My sig­nif­i­cant other (who will hence­forth be referred to as Whee­z­ley Blighter — and no that’s not his real name) and I actu­ally left for the Roman­tic Times con­ven­tion on Tues­day so we could drive up to Erie, Pennsylvania.

My friend Super Librar­ian Amy (as she will hence­forth be known) is the head hon­cho at the Corry Pub­lic Library in Corry, Penn­syl­va­nia, a small town about thirty min­utes from Erie. Since Pitts­burgh is only about 2 1/2 hours from Erie, Super Librar­ian Amy asked me to come up, do a book sign­ing, and hang out. I was happy to oblige. :buttercup:

So we packed up the car and headed that way early Tues­day morn­ing. I’d only been to Penn­syl­va­nia one other time, and I was curi­ous about where my friend lived (she’s orig­i­nally from the area).

Penn­syl­va­nia is really flat. And swampy. And there are more dead deer by the side of the road than any­where else I’ve ever been. Seri­ously. Super Librar­ian Amy told me to watch out for the “sui­ci­dal” deer, but I didn’t believe her until we got up there. We’d pass a great big deer lying dead by the side of the inter­state every other mile or so. Weird.

After we cruised by Pitts­burgh, there wasn’t a lot to see until we got to Erie. I thought my part of the world was rural, but Penn­syl­va­nia was more so. Guess it’s all the farm­land up that way. Any­way, we only got lost once on one of the back roads and made it to the library right on time.

The Corry library is really nice, espe­cially for a small-town library (the photo above shows the inside of the library). The library col­lec­tion is around 90,000 books — and there are only about 1,500 peo­ple who live in the town. That’s a pretty good book-to-person ratio. Color me impressed. I sold six books, which wasn’t bad con­sid­er­ing this was a Tues­day night. But more impor­tantly, I got to hang out with my friend, meet some of her fam­ily, meet her fiance, and went out to din­ner — it was all good. :blossom:

So thanks Super Librar­ian Amy — we had a great time.

Also, if any writer out there in blog land lives in Penn­syl­va­nia or the sur­round­ing area, you can con­tact Super Librar­ian Amy through the library’s Web site. She’s always look­ing for authors to come to the library and do events.

Up next: More stuff from RT.