Can you tell we are both pretty happy about it?

I think a lot of you already guessed my news the other day, when I tweeted that I was “having a REALLY GOOD DAY.” But! How did you know I didn’t receive a deposit in my bank account from a deposed Nigerian prince? Or find out I was pregnant? Or have some really excellent blueberry pancakes? Or hear news of an enemy’s demise? Huh? It could have been anything, really.

On Sunday, CW and I went out for breakfast at the Irish pub in order to celebrate Bloomsday (the date of the events of James Joyce’s Ulysses, because yes, we are nerds for Irish Modernism; who isn’t?). I did, in fact, have some really excellent blueberry pancakes there. We’d gotten an early start to the day, so after breakfast we “wound up” going on a lazy Sunday drive, which seemed quite spontaneous but must have actually been planned to land us at the beautiful arboretum on campus, where we walked around and explored for a while and then sat on a park bench and talked for a while and then he asked me to marry him. And yes I said I will yes.

It was a total surprise. Probably the best surprise ever. The moment was so perfect and sweet and my heart was all a-flutter. (Oh, and CW has excellent taste in jewelry: he chose an engagement ring in the exact style I would have picked for myself, and he did it with no suggestions from me at all. It is beautiful and I love it.)

For a long time, I didn’t imagine that I would be the kind of person who got married. It seemed like such a distant, unreal idea that I would meet and fall in love with a man who would fall in love with me right back. But I did, and he did, and now we will.

2. I got some pretty flowers. They’ve now been in my house for over a week and they’re still looking great. Flowers! For years I tended to date the kind of men who thought giving women flowers was silly, overrated, or otherwise somehow unnecessary. Before CW, the last guy I was dating who gave me flowers was my highschool boyfriend, circa 1995. Flowers, welcome back into my life.

3. I have been really enjoying using my new fitbit, but it has not magically led to me losing the extra 5-10 lbs I’ve been carrying around. Go figure. I immediately dropped about 3 lbs the first week, then another two, then gained two back, and have been sitting steady at the same number for weeks. I am working out 5-6 days a week and counting my calories, but my body is not being very cooperative. Why is losing 5-10 lbs harder than losing 100, sometimes? HMPF. Well. I’ll figure it out.

4. My summer class is starting soon (the 24th), and I will be reporting for duty, slightly-too-tight pants and all. I’ve been diligently doing all the reading, but I still have to do some of the thinking and course design/planning before day one. I guess I’ll be spending some time at the office next week. I’m giving myself until Monday, but after that, I suppose vacation is… over. Hold me.

5. I had grand plans to pack up all of the household things I won’t immediately need before classes started, but now it looks like that won’t necessarily happen. We move into the new place sometime around July 15th (depending on how long it takes the property managers to do all the carpet cleaning, paint touch-ups, and so on), and I haven’t packed a thing yet. I did manage to unearth a dozen or so broken-down boxes from my last move, helpfully stowed away in my spider-infested storage shed, so I’ve got that going for me. Maybe this weekend I can pack up the books and winter clothes. We’ll see, Internet.

6. So. Who else has read J.K. Rowling’s grown-up book, The Casual Vacancy? I am working my way through it right now, about 2/3 through, and so far I’ve only heard from people who hated and/or abandoned it. It’s not exactly gripping, I’ll say. But I think the plot might be picking up a bit. I’ll be back with a full reading report soon — hopefully before classes start and my available leisure reading time plummets into nothingness.

7. Finally, because Sunday is Bloomsday:

O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

The Friday he arrived it was an absolutely gorgeous day, so of course we had to have lunch downtown and then stroll around the scenic campus:

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It was kind of funny, because he had forgotten to tell our dad that he was coming to visit me (they live in the same town and therefore see each other pretty regularly), so I texted Dad the picture above and was all, “Surprise, look who is in town!” and Dad thought that was my patio in the photograph. It is not. I wish.

We met up with CW and had drinks and dinner, which involved both Manhattans and soju and a ton of really spicy Korean food. It was delicious. The next day was tinged, however, with regret. That dinner was spicy, I tell you.

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Speaking of food, prepare to be jealous: Pete can eat probably more than double the daily calories I consume and yet he is not overweight. He’s an RN in a cardiac unit and therefore is on his feet all day, plus he works out, but still, picture this: We go to a coffee/sandwich shop for lunch and he peruses the baked goods selecting several. The counter girl asks him, making sure she’s got his order right, “So that’s the muffin, the bagel, the cinnamon roll, and the cheesecake…?” To which my brother replies, “And a salad.” Yes, he ate all of those things for lunch. It is baffling. “AND A SALAD,” HE SAYS. “AND A SALAD.”

(Above: the charming rooftop seating area where we lunched. I refrained from photographing the food.)

We spent Saturday evening grilling on my patio — the guys had steaks and I had a veggie burger — and drinking interesting beers. Check out the cork from this bottle of Chimay:

Yes, that’s my birthday on there, for whatever inscrutable reason. I took it as a good sign.

Sunday we did a little local hiking in the state park:

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Humid as the inside of a dog’s mouth out there, but beautiful. I guess we worked up an appetite, because after that, someone (not me) ate an entire block of Tillamook cheddar with crackers as one of his lunch courses. Why didn’t I get that metabolism, I ask? Life is so unfair.

Let me warn you now, though, that what I am about to share with you are not what anyone would call “book reviews.” I do enough academic writing about books at work that here on the blog I prefer to share my thoughts and experiences about them with very little intellectualizing. I hope you will forgive me.

Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

My mind kept hearkening back to Gone Girl after I finished it, so I managed to check out both this and Dark Places so I could continue delving into the dark and compelling characters Gillian Flynn creates. I’m a little obsessed with her right now, in fact. I loved this book, and the length of it (it’s a pretty quick read) inspired me to choose it for my summer class on detective fiction. The narrator of Sharp Objects is fascinating and, in some disturbing ways, relatable. One thing I really enjoy about Flynn’s writing is the prose: crisp, quick, witty, and wry. She strikes just the right note for this genre, in my opinion.

Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

I read Dark Places next and really enjoyed it, too. The 1980s obsession with Satanic cults certainly rang some bells for me — I quite vividly remember my own (paranoid & mentally ill) mother’s obsession with same. The characters and the Missouri communities Flynn creates are so vividly realistic to me I feel like I cam practically smell them coming off the page. Recommended.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

I’d been meaning to pick up this book for a while, after having read some friends’ comments about it online. I found it didn’t go very quickly for me, partly because I never really connected with any of the characters (I don’t believe I need to like the characters to like the narrative, but in this case the characters only barely interested me, to the point where I couldn’t even drum up much emotion when one character is attacked by an anaconda and another character has to wrestle and hack said anaconda to death), and partly because I found the colonizing relationship between the American scientists in the book and the Amazonian people among whom they were living to be, well, highly problematic. You can take the girl out of the West-Coast-radical graduate program, but you can’t take…well, you know the rest.

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

I wanted to read and love this, but I abandoned it after about 20 pages. I didn’t dislike it — the abandonment had a little something to do with running out of online renewals from the library — but I didn’t find myself compelled to go on, either. I think I’d like to try it again, but not right now. There are other things that are more enticing at the moment.

Room, by Emma Donoghue

I knew nothing about the content or plot of this novel before I began, but I became absorbed so quickly and so irrevocably that I stayed up late one night, starting it when I got into bed around 10:00 and not being able to put it down until 2:00 or so — and then only reluctantly. The next morning, instead of getting up, I stayed in bed until 2:00 in the afternoon finishing it. At one point I got up and made coffee, but otherwise: read, read, read, must read. I do love it when that happens. The narrator is often unbelievable and/or overly precious (it’s narrated by a 5-year-old-boy), but I was able to overcome any objections on those counts due simply to how gripping the story was. Plus: I was reading it the same week Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were rescued. Life and art collide in a terrifying, all-too-real fashion.

The Talented Mister Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

I chose this novel for my summer class without having read it — purely on the basis of the Matt Damon/Jude Law film I’d seen years ago. Well, plus I felt it was high time I read some Patricia Highsmith. It did not disappoint. As is always the case, the novel is richer and more complex than the book. Highsmith’s voice is delightfully crisp on the page, her prose both witty and dark. She makes Tom Ripley frighteningly real and surprisingly sympathetic. But then again, a lot of sociopaths are quite charming. I can’t wait for my chance to read the four other Ripley novels. Recommended.

The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett is a favorite of mine even though I haven’t read all that many of his novels — no one could ever believe I hadn’t read The Thin Man. Well, shut up all of you, because now I have! It’s the classic Hammett noir: lean and efficient prose, quick dialogue, twists, mistaken identities, and double crosses. And lots and lots of cocktails. But then he goes and makes it funny, too! My boyfriend and I happen to be watching some Veronica Mars lately, and I now see a lot of Nick and Nora Charles’ influence on the snappy (and often inappropriately flirty) dialogue between Keith and Veronica.

In the Woods, by Tana French

Let me say first of all that I wound up loving this book, and I shall make it my mission to read her follow-up novels just as soon as I can (though I have stacks of other books for both work and fun standing between me and that plan, dammit). I loved Rob and Cassie, the detective team at the center of this novel. The plotline was gripping and the storytelling seemed realistic in its use of detail, but not tediously so. The inclusion of entire interrogation-room dialogues, for example, lends the air of an authentically long investigation. The pacing reminded me a bit of The Killing, in fact, in that I felt we really were following the murder squad detectives through all the steps of their work. And yet the pacing still felt fast and I found myself anxious to get back to the book whenever I wasn’t reading it. The only negative, for me, is French’s prose style. I almost put the book down after reading the first three sentences:

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small town 1950s. This is none of Ireland’s subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur’s palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses.

I’m glad I didn’t. (It isn’t all like this.)

Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

I started this and finished it this morning, in another marathon reading binge. I’d heard so many good things about it and finally my library’s copy was available. I enjoyed reading it, but a good many things about it also annoyed me. I never read Eat Pray Love, but I sort of have a suspicion that this is the hiking version of that story, i.e., a privileged white lady who’s having some problems goes off somewhere to “find” herself. From what I hear, though, I take it that Cheryl Strayed is much less … that woman than Elizabeth Gilbert is.

On another note, if you’ve known me for very long at all, you know that my love for the mountains of the west, the Sierras and the Cascades in particular, is deep. The High Sierras from Tahoe to Yosemite are where I spent many summers as a child and teenager, where I first camped, fished, learned to rock climb, found bear tracks, hiked in the woods both with my family and — occasionally, secretly — alone. The landscape of those mountains is (and this is difficult to describe, but) where my heart feels most at home — the only place in truly longs for. If you’ve read this book, imagine my feeling upon reading the section entitled “Range of Light,” where Strayed reached the High Sierras, and the events that ensued.

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Well then. I have just started John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (a rare foray into young-adult fiction for me, not counting Harry Potter and Twilight) and it is calling me back to its pages. If you’ve read any of the above books, I’d love to hear your opinon!

Since school has been out, I have been doing as follows: wake up, get up if I feel like it or don’t if I don’t; eventually go for a run/walk/bike ride or do some other form of exercise; sit on the couch watching TV while I wait to stop sweating; eat, read or watch TV or nap; shower at some point; have a happy hour drink or two while reading on the patio; have dinner and hang out with CW for the evening. It’s a rough life, but someone’s got to live it.

Before anyone gets all stroppy about teachers having summers off and bilking the taxpayer, please note that our paychecks also take the summer off. Furthermore, I will have you know that the reading I’m doing is in preparation for my late-summer class, so technically I am in fact working.

I seem to be a little defensive about all this free time.

Anyway. I thought I’d post a little something here to break the silence and to natter on a bit, and then maybe later this week I’ll come up with a Real Post as above described. Or I won’t. We’ll see. I do have things to talk about, though! For example, I was going to go into great detail confessing all my Secret Single Behaviors I have developed over the past 13 years of living alone — you know, all the things I’ll have to curtail when I start cohabitating with my soon-to-be roomie. I also plan to tell you all about the fun books I’ve been reading, of which there are many!

I am currently reading In the Woods by Tana French, for example, and I have been sucked right in. I’ve been told the ending may piss me off (please don’t comment on that here until I’ve finished the book, thanks!), but I’m not too worried. Books with endings that tend to piss people off are often (but not always) my cup of tea. See Gone, Girl for further evidence.

My patio herb garden is looking really good so far — fingers crossed! I don’t seem to be gifted with a green thumb, so I’m really just hoping for the best. I’ve got basil, Rosemary, cilantro, sweet mint, and yellow-pear cherry tomatoes that are just starting to flower. Hang in there and keep growing, little guys!

Oh, also, today I made a pretty great find during my bike commute: a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses lying in the bike lane, miraculously intact and not noticeably scratched! They have a translucent, Piet Mondrian-inspired frame, which is not what I would choose if I were to spend money on something like sunglasses (which would be entirely unheard of — my price ceiling for that sort of thing is usually about $15), but I think they’re pretty cool. There’s no real way to try to return them to their owners, so I guess I’m keeping them. Lucky me?

I also have this happening in my house right this very moment. That’s right: three adorable puppies hanging out in a sunbeam. Don’t be jealous now; it doesn’t suit you.