Then, sometime after that, we hope to have hot water. We have found that leaving the setting on cold actually results in warmer water than turning it to hot; Dan cleverly determined that the cold water pipes run along the roof, while the “hot” supply is stored in a water heater in a dark, inner sanctum. Even with the newly discovered leave-it-on-cold shower method that has taken us from “Jesus, I’m so cold I’m burning” down to “Oh, damn, it’s cold, but I can feel my limbs,” I find myself daydreaming about hot water… the showers I’d take, the baths I’d soak in, the pasta water I’d boil…

A girl can dream, can’t she?

We’ve essentially decided to skip getting cable when that becomes an option. This is a good decision that’s a much bigger deal to celebrate for Dan than for me. We didn’t even have TV in my house for most of my childhood, and I did a few-years of TV-lessness in my twenties without too much trouble (unless you consider nightly binge-drinking trouble… just kidding). Dan, on the other hand, grew up in a TV household (with cable), but fortunately, his mom always had a rule that no one could simply watch TV… everyone had to be doing something else at the same time. Dan drew, and his sister Mimi did latch-hook. (I’m sure she did other things, but this seems to be the example Dan cites every time.)

Without TV, we are listening to a lot more music—and realizing just how small of a collection 4,000 songs is.

We also are reading more. Dan’s currently digesting something collegiate about Buddhism, and I am doing my usual five-book shuffle but consuming much more quickly than usual. In the past two weeks, I’ve read:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I hadn’t read this book since sixth grade, and now I’m dumbfounded that my elementary school library would allow an eleven-year-old to read about a village of drunks centered around a whorehouse.

Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk’s latest. It was what is becoming for him a usual: gross-fest. I didn’t care for this one too much; as always, his descriptions were priceless, but it was quick and had not an ounce of hope in it.

Chelsea Handler’s first and second books, My Horizontal Life and Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea. Both were good and such quick reads (literally 90 minutes for the first and a couple of hours for the second), but I preferred Horizontal, which is all about her career (?) of one-night stands. She is clever, sarcastic… and painfully honest and open, something I would love to be but am not. (How does a girl write a memoir about all of her drunken, embarrassing sexual experiences while her parents are still alive?) I got the impression that the second was a less pondered and more quickly written attempt to strike while the iron was hot.

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. Happiness-and-meaning is not my usual fare, but the book was recommended by a friend, and it was perfect for me: I love non-fiction, and there was a lot of information about the political and social climate of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Islam on top of the (sometimes flowery) do-gooder sentiment.

More images at Bolívar Iñiguez’s Flickr