Books n flicks

My first week as just Special Projects Editor is over and so far, so good. It is an almost out of body experience to watch someone else do my job of the past three and a half years. Wow, it really is a full-time job, I said as I did the second job I have been doing at the time, namely the special projects.

We had a wicked downpour on Thursday night/Friday morning and regina and I woke to find a small flood in the basement. Let's just say we had some puddles and a small hole with water streaming out. Not a trickle -- actual force and volume, like you turned on the faucet half-way. We bailed and laid out towels and fired up the wet-dry vac. The filter was so old it couldn't handle the force of the water being sucked in so we went to a pair of Home Depots for a new filter. Once afixed, the sucking commenced.

Watched more of the second Season of The Office (US). It's very well done and is getting more wonderful with each episode. They soften Pam's bofriend from a thuggish lout to sweet if thoughtless loser. Dwight Shrute is a wonder and the actor Rainn Wilson was born tomplay this overbearing psycho who will ruin everyone's life once he is promoted to any position of power.

I am reading Low Life, a survey of old New York from the 1840s until the 1930s. NYC was, in short, a magnicently dirty and dangerous place to live. This isn't your father's Henry James novel. In fact, I bought this book of of Amazon with Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. Not a gilded age in the pages of Low Life.

The other morning, I cashed in some pounds at Grand Central and I laid the book on the counter. The guy behind the counter looked at the cover and said, "Low Life, eh? Is it about George Bush?"

Everyone's a critic.