Apologies, Indianapolis, a Parrot and John Green

First off, I apologize a thousand times for the lack of posts lately. Last week was the last week of school, so I had exams all that week, and the weeks before our teachers decided to load us with as many assignments and papers they could. This still is no excuse. But school has ended, and I shall try as hard as I possibly can to make up for this during the summer.

Anyway. You're probably wondering what I did over the weekend. Actually, you're probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

On Saturday morning, my family and I went up to Indianapolis, IN for a wedding. We then spent the night at a hotel [Embassy Suites] and left the following day. This hotel had four half-glass elevators, a ton of greenery [I think they wanted us to feel like we were outside?], and was just very nice in general. Along with the greenery and outside-ness, there was a parrot. A loud parrot. By one set of elevators. Named Sweetie.

The Pineapple Symbolizes Hospitality. [At least that's what I was told.]

That's great, Silver. I'm glad you went to a seemingly awesome and hospitable hotel, but what does this have to do with anything?

Well. After the wedding was the reception, which lasted until about 10:30PM. So we [I, my sister and brother, and a few others around our age from the wedding] went swimming/hottubbing. After that we went and ate pizza and then walked around the hotel/played cards/did absolutely nothing until about 1AM. Around this time, most everyone decided to go to bed, but I was not tired at all. So, because there was nothing else to do [the pool closed at midnight], I decided to go see how Sweetie was doing/sit by the fountains in the lobby/read downstairs. All of this was to take place in the lobby/dining area on the first floor.

After grabbing my book, I rode down one of the half-glass elevators, lying down and staring out of the glass as I rode from the 6th floor to the 1st [which happened to be kinda fun]. I decided to see what Sweetie was doing first. I couldn't see her until I came out of and around the elevators. I then learned that she was sleeping, so I decided to go sit on the bridge over the water in the lobby/dining area* and read An Abundance of Katherines.

I walked over to the bridge, looked down, and saw a man lying across it, sleeping with his face toward me. I started to back up slowly, as to not wake him, when I saw his head pop up. He looked faintly familiar in the dark, but I figured I had just seen him walking around earlier or something.

We stared at each other for a minute before I said, "Sorry for waking you. I'll go over there."

"No, no, no. You didn't wake me. I was just thinking," the Mysterious Man told me.

"Oh. Okay." I turned to leave anyway.

"No, wait," he cried. "I need your help."

I twisted back around with questioning eyes.

The Mysterious Man pulled out a notebook from under him that I hadn't seen and sat up, Indian-style. He then began to read from a filled notebook page, with a slightly familiar voice. Figuring this could take a while, I sat down facing him. After he had read for a couple minutes, he looked up at me from the page. "Well?"

Looking straight at him caused a wave of recognition to crash over me. I didn't know the Mysterious Man personally, but I knew who he was. "You're John Green," I gasped.

The Mysterious Man

"Yes," he replied simply.

"The author of Looking for Alaska."

"Yes, but-"

"And Paper Towns."

"Well, yeah. But I-"

"And this," I told him, holding up my book.

"Yes, I wrote that too. And I co-wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson with David Levithan. But I also wrote this." He held up his notebook. "And I really need to know what you think of it."

"Oh. Right. It was really good. About an eight out of ten." He looked at me with eyes that clearly wanted to know more. "It's the name. I mean, no one's going to like a character named Randall. In fact, I completely hate him right now."

This is what people named Randall look like.

"You know nothing about him!"

"That's irrelevant. It's an awful name. You need something like Joey... or Ryan."

"Okay? Well if I change his name to Ryan, would it be better?"

"Absolutely. If his name is Ryan, then it's a ten of ten. "

John Green sighed out of relief. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have no idea how much you've just helped me."

"Glad to be of assistance."

"Well, now that I know that my prologue is okay, I think I'm going to go home."

And with that, John Green stood up, walked across the rest of the bridge, across the lobby, and out the front doors of the hotel.

And that, dear readers, is what I did over the weekend.**

-SilverLining

*I'm telling you. They were trying to make it as outdoorsy as possible.

**Well, kinda. I should probably point out that everything after where I went to the bridge wasn't quite accurate. And by "n't quite accurate," I mean that I may have made it all up. John Green does live in Indianapolis though, so it had a bit of verisimilitude.