Tour Day 3
Hello all!
I skipped a day! Sorry. It was one of those totally typical tour days--first of all, there was the issue of the one-cup pot of coffee, which was immediately problematic. Then there was a whirlwind of emails and phone calls, an updated tour schedule, a snafu with the grey pants, a thirteen-dollar smoothie at Grand Central Station (is that even legal??), a mad dash trying to find the right track--turns out you don't pay attention to the part on the ticket where it says TRACK NUMBER --ours said TRACK NUMBER ONE, and as far as I can tell, there is no such track--and a race to the correct track (25), and a flinging ourselves into the seat, panting. The thirteen dollar smoothie was in fact very good. I set out to review my materials for Yale and my schedule. The phone started ringing; the schedule is now radically out of date, and a new schedule appeared on my email when I arrived in New Haven, but not before the other snafu, involving the wrong hotel, which required a call to AAA to get them to find another hotel, and then Jeff's brilliant idea that we should rent a car rather than take cabs (as my publicist had said we should (rent a car) a month ago, but I insisted no indeed we did not need one), and his call to Thrifty to reserve said car for an hour later, and his discovery that all that was available was a pickup truck, which I thought, well fine a truck works, but he felt it did not work, so he called another rental place, and reserved something else, and was told that the new rental place was one-third of a mile away from the New Haven station, and then our arrival at the station (a very pretty train station) and subsequent discovery that indeed the rental place was NOT one-third of a mile away but a twenty-dollar cab ride to the far reaches of the universe, Jeff swearing all the way, and our ride to North Haven (where the new hotel is, where I now sit in an elegant Holiday Inn, which contains a ONE-CUP COFFEE POT, while Jeff snores like the dickens), which is also nowhere near either the bookstore at which last night's reading took place, nor Yale, where I give my talks today, anyway, we arrived at the hotel an hour before the time we had to be at the reading half an hour away, and I scrambled into clean clothes and we zipped off to the reading, AND WERE ON TIME! Ha! Triumphant.
As for the reading--here is my HUGE thanks to all the people who came out last night. Great crowd, wonderful people, fascinating questions, and the incredible joy of finally getting to meet the real people who read my books. It is the biggest thrill to meet readers, talk to them, hear their stories, and hopefully give them a decent reading, because THAT'S why I write: you. Of course I thought the reading was wrong in this, this, and this other way, but for the first reading of tour, it wasn't TOO awful, and now I have a clearer idea of how I want to improve on it next time. BY the way, the RJ Julia Bookstore in Madison, CT, where I read last night is an AWESOME store, and I was honored to be there. Thanks many times over to RJ Julia for having me. The next reading is actually pub date, next Wednesday. I can't wait. But between now and then, there's a whooooole lot of stuff. In a fit of intelligence, I realized at 3 a.m. this morning (a.m. and this morning being redundant, sorry) that the talk I'd planned to give at Yale was not at all the talk I should give, and now am whipping around trying to get the new talk ready--so clever--and then the reverse train ride tonight, which hopefully will be sans snafu, getting into NYC around 1 a.m....but I have the weekend off, or thought I did, but suddenly there's an op-ed to write, and on Monday there are interviews and then I'm taking another train (I love trains) down to D.C. for the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday morning, which I'm really really looking forward to--she's so cool, and her show is so much fun--and then a passel of interviews on Wednesday, starting with the crack-of-dawn Early Show and lasting until about two minutes before the reading that night--well, not quite, because just before the reading I get to meet up with my fabulous friends, NY- and Mpls-based, who are coming to the scary Barnes and Noble with me, and we'll sit around and laugh our heads off and I'll be all zenned and mellow by the time I hit the podium at 7 p.m. and the book is officially sent off into the world. Weird! Weird! Weird!
So, as you can plainly see, the only thing for it is to do yoga now. The North Haven birds are singing, it's still dark out, and the day's about to begin.
And by the way (grin) many thanks for the birthday wishes. A friend of mine asked for a birthday story, and I told him about April 4, 1980, Walnut Creek, California, when I woke up six years old and pretty pleased with myself for having done so. There, hanging on a hanger from the dresser, was a PURPLE SKATING DRESS! It was glorious! I scrambled into it as fast as I could, insisted that we go skating IMMEDIATELY, and my pops took me to the Sun Valley Mall skating rink, and I think I went zipping around the rink a thousand times (wobbling is probably more like it), and then went to a restaurant that was in an old train car (my favorite restaurant) and had an eclair for lunch (my favorite food) and wouldn't take off the fabulous purple skating dress for days. SO wonderful. As my dad reminded me in a birthday email this morning, Dylan Thomas wrote, "The memories of childhood are without order and without end," and so they are, and I cherish them all. Nearly thirty years later (gulp), it just gets better and better every years. Here's to life!
Peace,
M
I skipped a day! Sorry. It was one of those totally typical tour days--first of all, there was the issue of the one-cup pot of coffee, which was immediately problematic. Then there was a whirlwind of emails and phone calls, an updated tour schedule, a snafu with the grey pants, a thirteen-dollar smoothie at Grand Central Station (is that even legal??), a mad dash trying to find the right track--turns out you don't pay attention to the part on the ticket where it says TRACK NUMBER --ours said TRACK NUMBER ONE, and as far as I can tell, there is no such track--and a race to the correct track (25), and a flinging ourselves into the seat, panting. The thirteen dollar smoothie was in fact very good. I set out to review my materials for Yale and my schedule. The phone started ringing; the schedule is now radically out of date, and a new schedule appeared on my email when I arrived in New Haven, but not before the other snafu, involving the wrong hotel, which required a call to AAA to get them to find another hotel, and then Jeff's brilliant idea that we should rent a car rather than take cabs (as my publicist had said we should (rent a car) a month ago, but I insisted no indeed we did not need one), and his call to Thrifty to reserve said car for an hour later, and his discovery that all that was available was a pickup truck, which I thought, well fine a truck works, but he felt it did not work, so he called another rental place, and reserved something else, and was told that the new rental place was one-third of a mile away from the New Haven station, and then our arrival at the station (a very pretty train station) and subsequent discovery that indeed the rental place was NOT one-third of a mile away but a twenty-dollar cab ride to the far reaches of the universe, Jeff swearing all the way, and our ride to North Haven (where the new hotel is, where I now sit in an elegant Holiday Inn, which contains a ONE-CUP COFFEE POT, while Jeff snores like the dickens), which is also nowhere near either the bookstore at which last night's reading took place, nor Yale, where I give my talks today, anyway, we arrived at the hotel an hour before the time we had to be at the reading half an hour away, and I scrambled into clean clothes and we zipped off to the reading, AND WERE ON TIME! Ha! Triumphant.
As for the reading--here is my HUGE thanks to all the people who came out last night. Great crowd, wonderful people, fascinating questions, and the incredible joy of finally getting to meet the real people who read my books. It is the biggest thrill to meet readers, talk to them, hear their stories, and hopefully give them a decent reading, because THAT'S why I write: you. Of course I thought the reading was wrong in this, this, and this other way, but for the first reading of tour, it wasn't TOO awful, and now I have a clearer idea of how I want to improve on it next time. BY the way, the RJ Julia Bookstore in Madison, CT, where I read last night is an AWESOME store, and I was honored to be there. Thanks many times over to RJ Julia for having me. The next reading is actually pub date, next Wednesday. I can't wait. But between now and then, there's a whooooole lot of stuff. In a fit of intelligence, I realized at 3 a.m. this morning (a.m. and this morning being redundant, sorry) that the talk I'd planned to give at Yale was not at all the talk I should give, and now am whipping around trying to get the new talk ready--so clever--and then the reverse train ride tonight, which hopefully will be sans snafu, getting into NYC around 1 a.m....but I have the weekend off, or thought I did, but suddenly there's an op-ed to write, and on Monday there are interviews and then I'm taking another train (I love trains) down to D.C. for the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday morning, which I'm really really looking forward to--she's so cool, and her show is so much fun--and then a passel of interviews on Wednesday, starting with the crack-of-dawn Early Show and lasting until about two minutes before the reading that night--well, not quite, because just before the reading I get to meet up with my fabulous friends, NY- and Mpls-based, who are coming to the scary Barnes and Noble with me, and we'll sit around and laugh our heads off and I'll be all zenned and mellow by the time I hit the podium at 7 p.m. and the book is officially sent off into the world. Weird! Weird! Weird!
So, as you can plainly see, the only thing for it is to do yoga now. The North Haven birds are singing, it's still dark out, and the day's about to begin.
And by the way (grin) many thanks for the birthday wishes. A friend of mine asked for a birthday story, and I told him about April 4, 1980, Walnut Creek, California, when I woke up six years old and pretty pleased with myself for having done so. There, hanging on a hanger from the dresser, was a PURPLE SKATING DRESS! It was glorious! I scrambled into it as fast as I could, insisted that we go skating IMMEDIATELY, and my pops took me to the Sun Valley Mall skating rink, and I think I went zipping around the rink a thousand times (wobbling is probably more like it), and then went to a restaurant that was in an old train car (my favorite restaurant) and had an eclair for lunch (my favorite food) and wouldn't take off the fabulous purple skating dress for days. SO wonderful. As my dad reminded me in a birthday email this morning, Dylan Thomas wrote, "The memories of childhood are without order and without end," and so they are, and I cherish them all. Nearly thirty years later (gulp), it just gets better and better every years. Here's to life!
Peace,
M
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