I had a wonderful weekend, I mean, way more wonderful than usual, which was promptly followed by a 24-hour bout with the stomach flu/food poisoning. Since vomiting is on my list of least-favorite things to do, I thought I’d ponder some of my favorite things which kept me sufficiently distracted during my down time:

–Steven Colbert. Scary smart, off-beat cute, and impossible to pin down. He’s my media crush.
–Aimee Mann. Her new album arrived just in time. Go here and listen to a song from the album:
http://www.aimeemann.com/
–Haruki Murakami. I grabbed the new fiction issue of The New Yorker and enjoyed it immensely. One of the highlights was Murakami’s essay on how, at thirty, he started distance running and also trying to write full-length novels. His breezy tone, which comes through unmistakably even when translated from the Japanese, is a wonder. I love his short stories. An aside: while reading The New Yorker, I realized just how much American women’s magazines talk down to their reader. British women’s magazines suffer from this a little less, but it’s really very insulting. Also, there was an in-depth discussion of the problems of God, faith, and suffering, which I always enjoy, but I was surprised to see for some reason.
–My husband and my cat, Shakespeare. Because when I was miserably curled on the floor at 2:30 in the morning, they came and joined me.