Burnt popcorn

I want to blog. Really, I do. I just don't know what's worth blogging about anymore.

Is anyone really interested in hearing about the day's banalities? I don't have a problem reading about other people's banalities. I just read about how one friend is going to ask her midwife to strip her membranes, while another shared the story of a heart-to-heart while eating Kashi's Heart-to-Heart oatmeal. But I'm not so sure you and I share the same tolerance for banality. Do you care that I just burnt popcorn while writing this post?

I get that this is the point of blogging, the sharing of the day-to-day banalities, that is. And I guess I could blog about how I bought a brand new couch and coffee table the other day, my first truly grown-up purchase, considering that the last "grown-up" item I bought for myself was the $125 Tiffany's mesh ring, which, next to the sterling silver letter opener, is the cheapest item you can buy at Tiffany's, which really isn't all that exciting of an event given that I'm almost 30.

Were I 23 and fresh out of college and buying new furniture -- now that -- that would be exciting. Because you're 23! And buying furniture! That's not from Ikea! Or Target! (It's from Suburban. How very -- suburban.) Buying furniture at 23 is so unexpected! And buying furniture at 29 is so very expected.

Wait for it, folks. I'm sure there's something more interesting around the corner.

(Off to Cincinnati for the New Year. Perhaps something interesting will pop up between by then.)

Idling away

I thought by taking a job editing, I'd be more inspired to write, but instead I just find myself picking out typos in everything I read. Bo-ring.

Which is what life has been lately, though I know those of you in more exciting and far off lands check here for updates on life in New York, so I'll do the best I can in trying to make an unexciting existence sound remotely interesting.

We caught up with Ratterman, Franklin, Vicki and the Lishegos over the weekend and everyone is doing well, with the exception of a minor meltdown over the lack of enough vanilla extract for some peanut butter macadamia nut cookies, which turned out to be pretty good. (See what fun you're missing?! Octoberfest in Germany? The Great Wall? Bah.)

Next week, Jay is off to Melbourne and Sydney (and perhaps someplace else in Australia?), for the first flight of something that has the wingspan of a football field. I am making him take my camera and will try my hardest to also make him blog about it, though for whatever reason his love affair with blogging has been short-lived. What happens in Seville, stays in Seville, I guess.

On a more personal note, we had a Meet the Parents weekend two weeks ago. The Boehmers, in town for the weekend, met the Merritts in a casual yet intimate dinner setting at Arturo's. All went well and I wasn't very nervous about it until I saw that my father had managed to singe off most of the skin on his chin (not an exaggeration) from a piece of cheese on a sausage and pepper sandwich. It was the sort of thing you could tell everyone was staring at but didn't want to ask about, so I eventually felt compelled enough to explain my father's leprosy.

All in all, it seems that our parents were more concerned about how they came off rather than formulating a real impression of the other set. So the good news is, I think we'll all be able to hang out again.

And that, my friends, is all there is for now. I'm trying my hardest to stay away from the obligatory "I promise to update again soon!" sign off.

Oh, wait.

Who am I? Where am I going?

After reading Sam Kashner’s article in Vanity Fair, “Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate,” I’m totally crushing on Mike Nichols.

The quotes provided by the 76-year-old director made me laugh and contemplate things in a way that only a rich man who’s had the time and the means to reflect on life can. My favorite (and the article’s penultimate) quote is: “There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.”

Sweet, non? It also reminds me of part of the reason to I came to Spain: to find what I guess would be my second calling, as my passion for writing slowly fades. (Yes, at 28, I’m burnt out. I’m over the competitiveness of the publishing world, the countless unrecognized résumés and seeing so many hacks get ahead, especially now that anyone with a blog can call themselves a writer—linkage company at right excluded.)

You see, the last time I spent a long period of time abroad, in England, I went thinking I would return home and become a kindergarten teacher. I always loved writing, but teaching was more practical (hey, that word again!) and just as underpaid, heh. Instead, walking the same streets and learning in the same classrooms as of some of my most favorite writers uncontrollably reignited my passion for pen and paper, and so, here I am.

And now, I’m almost right back where I started eight years ago, wandering the streets of some foreign city and waiting for inspiration, for that realization to strike, however corny and clichéd the whole idea may be.

At the time Nichols controversially cast Dustin Hoffman in the lead, he was reading Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle,” about “a young man who lets life and love pass him by while he waits for a cataclysmic event to transform him.” I plan to pick this book up on our next trip to the English-language bookstore; it certainly sounds apropos.

Image: Patricia Lin