1. I am in Alabama, getting married. I mean, I won't technically be married for a week, so I guess we are still just planning the wedding, but at this point it has begun to feel like we are actually in the process. It's all very fun and exciting. It is also hilariously expensive. Just today I was at the liquor store buying presents for my groomsmen, and the woman behind the counter said, "That will be 110 dollars," and I said, "Man, that is a lot of money to spend on my groomsmen," and she said, "Wait, this is for a wedding? In that case, it will be 300 dollars even." (I'm just kidding. Actually the woman was very nice and called all over town asking if anyone had any Talisker. That ABC Liquors. They really do cater to your spiritual needs.)

2. I've been watching some television the last couple weeks, and man, let me tell you, television isn't as bad as everyone says it is. For instance, this show How I Met Your Mother, which my friend Lindsay "Lindsayism" Robertson and I agree is thoroughly underrated. In an utterly unrelated story, I happened to have attended college with its star, although I did not know him because he was so much better looking and more popular than me.

2b. But not even HIMYM (which is a fantastic acronym, isn't it?) can match the humor and pathos of my new favorite TV show, Deadliest Catch, which is about Bering Sea crab fishing. I relate to the show partly because my dad worked on a boat in Alaska decades ago, and partly because I once spent my own summer in Alaska. Admittedly, I was working in an ice cream store, but it was still really hard. Sometimes my arm would get so sore but I would just have to keep scooping.

3. I very much like E. Lockhart's Fly on the Wall (it's like, what if Kafka was funny and a girl and sort of obsessed with penises), Adrienne Vrettos' Skin (it's just really good), Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (absolutely exhilirating), and Frank "Dr. Frank" Portman's King Dork (which I obviously liked, since I blurbed it).

4. If you read the New York Times, check out my review of Markus Zusak's new book, The Book Thief (the book is extraordinary, and you should read it immediately) in this Sunday's NYT Book Review.