New Space

I've been MIA, but not without a fairly good excuse: I've moved on short notice from a dark first-floor apartment to a little studio above Manhattan. The view is nice and all (also qualifies as fantastic), but it is nothing compared to finding the holy grail of NYC apartments: an ensuite washer and dryer. I used to drag my laundry upstate because I hated paying so much for it; I'm so excited about this that I've been doing laundry two, three times a week, full load or not.

However, I was a little apprehensive about living alone. This post from Joanna at Cup of Jo was so comforting (and fascinating), and to be honest, I'm already enjoying the abundance of alone time amid my books and magazines. Do you, or have you, ever lived alone? Did you like it?

Blue Morning

I love how New York City is cast in shades of navy in the early morning when I wake up and walk to the gym. I always imagine the city as a gritty steel color in my mind, but when it's 6 AM and the lights are still winking, it's something altogether a little lighter and fresh.

How was your weekend? I went upstate to the Hudson Valley, which manages to be pretty even in the dead of winter (if you consider 50 degrees to count as winter). I don't mean Poughkeepsie so much as the woods and hills and creeks around it. I figured everyone would be confused if I used the modifier "pretty" for Poughkeepsie. I've been reading The Marriage Plot lately. Has anyone else started reading it? I'm halfway through, but the references and obscure quotes make me feel so unread (and I was an English major) that I can't decide how I feel about it. There's also the part where I'm obsessed with an entirely different genre and set of writers (dirty realism from the 80s; Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Richard Ford, Flannery O'Connor). Are you thinking of reading it? I know it received a lot of hype.

[photo cred here and there]