How did it become August already? I hate August. I've been out of school for a hundred years now but everytime August rolls around, I get that pang of Back to School anxiety and imagine the weather is cooling enough to start worrying about the onset of winter. Even though right now it's about 99F degrees and winter wouldn't be so bad. Did I mention the AC unit in the house has broken?

We had a really good, social weekend. We basically ate and drank the entire time, neither which are really good for keeping cool. After we spent an afternoon at a friend's BBQ, my college friend Raj in Providence invited us down to help him with a shellfish situation. He calls up and goes, "Mike [another college friend] overnighted me a dozen crabs! From Baltimore! I can't eat all these by myself! Help!"

I don't think it is an everyday occurance that one guy sends another guy 12 crabs just cuz. It is the sweetest thing ever. And really quirky which I like.

After that bbq of hotdogs and pulled pork and cupcakes (filled with peanut butter!) in the smothering heat, the LAST THING I wanted to eat were crabs. But I couldn't say no. Because those crustaceans were sent with love.

His place wasn't air conditioned either. By the time we were done eating, his apartment reeked of an oceanside landfill and our faces had melted into our shoes. Seagulls uulated overhead over all the crab guts and broken shells. Oh the humanity. We were sweaty and the salty shellfish smell just stuck to our every salty pore.

But oh they were tasty. All heavy and meaty and sweet and delicious. Those crabs were once full of life, you could tell.

We cooled down afterwards by going to WaterFire. And by "cooled down" I mean "remained uncomfortably warm." Everyone should visit the phenomenon that is WaterFire. It's a funny thing. Someone decided to light the narrow little rivers with a string of pyres, play some world music over the loudspeakers, serve some lemon slush, maybe some wine, and foosh! it's the best thing since sliced bread. They've got a couple of gondolas going on, and masked "nymphs" rowing up and down tossing flowers into the crowd. WaterFire is every weekend in the summer and you'll be surprised the number of people who show up just to watch fire burn.

I guess it's the equivalent of lighting a ton of candles around your bathtub. No one argues that a candlelit bath is romantic. It is. So when you imagine WaterFire, picture a placid river instead of a warm tub, crackling bonfires instead of flickering candles, and bam you've got uber, SUPER-SIZED romance, no? More romance than you can handle so that you invite all the neighbors to join in.

Providence is really pretty. There's the quaint, colonial backdrop of the RISD campus and College Hill on one side, and the quaint metropolis on the other. I never used to think much of the place when I went to school here.

But all it took was a good exfoliant - the kind with microbeads - a little makeup and some pearls and suddenly she's got all this grown up sophistication that I hardly know who she is anymore. So proud and wistful at the same time...

I wish knitting would keep me entertained these days, but as it turns out I haven't knitted a stitch in a whole week. My mom called yesterday, and asked if I wanted her sewing machine, as she is upgrading. A sign perhaps?

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