these are the haps, Internet

Hullo, Internet, hullo! I missed you too. What have you been up to? Me, I have been beaching it, and grilling, and eating lots of things dipped in chili-garlic-honey sauce, and sleeping soundly thanks to a new memory foam pillow, and organizing a year of the reading series, and thinking about all the new poetry books that I need to get to one of these days, and making fun of the dog because he has way too much fur for this sort of heat, and threatening publicly to beat down the makers of Pretzel M&Ms if they decide to yank this version off the market like they did my old favorites. Exciting stuff, I know.

I have also been reading blogs. Do you ever read Orangette, Internet? You really should. There is nothing better than spending a sticky July day sprawled in front of a box fan with a cup of coffee, paging through those archives. I suppose that her accompanying photos, which are always Polaroid-tastic, sort of seal the deal for me. Go on, take a look. It's like stepping into 1974.

I have also been tinkering with fonts lately, Internet. In fact, though you are probably viewing this page in Trebuchet, I have it set to Whitney-Book, and it makes me so happy. It's actually not the best font for the Web, but I don't care. I really, really like Whitney-Book. Thanks to my brother for berating me into this new love.

Do you know what's even nerdier? I sort of want to spend some time this summer making my handwriting into a font. GAH. I AM DROWNING IN MY OWN RIDICULOUSNESS. Yesterday I spent two hours debating whether or not I wanted to finally give up the ghost of HTML Blogger and switch over to all those fancy new templates they have, but I have decided against it, Internet. For one thing, they are all kind of stupid looking. But more importantly, that shit takes forever to load. I am a bit of a blurker, Internet--I tend to read lots of poets' blogs and stuff like that--and many of those well-meaning poets have switched over to the new format, and their pages are now all sluggish. Maybe it's just the heat that's slowing those pages down, Internet, but I'm sticking with my shitty old HTML for now.

I am going to try to write a poem a day for the next thirty days, starting today. It will be my own NaPoWriMo, only it will run from sometime in July to sometime in August. It will also have to be longer than a month, since I will probably take some days off in there to go up to Duluth and to the Adirondacks. But so it goes, Internet.

I hope you have a blender, Internet, or a food processor. I hope that you throw into it two cans of diced tomatoes with green chiles, and a big can of whole peeled toms, and a mess of onion and garlic, and a jalapeno, and a little bit of salt, and some lime juice, and a whole ton of cilantro, and that you whuzz the whole thing together for a minute. Then bring a bowl of that over to my backyard, and I will provide some salty chips, and we can sit out back and watch the sun set and enjoy this sweaty, glorious month.