It's been a quiet day today. Farmers' market, family time, catching up on the past few weeks (new job for me, power outage and some trip planning for them), eating delicious lunch (glazed salmon, corn on the cob, blueberry tart), a ton of laundry, dishes, general low key-ness.

In the middle of the day, I ran into friend Jen, roommate of friend Emily, at the neighborhood gas station. It was the first time I'd ever run into someone I knew at a gas station. So strange. But it was good to see Jen. And I realized that while she'd been a great supporter of the blog this year, she'd never appeared in it. So, to make up for that omission, I thought I'd do a post with the video of us running into each other.

I'm the big nerd reading the book. Jen's the one in the helmet.

Today I'm taking it easy, doing laundry, reading, and visiting the fam.

Tomorrow I'm going to an all-you-can-eat pig roast at Bourbon Steak, the Georgetown's Four Seasons restaurant. Fanciness and messiness are going to come in equal portion. The menu looks great. Guests will:

…enjoy as much as they can of a 400-lb wood-roasted Berkawattabaw pig from Eco-Friendly Foods, served with both traditional and non-traditional barbecue sauces. Chef Varley will also offer a host of sides, including Barbecue-baked peanuts, Alan Benton's ham and cheddar biscuits, Country macaroni and cheese, Grilled corn with pimentón and blue cheese butter, and BOURBON STEAK bourbon bacon potato salad.

Guests can also taste one of Varley's winning creations for dessert, Porkeos (chocolate cookies made with lard and filled with whipped lard icing). Other pork-inspired sweets will include Pigalicious cupcakes and Maple bourbon soft serve with bacon sprinkles.

Before going, I'm catching up on the single best pig-based television episode I saw as a child. But you don't have to take my word for it.

A top five unfulfilled childhood dream? Reading Rainbow book reviewer.

I wouldn't say Inception was the first movie to give me a panic attack. The movie didn't get me that far. But it took me about halfway there.

The experiential combination of personal loss, nerves and complication sent me toward a racing head, disorientation and distance. The movie made me believe a panic attack was possible. If you can believe that.

Not everyone has this reaction to the movie. Some friends have hated it. Others have found it your typical summer blockbuster. With sleeping issues since spring, work grabbing most of my head this month, a long legacy* of work dreams, and my usual investment in movie-watching, I was a solid target for Inception. And I saw it sitting sixth-row center at the Uptown. I explained to Meghan the math Spencer had done in high school, and the curving screen, typical for those seats, enveloped us.

So, seriously, go see this movie. Go to the Uptown. Sit near the front. Pay attention and — similar but different — follow along. Let the story get a few levels deep in your head. Inception isn't a four-star film, but it's three-and-a-half and a mental kidnap. Just don't lose yourself in it.

*Last night's dream involved a former colleague telling me my replies to Facebook posts weren't short and punchy enough. That's one for Leonardo DiCaprio, for sure. Dream Jon Burns, I'll get cracking on those replies.

Refrigerated trucks parked 50 feet apart in my neighborhood:

Sing it with me, Youtube: C.W. McCall, Convoy.

All that Grey's Anatomy-viewing finally paid off. I went to Mat Kearney's show tonight at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue and knew about half a dozen songs, which was about half a dozen more than I expected.

The man played a good, fun show. He hit all the notes from the studio, got creative about how he put the songs across, talked about visiting museums today, questioned the proud weirdness of our District license plate, spun his hat-wearing self-awareness into storytelling and stage presence, and asked who in the crowd could play drums. A kid yelled from the back balcony. Kearney had him run downstairs and gave him an old yellow suitcase to tap a foot on. The kid turned out to be able to rock the beat and some inspired fills (Kearney: "I feel like I've been punked") as Kearney, to finish winning my respect, sang Dancing in the Dark. I should have remembered his Atlantic City cover from last year.

Thank you to Sheri for leading the group outing — I wish I could think of a phrase other than "group outing" because it sounds like now we have to go back to the ward or our cells, but it's late and I'm beat — and thank you to Ella's pizza for being delicious. Also, very cool to see the heralded Sixth and I interior for the first time. Sound was muddy, but the space was friendly and intimate. I'd go back for more shows.

Lastly, because you're wondering the same thing, Wikipedia: "Kearney has stated that his legal name is Mathew due to a nurses error on his birth certificate. He discovered the error while in the 8th grade when he noticed how his mom corrected the error with red ink, never legally correcting it. Since then, he embraced the one T in his legal name."

I'm not afraid to say it. Michael Cera's new Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the best video-game rock action-hero romantic comedy ever made. If graphic novels are responsible for this, I am now more okay with them. Friend Amy is awesome for snagging last-minute preview tix last night.

Young people will enjoy the anti-hero Cera, fighter-style battles, girls kicking ass, and the fact that theatergoers of a certain age just won't understand. There will be a cultural line. If you have dropped quarters into an arcade video game any time post-1990, you will like this movie.

It won't be perfect. Anna Kendrick will be superfluous, and the role for Parks and Rec's Aubrey Plaza will come up short-ish. There will be some loose ends and occasional plot meandering. But you will like the power cords. ex-driven destruction, pictures of a wild script in your head, and the fact that twee alone — for once — cannot win a Michael Cera day.

A caution: As fun as the movie is, you will leave the theater wanting to win back all of your exes at once. You will want to let this feeling pass.

With a book review in The New Yorker this month, Meghan O'Rourke takes another step toward the title. Not yet 35, several years ago O'Rourke was culture editor at Slate. More recently, she's published her poetry — her "Troy" is among those hanging on the side of my fridge — and been a poetry editor at Paris Review. Outside any official title, she has been working through her mother's death and grieving. One of her ways of doing so has been examining how grief happens.

She does so anew in her review of poet Anne Carson's Nox, a book that mourns Carson's brother, who died in 2000. The loss takes torn, innumerable shapes in the book, and O'Rourke serves as interpreter.

"Nox" is as much an artifact as a piece of writing. The contents arrive not between two covers but in a box about the size of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Inside is an accordion-style, full-color reproduction of the notebook, which incorporates pasted-in photographs, poems, collages, paintings, and a letter Michael once wrote home, along with fragments typed by Carson. The reproduction has been done painstakingly, and conjures up an almost tactile sense of the handmade original. A mourner is always searching for traces of the lost one, and traces of that scrapbook's physicality–bits of handwriting, stamps, stains–add testimonial force: this person existed.

The analysis joins O'Rourke's look at better grief, her "Long Goodbye" series for Slate (with my favorite part, her grief reading of Hamlet) and plans for a 2011 book on the subject. She's written well — very well — during this period on other topics, of course. In the latter link, "My Life as a Ruler" is great. But she has taken a kind of ownership on grief.

Not the kind of ownership that is about possession, but the kind that's about responsibility. For an owner to be young, have a poet's sense of observation and take a humble, outward-looking stance on experience is promising for her us, for us and for our difficulties, ultimately shared.

Meghan and I went north to Elizabeth and Justin's home to meet dogs.

Beyond our shared Medill pride, we went for Walter (shown sitting).

Walter was a rescued dog — predecessor and hero to all dogs there.

There was also a kitten who lived in the bathroom. 

Fun times were had by all except Simon, an orange cat who ventured downstairs at the wrong time, caught the attention of a three-legged dog who proved quicker than everyone else in the room and sparked an all-dog chase followed by all-owner chase of fantastic proportions.

Simon emerged without injury.

Next was Brewer's Art with Steve — an all-star Medill afternoon — and it turned out he went to high school with cousin Tim. He and Meghan told me the downstairs was a dungeon. They were right. But it was a comfy one. We drank beers named Wit Trash, Sluggo and Resurrection.

On our way out, we found sunset shining off the opposing building. 

How could the weather have run so hot? Staying cool felt like success.

Major congrats to friend Jen, my Glee- and Grey's-watching comrade, for her coauthored expose of teacher Kevin Ricks in today's Washington Post.

Sweeping in scope, the Ricks narrative dominates today's front page (at right) and runs deep both in print and online.

Readers aren't going to be able to put this one down. Unlike many news packages of this size, there's minimal filler. Nearly every paragraph contains case reporting. The details span years, mediums and a wide variety of school systems, local and foreign.

Authorities arrested Ricks in February. To the public, the known case involved just one student. Today's story has shown the number affected may explode. The public has many questions to ask of its school and police systems.

Today's opening sentences:

Kevin Ricks was a gregarious, well-traveled English teacher at Osbourn High School, a Walt Whitman devotee who was so popular that a photo of him in class was chosen to fill the opening page of the yearbook. A writer and photographer himself, Ricks would walk the halls of the Manassas school with a leather-bound journal of his musings tucked in his bag, next to his laptop computer.

What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn't know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks's world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation.

Again, read it in full here. Jen and her fellow Posties, stunning work.

Update, late in the day: Catching up with Jen this afternoon, it turns out friends Jon and Kat did the A1 design and the digital timeline, respectively. It's terrific to be in a metropolis where great young journalists abound.

Hilary invented the word. Sheri approved it. "Jobirthday." When you take major job action on your birthday. Webster's, you're on notice.

Delayed a few weeks for trips, work, illness and more, we dove into the Art and Soul cocktail list. There were egg whites and sno cones.

We walked to Chinatown and Red Velvet and started work on photo submissions to a new Tumblr, Dudes with Beards Eating Cupcakes.

Then down the street to Pitango Gelato. Shown left to right: Chocolate chip, banana, espresso. The hundred degree temps? We fought back.

Later, we witnessed the best Metro hook-up ever. A drunk dude and his drunk blind friend boarded the train and met a drunk girl. The dude complimented the girl's shoes. They began making out. But! She then realized she'd ridden many stops in the wrong direction. (These things happen when you're in love.) The drunk blind friend confirmed it for her and said to his friend, "I'm sorry, dude, I had to tell her!" Another rider politely informed him that his friend had left the train with the girl. The drunk blind friend let loose the best laugh I'd heard all week. I wanted to follow the two friends around town and chronicle their lives forever.

To recover from this excitement, sangria. A happy jobirthday for all.