food

No Pickle Thursday

So I got a tuna fish sandwich for lunch today, and they asked if I wanted pickles when I was paying for it. I said yes, because, hey, free pickles. But when I got back to the office, there were no pickles to be found in my bag. And because this is the kind of thing that makes the internet go round, I posted it to Twitter. This is what resulted:

Pickles

It got a surprising amount of response over on my Facebook page, too, which is basically just a feed of my Twitter posts I maintain so I can play Scrabble online. Usually I have to post really pedantic grammatical questions to get that kind of response. (Although, in my line of work, that kind of thing comes up a whole lot more often than lack of pickles.)

Anyway, it kept me amused. Today was decent enough for a Thursday, although it was disgustingly hot and muggy, and I’m just glad tomorrow’s a half day.

Thursday various

Tuesday various

  • I see the dead Tauntaun wedding cake. And I see the zombie wedding cake. But what I don’t see is the obvious next step: the zombie Tauntaun wedding cake. Get on it, cake-makers!
  • The movie(s) may still disappoint, but I’m genuinely excited by the new Harry Potter trailer.
  • Martin Scorcese, meanwhile, has never seen the Harry Potter movies. I think they passed up a great opportunity to have him direct one of them. Seriously, can’t you see De Niro or Keitel as Voldemort?
  • I’ve been saying this about emoticons for years and years. [via]
  • And finally, today through Thursday marks the third Harlan Ellison Rare Book Purge. I’m tempted, though mostly by the stuff that’s a little outside of my price range. Say what you will about the man — and heaven knows there’s a lot to be said, both for and against — there’s no denying that he’s written some phenomenal work.

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.