For a good cause!

It’s that time of year when I start begging you for donations for New York Cares Day, in which I will volunteer for the fourth year, and my team will go help out a public school in NYC. Your money goes towards New York Cares, which does a lot of great stuff for the city. I put buttons both for my personal donation page and my team (the amazingly awesome Team Truthiness, a ragtag group of volunteers and friends from all over the city) in the sidebar there, so get to the donating!

But alas, I’m making a post to lament the fact that I never post anymore.

So let it be known that the quick links and things that used to get compiled into quickies posts are mostly winding up on my Twitter, so follow me there for fun and games.

But, here are some things that didn’t make it to the Twitter.

+ Urban Sketches has some really cool drawings of Brooklyn.

+ Here are some women pioneers.

And that’s all she wrote. I am laaame.

If you’re into it, you can now follow me on Twitter.

That’s right, bitches. It’s time to write a novel. This year, I have a nefarious plan to write the most ridiculous suspense novel ever, with way too many characters and a hero who moonlights as a paid assassin. I’m psyched.

I’m volunteering for New York Cares day for the 3rd year in a row. My team, the imitable Team Truthiness, is raising money to support the organization. It’s a good cause, I promise! The past two years, we’ve gone to struggling schools in NYC and helped them with cleaning, painting, library organizing, and other things to make school better for the students.

To learn more about Team Truthiness, visit our website. We’re one of the most successful non-corporate sponsored teams. And we have hats!

If you’d care to donate, and you really should, you can do so by going to my donation page.

2 things:

This artwork about two boys who love the NYC subway is awesome.

As a former employee of the Gap, I can say with some authority that it’s true that a stint there will induce OCD in the sloppiest of people. I spent enough hours board folding when I worked there that I have folding shirts down to a science. It actually took me a long time to cure myself of the habit of folding shirts in stores that were not the one I worked in. So, yes, they are a little crazy about the folding at the Gap, BUT I wouldn’t have it any other way because most Gap stores are very neat. I hate shopping in messy stores.

Now that you’re ruing the day I got a new computer and was suddenly able to post more every day, here are some quickie news items:

+ A friend linked me to the answerto the question, “Why do you encourage fat women to embrace their bodies if fat is unhealthy?” at Shapely Prose. It’s a genius response. Shapely Prose has been duly added to the blogroll.

+ As the daughter of a chemist, I found this dialogue between a child and a chemistry professor to be pretty darn hilarious.

+ Other Things I’m Reading: I spent a good chunk of yesterday reading Margaret Cho’s archives at HuffPo. I’ve seen her live twice, I think. She’s awesome, but you knew that. | I just bought this book at the Strand. It looks really interesting, thirty years of recent New York history. Plus, there’s a photo of my old block in Inwood on page 335, so I am already endeared.

+ Also just bought Lisa Loeb’s recently reissued Purple Tape. Am I the only one still listening to Lisa Loeb? The album is so deliciously early-90s New York, it fits pretty well with the new book.

I was thinking this morning that, when I first started blogging in August 2003, I was thinking that the blog would just sort of be a brain dump, a place for whatever I was thinking about to go. Then I started writing about politics and science, and it kind of evolved from there. If I start writing more often, it might go back to being a hodge podge of whatever, but either way, it’ll be fun, so I hope you stick around for the rejuvenated blog.

Behold, for then God said, Let there be MacBook:

And lo there was increased speed and portability. And then one humble blogger shall writeth with more frequency, from more locations, with more ease. Gone were the days of the eight-pound behemoth PC, gone were the Windows. Alas, there was no Vista to look over, but the future was bright.

Clearing out some items I had saved to write about:

1. Here’s a disheartening Gawker post from last week about a 26-year-old unmarried who fears she’ll grow up to be a cougar. She says, “I am literally a part of the Facebook group ‘My Friends Are All Getting Married And I’m Just Getting Drunk.’” Classy. Well, gee. I’m almost 28 and I’m single. Then again, if cougars are the new spinsters, I guess that’s not all bad, since they still get to have sex with attractive younger men, no? I think the first comment wins: “I’m 25, unmarried, and worried about turning into a werewolf.”

2. Gothamist had an interesting story about a house in Victorian Flatbush. We got culture in the BK.

3. I want to write about this at length more, but just to get the link up, Courtney at Feministing has a post up about calling my generation narcissists.

4. The Library of Congress has a Flickr!

Resolution: To find more blogging time!

I have lately been reading a lot of author blogs, and I like this idea of writing about writing, so you might see more of that soon. I’ve got a lot of disparate threads of novels in the works right now: a romance novel, a suspense thriller, a big sprawling mainstream fiction epic, a couple of historical things.

Maybe I’ll also talk about politics. (This is likely. Look, Edwards is leading in Iowa. Yay!) Maybe I’ll talk about pets or knitting. (For example, my page-a-day calendar tells me today that the first mass-published knitting patterns first appeared in women’s magazines in 1840.)

Anyway, I hope to actually, you know, maintain the blog this year. Stay tuned.