I shouldn’t post in that late-afternoon, aimless, should-be-taking a nap haze, but it’s so nice out and the wireless connection so good that I can’t really bring myself to lie down.

Santa Fe is the same as when I left it last, around 14 years ago. I guess there are a few more rich people here, but not so’s you’d notice. I walked into the lobby of the La Fonda hotel and was overcome with a sort of reverse Proustian experience: I immediately remembered what the place used to smell like–this vaguely sour but savory smell from, I think, the Swiss-cheesy crepes at the French Pastry Shop in the lobby, or maybe something from the main resto kitchen. I spent many weekends of my high school life sitting at craft shows in the back hallway, demonstrating my mom and Joanna’s Ear-resistables to ditzy Texans who just gushed about how “caaayuuuuute” they were.

We always made fun of the Texans and looked down on them, but they did occasionally buy a lot of jewelry, and, come to think of it, Ear-resistables was a pretty cutesy name for this particular sort of ear jewelry Joanna had invented. The jewelry itself (a flexible wire wrapped around the back of your ear, so beads hung down from the top, and from right by your earlobe) was usually really beautiful, given the whims of 80s fashion, and always looked a little funny on the puffy-sweatshirt-and-matching-Keds ladies who would insist on trying it on. But we still told them how beautiful they looked, and some of them bit and bought one (only one–it was the craaaaazy asymmetrical 80s), and then probably never ever wore it. And then I slunk off to get a roast beef baguette sandwich or something from the French Pastry Shop–about the only place you could get a good chewy hunk of bread back then, with very rare beef and a schmear of Dijon mustard and a real piece of lettuce.

In fact, I could go for one of those right now. I guess I should get one in the spirit of research, but they’re closed now. I’ll have to stick it out till dinner, but the B&B I’m at is having a little free wine-and-cheese happy hour right outside my door. I don’t want to go out and schmooze, so I have to hide out in here till it’s over, gnawing my arm off.

I’m glad Peter’s not here–I just looked down at the quilt on my bed and noticed a ton of animal hair. And for the record, this is a place that’s comping me and knew I was coming. But we’re in New Mexico, where the dog is king, so I guess it’s just an “authentic” touch. Later, I suppose, I’ll have some haute New Mexican cuisine with goddamn chipotle peppers, which of course have nothing to do with New Mexico.

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Crap. Turn-down service is booting me from my room, and out into the schmoozing world. I have to start composing a lie for these things. I hate telling people what I do, because inevitably they say something disapproving about how I let people know I’m coming, and identify myself as a writer, and then I have to explain myself, usually by mentioning the guide-book-writing pay scale, and an anecdote about how a hotel owner can be totally clueless anyway, such as with not vacuuming the dog hair off the bed.

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Banana cookies? Banana cookies as my turn-down treat? Very weird. Must get real food soon.