monday september 23 2002    |    8:52 p.m.

near-idyllic evening, even if the lights here in the living-room are too bright for my taste. i'm listening to miles davis on my headphones to create an isolating soundwall around me, but the parents are reading quietly for now, so the volume is low all over. (and, as usual, i spoke too soon.) there is a tropical storm circling us tentatively, so from the afternoon on it's been raining. i guess i'm luxuriating.

just got home a little while ago from brad's. we spent our stolen "weekend" lying around the apartment, venturing out to see movies down the street or to walk around in the rain. had dinner at the van dyke, as if we could resist, and a heretofore unknown waiter referred to us as regulars. whoa. saw the big fat greek wedding movie, which was sweet enough, and today, to celebrate a sneaky deed of mine (which will go unmentioned to protect, well, me), saw mostly martha, which was delicious. pun intended: it's all framed by cooking. in german!

i've been buying too many books from work. way too many. i get all excited with the discounts and the prospects, and then i take them home and there they are, i hardly know where to begin, and then back at the store i get all flustered and distracted and buy more. i'm trying to concentrate on jeffrey eugenides right now, the old and the new. i think i like him, but i haven't gotten past the surprise and curiosity stage.

a revelation: i like not smoking. wow. which makes it less hard.

another: i feel so good about my choices. all of them. the small ones and the big ones and even the ones i haven't quite made yet.

brad and i were house- and pet-sitting for his brother and sister-in-law last week-ish for four days, in the very throes of suburbia, and we loved it. it was late late afternoon and we were walking the dog down the spooky-quiet neighborhood, with the house and the pool and the car and the playstation just minutes away, and the families pulling up to driveways at the end of the night, and it wasn't so bad, everyone just wanting his own small piece of serenity, of not-chaos. sure, suburbia's not quite the thing to aspire to, but for four days we basked and didn't miss the hubbub of the beach in the least.

god damn it, i'm happy. let it last, let it last.