After what feels like 847 hours in the car driving around Massachusetts (if you asked my kids, they'd tell you it felt like years), the first events for Off the Record are over. Back on the campus of Smith College, I spoke to a room full of undergraduates about the publishing industry, prefacing my talk with a word about how I feared they'd bombard me with questions that required defending myself and my choice of writing. Well, the first woman who raised her hand asked me how I justified writing chick lit, and asked how I reconciled that with feminist thought - or something along those lines. In her defense, she was sweet. I basically said I didn't have to defend my writing, I just had to write what people would enjoy reading - or something along those lines. Anyway, I had a great time there, ate in the same dining room I ate in my freshman year, dished with the head of the English department (after telling her I had to take belly dancing to make up for the literature class I dropped my senior year). Really enjoyed myself.

Yesterday's signing downtown was also fun, some sweet friends of mine came, including author Marianne Mancusi . I also met Hank Phillipe Ryan, an investigative reporter for channel 7, and, apparently, a local celebrity. Hank has written a mystery and we've e-mailed each other, but I had no idea Hank was so famous. My friend Debbie actually told Hank that her dad loves watching her reports. But, discovering Hank's celebrity status definitely explained why she also looks drop dead gorgeous and totally put together, whereas I looked like I should be schlepping her lunch around.

Debbie's reaction to Hank kind of reminded me of the times I've been introduced to strangers by friends and all of a sudden the person realizes who I am and says: "You're Jennifer O'Connell? The Jennifer O'Connell? The world famous author? Oh my god, I love you!"

Okay, so that never really happens, but you get the idea.

I'm getting ready to head to Boston for some events, one of which is at my alma mater. The thing is, the event there has me slightly wigging out. Is it weird that the thought of addressing a group of 18-22 year old women should frighten me? All of a sudden I don't know what to wear or what these young women are expecting. Will my choice of literary (or non-literary) pursuit be put into question by students reading Homer and Aristotle? Will they look at me and think I'm so old? Will they look so young? So I e-mailed my friend Vicki and asked her what she thought.

"Wear a cute tan corduroy skirt," she instructs me. "Or J Crew has some cute things, too. But don't wear khaki pants - too suburban mom-ish." Cute pleated corduroy skirt with a J Crew argyle vest? It's a book thing, not a Britney Spears video shoot. The psuedo-school girl look will just not do. Besides I don't own said cute tan corduroy skirt, otherwise I may be singing a different tune. So, I'm stuck with what's in my closet, and all of a sudden nothing looks appropriately cool enough. How to look cool without looking like I'm trying too hard? Because my "normal" wardrobe is probably the equivalent of a college student - t-shirts and shorts or jeans - they might just think I'm trying too hard to look hip. And, even my t-shirts aren't of the cropped, tight cool variety. They're more like the faded baggy ones I bought to remember a trip to Martha's Vineyard five years ago.

The sad fact is, these young women don't give a shit what I'm wearing, and probably won't even notice. So why am I overthinking this? Because the idea of having a young girl raise her hand and say, "Excuse me, ma'am?" is just horrifying. Kinda like the idea of being in a Britney Spears video.

This weekend my husband had to fix one of our garage doors, which wasn't going up as it was supposed to. Well, my daughter walked out into the garage and happened to see that the formerly broken door was open.

She asked, "How'd you get the garage door up?"
My husband told her, "I lifted it up."
This thoroughly confused her. "What do you mean you lifted it up? How?"
"With my hand."
Now her mind was completely blown. "Your hand?"
"Yeah, like this." He proceeded to show her.
Well, you would have thought he'd turned water into wine the way she started carrying on. "You mean you can open the door by hand? Without the remote control or pushing the button?"
He demonstrated again, and this time she had to get my son. "Come here," she yelled, thrilled with the discovery that the garage door could be opened by the hands of a mere mortal. "You can open the garage door by hand!"
My son came rushing to the door and watched in amazement as my daughter told him about an amazing thing called opening the garage door without the use of electronics.

It had never occurred to us that our kids were growing up thinking that garage doors merely required the push of a button to open, or that actually opening the doors by manually lifting them was something out of the realm of possibility. Imagaine what would happen if I told them that phones used to have cords, or that, a long time ago in a land very far away, we used to have to get off the couch to change the TV channel or lower the volume. I'm sure they'd think I was making it all up.