First, we have the personal beauty update: I got three new holes in my earlobes (first new piercings since I was thirteen and got dragged to the jewelery store by a friend for the original set). They’re nearly healed now, and I’m ready to go shopping for some hoops . . . but in the meantime, here’s the new look.

Hanna’s lobbying for a nose stud or a belly ring next, but I remain unpersuaded. Ouch! But I do continue to ponder possibilities for a graduation tattoo . . .

Reading and film-watching are two time-honored ways of spending leisure time, and I did much of both this August. I read Melissa Marr’s somewhat disappointing sequel to Wicked Lovely, Fragile Eternity, and Umberto Eco’s confusing bibliographic thriller The Name of the Rose. At the Boston Public Library, I picked up Charles de Lint’s low-key supernatural love story, The Mystery of Grace, and from Borders a copy of Furious Improvisation, a history of the WPA theatre project. For thesis background came Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties and Stewart Burns’ Social Movements of the 1960s.

When it came to film, we tilted toward the summery fluff, enjoying (to my surprise, at least) G.I. Joe in the theater, Sophia Myles in both Tristan & Isolde and Outlander, and many episodes of Bones. I also recently made up for the gaping hole in my Kevin Smith filmography by watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (and won bonus points by correctly identifying the moment at which Hanna began to applaud in the theater because, as she said, “There really was no other appropriate response.”) And, between pledge breaking, came the British comedies on Tuesday and Saturday nights. We’re looking forward this fall to welcoming the new kid on the block: My Family, starring (among others) “Colin the sex god” from Love Actually.

Hanna and I once again find ourselves running out of space for books (the everlasting logistical challenge of cohabiting bibliophiliacs — and neither of us have the bulk of our libraries here in Boston yet!) and managed to forestall the inevitable by purchasing a little wooden bookcase at the Goodwill.

We have a dedicated shelf for library books, shelved by lending institution (three at my last count, not including inter-library loans!): yes, we really are that hopeless.

We’ve grown two new pots of inch plants to join our creeping greenery: the ood and heero & duo have joined jack, ianto, mona, an as-yet-to-be-named swedish ivy, and an african violet that prefers the solitude and shadow of my room to the sunshine and company of Hanna’s windowsills (perhaps I should name it septimus hodge).

My mother also sent us a set of knitted vegetables made from recycled clothing, which Hanna and I improvised into a hanging mobile for the dining room, made from a set of chopsticks and box string left over from mike’s pastry boxes. Hanna says if hunters have the heads of their kill hanging in trophy rooms, it makes a certain amount of sense for vegetarians to have the heads of dead vegetables instead.

Watch later this week for notes on the coming semester and meanwhile, I hope y’all are having a great Labor Day weekend. The weather in Boston (not to brag) is pretty much perfect.