Summer mix, Whole30, pensive miscellany.

I drive a lot. I have never not, except for when I lived in New York, and then I just took the subway for a similar amount of time. But my point is, my commute is loooong... but I've never really cared. Long commutes are the best for giving an excuse to create really elaborate music mixes, to listen to over and over again. They're particularly awesome really early on summer mornings, when it's kind of foggy and warm enough to keep all the windows open.

I recently started a new job, and while I can't stress enough how much I love it, I'm finding it a little stressful. The pace is quick and it's more cerebral than I'm used to, at least more than I'm used to for eight-hour stretches. The long, long commute is kind of a plus in this situation, because it gives me time to kind of "ramp up" in the morning, and wind down in the afternoon. I made this mix last week for these long, pensive-in-a-good-way, drives back and forth. It's like the best of this summer plus the best of the summer after your senior year of high school, all rolled up in one.

(Sorry, I don't know how to do that thing where I can somehow magically give you links to free music with each song. You'll have to look them up yourself on Youtube, I'm too lazy for that.)

• "Lonely People" - America
• "Across the Sea" - Weezer
• "The Rock and the Tide" - Joshua Radin
• "Neopolitan Bridesmaid" - Tarkio
• "Everything You Want" - Vertical Horizon
• "For Once in My Life" - Stevie Wonder
• "Boys 'Round Here" - Blake Shelton
• "I 4 U & U 4 Me" - the Decemberists
• "Bad Moon Rising" - CCR
• "I Want You" - Bob Dylan
• "Blurred Lines" - Robin Thicke
• "Mushaboom" - Feist
• "The Dog Days are Over" - Florence + the Machine
• "Band of Gold" - Freda Payne
• "Emmylou" - First Aid Kit
• "Stolen" - Dashboard Confessional
• "Sweetness" - Jimmy Eat World
• "Semi-Charmed Life" - Third Eye Blind
• "Friends in Low Places" - Garth Brooks
• "Palm of Your Hand" - Ingrid Michaelson
• "When I Write My Master's Thesis" - John K. Samson
• "Summer Girls" - LFO
• "The Sweetness Lies Within" - Hefner
• "Thrift Shop" - Macklemore
• "Die in Your Arms" - Justin Bieber
• "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" - Looking Glass

I'm a little bit embarrassed by this mix, but it's so good for driver's seat dancing / pondering the meaning of life during morning commutes (and evening commutes, and weekend drives to the store, and...) that mostly, I'm actually not.

In other news, tomorrow morning, my husband and I are starting a Whole30. I'm not going to go into many of the details here, because this is never going to be a healthy eating blog, but it basically entails abstaining from booze, dairy, grains, legumes, and all added sugar for thirty days. It's supposed to be a kind of nutritional reset. If you google it, you can find all these blogs about these people have amazing sea changes in their lifeview, which I can nearly 100% guarantee will not happen to me. But with all my food allergies (anaphylaxis to any kind of shellfish and any kind of fish, plus blueberries, plus oral allergy syndrome to apples), and foods that I'm not allergic to but make me feel kind of awful (eggs, dairy, carbs), it'll be kind of nice to see if anything positive physically comes out of it. I'm personally not interested in losing weight, but I know a lot of other people are? Anyway, have you done one? How did it work out for you?

Pensive-ish miscellany that doesn't deserve a whole paragraph:

• I've been slowly giving up caffeinated coffee over the past couple weeks and am pretty surprised to find out there are zero physical repercussions, other than being totally disgusted with the taste of decaf.
• As my brother-in-law recently brought to our attention, the "Will Smith" station on Pandora is the best possible summer pool party (or any party) mix you could ever hope to create; check it out.
• I have been getting up at 5:00am for only about two and a half weeks now, but I'm already unbelievably sick of it. I know this is a novel emotion to possess.
• I need suggestions for end-of-summer reading; any ideas?