Why no, I didn't blog yesterday.

But if I ever had a good reason¹, this was it.

This is a prime example of why I love improvisation so much and basically never really plan anything.

**spoiler alert** NOTHING GOES ACCORDING TO PLANS

John Green is one of my all-time favorite authors, he's written books like Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and one third of Let It Snow, which, by the fact the fact that they are all, by nature, novels, by genre, young adult, and look that way, seem like crap I wouldn't want to read, but I found out with great reluctance that his books are both, hilarious, thought-provoking, and educational² all of which include nerdy teens, illegal drinking, and road trips as major plot points at some time or another. He also has a sometimes equally hilarious,thought-provoking, and educational collaborative weblog with his brother Hank³ that includes nerdy adults, drinking things that are not normally considered drinkable, and not-surprisingly enough, roadtrips as, you know, major plot points.

One of my sisters learned about him from some unknown source and introduced him to me and my other sister, I introduced him to my best friend Mike, and Mike and I collaboratively introduced him to our friend Hannah. (Yes, I'm pretty sure this backstory is completely necessary)

He recently completed and published half of a book called Will Grayson Will Grayson the other half of which was written by the same David Levithan that helped write Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. As you may have guessed John Green's half is titled Will Grayson while David Levithan's half is titled Will Grayson. And they, to promote their new book are doing a book tour that stopped in "the LA area" for the Marlese Newyear (yesterday) even though they don't know anything about The Marlese Newyear. Obviously we (I and my John Green loving contemporaries) consider this the perfect set up for a 22nd annual Marlonic New Year celebration. Unfortunately at the same time Mike had the much more important airforce graduation of his closest sibling to go to in Te-has, so it was just to be me, my two sisters and Hannah.

So, we check John Green's website it says he's going to be in La mesa at 6pm, we're like "Cool, that's not far" so we print out directions to the Costa Mesa library and leave the AV at 3:30. On the way to pick up Hannah, we get gas, some sausage biscuits and some Arizona Iced Tea Rx Energy. We get to Hannah's at about 5 and realize A. John Green lied when he said he'd be in the LA area because it's actually in the San Diego area. B. Costa Mesa and La Mesa are not, in fact the same place, and C.La Mesa is about 60 miles south of Costa Mesa we only have an hour to get there, it's rush hour and we're still only in Sherman Oaks about 30 miles north of that. So we' realize the book signing will be over by the time we get down there so we decide to do something else for the day, my options were as follows: the beach, some random mall, wander around sherman oaks, Palm Springs, and other random California towns with nothing but old people on some kind of half-hearted scavenger hunt idea my sister came up with.

Now, for one, I'm either a woman nor a hommosexual. Going and window shopping at the mall couldn't possibly interest me.

For two, I hate the beach. I mean I can theoretically enjoy any location with the right people, but there's something wrong with going to your least favorite location on your birthday. I know is sounds weird here on the West Coast, but it's true. I hate the beach, people ask me all the time what I hate about the beach and usually I could answer "You know at you like about the beach? That." I hate the ocean, the waves, the sand, the kelp, most of the people in bathing suits, I definitely hate the smell, the sounds the weather, the way the air feels, the way the air tastes, how the horizon and the ski just kind of mesh together, and I've never encountered jellyfish, but I really, really hate the concept. It's like a Lewis Carroll poem, actually.

For three the scavenger hunt sounded shady as eff,

The sister who drove and suggested the scavenger hunt thought it would be a good idea to utter the words "I have a full tank of gas so we can pretty much go where ever, plus this energy drink's got me down for just about anything." So we looked at a map for guidance. Some locations had some interesting names but none so much as Chocolate Mountain.

1.I HAVEN'T before now
2.both!
3.Both him and his brother Hank and gay.