back to it

In the tradition of blogging every summer for the past two years, I am starting Round Three of journaling about my various Mundane Adventures.

Although it feels like a month has gone by, it has only been a week since I graduated from college. Post-graduation is a time for roadtrips and Eurotrips, but I have settled for the more banal experience of floating from room to room in my house and hanging out with my grandmother. Instead of worrying about foreign language complications, getting lost in Paris, or being swindled out of fifty euros, I fill my life with such questions as: Is it olive oil or sunflower oil that burns? (this still needs an answer); Where in the world is the Natick Collection? (on route 9, but definitely NOT a straight shot from Shoppers' World); Does Max Brenner actually have good dessert? (debatable); What to do on a rainy day? (Make the Best Breakfast Ever for my grandmother). Was there a better way to structure that sentence? (Potentially).

I exaggerate - my life isn't actually that dull. I start work on July 15th in the nation's capital, so I have been doing the Craiglist-Zillow-padmapper dance to find housing. So far, my efforts have yielded fewer results than I had hoped, but I am determined to find an apartment when I visit the area on the 19th/20th.

In other news, I have finally finished all the articles that were hanging out on my Google Chrome tabs. This New Yorker one was my favorite.

Reading has many facets, one of which might be the rather indescribable, and naturally fleeting, mix of thought and emotion and sensory manipulations that happen in the moment and then fade. How much of reading, then, is just a kind of narcissism—a marker of who you were and what you were thinking when you encountered a text? Perhaps thinking of that book later, a trace of whatever admixture moved you while reading it will spark out of the brain’s dark places.

So often, I hesitate to begin reading new books for the reason described above. I have formed very strong connections with a set of titles because of the time and place that I read them (and the person that I was when I read them). If I begin a new book, I want it to have a similar effect on me and leave something memorable. Now that I think about it, that seems to be my attitude toward all other relationships as well. Hmm - I should probably change that in order to become more open toward meeting new people & making friends in DC.

Peace out --