Last nite DH and I went over to Powell’s at Cedar Crossing to see Pioneer Woman and get her new cookbook signed…
alas, there were well over 4oo people there and they had given out all the tickets…which I didn’t know about until it was too late to get them, seeing as how they were gone by 3pm and the book signing was for 6pm.
So we hung back in the crowd and watched the guy announce that Pioneer Woman was lost and going to be late…
I don’t know if you can make him out, he’s in the olive green t-shirt checking his wrist watch. So we waited (while I wonder at how the Unbelievably Wonderful Pioneer Woman is allowed to navigate Portland/Beaverton on her own in a car and why wasn’t someone looking out for her?)
Finally she comes and brings her daughter and mother in law with her…I spy her daughter in the back of the crowd while she talks so I snap a pix because I can’t even see Pioneer Woman through the crowd.
see that tall girl with the pony tail and the blue shirt with flowers? that’s her. and I don’t know her name.
I sit on the steps and knit and listen to the Pioneer Woman talk and wonder how long I may have to wait before I get my book signed. DH nods off beside my and I have to nudge him now and then. (He gets up at 4:30am and is ready for bed already, but being good-hearted he takes me to this…this crowd of women all wanting to see Her.)
The guy in the olive green shirt announces the ticket system, and explains how we will wait until numbers are called, and the rest of us…well, shoot. I move over to a seat just outside the window of Powell’s.
Chris works his way through the crowd to actually purchase us a book. I can see his head bobbing way above everyone in the crowd and can watch his progress. (DH is 6’4″ tall, easily recognizable in a crowd!)
He comes back with “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” and tells me the info he picked up while chatting with the clerks. He says the were to initially order 650 copies of the book and within the first three days, had gone through 1,000 wanting the book. He says the guy planning this didn’t think it would be so many people, he had no idea how popular the Pioneer Woman is. I told him that was obvious.
My friend Rachel (Trtgrl) was there somewhere but we never saw each other. I hope she got her book signed. I waited until they announced numbers 90-100 and when I realized it was 7:30 already, decided to give up and let DH go home to bed, where he wanted to be.
If they had 400 to go through and it took until 7:30 to get through the first 100, it would be midnite before it was my turn. Before I left, I came to realize that the Pioneer Woman’s daughter had ended up sitting with her back to me on the other side of the glass, so I snapped a quick pix.
Notice the book at her elbow, eh? “The Old Barn Book”. Coming from a ranch in Oklahoma, I wonder if that was intentional or serendipitous?
I elbowed my way alongside the line a little ways and attempted to snap a pix of Rhee, The Pioneer Woman herself at the book signing table. I came all this way, waited all this time, the least I could do is try to get one unobtrusive pix.
So that’s as close as I got folks. I took the book home and started a batch of herCinnamon Rolls.
It was the least I could do.








