Meta meta meta, but the first reason I haven't been blogging is because I managed to break my camera. Annoyed at my short-sighted past-self for passing on the warranty when I bought it last August, I've decided that I'm too goddamn old to be so needlessly hand-to-mouth. I'm gonna buy WARRANTIES, you guys. I'm gonna buy IN BULK. I'm gonna wash the cereal bowl immediately after I'm finished. Chrissakes.

The other reason I haven't been blogging is probably because I'm busier. The busyness of grad school was different; I was mentally tumored with stress and obligations but I still found myself very often with lots of time to reflect (and blog) in my big creaky house, trying to fill the hours before bed. Now I'm barrelling out of bed like a Roman candle each morning to pedal down Summit to my internship in the Short North, then changing into my server getup and making my way to Grandview. Beyond the internship and the job, there are friends here? And they want to buy me food and sing karaoke with me? Also, my boyfriend is cute and beardy and distracting. The weeks have been vanishing at an alarming pace, for example, it's JULY, which is weird because wasn't it just Christmas?

I liked the photo-blog format because I think a pictures and words are symbiotic, both em-better-ing the other. Also, a photograph helps me center my scattered writing (see: above sentences). But I miss committing stuff to electronic ink, drawing thoughts like invisible fibers from my skull. It keeps them from tangling as I'm trying to go to sleep at night, deafened by the sound of a twenty ideas talking to me at once.

So I'm going to be in a wedding in a week. While I know that I am going to be far more concerned with my appearance than anyone else in that gigantic Catholic church, I still find myself nervous about somehow screwing up my chance to look halfway decent. Every time I bang my shin on a chair at work or catch myself biting my nails, I straighten my spine and make a note to be a little more aware of myself.

Sure, I make an effort to wear makeup everyday and wear "hard pants" (pants with some sort of metal closure, i.e. not sweatpants) but I have never been terribly nervous about looking polished. I don't mind the occasional zit or bruised knee or chipped toenail polish. What I'm getting at is that being concerned with maintaining these sort of superficial things is making me terribly unhappy and it seems like no way to live. Bodies are for living in and they are made to be resilient. I look forward to being bruised and skinned and a little mussed again after July 11th.

Worst "daily" "blogger" ever. It'd be pretty inauthentic at this point to go and backdate two weeks' worth of entries, so I'll just try to summarize things best I can. As I write this I'm in a pretty comfortable state of transition: done with final/coursework, thesis looming over my head. Moved out of my big lovely house in Athens, moved into Nick and Jason's Washington Beach bungalow. Looking for the perfect house in Clintonville to share with my favorite L.A. malcontents.

Last year, for Nick's birthday, I made a pretty great-looking Flash cake. In keeping with the DC comics theme, this year I did Green Lantern cupcakes instead. The Green Lantern symbol didn't translate as well to candy as I had hoped; they ended up looking like cupcakes topped with some bizarre Martian rune. Still, they were tasty. So, Nick! It was good to celebrate another birthday with you. I am happy you were borneded.

It took Sjanneke and me until finals week of spring quarter, but we finally cycled out to the Athens farmer's market. We ate sour cherries and little peach tarts. Last fall when I moved, I thought it would be strange to see her all the time. We went to different colleges and really only spent time with one another every couple of months up to that point. Now, it's strange that I can't just call her to drink beer on my porch.

These are the faces of two people who made my life exponentially better while in Athens.

My parents helped me move last Sunday. How many adult moves do I have left where it's okay to draft my parents and their cars? They were a little late getting into town so Nick and I took the moped around. I love the whine of that two-stroke engine.

Columbus welcomed me back with a baptism of fire (oh, and a potluck. Thanks, Ana). Clearly I am up to my old tricks, evidenced here in my scaling of something huge, mechanical and likely dangerous on High St. I'm sorry, officer. You're right. Construction equipment is not a toy. I won't be able to keep up this behavior all summer but it was nice to have a "vacation week" after grueling final exams.

This week, I started my internship and started back serving at the restaurant again. The internship is just wonderful. It's so refreshing to ride my bike to a creative, well-designed space where I can get waist-deep in stuff that actually interests me. Serving has been fine. I'm sure by next week I'll be recanting the hell out of this statement, but it feels good to do honest labor and get gratified almost instantly for it. And I work with six of my closest friends. Not exactly a coal mine.

I'm annoyed by blogging that seems self-deluding or rationalizes away every disappointment: "my life couldn't be more perfect!!" But honestly, things feel level, positive. Brenda is back, my roommates-to-be return soon, and Comfest is right around the corner.

This is what my hangover looked like back when it was just a good night.

You guys, I know I get caught up in metaphor. I see everything in terms of other things, often to a fault. These thoughts are typically pretty fleeting, but there's one I keep coming back to, over and over again. With every disappointing meeting with committee members, every PowerPoint presentation that vanishes from my jump drive just as I'm standing up to present, it occurs to me; more or less I'm just a cow with my horns stuck between the fence slats, thunking and thunking against the wood and hollering in a panic.

This comparison becomes a little more literal in the humbling instances where I do things like get my belt loops caught on the doorknob or close the car door on my skirt.

With few exceptions, I've been screwing things up the same way since I was in high school. Every time I ensconce myself in that same old bullshit, when I close my eyes at night I see that cow stuck in the fence, every muscle tense, ramming its horns back against the unyielding fence.

In the spring and fall, on days when the weather is a very specific lowlands mix of damp, cool, and bright, Sjanneke and I will text-message each other: "Dutch Weather!"

Dutch Weather is when the sky is a kind of matte shade of white, the temperature hovers in the low 60s and the dampness of yesterday's rain or today's impending showers saturates all the trees and grass a brilliant Technicolor green. It's my favorite kind of weather, and not just because I love Holland and I'm reminded of those days spent traversing those canals and nights spent trying my best not to fall in those canals. It's also perfect weather for my favorite things: sipping too-hot coffee on the porch, reading books next to huge windows in cafes, riding my bike to everywhere, donning a scarf and sweater, cooking with the windows open.

Oh, shit. Look what I did. Now I'm scouring the web for internships in the Netherlands.

I don't write much about my roommate, B, in the interest of maintaining domestic harmony. I have found out the hard way that the photos I post and the comments I make can alienate people, and that's not what I'm trying to accomplish here. Plus, I wouldn't want someone telling the Internet about how I leave a Family Circle-esque trail of Evie marking my path in the house until I finally pick up after myself. The lower level of our house is usually scattered with bookbag, jacket, coffee mug, other coffee mug, keys, bobby pins, camera, shoes, other shoes. But B and I are buddies, and strangely sympatico given we share a bathroom thanks to the uniting power of Craigslist.

Above is our sophisticated mail-sorting system. B's stuff goes in the orange crate, mine goes in the metal basket. He's been living here for several years, long enough for junk mail to find him. My mail is almost exclusively personal and therefore relatively sparse, letters from friends and cards from relatives and my quarterly ReadyMade (thanks Ana!). I usually do the sorting, and it always kills me that B, a Marxist who studies political theory and used to live in an anarchist collective, gets a subscription to Golf Digest and myriad golfing catalogs. I can't help but tease him about it.

Pesto, from the potted basil Ana gifted me for my birthday. My mom makes a ton of pesto every summer from her basil crop and freezes it in little batches to send home with us when we visit. I am pretty sure she uses a food processor, though, and doesn't spend an hour chopping, scraping, gathering, swearing, chopping, swearing, throwing things, chopping.

I give my first try a B. More meal-y than paste-like, but still tasty.