For the last two weeks – as I’ve been wrapping up last-minute dayjob to-do items and obsessively making lists of things that would doom me to lifelong failure if they didn’t make it into my suitcase – my mantra has been, “I’ll be fine once I’m on the plane. I just can’t wait to get on the plane.”

One of D the B’s to-dos was to strip DVDs for me, so I’d have lots of entertainment on the kickass iPod he got me for Christmas. (Thanks, D the B! And for those of you who haven’t had the distinct pleasure of meeting D the B, he has the patience of Job, he’s very handsome, and he finds ways to make me laugh when I think I might crack into a billion little shards from stress. He’s such a catch, I can’t even really talk about it.)

Yesterday, he armed me with 13 episodes of Keen Eddie (an awesome detective show co-starring a pre-overexposure Sienna Miller); the new, almost-perfect 4-hour Masterpiece Theatre version of Jane Eyre, complete with makeout scene(!); When Harry Met Sally, which D the B was reluctant to include because I always cry when Billy Crystal runs through the streets of New York to get to Sally on New Year’s Eve; Hellboy, ‘cause, yes, I have a crush on Hellboy; and Little Miss Sunshine. From iTunes, I bought myself the music video for Duran Duran’s “New Moon on Monday” and an episode of the TV series Wonder Woman in which Linda Carter plays dual roles (the evil twin episode!): Wonder Woman and an evil Nazi impersonator.

I couldn’t wait until we’d been in the air for the requisite 10 minutes so I could fire up my iPod and start watching. I planned to start with Linda Carter.

I’m pretty sure I was asleep before the plane took off, and I only woke up when the pilot announced that we’d be landing 30 minutes later than planned because Phoenix was in the midst of a thunderstorm, and we were one of 60 planes making lazy circles in the sky over Arizona, waiting for the storm to pass.

Once awake, sort of, I started on the Detective Barnaby novel I bought at Half Price Books a few weeks ago. So far, it’s just what I expected, which is a good thing. Cozy. Familiar.

So… flight: mostly uneventful. And I was in row seven. Lucky!

When we got to the hotel, we were given a key to room 711! VERY lucky. And shown the pile of book boxes stacked in a storage room. I had 400 copies of Rollergirl shipped here to take to the Dust Devil. They arrived on a palette and a bellhop had to carry 20 boxes into the hotel. I gave him a heart-shaped box of chocolates when I arrived; it seemed to make amends.

I’m about to wander downstairs for complimentary coffee now and get ready for AZ-TV interview at 9:00 a.m. —my first TV interview in regular human clothes, instead of my Derby uniform! And tonight, my first book signing!

To all of you who’ve been sending me sweet emails and words of encouragement: thank you (truly) and keep ‘em coming! I love hearing from you.