1) Last weekend, I was out all afternoon on the hottest day of the year, and Kamran texted me at one point to say that he thought the air conditioner had stopped working. I arrived at his apartment later with a couple of iced coffees just to make fun of him and his overactive imagination, but no, there was definitely warm air coming out of his vent. We spent the remainder of the night sitting perfectly still on the couch, afraid that moving would allow the sweat rivers dammed in our hair to unleash on our foreheads. It. Was. Miserable.

Way wore than the night we lost power in my apartment, because Kamran lives in a studio with windows on only one side of the room, so there’s no way to create a cross breeze unless you open the door. And I wouldn’t have been entirely opposed to propping the door if New Yorkers weren’t so infamously curious about other people’s habitats; you know every single person who walked by would’ve stopped dead to watch us gnawing on ice as we watched Manhunter.

I texted my best friend, Tracey, about it, and she suggested I fly to Ohio and enjoy her central air. I also considered going back to my own apartment, figuring that a single wall unit for all 900 square feet was better than nothing, but I didn’t want to leave Kamran alone with his take-home law school exams. We went to bed around midnight, but Kamran woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like he was having trouble breathing and thinking we’d need to go to a hotel, which made me EXCITED. But then he remembered a box fan hidden in the back of one of his closets and aimed it right at us so we could at least not die during the night.

Two days later–after his exams were all finished, of course–his landlord graciously had a guy come and install a brand new unit with a timer and remote control so we never have to leave the couch again.

2) You may think of me as some huge important chef thanks to my starring role in Julie & Julia and my wildly popular food blog, but the truth is that about the most I do is heat up some hotdogs for breakfast in Kamran’s convection oven. But his oven went out in March, and we kind of didn’t bother to do anything about it, which means I’ve been heating up my hotdogs in skillets.

Skillets.

But early this week, when the new air conditioner went in, the landlord also sent him a new microwave. A huge one, with a light underneath to illuminate the stovetop, and a vent on top to keep the apartment from smelling like pigparts.

3) Last night, I met Kamran to go shopping for toilet paper (romantic!), and as we were leaving Duane Reade (a pharmacy that got its start in NYC at the corner of Duane Street and Reade Street–clever!), I realized that it was my chance to buy my favourite generic lipgloss, which I’ve been without for several months now but have been too lazy to walk an extra block to the Duane Reade for because the CVS near his house is so much nicer. I forget sometimes that the littlest things can make such a huge difference to my happiness.

4) I’m in Ohio for the weekend for my stepsister’s wedding! This means I’m the only one of the five of us kids who isn’t married. Last time I was home, I told my grandmother that Kamran and I are going to California to visit his parents early next month, and she said, “Oooooh, are you going to pin him down while you’re there?” And I said, “Um, haven’t I done that already? We’ve been together almost four years now. The only thing we haven’t done is move in together.” She didn’t like that.