Photos of the Day: Last September "Summer" Sunday

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Bee-autiful Sunday afternoon at the New York Botanical Garden with Christine.

Absolutely buzzing with activity as summer hangs on with all her might. Time flies.

 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

~ To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (Gather ye rosebuds)

by Robert Herrick

Wreck it Wednesday: Wreck this Journal Updates

From the Preface: 
Warning: During the process of this book you will get dirty. You may find yourself covered in paint, or any other number of foreign substances. You will get wet. You may be asked to do things you question. You may grieve for the perfect state that you found the book in. You may begin to see creative destruction everywhere. You may begin to live more recklessly. 





 
It's been a while since I've posted the updates about my Wreck this Journal, but I have been slowly working on it. This past week, in particular, saw a burst of activity - mostly while I was waiting for other things to happen. It was good to use it to process other things that were going on.

Updates on existing pages:

The above is a riff on the apocryphal library school story about raw bacon being used as a book mark. It's a print add for Oscar Mayer (? I think) bacon, that uses Boolean operators. I'm a geek.

New pages:

Everything smells like Tea Rose perfume now ... It's kind of nice, especially when you don't have time to go out and smell real roses. Also, I bet people of a certain age can't get a Tears for Fears song out of their head. (This one.)

This one word is PATIENCE - what I was trying to exercise one night at Symphony Space while waiting my place in line for Neil Gaiman to sign The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I filled this page up too quickly, to the amusement of an usher. So I moved on to this one. I had already slapped the two Janet Evanovich stickers in there, and it let to some interesting internal debates. It started in the lower left corner of the Morelli page and wrapped around, saying things like:

~8:30 pm  6/19/13 waiting for GAIMAN @Symphony Space OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

It is completely silly that I am actually dedicating these two pages to an internal monologue - especially one that now has to focus on two fictional characters in a series of novels that has unfortunately gotten to be formulaic but I stuck these stickers here so I might as well commit. Plus I have time to kill waiting for a much more intriguing novelist to sign his most latest book. The usher may have a point ... Why do I/we need autographs from writers? Shouldn't the book be enough? Obviously NOT, as a full sold-out house is waiting for this guy to sign their book, and their stuff, so they have another piece of him. But this was supposed to be a monologue about MORELLI vs. Ranger. Morelli - reformed bad boy, house, home, dog, job, family, still enough bad to attract. Ranger - international man of mystery, sexy as hell - but... Not one to settle down with, no shared childhood/cultural BURG history. After all the back and forth, it's really annoying. Pick one or choose yourself. It's 2013! You don't need a man. Really. I mean, it's nice and all, but ... seriously. Time to grow up Stephanie, the character. Janet the novelist should have moved on 10 books ago. The audience has, and I have wasted two pages writing about this and the signing line hasn't moved!

P.S. After writing this, getting dinner @ 9:30 and waiting 2+ hours, watching train schedule -- decided author's work more imp. than autograph. Gave him 1 less interaction, me home around midnight, less commute stress, and some sleep. May be short-sided, but there it is. 
11:50 PM 6/19/13

Post-note: According to the author and organizers, Neil Gaiman wasn't done signing until after 1 a.m. If I had left at the end of the reading, like my colleague, I would have gotten a pre-signed book. I waited until 10:30 and left with an unsigned copy. Who was the smarter one?