Another office move

This will be a short post today--I worked on my SCBWI Austin speech all afternoon on Saturday, only to decide to scrap it and start over on Sunday after talking it over with the Blue Rose Girls at lunch yesterday (not that they advised me to start over, it was just that talking to them inspired me to refocus the talk). I had been trying to combine my first two ideas from last week, but now I'm going to mainly focus on #2. My talk is tentatively titled "The Realities of Children's Book Publishing." If there's a specific question/topic that you'd like me to cover under this umbrella, feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments section! Thanks so much. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions regarding my talk AND places to go in Austin! I'm hankering for some good mac and cheese.

And now I'll leave you with pictures from my new office. I moved offices yet again on Friday. You may recall that I moved to an office on the atrium in January. I quite liked the office, but the problem was that it was on the other side of the building, away from my department. An office recently opened up back on the children's side of the building, and so I packed up my belongings into boxes yet again and made what I hope will be my final office move. I'm happy to be in my first windowed office! Big time, I tell you.

Here's my empty old office:

I left behind some SERGIO stickers on my window:
And here's the new space (not fully unpacked/organized--I'm planning on hanging my snowflakes from the Robert's snow auction on the pillar!):

And here's the two things I did manage to hang--an original piece of art of FLIGHT OF THE DODO from Peter Brown, and the star with HOPE stamped on it in honor of CALL ME HOPE by Gretchen Olson.

My view from my desk:

Let's hope I don't have to spend any more time in the near future packing and unpacking...

I'm off to China...

Grace and I are going to Beijing and Shanghai with a few friends for about two weeks. I'm leaving for the airport in a few minutes, and since I missed my day to post last week, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to post next week while in China, I thought I'd just drop a quick note.

Grace has made a commitment to herself to post from China every day, so check her personal blog for updates. I'll try to post as much as possible as well from my blog.

And now, I'll leave you with some picture from my new office. As you loyal blog readers know, my company moved into a new building last Spring, and the new building has an internal atrium that's quite cool. My office has a window to the atrium. Anna was visiting a week ago and helped me take a few pictures:

My new space

As promised, here are pics from the new office.

First, the building (picture taken from my coworker Ben's flickr site). Looks like your standard office building, doesn't it?:
And now my space. I have to say, I'm really happy with my windowed cube. Who knew that losing a door but gaining a window would be so nice. It helps that I'm set back from the hallway, so I have a lot of privacy, too.

And it's funny, I unpacked and settled in and had a nice, neat, organized cube, and felt a little at a loss. I couldn't concentrate or remember what I needed to work on. But by the end of the week, I had my piles again and have been productive. It's funny how differently people work, what environments they need.

As for my commute, it's not as enjoyable, but the good thing is that it takes me exactly 30 minutes to walk, whereas my old commute through Central Park took about 35-40 minutes. So at least that's a small consolation. And it's helped that the weather in NY all last week was absolutely gorgeous. And another bright spot--this is my view as I approach the office:

I love the Chrysler building!

One great feature of the new office is that we have a center atrium. I'm not sure when the novelty will wear off, but for now, I'm fascinated with it. You can look across the atrium and see colleages hard at work across the way, you can see into some of the conference rooms, see into the kitchen. Here's another pic taken by Ben:There are also two glass elevators. Here's the view from one of them:

And a view of the atrium from the lobby:

As Annie sings, "I think I'm gonna like it here!"

Last week was unbelievably busy, both with unpacking and settling in, and all the usual meetings and work. I'm hoping this week will be a productive one, and then the following week I'm off to Toronto for the International Reading Association conference. If any of you are going, or live in Toronto, let me know! I'm staying an extra night to see the city, and don't know anyone who lives there, so would love a tour guide or someone to explore with.