Moving Up and Down

I know I’ve had some long gaps between posts, but I really didn’t mean for this to go so long. Fact is, I’ve had some big news…but almost the very day I wanted to write about it, my computer died. Well, that’s a bit dramatic. Turns out there’s a little pin in the charging port and the charger fits over the pin. Except that this time, the charger decided to eat the pin and pull it off. No more charging! And I don’t have a detachable battery, so finding another way to charge was not an option.

Getting the computer fixed was quite an adventure, but first, in ascending order:

Big News

Stasis: First, our landlords are renewing our lease! I hadn’t really even realized they might not without showing signs of unhappiness with us, but then I started hearing horror stories of friends whose landlords were telling them to get out quick. But nope, no fuss.

Moving Down(town): Second, the office finally moved from the Flatiron to Varick Street. I traded a lovely view of the Empire State Building in the morning and the line at Shake Shack during the day for the views of Canal Street in the morning and One World Trade Center during the day. Well, I quickly realized that walking up to Grand Street gave me nicer views of south Soho and an easier walk (no dodging tourists and fake Prada bag hawkers).

The new office is great: colorful, lived-in, open space so that we can all help each other out, full of small meeting rooms for when we need to make our calls to the UK, and—a highlight for me—containing not only one but TWO break rooms with actual tables where we can eat lunch. Hallelujah! The tea selection still stinks, but that’s nothing new.

Now the really big news…

Moving Up: After over a year and a half at my job, I’ve been promoted! Yep, instead of being an Editorial Assistant, I am now an Assistant Editor! It’s basically the same thing except that I also get to acquire books. It means more time recruiting authors, and since working with authors is the best part of the job, well, it’s pretty great. I’m also working with a fantastic new series editor on a series that I actually helped get off the ground, which is exciting. I can’t wait to get some more projects in.

Computer Woes and Historical Side Trips

It’s a darn good thing I got the promotion, too, because that computer repair wasn’t cheap. It didn’t exactly break the bank—I had a couple options—but the worst part wasn’t the cost or the inconvenience but the difficulty of finding a place to get it repaired.

I started out looking for an official Asus repair shop in Long Island City. Left work a few minutes early because the shop closed at 6 and I’d been getting home from Varick around then. Switched trains, walked up and down the sidewalk past a penitentiary (so labeled) and didn’t find it. Did some phone Googling and found out that it had moved into Manhattan. Well, since I was already on the hunt I figured I’d go find it. Got back on the train. Two transfers. No near subway, so I got out at Grand Central, which is just as bad as Times Square. Walked a good way, found the address, front door was under construction so found the back door…and when I asked at reception, I was told they’d moved out a month ago.

I gave up for the night. When I went to their new address (I don’t know if it was the next day or the day after that), I found it, but they wanted $250 to fix the computer and replace the charger. Yikes!

Next, on the weekend, I ventured forth into the Financial District in the pouring rain to look for a place with a great repair deal. I got a bit turned around and ended up stuck in the One World Trade Center plaza because there was apparently only one side open to entrance and exit. Further wandering finally confirmed my fears—the address was in a building under thorough renovation next to the World Trade Center site. I got out of the rain for a bit, emailed their office, and was told that they were now in Brooklyn! Yeah, I wasn’t going that far.

I took a break to check out the African Burial Ground National Monument, which had caught my eye on another occasion but had been closed. The Memorial is on the site of a massive colonial New York graveyard, where slaves buried their dead quickly, in increasingly smaller groups as laws became more strict, between sundown and nightfall (because slaves had to work during the daylight hours). Hundreds of people were buried there—and the site had been all but forgotten until excavation was begun for a new tower. After a good bit of activism, the city agreed to give the site a proper archaeological excavation, followed by the construction of a memorial, an international dedication, and the reinterment of the remains. So much of the north likes to forget that slavery was part of its history—the monument is badly overlooked and much needed.

Anyway, after I’d seen all there was to see, I headed off in search of one more shop on the West Side. Two subway transfers with a longer walk than I wanted when my shoes were soaked and I’d been on my feet for hours. As it turned out, there were two repair shops at the address and I ended up in the wrong one…but they were welcoming, quickly told me what was wrong and what needed to be fixed, and offered a decent rate to get it fixed. True, it was a day later than expected, but by that point I was so fed up looking for repair shops and I had such good service that I don’t really care. They even fully charged the battery before returning the computer!

The result is, as you can see, a fixed computer.

In the Writer’s World

In the world of writing, I’ve been chugging away at my latest project, which has required all that odd research I’ve been tweeting about. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, tungsten is in high demand for its use in strengthening steel, and some enterprising industry barons have solved the problem of Progressive Era labor laws by sponsoring criminals to serve their sentences as productive “employees” at their company’s mine in the Yukon. Quiesence McGee hopes to keep her head down, but her medical certification attracts the attention of one of the area’s only resident non-criminals—Charlemagne Mason, eccentric son of a wealthy industrialist who’s running an experimental school hundreds of miles from civilization. It turns out that he needs her help: his right-hand man is Frankenstein’s creation, and the patchwork body is starting to break down after almost a century of post-mortem life. Things get even more complicated when the spring thaw brings some of Mister Mason’s old high society acquaintances…who notice that dear boy Charlie doesn’t look anything like he used to.

It’s a lot to take on, and I only know what I want to happen—I’m letting the characters take me there. The story’s going to need a lot of work later, but right now I’m just trying to get a draft done, even if that means no going back to standardize my experiments with tenses and points of view. When I’m not writing, I’m having a ton of fun researching everything related to the story. Let me tell you, coming up with names and backstories for more than thirty women criminals is both fun and challenging! I’ve always loved researching for stories, and this is probably the most I’ve ever done.

From the Pages of…

I have a big of catching up to do on GoodReads. Fortunately I have a single volume of Shakespeare, so I don’t need to review all four of the plays in Shakespeare’s second Henriad individually. Man, though, what a political mess! I had trouble keeping track of all the characters when so many people had the same name or took over titles from people who’d been killed in the previous plays. That said, it was all very interesting. You don’t often see plays featuring weak kings—who aren’t even the center of their own stories. Henry VI was a stark contrast to his father, grandfather, and uncle, but even King Richard II commanded the attention of the other characters despite his failure. But maybe that’s part of what made Henry VI so interesting; he’s so different from the other kinds and queens in the histories surrounding him.

I’ve also finished a book that I would have appreciated much more when I was younger, reread most of Frankenstein (for the story I’m working on), started reading Paradise Lost (ditto), and started pecking at a book for casual reading. We’ll see if it lasts.

I also spent a portion of my weekend at my parents’ home opening boxes in search of Becky’s Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein. I’d been green with envy when I saw the book that she got for one of her classes, and was eager to get my hands on the essays for more (probably excessive, in this case) research. Becky even said I could keep the book if I managed to find it in the mountain of boxes whose contents are waiting for their final destination once the attic renovation is finished.

This was already going to be a bit daunting, as the Lawrence family has a ridiculous number of books. Alas, the curse of the packers’ terrible labeling struck again. Only two boxes of books had Becky’s name on them, and I even found a few boxes of my own things that were labeled “books” (no room or name added) that contained nothing of the sort. I gave up on Saturday, then, right before I left, I decided to open the boxes in the living room that were only labeled “books”. Two of them contained Becky’s books, so I thought I might have a hope of finding Frankenstein yet. I went back to the boxes near Becky’s furniture and opened a one that didn’t have a room specified. Sure enough, there it was! And man do those essays sound interesting!

I’d better bring this entry to a close now, since I know I’ll have another one coming up soon—this Saturday is the Lower East Side’s Pickle Day! 

Reinforcements

Sorry for the silence. It’s been an emotional roller coaster for a couple weeks and I will admit that there have been a lot of low points. There have been some high points as well, so I’ll try to cover a bunch of them and not let myself be too gloomy.

I have no idea why I chose the word "reinforcement" for this entry, but I somehow just started thinking about how different applications of it kind of meshed with what was going on.

1) Backup (e.g. Additional Troops)

As those of you reading my blog are probably aware, my parents and youngest sister recently moved from north New Jersey back to Massachusetts. I couldn’t make it for the actual move, but I took a couple extra days around the long Labor Day weekend to help settle in.

I don’t think I realized just how unsettled the whole house still was until I got there, but that’s for later.

The house is, simply, gorgeous. The original granite exterior was built in the mid-1800s and expanded upon over the years to include a kitchen, enlarged sunny family room, and an attached garage. We’ve always wanted to live in a historical house and now some of us do, along with all the quirks: a very steep servants’ staircase, an uneven basement floor, an oddly placed slate patio overlooking the neighborhood cul-de-sac that used to be an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the crumbly remnants of a road in the backyard that used to be the front yard, the alternatingly chic and questionable style sense of the former owners. Oh, and a couple renovation projects.

That was probably the hardest part for me: because the top floor needs to be renovated, I wasn’t able to help with a lot of the unpacking. I got the guest room and my bookshelves and storage set up, tackled almost all of the dining room, made a big dent in alphabetizing the CDs and DVDs, and helped out with a few other projects around the house. Maybe when I’m back around Thanksgiving I’ll be able to help with some of the dozens of boxes of books…

The best/most frustrating part was that the movers didn’t do a great job of keeping everything labeled and organized by room. Mostly I noticed this when things were missing from the rooms that were mostly unpacked, but we also found a quite a few unexpected items. A box of Christmas decorations was labeled for my room, as were a few decorative objects from around our old entryway. The books and electronics from the family room, dad’s study, and the back room were mostly thrown together willy-nilly. I had two mostly empty closet boxes for my room even though there hadn’t been enough closet boxes for the rest of the family, but breakable mugs and figurines had been put in my dresser drawers without any padding.

Around the unpacking I did get a little fun in: I rescued three tiny turtles from the pool; went up to the roof to take a look at the crumbly chimney; walked to see a couple of the historic local not-witch houses; went into Boston’s North End for a nostalgic stroll by the marina, delicious lobster ravioli at Mother Anna’s, and cannolis to go from Mike’s. Part of me wishes I’d gotten to live in this awesome house in this cool area near this historic city—which may mean that Boston will have to be somewhere in my future.

2) Positive Reinforcement: Scientific Definition

As any psychology student can probably tell you, positive reinforcement doesn’t mean rewarding a desired behavior; it’s simply the addition of a stimulus or incentive to a situation to reinforce behavior. So that guy in Ghostbusters who was getting zapped for failing to predict cards correctly was actually receiving positive reinforcement (in his case, he’d prefer negative reinforcement: having the threat of zapping removed for answering correctly).

In the past couple of weeks, someone near the apartment has taken up smoking. First there’s the gentle scraping sound of the window screen going up, then the flick of a lighter, and a few minutes later I get to share the experience via the stink that wafts in through the kitchen window, sometimes as far as the living room. The frequency of these smoke breaks has been increasing from one a morning to several every day.

I don’t know who’s doing it. Up until this point, I’ve never been aware of anyone smoking nearby, except for maybe the occasional cigarette from someone who crossed the street from the steakhouse to get a little quiet. It’s annoying, but what can you do?

Well, in this case, I could apply some positive reinforcement. Every time I heard the screen go up, I rushed to the window, grabbed two pans, and started banging them together. My desire was to make the environment unhospitable enough that the smoker would find a different direction to face—like out the front window, where there’s more of a breeze to dissipate the smoke.

After some initial success, the subject (who is, my nose tells me, currently at it again) appears to have become accustomed to the ruckus—like bears who run into noise and light alarms around dumpsters so much that they learn to ignore them. Maybe I need an air horn. And “please smoke elsewhere” in Morse code.

3) Positive Reinforcement: Conventional Definition

The use of the phrase “positive reinforcement” to mean rewards for good behavior is so common that it does merit inclusion. I had a great example in mid-August when I met with CC for my half-year review. I had a great report and was given more responsibilities, including a commissioning goal, and told what I’d need to do to be considered for promotion. Yay!

Unfortunately, things got a little rough soon after that. As our office move downtown approaches, quite a few people I love working with are moving on, so there’s some sadness along with the excitement. And I’ve had several very promising leads for book projects fall through or get put on the shelf for a couple months—not that they won’t happen, and I can’t begrudge a writer for wanting to take their time, but I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to reach their goal early so that they can surpass it.

4) Assurance

Along with all the changes happening at work, though, we still have a great team of editors and assistants. My own editor has been supportive when things were rough, and other editors, EAs, and PAs have also offered opinions and advice—potential positives in turnovers, last-minute career tips, moving office decorations, shows to see, books to read, restaurants to eat at, recipes to try. I’ve also spent some time with people who I’ve not had much chance to interact with up until now. Hard to believe it's possible not to have talked much with someone in an imprint this size, but our wedge-shaped office doesn't lend itself to interaction. Which is part of why we're moving. 

5) Reiteration

Support doesn’t just come from work, either. Friends have been willing to listen and offer advice—even hilariously bad advice, when I need a laugh. Cadillac is there every morning for a quick chat to just make me feel human again, to have a conversation that isn’t about work, doesn’t require knowledge of current TV shows, and allows conversations to swing from serious to silly and back again in a few seconds. And, as usual, my family has very kindly put up with me. My mom is a saint. 

6) Strengthening

I’m trying to stay focused on this aspect of the definition, the fact that I really feel like I have a grip on the EA thing and am more than ready to move up. Even if my projects have been slow off the ground, they are coming—that’s something. But I’m also handling some complicated and delicate situations on my own (as a result of the turnover, not negligence on anyone else’s part!) and doing really well. I can answer most questions about our title management system and I know who can when I can’t. I’m writing bulletins about technology updates and monthly successes. I haven’t actually let us run out of coffee despite a surprising lack of anxiety in the office when the supply gets low. (Yes, I’m doing the coffee order. Oh, the irony! (I think…))

To step away from all the vagueness, I also did some literal, construction-level strengthening. A friend, MM, told me and Neline about a cool even that happened last Saturday evening in Madison Square Park: MAD. SQ. TASK, a massive art party for people young and old and a lot of in-between.

Volunteers had brought in supplies from all over: cardboard boxes and tubes of all lengths, sizes, and weights; ribbons pattered and plain, strings and tapes of several colors; hat boxes in at least four different sizes; seven or eight mannequins that didn’t start or end the evening with all their limbs in place; lengths of scrap cloth in a dozen textures and patterns; plain, construction, and wrapping paper; markers, crayons, paints; and odds and ends that included a couple reels of film, ladders, endless rolls of plastic wrap, and foam tiles.

Visitors had to write a creative task and put it in a box, then take one of their own and complete that task. One friend had to build a Broadway set, convince people to act in it, and gather an audience. Someone had to make and share a pizza. One group built a “power tower”. One little girl wrapped herself in tinfoil and went around asking for hugs. One person got five people to join a dance party. One little boy had to start a human wave, and some older guys quickly got on board helping him out by lending their very loud whistles. Several college kids were running around tying people together. Lots of little kids built nonsense contraptions that may or may not have been actual tasks, but hey, they were having fun.

My task was to make a five-foot-tall hat. I had no idea how to start. I ended up getting a hat box with a ribbon in it for the base, then realized that it could be five feet tall without going five feet off my head—so it was five feet tall but started partway down my back. I attached a five-foot cardboard tube to a hat box with copious amounts of tape (going by the “more is more” school of thought), so that the tube was about three feet above my head and two down my shoulders. I did some tying and taping to wrap some shiny textured gold paper around the tube, then did some creative taping and wrapping to attach some overlapping layers of dark green cloth to the top and a sandy gold textured cloth to the top of the hatbox (no glue, no staples, no scissors, and I was lucky enough to find one tiny safety pin among the cloth. Voila! I had an island hat.

But my palm tree was lonely. I decided it needed a mermaid. Again I got creative: I rolled a bundle of brown cloth for the body and secured it with a ribbon, rolled and bent paper tubes that I tucked into the ribbon to make arms, and carefully folded two corners of a scrap of blue cloth into a tail. Zhe looked a little lonely, so I tore a few fish out of green construction paper, drew on fins, gills, and smiley faces, and attached them by taping them to lengths of film that were, in turn, taped to the hat box.

When I finally put the hat on, the hat box covered my entire face. But then, a five-foot-tall hat wasn’t going to be the height of practicality anyway.

My next assignment was to give it to someone. This was fairly easy, though the poor woman I gave it to had no idea what to do with it. Alas, I was the only one to ever wear my creation: it leaned against a railing near some very wildly dressed mannequins the rest of the evening.

7) Reminder

When I’m in a slump, I have an awful tendency to become unsocial even when I really want to be around people. So to combat that, I’ve been trying to do things that I know I like, even when I do give in to the desire for some alone time.

I started with a walk in St. Michael’s Cemetery, which did not seem like a morbid thing to do until I told someone I did it. I like cemeteries. They’re quiet, peaceful. There’s so much history in gravestones, and sometimes quite a bit of personality. There were no terribly old stones that I came across—only the very late 1800s, not exactly impressive to someone who grew up in New England.

There were definite waves of fashion among the headstones. Newer remembrance walls for ashes and urns broke up the field, as did a couple rows of honest-to-goodness mausoleums. Near the front of the park the tombstones were massive in width and length, at least four feet high, with bigger plots and a handful of names of each stone. More modestly sized stones for individuals (and a few couples) filled the middle, though there was a lot of variety in decoration. Well, sort of. There were carvings of pillars and flowers and scrolls, but there were also a heck of a lot of crosses. I only realized when I saw one star and crescent that I hadn’t seen any stars of David.

There were also a lot of languages, which was a first for me. I’ve seen some tombstones in German, but that’s about it. St. Michael’s had Greek, Italian, Russian, Polish, and quite a few alphabets and languages I didn’t recognize, with a few Chinese, Japanese, and Korean letters scattered among them.

Right next to that crowded, newer section were some scattered older headstones among very large trees: one of the oldest parts of the cemetery, I believe. A far corner was dense with a variety of Asian texts and stones as tall as I was with what looked like quite a few names—family plots, I assume. I made my way back toward the entrance over a hill, through some very Edwardian-looking grave stones that were more like statues and decorations than simple markers.

What struck me most was how impersonal so many of the stones were. Granted, I wasn’t expecting it to be full of unique memorials like Barre, Vermont’s Hope Cemetery, but I expected a bit more individuality from New Yorkers. Names, dates, maybe a photo—that was it. Only a few had really personal touches: one made sure that everyone will remember he was a Yankees fan, one was a piano player, one a doctor, one a “ladies man” (that was carved on the back of the tombstone, which I thought hilarious), and in one perplexing instance the stone didn’t say anything but “MOTHER”. Those last two really struck me, since they seemed to have several possible stories behind them.

I also made note of good names as I went by. Graveyards are great places to browse for character names. I won’t include the one absolutely brilliant full name I found, since it was a relatively new memorial, but I’ve included some of my favorite individual names.

First names:     Marija     Roque     Tekla     Madiana     Orsalla     Edilia     Spyros     Quiescence     Suoma     Toman

Last names:     Rovensky     Skerbel     Timberman     Vartholomes     Dragos     Arrington     Templeton     Grassner     Spinner     Wickersheiner     Lallathine

On the subject of characters, I haven’t been writing but I have been inspired and taking notes like a fiend. I usually only dream vividly when I don’t sleep well (and yeah, there’s been a good bit of that lately), and one morning I woke up with a place and a situation and the beginning of a story clear as day in my mind. I started throwing characters at it, first from Sherlock and Elementary, but they rapidly spun out of character until they were only vaguely recognizable (though I may still play with them that way)…then, oh boy, I got Frankenstein involved. Mostly it was a desire for me to throw in some characters I’ve been building, one of whom was Frankenstein’s creature. (He likes to cook. It’s a long story.) Then I remembered “Pride and Prometheus,” a gloriously grim and gothic short story I read a while ago, and decided to get some Bennett sisters involved. I’ve cut myself off for now until I get some more plot hammered out.

As a result, I’m back to doing what I love: research. I’m gobbling up what little information and scraps of literary criticism there is about Ernest Frankenstein (the second son and the only Frankenstein to survive the novel), figuring out just how much I’m willing to fudge the properties of phosphorus in a steampunky world, looking up the thickness of permafrost, brushing up on the history of the transcontinental railroad, and very determinedly ignoring the last two digits of the years I’m looking at. We’ll see what happens.

I also had a chance to indulge in something I rarely do: fire! I had a few packets of checks with my parents’ New Jersey address on them and I’d finally gotten around to replacing them. I wasn’t sure how to dispose of them, so I figured I might as well do it completely. I brought the checks to Massachusetts, found the old “wolf pot” (an iron pot that’s always stood by a fireplace…except when we’ve repurposed it as a Halloween candy bowl) and carted it down to the pool side. Not exactly a bonfire, but fun nonetheless. It made me want to light a real fire and try cooking in that big old pot.

Food is has still been great. I’ve been out with coworkers and friends for Japanese in the East Village, vaguely South American nachos and tres leches cake, a Korean burrito (man, I love New York!), and a good old burger.

I'm also still volunteering. Since I missed Labor Day Weekend, I actually gave Xavier a try on a first Sunday. Man, was I reminded why I don't go on those weeks any more! No issues with M. Creepo, thank goodness, but the coordinators sure were doing their best to keep the hungry miserable. I took a certain savage pleasure in fetching takeout containers, extra cups of juice, and coffee--other coordinators have only ever encouraged us to do that kind of thing, since the whole point is to be welcoming and friendly! The usual post-volunteering lunch crew wasn't there, so I indulged in Panera's over the end of The Marlowe Papers.

So yeah, I’m doing what I can to get out of this funk of mine, though it’s taking more work than I’d like. Hopefully my next update will be a bit more cheery. 

Fair Weather, Friends

Once again I'm well overdue for a blog post. Yeesh, I haven't written since before the Fourth of July! 

Fun with Family and Friends

Since then I've caught up with most of my dad's side of the immediate family over two trips to my grandparents' house at Lake Wynonah, and got to spend some quality time with my sister and her boyfriend, who I hadn't had much chance to hang out with. I also got my yearly water skiing in, though the weather was a bit rough so I didn't get to do quite as many laps as usual, alas. With alpine skiing I may only get to go once a year, but I can ski all day two or three days in a row. Water skiing, well, that's a ten-to-fifteen-minutes-per-year extra special treat. 

When it comes to smaller groups, I had a great time with my parents, and an aunt and uncle to came to New York City to visit the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My aunt has been teaching art classes at a local school, but I was under the (wildly mistaken) impression that it was all on the, "what shapes are in this picture?" level. Instead, we had our own personal tour guide. Well, maybe not "guide", since we all out ourselves pretty lost in the Met Museum a couple times--but that's the fun of that big building! And it seemed like everywhere we went, my aunt had a story to tell about an artist or a picture. We also made the discovery that modern art is far more fun and interesting when a little bit tipsy--this discovery was courtesy of the rooftop bar, which has some amazing views, a changing array of interesting (if pricey) drinks, and--best of all--very soft fake grass that makes an ideal spot to sit on the ground and share sips of our cocktails. We capped off the day with a delicious meal at Le Paris, a French restaurant (gasp! surprise!) where there was once again a great deal of sharing.

Another weekend saw a birthday evening for a friend. Neline and I met up with a few others at The Meatball Shop in Brooklyn. After we ate, we wandered down to the East River Ferry, where all five of us chowed down on a massive piece of chocolate birthday cake while enjoying the sunset over the New York Skyline, ogling puppies, and spying on the illuminated apartments in the fancy high-rises on the water. Next on the agenda was the wonderfully named Radegast Hall & Biergarten, which had a delightfully old-world feel and great folkish-sounding music (I really must look up the band the birthday girl was reminded of). Worn and weathered wood everywhere! My kind of place...though I didn't spot any "garden". I was tempted to get some mead in keeping with the theme, but opted instead for Crabbie's Ginger Beer since I love the nonalcoholic variety so much. As usual in my case, the alcoholic version added something that wasn't necessarily desired in the first place, but at least it was decent. After that, we finally, finally made our way to the main event: dancing! We headed over to The Woods, a bar with a dance floor, and forked over a small cover charge...but nobody was dancing yet. We hung out for a bit, grabbed a bite from the kitchen and hung out in the garden, and finally got fed up with waiting. At almost midnight, a couple of us went in to get things going. In no time, the dance floor was packed! I had a great time, just wished the dancing had started sooner so I'd gotten more in. We left around 2AM, which wasn't so bad, but didn't get home until 4AM thanks to subway repairs and New York cabs' reticence to drive between Queens and Brooklyn (grr). I slept in incredibly late and only just woke up in time to meet everyone again to go see Boyhood, which was fantastic. For all you movie-lovers, I can't recommend it enough!

 

I also recently had a long-overdue catch up with Felicia (who I hope doesn't mind that I'm naming her). Obviously I don't have restaurants to recommend from that experience, but I have to say that GoogleChat is a great substitute for Skype...which I'm really only not using because I can't for the life of me remember my log-on info.

Pickles and Books

In blog title-related news, one of my two local grocery stores has started carrying 99 cent deli pickles--you know, the eight-inch-long ones that are so delicious. Needless to say, I'm fighting habit formation! Even stuffed in one of the overlarge plastic containers they provide, they're far easier to carry home than an entire jar of pickles. So far I'm limiting myself to one about every other week. Yeah. I am an adult.

Relating to the other half of my blog title, we recently had another Free Book Day at work. I went a bit overboard, being far less choosy than usual, though I justified this with the knowledge that we will (probably) be moving to our new home before the next one. I'm well stocked up for the next couple years (factoring in the gradual addition of other books). 

The loot list: 

The Intern’s Handbook – Shane Khun; The Revenant of Thraxton Hall – Vaughn Entwistle; Mistborn – Brandon Sanderson; Tower – Nigel Jones; Thieves’ Quarry – D. B. Jackson; The Fire Witness – Lars Kepler; The Other Typist – Suzanne Rindell; The Crown – Nancy Bilyeau; Joe Golem and the Drowning City – Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden; A Little Night Magic – Lucy March; Dancing to “Almendra” – Mayra Montero; Dirty Wings – Sarah McCarthy; Love All – Callie Wright; The Shogun’s Daughter – Laura Joh Rowland; The House of the Four Winds – Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory; The Midwife’s Tale – Sam Thomas; Fairy Tale Queens – Jo Eldridge Carney; Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters – Philip Eade; The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno – Ellen Bryson; The Executioner’s Heart – George Mann; The Caretaker – A. X. Ahmad; Cinnamon and Gunpowder – Eli Brown; The Water Rat of Wanchai – Ian Hamilton; The Sea House – Elizabeth Gifford; A Book of Horrors – edited by Stephen Jones

I'm especially excited for Mistborn, which I think is one that Felicia recommended to me some time ago. Now I can finally get a crack at it! There are also three nautical/piratey books in there that I can't wait to sink my eye-teeth into. 

In what's become something of a tradition, though, I am not going to read any of these books as soon as I finish my current novel. Instead I'm going to crack open what may be one of the most touching gift books I've ever received.

Cadillac

I need to preface this with a tiny bit of an explanation. After a three week break from St. Francis Xavier, I came back to a weird day that wasn't exactly in my top 10. Two of the guests hit on me, and one of them--who I'd considered a friend for several months--said some particularly nasty things that even I couldn't ignore. I told him off far more politely than I though he deserved and thought I'd let it roll off my back, but it kept bothering me to the point that I almost didn't want to go back this past week (though of course I did, because I knew what I should have said last time and was ready in case it happened again). 

Now, there's this guy who I see almost every morning when I go under the railroad overpass to take the shortcut to the subway stop. He's always been friendly and polite, wishing me a good day and commenting on the weather, and I'd taken to replying in kind. It was getting ridiculous that we spoke so frequently without saying anything of importance, but I was being stupid about feeling like I needed a reason to stop and talk.

Last week I happened to notice that he had an open notebook beneath his hands as he leaned against the mailbox...and his handwriting was all over it! I didn't even think about it--I just had to ask what he was writing. A quick chat finally opened the floodgates. We introduced ourselves and he told me everyone called him Cadillac. It was the morning, so I didn't have too long to talk--just enough time to find out that he'd had some work published and resolve to look it up. Sure enough, that afternoon I found out that Cadillac was known professionally as Cadillac Man--and he'd published a book, Land of the Lost Souls, about his experiences as a homeless man in New York City (published by Bloomsbury, no less--my upstairs work neighbors!). I immediately added it to my GoodReads list, though I wasn't sure when I'd get around to reading it. 

We had a couple longer conversations last week, wandering from general to specific about our lives, our writing careers, the job market, life and death and heaven, Astoria geography. I was still a little wary that another piece of nastiness was going to jump out of someone so friendly and kind, but so far so good. Then, yesterday, he waved me over, asked if I had an "h" on the end of my name...and pulled out a copy of his book, which he'd signed for me! I was so incredibly touched and happy. I just finished my last book today, so Cadillac's book is up next!

Shipping Up to Boston

I think I use that phrase any time I'm taking a trip back to Massachusetts, which is probably too much. Hey, I love that song! Anyway, the 'rents are packing up and will be officially moving from New Jersey to Massachusetts soon. I won't be doing much shipping myself, though I do think I'll be taking myself north to help unpack and settle in. The least I can do is get my bookshelves organized, right? All two of them. Where have all the bookshelves gone?

I haven't seen the house yet, but I'm really excited to. The guest room, which will be my main haunt when we don't have other guests around, sounds lovely from Dad's description, with a windows on three sides (I think). I can't wait to see the historic bits--the narrow servants' stairs to the kitchen, the massive central chimney, the granite-posted basement, the soaring ceilings. I've also put in a request for a visit to the North End for some fantastic Italian food. 

If there are any ghosts in the new house, you can bet I'll be writing about them here!

A Word from the Closet (There's Something for Everyone)

Hey everyone! On this, the last day of Pride Month 2014, it’s time to tell my story.

The TL;DR: I’m demisexual. There’s a short general definition here. If this bothers you, you can pretty much ignore it: it’s a “mythical” or “invisible” sexuality because it blends in with other sexualities so easily.

Though middle school, high school, and most of college, I had the sense that there was something really wrong with me. It seemed like everyone was interested in someone in a romantic or sexual way—a celebrity, someone they knew, lots of people—and I just…wasn’t. In hindsight, I’m really glad I went to such academically competitive schools, because I think if people had had fewer conversations about John Marshall, Beowulf, favorite authors, and social justice, I’d have felt even more out of place. As it was, I could mostly ignore the difference, though it hurt when I couldn’t.

I need to admit that I sometimes lied, and the worst part is that I only did it to my best friends because that was the only time I cared what other people thought. I would take a person or a situation that I “knew” most girls my age would react to and say something that implied I was interested. I should have known I didn’t need to do this: I’ve never had the kinds of friends who would have been anything but supportive if I just honestly said that Matt Damon did nothing for me (other than act well in some good movies), and I still feel bad about it.

And the thing was, I wasn’t entirely disinterested in guys. It’s just that, instead of imagining kissing or cuddling, I imagined hanging out and talking, finding places where we agreed and teasing each other about where we disagreed. I wanted a deep kind of friendship like what I shared with my girlfriends, but with the extra possibility that something more might come of it down the line.

                                                                                                                         

Morocco put me through the self-reflective wringer. I had great friends and I learned so much, but at one point I got to a mental place that I hope I never get to again. The end result was positive, though. My friends helped me get over myself and my internalized misogyny, and, when I got back to the States, I was less concerned about how I was different. So I didn’t think random men (or women) on the street were hot. So I didn’t want to bang the actors and artists I admired. So what?

In the fall of 2011 I was doing research for a project in which I was analyzing Sherlock Holmes from BBC’s Sherlock. It was a bit like playing the Jesus game on Wikipedia. Articles and blog posts about sociopathy led to mental illness led to sexuality (okay, so as usual I was doing more research than strictly necessary), and on one page was this word I’d never seen before: “demisexual.” I did what I always do when I find a word I don’t know: I plugged it into Google.

I was on the computer until my next class. I felt stunned, but I also felt incredibly light, like this weight had been lifted off of me. There was a word for me—I wasn’t the only one, and enough other people like me existed that we had a word!

I’d never felt like I was missing something, but now I actually felt whole. After a couple weeks getting used to it all, I told my parents, with varying degrees of success, and then I told a couple of my best friends. I thought a lot about who I told, when, and why. Mostly I didn’t tell more people because I thought it wasn’t as big a deal as coming out as gay, bi, or asexual might be. Being demisexual doesn’t change much as far as other people are concerned, so why put myself through a dozen weird conversations?

But I’ve never forgotten what it felt like when I found that word. How right I felt, how normal and light and free. Demisexuality doesn’t get a lot of press (hey, I’d never heard of it in 21½ years!), though I do see it come up on tumblr every so often. I know my blog doesn’t go far, but I have felt for a while that I needed to get this out there, just in case someone like me is looking for evidence that they’re not alone. I never knew when the right time would be—and I’ve decided to stop waiting.

Thanks for reading!

But Sarah, you’re always talking about Benedict Cumberbatch/Natalie Dormer/Neil Gaiman/other famous person!

Yep. They’re smart, interesting, talented people. Given the chance, I’d love to sit down and talk with them about their work and get to know them. Doesn’t mean I’m interested romantically or sexually.

Wait, but you said you actually wanted to see Magic Mike.

And I want to see the next season of Orange is the New Black and I want to go out clubbing and I want to see St. Peter’s Basilica and I want to publish a book with a major publisher. Next?

So now that I know you, I know everything about demisexuality!

Nope. Just like any other sexuality, there’s a lot of diversity. People who identify as demisexual may have very different approaches to their romantic and sexual lives. Go forth and broaden your sample size!

Right, well, this is awkward.

It really doesn’t have to be—I’m still the same person. Also, if you have questions, I would far rather have you ask me than go around with mistaken assumptions. I’ve been there, and it’s not a pretty place. If I really don’t want to answer, I’ll let you know.

Aren’t you a special snowflake…

Well, no two people are alike… Seriously, though, I don’t have time for you. Go troll yourself.

Playing Catch-Up

Why today? Who knows! For whatever reason, I'm finally sitting down to get back on the blog. 


The Family

May was a crazy-busy month. I spent most of the weekends at home with the family, helping them get the house into shape for viewings. This involved:

• painting ceilings
• power washing the deck (wohoo!)
• mowing the lawn
• scrubbing walls
• carefully hammering popped screws back into the ceilings

...among other things. 

Then, over Memorial Day, we went to the lake and proceeded to demolish two sheds. With two axes and a crowbar Becky and I tore them both apart and hauled the remains either up the hill--to throw in a massive dumpster--or down the hill to the fire pit. So, of course, I got to have a massive bonfire, which was a great deal of fun. I wasn't quite as well-toasted as last time, fortunately. 


The Work

May and June are the busiest months for us. It takes about six months to take a manuscript from submission to final book, so we've been hard at work pressing our authors to deliver their manuscripts on time so that their books can publish in 2014. Unfortunately, most of them submit manuscripts stuffed full of things that they don't realize require permission, so they have to go and get that permission belatedly, and it can be a very long process. My job is to make that process as painless as possible--though you'll hear very different things author by author. 

The biggest buzz around the office? Sometime in late July, we'll be leaving the Flatiron building. Mixed feelings all around--I loved getting to work in a historic and well-known building, but I'm definitely going to enjoy some of the modern conveniences. We'll be joining Nature Publishing Group down on Varick Street for about half a year until we all move to our final, long-term home downtown. I threw together a map with approximate locations: 

Other fun things at work included two author events. The first one was a small presentation that the author gave about their book, which described the lessons about leadership and management that could be seen in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. One of the authors had actually worked with the television company in Pittsburgh and had worked with Mr. Rogers himself to create educational activity booklets to go with the show. 

The second event was, if you can believe it, a massive wine tasting. Two of our authors have written a book about the economics of the wine market in the EU, and since one of them is on the board of the Chianti Classico consortium, we got to attend the launch of their new elite category, the Chianti Classico Gran Selezione. I didn't know much about wine to begin with, and then to learn that I'd be able to taste 24 different kinds of some of the best wines in the world...well, I was blown away. 

All I can say is, thank goodness for spit buckets! I think I only managed to try a few more than half, though I also got to try out some regional cheeses, salamis, and prosciuttos. Yum!

But I didn't come out any more appreciative of wine than when I went in, and I definitely haven't had a magical conversion into a wine connoisseur. Most of them were pretty harsh, and I can't say any of them would be a first pick unless I had a good meal to help it go down.

Highlights:

• Castello di Gabbiano (2011) - the only wine I gave 3 stars (the rest of these were 2 stars)
• Luiano: Ottantiuno (2010)
• Casaloste: Don VincEnzo (2009)
• Vignole: Créspine (2009)
• Bibbiano: Vigna del Capannino (2010)
• Castello di Fonterutoli (2010)
• Castello d'Albola: Il Solatio (2010)
• San Vincenti: Chianti Classico (2011)
• San Felice: Il Grigio (2010)

ES had to dash, but CC, JV and I rounded out the evening at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village that I'd heard great things about--though the $15 entrees were a bit out of my price range when I lived there. I had stuffed cabbage with sauerkraut, both of which were absolutely amazing, and I even had enough left over for breakfast the next day!

The Play

In Astoria Park

Becky came to visit for the weekend after Memorial Day. She hadn't seen the apartment yet and I was eager to show her around. We hung out the first night, walking down to Broadway (in Queens) to grab a bite to eat, then headed home to watch a movie for one of her classes. Which is how I finally saw Inglourious Basterds (which would have been a way better movie with Shosanna as the main character...just sayin').

Me and My Pickle!

The next day--well, we tried. The plan was to visit Brooklyn Flea and then hit up the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. First I brilliantly decided to wait for a Q train when there were no Q trains in Astoria that weekend. We took an N and hopped to a Q in Manhattan, then when we finally surfaced in Brooklyn I kept managing to get us turned around. We walked in about four different directions before I finally got us on our way to the market. We had fun poking around, though neither of us bought anything, and set out to find the Botanic Gardens. Alas, there was nothing to tell me that there was not, in fact, an entrance to the gardens via the road that cut through Prospect Park--so my efforts to take us on the shortest route from the subway to to the Gardens just got us spit out at Grand Army Plaza...just in time for a downpour to start! We took refuge in one of two doorways under the Plaza's Victory Arch and exchanged photos with the people huddling in the doorway opposite while we waited out the rain. By the time we ventured forth, we were done with excitement for the day. Instead, we settled in at Ideya for a late brunch (only in NYC does brunch start at noon!) before we headed home. Becky continued my introduction to Tarantino with Pulp Fiction, which I actually really enjoyed.

Fortunately, Becky's last day with me totally made up for the previous one. Everything went off without a hitch: After stopping at Brooklyn Bagel for some really delicious breakfast wraps (and a pumpernickel everything bagel for me--who knew such perfection existed?), we headed over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to catch the Charles James exhibit. It turned out to be perfect for us--James's designs were heavily inspired by historical dress, involved elaborate architecture and detailed planning, and many mixed colors beautifully. The upstairs room was definitely the more "modern art"-ish section. All the dresses had been worn, but they often looked uncomfortable or even absurd. A second room downstairs had more of the things that people might actually wear--some of which I definitely would try!

 

 

After that we wound our way through Central Park to the Zoo. Becky had wanted to go for ages, and I was certainly up for it. The entrance fee was surprisingly reasonable, and I was impressed with how much fit into that little park. We also got lucky in that a lot of the animals were out and active--we got good sightings of monkeys and birds, and the sea lions were having a blast rocketing around their tank. 

 

The only bummer was that when Becky went to get her souvenir magnet at the end of the day, they only had ones showing animals we didn't see--snow leopards (well hidden), baby penguins (none this time of year), and a polar bear (recently deceased). (I appalled Becky by asking a park attendant what they did with the body of the dead polar bear. They didn't know.) We also stopped by the children's zoo, which was totally worth it. There were plenty of new animals to see that weren't in the zoo proper and some great places to take pictures. 

Another weekend I went with Neline and a couple other friends to visit some art galleries in Brooklyn. I'd never done it before, but apparently we just walk into a building full of studios and pop our head in any open doors. Unfortunately, the landlord had evicted the galleries the previous weekend, so there were only a handful open. One of them, though, gave us some bang for our buck with a display of seven artists' paintings, all modernistic. One had tiny, smaller-than-a-post-stamp paintings on the walls--we had to pick up magnifying glasses to walk around the room and see them. We hit the jackpot on the third: the artist was going to have a demonstration of his awesome printer later that day, so we got to chat a bit. This thing was a silkscreen printer! You could scan in an image to create a plate and then print a bunch of images in a single color. The artist was interested in small-print-run publishing and his friend was interested in publishing more generally, so between art, books, and Brooklyn, the six of us had a good talk. They sent us away with a recommendation to try the nearby Tortilleria Mexicana Los Hermanos, which is a tortilla factory and Mexican restaurant. 

I only had a small (delicious) snack before hopping on the subway to meet up with Dad and his parents in Astoria to show them the apartment. We tried to get into Taverna Kyclades, which is apparently famous, but they were already busy early in the evening. Instead, we headed across the street to Okeanos--which is a fantastic Greek seafood restaurant where Mom and Dad and I ate the evening that they moved me into this apartment. I don't like fish much, but I've twice had delicious fish dinners. And their potatoes...I think they do something with lemon. They're delicious, though I've never had room to eat them at the restaurant, only as leftovers! They sent me home with most of the veggies, which went into that week's dinner, a vegetable-heavy couscous salad.

And, finally, for those of you following me on Twitter and Facebook...what is "sex croquet"? I went with KB (EA) to a Young to Publishing hangout in Central Park. We were going to play frisbee/"flying disk" (it came from a dollar store) and such, but we got distracted when an Australian stag party started playing party games nearby. There were two teams, blue and white jerseys, and they started up with tennis ball egg races, boot throwing ("welly whaling"), and sack races before advancing to the events that caught our attention. Sex croquet (which the literarily-inclined YTP group called "crotch croquet" until informed otherwise) was a relay race in which two contestants tied ropes around their waists to dangle the ball attached to the end between their ankles. They had to bend their knees and swing their hips to get the ball going and then knock a tennis ball on the ground the 10 feet to the finish line. It was pretty funny, but difficult enough to be a bit slow. The more popular event (for the YTP group, who started cheering for the teams) was the sock wrestling, when two guys each put a sock on their right foot and then tackled each other in a ring to get the other guy's sock off first. 

Let's see, the reading you get updates on through Goodreads (apparently a lot more updates than I'd realized!), which just leaves

The Writing

The story I've been working on graduated from the handwritten journal to the computer. Unfortunately, that means it kind of stalled. My morning subway rides were my dedicated writing time, and I need to readjust to start working in the afternoons, when I'm usually fed up with looking at a computer. 

I like how it turned out, mostly, though it needs some serious editing. The main issue is the end, which it doesn't have yet. I've written about five quick drafts of an ending but I don't like any of them. *Sigh*

In other news, I'm rereading King of Worms. Yes, that old thing. Kind of surprised how good it is. I mean, Lavardia would need a lot of help to bring it up to snuff, but KoW is pretty good, if I do say so myself. Maybe once I'm done with this read-through, I'll print out another copy and get work on the massive cutting that needs to be done. Fortunately, I've been seeing lots of places where little extraneous words can hit the highway. Verbal efficiency and economy, those are my goals. We'll see how that goes. 

Goodgrass...heh heh. Still a dream project. Tumblr's been a great source of inspiration, but I'm too heavily invested in the world and not enough in the characters. So yeah, character exploration needs to be happening. I'm also struggling because I'd really like to show off Tam's matriarchal society, but the whole point is that he's a fish-out-of-water, man-in-a-woman's-world thrown suddenly in a patriarchy. Granted, that society doesn't really see him as a man because of his culture, so maybe that's my way in. Just doing a lot of thinking still. 

And Last but Not Least...

I need to give a shout out to another poorly named but really excellent movie, Dirty Pretty Things, which Neline and I watched on an impulse purely because it had Audrey Tautou (Amélie) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) in it. It's about immigrants, legal and otherwise, and refugees in London trying to earn enough money to survive and, eventually, pay their way to the next stage of their life. 

And that's it! Hopefully it won't be so long between posts next time. 

April Showers...

I have a lot of big news this week (guess that's what I get for skipping one). Some of you may already know some of it, so bear with me. 


Meow

The most exciting news that I'm talking about way too much is...I have a cat! More specifically, I have Audrey ("Fluffy," to Grandma Sybil). Mom and Dad drove me back into the city after Easter this week to drop her off. She's still adjusting--she's never been a loud cat, but her little squeak-meows have been about five times more frequent than usual. My apartment is the smallest space she's ever been in, and she doesn't have Ripley to annoy her...which is part of why Mom and I decided she'd be best to come to the city. She's always been a little underweight and recently a bit tender (we think she has a bit of arthritis--she is 14, after all), so we thought some peace and quiet and a chance to finish the food in the dish might do her some good. 

Why this change? 


Shipping Up to Boston

The Lawrence family is moving again. Dad recently got hired by SeQur (which I thought was "Sea Cure" until he showed me his product's video!) and, in a hilarious coincidence, the office he'll work out of is located in Northborough, Massachusetts--in fact, the building is on the very road that I used to take twice a day on my way to and from high school! 

Mom and dad are excited to move back to Boston, and are even looking at a historic house closer to the city and with a nearby Trader Joe's--a long-time dream of theirs (okay, so Trader Joe's was a recent addition). It's too soon to know exactly where they'll end up. The biggest thing to factor in is that Kate still has two more years of high school yet before college. Poor Kate isn't too thrilled, since she has a lot of friends down in New Jersey, but we all know she's a tough nut and a good egg who'll make friends quickly wherever she ends up. 

Most of what this means for me is that I finally have to make decisions about what items I want with me and which can be more difficult to access. It felt a bit like betraying my friends, but I finally decided to box up many of my favorite books from childhood and other favorites as well, leaving behind books I haven't read, haven't read in a long time, or might conceivably want to read again in the near future. We figure that these ones will be the most likely to end up on a shelf at a new house, where I can get to them when I come to visit my parents.

Anyway, we'd talked about having me take a cat before mom and dad decided to move the whole family, since it would take one pet off their hands (and their rent) if they had to live in an apartment for a while. Even after they'd organized their plans, though, mom still stuck with the idea of sending a cat with me--after all, I'd always said a cat would be my first luxury after I had a paying job. So I asked my landlord and my roommate, got the go-ahead, and brought her in. 


The Job

As always, I don't want to go into too much detail about this. Suffice it to say: my manager, BF, has moved on. With my imprint's recent merger has come a lot of change, the most recent of which was a decision to move my imprint into the other imprint's building in advance of a bigger, final move later this year. The commute was already a pain for BF, who lives in Connecticut, but this move was going to tack on another 30 to 45 minutes to his commute. 

We're down to four now: JV heading Business with ES to help her; CC on Economics with me to help her; and CC also on Finance, though ES is still the assistant for those books. One good thing to come out of this latest change? A promotion for CC! That's right, I'm back to working with a full editor. Strangely enough, there's very little change for me, at least as far as the day-to-day goes. 


Enough news, time to gush about the good things in life. 


On Writing...

I'm now on the third draft of the short story I've been working on since February. Okay, okay, so that's partly because I got impatient with the format I was using and decided to start fresh before I got the whole way to the end of the second draft. The first was a standard first-person piece of prose, with a space-age interplanetary trucker narrating the encounter that she and her copilot have with an alien life form--the first interaction between humans and a preexisting life form. The narrator is almost exactly a character I created for a short story in my senior year of college. Except for the whole space angle, of course. 

Anyway, I decided the second draft should be an annotated transcript of the cockpit's "black box" recording--annotated because I had so many ideas about this space-going culture that I wanted to squeeze in. Typical of my enthusiasm for a new project! However, as I went on, I found the annotations to be distracting. I wanted to use a made-up code to indicate alarms going off...but then I realized that multiple alarms would be going off in these situations! I had a damage report, but didn't want to actually list the three dozen flare exit nozzles that were crushed, bent, or altogether removed. Boring! I tried just doing a straight transcript...but the alien encounter is very visual, and part of what attracts me to the transcript format is how sensually flat it is (this was a key frustration of mine when I was transcribing oral history interviews). My main character's main setting is, "generally amused," but in a transcript all her little chuckles, chortles, and other sounds of merriment get transcribed as "laughs" or "laughter." 

As of this morning, the third draft is an incident report with commentary. It also has the transcript in it (and I'm not messing too much with the last draft's dialogue sections), but it's there as a transcript within a transcript. I figure, what's the best way to fill in the visual blanks in this audio file? Well, have the people involved in the accident listen to the recording and comment on it! I'm sticking with my main character--the other one plays by the rules--though in theory both pilots would comment on the recording. I figure having a single person responding to the transcript will let me keep some of the visual while expanding the view into this character's head...though I've already found a few downsides to this format as well. I'll keep going, but there's still the possibility the whole thing will end up back in prose form--definitely better for its trip across genres, but still back to the beginning. 

And did I mention that I'm hand writing all of these drafts on the subway?


On Watching...

A couple weekends ago I went with Neline and one of her friends to see Only Lovers Left Alive. In spite of its saccharine, tongue-tying alliterative/assonancey title, I really enjoyed it. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton (the reasons I even gave this film a chance) play millennia-old vampires living in the modern day. They're both recluses, one in Detroit and one in Tangiers. Why? Well, why not? Both places are just as un-legit as the sticks of Washington State.

Why did I fall for this movie? As always, fantastic world building. There were so many hints of history and culture indicating a bigger story, references to larger issues both ancient and modern. I loved the references to scientists, writers, and musicians throughout history, even if they seemed much like a best-of checklist of only the most famous. True, the audience wouldn't recognize the dropped names of people who didn't become as famous as they deserved...but shouldn't there have been some of those between Einstein, Tesla, and Shelly? Oh, and the music was great. I'm holding out hope for a soundtrack. 

The only two things that annoyed the heck out of me: 
     1. Adam and Eve. Seriously? If it wasn't Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, those character names would have driven me from the theater. 
     2. Christopher Marlowe. Not the fact that it's him, just yet another speculation that he wrote Shakespeare's plays. I just can't believe that--the styles and ethics of the plays I've read by each writer have been so wildly different that I just can't believe that Marlowe is the grand master. I like the idea of Marlowe as a vampire...I just can't see him settling for Shakespeare as his legacy!

Incidentally, I'm on the lookout for a collection of Marlowe's works that will, ideally, be a counterpart to my beloved Complete Pelican Shakespeare. If you're a Marlowe buff, drop me a line!


On Volunteering...

I'm still going to St. Francis Xavier on what's turned out to be just about every other week. I continue to enjoy it, but have finally decided to stop attending first Sundays. Back on the first Sunday in October I had a run-in with one of the volunteer coordinators, which I described in one of my blog posts. At that time, G. invaded my personal space and grabbed my arm. He'd done it twice since then, and both times I pulled away and asked him not to do that. Three weeks ago he came up behind me while I was working and grabbed me by the arms--and that did it. I told another coordinator what had happened and I left. Fortunately, G. only volunteers on the first Sunday of each month, so I'll take myself elsewhere on those days from now on. 

The week after that more than made up for it. I had a great time manning the bread stations with other volunteers, chatting when we weren't busy. It's great how happy a buttered cinnamon bagel can make someone! After the day came to a close, we had a record number of people (at least since I'd started going) join us for lunch afterwards. 

~ ~ ~

That's about it. I want to close by saying that this post's title isn't meant to be symbolic of bad things. I know one traditionally has to put up with rain, but I actually often like it...and anyway, in this case I'm just thinking of rain as a change from snow. It's still precipitation (change always happens, just in different ways) and it's still going to bring results (flowers) that I have no way to predict. I'll just have to wait and see what blooms!