Up in the aerie, chicken roasting in the oven, crostata with apples from our tree cooling on the stove. D will paint the kitchen tomorrow, so I'm trying to get in a bunch of roasting and baking so that the paint has a chance to cure before I do serious cooking again. Yesterday I made a cauldron of stock, clearing out the freezer of carcasses. Our friends from Brooklyn might like to chill a bottle of say, vodka, and not encounter a freezer full of baggies of chicken bones.

Not much to report tonight Mr. Big - I mean Mr. (Ms.?) iPhone. You're Mr. iPhone to me whoever you are. My virtual Wilson, as in the Tom Hanks movie with the anthropomorphized volleyball. I've never held an iPhone, much less read anything off one. Wouldn't it be hard to read something like my blog on there - isn't the print awfully small? One day I will borrow someone's and look myself up.

Tired and at low ebb at the moment. Got in a long power walk this morning, then yet more curtain ironing, followed by assembling a wonderful lunch of quesadillas loaded with delicious toppings, including black beans with chorizo, and bits of leftover steak. Then I went to the movies, The Social Network movie about the Facebook founder, which I greatly enjoyed. Not that I've ever seen I, Claudius - D raves about it, I mean to get to it but it reminded me of something like that, or a Shakespearian play loaded with political intrigue and sharp characterizations. I was impressed with Justin Timberlake, with whom I am completely unfamiliar (didn't even know what he looked like) except for his name. He has got "It," charisma, an animated, energetic, Jude-Law-reminiscent energy that he brought to his Machiavellian part.

I didn't attend Harvard, but was amazed by the mini-adult corporate/litigious/cutthroat (& sexpot - on the part of most of the vapid and/or opportunistic female characters) mentality that the film depicts of its undergrads in 2003. I don't doubt it for a second, but couldn't personally relate. Just about every character was an operator on some level, except for (in the movie) the first love with her unshakable sense of self and strong personal integrity.

The light is dimming in discernible degrees - the sun must be starting to sink behind the mountains. The apples from our tree are incredibly delicious. For every few slices for the buttery tart I snacked on one or two - swooning. And I don't mean to lay it on too thick here - but these bites of apple were just so flavorful and sweet - and yes, organic - believe me, we do nothing -

Jerrice has just put on the loveliest French song - I'm picturing a French chanteuse strumming ukelele on the Mississippi at twilight as Huck Finn (who in my mind looks like A.A. Bondy - oh to be in Bearsville Tuesday night) listens as he silently guides the raft, the two of them, down the still water, banks on either side dark with shrubbery, the woman liltingly singing ...