Flea Market in the Heights

Michael Kraiger and I made another attempt to sell off the trade paperbacks we had found in our office storage space last year. 

We didn't succeed, but we got a little spending money. 

Which is good, because I'm a freelancer and I get paid when the gibbous moon shows up aligned with the top of the tallest building on the park in a rural neighborhood in an English-speaking part of Kuala Lumpur. Or something like that. Something entirely random and not appreciably in sync with when my bills arrive. 

Staying Warm

"My mom makes quilts all the time," Michael Kraiger has said to me several times.

Finally one day I said, "Would your mom make a quilt for me?"

He asked her and she cut me a deal. I make her a bag. She makes me a quilt.

I'm going to have to make an amazing bag, huh?

Moving House

Right after I got back from Mexico, I saw this strange thing in the park across the street from my house.

What the hell? It looked like a squirrel eating a squirrel. Or with a very strange mouth.

I watched for a while. This was a Mama Squirrel moving her babies from one next to another. She'd run up the tree on one side of the walk, grab a baby, then run down, across the walk, and up the other tree. 

At one point, she glared at me and unleashed a string of obscenities. 

A man walked down the walk right as she approached. I stopped him, alarmed. 

"What?"

"Squirrel." 

He probably thought I was a lunatic. 

Promotional Materials

Now that I don't have an actual office in Manhattan anymore, I've had to think about setting up my home office in a more useful way. Plus, I've started dragging my old comic book reference material out of the garage.

I bought a new bookcase over the weekend. It's a cheap IKEA one and matches the other cheap IKEA one I bought in 2007.

Today I assembled the bookcase (yes, it was slightly annoying, but what do you expect when it comes in a box?) and set it up. I pulled all the books off the old bookcase and rearranged.

And look what fell out! A time capsule from 1988 or so.

Amazon Author Central

I made an Amazon Author page in...2005? No...couldn't be. Could it? But I think I was in my little apartment on Ggaba Road near Kabalagala, outside Kampala, so it must have been.

I promptly did not update it until yesterday.

It's not very exciting, but here it is:

https://www.amazon.com/author/mariejavins.

Home Is Where the OHOTMU Is

Before I was completely immersed in the world of Thor, I was solidly buried in Captain America.

I'm editing this prose novel written by my old friend Larry Hama. I've known him since January of 1988 when he'd stop by the Epic intern's desk (mine) to help me do the daily NYTimes crossword puzzle. He wrote a little comic book called Wolverine and another one called G.I. something. Maybe you've heard of one of those.

Larry wrote a highly entertaining, tight, and atmospheric novel last year, and after I read it, I became determined to get him onto one of the Marvel prose novels I've been working on with my colleagues Stuart, Jeff, and Axel. I was a little annoying about it, even, until Stuart agreed to read chapters from Larry's novel.

I can't share a preview with you, so you can't read it yet, but I can tell you this much. Larry asked me a question about SHIELD's gear the other day, and neither of us were able to locate what we needed online or on Marvel's digital archive. So I headed over to my garage to dig out some things I nearly threw away a few years ago, some things I never expected to need again, as recently as a few years ago.

Freelance editing and writing for Marvel isn't a turn I expected at this point in my life. But it fits better than gloves or old shoes. It fits like home.

Me on PBS

The documentary on the company I worked for from 2006 to this past July is up this week streaming on PBS.

Check it out here.  I'm not sure how long it's up so don't dawdle.

I'm at 12:47, 32:50, 39:08, and 46:58. I'm either the voice-of-reason or should have been fired for not being gung-ho enough. I'm pretty sure it's the former, but I did something similar on the BBC a few years back, so I probably should have known better.

I am not capable of lying on a recording I know will be around long after whatever it is I'm being interviewed about has disappeared. This is what we know about me. The filmmaker worked it in nicely as a way to ground the concept a bit.

Mexico: How To Marie-Style

Welcome to another installation in "How does she do this if she is not filthy rich."

Though if you've been here a while, you probably already know from your own experience that the whole "Travel is expensive" thing is a sham perpetrated by people selling advertising in their publications. Travel is only expensive if you buy into the notion that hotels should be $100-300 a night or more, and that you should fork over endless huge amounts of money for things you'd buy at home for normal prices.

We all know I don't have a job at the moment. I'm not unemployed. I'm overemployed. But I'm freelance. So you might be wondering how I could do this, but the truth is, by going to Mexico, I spent LESS than staying home for that time.

-I used American Airlines frequent flyer miles (mostly collected on my Aadvantage Mastercard) to fly from Dulles (near where I was visiting my mother) to Queretaro, the nearest airport to San Miguel de Allende. Normally, I'd have had to fly to much-cheaper Mexico City, but on miles, you fly by zones, so smaller, pricier airports use the same number of points as larger destinations. So I got within an hour of my destination instead of having to take a 3.5 hour bus journey as soon as I landed. There's a shuttle, like SuperShuttle, from the airport to the town. That was $29.

An Unexpected Turn of Events

Back on the Hampton Inn shuttle at the crack of dawn. Back to the airport for another mediocre breakfast of eggs with a side of eggs. Board for Newark. Disembark at Newark, collect luggage, jump on Airtrain, wait ages for train to Newark, switch to PATH train, zip to Grove Street.

Stop at the greengrocer for some delightful berries and lactose-free milk. I've decided I can have berries on my no-sugar plan. I've also decided I'll have lactose-free milk, since lactose has sugar and I am not trying to drive myself nuts, just trying to have as little sugar as possible.

I walk home. The day is stunning. Sunrise was stunning. The brownstone I live in on Hamilton Park is stunning. My apartment looks fantastic—Yancey and his family took great care of my (their) apartment.

Home is so beautiful this time of year. I realize I missed summer here.

But that's okay. I spent a summer in Mexico. I feel incredibly lucky, suddenly, to have had work where I could go abroad so often and even work abroad. To have traveled around the world twice, to have lived in Berlin, Australia, Barcelona, Uganda, Namibia, Kuwait, Cairo, and now San Miguel. To be a working writer/editor with plenty of freelance for the moment.

I stand in front of my building for a moment, grateful for all the opportunities I've had in life. My life has been far from normal and I've spent too much time complaining about being single when the truth is it is wonderful. I'm sure all you married people enjoy your lives too. But there is surely nothing wrong with mine.

I head in, as it clicks.

Being off sugar is making me weird.

Leaving Mexico

Today it was raining in Cancun.

That was all right. I was working in my room until check-out time. And it wasn't just raining—it was alternately pouring and raining. 

Lucky for me, the rain slowed to a drizzle after 11 AM, then stopped completely by around 11:30. 

Time for a break to the bus station, I knew. 

I checked out and pulled my bag across a slightly flooded lot, in between two buildings, and over to Tulum. I didn't want to risk jaywalking with luggage, so I went down to the crosswalk. Or what appears to be a crosswalk. It's really a semi-speedbump where pedestrians take advantage of the slow speeds of vehicles to cross in front of them. 

At the bus station, I approached a counter with the word AEROPUERTO signed above it. I bought a ticket—just a few bucks for what was a small fortune by taxi—and boarded the bus to the airport. 

Where I proceeded to get off at the wrong terminal. It came back to me now. There was the big international terminal, then there was the domestic and Cuba terminal, where you rock up to the desk and buy a visa. 

I got on the shuttle bus to the international terminal. No harm done. I had the most disgusting, expensive lunch I'd had in Mexico, made all the more insulting by the wide variety of food on offer in the food court behind Security. But I'm off sugar, so it was chicken or chicken. 

The flight to Miami was startlingly short, and on arrival, I went out to the curb and used my cell phone to call the Hampton Inn Blue Lagoon for a pick-up. I was able to communicate again! That was nice. And at the hotel, I ordered dinner in from the Cuban restaurant across the street. The hotel was pleasant, but it didn't matter. I was asleep early. Tomorrow I'd get up at the crack of dawn for the flight to Newark.