Weekend Wrap-Up

This has been a really nice weekend. Not only was I able to be a bit of a social butterfly around the Boston area, it has been an amazingly productive weekend (read: no kids!). The rain has finally given way to 60 degree weather and a bit of sun. Hurray!

I'm wrote this at Starbucks. Unfortunately, Wifi was down so I'm posting after the fact.

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I should mention that I had a rotten night of sleep on Friday, which led to me watching the movie The Bodyguard until 3:30 a.m. I mean, how many times has The Bodyguard been on since 1992? Totally my fault for watching the movie, but that made Saturday all the better.

Decided to forgive myself for watching an-awesomely-bad-it's-sooo-good flick and enjoy what was a very wet day. I hung out with my girlfriend Suzie. We ate and shopped all day. I even bought a winter coat—very slimming, indeed!

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Later, after more eating, we went to the Somerville News Writers Festival. Last year the event was held in an old V.A. hall, I believe, so the move this year to Arts at the Armory, a community space in Somerville, was a welcomed change.

Hosts Tim Gager and Doug Holder keep everyone on track with time. But it was clear than that all of the authors were happy to be there. Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish came in from another reading. Rick Moody, author of Garden State and (one of my favorite books) The Ice Storm, came in from New York to read. And Margot Livesey read her wonderful work. There were a few no-shows, most notably John Buffalo Mailer, playwright and son of Norman Mailer, who couldn't be there because he was called back to Hollywood, as the story goes, to work on the rewrites for Wall Street II.

Anyhoo … The highlight of the night for me was getting a copy of Steve Almond's new book This Won't Take but a Minute, Honey. He's written several books including Candy Freak and My Life in Heavy Metal, but the new title he has self published. And get this … no ISBN. For those not familiar with ISBNs, that's the unique code given to a book. The number makes it easy to track. In general, bookstore are reluctant to sell titles without ISBNs.

The book itself is a smaller trim size It's about 60 pages of essays and stories. In fact, the essays and stories are separate. So if you're reading stories, you have to flip the book upside down to read the essays. I like that. (Sorry for the lousy photo. Doesn't do the cover justice.)

With I had more time to chat with him because I'm completely fascinated with this approach. I'm always looking at innovative approaches writers use to get their work in front of an audience.

All in all, it was a really great day.

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As for today, I have been an organizational queen, making my lists (there are three) and checking them twice. It's rare that I knock off 10 tasks in a day but I'm almost done. Woo hoo! That left plenty of time to hang with the kids. Gave us plenty of time for them to help me make the meatballs for my spaghetti sauce. Yummy!

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This weekend I lived deliberately. I was in the moment and it felt great. Now, if I can only apply this sensibility to the rest of my week.