Juillet

Independence has come and gone, or the day celebrating it anyway. T-minus 24 hours 'til our departure from Michigan. Already my mind is starting to wrap up its vacation mode and return to New York mode and all the productive things I want to do with the last month and a half of my summer. I am ending my vacation reading a memoir by a girl my age who grew up in Grand Rapids. I picked it up yesterday while we sat around watching the men's Wimbledon final.

About that, I don't really watch tennis on television, much. For some reason, tennis and hockey are two sports that just don't really captivate me when televised, and I much prefer watching them live or, in the case of tennis, playing. But yesterday's men's final between Federer and Nadal was pretty exciting and dramatic and watching it live was super-captivating. In fact some sports writers have already called it the greatest tennis match ever. So there you are. I also got to see a lot of extra-innings baseball yesterday, which is my favorite, and that was the background as I sat around reading. Yay! When I finish this book I'll surely return to Norman Mailer. I have a whole bus ride to fill with it.

My thoughts have started to turn toward what I'm going to do next summer, or, more specifically, where I'm going to go. I didn't mean to think about it; I'm actually rather happy to not, frankly. But other people are making me think about it. They do this by, for example, asking me, "What are you doing next summer?" That question should be OFF LIMITS, in my opinion. But as I was thinking about it some more, I realized a funny thing. It's OK (for me, at least) because I like nothing more than thinking about where to go next. So here's what's funny about that: OTHER people are the ones who get annoyed when I start pontificating about moving to a new place and being indecisive about where to go and fantasizing about all the other cities in the world in which I could live. Well, then maybe OTHER people should stop asking me about what I'm going to do next. Because for me, the "what to do" question is inextricably linked to the "where to go."

More on the geographical question as the coming school year develops, I'm sure.

The other thing about it is that I have to decide where to take the bar exam. I'm leaning toward taking it in New York and then moving on after that.

And don't think for a moment that I've abandoned the desire to get my M.F.A. ...