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There is no relation between the title of this post and this picture. I just like to have a picture in my post every day, and this is today’s. It’s across the street from one of the movie theatres I go to and I call it the “I Quit, Give me a Burger and a Cupcake and Take Me Now Cafe.”

Nadine, a reader of this blog, is visiting NYC with a friend this week and I wanted to say hi! Apparently they brought the president with them, so thank you for the all-day gridlock, Nadine and friend!! (Kidding.) But it’s also their BIRTHDAYS.

Speaking of which, I prefer the cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe on 18th between 5th and 6th, and a great place to eat lunch is on that block, City Bakery. So if you have time, you could go to those places one day, but you should definitely get birthday cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe.

I took this picture at the movies last week, when I saw Year of the Dog, which I didn’t really enjoy, I’m sorry to say. I’d love to recommend it, and if anyone was the audience for this movie I was, but it made me feel bad.

So here I am, on what is supposed to be a lovely day in the 70’s, planning my day and I’m thinking movies. What is wrong with me?? But the guys who made Shaun of the Dead, one of my favorite movies, have a new movie out called Hot Fuzz, and really, there are so many others to see as well, and I must catch up. It’s my job. Okay, it’s not my job.

I’m in a good mood because I’m working on a chapter about the haunting of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem. At one point I thought I might be writing a book about this, so all the research is already done. I’ve edited what I have down to only the best parts, and it’s a killer chapter, and, because I had already done all the research, it feels like I got a chapter for free.

It’s pretty outside my window right now, if you like grey, which I do. Rain rain rain is imminent. I rarely have anything substantial to say, it seems. I do think about things, a lot actually, but then I write all the time and by the time I get here I’m down to: “I like grey.” (“Fire bad, tree pretty.” The cool kids will know this reference!)

I wrote that at around 7 a.m. I think, and it’s 4:20 in the afternoon now.

My birthday is still a month and a half away, but I like to get all my ducks in a row and I’ve already started preparing. I scheduled a hair appointment for a few weeks before. I’m going short again. That’s the main thing. Then there will be brow appointments and pedicures, it’s nuts I know, but it gives me a nice regenerative feeling. What the hell?

Right now we’re arguing on Echo about should Virginia Tech have “locked down” the school after the first murder. I’m on the side that says we only know that the first murders were a warning sign after the fact, there was no way to know that at the time, and how do you lock down a campus anyway, and given that the killer was a student, what would that have accomplished? He could have ended up locked down somewhere with a different set of victims. But I’m all for learning what we can from the experience, and perhaps coming up with the best ways to send crucial information to all students quickly for the future (but again, in this case, that same information would have been sent to the killer).

I’ve had a terrible headache the past couple of days. I still have it. But I’m sitting on the couch relaxing, with crappy TV on in the background, and I feel like posting.

Why this week sucks:

– 33 dead kids in Virgina.
– 171 dead in Baghdad, and that’s just today.
– The Supreme Court upheld a ban that will limit our abortion rights.

I’ve got a picture of Buddy because he’s just a big old sweet, innocent, leaf-eating (“bad cat!”) cat. I also offer the last stanzas from the Walt Whitman poem Darest Thou Now O Soul that Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music and we’ll be performing next month. He’s musing about what will happen to us when we die. I don’t imagine it as Whitman does, which is why I am posting his words instead of mine.

I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region that inaccessible land.

Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.

Then we burst forth we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.

On a happier note, this new chapter is going well. Who do you think is going home on American Idol this week?

I’m supposed to go out to the Parapsychology Foundation today, but it may get called due to the rain. I’m waiting to hear. Can’t say I blame Lisette if she doesn’t want to drive in the rain.

The chapter I’ve just started is going to be freaking amazing. I’m telling the story of a haunting in Harlem in the sixties. The haunting part is mostly already written, it was the story I used in my book proposal. So now I have to research what the current thinking is about hauntings. It’s like I said in the proposal, what’s more fun than a ghost story? I wish there were more of them!

Breaking News! We’re postpoing until next Monday. Okay, so different day. What shall I do! The library is closed, I read all day yesterday so I need a break from reading. Hmm. I guess today will be: write and go to the gym.

(Picture courtesy of http://www.fashionologie.com/.)