Remembered a little bird I saw in a museum so I tried to find it online. I believe it IS what gave the idea for the book The Goldfinch. It is in the Frick Gallery in New York City. I started the book and only got 1/3 of the way through it before it became overdue. Then started all over again with the 26 CD audiobook. It is quite compelling!
Finished Then again, by Diane Keaton. I love reading autobiographies and finding out who knew whom and such like that. I am eager to read her new book as I enjoyed this one on my Nook. She never married (I like THOSE role models) and adopted two children. She also went through a lot with the decline of her mother.
Someone has been in my yard and it gives me the creeps. Came home and found one of the wooden pieces broken off on my gate. Then we found a SWEATER and a CELL PHONE under the steps. Just what I need, a careless, vandalizing trespasser. I have enough dislike of my neighbors without them invading my space. Called the policeman and he was very polite and took the cell phone although he thought it was broken and useless.
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
35 million of us
This is now many people are filing at the last minute. This is how I have been every year of my life. It really ruins the days approaching April 15th. Tax preparation, like cooking dinner, can expand to fill up all of the available time. I did it and redid it and had great nashing of teeth, alternating between thinking it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to do and then perhaps possible. I just don't like the RESULTS...as in owing almost $4000. BUT, I am going to pretend I didn't notice that you should pay penalties for this. (Isn't that just like adding INSULT to INJURY!)
All is not lost. I shall proceed to ask Social Security to take hundreds of dollars from my measly paycheck each month so that I can come out perhaps about even next year. Came to the library and attempted TaxAct, a free service. But I kept going around in circles and getting sort of like error messages. Then I switched over to fillable forms, but that got on my nerves, too. SO, I am back to copying each form over in blue or black ink and sending it by US mail. See, once I go online, I will no longer receive the booklet in the mail and I really look forward to reading the booklets from cover to cover (twice).
The museum of extraordinary things (book), by Alice Hoffman. Liked the title and I like all fiction writers with the first name of Alice although I have trouble telling one from the other. The book takes place in the New York of the early 1900's and the Hudson River figures prominently. Also freak shows and the Triangle shirt waist fire and mean fathers and daughters who swim like mermaids and want more out of life.
Today went on an excursion with some friends...to the National Archives of Philadelphia (a well kept secret) and to the Reading terminal market. We went to see an art exhibit called Archives alchemy. The archives was getting rid of a lot of stuff...books, papers, microfilm. They donated it to an artist group called the Dumpster divers and suggested that they make ART from those materials. My friend had one of the best ones.....they really used to wrap things in cotton and secure them with cotton RED TAPE. She somehow got words on the red tape and hung it like a door screen, weighted down with US and foreign coins. It was called, "No scissors sharp enough to cut the red tape of immigration". There was a lamp decorated with microfilm and microfilm reels going all up the pole. The exhibit has been extended until the summer and the end will coincide with the closing of this branch of the archives. They will be merging with another location which is in some far away Northeast section of Philly. A handful of archive locations are being closed down for budget cutting. Sad.
All is not lost. I shall proceed to ask Social Security to take hundreds of dollars from my measly paycheck each month so that I can come out perhaps about even next year. Came to the library and attempted TaxAct, a free service. But I kept going around in circles and getting sort of like error messages. Then I switched over to fillable forms, but that got on my nerves, too. SO, I am back to copying each form over in blue or black ink and sending it by US mail. See, once I go online, I will no longer receive the booklet in the mail and I really look forward to reading the booklets from cover to cover (twice).
The museum of extraordinary things (book), by Alice Hoffman. Liked the title and I like all fiction writers with the first name of Alice although I have trouble telling one from the other. The book takes place in the New York of the early 1900's and the Hudson River figures prominently. Also freak shows and the Triangle shirt waist fire and mean fathers and daughters who swim like mermaids and want more out of life.
Today went on an excursion with some friends...to the National Archives of Philadelphia (a well kept secret) and to the Reading terminal market. We went to see an art exhibit called Archives alchemy. The archives was getting rid of a lot of stuff...books, papers, microfilm. They donated it to an artist group called the Dumpster divers and suggested that they make ART from those materials. My friend had one of the best ones.....they really used to wrap things in cotton and secure them with cotton RED TAPE. She somehow got words on the red tape and hung it like a door screen, weighted down with US and foreign coins. It was called, "No scissors sharp enough to cut the red tape of immigration". There was a lamp decorated with microfilm and microfilm reels going all up the pole. The exhibit has been extended until the summer and the end will coincide with the closing of this branch of the archives. They will be merging with another location which is in some far away Northeast section of Philly. A handful of archive locations are being closed down for budget cutting. Sad.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
More hideous weather
Escaping the raw, rainy day here in the library. I used to work here and remember it as being warm and cozy and colorful. Winter has not even started yet and the weather is despicable.
Returning a book that I got on Interlibrary loan. The last bohemia : scenes from the life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by Robert Anasi. As Brooklyn gets hipper, I get more like a country bumpkin and an OLD one at that! Feel like life is changing and that I am getting more "out of it". This book is about young, not rich, people viewing the gentrification of a funky place and lifestyle. And it was short so I could finish it before the due date.
Nighttime eating getting out of control. I think I got some cheese out last night, even after I pigged out at French club. There was an "old" me and a "new" me. I have lost touch with the "new" me.
I thought I heard a mouse last night and there were a few nibble marks on the cheese that I don't think were made by me. Need to set some traps. I hear rustling in strange places. I don't think I am alone.
Returning a book that I got on Interlibrary loan. The last bohemia : scenes from the life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by Robert Anasi. As Brooklyn gets hipper, I get more like a country bumpkin and an OLD one at that! Feel like life is changing and that I am getting more "out of it". This book is about young, not rich, people viewing the gentrification of a funky place and lifestyle. And it was short so I could finish it before the due date.
Nighttime eating getting out of control. I think I got some cheese out last night, even after I pigged out at French club. There was an "old" me and a "new" me. I have lost touch with the "new" me.
I thought I heard a mouse last night and there were a few nibble marks on the cheese that I don't think were made by me. Need to set some traps. I hear rustling in strange places. I don't think I am alone.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Suddenly humid
Wow, it is going to be over 80 degrees today. Having a hot flash just thinking about it. That is getting a bit over my limit of comfort.
I only watch a few minutes of TV each day. Happened to catch Matt Lauer at the top of One world trade center at the moment the top spire was raised, lowered and attached. 1776 feet tall - is that a historical date or how many people died on 9/11? We now have the tallest strictly office building in the western hemisphere. Ain't America great!?!? Other interesting facts were that it takes the workers 40 minutes just to get to the top to do their jobs each day! And that the first businesses will get their keys in 2014. I happen to be going to New York next Saturday. Must add this to the list of things to do (it is short, so far). Feel kind of bad that I haven't visited the site at all in ten years.
Book review: Winter journal, by Paul Auster. I didn't/don't even know who Paul Auster is, but according to a Henry Holt & Co. ad I saw in the New Yorker, he is "one of the great writers of our time". I did enjoy this memoir...which detailed all the places he has lived (in order) and traveled and the decline and death of his mother. Also there is a New Jersey connection, which I always like to know about. And he wrote this when he was 64, about the same age as I am. I liked the first paragraph - "You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else." I recommend this book. You can borrow the large type edition from the Millville Public Library (LT 92 AUS).
Book review: Peaches for Father Francis, by Joanne Harris. In which the characters from a previous book called Chocolat come back to Lansquenet, a small village in France. There is an interesting addition of an Islamic theme and the push and pull between the cultures. There is a bit of a mystery about who caused a fire and who is the covered up woman and why has she come to town. Our heroine, Vianne, returns to the small town to straighten out some things. She gets very involved and has trouble getting back to her life in Paris. I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Harris Joanne)
I only watch a few minutes of TV each day. Happened to catch Matt Lauer at the top of One world trade center at the moment the top spire was raised, lowered and attached. 1776 feet tall - is that a historical date or how many people died on 9/11? We now have the tallest strictly office building in the western hemisphere. Ain't America great!?!? Other interesting facts were that it takes the workers 40 minutes just to get to the top to do their jobs each day! And that the first businesses will get their keys in 2014. I happen to be going to New York next Saturday. Must add this to the list of things to do (it is short, so far). Feel kind of bad that I haven't visited the site at all in ten years.
Book review: Winter journal, by Paul Auster. I didn't/don't even know who Paul Auster is, but according to a Henry Holt & Co. ad I saw in the New Yorker, he is "one of the great writers of our time". I did enjoy this memoir...which detailed all the places he has lived (in order) and traveled and the decline and death of his mother. Also there is a New Jersey connection, which I always like to know about. And he wrote this when he was 64, about the same age as I am. I liked the first paragraph - "You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else." I recommend this book. You can borrow the large type edition from the Millville Public Library (LT 92 AUS).
Book review: Peaches for Father Francis, by Joanne Harris. In which the characters from a previous book called Chocolat come back to Lansquenet, a small village in France. There is an interesting addition of an Islamic theme and the push and pull between the cultures. There is a bit of a mystery about who caused a fire and who is the covered up woman and why has she come to town. Our heroine, Vianne, returns to the small town to straighten out some things. She gets very involved and has trouble getting back to her life in Paris. I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Harris Joanne)
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