long island

I guess that was Tuesday

I overslept this morning and somehow didn’t wake up until 8 o’clock on the nose. Even more remarkable, though, is the fact that I still managed to be on the 8:15 train. I even managed to shower and brush my teeth. (Well, okay, I did those two simultaneously.) And while I had to rush like mad, I didn’t have to run for the train or anything.

Sometimes it pays to live only a couple of minutes from the train station.

The rest of the day was pretty much business as usual. I spent most of it weeding through stock photo sites, which I’m still doing, looking for replacements for figures that appeared in the first edition. This is proving a little tougher than finding regular stock photos, since these others are more medical and scientific in nature. I know I’m just asking for trouble plugging keywords like “glands” into my image searches, but that’s sort of what it’s come to. The previous edition was published by a competitor, and I think they had an illustrator or two on hand, which seems just wholly unfair.

Other than that, I scheduled a follow-up appointment with my spine doctor for next Tuesday. It was probably asking too much that I be able to get a Friday appointment, and thereby use a day I was already taking off for vacation. But I rescheduled my day off, for next Tuesday, and it’s not too shabby getting the initial visit, MRI, and follow-up all taken care of it less than two weeks. Hopefully the MRI — bright and early this Saturday — will suggest a plan of action.

And this evening, when I came home, there was a helicopter circling this and the surrounding blocks for twenty or thirty minutes. Also, maybe unconnected, a police car pulling into the parking lot at the train station a few minutes before that. I wonder if they were chasing a fugitive or something. I’ve seen nothing about it on the news, or online, but that helicopter seemed to be making quite a few passes overhead.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t enjoin you all to vote for Heather in the Canadian Blog Awards. Hers is my favorite Canadian blog, which I’m sure you’re all reading anyway, but I thought I’d pass the word along.

Tomorrow, they tell me, is Wednesday.

Tuesday various

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!)

Back at the old homestead

A quiet day at home, mostly finishing up a few chores and some cleaning, and watching more episodes of The Office. (I’m making good headway into Season 3.) I toyed with the idea of going to see The American, but didn’t, just hung around the house.

Nor did I go up the block to join the neighborhood block party. A few weeks ago, they sent around a somewhat passive-aggressive flier for the party, notifying us that because “some people” had disapproved, only the other end of the block would be closed off to traffic. I guess at this end, we’re just fun-hating spoilsports. Block parties around here have always been kind of an other-end-of-the-block thing anyway, and nowadays, with only a few exceptions, that’s where all the families with young children live.

I don’t know if they intentionally picked September 11 as the day of the party. It does seem a little weird. Though I also ran into a local “harvest festival” that had roads blocked today, and only one small gathering at the local flagpole commemorating the day. To be honest, aside from a few posts on Twitter, and the fact that they had some of the memorial services on TV at the deli when I went to buy lunch, I might not even have known today was September 11.

Actually, that’s not true. As Thud points out, those who most angrily declare that we’ve “forgotten 9/11” do so simply “because we don’t agree with them,” or because they’ve forgotten what actually happened that day, or learned the wrong lesson from it. (Like, oh, that all Islam is evil, or that burning Korans is a good idea.) I actually started this weblog a couple of days after the attacks. I have family and friends who were in Manhattan at the time, though thankfully no one who has hurt. Even as it’s become a day that, nine years later, I don’t dwell on for every moment, it’s also a day I’m not likely to forget.

Though it occurs to me now, a lot of the kids I saw up and down the block, headed to or from the block party? Plenty of them weren’t alive that day, or were too young to really remember it. That seems a little weird to me.

Anyway, after dinner this evening, I drove to the airport to pick up my parents. I may have mentioned, they were in London for the week. There was a little confusion about which terminal they were in — I was waiting around in Terminal 2 for about an hour, then I got a call saying they were waiting in Terminal 3 — but everybody’s home now safe. Our dog has already ripped up the stuffed Beefeater dog they bought him. Which is, of course, what he does to pretty much all his toys.

And that’s it. Tomorrow’s my last day off before heading back to work. On the one hand, I’m looking forward to it. On the other, I was just starting to get the hang of this “vacation” thing.

(Actually, I think the next time I take a vacation, I need to go somewhere.)

Beachfront property

So this morning, I got up early and went to the beach. No particular reason, except that the weather’s still been pretty nice, and, despite living maybe twenty minutes from the Atlantic ocean, I can’t remember the last time I went near the beach.

It was nice. I walked along the boardwalk for a few miles, listened to a podcast, and took some photographs. I left before parking lots started to fill up.

I’m not sure if I got my full $10-parking-fee’s worth, but I’m glad I went. I’ve never been too much of a beach person — partly because I don’t have that bathing-suit, Charles Atlas physique, partly because I don’t like sand in my shoes — but it was quite pretty out by the water in the morning sun.

The rest of the day, I spent mostly just cleaning. It’s amazing how much of that there can be when you a) have too much stuff, b) are way too disorganized for your own good, and c) decide foolishly to rearrange all the furniture in your room all by yourself.

I think I may finish tomorrow.

And then tonight, I ordered Chinese food. I ended up with more food than I expected — it’s just me, still, with my parents due back Saturday — but there’s always leftovers. My fortune…well, I’m not quite sure how to interpret this: “Your luck is about to change.” Hopeful, ominous, inscrutable?