Once again, I have proven myself to be horrible at updating. I've gone on a lot of daytrips this past month: to Savage Mill, to Edgar Allen Poe's house and gravesite (that was amazing), to see the new Harry Potter movie... For the Fourth of July my parents and brother came down, and we watched fireworks over the harbor from the deck of a Civil War-era warship. It's all been a lot of fun.

Work has been good. I'm still working on that restaurant guide, along with Kristen. We're also working on a survey on people's reasons for being vegetarian. I had no idea how much work goes behind doing something like that. Kristen started it before she came here, a week before me, and we're still not done contacting people, let alone putting the results into a readable format.

I'm also reviewing products for our magazine's Veggie Bits section. Kristen and I made curry for the staff using sauces from the company I am reviewing now. It was delicious! One of the best parts of this job is getting so much good food. My coworker Jeannie got some new meat analogues from Heather Mills (literally--she met her at a conference), and we spent two days dining on fishsticks, hamburgers, hot dogs, and bacon. They all tasted amazing, and it was a great opportunity to have vegetarian food that I can't find easily in rural Ohio.

This weekend we're going to Washington D.C. for the Taking Action for Animals conference. I'm very excited. We'll be staying with my friend KK (who is interning there) so we can stay longer and do some sightseeing. It will be wonderful to see KK again, and I can't wait to tour yet another city this summer!

Last BEA entry, and catch-up

There's not too much to write about Sunday, or maybe I've waited to long to write it down. I got more books signed: Persian Dreams by Maryam Tabibzadeh, The Last Aloha by Gaellen Quinn, Worst Nightmares by Shane Bryant, and Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink (I got the last one just wandering through the floor. One of Michelle's helpers stopped me and asked "Do you like YA novels?'' I was like "Yes!" so she handed me the book and told me to get in line for the signing. It looks good--I'm excited to start it).

We handed out the last of the Vegetarian Journals and I picked up a Qu'ran from the booth across from us. Then it was time to tear down. We donated our leftover books to a charity whose name I forget that helps people with HIV. It was a worthy cause and it certainly beat carrying them back to the parking garage.

We got Indian takeout and carried all of our supplies back to the car. I had done so much walking and standing that I could no longer feel my legs, so the walk wasn't quite as painful as the original walk to the conference center. (After reading my earlier entries, my bosses asked me to point out that we did take the subway a few times. And we did. But we also walked for miles and miles. I am quite proud of my unexpected endurance.)

Since BEA, I've settled into my duties at the office. I've had one tiny little paragraph already published here (see the bottom of the entry--the Rachael who wrote the main article is not me), which I was asked to write when I explained how our vegetarian club at ONU began. I've also written a longer article that has not yet been published, and I'm working on others. I'll write a little bit more about my specific duties in another post.

Last Saturday, Kristen (the other intern) and I went to a craft festival and Baltimore's Gay Pride Parade. Both were fun, although it was horribly hot and humid, and we were dressed for rain (the storms that were supposed to hit all day went away the moment we stepped on the bus). In between the festival and the parade we grabbed lunch at Red Emma's, a vegan anarchist bookstore and cafe. I am so glad that I took an internship with a somewhat alternative group. Where else would I get introduced to so many different subcultures? I have to admit, I wasn't impressed with the food there, but it was still an experience. Not quite as much of an experience as the Pride parade, but when you put all three stops together, it was quite an eventful day.

By the way, the vegan ice cream shop we went to in New York City was Lula's Sweet Apothecary. I highly recommend the place, even if you're not vegan (but especially if you are). While I'm recommending things, I am halfway through Holly Black's The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. It comes out in Febuary 2010, and if you are a fantasy fan, you must pick it up. These are some of the best short fantasy stories I have ever read. I am now a diehard Holly Black fan, and I only wish I had known how awesome she was when I met her, so I could tell her that she was awesome.

BEA Day 3

The first thing I did on Saturday was get a book signed by James Van Praagh. He did not pass along any messages for me from the other side.

I also very nearly got to meet R. L. Stine, to get a book signed for my boss's son, as one of my menial internly duties. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for the son, he managed to get the kid in to meet the author himself. R. L. Stine and the other really big names had ticketed lines, which were free but you had to sign up early. The boy was ecstatic about meeting him, which was cool. I wish I had gotten to meet one of my favorite authors at that age.

By Saturday, I was getting the hang of this BEA thing. I spent most of the time hanging out at the booth with the VRG people talking to random passersby about vegetarianism and occasionally pointing someone wanting to do business in my boss's direction (I can't talk about business deals that aren't complete yet, but this year's BEA landed VRG some exciting contacts--I don't know if it's always like this, but it was pretty cool). Whenever my feet stopped hurting or a cool signing opened up I'd go take a walk. I loved looking at the other booths and seeing what books or items they had on display. I carried around a little notebook where I wrote down the names of all the interesting titles. Most of them aren't published yet, which is great for my wallet because I might forget by the time they come out.

On one of these walks I stopped to get My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent. It's a story about a teenage banshee. I haven't opened this book yet, but I love it already just because it's about a banshee. Who writes about banshees? Awesome people, that's who. I was standing in line between two people who were having a conversation over my head. One of them apologized for it to me, and somehow that led into a conversation about the food at the conference (gross and overpriced). I pointed to my name tag and said how awful it was for the vegans in my group. It turned out she was a vegetarian! Her name is Sharon, and she was at the BEA because she has a book-review blog, Sharon Loves Books and Cats. You should check out her blog, because she's cool and she discussed YA books with me while I was suffering from some serious fiction deprivation. Sharon and I got our books signed, and then I took her back to our booth so she could pick up some of our materials.

There were a surprising number of vegetarian-themed books being signed at the show. The most exciting (and the only one I picked up) was Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. She is the author of Veganomicon and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. In other words, she is the Goddess of vegan baking. And she made cookies for the signing. I ate a cookie baked by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. You know you're jealous.

After the show closed for the night, L took us out for Indian food. Up until this point, the only Indian food I had ever had were my university's samosas and the stuff I got at Whole Foods on Thursday. I was pretty excited to try it, because everyone I know who eats Indian loves it. (At this point, I'm sure all the people from home who are reading this are like "Who is this person and what did she do to Rachael?" I didn't go all the way to Baltimore and New York with a vegetarian group to be picky. If it makes you feel any better--Rachel--, I have a loaf of bread in the cupboard that I am forcing down my throat because it turns out that even in Baltimore I don't like bread.) Anyway, I was not disappointed. I let them know that I was leery about spicy food, but I went ahead and tried this onion thing that everyone was avoiding and it wasn't that spicy! Even for my new adventurous-eater self, it's a bit disconcerting to be liking food that other people won't touch. Maybe an alien has taken over my body. I've been craving Indian food ever since. A couple of days ago I went to Googlemaps to look up Indian restaurants near my home. Imagine a circle. Imagine my house at the center of this circle. The radius is about forty-five minutes to an hour drive. That's where all the Indian restaurants were, in clusters at the diameter of the circle and beyond. I live in Indian no-man's-land. This does not surprise me one bit, and of course it explains very well why I have never tried this cuisine before.

Just typing this is making me hungry. I should end this post now, so I can sleep and dream about Indian food.

BEA Day 2

Before I talk about my second day in NYC, I'm going to jump ahead a couple of days and say what I've been doing. I forgot to ask the relevant people permission to use their names in this blog, so please forgive my liberal use of initials here.

Our wonderful coworker J has been helping the other intern (K) and I get acclimated. On Thursday, she took us to a vegan potluck held in somebody's apartment. K came over to my place and we cooked vegetarian chili in my landlord's kitchen. My landlord and his other tenant hung out for a while and it was like a little party. And K knows how to cook--the chili was delicious!

The potluck was fun. It was interesting to see the type of people that showed up; they were all a little alternative, which was fun. In the places where I have lived, there's always that one person who dresses differently and stands out as being super alternative. In this group, my t-shirt and jeans stood out. The best dish there was the host's samosa scramble, which was made with Trader Joe's Samosa Burgers (I must find these) and scrambled tofu. It sounds weird, but it was to die for. And she just made it up on a whim when she'd been eating a burger that morning and was trying to decide what to make. I wish I could be that creative with food.

The next day J took us to a boutique that was having some kind of promotion involving vegan desserts. The food was good, but the boutique was too expensive for me.

Today, we went on a home and garden tour. I had never been inside a townhouse before, but I just expected them to be kind of tiny and run down. I was completely shocked at how much room there are in those places, and how beautifully you can decorate them. I can't even describe how nice the insides of some of these homes were. Some were based on the antique feel of the homes, and some were super-modern. And all these people managed to do wonderful things with the very small spaces they had for gardening. I've decided that when I am rich, I am going to live like this.

After the tour, we went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for baba ghanoush and vegan pizza. I've never had baba ghanoush before--it was very tasty.

Now back to New York... Friday was actually the first day of the show. My main task for the VRG was to pass out free copies of the Vegetarian Journal. Two non-Baltimore members of the VRG showed up to help out--I'll call them L and D. L is a physician with a nutrition degree who lives in NYC. D is a former dietetic intern who just finished the last of her schooling to become a nutritionist. They were both very interesting to talk to.

One of the cool things about the BEA is the fact that a lot of the publishers bring their authors along to promote new books. There were some really famous people there--Julie Andrews and Neil Gaiman are two who come to mind. Most of the books given out are not yet in stores; some of them haven't even finished being proofed by the editors or having covers designed. It's pretty neat to see the in-progress version of a book. I got one of these coverless books from fantasy author Holly Black: her short story collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. I also got Revelations by Melissa de la Cruz (who told me she "could always tell" when someone was a vampire fan on a day when I could not have looked less like one--I think the fact that I was getting her book was the clue) and Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr (who has awesome purple highlights in her hair).

I did some walking (the convention was huge! I was glad that I had been warned to wear comfortable shoes), but wasn't really sure what to do with myself that first day. Apart from meeting the authors, I had the most fun just sitting and chatting at the booth. The most interesting business-related thing that happened that day was when we were approached by a representative of a major bookstore chain, who are starting a new vegan section in their stores. When I hear names like Barnes and Noble or Borders I always just see a logo in my head and think that everything that goes on there just works like machinery--you publish a book and it goes in the store. It was really cool to see the people working behind the names and find out how they decide to put books in their stores.

After the show was over we went to a tiny Middle Eastern place for falafal, which I had never had before. The sandwich was a little difficult to eat, but I loved it. I fear that it is going to be very difficult to go back to rural Ohio and not have all of these ethnic foods so easily available after this experience. After the falafal we walked to a vegan ice cream parlor, which makes its ice cream out of nuts--I think it was cashew. It was the most dairy-like vegan ice cream I have ever had. It was so creamy, and they even had soft serve! I can't remember the name of this one either, but I promise I'll come back and list all the names after I ask someone.

After another day full of walking, we headed back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep.

BEA Day 1

Sorry it took me so long to post. I didn't have a computer in New York. The first thing I did after getting back to Baltimore was to turn on my laptop, only to discover that the house's wireless had mysteriously broken while I was gone. It's all fixed now, though, which is probably good because I didn't have time to link this blog to everyone I wanted to before I left. Sorry if you're just coming upon this now!

My New York trip will take a couple of entries to write up. It was very eventful and I didn't get a moment's rest. Kind of like a certain high school choir field trip, except without the stomach flu plague.

We left early Thursday morning. The group consisted of the other intern, my boss, his wife (who is also a director and author in the organization), and their 11-year-old son. I was sitting next to the son, who watched The Golden Compass on his portable DVD player during the ride. I've been avoiding that movie because of all the horrible reviews it got, and was surprised to see that they didn't butcher the book that badly. I mean, they did butcher it, but I was expecting way worse. It wasn't torture to watch.

We parked almost immediately after getting out of the tunnel, and then my boss proceeded to empty out the trunk. When I visit places like this with my family, we usually park at the hotel (when we went to NYC, our hotel was in New Jersey), and then take public transportation to get where we need to go, especially if we have stuff to carry. We are not city people. These were city people. In fact, they had both lived in New York City, and they were used to walking. So we walked, carrying (or pushing, in the case of the dolly of books) all of the supplies we needed to set up the booth. I wasn't carrying as much as some, but I felt pretty accomplished after we got there.

We each got nametags that said we belonged at the show. We were warned that these were very expensive pieces of paper and to not lose them under any circumstances. We set up our booth, which was in the aisle of small presses (the VRG self-publishes all of their materials).

I should pause here to explain what BookExpo America is. I'll probably get some of this wrong (as a disclaimer, I may get a lot of things I write further on wrong, because I learned all of this in three days of crazyness), but from what I understand, it's a trade show for the publishing industry. The main participants are publishing companies, who are looking for new books, trying to advertise their current stock, and networking. There are also distributors, who handle getting books to the booksellers (I think. I'm a little unclear on the distributing part of this equation). They're there looking for new clients. There are some authors hoping for publicity and a chance for a company to pick up their book(s). And other various groups, such as booksellers and the press. This year they were spotlighting new media, and there were quite a few bloggers there.

Like I said, we were in the small press aisle. We were next to and across from two people trying to get someone to take on their self-published books. We were also across from an Islamic publishing company who were passing out free Qur'ans. They were pretty awesome. On our right was this company: Man Love Romance (link is safe for work, unless you work in a very conservative place. Or if you don't want your coworkers wondering about you). They were hilarious, because despite the vaguely pornographic setup they had going at their booth, the women and man working it were totally down to earth and normal. They were even dressed in business clothes. On the second day, they gave away Twizzlers. It was completely bizarre.

Farther down the aisle were remainders sellers. This was the first thing I saw when I walked into the show floor, and I nearly died of joy, because there were just books everywhere. Books! I was at a professional conference about books! What cooler place could I possibly be? Anyway, I soon discovered that the remainders section wasn't really the most exciting part of the conference. You know those discount books you find at the dollar store or in that one corner of your local Borders? The ones that occasionally contain a treasure, but are mostly just a bunch of themed cookbooks and educational children's books? Well, they don't start off as discount books. When books don't sell, they go the remainders (who I believe are separate companies from the publishers), who take them to shows like the BEA and put cheap price tags on them. But instead of buying one for $3, you buy a hundred for... whatever is cheap for a hundred books. I don't remember. We looked through the remainders for vegan cookbooks, because our company would have bought that, but they didn't have any.

The show didn't start until Friday, so after we set up we walked back to our car to get our bags for the hotel. I had a large duffel bag, plus my little purse/backpack. I assumed the hotel was nearby. It was, if by "nearby" you're speaking in New Yorker. If I have the right parking garage on the Googlemap I just made, it was a fifteen minute walk, which sounds about right. Fifteen minutes, in the heat, carrying heavy bags. And have I mentioned that I have tendinitis in both hands? It's healing, but this trip tested that. I was incredibly proud that I made it without having to stop.

Being a party full of vegans (and one vegetarian, me), we were thrilled that our hotel was right next to a Whole Foods. The other intern wanted to visit, so she and I walked down there and were even more thrilled that they served hot food. I was drooling over the samosas, so I got that and she convinced me to try a few other Indian dishes. It was something like $7.00 for pound, and I managed to get enough food to fill me up for $4.00. And it was all delicious.

Later that evening the whole party walked down to Chinatown for dinner. We went to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant that I unfortunately don't remember the name of and decided to share a few dishes. For the vegetable dish, we got watercress, which was pretty good. We decided to get two mock meats: chicken chow fun and A Sam fish. The chow fun was delicious and the mock chicken was excellent. The fish was interesting. It had a crunchy seaweed outside, which everyone else liked. I couldn't break it apart with my chopsticks, so I mostly ignored it. All of the long-time vegans at the table were totally grossed out by the texture inside the "fish," which was surprisingly realistic (the texture, not the taste). I had no problem with that and just wished it was a little fishier (it just tasted like the sauce it was cooked in). Apparently I'm a bad vegetarian. For dessert, we had soy ice cream and tofu cheesecake. Both were good. After this meal, I came to the conclusion that I need to take vegans with me whenever I dine out, because they know where the good food is. I think the rest of the trip went on to prove me right.

After we left the restaurant, we went on a long walk through Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village (I may be combining another day into this, but wherever I went, trust me when I say it was a long walk). It was fascinating, because as I said, my boss and his wife lived in the city and knew how to give a good tour. In Little Italy we ran into a random street fair. We had a sad moment where we discovered that all the funnel cakes were fried in animal fat and therefore not for us. But then a very random and very tiny Italian marching band walked through the fair, which distracted us from the disappointment.

Eventually we made our way back to the hotel, exhausted from all the walking. If only I knew how much walking there was to come.

I'm moved in and have worked for two days. I'm finally awake enough to update this blog.

I didn't actually explain what I'm doing in the last entry, so I'll get to that now. I have a writing internship with the Vegetarian Resource Group. They're a nonprofit organization that publishes books, a magazine, and pamphlets/brochures. They also do outreach and offer college scholarships to vegetarian teens who have done vegetarian outreach in their communities.

I have a varied list of jobs. Right now I'm helping put together a survey, writing a couple of articles, and helping to update the group's vegetarian restaurant guide. The last task involves looking at a lot of delicious menus and makes me really hungry. Tomorrow I'm going to New York City for BookExpo America. It's going to be awesome.

The people I work with are amazing. They're all really nice and very knowledgeable. I think I'm going to learn a lot here. I was a little worried when I was deciding whether or not to accept this internship, because I wasn't sure that it would help me career-wise. But on my first day here my boss explained the pros and cons of each type of publisher and gave me the names of a couple of writing or publishing contacts he has so that I can gather advice from them on building my career. The BookExpo is also going to be good for building contacts.

I need to finish getting ready for New York, so I'll cut this post off here. I probably won't be able to post again until next week after I get back.

I've arrived!

My parents drove me to Baltimore today. It was a five and a half hour drive from Youngstown. We're spending the night in a hotel before I move into my new place. We spent some time in the Inner Harbor listening to an Army band sing and looking at the closed doors on all the attractions. Sunday evenings aren't the best time to be a tourist, apparently. But it was fun just to be in a new place.

Not much more to report today. My first day of work is Tuesday. On Thursday, we're heading off to New York City for Book Expo America.