Saw Margot at the Wedding last night. Loved it. It was a good deal less depressing than The Squid and the Whale, thanks to Jack Black in a part that I’m guessing Baumbach wrote specifically for him. And what’s great about his movies is that no matter what kind of painful stuff is going on your life, you can say, “At least I’m not part of that family.” Also, I love Jennifer Jason Leigh and have missed her. (Though I just looked her up and apparently there was no reason for me to miss her since she’s been in a zillion movies in the past decade…)

Do you ever feel like winter will never be over? That your best attempts at doing the right thing only make things worse? Is that what the Old Testament writer meant when he said that our human righteousness is like filthy rags compared to the way things should work? Right now I have the lyrics to Pierce Pettis’s “Crying Ground” in my head. Pierce is my singing therapist. Remember that ANTM episode where the girls have to contort their way through lasers and not touch anything in order to get a prize? And be graceful and pretty while they do it? Of course you do! That’s how I feel about life right now. Like it would be nice to put on a silver body suit and weave your way oh-so-carefully through it without ever touching anything that will leave a mark or hurt you or hurt someone else, and you’ll look fantastic doing it and have everyone applaud and say wow, look at how she handled that! Such grace! Such wisdom! Perfect decisions at every turn! What a champ! Instead I’m Renee, who keeps running into the lasers over and over and not only has to hear the buzzer going off every three seconds, but has the added humiliation of going back to go back to the start each time and none of the progress she’s made counts. Forunately, life is not ANTM and the story arc goes on and on and is not contained in a 13-week season.

Next time someone asks me what famous person I’d like to meet, remind me to say Gwen Ifill. Is there an Ifill biography for young readers? There should be. You should write one!

I’ve been going to a spinning class at my gym. It is actually pretty fun, except for the part where the bicycle seat is stabbing you in the uterus. I did buy appropriate butt-attire, but I figured out at the last class that one row of bikes has wider, softer seats while another row has pointy, stabby seats, and even with the $70 bike shorts the pointy seats still hurt. So it’s all about choosing the right bike.

Lastly, I successfully secured my wireless modem. I always wanted to be one of those socialist-minded people who left an open connection for the world to use, but I’ve been having a lot of stability issues with my connection so now it is all sewn up. Sorry, world!