First subject: Television Addiction. The cable is fixed! After two unsuccessful calls to the cable company, the third one featured a sage customer service rep. "Did you try unplugging the box for 30 seconds?" I had not, and once I did, the picture was restored. No "Um, there's a problem with the routers in your area" or false promises of a technician coming out to look at it, just good old fashioned "restart" common sense. Now I've been watching way too much TV as in the old days.

Next subject: Coffee. In college, I was a coffee connoiseur. I spent many an evening/afternoon at the French Roast on 10th or a variety of other cafes with numerous college cohorts. I still love coffee. Yet, when I lived in Athens, I gave up on the world of "good" coffee, instead buying the (shudder) Kroger brand at home. I would drink my good coffee on trips to Blue Sky. Now that I'm in Philadelphia, the Whole Foods (Allow me a moment to swoon at this supermarket marvel. Expensive, but soooo worth it.) is a mere two blocks from our apartment. They have all kinds of bizarre, tasty, organic and conventional coffees. We no longer possessed a coffee grinder at home, so our choices were slimmer. (There's a grinder at the store, but the sign on it made me all paranoid about cross-coffee contamination.) Anyway, we bought the Torreo house blend, and man, is it tasty. I'm enjoy a cup/half-a-pot right now. And the next day on our mammoth trip to Target, we bought a coffee grinder. Yes, I bought the Michael Graves one because I'm a total dork and want everything in my kitchen to match.

Next subject: "Homesickness." I kind of miss Athens. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but talking to JR and A. the other day made me sad I didn't make it to the prom (an annual event put on by a local promotion firm that features free PBR and an indie band doing '80s covers). I'm sure I'll visit at some point, but right now I guess I'm still feeling unsettled and a little out of sorts. I don't have my routine yet. And we're still not unpacked. And it's really no fun to unpack when the other inhabitant of the apartment isn't around. I'm not complaining -- I've seen Mike more in the past three weeks than I have in the past three months, but it's just not that motivating to do anything when the other person isn't around.