SO A FEW NIGHTS AGO we had the first nice, crisp fall evening. I am a big fan of nice, crisp fall evenings. You know the type: a bit chilly, though not quite jacket weather, with the sun going down around dinner time.

(Side note: when I was a kid, we would never say dinner unless we were going to gather around the fancy table with five dishes and visiting company. Your everyday meal was supper. This bit of New Englandism has, I believe, been exorcised from my vocabulary. It can’t be totally gone, since my boss saw an article about a Lobsterman from Maine and forwarded it over to me without thinking twice. Vaahginia? It’s toooo fah. Yah cahn’t get theyah from heyah. Aaand theyah’s no lobstaaah.)

In any case, the thought came as to which month is the most distinctive. October is solid, right? Football is coming into full swing, the weather is good, there are fresh apples and newly chromatic trees. December - you’ve got Christmas, snow, more…football. May is prime wiffleball season, and, all of a sudden, the average girl looks about two points better (hey, don’t kill the messenger). Worst months? March has this on lock, doesn’t it? You’re getting sick of winter, there aren’t many sports to think of, and you’re a good two months away from good weather. What do you think?

I’m not sure why I read the New York Times, but I do. The reporting is generally good, but their idea of “average Americans” is so incredibly out of touch with reality that it boggles the mind. My all-time favorite was their article about unbelievably expensive Quinceanara parties (meaning $25k+, with white stallions and tuxedos and ish) were “becoming commonplace.” A handful of vain Manhattan lawyers does not a trend make.

Anyway, a close runner-up was in today’s paper. There was an article about how to rent out your house and this one lawyer in Richie McRichville was cited in a caption as renting out his house “in order to defray his heating expenses.” Probably a small cottage then? No. His house rents for $8950 per month! Seeing as 8950 times 4 (assuming he’s only in Florida four months a year) is almost 40000 buck, or enough to heat a small village, I’m not sure defraying heating costs is his only motive to rent.

Last up, you may have seen that we had a bit of flooding in Richmond this weekend. This is the South, so the only neighborhoods that often flood are the ones with lots of black people, which isn’t exactly the storm drainage priority down at City Hall. Whew. I should be safe then. Lemme just check the census real quick…

1.1 miles around my house (in yellow); dark green are blocks that are at least 95.2% black.

That rental houses article was ridiculous. As was this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/fashion/08college.html

As Chris noted when I emailed him bitching about this: note how the mother is some sort of semi-literary luminary who listens to the Pixies with her daughter — you know, the kind of mother every NYT reader has.

I don’t know about you, but when it came time for my college tour, my only “bonding” with my mother consisted of trying to convince her that she did not, in fact, want to spend 15 hours in a car driving through the Northeast with my recently-separated father.

Said college tour also included trying to find the last open restaurant during a blinding rainstorm in Cleveland; spending the night in a Days Inn in Schnectady, New York that was suspiciously redolent of rotten curry and excrement; and getting lost in Revere.

In conclusion, I hate the NYT… especially the Real Estate/Fashion/Styles sections.

Hope you’re drying out, man.

march madness you dope, and btw im pretty sure Argentines have the hot women on lockdown, screw Brasil

Mike: Touche. March is better than February. And asking whether Argentinian girls or Brazilian girls are better is like asking whether “Mona Lisa” or “Starry Night” is the better painting to hang above your fireplace; if you have either one, you’re in like a muddafucka.

Allison: That article was good times. If my kid made me drive across the country and then wouldn’t go on a tour because the college was on a hill, I’d pop off like the kid has never seen in his life. My college trip: I used the plane ticket RPI gave me to tour colleges in New England, and then the plane ticket USC gave me to check out Pomona. I could’ve called that article without reading it; my only mistake was to assume the prissy girl went to day school in Long Island and had a dysfunctional Jewish dad who worked a lawyer; in fact, she went to prep school in Manhattan and had a crazy Jewish mom who worked as a TV executive.

My other favorite part was the Mom and daughter whose “shared interest” was “breakfast buffets.” There might be problems on the homefront if “eating in the morning” is one of the only shared hobbies that comes to mind. Just sayin’. Hope WA is going well.