First, a well-earned follow-up: I’m toying with this headline here as a potential food blog title, though my favorites from your suggestions (thank you!) were The Omnomnomicon and I Eat Food, I believe. : ) I’ll let y’all know when food blog plans progress.

Second: Yes, I am incredibly lame. In my defense, well, I had better things to do? Kind of a crummy opening argument, wot? (I *love* that expression and am trying to work it cleverly into my personal vernacular…we’ll see how it goes…) Anyway, there’ve been many things happening in the Life of Kelly that have gotten in the way of regular blog-tending.

Here, lemme ’splain…no, that will take too long…lemme sum up. Since my last post, I have:
- scuba dived (scuba dove?) in a 150-year-old shipwreck
- obtained a third job (Sun Times = 1, freelancing = 2, mysterious & exciting New Job = 3)
- lost several pounds
- learned a bunch more about my dream graduate degree (you may remember it from such blog posts as: A tavola non s’invecchia)
- visited Annie in the Big Apple, which entailed some truly exceptional shopping, eating, and general larking about
- learned to cook gourmet meals with nothing but a toaster oven and an electric tea kettle
- and a bunch of other things I’m surely forgetting…

I need to go make something else clever with my toaster oven here in a minute – I must feed – but I suppose I’ll expand on a couple of the key points first. Let’s see… ah, yes, New Job! I am now a proud employee of Big Planet, the surf couture joint about 150 meters east of the Sun Times office. I’m working part time to supplement my income, in preparation for the slow season, which is nearly upon us. I actually really like it – standing around folding t-shirts and chatting with customers and stuff nicely balances out all the time I spend at the Sun Times, sitting behind a desk . So that’s cool.

Also cool was my trip up to New York City last weekend. I went up for an info session about the Italian grad program and came a few days early to hang out with cool NYC people! It was a lovely trip! And the most significant thing I got out of the grad meeting was that even if I apply for a Fulbright this year and (by some freak chance) get it, I wouldn’t be going until March of 2011. In fact, if I do manage to secure a grant, it will more likely be for the 2012 program! This warrants an exclamation point because it means I’m here on St. John for at least another 2 years, and probably 3. I’m coming frighteningly close to having a proper, permanent life going on here…

So that’s about everything of note. I’m going to go figure out how to make mac & cheese in a toaster oven…

Cheers,
Kelly