personal

Sniffly Wednesday

Today was a pretty decent, if not altogether exciting day, although I do seem to be fighting a summer cold or allergies that have kicked into higher gear suddenly. It’s been coming on the past couple of days, actually, and is now a fun mess of watery eyes, a sneezing and runny nose, and a tickle at the back of my throat that, if I’m not careful, turns into a lot of coughing. I’ve felt worse — and I don’t necessarily feel sick — but I’ve also felt better.

Then again, I had an amusing moment via Twitter this afternoon when Kurt Andersen, replying to my compliments on last night’s reading briefly mistook me for his fellow panelist Jeffrey Ford. It’s not like there’s no resemblance, but I think it’s pretty slight. Still, there are worse people to be mistaken for, and it was amusing.

Thinking of making an early night of it, to keep one step ahead of this nagging cough and runny nose.

And then what happened…?

This evening, I took the subway uptown to attend a reading and panel discussion at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College to promote the brand new Neil Gaiman/Al Sarrantonio-edited collection Stories. In attendance were several of the writers from the collection, namely Gaiman himself, Lawrence Block, Walter Mosley, Kat Howard, Joe Hill, Kurt Andersen, and Jeffery Ford. They each talked a bit about their work and genre and storytelling, and they each (with the exception of Mosley) read a section of their individual stories. They were really quite good, and I look forward to reading the book in its entirety. I bought an autographed copy there, from which I read Howard’s story (her first ever sale!) before the panel took the stage and then Andersen’s on the train ride home.

Before the show, I had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant about a block from the auditorium, which was okay but not exactly my favorite. (I wasn’t in love with the spongy and mildly sour injera, though overall the food was okay.) And then, walking home from the train station, I stumbled into a scene of about half a dozen police cars and an ambulance outside the local plastics manufacturer. I still have no idea what happened — the cops were getting into their cars and the ambulance was pulling away as I approached — but it was an interesting end to an exciting evening.

A puzzling Sunday

I went to sleep last night at a somewhat sensible hour, which is actually kind of rare. Many is the Saturday night that I’ve spent late-night capping, acting snarky towards informercials and Darren McGavin long into the wee hours. It’s all a bit zany — you know, a bit madcap, funster. Frankly I don’t fully understand it myself, but the kids seem to like it.

Today was a pretty quiet day. I worked on the Sunday New York Times crossword, which for a change I really disliked, thanks to a theme that seemed way too clever by half and ultimately just hurt my brain. Lots of people seemed to love it, however, and the puzzle’s constructor had sense of humor enough to retweet my negative comments. But I still didn’t enjoy the puzzle, which is ultimately something of a curate’s egg: inventive in its construction but headache-inducing in its execution.

Afterward, I joined my writing group for a little free-writing, then came back home to watch television with the dog. My parents drove out to Port Jefferson to see my aunt, who’s been in the hospital since yesterday with an irregular heartbeat. She’s feeling well, and has been moved from the critical care unit, but the underlying problem hasn’t yet been diagnosed and/or fixed. So we’re all hoping for the best.

Then for dinner, Chinese food: “The fortune you seek is in another cookie.” Talk about too clever by half.

And somehow that filled a Sunday. Time, I think, for bed.

Body shots

I had a pretty decent, if largely uneventful, Saturday. I got a little more caught up on Kaleidotrope slush, finally reading everything submitted earlier than last month. And I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who, which I quite enjoyed. Next week’s looks like another everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink’s-kid-brother sort of episode, but you certainly can’t accuse Steven Moffat of not having a plan. This evening I also watched Jennifer’s Body, which I can’t pretend to have enjoyed very much at all. Less than halfway through, I switched the lights back on and pulled out my iPad for distraction. Scott Tobias and Kyle Ryan go a long way towards explaining what’s wrong with the movie. It’s like a very badly written version of Ginger Snaps. I wish I could say the movie got better as it went — I genuinely enjoyed Diablo Cody’s previous movie, Juno and the one episode of United States of Tara I’ve seen — but I think it would be wrong to lie. Better to just move on…dot org. (Ugh.)

I did manage to get caught up, ever so briefly, in today’s World Cup match between the United States and England. I like soccer — I played for several years, up until sixth grade, and tried out (very unsuccessfully) for my high school team — but professional matches can appear to be very boring, with only brief spikes in excitement when someone gets close to scoring a goal. Those appearances might be deceptive — the rest of the world can’t be completely wrong, can they? — but I don’t think I’ll be getting up first thing tomorrow to watch the US in their next match, or any of the other matches. If I happen to catch some more, I’ll maybe watch, the same way I watched this year’s Olympics, but that’s probably it.

Beyond that, it was mostly just a quiet Saturday.