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.
No comments:
Post a Comment