In related news, I am moving to Japan.

Well, hopefully. I am applying for the JET Program to teach English in Japan for at least a year. I don't want to jinx it, but I am really really really excited about the prospect. I've been doing research on different prefectures to help me decide what area I want to request and it is bringing me so much joy to read things like this:

The Opening of the Ise Lobster Season You have been waiting for! Try fresh Ise Lobsters just landed from the sea! Ise lobster is known as one of the most gorgeous seafood in Japan. You may feel nothing but delicious, when you eat the clear and rich white meat picked out of the hard shell like an armor.

My goal in life is to feel nothing but delicious.

On the way down the hill from the house, I saw Jeff Goldblum walking up the hill. I hate Jeff Goldblum. I'd like to say that for a split second I considered swinging my steering wheel sharply to the right and ridding the world of future movies featuring his pseudo-stutterings, but I did not. Instead, I just made eye contact with him for a brief moment and afterward had the urge to call someone and say, "I just saw Jeff Goldblum! I hate Jeff Goldblum!"

Consider yourself called.

Reasons to be happy:
- Seeing The Incredibles with a theater full of rapt children.
- A new season of Arrested Development (I have a secret crush on Jason Bateman that I just realized has existed since The Hogan Family at least).
- Citrus season is beginning. This is exciting news.
- Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer and the way it has made me look at everything in terms of parasite/host relationships.

Reasons to be sad:
- The letter from Sallie Mae detailing my revised payment plan...which ends in 2024. What? Won't I be dead by then?
- Bloghosts is ailing! I will have to find a new host! (I am the parasite -- see?)
- Busy days at work. Ugh. There's nothing like having an enticing future goal to make you lose all motivation in your mind-numbing present life.

Even after close inspection, I have no idea what is growing out of the West Coast. Fudgesicles?

Six years ago, when I finally gave in and subscribed to Martha Stewart Living, it felt like a revelation. No longer would I be forced to "accidentally" stumble upon her TV show and halfheartedly make fun of it whenever someone else walked into the room -- I would indulge in my fascination with crafts, cooking and gardening in the open, without shame. Last year, tired of the repetitive recipes and annoying Martha-knows-best attitude, I started subscribing to Gourmet. But now even that magazine -- with its ritzy travel sections and fluffy "Famous Food in the Movies!" articles -- feels too shiny and pretty for me. (Although there was an amusing uproar earlier this year over a cover photo of a cake topped with cupcakes. Responses included: "Five months have gone by, and your January cover is still causing controversy!" and "I canceled my subscription to Gourmet because of that polka-dot cake on the January cover!" Oh, readers of Gourmet. Will you ever cease to amuse me? No, no you will not.)

But now I've graduated. I've entered the unpretty, unglamorous world of Cook's Illustrated and there is no going back. It is all about the science of cooking, about finding the absolute best way of cooking an acorn squash or roasting a chicken. No shimmering tableware. No cobblestoned streets in France. Instead, the founder and editor wears a bow tie and looks like a weak-willed high school chemistry teacher. I love it. The best part of all is that it doesn't make you want to buy anything except the necessary ingredients. There are no ads and no sumptuous photo spreads to tempt you. Just good, old-fashioned food nerdery.

From my friend Emily:

"My dad just sent me this picture of his best friendís newest pet addition. This guy is kind of a lunatic and heís known for having all kinds of crazy animals roaming around his house like talking parrots and snakes and large dogs. ÝHe says that heís training this one to fight my dadís new dog."

A week later:

"This is the ferocious beast that the little kitty is being trained to fight. ÝMy dad is keeping her on a strict diet of Kibbles ëní Beer."

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd pay big money to see this tiny brawl.

Sometimes you cradle your sadness in your arms like a soft, small, terrified animal. Like a baby rabbit, with white fur so thin and new you can feel its warm, pink skin under your palm. You hold it and murmur, Stop shaking stop shaking stop shaking, while you feed it cigarettes and wine, give it warm baths, drive it around in the car and play its favorite CDs, things you know will keep it shuddering like a tiny, rusty engine. It feels good to have this alive and needy creature huddled up against you, so stupid and helpless.

So even though you know you should let it go, should put it in a cage and feed it tender leaves and collect its neat droppings until it dies of old age or maybe drive it to a green field somewhere and let it leap out of your arms and into the glinting clover, you arenít ready for that. Sometimes the most you can do is curl yourself around it, a thin shell of skin and bones, and feel its quivering heat at your very center, a white and lustrous pearl.

Yesterday on the way to work, a fire engine passed through an intersection where I was stopped and I found myself strangely moved by the way everyone started driving forward at the same time after it passed.

These are strange and sentimental days, my friend.

There were things he wanted to say to her but couldn't. He could feel the wooliness of his tongue filling his mouth when they stood there together in the office kitchenette with nothing left to say. Her eyes were brown and sparkly, appealing as pretty buttons. He cleared his throat. She smoothed her skirt. The cooler gurgled.

One day she wore a sleeveless shirt to work and as he watched her reach for the sugar on the top shelf he thought, You are beautiful. As she put her arm down, he caught a flash of something on the soft bit of skin connecting arm and armpit.

"What's that?" he asked.

She looked down. "What?"

He reached out and pointed, his finger barely grazing her skin. She lifted her arm and there it was: You are beautiful, typed into her skin. She touched it. "Feel it. It's so strange," she said.

The words were slightly sunken, exactly as if the metal teeth of a typewriter had bitten in, and the ink was bluish, like an aging tattoo. The surrounding skin was perfectly pale and whole. His exploring fingertip stayed there a moment longer than it should have.

"This is so odd," she said and looked up at him. His throat bobbed under his tight collar, but held steady.

"Yeah."

The next day they ran into each other at the copy machine and she lifted her hair up to show him what was on the back of her neck: You are softer than the softest thing. Her neck was warm and vibrant under his hand, buzzing like a live wire.

The day after that: I want to wake up with you in the middle of the night, circling one of her ankles.

And: This is true, on the tender bottom of her foot. She had to balance on one teetering shoe to show him and she laughed when he touched her foot. "So ticklish," she said, and he had to fight the urge to tackle her and tickle her for hours right there on the floor of the conference room.

"It's like a secret message every day," she said. "I can’t wait to wake up in the morning, to see what it will be."

Her foot was still in his hand and she was smiling at him, but his throat was packed tight as a roll of pennies and there was nothing he could do to shake them loose.

---

He waited for her to lift up a bit of her clothing and show him the latest find, but she just stapled her papers with her back to him. "Nothing for three days," she said finally.

"Oh," he said and was surprised at his own disappointment.

"It was this amazing thing and now it's gone, maybe for good."

He didn't say anything. She kept stapling, not looking at him.

---

He knew where she lived because of that one time he drove her home after the office Christmas party. She lived in a little house by herself, behind a bigger house. He stood on the porch in the morning light, wondering if this was the creepiest thing he had ever done and feeling the Sharpie cap press into the skin of his sweaty hand.

She looked confused when she opened the door. "Oh. Hi."

He took her hand and held it palm up as he uncapped the marker with his teeth. She watched him write, her expression impossible to read.

I love you.

She took the Sharpie from him and pulled his hand close. Pushing up his sleeve, she wrote, And I fucking love you, all the way up his inner arm.

"Finally," she said. "I thought I was going to burst."

He looked at her and suddenly he saw all the things that crowded her throat, that were spilling out of her eyes. She was smiling at him and he started laughing – it felt like a gushing fountain, like an explosion of new pennies, like a handful of wishes tossed, glinting in the light of this new and perfect sun.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I hereby dedicate this entry to some random food-related items.

Item A: My dearest Los Angeles Public Library has a menu collection in their rare book room and some of them are online. You can search for all menus from, say, the 1890s and marvel at the crazy banquets that featured items like "Prime Beef, Dripp Sauce." The menu covers from the 1960s Chinese restaurants would make amazing fake vintage t-shirts. (The questionable morality of wearing a fake vintage t-shirt would be balanced out by the DIY aspect, right? Right?)

Item B: Have you heard of a Turducken? It's a deboned chicken inside a deboned duck inside a deboned turkey. And people eat it for Thanksgiving. Really.

Item C: This has been on my mind for awhile -- pork martinis.

There's nothing more annoying than sitting cozily in a cafÈ, happily sipping your green tea on a rainy afternoon and then realizing there is some guy with creepy hair staring steadily at you and every time someone at a table near to you leaves, he moves over until he is sitting a mere three feet away, facing you. That is not the kind of cozy you want, I assure you.

(What is creepy hair, you ask? In this instance, it was a longish bowl cut on top and a short buzz on the bottom, resulting in an inch-wide difference in thickness between top and bottom layer. It was a hairstyle popular among skater kids when I was in eighth grade. But this man was approximately 35 years old. THAT is creepy hair.)