New York: Day Five

In direct inverse proportion to how much Day Four kind of stank, Day Five was full of surprises and awesome.  And I sort of already blogged about this already but I'm gonna again.

So.  We got to the Javitz at 7 to get tickets for the Temple Grandin signing, because Temple Grandin is intense.  And then we sat in the line-up to get in and waited for two hours (as one does) and flipped through the Things Going On Today magazine, whence all our surprises.  Shel Silverstein preview!  Jimmy Fallon tomorrow!  And so on.

Ok and then the floodgates opened and we got our first taste of the feeding frenzy that is the HarperCollins and Hachette (pronounced 'Ha-shet' and not, as I have been saying, 'Hatchet') and Penguin booths.  Stacks of books for the taking!  Elbowing also for the taking!  No time to read blurbs or book-backs!  TAKE!  TAKE!  TAKE!  It was actually delightful and overwhelming and fun in the way that very loud dance music is.  OVERSTIMULATION!

And then we went and met my internet-friend 'blackbird' at her booth, which had soft carpeting and cushioned seats and which we stopped by MANY TIMES over the next few days for these reasons (and also because it had BLACKBIRD and she is hilarious and precious and New Yorky and dear, and her only flaw is not telling us she wasn't coming on Thursday so we could get a picture with her on Wednesday.  Alas).

While we were sitting on the Javitz steps with blackbird, eating our hotdogs and yakking, a pack of school-children traipsed by with identical treats, and we were like, Where did you children get those treats?  And one of the minders is all, They're giving free treats away thataway.  So we wandered over to the Sarah Dessen truck and got red velvet whoopie pies

from who I later realized was Sarah Dessen herself (whoops.  I loved The Truth About Forever, Sarah!) and they were one of the best things we ate all week (there will be a wrap-up of Things We Ate later.  Also, Our Hostel and The Sketchy Adventures Therein).  Grandma Plett loved red velvet, so I like to think we were honoring her in chosing this over strawberry.

And then, and then we got in line for Mike Holmes, a line that was full of giddy girls, and by the time we got to Mike Holmes we were both turned to eleven and very high-pitched but he was so calming and had such enormous, soft hands and then we HUGGED HIM and it was one of my top two celebrity encounters of the week.

And then I met Chuck Klosterman and then we met R L Stine, who was a bit leery but which was kind of expected, and then we spent a good twenty minutes circling a quadrant of booths looking for a particular booth, but they aren't in strictly numerical order and they aren't always labelled and finally we just asked a girl, Where is the Shel Silverstein?  And she was all, Right here, and the cookies are on their way.

Oh and somewhere in there we saw a skinny older lady doing something technological on a stage and then we were like Is that Margaret Atwood?!?!  And then we stopped and had a moment because MARGARET ATWOOD.  She was signing e-books, which was a very future-space-tech and Atwoody thing to be doing.

And then we hauled our wheelie bag of books back to the hostel and changed our shoes and headed out to the library (the big one, with the lions, which is easier to find on a map) for a sci-fi/fantasy reading.

And, ok.  When I'd gone online to rsvp, the sign-up had been closed, but I figured we'd show up and hope they could squeeze us in and if not, we'd have gotten to see the library anyways.

So we get there and start a living wait list, and more people keep showing up who didn't sign up, and they fall in with the wait list, and the gals start checking people who DID sign up off a list that is tragically not in alphabetical order so they have to go through all the pages looking for each person, but everyone is orderly and patient because we are book people and not rowdy, except there's ONE GUY behind us in the wait list who is all, I'm not on the list but I'm reviewing one of these authors so it's very important that I cover this.  And we are like, Dude, everyone here is probably reviewing one of these authors.  Fall in.

So he falls in but ok, did I mention that he's blind and does it make this story worse if he is?  Because he is the WHINIEST PERSON ALIVE and also blind so he keeps being like, How many more people are left?  And me and boo are like, Maybe 30?  But it's taking a while to get through everyone (see: list issue) and he's all *aggrieved sigh* This isn't right!  It never said you had to have a reservation!  And we're like, The website did.  And he's all Well NOT EVERYONE HAS COMPUTERS!  And we're like *careful silence, because in addition to being blind he is also maybe crazy?*  And then five minutes go by and he's like, Miss?  How many more people?  And we're like, Maybe 25?  And it goes around again.

But.  We all got in in the end, and the reading was amazing.  Oh hell, this is already a very long post.  Suffice it to say that Lev Grossman reads like an elementary school teacher (in a good way), John Scalzi is hilarious even if I think his fiction is kind of bad, Scott Westerfeld had illustrations, and Cat Valente is a force and I want to be her bestie.

New York: Day Four: The Director's Cut

What?  Oh right, this.  It turns out that working full-time even temporarily can take a piece out of you if you're used to sitting around on your lazy student ass.

Day four: BEA begins: Sort of.  Monday was mainly for book sellers and publishers and whatall, but we were like, Let's go to that shit anyways! because we are keen like that.

So we hauled our asses to the Javitz and got our badges and went to a panel on the 'eBook era' which apparently is 'now.'  It was interesting in a factoidal way, and full of charts and stats.  The next panel on PR in Marketing was not up our alley, or even located near our alley, as the advice was primarily to 'use facebook' and 'figure out what that twitter thing is about.'

In between the two panels we'd gone to information to ask where the Mulberry Library is, since Jersey Street wasn't on our portable-but-tiny map, and the information woman is all, Let me google that for you?  And the woman next to us is all, Oh, I work for the library, let me mark it down on your teeny map.  And we are like, FORTUITOUS!  Although upon further reflection, running into a librarian at a book expo isn't like finding a unicorn.

Anymoving on.  We knocked off for the afternoon to go do some sightseeing in Greenwich Village, because we'd heard tell of a Secret Garden there and we were hell-bent on finding this, like, best-kept secret of New York or something.  But things that are not on attractions lists are frequently not on attractions lists for a reason, so while the garden was secret and leafy, it was also small and you had to go through shrieking eels children to get to it.

Also we both had to pee, which brings down the tone of any excursion.  From there we went to Urban Outfitters to do a little more shopping, only unbeknownst to us, UO is esssspensive.  If I want to blow dolla bills in New York I'll do it right, and not at some shoddy, overpriced Forever XXI.

From there we went a-questing for Panchitos, which our hostel's concierge recommended and then proceeded to not be able to find on a map, and when the directions to a thing are very complicated and you have spent most of the day being lost (like that time you were trying to cross the street but couldn't because you cannot cross the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and then you have to backtrack, like, five blocks to get to where you were going) and then you actually FIND that thing

and then that thing has burritos and enchiladas and three types of beans and two types of rice

and deep-fried ice cream

then everything else about the day is fine.

And then we went to the Mulberry Street Library for the Teen Author Carnival, and we got there late and had to stand in the back for the first panel and it was HOT SO HOT but we met a real live Book Smuggler

and got seats for the next panel on (I paraphrase) putting angst in your teen novel and having it not suck.  Which, ok, there were some hilarious and articulate authors on this panel (David Levithan, e.g.  Susane Colasanti in particular made me want to start reading her books, except I couldn't see her name tag from where I was sitting so we spent an uncomfortable few minutes zooming in on her chesticles with the camera to try to suss it out and then giving up) but the moderator refused to ask any questions about, you know, angst.  And putting it in novels.  And making it not suck.  So it was interesting inasmuch as listening to authors talk about their work is always interesting, but I was VERY INTRUIGED by angst and the not sucking thereof.

Regardless, it was our first bookerish day and was therefore very thrilling, although if it had come after any of our other bookerish days it would have been a let-down in the utmost.

Day Three: Addendum

Before we entered the Met-maze we sat on the steps and let Acapella Soul serenade us.

Where were we? Oh yes. New York: Day Three

The second day of aggressive sight-seeing is always more exhausting than the first day, because your capacity for absorption (and walking) is waning and you haven't yet built up the stamina of later days.  So.  This day was the most exhausting.

But also exciting!  Because we went to Central Park and rode the carousel (which is sadly no longer a dollar.  Two-fifty is still a cheap ten-minute ride, but there's something satisfying about paying a lone dollar).

On our way into Central Park we were besieged by those guys who try to sell you carriage rides, and one guy told Bekah that her purse made her look very sexy (so...without the purse she is an unsexy hag?).

We unexpectedly came upon a statue of Hans Christian Anderson reading The Ugly Duckling to a duckling

and to us

and then found the Alice in Wonderland statue.  We had to linger some twenty minutes to get a photo of it without any kids clambering on it, and then we had to be quick because a new flock of kids would usually climb up as the last flock was climbing down.  There was no lag time.

and then we climbed on it

We went to the Met and this is where exhaustion kicked in, because it is SO LARGE.  And maze-like.  And there is many an art.  This one installation of tiny people on a wall caught our eye, and we both spent a bizarre few minutes trying to get a 'good' photo of it without being sure what a 'good' photo would be, which is why we now have a dozen photos between us of this one thing and we're still not sure what we were trying to capture.

what?

Then we walked down 5th Ave and Madison Ave and Parks Ave to see the old robber baron mansions that have been converted into apartments and Japanese consulates.

Thence to Grand Central Station, which was yuuuge

but had disappointing and expensive gelato.  Green apple should not taste like pear.  It should be tart.

Then we wandered back to our hostel, picking up a falafel on the way (Vancouver, whither thy street food carts?) and a couple of cheesecakes to smuggle into our room.

New York: Day Two: The More Longerer Version

Ok.  We tried to find MOOD again in the daylight but were still thrown off by the scaffolding and also being wrong about where it was.  But we did find the Macy's and the wooden escalator, AND we found the H+M (it was right next to the Macy's.  For the record, Macy's is a terrible marker because it is a block long and wraps around both sides, so later when you go back to find that breakfast place [this was before we realized that every deli does some sort of breakfast] you won't remember which bit of Macy's you meant 'across from') AND we thought we'd found the flea market, but it was more fleas than market and later we discovered it was not the flea market we'd been looking for.

And then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and it was hot and lovely and took only half the time the internet said it would.

And then we got lost in Brooklyn and got lost again and found a train and tried to make a connection and got lost again and then found the train to Coney Island and that was almost better than finding Coney Island itself.  Except that the train didn't have freaks, and Coney Island did.

also hot dogs

The freak show was super, with a fire-eater and a sword-eater and a hypnotist and a KNIFE-THROWER WHO SET A GUINNESS RECORD WHILE WE WATCHED (the Guinness guy was there and everything) by throwing 78 knives in a Ladder of Death around TWO girls in less than a minute.  I know.  The knife-thrower was the most impressive but also the most watched-through-fingers-due-to-terror-and-liveness-of-show-and-potential-for-actual-death.

And then as we were darting out to the beach to dip our feet in the Atlantic (or whatever) we heard a caller for a $2 freak show and amigos?  You get what you pay for.  The woman was turrrrrible.  A boring performer, a stumbling banterer, a 'Hey guys, do you want me to stomp on this box full of glass?  Cause I'll do it.  I'll...hey guys!  Guys!  I'll do it, don't think I wont!'  We finally gave up all hope on it getting better (i.e. her leaving the stage) and consoled ourselves with Bekah's first funnel cake.

 nothing a little deep-fried sugar can't cure

And then we went home and bought some apples at the market and the market-guy told us we were going to kill all the mens, and we were like, What?  No!  And he was like, Because you have all much beauty!  And we were like, Ahhhh, yes.  Well.  And then we felt uncomfortable and went home to bed.

New York: Day One: The Extended Version

New York!  We went.  It was bananas.  I don't even know how to blog this, so I'm just going to go until I reach a breaking point and then stop.  Dealsies?

pre-travel early am faces

Ok so we flew in on a Friday, and caught the bus and then the train and this was before we knew there might be elevators and before we knew you could go through the service doors if you had bags so we lugged our suitcases up and down many a flight of stairs and Bekah got stuck on the top of a turnstile because she was trying to lift her bag over it while she went through it.  The LOLS!

post-travel faces

On our way from the train to the hostel we went the wrong way twice, were asked for directions twice, were asked if we were Jewish once, and if a guy's hat looked good with his outfit.  It was a very busy seven blocks.

Times Square is very dull and billboardy during the day and since it was only 7 or so we had pizza (and were all stoked because this pizza place was across the street from our hostel.  This is before we realized you can't swing a dead cat in New York without hitting a pizza place) and wandered up to be dazzled by the lights at night.

the lights, but you've already seen this photo

Everyone wants to sell you comedy tickets in Times Square, which is why we actively avoided it after dark.  They are insistant.

And also that night we went to Madison Square Gardens (like, the outside bit) and wandered down 37th looking for MOOD and couldn't find it because of the dark and the scaffolding and also we were misinformed vis a vis it's location.  And then we went back to our dodgy hostel with its rickety beds, about more which another time.

I'mma end this post here for tidiness' sake.

New York: Day Six

Computer unhappy, blogging from iGadget just to reassure my mom that we're still kicking. Due to computer moods unable to upload photos of pulled pork and hush puppies. Your loss,but also mine because they are eaten and I will never see their like again.

Book snatching restrained to a modest twenty-eight today.

New York: Day, what. Five?

Today more than made up for yesterday.  The feeding-frenzy book grab portion of BEA began in earnest, and WE! MET! MIKE! HOLMES!

What?  You can't not hug him.  He was so nice and so pleasant and the line was full of giddy girls (ourselves not excepted).

We also met R L Stine, which was deeply weird because he's not so much a person as an amorphous presence of my teen years and yet hey look, he is also a person.  Wacky.

And we met Temple Grandin, and Chuck Klosterman, and my internet-friend 'blackbird,' and many bloggers, and we had whoopie pies and a black-and-white cookie that came with a preview of a Shel Silverstein book (we would have taken either the preview or the cookie alone, but TOGETHER OH MAN) and then went to a sci-fi/fantasy reading with Cat Valente and Lev Grossman and John Scalzi and Scott Westerfeld and Cat Valente made me a little starstruck because she is Cat Valente, is she aware?

And it was hot like summer and we had brought a wheelie-bag to wheel our loot the fourteen blocks back to our hostel and were so glad we had because even being our most discriminating and restraining selves, we came home with this:

And, like, and infinite number of pens.

New York: Day Four

Ok so sometimes places you'd heard were cheap shopping end up being not that cheap after all, and secret gardens aren't always all they're cracked up to be, but in the end we found the Mexican food place that our hostel's concierge bartended at when he first moved to America, EVEN though it was in Greenwich Village and Greenwich Village is a (beautiful) warren of streets, and it was EVERYTHING WE WANTED IT TO BE!

Blogger won't let me post any photos, but there were two types of beans and three types of rice with our burrito/enchilada platter and guacamole aplenty and the deep-fried ice cream fulfilled my deepest wish.

New York: Day Three

The Central Park Carousel!

Hans Christian Anderson!

The Met!

Grand Central Station!

And falafel and gelato and hot pretzel and I was going to take a picture of my cheesecake for you before I ate it but I forgot.

New York: Day Two

Brooklyn Bridge!

Coney Island hot dogs!

Freak show!  (Cameras not permitted inside actual freak show.)

Bekah's first funnel cake!

New York: Day One

Many much flights, but also pizza!

And Times Square!

Crazy at any other time, I'm sure, but positively hallucigenic at night after hours of traveling.

AIEEEE!!

Youuuuu guyyyyyys!  I can't focus on anything when something is impending, so it's probably for the best that I signed on this week to help out my thesis supervisor organize a bunch of her Office Shit (where there were PILES there are now FILES) rather than pace around the house picking at things.  I need someone else to direct my energies.

New York!  Remember when that was...a lot of days away?  Tomorrow I pack and Thursday I ferry over to the mainland and FRIDAY WE FLY OUT!  Zoots.

I have been making lists in my mind and not writing them down so I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting.  Like library books!  Remind me to take those back.  Today I got new guards put on my yellow boots in preparation for all the walking AND I bought some Dr Scholls inserts the other day and why has no one told me this but they turned all my cheap-ass shoes into comfortable, expensive-feeling shoes.  I have been doin it rong for years.

Tomorrow I make final decisions vis a vis clothing choices, and someone told me to just wear all black and I'll fit right in but I am from the west coast and I like to wear all the colors ALL OF THE TIME.  So.

I AM GOING TO CONEY ISLAND AND I AM GOING TO EAT A HOT DOG AND SEE THE FREAK SHOW BECAUSE THAT IS STILL A THING.

*hem*

I wish it was Thursday.

When boo and I found out we were going to New York back in November, there were still HUNDREDS of days before take-off.  Now there are six.

Six! Days!  I feel like all these little guys.

Graphic stolen shamelessly from sister.  I am nervous and excited and mostly trying to hurry time along faster.  But then I have all these things to do before I go to the mainland on Thursday, and Wednesday just got verrrry busy.  I will have to pack on Tuesday.  What to pack!?  What to wear!?!  It is cloudy in New York right now, and 19 degrees.

Stupidly long posts is what I get for not blogging.

Oh blog, where have you been.

Ok so I was out of town.  And while all the places I was at (my parents' house, my sister's house, my in-laws' house) have The Intertubes, I couldn't seem to muster up the moxie to blog.  But I'm here now!

So.  Wednesday I went to the mainland and boo and I went shopping and it was terrible and we were largely unsuccessful.  Mall, why do you fail us when we need you most?

And then Wednesday night I slept over at boo and Darren's and Thursday morning Georgie thought I was a burglar and then when she realized I wasn't she got so excited she peed.  Boo and I read and took a nap and watched Clue and had plum platz for second-breakfast and then more platz for after-lunch and then took another nap and watched Arrested Development and made cookies and had those for dinner.

There was a lot of this

and some this

and no small amount of this.

In lieu of children or dolls, Georgie is our plaything.  And then on Friday I went to visit my Small Byrd and her Baby Byrd and nibble on the baby's cheeks because look at them.

Robyn and I ran errands because we are errand-running champions.

And then Joel came out and on Saturday we went for Mother's Day brunch and to the park and again with the this

and this

and this.

And then on Sunday we went to Chilliwack for other Mother's Day and went for a hike but Joel left the camera in the car, alas.  Pretend there are pictures of us looking slightly sweaty but very healthy.

Oooh, and!  Remember that season of Project Runway that stupid Gretchen won that Mondo SHOULD have won?  Gillian got me a Mondo shirt for my birthday!

It is COLORIFFIC.  The pattern that looks grey is actually VERY BLUE.

And, AND!  We got our iPad2!  No pictures, because Joel is off somewhere playing with it.  It is infinitely play-with-able.

Now I am home, and off to go remind Boston Pizza that they want to hire me.

Two things.

Yesterday I ran!

Personal record by about 10 seconds, EVEN THOUGH I stopped to walk twice because the new route is all hills and running hills gives me the vomits.  But there was a guy in full hockey equipment (hockey socks, hockey shorts, shoulder pads, Canucks jersey, helmet, those flags you put in car doors taped to his helmet) right behind me the whole time and every time he would pass me I'd have to run harder, because you can't let a man in full hockey gear beat you when you are just carrying your own weight.

Also?  Those t-shirts are the most generic running-event t-shirts of my life.

Today I voted!

[No photo.  They frown on that sort of thing in voting stations.]

I feel very civic.

From highnesses to hicks.

Shannon PVR'd the Royal Wedding so we could watch it last night instead of yesterday at some ungodly hour, and so we could fastforward through the boring bits (i.e. most of it) and pause on all the hats.  HATS!

Hilarious!

I love a good wedding, especially one that I can attend in my jeggings and don't have to buy a gift for, and I love pomp and circumstance.  Where are the trumpets to announce MY entrance?

We made our own wedding feast of bangers and mash (except we don't really know what that is so we had sausage and potatoes and called it good) and royal-engagement-ring-themed tarts.

Ehh?  Anyone?

And then today Chelsea took me out driving in her truck because I need to learn to drive standard or be forever housebound and it wasn't the worst because Chelsea is very like my aunt Lois (i.e. calm and instructy) and driving a truck feels very badass.