new york

Garden Talk

There’s not a whole lot to be said about this particular Tuesday.

I did stop by a Home Depot in Manhattan, looking and failing to find a garden soaker hose, not even one of the too-long lengths listed on their website. A Home Depot in midtown Manhattan is an odd place, I have to say, not least of all because the bulk of the store is hidden down below and a block deep. I suppose people who live and work in Manhattan must occasionally need lumber and gardening supplies, too, but it was a slightly weird experience. I was only there in the hope that I wouldn’t have to go buy one in the evening. (Lowes has the length I want listed on their site, but they don’t have any stores in the city.)

I don’t need to buy the hose, but the one we have appears to have a hole in it. I’d like to replace it (and use the replacement) before my parents come home on Thursday. Unless it rains tomorrow, I’d like to water the tree in the front yard.

This is what passes for excitement this week

A night at the library

I spent another day wrasslin’ with a manuscript, taking all my corrections and putting them back into a Word document to send to the authors. We’ll see how quick they can respond, and if they agree to all my changes.

A few other e-mails aside, and a quick escape for lunch, that was pretty much my day. My evening was spent at an event called Speculating on Fiction at the New York Public Library. The guests included John Scalzi, Scott Westerfeld, Cat Valente, and of course my favorite author, Lev Grossman. Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press emceed, and Brian Slattery and friends provided music.

It was a lot of fun. John Sclazi was quite entertaining, essentially just repeating the story he tells here about The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City. Cat Valente was maybe the best reader of her work, making me wonder what’s wrong with me that I’ve never read any of it yet, and Scott Westerfeld not for the first time made me want to read his Leviathan series. And even Grossman was good, reading from the forthcoming Magicians sequel, which, at least in the section he read, focuses more closely on one of the first book’s most woefully mistreated characters, Julia. It wasn’t good enough to convince me to actually read the new book — I don’t think anything could do that — but he didn’t seem out of place on the stage or anything like that.

(I did note that only one person had a question for him during the Q&A, about how he manages being a full-time critic for Time with writing a novel. But the man’s not tedious idiot. Anybody can write a lousy book. A really, really, really lousy book.)

Thursday various

A rainy Wednesday

Not much to say about the day. It was a Wednesday, a little wet and chilly, but nothing too special.

I did learn this evening that the restaurant where, just last month, we had my aunt and uncle’s wedding anniversary/birthday party — a restaurant they quite like, and which has been in Maspeth, Queens, for some eighty years — burned to the ground. Luckily no one was hurt.

And that’s about it, as far as Wednesday goes.

Thursday

There’s not a whole lot to say about today, really. It was pretty much just your typical, run-of-the-mill Thursday.

It poured rain in the middle of the afternoon, bucketing down just minutes after I’d wandered back to the office after lunch. Which was lucky, because I’d left both my umbrella and jacket behind at my desk. It had quit raining long before it was time for me to actually leave for the day.

And that, honestly, is about the closest I came to excitement today. They were filming something up the block from my office, or seemed to be, but I didn’t see what. It was a block away, the street was blocked by police, and it was going to rain. It’s possible it was location shooting for Glee, which I’ve seen but don’t watch, but I say that only because there was some chatter on Twitter about them filming for it elsewhere, nearby, in the city. I didn’t actually see anything definitive.

And that was Thursday.