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and a little spinning thrown in. I'll be at RabbitEARS, giving a spinning demo and gabbing about books. I might even read a little from the as-yet-unpublished memoir. You should come!

Details here.  It is POSSIBLE I'll have an ARC of the next book to give away….

Amy Singer (Knitty.com) was in town from Toronto and came over for dinner tonight!.Nathania Apple brought her, and we had a GREAT time. I realized as they were almost at the house that I could have used the dinner as an excuse to invite all the local knittas to hang at Chez Hehu, but I didn't think of it in time, so I got Amy and her uke-magic all to myself. (Selfish and lucky at the same time.)

After dinner, we broke out the ukes for a little music. My fingers hurt now, but this is what we got (with a couple of outtakes — I like the one at the end the best — it cracks me up HARD every time):

Mad World.

EDITED TO ADD:

So you wanna play the uke? Dude, it's easy. Really. It's so EASY and super cheap to try out.

1. Get a ukulele. It's fun to start with a Mahalo — buy one HERE for $21, fun colors. It's an inexpensive little uke, and you can beat it up and it still holds it tuning really well. Great starter uke.

2. When you get it, tune it. How? OH SO EASY: Go here for an online tuner. Don't be scared of all that stuff on the page, just hit the buttons under each string (where it says G C E A) and just turn the pegs until each string makes the same sound.

3. Learn some basic chords — good, simple video HERE. With C, G, A, and F you can play about a million songs, and with some more simple chords, you can play EVERYTHING.

4. Or don't learn the basics, just start learning songs! Sit with your uke and search around on Youtube, watching tutorials, playing along. I like this one to start out with.

It's Tuesday now — you could be playing by Friday night! Or today, if you live in a place with a store that sells ukes! (Guitar Center often carries the Mahalo, too.)

 

I like it. I make interesting discoveries ALL THE TIME. Like this one: If I work all day on writing, it's totally okay to take two hours off in the afternoon. With those hours, I can do whatever I'd like. No guilt. Yesterday I went for a run around Lake Merritt with Clara (running you ask? Why, yes, I used to be a runner. I hadn't run for so long that I couldn't find my iPod and I put my bra on backwards. The run itself was great. I'm easing back in slowly, so I'm doing the Couch to 5K again, and in the first week you only run 8 out of 30 minutes; the rest is walking. But I still call it a run, and I can FEEL it today).I also did errands, and just hung out.

And today I used those two hours to take a nap. A lovely, lazy nap, something I wish I could do every day of my life. I'm almost done with the completely delightful DIRTY LIFE: On Farming Food and Love, by Kristin Kimball (a girl from Manhattan who falls for a rather… eccentric farmer and moves to the country to farm — to me she's the female version of Michael Perry — the subtext is  different, but the voice is very similar, a love song to things usually unsung). I read it in bed until I drifted off, listening to the sounds of the high school football field, the ice cream truck, sirens (always sirens in the city). Miss Idaho formed herself to one side, and Waylon (none of the cats except Digit are allowed in the bedroom to sleep at night, but naps are the exception) pressed up against the other.

Lovely. Now I'm rested and refreshed, and I can't decide whether to a) write some more or b) clean up my office, which looks like a tornado hit it. I think, on reflection, I'll do the latter. It's been depressing me, but I've been too busy to fix it. I'd also like to tidy some things in the back yard, put away some things that already got hit with the first rains, but that might be a little ambitious.

It's perfect here today — I think that's why I'm reflective and why I have that fall cleaning urge. It's really, really fall and I want to clean things and buy new pencils and bake a lot. Made delicious banana muffins yesterday, and I think I've eaten six of them today (they were really small, and BOY running gives me an appetite).

And I keep telling myself I will NOT break into the Halloween candy. I believe that resolve will last until six pm. Probably.

Some pics from the trip that I just took off the camera:

Me at the Jane Hotel, again trying to show how impossibly small the room is. That's the whole room there. The mirror makes it look bigger.

Views from the High Line, the old raised train tracks on the West Side that has been turned into a lovely public park.

I love this piece of art at the end of the High Line.

Brownstone and pumpkins.

Church door in Chelsea.

Interior shot of the Jane.

Now, to Organize Things!

to say come see me over at the PensFatales. Today I'm talking about how when I was a kid, I figured out how to stop World War III. Really.

My friend Janine just gave me this from her Vogue magazine. I am putting it on our fridge. I can't help it.

 

Oiled up and ready to go. What makes this even more funny is that he has a Sponge Bob tattoo. And one that says shameless. And EVEN BETTER? It's actually Marc Jacobs. And I believe it's a serious ad. From HuffPo.

I, for one, will remember this fragrance when I see it in the store.

I'm in New York. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you're . . . well, you're aware of that. I find it impossible not to tweet when I'm alone on an adventure, and this, although it's only begun, is that.

I started the trip by downloading Sophie Littlefield's BANISHED, released today. Now, y'all know Sophie's a friend of mine, blah blah blah, but I was blown away by how hard I fell in love with it. I read it in one fell cross-country swoop, and it allowed me to ignore the elbow of the tall man sitting next to me. Her characters are stunningly real, the action at times shocking (Hailey can not only heal but bring the dead back to life — if she dares), and the emotion (a Sophie-specialty) is visceral. I loved the story, and I can't recommend it highly enough (even if YA isn't normally your thing, this probably IS).

Then I got off the plane and dove into the nearest cab. I know there are other ways of getting to the city, but I was in a hurry. I only had a couple of hours before the sun went down, and I had to do some wandering.

I'm staying in the West Village at the Jane Hotel. And I do think it's the coolest place I've ever stayed. While a large part of the thrill is being here by myself, I regret that Lala isn't here to see this (though we'd need a larger room). I regret that Bethany and Christy aren't here (especially Bethany — this is HER kind of place to the teeth — check her blog to see proof). I regret that the whole hotel isn't full of everyone I care about.

Check it out: It's a pod hotel. What that means is that the rooms are small, cabin-style (shared bathrooms, which are very nice and clean — they even provide you a robe and slippers so you can walk down there!). I have the smallest (and I swear that this is if not my room, then my room is EXACTLY like this one) and most inexpensive cabin:

(Katie Sokoler/Gothamist)

I've decided, after much consideration, that this room is the size of a King bed. If you include the 6inch deep shelf at the end, perhaps a California King. I can touch both walls with my arms outstretched (and did, several times, just for fun). But IT IS NINETY FIVE DOLLARS. In New York, that's practically free. There is room under the bed for one suitcase (you could NOT have two very skinny people in here if they both had a suitcase). You'd be hard-pressed to have one person fit in here if she brought two suitcases.

But it is AWESOME. And did I mention the price? And in the West Village (bordering Greenwich Village)? Dude.

I walked around a while after I checked in (not in the room, that wouldn't take long) in the area, down Jane to Greenwich, then wandered Hudson and Bleecker…. I had the best cheap burger at the Corner Bistro and sat watching the world go by outside, in the warm wind as leaves struggled to fall, while everyone and her brother walked their dogs.

After a drink and an accidental trip-and-fall into Magnolia Bakery, I wandered back to the Jane, where I found the bar.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

The whole hotel is like this (survivors of the Titanic stayed here — they even had a memorial service here), but the bar is the MOST like this — it's as if I'm staying in the Haunted Mansion. Or the Tower of Terror. Only SO MUCH BETTER because it's not Disney, it's real. (Okay, it's fake-ish real. Redone real. But I don't care. I'll buy it.)

I'm right now sitting in this room, above. Only it's dark, only lit by candles and wall-sconces. And I'm the only one in it, at almost 8pm. And strangely, they're playing Tina Turner and Michael Jackson. (Really, no problem with that.)

More photos HERE. (The desk help really dresses like that. I can only imagine the maids do, too. Should I be ashamed for loving it so much? Probably. But the martinis are good, as is the music, and I'm going to bed early in a cheap awesome hotel in a great location, and I'm stoked.)

And when I go to bed (actually, as soon as I finish this post and get out my Kindle and relax in front of the fire with my dirty martini), I'll be reading ASH, which is breathtaking (Cinderella with a fairy-tale GLBT twist). I didn't mean to go on a young-adult kick — I just seem to be there. And I'm loving it. Tomorrow will be a work day, and then more fun. I'll keep you posted.