The Inspiring Jules, both of them

Today was as dreary as days come in autumn.

A plague of mist descended on Charlottesville, a sort of evil spitting fog. I walked through it, down to a coffee shop to meet a friend, until my jeans were damp and clingy and miserable. Even the vivacious leaves just hung, listless and defeated, like drenched feathers of peacock.

Blah, personified.

As if that weren't gloomy enough, the day began at 8:30 a.m. with a five-hour exam, No. 4 of 5 this week. Yes. Five exams. The end of Quarter 1 is near.

Antidote? Comfort food, please.

Or better yet, a comfort movie about food: "Julie & Julia." The basic premise is a 30-year-old New Yorker named Julie Powell cooks her way through Julia Child's classic cookbook over a year and blogs about it in the process. That blog became a book, which became a movie. Which is, in and of itself, inspiring. Go, Julie!

And if you find Julie inspiring, you'll be amazed by Julia.

I'm late to the Julia Child fan club, but I couldn't help but be immediately enthralled by her. Inspiring in 100 dimensions. I hesitate to try to sum her up in a spoonful of words here, as it would take an entire biography to do her justice.

Still. Just imagine, if you have never seen her: a tall, joyful woman without a pretentious bone in her body, instructing you to cook decadent buttery dishes in the most practical terms. I want to appear magically next to her at the kitchen counter and watch her add cream to something and describe "coagulation" or whatnot in her high-pitched drawl. Alas, she died in 2004 at age 91.

If you've never seen her PBS cooking show, you can watch "The French Chef" episodes for free at PBS.org. I'm fond of the egg episode, wherein eggs are cooked and baked in little dishes, the likes of which IHOP has never seen.

Maybe I'll try baked eggs tomorrow — the perfect protein-rich breakfast for the very last of this week's five-hour exams!