November Sunday

Sunday turned out to be a really pleasant day. Here's what happened:

1. Abruptly woken up at 5 am by the incessant clanging of the pipes in our apartment. For whatever reason, the pipes, which seem to be carrying lava directly from the bowels of hell, make this horrible series of clanging noises every few hours. You try to be polite and ignore it, but it's like the infrastructure of our building is having a heart attack. So I was awake and thinking about this already when the carbon monoxide alarm started shrieking, perhaps in the wake of an extremely successful Second Annual Faux Thanksgiving, which required the oven to be on all day. Ultimately I took the batteries out but not before noting, first, that we don't have a smoke alarm in our apartment, and, second, the neighbor's carbon monoxide alarm also seemed to be going off.

2. Woke up alive.

3. Spent two good hours at the gym, sweating out the red wine and yams that I steadily consumed for five hours the day before.

4. Had a fun breakfast at a fantastically lame restaurant, Johnny Rocket's, with my friend Russell from hip hop. Got a coke from Chipotle to pull it all together.

5. Read the paper, including some really good op-eds and a column discussing the design elements of the candidates' logos and bumper stickers. This is one of those topics I really get into, thinking about fonts and momentum and what colors mean.

6. Embarked on a meandering walk with L: to the bookstore, where we had a nice chat with the owner; to Rickshaw for a snack; and then on to the Angelika for a random screening of "Margot at the Wedding." It was the perfect kind of movie to see when you're wearing winter clothing: a moody indie film, bland colors, with screwed-up families and relationships that make you feel better about your own life. But I was perfectly entertained by it, there were some funny parts, Jack Black was less insufferable than usual, Nicole Kidman was great, and I really liked the ending -- emotional, kinetic, definitive, and unlike the rest of the flick. Thank you Angelika for these random winter afternoons.

7. Came home, did some work, and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner again. Everything tastes even better a day later. Went to bed happy.

And now I'm off to Virginia in a couple hours. Happy Thanksgiving.