Happy Friday, my friends! I’d like to celebrate the impending weekend with some end-of-fall photos—a perfect segue into winter, I guess, as we Chicagoans celebrated our first snowflakes of the season yesterday.

But the story behind these photos, I think, is even nicer than the results themselves. A few weeks back, I met up with the extremely talented Jacqui of Happy Jack Eats; we wanted to capture Morton Arboretum, in all its autumnal glory, on film. I took the train out to meet her, through new-to-me villages with sweet storefronts, and ended up having a blast. (I sincerely believe that the best part of moving to a new place has to do with the new relationships that follow. Between meeting lovely people like Jacqui and Maggie in person, hanging out with my hilarious coworkers, and reconnecting with high school and college friends, my heart has been quite full lately. So has my social calendar, but that’s something I can learn to live with.) We talked about photography and our futures, got ourselves just a little bit lost, ran into a troupe of zombie-actors, and had an extremely satisfying meal at Honey Cafe. Basically, there was no room for improvement.

So enjoy these snapshots (Portra 400 for the win!), then call up a friend. You know, just to chat. They make the transition from autumn into winter just a little bit less bittersweet.

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My friend Emily throws the very best theme parties. In college, she dreamed up ideas and organized them miraculously into being, such as when her urge to throw a Chanukah-themed golf party led us to making latkes for twenty. Always a stick in the mud, I groused about how annoying all that damn potato-grating would be, but Emily saw the big picture: that after nine rounds of holiday drinks at nine different campus locations (including Jello shots at the library—oh, college!) nobody, not even yours truly, would care that the apartment would smell like hot oil for weeks. And you know what? I didn’t.

In fact, it’s times like those that I look back on fondly, especially now that Emily’s packed her boxes and moved to a tiny New York City apartment. Right up until her departure this summer, she was planning get-togethers for everybody still in town, always with a creative twist. Case in point: to commemorate the arrival of Top Chef in D.C., she invited us over for a series of potlucks, with the stipulation that our contributions would be (in true Top Chef fashion) part of a challenge. The first night, we made foods that somehow represented our home cities; I explained my salted butter caramel ice cream as being a dessert-ified version of the classic Chicago caramel corn from Garrett’s. At the height of World Cup fever, we brought over dishes inspired by the countries that made it to the final four. I chose Germany.

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For my sixteenth birthday, when most other newly-licensed kids would be begging their parents for their first (beat-up) car, I was begging mine to go to New York. The Met was about to put on an exhibit of Richard Avedon’s portraiture, you see, and I was just precocious enough to understand how cool that was. Probably relieved that I wasn’t bugging him for my own set of wheels, my dad relented, and that’s how I got my first taste of New York City.

Since then, I haven’t stopped returning. Not a year goes by that I don’t hop up to the city—for an Eric Clapton concert in Madison Square Garden, maybe, or to stand in Grand Central Station on Halloween and gawk at the costumes, or just to visit the Strand and look at their awe-inspiring selection of used books. (Once I snagged an Avedon coffee-table book filled with his photos for Versace; it’s still my favorite find!) But every year, I’d always wander Manhattan and ignore the boroughs. This past weekend, I broke that streak when Ted and I watched some wonderful old friends run the Brooklyn Half-Marathon.

We arrived far too late on Friday night, and groggily clambered into a subway car far too early on Saturday morning, passing Russian billboard advertisements on our way to Coney Island. There, we were greeted by the rickety wooden Cyclone roller coaster, a Ferris wheel decked out in primary colors, vendors hawking funnel cake and hot dogs—and the finish line of the half-marathon! Not a minute after we sauntered up to the sidelines, my friend Anna sprinted by, hardly more than a flash of color in her track club jersey—and two of my college classmates followed soon after. It was completely thrilling. This was my first time as a race spectator rather than a participant, and to cheer people on as they pushed through the 13.1 miles, pain and determination plastered on their faces? I can’t think of anything more inspiring. Everyone there was an otherwise regular person, but they all accomplished something so extraordinary.

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My friends, it’s Friday, and I’m headed up to New York City. Three of my friends (Monica, Kim, and Anna, blogstresses all of them!) are conveniently running the same half-marathon in Brooklyn, which makes it pretty easy to see them all in one weekend. And with round-trip bus fare priced at $24, I had no reason to stay in Washington. In just a few hours, I’ll be snuggled up in my bus seat, concerned mostly with staring out the window and flipping through a stack of glossy magazines.

I’ll be sleeping on the futon of my dear friend Anna, who visited Washington last fall and stayed with me then. I’d just moved into my current apartment, which was, er, sparsely furnished, and cardboard boxes still adorned the living room. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to mind, and we had a great time sitting cross-legged on the floor with plates of lasagna after a full day of vineyard-hopping. And she brought dessert that lasted the whole weekend: monstrous slices of red velvet cake from her favorite Brooklyn bakery, Cake Man Raven (that’s the nickname of charismatic owner Raven Dennis). Word on the street is that Cake Man Raven counts Oprah, Robert De Niro, Patti LaBelle and P. Diddy as fans, and it was easy to understand why after taking my first bite of cake.

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I’ve become very familiar with the round-trip flight from Washington to Chicago. I can tell you how to get to the Reagan National, Dulles, or BWI airports using public transportation, and once there, I barely have to look at the overhead signs to steer myself toward the correct ticket counter. The flight itself? Similarly predictable, with the patchwork of dull green and brown cropland stretching out flatly as far as the eye can see. On such a trip, getting a window seat isn’t the trophy it used to be, back when I was a wide-eyed kid.

But this weekend, I was reminded that not all airplane rides are simply ways to get from Point A to Point B. Soon after my connection flight left Milwaukee, the pilot began to narrate our journey excitedly: “Folks, off to your right is Denver, and we’re nearing Aspen and Telluride! You’ll see the land get hillier as we head into the Rocky Mountains.” Sure enough, the peaks soon appeared in stark relief, snowcapped and majestic. “There’s Monument Valley,” he narrated. “And we’re coming up on the Grand Canyon—you’ll see the Colorado River’s pretty muddy this time of year.” He couldn’t even help himself from pointing out Las Vegas as we pulled closer to southern California.

As a pilot, I’m sure he’d passed over the same scenery too many times to count. But since a cross-country flight is such an unsubtle reminder of America’s varied beauty, I can’t imagine these views would ever get old, either.

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As I had hoped, three city-dwelling friends visited my suburban apartment this Saturday, plied by promises of (what else?) food, and lots of it. Formally, this gathering would be called a dinner party—but that sounds so staid, doesn’t it? I think of dinner parties as those events of my youth when children were banished by means of early bedtimes. As a child then, my biased opinion was that dinner parties must be no-fun zones washed of spontaneity and liveliness.

Of course, as I’ve grown up, I’ve learned better. Now that college is over, dinner parties are a great way for groups of far-flung friends to get together at once. They’re cheap, with only the cost of an extra bag of groceries to fuel an evening. And they don’t require screaming over music and strangers, as with nights spent at restaurants or bars. Really, I’m glad that I’ve gotten over that childhood bias, just as I’m relieved to have recovered from another one: vegetable phobia. Because when dressed up with cake batter, golden raisins, and white chocolate, carrots ain’t half bad.

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Way back in October, I invited a few friends over for dinner. I contributed a pan of lasagna and a green salad, and my friend Emily brought a shiny blue plate piled high with Bailey’s-spiked brownies. We were busy laughing and chatting, and the blue plate never made its way back to Emily’s apartment.

Somehow, October turned into February, and I figured that I owed her the plate plus interest. I paid that interest in the form of lemon bars. And after taste-testing them, I can assure you that they made up for the delay.

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If there’s one thing I miss about college life, it’s the proximity to my friends. Yes, sharing 600 square feet with three other girls became grating by senior year — in retrospect, I think we were literally running into each other in our tiny kitchen. No, I don’t miss our upstairs neighbors; christened “The Stompers,” they not only enjoyed jumping (with astounding force) from their bunk beds at 7 a.m., but also played five instruments between them (badly, and loudly).

But nothing beats the commiseration/coffee breaks with friends as you lock yourselves in the library together, or the run-ins with casual acquaintances that you can’t really orchestrate. My college campus did all the social heavy lifting, which is especially important when you’re an introvert like myself. Just by virtue of bumping into characters on the street, I received party invitations, fell into impromptu catch-up sessions, and found company for walks to the farmers market. No effort necessary! Life was good.

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