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i'm thankful that ec texted me while i was bored in the stationery store asking to live vicariously through me and i talked about wishing that i loved objects more but how i am almost always more interested in a mediated representation of a thing rather than the thing itself, which feels kind of fucked up but is also how i feel and anyway writing about thinking about myself being bored in the stationery store suddenly made the experience interesting enough to me

 

i'm thankful that though our favorite boba tea place, the one in the same plaza as our favorite dim sum, was closed, there was another one nearby

 

i'm thankful for kali uchis's album isolation )https://open.spotify.com/album/4EPQtdq6vvwxuYeQTrwDVY?si=4FEI4VzYRq27fGoAXXBrjA), which is really good disco r&b, round and sprung bass lines, the steve lacy collaboration is in particularly punchy (https://open.spotify.com/track/1HA2V2EfAgJUBVOju4YfiB?si=shoSUxlnSFaowd6-UE8j8Q)

 

i'm thankful for my welcoming drip campaign for my new job, since even though i'm nervous and want to scrape out the last bit of marrow from this vacation, i also have very posi vibes about it and i keep thinking about whether referencing, after a list of my hobbies, "generally being a Scorpio" in my introductory paragraph to the team that was to be posted in slack was actually something i wanted to do or not, but it doesn't matter and those assignments are always impossible and i will have more opportunities than a single paragraph to make new work friends and anyway at least it wasn't what i did for our MFA thesis reading, which was they asked me for a picture and a bio and i provided this picture of me nuzzling against a professor's horse, which was my favorite picture of myself, and then i submitted my bio as "Justin Wolfe has never had sex with this horse" and then the person making the program who may have been d wrote back "are you sure that's what you want to put there" and i said yes and we filled the auditorium with people's families and one of my students there for extra credit and the program was like a picture of me with my eyes closed nuzzling a horse and the text "Justin Wolfe has never had sex with this horse" and then two normal bios listing recent publication credits. i'm thankful that i read a story about premature ejaculation and another one about lindsay lohan and i fucking killed and then i didn't write anything for years afterward

 

i'm thankful for generally being a scorpio

 

i'm thankful for my gray sweatshirt which has on the front, in thick black marker letters, "EVEN MY FEELINGS HAVE FEELINGS", which i bought because it really spoke to me but i didn't take into account is a shirt that seems to say to other people "Talk To Me About My Shirt" and i actually do not need to have spontaneous interactions where people Talk To Me About My Shirt and at the checkout while d went to get a cart the cashier asked me if she had bought it for me and i said that i had bought it for myself and that it was part of being a scorpio and she looked at me blankly and said "i don't know much about being a scorpio" and then we stood there awkwardly until d returned

 

i'm thankful to have been going through my notes app and seen a note i had made at the party the other night where t said "doug funnie...from the show doug". i'm thankful that at the craft store d said the sentence "do you want to embroider your pronouns?" and pointed to a kit hanging on a rack

 

i'm thankful for d and i's discussion of the evolution of our dim sum order over time, which i told as a story of two narratives, one in which i grew to more and more love and appreciate her favorite sticky rice in lotus leaf, which i had always thought felt like too much of a commitment when i could devote more resources to a variety soft unctuous dumplings, but which, when it's done well, is so rich and warming and actually a nice textural and kinesthetic variation from eating dumplings that also enhances the experience of the dumplings when you return to them, and then the second narrative was the opposite direction, the shrimp rice roll falling out of favor, but then i'm thankful that d countered that narrative and said that was more of a function of this restaurant not doing the shrimp rice roll or not doing it well or something, which was true even though it isn't my favorite

 

i'm thankful to have made this green rice thing (https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019908-fried-eggs-with-garlicky-green-rice) and to have felt that it's a nice twist on a weeknight rice bowl with some greens and can't say no to cotija cheese although also i think it would have been better if i sauteed the garlic rather than adding it raw

 

i'm thankful for the chapter in the chairs are where the people go about an improvisation game where everyone sits in a circle and has a small pile of stones and you go around the circle and each time, someone can either place a stone or move an existing stone and you don't interact in any other way than that and so see people start to make patterns and then enforce them and then break them and then start over

 

i'm thankful for edith zimmerman's newsletter, which has been so good and i'm thankful for today's especially (https://drawinglinks.substack.com/p/dinner-with-david)