WINTER KEPT US WARM: Via Mixolydian Mode, the Friday Feast!

Appetizer
Do you get excited when the season begins to change? Which season do you most look forward to?
Yes. I’m very seasonally-oriented (as readers of “Desire” might recall); I love all four seasons in DC, though summer is my (perverse) favorite. This year has finally been intense enough for me, with many sweltering days breaking the hundred-degree mark.

The signs of seasonal change: Winter to spring: a certain softness in the air. The first buds on the clawing trees. Light at six in the evening.

Spring to summer: Soft, hot breezes moving thickly across your skin like a caress. The first ninety-degree day. The first passionate thunderstorm–all day long the atmosphere lowering, tightening, every minute hotter and wetter until everything’s cloying haze and tarry, melting heat; then the first low rumbles in the sky; then catastrophe, climax, downpour; and, fifteen minutes later, the bright, clear, breezy denouement.

Summer to fall: A thin little wind that twists along the sidewalks, burnt-smelling, chasing you until at last you can’t hurry ahead of it and it crisps in your nostrils. That first cold little wind. Indian summer still lies ahead, nostalgic and already-lost, but summer is over.

Fall to winter: Darkness at five-thirty. Mellow days turn cold the moment the sun sinks beneath the low DC skyline. The wind that sends the fallen leaves skirling along the sidewalks; the storm that strips the last dead leaves from the trees.

Oh, I love this city.

Soup
What day of the week is usually your busiest?
Monday: work, pregnancy center, and often fiction after that.

Salad
Would you consider yourself to be strict when it comes to grammar and spelling? What’s an example of the worst error you’ve seen?
Oh yes, spelling errors make me itch. Grammar errors… I’m not as good at spotting them, but when I do, they also bother me. (Still don’t know the difference between “that” and “which”–sorry, Mom….) I don’t know that I can recall hideous examples….

Main Course
Who has a birthday coming up, and what will you give them as a gift?
Me! And a better year, I hope.

More in the spirit of birthdays: SRD; not sure what I’ll get him. Probably music. And my godfather. I’ll FINALLY send him his Pope Innocent III action figure, and also get him a book, though not sure yet which book.

Dessert
If you could have any new piece of clothing for free, what would you pick?
New shoes. A black pair and a red. High but chunky heels; ideally not too strappy; aggressive tock-tock heels.