I had my first B-list celebrity sighting since being in New York. I was on 34th and 7th, on my way to the last two H&Ms on my list, when I saw Christian Finnegan best known to me as one of the funny people on VH1's Best Week Ever. He had a suitcase and was probably coming from Penn Station. He looked bewildered and was moving slowly. He also looked thinner than I remembered.
I went to the central branch of NYPL today (42nd and 5th) for my library student insider's tour. Wow, their reading room is amazing. Really breathtaking. And the reading room for rare books and manuscripts is also quite charming. It looks the way a library should look or at least the way old, rich, white men in 20th century New York thought it should look which is to say it probably looks a lot like the libraries in England.
I also got to see the underground stacks and by underground I mean beneath Bryant Park. It's seven floors below and something like the size of a football field. Very impressive. Bill showed me a handwritten copy of George Washington's Farewell Address and on the first floor of the library, there was an exhibit of Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence. That was really something.
The whole visit, however, was made extra special when I bought myself a Scrabble charm. I just about died when I saw it. Also picked up a copy of The New York Times Brainbuilder Crosswords book and a charming little mechanical pencil that looks like half of a genuine pencil.