Last night I made fried chicken, my first time ever, and it was delicious. Then between the first and the second batch there suddenly arose a grease fire serious enough that I pulled the pin out of the fire extinguisher and was probably less than a second away from squeezing the trigger. Tonight I have to go home and clean smoke stains off the walls and ceiling. Conundrum: but the chicken was really good, and I have one more plateful of parts in the refrigerator that are covered in batter-marinade � and the recipe says that you can let them sit for up to a day like that, and I�ll bet they taste even better that way � and the fire only happened while I was getting the grease hot again after it was at cooking temperature and it�s true that I was sitting on my butt with the new CJR instead of monitoring the heating element like a sentry, so, fire and all, I am sorely tempted to cook up the second batch. Before or after I clean up the kitchen? Or am I on crack to think like that in the first place? The cornbread was aces, as per. Also I test-kitchened a recipe I had in mind as a possibility for the next Book Club, a salad with watermelon and tomatoes (yes) and green onions and Cabrales with a sherry-cayenne vinaigrette � I really and truly wanted to like it, but it came out just plain odd. I have another, less nouveau twist on the watermelon-and-tomatoes theme that I will try next, and maybe that one doesn�t taste so perverse. In case it does, two people have independently noted that the book-and-food theme for the next go-round � did I mention, we are reading "The Botany of Desire," and, I swear, I�m going to start it tonight � lends itself well to the preparation and consumption of Very Special Brownies. Especially considering that all sorts of newbies are on the hook whom we do not want to scare away or make think we are bad girls, will anyone have the guts to step up and make some? Hmm, will I?

I got more, too. For the past several months, really since I've been keeping track, one of the more popular Google searches by which visitors have arrived at my site has been "Rick Bragg + intern." See, you get this page. And I had figured that there was some kind of secret insidery dish floating through Manhattan writery spheres concerning Mr. Bragg and maybe one of the NYT�s summer interns, I was picturing some fresh young corn-fed blondie out of Duke or Vanderbilt who reminded him of sweet home Alabama, someone with the earnestness and crusading sheen of a j-school acolyte, to whom he would obviously be a hero and a mentor and by the way the best person in the world to whom to administer a few career-development blowjobs� and I�d be lying if I said my theory, refreshed every so often by a new Google search for the same terms, always initiated via some server back East, was not a source of vague titillation to me, because, as you may remember, I thought "All Over But The Shoutin�" was awfully self-aggrandizing for something that was supposed to be about a noble calling and journalism as vocation, and it was pleasant to think of Rick aw-shucks-ma�am-now-give-me-my-Pulitzer Bragg as a secret bastard. Now, though, it looks like I was wrong about the bastardliness but only by type, I wonder if what people were looking for was confirmation of a rumor that Bragg used interns not for free booty but for free legwork and interviewing and bylines. Because, let�s be honest here, how he treated that Yoder cat is not right � and while he was at a resort an hour away! � and even if it would have been acceptable by his paper�s sketchy standards, as he claims (others make a good case otherwise), there is such a thing as personal ethics. That�s why my heart belongs to Frank Rich.

Oh, and one thing I remembered after I wrote the last entry. Andy "Ratboy" B. had a best friend, a girl who for whatever reason never took to me. First she thought I was too quiet and not cool enough for him because I never went to improv nights (that�s because I was on air at the college radio station, bitch, so don�t tell me about cool), and then she got very interested in making him believe that I was schizophrenic. Something, one time, about how I slipped in the snow as I crossing the street and in my recovery was for a moment looking right into the windshield of her car as she was driving, but I failed to smile and wave and in fact didn�t even seem to notice her even though she could see my face clearly, so obviously something was wrong with me, and then later I didn�t even recall that it had been her white car that passed me as I was getting my balance back, and maybe I was even lying about that, and what kind of a person would tell that lie? She was a theatrical girl with a distinctive voice and a big social presence who wore dramatic statement-making glasses. She was from � wait for it � Texas.

Dr. Blahblah just asked me how to spell "negotiations" and I supersized him up to the etymology: otium and its negation. Go classicists! I�m so bored with the USA. (But what can I do?)

Enough stalling. Here is the deal and it�s official. I�m bacon-shacking up with Steve come September; I�ll be moving self + stuff into his apartment gradually over the next few months as I also shed some detritus � sofa to Popeye, red dresser to Vanessa, does anyone need a square wooden kitchen table and four chairs? � and then some months down the line we�ll say goodbye to those digs in favor of arrangements a little more grown-up and permanent.

1. I am such a chicken I almost typed "permanent-esque." Ha ha, that�s fantastic.
2. I got an oh-god flutter in my stomach at "we�ll"
3. and a bigger one at "permanent�"
4. Which: do you like my circumlocutionary euphemism? Cluck cluck cluck.
5. That would be a good title for my diary, Circumlocutionary Euphemisms.
6. No! It would not. That is not how I want to conduct myself, and as a joke it�s at my expense. Note to self: shut up.
7. All right, what I mean is: a condo and, hey hey!, a mortgage. That�s the plan.
8. I don�t want to talk about that aspect of things AT ALL.

My cat lives at Steve�s already. This one surprised even me. I took him over there on Sunday night for a visit � you know, get him used to a new place, get the cats used to the idea of each other, and then as I was leaving Monday morning Steve said, "Why don�t you just leave him here." Permanent. It�s weird to be in my house without Marcus there, it feels exponentially less like my house. Which I suppose it is.

Uh, what else? Oh yeah, holiday weekend. Sasquatch Festival was basically the biggest fraternity party you can imagine, except you were trapped there and could not leave, and the bathroom facilities were grosser still. The guys one campsite over from us were running a generator until two in the morning, which constant lawn-mower noise when I needed to sleep gradually made me so unhinged that I ended up sobbing in the back seat of my car with Steve�s hat, a blanket, and my jacket tied around my head. Party on. And here�s the funny part, and if I had to name you just one fact about the Sasquatch Festival through which to give you a sense of the whole thing it would be this one: they were running the generator only to power the Christmas lights around the perimeter of their rain shelter, as if it was supposed to be some kind of beacon announcing that all the action was right here. In the afternoon the leader of the frat-boy encampment went as an envoy to the one next door that was occupied by a pack of corn-fed blondies out of I�m guessing WSU, and even though he showed them his tattoos and offered them drinks from his ridiculously well-stocked liquor cabinet they were not digging it, and then around 1:30 when Dave went over and negotiated the 2 a.m. generator curfew, it was just one guy still awake sitting in the truck listening to the Prodigy on headphones, looking very forlorn that he wasn�t scoring instead. And, OK, it�s always nice to see the Flaming Lips, but lazy Wayne�s stage show was the same as the last time I saw them, only one change to the set list if memory serves: not so nice. He has no right to hector the crowd about not being spontaneous enough and how we owe it to rock�n�roll or whatever to "get into the moment," by which he means waving our arms around and singing along as and when he tells us to � which shit I hate, by the way; this isn�t Girl Scouts � when even his interstitial patter is a cold cold leftover from at least last August. And I still can�t figure out whether the stage show is ironic or not; I�d thought that the last two albums were both subtextually *about* bombast, like a winking Cartoon Network riff on Orwell and totalitarianism, and you have to understand that I have loved Wayne since the days of my first college radio station when we were rocking "Hear It Is," but I�m beginning to suspect that it�s himself he�s installed as a benevolent dictator, that he has succumbed to the temptation to drink the albums� psychedelic Kool-Aid and call it nutrition. Monday I went with Mrs. Roboto to the naked-ladies spa in Tacoma and that was wonderful and I am going to follow her example and not write a whole lot about it beyond that, and Monday night Steve and I met up with Vanessa and Popeye at Linda�s, where the flirty new waitress did everything but offer Steve a lap dance. It was hilarious. You with the frosted flip, I�ve got my eye on you, sister.

May is back. Hi, lady. And this is Catharine�s first day in a new place, so I am sending her love and admiration and all best wishes.

I have to put together a slideshow this afternoon on hepatitis. I have to find clip art of bottles of booze, a needle and works.