You can never have enough LEGO bricks. You’ll always need more. This must be how vampires feel, if they had a thirst for plastic bricks and didn’t eat people.
- Jonathan Bender

…from his blog Brick Bender, and author of LEGO: A Love Story (which I’m currently reading, BTW).

HT: Brothers-Brick, via Jonathan Bender’s (author of LEGO: A Love Story, go check it out!) Twitter page.

Laura Bush recently published her memoir, Spoken From The Heart.

On May 4th, a book party was held for her at the Kuwaiti Embassy. The publisher was on hand to sell books, and as publishers rarely have actual retail infrastructure, the Bookstore provided four sellers to work the event. As part of the security arrangements, the store had to provide those sellers’ names before the event, presumably so background checks could be conducted. You know: in case some Al Qaeda operative got himself a job shilling books on the off-chance he might be asked to work an event some former muckity-mucks were at so he would have the opportunity to, I don’t know, lob hardcover books at them or something.

But there was a problem: one of the booksellers who was slated for the event was actually in California. On vacation. We’ll call her Amy. Thanks to a schedule mishap, her vacation request hadn’t carried over to the current week’s schedule. This left the bookstore group slightly understaffed, so they recruited the supervisor of the store’s gift section to go in her place. We’ll call her Janie.

So they loaded up a taxi with boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of the memoir, jumped in themselves, and drove up to the Embassy. There was a security check, oddly, the guards* weren’t interested in IDs, just asking the staff members to identify themselves. (Kindly note: names have been changed to protect the innocent, the not-there, and the people I work with on a day-to-day basis.)

“Joe?” “Yep!”

“Frank?” “That’s me!”

“Karen?” “Yes!”

“Amy?” “No, I’m Janie.”

At this point, you would think any number of things would happen. I’m picturing gunships buzzing, large SUVs with blue and red flashers, Secret Service agents pouring out of every conceivable structure with weapons in hand.

At the very least, I would expect the guard to demand everyone start coughing up photo IDs. Instead, Frank gestured at Janie, who then identified herself as Amy.

No drawn weapons. No stern security measures. NO REQUESTS FOR IDENTIFICATION.

I mean, I realize she’s not the current First Lady. I’d still think at some point you’d have to show a driver’s license to someone.

*I don’t know how many guards there were. I don’t know if they were Secret Service, Kuwaiti, Metro PD, or from some other alphabet soup federal agency. I don’t even know they were guards, maybe they just stuck some ushers out front to guide people here or there.

***

Full disclosure: I do not know that this actually happened.

I was not present at this event. I was not there when this occurred. The person who initially told me the story has been known to, er, ‘exaggerate’, from time to time. Of the others who were there, when I asked them, there were differences in what did or did not happen (the bones of the story were all there) — that’s not surprising, given as no two people will remember each event the same way. Yet, I feel it’s important to throw out there: this is very much complete and total heresay.