new york

Thursday

A pretty quiet day, aside from the storm that rushed through here. Luckily, I got home ahead of the storm and missed all of the excitement in Manhattan, where apparently the Long Island Railroad shut down entirely. Good times.

Other than that… I finished reading Barry Lopez’s short story collection Light Action in the Caribbean. I liked the collection, even if some of the stories (including the title story) were a little strange, and even if none exactly lived up to “The Mappist,” the final story in the book and the one that introduced me to Lopez. (I heard it on Selected Shorts, where actor Joe Spano does a great job with it.)

And I wrote a little more today, making some slow but steady progress on a short story of my own I’ve been working on lately. I’m hoping to spend even more time with it over the weekend.

Oh, and I posted the cover and contents for Kaleidotrope #10 earlier today. I still can’t believe this will be ten issues, that I’ve been publishing the zine since October of 2006. (Just as I have trouble believing I’ve worked in my office since October of 2004.) I really like this issue, and I hope you will too. (You can pre-order copies now if you’re not already a subscriber!)

Tuesday various

Train of thought

My father overslept this morning, so we caught the same train into Manhattan. Of course, we didn’t ride in the same car, since I work further uptown than him and it makes more sense for me to be at the very back of the train. I was a lot further back from him this evening, too, but only because summer hours at work get me to Penn Station with little time to spare, and no time to be choosy. It’s unfortunate, since in my car we were again packed in like sardines — tighter, in fact, than yesterday and with less cool air getting through — and apparently not packed at all in my father’s car. The LIRR is naturally still predicted delays and canceled or combined trains again for tomorrow, but maybe it won’t be so bad. And Friday, I get to leave early.

I’ve pretty much gotten into the swing of summer hours…so of course they end after next week, right before Labor Day.

Wednesday various

Cloudy day, take two

Today wasn’t too significantly different than yesterday — hence the near-identical image up at top. I did see someone getting arrested outside a Duane Reade drugstore from the train this morning, which is unusual for my morning commute. I felt a little weird watching them handcuff the guy — for what, I don’t know — but we were sitting in the station for a few minutes, and the car I was in overlooked the drugstore’s parking lot. This evening, nothing half as exciting happened. Although the train was packed and very slow — they say because of a cable fire yesterday that’s been causing delays ever since — and at the stop before mine, the guy next to me got his umbrella caught in the door and it would only open halfway (the door, not the umbrella). A few of us standing there — yeah, I stood for the whole hour-plus train ride — tried to pry the umbrella loose, my headphones briefly becoming wrapped around it, but even when we did, the door didn’t open any further. Which led to a whole lot of grumbles by the people who had to squeeze through the narrow gap to get out. Luckily, the door wasn’t damaged and closed, or we’d have been stuck there instead of finally getting to my stop.

Anyway, that was Tuesday. The stuff in between the train rides was even less exciting, believe me. Onward to Wednesday and the second half of the week.