Yesterday was a hard day. The weather was horrible and work was long, but there were a few small moments that made my day.

1) The damp of the morning made me feel like Autumn is finally here, and we have made it past the beautiful but uneventful summer months.  All I wanted to do instead of go to work was start a fire in our fire pit and sit in front of it all day long.  Despite not having the time to follow up on this idea, there was something comforting in simply envisioning it.

2)  I’m starting a new cooking trend with Keely, my roommate.  I love spending time in the kitchen with other people and being able to share that with my roommates has been hit and miss in the past.  We’ve decided to t a friday series of Mac and Cheese dishes with the arrival or fall, which I think will be a lot of fun.    We both have our own traditional ways of making mac and cheese, and I think that as the weeks go on we’ll not only try new recipes, but also try crazy variations of the recipes we already know.  Other recipes we’ve already discussed include homemade pizza, pecan rolls (tomorrow morning for brunch) and Keely’s Twice Baked Potatos, which we had last night.  I also want to try my hand at Moussaka, which I haven’t had in years, at this point.
Regardless, Both of these things made me very happy in small but important ways.  I will post more about each recipe as we try them, and since this blog hasn’t really found an identity, maybe I will end up joining the ranks of the foodie bloggers, you never know!

I ordered a paper subscription to the New York Times at the beginning of this week, and have been loving it.  I have always enjoyed the tactile sensation of reading, and even in two days it seems I’ve already developed the beginning of a ritual:  I get up in the morning an hour before anyone else in the house, start a pot of coffee, slip on some shoes and grab the paper.   With the first fingers of winter starting to take grasp the crisp air in the morning is a nice wake up call.  Some mornings I’ll get around to actually reading it, and some mornings I’ll check emails or waste time on the internet, but I do enjoy having the paper, being able to spread it out and pull it apart.  It’s a strangely nostalgic thing, the paper;  It feels old to me somehow, and I think that’s part of the reason I enjoy it so much.

I got into a conversation earlier today with a friend who said that having a paper newspaper in this day and age is a stupid idea,  The business model is old and trying to keep an archaic factory in running condition, every day.  Paying for the delivery of the paper is yet another cost, &c, &c.

I don’t know enough about the business of the New York Times in particular to say whether or not it’s a good idea to keep the paper running every morning, but it seems a worthy cause, if only out of respect.   I went on line and and within a second found this story.  It’s just a short brief, but the upshot is that, yes, it is struggling business that needs to be supported by digital subscriptions.

What I would like to read between these lines,  though, is that the company is driving digital subscriptions but has not yet abandoned the old, out of date, business. I would like to think that the reason for this is, in some twisted way, exactly the morning ritual that I and so many others have assembled over the past hundred years or so.  I may very well be 100% wrong about their motivations, but having that morning moment is a small luxury which I have come to look forward to in the silence of the morning.

Historically I have had a very bad time trying to come up with what I want to write on my blog.  I think that I’m going to take a page from the book of a good friend of mine, and try and dedicate this to be a photo blog of sorts.

Knowing the way i have used blogs in the past, I assume that the photos will be interspersed with posts about other things, but having a place to post photos will keep me clicking away more than I already am, I’m sure.

“hello, again, world” seems more appropriate.