Ysa Wilce

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

Here are my few pics from this month’s KGB reading, which happened on Wednesday. It was fun, as always.

On Thursday, I also trekked into the city for a Learning Annex class I was taking with my friend Carol, which was also fun, but then end of my evening most decidedly was not. I arrived back in Jersey City, having taken the bus from the Port Authority, only to find my car missing. It seems I parked in front of someone’s driveway, and it was towed. $250 to get it back. Damn it. Worst thing was, this happened after midnight, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The office was right there, and I have a key, but I figured Gordon and wife and child were probably sleeping, so I didn’t want to call or freak them out by walking into their house in the middle of the night. So I called my mom and had her pick me up.

How did you park in front of someone’s driveway and not notice, you might ask. Well, the thing is, in that neighborhood (by the F&SF office), the driveways are practically invisible. There’s no “ramp”; to enter the driveways you have to drive over a regular curb. The curb itself is not painted. Some of the driveways have “No Parking” painted on the road in front of the driveway; this one did not. There are no street signs marking off any of the driveways either. This particular driveway does have a garage there (it’s like the first floor of the house), but it’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.

While in the city, I also picked up the fax machine Ellen Datlow was giving away, and spent some time chatting with her and her visitor, Maura McHugh, one of Ellen’s former Clarion students. I haven’t tried the fax part yet, but it does work great as a copy machine. So at least the evening wasn’t a total loss.