I woke up to rain this morning. I love a rainy day when I don’t have anything urgent to do; the rain takes away all of those annoying feelings of “I should be doing something.” It’s the perfect excuse to stay indoors and do nothing.

Rain was a contributing factor to why I failed my first class ever, during sophomore year at UCSC. It was an 8am Spanish class, and I just couldn’t manage to get myself there often enough. My Spanish professor had a rule about attendance: it didn’t matter if you turned in all the homework and passed all the quizzes and tests; if you missed more than three class meetings you failed the class.

At the time, I lived in an on-campus apartment, with sliding glass doors in the living room that looked out onto a redwood forest. It was on the second floor and not being able to see either the ground or the sky made it feel like being in a treehouse.

My high-school boyfriend and I had made it through freshman year as a long-distance couple, but broke up over Christmas break of sophomore year. When I got back to school that January, all I wanted to do every morning—and a good portion of every day—was to sit in that treehouse of a living room, drink tea, read mystery novels, and leftover Christmas cookies and mandarin oranges, looking out on the rain in the trees. So that’s what I did, indulging in the ultimate coziness, hibernating with my heartbreak, unwilling to put on a raincoat and walk across campus three mornings a week.

The rain. Perfect excuse to ignore all the obligations of real life.

LINKS & THINGS

I got lucky on the 7-day shelf at the Fairfax Library. I picked up Louise Penny’s A Better Man without having to wait weeks for a hold request. It wasn’t my favorite of her books, but a Gamache novel is never bad.

I’ve been enjoying drinking my morning tea out of my new Hanselman mug. I got it from the “not-quite-perfect” shelf, a bonus of shopping there in person.

After reading Helen Rosner’s “The Best Things I’ve Eaten This Decade” in the New Yorker, I had to order some IndoMie Mi Goreng noodles, “an Indonesian packaged noodle that comes in bricks resembling instant ramen and is one of the most purely delicious things I have ever consumed in my life.” I agree, they’re hecka delicious. I ordered a ten-pack on Amazon so I could share with my sister and parents. My mom tried them, and then immediately ordered a 30-pack.

And, since we’re talking about cooking, I made this tofu stir-fry last week and it was also hecka delicious. Even Poppy liked it, and that’s saying something.

McKenzie Funk’s review of four non-fiction books about climate change was pretty compelling, especially since he wrote the review during fire season in Ashland.

And here’s a scary one to make you think: An BBC article about the psychological effects of common medications. (I’m sure glad I use ibuprofen instead of acetominifin.)