Manhattan

This is the view from our friends' apartment they are letting us use this week. Yeah, the Chrysler Building. Cool.

We haven't really hit our stride yet, but we've eaten at two favorite places and gone to Crawford Doyle Booksellers. I love that little store where everything seems curated so you just see so many things you want to buy (or that you have a copy of at home and think you should read or read again).

There was a huge parade on Fifth Avenue for Puerto Rico day. There were police barricades on Madison where cars had not been allowed to park (or been removed) with the barricades out into the street as if to accommodate large numbers of people. People were going by with flags of Puerto Rico, everything was covered with them.
We ask one of policemen (there were one or more on every corner) if there was going to be a parade here, too. "No, this is for the aftermath," he said. Oh. Large crowds. Aftermaths. We don't do that well. So we decided to rest up a bit before the evening.

One of our reasons for being in NYC is the literary-geeky Bloomsday readings of James Joyce's Ulysses. We have just added to our schedule an afternoon reading that will include a friend reading part of the book. Add this to the evening one at Symphony Space on Tuesday and we will be thoroughly ensconced in Joyce Tuesday. (For the uninformed, Joyce's book takes place in one 24 hour period beginning the morning of June 16, 1904.) Yes, I've 'read' it. And maybe I even understood a little.

So far we've had an easy time getting into the two restaurants we tried (where we only called in the hour before to get a table). We saw lots of empty tables for lunch today on Lex. And we received the sad news that our favorite downtown Austin wine bar, Taste, had closed. Yeah, it's officially a recession. Well we'll be spending some money around NYC and then we will come home and keep supporting the other restaurants and venues and charities we love. But will it be enough?

Lists

Christmas is over. It's time for lists.

Reading List. A lot of of people keep a tally on their blogs about what they are reading. This would be too embarrassing for me, generally. I'd have to admit that I only recently finished Gilbert's study of James Joyce's Ulysess which I purchased on June 16, 2004 or thereabouts in the Paris English language bookstore Village Voice. I read this book in the bathroom. OK, another embarrassing admission. I read whole books in the bathroom even if it did take over two years. This book was particularly difficult since it was written in the 30's about a difficult book (which I haven't actually read...I'm working up to that one) and assumed a knowledge of Greek and French and, I think, maybe a little German. Not to mention the history of myths in multiple cultures. I'm now reading A.M. Home's The Safety of Objects in that bathroom. In the other there is a choice of old copies of The New Yorker or a book called Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them. It's a pure coincidence that these books share a word. I'm obssesive about some things. But that would be a bit much even for me. The former is a small book of short stories. Even at one paragraph at a time, it should be dispatched in short order. When I use the third bathroom, I am the prisoner of whatever FFP left there.

On the obsessive side I do want to announce that I have sent to recycling virtually all the old newspapers around here. Without some serious searching (perhaps in the aforementioned bathroom) I would have to read today's paper if I wanted to read the paper. My gym reading today will be Prisoner of Trebekistan: a decade in Jeopardy! which was my Christmas present from FFP. We don't really buy each other things but given my penchant for recording Jeopardy and shouting the answers out (when I know them) I think he saw this and couldn't resist.

To Do List: There are things to do for my dad. I think he has waited out Christmas and now expects his doctors to turn their attention to his problems. Sadly, I think they are on vacation. He wants me to call them. He also has some shopping for me to do. So there is his list. And then mine. The month and year are winding down. That means taxes. And bookkeeping. And then there is the long list of things to do around here. Like cleaning up offices and files and storage. And, of course, putting up all those silly decorations.

Sigh. Well, I could make some lists. That's a place to start. Off to work on Dad's list first. He would like sliced cheese, some Milk of Magnesia and a doctor to explain his back pain.

Naturally today's picture has nothing much to do with anything. Except maybe that to do list item: "organize digital pictures so you can easily find one that is relevant and not just post another shop window."