on your journey, i will bless you...

I just got back from riding my bike home from the Shabbat evening service at the temple. (Edit: I actually got back about an hour ago, but just now got on the computer.) I really enjoy going there and find myself looking forward to Fridays. In fact, the weeks are practically flying by now, because I always have two things to look forward to: new NCIS episodes on Tuesday, and temple services on Friday. Doesn't get much better than that.

I'm glad I live close enough to ride my bike to and from there. Lately it's dark by the time the service is over, and today a few people offered to give me a ride home, but I told them not to worry, because I was wearing a white shirt (which greatly increases your visibility and is safest to wear at night) and had a spray-can of mace in my purse (which was true; Ben gave it to me for my birthday, and I always try to carry it when biking at night -- never had to use it, though).

It's a short bike ride, but I almost never go straight home from the temple. Tonight I meandered all over downtown. There's so much to see when you biking at night, things you never notice during the day. There were night construction crews at work inside my bank and a hair salon, hammering boards and laying down paint. There were a few lights still on in the tall buildings downtown, maybe from people working late. There were teenagers coming out of the Catholic cathedral (a youth group meeting, I assume). There were well-dressed couples and the most delicious smells coming out of the corner cafe. There were guys and wafts of alcohol coming out of a bar, its doors open onto the sidewalk, and big front windows where I could see everybody watching sports on the big-screen TV. There was an antique store, empty and closed, but its window lights were still on, shining so brightly on all the glass, gold, and silver trinkets, it was almost hypnotic. There was a group of guys in a cadillac who whistled at me as they drove by. There was a couple taking a ride in a horse-drawn carriage. There was a breeze coming off the lake. And as I got closer to my apartment, there were blocks and blocks of quiet little houses. And there was Rebecca on her blue bike, riding past it all. (Also rode right by babygoose85's house. The kitchen place next door to you smells so delicious! How do you resist it?)

Refuah shleima, people.

The days are getting shorter now, and I've started riding my bike at night. The streets look so different in the dark, and it makes me notice things that I never notice during the day. Smells seem to be stronger at night (I guess because there isn't as much to distract you from them) and all the flowers in our neighborhood are like a heady perfume. I love riding past the houses with their windows lit, they look so cozy and peaceful. Tonight I saw two front yards that still had sprinklers running in them, and they were really beautiful. The water shone in the streetlights and the drops were like beads on a shiny beaded necklace.

I love how I feel when I'm out riding my bike. I love the way my legs move when I pedal, "wallowing up the sidewalk," as Anne Sexton once put it. It makes me feel powerful, for some reason, and lately I've been thinking that I need to take that feeling with me when I go on job interviews. I have another one tomorrow morning, and I've also found a temporary job in the mall (it probably won't last more than a few days, but it's better than nothing).

Mom was in town last weekend, and she insisted on celebrating my birthday while she was here. I won't go into details, but I will say that it was even worse than what happened last year, and it ended with Mom telling me and Sara to "get out of my house now." Grandma and Aunt Carla want to take me out to dinner on my actual birthday, which I'm really looking forward to.

Too often we only realize how much something means to us after we lose it. In an effort to try to appreciate things while they're still a part of my life, and not afterwards, I've compiled this list. Most of the things and people listed here will not be a part of my life once the summer is over.

1. Riding my bike. I've ridden Clochette (that's the name of my bike and also the French name of Tinkerbell) to and from school everyday this summer, and I just love the healthy, happy feeling that it gives me. It's sweating and getting Clochette up and down the apartment stairs that are the problems.

2. My Shakespeare professor. He quotes Billy Joel songs in his lectures, shows us the young and modern movie adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, compares King Henry and Prince Hal to Anakin and Luke Skywalker, and makes a lot of other attempts to try and seem cool. It's actually pretty funny.

3. Ann Marie. Ann Marie sits in front of me in Shakespeare class. She spends every class knitting, and she always has something interesting to say. But the prize for the best comment in that class has to go for me for, "I think that maybe Iago is actually in love with Othello and that all his hatred really stems from his inability to express this desire." Half the class laughed, and the other half gave me weird looks.

4. The crepe myrtles. The crepe myrtle trees on campus are still in full bloom, which is a little unusual for this late in the summer, but I'm not complaining. They look and smell gorgeous. I always walk by a crepe myrtle tree full of pale pink blossoms on my way to work, and it is so beautiful that I look forward to it everyday.

5. Mater Dolorosa and Cousteau. These are two pieces of artwork currently on display in the art gallery where I work, and I have a very good view of each of them from my desk. Mater Dolorosa is a needlepoint of the Virgin Mary, and Cousteau is a watercolor of a small spaniel named after the French explorer. Cousteau hangs on the wall directly beside my desk, so I like to pretend that he's my dog.

6. If We Fall in Love Tonight, by Rod Stewart. This is one of the CDs that my boss keeps in the gallery, and I usually play it when I'm at work. I've listened to it so often this summer that I should have gotten sick of it a long time ago, but I haven't. I especially love "Downtown Train," "All for Love," and the horribly cheesy "My Heart Can't Tell You No."

7. Sam. Sam is probably my favorite co-worker. Our hours don't overlap very often, but when they do, I like talking to him. Over the summer, we've discovered that we both love a lot of the same things -- Harry Potter, Star Wars, Law and Order: SVU (and the possible romance between Elliot and Olivia), and the unbelievable head-butt that Zinedine Zidane pulled on Marco Materazzi earlier this month.

8. The birds. I've eaten lunch in the oak grove everyday this summer, and I always feed my bread crusts to the little birds that land beside my bench. I've seen many different kinds come looking for crumbs -- finches, blue jays, robins, sparrows, mockingbirds, and the occasional squirrel. I feel like I have twenty pet birds with cages that I never have to clean.

9. The two guys who have the lab station next to mine in chemistry class. I don't know their names, but these guys are hilarious. They're always telling jokes, and even the professor cracks up and lets them get away with quite a lot (they once threw a cup of dry ice onto the floor -- it disappeared!). They like to joke about having to inhale all the fumes in the lab because their lab station is right next to the fume hood.

10. Cream pops. On a spur earlier this summer, I bought a bulk box of cream pops at the grocery store. Cream pops, popsicles with an ice cream center, were one of my very favorite treats when I was a little kid, and I hadn't had any in a very long time before I bought this box. I still have a few more in the freezer, and I hope to make them last all summer, so that in the future I can refer to Summer 2006 as "Cream Pop Summer." Or maybe cream pops will become an annual summer tradition for me.