A Few Things

Fringe. I don’t understand why it keeps falling in the ratings when it keeps getting better.

It has become this great ensemble show, rising to the level of Bones in that respect. Also, the developing mythology is wrapped up in love stories of one kind of another, either romantic or between family members or work partners, which makes it engrossing both intellectually and emotionally. Love, science, science-fiction.

I’m sorry for steering you wrong about Grimm when Once Up a Time developed into a much better show, but I made a snap judgement in that case. Fringe has been on for a while. I am not wrong here.

What were the other things? Oh, I know. I’ve been reading New York Diaries and I’ve been loving how people describe their New York days, and I realized I don’t really do that. I describe what I’m doing but not the city I’m doing it in. I’m going to start doing that.

Bleecker Street. I’ve posted photographs of these building before, because one of them is on sale. I just loved how they looked in the sunlight, with the skies.

Blue Skies on Bleecker Street

Reading Recommendations Please

My plan for the day: swim and read. After I finish New York Diaries I will need something escapist but great. Any recommendations?

I love this sign. I’ve always been attracted to shades of yellow and blue together. A couple painters I’ve loved also worked with yellow and blue a lot, who were they?? Of course I don’t remember because I no longer possess a working brain.

Removing Google Search History

Everyone is talking about removing their google search history and I was about to do that, but stopped. I need to research this more. Do I really want to? My question is, will anybody be able to search my web history? I agree it could be pretty embarrassing, but not horribly so. I search my name more than anything (to see if anyone is reading my books) and nail polish shades. Okay, and cute animal pictures. You got me.

From the EFF:

“Google’s new unified privacy policy will take effect on March 1. All the data Google automatically gathers about you, such as the sites you visit, will be dumped into one virtual bucket with your name on it. While you can’t opt out of the new approach without abandoning Google sites, you can erase your browsing history.

“Search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more,” warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and an advocate for online privacy.

“If you delete your Google Web History that includes the searches you’ve made and the sites you’ve visited, you’ll prevent Google from associating that data with information it has collected from other Google sites you use such as YouTube and Gmail. While no one knows exactly how Google would use your combined information, the policy changes have already prompted more than raised eyebrows.”

We spotted each other immediately. It was true love.

I Will Be Back to Normal Tomorrow. Or Thursday.

I am so out of sorts I gave Buddy his chemo medication on the wrong day. I gave it to him this morning thinking it was Wednesday. I’m pretty sure it won’t kill him, it’s the mildest of mild chemotherapies and very slow acting.

But the book is handed in and you’d think I’d be all “It’s Miller time!” but instead I’ve been bursting into tears about every little thing. My accountant emailed me a question, I cried. I can’t make up my mind about what I want to do at the moment, I cried. I don’t have any decent pictures to post … tears.

I went up to the roof, cried at the thought of someone locking the door behind me, not knowing someone was up there and then I’d be locked out on the roof in the cold.

So here are three views from my roof, practically live, haven been taken just moments ago. This is looking west, that’s the Hudson River in the distance, and New Jersey beyond that.

You’ve all seen this view from my roof before, but this is looking uptown, or north. My camera is tilting ever so slightly I see. Oh well. I guess I better cry.

A very pastel looking view of downtown.

Fact-Checking

Two more days of writing and I’m human again. I’m so happy knowing how elated I’m going to feel Tuesday night. It will be the fifth time I’ve felt it. Part terror, mostly jubilation. It’s not like I’m technically done. My editor will have edits, the copy editor will have even more.

I also have to go through and fact-check. Publishers used to do this, but now authors are expected to fact-check their own books. No matter how careful you are as you go along, you make mistakes. You type in dates incorrectly, flip places (ie “he was born in France and died in Spain,” when it was the other way around) you mess up transcribing quotes, or you misunderstand what someone was explaining in an interview and you don’t represent them correctly. It’s endless the kinds of mistakes you might have made and it’s time consuming finding them.

I love fact-checking other people’s books, LOVE it. I’m also great at it. It’s fun for me so I’m very thorough. I would happily do it for a living. But fact-checking your own is kinda tedious.

I think I might have posted a picture of this restaurant before, Redfarm. It’s fairly new but it already has an excellent reputation. It’s expensive though, so I’ve never eaten there. It’s sits above where I do my laundry. If the weather is nice I sit under that tree there and read. I don’t know why, but I enjoy the contrast of that, my well-to-do neighbors having a fancy dinner above the machines where my laundry is going round and round. I don’t begrudge them at all! Sitting under that tree reading is such a happy, peaceful, relaxed thing to do it makes me look forward to doing the laundry. It’s just funny.