generally fabulous.

Bulleted Thoughts About Our Wedding

2011-08-15T12:21:00.003-04:00

Our wedding is barely a week and a half behind us, yet it seems to be receding rapidly from view. Life returns to normal so quickly, which is startling and relieving all at once. On the drive home from our short, blissful honeymoon, we stopped at a rest stop for McDonald's and joked that the honeymoon had officially ended. That evening at home, we had our first spat since before the wedding, and it was confirmed.

However, it does seem to me that wedding and the honeymoon have injected a bit of spice into our relationship. Of course, I think that no longer spending all of our waking hours planning the wedding helps, too.

A few snippets before I dive into more comprehensive posts. These are things no one told me (or everyone told me, but I didn't believe) before the wedding:

We were buzzed for about 5 days straight. Beginning with the rehearsal dinner, through the wedding day prep and reception, and until the visit to the winery on the last day of our honeymoon, we drank. More than either of us is ever really inclined to. There seemed always to be a bottle of champagne, a nip of vodka, or a seaside beer to enjoy during and after our wedding. By the time we were home again, we thought we were done drinking forever. And then we went to the beer garden on Saturday, and all was well.
It was big. The wedding was huge. I didn't think I'd be overwhelmed by my wedding, but... everyone else was right. It was ginormous, and much bigger than just E and I.
People will surprise you. I had a lot of family drama and felt like many of my friends and family members were wedding'ed out before our wedding, and like they weren't invested in us. But they were. And when they answered our community vow with a resounding, "We do!" during the ceremony, I let any lingering doubts about their investment melt away, and had a blast at the explosion of joy that was our reception.
Things will go wrong; Or, they won't. We didn't really have anything go wrong at our wedding. I was steeling myself for some calamity, and tried to tell myself that everything would be fine despite any major or minor catastrophes. And then, all was well. I have a lot of thoughts about why we were so lucky, but I think a lot of it was just because we trusted our vendors and we had really great people helping us out in advance.
It will recede, and quickly. As we got into our cab back to the hotel after the wedding, I thought about all the people who said, "It goes by so quickly! Savor it!" and felt like they had been wrong, like I had been able to be present in every moment and it had stretched out just the right amount of time. I still feel that I did a good job being present, but I also feel like it is merely a bright flash in my memory, even thought only a week and a few days have passed. Now, it feels like it went by very quickly, like a blur in my memory.

Photo by my sister as we entered the reception.
Blurry due to incorrect camera settings, but fitting for this post.

Oh, hey.

2011-08-10T11:19:00.001-04:00

I have a blog. Which I stopped writing in due to the upheaval of finishing school, writing my thesis, starting my very first grown up job, and planning (and having!) a wedding. It's been a very busy 8 months, but with the wedding done and life finally settling back into normalcy, I feel like my thoughts are my own again, my life isn't on public display to be critiqued and picked apart by everyone I know, and therefore I might as well start blogging again.

I tried wedding blogging, but wedding planning was a very difficult process for E and I, and it was hard to contain that process in sweet little succinct blog posts. Now that the planning is done, I can reflect on what we've learned and encapsulate it better for public consumption. So, for a little while, this will be like a wedding blog, with some regular life thrown in. But that will only be temporary, and then the flowers and organza will subside on this blog as they did in real life.

Not sure how I should feel about this.

2010-12-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

When I start to get exhausted (like right now when I am juggling 2 internships, a job, classes, and job-hunting), I start to get foolish with my sleep. As in, I tend not to get enough of it, and by the time I get into bed, I'm really dragging. E is much more of a night person than I am, so he's normally getting into bed at a time I reserve for frantic ends-of-semesters. One of his favorite things to do on such nights is to talk to me while I drift in and out of sleep. He gets a window into my weird subconscious, and the next day, I get stories about whatever ridiculous things I said the night before.

The other night, for instance, as I struggled to stay awake, I told E to just "ask the cookie vendor" rather than talk to me. In my head, we were in the holiday market at Grand Central Terminal, and there was a guy selling lovely frosted cookies. In reality, we were in bed in our freezing cold bedroom in Queens. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

A few minutes later, I started singing a variation on this classic Fats Domino tune:

...except I basically just sang "We're talkin', yes indeed..." over and over.

I can't even get back at him, because once he falls asleep the only noises you'll get out of E are teeth-grinding and various emissions. Oh well.

My first ravioli adventure!

2010-11-07T19:00:00.001-05:00

Another busy weekend has flown by, and now I am staring down the dreaded Monday morning once again! Ah, well, at least it was a good weekend. Friday night, E and I got right down to business with some couscous and feta stuffed peppers. The filling for these peppers was absolutely delicious even on its own! I'm picky with stuffed vegetables; I want the filling to be moist, dense and full of flavor. This recipe definitely fulfilled all of those requirements! E, though, often suggests we make stuffed peppers for dinner and then once they're on his plate he remembers he doesn't even like the actual roasted peppers. Right? Anyway. He ended up simply scooping all the filling out and leaving behind the peppers. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

We were supposed to have a quiet night in, but 2 of our friends were back in town after time spent away, so we wandered over to their apartment, drank wine and ate fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies while arguing about the necessity of the Oxford comma all night (it's not necessary, it's not! it's not!). We had a much later night than expected and I woke up with a slight headache, but it was worth it. The Oxford comma debate continues, with everyone we discuss the issue with fiercely divided.

Saturday night E and I parted ways, he bound for a party at his friend's house in Brooklyn, I heading to a neighborhood Cuban restaurant for dinner and drinks with our friends and their house guests. It was a great night, and thanks to the time change I was even able to get a full 8 hours of sleep without feeling guilty about sleeping late! Huzzah! Today E and I have each been wrapped up in work all day, but this afternoon I ventured into the kitchen to make some ravioli from scratch. My dad's family is Italian, so we have ravioli and seafood pasta every year on Christmas Eve. Growing up, we made dozens and dozens of homemade little pillows of pasta dough and ricotta cheese, though in recent years the scattering of cousins and everyone's hectic schedules has led to store bought ravioli. I have lots of fond memories of helping to make ravioli late every fall in preparation for the holidays, but it's been a good 10 or so years since I had the chance.

I used this recipe, and they were surprisingly easy and expectedly delicious! The whole process of making the dough, letting it rest, making the filling, rolling out the dough, assembling the ravioli, and cooking everything takes time, but it's not hard at all. It's so satisfying to have a belly full of mushroom-y goodness when all is said and done. There's something that feels really badass about putting together a handmade meal that you usually buy preassembled, if you will. It's the same feeling I have when i watch a pot of jam come together on the stove: You just feel badass! One note on the ravioli: we made the filling as described there and have waaaay too much of it! We used probably less than half of what it calls for for 10 very stuffed 2-2.5 inch ravioli. It's not a huge tragedy, since we'll use the leftover filling in eggplant rollatini, but you might decide it's not worth it to chop all those mushrooms up!

I'm excited to have entered new ground (for me) in the kitchen, and now I am lusting over pasta makers and other kitchen gadgetry! Some day we'll have room for more kitchen stuff, but for now this is all the space we've got:

Yeah. Someday!

Pumpkins as people and dogs as cops.

2010-10-25T20:57:00.001-04:00

This weekend, in pictures:

This weekend finally felt like Fall. We carved a pumpkin Friday night, and Saturday we drove upstate for some foliage and trail wandering at Bear Mountain Inn. Unfortunately, the leaves don't really change colors here in NYC -- they just kind of stay green forever and then suddenly one day they all fall off the trees. As a native New Englander, I miss vibrant foliage so, so much! We originally went to Bear Mountain to partake of their Oktoberfest, but by the time we wandered around Hessian Lake (how badass, right?), the crowd had gotten pretty thick at the beer/food stands and I didn't feel like waiting an hour for an experience we could get at our friendly neighborhood Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden.

Sunday I made pumpkin pancakes and we made pizzas to try to use up the food in our freezer since it decided to stop working. All in all, even with the malfunctioning freezer (and possibly refrigerator, now, as well), it was a delightful weekend. This weekend will likely be crazy with all that goes along with Halloween (though we still don't actually have costumes and we're attending a costume ball Thursday night), but I'm looking forward to it all the same.

My thesis, in one 3:46 clip

2010-10-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

I'm in my last semester of graduate school, and I am writing my thesis about American history as it is portrayed in Disney theme parks. Basically, within the parks, narratives of progress are translated into meticulously controlled physical space for consumption by millions of middle and upper class paying "citizens" of the Disney nation.

In Epcot, Disney's "permanent World's Fair in Orlando, there is an "American Adventure" pavilion which includes a 45-minute show MC'ed by Ben Franklin and Mark Twain audio-animatronics (robots), that takes visitors on a whirlwind tour of exactly what Disney wants its visitors to know about American history. The finale, shown in the video below, is basically a montage of 5-10 second video clips of What It Means to Be American.

It's pretty incredible. Louis Armstrong! JFK! JFK Jr.! MLK! Elvis! Gloria Steinem! 9/11! Eagles! Clouds! Soaring music! AMERICA!!!!

Unfortunately, "taking walks" wasn't really something we could do together in our apartment.

2010-10-19T09:00:00.002-04:00

I want so badly to post a few recipes I've made in the last few weeks, but this is turning into a straight up food blog, so instead of my usual recap, I will do a link-and-one-sentence-review for each:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins: I've been using this very recipe for a few years now, and they never fail to disappoint -- fool proof, and they always come out moist and dense -- just don't add more chocolate chips than it calls for (they just get too chocolatey, and I'm saying that as a chocolate fiend).
Split Pea Soup: Growing up, my mom always made split pea soup, so I was excited to see it is, as I assumed, very easy to make vegetarian. I added some peeled and diced potatoes, and a package of frozen petite peas, and I used vegetable stock instead of just water.
Ziti with Roasted Zucchini: Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (used 2 shallots and 1 red onion instead of alllll those shallots... delicious. Never too much zucchini. Will add mushrooms next time. It will be amazing.).

In non-food news, the weather on Sunday was essentially perfect: around 70 degrees, light breeze. E and I grabbed lunch with a friend and her boyfriend after said friend photographed E and I engaged in every day activities for her summative project as a photography major. We had to do things around our apartment that we usually do together. After a lot of waffling about what we do together (in the apartment? Not much really -- usually E is working at the desk in the bedroom and I am cavorting in the kitchen/living room), we settled on two activities. First, we hung out at the table in our kitchen/living room, each of us on separate computers but chatting and sending each other cat macros and videos of Conan O'Brien washing his desk. Then, we prepped all the veggies for that ziti zucchini dish up there, since we cook together most days of the week and, if this blog's slow devolution into recipe folder is any indication, food is a major part of our lives. She took some great pictures, and made our apartment look much more... atmospheric... than it is in real life.

And then there was lunch and a long walk to the park. Astoria Park is pretty big, and is a really pretty park built around and between the foundations of the Triboro and Hell Gate Bridges. The city just built a new skate park beneath the Triboro, and so we watched people of all ages on wheels there for a few minutes. This summer we hung out there a bunch of times, having picnics or watching fireworks, but we never made it to the amazingly huge swimming pool! They held the 1936 Olympic trials there, and it is massive:

via.

The pool is closed until next summer, but we checked out the preserved 1930's entrance to the pool:

Crappy iPhone photo, but you get the idea!

Maybe next summer we'll get our acts together and make it in time to actually take a swim! If not, I'll be pretty okay with another fireworks show from the hill at the park.

Oh hey, another crappy photo! Whatever, I'm too busy living to carry a camera around all the time, gosh.

Food Budgets

2010-10-03T16:26:00.000-04:00

A couple days ago, after I whined on Twitter about my dwindling money supply, a friend of mine told me about Frutober, an initiative started by a blogger who decided to only spend 75$ on food and 25$ on fun for the month of October. I am intrigued by this idea, and want to try out a modified version of it, but probably not til November. So it'll be... Fruvember. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but it does have the added bonus of Thanksgiving leftovers, which I should be able to live off of for a few days, at least.

In general, we don't spend all that much on food. Our grocery bill probably totals a little over 200 dollars a month for 2 people, so we're not spending too far over 75 a month per person anyway. However, if we were more diligent in planning our meals and buying things in advance, we'd waste less and save some more money. Our refrigerator is small, but usually pretty packed full of produce, so it's not uncommon for a plate of leftovers or bag of grapes to disappear long enough that we have to pinch our noses and scurry to the garbage can with it when it resurfaces. It happened with some grapes this week. And with a container of Greek yogurt (mmm) this morning.

Another major budget buster for us are vegan alternatives for butter and cheese (and occasionally meat) for E. We bought 8 ounces of fake cheese made from tapioca rice today, and it was 5 bucks for the back! And we found a tub of fake butter for 3.50 and nearly shat ourselves because it was such a bargain. Also, since I have no trouble with dairy, we end up buying the alternatives for him and the regular stuff for me, so we double purchase a lot of items. It's cheaper overall, since the margarine I buy costs 89¢ instead of 3.50 (or, usually 5 bucks), but it is kind of lame.

The mind behind Frutober advocates for stockpiling necessities in September, but I found out about the initiative at about 10 pm on September 30th, at a real low point in our pantry supplies. We've been out of eggs, bread, grated cheese, vinegar, olive oil, and various other vital parts of our diet for a few days now, and if I had restocked the cabinets as part of my 75$ monthly budget, I would have only had enough money left over to eat ramen for the rest of the month. So, I'm not sticking to a 75$ budget this month, but I'm trying to stick to spending more than $6 on dinner every night (which will hopefully include leftovers). In general, this shouldn't be too hard -- tonight I plan to make a pot of lentil soup that will cost about 4 bucks total -- but it will require a bit more thought and frugality. No more wild mushroom agnolotti for us, I guess.

Turning vegetarian

2010-09-28T11:22:00.001-04:00

E gave up all meat/most dairy products about 4 months ago now, to manage some digestive issues. It's helped immensely, and he feels much better since then. We had already been on a low-meat diet for environmental reasons for a long while, so day-to-day the change didn't affect much. Cutting out meat, though, does require a bit more creativity in the kitchen to prevent us from eating a big bowl of random veggies every day, which is what most of my omnivorous friends assume I do anyway.

When we ate meat, I often felt like we fell into a cooking routine. Each of our meals would just be meat + starch or grain + vegetable. Usually, each component complimented the other nicely, and there was some thought behind that, but it was often pretty boring, required a whoooole ton of pots and pans and dishes to accomplish, and left us feeling sluggish and vaguely sick. Once in a while, we fall into a seafood-heavy rotation (fish/shellfish doesn't affect E the way meat does, and it is just so delicious) and I feel this way all over again. We also relied a lot more heavily on processed/pre-packaged/frozen foods, which was expensive and not healthy. Now, we do just about all of our food shopping at the local green grocer, and just about everything that comes into our kitchen is whole, green (or some other nutrient-rich color), and infinitely satisfying to eat. And a fiber rich diet does help keep the plumbing in working order.

So yes, I can't say enough good things about our new diet, especially about how we each feel to be putting so much good stuff in our bodies. Our meals are simple, fresh, and fantastic, overall. There have been a few bumps along the way. Sometimes it's frustrating that I have to accommodate his dietary needs when other options are cheaper/easier (one evening where I blew up because I was making brown butter gnocchi and we were out of vegan butter and E said I had to use olive oil instead of real butter comes to mind), but I think we're both happy with the switch -- and I'm just glad E's feeling so much better!

And honestly, there aren't many recipes I have to miss -- so many things can be easily made vegetarian. E can't do fake meat (and I'm not a big fan, either), so we usually just skip those alternatives. Last night, for instance, I made a vegetarian minestrone because the weather has definitely taken a turn for the autumnal. Instead of using beef broth or any meat to flavor the soup, vegetable stock and some carefully used spices does the job. In under an hour we had a giant bowl of hot soup bubbling away on the stove, for under 10 bucks. We froze about a meal and a half's worth right away, and I am enjoying a leftover bowl right now! I highly recommend this recipe, which is the first I've made up on my own for minestrone!

Shae's Rough Vegetarian Minestrone Soup

Ingredients:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 cloves of garlic, crushed (this can be reduced... we eat a lot of garlic and are desensitized)
1/2 cup white onion, chopped
1/4 cup carrot, chopped
1/3 cup celery, chopped
1 can crushed tomatoes (one of those big guys)
1 can cannellini (white kidney beans)
1 can red kidney beans
3/4 of a bunch of fresh spinach, chopped (I am not sure how much spinach is in a bunch... probably close to a pound? Feel free to eyeball this, but don't get too skittish -- spinach cooks down a LOT)
2 pounds zucchini, diced
8 cups vegetable stock (homemade or using bouillon, like I did)
a glug of wine, white or red (this is very scientific)
oregano, basil, black pepper to taste
1/2 a pound of Ditalini

Heat your oil in a large pot on the stove over medium heat. Add the crushed garlic and the onion to the oil (Sidenote: to peel garlic easily, cut off the hard tip of the clove and crush it with the side of a knife. The skin will come off in one piece, and then you can prepare the garlic however you want). Stir to coat, and let cook for about 2 minutes, and then add the carrots and the celery. Let it cook until the onions are transparent and the garlic is fragrant.
Add the contents of the can of crushed tomatoes. Let it simmer for a few minutes while you cut up your zucchini and spinach.
Add the vegetable stock to the pot. Stir well. Once everything is incorporated, add the cut spinach and zucchini to the soup. Stir well, though the spinach won't wilt for a few minutes and might seem to refuse to mix in. It's okay. Its time will come.
In another pot, start boiling some water for your pasta. Cook it until it is slightly underdone.
Drain about 3/4 of the liquid out of the cans of beans. Dump them into the soup pot. When the pasta is ready, drain it and put it into the soup as well.
At this point, I poured a glug of white wine in, which I think helped bring the flavors in the pot together. I used some crappy wine we bought for cooking, and it worked great. I think a red would be even more delicious, but I didn't have any on hand. I also added a bit of dried oregano, a few leaves of fresh basil, and a healthy shake or two of black pepper to the pot at this point.
Simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes, until the spinach and zucchini are cooked and it smells divine. Serve with a shake of romano cheese and some crusty white bread. Makes at least 6 servings, depending on how hungry your crew is, and it's a satisfying, inexpensive, healthy meal.

Tessie doesn't even have to wear high heels, ever.

2010-09-28T09:34:00.001-04:00

I am tired. The kind of tired that makes me really, really wish that there existed, somewhere, a pillow big enough for me to curl up on. And don't say, "What about your bed?" because that's clearly not the same. If I had a featherbed, I might say, "Oh, you're right, I have this featherbed," but I don't have a featherbed, so it's definitely not like a pillow. I also wish I had a tail so I could cover my nose with it when I sleep for optimum-comfiness, but that, also, is not really possible.

Anyway. Part of my exhaustion stems from my busy schedule, yes, but this weekend was also a doozy. One of my friends from my hometown is getting married in, oh, 11 days or so, and her bachelorette was this weekend. We went to dinner with her family and then went down to lovely New Haven, Connecticut, where we had a hotel room, and went out to a few bars to celebrate her ~~last night out as a single gal~~ impending marriage to a wonderful guy. Abbreviated siderant: I'm actually not a fan at all of the last-night-of-your-life nonsense surrounding America's pre-marriage rituals. That's not the point, guys.

Included in our girls' night out were plastic jewelry, little black dresses, and way too many uncomfortable heels. We had a long night, and luckily the only one of the group who was really hard hit the next morning was the bride-to-be -- as it should be. I, myself, felt great, and hopped in the car to drive to Rhode Island for an afternoon with friends. So, it was a long weekend, but a great one, and in light of that fact I'll try not to complain too much about how gosh-darn tired I am.

Back

2010-09-21T22:34:00.001-04:00

I am back in school. Classes started about 2 weeks ago, bringing to a close a very, very hectic summer full of weddings (and their auxiliary events), babies, and the first job I've ever worked that I loved enough to not dick around while on the clock. Hence my general absence from the internets.

But now I'm back in class, with lots of weird little snippets of downtime and a million overlapping activities. And, of course, plenty of time in which I should be doing things I don't feel like doing (not that this is what's going on now. nuh uh, no way, no how). This is my last semester ever (!!!), and it is terrifying and exhilarating and did I mention TERRIFYING? There are basically no jobs out there. But I am trying to distract myself from that frightening reality by making my last semester count. There are the two classes I'm taking:

Interpretation & Architecture: This doesn't sound that cool, but the big project for it is developing programming (interpretation) for this property about an hour upstate! Yay hands-on stuff!
Social Science Approaches to Analyzing Biographical & Life History Information: Okay, that is the longest title ever, but it's a class in the oral history program here, and it seems really great based on the syllabus. Right now, I am taking a break from a reading about how people become Nazis, and generational identities, and biographical versus systemic historiography and IT'S NERDY BUT COOL, OKAY.

I'm also interning at 2 different museums and working at another, and I am writing my thesis, as well. If I ever get the topic finalized and my proposal approved, sigh. It definitely seems like a good set of classes/activities to round out my educational career -- representative of many of my interests and ideas. So yes, this semester looks to be very, very busy, but I'm hoping it will go by quickly and that one of the museums where I work will find me indispensable and decide to start paying me for my awesomeness.

Here's hoping.

Neighbors and Birthdays and Dogs, Oh My!

2010-08-26T23:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight, in celebration of a friend-who-just-moved-into-our-neighborhood's birthday, we went to Manhattan. That's right, folks, we outer borough folk do head into Manhattan for some entertainment and merrymaking! Yes, we will continue to try to lure you into our realms ("I'll take you to the Beer Garden" being one of the key baits), but we also head over to the island once in a while.

Anyway, this friend and his roommate, also a friend, recently moved into our neighborhood -- a few short blocks away from our crappy little prewar apartment, in fact! -- which is very exciting because, well, as an outer borough person, most of my friends live in other, fancier outer boroughs, or in Manhattan, or even in New Jersey. So it can get lonely out here in Queens on occasion. But now there are people around the corner with whom we can grab lunch in a Greek restaurant, or make friends with the panhandlers on the N or Q into Manhattan, or sit at the Beer Garden and talk about how awesome Queens is, and how smart we are for living here. I'm stoked.

But yes. Birthday. So we went into Manhattan, and we took advantage of the absolutely beautiful day by getting a round of drinks at Pier 66 Maritime, which houses an historic barge (now a bar and grill!) and several historic ships, including a fireboat and the Lightship Frying Pan, which was underwater for 3 years before being pulled up and restored. The weather was absolutely glorious, and it was awesome to be on the Hudson, enjoying a beer, even if the swaying of the barge on the river gave me a touch of the queasies.

Afterwards, we headed down to the High Line, a relatively new park in Manhattan, reclaimed from an old elevated freight train line that was abandoned for about 50 years. Nature took over, and then landscape architects came in, refined the plants that were already there, built benches, and made it a really beautiful park for strolling above the city streets. We walked the current length of it, from 20th Street down to about 14th, and I can't wait to see what the next section to open looks like. It's a really lovely space where urban and natural mix wonderfully, and the breeze and views from that elevation are fantastic.

As the sun was setting and we hadn't eaten yet, we wandered around for a while before ending up at Benny's Burritos, which, sneakily enough, is part of the Blockheads mini-chain of Mexicali food establishments. After a much shorter than anticipated wait (think 8 minutes instead of 40), we slid into a table in the very noisy dining room and proceeded to gorge ourselves on chips, salsa, guacamole, burritos, and 3 dollar margaritas. Delicious, cheap, and a hit with everyone involved.

We split up after that, with the birthday guy having a bit more party in him than the rest of us, and E, our other friend and I ended up on a train back out to Astoria. A man got on with a service dog that must have been in training. He kept standing up rather than laying beneath the man patiently, and at one point the motion of the train must have got to him, because he vomited in the corner. I don't think I've ever seen a dog so happy to get off a subway as this dog, who practically opened the door with his nose once they got to their stop. He was clearly trying very hard, though. I have a huge place in my heart for service dogs. They're smart! They're well-behaved! They're helpful! You can't pet them! Seriously, all I want to do when I see a service dog is give it a giant hug and belly rub. This urge is probably largely because I know you aren't supposed to distract them from their work with lovin', but it doesn't stop me from wanting to more than anything else in the world at that given moment.

Tonight was no different, because the dog was young, and trainsick, and SO SO CUTE. If I had any ability to give away cute things, I would totally train puppies to be service dogs, but I wouldn't be able to give them up. Also, puppies are hard. They require walks and they puke and pee on the floor and lick you and are kind of smelly. When my cat pukes, I tend to pretend I don't know what happened until E steps in it on his way to bed and has to clean it up himself*, so I can't handle dog puke, which is obviously much more gross. Gosh, what will happen when I have children? I don't want to think about it.

*This may or may not have just happened. He's a pretty good guy!

A lot of fruit has come into this house.

2010-08-08T11:51:00.000-04:00

This summer has been positively flying by. E and I have each been very busy with our summer jobs, and we've also spent many weekends trekking to Connecticut for various events and goings-on.

We've also been perfecting our jam-making skills, as mentioned previously. My best friend is getting married next weekend (!!!) and I offered to make jam for her favors. Once they're done and wrapped up looking pretty, I'll take a picture of the jars, which are little and adorable. In this photo, Tessie is supervising E's strawberry-slicing.

The bride came down last weekend, and even though our original plans to work together on the jam fell through due to some logistics issues, we finally got to bring her to the Beer Garden, and she agreed that it was magical. Luckily the weather was basically perfect, unlike today, when it is hot and humid and our air conditioner conveniently decided to DIE overnight. I am so upset, and don't anticipate sleeping much over the next few days as the mercury creeps higher...

In other news most people don't care about, I found the most amazing nail polish at CVS the other day! This photo below, of my nails with Rimmel London Lasting Finish Pro nail polish on them, was taken a full EIGHT DAYS after I applied it. Minimal damage, despite my marathon jam-making and doing dishes and type-type-typing at work and home! And for only 3.99? I'll take it.

Broke AND BORED sometimes maybe.

2010-07-23T22:02:00.002-04:00

So, sometimes that whole, "Hey, let's take advantage of all the awesome free stuff to do in NYC," thing doesn't work out. Like, epic catastrophe doesn't work out. I know, because it's happened to me. Last Friday, after a crappy weather forecast forced me to cancel outdoorsy plans with a friend, the skies miraculously cleared at the last moment and E convinced me it was a good idea to go to the free New York Philharmonic concert in Prospect Park. I begrudgingly agreed, even though:

We decided to split a PB&J that had been bouncing around in E's work bag all day to avoid having to buy dinner
IT WAS GODAWFUL HOT AND MUGGY AND OMG.
Our work schedules didn't line up and my office building has a strict GET-THE-FUCK-OUT policy on Friday afternoons, so I had to go sit on a bench on a traffic island outside of E's office for 40 minutes. It was hot.
Neither of us had ever set foot in Prospect Park! I know, this is crazy, but honestly, we're rarely in Brooklyn.
Because of our work schedules, we were destined to make it to the park around 7:15, a mere 45 minutes before this free concert in the city's most populous borough was set to start.

In the end, he convinced me to go by talking up the fireworks display set for the end of the evening. However, beginning when I sat outside of his office building for 40 minutes, sweat literally dripping down my legs, hungry and tired, I was cranky. And it didn't stop when he got out of work, or when we were on an air conditioned subway train, or when I finally had a bottle of cool, delicious water in hand. While we wandered aimlessly through the massive massiveness of Prospect Park in search of the Long Meadow, I whined. I whined about the heat, I whined about the fact that we saw about 500 fireworks displays earlier this month, I whined about being tired, and hungry, and about my feet hurting. I refused to take off my cardigan on principle, so I could have something else to whine about, because I was being passive aggressive. I whined about the crowds and the heat (IT WAS HOT, GOSH) and the impending long ass commute back to Queens. I was a real terror, and it was not my proudest moment.

But then we found the Long Meadow (after E sent like 6 people off in the wrong direction as if he had a CLUE where we were), and we got seats, and we ate the PB&J and hung out. And it was still hot, and we didn't have a blanket so the grass was scratchy, and I wasn't able to flag down one of those guys who sells glow-toys at fireworks displays, but it was kind of nice. The Philharmonic started out with a couple of fun pieces, including some West Side Story stuff, and we started to relax and have fun. There were cute kids everywhere, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves, so why not? Then it was intermission, and more kids bought more glow toys (but I still didn't), and the sun went down so the temperature dropped, like, 3 degrees.

But then. THEN. The Philharmonic came back and played an utterly interminable, very, very slow-and-quiet piece. It was SO. LONG. And we could BARELY. HEAR. IT. I get it. The people in front are the people who are donors and ~serious music-y people~ and whatnot. BUT YOU'RE IN A PARK. There are a few thousand people sitting on the grass to hear you play. Melting in the heat. Listening to other people's conversations. Tolerating other people's children and their glow toys. They are obviously dedicated. PLAY SOMETHING THEY CAN HEAR. Every time the music stopped (which we mostly marked by the polite applause of people closer to the stage, but not close enough to know you're not supposed to clap between movements or w/e), we watched hopefully for the conductor to turn around. He never did. It was excruciating. At some point it devolved into a giant glow-toy swordfight.

And then it finally ended, and the fireworks started, and... they were kind of crappy. And over in like 3 minutes. So that was that. And E had to use the restroom for about an hour, and I was getting there myself, so as soon as the "grand finale" (I use the term loosely) had ended, we hightailed it out of there (the perks of not having blankets or luggage or children) to beat the crowds to a restroom. We walked past the port-a-potties in the park and to the nearest food-selling facility, a bakery about a block away. We bought a god-awful red velvet cupcake so E could use the bathroom, only to find out that the bathroom was out of service. After wandering a bit, we realized that there was nothing else around, and found ourselves heading back to the park. For the port-a-potties.

I hate port-a-potties. HATE. There are few things as revolting to me as a portable pisser. So, on a night when it was still in the 80s hours after the sun went down, when thousands of people had probably relieved their full-to-bursting bladders there, I knew these things were going to be rank. AND OH MY GOD THEY WERE. To think about it now causes one to nearly vomit in one's mouth. Utterly miserable.

Having survived that experience, we dashed to the subway and began the long journey back to Queens. You would never think that Queens and Brooklyn abutt each other on the lovely Long Island based on the ease of public transit between them. It's sort of astounding. But so it goes. We made it home, immediately showered to try to rinse the port-a-potty grime off of us, and I mentally swore never to get suckered into something like that again.

...Until I was. But that's for another time.

I just want to ensure a magical start for my kids.

2010-07-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

After reading this interesting tidbit today, I have a new life-goal:

Main Street USA was the scene of the first appearance by one of the Disneyland's most magical guests. During a busy Fourth of July in 1979, Teresa Salcedo became the first baby born at the park, weighing in at 6 pounds, 10 1/2 ounces. Mickey Mouse later presented the baby with "Disneyland Birth Certificate No. 1" in recognition of the event.

A couple sources say she gave birth on a bench near the Plaza restaurant, which also makes me giggle.

So, you're not supposed to fly when you're really pregnant, right? I guess it'll just have to be an epic car ride down to Florida -- with many pit stops to accommodate a pregnant lady's body/bladder -- in order to secure a Disney World birth certificate for the future MiniGenFab.

Come on, it would be hilarious.

2010-07-07T07:44:00.000-04:00

Can't wait for that little rain icon! Our apartment is a boiler right now.

In other news: Oh, hey! I have a blog!

Triumphant return soon.

Summer = delicious, cheap fruit

2010-06-19T18:29:00.000-04:00

It's been a few weeks! I've been settling into a full time internship and trying to enjoy the beautiful weather before it gets too hot around here! I kind of hate the summertime. I mean, I love the lush vegetation and abundance of fun activities, and there's nothing like a warm summer night spent outside drinking, but I wish it never got above 80 degrees. Ever.

I've also been buying lots of fruit! I offered to make jam for my friend's wedding favors, and even though the wedding's not for 2 months, the berries I'll be using are abundant (and cheap) now. So, the other night, for instance, I came home with 7 quarts of strawberries for 10 bucks -- and they're even cheaper now! Serves me right for jumping the gun, I guess.

I'm freezing the berries until we get all of the other supplies -- jars and such -- and experimenting with freezing techniques. The ones on the left are cut up and frozen with about a cup of sugar, which the internet tells me will help to preserve the fresh strawberry flavors. The ones on the right are cleaned, cored, and frozen whole on a baking sheet before being put all together in the bag. So far, I'm more excited about the whole ones -- they seem to be in better shape overall. We'll see what happens when it's time to make jam, but I'll probably augment the frozen berries with some fresh ones.

Here is a batch of blackberries ready for the freezer. I decided to go for the whole-frozen setup with these guys, and they're all washed and placed on a wax paper on a cookie sheet, not touching. Tomorrow I'll bag them up and fill my freezer until it's time to get cooking!

The Twilight of my Unemployment.

2010-06-04T11:20:00.000-04:00

Today is my last weekday off before I start interning full time for the rest of the summer, so I am trying to enjoy it even though there are about a billion things I should be doing instead. Like finishing the last paper I have to do for this semester. The semester that ended 2 weeks ago. Whoops.

Instead, you can find me here, enjoying the one air conditioned room in our apartment and reading Twilight. Yes, Twilight. I've resisted for a very long time, but now I am reading it and enjoying it, the same way I enjoyed the Draco Trilogy of Harry Potter fanfiction. Terrible, but delicious. I will, however, say that whoever published these books has obviously never read a lick of fanfiction, because Twilight is honestly more akin to fanfic in style and content than just about any book I've read, and I've read my fair share of fantasy series and historical fiction (read: socially acceptable romance novels for people who raise their noses at romance novels). Before I ever read Twilight, people said that Bella was Mary Sue at its best, and it's true! She is! An awkward, socially-reluctant bookworm who is snarky all the time and has never known how attractive other people find her? Pure Mary Sue.

The text is absolutely dripping with adjectives, and full of awkward descriptions of clothes and hair and weather patterns using words that don't quiiiiite work. She overuses semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses. And dear sweet Jesus, if I have to hear about how god-like and statuesque Edward is too many more times, I might puke.

Again, the fabric clung to his perfectly muscled chest. It was a colossal tribute to his face that it kept my eyes away from his body.

HAHAHAHAHAH SEE?! SEEEEE?! Although, I'm not sure I could be too into his perfectly muscled chest were it peeking out from beneath his unbuttoned, sleeveless button-down shirt. Yeah. This. Edward dresses like a 40 year old man in 1993, cream colored turtleneck sweater under beige leather jacket and all.

And I won't even get into my huge issues with the romance going on. I mean, you have Bella doing everything she can NOT TO DO ANYTHING THAT WOULD MAKE HIM KILL HER. Oh. Okay. That sounds healthy. But she's ~*~sew in love~*~ and he loves her, too, but, like, he can't, like, control himself sometimes and, like, it doesn't mean he doesn't, like, love her.

Also they are already talking about doing the dirty and I'm like halfway through the first book and people let their young children read this?!

None of this is to say that I'm not enjoying it. Quite the contrary. I am devouring it. Bwahahaha.

Not innovative, but delicious!

2010-05-29T10:07:00.000-04:00

For the past week, E and I have been eating a largely animal-product-free diet, and it's been great! We originally decided to take the plunge after we noticed that a lot of meals in which we ate meat, or eggs, or dairy left us feeling less than 100% great. So far, the vegetarian diet has served us well!

Luckily, the transition has been pretty smooth, since we had already limited our intake of meat to about 2-3 meals per week for environmental reasons. One slight problem has been my reliance on soups and stews in creating veggie meals, which aren't the most appealing things in the heat of summer. Sunday, for instance, I made what amounted to veggie stew with zucchini, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and some other odds and ends with a side of couscous. Delicious, yes. But had it been 10 degrees warmer, I don't think we would have been so jazzed.

Monday, though, I threw this together and it came out great. I adapted this recipe -- minus the pine nuts, plus some perfect cherry tomatoes, and with twice the garlic -- and I highly recommend it!

The other interesting culinary experiment we conducted was spaghetti squash. I've been meaning to try this for a while now, but the only other time we remembered to pick it up at the grocery store, it fell off our kitchen island and broke and got moldy. So that didn't work out.

It looks strange, but it was pretty tasty! The texture was a lot like pasta, but it was crunchier, like squash. This will definitely be back on our shopping lists in the future because it was easy and satisfying. As a side dish, I made some Greek lemon rice using this recipe, but I used vegetable broth instead of chicken. I've used the recipe a couple other times, and it is a favorite side dish.

Last night I made a sort of eggplant lasagna. The internet also taught me a new trick -- to peel the eggplant, slice it into rounds, and then salt the rounds and let them sit for about a half an hour. The salt draws out the bitter juices in the eggplant, so you get a more flavorful, sweeter vegetable. You can actual see the liquid gathering on top of the sliced eggplant. After a half hour or so, you just rinse the salt and juice off, squeeze the eggplant dry, and cook with them as usual. In this case, I pan cooked the eggplant for a few minutes and layered it with sliced mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, fresh spinach, a couple of cooked lasagna noodles, and a sauce I made from tomato puree, a bunch of garlic, and some chopped onions. After about 40 minutes in the oven at 375 degrees, we feasted. Came out great!

I'm excited to continue expanding my vegetarian repertoire. I've been gently pushing E to go more veg for a while, and I'm glad we're both on the same page with this. And we're both feeling great after a week of our new eating routine!

Where I talk about things I would buy were frivolity and money no object.

2010-05-26T11:10:00.000-04:00

A custom-built bike from Urban Outfitters! Look how cute it is! I had no idea this was even an option, not being a big UO shopper myself, but I am totally smitten. I don't even ride bikes! I bought a bike at a tag sale before we moved to Boston in 2008, and I never once took it out of our apartment building's basement. We lived halfway up a giant hill on a busy street and I am a big baby. And then I was going to sell it before we moved here, but decided to keep it because I wanted to become a big, tough, bicycle-commuting (or at least picnicking) gal. But again, it sat in the lobby of the building, unused, with deflated tires, for months before it disappeared. So, no, I would likely not get as much use out of this 400 dollar custom-built bike as I should were I to blow money on it. BUT IT IS SO CUTE. It has RED TIRES, people, RED TIRES. And no worries, I even have my eye on a few not-totally-fugly helmets already, for when I win the lottery and can buy a bike and matching helmet to sit in my building's lobby -- this time with a lock.

One year ago...

2010-05-24T23:02:00.001-04:00

Today is the day, one year ago, that E and I returned home to Boston from our first "real" vacation together: a trip to Walt Disney World!

While we were there, it rained in Future World (Epcot)...

...and it rained on the streets of New York (MGM)...

...and it rained on Cinderella Castle (Magic Kingdom)...

...and in China (Epcot again).

And yes, I am sort of really embarrassed to say that we rocked the ponchos. We brought some from home, and then I had to buy a stupid 8 dollar Disney one on the last day when it was downpouring YET AGAIN and I was poncho-less. It rained every day! And not just the quick afternoon thunderstorms Florida is famous for. No, no, it was full-on, all-day monsoons all but one day we were there.

And I hurt my foot on the first full day of the trip, so E's view for the rest of the time was this:

Ridiculousness aside, we had a blast, and I can't wait for our next adventure together in far off lands (probably our honeymoon... wherever that may take us)!

Broke, but not bored -- the out-of-town visitors edition!

2010-05-17T16:30:00.001-04:00

E and I had what was, quite possibly, our best weekend since we moved to New York this past weekend. It helped that E was finally done with the semester and hadn't yet started his writing competition thing yet (oh law school, and your endless deadlines and projects). Of course, it was great that the weather was breathtakingly perfect at 75 degrees and sunny all weekend long. And, we had some of our favorite people visiting. But we also spent almost all of the weekend out of the apartment, without going broke[r]! Which just goes to show you, you don't have to spend a boatload of cash (even in New York City) to have a good time.

Here's what we did:

Saturday morning, at almost exactly the same time, 2 of our friends, with whom E went to undergrad and who lived basically down the street from us when we lived in Boston, and E's dad arrived. Everyone was about an hour early, thwarting my plans to pick up fresh flowers at the market and feel fancy, but luckily we had cleaned the entire apartment Friday, so it worked out alright! We hung out at our apartment for a few minutes, getting caught up.
We headed into Manhattan and up to Columbia, where we stopped by the photo exhibit I curated. Two of the panels somehow got switched out of order, which I don't really understand, but I am beyond the point of asking questions. While we were in Morningside Heights, we went to a deeeeelicious Cuban restaurant for lunch. Plantains and stuffed peppers and yellow rice, mmmmm.
We then headed downtown, saying goodbye to E's dad at Times Square (he had a birthday party to get to on Long Island). We got off the subway near the World Trade Center site to see the progress on the construction there, and walked down to Battery Park, pausing outside the New York Stock Exchange in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street to bitch about the economy. In Lower Manhattan, we went to the National Museum of the American Indian, where we saw a few interesting exhibits, marveled at the gorgeous old building, and even saw a dance demonstration by Native Americans. Then we wandered through Battery Park to the shoreline to gawk at the Statue of Liberty from afar.
Next it was off to the Lower East Side! We met a friend of our friends for french fries at Pommes Frites, and tried a bunch of gourmet dipping sauces. Mmmm, so delicious. The friend then took us to Grassroots Tavern, which was the diviest dive bar I've ever encountered. We got a pitcher of beer and talked about LOST for an hour or so, and it was fantastic, overall.
We wandered up to Union Square, from where we took the train back out to Queens. After an hour of resting our tired legs and watching basically every Lady Gaga music video ever made, we ventured to the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, favorite summer drinking base camp and site of my St. Patrick's Day escapades this year. Ever since we moved to this neighborhood, we've wanted to take these friends to the much-loved beer garden, and this was the first visit they made in nice enough weather. It didn't disappoint. Despite long bar lines and large crowds, we managed to snag a table (and beer from friendly neighbors!) and hang out through our second winds, debating a wide range of very important and controversial topics, much to the chagrin, I'm sure, of those around us.
We got back to our apartment and ordered a pizza from the only pizza place still open. Not great pizza, but not terrible, either, and once you've had a few beers, anything will do. We went to bed with full bellies, and all woke up hangover free to watch the only Lady Gaga video we hadn't watched the night before.
Bagels. BAGELS. So delicious. I want to eat them every day but I know then that I would weigh about 800 pounds in no time. This time I got an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese and fresh sliced tomatoes on it, and it was amazing. E tried a breakfast sandwich on a bagel, and also loved it. This place can do no wrong in my book.
After we all devoured our toasted, perfect bagels, our guests packed their bags and we all got on the train to head into Manhattan so they could catch a MetroNorth train home. SADFACE. We had time before they left, though, to check out an exhibit on archaeology at the South Ferry terminal at the NY Transit Museum's gallery annex at Grand Central Terminal. It was so cool! Tons of really old remnants of a New York City that is no more. Also, if I ever move away from NYC, I am planning to dump a lot of cash in their gift shop, first. So much cool junk! This has definitely whet my appetite for the real NY Transit Museum in Brooklyn, which is in a decommissioned subway station and includes antique train cars to explore!
We got them to their train on time, and headed out to Bryant Park to enjoy some sun. The park was suprisingly uncrowded given the perfect weather, and we got to hang out and watch babies learning to walk on grass and get a little pink on our shoulders. Bryant Park is really beautiful, and I can't wait to catch a movie there during their free summer movie series!

After that, we headed home so E could watch the Celtics game and I could fart around on the internet. I made roasted veggies and couscous for dinner, and we spent a lot of the night intending to watch a movie but accidentally talking until it was too late to start one, since I had to get up early to intern.

So, overall, this weekend was the best kind of busy, full of fun exhibits and activities, and exhausting enough that I slept super soundly last night! And the best part of the weekend? We didn't spend a dime on activities. Yup. Every activity we did was completely free, we just spent money on food and booze. Which is my favorite way to do things, duh.

Family and food, as usual.

2010-05-11T09:52:00.001-04:00

Sunday was Mother's Day, and my older sister and her husband and kids came in to the city to celebrate. They went to the Gazillion Bubble Show, and then I met up with them and we went to the Central Park Zoo!

Here are the backs of my nephews' heads while they watch the Polar Bears rip open bags and dig through buckets to get some fish. I had so much fun hanging out and looking at the animals with these two, and with the other grownups, too, of course. I had to scurry home to finish my paper after the zoo, but from what I've heard, they had a very successful trip to an Italian restaurant, where dessert was ice cream shaped like a bear.

The nice thing about living in New York City is that, even though we're far from family and friends, the city usually convinces people they want to visit without us having to do much work.

I finally turned in that paper yesterday morning. The topic was too broad; it would have been much better as a longer paper in which I could have explored things more deeply. Oh well, it'll just have to be a book, I guess! Research trip, anyone?

Strawberries are on super sale everywhere. I read a while back that unseasonably warm temperatures in California and Florida meant that both states were flooding the strawberry market at the same time, leading to a glut on supermarket shelves and lower prices. I'm not sure if that's still affecting prices, but over the weekend we got 3 packages of strawberries for 5 bucks! I decided to make some strawberry jam. We usually have preserves in the fridge and eat them on toast/sandwiches/waffles, but I also absolutely love to mix them into Greek yogurt. So good! But I saw a blog post about making strawberry-rhubarb jam the other day, and it looked pretty easy, so armed with my piles and piles of strawberries, I got to cookin'.

It came out great! I used these directions and it only took about an hour. Since it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision, I didn't have any canning jars around, so I sterilized an empty pasta jar and used that. I filled it to the brim (we have enough strawberry preserves to last us a good long while) and screwed the original (sterilized) cap back on, and the cooling process even pulled the little button on top of the lid back down, so it popped this morning when I opened it! Next time I'll probably use a little less lemon zest, but it's delicious overall. And, given all the talk of what the incredible high levels of chemicals in our food and our environments can do to us, I'm happy knowing that the strawberry preserves in my fridge are just strawberries, sugar, and a little lemon zest.

The bread is left over from last week, when E and I made Spanglish sandwiches for dinner. Known as such because they were created for the movie Spanglish, a lot of people think they are the only good thing to come out of the film. I actually didn't hate Spanglish as much as everyone else did, but I do have to agree that the sandwich is pretty amazing. It's basically a BLT with monterey jack cheese and a fried egg, and goodness gracious me, it is delicious. I overcooked the egg a bit (it was HARD multitasking that much!) so we didn't get the runny yolk effect, but I can't wait to try again and get the full experience.

I'm off to campus for the last time this semester, to finish up my work-study tasks! Last time being locked in the scanning lab til Fall, hopefully. Is it bad, though, that I want to bring this book on Disney design and architecture and scan every page? Some of the concept art from the 50s and 60s is SO COOL, and I don't want to return the book to the library!

We interrupt this paper writing...

2010-05-08T12:20:00.003-04:00

I have 2 papers standing between me and the end of the semester, and they're both due in like the next 3 days, so then I'll be done! Huzzah! The return of warm weather round these parts has meant several things:

The return of floral dresses without tights.
The return of Dunkin Donuts iced coffee.
The return of ice cream trucks.
Bright Ass Nail Polish.

1. The return of floral dresses without tights. I love dresses. Especially floral dresses. Especially with bare legs and sandals. Especially on sunshiney days, in grassy parks, alongside rivers, at the seashore, while visiting museums and going to concerts and having fun times. I have broken out the dress collection in a big way lately, and I am really enjoying only having to put on one item of clothing in the morning and looking put together. Faaantastic.

2. The return of Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. I am a New Englander. We live by Dunkin Donuts. Not Starbucks. Dunkin Donuts. Tourists in Boston used to ask if we gave directions based on Dunkin Donuts stores, to which we sweetly replied that there were too many, and stupid tourists would get confused if we tried to do that. Iced coffee never really goes away for me -- I'm about as likely to order it in January as in July. But something about a warm morning and a cold cup of DD iced coffee -- Medium, French Vanilla, Light, 2 sugars -- is pretty awesome. And caffeinated.

3. The return of ice cream trucks. New York (and I'm sure other places) has ice cream trucks we never in my home city. Instead of just selling prepackaged frozen novelties hawked by your friendly neighborhood presumed pedophile, they also have soft serve ice cream! Genius! It's usually rather melty and the sprinkles are always stale, but it's still pretty fantastic that there are mobile soft serve makers wheeling around (and playing something other than pop goes the weasel).

4. Bright Ass Nail Polish. I keep my nails painted most of the time, and usually it's not a fancy-grown-up-job acceptable color. Spring, though, has inspired me to step it up a notch on the fingernail front, and here are my current favorites in heavy rotation:

The best part is, 3 of these bottles cost only 2 bucks a piece! The Sinful Colors and Wet n Wild ones are cheap, and the Sinful Colors polishes in particular are ridiculously long wearing. Like, I can go a week without any real chips. Pretty fantastic. The light blue is Essie brand (which, little did I know, is based out of my neighborhood!) and more expensive -- about 6-8 dollars a bottle -- and I love the color, but the wear isn't quite as great. If you're looking for a pop of color on your fingers (or toes, for those of you in conservative professions), a lot of polish lines are coming out with great brights for spring and summer.

Unfortunately, though, I can't quite bask in the summertime glow for a couple more days. About that paper...

Frozen Grapes!

2010-05-02T19:38:00.001-04:00

I bet this super futuristic spaceman at Disneyland in the 1960s ate frozen grapes. via

It is hot in NYC this weekend. Like, for real hot. Not just normal, late-spring warm. Yesterday wasn't bad, but today, with the humidity from an impending storm system setting in, it's miserable. We live on the fourth floor of an old, poorly insulated apartment building, and all of our windows face east. It's nice because the sunlight helps wake you up when you have to get up early, but we have no cross-breeze, and the morning sun manages to heat our apartment up by like 20 degrees in the summer. Oh, and, the sun helps wake you up even when you don't have to get up early.

So anyway. It's hot. E and I had decided to wait until June 1st to put in our air conditioner, but that's mostly just because we forgot how miserable it is in here without the AC (and with it, truth be told, but the heat is greatly abated). So today, while he escaped to the law school library to do some studying and soak in the air conditioning, I've been melting here. And yeah, I could go to campus myself, but somehow spending 50+ minutes each way on public transportation doesn't seem like the best use of my time when I should be working on the presentation I have to give tomorrow morning. So, I suffer.

I did, however, decide to make frozen grapes! The internet has been exclaiming the wonders of frozen grapes for a very long time, but I have always been skeptical. However, with the temperature climbing and grapes available for practically nothing a pound at the fruit stands around here, I decided it was worth a shot. And they are DELICIOUS! Why didn't I trust the internet, that magical beast that brought me lolcats and babbies* and catsinsinks?! For shame.

They are sweet and juicy and COLDCOLDCOLD, and the texture is really pretty awesome. They do not turn into little stones as I suspected! I highly recommend them as a sweet, cold treat that won't wreck your waistline.

*E accidentally wrote "babby" in his law school notes. As in, a woman went on a 3-day crack binge and her babby (sic) died from dehydration. As in, it's really not funny, but it is. I am a terrible person, and if I believed in Hell, I would certainly be on the fast track.

What I've done, what I'll be doing...

2010-04-28T22:23:00.000-04:00

The exhibit I've been working on for class is being installed on Monday, and the opening reception is Friday! Here's the blurb:

Wandering the World City documents the unparalleled cultural diversity of New York City in the 1960s, as seen through the unique lens of Belgian-born artist Jan Yoors (1922-1977). Best known for his writing, tapestries and sculptures, he was also an avid photographer. Join us for an exhibition of a small selection of his black and white photographs, which reflect the changing urban landscape he explored.

I'm excited to finally see it up on the walls! If anyone's planning to be in the NYC area in May with a bit of time to kill, go check it out (directions on the site). It's been a long semester, full of frustrations and excitement in regards to this exhibit, but it's all come together pretty nicely, if I do say so myself!

But phew, it seems as though every aspect of my life has decided to get crazy at exactly the same moment. This has so far been a week of dashing between different appointments all over the city, and somewhere in there I need to find time to research, create presentations, and write papers. Yikes! However, I did finally get an offer for a summer job, so now I am just waiting to hear back from one other place before I make a decision. But, I mean, really? Who wouldn't want this guy among her colleagues?

via

Happy Hump Day!

Taste the rainbow.

2010-04-25T21:08:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, the colors of cooking. One of my favorite things about creating a meal is playing colors off each other. Tonight, I made my favorite lentil soup, and I love seeing the vegetables against each other as I'm getting everything prepped.

After such a lovely dinner, I decided to continue the colorful theme. Tomorrow is my last class with my Masters cohort, so I made some rainbow cupcakes as a treat. I'm a little unsure of how to transport them, especially since I have an interview across town early in the morning, and the class isn't til 3 pm, but I'm still pretty excited about them.

I got lazy and just bought a box mix, which ended up kind of throwing me for a loop. Normally, when I make cupcakes from scratch, I can fill the tins almost all the way in order to get a nice little top. These guys swelled up and over the sides of the cups like crazy! So, they're giant, which complicates my original Rubbermaid-box plans for transporting them.

But c'mon, it's worth it. How often (outside of a Skittles ad) do you get to eat all of these colors in one delicious set of bites? Yeah. That's right. Never. This is the second time I've made these, and I was less shy with the food coloring this time (get gel food color rather than liquid -- it's brighter and allows you to add more without diluting the batter) to get colors I was much happier with overall. Could still add some more red to avoid the hot pink, though.

E's pretty annoyed that they're leaving the house with me (although I'm not sure what he thought -- how often do I put this much effort into something that will just sit around our apartment?), but he'll live. I've got a few other recipes I want to try out in coming weeks, anyway, so there will be more than enough for him.

Update

2010-04-19T20:16:00.000-04:00

...on Too Tall Bunny.

Saturday afternoon.

Monday morning.

Looks like good ol' Mr. Sun had it out for Too Tall Bunny as well.

Not so tall anymore, are ya, Too Tall?

That's what I thought.

Crazy comes in all forms.

2010-04-18T09:22:00.000-04:00

E and I went to Disney World last May, and it was kind of a short-notice trip. As in, we decided to go and booked it about a month and a half before we left. I hadn't been in about 3 years and E hadn't been in, oh, 13, so we were pretty excited about it. I even downloaded a Countdown widget for my Dashboard to help me get jazzed about ice cream shaped like Mickey's head and fireworks every night and glorious sunshiney Florida days. Of course, that last bit didn't quite work out, since it rained. All. Day. Every. Single. Day, but it was still awesome.

Since the day of our departure came and went, the countdown widget has been counting the days since our trip. E was teasing me about it the other day, so I fiddled with the settings a bit ... and lost the countdown. Gone! We were at -327 days and I couldn't get my countback back. I was pretty sad about it, but since there wasn't really anything I could do, I decided to do the mature thing, and count down to our wedding instead, as so:

What was I saying about maturity?

Too Tall Bunny is a SHAM.

2010-04-17T14:59:00.000-04:00

For Easter, E's mom got him this adorable basketball wielding chocolate bunny. His name is Too Tall Bunny, and he's sooo tall that his ears stick out the top of the box (and he had to start playing basketball because he had no marketable skills aside from his height). E has had this sitting around the apartment since April 4th, because apparently his reaction to chocolate is not the same as mine (which is, basically, STUFF IT ALL IN YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOWWW NOW NOW NOW). The other day, though, I noticed something.

YEAH. TOO TALL BUNNY ISN'T REALLY TOO TALL, HE'S JUST STANDING ON A PLATFORM. His little bunny feet start right where that clear plastic window starts on the box. He is not actually too tall, he is lying to us all. And, judging by that embarrassed, panicked look on his little bunny face, he's just been waiting for someone to expose him as the impostor he is.

Whatever. E and I just ate his ears off, so now he fits in the box, platform or not. That's what you get for trying to FLIM-FLAM THE WORLD, Too Tall Bunny.

Weekend dreaming

2010-04-16T11:24:00.001-04:00

It promises to be a soggy weekend in a rainy time of year, but you know what they say April showers bring: Pilgrims! Right. So. This time of year is tricky, because the weather swings from 85-and-sunny to 55-and-dank on what seems like a moment's notice. It's such a tease to be able to wear a floaty dress and light cardigan one day, and be bundling up in thicker sweaters and slacks and jackets the next.

E and I still have our much-loved Crate and Barrel bedding out. Most nights, it's fine, but more than once in recent weeks I have woken up sweating in the middle of the night, which is pretty annoying. I've been thinking of the DwellStudio for Target coverlet we put off buying in store a month or two ago, and hoping it finds itself on my bed soon, since the quilt I've had since middle school really shouldn't be used for anything other than picnics and beach days at this point, it's so ratty. We're also planning to renew our lease in the next couple of months, so we're probably going to paint our apartment. We have various paintchips in lovely soft shades of grey on our bedroom walls, and I can't wait to take the colored-wall plunge.

Other plans for this weekend include a much-needed thorough apartment cleanse before the craziness of the next few weeks, and the last throes of hearty comfort food. We'll likely finish the beef stew I made earlier this week (My first attempt, and it was delicious! I adapted this recipe for Drunken Irish Stew from The Crepes of Wrath), and I want to tackle some hearty, oaty, homemade bread as well. Bread, for some reason, is really intimidating to me, but hopefully it will be successful. I love winter food (soup! stews! more soup!), and so even though I'm excited for light, fresh summery foods (sandwiches! salads! veggie stir-fries!), I'm a little reluctant to phase out some of the staples of our winter diets.

Other than that, I hope to sleep in (ahhhhh), wear comfy shoes (my feet are dying from a week walking all over the city in fancy-pants work appropriate shoes), and spend a few hours being productive in the library. So, a quiet but happy weekend in store, which is just exactly what I need right now. Maybe we'll even make it to brunch, my favorite! At the moment, though, I should probably focus more on finishing up the workday. Pssh.

School is cool.

2010-04-14T14:18:00.001-04:00

So, after complaining yesterday about the sheer amount of schoolwork that is piling up in my household, I do want to say I am lucky to be studying things I like. That's the nice thing about grad school -- no general education courses. Every class I take, I take because I'm interested in it, and I pretty much never have tests and usually just have to write a research paper for each class for the end of the term. It's pretty sweet.

Right now, I'm taking a class in the architecture department on space and the politics of memory, which basically focuses on the ways in which we as humans create meaningful space, and the ways that created space impacts our collective and individual memories. For my final paper in that class, I get to combine 2 of my favorite things: Disney theme parks and Cold War era thought and perception! Huzzah!

These are all of the Disney books I have out of the library right now. For anyone who's ever said there's no reason to take an academic interest in Disney, HA! Look at all this material! And I've requested a few more books from partner libraries to continue the Disney-book apartment takeover in progress. Okay, so the bottom book is actually basically just a picture book about the design process for the Disney "mountains" (Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn, Everest, and Space Mountain, which is the one that's actually relevant to my work), and I actually own that one, but whatever.

Anyway, I won't say too much in case I ever decide to write a book on this or something equally awesome, but I'm writing about Disney's portrayal of the future in Tomorrowland, one of the themed "lands" of the Magic Kingdom. I'm interested in the ways in which the construction of the future in the parks changed from the 1960s (when there was an earnest effort to immerse guests in a utopian imagined future) to the 1990s (when Tomorrowland was completely remodeled to instead portray a "future that never was," ie a retro, stylized, 1950s-esque "future") and how thus giving up on imagining the future and focusing instead on the past relates to the conception of history and of the future in the collective public imagination.

Phew!

Now if only I could somehow work in a research trip and get the school to pay for it...

My school zombie fiance.

2010-04-13T12:32:00.002-04:00

This past weekend, I went up to Boston to celebrate a friend's birthday with homemade dinner (including delicious pasta e fagioli -- hearty bean based dishes get me every time) and a night of dancing in a dark bar in Cambridge with a whole bunch of people who I miss a whole lot. It was great to be back in the Boston area to feel how that city's energy differs from New York's. Moving here directly from Boston, I have to confess that I have missed the quaint-y-historical-y feel that Boston has worked so hard to maintain and cultivate anew, but I also appreciate the different kind of electricity New York vibrates with, and the way it feels like the city is always trying to reinvent itself. Ramblings aside, though, I mostly enjoyed lip-syncing to 80s music and celebrating one friend's birthday and another's grad school decision -- she'll be heading down this way to start at NYU in the fall!

I also had my first experience with BoltBus, the discount bus line offering cheap, direct service between major cities on the east coast. They even have free wireless on board and places to plug in your computer at every seat! Before I start to sound too much like a paid spokesperson, I will say that the journey up to Boston was a disaster -- the seats on Bolt seem a little narrower than other buses, and I was sitting next to an armrest hog, so I spent a lot of time leaning pathetically against the window. Then, the bus driver actually got on a highway going in the wrong direction (as in, she got on 691-WEST going through Connecticut instead of 691-East), and didn't realize it til a passenger pointed it out like 25 minutes later. COOL.

However, the way back to New York on Sunday was quite pleasant: I had an aisle seat, we had time to stop at a rest stop in Connecticut so my butt didn't get numb and I didn't have to use the bus bathroom, and we even got in about 10 minutes early. Score! Overall, I think I'll be using Bolt again in the future.

Unfortunately, though, I made the trip up and back alone. We're coming into a stressful time of year, and E has begun the Great Finals Crackdown. Law school exams are, like, a big deal or something, because for the last month and a half of the semester, I might as well not have a fiance. Instead, I just have someone who leaves dishes in the sink and appears in bed sometime between when I go to sleep and when I wake up. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but that's the general idea.

I'm starting to stress, myself. My class has an exhibit opening in May and I am working on the website with another classmate, so that's taking up a lot of time. I also have a lot of work to do at my internships, and end-of-term papers and presentations are coming up way too soon. Plus, I still haven't done my taxes, whoops.

But hey, at least I have some fun things. Like weekends in Boston with good friends, and Fage Greek yogurt with strawberry stuff. Because, seriously, I have been eating these things for lunch for like a week and a half now. They're like crack, I am so addicted. In fact, I just ate one, and typing this out is making me want to get another one.

via

I wish I could find someplace to buy these in bulk.

My morning commute.

2010-04-09T11:15:00.003-04:00

I've never really appreciated the Brooklyn Bridge the way everyone else in the world seems to. Like yeah, it's a cool bridge and all, but there are much more impressive ones out there, in my opinion. Like the Manhattan Bridge -- I just think it's more visually striking! However, my new internship's offices are located at South Street Seaport (and I thought it was just a tourist trap, ha), so I walk by the Brooklyn Bridge every morning on my way in.

I snapped this on my walk this grey morning -- how sad is it that my cell phone has a better camera in it than my first digital camera did in 2004? -- right after I thought to myself, "Okay, so maybe it's kind of a cool bridge." Then I got on Wikipedia:

The occurrence of the decompression sickness (the bends) in the caisson workers caused engineers to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand.

At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh — by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty.

Crazy! Also, the bridge was completed in 1883 but didn't get its first jumper til 1885, which to me indicates that the bridge lifted 19th century New Yorkers' spirits. And, in May of 1884, P.T. Barnum marched the gigantic Jumbo the Elephant (later to become the mascot of Tufts University, where they have his ashes in a peanut butter jar) across the bridge in a parade of 21 elephants to prove its stability (and promote his circus) after an 1883 stampede triggered by a rumor that the bridge was going to collapse killed 12 people.

Also on my walk to and from the train, I pass this flower stand, which always has the most gorgeous blooms out for sale. Yesterday, though, I got a good chuckle out of this:

Ahhh, Engrish.

Happy Friday!

Nice to be thinking about being back outside.

2010-04-06T20:27:00.000-04:00

The weather has finally warmed up, and I am just crossing my fingers we don't get a mysterious early-spring cold snap. Aside from finally breaking out the spring dresses and shoes (oh, sandals, I love you), the warm up also means that the library on campus is eerily empty. Apparently everyone moved out to the stairs/green spaces around campus. Today I was tethered to a scanner that unfortunately can't leave the library, but hopefully one of these days I can block pedestrian traffic with my fellow students.

Faraway places

2010-04-01T22:17:00.003-04:00

Tonight I am dreaming of all the places we could go if we repurposed our wedding budget. Oh, wanderlust, I haz you.

Please note, basically all of these photos come from random sites that aren't really worth checking out. Except the one of Sacre Coeur. Check that link out. Gorgeous.

Chile (via)

The Mayan Riviera (via)

Thailand (via)

Spaaaaaain omg spaaain (via)

Granada... as in the country. (via)

India. India. India. (via)

And, of course, France. Paris. PARIS. (via)

Okay, so obviously our wedding budget would not allow us to jaunt all over the world and visit all of these places, and there are about a bazillion other places I want to visit of which I am not scouring the web for pictures. But even one.... sigh.

When it rains, bake!

2010-03-31T11:22:00.000-04:00

It's been a gloomy week around here, full of raindrops and summer internship applications and bathrooms that need cleaning. E already has his summer work lined up (and some!), so now I just need to convince someone that I would be an awesome summer employee.

via

I did, however, want to recommend this amazing recipe for Oreo cheesecake cupcakes. I made them over the weekend (halved the recipe to get 12 cupcakes), and every one of them would be gone by now were it not for the fact that I decided to freeze half of them. My first venture into making [mini] cheesecake went very well!

TGIF!

2010-03-26T14:21:00.002-04:00

It's been a rough week somehow, starting with the brutal snap back to reality Sunday night that signaled the end of E's and my spring breaks. I stayed up far too late doing schoolwork I put off all week in favor of sunshine and fancy home-cooked meals, and never seemed to recover. Of course, for the last 3 days I've gotten up in the way-too-early post-dawn haze to get to 2 different internships, which didn't help. And, to add insult to injury, when my alarm went off each morning, the cat was in mega-cuddle mode and E got to keep snoozing for at least another hour -- at least, when he wasn't complaining about my hair dryer waking him up.

But here we are on Friday afternoon! I am currently counting down the minutes until I can leave internship #2, which I just started yesterday. I'll be here a day and a half per week through May, and this one even pays a wee bit! The office has been in a crisis over issues not related to my arrival, though, so I have kind of been neglected. I haven't had much work to do, and yesterday I didn't find out where the restroom was until after 5 pm, when everyone was leaving! Luckily I have a bladder of steel. They have promised that next week things will be less crazy and they will have more time to devote to me, so I am holding out hope that this will be a valuable experience.

This weekend will involve sleeping til at least 8 am, going to the new laundromat that has free WiFi (I have been hoping for this magical combination of laundry facilities and interwebs for a very long time), and hopefully brunch at a Cuban restaurant we've wanted to try since we moved here. Really, though, I just want a Cuban sandwich. It's also the end (I think?) of the NCAA Basketball tournament, so I'll have many hours to do schoolwork while E is glued to the TV. Reading and papers and discussion questions, oh my!

Oh, and if you were wondering, I didn't make it out to see the elephants Monday night. The wind and rain were enough to keep me from making the trek. NEXT YEAR, THOUGH, NO MATTER WHAT, especially because I will know about it more than 12 hours in advance.

Elephants on Parade!

2010-03-22T21:36:00.002-04:00

Ladies and gents, boys and girls, the CIRCUS is coming to New York City! And, since the train comes into Penn Station, which is, woefully, very underground, and since elephants and horses haven't mastered escalators yet, they're taking to the streets! The train stops in Queens, they unload the elephants and horses, and then walk them through the midtown tunnel to 34th street, where they parade through the streets to Madison Square Garden!

via

I was gearing up to go, if not on the Manhattan side then the Queens side, but the wind/rain/lightning/thunder outside my window is intimidating me. Also, it happens at about 12:30 am and I'm not going to be able to convince E to go with me, because he has class early tomorrow, boo. Maybe I'll bone up and go, or maybe I'll have to wait for next year. But what if there is no next year? I'm pretty sure this would be one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Decisions, decisions.

One Roll, Two Roles.

2010-03-21T21:39:00.000-04:00

Dinner Saturday Night:

Black bean burger with swiss cheese, tomatoes, red onions, and sauteed mushrooms on an onion roll, with a side of homemade sweet potato fries and ketchup (this recipe, but with garlic powder and paprika and seasoning salt instead of cumin, salt, and ground red pepper).

Breakfast Sunday Morning:

Two eggs over easy with swiss cheese and sliced Bosc pears on a toasted onion roll.

It was most definitely a delicious kind of weekend. Oh, what planning one's meals/grocery shopping will do for the taste buds.

Today, in Geek Household...

2010-03-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

E and I actually just had an argument about who got to fill out the Census. It was an epic battle over who got to be Person 1 versus Person 2, and it involved a lot of "No, I wanna fill out the Census!" whining back-and-forth. In the end, he won because he had the initiative to actually get off the couch and get the form, but I wouldn't let him fill out the Person 2 section, and filled it out myself instead.

And now it's off to the Census Data Collection Center or whatever, where the government will cull that data and use it to allocate money and government representatives and blah blah blah. Fill out your censuses, people! I know that last semester, when I was doing research with the 1860 census for one of my professors, I was glad all those schmucks answered the door to the census takers!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Czech Republic style.

2010-03-18T16:25:00.001-04:00

E called me yesterday afternoon and told me, excitedly, that not only were we getting corned beef and cabbage for dinner, we were getting it at the beer garden. The beer garden, dear friends, is a magical place about a block from our apartment. It's essentially a gravel yard full of picnic tables, with hundred-year-old trees offering shade and high stone walls shielding you from the neighborhood around you. And they serve beer. Lots of beer, and lots of Eastern European food, and occasionally they also have live entertainment.

via

There it is! We've been anxiously awaiting the return of beer-garden weather since our last visit in early November, when we brought a couple of visitors there just to witness its magic, willing ourselves to finish our pitcher in the cold. Worth it.

So, we get to the beer garden and settle in, enjoying the last few rays of sunshine for the evening. Turns out, they weren't actually serving corned beef and cabbage like the person E talked to on the phone said, so we ordered off their regular menu. Kielbasa, potato pancakes, pierogi, sauerkraut and these amazing things that were like gnocchi -- but obviously weren't since they weren't Italian -- smothered in cheesy sauce. Mmmmm, everything was so delicious, and we'll just have to find an Irish pub sometime soon to get our boiled cabbage fix (though we did have some pickled red cabbage last night that was delicious). Unfortunately, I don't know my limits anymore in my old age, so I powered through slightly more than one pitcher of beer by myself in little more than 2 hours, and I had an interesting night after that, to say the least. This was my Facebook status when I got home:

Translation: I'm drunk. It's St. Patrick's Day, which we celebrated at a Czech restaurant with kielbasa. It's 8:46 pm and I feel like I'm dying because I'm drunk. Oh my god, Oh my god, this Bon Jovi song was on at the bar and I not only sang it there, but I left my friend a voicemail of me singing it and I am still singing it now that I am home.

It wasn't pretty.

One of those [Wednes]days...

2010-03-17T10:48:00.000-04:00

Reasons Why Today is Lame:

It was pretty near impossible for me to get out of bed this morning. The cat was cuddling, E was dead asleep, and the sun wasn't so bright in the sky as it was last week because of DST.
It's St. Patrick's Day! But instead of witnessing NYC's parade and the city's descent into debauchery, I am at my internship like a good little drone. I don't even neeeed these hours, psh.
IT IS SO NICE OUT BUT I AM INSIDE. 65 TODAY. SUNNY. BEAUTIFUL. SPRIIIING!
My tights are too big, so I have puddling at my ankles. Now I know what all those super-skinny girls were complaining about in middle school.
My cotton dress, which I attempted to make appropriate for very early Spring by rocking tights and a cardigan with it, keeps sticking to my too-big-tights and riding up while I walk.
...which is to suggest that I can walk without pain. Which would be a lie. Ow ow ow ow ow Jillian Michaels, I blame YOU (and myself for having such weak thighs).

However, today is also busy -- I have a full slate at my internship (responsibility, yay!) and I'm in discussions with various potential wedding caterers via email to distract me whenever I feel like I'm being too productive. AND this evening, E and I are going to go get corned beef and cabbage to honor our non-Irishness! Mmmm, cabbage.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm diggin this lady:

"These abs don't come for free"

2010-03-16T17:55:00.000-04:00

Jillian Michaels is evil. E decided on Sunday that he wants to start running, so we got geared up in what we thought was a break in the otherwise relentless rain. By the time we got downstairs it was pouring again, so we gave up on that idea, but E convinced me to do The Shred, which I've had forever but hadn't worked up the courage to actually do yet. It. Was. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. I am not in the best shape (but I can run over 2 miles without stopping now!), and this program made me feel it. Someday I will recover and be able to do it again. Maybe.

In the meantime, though, I was left hobbling around Manhattan today, 2 days later, when E and I decided to go to the New York Historical Society. We're both on Spring Break this week, but bad, bad weather Friday-Monday kept us indoors, and I'm back to my internship tomorrow, so this was our big exciting day. We were going to go see the Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA, but of course it's closed on Tuesdays, so we made a last minute decision to go the the NY Historical Society instead of trekking to Brooklyn for the NY Transit Museum and the Prospect Park Zoo. It was an interesting museum, and we topped that with a visit to Shake Shack, where I got a Chicago hot dog!

What is a Chicago hot dog? Wikipedia has this to say:

A Chicago-style hot dog is a steamed, boiled or grilled all-beef hot dog on a poppy seed bun, originating from the city of Chicago, Illinois. The hot dog is topped with mustard, onion, sweet pickle relish (often a dyed neon green variety called "Nuclear Relish"), adill pickle spear, tomato slices or wedges, pickled sport peppers, and celery salt.

I first learned about Chicago hot dogs from The Phantom Gourmet, a Boston cable show about local (and not-so-local) good eats. I have had one of these suckers on my mental plate since, and it did not disappoint. Spicy, tangy, and with the tomatoes to soothe the palate. I had a bite of E's burger, as well, which was a perfect fast-food-done-right slab of meat and veggies on a bun, and we got an order of amaaazing french fries as well. We also split a large root beer (and it was real root beer, not just A&W or something) and a chocolate shake that was amazing. I want to go back. Now.

We walked across Central Park to enjoy the perfect, sunny, 60-degree early spring weather, and saw about a million cute dogs wandering through the park. Every time I'm out and see happy pups bounding through life, I want a dog, and then I remember that I am not willing to climb up and down the stairs to my 4th floor walk-up to walk the dog in wind/rain/snow/heat/etc. Especially when my quads are BURNING TO HIGH HEAVEN due to ill-advised workout videos.

I hurt. I hurt a lot.

Not Belgian Waffles (which were premiered at the World's Fair!)

2010-03-13T21:59:00.000-05:00

I made breakfast this morning. I'm actually not a big fan of breakfast. I know, I know, that's a sacrilege. But it's true. Give me soup or a sandwich or a stew any day. I even prefer eating lunch/dinner foods for breakfast most of the time if I can. I know my way around the kitchen for any meal, but somehow I'm best at breakfast. I've recently started making what have been called "diner quality" homefries, and the combination of avocado, eggs and tomatoes is amazing -- usually I prefer the eggs over easy, all on toast, but we're lacking bread today.

Otherwise it's been a lazy day. Slept late (and probably will again tomorrow since we're losing an hour by setting the clocks ahead), avoided the torrential rain, watched Moon (so, so, SO good!), and ate gyros, and now I'm watching an awesome documentary on the 1964-65 World's Fair. The World's Fair is a recurring theme in my life, apparently.

In the kitchen

2010-03-12T09:44:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've been thinking pretty much exclusively of kitchens and workspaces when it comes to home decorating. We don't have a "real" kitchen, but rather a stove, sink and fridge on a stretch of wall in our living/dining room, which we've augmented with an IKEA kitchen cart. It works, but it doesn't work, and pretty much my only requirement for when we move (in over a year) is a real kitchen. With more than 2 cabinets, and with counter space!

via apartment therapy.

also via apartment therapy

Speaking of kitchens, I've been experimenting in ours. Mostly with cookies. I have been adapting my perennial favorite cookie recipe: Rocky Road Cookies! The recipe as written comes out perfect every time -- moist, caramelly sweet and the perfect chewy/crunchy combination. I made them last week and didn't have nuts or white chocolate chips, and the resulting chocolate chip-marshmallow combo was much appreciated by the people with whom I shared. Last night I was looking in the cabinets and realized we had graham crackers, chocolate chips, and mini marshallows, which made me want s'mores. So, I tried to adapt the rocky road cookie recipe to make s'mores cookies, which didn't really work since the broken up graham crackers just kind of got subsumed into the batter. Next time I'd try it with larger chunks, or even place the batter on top of a square of graham cracker on the cookie sheet before baking. The little tiny bits did add a nice graham cracker sweetness to the cookies, though!

Additionally: Why yes, I do plan to change my header to something cheesy related to whatever seasonal holiday is fast approaching at any given moment throughout the year. Thanks for asking!

A dress by any other color...

2010-03-08T19:56:00.001-05:00

I spent the weekend in my home state, Connecticut, and I am glad to be back even if it means school and work and stressing out about what to do for the summer. My motivation for the trip was a visit to several bridal salons with Ren and her mom and sister, and we had two experiences: 1 at that chain that rhymes with Shmavid's Shmidal and another at a smaller, local boutique. She ended up purchasing a [beautiful!] dress at the boutique, and we had good experiences at both stores, but somehow seeing that all gone down has made me want to put off the dress-shopping thing even further.

It's not about the attention (okay, it's kind of about the attention) or the cost (oh wait, it's definitely about the cost) or any of those things, it's the way that the symbolism of the wedding gown seems to play out. It becomes this, like, giant thing, this symbol of weddingness that sets the tone for your entire wedding, more than the venue seems to, more than the food or the drinks or the words you say at the ceremony. The dress, and other bridal accessories, are one giant symbol of what's Important about your Wedding Day (caps required). Your dude's in a suit like always, your guests are eating delicious things and drinking intoxicating things, and there's dancing involved. Even though this combination of things seems to be confined mostly to the wedding experience these days, if you were to take out the ceremony and, importantly, that big white beacon of light of a dress, you'd just have a party.

Women's clothed bodies -- and their bodies in and of themselves -- have long been places of regulation of social norms and controls, and despite the leaps that the women's movement has made, we still see this at play every day. Women are put in more restricting, uncomfortable clothes, forced to teeter around on high heels and wear constricting undergarments, mostly in an attempt to render their bodies less usable for themselves and more easily consumable by men. Additionally, you see gender dynamics play out in women's clothing in ways that you simply don't in men's: if a woman wears pants, she's just looking out for her own comfort/ease of movement/etc.; if a man wears a dress, he is emasculated, rendered powerless, and -- importantly -- rendered female. In the former case, the woman is aspiring to the status of the man by co-opting his clothing. In the latter, the man is devaluing himself by dressing like a woman.

None of that is news to anyone. And, I firmly believe that a woman can be comfortable with her femininity and still be a feminist. I myself love dresses and heels and do my makeup and hair on a daily basis, and I identify myself as a radical feminist. I don't feel like those loves (for dresses and for women's rights) are in conflict. Womanhood is the cornerstone of my identity, and I am lucky to have never felt conflicted in my gender. The whole key to the women's movement is giving women the choice to have a career outside the home or raise children within it, to have doors held open for them and to hold doors open for others, and, yes, to wear pants or wear dresses with reckless abandon.

But for some reason, this giant, messy, outdated symbolism related to courtship and marriage and weddings as transitional moments is very problematic for me. I want to feel beautiful on my wedding day, and I know I will, but I also want to mediate the symbols as I intend them, and as my guests are conditioned to interpret them. What I mean is, I want to be able to wear a white dress, and not have it mean that I am somehow pure, or virginal, or an unsullied woman submitting myself to the will of my husband. I want to say vows with language that does not imply gender roles, or is possibly even gender neutral. If I decide to wear a veil (which I won't), I'd want to wear it without that weird implication that I am, again, pure, or that by unveiling me my husband is taking possession of me. Eventually, I want to become a wife without all of the linguistic or societal baggage that goes along with that word, and I want E to be a husband in the same vein.

This is something I've been negotiating since long before I got engaged. I didn't want to be marked by an engagement ring before E was, so I proposed back to him with a ring. I don't want to deal with the white dress syndrome, so I am trying hard to find an appropriate colored dress I love. However, all along I have found that it's hard to convey the difference between what I mean and what people interpret from these symbols. For instance, I felt immediately when I got engaged that people suddenly felt that all I wanted to talk about was my nuptials. One of my new professors asked me when I was getting married at an advisory meeting when I barely knew her and we had no reason to be discussing my personal life. When I met E's friends for the first time, they fired off question after question about our wedding, even though at that point we had nothing planned. E said later that they hadn't asked him about it. These people are well-intentioned, but I felt that pressure from very early on to be that BRIDE in capital letters. I will not define my life based on my relationship, no matter how successful (or unsuccessful). I am not a BRIDE, just like I will not be a WIFE. I am, however, a WOMAN, and I am trying to mediate the expectations of others with my own.

For instance, I was talking to a friend about the whole tradition of the dad giving the bride away. My own father passed away when I was young, so I don't have to worry about this, but even if he were alive I don't think I'd be comfortable with the practice. My friend is very close to her father and wants to honor that relationship with this practice, but she was concerned that her guests would interpret it simply as the father passing ownership of the daughter onto the new husband. Do I think anyone will be consciously thinking that at her wedding? No. But these symbols are perpetuated because in some corner of our patriarchal society's group memory, we think it makes sense. The husband will now provide for the woman, as the father provided for her until then. We have sassy, independent, self-reliant women being put into these molds because they think it's the right thing to do, or because they genuinely want to honor their fathers this way but their guests interpret these symbols as they were written to be interpreted.

This has gotten off topic, but I am speaking generally to the system of symbolism around weddings and how it is essentially impossible to operate outside of that system of meaning. Every action we take at these highly culturally mediated events has meaning, and often a meaning that most people probably don't intend these days (I hope). But is there a solution? Do we just buck any and all tradition and make it up as we go along? Our guests have their own culturally mediated views on the world that will regulate the way they interpret your totally original wedding as well. Do we practice every tradition just because it's the way things are done? Or can we pick and choose traditions to follow and to leave behind based on the vision we have of the world, and our relationship with our partners and those around us?

I am nervous about trying on wedding dresses, but not because I'm scared of a white dress. I am nervous about the symbolism of that white dress, the meaning we have placed on it in the last 150 years of its use in weddings. And yet, I am also a product of my culture, so that even as I look at grey and champagne and gold and peach dresses, I am still drawn to white/ivory ones, and concerned I won't feel like a bride if I don't marry in a white dress. I know it's silly, but that's the conflict between the bridal and the feminist parts of my brain.

I have NEVER loved sports.

2010-03-03T21:57:00.003-05:00

I am so glad I don’t like sports, because I am pretty much convinced that die-hard sports fans will die ten years before I do because of game-watching-induced heart disease. Seriously, E gets SO WORKED UP when he’s watching whatever sporting event happens to be on a given night, and he screams and yells and claps and paces the room nervously. It’s enough to get me worked up while I am innocently surfing the internet on the couch next to him.

And if his team loses? Oh, dear. Oh. Dear. He will be in a funk for hours. I don’t understand this at all, because while I have occasionally gotten absorbed in a baseball game and have experienced the euphoria of the drought-ending Red Sox World Series win in 2004, I don’t think I have ever, ever really been upset — like emotionally affected — about a loss, even for a team I have really liked. For instance, I was annoyed when the Sox lost the 2003 ALCS to the Yankees (I used to follow baseball, before E’s INSANE SPORTS FAN viewing requirements destroyed that pleasure by making a game where grown men wear knee socks Srs Bzns), but that annoyance lasted for about 2 minutes before I got over it. In contrast, E just nearly had a meltdown because his wireless card was having trouble connecting to our network after the UConn men lost a basketball game.

My aunt is married to a die-hard sports fan, and somehow they’ve negotiated this for the last 30 or so years. When we saw them recently, E and my uncle were talking about something that involves balls (but not like that), and I made some snarky comment to my aunt, who told me that she resisted the whole sports thing for years. Really put up a fight. But somewhere along the way, she got worn down, and now she really likes watching a game or two.

I doubt that’ll ever be me (I’ve tried, really I’ve tried, in the name of fun nights out eating chicken wings and drinking beer), but it won’t hurt E to dream.

Back

2010-03-02T16:40:00.002-05:00

Once E gets home, we’re going to go for a run together this beautiful, not-dark-til-after-6-pm afternoon. I haven’t run in a while (this weather is depressing and demotivating. Also, I am lazy.), but I finally went ahead and registered for my first ever 5K, which I’ll be running on April 3rd, so it’s time for me to get back in gear so I don’t embarrass myself on the course. This will also be the first time I’ve ever run with E. I am nervous. I am a sloooow runner, and I haven’t been in a while, and I think I have a mild undiagnosed case of asthma based on how much I wheeze while I run. Seriously, I have to really focus on my breathing in order to avoid a coughing fit.

Anyway, hopefully all goes well and neither of us wants to kill the other when we get home. On a final note, the best part about this 5K is that the course is on the former World’s Fair grounds out here in Queens, so I’ll be running in the shadow of the Unisphere, which I am squishing in the photo above. I kind of love the World’s Fair grounds, so this might be a major motivation for running this race.

Ice to Ice Cream to Disney World.

2010-02-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

We got a lot of snow, when all was said and done, and this morning a squirrel decided to seek refuge on our bedroom window sill. I'm pretty sure it's the same squirrel who's been around all Fall, occasionally stopping by to give Tessie a heart attack, and this morning was no exception. She's been guarding the window zealously since about 8 am, taking breaks once in a while to walk into the living room and meow at us, annoyed that this squirrel won't vacate the premises.

He is a cheeky squirrel. E named him Herbert. I hope Herbert doesn't freeze. He keeps eating snow, which I don't really think is a great idea, but we'll see if sleeping-squirrel-on-our-window-sill becomes dead-squirrel-on-our-window-sill.

In other, totally unrelated news, I stumbled upon a post at The Disney Food Blog about the home made ice cream sandwiches you can get in the Magic Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios (RIP MGM) and Epcot, and now I am craving one like no other. Somehow E and I missed these on our May trip to the World, which is a shame since there are few sweet treats that he loves more than a good ice cream cookie sandwich. And, according to that post, the Main Street Bakery in the MK will let you choose any cookies in the store with which to make the sandwich.

I might have to whip up our own home made ice cream cookie sandwiches tonight, because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to get these off my mind.

I am currently trying to convince my sister that a girls' weekend in Disney World in the Fall would be 10x as awesome as a traditional bachelorette. My idea of a fun night out is a table at a not-too-loud dive bar with a few friends and some beer, and without moving for 4 or 5 hours, so a traditional bar-hopping bachelorette just doesn't really appeal to me. A few days in some Disney, though, with fireworks and good food and rides? Poifect. We'll see.

Snow Day

2010-02-26T12:39:00.000-05:00

It's been snowing since sometime Wednesday night, and the city is clogged up enough today that E and I both have snow days today! Fun! Unfortunately, I still have a lot to get done today, but it's so hard to make myself buckle down when it's supposed to be an unplanned day off. I think we're going to brave the snow in a bit to get some Chinese food, and then cuddle up with a movie to while away some of the afternoon.

This is actually a photo from the last snowstorm we got a few weeks ago. You know, about a month ago, E and I were talking about how mild and dry our first New York winter had been so far. The snow that's been dumped on us since then sure puts that to rest. I took that picture (with my cell phone -- technology!) on Columbia's campus, which was blanketed in a positively beautiful layer of snow. Unfortunately those brick walkways get pretty slippery when covered in slush, though, and while I didn't fall myself, I got to watch a lot of folks end up on their butts.

They should test sentimental commercials out on schmucks like me.

2010-02-25T10:38:00.001-05:00

I am what you might call a sucker. I get sucked into doing things for people because I feel bad, I fall prey to advertising campaigns galore, and you can find me crying on the couch about something or other most days of the week. Commercials, especially, usually leave me with soggy tear ducts. And, lately, I have spent many nights getting weepy over Olympic athletes standing on podiums, getting medals placed around their neck, and beaming with pride as their national anthem plays and their flag is raised. This isn't limited to athletes from my own country, by the way, but anywhere.

This commercial is like a perfect storm of Things That Make Me Cry, and I can hardly think about it without tearing up right now. The kids are absolutely adorable, they're working so hard and look like little tiny grownups (yes, this is part of the equation -- miniature things that look like bigger things), and it's about their moms loving them and always seeing them as lil guys. Cue my overactive emotions.

There's something wrong with me, I think.

Back to the grind.

2010-02-24T13:32:00.000-05:00

We pulled back into our neighborhood last night after a rainy, boring, 7-hour drive back from Maine, where E and I attended the memorial service for my grandmother and spent some quality time with family, including my littlest niece, the 18-month old wonder, Avery. She is smart, adorable, and sassy as all get-out. She seriously gives dirty looks better than I do, and I've had more than 2 decades longer than she has to figure it out.

The first order of business when I got to the apartment was to cook something delicious. We left Saturday afternoon, and kicked the trip off with a visit to Burger King's drive through. The next 3 days were a whirlwind of fast food pit stops, gluttonous hors d'oeuvres spreads, and dinners out with family -- all delicious, very little nutritious. It had gotten so bad that my body was shouting "GIVE ME GREENS!" to my brain from about noon Sunday til we got home. I raided the fridge for whatever salvageable produce was left, and made a veggie stirfry that soothed the craving a bit, but at this point I'll be happy if I never see the inside of a McDonald's again.

Either way, it's good to be home. The cat has probably never been happier to see us. She's the only cat I know whose owners can disappear for days on end and she doesn't even try to pretend to be mad at them when they return. She's been on our laps any time one of us stops moving, and was getting kicked around at our feet as we slept all night. Poor lonely, codependent kitty.

Housekeeping (new hosting & wedding venue)

2010-02-19T13:36:00.003-05:00

The other night I decided to buy a domain/hosting and go big with my blog, especially since I currently also have a wedding blog in the works. I made a selection, purchased it, set it up, installed Wordpress, and now I have hit a wall. The truth is, I kind of don't feeeel like redoing a layout (or relearning CSS, since it's been a long time since I've worked with it), transferring all my existing content over, and getting used to a new interface. Okay, so the setup is what's really holding me back, whatever.

In short, I may or may not have a new URL for you guys in the next week or so, but I'll keep you posted. Good thing I decided to only get the 3-month hosting package for now.

In other news, E and I just sealed the envelope to mail out our wedding venue contract and deposit! It's official, there's no backing out now!

(via)

...Only with snow. That's right kids, a January wedding in New England! So maybe we're crazy, but whatever. The inside of that 1896 mansion is full of Victorian charm, and will be perfect for the cozy vibe we're attempting. And, in a true piece of nerdery, it is a replica of the Connecticut building from the 1896 World's Fair (No, really. Bottom right.). E and I are both pretty excited, and hopefully over the next few months the other big-ticket items (caterer, muzak, etc.) will fall into place and then we can get to the part I'm most looking forward to, PAPER GOODS! I am seriously having dreams of invitations and save-the-dates and day-of paper tidbits. And the wedding website... if I ever get around to it.

A Proposal, Girl Style.

2010-02-16T11:12:00.002-05:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I proposed to E over the weekend, and that he said yes (unsurprisingly, since he had already proposed to little old me). This reverse-proposal was something we talked about before we ever got engaged, mostly in the context of him wearing an engagement ring. The tentative plan is for him to have a thicker engagement ring and then a thin little wedding band and wear them as a set, but that might change because he's nervous that two rings will feel weird on his man-hands. So, while he's known the ring was coming since we got engaged (I am just a lazy, indecisive sod who couldn't pick one out), I decided to formalize it a bit and pop the question myself.

Enter this book. I decided to make a secret-compartment book to put the ring in, which then evolved into a plan to decorate the pages up to the big reveal with reasons why I think he's a cool dude. With Valentine's Day fast approaching, it would seem innocuous enough, right?

The weather didn't really cooperate with my plans to finish the book in secret -- E came home around noon on Wednesday because of snow, which was supposed to be the day I'd get a lot of it done. I was stuck getting up really early to work on it before he got up for the day and encouraging him to take naps -- which I would then "forget" to wake him up from -- so I could rush through it.

I managed to keep the project a secret until Saturday afternoon, when E came out of the bedroom suddenly and unexpectedly and I had to squawk at him not to move and to close his eyes for a second, confirming his mounting suspicion that I was up to something. So close!

I stuck mostly to relatively generic statements, just because I figure this will probably sit on our bookshelf for a long time and I don't really want strangers or our future children to read things like "I love you because you never hold my head under the blankets when you fart in bed," no matter how true it is.

I painted over the pages with a wash of acrylic paint, freehanded the numbers, and then doodled with black pen. I found my metallic pen, too, at which point all bets were off and things got sparkly. I'm a glitter kind of gal.

I also used elements from the book in the composition -- the photo of the thinking man on reason #10 (where I just realized there is a massive, panic-over-spacing-induced spelling error that I have to fix haha), the seated crowd on #7, and, my favorite, this Japanese mask on #2. Seriously, it's too perfect, I had to.

Ta-Da!! And then the big moment. He turned the page and saw a love letter on the left and my super-awesome-secret-agent ring compartment on the right. It reminded me of the terrible movie Troop Beverly Hills when the pushover sidekick woman has a camera hidden in a book to report on the awesome red-headed troop leader's misadventures with her spoiled scouts. I think I'm the only person in history who's seen that movie.

Anyway, I was surprisingly nervous, given that we already have a wedding date set and venue booked, that he'd say no. I was probably more nervous, however, that he'd be mad I destroyed this old encyclopedia volume and that he couldn't read it. Luckily neither of those events transpired and we are happily engaged-engaged. Double engaged? Re-engaged? In any case, it was a lot of fun pulling this off, and he liked it a lot, even if he wasn't surprised because I left the website where I ordered the ring open on my computer. Still good!

A Wild Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

So, I had made a pretty adorable Happy-Valentine's-Day graphic to post here, but Photoshop just crashed on me and I don't feel like redoing the whole thing, so I'm just going to ask you to imagine a really shiny awesome graphic at the start of this entry wishing you a happy Valentine's Day.

It's been an alternately strange/awesome 48 hours around here, culminating in some festive red velvet cupcakes and pairs figure skating (if the Winter Olympics could be my Valentine, it would happen). A friend who lives down south sent me a box-mix for red velvet cupcakes, since I can't find it around here. It came with a mix for cream cheese frosting, but I didn't feel like getting out my giant standing mixer, so instead I decorated with some cut-out hearts and confectioner's sugar.

The mix made 5 cupcakes, and even though it wasn't quite as delicious as the queen's recipe, I will take the ease and smaller portions of the mix any random Sunday night when I just want a sweet fix.

After a lot of debate about what to do this Valentine's Day, we ended up having a low key but delightful weekend. Last night I completed the circle by asking E to marry me (yes, you read that right -- more details forthcoming), and he said yes, not unexpectedly. We made a delicious dinner and actually cleared off the dining table and ate there, WITH lit candles, instead of hanging out on the couch and watching an episode of whatever TV show we're trying to catch up with at the moment (right now it's Modern Family).

This morning we got up and went to brunch at a bar down the street, and everything was amazing. The entrees were the perfect breakfast/lunch and traditional/edgy mix, and the mimosa I had was great. E got an egg and cilantro sandwich that he cannot stop talking about, so that's usually a good sign. After brunch we headed into Manhattan to enjoy the nice weather (it was around 40 and not windy!) at the Central Park Zoo. I hadn't ever been to the CPZ before, so I was pretty excited. I was impressed by the enclosures and the animals that were on view, and the way the original zoo structures have been adapted was pretty cool. I think the polar bears were the stars of the day, but the birds in the rainforest house were a very close second.

They also had Snow Leopards on view that were stunningly beautiful (except for when one relieved itself in front of us), and we got to see a sea lion feeding as well! There were quite a few other folks enjoying a day outside in the brisk air, and I am excited to go back when the weather warms up.

Unfortunately the rest of the day wasn't as exciting. When we got back out here, we went to shovel out the car from the snowstorm we had this week, and luckily found that the sun had done about 90% of our work for us. It pays to procrastinate, kids! Then we went to Target spontaneously, along with everyone else in Queens, and ate our Chinese food leftovers when we got home. Throw in some more Olympics coverage, and we're back to where we began -- cupcakes!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy VD! It wasn't a monster truck rally, but we had a lot of fun, and the stuff we did suited us just perfectly, so I am completely content.

Fun Things Around the Internet

2010-02-13T11:57:00.002-05:00

Quiet day today, so I'm just going to post some interesting links I've come across in the last few days.

Promotional video for the 1964/65 New York World's Fair. It shows the pavilions being constructed and gives you a bit of a preview of what's to come. After that, there's a brief clip of Hayley Mills making her hand/foot imprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. I have a feeling this was a Disney produced clip, but I don't know.
Pretty neat discussion of the roles of computers at Epcot in the 1980s (then known as EPCOT Center). It actually is pretty crazy to think about how far computing has come in the last couple decades, and to think that when I was born people wouldn't have been able to imagine the stuff we do with computers today.
Serval Kitten photographs from ZooBorns. Seriously, these animals are beautiful and adorable. If you don't have ZooBorns added to your reader, what are you waiting for?!
Wedding Sexism for Men and What a wife isn't over at A Practical Wedding. I love this blog, and its realtalk about weddings and shit.
A discussion and comparison of different types of light fixtures in Epcot. I told you all my nerdery could go much, much further than it does.

And, because that list is really just a collection of distractions from what's really on my mind, I want to take a moment to remember my grandmother, who died late last night. She was, as E said this morning, the sassiest woman I've ever known, and I can only hope that I live as long and love life as much as she did. Here she is at my great aunt's 75th birthday party a few years ago. She loved those novelty sunglasses (and animal print and faux fur, haha).

Happy Nails!

2010-02-09T23:07:00.002-05:00

In case you don't have panicked Northeasterners anywhere in the far reaches of your social circle, we're expecting a bit of snow around these parts. Last I checked the forecast, they were promising 10-18 inches over the course of tomorrow, which is fun. I was really not looking forward to heading out in the snow tomorrow, especially since my last good pair of boots apparently got destroyed when I tripped over my feet and fell in the middle of Union Square the other weekend. Holes in the toes, yes.

Lucky for me, my internship supervisor emailed me a couple hours ago to let me know that everyone in the office has the option of working from home tomorrow, and she's taking advantage of it, so I didn't have to go in if I didn't want to! And, given that she is going to be home, I'm not going in. Instead, I am sitting here watching The Little Couple and painting my nails.

In the last year or 2, I have gotten really into doing my nails, and keep them painted more often than not. I also have come to hate having chipped or damaged nail polish, so I repaint my nails about twice a week most weeks. Yeah, it's kind of an addiction. Coupled with my recent forays into "fancy" nail polish, it's become a pretty serious investment, too. Nine or ten or fifteen bucks a bottle is srs bzns.

I've also become very picky about what nail polish I wear. In fact, a couple months ago I started documenting my nail polishing exploits with my webcam.

Now, I have an archive of what every color looks like on my hand. My nerd side is completely stoked about this, and when I am wondering what color to use next, I can just scroll through photos of my nails in the past. It's like having paint swatches for my fingers. I kind of love it.

And so, I will sit here and allow my nails to dry before I go to sleep and get up to apply to a bunch of jobs. Huuuuuzzahhhh.

Lazy Sundays + Valentine's Day

2010-02-07T11:26:00.003-05:00

New layout for the big gushy romance-fest coming up next weekend! E and I went to a Monster Truck Rally last year for Valentine's Day, and it was pretty awesome. It was my first ever, and there was a heart drawn in the dirt in the arena before the show started, which was pretty hilarious. Also, there was a Kermit the Frog puppet on a remote controlled mini monster truck, which was pretty awesome as well. Click for larger images.

We haven't figured out a way to top it this year (and really, can it be done?!). We thought about going to a Harlem Globe Trotters game on the big VD (hehehehe), but Ticketmaster charges TEN DOLLARS PER TICKET in service charges, which changes worth-it-for-the-lols ticket prices into okay-so-not-worth-it ticket prices. So, we'll probably get some beer and play a few games of rummy or something, because our activities of choice seem to alternate between those meant for the very young and for the very old.

Following last weekend's ridiculousness, this weekend has been very quiet. We've cleaned, we've cooked, and we've watched not one, but TWO Netflix movies that have been sitting around for a while. I love Netflix -- since joining a year and a half ago, I've hawked it to everyone who mentions being interested and given gift subscriptions, etc. -- but they definitely know what they're doing. We have the 2-DVDs-at-a-time plan, which in theory should mean that at any given time there is at least one movie/TV show that we'd like to watch in our household, but there are still times when they just sit on our TV console, waiting to be watched for weeks on end. We had Letters from Iwo Jima for 3 1/2 months last spring before we finally just mailed it back and put it back on our queue. We try not to let it get that bad anymore.

And now it's Sunday and E and I both have some homework to get done, laundry to wash, and other little things to do around the apartment, but there is something about Sunday mornings that makes me not want to disturb the quiet, as if the day is in a little cocoon of sleepy a.m.'s and restful p.m.'s. That's our cat, Tessie, up there, and she's definitely got the right idea. But cats usually do, I've found.

LOST: What's on Your TV

2010-02-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

There are very few shows that I watch regularly. Sadly, many of them belong in the "daytime-TLC" category due to my status as a student with weird time off during the weekday. If anyone ever needs advice on how to raise 400 children at once or plan a deliciously tacky wedding, let me know. However, there are a few primetime shows that hold my attention, and LOST is one of them.

I have always had a taste for sci-fi, probably because my mother raised me with Star Trek: The Next Generation playing in the background of basically every memory I have. Since then, I've cycled through a few sci-fi fandoms, the longest lasting being, of course, X-Files. I don't think Harry Potter counts as sci-fi, but that was big, too. LOST is its own monster, though, as it seems to have been written SOLELY to fuck with viewers' minds. And so, for the last 5 seasons, the writers have engaged in all sorts of trickery and obstruction, and all without reruns (No, seriously, they don't play reruns because it enrages the fans. We're rabid.).

Tuesday night began the FINAL. SEASON. of the show, a season that was probably outlined long before much of what we've already seen. There was the usual hour-long recap show, and then a 2 hour season premiere that definitely delivered. Last season was frustrating -- it seemed they spent most of the episodes traipsing through the jungle without revealing anything new for much of it -- but if this season continues as the premiere did? I bow at your feet, LOST writers.

LOST is a nerdy-cool sci-fi show. To be really absorbed in it, you've got to be letting your geek flag fly. However, it's still cool enough that most of your friends probably turn off their cell phones from 9-10 on Tuesday nights. And yet, the fandom is ridiculous enough that a quick Google search will turn up all kinds of recipes, crafts, and more conspiracy and theory web sites than you could ever, EVER need, all related to the show and its characters.

It is in that spirit of supreme geekdom that I decided to make some celebratory themed food for the premier: FISH BISCUITS. Fish biscuits were food for the missing Polar Bears on the island a few seasons ago (if you don't watch the show and you're wondering why there are Polar Bears on a tropical island, WATCH THE SHOW) and the became food for humans as well. I wasn't really in the mood for fish-flavored cookies, so I made sugar cookies and put some food coloring in them to get the right coloring.

I freehanded them with a butter knife and a chopstick, but if you want a template, check this out. I used this recipe plus a bit of vanilla for sugar cookies, and added a glob each of red and yellow gel food coloring to the batter.

They came out lookin like the real thing (okay, so using a template and a sharper knife is advisable) but undoubtedly taste much better. I think for the finale I'm gonna cover the labels on beer bottles with Dharma Initiative labels! Woooo Dharma Booze!

Well, this post is all over the place.

2010-02-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

First and foremost, we've been breaking out the champagne here at Generally Fabulous, because my pal Ren at Wind on My Back is officially engaged as of this past Saturday! I have to admit that I knew it was coming thanks to some advice sought from me by her now-fiance, so I was anxiously awaiting the phone call Saturday night when they were doing dinner and a Broadway show for their anniversary. I am so excited for Ren and her fiance, and I know they'll have a lifetime of happiness together.

However, that champagne? Not literal champagne. I am still trying to stomach (no pun intended) the very idea of any alcohol after a night out gone very, very wrong this past weekend. After lots of cheap beer and margaritas, I threw up in a cab and then got in the shower fully clothed, with my cell phone in my pocket. Not a fun night, and Saturday was probably the worst hangover of my life. So it'll be a few ~~weeks~~ months before you catch me in a bar, I think. We'll see, though.

Staying out of bars for a bit might be an okay thing, though, since we need to officially kick the wedding savings plan into high gear. On Friday, before my catastrophic night out, E and I ventured into the beautiful town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, to look at a wedding venue that we have absolutely fallen in love with, and put a hold on a date. January 7, 2011, folks! Mark your calendars! I am actually in the process of trying to peer pressure Ren into starting a wedding planning blog with me, so I can move my wedding ruminations elsewhere, but we'll see what happens. In the meantime, I am going to let her bask in the glow of being newly engaged, and stick her big toe tentatively into the world of wedding planning. It's kind of a very terrifying place, if I may say so myself. I'm going to go back to daydreaming about color schemes and hors d'oeuvres menus, if you don't mind.

Alton Brown is obviously my best friend (Chicken Noodle & Lentil Soups, and cupcakes for good measure)

2010-01-25T21:39:00.002-05:00

Today is my half birthday. I don't think anyone other than Leos keep track of their half birthdays past the age of 11 or so, but here we are. I am old. Today was also my first day of classes for the semester, since all my classes are on Monday and classes began on Tuesday last week out of reverence for Dr. King. It was a miserable day, and not only because this officially means the craziness has begun anew. I woke up sick on Sunday morning, again. I don't know what it is about this city, but apparently it is intent on me being sick for weeks on end this winter. It probably has something to do with me spending 2 hours a day in a metal tube with dozens (and dozens) of strangers, but hey. So, I leave my afternoon class and have a text message waiting for me from E, alerting me to the fact that dinner is waiting for me at home. Score! I love cooking, but when I'm sick, I love whining more.

I get home, and there's a big pot of homemade chicken noodle soup simmering on the stove! Someone took some Awesome Juice this morning and whipped up some culinary magic. Okay, for the record, a big pot of soup on the stove is likely to make me grin no matter what the weather, and what the state of my health, but there is something so exciting about hot soup when you're sick and it's a miserably rainy day, isn't there?

E grabbed Alton Brown's recipe for chicken noodle soup off the web. We didn't have an onion, but I think the important flavor factor in chicken noodle soup is actually the celery, so it's all good. The recipe doesn't call for any actual chicken (and could therefore easily be made vegetarian using vegetable stock instead of chicken), so E added a little as well. It came out great and reminds me a lot of my mom's -- it would just need some dumplings. Mmmm, dumplings. So yes, good job (and thanks!) E!

While we're on the subject, one of my favorite kinds of soup is lentil soup. Easy, cheap and savory, lentil soup is one of those foods that just seems to taste better after a couple days in the fridge, with all the flavors melding. Unfortunately, this pot of soup didn't last that long. I threw together Alton Brown's lentil soup for a total of about 3 bucks, and it was amazing and fed 2 people for 3 very satisfying meals. I didn't use the spices he recommended (and, truth be told, I don't even know what grains of paradise are) and instead minced an entire bulb of fresh garlic and threw in some dried cilantro and dried basil. When in doubt, go with garlic, am I right? I seriously cannot rave about this soup enough. Since I ate the last bowl of it, I've been craving it, and I might make it this week just to have one portion, and freeze the rest. So, so good.

In a completely unrelated note, I was hungry after dinner the other night, and I finally decided to use the year-old box of carrot cake mix my mom gave me (now I know where I get the urge to foist junk I don't want anymore onto my friends and family) and made cupcakes. I was going to leave them unfrosted and pretend they were muffins so we could just eat them for breakfast, but E wanted frosting, so I followed this recipe for Honey Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting. It came out great -- fluffy and sweet -- but I added a bit more cinnamon to tone the sweetness down a bit.

The frosting attempt was much more successful than my last attempt at buttercream. I won't even link to the recipe, but I will say that the Hershey's perfectly chocolate cupcakes I made the other day came out, well, perfect. The recipe was easy to throw together and tasted better than boxed mix (dark and moist and dense and just the right amount of chocolatey), and the minimal use of dairy is great for people with delicate constitutions. Just a warning, though: I halved the recipe posted there and still ended up with 12 cupcakes (6 more than I wanted). I'm not even going to pretend I didn't eat the extras, though.

I need a hobby other than baking, ha.

Miniature things are always better!

2010-01-23T19:13:00.009-05:00

As a budding museum professional, you might assume that I enjoy spending time in museums. You would be correct. As previously mentioned, I also love theme parks, and the intersection of museums and theme parks is, arguably, World's Fairs! The day we leased our apartment, we had to drive across Queens to get cash out of the bank, and we drove past the Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site of both the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World's Fairs. From the highway, you can see the Unisphere, the New York State Pavilion (which is basically in ruins), and the Queens Museum of Art, which was the New York City building, served as the meeting place for the UN General Assembly for a while, and also housed an ice skating rink, which was apparently decommissioned last year.

Immediately, I was stoked. We went for a visit in August before E started school, checked out all the remnants of the fairs, and went to the Queens Zoo, where the aviary is a geodesic dome that was the Winston Churchill pavilion at the fair. Insanely cool. The whole park is full of recognizable things. It was built on an ash-dumping ground that F. Scott Fitzgerald called "a valley of ashes" in The Great Gatsby. The observation towers on the New York State Pavilion were the alien spaceships at the end of Men in Black. The US Open is played there, and the Mets play at Citi Field on the grounds. The Unisphere is one of the most recognized symbols of Queens.

And, tucked inside the Queens Museum of Art, is one of the coolest things I've seen in a museum: an amazing scale model of Manhattan and its boroughs. We decided to have a cheap daytime date today ($2.50 per student!) and go check it out. The photos on the museum's website do not convey the scale of this thing. At over 9000 square feet (that's like 10 of my apartments, FYI), it takes up most of the sizable building, and features nearly 900,000 (THAT'S 90% OF ONE MILLION!) individual structures. I found our apartment! I found Coney Island! My school! E's! A thousand other awesome things! And all in one very large room!

The viewing platform is a ramp around the perimeter of the panorama, mimicking the original simulated helicopter ride in glass-bottomed cars from 1964-65. We spent a ton of time in there, taking everything in, though the rest of the museum is pretty cool as well. Afterwards, we went outside and enjoyed the January thaw by meandering around the Unisphere (and spent about 15 minutes trying to get the perfect picture of me playing Atlas with the Unisphere on my back). With another museum (the New York Hall of Science), a theater (Queens Theater has taken up residence in the usable parts of the former NY State Pavilion), and several sports arenas on the grounds, I anticipate spending more time at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the future. Especially since I am now intent on bringing every visitor we have to see the amazing panorama at the Queens Museum of Art. SO. COOL.

Wedding Dress Shopping, Part 1

2010-01-20T21:40:00.001-05:00

Apparently, if I'm feeling discouraged about something, I should blog about it. After my post the other day whining about my difficulties running, I went out that afternoon and finally conquered by 25 minute run! I came home feeling amazing, took a shower, and wanted to pass out, but it's ALL GOOD because I did it! Back on the wagon, guys.

So, now I'm going to blog about wedding dress shopping, because it's probably more intimidating than a 25 minute run. When Ren was here, one of our goals was to go to David's Bridal and try on some dresses. Granted, without having our venue completely pinned down, it was unlikely that I'd buy anything at this juncture, but it would still be nice to have a few things in mind and see what does and doesn't work on my body.

Our grand plan to was drink, try on dresses, and drink some more as a follow up. We headed into Manhattan and found the David's Bridal, and as soon as we walked in, I was hit by a wall of white that was very intimidating. A desk was set up by the door for people to "register," but I averted my eyes and ducked to the left side of the store, to the safe haven of bridesmaids' dresses and unassisted shopping. Ren tried to harass me over to the other side of the store, but I mumbled that I thought I was backing out, and eventually I convinced her that it was true. We made a hasty exit and ended up at a Goodwill shop across the street. She tried to talk me into one of the abandoned 80s-style wedding dresses there, but don't worry, it didn't happen.

Of the wedding-planning experiences I will undertake in the next year, dress shopping is both one of my most anticipated and most dreaded. I love playing dress up, as anyone in my family can tell you. E can even complain at length about how many outfits I try on before I leave the house, and how often I spontaneously change clothes midway through the day. When I was little, my mother promised to make me a "wedding dress" and veil out of the white lace shower curtains she was getting rid of, and I was disappointed when they never appeared. I am also a sucker for a gorgeous dress. That said, I don't have the cash to drop thousands of dollars on a 1-day dress, so a lot of things I love on first glance get immediately dismissed for monetary reasons. Apparently, I have expensive taste. I'm not even going to inquire about the designer bridal gowns I was ogling lustfully in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue today. God they were gorgeous.

On the other hand, though, I am not really excited about an over-attentive salesperson cooing at me while I stand on a pedestal in some fancy frock. Coupled with my desire to put on a show is a moderately severe introversion that doesn't appreciate the attention of strangers. So, the dress shopping experience itself will likely be stressful. Also, that white dress? I'm not really excited about it. I mean, I get it and all. I'm the bride, I'm supposed to be in white. But there's something about that awkward implication of "purity" -- an arbitrary categorization, to be sure -- that, even though I haven't really believed it since I was about 9 years old, is lurking in the back of my head and squicking me out. E's not a fan of the white dress phenomenon, either, and wants to see me in blue, my favorite color. This whole brides-wear-white thing has only been around for a hundred and fifty years, anyway, so it's not exactly as far-reaching a human cultural tradition as, say, marriage.

Which brings me to my most enduring frustration with the wedding dress search: I cannot find a dress in a suitable color! I'm interested in, in this order, grey, champagne, very light blue and white dresses. And even though practically every starlet on the red carpet at this weekend's Golden Globes was in grey or gold or peach, it apparently hasn't trickled down to normal folks' fashionz yet, because I can't find anything anywhere. I'll settle for an ivory dress (which would allow for the awesome wedding shoes I want), but in the meantime I will keep up the search.

And maybe someday, I'll brave a David's Bridal. Maybe. But for real, there might have to be alcohol involved.

Getting nowhere.

2010-01-18T13:31:00.001-05:00

I started running in November, and had pretty great momentum through December. One of the perks of being a grad student is a pretty flexible schedule, overall, which allowed me to run every other day, outside, before it got dark, even when the time change kicked in. Then, during finals week I had about a million assignments due all at once, and I took the week off from running. Immediately following that was a whirlwind of cooking, cleaning, packing and traveling for the holidays, and the day we returned to the city I was laid out with a week long illness that left me completely drained and exhausted. So, three weeks off. Ultimately, this wasn't entirely negative (I ended up with a 3.8 GPA for the semester, had a delightful and delicious holiday, and was able to recover fully without straining my body), but it did set me back in my running.

Since then, I have been stalled on Week 6 of the Couch to 5K running program. I seem to have lost a lot of the enthusiasm I had going into this, and am often forcing myself outside to run. Once I'm on the road, I am constantly calculating how long I have to run til I get to stop, and I often find myself going too hard at the beginning and then psyching myself out, so I am gasping for breath and panicking about whether or not I can finish. The last time I went for a run, I had to stop because I thought I was going to throw up, even though I hadn't eaten in a few hours. I've had one truly successful run in the last 2 weeks, where I got home feeling great. Otherwise I've come home gassed and discouraged, wanting nothing more than to sleep for a few hours.

The other tricky thing, going forward, is my schedule this semester. It's going to be getting dark early for another few months (though it's already lighter noticeably later!), and this semester I have class all day til 6 pm on Mondays and an internship on Wednesdays and Thursdays, all day. Somewhere in there I need to work on campus, and hopefully (HOPEFULLY) I will be getting a part time job off campus for other times. This schedule will probably requiring me fixing my running schedule to 3 unchanging days per week, rather than running every other day every week. Also, I might have to get over my fear of running at night and start packing some mace and running without my beloved podcasts.

In terms of this immediate block, I think those podcasts might actually have something to do with it. During the podcasts, their creator comes on to tell you when to walk, when to run, and to offer some encouragement along the way. In general, I have found his podcasts to be extremely helpful, and I kind of feel like he's my buddy, running along with me out in California. However, right now I think the podcasts are kind of hurting my running, because I spend the run trying to figure out when the hell he's going to tell me I can stop running, rather than focusing on form and breathing and speed. I might have to take a little break from the podcasts til I get over this current hurdle.

I am planning to register for a race or two in the next couple of months to get myself motivated and to help me get accustomed to the race setting. I'm evening toying with the idea of signing up for a half marathon in April, with a plan to run/walk it as best I can. Before I jump the gun with this, though, I should probably focus on today's run -- and at least get through it.

I have no words

2010-01-15T15:30:00.003-05:00

The Boston Globe's "Big Picture" Series says more about the earthquake in Haiti than I ever could:

The First 24 Hours || 48 Hours Later

I just have to say this: ...Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson have been weighing in on how Haiti has been cursed by God once again, but, you know, the truth of the matter is that this is a manmade disaster in the sense that the extreme vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade. And that has a long history and that‘s a history that begins way back with the slave colony that the French established in Haiti, the hideous slave colony, and the fact that the Haitians [are] the only slaves on earth who freed themselves and created their own republic and then got punished for it ever since.

And, you know, we need to fix this. We need to fix this problem right now. We need to get as much material and doctors and everything in there as we possibly can and do this in a concerted way, but afterward, we need to continue to care about Haiti. It is one of the most beautiful and important cultures ever born under the face of this earth and it is in danger. It seems to me, long-term danger.

We need a concerted effort, one that—one that is not self-serving, but one that attempts to serve the poor of Haiti, the vast majority of Haiti. And to do that through strengthening Haitian institutions instead of doing what the United States has done all too often there, which is to weaken them.

-Tracy Kidder, The Rachel Maddow Show

American Red Cross	International Rescue Committee
Text HAITI to 90999 (Donates $10)	Text HAITI to 25383 (Donates $5)
Salvation Army	Yéle
Text HAITI to 52000 (Donates $10)	Text YELE to 501501 (Donates $5)
The United Way	The United Nations Foundation
Text HAITI to 864833 (Donates $5)	Text CERF to 90999 (Donates $5)
The Clinton Foundation	Other Relief Organizations
Text HAITI to 20222 (Donates $10)

Magical nostalgia - Why I love Disney World.

2010-01-14T15:03:00.002-05:00

When I was 5, my maternal grandfather died, and my family decided it was high time we started taking those fabled family vacations Americans were supposed to take. In January of 1991, while the aerial bombardment of Kuwait began, we went on our first-ever family visit to the Happiest Place on Earth (though I'm not sure it had been branded as such yet). I don't remember much, aside from this one image of my mom, totally drenched and in a peach colored windbreaker, standing in front of a sea of yellow Mickey ponchos that were omnipresent as soon as it started to rain.

I've been back a bunch of times since then -- 6 trips with family, 2 with my high school band, and once most recently with E this past year. We alternated Disney trips with other trips growing up, and I definitely want to continue seeing other parts of the world, but Disney holds a huge place in my heart and my imagination. Disney is ultimately about escapism. When E and I decided to go last year (his first visit in a decade plus), we deemed it our "starter vacation." It was our first big trip together, and we decided on Disney because I had been before and was familiar with the process, and because we thought it couldn't hurt to go somewhere where people are literally paid to make your days magical. We weren't disappointed. Everyone, from shop employees to bus drivers and ride operators, was gracious, enthusiastic, and friendly. One night, while we were on the Disney motor coach, we passed a security checkpoint at the entrance to our resort, and the security officer came out with one of those Mickey hand gloves on and waved at our bus with a big smile on her face. We were literally able to have a care-free 5 days in the parks, where we didn't have to worry about cooking, driving, or, of course, working. It was great!

My love for Disney theme parks, though, is rooted in the behind-the-scenes action. It is completely fascinating to learn about the creation of these parks, and to find out how these environments were thought up. There is something just so stinking cool about creating an immersive environment where visitors can suspend disbelief and have a great time. I love noticing little things like the thematic texturing of concrete surfaces in different areas of different parks, and reading about the logic in the placement of different elements and the motivation behind different attractions and storylines. I am definitely not blinded by the Disney brand, though. Part of the stuff I love is the gossipy, dirty stuff. I also realize that Disney is a giant corporation interested in capitalizing on nostalgia to suck my money out of my pockets. I am fully aware of the fact that they drained and destroyed acres upon acres upon acres of Florida wetland for Disney World, and California Orange groves for Disneyland. I get it. But they're also working to cut their carbon emissions in half by 2012 and are greening up for sustainability and cost-savings. Frankly, any time a traveler jumps on an airplane and stays at a tourist-oriented resort, they're expanding their carbon footprint in a big way.

And yes, Disney is about nostalgia. I do have wonderful memories with many important people in my life from our time in Disney, and I love that I can walk around the parks and be reminded of the time I accidentally tripped my dad on a bridge in front of Cinderella Castle, or standing in front of the massive clock/sculpture that is the front of it's a small world in Disneyland with my mom. I remember my older sister getting chased around by Goofy at a character breakfast, and going to a luau with my little sister on our first trip. On humid spring mornings I text my sister to tell her it smells like Disney World, and I loved going in high school with my friends and experiencing Disney as an adult. And, E and I made a ton of new memories this year, though mostly of rain and ponchos and my inconveniently injured foot and resulting wheelchair.

This video is a great look at the Magic Kingdom from morning til evening, and the style makes it almost look like a miniature. As corny as it is, there is something cool in knowing that even when I'm having the shittiest of days in my normal life, someone's having an awesome day in a Disney park. My sister, who used to work in a job where they closed at 9 pm, says that every night when they closed she thought about the fireworks show that was just beginning in Epcot. I know how it is.

And if you like that one, check out the video they made of Epcot. The Magic Kingdom one is my favorite, but the Epcot one has fireworks!

It's been 5 hours since I last tasted anything. I am still full.

2010-01-13T23:42:00.003-05:00

At 7 pm, I waved my friend Ren from Wind on My Back down into the bowels of Penn Station, and basically dragged myself back to the subway to head home. Her whirlwind 34 hour visit began with sushi and ended with fried pickles, and had many delicious culinary stops along the way. I have been stuffed silly for the entirety of today, and am having trouble imagining putting anything into my stomach for the next week or two.

One of the great things about our neighborhood is the food. Whether you're rushing to a fancy seafood restaurant in Winter's chill or ordering from the gyro cart outside of the beer garden at the end of a great Summer night, you can find something at just about any price point and a great variety of cuisines. Being poor graduate students, E and I are still eating our way through our neighborhood's restaurants, but already we have a few favorites, which we visit with most of our visitors who blow through town.

Ren and I started at Kitaku which is across the street from our building. We each got a 2-roll lunch special that came with miso soup and salad, and we split an egg roll. The bill came to 15 bucks. Fifteen bucks! When E and I eat here, we can get a Bento box and a roll of sushi or 2 to split for under 25 bucks. Amazing. The fish is always fresh, and the other items we've tried have been great, too, though I'm not a fan of their Chinese food (aside from the egg roll). The only thing that the other sushi place we tried in our neighborhood has on Kitaku is that they forgot to charge us for a beer when we ate there. Not a reason to go back. Ever since Club 23 and its scantily clad waitresses (one Yelper says, "Not quite a titty bar, Club 23 nevertheless has varying levels of nudity happening, although none of the girls are very attractive.") vacated the space next door, Kitaku has had relief from the blaring techno that purportedly vibrated the wall it shared with the club of ill-repute. Business has seemed to pick up since then, so hopefully it continues.

For dinner (and after a disastrous attempt at wedding dress shopping) we headed down the street a block or so to The Sparrow, the bar we frequent most year-round. Across from the beer garden, it attracts a more laid back crowd, and the low light and decent beer and wine selection keeps us going back for more, not to mention the appeal of air conditioning in the summer. We had devoured their amazing herb-encrusted french fries many an evening, but we hadn't made it down for a meal. I am very glad we finally did. I had fancy grilled cheese that was delicious, and E's mashed yuca was a great texture. Ren had a beet salad that I kind of wanted for myself, and we each had a couple drinks to wash all of it down. Deeelicious. Next time we'll try their brunch, which is supposed to be amazing.

Ren and I, full of false hope for a raucous evening, bought a big bottle of wine and came back to the apartment, where E settled down with his law school textbooks and we uncorked the bottle and started playing Mario Party. Half a glass each later, we were both ready to pass out in food/wine comas, which we did.

This morning, we got up much later than we planned, and headed to that perennial favorite, the Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company. A short 6ish minute walk away, this gem was actually discovered by a visiting friend of ours back in October, and now we can't stay away. If you want a New York bagel, come crash on my couch and we will get you a New York bagel. And it will be as big as your face. I successfully brought these home over Christmas (each in its own ziploc bag, as the internet instructed me) and my family also stuffed their faces with them with much delight. And the cream cheese. THE CREAM CHEESE.

We digested for a scant few hours while finishing our abandoned Mario Party game before heading back out for more food this afternoon. Not wanting to get on the subway again, we dragged our carb-filled bodies over to Mojave, a Mexican-y place around the corner, where my Caesar salad was GINORMOUS and the salmon on Ren's sandwich perfectly cooked. I don't know why we ate this meal. I can only speak for myself when I say that I was not hungry, but it was delicious anyway. I also got this fancy half-Dos-Equis, half-lemon-soda concoction that was pretty tasty, but only served to fill my poor stretched belly more.

Another game of Mario Party was in order to aid our digestion, so we forewent (is that a word?) our run and kicked some Wario/Waluigi ass. Soon enough it was time to head into Manhattan, so with time to kill we ended up at "FATS," or Fat Annie's Truck Stop near Penn Station. Neither of us could stomach (har har) the idea of more real food, so we hung out with some beer and an order of fried pickles. FRIED PICKLES! One of our favorite restaurants in Somerville sold fried pickles (in chip form, which is the best), and we've been looking for a decent fried pickle place down here since. Found! They were a little juicy for my liking, but still amazingly delicious. If only they had the chipotle ranch dipping sauce! Either way, the place was cute, if gimmicky, and I'm planning to drag E down there for more fried pickles, soon!

It was great to have Ren down here, and I was sad to see her go, even if the most excitement we had was her first viewing of TLC's Say Yes to the Dress. Seriously, if seeing me isn't a good enough reason to come hang out in my hood, come for the food. Come for the food!

Where I delve into the wedding issue.

2010-01-11T15:50:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons I started this blog was to write about my experiences in wedding planning. And yet, I've avoided making posts about it for a bunch of reasons. Namely, the culture surrounding weddings today is so mind-blowingly ridiculous that every time I start a post I get frustrated anew and close out the window without finishing anything.

E proposed on my birthday this summer. I woke up after a night out on the town to a sign on the door that said "STAY OUT" and some suspicious noises from the kitchen. He made me breakfast in bed and pulled out a ring, and I was so shocked that the first words out of my mouth were "Wait, are you serious?!" It's now been about 6 months, and though we'd put wedding planning on hold during the first semester of graduate/law school, we visited 2 venues this past weekend. We put a temporary hold on one date this summer, but failed attempts to coordinate vacation/other schedules this summer may be officially pushing it back to January 2011, when E will be on winter break and I'll just be working on my thesis. This means starting a venue search all over again, because a winter wedding in New England calls for an entirely different atmosphere than a summer wedding.

My wedding planning frustrations stem from the expectations of those around us, and from our own negotiation process as a couple as we look at the traditions surrounding weddings in American (and New England, which is a whole set of other issues) culture, evaluate what works for us and what we want to get rid of. The symbolism behind a lot of wedding traditions is problematic for us as a progressive, feminist couple, and yet as products of this culture, there is still a strong urge to conform to those practices. The other night, as we were talking about what color dress I should get to flounce around in at our wedding (I flounce about on every other day, why not my wedding day?), we got into a long conversation about doing things because we want to versus doing things just because that's the way things are done.

Additionally, we are continually frustrated by locations that bill themselves as "budget friendly," but in my opinion are anything but. We are grad students, it's not in the cards for us to spend the 15,000 dollars that the wedding industry seems to think is a slender budget. We want to have a wedding because we view it as an opportunity to bring together the people, whether family or friends, who will be our community for the next 10, 50, 80 years, but at the same time it is very hard for us to rationalize spending the money. If we spent on any other party what we are expected to spend on a wedding, our family and friends would be rightly concerned about us! Something about weddings, though, makes people a little crazy.

Wherever you go, there you are.

2010-01-10T22:53:00.002-05:00

Driving back to the city tonight after a crazy weekend, I came onto the stretch of highway before the Triboro (ahem, RFK) Bridge and the view of the Manhattan skyline made me smile just a bit. I may have lived here for 5 months already, but New York, you're finally starting to feel like home.

Now if only you'd warm up a bit. Thanks.

A redo, and a lost girl. (Peanut Butter Cup Brownie Cupcakes)

2010-01-08T10:05:00.002-05:00

We are heading into the great white north of Connecticut today! We are looking at a few (okay, one, because no one got back to us) wedding venues today, visiting some friends in Rhode Island tonight, having Christmas with my sisters and their families tomorrow, and going to a friend's daughter's birthday party on Sunday! Phew.

I am bringing dessert to Sister Christmas, and after bringing Peppermint Patty Brownie Cupcakes to my sister's house on Christmas Day, I decided to try the recipe with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups instead of Peppermint Patties, at the request of my brother-in-law. Unfortunately, I left my cocoa powder at my mother's house when I made the cupcakes over the holiday, so I had to pick up some more. When E and I went to our grocery store, they were out, so I sent him home to watch the college football championship game while I went on an epic quest for cocoa powder.

CVS didn't have it, nor did Rite Aid. I went into every little ethnic grocery and bodega in a 5 block radius, and most people just looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for cocoa powder. I always thought cocoa powder was a pretty normal ingredient to keep in the cupboards. Finally, I found a canister of carob powder in an organic market near us, and remembered something I'd read about substituting carob powder for cocoa powder. After purchasing it, I headed home, where I had to buzz up to our apartment because I hadn't taken my keys when we'd left the first time.

I buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed again. I was outside for about 8ish minutes before I decided to buzz our neighbor (who we have never met by the way) and ask them to buzz me into the building. Just as I started to go in, E comes around the corner. Apparently, I'd been gone long enough, without keys or cell phone, that he was convinced I'd been murdered and had torn through CVS and Rite Aid looking for me. So, while I was looking for the elusive cocoa powder, he was looking for the elusive me.

Anyway, I've made this recipe twice before, always substituting regular cocoa + a bit of baking powder for the Dutch Process Cocoa it calls for. Both times, the tops didn't set correctly, though they were still delicious. I don't know if it's the carob powder, or the new mixer (which kept me from overmixing) or what, but this time, they came out perfect. Seriously, perfect. I took them out of the oven and squealed with delight because they literally looked like brownies in cupcake form! I originally was going to make Nutella frosting to go on top, but they look so pretty (and the daisy trivet my sister made me for Christmas does, too!) I'm having a hard time justifying the frosting!

I made the recipe exactly as described, putting in the snack-pack size peanut butter cups instead of peppermint patties. And, of course, using the carob powder instead of the Dutch cocoa. You literally just use the same amount (see this chart). Supposedly carob powder is better for you, too, but I don't know. The peanut butter is a great compliment to the dense, brownie style cupcake, and I love to warm them in the microwave before devouring them, Cookie Monster style.

As I said, we're off this weekend, so I'll be back next week, when E starts classes again and leaves me a lonely, bored gal hanging out on the internet all week! Personally, I'm anticipating a visit from my friend over at Wind on My Back, during which we will try on wedding dresses and drink, though not necessarily in that order. Until then, have a spectacular weekend!

The holidays are just a good excuse to bake delicious things (Recipe Review)

2010-01-03T17:07:00.003-05:00

E and I ordered a new comforter to go with the new sheets he got for Christmas, and even though it wasn't scheduled to arrive for another week or so, it came yesterday afternoon, which sent me running to the laundromat to wash everything and set up our new grown up bed! Just about everything we have is a hand-me-down from someone or other, and the comforter is sort of our first step towards our adult living space, whenever that happens. We had some lovely visitors last night into this morning, and once they left I got back into our wonderfully made-over bed and have not left yet. Thank you, laptops!

It's also incredibly frigid here, today. We took a walk to the bagel shop this morning with our guests, and it was 19° with a biting wind. Needless to say, it's another reason to stay in bed allllll day. What better time to review some recipes for some sweet things I've made over the last few weeks?

Red Velvet Cake Balls
Once you get over telling everyone that you're bringing your balls to the party, you can feast on these delicious morsels. These came out surprisingly good for how intimidating they look when they're finished (everyone was shocked that I had made these). I did half in dark chocolate and half in white, and drizzled the contrasting color chocolate on each. They came out great, but the dark chocolate ones were my favorite, probably because the chocolate was thicker and there was therefore a higher chocolate:cake ratio. Also, since red velvet cake is still sort of a Southern Thing, I can never find the boxed mix in stores, so I had to make a red velvet cake, which leads me to...

Grandmother Paula's Red Velvet Cake
Whenever I need to make something sweet, I usually trust Paula Deen, queen of things-bad-to-eat. I've made a few other recipes for red velvet cake and have always come up sort of puzzled over all the fuss about it. It always was kind of dry and frustrating -- it was okay, but after a piece of red velvet cake i just wanted some chocolate cake. After making this recipe with E's help, though, I get it. Red velvet cake is sweet without being overly so, with juuuust a hint of chocolate. It's dense but light, and this recipe made a superbly moist cake. I will definitely be making this again as a cake/cupcakes, but if I decide to make the aforementioned cake balls again, I'll probably look for a dryer recipe (or just a box, GD it). When you mix the cake with the frosting for the cake balls, I found this recipe to be too moist, and it created a sort of mushy texture overall. I think I'm the only person who felt this way, so it might just have been me. Overall, it's a great recipe for red velvet cake.

Blondies
I am pretty sure I'd never really had blondies before making this recipe the other night to satisfy a holiday-enhanced sweet tooth. I've seen them and I think I've tasted them, but never really appreciated them. They definitely have a different taste/texture than brownies, but they are delicious. I used light brown sugar for this recipe since I didn't have dark brown on hand, and they came out great. I also threw in about 1/2-3/4 of a cup of mini marshmallows I had in the cupboard, which added an extra touch of sweetness to the finished product. They were surprisingly easy to whip up and the smaller portion made with this recipe meant we weren't gorging on sweets for a week, which is always good.

Banana Cupcakes with Honey Cinnamon Frosting
I mentioned previously that we were lucky enough to receive a standing mixer from E's mom for Christmas this year, for which we are very appreciative and excited! I was dying to make something with it, but our pantry is a little empty due to holiday traveling, so I decided to make these banana cupcakes since they didn't require any fancy baking supplies. I also learned a little trick, since we had bananas that were ripe for eating but not for mashing up and baking with. It's pretty well-known that you can put bananas in a brown paper bag and quicken their ripening in a day or two, but I did some googling and discovered that you can lay your bananas on a cookie sheet and put them in an oven at 300° F. Just keep an eye on them and take them out when the skin is mostly brown. They'll be much softer and should be fine for mashing up for whatever recipe you need them for! The cupcakes are dense and sweet, and if you leave them unfrosted you can take them for breakfast if you'd like. Mine didn't rise much in the oven, so next time I'll fill the muffin cups a little more than she recommends.

I didn't make her frosting due to a lack of confectioner's sugar (it's cold and the store is 2 whole blocks away), and instead improvised a cream cheese frosting with neufchatel cheese, adding some honey, maple syrup and cinnamon to complement the banana cupcakes. Unfortunately, when I halved the recipe I forgot to halve the butter, so the frosting is waaay too buttery and kind of gross. I sprinkled a bit of cinnamon and sugar on top to cut the butter taste, but it's still not great. Human error can ruin the best recipes!

E and I have been doing some serious nesting. Between getting a ton of housewares for Christmas, getting new bedding, and finally hanging some stuff up around the apartment, it is definitely feeling more and more like our home. We have decided to renew our lease for at least another year, so over our spring breaks we're probably going to do some painting. I'm thinking an accent wall in the bedroom, a fresh coat of paint in the bathroom, and a new color for the living room/kitchen/dining area. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, we need to find something amazing to hang on the wall over our bed to compliment the new bedding!

Same life, new decade.

2010-01-01T11:23:00.002-05:00

Heart : Stomach :: Brain : Refrigerator, or, How I Learned to Stop Stressing and Love Zucchini

2009-12-30T21:26:00.002-05:00

Inspired by this fascinating photo essay, today I share with you the contents of my refrigerator and freezer. We're at a moderate-fill level right now -- most of our basics are in stock and some extras as well, but we're not exactly as full-up as I usually like to be.

I should start by saying that I like cooking. I've mentioned previously that it makes me feel more sane to have control over what I'm making and eating. I enjoy finding new recipes, planning what I'm going to eat, when, and the 1/2 hour or hour in the kitchen every day helps calm my mind and makes my tiny little apartment feel more like home. As a sidenote, I also love the nights I come home to find E making me dinner, and cooking together is one of my favorite date night activities. We try to eat sensibly and economically, and I think the contents of our fridge (and the list of basics we try to have on hand at all times) reflects that. So, without further ado...

...our fridge! I told you it's looking kinda empty right now. The Brita pitcher is obviously always in there, because E is convinced it tastes better than tap (even though some studies, such as this one, show otherwise) and is better for you (even though our tap water source is rated 13th in the country). So that takes up a lot of space in our tiny fridge -- it's only about 5 feet tall. We also have 2 different kinds of milk: skim for me and Lactaid for E, who doesn't tolerate dairy too well. Other things we pretty much always have are giant jars of minced garlic, whole wheat bread, eggs, butter, margarine and orange juice. Right now we've got some fresh parsley as a bonus.

In the vegetable drawers, we pretty much always have red potatoes, red onions, some kind of squash, tomatoes, and apples. Sweet potatoes are usually on hand as well. We are lucky to have several green grocers within about a 2-minute walk, where we get amazingly priced produce. 50¢ avocados? Yes, please. Zucchini for 69¢ a pound? Definitely. And oftentimes they tell you where it's from, and it's usually relatively local, so that's pretty exciting when you're trying to figure out ways to eat more sustainably. We got amazing late summer tomatoes harvested on Long Island for 99¢ a pound in August, and they were huge, bright red, and fabulously tasty.

Here's our freezer. We buy a lot of frozen vegetables, especially in the winter months, when fresh produce often leaves much to be desired. Brocolli and spinach get a lot of play. We had a few slices of turkey bacon and a couple of pork chops in there, as well. Overall, we have greatly reduced our meat intake for environmental reasons, but we still use it a lot. If I were only cooking for myself, I would cut meat out entirely, but E is a big fan of meat (and truth be told, I like it, too) so we still cook with it. In a few weeks we're going to start buying ethically sourced meat directly from farms at farmers' markets, which I'm excited about. I have no qualms about eating meat, but I think it can still be done in an environmentally responsible way if it's a minor part of your diet.

The white stuff in containers on the top shelf is buttermilk, since every time I bake with it I have to buy a quart but only need a cup. You can also make your own buttermilk substitute, but I use it regularly enough that I just buy it and freeze what I don't use til the next time I make something delicious that requires it. I've also gotten in the habit of freezing leftovers. On the bottom shelf (behind the pint of ice cream that E has somehow had for close to a month without devouring as I would have done) is a container of veggie tortellini stew from last night that is awaiting a night we don't feel like cooking and can just defrost some homemade stew instead of something super processed.

Winter time is prime stew time in our home, mostly because you can cut up a bunch of veggies, throw them in a pot with some spices, and have a hearty, delicious, and supremely healthy meal in an hour. In this case, I used a little leftover ground turkey to start it off and give it a little flavor, and then added red and white onions, green peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, spinach, and cheese tortellini. I put in 2 cups of water and let it simmer for about 30 minutes while we assembled a cabinet for our bathroom. It came out delicious and perfect for the weather lately (Temperatures dipped into the single digits with wind chill yesterday), and we have some in the fridge for a couple more meals, and that frozen portion for a later date.

Tonight I also tried making Blondies for the first time! They came out pretty good, but more on that next time, when I'll be reviewing a few recipes I used for holiday baking: Blondies, Red Velvet Cake Balls, Chocolate Chip Meringues, and Chocolate Pudding Pies.

Sniffling is not conducive to running.

2009-12-29T16:34:00.003-05:00

For the first time since a mysterious summer flu that knocked me out of commission for a few days right before our big move, I am sick. Stuffy-headed, blocked nose, nighttime cough, body aches kind of sick. As I mentioned previously, my mom, sister and I drove up to my older sister's house on Christmas Day, where my super-adorable 16 month old niece was sniffling and sneezing and covered in baby snot. I woke up the next morning with a sore throat, and have deteriorated since. This morning was slightly better, and I'm hoping another few nights of solid 8-hour sleeping will set me right before the New Year.

In the meantime, however, I am just yearning for my sense of taste back! We were lucky enough to receive a slew of cooking items (bakeware, serving utensils, margarita glasses, a standing mixer) for the holiday and I am dying to try each and every one of them, but not while everything tastes like, well, cardboard.

The illness has also forced me to continue my running break. I took 2 weeks off for finals/holiday travel & cooking & shopping & craziness, and now, right when I was stoked to get back into running, I'm unable to breathe through my nose and am coughing and sneezing every five minutes. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be able to load up on cold medicine and get back on the road, because I miss it! And I want to get through Couch to 5K so I can be focused and prepared to start 1/2 marathon training.

Luckily, I anticipated a rough winter for training. My initial plan when I started running in November was to do Couch to 5K and then launch immediately into 1/2 marathon training, with juuuust enough time to finish a program and fly down to Orlando for the Disney Princess Half Marathon in March. It would have been a tight fit and would have required that I miss no days of training and accelerate both the 5K and 1/2 marathon training programs a bit. As it started to get colder, though, and when my knee started acting up and school started getting more intense with end-of-the-semester stuff, I realized this was impractical. So, I decided to focus on finishing the Couch to 5K program, even if I had to redo some weeks/miss some days due to weather and scheduling and other such nonsense. I'd maintain that level through the rough, cold months, and then in early spring I'd start a 1/2 marathon training program, with the goal of running a 1/2 in May or June. At that point I'll decide whether to just maintain the 1/2 marathon level or to really push myself and start training for a full marathon, and in January 2011 I hope to participate in either a 1/2 or full marathon during the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend. This works out wonderfully because I'll be just finishing my MA, and will be ready for a long weekend in the House of the Mouse. Plus, every account I've read of running in a race at WDW has been overwhelmingly positive -- it's a generally flat course through the Disney theme parks, with entertainment at every mile. What's not to love?

I finally bought a compression shirt today at Target, so I can run outside without getting wet and freezing to death. The rain over the weekend melted all the snow that was making the sidewalks and intersections miserably impassable. Now I just need my lungs to cooperate so I can breathe properly and get out there to pound the pavement.

Tomorrow: A glimpse inside my refrigerator! Inspired by the fact that I just finally cleaned it out/scrubbed it down and it is now full of deliciousness I am about to convert to cooked deliciousness!

Happy Holidays, however many families you have to split your time between.

2009-12-27T00:40:00.001-05:00

It is both a blessing and a curse for your significant other to be from the same area as yourself. E and I met working a summer job in college (a job which deserves a post all its own in the future), when we were each living at home about 20 minutes away from the other. He went to college about 45 minutes away, so luckily we were never so far away from each other that we couldn't hop in the car in case of emergency or boredom or anything else, really. When we both lived at home after we graduated, it was again a good thing to be close together.

The interesting moments come now that we're: a) in a serious relationship; and b) living elsewhere -- as in, 2-hours-away elsewhere. We come back home for holidays and other Big Goings On, and then we usually begin whirlwind days of each visiting our own and the other's families and friends, driving a lot (which is strange when you're used to getting on trains that magically deposit you where you need to be every day), and usually disappointing some friend or family member or the other. This Thanksgiving, we did 2 hour shifts. Breakfast at E's dad's, then 2 hours at E's mom's, after which E stayed at his mom's and I went to my aunt's, and 2 hours later E joined me at my aunt's for dessert. It did the job and we fulfilled all of our familial obligations, but at the end of the day we were both completely exhausted.

Because our families live close together, we are able to see everyone for the holidays. However, it also means that we have completely full schedules and spend the duration of our time at home dashing frantically from one gathering to another. We're heading back home to New York tomorrow, but in the last 3 days I have done Christmas Eve with my family (+E) at one sister's, Christmas morning at my mom's, then Christmas Day at another sister's house in Massachusetts, breakfast with a former coworker this morning in Connecticut again, then belated Christmas at E's mom's house. Tomorrow morning I'll be up early for breakfast with another sister who we didn't get to see at Christmas Eve, and then possibly visiting with a friend and her baby who are passing through town. E and I are going to pass out on the couch together (and with our kitty!) as soon as we get back inside our apartment. I almost wish our families lived far enough apart that we simply had to choose one family to visit each holiday, because it might make things easier on us.

All that being said, it has been wonderful spending time with so many people we love in so short a time. These are our first holidays together since we've gotten engaged, and although it sounds corny, we've grown a lot as a couple in the last few months, and it's really brought our relationship to a whole new level and made it even more exciting to participate in each other's families' traditions and rituals, to spend time hugging the babies in each family and telling jokes with the adults. Today I spent 15 minutes trying desperately to remember hand games from elementary school with E's 8 year old cousin, and on Thursday night E got his very own gingerbread man from my aunt, who makes one for every member of the family at Christmas. We're still figuring this family-blending-action out, but so far it's great to have a whole extra set of folks to get to know and to share traditions with. And we'll just have to put off sleeping (on our awesome new ridiculous thread count Christmas gift sheets) until we're back home in New York.

I hope everyone's holiday was simply delightful!

The downside of public transportation.

2009-12-23T09:25:00.001-05:00

When I was in high school, I played the Alto Saxophone, a habit that has long since gone by the wayside. I was never terribly good, but I loved being in band, so that's pretty much the only reason I played. My family has a long love affair with the Alto Sax. Three of my sisters played it, and one of my nephews is currently playing it. My younger sister and I had one year of high school together (I was a senior and she was a freshman), and one of our favorite songs to play was Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride." See, my high school's band was very focused on football season (my town was very much a football town), so after Thanksgiving there was a mad rush to prepare for the Christmas concert, which meant that we played the same songs. Every. Year.

Among them was "Sleigh Ride," and it was hard. The saxes had melody for once, and it basically took you two years to get comfortable with it, and another to master it, so by senior year you could actually play it without feeling overwhelmed. It starts off nice and proper, and then gets a little jazzy and sloppy and essentially awesome. When I hear the song, I can still hum the alto sax part because of the hours and hours I spent practicing.

Anyway, my younger sister and I have had a bit of a tradition for the last few years of calling each other anytime "Sleigh Ride" was on the radio and cranking up the volume so the other one can hear it. I'm not sure how it started, but it's pretty great. This year, I haven't been in my car... at all, really. So I never listen to the radio and therefore never hear "Sleigh Ride" blaring over the speakers so I can call my sister. Tonight I'm driving home for the holiday, and I probably won't hear the song then, either, so I'm posting it here as a virtual OMG-IT'S-SLEIGH-RIDE phone call to her!

Happy holidays!

Let it snow (paper), Let it snow (paper), Let it snow! (...paper)

2009-12-20T15:37:00.001-05:00

The East Coast has been hit by a pretty big storm, and NYC is blanketed in its first layer of the cold, white stuff. E and I had a fun morning of shoveling out the car, dealing with a disgruntled old man who was upset we got a little snow on his sidewalk, and then discovering that the car wouldn't start anyway. We're holding out hope that it'll be an easy fix, though the tow truck driver who came to rescue us guessed it was the starter and not the battery as we had suspected. I don't know anything about cars, by the way.

In honor of the snow, I wanted to finally put up the paper snowflake tutorial I'd been talking about for ages. I learned to make paper snowflakes from my eighth grade algebra teacher, and her method has been the best I've tried! I love to string paper snowflakes up in windows, and they also look pretty on garlands strung up over doorways! Really, the trick is in the folding, and don't be afraid to experiment with different shapes when you're cutting!

1. Start with your nice, clean sheet of regular old copy paper. Get out your safety scissors, and grab any children old enough not to cut their fingers off while using safety scissors.

2. Remember when you were in grade school and you made cootie catchers? You're going to use the same procedure to achieve a square of paper for your snowflake. Fold the top edge down to meet the left hand edge...

3. And cut off the bottom strip of paper! You can use this to make smaller snowflakes if you want!

4. Fold your folded triangle in half...

5. And half again, and you're ready to start hacking away with those scissors! Also check out my awesome glitter-tipped festive holiday nails!

6. If you want your snowflake to be essentially round, you want to cut off the top corner, starting on the longest side, or the hypotenuse. Make it rounded, in the general direction I've noted in this photograph. You can also just work with the shape as is, but you're going to end up with a square-ish snowflake.

7. Get to work cutting! You're going to focus on cutting into the center of the triangle from the folded edges, so everything that you cut will be mirrored. For example, above I've shown you how to cut hearts and stars into your snowflake. It's pretty self-explanatory. So just cut, cut, cut...

8. Til your snowflake is all snipped out. Remember, don't cut straight across the body of the snowflake, or... you'll just be cutting your snowflake in half. Womp, womp.

9. BIG REVEAL! Carefully unfold your snowflake (more detailed cuts can kind of get stuck on themselves, so be gentle!) and you're good to go! I like to give the paper a quick once-over with the iron so it lies flatter. Tape it to the window! String it from the ceiling! Whether you're in California or Canada, you can have a White Christmas!

And here are some other snowflakes I've made this season, though I have yet to hang them up.

World Wide Web of Deliciousness (Bacon-wrapped pork, potatoes, rocky road cookies)

2009-12-19T16:29:00.005-05:00

E finished his first semester of law school on Thursday, which led to an evening out, which led to a very unproductive Friday of sleeping til 1:30 and then being miserable for the rest of the day, for reasons I'm sure you can guess. But, when we did finally get our acts together, we went GROCERY SHOPPING for the first time in about 3 weeks. We had nothing left in our cupboards, and we had been living off takeout for about a week, so I was really excited to get back in the kitchen.

So, in honor of my triumphant return to meal planning and deliciousness-producing, which also seems to help keep me feeling more sane, I bring 3 recipe recommendations, all from one of my favorite food blogs, The Crepes of Wrath!

	Bacon-Wrapped Pork Chops with Apples & Onions As strange as it is to think about eating a piece of pig wrapped in a piece of another pig, this recipe was absolutely delicious. We used all real bacon this time because we had it from another recipe, but I wouldn't hesitate to sub in turkey bacon for half or all of the bacon.
	Crispy Smashed Potatoes These were a great new way to make potatoes! I should definitely have left them to boil for a little longer so they would be softer and more mush-able, but they still came out great. I also sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top before baking them, and served them with some sour cream, which was great!
	Rocky Road Cookies These are a perennial favorite around here, and every time I have brought them to a party or potluck they are devoured with happy little food exclamations! This time I forgot to get white chocolate chips so I just threw in a few more chocolate chips, and they are delicious. The marshmallows kind of melt, so make sure they're not hanging off the sides of any cookies before you bake them.

We also cooked up some zucchini and yellow squash, some of my favorite vegetable accompaniments to any meal. In case you hadn't figured it out based on this entry, The Crepes of Wrath is one of my favorite food blogs. Everything we've tried from here has been delicious (Peppermint Patty Brownie Cupcakes! Roasted Garlic and Cherry Tomato Penne![!!!!!] Spiced Honey Lemon Chicken!) and she does a great job writing things out and giving her own little hints and tips. She also includes appealing photos that make you want to make everything she publishes, as you can see in this entry. Her sweets in particular always have me drooling, and I'm planning to use her DHARMA Initiative Fish Biscuit recipe for an upcoming party with some LOST fanatic friends. Just looking through the site to get links to these recipes had my mouth watering!

Now I will never be in the Tour de France.

2009-12-16T20:45:00.002-05:00

Summer 2008. E and I are hitting tag sales (yard sales for those of you not from Connecticut) to pick up a few odds and ends for our new apartment. You know, light-duty vacuum cleaner for the hard wood, a few mugs and plates and things -- basically, stuff that no one who isn't moving into their first apartment together wants anymore.

We arrive at one tag sale, where I see this beautiful red vintage bike, in great condition but for the flat tires. The people selling it, an older couple who were very nice, ask for an offer, and I get the bike for 10 bucks, which is obviously basically free. I brought it home, inflated the tires, and relearned how to ride a bike. That's right, folks, it was a little touch-and-go for a while there, but I made it with all of my skin intact. The bike traveled with us to Boston, where I never rode it (I blamed Masshole drivers and our apartment's location halfway up a pretty steep hill), and almost sold it before we moved down here. But I didn't, and we crammed that stupid bike into our moving truck and brought it down here because I had visions of grand summer bike rides in flowing dresses and cute shoes, hair blowing in the breeze and picnic basket strapped onto the back fender.

We've been here for 4 months, now, and I haven't learned. Haven't even ridden it around the block. It's been sitting in the lobby of our building with another tenant's bike, completely unused. The truth is, I'm still terrified of biking on the streets, and I would never ride on the sidewalk because I want to KILL anyone who endangers me, the pedestrian, by flying down sidewalks on bikes. But the other night, I came home, expecting to see my happy, disused red bike greeting me in the lobby, only to see that it had disappeared!

That's right, someone stole my bike. Now, for some reason, I am actually more upset about this fact than I have any right to be. But somehow, thinking of someone else getting use of the 10 dollar bike I never rode really grinds my gears (pun intended). How dare they!? And now I will never get to be the hip, eco-friendly cyclist whooshing past befuddled pedestrians on my way to the museum, or the park, or whatever it is these kids do these days. I could have at least sold the damned thing and made my 10 bucks back.

There is also a chance that my building's superintendent noticed that I wasn't using it anyway and put it in storage for the Winter. I only think this might be the case because his bike, previously stored in the same place, has also been missing for a few days now. But I am too wimpy to ask him about it, so I will continue to pout.

The way they look will prevent other people from eating them (No Bake Cookies)

2009-12-12T10:46:00.006-05:00

This weekend is the last of the semester, and it's going to be hectic. I have papers coming out my ears, and E is immersing himself in studying for the last of his law school exams this week. I predict a weekend full of takeout and not much in the way of speaking to each other. The other night, though, I made some no-bake cookies as a quick little treat, and they were so easy and delicious I figured I'd share the love.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what they look like. I know. But they are delicious!! That photo and the recipe are from here.

No-Bake Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Oatmeal Cookies
Yield: 2 to 3 dozen, depending on how large you make them

½ cup (1 stick) butter
2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup milk
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
½ cup peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups quick-cooking oats

1. Add the first four ingredients (through the cocoa powder) to a 4-quart saucepan.
2. Bring to a rolling boil and let boil for 1 minute.
3. Remove from heat.
4. Stir in the peanut butter and vanilla until smooth, then stir in the oats.
5. Drop by heaping tablespoons onto wax paper-lined baking sheets.
6. Let cool until set. (It took about 30 minutes for mine to cool -GF)

They are sweet and melty, and the oatmeal makes them pretty substantial. Also, they're rich enough that even I, the chocolate queen, can only eat 1 or 2 before I am done for the day. And just a note, they don't change once you put them on the wax paper, so you probably want to flatten them out and make them look more like cookies than... well, you know. Or maybe you don't.

Where I am running...

2009-12-09T19:25:00.004-05:00

When I was in 5th grade, some of my male friends made a secret club. As you may have assumed, this club had an imaginary "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" sign on its imaginary clubhouse door. In short order, my budding feminist self had my girlfriends in a right tizzy over this outrage: You cannot discriminate on the basis of sex or gender!, my 10-year-old self would have said if she had had the worldly knowledge to do so.

Instead, I just demanded that they let us join. "Okay," said their ring leader (I still remember his name and his lisp and his red-haired, freckled head... in fact, I am about to Facebook him), "You can join. If you each beat one of us in a race."

Here is the truth: I have never been a runner. I have never been an athlete in any way, shape or form. Climbing trees and playing games, sure, but unlike my sisters I was never on an organized sports team and was completely content to keep it that way. So when these boys challenged me, I knew I had to use my brains to beat them and gain access to their club.

We went out to the soccer field during recess. The boys said, "We start here, we end here," and lined us up. I was racing a boy who in 6th grade would awkwardly become my first boyfriend (he painted my name down his leg on field day; I was mortified). And then, someone shouted something or other, and we were off. I was doing okay, keeping to his pace, when suddenly i cut sharply to the right... AND RAN STRAIGHT ACROSS THE FIELD TO THE FINISH LINE. Yep. While my opponent ran allllll the waaaay around, I was defending my decision on the fact that they had only said where we would start and where we would stop, but they didn't define the actual course.

In the end, we were denied membership in the stupid club with the stupid boys, so we made our own and it was ten times awesomer. Yeah.

So anyway. That was probably the height of my running career. The next year I ran a 10-minute-mile during the annual fitness tests (ugh, kill me), and it was all downhill (except I guess that expression doesn't really work here... it was more like a brick wall) from there. I have, through the years, toyed with the idea of being athletic, but it has never stuck. Then, this fall I watched the end of the New York City marathon, and suddenly felt inspired. No, not to run a marathon (ARE YOU CRAZY?!), but to run a HALF MARATHON!!! Luckily, my best friend was ready and willing to pretend to be a runner with me, and we started the Couch to 5K Running Plan together. I'm currently about to finish Week 5 of the plan and while I am nervous for a 20 minute run tomorrow, I'm excited to power on through.

It's strange to have run 3-4 times a week for over a month, now. I've finally started to enjoy it, and I think I get why all you running nuts go so crazy for it. I feel more focused, and I look forward to my runs as a time to focus on myself and let the rest of the world melt away.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll finish the Couch to 5K program and maintain that over the winter, and then in the spring we'll pick up our training again and start working on our 1/2 marathon. The eventual goal? A 1/2 marathon (or maybe a full? AM I CRAZY?!) in Disney World. I am really excited. If only my 10-year-old self could see me now...

Triumphant over the boy.

2009-12-03T14:27:00.000-05:00

I spent a lot of time with the guy in that video last night. His voice is actually pretty soothing. My fiance, E, had an interview today for an internship next semester, and decided he wanted to rock a Windsor knot as opposed to his usual half Windsor (who knew tying ties could be so nuanced?). So, for the last week or so, I would occasionally see him reading or watching tutorials about how to tie it, and last night he finally actually got out a tie to practice.

Cut to about 20 minutes later. He's frustrated because he can't tie the damned thing and I am sick of listening to him complain. I go get one of his ties and sit down with the video above. After a few incredibly unsuccessful attempts, I did it! It was sloppy, but it was done! I kept practicing and sooner or later I had it pretty much figured out. Tried to help him learn, watched the tutorial with him, etc., but this is the guy who has trouble fitting a whole load of groceries in the fridge. He's not exactly gifted with spatial reasoning skills.

Finally, he handed over the tie he was planning to wear today (and a sharp tie it is) and, head hung low, asked me to tie it for him and then slip it off without untying it so he could just wear it today. Yes, this happened. He then watched me tie an expert Windsor knot (I believe his words were, "You look like a fifty year old man who's been doing this for 25 years.") without even the aid of my buddy in the video. That's right, kids, I've got it memorized. And this morning, he slipped the tie over his head, neatened it up, and was off to his interview, looking very authoritative with that fat knot. My dad, who taught me to tie his ties when I was about 9, would be so proud.

I kind of wish women wore ties with their professional getups. The tie sections in men's stores are full of bright, shiny colors, and it's like one of those wire MENSA 3D puzzles, except you can actually figure it out without getting out lock cutters.

Generally fabulous!