I live a very small, simple life in Albuquerque. I have only a couple of friends that I see only semi-regularly. My two roommates, my boyfriend Josh and his old aquaintence from New Mexico Tech, (also Josh) constitute my regular company. Incidentally, they both have the same middle name, too.

The time that I spend with my Josh is great, but usually our waking hours do not correspond (I work from four in the afternoon to twelve thirty and he works from ten to seven in the morning) so the time that we have spent together recently has been limited to the few hours that we share the twin bed. When I was able to share his company all night, before he got a job, I would sometimes sleep in the big wicker chair/bowl that I dubbed "the pod." Now, however, sharing the tiny bed with him is the best part of my day.

In the early morning hours after work, I read. Without a formal structure to govern my studies now, I am trying to read as much as possible. Since I came to Albuquerque, I've read a small pile of books, including...

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Plague, by Albert Camus

The Remains of the Day, by Ishiguro

Snow Country, by Kawabata

Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe

Alcestis, by Euripedes, Translated by Ted Hughes

American Gods, by Niel Gaiman

And most of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn

I will make each of these, and any books that I finish, into individual entries with quotes from the work. Out of the above, The Plague and The Gulag Archipelago are vying for the top spot in my esteem, so I might write an entry concerning both of them, and how they compare.

For being so simple, my life now also feels very full.