tick tock

Still running around, trying to get things done.

Haven't yet started to pack, although it's 1am and I'm supposed to be at the airport a little after 4 (2 hours prior for international flight). Of course, since there's no public transport at these hours, I'll be taking a cab...

Just had the (oops!) realization that I needed to write the copyright page info (we made a little game where the reader has to find something within the pages of the book) and back cover text, which I've now sent to the Catalan translator to look over tomorrow, since the book is going to be laid out while I'm in transit tomorrow and the translator will be off soon on a trip as well.

Not panicking just yet.

No doubt when I'm at the airport and suddenly half a dozen more of these things I should've taken care of already occur to me, then I'll feel all panicky.

With luck I'll have packed beforehand... ;-)

More last minute thingeys

Bought my tickets to Frankfurt. Will be there Oct 15-23. Although may dash down to Heidelberg to visit a friend one or two nights. (He used to live in Berlin, where he edited OPERN WELT magazine, but is now running the Opera in Heidelberg.) Probably before the Book Fair starts, although I'm trying to leave my Friday afternoon schedule light so I can leave early and catch the train down and catch the performance of DON GIOVANI that night... Not an opera I've seen, although friends recommend it highly.

Luckily, since LanChile runs a flight from Santiago de Chile to Frankfurt with a layover in Madrid, it's usually pretty cheap to buy just the Madrid-FFM leg (even though it's less than a month's notice).

And they're easy afternoon flights, unlike this $#@#$%# flight to Amsterdam in a few hours.

Making progress on all sorts of loose ends and other details.

Still haven't packed yet, though.

space cadet

I really am kind of out of it right now. Imagine how ditzy I'm going to be by the time I hit NY without having slept really...

Just realized I'm going to be in Frankfurt (or Heidelberg) for my birthday (Oct 16).

This isn't such a big surprise, since my birthday usually falls during the Book Fair, although this year the Fair dates are later than usual. (And next year, the Bologna Book Fair is way early. Go figure.)

Speaking of b-days, since it's already Thursday here in Europe: Feliz cumpeaños a matociquala y bearsir!

Filler

OK, I've finally tried packing.

And the suitcase is ridiculously empty.

Looking now for "filler" that I can bring to NYC but not need to bring home to Madrid, so that everything doesn't slide around so much.

Hasta pronto

OK, I guess I'm as packed as I'm going to be, so I'll stop spamming the f-list.

I just hope I didn't forget anything really major--and that I can stay awake to catch all my flights!

(no subject)

I know better.

I even stopped, as I was about to leave the apartment, and turned back to look at my shelves and shelves of books to be read.

But I was already leaving the apartment late, and in the face of such stress couldn't pick what else I might want to read.

Of course, the decision process was also limited, not just by what titles I had available, but things I didn't plan to pass along to Sara or another friend when I'd read them, something I could bring to NYC and abandon there.

So I left with only Mike Gayle's DINNER FOR TWO, which I had started reading a few days earlier and had made very little headway with. I had quite liked his MR. COMMITMENT, but hated his best-known (and best-seller) MY LEGENDARY GIRLFRIEND.

I justified leaving with only one book (even though I've written articles advising people always to have a back-up book, especially in the current travle climate where delays are not uncommon) by telling myself that I would a) work (ha!) and b) sleep (mostly on the flight from Amsterdam to NYC, or that's the plan).

And what happens, but I wind up finishing DINNER FOR TWO before I even land in Amsterdam.

Oops.

So I had to buy an expensive import-priced novel at the airport shop. While I still haven't finished Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series, after some deliberation (the 6th Alexander McCall Smith Botswana book? the new hardcover P.D. Jame sin its expensive UK edition?) I settled on an entry from Mankell's new series, featuring Wallander's daughter, BEFORE THE FROST.

And now that I'm sitting down typing this during my 5 hour layover (sigh), I'm dropping with fatigue.

Doubtful I'll get much work or reading done in the hours I have to wait until the flight for NYC leaves.

Afraid to nap and oversleep my flight.

###

Continued after arrival in NYC, when I can finally post the above which was written in Schipol airport.

The Mankell was only 470 pages so I finished that, too. Not sure if I liked it. It's not really a Linda Wallander book, or at least that's not an accurate way to think of the books; it's still half her father.

And it was a thriller, not a traditional mystery. I don't likebooks where we're in the mind of some psycopath every few chapters, and the reader knows things that the detective doesn't, so we know how time is running out for them to get a clue and solve things before all the diabolic plans, etc.

Not my cuppa.

Although I like the father-daughter relationship. And actually, the book is not so dark as many of Mankell's other novels. Because the "dark" elements are not personal demons of the detective (as in the Kurt Wandell mysteries I've read so far) but rather external (and hence less meaningful, more distant) done-to-death religious cult psychopaths yawn yawn (and not just from lack of sleep).

Anyway, I'll know better in future not to let myself leave home so unprepared again.

It begins

I've been in New York for around 5 hours so far and I've managed to acquire 5 books. 4 of them I bought:

TALK TO THE HAND by Lynn Truss (I had enjoyed her EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES)
BODIES IN MOTION: STORIES by Mary Anne Mohanraj
3 DAYS OFF by Susie Morgenstern (translation from the French, ya novel; have never yet read anything by Morgenstern and have been curious)
I also bought a copy of the latest TOOT & PUDDLE book by Holly Hobbie for Sara (who has a standing request to pick up for her any of the ones she doesn't have, and this is a sep 05 release): WISH YOU WERE HERE

I also found a copy of Edwidge Danticat's THE DEW BREAKER. I have a copy of BREATH, EYES, MEMORY in Madrid, waiting to be read. But took this home, too, because a freebie is under my impulse threshhold...

Of course, I have hardly had a chance to even begin looking for books, since much fo the time since I've been here was taken up with a) trying to stay awake, b) unpacking and otherwise settling in a bit and c) dinner with my grandmother and my sister at a medicore Chinese restaurant.

TAXIS
While I may be a native New Yorker, I have gone "soft" and "European" in my years in exile. I lost three taxis in a row because I was politely waiting on the corner instead of jumping in front of other people who were already ahead of me flagging a cab, as happened to me three times before I moved halfway down the block instead of waiting on the corner and agressively took the next cab that came by.

But such agression and hostility!
Not just from the sidewalks, but the cabs when they are all zipping and honking and tryignt o pinch each other's fares and etc.

I'd (happily) forgotten.

Anyway, I think I've successfully lasted long enough to be able to collapse now with a clear conscience and the hopes of having normalized to the new time zone. (Fingerses crossed.)