Views from the Red section

Yesterday some friends drove in from St.Louis to attend a book signing at the Borders in Schaumburg. Who was signing? Tattoo artist, Kat Von D. I've been to a book signing, or two in my past, but nothing was as crazy as this was. The atmosphere felt more like a rock concert, than a book store. Fortunately, for us, we arrived before 11am and grabbed our wrist bands putting us in the "red" section (aka..the third group). The signing was only eight and a half hours away! While we did not spend the entire time hanging out in the red section (which happened to be amongst the Religion section of the book store), we did arrive back around 5:30. Just in time to get in our line and make some new friends.

Courtney was so excited, she couldn't stop posing with her book.

Matt was standing behind us in line, and while he may have been interviewed he forgot to have someone take his picture when he actually met Kat.

These girls made paper flowers to give to Kat. I thought that was so thoughtful!

We were finally getting close enough to get a real glimpse of Kat, and Courtney was so excited!

Here's Courtney getting her book signed by her favorite person in the world, Kat Von D. This whole day was all about this moment. Courtney was telling her how she drove over 7hours to be there.

Kat giving Courtney a hug for driving so far. Courtney was so relieved at how nice Kat was, and promises to marry her someday.

One last look before being ushered back down stairs so more fans could get their chance.

Yes. These are empty pizza boxes. This is how cool Kat Von D turned out to be. I don't think that Borders was quite expecting this kind of turn out for this event. When we arrived in the morning to get our wrist bands the rules were these. You can stay as long as you want, you can take as many pictures as you want, if she is willing you can pose with pictures with her (and the guy in the morning had talked to another Borders store that said she had posed for pics there). So we spent all day planning on how we were gonna do pictures and how we wanted a group shot with Kat Von D, ect.. Well, like I said, we don't think the Borders there expected so many people. The building was packed to fire code by 6:30pm and so they had to make people stand outside to wait in line (boy were we glad to have our red wrist bands). When Kat Von D arrived at 7:30 (right on time), she stopped and bought the people outside pizza to eat while the waited in line. How cool is that? Unfortunately because of the amount of people the photo rules had changed and we couldn't get pictures taken with her, and the minute you had your book signed the ushered you away to make more room in the building. So Trish and I sacrificed our turns to meet Kat in order to take a ton of pictures of Courtney meeting her hero. It was well worth it.

This is Trish, me and Courtney right at the front of the line. The wait was finally over, we had made new friends, and had a great time.