Tis the Season...
...to do budgets! Long rambling post to follow.
This was the first semi-normal day I've had in weeks. I wasn't working ridiculous hours. I wasn't working all day (like I did yesterday). I had a 9 am conference call, but that was the end of the work I had to do today.
What a great day to not have to work. The weather was fabulous. Real beautiful fall weather. New York City is really at its best during the fall. The crisp weather truly suits it. I met a friend for lunch. We then walked around, heading down to Union Square. We went into the Barnes & Noble, where I was very happy to see that Gregory Maguire had a new novel out. "Son of a Witch" is the sequel to "Wicked", one of my favorite pieces of modern fiction. In fact, with the death of Robertson Davies some 10 years ago, Gregory Maguire has become my favorite modern author. He's an excellent writer and a storyteller both (with the exception of "Lost", which I am willing to consider an anomaly).
Speaking of books, I'm currently struggling through "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed". I normally love Patricia Cornwell, primarily because I do have a morbid fascination with the psychology of serial killers. If I didn't have such a problem dealing with blood and death, I might have become either a forensic pathologist or a profiler. However, this book is just poor. When she actually writes about the scientific evidence tying her suspect to the crimes, it's quite fascinating. However too much of the book is spent in idle speculation. Paraphrasing - "I don't know if Sickert gambled. But I have no reason to believe he did not." If you don't have any evidence on way or the other, why mention it? I suppose the pure scientific evidence (paper samples, writing analysis) wasn't enough to fill a book any publisher would deign to publish. Nonetheless, reading this book has given me an interest in seeing the paintings of Walter Sickert, an artist with whom I was not previously familiar. I understand they are quite grotesque, but I would be interested to see how much they do, in fact, match the murders of Jack the Ripper.
Ha! Falco's "Der Kommissar" just popped up on my iTunes! I love that song. Is it sad that I scoured the web to find an mp3 of it to download? I vastly prefer his German version to the English version performed by After the Fire. "Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?"
So what fun things have you all been up to this weekend?