if you're crabby and you know it clap your hands.

Some days the weather throws you a bone and acts the way you feel. Thanks, Gainesville. For once we're on the same page. Your dark gray torrential downpour lifted my heart, kind of, in at least not being contradictorily sunny when I'm in a foul mood.

Ugh, what a day. With no warning signs, my laptop's begun flaking out in a bad way. Nothing - almost nothing - is more stressful than an expensive piece of technology you depend on practically all day, every day, threatening to up and choke. Except when you've been waiting with baited breath on student loans that should have been disbursed 2 weeks ago while the rent looms heavy on the horizon and you're using credit cards to buy milk and eggs.

Not that there would be any surplus in these loans for a laptop, should Sparky McFlakealot give out on me. Worse comes to worse, the prostitutes on SW 13th seem to be doing okay. And they don't have to sit in lectures learning that the tests they'll use throughout their career appear to measure nothing significant. Oh dear, I just read that paragraph over. Has it really come to this?

But I'll balance out the angst-fest: I had the best weekend ever. It started surreptitiously enough with Trivial Pursuit at Maude's over jasmine tea. Power Team #1 (Lisa & Shannon) scored the most wedges, no thanks to my discriminating knowledge of dead rappers.

Saturday I didn't even want a beer at my favorite bar, because there was GUITAR HERO on the big screen. Power team #2 (Shannon and Eli, a ten year old kid in a hoodie) rocked it out on cooperative mode... over and over... and over.

Sunday night finished off with a fantastic (and cheap!) group dinner at Tapas 12 West. Perfect cap to a perfect weekend: collapsing just this side of a coma, full of scallops, empanadas, sangria and chocolate souffle. Mmmm. Why was I crabby again?

once again, taking a close look at things proves to be remarkably worthwhile.

I FIXED MY BIKE!

Or in more specific terms, I figured out what's wrong with it and am avoiding using the broken part. Close enough! I have mastered you, mechanical enigma! Bow down before me, puny gears! Let's go for a ride on the Hawthorne trail... I promise I will most likely not grind you hideously against one another. Assuming the front wheel has now decided to always turn in the same direction as the handlebars, I should be fine.

Someone please buy me a car.

I'd be even better at fixing that than a bike.

in your face, northern America!

And not because our Gators just kicked your Northern asses. You know deep down I love you Yankeeland. And - you know I'm not a football fan. I only know we won because if you're anywhere in Gainesville during a Gator victory, you don't even need to open the window. I can hear what literally sounds like a screaming stadium through my back door, and there's no stadium anywhere nearby. The game wasn't even HERE. One of the great mysteries of Gainesville I have yet to figure out.

Anyway, I get to say in your face to you, Great North, because finally my weather kicks your weather's ass (all about ass-kicking tonight, it seems). It is beautiful here. Paradisiacal. And if you're going to deprive me of my much-loved snow, paradise is an acceptable consolation.

I said to a friend last week: "Sunshine doesn't do it for me! Not what snow and dead trees does!" But I eat my words. Returning to Florida air was a reminder of every camping trip my parents ever took me on. It smells like life here. Like wet, fresh, growing things. And if you step away from the four-lane highway packed with gas stations and Walgreens, it's quiet and wild and sweet, laden with bright little flowers, crawling vines, tree branches heavy with Spanish moss.

So that's what I did. I stepped away. Some of you back home know I routinely walked the 6 or so miles home from work, even in the rain. I never thought anything could replace those long chilly city walks. Well. Nothing has. But I've found a new pleasure here, unique. Only here could I slip on a thin cardigan in January twilight, loose skirt, flip flops, wet hair tied up, and walk for miles hearing only the birds and my feet on the ground.

I can see different neighborhoods than you see up north, different than in the city. Clusters of small brightly-painted houses up on cinder blocks, buried under ferns and low-hanging trees. Little houses falling apart. I love buildings falling apart. Little kids powering their Big Wheels around a pond, crushing pine needles while tired-looking moms and dogs look on.

Florida, this is a provisional love. You will probably kill it soon with a sweltering heat wave. But for now, you have your charm and I'll like you for that. You're still kind of lame, but we both know I've never had a problem loving lame. Just stop ruining my apartment and stealing my stuff and we might get along.