from the beach! it was pretty nice, as vacations to soulless beach towns go. (sorry, mom.) we were at stone harbor, a little town on the south jersey shore. the beaches there were beautiful - somewhat reminiscent of the outer banks - but the town was flat and cutesy and kind of terrifying, in a soul-sucking way. everyone there was a beautiful tanned teennage god/goddess who would stare you down for attempting to look on their glowing beings, or else a leathery 50 year-old woman with a louis vuitton imitation bag and frosted poufy blond hair and lots of bling. and everybody is white. i saw two black women, and that was about as ethnic as stone harbor got.

the food there was also terrible - terrible in the kind of way that makes you want to eat rice krispies and lactose tolerant milk out of a solo cup in your hotel room for every single meal, which is what i did about 30% of the time. we finally found a decent italian restaurant our last day there, but up until then my meals had consisted of rubbery spaghetti with diseased-looking mussels, many a crabcake sandwich smothered in tartar sauce to hide the taste, or ice cream for dinner.

but, to sway away from my inherent negativity, like i said, the beaches were beautiful, i got to spend time with my family (minus my brother peter, who is toiling away as a research assistant to some nuclear grad student at uva or something), we had absolutely fantastic weather every single day, and i got to read a lot, watch a lot of tv, and see a lot of movies, which are three of my favorite time-sucking activities. we saw spiderman II (a reviewing for me; even better the second time); collateral (actually pretty decent; jamie foxx was great, and i still despise tom cruise, though i think he's better when he's an evil, despicable character); and the princess diaries II (shut the hell up; my little sister wanted to see it, and if you don't bow down and worship at julie andrews' fabulous feet, then you clearly didn't watch mary poppins and/or the sound of music 3200 times when you were 10).

i read slammerkin, which is an intelligent, sort of dickens-ish historical fiction about a london prostitute in the 18th century (go whores!). then in about two days i read the entirety of the his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman, which I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LOVED AND IT WAS AMAZING AND GO READ THEM and dare i say - it was better than harry potter? not as fun, more serious and adult, kind of emotional and heavy-handed, and i'm pretty sure it's all a recreation of paradise lost so i'm not sure if you're down for that sort of thing, but i thought it was awesome. i don't normally go in for the fantasy genre of books, but i completely fell in love with everything about it. a movie is in the works, with the wonderful tom stoppard writing the script, and new line cinema producing, and if they can carry it all off, it will be better than LOTR and harry potter and everything in THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD INCLUDING ALCOHOL.

anyway, i am back to the normal world now, and going to work tomorrow, and doing all sorts of boring things. in case you didn't receive an evite for some reason (because i am a lazy, mean bitch or don't have your email addy), my roommates and i are hosting a bbq this coming saturday, starting around 6 and going till whenever. you can email me for the location. please come out and drink with me to validate my existence.