If you haven’t seen it yet, check out “The Devil Wears Prada.” Streep chews up the scenery like nobody else can.

First: Scory 158 OMG, the peach/blackberry cobbler! I have copied the recipe. Now I have to get myself emotionally prepared to give it a try. If mine bombs, can I come over to your house and beg for a helping or five of yours?

Second: I have a TV and VCR/DVD, but no cable, which around here means no reception. But it also means lots of new premium channel stuff to discover when it comes out on DVD. For the past two evenings, I watched the first episodes of Showtime’s Weeds (Season One). Don’t know if I love it, exactly, but I like Mary Louise Parker’s character. She is weirdly endearing.

Books: I recently read Other Peoples’ Dirt: A Housecleaner’s Curious Adventures (Louise Rafkin). It isn’t new (1998), but it’s both funny and eye-opening.

Another one is A Place of Execution by Val McDermid (2000). It’s an intense murder mystery with lots of twists and turns. A young girl’s scary disappearance is central to the book, but she’s not used simply as cannon fodder or a cheap, lurid way to advance the plot. It’s set in the UK, in a small, remote hamlet.

(Actually I’ve been having a lot of fun cataloging my reading at LibraryThing.com)

Food: The other day while house-sitting, I ate one of my favorite summer dishes. I’d brought an heirloom tomato with me, and when I went out to tend the house garden (those tomatoes weren’t ripe yet), I saw several healthy, robust basil plants. And then I looked in the refrigerator and saw fresh Mozzarella balls! Lord Goddess Mama Earth, oh my, slice ‘em up, fan ‘em out on a nice plate. Take plate and glass of pinot grigio to the airy dining room with a wide-open view of the GGNRA headlands, and eat real slow, every bite, mmmmm.

Music: Can’t say much on the subject of new music. I don’t have the iPod stuff and don’t download. I have been listening to an older Aimee Mann CD, Bachelor No. 2. The first cut (”How Am I Different?”) cries out to be vidded. The last stanzas (”Just one question/ before I pack/ when you fuck it up later/ do I get my money back?”) I’d love to see that video of U.S. vehicles careening through Baghdad fade and dissolve into some footage of Bush, Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld ambling along in their faux Super-Hero flying wedge.

Ooh. Tired. Should I wait and review tomorrow before posting? Aww that’s ridonkulus. It’s a Saturday pull-up-a-chair confab post, not a position paper.

Also, I’d better make a copy of my post, because I am SO late I don’t know if any of y’all will see it. Maybe I can post it to my own tiny remote protoblog.

My other new activity is the college hunt with my 17 year old, who will be a senior next week. Yesterday, I tucked myself in the backseat of the Corolla and let myself be driven up to DesMoines to Drake University by my son and his friend (their long legs gave them the front and besides, they could pretend they were on their first road trip if I kept quiet). The two boys are a total delight and give hope for the future.

The trappings and cameras from last Sunday’s debate are still up at Drake, as the Dem debate will be there in two weeks. Since my son is interested in political sci and journalism, he got a real kick out of that.

Any advice about the college hunt from others will be gratefully read.

And with reference to your subsequent posts on this subject:

#1 – you WILL get through it!! You’re lucky to be in the “middle of the country” and not on the “Crazy Coasts,” where parents can just go nutso.

#2 – if you son really interested in sports journalism, he might look at USC (University of Southern California). My son goes there, is a sports journalist, and LOVES it. He will be the “beat writer” covering the football team for the school paper this year — rather amazing for a sophomore. Their Annenburg School is well known and well-regarded, and the “contacts,” particularly within the sports journalism community, are legendary.

Also, USC (a private university, NOT one of the state schools) has LOTS of scholarship money for both kids with financial need, and to lure kids who might not. They ought to be particularly interested in a student from KS, since they continue to try to diversify their student body (about 50% of kids are from CA).

If you end up wanting to inquire further, please contact me [@aol.com].

Good luck.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 19

angry at 14 — That sounds intriguing on the micro-eco farming. And it sounds like we are having the same “bake everything to a crisp” summer that you are — it’s been awful this year and nothing is thriving in my little garden. Just one of those years, I suppose, but if I’m going to can any tomatoes, I’m going to have to buy them this year.

Sorry to hear that. We are being over run by the peaches this year so it is peach cake, peach pie today and made peach chutney last night. Peach ideas anyone?

Sounds like there should have been a “farmers’ market” section @ Yearly Kos — at least at the FDK break-out section of it.

Henry Rollins interviewed Gore Vidal and I must admit I have never read one of Vidals books and it is now time. Anyone want to suggest a best first Gore Vidal book?