I zipped through security and then ran into some puppeteer friends who were on their way to the SE Regional Puppetry Festival. That did give me a bit of a pang because I’d like to be on my way there too. Still it was nice to catch up and chat with them and I know I’ll have fun at Readercon.

No problems with the flight until we landed.

This wasn’t a problem so much as just funny.  We’re sitting there waiting to deplane and the attendent makes this announcement. “Folks, we apparently landed one minute before Queen Elizabeth and now they’ve locked down the airport.”

The delay getting off the plane was so negligible that I’m not sure there really was one.

I came into the city, hung out at the Puppet Kitchen for a bit then wandered over to NYRSF to hear Saladin Ahmed (one of the Campbell finalists this year) and Paolo Bacigalupi (up for a Hugo) read.  Both did really nice readings.

I’m now ensconced at Jodi and Sam’s and feeling the travel day catching up with me. Well, that and the humidity. Ugh. I do NOT miss that.

I wonder how the Queen is handling it?

I’ll be out there until the 25th and am contemplating having a picnic next weekend as an easy way to try to catch up with everyone.  Any thoughts on where would make sense? My initial inclination is Riverside, simply because it’s in our old neighborhood and I know what’s around there. Plus, breeze from the river and not usually over-crowded.

Feel free to make suggestions.

No, really, I’m not making this up.

The previous record was set in Poland with 27 saw players, or sawists. In Astoria, this weekend they had 53 musical saw players on the stage to play Ave Maria.

Now, before you listen to this, I want you to understand something. To find the note, the saw needs to be ringing slightly or you have to slide into the right note. With that many players, finding the starting pitch quietly wasn’t going to happen, so the first note…well, it’s a doozy. Dad says that the conductor rocked back on his heels like he’d been hit by a basket of lemons.

And as a palette cleanser, here is my Dad playing “Wayfaring Stranger.”

After the initial concert and Guinness attempt, many of the saw players had solos. I sat through Four and A Half HOURS of musical saw. The fascinating thing was the wide, wide range of techniques. Many of these folks had been playing for decades and were really, really good. Not as a novelty mind, but demonstrating genuine musicality and talent.

How was your weekend?

People who’ve already heard the news ask me if this is a good thing or a bad thing. In truth it is almost entirely neutral. There are many things I’ll miss about the City, but I truly loved living in Portland. I have friends in both places that I will miss while I’m in the other.

Based on the way my theater life was before moving out here, I expect I’ll still come back on a fairly regular basis for work. Which, of course, adds to the neutrality of the move. It will be hard to miss a place where I plan on coming so often.

• 10:22 Picked up a zipcar at 10 and am going to get a table and chairs for Night Sky. #
• 10:40 Astonishing. Parking in front of the building. #
• 10:40 The very nice French student and her father helped me get the table & chairs into the car. Now, to the theater. #
• 11:16 I have arrived at the theater and am not dead. Again, there is parking in front of the building. This is not normal. #
• 11:36 Dropped off the furntiture, extended the Zipcar res. And heading out for next load. #
• 11:42 Also sending designer reference photos while stopped at traffic lights, of which there are many. #
• 12:06 Ah ha. Now is the driving in circles looking for a spot, as expected. #
• 12:16 I’ll be double-parking, now. #
• 12:25 Furniture loaded and back to the theater. #
• 12:58 At theater. Found parking. Dropping furniture. #
• 13:08 Furniture dropped and off to return the zip car. Fascinating day, I know. #
• 13:21 On the car radio, 89.9 is playing the complete discography of Benny Goodman in chronological order for the next 16 days. #
• 13:39 Whew. I’ve dropped off the car and now have a little room for a breather before heading on the next errand. #
• 14:20 For those folks who wanted to listen to the Benny Goodman complete discography. 89.9 is streaming online bit.ly/Hkmj #
• 15:03 I’m laying out some of the paper props used in the show. Brochures and forms. #
• 15:07 I’ve got the aphasia lesson plans printing now. #
• 15:37 I’m printing flashcards of actors. #
• 15:39 Ugh. A brand new color cartridge and it’s not printing yellow. This is the third one that’s happened to so I think it’s the printer. #
• 15:53 I’ve emailed the flashcards to the office which will print them for me. Now, off to the floral district to buy fake asters! #
• 16:55 Fake asters don’t exist in NYC. I need another flower with a connection to the word “star.” Any ideas? #
• 17:08 Thank you all! I have aquired star jasmine. #
• 17:39 At the theater to drop off star jasmine, jewelry box and put alka-seltzer in a champagne bottle. #
• 21:57 10 alkaseltzer have the right boost, but priming the bottle without losing liquid is hard. #
• 22:01 Back into the bowels now. #

I got home around 1:00 am.

The host, Jim Freund has invited me to chat and do some reading.  We might even take listener calls.  I used to do radio theater and took radio broadcasting waaaaay back in college, but this is going to be my first author appearance on the air.  It should be fun.

So stop by to listen.

See that pole in more or less the top center of the photo? That’s what the drop the ball from apparently. It says “2009″ at the base of it. Can you imagine traveling to NYC and standing in the cold with the wind and the snow to watch that tiny thing?  This is why television was invented. And hot toddies.

Tomorrow I’ll be snug at home enjoying the traditional black-eyed peas and collard greens, which are said to bring wealth and good fortune.  The good fortune is working, but I guess I gotta work on my greens recipe because the wealth is a little thin.

What are your plans?

I took Rob along since people have been making cracks about my invisible husband at cons. I don’t think he minded and he even smiled in a photo. (Ellen, will you send me that?) I was amazed by how many people I knew. There just wasn’t time to talk to everyone.

After I dropped that off at the apartment, I gathered Mom and Dad for a stroll down Central Park. The weather cooperated in lovely ways and was crisply sunny. We hopped onto a train eventually and went to Cafe Edison, also known as the Polish Tea Room for an egg cream and brunch before the show. It’s a diner in the fading splendor of a Victorian ballroom. Gorgeous plasterwork and then hardcore diner fare. It’s a grand blend of styles.

We had tickets to the matinee of Spamalot. I’ll tell you that I was highly skeptical of the premise. I mean, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is pretty much perfect as is, how could converting it to a Broadway musical possibly be good. And yet it was. It succeeded perfectly at what it set out to be, a profoundly silly musical adaptation of Monty Python. The energy never flagged. I enjoyed it without reservation.

We stopped at Zabar’s to pick up some treats. Mom and Dad were suitably impressed with the place.

We went to Picnic for dinner last night which was lovely.

On the way home, we stopped for a bit to watch a show being filmed. Our street gets used fairly often for filming — I don’t know why — so it’s not uncommon to come out and find the whole thing lined with trailers and whatnot.  Last night’s shoot was interesting because they had a rain machine on. So they were stopping passersby, not just for continuity, but so we didn’t get wet.  Needless to say, Dad was fascinated with the rain machine.

I was in bed by midnight and my body seemed a little confused by this, since I woke up –wide awake — around 5:00.  I suspect it will take a little while for me to adapt back to a normal day/night cycle.

Today I think we are headed out to museums and the like.

[audio:loudparade.mp3]

Bear in mind that all my windows are closed and we have no walls that face the street.

Edited to add: “After listening to this, record the ambient sound where you are and post it on your blog.”

Not unusual.

A tax broker type in the middle of the train shouted back, “You’re in the train. Shut up already.”

“Come on and make me.”

“Why are you still shouting? You’re in the train.”

The shouting guy continued unabated. “You want to come over here and make me. Move into the train.”

Tax broker was standing dead center of the train. It’s unclear exactly where shouting guy wanted him to move. The doors were shut and we were moving at this point, so you know, shouting guy didn’t have a case for being angry. Tax broker said, “Just shut up already.”

“You shut up.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

The three-year old level of conversation continued for a bit and then shouting guy sayid, “No, you shut up, you devil!”

At which point we pretty much all laughed. Shouting guy nodded, “Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about.”

A woman from another section of the train said, “They’re laughing at you.”

Silence. Shouting guy got off at the next stop.

What makes me really curious is where he came up with “You devil!” I felt like I’d run across a time-traveler from the past who’d been told that to pretend to be a contemporary New Yorker he had to be antagonistic but wasn’t given the full vocabulary list of expletives.

The strangest thing about this harvest, for me, is that he comes home every night.  When he was at Bethel Heights, because the drive was an hour and a half, he’d stay at the winery for the whole harvest.  I always drove down to visit him.  I’m glad that this place is closer at least, even if they are having some rather interesting challenges from working in tight spaces.

I will do a full post, with photos of the retreat. It was an amazing experience and went surprisingly smoothly.

At the moment though, I’m going to pet the kitties and spend some time cuddling with my husband. The cats are getting first dibs simply because Rob is out at the moment.

Oh, and did I mention that there’s a moose head in my hallway?

It’s been an interesting year.  I’ve been so busy that I can barely breathe, but Rob spent then entire year looking for work.  And that’s almost literal.  He sold his first article a bare two days before our one year NYC anniversary.  He’s got a couple of other jobs coming up, so I’m really hoping the dry spell has broken.

It will be interesting to see what the next year holds.

The second thing you should know is that after you pick up the axe, you will have no problems finding a seat on the subway.

The third thing is that random passerbys will engage you in conversations like the following.

“Whoa. You mean business,” the man says as he comes out the door and sees you.

“Yeah, well,” you said, not really wanting to explain the show for which the axe is a prop. “There’s not much call for them in the city, I’ll admit.”

“He must have really pissed you off.”

You smile. “It’s so true. There’s really not a reason to have an axe in the city unless you’re planning to off someone.”

If you say that, the passerby will suddenly find something else very interesting on the other side of the street.

All of which makes me wonder why I could buy an axe in a city with no need for cutting firewood.

I started jotting down favorite parts but then got caught up in the story and forgot to keep doing it. So here are two from close to the beginning.

He knew she couldn’t see what he was seeing. Because he was going crazy and that’s not really a team sport.

When Bridget picks up her only Barbie (she doesn’t normally pay with “such girlie things” and had given it a makeover) we get this fabulous bit.

This was Malibu Death Barbie. A fashion-conscious dealer of justice. The last thing her enemies saw before their horrible dismemberment was a flash of pink lipstick and a really big knife.

If you’ve got a teen reader in your life, look for Gods of Manhattan when it comes out. History, adventure and magic! What more can you ask for?

That would wipe out everyone who’s ever ridden the subway.

While I’m in transit, why don’t you tell me what your top three favorite gifts were this year.

I’ll start:

1. Soup spoons in our silver pattern
2. A Ryobi cordless trim saw
3. Victorian pantaloons

I hope your Christmas was as merry as ours.

Except that Chattanooga apparently has a thing against sidewalks. There were none.

Strangely, one of the lights had a pedestrian crossing button, to get the traffic light to change color, but no crosswalk, no crossing signal, no sidewalk on either side. Just who were they expecting to hit the button? Drivers just didn’t know what to do with us. I felt far less safe walking than I did driving. I’d forgotten just how intense the car culture is after living in NYC and Portland.

Meanwhile, I’m probably not going to be online much the next couple of days, so may I offer you some old-time Christmas Radio. This includes such gems as the original cast recording of It’s a Wonderful Life.

After that collection, we watched Lonsome. Again, set at Coney Island, this film from 1929 is your standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl and they live happily ever after. The male lead, Glenn Tryon, was out of the same mold as Stefan Karl, quite delightfully so. One of the things that fascinated me was how modern the text cards appeared. I’m so used to faux silents with their old timey text, that I’d forgotten how recent these films actually were.

At one point, Our Hero followed the Girl to the beach. He tried to gain her approval by feats of acrobatics and then finally settled down next to her and said, “Hello.”

In sound.

I tell you, the entire audience gasped. It was as if we had never heard a talkie before in our life. This film, which I had thought was a standard silent film, had three minutes of dialogs in it. The moment when he opened his mouth and sound came out was electrifying. I can only imagine how much more it must have been for people who didn’t even know that such things were possible.

So, that thing I said about only the fashions changing isn’t completely true. Technology has given us a lot more possibilities. But it’s awfully nice to know that the sense of wonder can be regained in the right context.

The question is about getting work. I feel like the area code on the phone is becoming a sort of non-issue these days as more and more people switch to cells. On the other hand, it does instantly label me as an out-of-towner.

So what do you think? Switch to a 646 number or stay with the 503?

Edited to add: Thanks for the comments everyone. I decided that the continuity was probably worth more than the “local” number. Especially since I realized that I can just forward my 646 Skype number to my cellphone. It’s the best of both worlds. So, the 503 number stays.

As I was explaining to someone, I always quadruple the amount of time I think it will take to do a mech because it never goes right the first time. I’ve installed ear mechanisms on masks before. This was a thing I was familiar with. And yet…

I did a rough draft of the ears on Tuesday. On Thursday, I came back to install the final ears, but we weren’t sure where the puppeteer’s hand needed to be for the control. Saturday, I went in at three o’clock to install the triggers. I left at three a.m. Here’s what I did during those twelve hours.

While I had installed the ears on the exterior of the head, I wasn’t sure until I went in on Saturday where I would need to run the cables to control them. (Normally, you figure all of this out in advance, but there were some staging issues that needed to be resolved first, in this case.) The cable for the ears needed to move three inches in order to trigger the angry dog pullback. Unfortunately, where we needed to put the trigger, there wasn’t enough room for a lever to move that far. So, I needed to reduce the amount of distance that the cable had to move.

It’s sort of like a reverse block and tackle, because I was willing to increase the amount of resistance, to decrease the distance moved. But to do that, I needed to allow a length of line pass through the skull in a “v.” Another line would attach to that and pull it. So, I needed to cut a slot in the skull. I started by drilling four holes.

I then inserted a coping saw blade into one of the holes to cut out my opening.

Once the slot was cut, I tested the ear. Which resolutely failed to work.

After a bit of cursing, some internet time and a conversation with my dad, who is a very clever man, I realized that I had attached the pull line with a fixed point, and it needed to be a fluid point. Such a silly thing to do. After that, it worked exactly as it was supposed to. Whew.

Sorry this is a blurry photo. All the cables have to come together to a fairly tight point where they run down the length of the dog’s spine. I’m using goldenrod cable (a flexible push-pull cable for model airplanes) to get from the head down to the handle where the trigger will be. That’s the thin yellowish cable, with the brass fittings on it. I have to use cable in a housing, otherwise the movement of the dog’s head would trigger the ears as the distance between the head and the trigger changed. A housing keeps that distance fairly consistent.

For the trigger, I opted to go with a wheel rather than a lever. The cable exits the housing and wraps around the wheel as it rotates. Rather than centering it, I put the pivot point off-center to give the puppeteer some mechanical advantage. We tested it and it worked well. Happiness.

I installed the other mechanism, which was comparatively simple. Again, running it back to a wheel. Suddenly the first mech acquired a lot of friction. I couldn’t figure out where it had come from since the new one didn’t touch it. In desperation, I pulled the second one out, thinking that its mounting might be binding the first one somehow. Nothing. I tried activating the mech from within the head without using the cable. It seemed like it was within normal limits there, which meant that the friction was occurring somewhere along the length back to the trigger. I undid the mounting on the first one, checked it for crimps and reinstalled it. Still, it had that awful friction. It was unworkable. I was baffled.

I pulled the trigger from the other mech completely off the handle and–the first mech got easier again. It was still tight, but it wasn’t unworkable. What we were facing turned out to be a combination of factors. The trigger for second mechanism put the puppeteer’s hand in a weaker position. It also activated a mechanism that naturally had less resistance, so the first mech’s trigger hadn’t actually acquired more friction, but it felt significantly harder compared to the second one. At the same time, the monofilament that I’d used had stretched out. I normally avoid the stuff, but because the dog was so pale I used that instead of the braided dacron (which is black) that I prefer. It was a bad combo all around.

Unfortunately there wasn’t anywhere else to install a trigger. It was also two o’clock in the morning. Emily had to get on a plane with the puppet later on Sunday, to Ireland. I was tearing my hair out in frustration.

What you see here is a mockup of what I wanted to install. I used the connector on the end of the cable and a ziptie to create a thumbgrip. Elastic held it in place. One slides the thumbgrip back and the ears droop. You can still hold the dog’s handle and operate the trigger for the first mech in a reasonably comfortable position. It is far, far from ideal, but it works.

Here’s the proof.

This should have been a five or six hour job. My quadruple estimate was closer to being accurate. When Emily comes back with the dog, we’ll be able to fix it for the NYC shows in January.

I made a beet green and black olive tapénade frittata, topped with a sour cream and gin sauce; sautéed green peppers and potatoes; fruit from -e-’s garden in Portland. I also had a some croissants leftover from work, yesterday.

The closest coffeeshop to the Puppet Kitchen is the The Bagel Zone. The guys there are totally nice. I needed to research some ways to decrease the distance of a cable pull, and they were starting to close down shop. Not only did he let me hang out while he cleaned, he gave me a big bag of pastries to take home.

It was great to have Fabulous Girl here. She is a fine reminder of the many reasons that moving to NYC was a good idea.

I was expecting to be frightened and tense while biking–I mean, it’s New York. I’m used to Portland, where the cyclists are plentiful and respected. We all know how crazy traffic in NYC is, right? Yeah. Here’s the interesting thing. Traffic in the city is slow.

I didn’t think about that until I was on the bike. Even obeying all the traffic laws, I was always moving faster than vehicular traffic. Why? Well, first of all, I planned my route so I was on bike lanes almost the whole way. So, when there was an obstruction, I just sailed past it. Second, cabs stop all the time to let people out.

By the end of the ride, I wound up being more aggressive about merging into traffic when someone was stopped in the bike lane. Again, I expected that would be scary, but really, I’m going the same speed as traffic. I’d look. Signal. Change into their lane. Not once–and this is NYC–not once did anyone honk at me. I even had a cabbie, a cabbie mind you, wave me ahead.

I think because I was behaving like a vehicle and they’d seen me stopping at traffic lights (there was a long stretch where I was next to the same three cabs) they were inclined to not hate me for making their lives difficult.

I, on the other hand, began to loathe the other cyclists and pedestrians who just wander out into the street as if no one is going to run them down.

The weather has cooled off enough that I have been cooking at night. Other than that, most of the day was spent organizing the office. There have been several things in our boxes that baffle me. For instance, why in the world did I decide to pack the folding file I had in college? I mean, nothing–nothing is useful in that. I didn’t even know I still had it, so why is it in NYC? I’ve started a box for “things that don’t belong here” that Rob will take back to Portland when he goes back for IPNC.

We spent yesterday cleaning and unpacking. The bedroom is assembled and has no boxes. Yay! Rob has disassembled the stove and is deep cleaning it. It’s a nice old Welbilt, which has thirty plus years of grease buildup on it. We shudder.

The living room is starting to emerge from the chaos of boxes, but it will take awhile.

I have to give a huuuuuuge thank you to Emily, Jodi and my brother, Steve, for their help moving us in.

Here are some photos from moving day.

Arrival in NYC

So, I added photos that we took the other day to the web album.

Move To NYC, Day Two

I promised to tell you about our misadventures from yesterday, so this is what I wrote up while we were driving.

It was dark when we crossed into South Dakota. One of the interesting things about crossing a state line is that the quality of the road one is traveling on changes dramatically. So, as we crossed into South Dakota all the reflectors disappeared, the white line showing the edge of the road disappeared and the color of the road became almost exactly the same as the shoulder. Without my brights on, it was very hard to see the road. I did not feel comfortable traveling more that forty-five mph.

Everytime another car approached, the road beyond them completely vanished. I learned to watch the angle at which they approached to get a guess about what the road would do when I got to it. Occasionally, there would be reflectors by the road, but not where you would expect them. There might be a curve and then three reflectors on the straightaway.

At one point, as a semi approached and the road vanished again, I saw a quick reflection in his lane. I had time to think, “My god, is there a cyclist on this road?”

And then I hit a deer.

A herd of them was standing on the road. What I had seen was the reflection of one of the other deer’s eyes. The one I hit materialized in my headlights as if it had beamed into place. I can only assume that the semi also hit one.

We stopped, confirmed that there was no serious damage to the truck. There wasn’t–one of the advantages of driving something so large, I guess. After this, I slowed down still more as the road got twistier.

We kept trying to call the campground to cancel the reservation, but could get no cell signal. Though it meant that we didn’t get to the campground until after 11:00, we still went for it knowing that if we got behind, that today would be even longer.

Unfortunately, they stop registration at 11:00. So, though we had reservations, we had no idea where we were supposed to be. I finally found a bag with our name on it that contained a map to our site. It was hard to see the site numbers, so we decided that I would sit in the truck while Rob looked for the campsite.

While I was sitting there, someone came out to complain about the noise of the diesel, so I shut it down. Someone else then came up to demand to know what was going on. Though I was now quiet, he wanted me to move the truck away. I figured the smart thing to do would be to take it back to the main parking area and just pack the tent and cats to the campsite. He assured me that the road went straight through.

He was quite wrong. So, while Rob was looking for the campsite, I got stuck at the end of a deadend road. I tried turning the truck around, and hit a rock–no damage, since I was going extremely slowly, but enough to convince me to stop the truck where I was.

We were next to a cabin which had no cars in front of it. There was a large grassy area. At this point I decided to screw finding “our” site and to just camp in the grassy area. I walked back to get Rob and we set up the tent. Of course, since we were at the end of a dead-end road, it was completely dark. The truck was facing away from the grassy area, so there was no way to use the headlights to set up. We worked with the glow cast by the overhead light in the back of the truck. Our nightlight, once we set up the tent, was supplied by the screen of my laptop. Ah, technology.

We got up at five this morning and hit the road. Mt. Rushmore wasn’t open yet, but is clearly visible from the road. I’ve got to say that it’s more impressive from the side than from the front, but there’s no safe way to pull off and take a photo there.

The road since then has been unbelievably straight.

A hearty, hearty thank you to the Chelsea household, Mick Daugherty and Rick Lovett for their help carting everything across. They totally saved our hiney.

The house is totally empty except for the cats and their acoutrements. We pick them up in the morning and hit the road. The plan is to leave at dawn and go straight to Salt Lake City instead of doing an overnight stay in Boise. Whee! At least the solstice will give us lots of daylight driving time.

But when I walk into the bathroom, it is no longer part of my house. This room belongs to someone else already.

Although we had serious sibling rivalry growing up, he’s a swell guy. He just got accepted to Vanderbilt where he will finish his doctorate. I’m not looking forward to calling him Dr. Harrison, but I’m still proud of him. Oh– and he’s driving up to NYC to help us move in.

I also have several boxes of marionettes that I inherited from an older puppeteer and I can’t take them with me. These are in various stages of completion. Some of the boxes are only parts. Many of the marionettes need to be restrung

I can’t bring myself to throw them in the trash.

These are good for an older child’s toys, beginners and collectors.

Her visit is already proving delightful, and so far I’ve only seen her in the car on the way back from the airport. Besides her wonderful personality, she also brought bagels from New York. Rob and I were embarrasingly pleased to have these.

For future reference, anyone coming to visit us who can bring bagels from NYC automatically gets bonus points.

We watched the newest Dr. Who episode. May I say, I am such a geek. I was a huuuuge Dr. Who fan when I was a teen, and by God, I turned fourteen again watching these episodes. They are really good. Besides engaging characters and interesting storylines, they actually have production values. If you’ve seen the original Dr. Who episodes, you know what a phenomenal leap that is. Of course it’s also fun to sit with a bunch of SF writers and chat about it afterwards.

I’m going home early tomorrow. I’ll really miss Jenny, Nia, Steve, Luc and Lee. This has been a great weekend.

Oh! And Jenny and I just realized that we’ll see each other in NYC on Wednesday. Then I will get to see Steve and Lee at Chattacon next weekend. Looking forward to that.

As I walked past the snack table I saw that little Miss Snippy had her stick horse, which she’d been waving in my face and everyone else’s, so I told her to put it away.

“But it’s all the way over there. Can you put it away for me?” she said.

“No, it’s all the way over there for me too.”

“But,” she whined, “you’re a teacher. It’s your job to help kids.”

Biting my tongue, I took a breath and then replied, “It’s my job to help children who are having trouble, not children who didn’t follow instructions in the first place.”

“But I’ll lose my place in line.”

“There’s no one behind you. You’re the last one in line.” I turned and walked away, straight into the teacher’s lounge where I announced that I didn’t like her.

I’ve had children who don’t pay attention, or are disruptive, but not one that’s so openly manipulative. She’ll be like this when she grows up, it’ll just be more subtle.

So, I was very grouchy on my way home, but when I got there I found a box. My dear friend’s in NYC who let me stay with them when I come out have a fantastically appointed kitchen. The last time I was out, I was helping Marlene in the kitchen and commented on her sets of mixing bowls. She has a set of nesting glass bowls that come in every imaginable size and a set of steel bowls that are perfect. I mentioned that I covet them.

Today, without any provocation, Marlene sent me a set of nesting steel bowls. So, very, very kind.

As I was heading back up to catch the train for Katonah, I had a bit of time to kill so I stopped in Union Square and wrote for a bit. When it started to rain, I decided that it was time to catch the subway, so I headed down to catch the 4,5,6. There was a huge crowd on the overpass looking down at the platform. As I came up, three cops came running flat out and yelling “outta the way!” It turns out that someone had been hit by the subway. I didn’t see much, although it was hard not to rubber-neck like the rest of the crowd. There’s something about an accident that just pulls ones attention. I don’t know why. It’s not like I wanted to see a tragedy, but there seems to be something hardwired in to turn and look at accidents.

They carried him out on a stretcher, so I think he was still alive.

Meanwhile, here’s a photo from DC that I forgot to upload on Friday. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, I think.

Meanwhile, they assigned me a seat for the flight and then relocated me because they had a weight imbalance on the plane. Why didn’t they think about that when I was getting my seat assignment during check-in? Odd.

At one point, Stefan came running into the room and said “The Northern Lights!” so we all ran out onto their deck and stared up at the sky. At first it was very faint, and then the entire northern face of the sky lit up.