I’ve really been meaning to catch up on posting and emails and picture-taking, but I’ve been working really hard on writing something that’s taking most of my energy and attention, so that’s all going to have to wait just a little longer. The good news—and it is good news—is that the writing is pleasant, satisfying, and energizing.

Well, mentally and emotionally energizing, anyway. Physically it has kind of pooped me out. Of course, it is also possible that I am simply suffering a blood sugar crash after having consumed half a slab of Ritter Sport yogurt chocolate.

Therefore, forgive me for the lapse, and know that if you, yourself, consume half a slab of Ritter Sport yogurt chocolate tonight, and be sure to tell me if half an hour later your eyelids begin to feel like lead weights, you will be doing a great service by adding to my set of experimental data.

Das ist alles.

Carrots are in season, so when we ordered a box of organic produce (and eggs, and milk, and grass-fed beef) from this local delivery service, one of the items it contained was a huge, beautiful bunch of them. We cooked with a few, but I knew we wouldn’t go through them all in time unless we bit the bullet and aimed big.

Ergo, carrot cake.

I made the cake this evening while Ross was putting together a new shelving unit in his office, constructed out of 20 small cinderblocks and three long pieces of pine. It’s pretty great—the lower two shelves are for books, and a row of plants goes on the top. Also, it frees up some space in that room and makes it feel much less cluttered. We’re going to have to get rid of two pieces of furniture as a result: one folding bookcase, and this table. Anyone in the Chicago area want to buy either?

Back to the cake. It turned out beautifully, which is to say that it (along with the slightly lemony cream cheese frosting I made for it) tasted wonderful. Moist and yummy but not too sweet. Unfortunately, given that

a) it kind of broke while I was turning it out of the glass dish I made it in, and
b) we aren’t exactly skilled in the art of frosting,

the cake did not look like this. Instead, it ended up having the sort of face only a mother could love. Or, as Ross put it (while frosting), “I’m going to keep working on this for a while, so it doesn’t look so much like a cake that barbarians made.”

I don’t know. We’ve got pretty refined palates, for barbarians.

The weather we had all weekend was entirely charming, so we did our best to take advantage of it—at least, we did on Saturday. After the gym in the morning we biked down several streets to a farmer’s market where they sell the most wonderful lamb stew meat for seven dollars a pound, which is not bad considering it’s organic and the lambs are happy (for a while, anyway), at least as far as we can tell from the poster of adorable smiling lambs in the midst of green green pastures that stands next to the stall, inspiring feelings of vague guilt. We also bought some Honeycrisps, which are sweet as—well.

Anyway, in the afternoon we went to listen to these guys perform inside the Robie House as part of the wonderful, and completely free, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, an event that is exactly as old as our residence in Chicago. Megan, I thought of you and wondered if you would have been able to translate some of their songs for me. On Saturday evening, we did something rather decadent: we had pizza twice. Once after making a pie in our oven, and again after walking down to 57th Street, where every year on one night in the fall the stores stay open late and there are greasy slices to be had for a dollar a pop. It was a beautiful night, pizza and all, but lord oh lord do undergraduates suffer from a lack of age.

Today contained nothing worth reporting besides work and a rather delicious dunking of ciabatta in a plate full of grassy olive oil, sweet balsamic vinegar, and red chili.

…I’m beginning to think that I need to declare a moratorium on mentioning what I eat. Even I’m not that interested in it.

Ha. Just kidding. I am. But maybe I’ll spare y’all for a little while.

Mixed together thawed frozen spinach, log of goat cheese, half a package of cream cheese. Spooned this on top of pieces of salmon. Wrapped these bundles of joy and heart attack in five sheets of phyllo dough pastry each (remembering to brush each layer of dough with butter first, plus more butter to cover the whole astonishingly classy burrito). Baked.

Ate with wasabi mashed potatoes made by Ross.

Entered coma.

Talked to Ben, while still in coma. Pretty sure he did not notice.

After nearly two weeks of what turned out to be an utterly charming holiday filled with a bountifulness of dear, dear friends and family, I am back in the land of the to-do list. Yesterday I pissed the hours away on Flickr and Facebook, but today I strapped myself into my red chair and got down to business. Besides work (which is a little complicated, but fine), I now have at least three doctor’s appointments I need to schedule, many emails to answer, an apartment to clean, reading to catch up on, clients to badger and please, and—the indignity of it—I find that I am responsible for planning and making my own meals again.

Okay, I lied. That last one isn’t an indignity. It’s a tremendous pleasure. We’ve cooked dinner every night since we got back (yes, including Wednesday, and our flight didn’t get in until 6:10pm) and this evening another marvelous staple is on the menu: our favorite bacon-tomato-mushroom pasta. It contains fully a cup of white wine (which is a lot, but still leaves quite a lot in the bottle for later), is simmered until the bacon all but disappears, and winds up so rich and delicious that it is served (on long strands of green spinach pasta) without a whit of cheese.

Tomorrow we’ve decided that we’re bringing the holiday back to Chicago and heading to the Loop for an afternoon of great coffee and magazine reading in the Intelligentsia cafe. No work is allowed. (Ross will have a far harder time sticking to this than me.)

For more Boston, go here. Also, stay tuned for a future entry on the subject of “How a Person Can Put Her Entire Life on the Internet and Still Consider Herself Extraordinarily Private.”