Bad Apple

Mille grazie to Maria Caterina di Perugia for a wonderful day at her house. She even picked me up & brought me back; I'm rather tottery lately, so this was a huge help. Lovely lunch. Discussed possibility of trip to Bath, Wales, & Cornwall within a reasonable time-frame (well, you have to plan these things). MCat received a gorgeous red-fabric bound set of collected Jane Austen from the Jane Austen Centre for her first anniversary (yesterday). My haul: three kinds of tomatoes, little peppers, heaps of basil, rosemary, sage, black-eyed Susans, & marigolds. Yay. I look forward to house-sitting whilst they are away at the beach later this month. Birds, two cats (one being My Julie), breezy house, & garden. No weirdo neighbor with secret meth lab. (I'm only half-kidding.)

All clean & tidy & happy-ish, claws sheathed, I logged on to see (as I did this a.m.) where/why iTunes had not downloaded the second episode of Mad Men (yes, it is a priority...you should read & look at the stuff I have to, then you'd know why). Thought it was me; no it was not. That was no small sum I paid for a season pass. Bad Apple!

Hope you had a great Monday. If you're a Bachelorette fan, Joanna at Cup of Jo is holding a series finale confab, here. (Me? No, but have a good time.) See ya in the funny papers.

ciao-meow

[Natalie Portman photographed by Ellen von Unwerth, 1996 via bohema tumbr]

Serenity Now

Why Susan! Are you coming to us via the magic of blogger-schedule-draft or have you cancelled plans (again) because of whatever this ennui-angsty thing you are so not rocking? (Do I drop the 'n'?) I'm supposed to be lunching-as-verb with friend & at my beloved Phillips Collection. So I'm here, there's always tomorrow & that is The New Plan. My crazy-neighbor-with-the-secret-meth-lab & shrieking Toto-dog just called me "The Duderina" - hey, my gray robe is a cashmere-wool-cotton blend! (Truthfully, it alerted me to dress-dress because my favorite UPS guy, Roland, should be here today; he worries, Roland does, about me. He does. Minds out of gutter--not that way!)

The only happy camper here is Julie (of course). I have some funny & cool pix to share, but they must be organized. And I thought, wow you should put in a pretty photograph* that isn't ennui-angsty because...finally subtitling the blog (thanks to Diane at Things We Love 2) with a Leonard Cohen line (I can hear the rolling eyeballs), & posting dark photographs of Jerusalem & depressing people about human rights abuses, etc. is so not fair. If you wanted that, you would go over to Julie's blog.

Mille grazie to Michelle Fabio at Bleeding Espresso for being so supportive. I won a book on her Facebook site, go quickly to her page...trying to get 1,000 peeps by the end of the month & she gets more free books. Everyone wins (which, is rather socialist, isn't it?;) Also, lovely & kind Angie Muresan is having a book giveaway for French By Heart. Now, to those photographs & Roland & that shrieking freak (both of them) next door. Come here, my pretty.**

*Trine Thorsen mosaic on Sebastian, via we heart it
**I would never ever hurt a dog! I love (most of) them.