I’ll be back to regular posting in another day or two. I’m finishing up a writing a project and I’ve been busy at work, too.

New York was swell and so was the blogging panel. It was good to meet Maud, Sarah, Adam the Technorati mastermind, and Michael Cader the purveyor of Lunch. And it never hurts to have Ron Hogan show up at a lit blogging panel, since he asks good questions and summarizes things better than I ever could, since I spent so much time trying not to be like Cindy Brady in that one episode where she goes on a quiz show and gets mesmerized by the red light.

My friend Michael and I had a drink at the Algonquin, though for some reason I’m compelled to say that we didn’t go there on purpose and we didn’t eat the Dorothy Parker hamburger. And the fact that I can’t think of a witty joke to go with “Dorothy Parker hamburger” feels like a slight personal failure, but oh well.

I also got a little lost on the subway. I remembered that this is not the same thing as this. I guessed a lot and managed to overshoot my destination stop only twice�once in each direction.

I’m a little exhausted now. But it’s a short week, right? Good.

Remember this? It’s been six months since that news segment aired with its vague reference to “experts” who said blogging was “not quite mainstream yet” but to “give it six months.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hoping these experts would come out and hold a press conference declaring BLOGGING MAINSTREAM! and open to the public like a big, blathery theme park.)

Sadly, I am not a Local Affiliate Fox News Expert at all, but I will be on this panel on Thursday, along with a couple of my favorite literary bloggers and other esteemed folks, and I have a feeling the discourse is going to be on a somewhat higher level than… well, this.

(It’s open to the public. Stop by if you’re in NYC. I’ll be in town through Saturday night.)

From reading the slush pile at work I can testify that at least one person in the world has come up with an idea for a picture book about how to blow your own nose and someone else has thought up one to explain why Mom has PMS. I don’t quite buy this notion that there ought to be a children’s book for every occasion, issue, fact of life, or philosophy, but all the same I’m kind of tickled that It’s Just a Plant has become fully realized. This is my favorite page:

   “Marijuana,” smiled her mom, “is a plant.”
   “What kind of plant?” said Jackie.
   “Well,” said Mom, “That story might take all night for me to tell you. How about we go on a bicycle ride tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about it? Have you ever looked at a bicycle wheel spinning for like, a really long time, until it looks like it’s not spinning at all, except it is, and maybe that’s how it is with the earth, you know, the planet, because it spins way faster than that but you can’t even tell, right, because it’s really, um, big and stuff, and oh man, wait a second, you know how sometimes you can’t find things in your house, like when you have a sandwich, and you put it down somewhere and you can’t find it again, and yeah, it’s like that. Hey, are you hungry? Isn’t it weird how plants eat but you never see them do it?”

(A lot of typos, though. You’d think some copyeditor would be willing to proofread in exchange for an eighth.)

The you-know-what has an Amazon listing now. I believe this happened in the past week, because I have been just that compulsive enough about checking Amazon. Up until recently, searching on the words I’m Not the New Me brought up the title He’s Just Not That Into You. While this was highly distressing I wonder if this weird little keyword phenomenon has its benefits, and whether my own book might get a little boost by the monstrous popularity of this other book just by way of that Not. Dude, NOT is hot. I bet NOT will be the new legs. I hope to make the most of this mutual Not-ness.

Also, I got a galley copy yesterday and I made sure to see if my name was spelled correctly (it is). I have to say that seeing it for the first time felt a lot like the day they’d hand out the class pictures in grade school and you’d get the envelope and the big 8X10 portrait was right on top. Yep.

In this weblog I don’t tend to link to things related to charitable causes or my job. (One of these is an oversight and the other is in the interest of staying professional.) That said, you all need to know about Robert’s Snow, which is an online auction of wooden snowflakes painted by some of the best children’s book illustrators working today (and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of them, too). The art is cool and the proceeds go to cancer research. Check it out.