first day of summer feels like spring

yesterday was one of those days. it was supposed to be good because my boyfriend, who is a teacher and is finally out of school for the summer, came to see my office and met my coworkers and we went on a tour of the Supreme Court and enjoyed a private question-and-answer with the Court's longtime (now-retired) clerk. while the office visit and Court tour went well, our lunch conversation was intense and left me distracted and sad. a raging blister left me unable to go on a much-needed run and i spent the evening on my couch feeling sorry for myself watching veronica mars season one. i fell asleep with a book on my face at 9:30, missing the new topchef i'd been looking forward to (not that that's a tragedy since bravo replays episodes until we all have them memorized).

but today i woke up to stunning spring-flavored weather- it was 60 degrees when i took my dog for her walk. it's her birthday today! she's four. i arrived at work to a sweet email from my grandmother, an equally sweet email from my boyfriend (exclaiming the joys of unprocessed sugar and his desire to get into cheesemaking), and an email from my boss telling us to take off early today and tomorrow and enjoy the summer. my coworker and i are wearing the same exact shirt and have been getting laughs all morning. we are going to walk to the farmer's market on our lunch break and i will pick up some cave-aged cheddar that i've been craving. my vegetable box arrives today (what the hell am i going to do with the beets?) and tonight we are going to grill out and take the dog to petsmart for her birthday. i also hope we can get in a bikeride in this gorgeous weather.

that said, here's the quote of the day:

"It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis."
-Margaret Bonnano

happy first day of summer.

pickles and snot

coming home from an errand on friday morning, i let my dog out onto the back patio. instead of scrambling up the cast iron stairs as usual (i live in a basement apartment), she beelined under the stairs and, in an act of "terrier"ism, she attacked a fuzzy pile of baby birds, each the size of a lime. eventually i was able to wrestle my dog from the melee, but it was too late for one bird and another was severely injured.

i was upset so i called animal control and they said to bring in peanut (the dead one) and bradley (the injured one). (s. and i named them after the fact. we named the two who survived pickles and snot). on the phone, the woman had the voice of a concerned and informed zookeeper; i assumed then and do now that when she told me that bradley was going to be sent to a rehabilitation park for injured birds, she meant it. after she inspected bradley when i arrived at animal control, the woman told me that they were baby starlings.

returning from animal control, i peeked out my window at the remaining two birds. it seemed that they'd recovered from the earlier trauma and the disappearance of their brothers because they were moving around in the leaves under the stairs. s. and i had a fun time watching them over the weekend; it felt like we'd acquired two new pets. by sunday night, though, they were bouncing around the bottom of the stairs like popcorn. we realized that they were learning to fly. it was cute; they were hopping around so much that, lying in bed sunday night, i could hear them hit the backdoor and the walls with each failed attempt. they gradually got higher and higher off the ground and, by monday night, each had flown away.

anyway, it was neat to watch. i'm sad they're gone but my dog is thankful she can go out onto the patio again.

vacationer

my decision to take a trip to tortola was made while i was helplessly intoxicated after thanksgiving dinner. it was almost like i took a thousandth gulp of my white wine, looked away for a moment, and a real vacation landed in my lap, said "take me." now, i'm so glad that the vacation fairies were watching out for me that night.

this was the kind of vacation where you opt to take your big suitcase and pack more than one bathing suit and snorkeling gear. it was one where you stay for a week and actually unpack. even better, tortola is a place where you get no cell reception and it's just strange enough for the foreign-ness to be invigorating, but not so remote that it's a concern. being a beach baby is great on any beach for a week, but this was so much more than that. here are some highlights.

the roads were terrifyingly, vertigo-inducing steep. and not just steep in the normal up-and-down way, but they also were steep sideways, if you can imagine. the car we rented? a sentra. just drive on the left and try not to roll the car off into the ocean.

there was a music festival, mostly hip hop and reggae, on our beach the last two nights of our stay. wyclef played saturday and, although i was in bed by the time he went on, i could hear him playing while lying in my bed.

my favorite beach day was the day we took the sentra offroading to a secluded beach called smuggler's cove. the road there was not impassible but definitely undeveloped and rough. we were almost the only people on the beach that day and found it to provide the best snorkeling on the island. the best part, though, was patricia and esther, two sisters who camp out at smuggler's cove every day with their coolers and miniature charcoal grill and serve folks grilled chicken and frozen rum drinks and beer. they had to use a generator to run the blender for the frozen drinks!

a real vacation. worth every penny, every hour of annual leave used. next year we're sailing BVI.