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Oysters
September 13, 2024
On polite fictions. Someone asked what I’d been most excited to eat post-pregnancy, and I realized I hadn’t gotten oysters yet. So, we went out early to get...
Tomato Season
August 30, 2024
On abundance. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I worked at a flower shop in the evening after school and daily into the summer. Throughout the...
3:00 a.m.
August 16, 2024
On sleep (and not) If you’re around to see 3:00 a.m., you’ve gotten up for some reason or been awake all night. Both are unpleasant in their own right. It is...
Having a baby
August 2, 2024
On best-laid plans. Programming note: Hi, everybody! I’m back and semi-unretired for the rest of my actual work leave. Expect a new Enthusiasms in your inbox...
Being Pregnant
June 14, 2024
On the past nine months. Programming note: Enthusiasms is going on leave! I am taking off the rest of June and July and aiming to be back in August (maybe...
Photos from my Birthday(s)
May 31, 2024
On occasions. There have been worse birthdays. C. got Covid this week, which meant a lot of plans were canceled—but we still managed to get a cake and...
Watching WWE
May 24, 2024
On a good neighbor. You can see the room where Mario would watch TV from our backyard. In the winter, it would just be the blue glow from the screen through...
Taking an L
May 17, 2024
On admitting defeat. My brain has felt very smooth lately, I have to admit. For example, on Monday, I left my home with the express purpose of running an...
Cats, Part 2
May 10, 2024
On good company. C. has been away for a conference, so it’s just been me and the cats all week. It’s a bit funny, being right here on the cusp of probably...
Allergy Season
May 3, 2024
On muddling through. My eye is so watery lately, is a thought I have each spring, a perennial mystery to be solved. One of the big oak trees in my...
When All the Trees are In Bloom
April 19, 2024
On returning. During the spring of 2020, I read somewhere that dinosaurs ate magnolia blossoms. I didn’t really care to verify it—one of those things that...
Solar Eclipse
April 12, 2024
On the cosmos. Programming note: Hey, what the hell! These keep not sending out as expected! Here’s an unintentionally late edition of Enthusiasms for your...
Gay Easter Parade in New Orleans, Louisiana
April 5, 2024
On miracles. I caught a fistful of beads—with my left hand, no less—before they flew past and hit someone else in the face. French Quarter Journal/Melanie...
Getting Caught in the Rain
March 22, 2024
On being prepared. Shit, I thought, looking at the blue-grey clouds rolling in. Left my umbrella at home. Rain Landscape, Wassily Kandinsky/Wikimedia Commons...
Daylight Saving Time
March 15, 2024
On the future. Because of the time change, the sun was blasting right in my face. Going west on the Pike, riding the bus home from work. On top of that, one...
The Weather in Other Places
March 8, 2024
On user experience. I don't know why Apple won't let me have the one thing I want: to know the weather in every place I've ever been. It's windy in Edinburgh...
120 Film
March 1, 2024
On waiting and seeing. I accidentally put a roll of black-and-white 120 film through the scanner at the airport. Do you think it will still come out? I asked...
Accidentally Stealing $8 Worth of Pizza
February 23, 2024
On misunderstandings I would like to formally apologize to the new-ish pizza place in Harvard Square, which my friend S. and I visited for the first time the...
Guy on the Bus Bringing Home Flowers on Valentine's Day
February 16, 2024
On labors of love. Roses were always so much work. They shipped in a long, skinny box—all the flowers did, and it was my job to unpack them at my part-time...
Liquid Nitrogen
February 9, 2024
For medicinal purposes It's never good when someone says, This might hurt. In fact, it's usually a good indicator that whatever it is and whoever is saying...
The Stairs Outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art
February 2, 2024
On souvenirs I kept getting annoyed at the people in front of us. Every couple of steps, they would stop to turn for a photo that someone below was ready to...
Dance Dance Revolution
January 26, 2024
On High Scores I kept missing the arrows, which I blamed on the shoes I was wearing—my big, hideous Sorel snow boots that, for a weekend in January in...
Eating Alone at Yume Ga Arukara
January 12, 2024
On getting it perfect. Is this technically a restaurant review? The other night, after getting a haircut, but before getting home, I needed dinner. The...
Hanging Out with a Cat at the End of His Life
January 5, 2024
Hanging Out with a Cat at the End of His Life On the in between. By the time we arrived, just before Christmas, Moose’s interest in food had already waned....
2023 in Enthusiasms
December 15, 2023
If my long-neglected embroidery-in-progress is any indication, it is not always easy to keep up with a creative project. But in 2023, I have come here...
$12 Milk Frother from Williams Sonoma
December 8, 2023
The mega-yacht owners of the world would have you believe that luxury is a rarity reserved only for those who can afford it, but I am here to tell you that...
Waking Up From a Nap To Find out Henry Kissinger Died
December 1, 2023
When I was in Hanoi, I went to the Vietnam Military History Museum, where, for the first time, I encountered what was true: the United States had lost. I...
Walking Through a Little Pile of Leaves
November 17, 2023
On the days I work from home, I do my little stomp around the neighborhood to maintain a sense of well-being. caption... Just the other morning, I passed a...
MBTA Commuter Rail to Providence
November 10, 2023
I thought the train left at 7:00 a.m., so I set my alarm for 5:00 and, somehow, was still asleep at 5:48 when the cats woke me up instead. Twenty minutes and...
Halloween
November 3, 2023
I think I have dressed up as something for a solid 97% of Halloweens, minus the few lost years between the ages of 11–14 or so, when everything else about...
Flipping the Record Over
October 27, 2023
I gotta say, the amount of terrible things that happen in and in the name of the United States makes this project feel silly sometimes. But, I think, for me,...
Popping Your Ears
October 19, 2023
No one really tells you how many indignities you’ll suffer on account of having a body. These are just things you learn, living in the body you have. I hate...
Sneakers
October 13, 2023
I was talking to someone earlier today who said they felt like a scrambled egg, which is exactly how I feel on this spooky Friday the 13th afternoon! That’s...
Berlin U-Bahn
October 6, 2023
Buying a ticket was as confusing as I remembered. The first time I was in Berlin, in 2015, I just picked whatever and hoped, in the event that someone came...
The Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)
September 21, 2023
I was about midway through eating a popsicle when I realized I didn’t really know what it tasted like. Do these have a flavor? I called up the stairs to C.,...
Lanternflies
September 14, 2023
I tried to recall where my friend had lived in Brooklyn, but everything had changed so much since then, or, otherwise, each block looked the same as the last...
Expensive Fruit
September 7, 2023
We bought peaches with the intention of making pie. They cost $30 at the fancy little food store, an exorbitant amount that we were, nonetheless, too proud...
Ice Cream Cone
August 31, 2023
On Sunday afternoon, I was in a mood. The self-pitying kind that propagates, curdles. It started when what I anticipated to be a simple bike repair turned...
Sailing
August 24, 2023
I like sailing for some of the same reasons I like riding a bike—it’s you and a machine working together to get somewhere. You could become proficient at...
Changing a Tire
August 17, 2023
Changing a tire is, I guess, one of those life skills that are handy to have as an adult—like poaching an egg or avoiding someone you don’t want to see out...
Sharktivity
August 3, 2023
This week, I’m running one from the archives. Please enjoy this 2018 vintage Enthusiasms on Sharktivity, which I firmly believe is the only good app and one...
Twilight in Boston
July 27, 2023
I like to note that Jonathan Richman and I share a favorite part of town. The little memorial/By the Victory Gardens — yeah, I’m imagining it right now. Few...
Hammock
July 20, 2023
As a kid, my family’s summer vacations went like this: One year, we’d take a “big trip” somewhere, and the next we’d go to Cape Cod. There, we’d rent the...
Fireflies
July 14, 2023
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many fireflies as I have when we’re on Long Island, a place I had never really thought of as being beautiful until I married...
Typos
July 5, 2023
Things happen. A family emergency left us stuck in Colorado for four more days than planned (and is also why this blog was MIA last week!) Luckily, everyone...
Rain Boots
June 21, 2023
I did not expect to cry at the boygenius concert. I just laughed out loud, typing it out—am I a stereotype? Sad girl at the sad girls show. But really, it...
Birthdays
June 14, 2023
On my birthday, everything should go my way—though the universe hasn’t always agreed with me on that. I don’t always get what I want. One year, as a kid, I...
Graduation
May 25, 2023
I guess it is foolish to expect better of our varied and variable institutions, but, as you may have seen, my alma mater invited David Zaslav, currently in...
Playing Zelda
May 18, 2023
The best thing about video games is that they are fucking funny as hell. I was going to say that I only learned this as an adult, having grown up in a...
Checking the Air in Your Bike Tires Before Every Ride
May 10, 2023
It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that I’m, as the great Naomi Fry once tweeted, “very paris '68 in that i'm a staunch hard-edged communist as well as a decadent...
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