It's unbelievable:  Almost impossible these days to find a room in NYC for under $200!  I recommend:

• This 10/12 NYTimes article:  http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/7-manhattan-hotel-rooms-for-150-more-or-less/

• Colonial House Inn, W. 22nd in Chelsea. Near the HighLine, the Flatiron Building, and a pretty decent branch of Grand Sichuan.

A little pricier, but perfect:

• Your own small, charming apartment on the Upper West Side, Country Inn the City.  We used to stay there before we moved here. He prefers longer stays (3 nights & more) - but check out the Last-MInute-Specials; you can always ask.  [ETA:   Because of new annoying anti-B&B laws in NYC, you can now stay here only 30+ days at a time.  This is very, very sad & bad. More info (and a petition to object) here: http://www.staynyc.org/getinvolved.htm  ]

• Around the corner from it, the Beacon Hotel.  It's gotten a facelift since the funky days we stayed there, but you gotta love the kitchenettes, with Fairway & West Side Market across the street!  Suites w/2 rooms w/foldout couches a good deal for families. Near Lincoln Center, Nat. Hist. Museum, Artie's Deli.

Your suggestions?

Someone just asked, and here's what I wrote back:

Fantasy of Manners refers to work with its roots in the social comedy of writers like Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and Georgette Heyer, rather than the heroic and mythic tales that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien and his followers.  It is usually, though not always, urban rather than rural.

There is, of course, a lot more I could say on the subject - I was, after all, Present at the Creation (of the Theory & Nomenclature, not just the lit. - and I hope someday some grad student does right by us all.  I am willing to serve if called.

Delia's feeling much better - and therefore, so am I!  Last night is the first time in over a week that I was silly on the internet.  (That's how we know.)  And what do I do with this precious frivolity?  Why, find a guy on Tumblr who I think looks like Alec Campion, of course!

Sheesh.

Here are the two photocollages I've found already of him.  (I intend to make one more, from this sequence.)

He is Lucian Clifforth, a 19-year-old Australian who sounds kinda geeky, in a nice way.  If he can act, he'd be perfect - but they'd better hurry up with that Swordspoint movie; they don't stay scrawny & raw forever!

I have passed on all your good wishes to Delia.  They bring a nice color to her cheeks.  Thank you.

**ETA:  I've now got a Tumblr tag: Casting Riverside Books - to which I shall add others.

I don't post here often enough anymore.  Here is an expanded version of my latest from Facebook.  Because it deserves to be remembered.  And I bet that you have stories of your own.  I'd love to hear them.

Kind of an extraordinary day. Woke early to the manhunt on the radio.  Was glued to TV in the morning, needing to see photos of my old Watertown stomping grounds in extremis - as I wrote earlier this morning:

Watertown, Cambridge . . . . I was stunned to wake up this morning to the news of so many streets and neighborhoods I know well & love in Boston area being at the epicenter of all this. I'm watching on TV, just to get a glimpse of Watertown Mall, the diner on Mt. Auburn St.... As with Copley Square on Tuesday, they look just the same as they did when they were part of my boring, normal life for so many years there working there for WGBH-FM. A friend in Watertown says she's had a SWAT team go through her apt.! I was living in Somerville (Porter Square) the day the planes hit NYC on 9/11. I felt such a need to come be with my Other City! Now, I am with you, Boston.

Tried to get office work I'm behind on done, mostly succeeded only in making lists before I had to leave to meet my friend Joel Derfner in E. Village coffeeshop.  (We met online - no, really! - as fans of each other's work.  I love his book Swish.  We talked about his new project, and it was deeply satisfying.) I had my annual malted milkshake & a few of his french fries.

Twitter revealed that Neil Gaiman was nearby, so we arranged to meet up & walk through SoHo to his 7pm gig near Washington Square, stopping at an ice cream truck where he treated me handsomely.  (Gotta say his hazelnut was better than my pistachio - and I know this because he was equally generous in letting me have a taste.) Talked about Life - walk not nearly long enough.

After dropping Neil successfully off (and thus, I hope, redeeming the time I got utterly lost in Boston about a million years ago & made both him & Dave McKean horribly late to their signing!  First & only time I've met McK - deliberate??), I hastened to the Rubin Museum to meet Delia so we could see Janis Ian perform at an intimate concert there [part of their series called NAKED SOUL: Unplugged but totally Connected] which I highly recommend!].  But first I had a plate of Brussels Sprouts in their lounge, Delia having already eaten all the salmon.

Janis told stories and answered questions and sang songs in a compelling  . . . Then D&I went upstairs & looked at Tibetan art of gods and saints and monsters, came back down to hug & chat with Janis (whom we got to know through the SF community - what a lovely woman she is! and a voracious reader), stopped in at Loehman's on the way home because it was open at 9:30 at night and how could I not? and bought Useful Things, got on the subway and now we're home and am I still a little jazzed?

Uh, yeah.

Would love a nice, peaceful weekend, but that will have to wait til Sunday - tomorrow is a birthday lunch, a few hours' heavy labor with our new office assistant, and then dinner w/Charles Vess, who's visiting to do an event at Books of Wonder.

I will say it's keeping us nice & distracted and away from brooding overmuch on this week's upcoming surgery (4/24) - which we are SO ready to have be done already!!!!!!  So. Very. Ready.

Many thanks for all your good wishes for Delia.  I'll keep you posted.

Well, this is. . . interesting.  For many weeks, now, the plan has been for Delia to have foot surgery (for a complicated bunion) this Thursday (carefully planned so that she'll be merely limping around by Wiscon, and fully fit when we head down to Roanoke to teach at Hollins U. all summer - for some reason, the notion of hobbling around the leafy campus on crutches did not appeal to her).

But now we're waiting for test results on another part of her body entirely, and, depending on what they are, she'll either be fine, or have to have entirely different surgery, probably later this month, with a quite different recovery trajectory.  (Please don't worry; either way, she'll be fine! I love modern medicine.)

Hoping for results on Monday.  But for the next three days, I'll be living in a world with two very different branching futures.

Either way, I suspect I'll be doing most of the shopping.