i'm an adult. i don't have instagram.
(my sister and i saw anora last weekend. it got great press and i really liked mikey madison in better things but i'm still not sure how i feel about it, other than part of it goes on way too long and i didn't think it was as funny as a lot of other people seemed to. i'm not sorry we saw it but maybe i was just expecting something else.)
anyway. it's been a while! this past week was just A Lot and i'm glad it's over. i was like twenty minutes late to writing group on thursday because the t is borked because they're doing work on it and it takes forever to get anywhere, and when everyone else paused to say hi and what had i been working on the past couple of weeks i just said "every fucking thing is annoying me - not you guys, you guys are great - but everything else is just annoying". it was that kind of week. and now it's saturday! i got a new battery for my watch - you can change the watch band yourself but apparently you need an actual watchmaker or a jeweler to pry the back off and change the battery, which ran me $35 for what is probably a very standard watch battery - and picked up my comics and met cousins j&m and their twins and cousin n who is cousin j's brother and his girlfriend for candlepinning and pizza. (candlepin bowling. the balls are smaller and the pins are straighter. you still need bowling shoes tho.) that was fun. we're going to j&m's for thanksgiving and they're having twenty-one people. their house is not that big. i was tasked with bringing a pie and am now going to bring two because did i mention, twenty-one people.
mom came up for tday on wednesday and i met her and my sister for dinner (and was late because public transportation) and last night i met them for birthday dinner (sushi). it was delicious. mom is staying with my sister because she can.
for veterans day weekend my sister and i went to new york and hit traffic EVERYWHERE and saw chicago which we might have liked more if we weren't sitting waaaay over at the end of the row where we had kind of an obstructed view. the guy at the ticket counter did not tell us this. alyssa milano played roxie and she was fine? but i think kind of miscast in a musical. the actress who played velma was fantastic tho. the next day we took a walking tour of tv and movie locations in central park (very fun) where we learned among other things that you can shoot your movie for free in the park as long as your camera never touches the ground. so if you carry it around you're good but if you set up a tripod it will cost you. you can also get married there for free altho the price you pay is that you're kind of unintentionally inviting anyone who happens to be in that part of the park at the time to your wedding. which, honestly? as someone who likes weddings i would be totally down with that. everyone come see me get hitched! (and i want to see other people get hitched!) but you can't all come to the reception.
the tour ended by tavern on the green, which is a restaurant now but used to be a barn where they kept sheep, and across the street from the dakota, famous forever as the building where john lennon was shot. there are no celebrities who live there - the condo board turned down madonna and jerry seinfeld - because the board (which i think means mostly yoko ono who owns like the entire top floor and a half) doesn't want to give paparazzi any reason to hang around outside. which is fair. the weather was cold and crappy and we were looking for someplace that had hot cider and instead walked past the museum of art and design which had a barbie exhibit, so we saw that. so fun! so many barbies! plus a bunch of kens! plus the original barbie dream house (which was really just a barbie dream room) and a life size replica of barbie's pink convertible. you could sit in it. say what you want about barbie's materialism and unrealistic shape but she really was aspirational - mattel put out the first astronaut barbie in 1965, beating sally ride into a spacesuit by almost two decades.
that night we met cousin m (daughter of cousin s who lives in phoenix) for dinner which was delicious, and monday we took a detour out to long island to see where we used to live. we drove by the house and the high school and the temple we belonged to and we drove through the tiny town center (the clock tower is still there and so is the movie theater! altho the theater is closed now) and past where the best chinese takeout used to be and the steakhouse dad really liked and the diner (which has been renovated into a two story building) and we went to the deli and got knishes (and i got kasha varnishkes because it's so hard to find around here) and almost nothing looked familiar to me. it was VERY WEIRD. i mean, i lived there for thirteen years (altho six of those were college and grad school) and the house was the only thing i'd be able to pick out of a lineup. and then it took forever to get home because traffic. but it was a good weekend overall, partly because it's just nice to get out of town and partly because it's a fun tradition. we don't have to go out to the island next time tho. i mean, it was hours out of the way.
my curling team lost last week by a lot but it was still a good game. i think we were pretty evenly matched until the end when the other team got four points and we just couldn't come back from that.
the nanonovel proceeds apace, by which i mean i'm on track with word count, but also i think i adopted the wrong plot bunny. one of the women in writing group keeps teasing me about the fact no one has ever read any of my nanonovels and suggesting i submit the current one and i finally snapped that i don't write them to share, i don't write them to edit, i write them to prove to myself that i still can. that's it. (also, seriously, they're not good. every single one is written in a hurry and most of the time i don't know where the story's going until it gets there. someday i will plan ahead! but that someday is not now.)
that reminds me! i can pimp! the twice-sold soul, formerly the twice-sold soul of mckenna ellerbeck, originally the demon's witch, written by katie hallahan who's in my writing group. we're very proud. it's sold as romantasy altho there's more antasy than rom and the author submitted the entire thing to writing group so i have read it! altho not the final draft. and i pimp it to the romantasy fans out there, or even the folks who just like urban fantasy but aren't turned off by a little romance. and there's a cocktail recipe in the back. :D
my roommate is out of town until the monday after thanksgiving which is probably the best birthday present she could have given me. i am thoroughly enjoying having the house to myself. i mean, i don't have to wait ten minutes for her to get out of the bathroom every morning and she cleaned up her shit before she left so i can have mom and my sister over for dinner and not be embarrassed.
you all need to watch chris evans and stephen colbert and a bunch of puppies. don't argue with me. :D
inside kowloon walled city - before it was torn down it was documented by a couple of photographers who then released a book of photos. i kind of want it except it's $103 on amazon and about $89 if you buy it from the gallery in hong kong that's currently running an exhibit of some of the photos.
is this art and is it worth $6.2m? by which i mean, an artist taped a banana to the wall with duct tape and sotheby's auctioned it off for over six million bucks. it's a banana.
anyway. it's been a while! this past week was just A Lot and i'm glad it's over. i was like twenty minutes late to writing group on thursday because the t is borked because they're doing work on it and it takes forever to get anywhere, and when everyone else paused to say hi and what had i been working on the past couple of weeks i just said "every fucking thing is annoying me - not you guys, you guys are great - but everything else is just annoying". it was that kind of week. and now it's saturday! i got a new battery for my watch - you can change the watch band yourself but apparently you need an actual watchmaker or a jeweler to pry the back off and change the battery, which ran me $35 for what is probably a very standard watch battery - and picked up my comics and met cousins j&m and their twins and cousin n who is cousin j's brother and his girlfriend for candlepinning and pizza. (candlepin bowling. the balls are smaller and the pins are straighter. you still need bowling shoes tho.) that was fun. we're going to j&m's for thanksgiving and they're having twenty-one people. their house is not that big. i was tasked with bringing a pie and am now going to bring two because did i mention, twenty-one people.
mom came up for tday on wednesday and i met her and my sister for dinner (and was late because public transportation) and last night i met them for birthday dinner (sushi). it was delicious. mom is staying with my sister because she can.
for veterans day weekend my sister and i went to new york and hit traffic EVERYWHERE and saw chicago which we might have liked more if we weren't sitting waaaay over at the end of the row where we had kind of an obstructed view. the guy at the ticket counter did not tell us this. alyssa milano played roxie and she was fine? but i think kind of miscast in a musical. the actress who played velma was fantastic tho. the next day we took a walking tour of tv and movie locations in central park (very fun) where we learned among other things that you can shoot your movie for free in the park as long as your camera never touches the ground. so if you carry it around you're good but if you set up a tripod it will cost you. you can also get married there for free altho the price you pay is that you're kind of unintentionally inviting anyone who happens to be in that part of the park at the time to your wedding. which, honestly? as someone who likes weddings i would be totally down with that. everyone come see me get hitched! (and i want to see other people get hitched!) but you can't all come to the reception.
the tour ended by tavern on the green, which is a restaurant now but used to be a barn where they kept sheep, and across the street from the dakota, famous forever as the building where john lennon was shot. there are no celebrities who live there - the condo board turned down madonna and jerry seinfeld - because the board (which i think means mostly yoko ono who owns like the entire top floor and a half) doesn't want to give paparazzi any reason to hang around outside. which is fair. the weather was cold and crappy and we were looking for someplace that had hot cider and instead walked past the museum of art and design which had a barbie exhibit, so we saw that. so fun! so many barbies! plus a bunch of kens! plus the original barbie dream house (which was really just a barbie dream room) and a life size replica of barbie's pink convertible. you could sit in it. say what you want about barbie's materialism and unrealistic shape but she really was aspirational - mattel put out the first astronaut barbie in 1965, beating sally ride into a spacesuit by almost two decades.
that night we met cousin m (daughter of cousin s who lives in phoenix) for dinner which was delicious, and monday we took a detour out to long island to see where we used to live. we drove by the house and the high school and the temple we belonged to and we drove through the tiny town center (the clock tower is still there and so is the movie theater! altho the theater is closed now) and past where the best chinese takeout used to be and the steakhouse dad really liked and the diner (which has been renovated into a two story building) and we went to the deli and got knishes (and i got kasha varnishkes because it's so hard to find around here) and almost nothing looked familiar to me. it was VERY WEIRD. i mean, i lived there for thirteen years (altho six of those were college and grad school) and the house was the only thing i'd be able to pick out of a lineup. and then it took forever to get home because traffic. but it was a good weekend overall, partly because it's just nice to get out of town and partly because it's a fun tradition. we don't have to go out to the island next time tho. i mean, it was hours out of the way.
my curling team lost last week by a lot but it was still a good game. i think we were pretty evenly matched until the end when the other team got four points and we just couldn't come back from that.
the nanonovel proceeds apace, by which i mean i'm on track with word count, but also i think i adopted the wrong plot bunny. one of the women in writing group keeps teasing me about the fact no one has ever read any of my nanonovels and suggesting i submit the current one and i finally snapped that i don't write them to share, i don't write them to edit, i write them to prove to myself that i still can. that's it. (also, seriously, they're not good. every single one is written in a hurry and most of the time i don't know where the story's going until it gets there. someday i will plan ahead! but that someday is not now.)
that reminds me! i can pimp! the twice-sold soul, formerly the twice-sold soul of mckenna ellerbeck, originally the demon's witch, written by katie hallahan who's in my writing group. we're very proud. it's sold as romantasy altho there's more antasy than rom and the author submitted the entire thing to writing group so i have read it! altho not the final draft. and i pimp it to the romantasy fans out there, or even the folks who just like urban fantasy but aren't turned off by a little romance. and there's a cocktail recipe in the back. :D
my roommate is out of town until the monday after thanksgiving which is probably the best birthday present she could have given me. i am thoroughly enjoying having the house to myself. i mean, i don't have to wait ten minutes for her to get out of the bathroom every morning and she cleaned up her shit before she left so i can have mom and my sister over for dinner and not be embarrassed.
you all need to watch chris evans and stephen colbert and a bunch of puppies. don't argue with me. :D
inside kowloon walled city - before it was torn down it was documented by a couple of photographers who then released a book of photos. i kind of want it except it's $103 on amazon and about $89 if you buy it from the gallery in hong kong that's currently running an exhibit of some of the photos.
is this art and is it worth $6.2m? by which i mean, an artist taped a banana to the wall with duct tape and sotheby's auctioned it off for over six million bucks. it's a banana.