Let it Snow, Let it SnooOOOw, Can't Hold it Back AnymooOOOre!

January 20th-21st, 2014

For those of you who have not yet grasped my affinity for Disney, the title of this post is to be sung to the tune of "Let it Go" from Frozen.

Yesterday in honor of MLK and no work, I did not get out of bed until at least 11. And when I say "get out of bed" I mean I was sitting in it and on my computer. (Before you make fun of me, I was updating my blog. So THERE. At least I was productive.) The evening I did manage to step out the door for some Argo Tea to meet up with a high school friend I have not seen nor talked to...since...well, since high school. She lives in the city, and now I've got a handy-dandy little list of places that I must go to now. Several of them require subways because she's out of Brooklyn, so I have a little more time before I take on that beast. We walked over to Union Square, which I'd never been save in passing and then I hadn't known what it was, but there is a really depressing neon sign of numbers stretched across one of the buildings. It fluctuates all the time, usually going up than down, and it's apparently showing our national debt.

It must have been a bad omen that many of must-go-to venues needed me to get on a train because the following day I had my first ever subway adventure by myself since being in the city. And you know, in hindsight trains that say "downtown" as in "numbers get smaller"--because as I've previously discussed, that means Southbound--makes a lot of sense. For someone whose only thought is "train place on this street," clearly the first one I run into must be exactly the one I'm looking for, and everything will be great and nothing will go wrong! Well around the time I swiped my metro card, I realized I needed to re-exit and actually go across the street to go uptown/North/growing numbers/MY STREET. Oh and someone pulled the emergency break on the train I did catch. They had to hold a few minutes to figure out why. So that was fun and I paid twice to be on that ride, but I have the consolation that it was still better than either walking or cab fare.

Why did I decide that today would be my subway adventure time? Because no matter which direction you walked outside today, the wind and the BOUNTIFUL FLURRIES IT CARRIED followed you, and there was no escape but underground. It's like when you're at a bonfire and the smoke only follows the asthmatic kid.

(me snow dusted [left] and unfortunately my phone actively ignores falling snow, but it's there. [right])

Besides that, I brought my macaroons into DAW today. I still don't have my ID card, so my quest to befriend the security guard at the front desk lives another day. He did not take a cookie, but he was very appreciative and said "thanks, sweetheart!" But not in the creepy way, more like in the I-will-always-look-12-years-old way.

Office work-wise, I pretty much spent my day looking at quotes about new DAW books featured in recent magazines. Some critics were harsher than others, but most were very nice. One critic I swear, though, is Paula Abdul's pen name because she loved everybody and didn't have a single hard word to say about anything, and was clearly very excited to read fantasy and SF books for her job (Who wouldn't? Fun-haters, that's who).

So looking and logging was Part A of the quote job; Part B entailed going on the server and updating cool quotes to be used for media marketing.

Many people were ducking out early because of the snow that was showing (and still is if I look outside my window) no sign of slowing, but before I head out I had two tasks. I could have taken them to the house, I'm sure, but there are few locations more enticing for productivity than an office, so I stayed. Firstly, the Pub Newsfeed.

Basically I searched for recent news in the publishing world that is worth a read or a skim for publishers of fantasy and SF. All I have to do is find about five sources, write 1-2 sentence blurbs about them, then email them out to the office. Most of them were about eBooks and either how awesome they are or how much money they're losing.

Secondly, and my favorite part of the day, manuscript reading! I even got through the first hundred pages before my usual end-time. I only stayed over a couple minutes to write out my notes, then into the blizzard I went. (Fun fact: "Let it Go" just came on my iTunes and this entertains me.)

Only real bummer is that I had originally planned this evening to go to Bubby's Burgers and actually eat a burger (long disappointing story as to why I had been there once before and did not get a burger), and meet a couple housemates out there in SoHo. That, however, was snow-checked because it is in exactly the opposite direction from the house and nobody wanted to do that. Next time, burgers, next time.