It's fascinating to observe what the mirror does

This time last year, rushthatspeaks and I were in Providence for one of the most bipolar weekends either of us can still remember, split between highs like Myopic Books, Lovecraft's grave, and the bathroom at Julian's and lows like attending a funeral in company of Rush's mother.

I am pleased to report that for our first anniversary, we have managed to avoid all but an e-mail from said mother and absolutely no funerals were involved.

Due to weather/transit shenanigans on the part of New York City, Rush arrived several hours later on Thursday than planned, so that night we mostly ate mlukhieh from Garlic 'n' Lemons and passed out, but on Friday we got up and went out to procure Rush new shoes; adding to the shenanigans, the Tevas had bought it in New York. You must understand that both of us hate clothes shopping, of which shoe shopping is the most pernicious expression, so a lot of this process was indistinguishable from walking into Central Square, being distracted en route by savory BerryLine flavors (honey lavender, lemon basil), cheaply priced used Robertson Davies (Happy Alchemy (1997), although ultimately we left it for the next passerby), and free samples from Follow the Honey, a hitherto undiscovered honey store on Mass. Ave. (tithenai, when you visit, try the avocado blossom; cucumberseed, they sell killer bee), but it got us to Payless, where we were only mildly traumatized by some of the things American women are expected to put on their feet, and I got some kind of cranberry hibiscus iced thing from 1369 on our way back that almost staved off the total stamina crash later that evening. Dinner was that combination of sandwiches and leftovers that happens when you're too tired to cook, but you'll be more tired if you don't eat. I showed Rush the first two episodes of the BBC's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979). We curled up.

Saturday was the Readercon debrief at noon, and thereafter a lovely day. I had never been to Inman Oasis; we got half an hour in the wooden hot tub, which Rush tells me is very much like a traditional Japanese onsen except for the privacy. I felt better afterward. That hasn't happened a lot lately. We found the used book store that turned out to be Lorem Ipsum, but first we found a spray-painted graffito of a wolf eating the sun. It was less than five minutes' walk to Bosphorus, where we are resolved to reverse-engineer their manti the next time we feel like making dumplings and the hünkar beğendi was possibly the best eggplant either of us has eaten. Also it is a truism that anything is good with pan-fried halloumi, but there is no reason that pickled okra should have been delicious. We even made it back to Davis Square in time for the curtain of Theatre@First's As You Like It, but the combination of nowhere to sit and smokers in the audience eventually inclined us to repair to the Diesel and then home for the next installment of Tinker, Tailor. The dogfight that broke out behind us was rather authentically Elizabethan, though.

I read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which Rush gave me. It is a masterpiece.

On Sunday we saw Amos Poe and Ivan Kral's The Blank Generation (1976) at the Harvard Film Archive, which really deserves a post of its own. Black-and-white concert footage from CBGB's, all songs deliberately out of synch; I wish the soundtrack were available, since it seems to have furnished my favorite version of "Psycho Killer," Stop Making Sense included. Baby David Byrne: my God, adorable. Jayne County when she was still Wayne, with fishnets and a toilet plunger. Television and the Heartbreakers. I'd never even heard of the Miamis, the Marbles, or the Shirts. In the spring of 2005, Rush sent me Horses (1975) via YouSendIt, because I had no Patti Smith: the first thing you hear in The Blank Generation is "Gloria." On all points, it was the correct movie for us to see this weekend. And yesterday we had planned to go to the MFA, but instead we found Summer Wars (2009) at the Arlington Library and the obvious course of the evening was to watch it with pizza and later ice cream, which we did, also brownies. It is an almost absurdly heartwarming film and I plan to bring it to this week's Movie Night with Alison. We finished Tinker, Tailor, which remains some of the best television I have seen; we watched some episodes of Shaun the Sheep (2007) and The Supersizers . . . (2008). We never got around to making an apple pie, but there is all the rest of the fall.

My poem "Scythe-Walk," written for teenybuffalo on the occasion of her purchasing a scythe from a jumble sale, was accepted by Mythic Delirium.

Rush left this morning. It was a good visit.

I'm not unhappy right now.