The Shift Key is Broken Because of Him

"Oh, did you want to work here? My sitting on your laptop isn't working for you? Oh, you mean now? Move now? Me? You're reaching for me. Maybe you just want to pet me. Or play. Maybe I just need to flip over on my back. Here. On your laptop. No, I'm just messing with you. I know you want me to move. Hey. Check it out. Look how big I am. I cover the whole laptop and more."

Tonight my choir rehearses with the orchestra. Love this part. I don't totally love where I'm going to stand. I'm the first person on the left in the front row. I like being surrounded by singers. But maybe the few people around me will be great singers and I will love my spot. Besides, there's over 100 of us and sometimes you get a great spot, sometimes you don't. It's the luck of the draw, you win some, you lose some. The good part is being right up against the orchestra.

The Cover of My Book

Love my cover, just love it. I had wanted the subtitle to mention the Duke Parapsychology Lab, but the publisher wanted something broader and this is what they went with. It's fine. The inside flap copy and the back cover will go into how the book is about J. B. Rhine and a group of scientists at Duke who conducted the investigations and experiments.

I love it because it's so eye-catching, and graphically striking and I think it will get people to pick up the book, and I believe if they just read a paragraph or two they will buy it. It actually makes me think of the Invisible Man before ghost, but that's a good association and the subtitle quickly makes it clear.

So, the book comes out in March, which is less than a year away! It feels like tomorrow practically, to me. Scared! Scared about what reviewers will say. Scared about what the scientific community will say (if they take note of it at all).

Scared,
scared,
scared,
nervous,
scared,
but of course I can't wait.

At least I will be waiting in my can't-possibly-be-cleaner apartment! The picture is a little dark, which makes my place look kind of dreary, but I was experimenting with taking pictures without the flash. It's actually quite cheery in here.

Vacation Over Blues

This photograph by James Hill was in the Times yesterday. There are just so many amazingly talented people in the world. Look at this. It was from a story about Russia, I believe.

The mini-vacation I gave myself ended yesterday, so it's back to work today. I'm so blue. Plus it's a cold, rainy, cheerless day, weather-wise. My carpet will be returned this morning, all nice and clean, so there's that. Sigh. I need something to cheer me up. A nice surprise or something. Good news about something. Something!

Oh, before I forget, there were lilacs all over the place in New Paltz, and they smelled how lilacs are supposed to smell. You get anywhere near them and you get a blast of their wonderful scent. So, it's just Manhattan and Brooklyn lilacs that are, alas, sub-standard.

Bird Watching

Update: Deborah has totally correctly identified the bird as a red-winged blackbird.

I went to a friend's house warming party in New Paltz and there was this great pond across the street where I saw the bird in the second shot, which I couldn't identify, and this one, which is a heron, but the only reason I know that is because someone walked by and told me it was a heron. He stood so still that at first I thought he wasn't real. I thought he was a statue that someone placed in the pond. (Really. I thought that.)

The second bird was black with an orange spot. Does anyone know what kind of bird he is?

The Contents of My Go Bag

- T-shirt.
- Socks.
- Goggles.
- Goggles with lights.
- Flashlight. (Actually I moved that to my daily backpack after seeing the movie Cloverfield. Now, when a monster rampages New York and I am hiding in a subway, I will be able to see the smaller monsters that fell from the big monster when they come after me.)
- Toilet paper.
- Duct tape.
- Face mask thing.
- Matches.
- A tube of first aid stuff that they gave away at some City thing I went to on emergency preparedness. Not sure what is in there. It will be a surprise.
- Extra pair of glasses.
- Scissors.
- Screwdriver.
- Sharpie pen.
- Power bars.
- First Aid manual.
- A whistle.
- $100 in mostly small bills, because stores may not have change in an emergency.
- Gauze pads.
- A plastic bag containing info about my cats, out-dated forms that say they had their rabies shots (must get current forms) and a list of hotels that take cats.
- Tags with my cats name on them and my name and cellphone number.
- A plastic bag with info about me, birth certificate, social security number, phone numbers of family, friends, doctors.
- First aid kit, the zipper on the bag is broken. It's got prescriptions, girl stuff, sun block, toothbrush, floss, Motrin, more gauze, bandaids, and lots of Imodium because my worst fear in a terrorist attack or tornado is to have bathroom issues and no bathroom.

I used to have an extra pair of sneakers and a pair of jeans in there, but I don't currently have extra sneakers or jeans to spare.

Spring Cleaning Status Report

That's a shot of the Verrazano Bridge taken from a street in Sunset Park, Queens (where I now want to live). I love that bridge. UPDATE Sunset Park is in Brooklyn. I must have been suffering from cleaning exhaustion when I wrote that.

So today should be the last day of my Spring cleaning, and all that will be left is the return of my freshly cleaned livingroom rug. Oh, the bliss I will feel then. I will get a pedicure and walk barefoot on my nice clean rug while looking around and admiring my work.

I had a horrible horrible day yesterday due to this company that I had hired to reinstall my air conditioner for me. They are called Airwave, and they have a good reputation in the city, but they were just an absolute nightmare. I will post the story tomorrow after I've recovered from the post-traumatic stress of it all. But briefly, they had charged me an arm and a leg to reinstall my air conditioner so that it could be taken in and out of the window easily, but when the window cleaners and I tried to take it out, it wouldn't come out. I called Airwave and asked them how to do it, and they say it's easy, but then they were unable to tell me how, and then they wanted to charge me another $100 to take it out for me, and then another $100 to put it back in. Can you believe it? It actually gets worse.

Spring Cleaning Status Report

The window cleaners and upholstery cleaners come this morning! Soon my apartment will be sparkly fresh and spring clean. And now, a Spring photograph. These are cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Which reminds me, can someone tell me why flowers don't smell as strongly as they used to? We walked through a row of lilac bushes and the smell should have knocked us unconscious, but I could barely smell them.

Spring Cleaning Status Report

- Bathroom painted, everything in the room washed, replacement wall shelves ordered.

- Bedroom curtains washed, blinds cleaned, rug shook out on roof, pad underneath the rug replaced.

- Plants dusted, pruned, soil added.

- Bus tickets to Boston ordered for June 2 (my reward/birthday thing). Along those lines, started picking up what I need to give myself a little sprucing up, starting with good scissors to cut my bangs.

- Arranged for upholstery cleaning guys to come in tomorrow to do the couch and my office chair.

- Tomorrow and Thursday will be the major cleaning days. The window guys will be here to do the windows (while I hide the cats and myself, I can't bear to watch, their balancing act while washing the windows is too scary).

The Baddest Bad Idea I've Ever Had ...

... in my adult years I should say (years after 30). I had some pretty bad ones in my youth. Okay, this one is really tame, but still. Spring cleaning has begun and I started with painting my bathroom. It was looking so dingy. Oh God, if ever there was a more miserable, tedious way to pass the precious few hours we have in life--I've painted plenty of rooms in my day, but I'd forgotten what it's like.

The main thing is I couldn't reach everywhere and the room is so small the ladder only fit inside in one way, so to get all the other spots that needed to be painted, I had to teeter on boxes (filled with all my Duke research) and stretch and strain and push, and one coat looked like hell so I had to do that all TWICE.

Oh God, this post is not capturing the horror. Oh and the off-white color I selected looks too yellow-y on the walls. The one good thing is the pretty new sparkly looking shower curtain I put up afterwards.

Books for a Bus Ride

I found out there's a bus to Boston that leaves from Chinatown every hour and only costs $35 round trip!! (I'm the last to know.) I was going to go yesterday, but then I decided it would make a fun birthday thing to do so I'm going next month.

But I bought these books Thursday night, when I still thought I might go yesterday. Three were from an NPR list of great science fiction books, and one, The Brief History of the Dead, was from another NPR list by the same person, but I forget the theme. But any book that imagines what it's like to be dead is for me!