I’m helping out a bit with a friend’s campaign—she’s running for city council back in Utah! She’s amazing, and wants to make the city more pedestrian-friendly, which would be mad helpful.

The dude who talked about his all bass guitar death metal band? Or the dude who showed up 40 minutes late wearing a bandana like he’d come from digging a ditch?

Bourbon on the rocks! Week was okay: I had a mild panic episode around some work stuff, and cried during my physical when I realized how much weight I’ve gained, but it’s also fall and I just got back from a nice date where I had some pie and talked for five hours (again! We’ve done this before!), so it’s a bit all…

Find an activity you would like to do as a group, and then tell literally everyone: strangers you meet waiting in lines, people on the bus, anyone. I found my old book club by this method—turned out my cashier at Trader Joe’s was new in town and just started a book club with her husband!

Yes, thoroughly. I do better with outer accountability, and my new assignment as a grad assistant is with a professor who isn’t usually on campus unless he’s teaching. Thankfully, he’s offered me use of his office when he isn’t in, so I can come to work there, but it is hard to get started when I know no one is…

Criminal, but my big one now is LeVar Burton Reads, where LeVar Burton reads short stories aloud. It’s marvelous!

Also, why a grapefruit? Grapefruit tastes like vomit.

DC doesn’t want him either. Baltimore might just shoot him.

It’s so often code for “men who don’t think you should have boundaries, especially ones that mean you won’t do whatever weird sex thing they want to do with you”.

Seriously! Why did you leave if it was so great? Why can’t you be New York’s problem instead of mine?

I like you.

Seriously. It takes time to find a bar with the sort of vibe where you can reasonably talk to strangers, and even then it helps to go a few times to really scope it out. What an asshole.

It’s only so quirky when they advertise on NPR.

That’s the big thing for me. It is the worst part of going out, to think you can just have a nice time with your girlfriends and all of a sudden some dude decides he gets to crash your party for whatever his fucking reasons are.

I loved Bev, but I hated how she was used in the film: she’s so fucking cool, and instead she’s treated like inspiration for the boys. Just let Bev be awesome, damnit!

I was told I had a “persistent darkness” in my love life, that had attached itself to money (convenient!) So clearly, I needed to give more of my money to her so I could be free to finally find love. NOPE.

I happened to go to a psychic once (I know, I was kinda depressed and it was easier than trying to get an appointment at the counseling center on campus), and when I mentioned I was dating someone, she started pressing me for his information, and then insisted he was my soulmate. He dumped me later that summer,…

I would have LOVED that!

I have the same rule, as my brother was disappointed to realize when I refused to finish the pilot of Battlestar Galactica (because “but that’s literally the only dead baby!” is not a solid argument in my book).

+1 to foreign student au pairs! They were some of my best friends when I was working overseas. And it is an interesting model for approaches to raising kids: one/two raised largely by parents vs. 3-4 with nanny/au pair. Honestly, I’m not sure which way I’d go; while I love the idea of a bigger family, I also know that…