New York City! and ROW80

ew York City! At Christmas!

Er, sort of. I was there the week before Christmas, but it was my first time in NYC in December, and I finally got to see the Rockefeller tree:

Tree from a distance

Tree and skating rink

Other lights

Funny how in real life - as opposed to movies - the skating rink looks so small. But the tree and the lights are lovely, as is the countdown on the Saks Fifth Avenue building. Then it was on to St. Patrick's Cathedral:

Cathedral nave

Creche

Later I wandered through the lobby of another building that had an entire village along the floor space:

Village

Churchill exhibit behind the village

Churchill closeup

Cornerstone bar, which reminded me of the Arctic Monkeys song.

The next morning I visited the New York Public Library, where they had a Dickens exhibit on:

Dickens poster above the steps

Dickens' character used to advertise whisky

I've featured Buchanan whisky on the blog before

Dickens' compass

On Dickens' notebook

Dickens' handwriting!

From there I went to the Morgan Library, where there were many fascinating items. On the way, I saw this:

For some reason, there was a rat.

Samuel Johnson's dictionary! Sausage!

Thomas Hardy on animal welfare

Postcard from Thomas Hardy

A Gutenberg Bible! I stood in front of it for quite some time.

Handwritten letter by Beatrix Potter.

I also took a photo of a handwritten copy of Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat, but it came out all blurry. Mostly because, as usual, I was sneaking a lot of these photographs in, without using a flash. Why oh why isn't photography allowed in museums? All these items are under glass anyway, so what possible difference could it make? The library itself is one to envy:

Morgan library shelves

Books behind radiator cover-like barriers

Morgan's study

Drool...

More books, on levels. More drooling.

Actually, my hotel room had a library too! And there was a cat exhibit at a nearby Barnes and Noble:

Cats!

Saw Seinfeld's black and white cookie at the airport:

Look to the cookie!

Here's the wee aircraft I flew on:

And here are New York's lights from behind the wing:

I miss New York already.

As for ROW80 goals, the editing is going well! I have a clearer idea now of the progress I hope to achieve on Druid's Moon in this round: I'd like to finish editing and write my synopsis before NaNoEdMo in March, during which I'll print it all out and re-edit on paper, before calling it ready for betas. And still querying Out of the Water, with no luck (not that I try very hard. Maybe a couple of agents per month).

Also, I just took the Jeopardy online contestant test. 50 questions, with 15 seconds to type your answer for each. Now that was a panic-filled few minutes. Even stuff you know flies from your head when you're under pressure. I did get the Queequeg question, though, thanks to Joe Hill's BigReadAlong of Moby Dick!

What was the last test you took?