D for Delicious: medium shells + spicy sausage + tomatoes + peas + mascarpone. Sprinkle with parmesan and enjoy with some garlic bread and greens.

V for Victory: after five years of trying to convince Tom he’d like The West Wing, “no really, I think you’re going to dig it, no seriously, it’s amazing,” HE IS SO INTO IT. I am dying of glee.

N for Nasty: okay, universe, I hear you, I am switching to farmer’s market eggs next week.

B for BAMF: Sierra starts teaching today! Dear Sierra, you are a champion of the world, you complete me, please don’t go ’cause I need you now, etc.

P for Pageturner: I think Chris Bohjalian is kind of annoying and manipulative in a Jodi Picoult kind of way, but homeboy knows how to keep me hooked. Before You Know Kindness: another rad subway read.

C for Cyclone: home for the weekend. Coney Island, Next to Normal, and a walk through Central Park.

1. It pretty much feels like summer has packed up her beach bag and headed for home, and while I’m really hoping that’s not the case (we didn’t go to the drive-in yet! And we’ve been loser weasels about having people over to grill) I am kind of digging the opportunity to bust out my new fall jacket. Am thinking it’d look pretty spiffy with these, am I right? I think I’ve made the executive decision to go thrift-only for the rest of my back-to-school clothes, though. Am in the mood to dig.

2. Chicken wing and pizza dinner with Ryan and Aoife last night at their swank new(ish) apartment, complete with zip-up beer cozies and Bob Marley Pandora. Did you know that Bob Marley Pandora is the greatest of all Pandoras? Seriously, try it. You’ll be helping to sing those songs of freedom in no time. Also, question: do you say “cozies” or “coozies”? Popular wisdom tells me that “coozies” is correct but frankly that sounds filthy and I can’t bring myself to say it.

3. A trip to the library this afternoon, plus drinks with a long-lost lady friend and a West Wing marathon with Tom. Yeah, rainy days are good.

4. Oh GOD, this made me cry at my desk this morning. Although to be fair, while it is both beautiful and heartbreaking, it was the second thing that made me cry at my desk this morning, the first having been an NPR segment about Natalie Merchant and how that Lite-FM masterpiece of hers is an anthem for the parents of disabled children, so I don’t know, maybe I’m getting my period.

5. My girl Nikki is doing a triathlon. Go tell her she’s rad.

i didn't take this picture.

Oh my, it is rather deliciously chilly this morning.

It’s the end of summer and I am full of wanderlust and lists. I feel like running three laps around my office. I feel like singing out.

Something is pressing at the limits of my skin.

I’m gonna go hop in some puddles.

“jackie and i want you to pick a show you want to see. i will buy tickets and the three of us will go out next saturday. whatever you want to see is fine with us since you are in the sticks. love you!!”

(love you too, sir.)

And I’ll Keep Being Me: Did anybody else find the twentysomethings article in the Times condescending and vaguely obnoxious? And also weirdly devoid of input from actual twentysomethings? Hey Robyn Marantz Henig, come chill with me in my apartment that my parents don’t pay for; we’ll drink cheap wine and listen to Vampire Weekend like us emerging adults are wont to do and I will tell you about working a nine to five while trying write the Great American Novel, remember all the things I have already forgotten, and figure out what the hell the rest of my life is going to look like.

I actually have a lot more to say about this–about the weirdnesses specific to this particular generation of twentysomethings, about what happens when you’re groomed your whole life to be school-smart and then school ends, about the pressure to find a cool job in an economy with not a lot of cool jobs because so much has already been handed to you–but whatever, those are first-world white-girl problems, and even I don’t want to hear myself talk about them. The whole thing just made me feel like some kind of misunderstood zoo animal slacker with a trust fund, is all, and frankly I don’t even LIKE Vampire Weekend.

Teachable Moment: I learned a good lesson this week about allowing for the possibility of change in people, including myself. I learned it at a bar with a painting of a naked lady in high-heeled slippers on the wall, which means I am not likely to forget it.

Ina Can You Hear Me: I made spring green risotto for dinner last night! I used brocc instead of asparagus, because there was no asparagus at the store and also because I love me some brocc, and it was so delicious that the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning were the leftovers. Dear Ina, I’m sorry I haven’t been using Back to Basics as much as it deserves to be used, and I look forward to many happy evenings together this fall.

Warrior One: I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night. It was very, very violent. Other than that it was nothing at all.

Summer Girls Go: I have lady friends coming tonight! We’re gonna get drunk and play Bananagrams.

From Kate:

You have everything you need. You have fortitude. You have stories. Be quiet, be still, until they slink out from underneath forgotten freight to sniff around your ankles like feral cats.

Never mind the trudge. Everybody trudges. Just keep going. But be sure, as you do, to listen.

One thing about New Orleans was that everything I put in my body was either fried or alcoholic (alligator! shrimp! pimm’s cups! beignets! nachos! slurpees that tasted like Hawaiian punch mixed with gasoline and made it absolutely necessary for me to pass out for three hours in the middle of the day!). Have returned to clean living with a vengeance.

Lunch this week: 2 big handfuls of baby spinach + 1 peach, chopped + feta cheese + walnuts+ a couple of slices of turkey.

And I don’t even need a nap afterwards.

New Orleans, LA, August 2010

The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is actually a pretty good book so far in an “oh hey that just made my commute go by really fast” kind of way, if you can ignore the fact that it was made into a Lifetime movie starring Mona from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. However, I just got to page 159 and have been totally and completely hung up, as if I was a ten-year-old-boy, by the use of the word buttock.

Like, singular.

Actually, the exact phrase she uses is “each hand was full of buttock,” and I’m sorry, but SERIOUSLY WHY DOESN’T LIFETIME WANT TO BUY THE RIGHTS TO MY NOVEL, I WOULD NEVER SAY SOMETHING SO GROSS.

Man, the level of discourse on this blog has really plummeted, huh? Remember when I used to talk about, like, all that baking I did?

I’m going on vacation tomorrow. I’m going to try to think of intelligent, genteel topics for us to explore together upon my return. Don’t fill your hands with anyone’s buttock while I’m gone.

Having seen both of their concerts in the last week (and having enjoyed them immensely, thank you), it is my new fondest wish that John Mayer and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine would co-star in a buddy cop dramedy set in the 1980s, and they’d both wear aviators and huge moustaches, and Levine would be the uptight by-the-book cop who is a big crybaby when things don’t go his way and is always checking himself out in the window of the police cruiser, and Mayer would be the laid-back rapscallion who doesn’t have time for rules when there are LIVES AT STAKE, and maybe he has something dark and humiliating in his past like a failed relationship with America’s Sweetheart Jennifer Aniston, and while they are on stakeouts Mayer always wants to talk about the meaning of life and Levine always wants to talk about his hair, and every episode would end with a musical number like the early episodes of Buffy.

When I pitched this idea to Tom on the walk home last night he said: “Didn’t both of those dudes have sex with Jessica Simpson?”

To which I said: “DUH, love triangle. Haven’t you ever seen any TV before? She would play the Girl Friday.”

We are still auditioning for the role of Gruff-To-Hide-How-Much-He-Cares Police Lieutenant.