An Eventful Day

I had "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" by The Kinks stuck in my head during the completion of my Marketing Law and Direct Marketing exams. I hope it didn't affect my performance.
Oh, and I got to meet Terry Pratchett.
Yes. Yes, that I did.
It was at a publisher's soiree at the Arthouse, a posh bar in the CBD, and Tanja and a few other Borders people got invites (including me, but since David couldn't remember my last name, my name tag read "Lucas: Borders City". Terry is a LOT shorter and skinnier than I expected (from his pictures, I expected a John Rhys-Davies-sized fellow in a cowboy hat. Instead, I saw a 5-foot-six man in a derby so big on him that it looked like a cowboy hat. And he had a silver scythe tie pin. Cool.)
I had brought along my Men At Arms book for him to sign, only to be told by a bitchy publicist/glorified assistant gopher that "Terry's only signing copies of Going Postal tonight. didn't you know that?" Grrr. I've read Going Postal but haven't bought it.
Then Terry starts wandering around to the different groups, speaking a bit to each. When he gets to our group, I'm so tongue-tied (a serious feat, for me) that Ikeda or whomever she is monopolizes Terry, and I miss out on a Discworld-themed l-space joke. Ikeda and Terry are talking about how big Borders is and she says they lose customers all the time, and I had the urge to say "yeah, we found the remains of some Christmas shoppers, and we ate their boots." But I didn't. Damnit.
But then he turned to me and saw my name tag and said "So, Lucas. What do you do at Borders?" and I said "Nothing, actually. I married into it." He said "Jolly good, fine old family. Old book money." Heh.
He wanders off and Dvid and I cornered and pounced trays of nibblies (meatballs and sausages and fish cakes oh my) and Tanja and I cornered and pounced glasses of free champagne (champers and champers and champers oh my) and then Terry gets up to speak. He's quiet and dry and extremely funny and I laugh far too hard at his explaining his hallucination of a sandwich vendor while on the operating table. Then he gets down to sign books.
Through side-handed trading, Tanja had enveigled me a copy of Going Postal to get signed, which I do, whilst gushing about the odd circumstances with which I came to have gotten it, and I realize he's not listening. And I wilt a bit, and go to shake his hand. He looks at my hand for a second, then switches his pen to his other hand, and sticks out his hand. I clasp it, but he doesn't clasp back (an odd sensation. Don't try it). I grab my book and skedaddle. I realize that by that point, the hardcore fans had already been past him, hence his kind of tuning my stuttering gushing out, but I was still to embarrassed to go into line a second time and get Men At Arms signed. David finally did it for me, slipping it into the pile of stuff they were getting signed for the Borders store.
Anyway. Yeah. That was my Pratchett moment. I felt good, even despite the wierdness. And I got Going Postal in hardback. Heh.