Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

That's the famous word you're supposed to say when you don't know what to say. Especially when you've just met the person who made that very word famous.

That's right. I met the Julie Andrews! In the flesh! Mary Poppins herself. ^_^

Okay, here's the scoop: Julie Andrews recently wrote a children's book called "The Very Fairy Princess" and, for whatever reason, she decided that she would include our Borders book store on her book tour. When I heard she was coming and signing copies of her book, I was very excited at the thought of meeting her. You know me. Always leaping to get an author's signature. ^_^

There was another reason I wanted to meet dear Julie. Back in April I read her biography, Home (see the review from my Book Club), and while reading that I came upon a very interesting piece of trivia. When she was younger, like 17 years old, she performed in a pantomime adaptation of Jack in the Beanstalk, and she played a character called Princess Bettina. ^_^ Not only that, but when she bought her very first car, she christened the automobile "Bettina". True story.

Don't believe me? Here's the link that'll prove that I'm not playing with you guys.

This morning we all woke up at 7:00, because the book store opened at 8:00 and Julie would be coming at 10:00. Only 200 lucky people would be getting her autograph in a copy of "The Very Fairy Princess". There was to be no photography or movie-taking, and she wouldn't be signing anything other than the book. (Of course, we took our cameras anyway and I brought along my little notebook just in case.)

It was fun standing in line. I felt so lucky, because we were among the last 50 people to get to meet her! Imagine, if we had arrived just a couple minutes later than when we did, we would have missed a golden opportunity here.

Here's a couple pics my mom tried to take right when Julie came into the store. Sorry for the blurriness. 0,o

So yes, I met her. I even got to shake her hand. I can barely believe it! Honestly, it was just like meeting a queen! (Well, you have to admit she does play a really good queen in the movies, like in the Princess Diaries and Shrek 2 onward.) She is such a lovely lady. Polite, charming, almost regal. It was just so... surreal, meeting someone like her. I mean, my mom says that the first movies she ever saw as a girl were Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music. It was a thrill for all of us.

Now, they may have said no cameras allowed, but my mom came up with a brilliant idea. Annette would hide our Flip camcorder in her pocket and she'd simply record everything we and Andrews said. So here's the video of our minute with Julie. There isn't much to see, but all you really need to do is listen anyway.

What a lovely woman, huh? ^_^ I said I'd name my first car Julie, after her, and she said that she'd never had a car named after her before, and that I was the first Bettina she'd ever met! Plus it's amazing that even with the camera in Annette's pocket, she was able to catch a glimpse or 2 of her face! We took a couple snapshots from the video that are much better representations of her than those blurry pics up there.

Haha, it's her elbow. ^_^

Here are the best ones.

I may not have been able to get her to sign my notebook like I wanted ~,~ (she was terribly nice about it though, so I didn't mind very much. Hey, we had to keep the line moving.) But after all our waiting, we did end up with her autograph. Here it is.