Report from Hoople: Day 8 (Bugles!)

Thanks to the good graces of Faithful Readers Ali and Dave, we were treated to hamburgers and hot dogs off the grill, sweet corn, and the spectacle of kids running blissfully free in somebody else's backyard. Thanks to the vigilance of Grandma Libby (who never lets down her guard even after two glasses of cab sav) Archer's magnadoodle was retrieved from the toy pile before we pulled out of the driveway. Thanks to Father Time, we're only two days away from Noel's return. It's a day to be grateful.

I hope you've been reading Noel's dispatches from Toronto on the A.V. Club blog. (And my pal Scott's, too, of course -- both of them are earning their keep up there.) He's seen a number of big fall releases that live up to the hype, but not as many discoveries to champion, promote, and feel passionate ownership about as in previous years. Even though I know he was probably ready to come home, in some ways, right around 6 pm Monday, I still envy him the chance to absolutely wallow in film in a city that is temporarily the cinematic capital of the world. It will be a long time before we get to do that together, if ever.

On the bright side, here's my list of Things I've Gotten Around To During My Husband's Absence:

• reading all my 153 RSS feeds
• transferring all my 153 RSS feeds into a new aggregator
• obsessively checking each episode of The Soup that records on the &*#$% DVR to make sure it's a repeat of the one I already have saved so I can delete it
• thinking seriously about whether I need these
• wishing I had a copy of this so I could just spend all night popping through them one by one like salted peanuts
• reading a book that made me cry every time I picked it up
• rediscovering what happens when you don't bathe every day
• going to bed with earrings and a watch on, and waking up in the morning with one of the earrings missing
  
• temporarily setting aside guilt about 24/7 kidblogging
• marking the fourth anniversary of my annual failure to get said husband anything for his birthday, which always falls in the middle of Toronto, providing me a convenient excuse for laxness which actually has nothing to do with the trip.