Bookish Journal #9: That Thing You Do

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here in New York City. We’ve encountered spring weather, and then winter and rainy, and now back to 90 degree summer heat today.Pietro is currently putting together a space station of a cat litter box while I type this, but he would be mad that I’m revealing how domestic he is. I hope the cats like their new poop box because it cost a fortune and is the size of an R2 unit.

Two weeks ago my friend Nate from California spent a week here on the east coast. I took him to great New York attractions such as Shake Shack, the bridge from Spider-Man 3 and the finale scene of Avengers- both in Central Park, FAO Schwartz toy store, Rockefeller Center, Times Square and more. The best part was that we got frozen chocolate bananas from an Arrested Development Banana Stand in Columbus Circle! We also caught a showing of the Broadway hit musical “The Book Of Mormon” which was exceedingly offensive and very well done. Nate is one of my dearest Twitter friends and we met at SDCC a few years ago. He has a great big beard and understands my obscure movie references in normal conversation.

A day after Nate left the best of the best, Angela, then came to stay with me for a night. It was the last Liverpool football match of the season and we wanted to watch it at the Liverpool bar downtown. She

Angela ^

brought Pietro and I jerseys to wear and we drank beer at 10 in the morning, singing along with other fans when our team won.

Angela left Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon my other long time friend from Twitter, Dawson, came to stay. Dawson is from Missouri and we met over three years ago when he came to visit for New York Comic Con. Over a weekend of crazy Cosplaying, a ridiculous MTV party, and riding the Path train drunk- we became great friends. He only stayed for a few nights and we spent our time wandering Central Park, watching movies, and creating a website dedicated to terrible marketing. As one does.

And then, a few days later, Alyssa also came to visit New York! Known as @Instalyssa on Twitter, she is one of the very first people I became friends with on Twitter over four years ago and we finally met after all this time. I was able to show her ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and take her to the restaurant from the movie, Café Lalo, for some delectable dessert.

For someone as quiet as myself, this was more social interaction that I get in two months! No, but really it was great seeing so many of my favorite people. I’ve also picked up a ton of books about Hemingway lately. I read The Paris Wife, which is a fiction bestseller about Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson and it was a brilliant read. I highly recommend it. I’m also in the middle of a few other books including The Hemingway Women and The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn is Hemingway’s third wife, and my personal role model. I’ve never really had one before, besides Jo March from Little Women, but she’s a fictional character. I’ll write more about Gellhorn in the future.

In short, life is good my friends, and I hope you are all doing well too.