Story hour

I'm with my cousins and visiting the grandparents in Aspen. Thankfully, we were all able to fly in on the same day (despite the snow). My flight from LGA went fine, even though my cab driver dropped me off at the terminal for US Air instead of United forcing me to use my New York walk in Queens so that I could get to the terminal in time (I was early).

The first few days of sitting for Adena (Baby turned 1 year old on Monday) were a bit harried. Like most infants, she cries the second her mother is out of sight. I've been getting her out of the house, into the stroller and making tracks around the neighborhood, but it's hard for her otherwise. I had been trying to convince Grandma that it's okay to take a baby and a stroller on the bus, so that I could get Adena to the library for some board books (which, go figure, are in short supply at this house).

Arguments why I can't/shan't:
-Nobody takes strollers on the bus
-I don't know where the library is
-I won't be able to get home.

But I had already done my research (Google Maps is the best!), and refuted Grandma's thoughtful points.

Today, I managed to hitch a ride with Mary Norma while she went to City Market, but I left the stroller at home thinking it might not fit on the bus. Adena and I arrived at the library about an hour before it was open, but I kept her busy with a walk towards the Nature Center, a quick stop in Clark's supermarket (where I let her help me with self-checkout and press buttons). I was beginning to regret not bringing the stroller, she's 17 pounds and I am not used to maternal duties, but I was not about to call and bother Grandma.
When the library opened it was story hour, so we sat for a few about bears and hibernation.
Then we picked out a few board books and one picture book, and hit the road. I guess I'm used to walking the big blocks, because we were at the other end of town/bus depot in no time. In other awesome timing, we arrived just as our bus did-- I realized I would have been able to bring the stroller-- and baby fell asleep on the ride home. Since I didn't have the stroller, I figured it'd be fine to get off at the short-cut/hospital and hike the hill over to Meadowood, she napped until I started to pull off her snowsuit.

Tomorrow, there are even more cousins coming to visit, which will make Friday's day off totally sweet. I've been reading and watching plenty of movies in the time between.

It's a shame about Howard Zinn, but I guess this leaves a vacancy for a new historian. I'm glad I took the chance to hear him speak a while back.

Speaking of departures, a coworker is leaving the bookstore. He resigned in poem form, so I responded in kind. He'll be gone when I get back to Greenlight.

This one's called,
"Re: Pre-meditated Resignation for the Kindly Folks, Yes....ah, well!"

Lifting her coat off the wary hook,
beneath her breath
chuckling,
though the evidence is long gone
as with the help which reached high
or updated clues in creation,
she spots a stain on the shelf
where the broth or stew
once brimming with ambition,
reached the consummation
of containment and
left a smile.

Overdue

I guess I've always had a problem with procrastinating, which is why I've let way too much time pass since my last real update.

For the sake of being succinct, I'll have to gloss over the goings-on since--oof, before Thanksgiving?
I spent what felt like five minutes in Miami, and then drove up to Amelia Island with Daena to spend some QT with the Weinkles. 'Twas a lovely visit and the little cousins are now getting to be bigger little cousins.

Which reminds me of my stokifying news, I am off to spend two weeks watching the little cousins and hanging out with Mary Norma and Julian. I'm excited to have the time off from receiving at the store, which has been doing well in the post-holiday-madness lull.

Greenlight's Team Awesome kicked butt over the gift-giving madness, mostly because of our staff's perspicacious handselling. If you'll allow me to play my own piano, I am the resident YA expert. Customers looking for young adult literature find themselves at the register with armfuls of my recommendations. Most of what I suggest are titles I read when I was a youngin'. I tip my proverbial hat to Mom and Pops on that one.

Despite the popularity of the e-readers (namely Amazon's Kindle), I'm pretty sure the codex format has staying power. Kind of like vinyl hasn't ever lost it's value. Cassettes and CDs are out, mostly because they don't last in the long run. Even DVDs are something of the past as more and more tune in online. As technology is ever moving forward, it's clear the e-readers will evolve. Certainly, there are issues with the proprietary nature of Amazon's monopoly on certain titles (and who's to say the publishing industry won't experience it's own version of illegal downloads?) But I know some of my customers are Kindle users, and they still like the feel of turning pages, so they're happy to visit the brick and mortar and friendly faces.

Speaking of turning pages, I've had some delicious texts in the past couple of weeks.

Amy Hempel's Collected Stories were remarkable. A truly gifted teller, she made me laugh and made me cry.
Dave Thomas's Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell is a rather engaging account of the business relationship between David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
Katherine Dunn's Geek Love is simply a full meal (and a unputdownable tale of geeks and freaks).
I'm reading Melanie Watt's new novel Alice I Have Been a fictional/history of the real-life Alice Liddell, and it is positively fascinating, to the point that I missed my subway stop the other night.
I also picked up Chris Moore's new novel Bite Me: A love story, which picks up the saga of Abby Normal, everyone's favorite adolescent goth who gets into some sticky situations when Chet, the vampire cat unleashes his undead fury on San Francisco. 'Twas cute, a good Chris Moore novel.

One thing I did not care for was Jonathan Dee's new book The Priveleges. He wishes he were Tom Perotta. Unfortunately, there was nothing about Dee's hideously wealthy characters in a financial setting similar to this one, that stuck with me. Reviews say each of the characters must come to term with their personal ethics, but I found nothing redeeming or tragic in their lives, it seemed rather trite to me. The only good thing about the book is the first chapter, in which Dee's writing is a strong demonstration and description of a "typical wedding." I'm not sure who The Privelegesis written for, and maybe that's part of the reason I didn't like it.

That's all for now. Tonight is Asian Film Fest with some pals. We're watching Wild Zero and Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki.

First Snow

Well I finally got a new computer, after having my faulty door locks replaced.
I've been tuning it into my personal settings but there's still quite a ways to go.

Other than that and the added violation of losing two new sweaters and a pair of gray tights out of the dryer I was using at the laundromat across the street, I am very happy here.

Now, les temps have granted me a 10 inch blanket over all the grime, and my window is frosted with clean white snow. Mahi Mahi and I were out on the town when it began to come down and had an all around great day around Madison Square Gardens.

I've really enjoyed work at the bookstore, and this season gets me pumped about the success we face as a business. It doesn't hurt that I'm on a full weekday schedule now, either, as the Mistress of Receiving. Since we only get deliveries on Monday through Friday, I have taken advantage of three whole weekends since coming back from Thanksgiving.

I know I need to write more, but until then, I'm signing off to watch the "7th Voyage of Sinbad."

"Hungry men don't ask, they take."

Even MORE Writer's (Building) Blocks

Nu. The first and second loads in a bunch of blogging I have neglected are dripping and pinned to the line.

I've stopped taking the subway so much, and it seems to me that I feel better than 90% of the rest of New York right now, sans flu shot. Washing hands that I keep out of my eyes and other points of sinusoidal entry fairly frequently helps too.
In the meantime, I've fallen in love with the buses in Brooklyn. I now have a transfer free commute to work, and I can still walk a decent amount being no more than 10 blocks from work (though my stop runs close).

I've been doing fine getting to work on time, though I was chastised on Halloween for answering the phone while at the cash-wrap. 'Twas an accident, but a careless move, nonetheless. A mistake I shant repeat, since I was up off my swollen knee (which I had sprained the night before) and working on an Purchase Order. When the phone rang towards the end of my shift, I picked it up absentmindedly and was reprimanded rather quickly by my boss. Learning takes reinforcement.

The incident put a little pep in my step, and I've been blowing through receiving cartons and greeting cards. Ah, retail.

MB, or Mahi Mahi, as she'll henceforth be known, and I held a HouseWarmingPotluck this past Sunday, which was well attended by our friends. There were plenty of great dishes, and now our "Bushwhack" fridge is packed with leftovers.

Today was a day off, and I spent it with the family of friends.

One of the best parts of New York City, is that it's fun to do the tourist thing once in a while, and walk from the High Line in Chelsea to Times Square, eat some Halal food, stroll to Grand Central Station, marvel at the structure and big-fuckoff-ness of the new Bank Of America building (a bank holding about 25% of the country's deposits), go up to the Observatory on the Empire State building and still make it back to Brooklyn before rush-hour.

Until next time.

More (Building) Blocks

Hello family, friends and friendlies, the noon hour is approaching!

So, in an effort to respect attention spans, I have broken this long overdue update into building blocks. The FIRST of which can be read here.

I had taken a Wednesday off from Greenlight to chaperon a field day in Prospect Park, then do some Laundry, Reading and Scribbling on Thursday.

Friday, it was back to work, which meant putting books on the FINALLY FINISHED (and finely finished) shelves! I also got to take a stroll around Fort Greene and Clinton Hill to put up fliers announcing the launch party for the store.
It took about two and a half hours to go up Dekalb and down Myrtle, jaunt down Flatbush and then back to Fulton, putting up the hand-printed posters.
When my coworker and I returned, we witnessed the very first sale! A local businessman came in to buy a book about brewing beer right out of the box!

The very next morning, I was trained on the cash register and Greenlight was go.
We had a whole week of a soft-open where we were cash-only and still made plenty of sales. By the time Saturday's launch took place, it felt natural to be open in Fort Greene, and the whole community had welcomed us with a very nice big hug. We've been officially open about a month now, and it's been very positive.

We have a lot of local authors coming in and telling us about their books, lots of community members stepping in to share their praise and thanks.
If the pictures of the crowd at our launch party are any indication, Greenlight has been very warmly received. I mean, it was buckets of cold rain were falling out of the sky, and we were having to turn people away at the door, because we were so packed. I was on sticky-finger patrol, but if anyone had wanted to rip us off, they would have had a hard time getting out the door.

I have been put in charge of receiving at the store, which means I check in all the shipments, count quantities, verify details and put the stock on-hand. It's a nice increase of responsibilities and it's something I like to do.

I'm still interested in other work.

Grad School, for instance. You may recall that I applied for Grad School
(I would link to that entry, but I don't know the HTML for directing a window to open at a specific place on the page, so the reader might be forced to actually read the entire entry on the screen before finding the exact reference.)

Anyways, I have only one out of the two letters of recommendation, the second of which is apparently hinges on a dialogue of one participant. I was short on time, in any case, and money as well. So I opted to pay rent and buy a new I-pod shuffle since the charger for my old one broke, in place of the application fee.
Currently, there is a change jar labeled "APPLICATION FEE", and the History Masters program at CUNY has rolling admission. So, a February deadline and a chance to be exceptional, I'm going to seek out scholarships now and get a competitive age for a bout with the admission process. Ditto FAFSA, which I can submit in January.

Also, there is a Marine-Theme Highschool on Governor's Island, which is basically MAST on the Hudson. They need a bilingual secretary, but Mom's right, I could easily learn Spanish. Time to purchase a Spanish-English dictionary. I can already comprende plenty. I think the easiest thing right now, is to volunteer, perhaps as a crew coach, and get to know the school that way.

Nu, it's time to move the first load down the line and find room for the second and start washing the third.

Writer's (Building) Blocks

Good morning family, friends and friendlies.

I'll admit, it's been way too long since I've offered an update. Blogs are a bit like laundry.
The longer you go without doing it, the more you're going to have to do when you finally decide to sort every dirty scrap and take it to be washed--probably requiring more than one trip to the machines--assuming you had enough clean underwear to get away with that sort of thing.

I'm wearing clean underwear, and doing laundry, so why don't I begin at the beginning and tell you what's happened since I last washed my unmentionables--er, updated this blog?

Load One:


I'll start with the field day my friend AJ--let's call her Miss Bones, planned back for October 14.

First of all, the honor for being the reason she was able to help organize such a great day for the freshman class at the school where she teaches goes to THE COLLEGE BOARD. The Oak-leafed Testing Bureaucracy had scheduled the Preliminary S.A.T./National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which most high-schools administer to the Sophomore and Junior Classes.

As a C.A.P. advisor last year, my 15 hours a week at MAST allowed me to plan an incredibly boring last minute college fair and financial aid lecture for the Senior class, while the rest of the school got familiar with the ol' College Board. A chilly morning in Prospect Park was way more exciting.

Miss Bones and her co-workers (mostly Humanities teachers at the Brooklyn School) organized a well-structured event, broken down into Alpha platoon and Bravo platoon. In each platoon about five rotating squads of soldiers, supervised at each activity station by at least one teacher and one other warm body.

I was assigned to work with Mr. Knife, the freshman History teacher (His name is from the French for blade, lame)
Our station was equipped with two big buckets of water, two liquid measuring cups that held 4 cups, two tablespoons and two teaspoons. Miss Bones had me carry some hula hoops to the park, for her station which involved the students holding hands and not being able to let go, while they maneuvered the hoop around each person in the chain.

Each squad that appeared at our station was divided into two fire teams whose objective it was to safely transport a tablespoon of water from the bucket to the liquid measuring cups. Whichever filled it first, WON!
It could have been really exciting for the first group except Mr. Knife has, like the most monotone voice EVER, and refused to get excited about a water game. He mumbled the directions and didn't think to explain the situation to the students, so natch, they got bored quickly and began to dissolve into chatty little pockets, talking big for the young teens they were.

When the second arrived, I stepped in to help whip some enthusiasm, and behavior reinforcement into the kids. For some reason, little kids impressed by shiny tend to pay attention to me, so it wasn't hard to keep the other groups motivated, despite Mr. Knife's incongruous position. Knife is a second year teacher, and if his classroom manner is anything like his presence on that bright, crisp morning in Prospect Park, I'm sad for the students who probably aren't learning much from a guy who doesn't seem to be able to shoot straight in the dark.

Needless to say, after a day like that, Miss Bones and I were exhausted, so I took a long nap instead of going to the premiere for "Where the Wild Things Are," which I've heard described as an hour and a half of Spike Jonze chasing some Hollywood Ganymede through the skeleton of a burnt forest while James Gandolfini muttered to a Karen O. soundtrack. "Lovely, yet devoid of content," were my friend's words.

With that, the first load is washed and hanging on the line.

On to the second.

Chapters

First of all, can I just say how excited I am that Kandinsky is at the Gug through January and I don't have to buy a plane ticket to get there? I can just get on the train!

Oh the train! I hear it every six minutes or so whistling into the station, a faint little time keeper when I get ready in the mornings to go to work. It's also a nice place to read good books and write.

Lately, it doesn't take much to get ready for work. Does that sound awful?


The Greenlight Bookstore blog posts have been about as regular as my own, which goes to show how much work it takes to open a business. Jessica and Rebecca have inspiring stamina, and while the process can be painfully slow, it also feels amazing to know that everyone is working really hard to get the job done right. Since there is still sawdust and wood stain and wood sealant all over the place (and maybe some oil-based primer for kicks), I have been wearing my grubbies to work.
That is, the same pair of jeans and a variation of band t-shirts for the last month. In that time, Hugo's Crew (the Chinese dudes) have finished painting the ceiling, installing the lights and building the bookshelf unit around the airshaft. (Click zee link, Brownstoner is a cool website for residents on the *other side* of the East River, but there are more than real estate postings for under a mil., too.)

Yesterday Hugo's Crew pulled up 75% of the cardboard around the store, revealing a bright and shiny new dance floor! No, it's just a slick wood floor that is a prime dancing surface, but also useful for traversing in the instance that one might be browsing for a particular codex.

Meanwhile, with local sculptor/carpenter Iris cutting wood, constructing the basic frame for shelves as well as a beautiful cash-wrap up front, his colleague Orien has been building the front window benches, and Greenlight's team has been sanding, staining, buffing, cleaning, sealing, buffing, cleaning, sealing again and buffing once more EVERY surface not covered by white paint, cardboard or tarp (the books are stored safely under the last two). The process is easy with shelves. The shelves are flat and easy to maneuver, don't take much time. The bookcases are a different story, so Jessica and Rebecca invited community members to come by and help out.

It was a twenty-first century barn-raising, I'll tell you what. And after copious touch-ups, the store looks amazing for a volunteer/amateur effort. We would probably be months behind schedule if it weren't for all the volunteers! It's good to see that even in New York, people aren't too busy to get a little dirty for the benefit of their community. I even met one volunteer from South Carolina, visiting friends in Brooklyn. She just heard about it and decided to come by while she waited for her friend to get off work.


(Speaking of helping out the community, UM Alumni, your alma mater's radio station needs you:

http://wvum.org/radiothon.php


THINK INDIE!)


I never thought I'd be able to add this kind of work to my resume, but the Team is lucky enough to have an incredible Project Manager behind us. She does an amazing job of assessing the daily situation, outlining tasks and delegating responsibility. No wonder, Tianna spent the summer as the Project Manager for the Swimming Cities of Serenissima.

Most of the details are taken care of, the bookcases are all stained and sealed, all the shelves are ready to be put in place, all the pilaster strips have been measured out (wouldn't want crooked shelves, now) and nailed into place. We spent yesterday finishing the stain process for the front bench pieces and all that's really left to do is finish the cash wrap, put the books on the shelves and open our doors to the public.
Thankfully, that will mean I can play around with my full-time hours a bit more, and may be able to start making services at Romemu on a regular basis. When Uncle James was up here the Shabbos before Yom Kippur, I met him on the UWS for shul. Honestly, it felt like putting on a sweatshirt, which I guess is an odd metaphor for Judaism. In any case, I was able to go to Yom Kippur services on Monday and it's the first time I've spent five straight hours in Temple and felt completely engaged the entire time. The Reb shared the traditional parsha (Aaron performing the rites of Yom Kippur, Lev. 16:1, in Hebrew folks), and invited the congregation up for whichever aliyah they felt applied to them. (So nice to know that I matter to the community, whether or not I write a big fat check). I'm still at odds with faith, but I like the tradition of Shabbat services. The Jewish Renewal aspect is intriguing, but I would like to shop around some closer congregations, too.

Speaking of shopping around, I applied to CUNY Brooklyn on Monday. I've asked some people at MAST for letters of recommendation, but the application wasn't daunting at all. I've applied for a M.A. in History, but I'd like to focus on scientific history. Father's daughter, something like that. I'm thinking student loan rates aren't too bad in this money season, and of course scholarships are available as well.

Well mischpachah, it is my day off and time for me to play samurai laundromat. Maya also bought a window garden box, so I'm going to poke around some neighborhood hardware stores and see if I can't find some pots in which we will plant an herb garden. Living with her has been awesome, she brings me all sort of delicious dishes from work (the company serves employees lunch every day, trying out different recipes for the restaurant in the East Village.) I just finished a nice gnocchi (which I heat up the oven that runs on the gas I pay for).

Coming Attractions: Next Wednesday, I'm helping out my teacher friends while they have their highschool's freshmen have a field day of sorts while the sophomores and juniors take the PSAT. Later in the evening, I'm going to a screening for Where the Wild Things Are (bookselling has its perks, after all). I'll report back later.