I'm slowly recovering from zee romance conference. It will be several more days before my feet recover, and I can only hope that they will recover before Chandlord and I go to Germany and walk them to death. But, I had a 'lie-in' this morning, as they say in Britain, and I took a nap this afternoon, so I'm feeling a bit closer to normal.
My roommate left this morning around eight a.m., and so I bid her adieu before crawling back into my lovely bed. But, I made it out the door by noon so that I could do something other than sit in the hotel. I didn't make it far; I was starving, and I ended up back at the Irish gastropub where I had lunch a few days ago since it made a delish shepherds pie and the decor was perfect for brainstorming. I spent a couple of hours there writing some notes for a series that I'm considering developing; it's not the young adult series, but rather an idea that my agent and I discussed last week and that I wanted to spend some time thinking about before the idea faded too badly. The problem right now is that my ideas are outpacing my production, so I'm going to have to hit the productivity much, much harder (realistically it won't happen until I get back from Germany, although I'll have to leave Chandlord to her own devices occasionally so that I can continue brainstorming/working). But, the idea I was playing with today was interesting, even though it's too early in the process to share it with anyone, so at least I felt mildly productive this afternoon.
After lunch, I spent a couple of hours at the Discovery Times Square building, where I toured an exhibit on Pompeii. They had a ton of artifacts, art, and plaster casts of dead people from the eruption of Vesuvius, and it was utterly haunting and memorable. As you may know, when the city was overcome by the volcano, people were buried under twelve feet of ash and rock. The debris settled and cooled around the bodies, which eventually rotted away, leaving hollow spaces in the rock where the bodies used to be. Some smarty-pants archaeologist in the late 1800s (when they were starting to be legitimate archaeologists rather than glorified grave robbers and cultural thieves) realized that he could pour plaster into the spaces and then break away the rock, making a cast of the bodies. Some of the casts are amazingly lifelike, capturing people, dogs, pigs, etc., in the moment of their death. Crazy stuff, and I was the crazy girl standing off to the side taking copious notes as visions and stories exploded in my head. Pompeii now has something to do with my young adult series, and I think I figured out a piece of the puzzle that I was missing about what the obstacles, goals, and stakes are for my heroine, so this was an excellent research stop.
I came back to my hotel after finishing with the exhibit, my mind still reeling from all the visions, and caught up with some mundanities like paying my bills and answering some email before taking a nap. Then, I took a quick shower and ventured out of Times Square (finally!) to meet the original Jen Lui for dinner in the East Village. We went to Lil Frankie's, an Italian place that served as out of this world mozzarella burrata (fresh mozzarella filled with mozzarella and cream), and I had a delicious spinach and ricotta ravioli as well. I hadn't seen Jen since Tolu's wedding last summer, so we had much to catch up on, and we continued the conversation during a stroll through the East Village (and one block of projects, which we realized rather belatedly while listening to a dude scream at someone during our entire walk down that street). We stopped again at Saint's Alp Teahouse and lingered over pearl milk tea (sans pearls) until after ten p.m. Then, Jen saw me safely to the Times Square subway stop, where I emerged to face the hated, despised throngs of humanity still clogging the streets and being obnoxious and awful (you can tell I'm not really into Times Square).
And now, I should go to bed; I have to pack tomorrow morning, check out of the hotel, and then venture to the northern edge of Manhattan to see the Met's medieval collection at the Cloisters. Yes, I'm a dork. Goodnight!
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