February Adventure #1 - Literary Love

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'

When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine, that's amore'"

February promises to be full of adventure dipped in chocolate
and sugar coated with literary love. Not even groundhog Punxatawney Phil and his forecast for six more weeks of winter could dampen my spirits. It's going to be a month of delicious indulgence if I have anything to say about it.

While searching for adventures for my blog, two opportunities popped up that were simply perfect. I stumbled onto one event by chance in the Artshound newsletter. If you are looking for an outing in Houston, this little gem lists weekly happenings in art, music, theater, and all things literary.

The first was a book signing and reading by one of my favorite best-selling authors, Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love, which is being made into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Her latest novel, Committed, chronicles her own adventure into an unlikely marriage.

My evening began with dinner at Mingalone's, an Italian restaurant and bar located on Texas Avenue downtown. I can recommend the Insalata Primevera, and I was told by a pretty reliable source that the Vitello de Teatro wasn't too bad. It was a great location near Alley Theater. After dinner I picked up my ticket at Will Call and received my copy of Committed. I couldn't wait to dig into her work, though I had already read the first chapter online.


There was enough estrogen to supply the entire female population of a third world country in the theater. Gilbert read the first chapter of her work throwing in personal commentary here and there. I found her to be funnier in person than the voice she portrayed in her books. She was genuinely honest about her reluctance to remarry, something I related to quite well. She spoke about her writing, her motivation, and I became inspired once more to pick up my pen and take a stab at the novel that's been patiently waiting years to be written.

As the evening came to a close, I waited in line with several hundred other women, some men, for Gilbert to sign my book. It was worth the wait. She thanked me for being so patient. I left with a renewed outlook on writing and relationships between men and women.

But that wasn't the only highlight of my first week in February. The following day I enjoyed dinner with young adult author Gordon Korman and my school librarian at Baytown's El Toro Mexican food restaurant. It wasn't Mingalone's, but the fish tacos were excellent as usual.

My sixth-grade class is reading his novel, Schooled, about a home-schooled hippie teenager who is dropped into the middle of a public school after his grandmother Rain breaks her hip and is hospitalized. The conversation was easy, and I enjoyed sharing ideas on writing with him. We exchanged thoughts about the publishing business, topics for new novels, and life in general.

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll join the ranks of Korman and Gilbert. For now, I'm just an ordinary girl writing about a year of midlife adventures.