close my eyes, make the pies all day

I set my alarm for 8 this morning, ambitiously planning to bake and clean and iron and yoga today. Instead, I finished the last of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and can't bring myself to leave my room and drag my laundry basket down the stairs. I need to make some sort of fancy dessert for a dinner party tonight and figure out just what exactly to do with the huge quantities of peaches and apples and blackberries Shannon and Gaby and I picked yesterday. Twenty-six pounds of peaches, three and a half pounds of blackberries and what, maybe eight pounds of apples between us? It's quite a haul, in any case.

Great Gaby moment: We're walking back to the car with all the fruit, and Shannon points out the ripening pumpkins in the field next to us.

Shannon: The pumpkins aren't ready yet, but soon they'll be nice and big.

Gwen: And orange.

Gaby: And delicious!

Delicious! Here is one of Shannon's photos, because I do not have my digital camera yet, but I swear I will someday:

makes you think all the world's a sunny day

Rrrrrrrrrroad trip photos are up in one of those fancy-pants Kodak Galleries -- go to the slideshow to start your exciting journey through our trip. Don't expect too many pictures of landmarks or anything, but do expect pictures of ducks, dogs and racist signs. Woo!

I was f-i-n-e fine

Tomorrow begins the glorious, glorious period at work known as the "dark" or "nonpublishing" weeks, in we do not put "new content" on the "site" so we have time to catch up on old projects and start new ones. Dark weeks are the most wonderful time of the year.

And I'm going to do an off-the-job dark-week project as well: Fix my damn room. For those of you who don't know, I have a gigantic room. Literally, five of my junior-year dorm rooms could fit in this room -- it has a sort of office-y desk area, a sitting area with a couch and a recliner, a bed area, an area where only things I don't use live.

But that whole thing about how you expand or contract to fill a space? True. I'm tired of the gigantic yellow room being a gigantic yellow mess. What's stopped me from dealing with this before, aside from abject laziness, is that it's not unliveable... the mess is sort of underground, in the structural organization. Like, I can see the top of my desk, but my phone bill from 2002 is cohabitating with my vacation photos from last summer, and the big zip drive I haven't used in three years is within easy reach but I can't find my favorite t-shirt.

Do any of you have organizational solutions you think I should implement? I'm thinking about going to the Container Store today just to look around and get ideas (read: I'm thinking about going to the Container Store today to wind up spending $50 on random things that probably won't help me but look pretty) but I'm pretty open to things. I would move furniture around, or acquire another piece of mass-produced Swedish yuppiedom if it would help.

Main problems:

1. Clothes.

  1a. Exposed clothes. Why, when I have all this furniture, do I need these plastic bins for my socks and tanktops sitting out on the top of my stuff?

  1b. Overcrowding. Must get rid of things. Must.


2. Bills and papers. Right now, they're in gray file folders that look nice and neat, but I don't want to pull them out and file things every time I get another piece of paper from the bank, so I pile everything on top of them, both obscuring their function and design.

3. Plants. Too many, most not thriving on sunless window sill (how am I slowly killing an aloe plant? Aren't they supposed to be unkillable?)

4. Weird bad area. The place near the couch where old things live.

5. Old laptop and printer. I need to sell these things on craigslist.

6. CDs. Except for the occasional new one, I haven't listened to a real live CD in like 2 years, since the birth of iTunes. Do you sell them to a second-hand place? Put them in a box in the basement?

So! I know many of you are organizationally inclined, so please feel free to offer any suggestions that have worked for you, especially in the bill-filing and clothes categories. Also, if you'd like to come over and magically complete this project for me, I would not complain.

a sad, sad limerick

There once was a girl from Lancaster
Whose book could be one huge disaster.
But she said with a grin, to her slight chagrin,
At least it is done, really actually done, and she, I mean I, won't be working on it any more because really it's actually done this time at least until an editor gets his or her hands on it which I hope happens someday because that would mean maybe I had an agent who maybe maybe please might be trying to sell -- sell? sell! -- the book and that would be so crazy that I'm almost scared to even imagine it so let's just concentrate on the fact that it's really actually done and shipped off to someone who's going to read it and comment which is scary but I'm not thinking about that either so let's just concentrate on the fact that it is really actually done. Which I already said. The end. Good thing I'm not trying to convince anyone to read my limericks, right?

why you think the 'net was born?

You guys, how great was the to-Minnesota-and-home-again road trip. I'm back. It was great. There was too much funny (Anne) and awesome (Anne) and revealing (the Minnesota farmland) and weird (Nan the Innkeeper) and scary (Mall of America! oh my god) stuff to even try to describe here.

Photos will follow -- photos from the borrowed digital camera that revealed what a truly crap photographer I am. I take badly lit pictures of, like, pretty patterns on the sidewalk and funny ducks near Lake Michigan. I take a LOT of badly lit pictures other people's pets and random signs. I do not take pictures of the stuff you're supposed to take pictures of on vacation, like your traveling friend or the stuff you're actually seeing, so please do not expect them.

Off to the beach with Angie and co. on Thursday, and then I will be back for good until Labor Day. I came back from this vacation feeling like I never ever ever wanted to come back, like I wanted to stay in Ann Arbor and go to coffeeshops and live in Anne's apartment with her forever, but maybe the mini-vacation will be easier to leave. Doubting that, but let's hope.