I'm finally back in California - yay. I spent the day in New York, alternating between working, packing, and procrastinating. I managed to grab my first and last 'real' New York bagel of the trip, which was quite tasty; the lox cream cheese spread was admittedly more delicious than any lox cream cheese spread I've had before, but I thought the bagel would have been better toasted (which the bagel place apparently does not do, as it considers toasting to be an abomination). After the bagel, I went to the UPS store and bought a box, went back to the apartment to pack the box full of books, and then shipped the box to myself. I probably could have come close to making the weight work in my bags, but it would have been dicey, and I likely would have had to carry on far more weight than I wanted to schlep around Newark and San Francisco. Thus relieved of both my burden and my worries, I went to a coffee shop and worked for a couple of hours over a latte before returning to Ritu's to clean up, finish packing, and catch my ride to the airport.
I grossly overestimated the amount of time it would take to get to Newark at rush hour, and so I was at the airport two and a half hours before my scheduled departure time. That meant that I could 'enjoy' a sit-down meal, which turned out to be mildly disgusting; I should have stuck to McDonald's rather than the airport's attempt at a diner. I also got to indulge in some extreme people watching, particularly being bemused/horrified by a couple who appeared to have one of the worst relationships I've ever seen in terms of their ability to communicate with each other. Sadly, this continued on the plane near me, since the woman was seated in first class and the man was sitting behind me in coach (only three rows away from first class). After she came back to harangue him about something and held up boarding, she went back to her seat, but she called him at least twice before phones had to be shut off to tell him that there were empty seats in first and that he should move up to be with her. He rightly pointed out that the seats would fill up and that it wasn't going to happen, but if I were him, I would have happily spent six hours in coach to not be subjected to her ridiculousness.
sssanyway, the flight was uneventful, and I read all of THE IRON KING by Julie Tagawa. It was one of the free books I got at the conference and won a Rita for best young adult romance, and had been sitting on my vague to-be-read list for quite some time, so I finally picked it up. I was interested in it mostly because it has a first-person teenage heroine on a quest, which is sort of what I'm considering for zee gargoyle series, and so it was good to read it and pick up on some of the pros and cons of choosing first-person narrative for that kind of book. I wouldn't say that I adored it, but perhaps I'm just not all that into the faery world, and it was in some ways too similar to WICKED LOVELY, which was also about the faeries and the Winter and Summer Courts, etc., and which I didn't particularly love either. But, if I had to read one of them again, THE IRON KING would win hands down, and I intend to read the next book of the series (unlike the WICKED LOVELY series, which I abandoned immediately).
After arriving in San Francisco, I gathered my bags and was picked up by Adit, which was v. lovely of him since it was close to midnight when I got out of the airport. Less lovely was that he regifted me the catfish pillow that has now survived over a decade of abuse; his mother apparently stuffed it in his car when the car was shipped to California, and Adit immediately decided to thrust it back upon me. It will have to go into the storage room downstairs again until I find the appropriate home for it, but after all it's been through, I can't really turn it loose into the wild (and by that I mean the dumpster). But now that I'm back in my lovely apartment and in my pajamas, I should really get some sleep - goodnight!
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