an unstable element

Lunch today. Spinach, blueberries and feta (I think goat cheese would have been better, but I couldn't find it at the grocery store here) topped with raspberry vinaigrette. My mother would be proud of me.

About to head out for my second day of work at the Post. Everyone on the desk was so kind to me last night--answered all of my little questions, gave me advice on how to write better heads, what DP style is for this and so on. It's hard to believe I'm actually working there. The newsroom is bright and modern and has an amazing view over the city and off toward the Rockies.

Seeing family this weekend (Dad, brother, aunts, grandmother, uncle, cousins) was just perfect. I needed a taste of that warm, comfortable feeling that comes from the company of relatives--people you don't have to impress or charm. I was sad to see them go, but so thrilled they could be here for a few days.

I like that my shift is from 4 p.m. until midnight; it gives me time to chill in the morning and enjoy the daylight. MK (the cat) sneaks into my room when I wake up and sleeps at my feet while I read or catch up on Google Reader. It's very peaceful.

Simeon offered me a part of the plot in the garden they're starting in the backyard. I need to do some reasearch, but I'd really love to grow basil. I also couldn't find it at the grocery store (lame Safeway) and I've had a hankering for it over the past few weeks. Basil on just about anything is divine, but it's especially amazing on pasta, and I have a forlorn, unopened box of it sitting in the pantry.

A dash of Proust for your day:

"We are, when we love, in an abnormal state, capable of giving at once to the most apparently simple accident, an accident which may at any moment occur, a seriousness which in itself it would not entail. What makes us so happy is the presence in our hearts of an unstable element which we contrive perpetually to maintain and of which we cease almost to be aware so long as it is not displaced. In reality, there is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralizes, makes potential only, postpones, but which may at any moment become, what it would long since have been had we not obtained what we wanted, excruciating."

Frankly, I'm struggling through the last 200 pages of "Within a Budding Grove." After eight hours of copy editing, it's very difficult to pay attention to words on a page that are not choppy, journalistic lines, but sentences that literally go on for pages and pages. To remedy my distractions (I am going to finish it, though), I started Heaney's "District and Circle" and Augustine's "Confessions."

What should I do on my day off (Saturday)?