It is hot here this week. Very hot. It is so hot that the the little thermometer on the thermostat in our living room has maxed out; it just can't go any higher. It is so hot that it's too hot to do anything other than sit around in your underwear reading in front of the tiny, ineffectual air conditioner in your bedroom, unless the other thing is to sit around in your underwear at the computer and ogle your Internet buddies.

There were things I was supposed to do today. I was to return the trial Interview Outfits that didn't pass muster and get back the money I shouldn't be spending on such things. It's amazing how expensive it can be to try to find a job. Especially out here in the land of WWBs (Women With Blazers). My mom says I should have a blazer for the follow-up interviews I have scheduled this week for a very blazerly firm downtown. "You can carry it on your arm, " she says. I say it's ninety-three degrees; no one else will be wearing a blazer, either. I wonder if that's even how you spell blazer? Maybe it's actually bleah-ser; seems like that would be more fitting. I've rather enjoyed my month of unemployment. It's refreshing to not be devoting forty-five hours a week to The (underpaying) Man. But looking for work is stressful in its own right, you're constantly selling yourself and constantly spending cash you're not replenishing. Plus it gets a little lonely at home. I'll be very happy if word comes back that I should show up someplace at 8:30 on October 1 with my blazer on.

I think Harvard is doing right by Stan. It seems to be everything he expected, and more, and less, and other things. He hasn't seemed to need to work/study nearly as much as I was anticipating, but he's a smarty and what the hell do I know about graduate school? He is definitely the Dad of the first-years. We got together with a few of them for beers last weekend and I was mesmerized by their plump, radiant baby faces and wondered how it could be that these children know anything about anything. Turns out on talking to them that they know plenty, because they went to fancy prep schools and prestigious colleges. So.

It appears that a feature of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is constant events and gatherings. Stan has meetings of various sorts lined up almost every day and there are parties we're supposed to RSVP for and election events and all types of this kind of business going on. It reminds me of every film you've ever seen or every book you've ever read about goings-on at University. I'm rereading This Side of Paradise now just to, you know, keep in the spirit of things.

So far my Top 5 things are:

• Our apartment, which is spartan but lovely and coming along. Slowly.
• "Dave's" around the corner which is a cafe really but which we use as a market for the staples: wine, beer and bread.
• The weekly farmer's market in our square where we buy mountains of gorgeous produce (heirloom tomatoes, especially).
• Our neighborhood, which has the perfect mix of old-school hippy community charm and yuppie boutiqueyness for the likes of the two of us, and is also convenient to get to and from without being quite so intensely/grungily urban as a lot of neighborhoods.
• The autumn light and weather have been phenomenal. Apart from today, which is too damned hot, as I have mentioned.