yes, it really happened

Amitabh Bachchan came to town for the red-carpet premiere of The Great Gatsby at Lincoln Center. Tickets were invitation only, but quite a few of his fans went to the red carpet to support him. I head that we made so much noise that the media initially thought DiCaprio had arrived. Some of the "EF" ("Extended Family," the fan group from his blog) arranged three meet-ups with him, and I was in one of the Saturday groups. It was only ten of us, sitting in a circle with him in a meeting room at the Carlyle (where he was staying). He spent about half an hour or forty-five minutes with us, mostly answering questions. Then everyone got pictures taken and autographs signed, and gave him all kinds of gifts. (I made him a turquoise bracelet, and an agate-and-carnelian necklace for Jaya, who was in the city but not at the meet.

It was nice to meet some of the other EF. Rochelle and I were the only white girls there, and most of the rest were men. Everyone was quite lovely. Some had traveled from Atlanta, Rhode Island, Florida.

Amitabh was quite friendly and pleasant. It didn't occur to me until later, though, that he didn't ask anyone about themselves. I think he truly loves his fans but in an abstract way; he requires the ego boost, but has no intention of having particular friends among the fans. There are some he recognizes and knows of, those who comment on the blog and tweet with him every day. I've been somewhat absent over the past months, but quite a few of the EF knew who I was. I don't believe there are any other "Jennifers" in the crowd, and I certainly don't look like any of the others. He did pause in his recent blogs to say how much he appreciated seeing us all. We're a mirror where he sees what he likes. Still, it was no small thing to have met him, and it was nice that he created a relaxed atmosphere. Most of us were quite nervous beforehand.

The rest of my life goes well, busy. I passed two years at my job and got a nice raise. I'm traveling a little this month - to Jannah's over Memorial Day weekend, and the weekend after, to Philadelphia to see a staged reading of a play my father wrote. My uncle arranged the whole Philly thing, and is paying for our train fare and hotel. Joyce and Joe are also coming, which is really nice.

It turns out that one of the EF, Nimmi, lives in Yardley, so we'll keep a lookout for each other at the Memorial Day parade, although Jannah is not fond of Indian women. (She says all of their husbands beat them, and they permit it. She has certain views that I do not share, to say the least.)

It's going to be nice to get away. And I'm taking vacation the first week in July, just to have a break, and to take advantage of July 4 - one week's vacation for only four vacation days.

The bad news is that I have another bad trigger finger, and am seeing the doctor on Wednesday. The treatment for the thumb and pinky is usually a cortisone shot (which worked well on my pinky), but this one is a middle finger and I'm afraid it may require surgery. Bummer. I'm drawing a blank on any pain associated with the last surgery, but I sure do remember wearing the little brace and going for six weeks of OT (occupational therapy).

I've been back at making jewelry of late - had some repairs to do, and a few commissions, and I'm starting to gear up for the November crafts fair. The last one was so successful that we're doing it again.I gave myself six months last year, and the same this year. I had pretty much laid off for a few months after the holidays, but I'm really enjoying it again, although keeping wire and headpins stocked is tricky.I can easily use 60 headpins in a "fringe" necklace, so buying 100 doesn't even last two projects. I'm using only silver-filled pins now, and moving to silver-filled wire. I want to stay with sterling clasps as much as possible but am looking into filled and plated as well. Even though I'm charging healthy prices ($75 each for the two fringe necklaces I'm making), the cost of silver is pretty frightening. Even with the silver-filled wire, I'm measuring the pieces I cut, rather than just eyeballing them. Fortunately, I still have a LOT of beads, and a decent stock of earwires. I'm also using a little more gold-filled, since I have some sitting around and it's a nice look for earrings. Chain is a problem because there just isn't a lot of nice silver-filled chain around. I bought a foot-and-a-half of sterling chain for $23 some months back, and I'm totally hoarding it. The days of lavish silver chain-based bracelets and necklaces are a dim memory. I do still have plenty of shorter bits of silver chain for earrings, and I'll just have to wait for better silver-filled chain to come along.

That nice piece of sterling chain will probably become a necklace, dripping with some larimar nuggets I changed to find at a very good price. Larimar is obscenely expensive. I have a couple dozen faceted larimar beads I've been holding on to for dear life. I own a very few pieces myself: a small cab in a silver bracelet I bought in St. Croix in the 90s; a big pendant given to me by an old boyfriend in the 80s (he has family in the Dominican Republic, which is the only place larimar is found). And I have a pair of big heart-shaped stud earrings that my stepmother was nice enough to bring me from the Caribbean when she and my dad were on a cruise.

Well, the bad finger is nagging me, so it's time to relax a bit. I worked until eight tonight, so I'll have to finish the second necklace tomorrow night (it only needs about an hour). I was planning to ask the hand doctor to try cortisone, but I'm starting to think it's going to be surgery. The finger aches all the way down to my palm.

sad about Richie

I was asked in the middle 90s to interview Richie Havens for an EPK for Bill Perry's first album. (An EPK, Electronic Press Kit, was a video that was played in record stores to promote an album.) Bill had played guitar with Richie before starting his solo career. I had interviewed Bill for a national magazine, and his manager asked me to interview Richie. We did the interview at a blues club, Manny's Car Wash, which was kind of an unusual venue for a video interview, which may be why Richie remembered me when I ran into him some months ago. He was a very, very nice man, and a great talent. I've met an awful lot of musicians in my day, some famous and some not, but only a handful had that deep sweetness, and Richie was one of them. And now he's gone.

I never saw that EPK - don't even know if it was completed and used. Bill's manager was kind of a slippery guy. He also managed Johnny Winter, and kept saying he wanted me to interview Johnny, and then called it off numerous times, always with fishy excuses. (Strangely, I hadn't asked for the interview - the manager had offered.)

Bill Perry was a great guitarist and singer, but a little wild around the edges. He died young, sadly.

No one stays the same, no one is safe from the passage of time. We fall away from each other without realizing it, and suddenly it's been years, decades. I don't feel old, but I'm constantly reminded that I've been around for a good chunk of time. I hope I've affected people in some good ways, but it's out of my hands and I may never know.

hatin' on technology

My phone was lost on the subway a couple of weeks ago. I had it insured, but i still had to pay a $125 co-pay. The replacement they sent me was defective. It turned itself off, screens went black, I had to touch an app several times to get it to open (which it did slowly), but sometimes apps just turned themselves on. I kept getting an notification that said "Service Denied." So I took it to Metro PCS (my carrier), who said that the insurance company, Asurion, had sent me a defective phone. The rep used the word "horrible" to describe it.

I tried to file a new claim online, and they wouldn't accept it. I tried to resume my old claim and they wouldn't accept it. So I pressed "Contact Us" and got a phone number which was supposedly Metro, but was actually Asurion. I spent ten minutes explaining the problem, and was then transferred to a tech guy, and explained the whole thing all over again. He made me "factory reset" it and then said they'd send another phone in one or two days. So now I have my phone without my apps or contacts.

The person at Metro had told me that Asurion is the only company that insures cell phones, "so they can do whatever they want." I looked online, and they have a pretty crappy reputation; they send out a lot of bad replacement phones. So we'll see.

Verizon is also on my shit list, since they had a service outage near my office and we were without internet all day. Didn't have it this morning, either, so I called them and they said the router had to be reset, so they walked me through it and I had internet again. But then the wi-fi was out in the office. Another call to Verizon.

Apart from consumer tech, I'm still having a problem with people spamming the comments on this blog. I have no freakin' idea how to stop it, except maybe not to accept comments at all.

Other than that...work is super-busy. We have a big conference on Saturday, and I did all kinds of drawing up mailing lists and mailings and emailings and contacting people and the like. Then I made the mistake of saying I wanted to go to the conference; the honoree is speaking on addiction as self-medication, which sounds pretty interesting to me. So somehow, I ended up having to coordinate all of the volunteers and all of the stuff that has to go to the event hall and having to be there at 8:30 AM, instead of 10 when the conference starts. I really wouldn't have minded if I've gotten these responsibilities earlier, because some of the organizers fell down on the job and I spent a lot of today having to find and buy a podium and a microphone system - the latter of which is way beyond my competence. How did no one ask me about this earlier? And exactly who is going to take care of the work I'm supposed to be doing?

I've been cranky all day. Just plain cranky.

Good news? well, I'm going to Jannah's over Memorial Day weekend, maybe my fifth year in a row. Surely something to look forward to.

Judy also hired me to do a little outside work, editing some articles to submit to a journal. I'm enjoying the work since it's something I'm really good at; I feel powerful when I do it.

The weather's getting warmer and I'm looking forward to getting into my warm-weather clothes. I am so sick of my winter clothes. I open the closet and gaze at the pretty dresses I'm going to get to wear. After I get paid Monday: pedicure! get ready for sandals!

I've been rewatching tv series on Netflix, now that I can wi-fi it into the tv. Nip/Tuck was a guilty pleasure, but I just finished seven seasons of The West Wing last night, and I'm really going to miss it. Smart, engaging show with great actors and great characters. Hard to let go of them.

I've discovered an app called Podkicker. Never really listened to podcasts before, but this is an easy way to do it. I'm partial to Stuff You Should Know and Stuff You Missed in History Class. And The Bowery Boys (NYC history). I like to go to sleep with it, even more than Pandora.

the picture of Ginger Rogers

In case I neglected to mention it...I probably didn't. It always seems premature when I say I'm writing a book, because I've never finished one yet. I start, and never continue.

So, I'm writing a book. It's a memoir, told in little chunks, and I'm getting the feeling it won't go father than age 20, if that much.

Anyway, I was writing about how my father wallpapered the bathroom in old Playbill covers, and how I was struck by the picture of Ginger Rogers in Hello Dolly. Rather than picturing her as Dolly, they used an older picture of her which was absolutely stunning, not movie-star glam but wholesome and lovely.

After I finished writing the section, I did a web search, out of curiosity, to see if I could find the image, which I haven't seen in forty years. And here it is:











Astonishing.

now we're talking tablet

After consulting with Tamsir, Cnet, Ebay, and a cheap-computer site called cowboom.com, I've decided that if I'm going to buy a new device, it should probably be a tablet. I was really sold on the Nexus 7, but too many consumers said that the screen break very easily. So I decided that a used Galaxy Tab was the way to go, 7", 8.9", 10.1", 8 or 16 gig storage - whatever was affordable. Cowboom had a lot of decent used goods but most were without chargers or manuals, though they did have cheap warranties. Ebay's prices were a little steep compared to Cowboom. And then I walked into an electronics store near my office, where they have the Galaxy Tab 7, 8 GB, refurb, for $175 - complete with all accessories, 90 day store warranty, and one-year manufacturer's warranty. It's also the kind of place where I can probably walk in with $150 cash and make a deal. So all I'd need to do is buy a case.

For Valentine's Day, Barry is going to give me some money toward the purchase, so I will have a decent chunk of money left over from the $200 I allocated, even after buying a case. I believe I will buy myself a bottle of cologne, and some other girl things like new eyeshadow primer and re-up on the Phillip Thomas Roth face bar I love so much.

Hey, stupid spammers! Blogger is BLOCKING YOU - your comments are not being posted to this blog. So why don't you leave me the hell alone?

Oh...and I wrote four pages of my book tonight. When I complained to my analyst about not being able to focus my creative energy, and mentioned that I'd always wanted to write a book, she said, "Why don't you go ahead and do it?" After some more thinking aloud, I decided on a memoir. After thinking about it for a week, I decided to go with little segments on particular topics, more or less chronological. Three sections into it, about an hour's work, it wasn't really painful and I think I'll go back to it.

I used to meet with my favorite writing teacher, the late Bill Decker, and tell him all kinds of story ideas. He'd say, "Write it. It doesn't exist until you write it, and you can't make it any better until you do."

PILES of spam

It seems this blog has somehow become a target for lots of spam comments - typically an off-topic comment on an old entry, ending with, "hey, come see my website" and a link. Blogger seems to have the good sense to segregate and not publish them.

Why anyone should hit on my blog is a total mystery. I have a teeny-weeny readership, and my topics are not terribly sexy.

The spammers are totally screwing up my stats. Stats say I had 60 hits yesterday on a two-year-old post. I know those were spamaroos, not a big group of people suddenly fascinated by whatever the topic was, my getting this job almost two years ago or whatever. Sigh. I wish they were real readers. No one's left me a real comment since I said I disliked fantasy books.

ebooks and ebook readers

My Kindle 3 finally croaked, after about three years. The Kindle was my constant companion, always in my purse for a subway ride or a wait at a doctor's office. And if I finished a book in mid-trip, there was always another one.

What's been tiding me over for the past week or so is an app called Cool Reader that I downloaded to my smartphone. Cool Reader has the benefit of reading both epub (Nook) and mobi (Kindle) formats.

It's probably no great secret that like movies and music, I download a lot of ebooks without paying for them. I've only hinted at it in this blog, because I find it a little embarrassing and am afraid of being judged harshly. Plus, it's not legal. But I don't begin to have the means to feed my book, music and movie habits, and libraries very often don't have what I want, except for books; I do occasionally reserve new books, though I confess I hate lugging around a hardcover after mostly using my ultra-light Kindle.

Amazon offered me discounts on a couple of refurbed Kindle Touches, both discontinued models with ads, for $74 and $104.

I figured that if I was going to spend that kind of money, maybe I should do more investigating and shopping.

I started to think about tablets - in particular, about getting an Android tablet onto which I could download Cool Reader. The Nexus 7 sounded really good, but a lot of users complained about the easily cracked screen.

Then I realized that I really don't need most of what a tablet offers. I don't really need a device to web-browse or send email; I can do it with my phone, although frankly the time I would want to use it is on the subway, which is a no-go. I have computer access at home and at work, and that seems to be plenty.

What I really wanted was something to read books and maybe watch movies - something for subway rides, bus trips, train trips, and waiting rooms. So, back to ebook readers.

Ebay had a lot of used Kindle readers, the plain-jane kind I had and the Touch, for very cheap prices. But then I was stuck with the epub/mobi problem. I've made some use of this online converter for epub to mobi, but it only converts one book at a time. So I took another look at Calibre. I had downloaded it some time ago, found it a hassle, and removed it. But it now seems a lot more powerful and user-friendly. It also will download and convert newspapers and magazines, which made me think again about getting a color device.

I looked into the movie formats the Kindle Fire plays, which is basically one proprietary software (V8 or something), and mp4. Most of my movies are in avi. But that online converter will convert video to mp4.

So I believe the solution is going to be a used Kindle Fire, Calibre, and the online converter for movies. Friday is payday. I had allocated $200 for a new reader, which will be way more than I need for a used first-gen Fire. Any excess money will most likely go to some new cologne, since I am entirely out of any of the good brands I like to wear (Bellodgia, Coco, Mitsouko, Rush). And maybe, you know, some makeup and nail polish. I love stretching a buck for everyday luxuries.

And for those of you who also enjoy stretching a buck, the bittorrent client I use to keep myself fully stocked in entertainment material is Vuze. Some of the bittorrent tech is over my head, but I've managed to figure out how to do what I need - well, want - to do.