Belonging to a household that wears almost exclusively black clothing is great when it comes to doing laundry (no light load) but inconvenient when it comes to finding a particular article of clothing in the resulting laundry bag. I spent about twenty minutes this morning digging for a certain newly washed shirt, and I kept coming up with Chris’s underwear.

On Thursday or Friday of last week, I had a Caesar salad that was so good I’m still thinking about it today. I’ll have to experiment with various dressing/parmesan/lettuce combinations at home to figure out the secret.

My weekend was pretty good, if unexceptional. It got off to an early start, at least - I worked from home on Friday so I didn’t have to deal with my normal commute.

I watched Fried Green Tomatoes on cable because I hadn’t seen it and because my friend Melissa mentioned it the other day. And I watched Dirty Dancing because I hadn’t seen it something like ten years. Chris was suitably horrified in both cases.

Those of you who travel a lot or live near Seattle may want to keep an eye out for one of my dad’s sculptures which is now hanging in SeaTac. I don’t have any photos of it yet, but it should be quite impressive - its wingspan is something like fifteen feet.

Obviously the events in London are weighing pretty heavily on the minds of many of us here in New York, but I don’t really want to talk about it. At least not yet.

It’s difficult to get back into the swing of things at work after a long weekend. Four-day weeks usually feel longer than normal five-day weeks to me, although that doesn’t mean I don’t want any more days off.

I feel a little bad that I’ve been fairly antisocial lately - it’s not that I don’t like any of my friends anymore, it’s just that I feel so worn out at the end of the day that all I want to do when I get home is eat dinner and go to bed. Weekends are better, but my free time is so precious to me that I often find myself wanting to do nothing but luxuriate in it. Wear pajamas for most of the day, watch movies or play video games, take full advantage of being able to relax while I can. That said, I think Al and I are going to try to hit up small weekly events more frequently, if only for the music. We go to bars and drink anyway - we may as well do it at places that play stuff we actually enjoy listening to.

One thing we’re always talking about is how there’s no really nice afterwork bar for our crowd. Nice in the sense that it’s spacious, has large tables or booths suitable for groups, tastefully decorated, possibly serves appetizers, etc. Good music and open early are the real sticking points - we want somewhere we could go at 5pm for cocktails and Sisters of Mercy. Don’t tell me I should be at the Raven or Korova, please - we don’t want somewhere that feels like someone’s mom’s basement. New York is packed to the gills with gorgeous venues that fit all of these requirements except for the music - for example the Tenth Street Lounge or Zanzibar. We make do with a couple of places that favor 80s music or take requests, but it’s not quite the same. A shame, really.

So I woke up on Friday morning with my shoulder and back flipping out again - I guess I slept on it badly or something. Between that and my cold, which was at its peak, I spent most of the weekend in a quivering heap of discomfort. My brother wisely suggested I get absolutely hammered and sleep it all off, and I certainly did my best to polish off some Stella we had in the fridge.

In any case, I think I’m better now. I’m still a little congested and my shoulder still twinges when I move quickly, but I’m more functional than I’ve been in the past two weeks, which is a plus. The only thing I’m concerned about really is my back; it had been almost completely better but on Friday it was as bad as the first day again. I just don’t want it to keep coming back out of nowhere like that, even if I do sleep on it weirdly, so I guess I’ll have to get around to going to the doctor about it.

You’re probably as tired as I am of hearing about my various aches and pains, so hopefully this week will be as free of them as possible. It’s funny how much one misses things like breathing and moving when they’re taken away.