watching Life on Mars - always such an uplifting show. over the weekend managed to finally get up Bear Mountain. It's a drag that they let cars drive up to the summit - sort of ruins the experience after the hard slog up the Major Welch Trail. the weather was great, the trail was mostly in great condition & the views from the tower were great. I sometimes wish I could just live near a thousand different trailheads & hike every day or at least every weekend. The hike back down was pleasant - aside from the sneaker-clad morons who think going down a mountain via the AT is a good way to take a walk on an afternoon. I saw a few slide down & nearly fall but thankfully (?) no one fell off the mountain. We finished up the hike with a nice long sit by the lake until a scary blond/fat family took over that entire section of lakefront. it's amazing how unaware of their own noise some people are. Sunday was a long-ass haul up to Fort Tryon to take a walk in the rain (!) to look at the river & the pretty flowers and spend the afternoon in the Cloisters cafe writing & reading with the always fabulous MES. Aside from the tourists & the bold little birds who were convinced we had food, it was a perfect place to write - quiet and full of the smells of rain and river and the wonderful gardens.

listening to L7's "shove" - miss that band so much sometimes. just came from dinner w/an old music industry friend. she does food/online stuff now & seems to be doing really well. competes in triathalons and such. sure I misspelled that one but I'm tired. trying to watch Castle but as per usual, it's not really holding my attention. it's just too formulaic. then again, it's network TV. I miss that show with Johnny Lee Miller as the lawyer who sees God. oh well. the new HBO show "Treme" has been pretty disappointing lately - plotless & too focussed on music. not that the music isn't brilliant but I'd rather spend more than 2 minutes with John Goodman acting & less time with the other storylines. if you can even call them storylines. again. it's TV. get over it, right? reading "Birds of America" every night before I go to bed. she's a great writer but the stories in this collection read as a bit formulaic. listening to my new little hi-fi system too. it's 1/16 the size of my old stereo & sounds almost as good. sure is nice to be able to hook my iPod up to something and hear it playing nice and loud. now I just have to figure out what to do with the old stereo...keeping the turntable of course. and then there's all the poetry I've been writing for Nat'l Poetry Month - a poem a day - though I've been averaging about 5 poems a day. some good. some not good. but it's good exercise to get something down on paper every day. at least that's the theory.

finally the saw "The Runaways" on Friday night. Loved the shoes/clothes/music. Not so much the movie. I thought Kristin Stewart & Dakota Fanning did decent jobs (Stewart more than Fanning). And what's-his-name was great as Kim Fowley. Overall though the movie just made me feel old. Really loved those platform shoes though. Saturday had another great workshop @ the Vet Center & then met up with friends to go to the Tartan Day parade. The weather was awesome & the pipe/drums bands were great to see but overall, it was kind of lame. Post-parade we went to a pretentious place called Highlands Bar where the service was good (mostly), the bartenders short & the beer overpriced (not to mention the limited/pretentious section). But the company was great & eventually we headed off to Life Cafe for some real food (as opposed to begging for fancy bread rolls & olives because the kitchen wasn't open @ Highlands). Nothing like sitting with a couple of other long-time New Yorkers talking about "back in the day" & how horrible New York has become in the last 10 years. After that, we stopped by 11 Street bar - an okay place though I wasn't too keen on the reek of cigarette smoke the entire front half of the bar was filled with. Still doing the poem-a-day thing with MES - not sure if any of the poems are any good though hers sure are. Trying to read "Zoli" but not getting very far. Think I need to try one of the other books on the short stack.

85 degrees outside and it's only April 7th. tooth still hurts (or absence thereof). just came from workshopping a story with the fabulous Emily. her story was wonderful. mine? a mess. trying to write about seattle & it's always tough going. had weird dreams about seattle friends the last 2-3 nights & then found out today another seattle fixture's gone. I think there should be a moratorium on young talented people from the PNW dying early. and that's all I'm going to say about that. I'm hoping this story gets itself together enough to be sent out into the world. but who knows. still doing the poem-a-day thing with MES. so far I haven't been able to come up with a happy spring is here poem - just lots of other kinds of poems. MES says they're good & I like a couple of them. maybe enough to send them out too. watching Criminal Minds. it used to be an intelligent crime show. now it's just formulaic torture porn. or maybe I'm just getting old. went to scratcher again tonight - they sure need to get a.c. It was like a sauna in there which made it hard to want to drink anything but cranberry/seltzer/lime over ice. I tried a beer & it tasted like gasoline. hate when that happens. this weekend's the tartan day parade. going with a couple of friends & then maybe we'll try out the Highlands Pub or maybe some place I wanna go (like a midtown dive). too bad St. Andrew's sucks these days. maybe I should write an essay, "when good bars turn bad" - though someone who drinks far more than I do probably already has. * plowing through more mss for BLPress. there's some good writing out there & some not good writing out there. I wish there was more good writing but I guess we can't publish everything, right? onwards. *

monday night. first week of april. and I have a sunburn. granted, it's only on my face but it's still a sunburn. in april. I spent the weekend (post teaching) walking around Central Park all day (very fun & lots of great photo ops) and Sunday, met up with Mimi & did some serious East River walking. They've finished some of the construction (you know that construction that the signs state will be done in 2007) but it's still not open from Houston to just above the Seaport. We hung out at the Seaport for a while watching the tourists. and the water. and the blue sky. and all the teeny tiny crowds of dots that were actually people on the shore in Brooklyn. and then we walked back through the LES along Orchard Street with all the nostalgia & stories that inspired. We stopped somewhere for a drink (still on the cranberry/seltzer/lime kick) and watched the sun move across the sky. Somewhere in there, I stopped at Bond Street Chocolates on 4th street & had a piece of dark chocolate with orange & spices. so good. and the people there? super nice (so not from nyc). Just read through 4 manuscripts - only 2 of which were passable. Some decent enough writing but then just those slides in pretension that so many writers suffer from. Including me. I'm not doing much writing myself this week though I am doing the "poem a day" thing for Nat'l Poetry Month along with MES. It's hard work churning out a poem a day. And no guarantee that any of them are any good. But it's better than doing nothing, right? And now? back to some more bad TV.

just got Ian McEwan's new one "Solar" - hope it'll be better than the new Delillo which was well written and all? just read as really unfinished and of course the only women in the book were not really IN the book. *sigh*

watching Medium for the first time in a long time. it's just not as good as used to be. or maybe it's me. now that I finally have time to watch TV? I can't find anything I want to watch.

doing the whole "poem-a-day" thing with MES. So far that's only 2 poems. neither of which I like very much but oh well. at least it's making me do some poetry. even if it is bad.

but at least it's better than this TV show. I do so like it though when they crank "don't fear the reaper" in the middle of a show. which is why I sometimes actually watch "supernatural."

and now, back to my book. just finishing up Buzz Poole's "I like to keep my troubles on the windy side of Things" which I bought because it's teeny tiny & has really good cover art. oh & it came with a free tote bag.