Hitting the road in four days!

I am on the brink of taking my first step into a larger world.
Friday will be my first book reading and signing, with another the day after. It's appropriate, I suppose, that these events will be help on old stomping grounds. Friday I'll be returning to UMass Dartmouth, the setting of the last few chapters of the book and home to four years worth of getting comfy in my then-new adult skin. It will be a fun, though strange return, since I am certainly a much different person now than I was during my tenure there. Proof? I just watched Revenge of the Sith with my girlfriend--the first time watching it start to finish since my senior year at UMass--and my response was...different. I will elaborate in another post because this certainly deserves of its own dedicated discussion, but to put it bluntly, I didn't hate it. Not like I did the first, and before today only other two times I watched it. Again, more on that later.
My second signing will be at a shop called Jabberwocky back home in Newburyport, MA. Newburyport itself wasn't home, but home was just ten minutes down the road. It will be interesting to bring a lot of the angst and bitter memories back to the home front, but I also believe it might be cathartic as well. Despite my frustrations and struggles as a kid who just wanted to belong and be okay with the geek he not-so-secretly knew he was, there were a lot of fun times had back home, whether it was my nose buried in an EU novel or staring for the umpteenth hour at Star Wars cards in the thick of a game my friends and I didn't quite understand how to play.
Neither one of these events was chosen or timed entirely at random. I have long believed in the power memory gives to things and places. I have books I was given by ex-girlfriends that went unread for months or years because of the negative thoughts that came with them. Listening to The Band's self-titled album and Beck's "Modern Guilt" on a particularly productive day while working on this book resulted in me listening exclusively to those two albums for the rest of the writing and editing process. It is my hopes that starting this book tour at two places where I spent so much time during the periods of my life discussed in the book that I will be able to tap into...something. I don't know what. Maybe it will just give me the confidence that comes with a home field advantage. Who knows. But there is significance to these places, if only personal significance that prior to any of you reading this would have otherwise remain hidden. If nothing else I hope that it will all result in a better show for you.
Now I just need to figure out what the hell to talk about and what passage from the book to treat you with.
If any of you attend either of these events please, be gentle, this is my first time.