2011 Must-Watch TV Shows

(in no specific order)

1. Three and A Half Men, Mondays at 9pm on CBS
2. How I Met Your Mother, Mondays at 8pm on CBS
3. Project Runway, Thursdays at 9pm on Lifetime
4. Hell’s Kitchen, Tuesdays at 8pm on Fox
5. Storage Wars, Wednesdays at 10pm on A&E
6. Pawn Stars, Mondays at 10pm on History
7. House Hunters, Mondays at 8pm on HGTV
8. Property Virgins, Wednesdays at 8pm on HGTV
9. What Not To Wear, Tuesdays at 9pm on TLC
10. Four Weddings, Fridays at 10pm on TLC

5 Tips For Living Solo for the First Time

1. Befriend the after-hours maintenance coordinator. Mine returned a call about the murky hue of my apartment’s water (twenty minutes after suggesting I simply let my water run for a bit, until the dirty water made its way out of the pipes) to tell me that he just remembered seeing a back-hoe in the lot next to my building, and would try to get a hold of the company and make sure they hadn’t done any damage. Then he asked me if all my appliances were in working order and mentioned the fact that my floor’s model microwave, circa 1980, had just about lived its lifespan–did I want him to order one for when mine went also? Besides the obvious convenience of a maintenance man who is willing to go out of his way for tenants, its nice to know who the mystery maintenance man that the office will “send up to take a look” really is.

2. Avoid falling into routine-driven boredom. It’s incredibly easy to do the same thing day after day. Go to work, go to the gym, shower, make dinner, do the dishes, pack lunch, pack breakfast, call a friend, go to bed. Repeat. Instead, mix it up. Skip the gym one day, or add a new strength-training exercise to the routine. Cook something new. Leave the dishes for tomorrow–with just one person eating, you know there won’t be many. Invite a coworker out for dinner or drinks after work on Wednesday.

3. Do establish a routine for:

• where you put your keys
• locking the front, back, and garage doors when you are home for the night
• double-checking that kitchen appliances are off and unplugged before heading to bed

4. Enjoy the ability to make every decision entirely on your own. Want to rearrange the furniture? Do it. Eat whatever you feel like for dinner, watch your favorite TV shows/movies. It can be very refreshing to return home from a day’s work, where compromise and negotiations are a part of every interaction, and just revel in doing every single thing your own way.

5. Make a real effort to actually cook meals a few times a week. It’s much more of a chore to put time into making a balanced meal when you will just sit at an empty kitchen table and eat alone. I picture Mandy Moore and Diane Keaton, in Because I Said So. Mother and daughter, in their respective kitchens, finish their evenings off with a delicious meal and glass of wine–and although they are eating solo, the meal is clearly enjoyment enough. Experimenting with food is rewarding in itself, an act in creativity with an equally enjoyable end product. And I like to keep some frozen pizzas in the freezer for those experiments gone horribly wrong.

Notable authors recently translated into English

Every few years, the Nobel Prize in Literature gives a non-English-speaking author a few days in the limelight, but it is rare that his or her works reach the kind of audience that they deserve. Of course, limited exposure can largely be blamed on the language barrier–publishers sometimes wait years, watching sales for a particular book in its native language before buying rights to a translation, and then even once they’ve been translated, they are hard to find. Unless we’re talking about Steig Larson.

If you’ve come across others, please share!

Some recent favorites:

Ismail Kadare (Albanian)–The Palace of Dreams

Orhan Pamuk (Turkish)–The Black Book and The Museum of Innocence

Carlos Ruíz Zafón (Spanish)–The Shadow of the Wind and The Angels Game

Pascal Mercier (Swiss)–Night Train to Lisbon

Newly Converted Hermit

Like many have done before me, I took a job straight out of college and moved away from home. I ended up in a new town, family and girlfriends hours and hours away. Luckily, my job at a university press landed me at the same college that my brother and boyfriend attend. Yay, I had arrived with a bit of a social life.

Fast forward one year. Brother is home for the summer. Boyfriend is interning at an architecture firm and is now also hours and hours away. I am living ENTIRELY on my own, after 18 years of living in a six-person family, 4 years of living with four roommates, and one year of being a live-in girlfriend.

For the benefit of anyone (most of these apply to gals, sorry boys) who finds herself living alone for the first time, I’ve assembled a collection of tips to surviving family/roommate/boyfriend-less for months on-end. And since I still have a day job, bear with me. They may appear slo-w-l-y.

Enjoy.