It's been a busy few months. I blame my aloof Aquarian ways for leaving you so poorly attended, oh blog of mine.

Let's see.

The now: the record has played to its end so I'm sitting in my apartment listening to the rain and the rattle of my bracelets against this laptop, which has scuffmarks where the two always meet.

The recent past: I unpacked two really big boxes of stuff that are the parts of my new table.

The less recent past: I moved to a new place. The new place has a gas stove that I love. Now the phrase "now you're cooking with gas" doesn't grate. The view is really nice -- not the windows of a sometimes carefree with the underwear old man. Instead, I have a pair of stomping idiots who live upstairs. But I've been keeping terrible hours with my work schedule all fakkakte, so I probably deserve their flat-footed passive aggressive rage. But the apartment really is pretty great. The neighborhood is really cool and nice. Lots of places to wander around to and eat and shop. Oh, and the view: when I wake up in the morning, I see the light settling into the Hollywood Hills. When I fall asleep, they're my twinkling nightlights. It's really soothing.

Since I last wrote, I've gotten loosey goosey with the diet, indulging now and again in some rice here and there. Some pita-binging now and again.

The other day, I invented the world's greatest/worst sandwich. Take Japanese eggplant rounds, salt, drain for 20 minutes, rinse, dry. Coat with egg white, fry in a half inch of peanut oil, drain on towels. Frying eggplant coated in egg white reduces the oil the eggplant sops up, leaving it light and crispy outside, soft inside. Slip yolk into oil, drizzle remaining egg white around it. Remove as soon as it's well set up. Take toasted pita, fill with French sheepsmilk feta, Japanese eggplant and fried egg. Drizzle it all with homemade bagna cauda (I like mine with basil). Try to go a day without wanting to do that again. So good. I'm keeping that recipe to entertain with -- it would be great for a lunch with a salad or as a warm starter for dinner, sans egg.

Oh, and I also made a pretty okay tahdig, not too long ago.

I'll try and be more attentive, oh blog of mine.

Sometime not long after I posted that I would eat out of my pantry for the next week as a culinary vow of poverty, I completely changed my mind and decided to go on a very expensive diet. Luckily, enough of it is posted all over the Internet that I don't need to buy the book to do it (Amazon's free peek is really quite generous sometimes). Because I'm broke, remember? Now I'm spending my dwindling funds on meat _ pricey when you're as picky as I am about eating organic, no hormone, free range, thrilled to be killed animals _ and eggs and lowfat dairy products.

So this was Day 1. I ate plain nonfat greek yogurt for breakfast. This was hard because I had already bought the packages that have the delicious shot of blueberry-acai on the side... which I love so much. But I threw that fruit right out.

For my three lunches _ yeah. seriously, three. _ i rolled up slices of pricey, high-end deli meat from Trader Joe's with laughing cow cheese and pickles. In all, I think there were 7 or 8 slices of meat, 3 triangles of cheese and 3 pickles eaten. I'm dubious that this all-you-can-eat meats idea is great, but I'm choosing to believe.

(Then I went to the worst yoga class on earth, where I didn't even break a sweat because it was so... touchy feely and deep-thinking, and the weird instructor kept saying "there is no such thing as good news or bad news" and then he would bash media and say stuff like "you can believe CNN or believe in you"... causing my inner yogi to silently shriek: "Look, dude, you wanna take this outside?! And people of Crunch's 7 p.m. yoga class, please believe CNN over this guy and his intolerable beanie!" But I digress.)

For dinner I came home and made a delicious dinner of shrimp that I was too wildly hungry for to photograph. Shrimp with basil, oregano, garlic, lemon juice and feta cheese. Oh, and I ate the weird oat bran pancake from the diet for dessert because I think it's the only fiber this diet has for the first 10 days. Hopefully I find a way to make that taste better; my addition of a packet of stevia and a squirt of lemon were undetectable.

We've officially exited my comfort zone on what I'm willing to blog about. Welcome to my diet shame.