Finally got out of the house and did errands--mailed off some Christmas presents. This way I'm ahead of everyone and the presents will sit under the tree until next year.

Did not buy any shoes, but did pick up two books. I found another Laurie Colwin novel and picked up Shutterbabe by Deborah Kogan. I had heard that Shutterbabe is supposed to be a great read, and from the first page I'm hooked. Sadly finished Kitchen Confidential (okay so I've read it before), and am still working my way through the Ben Franklin biography. I started that one with zest and then the author has to go and call Ben Franklin a "kid" at one point and it turned me off. No, the book is lively and well written, but calling a young Ben Franklin a "kid" just doesn't seem to make good literary sense to me. I also have to finish the Egan book I'm reading. One of my big fears in life is that I'll run out of books to read.

ED2010 www.ed2010.com is a New York City based national (and free) organization for journalists. If you sign up for their newsletters you get job "whispers," news and they have all sorts of events. The reason why I'm mentioning them is that they've got a book club and for the new year they're reading Fear and Loathing by Hunter S. Thompson. I've never been to a book club meeting before, but I love HST and think I might join them for this round.

Speaking of the cool and interesting news you get from Ed2010, in my newsletter yesterday they had a link to gawker.com about a picture screw up that happened at Us Weekly. Look at page 72 and you'll see an (ahem) extra body part showing from a male model... "Top Model," a reality show hosted by Tyra Banks, has a photo of a male model on one knee. His raised leg is supposed to conceal the naughty bits, but....A picture is worth a thousand words http://www.gawker.com/archives/balls.jpg


Didn't work on proposal yesterday, will do it tonight. I've got the cover page and I think three lines written. That of course is accompanied by lots of scribbles and the word overview in italics. Ack! I've really got to work on it. There's something about writing a book proposal that sends me into utter panic.

Am off to Park Slope to have lunch with Katie. It's definitely an adventure for moi, as I am pretty clueless about anything and everything to do with Brooklyn. I've got the Manhattanite's view of the outer boroughs---anything that's not Manhattan is just an amorphous mass. I can count on one hand how many times I've been to Queens. I know there's stuff out there (I mean Brooklyn and Queens) and am curious about finding it all, but it's so far away and I might get lost and they don't have St. Bernard dogs to rescue you and, and, and um you get the picture right?