My Travels with Edward Cullen

Over the past month, my job has kept me on the road. Monday through Friday I have been out of town, visiting my company’s various facilities in places like Corpus Christi, Shreveport, and Kilgore (and coming soon – Utah and West Virginia). Living out of my suitcase for this time has created some pretty bad habits on my part. My traveling coworkers and I have no choice but to eat out for every meal, and then we usually retreat back to our own hotel rooms when we’re done for the day. For me, this was much appreciated. Because of the line of work that we’re doing at these facilities, all I want to do at the end of the day is take a shower and crash. However, my diet and exercise routines have fallen to the bottom of my “to do” list each day. And I started to see the effects of it almost immediately. I decided after week 2 of traveling that I needed to break out of my bad travel habits. For lunch, we all decided that we’d find somewhere with healthy foods – salads, veggies, Subway… things like that. At least we’d be eating one healthy meal a day. And I made it my personal goal to hit the hotel gym (if you can really call a treadmill, bike, elliptical, and free weights in one room a “gym”) every night. Well in week three I realized that I wanted to get a few books to read while I was gone – it would give me something to do while we were driving/flying to facilities, while I was working out, and something to do instead of rotting my brain with reality TV every night.

I happened to mention my plan to Cheryl one day while we were hanging out by her pool. “Oh my god – you have to read the Twilight series!” were the exact words that came out of her mouth. I was intrigued – Cheryl and I usually have similar tastes in such things.
Here’s the jist of the conversation that followed:
Me: Never heard of it, what’s it about?
Cheryl: It’s a series of books about a girl who falls in love with a vampire and all of the things they go through trying to be together.
Me: *trying to hold a straight face at the thought of reading a vampire book – I mean, really Cheryl??* Yeeeaaahh. Sounds great – I’ll keep an eye out for it next time I go to Barnes and Noble.
Cheryl: They’re really good – seriously.
Me: Yeah. Mmmhmm. Okay.

While I love to read (though I don’t do it nearly as often as I’d like), I’m not at all a sci-fi book kinda gal. I am way into some sci-fi movies but I’ve never been one for alien/vampire/space wars books. Not my thing – no thanks.

So I go to Barnes and Noble on a quest for a good book to read during my week in Kilgore. Nothing jumped out at me. So, with a sigh, I pull out my cell phone and call Cheryl. “Hey friend. Who’s the author of those books you were telling me about?”…”Stephanie Meyer – seriously, they’re good books! They’re on the best seller list so they’re probably somewhere in the front of the store”…”Okay I’m going to try to find them.” I was desperate for a good book, so I put myself at the mercy of my best friend’s recommendation. Lo and behold, front and center of the bookstore there is this big display with all 4 books in the series. I picked up the first one, read the back cover, became slightly intrigued, and headed for the checkout. I only bought the first book, just in case I couldn’t get into it. The book sat on my kitchen counter all weekend, and then in my suitcase for the first 2 days of my trip. Then I decided to stick to my plan – Tuesday night I grabbed the book and headed for the hotel “gym”. It took me a little while (although part of that was probably me fighting off my inner voice reminding me that I was reading a vampire love story), but I became hooked. I couldn’t stop reading – I read until my legs couldn’t go anymore on the treadmill, read in the elevator back to my room, and read until I made myself put it down at midnight. I read it almost the entire 3 ½ hour car ride back to Houston. I had about 150 pages left by the time I got back home Wednesday. I tried to tell myself that I’d finish it that night – once I got in bed. I had a lot to do once I got home, and I wouldn’t do any of it if I opened that book. So I finished everything as quickly as I could, spent some quality time with my doggies, and got in bed at 7:30 that night. JUST SO I COULD READ!! Talk about obsession, right?

Without getting into the plot (because you could easily google “Twilight” and get tons of information about it), let’s just say that this vampire – Edward Cullen – completely turned me upside down. I hadn’t felt so strongly about a character since Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook” (hello, lover – shwing!). I was absolutely enthralled in everything about him. I’m such a sucker. I am probably EXACTLY the kind of person that the publishing company was hoping to rope in. And now that it’s been 2 days since I finished the book, I have been frantically trying to figure out when I can get to a Barnes and Noble to pick up the other 3 books. Needless to say, I’m going after work today. So I have a feeling I’ll be spending my weekend with Edward Cullen ;)

*Thanks Cheryl for an incredible recommendation. I’ll never doubt you again. Unless you tell me to go buy a love story about a werewolf. ;)