Let's see, what else has happened since the last time I was on here?
Work
Things are already looking up at work. I'm starting to talk directly with authors--or, rather, email directly with them, since that's how most business is done. I did get one phone call from an author to introduce himself and ask a few questions. I've been pleased with myself and grateful for all the training everyone's put into me, since I've been able to answer most questions satisfactorily without bothering my editor or assistant editor.
I also got nominated to be a "superuser" of the company's book creation and status-tracking system. People at Palgrave will get in touch with me when they have questions about how to work it. I'm still new to the system, of course--I've worked out a lot but I still had to be told when and why to use an important button--but I'll have some solid training once I'm back from the Fourth of July.
My new office space is amazing. I have a nice big desk right next to a window and an air con unit--so I get a view and a cooling breeze. Right across from and facing me is an even newer editorial assistant, so we ask each other questions and help each other out. I arrived right in transmittal season (when we get manuscripts into production) and got thrown into the tech end, and he arrived shortly after and worked his way up through the simple tasks that weren't prioritized in my first weeks, so we have plenty of advice for each other. We also share laughs at the street life below--the crazy guy who sounds like he's speaking a Star Wars language, the screamingly excited tourists, the occasional musicians, and the pigeons that are just a little too fond of sitting on the windowsill to watch us.
I've been doing lots of research for three of the four editors I work with (surprisingly, the workload is fine). As with the citation translation I was working with at Columbia UP, it's one of those things that sounds like it should be boring but is actually pretty interesting. Well, okay, it can be boring when I've got the names and just need to find the email addresses, but usually I'm going through journals and conference programs looking for interesting-sounding papers and articles. I'm learning a lot about the fields I'm working with this way, since I read a lot of titles and abstracts. I never realized how far economics and business could reach into other topics...but I won't list them, for Palgrave's privacy's sake.
The addition of the fourth editor I'm working with was unexpected but a blessing. Again, because I arrived in the middle of transmittal season, I got a good run-down of how-to and hit the ground running. As things in the office cool down, this editor always, always takes the time to slow down and explain not just the "how" but the "why" of what she asks me to do--which helps me remember everything even better and equips me to answer questions from authors and any new editorial assistants.
Not Work
Last weekend was certainly interesting. Saturday I got up early and caught the subway out to Coney Island (which is a freakin' long way away) for the Mermaid Parade. I'd seen lots of posts online about it and figured it sounded like one of those too-strange-to-believe things, so I thought I'd go see it.
I walked around for a bit, since the parade didn't start until 1 in the afternoon. Coney Island...not much to say about it, really. There's a beach, there are rides, there's food, there's beer. I'm guessing it's a much more exciting place at night when the lights go on. But still, interesting. There were a few remnants of historic Coney Island tucked among the newer stuff: an old building that looked like it had been a theater, a wooden roller coaster, the last remaining "freak" show.
I brought my own lunch and ate while I read Carl Hiassen's Bad Monkey on a bench by the boardwalk, then made my way down to the street where the parade would be. Honestly, that was one of the best parts: seeing people dressed up and half-dressed up walking around as though wearing a faux-fin was perfectly normal. I spent a bit of time scouting out a good position up the road.
First, as always, came the cars. Mostly boring, but there were some good ones:
The Delorean! An amazing recreation that even let steam out the back.
In honor of American Graffitti
Yellow Mustang convertible!
Finally the cars were done. The very last one carried the head of the Boro of Brooklyn, who was thanking people for being there, saying that Sandy wouldn't keep Brooklyn down...oh, and if nudity offends you, it's time to leave! That made a lot of us laugh. No one was actually all the way naked, though some guys in tribal/neptune costumes got pretty close.
The drum says, "Coney Island Presents"
A quick break for some swing dancing
On the far left there's a seahorse, and on the far right there's a nautilus
On the left there's a snail, the woman in the middle has a very lifelike shark's mouth painted on her neck and lower face, and the guy on the right is a fish school crossing guard. The other side of his sign says "Stop!" with a puffer fish on it.
The "shark" on the right moves in for a kill
This band impressed me--all dressed up as fish and still musically talented
Best.
This woman's carrying a fiberglass shark over her shoulder!
She brought it up to the fence to look for "victims".
The pool-noodle-anemone and clown fish were really clever!
Little girl, huge stilts!
These two wore outfits made entirely out of old Metro cards
Some mermaids and some cool jellyfish
This woman's dressed as Coney Island's parachute jump
Guys on stilts and, behind them,
two pirates protecting their loot as they haul it down the street
This adorable little girl had a knitted fin! So cute!
I ducked out around 3 to head back to Manhattan for a MeetUp. That was the part I'd been looking forward to all day. This group sounded awesome and they were going to play hide-and-seek on the Staten Island Ferry. I didn't know how, but it sounded awesome! And sure enough, when I got there I got talking right away. All was fine for a half an hour...then, right as we were about to get on the ferry, I started feeling sick. I had to leave in the middle of a conversation to rush to a bathroom where my lunch came back up to say "hi." Not fun. I was really upset about missing the MeetUp, but I had missed the ferry and I didn't feel up to doing much of anything, anyway. I spent the rest of the day in my room, mostly in bed, reading. I didn't feel up to eating anything until 9:00 at night, when I had some carrots and plain rice. So that day had gone downhill fast.
Sunday I met up with Mom and Dad in Central Park. We had planned to sit in line and see if we could get tickets to that night's Shakespeare play, but people had been camping out overnight. So we sat around and talked for a couple hours, just catching up, before we packed it in. We went to the Museum of Art to see a couple exhibits and ended up with a Civil War-themed day.
First we saw Photography and the American Civil War. It was a long exhibit with lots of very small images. We kind of wish they'd put some blown up images or explanations in large print up higher on the wall so we didn't have to fight with everyone to get a few seconds' look at a photo. Part of the fun for me was learning how photography was done in the Civil War, when it was still new. I didn't know this, but photographers would follow the armies not just for battle photos, but to set up tents where they would take pictures for soldiers. These tents had skylights built in to the roofs to get the best light, and a lot of the development process, which involved glass plates, had to be completed right away. There was also a lot of interesting exploration of how photography's place in American culture developed over the course of the Civil War. I knew about the impact of photography vaguely, from high school and AP US history, but not the details of how people reacted to photographs--collecting calling card-sized ones even of strangers, using photographs to document wounds and surgeries to teach future surgeons, a double amputee selling his image to make money for his family. One of the neatest ones of this last type was a photo of Sojourner Truth with the phrase, "I sell the shadow to serve the substance" written on the bottom (paraphrased from memory). She'd commissioned the photo and was selling it to raise money for cause. Quite a powerful thing to have control of your own image.
After lunch we went to the American Wing to see another Civil War exhibit, The Civil War and American Art. This consisted mostly of paintings, with a few photographs (most familiar from the previous exhibit) thrown in...and oh were they gorgeous! Don't be thrown by the overtly patriotic painting chosen to be the face of the exhibition. I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the light in these pictures, so many of which seemed to glow. There were a lot of landscapes, some with Civil War soldiers in them, some depicting the worst disruptions of nature and reflecting the contemporary mood. To my delight, the explanations were full of the psychological lenses that I love! There were comparisons of paintings by artists who had actually been to the front and those who hadn't; paintings by a Northern artist and a Southern artist displayed side by side; paintings by idealistic abolitionists that showed a black man and a white woman exploring nature alone together, and by less optimistic artists that showed children playing with a disrespectful jig doll painted to look like a black Union soldier. Beautiful, thought-provoking pictures, my favorite kind.
For the last event of the day, we went to hear a presentation by the curators of each exhibition. Some of it was summary--Mom and Dad noticed that they were some of the youngest people in the audience, never mind me, and the slide show probably made a good overview for those who might not have been up to fighting their way through the long exhibits. But I did learn some more cool tidbits, and it was interesting to hear the curators talk about how they organized an exhibit (even if I did think the photography curator was a bit over-selling the facial expressions of people in photos). To cap it all off, a brass band came in to play some Civil War-era and -themed songs, including a version of an aria from an opera Lincoln saw, soldiers' cap favorites, and Dixieland--the last after a quick explanation that, while the South had appropriated the tune for an unofficial national anthem, the song was so popular that Lincoln went out of his way to talk about "reclaiming" the song for the Union in a speech after the war.
After that we went out to dinner at a multi-Asian restaurant. I brought home the leftovers and mixed them with the last of last week's stir fry to spread the flavor.
Ah, but you're probably more interested in the blog title, aren't you? Over the past couple of weeks I've accumulated odds and ends in the fridge, since no grocery store lets you buy only as much as you need at a time. So I pulled together everything I had:
- cabbage
- carrots
- green beans
- mushrooms
- rice
- three 1/2-inch long pickled red peppers
- garlic
- onion
Happy Fourth of July, folks!
