This evening we got home from work around 7:30pm and checked the mail as we always do. In amongst the magazines and bills and, rather excitingly, an engagement party invitation, was a plain white envelope with the back unsealed. On the front, in a careful hand, someone had printed GARDENER. Inside, there was a business card for a gardener---the exact words were "landscaping and maintenance"---and nothing else.

Sean and I had two very different reactions to this envelope. Wait, let me see if you can guess which reaction each of us had.

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On Sunday night, I packed for a three-day business trip in ten minutes flat. Those are some good stats, my friends, and I didn't even forget anything crucial, like underwear or lipgloss. I've been traveling a lot this summer---mostly for work, but sometimes for fun---and I've managed to get the packing process down to a fine art. I could do it with my eyes closed. In fact, maybe next time I will. Oh, is that a challenge? Do I hear a challenge? Fine, next time I'll do it with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back. In seven minutes, how about that.

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One of the nice things about marrying a person you've known for six hundred bajillion years is that there's a pretty good chance his parents still live in the town where you met. My parents used to live there too, of course, which makes any visit back an exercise in fitful nostalgia. There's your old house, says Sean as we drive past it, and I crane my neck to peer into the kitchen. That's where my brother and sister used to wait for the school bus. There's the store where we bought our bread and our milk.

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Internet, welcome to the fourth and final week of my month-long makeover, wherein I’m painting the walls of our bland and boring bedroom in our very first home and transforming it—if all goes according to plan---into a room that’s sophisticated, comfortable, and just a little bit rock n’roll.

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I know it sounds like I can't shut up about my new commute---I've only been doing it for a few weeks and I've already written about it here and here---but there's a part of it I enjoy more than any other part, and it's this: the seven seconds it takes me to walk up the stairs from the underground platform to the slightly-less-underground station. (I have vowed to always take the stairs, see, instead of the escalator.

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Your eyes do not deceive you, I do indeed have a new website. Well, not a new website; more like a gently and professionally buffed-up one. A redesign, I believe the kids are calling it, though I prefer to call it a small cosmetic surgery: the equivalent of calf implants, perhaps. Just a little boost!

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Man, it’s non-stop excitement up in this joint. Two weeks ago, you suggested a wealth of paint color options for the boring white-walled bedroom in our very first home, then we narrowed them down together to six possible shades. This week, I’m going to show you which color Sean and I have chosen, announce the winner of last week’s Lowe’s gift card, give away another Lowe’s gift card, and show you a sneak peek of the room in progress. We’re getting there, Internet, I promise.

To see which color we ended up choosing, read on...

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Am I the only person who chooses paint colors based on their names? I mean, I can’t be, right? Judging by all the suggestions you guys gave me for my bedroom walls last week, I’m not the only one won over by the wonderful-sounding Birdsong Blue, the evocative Wet Pavement, or the whimsical Roaming Pony. Must be the word nerd in me, because I do this with nail polish too: ah, Sweet Aubergine sounds so delightful, who cares if my new manicure makes me look like I’ve slammed my hand in the car door?

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I would like to preface this by saying that in the last 32 hours, I have had approximately one hour of sleep, and I think I am being generous when I round it up to one. This hour of sleep was broken up across two different airplanes anyway, so it doesn't really count. However, I am not hallucinating---though you would be forgiven for suspecting it---when I tell you I'm sitting in my room on the eighth floor of a hotel in London. I'm really here! At least I think I am.

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First of all, thank you so much for all your wonderful comments and e-mails on the Memorial Day post. Thank you for sharing these personal strands of your history with someone you've never met, for trusting your fragile fragments of family lore to a person who is really, for all intents and purposes, still just a voice inside the computer. I feel like each of you handed me not a story but a four-leaf clover, a bird's nest, a perfectly-formed bubble, and said "here is something precious; look after it." And I will. Thank you all so much again.

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This follows on from Twenty-One, and before that, Twenty, and before that, Nineteen, and before that, Seventeen & Eighteen, and before that, Sixteen, and before that, Fourteen & Fifteen, and before that, Twelve & Thirteen, and before that, Eleven, and before that, Seven Through Ten, and before that, Zero Through Six.

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Scuba diving must be one of the only activities in the world where you constantly have to tell someone how much you weigh. Seriously, I had about five guys ask me my weight this weekend---getting fitted for the wet suit, getting fixed up with all the equipment---and it's not even that I minded so much, it's just one of those questions you don't really ever expect to be asked outright. What's your name? Sure. Where are you from? Yep, get it all the time. But how much do you weigh?

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Every so often I think I've got nothing to post about, that I've come to the end of my material, that nothing is going on in my life that could warrant a mention on my website, and then all of a sudden, Brother Tom comes through for me like a firefighter with an oxygen mask, and sends me an email like this

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Hey, remember how my car was broken into two weeks ago and the window was smashed and we all felt sorry for me for a while and I said a few bad words and then I paid $317 for the window to be repaired and I thought that was the end of it?

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I don't know how you go about celebrating something, but here in the Nothing But Bonfires house, our celebrations look a little something like this:

Awwwww yeah, champagne and pizza, baby! Keeping it real!

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First of all, I should tell you that I am a person who believes in ghosts. I do! I believe in ghosts! I'm sorry! So sue me! I'm a person who believes so much in ghosts, in fact, that if you are not a person who believes in ghosts and you say, out loud, "I am not a person who believes in ghosts," I will actually get worried for you. "Don't say it out loud!" I will hiss.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make: there are perverts in our midst. Well, not our midst---I don't think this site has any shady weirdos in tattered trench coats and dark glasses reading it, although, come to think of it, I am finding that I need to block at least one perv on Flickr every day---but rather the more.....general midst. Would you like examples? Here are examples.

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