While I’m quite used to paying a little extra for everything when I’m in Manhattan, it’s sometimes still a bit of an adjustment.

For example, I just stopped at a supermarket here to get some food for the weekend: a bag of baby spinach leaves, a can of beets, small tube of goat cheese, box of cereal, carton of orange juice, a lemon, a couple of tomatoes, a container of chocolate-covered raisins, loaf of whole grain bread, jar of peanut butter, jar of jelly and (my luxury) two medallions of filet mignon ($11, so that wasn’t too bad). Stuff to make salads, sandwiches, breakfast and a couple of dinners.

The total bill (for me to eat this weekend) was $67. Granted, if I went out for all those meals, I’d be paying a lot more, but I couldn’t help but think about how the same stuff would’ve cost me no more than $40 “back home.”

And for that moment, I felt a bit stodgy and country bumpkin-like. But I understand that that’s what it costs if I want to eat well and not get McDonald’s for every meal or eat toast from morning ’til night. I have friends at work who will do their food shopping in NJ before heading home to NY at night so they can save $10 or $20 or $30. I was toting a suitcase today, so that wasn’t an option.

Still, it’s going to be a nice change to be here for the weekend: spending time with an adorable doggie, walking in the park and taking photos, meeting up with some friends, and just not being home (where the quiet would probably begin to affect me, given the events of this week.)

For a variety of reasons, I don’t have the energy or time to write a full summary (perhaps this weekend) here is one story from Coachella I shall share since I told it to two friends over lunch today and feel like telling it again. Telling stories is a useful distraction and my grandfather was a man who loved to tell stories - of (his perceived) glories of Communist-era Poland, sneaking kielbasa across country lines, going fishing with a bottle of vodka, bread and some lard for sustenance… and man, could he make some good pickle soup. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

Coachella story:

My friends and I arrived at the festival grounds (Empire Polo Club/Field in Indio, California) late on Thursday night. Friday morning, I was up at 7:30 to hit the shower mobile and feel clean again. Shortly after returning to my tent (around 8:30 in the morning) I heard some loud talking in the not-so-distant-distance. The voice was that of a young woman - perhaps 19 or 20 years old. It was a sitcom voice; what you would think of as a “Valley Girl” voice from an 80’s movie. A voice not dissimilar from the “Oh. My. God, Becky. Look at her butt…” chick in the beginning of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” video, except a lot higher in pitch. The voice yelled:

HAPPY COACHELLA, EVERYONE!
THIS IS MY FIRST MUSIC FESTIVAL EH-VAR!
THIS IS MY FIRST COACHELLA!
I’M A COACHELLA VIRGIN!!!

Followed by about a minute of silence. Then we would all hear, yet again:

HAPPY COACHELLA, EVERYONE!
THIS IS MY FIRST MUSIC FESTIVAL EH-VAR!
THIS IS MY FIRST COACHELLA!
I’M A COACHELLA VIRGIN!!!

She was working the campground, walking up and down the rows, making sure that EVERYONE knew it was her first Coachella. I can only assume she was trying to make friends/attract attention. This was also my first Coachella and my first proper music festival, but something (common sense? pride? old age? East coast cynicism??) prevented me from engaging in this behavior.

(A shot of the campground and mountains nearby.)

After about 30 minutes, she was far enough away to stop assaulting my ears. But the next morning, around the same time, she was back. This time, a Brit (from Manchester, actually) staying in one of the tents near me replied, “Cheers, mate - you said the same thing yesterday.” (Yes, from Manchester, and yes, he did say “mate.”) The girl was all flustered and embarrassed and Mancunian Man just said, “No worries - have a great festival.”

When back on the festival grounds, I noticed a LOT of people greeting each other (these deep new-found Coachella friendships) by saying, “Happy Coachella!” I guess it was “a thing.” It didn’t catch on with me. It’s that East coast attitude, I suppose. I think we were making sure to represent Cynicism at this event and balance out the effects of all the hippies in attendance.

Case in point: we totally and completely avoided Jack Johnson.

Anytime someone mentioned that they’d come to Coachella to see him, it was understood in our group that any additional words falling from this person’s lips would be heavily discounted and their taste in other things was highly suspect and questionable.

I should be doing something more than sitting here. I’ve packed what I can since I’m currently laundering the clothing I want to bring and I can’t pack up my toothbrush and stuff until the bitter bitter end. And I’ve got a full calendar of stuff to do outside of work as well -friends to see, errands to run, errands to run for friends, exercise to do. BUT BUT BUT… I wore heels today. My feet hurt. I’m so tired from not having a weekend, I can’t focus much. I am getting a late dinner with friends and then probably going right to sleep so I can go into work early tomorrow.

And it’s amazing how people crawl out of the woodwork when they realize you’re going to be out of the office for more than a day. I mean, it’s fine - a little stress-inducing, but OK. I’m glad to feel all useful and stuff.

But a fun thing today: I was talking to my boss about things that I might need to leave in her hands while I’m away and she asked me if I’d have time for an important meeting tomorrow with another co-worker. And I said that I actually had a meeting with this co-worker at the same time she was suggesting - to which she responded, “Great - that means we can go to Rita’s for two-stamp Tuesday!”

There’s a Rita’s (”Ice. Custard. Happiness”) in Hoboken and we’ve gotten into the habit of walking down there once -OK, a couple of times- a week. On Tuesdays, they stamp your frequent buyer card twice for any purchase. My co-worker is in her third trimester of baby-prep, so ice cream cravings are allowed. The rest of us are enablers. Or just willing to interrupt our work day for some Italian ice (though I vastly prefer the custard and get myself a kids’ size chocolate vanilla twist when we go.)

Yes. So I accepted the meeting invitation for tomorrow afternoon. The meeting called, “Two-stamp Tuesday at Rita’s!”

And it’s not even a team-building exercise. The team’s built, yo.

I didn’t get a chance to take (m)any photos today. There were many characters of interest including a disturbing-looking man wearing a lamé (or lame) bodysuit and (quite obviously) no underwear. I had to turn my head and look away if only because I didn’t know WHAT my expression was conveying. At all. If anything.

I walked the floor a bit looking for a few companies/booths, but didn’t find any aside from the mimobot people. I have a USB drive, but I really could NOT resist. Really. They were discounted, and I only wanted 1GB and it came with a free gift! So, here’s my new mimobot friend:

Number 810 of 2000, if you please.

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Yesterday, my friend Sara called me to tell me about a used book sale going on in the next town over. She’d gone earlier and acquired a treasure-trove of beautiful old books for a total of $1.75 ($1 and $2 books for 50 and 75% off!)

Well, I went this morning before heading off to ComicCon, and they were having a bag sale—all the books you could carry in a paper shopping bag would cost you $5 (it was a fundraiser for a local school). Here’s what I brought home (minus one that I gave to my sister):

There are some I’ve heard of and some I’ve never heard of and bought because they looked like an interesting read from a time long gone and are probably long since out of print. To start, there is this gem from one of my favorite wits of all time, George Bernard Shaw (a 1928 publication):

I’m not sure if it’s a serious work or not… that time period was rife with things that would sound misogynistic these days but which were considered quite complimentary almost 100 years ago. I guess we’ll see just how intelligent a woman I am.

The purple cover below just made me smile - a combination of the title, the illustration… the whole cover treatment. Amusing. And it’s from 1909!

Then I found this very cool 1944 edition of Crime and Punishment. I love the embossing on the cover.

I have to admit that I bought this next book for the novelty of the title and the cool logo action. It’s from 1924…

And an interior that removes any possibility of having stumbled across interesting 1920’s erotica… I don’t think “happy ending” had taken on a lewd secondary meaning yet at that point.

And the Tempestuous Petticoat from this post’s title? Well, that’s from 1948, surprisingly. But I love this illustration.

I’m going to sit here for a bit enjoying the look and feel of these. Maybe I’ll even start reading one once I finish obsessing…

Well, today was the first of my two days at New York ComicCon. The annual east coast comic convention at the Javits Convention Center. I was at the booth alone from 3:00 on, so I didn’t get to wander the floor and see what was going on, but I did get some photos. Kind of boring photos since they were taken from the confines of my company’s booth:

In the two images below, I’ve circled a light-saber battle for you. They were pretty far away and I don’t have a true telephoto lens for the camera, and there was a lot of motion and I didn’t have a chance to change the shutter speed since I just saw this craziness happening and NEEDED TO CAPTURE IT.

There was a girl and a guy, both in weird Captain America-esque outfits. Just -boom!- in the middle of the aisle as people sort of scooted around them, totally nonplussed by the sword battle going on in their midst. It’s amazing how one’s acceptance of the non-traditional really reaches new levels here (half-naked women wearing red contact lenses and 8″ high platform boots? Ain’t no thing!)

Yeah. There was that. And lots of other interesting things and people. Thankfully, unlike the last convention I attended, the time passed by rather quickly and before I knew it, it was time to leave. I took the ferry back over to New Jersey and took this photo in the ferry parking lot - that’s the New Yorker building, among others… :

Yup. Rinse and repeat - doing it all again tomorrow, though not for nearly as long. That will be nice; I looked up an old friend from my bookstore days who is a comic book artist and learned that the studio he co-founded has a booth at ComicCon. I went over to say hi to him before I was due at our booth and we chatted for a bit, but I’d like to pop over again and perhaps buy a sketch from him or some such Fun.

Phew. I am planning on spending the rest of the evening watching highly entertaining silliness with my sister and her boyfriend - “Wet Hot American Summer.” From the folks responsible for “The State.” Yes. It’s quite funny.

Today was a pretty nice day. Very spring-like. Sunny and breezy and warm. A little chilly off the water.

I’m not typically a warm-weather aficionado, but I have to admit that today was nice. And I did get to go rock-climbing for a little while late this evening, so I feel good and tired from a combination of fresh outdoor air and physical activity. Still, I have to admit that it might be even nicer to be somewhere like this:

(My father traveled to Fiji about a year ago and he took these photos. It looks decent enough, no?)

I don’t even know how much time I’ll have to write in the next week. Seriously.

Today I drove my friend to the airport in the morning so he could catch his flight to San Francisco, and I will be flying out there to hang out with him next Wednesday. The seven days between now and then will be both interminable and far too short.

For example, I’ll be working every single day, including the weekend. That’s when I’ll be working the New York ComicCon to represent my company’s Shakespeare: The Manga Edition series. It should be pretty cool (if providing a little bit of geek overload - which I might even enjoy a bit if I didn’t get scared by people who are crazy hardcore about [insert comic book/graphic novel/manga/TV/movie series here] ) and the days should fly by since it will be busy.

Neil Gaiman is doing an appearance and signing sometime during the convention, but one part is a $500-a-ticket fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the other (reading - $20 a ticket) is most likely going to have lines spilling out the door if it doesn’t sell out. Since I’m working Saturday and Sunday, Friday is my only free night this week (and I’d like to see my other friends before I disappear for about two weeks), I won’t be attending, as much as I enjoy Mr. Gaiman - and I do.

All that coolness doesn’t change the fact that I will have spent all the hours between noon and 8 pm (you know, hours when I could be taking care of things like laundry and shopping and packing) standing in a noisy convention center.

It just puts a lot more pressure on me to get things done in the evenings. My usual evening routine is to get home from work around 6/7pm, change into running clothes, run for 30-45 minutes or so, shower, eat, check email/RSS feeds, and then read or watch a movie until I fall asleep. Tonight, I was unable to adhere to that routine; I got home at 6:30, checked email quickly and then ran out to stores to get vitals like sunglasses, shorts, a couple of tank tops and such. I got home at 9:00 and ate some dinner (leftover spinach and a piece of toast - PATHETIC) then tackled email, checking tracking on some stuff I ordered for said trip (durable rock climbing pants since Old Navy cargo pants won’t cut it), put away purchases, did some cleaning… and now it’s 11:00. Where does the time go?

Somewhere I can’t see. And the reasons for my blindness may vary.

But I’m glad to know that the title of a mix CD I made provided the possible title for a story my friend is writing, that I am basically guaranteed to have non-stop fun during my vacation which makes everything coming up to it worthwhile, that the stress I’ll be feeling at work will be productive stress because I’ll be getting lots of things done, and that I’m going to go rock-climbing tomorrow and it will feel good.

…since I’ve mentioned my obsessive reading habit. It’s still here; it’s just sometimes a bit overwhelming to write about reading because I do a LOT of it. A LOT.

And I’m not really good at writing about reading. I can analyze ’til the cows come home and write you a lengthy paper performing a close-reading of three lines from Hamlet - but I’m not a good reviewer. This is something I’ve come to terms with and can accept.

Instead, I’ll just mention two books I read this week, quote a bit from them, and make note of the fact that I really really enjoyed them. Good? OK.

Book the first: Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading. One of my greatest regrets from college is that I wasn’t able to take the Nabokov colloquium that NYU offered, like, once every two years. I took the James Joyce colloquium and that was great - but Nabokov does rate higher than Joyce on my literary love list.

So, Invitation to a Beheading is pure Nabokov in terms of his use of language and voice; the plot, however, is allegorical and surreal in a very Kafka-esque way. The very first line of the novel is the pronouncement of the death sentence for the protagonist - from there, it’s a psychological exploration of that waiting game. He knows he’s going to be executed, but doesn’t know where or when, and the cast of characters surrounding him (prison guards, lawyers, fellow prisoners) serve only to frustrate him further and drive him to lunacy.

It’s hilarious, frustrating as hell because you’re in the same boat as Cincinnatus (the protagonist), and I enjoyed it thoroughly. There’s a great segment where the narrator calls attention to our process of reading the book:

So we are coming to the end. The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which, during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel, mechanically testing whether there were still plenty left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick reading, already downhill…

I found myself smiling while reading that passage since I do read that way; feeling ahead with my right hand and deriving pleasure from feeling that there are yet pages and pages to read. This isn’t the only reason to enjoy it–there’s a gem of some sort on every page (IMHO). But I really enjoy Nabokov.

Then there’s Paul Auster. He’s another one–I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by him. And I’ve read a good bit. Not everything yet, though. That’s a goal. The most recent thing I read was Oracle Night which I purchased at The Strand a couple of weeks ago. I started reading it on Saturday night and finished up on the train today.

But I’m realizing that I should hold off on the Auster-love for tonight and hit the hay since I have an early morning tomorrow…

At this moment, Northern New Jersey is experiencing some rather heavy rain with flashes of lighting. I heard a rumble of far-off thunder a few minutes ago, and I am hoping it makes its way over here. That would be conducive to a very good night’s sleep after a very long and mentally exhausting week.

It makes me want to read poetry. Here are a few glorious poems I’ve stumbled across recently while looking for new poetry on the internets. April is a great month for that since it’s National Poetry Month and there are so many “poem-a-day” lists that spring up for this month alone. It makes me quite happy.

• The Dark-Light of Spring by Eric Leigh

• From Obelisk to Water’s Edge by Ray DiPalma

• End of April by Phillis Levin

• “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” by Walt Whitman

And one that I’ve liked for a while since I read it in Nine Horses, but which I don’t think I’ve shared before:

• Litany by Billy Collins

While I’m at it, here is one I absolutely love, also from Billy Collins (which I think I should memorize because it’s always good to have something beautiful stored away in your brain. My memorization of “Jabberwocky” probably doesn’t count):

• Picnic, Lightning