author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Tonight was a good night for Monday Night Football and free alcohol. First Harpo's sent a server around with free pudding shots (consisting of, I think, banana pudding and Fireball whiskey). This led almost directly to another diner offering me the rest of her wine bottle. "I have to drive home, and then the pudding shots happened, so I figured I had to stop drinking for the night--but it was a $13 bottle and I hate to waste it, and I saw you sitting all alone over here..."

If this was a variety of the "woman! alone in bar! must be lonely" impulse, well, I can't exactly complain. Not, I think, that it looked like I needed company. I was yelling at the TV like I usually do when football's happening. Yelling, and laughing, and occasionally screaming, because that's how I react when surprised by a good play. It was at least a five-scream game. The Saints won, improving their record to 6-8 and taking the lead of the NFC South.

I did manage to finish off that wine. And the pudding shot. And my beer. Don't worry--I was on my bike tonight.

Speaking of the need for company, Havi Brooks has requested some on twitter tonight during her seven-hour-and-forty-minute drive through the tumbleweed-infested wilds of eastern Washington state. Bring some music.

Dear world: There is a new fruitcake in you! I have baked it just now today.

It snuck up on me. Usually I bake it partway through November, but I honestly forgot all about it until a few days ago. Once I remembered, though, I didn't waste time. Off to the grocery for fruit and nuts! Hurry up and slice things and soak them in booze! Then today that sucker got baked.

Here, as per tradition, is this year's list of fruitcake ingredients:

• diced candied papaya
• cubes of candied ginger, sliced into wedges
• green raisins
• dried strawberries, sliced into thin wedges
• dried red tart cherries, sliced in halves
• dried blueberries
• pitted deglet noor dates, sliced lengthwise in quarters
• slivered almonds

Slicing dried or candied fruit is a pain. Anything that requires me to slice it has earned its place in the lineup, trust me.

The recipe, as always, was the McCall's "Best of All" Fruitcake recipe which an online friend shared with me years and years ago. This appears to be someone's adaptation of it, and it has at last resolved for me the mystery of the missing .5 cup flour. I think my friend forgot to transcribe step 5. Maybe next year I'll include it. Not that my fruitcakes have suffered for only having 1.5 cups flour in them, mind you. Nor do they suffer for my not bothering with the frosting.

As you've no doubt surmised, I ad lib extremely freely with the dried/candied fruit. Fruit and nuts came from Whole Foods on Pearl Street; Whole Foods bulk products typically don't have artificial colors or flavors added. This is kind of a big deal. Just for a change, I once went to Sunflower (next door to McGuckin's; it's now a Sprouts). I was unpleasantly surprised by the bitter taste of numeric food coloring in the papaya. Not doing that ever again.

The booze the fruit soaked in overnight was brandy, but as I am now out of brandy, I may soak the wrapping cheesecloth in rum. Or possibly the Balvenie Caribbean Cask, which would be fairly interesting.

Given the lateness of the fruitcake construction and the upcoming vacation schedule, it will not be unveiled at our annual winter solstice party and yule log vigil. Said party will not be happening this year, due, again, to our vacation plans. Instead, I expect the fruitcake unveiling will be at the family Christmas party. My family really likes this fruitcake. It will be quite the challenge to reserve enough to mail to the usual long-distance recipients.

I got to it later in the day than I meant to. Today began with a dental cleaning at 8:00 AM, which you'd think would ensure an early start to the day. But when I got home around 9:30, I was exhausted. Apparently dental cleanings wear me out. They aren't particularly painful; the crew at Dr. Adler's office are fantastic and solicitous and caring and responsive. Last time, I let the hygienist know that the gum exam was kind of jabby; this time she made sure to use the blunt plastic probe instead of the sharp metal one. I warned her today about an ulcer on my gums, right up front and center, and she zapped it with the dental laser and spread it full of topical anaesthetic gel. Also, if you want to hear fascinating things, make sure to ask Dr. Adler about his peregrine falcon.

No, everything was fine. But I stress. I tense up. I start wringing my hands--well, really, my hands start wringing themselves--and my feet start twitching. My jaw tries to close up. So I spend the whole time telling myself "Relax, relax, breathe, pretend you're yawning, you don't need to do that with your hands, just relax..." And apparently the whole circus just wears me out.

Which is why I came home and went back to bed until two in the afternoon.

Which is why I had to leave for roller derby practice before the fruitcake was done with its 3.25 hours at 275 deg F. I put it on the timed cook cycle, so it would turn itself off after 3 hours and 15 minutes, but John still needed to babysit it because once the fool thing shuts itself off it sings out a 6-note tune to let you know. Repeatedly. "I turned off your oven. I turned off your oven..." (I've made up words to most of its jingles. I can't help it. The tune for when pre-heating is complete is a full four-line verse.) So John was still going to need to tell the oven "Yes, I hear you" by pressing the CLEAR/OFF button.

As I said to the head coach, "What a day! It both started and ended with pain!" She was alarmed at first--"Are you OK? Did you get hurt?"--but no, it was just the discomfort that goes with the territory. I'm sure I have new bruises (though I'm told I gave as good as I got), and I don't even want to think about squat jumps. It was a good practice. It was the sort of practice that wants everything you have. So you give it. So, when you get home, you fall over.

When I got home, and the house was full of friends and the smell of fruitcake. Not too shabby for a day that I mostly slept through, right? And now, I think I shall fall over. Good night!

Hoo boy, today. Today was not a productive day. The first half of today got eaten up by a headache that wouldn't go away no matter how long I stayed in bed, and the rest of the day got eaten up by a gorgeous, gorgeous book. (Some days you hold strong against temptation. Other days, you just give in and enjoy it.) Somewhere in the middle there was a reindeer, and also the best pastries in Avon.

The reindeer was Cupid, and she was the star of the Avon Public Library's annual reindeer-and-elf visitation. I gotta say, the poem doesn't lie. Reindeer are tiny. When I read The Woman Who Loved Reindeer by Meredith Ann Pierce, I imagined them huge as elk, but in fact they're about the same size as whitetails, and in some cases smaller. And cute? I am here to tell you. When the editors of The Toast met the miniature horses, I thought nothing could possibly be cuter. I was wrong, dear readers. I was wrong.

It has been a day to bring Meredith Ann Pierce's novels to mind twice over. The reindeer was the first; the second came with the binge reading. As you shall see.

The librarian told me to help myself to hot chocolate. But there was far too much chaos in the activity room. It was crowed with kids waiting their turn to pet the reindeer, and make crafty things at the tables, and get their plate of hot chocolate and donuts. I gave up and walked across town to sooth my hot-chocolate-and-pastry cravings at the Columbine Cafe & Bakery. Then I soothed my tea cravings, which had become unbearable since using up the last bag of Taylors of Harrogate Pure Assam, by buying more tea. City Market does not stock T&H, but they did have Two Leaves and a Bud Assam and Tazo Darjeeling. Though the Two Leaves version isn't quite as malty as the T&H, it is nevertheless a specimen of The Good Stuff, and it will do.

Now, today's visit to the library was very exciting. The library had all three of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy on the shelf, and I was in terrible, terrible need of finally reading the third book. I've been meaning to buy a copy, but just haven't made it out to the bookstore yet--and the library copies were right here. Opportunity! But I knew the experience would be even more magical if my memories of what had come to pass in books 1 and 2 were fresh, so I checked them out one at a time and reread them. Today I traded in Days of Blood and Starlight for Dreams of Gods and Monsters, and I began reading it as I walked out the the door, kept reading it as I walked across town, and--pausing only for such necessities as ordering and paying for pastries and hot chocolate, or navigating a grocery store, or getting a phone call from John telling me all about the epic scrimmage I missed tonight what with not being in town for it and all--continued reading it until it was done.

At which point there seemed to be something in my eye, and I kind of had to sit with that for a bit.

There was a point where I very much feared this trilogy would go the way of Meredith Ann Pierce's The Darkangel trilogy (thus, the second time a Pierce novel came to mind today). And, there being a fine line between spoilers and encouragement, I hope to remain firmly on the encouragement side when I say this: Dear readers, Laini Taylor has no desire to rip our hearts out and stomp on them. She loves us too much. Can you truly doubt it? She gave us the character of Zuzana "Neek-neek" Novakova and a companion novella called Night of Cake and Puppets. Of course she loves us.

Thus I go to my daily rest, still headachy, bummed at not having written, but feeling loved despite all that.

Tomorrow: Your mostly-weekly Fictionette and other stories, probable adventures beyond walking distance, and, if I get out of bed on time, and if the baker at Columbine did not grievously mislead me, donuts.

As mentioned before, I'm in Avon, Colorado for the week. This is a little town just down the highway from Vail, in Eagle County. Given its nature as a ski resort/mountain town, it has certain peculiarities which I feel moved to mention at this time.

First off there is no straight line path to anywhere. Even if you can see the building you want to get to, there's no "as the crow flies" route from where you're standing. All the streets curve, and many of them have large traffic circles at their intersections. I'm pretty sure I've unnecessarily doubled the length of my trip between points A and B, for any given points A and B, by choosing to walk the long way around intermediary landmark C when it looked like it would be the short way around. It's very hard to gauge these things, especially when what looks like a direct route turns out to involve a six-foot drop or a near-insurmountable pile of snow.

And speaking of snow: Every day since I arrived has been sunny and warm, or at least sunny and warmer than you'd expect from a prediction of highs in the low 40s. I looked at the forecast before I left Boulder, and I thought, "Sunny and warm-ish, at least until mid-week. I'll bring my skates." But the problem with street skating in Avon in early December is this: it may not be snowing now, but it has snowed. And that previous snow is still hanging around, melting. And depositing mud and truly malicious gravel at every cross road.

Which is the long way of saying that my trip home from the library yesterday was--uncharacteristically, given how much I love skating--not particularly fun. But I did get a good toe-stop workout out of it. And I only fell once. Go me!

Meanwhile, have some pictures of the place where I'm staying. I'm at the Christie Lodge, which is unusual, but there was nothing available at the Sheraton Mountain Vista that I could take advantage of, so here I am. The Christie Lodge is much more convenient to Loaded Joe's, which I'm sure I'll appreciate on karaoke night when I will no doubt stumble back to my room late, tired and tipsy. It's also closer to the grocery store, which I have already had occasion to appreciate.

On the other hand, its layout is weird. It feels a little bit like staying in a long, narrow shopping mall made to look a little bit like an outdoor retail village. And it is built on a slope. This is obvious at all times. There is only one set of elevators at the center of the arc, near the lobby, and unless you are very lucky your trek from the elevator to your second-floor room at any distance down the east or west concourse will involve a half-flight of stairs. Maybe two. This is no fun at check-in.

Even some of the first floor rooms are inaccessible to wheelchairs. There are ramps for getting from one level of first-floor concourse to the next, but then you get to your room and there's a four-step rise to the door. It just looks like the architects, designers, somebody wasn't wearing their best thinking cap when attempting to solve the problem of building on a slope. Or maybe their target demographic is exclusively able-bodied enjoyers of snow sports, I don't know.

On the positive side, here is one of the things that the odd layout makes almost too convenient: Pho 20, their newest in-resort restaurant. It's practically right below me. I am no judge of how authentic a particular restaurant's pho is, but I can tell you that it was yummy and warm and filling, and the spring rolls were tasty too. I have been very, very good about eating most of my meals in the room--salads, instant noodle bowls in the microwave, omelets in the electric skillet--but Pho 20 is right there, beckoning.

Maybe tomorrow.

I'm so lucky. I could have been assigned a room on the Subway Sandwiches end of the resort.

Farm Mondays have more or less come to an end for 2014. The default has flipped: From here on out, the assumption is that unless I hear otherwise, there will not be a Monday crew.

Today was the last Monday where it was the other way around, and even so, I was asked to arrive an hour later than the usual. And even still, there was some early downtime involving hot tea and a very needy orange marmalade tabby cat. As a result, the shift seemed to pass very quickly.

The shift comprised three basic tasks:

Preparing dried lavender for sale/use. Rebecca's Herbal Apothecary & Supply turns out, unsurprisingly, to be super interested in locally sourcing some of their herbs. So that's who's getting the dried lavender blossom that I got to help process today. In this case, "processing" meant separating, as much as possible, the blossoms from the stems. The first step was easy: we took bunches of dried lavender and rolled them between our fingers over a couple of buckets. The next step was a little more complicated: We experimented with different gauge screens, and different methods of pushing plant material through said screens, to result in a maximum of blossom and a minimum of stem passing through. In the end we filled a gallon-sized Ziplok bag fairly snugly.

We came away from that task smelling heavenly, which was really nice considering our next task took us in close proximity to another team who were processing pepper seeds. The peppers were in a really advanced stage of fermentation. Trust me on this one.

Preparing the field for the plow. This meant examining the west terraced crop beds for wooden stakes, very large rocks, sandbags, and, in one case, someone's mason jar full of coffee. Anything the plow would have trouble with, or that we didn't want getting plowed under, needed to be removed. Jackets and coats started coming off around now despite the incoming coldfront, because carrying sandbags in full sunlight tends to raise one's core temperature.

And finally...

Picking peppers in the greenhouse. Several varieties, some of which had clearly been featured on the rodent four-star buffet. Even while we were picking the fruit that remained, we could hear mice squeaking as they ran by at top speed underneath the ground cloth.

And then it was one o'clock and time for me to go. I made a stop in Niwot to put gas in the car and pick up a few groceries (including some delicious udon noodles from Sachi Sushi), and my aspirations to get right to sanding the closet door undergoing refurbishing lasted right up until I got home (and devoured the udon).

But I've gotten quite a bit of the sanding done since waking up from my nap, so that's cool.

Anyway, with the farm going into off-season on-call mode, that frees Mondays up to be just another writing work day. Certainly that's true of next Monday, when I'll be in Avon, Colorado, having my sort-of-annual solo writing retreat/vacation from normal life. Works will progress! Also, yummy food will get cooked, karaoke will be sung, and a certain amount of video games will be played. But mainly writing will happen.

And the current closet doors had just better be done by then, that's all I have to say about that.

This week's Friday Fictionette is called "Your Neighbor's Keeper." And it took me something like half an hour of staring at the screen to come up with that title, so you'd better appreciate it. Seriously, what is with me and titles? Sometimes I wonder whether having to come up with one every first through fourth Friday is using up some sort of non-renewable resource. Like, there's only so many title-length combinations of words in the world. One day I'm going to run out.

Anyway, like the author's note says, this particular short-short started from one of those tiny, mysterious moments that defy explanation, while being at the same time too mundane to be worth wondering about. But being a writer means I have carte blanche to wonder about stuff that isn't worth wondering about, right? That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I changed the building numbers to building letters, and I changed them from condos to apartments, but otherwise that happened right here on my block. Minus the destruction, of course.

The other aspect of the fictionette that's drawn from life is my own shameful inattention to the people around me. I don't know many of my neighbors. I don't attend the neighborly gatherings at the clubhouse. I've a terrible memory for names, and I tend to look at hands and skates and helmets rather than at faces. I don't remember what she looked like, the stranger who interrogated me in the cul-de-sac, and I don't remember the car she drove. All I remember is my bare feet on the sidewalk and my wondering why she then disappeared around the corner of the dog park at the retirement home.

You know, come to think of it, she was probably just visiting someone in the retirement home, or going on a volunteer or staff shift. There isn't much legitimate parking for those purposes. She was probably just making sure that the only witness to her parking job didn't live in the nearby buildings and thus have standing to get her car towed. (Not that it was in any danger of getting towed. As long as you don't park by the yellow curbs or in a covered spot you don't own, you're fine.)

Anyway, I did the final revisions on this fictionettes from a table at Blooming Beets across the street. The server-cum-host who showed me to a table noticed that I'd been working on my laptop while I waited for a table to open up; she pointed out that, as luck would have it, I got the table with electrical outlets. She seemed to be one of only two servers on duty during a rather busy night during First Bite Boulder, but neither of them rushed me nor made me feel weird for dining alone or working on the computer.

I splurged on the wine pairings, which turned out to be quite a lot of wine. I reassured the server that it was OK, I walking home. And that it was very silly that although the restaurant had been open a little while now so close to my house, it took an event like First Bite Boulder to get me to finally visit. She lit up and said she, too, lived just up the street. Check that out: We're neighbors. We gave each other our names and shook hands.

And I made sure, for once, to really look at her as we exchanged "pleased to meet you"s and "see you again soon"s. I still have a terrible memory for names and faces, even when I'm trying my best. But I made sure, for once, to try.

We gathered at the east end of McCauley Family Farm, in the field known as "The Heart," and we considered the peppers in light of the coming frost.

The peppers grew on knee-high bushes that filled almost ten rows in The Heart. They made the bushes look decorated with strings of orange festival lights. Several rows of bushes were covered against cooler weather, a strategy that had unfortunately created the perfect warm and food-filled haven for mice. Under several plants, a litter of orange shreds and scattered seeds showed where the rodents had done the most damage. Still, more than enough crop remained to be threatened by the sharper drop in temperature predicted for the night. The peppers had to be picked post-haste (pickling optional).

The solution? Pick the whole darn bush.

So that's what we did from 8:30 until round about noon. We worked our way down the rows, pulling up bushes, shaking off mud, and piling the plants up with their roots all pointing the same way for ease of gathering them up later and putting them in the truck. (I think the plan was to bring the whole yield, bush and pepper and clinging bindweed vines and all, to the processing plant that McCauley Family Farm recently acquired in Boulder. I'm not sure. The fate of the pepper plants was still under discussion when I left.)

The work was relatively easy and certainly uncomplicated. But it was hard enough on the hands to require gloves, and, like most field work, hard on the back and thighs due to repetitive stooping and pulling. I came home feeling used up, triumphantly and virtuously exhausted.

In almost four hours of work, I think we pulled half of the pepper plants that needed pulling. Maybe two thirds. There were a lot of peppers.

By the way, after working with peppers, even with gloves on, it's best not to scratch anything tender on the way home. Obviously don't rub your eyes. Of course you wouldn't pick your nose. But don't even stick a finger in your ear, OK? Basically, don't touch your face.

As is the custom after most volunteer shifts, they sent me home with an armful of food, which contributed to the following Dinner #1:

• 2 potatoes (smallish, yellow)
• 1 turnip
• 1 celery root
• 1 sunchoke (or Jerusalem artichoke, or sunroot tuber)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 or 3 tbsp heavy whipping cream
• Some quantity of chives and green onions, chopped

Cut root vegetables into large chunks. Leave skin on wherever possible. Boil them until they are mashably tender: about 25 minutes. Drain. Put them in a steel pot with butter, cream, and the allium greens. Mash thoroughly. Eat every bite. Lick the bowl.

I said "Dinner #1" because today was a roller derby day (Phase 1: I was one of the two trainers, while John was one of the ten students). Dinner #1 comes before practice, so I don't go to practice hungry; Dinner #2 is for after practice when I turn into a ravenous beast.

Dinner #2 was red beans and rice with sausage. Farm veg went into that dish, too. In fact, the entire Holy Trinity of vegetables that went in there--celery, onions, and sweet green peppers--came from the farm. I think the garlic did too. The sausage came from a different farm, one owned and worked by a fellow skater. The parsley came from my patio garden as its last hurrah.

Yay farm meals!

As though to make up for last week, this morning's farm work went a little long. It featured seeds, seeds, and more seeds, seeds of tomato and pepper varieties, seeds to be wet processed for drying, winnowing, and sowing next season.

It began when the farmer, Rich, gave me a broom and said, "Why don't you give each of these seed buckets a good morning stir?" Thus I got my fifteen minutes being a classic Halloween witch, stirring a disgusting cauldron with my (sadly nonmagical) broomstick.

The tomatoes that were harvested a few weeks ago, and the peppers from the week before that, had been collected into buckets according to variety, covered with water, and left, essentially, to rot. Or ferment, I suppose, if you want to be all precise. All I know is that there was a layer of moldy yuck on the surface of each bucket, and as I vigorously stirred them, they released a smell that was part appetizing fruit and partly the sweet stench of decay.

I am constantly grateful for my iron-clad stomach. Not only can I eat darn near anything I want, and in vast quantities, and shortly before a two-hour roller derby practice without getting nauseated during our endurance session, but I also tend not to get queasy at the sight, smell, or thought of various forms of yuck. I'm sure some flaw or other went to pay for that particular merit. I'm guessing several points in gluttony?

But here's the cool thing. Viable seeds sink while immature seeds, fruit pulp, stems and mold all float. This means you can go from a bucket of pink frothy yuck to a window screen full of clean seeds drying in the greenhouse by means of no higher tech than gravity. You add water, you carefully pour off the floating stuff, you repeat until there's no more floating stuff and the seeds are clean. It's kind of amazing.

Eventually those seeds will be dry, and they will be further winnowed by means of an electric fan. You gently sprinkle the seeds from a height, and the fan will blow away the lighter, immature seeds, leaving only the heavier, viable seeds to land in your collection bucket. Simple physics rules the day once more.

After the bucket stirring, I was on pepper seed duty all morning long. I was stationed at the wide-screen prep step of the assembly line. That is, before the fermented mess entered the pour cycle described above, it was poured atop a screen where we smooshed it around with our hands, getting the seeds to fall through and the larger pulp chunks and stems to remain behind. We didn't wear gloves or anything, which might have been a mistake in the case of the huge barrel of Hot Portugals. By lunch time, my hands were well and truly irritated. I won't say they were burning--it wasn't that bad--but they were gently simmering, to be sure. They were also very orange.

Takeaways? First, gravity is kind of awesome. Second, latex gloves are potentially awesome too.

And, despite a long bath, I still smell like hot peppers.

For this week's Friday Fictionette I would have really liked to get a photo of an azalea hedge densely populated with brilliant blossoms in all different colors, but, for one, I'm not currently living anywhere particularly azalea-rich, and two, it's the wrong time of year. I suppose I could have scoured the internet for something appropriate. A cursory search found me a lot of exceedingly docile azalea bushes, nothing that stood a chance at representing the titular maze, and besides, there were generally people in front of them. For example.

Anyway, I ended up taking a close-up of my heap of squash vines out on the balcony. No, they are not fierce thorn vines that might guard your garden gate. And yes, if you look closely, you can see between the leaves the blue plastic of the Rubbermaid-type storage bin I used for a planter. Whatever. Don't look too closely. It's all about the lush abundance of the foliage, OK?

As Fictionettes go, this one endured bit more revision than most. The end and the beginning were present from the first, but the journey between them needed some reshaping. And so it was done, and so it is now ready for subscribers/Patrons to download and enjoy. The first few paragraphs are available as an enticing excerpt here, on Wattpad, and on Patreon in my Activity Feed.

Now I am about to collapse under the sheer weight of the sushi I ate for dinner. We had friends in from out of town on the occasion of the Great American Beer Festival, which visit traditionally must include a pilgrimage to Sushi Zanmai, which pilgrimage generally involves eyes being bigger than stomachs. We left nothing on our plates, which means I've now got nothing left to stay upright with.

Good night, Internet!

*thunk*

The fall harvest season brings with it a series of exceedingly homogenous Farm Mondays. At other times during the year, my Monday morning shift might consist of several tasks, a miscellany of Things What Need To Get Done. Culling seedlings, filling seedling trays with potting soil, weeding the berm, watering the potted trees, whatever. I'm an extra pair of hands. I'm handy when the high priority items prevent the core staff from getting to the items of slightly less high priority. But during the fall, my whole shift tends to be taken up with that day's great big harvest task.

Three weeks ago, it was beets. Last week, it was peppers. Today, it was tomatoes.

Tomatoes for seed: identify the plants whose fruit consistently demonstrates the desired traits; collect only from those plants, and only those fruit that best demonstrate those traits. Tomatoes for food: gather everything that's neither rotten nor green, pretty much. Tomatoes for snacking on while en route to the next tomato: I fully except my mouth to break out in sores tomorrow from the overdose of ascorbic acid.

The tomato plants grow in round tomato cages. Their branches bust out all over. To get to all the tomatoes, you have to dig and tunnel your way through the foliage. Your arms turn green and yellow from the juices in leaf and stem. And sometimes the tomatoes--especially the cherry varieties--especially the Washington Cherry reds--are so ripe and ready to go that the moment you touch them, let alone jostle the foliage in order to reveal and reach them, they fall right off the stem. It's like playing some weird arboreal version of KerPlunk.

So that was my Farm Monday.

After that came a roller derby shopping pilgrimage. I'd heard good things about Skate Ratz, so when John decided that learning how to skate would be part of learning how to coach, I suggested we check them out. That's how we came to spend most of the afternoon and evening in Loveland getting John equipped for derby. Not only that, but it turns out that Skate Ratz keeps on hand a sample Bont boot in every size from 3 to Something Huge, expressly for fitting. They also had an Antik boot in my size so I could make an informed choice between those brands.

So I have finally ordered the Bont Hybrid in leather, color black, size 3.5. This will replace my current pair of Riedell R3s, which are two and a half years old, and one of which, for a couple of months now, has only been holding heel and sole together by an army of denim strips (cut from old jeans) and veritable gobs of Loctite Flexible Adhesive.

We celebrated our life-changing purchases over dinner at the Pourhouse, which is the best house.

And that was my Monday.