The photo shows my home office, which is actually a rather
small closet located off of the living room. It’s nice, though. Very cozy and comfortable. The
stained-glass lamp and panel were made by two separate friends of our parents;
the desk and chair were both scavenged from the curb in our neighborhood in
Queens. There’s not a whole heck of a lot of room, but it’s good having a
dedicated place to work. All my files are stored on a high shelf in empty boxes that used to contain Mumm and
Perrier-Jouet champagne gift sets, which makes me feel very glamorous.
Book news: For the most part, Amazon’s Kindle has had
exclusive rights to sell most of my ebooks through their KDP Select program; in
an attempt to reach a wider readership, I’ve been gradually pulling them one by
one off of KDP Select (they’ll always still be available on Kindle, however) and
moving them into other ebook formats, such as Nook and Kobo, etcetera. There
are good reasons for sticking just with KDP Select, and there are good reasons
for mixing it up; right now, I’m just playing around and seeing what works best
for my books. Free stuff: Today through Sunday, you can receive a free ebook
of Demon City in whatever ebook
format you prefer – .epub, .mobi, .pdf, .txt – or read it right in your browser
window, simply by going to Smashwords and entering this coupon code: NM65F
I love Demon City, and I feel strongly that you should, too. It's just a cool little book.
Today I gave away the bulk of our parents’ record collection
(not the David McCallum albums, I
will quickly point out, and not the Beatles, or Simon & Garfunkel, or anything
else we couldn’t bear to part with) to a nice young stranger who responded
to my Craigslist post. Feels kinda weird, actually. These were all albums that
we grew up listening to, and remembered fondly, but there were so many of them
and they were loaded with so many childhood memories that they were starting to
seem like an albatross, or a nostalgia time bomb. It’s good to have them out of the apartment,
but perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m a little blue about it.
I will be watching the Tonys on Sunday night, because I want
to see Lin-Manuel Miranda win ALL THE AWARDS for Hamilton. Like any good New Yorker, I’ve been entering the Hamilton lottery for ten-buck tickets
eight times a week for the past several months. Still haven’t won, and it's unlikely I ever will. (Here’s my
sad song about it: “Lottery for Hamilton/Trying
to win cheap seats to Hamilton/Entered
a million times and haven’t won/But just you wait/Just you waaaaaaaaaait.”
Sorry. A little Hamilton-themed humor
there.) You’ve all seen the cast performance at the Grammys earlier this year,
right? You haven't? Click the link. It's so good. Damn, I love that musical.
I’m throwing together some more Duranalysis ideas. It’s all
pretty hazy at the moment, but something will take shape soon. In the meantime,
I’ve been wasting time being self-amusing in Photoshop:
That blond-and-black fluffy mulletish business will always be my favorite Nick Rhodes hairstyle, bar none. It's so ridiculous, and yet very fetching.
The best appetizer in the world: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed
with goat cheese. I’ve been making these a lot whenever my sister and I need to
feel like the world is not an entirely horrible place. Make a slit in the top of a date,
remove the pit, fill with a healthy scoopful of goat cheese, wrap with half a
slice of bacon, secure with a toothpick. I just use the toaster oven for these:
450 degrees for about ten minutes, or until the bacon is cooked and the kitchen smells like glorious awesomeness. Something about the combination is bliss: the
sweet chewiness of the dates, the grease and salt and smoke of the bacon, the
creamy earthy sourness of goat cheese… It’s so simple and yet so, so amazing. I have no new cocktails to announce, though I just picked up Trader Joe's new cantaloupe juice, which I'll be blending with an inexpensive brut Cava (my faithful old standby Freixenet -- pronounce it like "freshenet" -- is always, always the right choice for this sort of thing) this weekend to see if cantaloupe bellinis are a thing. My expectations are pretty high.
 |
| This will work. I feel certain of it. |
Song of the day for these troubled yet overly-blustery times: Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time”:
Comments
1. so the first and most important one took me a whole hour to find. duran duran work a shift at hmv! ...but it's shorter than i remembered ^^;
2. 97 duran is interviewed by rupaul! ru calls nick a sweetie! they pick their favorite spice girls!
3. since you didn't like high arcadia simon and it popped up in my search, i guess i'll try inflicting you with his polar opposite, subdued pop trash hotel simon and his creepy friends.
4. and while i was looking for the hmv one, i came across this and figured i might as well throw it in: simon and john cook a thing.
5. also while i was looking, here is john eating japanese food in japan and occasionally making faces
6. i even found them touring new orleans after katrina, which i thought was lost forever!
so by looking for that one really obscure video, i came up with six things! at least i can probably say it worked out.
also, is it weird that i'm a little jealous of your home office? my room's 1/4 closet, 2/4 workspace, and 1/4 bedroom, i wish i had a dedicated space for my various pursuits.