Walden Street

There and Back Again

2011-03-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

In late January, Stephen and I took a short trip to Washington, DC. I was already planning to go for a three-day conference during the week, so Stephen decided to fly down to meet me on Friday night and stay for the weekend.

In past years, we've often visited the DC area in March, when Boston is still snow-encrusted and dreary but the first flowers are popping up in mid-Atlantic yards. It always cheers me up and gives me hope that spring truly will come again.

But this time we found ourselves there in the deep cold of midwinter, so we had to find our flowers and greenery indoors at the Botanic Garden. It was warm and misty inside, and even the relatively cool and dry desert room full of succulents and cacti was a welcome break from the blustery weather outdoors.

Looking at these (slightly blurry) pictures reminds me that the spring bulb show at Smith opens this weekend. We went last year and it was packed. The crowd was literally shoulder-to-shoulder, and we had trouble getting to the exit when the exhibit closed because there were so many people lingering in front of us. We New Englanders are starved for signs of spring at this time of year.

We also saw some greenery in our hotel, which had quite an elaborate courtyard. We had brunch in that little indoor "forest" down by the lagoon. Note the floating piano!

Snow Pro/Con

2011-02-02T22:47:00.001-05:00

We've had a lot of snow this winter - 70 inches as of today. The average for the entire winter around here is 42 inches, and we've still got two or three months of winter weather to go! The extreme weather has its benefits and drawbacks.

Pro

1. Snow days! This is my fifth winter in Cambridge, and my workplace has had one or maybe two snow days in all of the previous winters combined. This year, we've already had two, plus a handful of delayed openings and early releases. You just don't expect that to happen much once you're out of high school, but it's a nice surprise when it does.

2. New snow. Freshly fallen snow is so lovely, and week-old snow is so gray and dreary. It's been nice to have the fresh snow replenished so frequently this winter. The city looks clean and fresh and bright.

3. Extreme conditions. It's kind of thrilling to see snow piled higher than the cars, so high that you can't see over the snowbanks. The neighborhood feels like a different world with this new landscape.

Con

1.Traffic pile-ups on the sidewalk. By "traffic," I mean pedestrians. I realize that I'm lucky not to have to rely on a car to get me to work, but the snow limits walkers, too. As more snow falls and there's fewer places to pile it, the sidewalks get narrower and narrower, which means no more passing lane. If you get stuck behind someone walking slowly, you're stuck for good. And if you run into someone coming the other way, one of you has to "pull over" into the snowbank.

2. Flooding. Our apartment is on an upper floor, so I'm not worried about my stuff getting ruined, but the office where I work is slightly below ground level, and any melt-off leads to water running in under the front door. I once had a minor moat around my desk during the spring thaw, and I anticipate that there will be a lot more water coming in once the temperature gets above freezing this year. And here's the gross part: the rising water flushes out cockroaches looking for higher ground. There is no insect that I like less than the cockroach.

3. Dirty snow. As I said, we've had frequent fresh snows this year, but at some point the storms are going to stop and the snow will begin the long, ugly process of melting away, gradually turning gray and black and revealing all of the litter that was buried beneath drifts as the snow fell. It will be an extra-long process this year.

Crafternoon

2011-01-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

I love to make things, but I rarely set aside time to do so. I like to handsew and knit and bake, but I put those things off until some indeterminate point in the future when I'll have more free time - as if that's ever going to happen. This NY Times article that I found a while back ("Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow") really hit home. Like many people, I procrastinate when it comes to fun things as well as pain-in-the-butt tasks.

Luckily, I have some friends who feel similarly, so we've started meeting for a biweekly "crafternoon" during which we eat pizza and work on whatever projects have been languishing around our apartments. Earlier this winter, I finished crocheting an afghan that I'd begun before grad school and then put away for three years. I've repaired and altered a lot of my clothes at crafternoon, and I'm finally nearing the end of a hand-quilting project that I began in 2006. Stephen recently finished knitting a mitten that he'd had on the needles since college! I try not to get too ambitious and stress out over being super-productive, though. Sometimes I just chat and eat pizza if I'm not in a creative mood, or I'll make us a banana cake for dessert and call it a day.

I'm surprised at the extent to which this phenomenon has improved my quality of life. Instead of feeling overwhelmed when I think of non-essential projects ("When will I have time to re-hem that skirt? Never."), I just add them to the crafternoon to-do list. Now I just need to learn to set aside time for all of the essential tasks that I procrastinate on. I don't suppose filing my tax return counts as a craft, does it?

P.S. We thought we were so creative coming up with the term crafternoon, but it turns out someone has already published a book with that name! Oh well.

Schooled

2011-01-16T21:31:00.000-05:00

I really like school. I hate doing homework and having assignments hanging over my head, but I like learning new things and the sense of progress that school gives you: every lecture, exam, and paper brings you one step closer to finishing the class, and each class completed means you're a step closer to a degree.

Even though I finished my Masters program last May, I decided to take a molecular biology class in the fall, and I’m going to take another in evolutionary biology next semester. I haven’t taken bio since high school, and I really liked learning about the human body and going to lab sessions. The exams were really tough, though. I had to re-adjust my expectations of a “good” grade. But I'm undaunted! In face, I’ve got a whole long list of classes (epidemiology, negotiations, etc) that I’d like to take once I'm done with these. It’s like a hobby now.

I like that school moves in cycles, with high and low points of activity and new people coming in each year. That’s one reason that I like working at a university, too--the cyclical nature of the work--although it’s sad when our favorite interns graduate and leave town.

But I also like the breaks from school, the negative space around the semesters. As difficult as it was cramming for my lab practical and final exam in mid-December, I felt so relieved and light as soon as I left the lecture hall on the last day. And I really treasure the hours I have now, between the fall and spring sessions, to catch up on reading-for-fun and projects around the apartment. And sleep!

Scandinavia Mania: Best for Last

2010-12-31T13:59:00.001-05:00

Last stop: Dalarna. Okay, this actually came in the middle of the trip, but I wanted to save my favorite part for last.

One of the things we'd been really looking forward to on this trip was celebrating Midsommarafton (Midsummer's Eve), one of the biggest holidays of the year in Sweden. We'd heard that the best place to go for traditional midsummer celebrations was Dalarna, a province in central Sweden. (You may be familiar with the Dala horse, a symbol of the region.)

Stockholm cleared out for the holiday weekend on Friday morning, and we left in our rental car, a great big silver gas-guzzler that we got as a free "upgrade" because all of the small cars were already booked. Yikes.

The first festival we visited was in Tällberg in the late afternoon. When we arrived, there were lots of people in traditional costumes dancing in a cleared field. All of the women were wearing crowns of wildflowers, so I braided one for myself, too. According to our guidebook, these wreaths are sometimes saved and added to the New Year's bath for good luck.

We watched them raise the maypole, then went to a nearby cafe for a dinner of waffles with whipped cream and cloudberry jam.

Then we drove to Leksand, where there was a much bigger festival--more like an outdoor concert. Hundreds of people (maybe even thousands; it was hard to get a good look at the crowd) sat on picnic blankets watching a band play as the maypole was prepared. Then pairs of men lined up and hoisted the pole as the spectators cheered them on.

Once the pole was up, everyone rushed in (including us!) and danced in a circle. Stephen and I couldn't understand the words to the songs, but we tried to follow the crowd and figure out the moves as we went. The only song I can remember now was Små grodorna ("The Little Frogs"), but I think there was another about elephants, and maybe one about playing various musical instruments. There were a lot of drunk teenagers and the ground was littered with discarded bottles, which added an element of precariousness to the fast-paced dancing. There were so many people dancing that you couldn't stop moving even if you were able to see the hazards in front of you. Luckily we made it through unscathed.

Since it was right around the summer solstice, dusk arrived very late. After the festivities had ended, we drove to Lake Siljan to watch the sunset. The water was calm and the colors were deep and saturated.

And then we got engaged! Here we are right after I asked Stephen if he wanted to get married, just as the last light was fading. Misummer's Eve is supposed to be an auspicious day for new beginnings. What better time to get engaged?

Well, that's a tough act to follow, but we still had a couple of days in the region before we went back to Stockholm. The next morning, we visited the house of Carl Larsson, an artist who painted scenes of rural Swedish life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Carl and Karin Larsson had eight children and a very warm and loving home life which Carl depicted in many of his paintings. Apparently the Larsson family still owns it and occupies it for part of the year. It seemed like a great place to grow up.

Our last stop on this leg of the trip was this little church in the town of Ovanåker where my great-great-great-grandparents, Olof and Ella, were married before emigrating from Sweden to the United States. Luckily, it was easy to find and looked almost exactly the same as in the decades-old photograph my dad had given me. (I think my paternal grandfather had a local genealogist take the picture when he was doing research about our ancestors in the 1980s.) We took some pictures and walked through the graveyard, looking at the names on the tombstones.

Finally, we had to pack up and say good-bye to Dalarna and to our tiny cabin with the lilac hedge, but I think this will always be one of my favorite places in the world.

The end!

Scandinavia Mania: Iceland

2010-11-11T15:08:00.001-05:00

We didn't get to spend very long in Iceland, either, but I loved every minute of it. (Except for the minutes when our credit cards were being charged. Food and transportation in Iceland are pricey!) We got in very late—our original flight from Copenhagen was canceled, so we had to get a later flight through Stockholm. As always, the late sunset was disorienting. It wasn't bright out, but it was dusky when we arrived at 1:00am.

We stayed in a cute bed and breakfast with a shared kitchen. I had toast with jam and a bowl of corn flakes in the morning, and wondered whether corn flakes are a universal breakfast food or just something that people buy for tourists. (I had corn flakes for breakfast at our hotel in Istanbul last spring, too.)

There were still lilacs blooming in July! Ours are usually gone by June.

We didn't have much time to spend in Reykjavik. We headed for the Blue Lagoon in the morning so that we'd have time for a long soak before our flight back to Boston. What an otherworldly landscape! It felt like being on a different planet—except for the bar in the middle of the lagoon.

And then it was back to Keflavik, the prettiest little airport I've ever seen. It's the kind of airport that LL Bean might design, with locally-sourced stone and wood, huge skylights, and shops selling woolen mittens and thick fleece jackets.

This is the only airport I've ever stayed in overnight. (We spent the first night of the trip in this terminal between flights.) I didn't get much sleep, but the stained glass window overhead was a nice view to wake up to.

Scandinavia Mania: Finland, At Last!

2010-11-07T15:01:00.000-05:00

Now where were we, lo the many months ago? Ah yes, Finland.

We were only in Finland for about 36 hours, not even enough time to make it to the mainland. We stayed on Åland, an autonomous, Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Baltic Sea.

To get there, we took a bus to Kapellskär, a port north of Stockholm, and rode the Viking Line to Mariehamn. The ferry was enormous, with several restaurants, a casino, and a duty-free shop--plenty to keep everyone occupied for the two-hour ride.

We got to our stuga (cabin) around 11:00pm. I was so excited to see a kitchen inside. It was our first opportunity for a home-cooked meal in weeks! Of course, we were too tired too eat by then, but I did make us some pasta with tomato and garlic the next night, and it was such a treat not to have to go searching for a cheap, vegetarian-friendly restaurant when we were both starving.

We rented bikes and went out to Kastelholm, a medieval castle in the countryside. The trip was a little farther than I'd anticipated, so we had to bike back quickly to avoid the hefty late-return fees. I think we got back to the rental agency five minutes before they locked up. I haven't biked in a long time, so my backside was super sore by the afternoon--I had to pedal standing up for the last twenty minutes. Afterward, we celebrated our successful fine-avoidance with cones of mjukglass (soft ice cream).

Stephen's parents gave us a wake-up call the next morning at 6:00am (11:00pm for them) so that we'd be sure to make the morning ferry back to Sweden.

And that was it for Finland!

Scandinavia Mania: Denmark

2010-08-30T19:03:00.000-04:00

After leaving Sweden, we spent a few days in Copenhagen. On our first afternoon in the city, we went to see the changing of the guard. They're less formal than the guards at Buckingham Palace--I think they're allowed to talk and take pictures with the tourists. Their uniforms still look uncomfortable, though. Bearskin hats in July!

I was charmed by the hearts carved into the little red towers at each station.

We also visited the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden. It was a hot and humid afternoon, so being in the Palm House was almost unbearable. Stephen was brave enough to climb up the spiral staircase to the very top of the house, but I got lightheaded when I tried to follow him. We cooled off afterward in the shadier Orchid House, which had some very alien-looking flowers.

One of our favorite things to do was to sit by the canal in the evening when everyone was out drinking beer and cider and chatting with friends. Sometimes we'd stop on the way back to our hotel and buy gelato or waffles drizzled with chocolate sauce. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival was in full swing, so we saw bands playing in practically every square.

One evening, we rented a boat at sunset and rowed up the canal, dodging the zippy motorboats and the wide, flat canal boats that motored past. We even got saw a jazz boat with a four-piece band on board!

On our last night in the city, we decided to walk out to the famous statue of the Little Mermaid. As we got closer, we saw some kind of screen lit up near the shoreline where the statue normally sits.

A sign nearby explained that the Little Mermaid had been taken to China to sit in the Danish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo. In its place was a video installation that offered a live broadcast of the statue as it sat in Shangai. I guess it's bad luck that we happened to be in Copenhagen during the one six-month period in 96 years that the statue was gone--but at least it hadn't been vandalized.

Scandinavia Mania: Swedish Cities

2010-08-20T16:57:00.003-04:00

We spent about a week of our trip visiting the two largest cities in Sweden: Stockholm on the east coast and Göteborg (a.k.a. Gothenburg) on the west coast.

In Stockholm, we saw the royal palace, browsed the public library, took in the view from atop the Katarinahissen, visited the vintage stores in Södermalm, and ate lots of quiche and pastries at our favorite konditori.

The city is spread out over an archipelago, so we spent a couple of days riding the ferries to and fro.

Since we were out during the day in the middle of the week, the islands were pretty quiet. We saw lots of young families on playdates, a few retired couples, and a smattering of other tourists. I was surprised at how many fathers we saw taking their kids out for the day, pushing strollers around and chatting with other dads. Swedes must have better paternity leave benefits than we do.

We spent one day visiting Fjaderholmen, an island with lots of artisan workshops and ice cream stands. What better way to follow a glassblowing demonstration than with a scoop of chocolate on the patio? We rested our feet and watched kids play with a giant Parcheesi set.

The next day, we visited Skansen, an open air museum and zoo on the island of Djurgården.

It was fun to go inside the historic buildings, but my favorite part was seeing the animals. We stood with dozens of other people watching the brown bears wrestle in their enclosure, and the reindeer nibbling moss in theirs. Stephen made friends with the goats at the barnyard. The only animals I tried to steer clear of were the noisy, aggressive peacocks, which would belly up to the picnic tables and loudly demand a bite of food.

A few days later, we took the train from Stockholm to Göteborg, the country's second-largest city. This city is also situated on the water, but we didn't visit any islands. We did go on one boat, though: our floating hotel! We had a harbor-facing window from which we could watch the sun set in the evening, and there was a good view of Skanskaskrapan, the bright-red skyscraper commonly referred to as the Lipstick, from the roof.

For an even better look at the city, we took a ride on the towering Wheel of Göteborg one evening. There was a VIP booth with tinted windows and white Christmas lights, but we just rode in one of the regular carriages.

I really liked Göteborg. I had heard that the city was more industrial than Stockholm, but it had a youthful energy and we found some awesome cafes and museums during our brief stay (not to mention the lovely botanical garden that we stumbled into when looking for a public bathroom). I'd like to go back someday--I'm sure there are more treasures there.

But there were still many other places for us to visit. Yet to come: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and a Midsummer adventure!

Scandinavia Mania: Camping in Sweden

2010-08-02T23:12:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure when I first had the idea of traveling to Scandinavia (and more specifically, Sweden), but for a long time now, going there has been my #1 international travel goal. My great-great-great-grandparents immigrated from Sweden, and my last name is Swedish, and Stephen and I both really like Scandinavian design, so: plenty of reasons to go.

I've talked about it for years now: hypothetically at first, and then more and more concretely/hopefully. But I've never planned out more than a weekend road trip on my own (heck, I was 21 the first time I flew on an airplane!) so the idea of taking on a three-week trip overseas was a little daunting.

Finally, last summer, Stephen suggested that we start saving money for this dream trip. We bought some guidebooks. I was overwhelmed with grad school. Stephen let me focus on my thesis and took on almost all of the planning duties, reading countless reviews, booking hotels, drawing up itineraries, and learning how to order food and ask for directions in Swedish.

And then, in June, we went! We spent 22 days traveling around Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Here are some pictures from the first week, during which we rented a car and drove around southeastern Sweden, mostly camping. (Yes, we carried a tent and sleeping bags with us!)

The countryside was so beautiful. It felt like a place you'd see in a dream, all sunshine and wildflowers.

We went hiking a couple of times. The forest there really looked like something you'd see in Maine. It was chilly like Maine, too.

We toured a glassblowing factory in Orrefors and ate peppermint candy in Gränna.

We visited open air museums all over the place. One had historic buildings from many different regions, so you could trace the changing shape of houses over hundreds of years and miles.

We visited IKEA on the day that Crown Princess Victoria got married, and they were giving out wedding cake in the warehouse. It seemed like the whole country had wedding fever.

Neither of us got a cinnamon bun at IKEA, but Stephen had the local equivalent (called kanelbulle) several times when we stopped for fika. They were less sticky than the American kind, and always dusted with pearl sugar.

Only one of the places we stayed had a kitchen, so we ate a lot of cafe meals. Luckily for me, they were pretty vegetarian-friendly. I ate open-faced sandwiches and drank Earl Grey tea and had a slice of carrot cake almost every afternoon. Not a bad way to travel.

But I was very excited for my first home-cooked meal back in Boston!

A Walk in the Cemetery

2010-05-26T18:20:00.004-04:00

Who wouldn't want to celebrate their anniversary in a graveyard? Stephen and I took a walk around Mt. Auburn cemetery for ours this year. This was one of the items on my list of things to do after handing in my thesis. I had heard that it's picturesque and that many famous people are buried there (I've since learned that Buckminster Fuller is among them--I wish I'd sought out his headstone), but had never visited before.

It's amazing to me that this peaceful oasis exists in the midst of a (relatively) bustling city. The cemetery was so quiet and lush that it was startling to hear traffic whizzing by when we walked near the fence on Mt. Auburn Street.

We walked up Washington Tower and admired the view of Boston's skyline from the top, with the Charles River below. Boston is not a tall city; the John Hancock Tower, that blue one on the left, is the tallest building in all of New England, but just the 46th tallest in the US, and 162nd in the world. Yet it towers over the rest of the city, except for the Prudential Center, the grayish one on the right, which is about 40 feet shorter. I like the relative shortness of the city, though. It feels manageable to me, as someone with small-town roots. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by skyscrapers.

From the top of the tower, we spied what looked like a cathedral nearby, so we climbed down and went searching for it. It turned out to be a chapel near the entrance gate--somehow I'd missed it on the way in. The architecture was very grand for such a small building, like it was built at half of its intended size.

Since we were nearby, we stopped at Sofra for lunch. I had the bread hummus again, and managed to get a picture this time.

For dessert, I had a morning bun with orange blossom glaze, which was not at all what I was expecting it to be. I thought it would be muffin-like, but instead it was a syrupy clump of small pieces of sweet pastry, somewhat akin to monkey bread.

And delicious.

Where Have I Been?

2010-05-15T23:59:00.002-04:00

I had good intentions of posting about Turkey as soon as we returned to the States, but then the reality of trying to finish up grad school hit and I basically sat here, at my desk, drinking strong black tea and staring at my computer screen, for the seven-week dash to the finish line. This culminated in a four-day flurry of activity at the beginning of May, when I ran two of our biggest events of the year at work, presented the results of my Masters project, and handed in a 45-page group paper for another class. Then I had a week to transform the 21-page draft of my thesis into an 88-page final product, which I turned in on Monday. I've spent so much time sitting at this desk over the past weeks, often in the wee hours of the morning, typing and shuffling papers and making checklists. That's Iggy on the right--he loves to be in the middle of whatever is going on around the apartment, even if that means squeezing himself into a slightly-too-small corner of the desk and knocking all of my papers on the floor. I actually like the company, except when he starts attacking the mouse. When I get bored, I put paper clips on the edge of the desk for him to bat around.

So I handed in my thesis on Monday, turned in the final report to my "client" on Thursday, and now I'm done with school. When Stephen and I went out Pizzeria Posto to celebrate my last day of class, he kept saying, "You have your life back!" (We were also celebrating a milestone for him--after three years working as a student teacher, intern teacher, assistant teacher, and a program assistant, he found out two weeks ago that he finally got his dream job, a full-time position teaching a combined 1st/2nd grade class in a progressive public school, which he'll start in September.) I have a huge list of things that I want to do now that my evenings and weekends are unspoken for--all of which I'd like to tell you about, but Iggy just jumped on the desk and fell asleep with his head on my arm, so I'm typing one-handed, and it's taking forever. So I'll have to get back to you. I am determined to get those Turkey pictures posted.

Istanbul, Not Constantinople

2010-03-11T00:41:00.004-05:00

It was 50 degrees out on Saturday, so Stephen and I took a walk through Huron Village to Sofra for an afternoon snack. We split a pot of cocoa rose tea, Stephen got lamb shawarma, and I ordered the Syrian-style bread hummus, which was not at all what I was expecting--sort of a deconstructed hummus, maybe. It consisted of chunks of fresh bread, olive oil, marinated chick peas, green onions, yogurt, and paprika, I think, served warm in a tiny casserole dish. Even though it was completely new to me, it smelled incredibly homey and familiar in some way, and I pretty much licked the dish clean.

We've had Middle Eastern food at Sofra a few times before, but this time we called it "research" because we're about to leave on a trip to Turkey with Stephen's family. The planning has been very sudden--I still can't believe we're going. I've only been out of the US three times in my life, and two of those trips were to Canada, so this is hard for me to wrap my head around. I've had the They Might Be Giants cover of "Istanbul, Not Constantinople" stuck in my head all week.

On our way home from the bakery on Saturday, we cut through the Radcliffe Quadrangle at Harvard and found these crocuses--first flowers of spring. Later we saw snowdrops in someone's front garden, too. Between the warm temperatures and Daylight Savings Time beginning, winter will soon be a distant memory. I know it happens every year, but it still feels like a miracle every time.

Foremothers

2010-03-06T23:24:00.001-05:00

Happy (almost) International Women's Day! Last year, I coordinated a big IWD event for a committee I was serving on, but we're not doing anything for it this year, so instead I plan to celebrate on Monday with some homemade carrot cake whoopie pies at our weekly staff meeting (which, come to think of it, will be attended by seven women and one feminist man, so that seems appropriate).

These (unfortunately blurry) images are from a photo that we got at a second-hand store when we went to Midnight Madness with my brother back in December. It's the Medford, Massachusetts High School senior class of 1923. I love the personalities captured in each of their faces.

Aren't they stylish? They look much cooler to me than contemporary high school seniors. Will anyone say that about my senior portrait when eighty-seven years have passed?

The End is Not Yet in Sight

2010-02-27T16:47:00.002-05:00

My yoga class was packed last night. We kept shifting our mats around to make room for latecomers. There must have been 40+ people squeezed into that little studio. The teacher was confused and asked if there was some kind of event going on that she wasn’t aware of. Someone called out, “No, we’re just stressed!” Ha. That’s certainly why I was there. The semester is in full swing now, and the amount of work standing between me and Commencement Day on May 23 is enormous. Meanwhile, we're launching several new projects at work, and watching the Olympics every night has not helped me to relax. I hold my breath each time we turn on the TV, hoping I’m not about to see some career-ending fall on the halfpipe or crash on the ice.There’s so much potential for devastating injury (not to mention heartbreak/crushed dreams) in these events. I don’t remember the Summer Olympics being so hard to watch. Are the winter games more dangerous, or am I just on edge? These kinds of things don’t seem to happen in swimming. (Actually, the high dive makes me a little nervous.)

I don’t like to use the word “stress” because I feel that its constant repetition (stress stress STRESS!) both adds to the collective burden of anxiety and somehow implies that it’s normal to feel this way, that everyone is always overworked and undernourished. There's a series of ads on the T right now for some kind of one-minute dinner product, and the copy says things like, "This rice is in an even bigger hurry than you are!" There are even streaks drawn behind the box of rice to show that it's rushing around. Bleh. But there's no denying that I do feel some stress right now. Going to yoga this week helped. And I (accidentally) slept for ten and a half hours on Wednesday night, which felt great.

A bright spot in all of this has been the weather this past week. Yes, we lost power on Thursday night, and the streets were flooded for days. But we've hardly had any snow (just a flurry here and there, nothing that stuck), and the sun came out on Friday morning, giving me hope that spring may indeed come again. I can’t wait. Last spring, I wrote down the flowers I saw each month so that I would know what to look for this year. In March, there were snow drops, then crocuses and pansies, followed in April by irises, forsythia, hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, and magnolias. Hard to believe that’s right around the corner, isn’t it?

Green Car

2010-02-07T23:31:00.003-05:00

These license plates are what remains of our car. It was in an accident in January and we just heard from the insurance company that it's a total loss. Luckily, everyone involved is totally fine.

At some point in my life (not very long ago), this would have seemed like a huge calamity: the police report, the insurance claim, the wondering if it could be fixed and how much it would cost to do so, etc. I would have dwelt on it and fretted and regretted and all that. It was still surprising and sad and scary, but it happened so soon after the earthquake in Haiti that losing a car just didn't seem like such a big deal in comparison. It was a good and safe and reliable car that carried me and my family to many places in its 12 years, and I appreciated that. It had over 227,000 miles on it, and I was looking forward to the day when it met the quarter-million mile mark. But everyone is still here, my future is still here, very little has changed except that there's no green car parked outside our apartment building any more--and that seems like a pretty lucky outcome, considering.

Thank you, little green car.

The Life Aquatic

2010-01-31T15:09:00.003-05:00

I've never been a strong swimmer. My dad taught me the basics when I was little, but I didn't take formal lessons. I knew just enough to get through the swim test in college. When I worked as a camp counselor one summer after graduating, I sat day after day by the pool and noticed this group of older women (some of them 80+) swimming laps as though it were nothing. I had this idea that if I could just get my form down, swimming was a skill that I could use for my whole life. But it's hard to figure out how to get better on your own; it's not like weight-lifting, where you can check your form in the mirror.

When I started physical therapy for knee pain last fall, the orthopedist told me to take a break from high-impact exercise for a while, so I decided to focus on swimming instead. I signed up for a six-week course at a pool in Harvard Square. The first few classes were very elementary, but I wanted to review the essentials before getting into more complex stuff. Also, I'd never done the crawl before, so the breathing pattern and arm movements were new territory for me.

When that course ended in November, I signed up for the Level II class, and then progressed to Level III this month. At this point, we spend most of the sessions swimming laps, alternating between the crawl and the backstroke. We're also working on treading water (which I still find exhausting) and learning flip turns to make the transition between laps smoother.

I think this will be the last class I take for now. I've learned everything I came to learn, and now I just need practice to build up endurance--especially mental endurance. I think the biggest impediment to progress right now is convincing myself that I'm not going to drown between breaths, that I have enough air to make it through three more strokes. It's weird how the animal brain can kick in when you're under water. Doing deep breathing exercises in yoga class has helped me learn to calm my brain a little when swimming, but it's still a struggle. I do love it, though. Especially at this time of year, when it's bitterly cold out, it's nice to go to a heated pool and splash around under the skylights for a while.

Zither!

2010-01-12T16:02:00.002-05:00

Stephen and I made a deal back in August to get each other just one present for Christmas this year. We don't really have much room to put new things in our 450 square foot apartment, and I thought that by limiting our shopping to just one gift each, we'd reduce our Christmas-shopping burden and be more thoughtful in our choices. I got Stephen a Fit board to go with the Wii he got for his birthday in November. And what did he get me?

An autoharp! When we were visiting friends in Maryland last spring, we stopped in at a music store and tried out all kinds of obscure instruments: ukuleles, hammered dulcimers, accordians, etc. The autoharp was my favorite. I liked the way sounded and how easy it was to play. Stephen must have made a mental note of my preference, because a suspiciously trapezoidal package showed up under the tree right before Christmas. He told me later that he had to go to six different music stores to find one that carried autoharps. Fun fact (if anything on Wikipedia can be called "fact"): The autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither.

I love it. It really is easy and fun to play--much easier than any other stringed instrument I've tried. There are no complicated fingerings to memorize or painful strings to press, thanks to the chord bars. So far, I only know two songs, but I hope to grow my repertoire. Get your request lists ready!

Christmas Review

2010-01-01T18:34:00.005-05:00

We only had one Christmas tree this year, this little silver one. I like the smell of a real tree, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy one in mid-December right before you leave town for two weeks, so we nixed the live greenery this time. I tried to tone down the tinsel with folksy felt and wooden ornaments and a paper flag garland that we got on our trip to Portland last June. I put up my collection of bird ornaments, too, but Iggy kept trying to eat them, so I had to take them down.

We invited some friends over before Christmas to help make a gingerbread village for the living room. We had wine and funky pizza from Zing!, and things got pretty creative. We ended up with a solar-powered house, an outhouse, and several structures that defied categorization. Someone even made an aquarium stocked with Swedish fish.

When they were finished, we set them along the windowsill. Now when the radiators come on, the smell of warm frosting fills the apartment.

I spent the holidays proper at my parents' house in New York state. My family and I spent most of the week eating homemade lasagna, putting together puzzles and playing the highly-addictive Carcassonne. Stephen took the train from Boston to Albany for my birthday on Monday and we went out to dinner with my brothers and their girlfriends. It was lovely.

And then...I got sick. So how did I spend the last night of the year? I took a shot of Nyquil and went to bed early.

Here's to 2010!

Rare Bird

2009-12-20T17:09:00.001-05:00

We took the train north to Salem a couple of weekends ago for another visit to the Peabody Essex museum. The morning was grey and chilly; the afternoon, rainy; and by the time we left the museum at 5:00pm, it was snowing. Inside the soaring PEM atrium, though, it was bright and warm. We saw Unzipped, a documentary about the making of Isaac Mizrahi's fall 1994 collection, and a panel discussion featuring Iris Apfel that coincided with the Rare Bird of Fashion exhibit. Iris and Robin Givhan, fashion editor for the Washington Post, had a lot of interesting things to say about the politics of women's clothes (especially for politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton).

The gift shop was full of crazy accessories inspired by the exhibit: necklaces as big as salad plates, huge bracelets, lots of feathers. I got this fascinator and wore it until we had to go back out into the nasty weather.

After the museum closed, we had an hour and a half to kill before the train home. We walked over to a little cafe, lured by signs promising Aztec hot chocolate and a chocolate fountain. I was initially skeptical about the idea of a shared pool of chocolate, but the proprietor assured us that it was sanitary. (Also, it was free and we were starving, so that tipped the balance in favor of the fountain.) We ate a bunch of chocolate-covered things, drank hot chocolate, and then ran over to the train station, where we huddled on the open-air platform waiting for the train back to Boston. It was a fun winter outing--though, someday, I would like to visit Salem when it's not freezing cold.

Fikapause

2009-11-23T00:15:00.005-05:00

It's no secret that Stephen and I are big-time fans of all things Scandinavian. We've been saving up for a while to take a trip to Sweden, the land of (some of) my ancestors. And we're rabid consumers of anything Danish, Finnish, Swedish or Norwegian that can be found stateside: IKEA, Marimekko, H&M, and the little Scandinavian import store we visited in Portland. Stephen even carved me a Dala horse last Christmas.

It's a particularly work-heavy time of the semester right now; I'm spending a lot of weekend hours in the computer lab at school. By mid-afternoon, I'm pretty burnt out, so we've recently adopted fika, the traditional Swedish ritual of sitting down for coffee and pastries with colleagues and friends. Around 4:30, Stephen and I head to the picturesque Danish Pastry House in Medford for mocha and cookies.

Chocolate-dipped macaroons may not be the most nutritious afternoon snack, but it's nice to sit in a warm and cozy cafe when the sun is setting at a depressingly early hour. If anyone knows how to brighten these short winter days, it must be the northern Europeans, right?

Hallowe'en

2009-11-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

What would it take for me to really like Halloween? Kids, I think. I need to have some kids (my own or someone else's) to take trick-or-treating, or a house (or someone else's) where I can give out candy to kids. It just seems like a great holiday for children. It was so fun to dress up when I was little and walk around town with a million other kids, collecting candy from people. Our town had a big Halloween parade on the evening of the 31st, and everyone (families, college students, dogs, whatever) would get dressed up and march down Main Street in the dark to the firehouse, then disburse into the surrounding streets. It was always cold that night, and our parents made us wear winter coats over our costumes even though cats/angels/princesses obviously don't wear puffy jackets. The best part (besides the candy and the dressing-up) was that my mom let my sister and I wear makeup to go with our costumes. (This is a big reason that I was a fortune-teller for so many years: they have to wear lots of makeup.) The smell of certain lipsticks still makes me think of Halloween.

I've never enjoyed the holiday as an adult, though. I like the idea of a Day of the Dead, but the grown-up, American version of the holiday seems to center around (1) violence (blood and gore, dismemberment, brain-gobbling zombies) and (2) skimpy outfits for women (sexy nurse, sexy pirate, etc). Ugh. Where is the creativity? The way I feel about Halloween is the way many people feel about Valentine's Day: it's too commercialized. I mean, entire stores go up for Halloween. Even V-day isn't that bad.

So how did I, the Halloween Grinch (or Halloweenie, as a friend dubbed me), celebrate this year? I went back to the holiday's historical roots. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Jack-o'-Lantern of legend was a wandering soul who carried a carved turnip lit by an ember. So we carved dracula turnips and hung them in the window. Between that and our real live black cat, I think we did the holiday justice.

Maybe next year I'll find a candy-dispensing house to borrow.

Eat Donuts, Sleep, Read

2009-10-31T13:06:00.006-04:00

For our Columbus Day trip this year, we drove to New York to visit my parents and siblings. You know those IndieBound bookmarks that say “Eat Sleep Read”? That pretty much sums up the weekend. I was still knocked out from a cold I got in September, and I spent 25 hours sleeping it off between Saturday morning and Monday afternoon. When I wasn’t sleeping, I visited the Village Tea Room with my sister, an Italian restaurant in Gardiner with my parents, got a bunch of take-out with Stephen, and had Sunday brunch at my parents’ favorite bagel place. I finished up my September book and read through all of my mom’s back issues of Real Simple and O.

On Monday, Stephen and I went apple-picking (and zinnia-picking, and cider donut-eating) with my mom. It was an overcast day, but the foliage was sparkling and the view was magnificent.

We got Macouns, Cortlands, a couple of Empires, and one of the last few Macintoshes on the trees. No Deliciouses, Red or Golden, because I dislike their texture and find them flavorless. And their name seems like a marketing stunt, like naming Greenland “Greenland”. I’ll be the judge of deliciousness.

Stephen thought the Goldens were pretty good, though. Here he is eating one.

Afterward, we went to the farm stand and bought half a dozen cider donuts for the long drive back to Cambridge. They were warm, fresh out of the donut-maker, so Stephen ate four of them in the first twenty minutes. I can’t blame him.

When we did this around the same time last fall, I wore shorts and a t-shirt. Hard to believe that now. It was way too cold for that this time. It feels like we transitioned very quickly from late summer to late fall this year, weather-wise. I like it when October has warm days and chilly nights. But this past month—in eastern Mass, anyway—it was just plain chilly. We’ve already had snow twice!

Maize

2009-10-29T23:31:00.001-04:00

I’ve been in corn mazes before. A farm near my parents’ house grows one every year, and I’m always surprised by how disorienting it is. The paths are so narrow that you have to walk single-file, and the plants obscure and muffle everything outside the maze. It’s the perfect setting for a horror movie.

I also got lost (for a couple of minutes) in a real cornfield once, while playing tag with friends. It was late fall, and the plants were withered and brown, the stalks crackling around our feet. As we scattered in all directions, I got turned around and couldn’t figure out how to get out again. Eventually, I stood on my toes and looked toward the horizon. I saw the ridge that borders our town to the west and remembered that I’d come from the opposite direction. I turned and ran to safety.

So I’m no stranger to cornfields. But the maze we visited earlier this fall in Sterling, Mass, was by far the most elaborate, confusing, and complex I’ve ever seen. This eight-acre monstrosity took us over an hour to navigate. Apparently some people stay in all day, finding all the different paths to the exit. It isn’t creepy—the paths are wide and the maze is staffed by helpful people who’ll point you in the right direction if you get frustrated. There’s even a snack bar halfway through. We went with a large group that split up at the entrance; I stuck with Stephen because he is an excellent navigator, and was able to get us out in a flash once I was ready to leave (read: tired and whiny). He must have a compass, an atlas, and a topographic map hardwired into his brain—he almost never gets lost. If we drive somewhere just once (even if I’m driving and I go the wrong way or we turn around a bunch of times or it’s dark or whatever) he remembers the route forever.

I really don’t understand it. I mean, I’ve gotten lost at IKEA.

Which is why I don't go into cornfields alone anymore.

Brimfield

2009-09-29T22:23:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure when I first heard about the madness that is the Brimfield antique show, but it's been mentioned to me several times since I moved to Massachusetts. The show is held three times a year, in May, July, and September. Finally, this month, I got a chance to go with Stephen and his parents.

Wow. So much stuff! Great old pine cupboards, pie safes, woodworking tools, luggage, boats, lanterns, jewelry, snowshoes, quilts, toys, butter churns, candle molds, fur coats--everything your grandparents and my grandparents and some of the stuff that their grandparents had. Literal acres of stuff. I'm glad I didn't have much money to spend, because that helped me filter out a lot of what we passed. My only regret was not being able to afford a few yards of the vintage French ticking fabric we saw midway through the afternoon. Like I need more fabric.

I did get these great old shoes in one of the clothing tents for $5. The proprietor had been carrying them around to show after show and couldn't find anyone they fit, so she threw them on the sale table. Yahoo!

Such bargains are dangerous, though. I have trouble passing up any clothing that fits and is on sale, and I've got overburdened dresser drawers and several bulging boxes of shoes to show for it. I'm trying to pare things down a little. I took a bag full of underused stuff to a clothing swap last week and managed to walk away with just two new shirts. I've got a few nice things left that I don't wear much, so I made an appointment to consign them at a local second-hand store next month. The store offer consignors a discount if they spend their earnings there, which sounds like a recipe for disaster (of the not-making-any-money-and-buying-more-stuff variety), but my intention going into this venture is to put more thought and care into buying fewer, nicer things. We'll see how that goes.

I do like these shoes, though.

Locavore

2009-09-27T15:45:00.006-04:00

We had a breakfast-for-dinner party before school started this month. The impetus for this celebration was a package of bacon that my sister and brother-in-law got us from a farm near their house. I've been a semi-vegetarian for eight years (vegetarian from 2001 to 2008, pescetarian for the last year), but I decided that this gift of very special meat--local, cruelty-free, organic, reputedly delicious-- constituted an exceptional circumstance. There was far too much of it for Stephen and me to eat on our own in a single meal, though, so we invited a few people over and made a local food feast with sliced cantaloupe and roasted onions and red potatoes from our farm share. The waffles weren't local, but they were heart-shaped and delicious, thanks to Stephen's waffle iron and the apple pie spice our friends brought for the batter.

The drinks weren't local, either, although the limoncello was organic. This is one my favorite warm-weather drinks: limoncello with cranberry juice, lemonade, and soda water. Something with coffee might have been more thematically appropriate, but the menu was thrown together with what we had in the kitchen an hour before dinner, so we didn't have time for too many artistic flourishes. We covered the table with butcher paper and lit beeswax candles in jelly jars for atmosphere. I love the smell of beeswax.

I'm surprised to see us eating different foods out of our farm share this year. Last year, we tried (though didn't particularly like) the kohlrabi and fennel, but ignored a lot of the boring staples. This year, we've given away a lot of our weirder veggies (yes, I do think fennel is weird--that licorice smell!) and feasted on the everyday stuff: carrots and carrots and more carrots, eggplant, kale, garlic, potatoes and onions. Mark Bittman has helped us out enormously with thinking of new ways to cook the same old stuff. We've had fried brown rice with bok choy, stuffed kale leaves with fresh mozzarella, baked quinoa with potatoes and whole cloves of garlic. We're definitely not true locavores, but we're doing what we can here and there. I'm glad that the modern sustainability movement is becoming more moderate in its demands: eat less meat, eat local more often, buy organic when you can. It's a lot easier to adhere to guidelines like those than to cut whole swaths of the supermarket out of your life. I do try to avoid the Cheetos aisle, though.

Nap Time

2009-09-21T23:03:00.002-04:00

I spent 24 of the last 48 hours sleeping. What I thought was some weird new autumn allergy last week turned into a full-blown cold on Saturday evening. I’d initially hoped to have recovered in time for work today, but ultimately spent the morning (and a good chunk of the afternoon) snoozing. Luckily, I don't have a fever, so I think I can safely assume that it's not the dreaded H1N1. Iggy seemed to enjoy the company, even though I slept through most of the day. He sat at the foot of the bed until I woke up at 2pm, then retired to his new favorite hang-out, the box that our digital bathroom scale came in.

I broke my self-imposed quarantine to go see The Informant! last night with Stephen and his parents. (Sorry, fellow Somerville moviegoers—I hope I didn’t infect any of you.) I don’t usually take note of movie soundtracks, but I thought the music added so much comedy to the film. Matt Damon just amazes me. How can the same person play Jason Bourne and Mark Whitacre with equal plausibility? (Acting, I guess.)

On a side note, if I haven’t mentioned this before, I love the word “movie”. It’s so old-fashioned. “Remember when we used to go see those still pictures at the theater? But now they’ve got these new ones that move!” I’d like to bring back the term “talkie,” too.

O New England

2009-08-29T13:18:00.002-04:00

Well hello, End of August. The last month has been a whirlwind: a week and a half in Nantucket, a weeklong trip to Maine, a weekend wedding in New Jersey; over 24 hours of driving, three ferry rides, a bus trip, and a 45-minute flight on a plane the size of a large van. I also wrote two papers, participated in a mock press conference, handed in a group project, and squeezed in nine days of work at the office. August was a lot of fun.

There were some un-fun parts, though. Our car started making funny noises when we pulled off the highway in Maine, and we ended up spending a good chunk of the week finding a mechanic on Mt. Desert Island and getting it all back in working order. (By the way, if you’re ever in this bind, we highly recommend this place—the guy was great, invited my whole family back into the shop so we could see what he was doing, talked to us about health care reform, let Stephen listen to different parts of the car with a stethoscope.)

And there was the supremely uncool matter of having to write a paper while on vacation yet again. This is one aspect of grad school that I will not miss: all of the assignments tend to come due right in the middle of August, when my family and Stephen’s are on vacation. It was particularly difficult this year because the house where we stayed in Maine didn’t even have electrical sockets in some of the rooms--just a single light fixture that was wired directly into the wall. It was a beautiful old three-story house with wide porches, tons of windows and lovely old wooden furniture, but the electrical system had clearly not been updated in at least half a century. Which is what I usually like in a vacation house—something a little rustic, a place with history—but it’s not an ideal setting in which to conduct internet-based research.

There were awesome parts, too. The weather and water were warm enough to go swimming several times in Nantucket, and I rode a bike for the first time in years. In Maine, the weather was cool and crisp. We walked around Jordan Pond and spent a foggy afternoon in my favorite garden. On Saturday, we sat near the shore and watched huge waves caused by Hurricane Bill crash on the rocks. (That was before this happened, which might have given us pause.) And I got to catch up with friends from college (and do a lot of eating and drinking and dancing) at the wedding in New Jersey.

This morning, it’s rainy and cooler. The oppressive heat has finally broken. I find myself, surprisingly, starting to anticipate fall weather and the turning of the leaves. I’m not 100% ready for summer to be over, but I’m getting there.

P.S. The title refers to this great song. And since we're on the topic of the Decemberists, this video is pretty cool, too. And if you think that's neat, wait til you see this.

What's Up, Doc?

2009-08-10T23:57:00.005-04:00

So it turns out I don’t have osteoarthritis after all. At least, the physician’s assistant at my doctor’s office no longer thinks I do. She diagnosed OA when I complained of knee pain at my physical last November. I think her exact words were, "Well, these things happen as we get older." Thanks a lot, lady. I'm 26!

Anyway, I tried her suggestions (ibuprofen, rest, ice) and didn’t see any improvement. If anything, the pain got worse, so I went back a couple of weeks ago for another exam. The PA twisted and pushed my joints around to test the ligaments, but everything seemed sound. You know when you have a health problem, and then you can't replicate it once you get to the doctor's office, and you think they think that you're making it up? I was worried about that. But then, right before the end of the appointment, my left knee started to swell up rather noticeably. Thank you, knee! So nice of you to cooperate. As a result, the PA gave me a requisition for some X-rays and a referral to a hotshot orthopedist in Boston. In the meantime, I’ve got this Ace bandage, and a new potential diagnosis: patellofemoral syndrome.

I must say that I’m relieved by this development. Not that I won’t end up with OA eventually--it runs in my family, and most people encounter it as they age, so I almost certainly will at some point. But I hope to live another decade or two before that happens.

Economic Stimulus

2009-07-29T19:04:00.003-04:00

There’s a Marimekko store about a mile and a half from our apartment, in Huron Village. We’ve driven past it several times but have never ventured inside. This weekend, though, as we were on our way to Sofra for lunch, I noticed a huge “Final Sale Days!” sign in the window, so I convinced Stephen to stop on the way back and browse with me.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the classic Unikko fabric (sacrilege!), but I fell in love with this pink-on-pink version when I saw it in the Scandinavian shop we visited in Portland in June. I couldn’t reconcile myself to the price then (this stuff is not cheap), but I steeled myself this time and got enough to make a couple of pillowcases for the bed. We really don’t need any more pillowcases, but the fabric is so lovely and summery that I'm sure they'll be used frequently. I got this little glasses case in the same fabric, rationalizing that I’ve been carrying my sunglasses around in an old sock for the past year and am ready for an upgrade.

We got some birdy fabric, too, to make throw pillows for the couch. And then I saw this plywood tray, the same one I’ve long coveted in one of the pictures in this book (scroll down), and decided to be completely reckless and buy that, too. The staff seemed grateful to make a sale—they said business has been slow lately, but they’re encouraged that it will pick up soon because there are more smudgy noseprints on the outside of the windows when they arrive in the morning lately. Some of those noseprints, no doubt, were from me, although I didn’t admit it. Oh, Finnland! Oh, Scandinavia! How I love your homegoods.

Iggy Stardust

2009-07-26T11:02:00.006-04:00

We got a cat! His name is Iggy, he’s six years old, and quite big for a cat. I mean, he’s tall/long, but also rather…plump. We’re going to take him to the vet and see if he needs to be put on a diet.

In the meantime, we’ve been bonding with this new addition. Iggy’s very affectionate and rather dog-like. He follows us from room to room, sits between us on the couch when we watch TV, and likes to nap at the foot of the bed while I'm reading. (To minimize the potential for allergic reactions, though, I always kick him out of the bedroom before going to sleep.)

The cat came to us from one of my co-workers. Her fiancé is deathly allergic to cats, so her parents have been watching Igs since she moved in with him, but they travel too frequently to really take care of him well. My co-worker has been looking for a new home for Iggy for a while now, so this worked out well for all of us. I was nervous at first that Iggy would trigger Stephen’s cat allergies, but he's been okay so far (fingers crossed).

Iggy’s been really good about not scratching the furniture, although he has done some serious damage to the catnip mice we got him. Here are three of his toys (from right to left): a brand new one, a 3-day-old one, and a third that he’s played with for a week. Poor things. Thank God we don’t have real rodents in the apartment. As it is, we come home to every evening to evidence to the latest Catnip Massacre: little felt ears and tails and bits of stuffing scattered throughout the apartment.

But we don't mind too much.

Return to Georges Island

2009-07-20T22:36:00.009-04:00

I can't believe it's been almost two years since our last trip to the Harbor Islands. This Sunday, we once again took the ferry to Georges Island. Stephen brought his pinhole camera along, which is what these photos are from. They're a little blurry, but I like the immediacy of the images. They weren't filtered through lenses or fancy digital settings. It was just the object and the film, and a tiny hole in a piece of cardboard.

Ads on the T for the Boston Harbor Islands say, "Minutes away. Worlds apart." I can't think of a better description--it's almost bizarre how tranquil the islands are, given that you can see the Boston skyline and the runway at Logan Airport nearby. After battling our way through the lunchtime crowd at Faneuil Hall, it was a huge relief to board the ferry and chug out into the harbor.

Located 7 miles from Long Wharf, George's Island encompasses 39 acres at high tide and 53 at low. According to the National Park Service, "The island sustained agricultural use for two hundred years until 1825 when the US Government acquired the island for coastal defense. Over the next twenty years, the island was dramatically altered and one of the country’s finest forts was built. Dedicated in 1847, the fort’s defensive design was virtually obsolete upon completion. However, the fort served as a training ground, patrol point, and Civil War prison that gained a favorable reputation for the humane treatment of its Confederate prisoners." Today, the fort is a National Historic Landmark, and is open to the public year-round. Boy, does it sound like I'm doing their PR or what?

But I love it there. Our visit always seems too short. I like to lie on the grass near the ocean for an hour or two and let my mind go blank. Then we spend some time exploring the twisting stairways of the fort and poking around the old granite outbuildings, trying to imagine what each room and structure was once used for. I invariably hear kids ask their parents if the island is haunted, which isn't surprising. It has the spooky air of a place that has lived many lives.

Lives that only ghosts remember now.

Midsummer Review

2009-07-15T19:35:00.006-04:00

While looking at a gallery of reader-submitted vacation photos on the Boston Globe's website today, I realized that I have done a poor job of documenting my own summer adventures thus far. Stephen's camera broke a few weeks ago, so I'm sort of scraping things together here, picture-wise, but here are some of the Greatest Hits of Summer '09.

Maine

We spent half a week in early July in Acadia National Park with my parents and youngest brother. It was cool and foggy, much as it has been in Boston for the past 2 months, only more picturesque. In our four days there, we managed to squeeze in several of my favorite Acadian activities:

1. Sitting in the gazebo at Thuya Garden (my mother and I agreed that this is our "happy place"--the place you're supposed to think of when you're trying to dispel anxiety and slow your heart rate).

2. Hiking the 3 mile loop around Jordan Pond, followed by tea at Jordan Pond House.

3. Eating ice cream and sandwiches in Bar Harbor. (If you're ever looking for a quick and tasty lunch in the area, I highly recommend the cheddar/pesto/apple panini at Michelle's Brown Bag Cafe on Main Street. We had lunch there on Friday, then went back on Saturday to get more sandwiches for the ride home.)

4. Shopping at the Rooster Brother in Ellsworth, followed by dinner at the Mex, where I always eat way too much and regret it.

5. Walking through the Asticou Azalea Garden, followed by pastries from the bakery at the Colonel's in Northeast Harbor

On our last morning, the sun finally came out, so Stephen and I took a spontaneous hike up the South Bubble to Bubble Rock, which is even more vertigo-inducing than I remembered. Even Stephen wouldn't go near it.

Chicks!
Photo courtesy of themaclellans.com

Stephen's mom recently got two new baby chicks for her coop. They're now a couple of weeks old, and so tiny and soft, just as you imagine a baby chick would be. We've spent lots of time hanging out with them and feeding them insects and Cheerios. Stephen's poor dog is very jealous and can't understand why we lavish attention on little fluffballs that can't even do tricks. But we've got to enjoy them extra now while they're still so cute and easy to catch!

Cupcakes and the Children's Museum

Last weekend, we got dressed up in our fancy clothes and went to the Ritz-Carlton for cupcake tea. (These cupcakes are actually from Lulu's, but you can see the real deal on the hotel's website.) The cupcakes were delicious and gorgeously crafted, but five cupcakes--even five mini cupcakes--is a lot to take in one meal. I only got through three, and that took about an hour. Woo!

Afterward, we took Stephen's three little cousins to the Children's Museum, which I've never visited before. It was fun for all ages, but I wish I had come as a kid to crawl around on the New Balance Climb. Lucky ducks.

I've also been taking a couple of summer classes, reading, and wrapping up the fiscal year at work. Of course, I still have a zillion things I want to do before the fall. I think I'd better make a late summer to-do list, since the next 1.5 months are likely to go by as quickly as the last 1.5 did. At least the sun is finally out, so we can get down to the business of sandal-wearing and food-grilling.

Housekeeping

2009-06-21T11:07:00.006-04:00

It feels more like spring/fall than summer around here (though today is the summer solstice) so I made an apple pie on Thursday night. I was pretty sick last week, and didn't slow down like I should have--I kept going to the gym, kept going to work--so although the sore throat and congestion are long gone, I still felt worn out well into this week. On Thursday night, Stephen went out with friends, but I stayed in and sliced apples while listening to NPR. It was incredibly restorative. The smell of cinnamony things baking can correct a multitude of wrongs.

Making pie always reminds me of my first grade class back at Duzine Elementary. During Writer's Workshop one day, I raised my hand to ask the teacher how to spell "pie". She told me to try sounding it out first. So I did what you're supposed to do when you sound things out: I went through the word, sound by sound, writing each out phonetically.

What sound does it start with? Pa.
And then that vowel sound. Ie, clearly.
But if you say the word reeaally slowly, as you do when you're sounding it out, you'll notice that there's also a quiet ya that follows the ie sound.
Therefore: paieya.

My teacher had to laugh when she saw what I had written: "Way too many letters!" I remember thinking, after she spelled it correctly for me, that it would have been much easier for both of us if she had just told me the three letters to begin with.

My June book has got me thinking about housekeeping and homemaking. I don't know what the "real" difference is between those words, but to me, housekeeping is managing logistics: paying bills, changing the smoke detector batteries, putting up storm windows. The stuff that maintains the house as a functioning structure. Homemaking is much more abstract, complex, emotional, personal--the process of making the house into a home. Making the bed, planting a garden, baking bread, making conversation, sitting and reading. Certainly, there's a lot of overlap in the housekeeping/homemaking Venn diagram: taking out the garbage, for instance, is something that must be done, per contract with the landlord (ergo, housekeeping), and also makes the house much more pleasant to live in (homemaking).

What surprises me is how much I like doing the homemaking stuff. I guess, on some level, as old-fashioned as it sounds, I identify as a homemaker. Not full-time, clearly, but perhaps a homemaking... amateur? enthusiast? dilettante? Shouldn't be surprising, really, since every woman in my family subscribes to Martha Stewart Living, and we all love to bake. It's just something I've never put a name to, I guess.

Portland!

2009-06-11T19:39:00.004-04:00

We took the Downeaster to Portland, Maine last Saturday. As usual, we miscalculated our travel time in both directions, and ended up arriving atboth the Boston and Portland train stations with just minutes to spare. (When we got to North Station at 8:48 am, the man at the ticket window said: "You've got two minutes. Track 7. GO!")

One of our main reasons for visiting was to see the biennial at the Portland Museum of Art before it closed. We spent an hour or so afterward checking out the rest of their collection, and were impressed at the breadth of artists represented.

The first time we visited Portland, a couple of years ago, we didn't do any research beforehand and ended up wandering, hungry, around the Old Port for a while and then eating a somewhat unsatisfying lunch at an empty restaurant around 3pm.

This time around, we spent a couple of hours compiling a long list of places to visit from various web and print sources. Unfortunately, some were a little out-of-date, like the one that recommended a visit to the Portland Public Market, which apparently closed in 2006. Boy were we pretty surprised to peek in the door and find bulldozers inside!

Here are the places we visited, in case I forget before we go again:

Lunch: Walter's
Stephen got a burger, I had the Caesar salad. Both were satisfying. We sat upstairs in a quiet, sunny room.

Dinner: Flatbread Company
Louder and darker than our lunch spot, but the food was delicious here, too. We split one of their specials, a flatbread with asparagus, aioli, chevre and scallions.

Stores:
Simply Scandinavian
I was so excited to see a Scandinavian import store on the map when we arrived. They had gorgeous (and expensive) Marimekko fabrics, imported sweaters, handpainted clogs, and shelves and shelves of Dala horses.

Leroux Kitchen
We tend to visit kitchen stores whenever we go on vacation. This one was pretty fun. I managed to stop myself from buying the heart-shaped Le Creuset oven (the thought of toting around an 8 lb. cast iron pot for the rest of the day was too much), and we left with just a garlic peeler.

Material Objects
Stephen got a pair of Clark's for $10 here, but I came up empty.

Places we didn't visit but hope to next time:

Maine Squeeze Juice Cafe
I was really thirsty after our trip to the museum so we ran over to Maine Squeeze, but it was already closed.

Beal's (or any other local ice cream place)
Cold Stone was the closest option when the ice cream urge hit, and the people there were super friendly, but I'd prefer something local.

Soakology
This place looks fun, but I'm not sure I'll be able to convince Stephen to sip tea and get a pedicure with me.

First Day at the Beach, 2009

2009-05-30T23:30:00.005-04:00

After a long week of rain and gloom in an office devoid of co-workers, the skies parted this morning, full of hope and the promise of a high temps in the 70s. Stephen suggested a visit to Plum Island, about an hour away on the north shore.

We saw a few brave souls swimming there, but most visitors enjoyed the beach as we did: by reading and napping on a narrow strip of sun-warmed sand. Stephen tried to even out his farmer's tan. I wore SPF 55.

The waves were noisy enough to drown out all other noises, so it felt secluded and calm there despite the men fishing a few yards away, and the children wading beyond them. The combination of the roaring waves and the bleaching sun and the astringent breeze always makes me feel scrubbed clean after a day like this--exfoliated in soul as well as body, and exhausted, and ready for ice cream.

The marshy interior of the beach was cordoned off for plover and tern nesting season, which began on April 1. We skirted the nesting grounds on our way back to the car, and saw dozens of fat little birds running back and forth between the matted reeds, so I guess the conservation program is working. I love watching those tiny, earnest shore birds dash about, like pint-sized teapots balancing on toothpicks. They're so darn cute. Just look at this thing and tell me if you don't agree.

Uniform

2009-05-12T22:42:00.008-04:00

In these late days of spring, by turns breezy and sodden, I've established two work-day uniforms. If the forecast calls for high temperatures near the 70s, I wear a light sweater, a cotton skirt and opaque tights with clogs. If the forecast is cooler, it's corduroys, a cardigan, a linen scarf and my ubiquitous yellow hoodie. I don't know when I became such a corduroy fanatic, but I've got 6 pairs and have worn them so much this year that the wale has started to wear away around the knees.

Luckily, I found a couple of new pairs on deep discount recently (one for $15, the other free) with which to restock. They were both several inches too long, though, so I took them to the tailor to get hemmed. I don't mind doing simple alterations on my own, like adding darts or stitching up pockets, but I didn't relish the thought of handstitching through three layers of corduroy around four pant cuffs.

The only other time I've had a garment professionally altered was when I got my prom dress fitted in eleventh grade, so I had the odd sensation as I walked into the shop this week that I ought to have my mother with me. The transaction was altogether less dramatic than I remember the dress-fitting being. The tailor didn't make me put the pants on and stand on a platform in front of a 180-degree mirror or anything. I just dropped off a sample pair and asked her to match the inseams. Piece of cake.

Now that I've gotten them all fixed up, you'd think I would be inclined to hang these pairs in my closet to keep out wrinkles and preserve their crisp center creases, but I'm all hanger-ed out right now.

Each May, the recycling coordinator at work collects all kinds of stuff left behind by students moving out of their dorms. Charities take most of the home goods, and she sells the clothes to second-hand stores, but no one wants the hangers. Even returning students would rather buy new ones than sort through the huge tangle of old ones to find a matched set.

I can't bear to see them get tossed, though, so I've decided to sort through them all this summer, grouping by size, shape, and color, and bundle them into packs of 10. You wouldn't believe how many different kinds of hangers there are. Wooden, plastic, wire; white, black, jewel-toned, pastel, neon, opaque, translucent and iridescent; powder-coated, flocked, foam-padded, cardboard-covered; some with hooks and clips, and a lot of these chunky ones from Ikea. I've sorted through about a thousand so far, with three garbage bags' worth left to go, and the seniors and grad students haven't even moved out yet. In the fall, we'll give them away for free on move-in day. It's a good promotion for our office and for the general greening efforts at the university, and I hope it will help people reuse rather than re-buy. In the meantime, it's giving my brain a nice vacation until classes begin again in June.

We're six!

2009-04-30T22:10:00.006-04:00

Photo by Ian MacLellan
Today is our sixth (dating) anniversary. Stephen and I met when he was 18 and I was 19, and starting dating 7 months later. I've been thinking about that time, late April 2003, trying to remember the details.

I remember introducing Stephen to my boss at the library (a very sweet motherly person who I ended up working with for four years) during finals week. She asked, "So, will he visit you when you're studying in Santa Fe next fall?" and my mind boggled at the idea of trying to imagine something so far in the future. I had no idea what would happen. It was my first relationship.

Six Aprils ago, I was a sophomore in college. I made $5.40 an hour at my work study job. I had never been on an airplane. I had just declared a major (Studio Art) and had completed Wilderness First Responder training a month earlier. I went home for the summer, and Stephen took a cross-country trip with his friend Sam. We didn't use cell phones then, so Stephen would call my parents' house from pay phones by the highway. I wrote him letters. When we got back to campus, we started the weekly ritual of The $20 Date: $10 for Chinese food at Main Moon, $4 for an ice cream sundae at Maxwell's, and $6 for two movie tickets (student discount) at the Hamilton Theater.

The thing that stinks about moving from place to place is that it means you can no longer have all of the things you love in one spot. I'll never be able to get Greek take-out in Cambridge and go have a picnic on the green in Hamilton. I can't take a walk through Beacon Hill on a brisk spring day and then warm up with chai at the Village Tea Room in New Paltz.

But that's okay, because wherever I go, Stephen is there.

Lately

2009-04-21T20:29:00.005-04:00

I'm:
listening to The Crane Wife LP, again and again
practicing my whistle (I'm a terrible whistler, always have been)
eating homemade lunches instead of the usual dining hall fare
cheering at the Boston Marathon
pet-sitting two guinea pigs, an eighteen-year-old Siamese cat, and a turtle named Turtle Boy
visiting the Gropius House
ruing not backing up the files on my desktop

Conspicuous Consumption

2009-04-09T23:23:00.006-04:00

I've always dreamt of having a couch in my kitchen. You never see that, but why not? There are so many times when I'm sitting in the kitchen, either waiting for water to boil or letting my tea steep or chatting with Stephen while he chops onions, and I always think how nice it would be to have a cushy couch to sit on. Our current apartment is too small for such luxuries, but maybe someday I'll have a big kitchen and I'll move this much-loved loveseat in next to the fridge.

I had an interesting conversation with some co-workers at lunch the other day about pleasure of purchase vs. pride of ownership. I think we got into it by discussing Costco and other emporiums of cheap goods. Not that cheap goods are necessarily worthless or "bad", but those big box stores capitalize on the impulse to buy for the thrill of the bargain: "Who cares if these towels pill up and fade after 3 washes? I'll just toss them and buy some new ones. They're only two bucks!"

So, what to do? I like buying things. But I guess giving up shopping is not the point. The point is that cheapness shouldn't be an end in itself, that you shouldn't buy crap just because it's on sale. I hate how cheapness lowers my purchasing inhibitions: "This shirt is okay. Whoa, it's only five dollars! Maybe I'll get two." You know how things always look more appealing when you find out that they're free, in a "Why not?" kind of way? I trust myself more when I buy expensive things, because it usually means that I'm motivated by anticipated pride of ownership rather than the thrill of purchase. Perhaps my strategy should be to ask: "If this cost twice as much, would it still be worth it to me?"

I thought about all this last weekend when I got a new dustpan set. After spending an hour contorting myself to vacuum up every last dust bunny in all the hard-to-reach corners of the apartment, I found this little gem at Abodeon on Sunday morning: a super light, well constructed, beautifully designed dustpan and broom. It was much more expensive than the average set you'd find at Walmart, but it works well and is a joy to own. (You can see a little animation of it in action if you visit www.normann-copenhagen.com and click on Products > Dustpan & Broom).

Since we're now talking about purchases: I've been looking at this brochure (big PDF, in German, I think) about the inspiration for the new PS Collection stuff that's supposed to come to IKEA this month. You see that chest of drawers on page 29? That would bring me pride of ownership, don't you think?

Weekend Window Update

2009-04-04T18:03:00.005-04:00

Another Saturday spent cleaning. I started washing dishes the minute I woke up. Stephen left for his parents' house at noon (he's helping build a chicken coop for their yard), and when he called to check in at 4 pm, I was still in my pajamas, scrubbing down the windowsills with baking soda paste. I also rearranged the bookshelves, polished the wooden furniture, flushed the drains with boiling water, and replaced all of those little felt floor-protector pads that you stick on the bottom of chair legs. It's amazing how much my list of home-maintenance duties has expanded since college, when it was more like this:

1. Make bed.
2. Wash laundry.
3. Vacuum floor.
4. Go play!

While I cleaned, I listened to last week's episode of This American Life, Scenes from a Recession. It was sad, and fascinating, especially the part about the FDIC takeover of a regional bank in Washington State. The snippet of a song by former Circuit City employees after Act Three is definitely worth a listen, too.

When I finished up in the kitchen, I noticed this little beauty blooming on the windowsill. I can't remember what variety these are, but they're lovely. Amazing what dirt and seeds can make, no?

P.S. I was having trouble with the camera yesterday and didn't like how the photos in the quilt post came out, so there are new ones up now.

Something(s) New

2009-04-02T23:54:00.012-04:00

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

A new quilt! This was a present from Stephen's parents. I've talked about this before, but I love blankets and can never have too many. To me, they are the embodiment of Home. Mmm, nothing like a nice cotton quilt.

I've always liked the saturated colors and bold graphics of the ones at Anthropologie. And this one provides a particularly stunning backdrop for my burgeoning collection of cotton tank tops:

My enthusiasm for these is rapidly outpacing our capacity for storage. It was comical when I came home with two new tank tops yesterday and found that I can no longer fit them all into a single dresser drawer. Each time I stuff a new one in, the one on the end pops out. So I'll either have to triage these or just make sure that a few are in the laundry basket at any one time.

Lamely, I didn't fool anyone on April Fools' Day. I almost never do, although I'm quite gullible myself. I don't like practical jokes and have a lot of trouble keeping a straight face. An intern of ours told me that she texted her roommate in the morning: "It's snowing!" Ingenious: plausible, benign, but devastating in the short term. I'll have to remember it for next year.

Sting Like a Bee

2009-03-26T20:54:00.007-04:00

Today was the exercising-est day ever. I went to two classes at the gym, one on mini-trampolines and then a weight-lifting class during which I became painfully aware of every muscle in my abdomen. Wow. Who knew obliques could even feel that much hurt.

I also went to self-defense class in the afternoon. It's the eighth week of the course, so we've learned enough that we're now being tested on combination attacks. For the last five minutes of class, we got into groups of three and took turns fending off repeated choke holds, headlocks, and sleeper holds from two "attackers".

I really like the course and have learned a lot from it, but it's emotionally exhausting, too, because it forces me to confront some of my worst fears. One of the very few things that I dislike about living in the city (and the main reason that I plan to move away in the next few years) is the heightened sense of vulnerability I have here. When I walk around alone at night, I think of all the police alerts I've gotten at work in the last two and half years about women being attacked around campus. I know these things don't only happen in urban areas, but I also don't remember getting campus alerts about armed robberies, stabbings, attempted assaults and abductions, etc., in my tiny undergraduate town. I've seen all of these and more since moving here in 2006, each new incident a reminder of the need for constant vigilance. The possibility of attack is something that I try not to dwell on (I tend to be an anxious/obsessive person to begin with), but I'm forced to think very concretely about it whenever I go to self-defense class because we discuss (and act out) all kinds of sinister scenarios.

The class hasn't taken away my fear (I don't think that's the point), but it has given me a constructive way to channel it whenever I start to feel panicked. The sense of self-efficacy I've gained there has started to impact other parts of my life, as well. I feel more strong and self-reliant in general, and I've stopped thinking that just because I'm small, I can't fend off an attack.

It's also got me thinking about other kinds of "self-defense". Negotiation, for instance, is another fear of mine--I associate it with conflict, competition, and assertiveness, things I tend to avoid in professional and academic settings. A friend in one of my grad classes once told me that she convinced the admissions committee to double her scholarship when she was accepted into the program, and another recently got a huge raise and a better job title using techniques that she learned in a negotiation course. When I hear things like that, I think, "I could/would never do that." But I want to learn to! So I'm going to get some books on the subject, and I hope to audit a course next year.

Spring Clean

2009-03-18T22:02:00.006-04:00

I sorted through the closets, bureaus, shelves, and shoe buckets last weekend, and came up with 3 garbage bags full of clothes to take to the Red Cross box. I was surprised to discover that I even had enough clothes to fill 3 garbage bags, much less 3 bags of extra clothes. It's days like this that make me never want to move to another apartment, ever. There's just so much stuff in our apartment, even with all of this sorting and tossing out. And we have way more furniture now than we did when we moved in two and a half years ago. We've bought a couch, two filing cabinets, and three bookshelves, and Stephen has made 3 benches, a kitchen table, a coffee table, a pine cupboard, and a sideboard for the living room. (He's still working on the rocking chair.)

It's such a great feeling to get rid of superfluous possessions, though. I'm really into it lately. My mom has been taking advantage of this eagerness to declutter, too. Whenever I visit, she gets a couple of boxes of stuff from my childhood out of the attic, along with a garbage bag, a recycling bin, and a small box for things that I want to keep. I spend the afternoon reliving piano recitals and looking at kindergarten report cards, and throwing a ton of stuff out. It's pretty fun, actually, and I get a great sense of relief/accomplishment from whittling the mountain of memorabilia down to a molehill. I've gone through about half of the stuff that's up there, and the attic pile is now quite manageable.

The apartment smells nice today, like daffodils. Early spring flowers have such a characteristic, heady smell, don't they? We went to the Smith Bulb Show on Sunday afternoon. We arrived late (45 minutes before closing) and the line snaked out of the building and down the road, so our visit was somewhat shorter than I'd hoped, but it was still totally worth the 2 hour drive. Just...flowers, everywhere. Over 1,000 plants in rampant bloom: magnolias, daffodils, tulips, freesia, peonies, hyacinths and anemones, stacked so high on every side that they towered over our heads. People swarmed over the blooms like honey bees. Afterward, we were in such a Spring mood that we went to Herrell's for hot fudge sundaes and got burritos. Then we had to hustle back to Boston to catch The Amazing Race. I love flowers, but I like reality TV a lot, too.

Not Again!

2009-03-08T19:50:00.006-04:00

I'm feeling under the weather again. (The weather, on the other hand, is feeling great. 60 degrees this afternoon!) I thought there was some kind of cosmic rule that you could only get sick once per winter. It's a rite of passage to have a miserable cold with a lingering cough in January, but after that clears up, you're supposed to be immune for another year. Right?

I'd hoped some banana muffins would perk me up, but it turns out I've got almost no appetite. The only things I crave are Advil Cold & Sinus and blueberry saft. Gimme those antioxidants!

I slept for almost twelve hours last night, then woke up at the ridiculous hour of 12:30, which turned out to be the even more ridiculous hour of 1:30 with the time change. Considered going back to bed and sleeping away the rest of the half-gone day. It was really nice to see the extra daylight this evening, though. It feels like spring is here.

Let's have a look at what's happening on the windowsill, shall we?

The morning glories are starting to climb their yarn trellis, and one of the geraniums has put out buds. It's exciting to see things getting ready to bloom outside, too. We visited our friend's garden this afternoon and saw daffodil and tulip shoots coming up. I'm hoping to see the spring bulb show this month at the Botanic Garden at Smith. I've only been there once, to see their fall chrysanthemum show a couple of years ago, and it was awesome. If I was a student there, I think I'd go sit in the greenhouse every day in the winter. Plant therapy.

Mini Break

2009-03-02T18:01:00.005-05:00

Well, whaddya know. A snow day. Great timing, too. I was up until 3:00 this morning working on a paper for my Complementary and Alternative Medicine class this afternoon (which was canceled), so it was a lovely surprise to get to sleep in. I re-edited my paper this afternoon, then took out the mountains of recyclables that were threatening to annex the kitchen and got groceries at Trader Joe's. I feel much more prepared to face the week ahead now. And I'm so grateful that the snow came today instead of tomorrow, when it would have interfered with a huge event I've been working my butt off to plan for International Women's Day. (IWD actually falls on March 8th, but we're celebrating early for scheduling reasons.)

The little polka dot dog/mouse is a souvenir from our trip to Northampton on Friday/Saturday. It's from a store called Essentials, which is a misnomer, because as colorful and charming as the merchandise is, none of it could reasonably be called essential.

We went to a Sarah Vowell reading at the Calvin Theater on Friday night, then met Stephen's brother for breakfast on Saturday (I had Morrocan french toast and green tea with mint, then ate everyone else's leftovers), visited the Eric Carle museum, and bought a pound of candy at Sweeties.

My suitcase for the trip was bizarrely color-coordinated. I hadn't realized how many of my outfits are a variation on blue and yellow until I put these together. Stephen was quick to point out that there are no fewer than five yellow sweaters in my closet (and umpteen blue t-shirts). Even my book matched. And this doesn't include the clothes that I wore on Friday: a yellow cardigan, navy-and-white striped skirt, and navy tights. It's surprising, though, because I think of myself as more of a blue/gray/red person. Cognitive dissonance!

Dye-it

2009-02-22T14:02:00.008-05:00

I was feeling well enough on Saturday night to attempt another dyeing project. I bought a pair of bright pink corduroys back in college, when they were on crazy-sale at J.Crew, but I've hardly ever worn them. They were really garish and didn't go with much, although they fit perfectly. I'd been trying to figure out what to do with them for a while: Give them away? Try to bleach them white? Make a bag out of them?

I finally hit on the idea of dyeing them when I found myself considering a pair of purple cords I found online a couple of weeks ago. I realized that my pink pants + blue dye could give me a custom color in just the shade of dark eggplant I was hoping for.

I wanted a much more saturated color than last time, so I decided to use the stovetop method and double the amount of dye I used. I also used liquid RIT this time, instead of the powder, because undissolved powder (which is very difficult to see in the inky solution) can lead to speckling.

Here's the before shot, when I pre-soaked the pants in hot water. They were BRIGHT.

The dyeing process was simple, but not easy. You bring a huge pot of water (RIT recommends 3 gallons per pound of fabric) to a simmer on the stove, then add the dye, a cup of salt, and the pre-soaked fabric. Then comes the endless, mindless part: 30 minutes of stirring. For half an hour, you have to stand by the stove, constantly agitating the fabric to make sure that it all gets evenly dyed.

The next step is the trickiest: you need to move the fabric between progressively cooler water baths until it stops bleeding color. This is the part where I wish I had a big yard and a hose, because there's great potential for mess-making and countertop-staining, and lot of running to the bathroom for fresh buckets of water. The first few moves are the hardest, when the dye is still pretty strong and the fabric is full of 140-degree water, so you have to quickly move a heavy, steaming, sopping heap of dye-soaked fabric from container to container while your assistant (thanks, Stephen!) dumps the full buckets and refills them with slightly cooler water. It's a water-intensive process. I went through at least a dozen water changes before the water was (mostly) clear. Then I hung the pants up to dry.

Here they are the next day. It's hard to tell what they'll look like when you're in the midst of the dyeing process, because they always dry a few shades lighter, but these are exactly the color I was hoping for.

Sickbed

2009-02-22T13:33:00.005-05:00

On Friday, I finally caught some version of the Late Winter Cold that I'd heretofore avoided, despite weeks of exposure to sick co-workers, family and boyfriend. It hasn't been too bad, just a sore throat and a cough so far, but I headed into the weekend with a single purpose: to be really sick and lazy for two days, then return, a least partially recovered, to work on Monday. I armed myself with:

1. 11 hours of sleep each night
2. Moyashi soba at Wagamama
3. Black currant juice (for Vitamin C)
4. Meyer lemon and honey (my mom always makes this for a sore throat)
5. Blueberry tea
6. Homemade masala chai (I like to make it with Lyle's)
7. Pizza
8. Pseudoephedrine-free faux Nyquil

So far, I've definitely succeeded at the being-really-sick-and-lazy part, but we'll have to see about the returning-to-work-recovered bit. I have my doubts.

Rest Day

2009-02-18T19:37:00.006-05:00

Ow. I'm so achey. I've been hobbling around all day, groaning about my overworked muscles. I accidentally got to the gym an hour early for trampoline class (that's right, trampoline class) yesterday, so I decided to go to the 6:00 weight-lifting class, too. It hurt. And there was a guy from ABC News filming us for a story as we flailed around with our Smartbells, so I had to work extra hard to keep the immense effort/panic from showing on my face.

I packed my gym clothes again today, but decided at the last minute to scrap the workout and go out to dinner with Stephen instead. A light snow was falling, and our waiter remarked on the beauty of the snow as it fell past the streetlights outside. I think we're all a little sick of winter, but it was beautiful. Eighteen days until Daylight Savings Time begins!

Hope Springs Eternal

2009-02-08T16:34:00.008-05:00

Spring has come to our windowsill. These are Morning Glories from a packet of seeds that my sister collected from her garden and sent me a couple of years ago. I came across them while sorting through the living room closet last week and figured they were probably long-dead, but I soaked them overnight and threw them in some soil just to see what would happen. We found an onion left over from last fall's farm share growing in the cupboard, too, so I put that in the same pot.

And lo! just a few days later, we've got a very crowded little Garden of Oddities sprouting in the kitchen. I guess I should have spaced the seeds out a bit more. It's really the wrong time of year to be growing them, and I don't have the heart to thin them, so perhaps the outlook is grim for our seedling friends. But take heart, Morning Glories. I'll string some twine from the curtain rod and see if we get some climbers.

Here's our second early spring miracle. It's a paperwhite narcissus, my birthflower. My parents used to give me a bunch of them every year on my birthday. I've been trying to grow them in my apartment for a few years now, but I keep getting bad bulbs. (Either that, or I'm doing something wrong, but there's not much--that I'm aware of--to go wrong here: Put the bulbs in a dish with rocks, allowing just the very bottom to rest in water. Wait for bulbs to grow.) For the last two years, I haven't even been able to coax them to put roots out. I bought four more bulbs in early January, but after 3 weeks nothing had happened. Finally, one of them (this one) put out the tiniest nib of a root. I threw the rest out and left this one on the windowsill as an experiment. Now I'm so glad I did! It's got a robust tangle of roots and some substantial stems that seem to grow an inch a day. I'm hoping for some flowers later in the month.

It's Getting Hot in Here

2009-02-08T15:41:00.004-05:00

50 degrees today! Snow's melting, birds are singing, and the radiators have finally cooled off. We've been out and about more than usual this weekend. We went to IKEA yesterday for some little things--a frame for a poster I got Stephen for Christmas, some fabric for imaginary future projects, random things for the kitchen. The cafe was abuzz with greater-Bostonians of all ages eating chocolate cake and drinking Kristian Regale. I actually don't mind the IKEA cafeteria. It's a lot nicer than most mass retailers' in-house eateries. (I'm looking at you, Poughkeepsie Galleria Food Court of My Youth.)

I'm trying to catch up on school work today, because there's a lot due later in the week. This would have been totally unheard-of when I was an undergrad, when my M.O. was starting papers at 11:30 the night before they were due. I still do that sometimes, but I'm trying to be a little more organized about things this time around.

Of course, the first step to getting any schoolwork done is to clear a space in which to do it. Although I grew up surrounded by clutter (the fight against The Mess was an ongoing, and often losing, battle for our family of four kids and two full-time working parents), I have a lot of trouble concentrating in a messy room. My brain can't work when my fingers are itching to arrange, rearrange, and (most of all) to throw things out. One of my greatest joys after an afternoon of cleaning is taking a huge pile of old papers out to the recycling bin.

Just look at this picture of my desk this morning, and compare it to my workspace a week ago. I don't know how I got anything done back then.

From the Desk Of

2009-01-31T15:03:00.006-05:00

One of my New Year's resolutions was to spend more time at home on the weekends. During the week, I almost never see the apartment during daylight hours, except for a small sliver of time between waking up and rushing out the door. I spend most evenings at class, at the gym, and/or working late at the office, so it's unusual that I'm home before 8pm.

To date, I have succeeded far better than I could ever have imagined. I've barely left the apartment over the past three weekends, and then only for short errands. I'm working on several school projects and doing a ton of editing these days, so most Saturday and Sunday hours are spent here, at my desk, typing and gazing out the window. When I'm not at the computer, I'm usually reading, trying to keep pace with the Book Club of One, or knitting while working my way through the Netflix queue.

I'm still cleaning, too. I did a deep clean of the living room closet and the bureau in the kitchen today, tossed a lot of old stuff, and finally put the Christmas tree away. Found about a dozen half-finished projects that had been stuffed in there during previous organizing frenzies: the corduroy blazer that Stephen started sewing in 2007, a half-finished hand quilting project, some embroidery still in its hoop, a sundress that I have been planning to finish for each of the past 2 summers, and a 95% complete afghan that I gave up on last winter when I decided it was too ugly to finish. It's a little overwhelming.

It's nice to be at home, though. I know we'll move out of this apartment eventually, and I want to be able to remember what it was like to be here, not just to pass through at the end of the day to actually live in the space.

That said, I think it's time I started spending a little more weekend time in the outside world. I really want to go into the city, see the Shepard Fairey survey when it opens at the ICA, maybe go to the aquarium. The icy sidewalks have thus far dissuaded me from venturing out, though. I felt the first pang of I'm-ready-for-spring yesterday while watching, of all things, a Vampire Weekend video on YouTube. I'm not sure where it was filmed, but the setting is so evocative of rural New York in the early spring, just after the snow has melted but before anything has bloomed, that I could almost feel the warm breeze in my lungs as I watched it. Oh, spring. How many weeks of snow do we have left? Eight?

What's Cooking:

2009-01-18T14:47:00.010-05:00

Ah, January. Once I've emerged from the underwater-time of the holidays (quiet, calm, snowbound; everyday concerns far-off and muffled), the first thing I like to do to reorient myself is clean like a madwoman. The second is re-set my schedule. (No more going to bed at 1, 2, 3am. 11:30 is the new bedtime!) Yes, I become quite a strict disciplinarian after three heady weeks of presents, cake, hot chocolate and lollygagging.

The third thing I like to do in January is get in the newly-clean kitchen and start baking, especially things with citrus zest. Maybe it's Vitamin C deficiency, or a hankering for warmer climes, or the seasonality of the fruit, but all I want to eat these days is citrus. When I bit into an orange at work last week, it was like the malt syrup factory scene in Slaughterhouse Five*. I don't even usually like oranges. In the past few days, I've also had salmon with citrus salsa, sole with lemon-caper glaze, salad with lemon vinaigrette, and lemon madeleines with (surprise!) lemon glaze. Can't get enough.

I'm also thinking about making cheese. My sister gave me a mozzarella kit for my birthday, and it looks pretty easy. Stephen's making French bread this afternoon, and we cracked out some of last summer's saft yesterday. It's a non-stop homemade food frenzy around here.

We got several new cookbooks for Christmas. In fact, we got lots of every kind of book. We had to clear off an entire shelf in the living room to make space for them all. I've got a ton of new titles to add to the line-up for the Book Club of One. I'm starting with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an electric book to go along with all of this acidic food.

I've been thinking about the twelve books I read last year, deciding which I'd recommend to myself if I were t0 start over again. I liked them all--I usually don't finish a book if I think it's a waste of time--but a few in particular really meant a lot to me. Mountains Beyond Mountains was the most powerful, followed by And the Band Played On. They made me glad that I'm learning to do health-related work. Of the novels, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was my favorite. I didn't expect it to be, but I think I read it at the right time, when the news was full of talk about recession, unemployment, and doing more with less: so many of the challenges that Francie's family faces. Somehow, it felt three-dimensional, like a book that I could get into and move around in. I didn't hold it at arm's-length. I hope I'll be able to find books as good this year.

* Speaking of good books:

Another true thing that Billy saw while he was unconscious in Vermont was the work that he and the others had to do in Dresden during the month before the city was destroyed. They washed windows and swept floors and cleaned lavatories and put jars in boxes and sealed cardboard boxes in a factory that made malt syrup. The syrup was enriched with vitamins and minerals. The syrup was for pregnant women.

The syrup tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke, and everybody who worked in the factory secretly spooned it all day long. They weren't pregnant, but they needed vitamins and minerals, too. Billy didn't spoon syrup on his first day at work, but lots of other Americans did.

Billy spooned it on his second day. There were spoons hidden all over the factory, on rafters, in drawers, behind radiators, and so on. They had been hidden in haste by persons who had been spooning syrup, who had heard somebody else coming. Spooning was a crime.

On his second day, Billy was cleaning behind a radiator and he found a spoon. To his back was a vat of syrup that was cooling. The only other person who could see Billy and his spoon was poor old Edgar Derby, who was washing a window outside. The spoon was a tablespoon. Billy thrust it into the vat, turned it around and around, making a gooey lollipop. He thrust it into his mouth.

A moment went by, and then every cell in Billy's body shook him with ravenous gratitude and applause.

There were diffident raps at the factory window. Derby was out there, having seen all. He wanted some syrup, too.

So Billy made a lollipop for him. He opened the window. He stuck the lollipop into poor old Derby's gaping mouth. A moment passed, and then Derby burst into tears. Billy closed the window and hid the sticky spoon. Somebody was coming.

Snowfall

2008-12-20T00:45:00.008-05:00

It's a winter wonderland out there. The snow started early this afternoon, and campus shut down around noon. Stephen and I stayed late to tie up the last loose ends at the office before leaving for a lengthy break, and walked home together through hushed streets as the sky turned from blue to purple to that particular shade of orange created by street lights reflecting off a dense blanket of clouds. The sidewalks were thick with snowdrifts, so we walked right in the middle of the street, moving aside when cars appeared. It was quiet and still on the side streets; we felt like we were in another world, a dream world, or underwater. I love snow almost as much as I love fog. I like weather that makes the world feel closer to you. It makes me think of Fog, one of the first Carl Sandburg poems I ever read. Here's another of his that I like:

Prairie Waters by Night

Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water--sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains.

And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feather throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms.

It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down; and the willows drowse and sleep on the shoulders of the running water.

And this one:

Hats

Hats, where do you belong?
what is under you?

On the rim of a skyscraper's forehead
I looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats
Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls, Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn.
Hats: tell me your high hopes.

Decemberist

2008-12-10T20:14:00.003-05:00

Ah, December: one of my favorite months of the year. Winter is new and exciting; the semester draws to a close and holiday visits commence; Christmas lights are everywhere; the first snow falls. We had a picturesque flurry this weekend, just heavy enough to look beautiful outside the window but not so much that it required manual removal. We put up our little fakey-fake tree on Sunday night, and I think that's all we're doing in the way of holiday foliage this year, except for a real wreath on the door. I love the smell of a live tree, I really do, but they're expensive and the Christmas season seems really short this year, and last year we were vacuuming up escaped needles until May. (Those little buggers go everywhere!) So it's a scent-free, shed-free, tinseled-up Christmas 2008 for us Cantibrigians.

I have a stack of books about a foot high on deck for the Book Club of One, so guess what I did when we went to Belmont last weekend? Marched right into Barnes and Noble and bought another one, of course. I was feeling brain-fried, so I went to the YA section and looked for the funnest cover I could find. Here's what I ended up with. It's a light and quick read, a big change of pace from my last book, which was about the Holocaust. I'm okay with something fluffy right now. Mmm, fluff. Marshmallows.

Which reminds me, did I ever mention the Union Square Fluff Fest that we went to back in September? We missed the first two in 2006 and 2007, but finally made it this year. Wow, there were so many marshmallow-based activities to behold! There were Fluff t-shirts, Fluff posters, Fluff letterpress, Fluff magnets, Fluffernutter sandwiches, and a Fluff hairstyling contest. (Yes, that part was kind of gross.) Stephen got a Fluff comic book and I got a t-shirt that says "What the Fluff?". I like to wear it when I'm doing laundry because it seems like the ultimate laundry day shirt, all softness and laziness and comfort food. Mmm, comfort food.

Lately

2008-12-05T23:35:00.008-05:00

I'm:
attending Midnight Madness
finishing up the last PowerPoint of the semester
anticipating Taza factory tour
experiencing arthritis?!
considering acupuncture
listening to Kate Nash (Warning: sound.)
Is it just me, or does she look a bit like the young Fred Savage at times? Something about the cheeks/chin, I think.
looking forward to sleep

Birthday Boy

2008-11-30T22:49:00.004-05:00

Happy birthday, Stephen! It's cold and rainy out, a good day for celebrating indoors. This is the kind of weather I was born into about a quarter of a century ago, or so my mother tells me: a foggy and damp December morning, the kind of weather I still love. It does chill you to the bone, though. Brrr. I'm glad we've got bellies full of birthday cookies and birthday risotto to keep us warm.

We went out for brunch to celebrate (nothing says birthday like a stack of pancakes!), then saw the Drawn to Detail exhibit at DeCordova. The museum has a huge staircase flooded with natural light, and it was cozy to watch the sleet and rain run down the windows while we looked at the delicate works on paper. There were some prints, an animation project, and many intricate drawings, some so large and detailed that they made our heads spin.

I've made substantial progress in my November book, but I won't finish it tonight. I've got too much work to do before tomorrow. I'm procrastinating, as usual, but for an unusual reason: one of my assignments is to write a self-reflection essay based on a presentation I gave, which means that I need to watch and re-watch a video of myself and scrutinize my performance. You know how hearing your own voice on the answering machine can make you cringe and ask, "Do I really sound like that?" This is like that, but longer and in greater detail, and I'm being graded on my critique.

So let's talk about something else for a minute, until I absolutely have to go finish my work. How about Thanksgiving travel? I've spent a lot of time in the car over the past week (7 hours round-trip to my parents' house + 6 hours to visit my grandparents) and here are the lessons I learned:

1. Driving on the Tuesday before and the Saturday after Thanksgiving is much easier than on the Wednesday before and the Sunday after, but the Mass Pike is always crazy east of I-84.
2. The content on NPR is better on weekdays than weekends, unless you're really into opera.
3. E-Z Pass is worth its weight in gold, even if it has a silly name (actually, I think mine's a Fast Lane, since I bought it in Massachusetts).
4. If you want to travel by train between Boston and Albany on a holiday weekend, reserve early.

I wanted to take the train to New York state, but it sold out really early. I may try again at Christmas. I love the idea of traveling across the state in a comfy train car, reading and not worried about traffic or road conditions. My mom suggested the bus as an alternative, but it doesn't hold the same appeal for me. My vision of the bus = crowded, sitting in traffic, watching a movie picked out by the bus company, whereas train travel = smooth, sitting by the window, plenty of leg room, quiet, snacks. Maybe I'll take a train ride next weekend, just for the fun of it. Go to the end of the commuter line and look around, see what we find; public transportation as the doorway to adventure.

Something from the Oven

2008-11-11T14:53:00.006-05:00

These weeks of the semester are particularly heavy with deadlines, so aside from going to work, class, and the gym, I rarely venture outside anymore. Instead, in between papers and PowerPoints, I've been baking.

This weekend, I made marshmallows. I've wanted to try this ever since I saw a recipe in a Christmas book of my mom's when I was in high school, but the ingredients freaked me out. (Corn syrup? Can you even buy corn syrup?) Now that we've made caramels a few times, the ingredients and the candy thermometer and the weird terminology (soft ball stage, etc.) are familiar and comfortable. Well, as comfortable as things can be when boiling-hot sugar lava is involved.

But I can't say that I was prepared for how messy this stuff would be. It's all stick and no structure: too thick to flow into the pan on its own, but not substantial enough to coax along with a spatula. If you were having a bad day already, trying to wrestle the molten fluff-stuff into a neat rectangle would probably make you cry.

Luckily, I was having a good day, so it was mostly just funny. As we pried the last bits of marshmallow goo from the sugar-encrusted utensils, I told Stephen about an episode of the Muppet Show (not Muppet Babies, which I've actually never seen, but the live show with celebrity guests) where Dr. Bunsen Honeydew develops a Super Adhesive that sticks to everything in the studio. That's kind of what our kitchen looked like on Sunday afternoon. (Update: I found it on YouTube! Wow, that's a blast from my past. Gilda Radner is the guest, if you can believe it.)

Other things I've been cooking up:

Carrot almond muffins, with the last of our CSA carrots. I made these when we were going over to my boss's house for dinner one night. I really like this recipe, which can be modified to fit any combination of nuts and fruit/vegetable. (As always, I got it from here.) There's a variation in the book for pumpkin bread with hazelnuts, which sounds magnificent. We've still got some uncarved pumpkins on the windowsill--I wonder if they would be good for muffins? Or do you have to use sugar pumpkins when baking?

The recipe made a lot of batter, so I made some mini muffins, too. These were perfectly bite sized, and I got in the habit of stuffing three or four in my mouth on the walk home from the gym. I'd tell myself that they're full of beta carotene.

They're also full of molasses, which I substituted for half of the sugar. I love the smell of molasses. I first tried it when I was anemic a couple of years ago and a friend told me to try putting blackstrap molasses into oatmeal, applesauce, and anything else I cooked. I didn't like it in most of those things, but I do love it in gingerbread. Smells like Christmas to me.

I've also been making good use of these implements, which we got on our trip to the Cape last month. The honey is from Plimoth Plantation, the donut mix from a gourmet food store, and the mixing bowl and corn pan are from a fancy kitchen shop. Food and kitchen shopping is pretty much the only kind of shopping that I like to do on vacation, and luckily Stephen feels similarly. He's been making donuts (excuse me, doughnuts) from that mix, and, like most fried things, they are heavenly.

I'm kind of a sucker for most shaped pans. I don't like Bundt pans for some reason--I guess I like cakes in traditional shapes, and the ones that look like castles or flowers just seem silly to me. But I do like shaped pans for other things, like madeleine pans for cookies and corn-shaped pans for cornbread.

Our first attempt to bake cornbread in this didn't work out very well--it was tasty, but it didn't pick up any of the decorative detail from the pan. Maybe we'll have to try another recipe. Or maybe I should try baking non-corn bread in here? A sort of culinary faux bois? Tricky.

Change

2008-11-06T23:26:00.005-05:00

Here I am on my way to vote on Tuesday afternoon. I was expecting a long line because it was around the block and down the street in the morning, but there were only a handful of people when I got there at 4:30. I was glad I had gotten up early that day so I had time to figure out a red, white and blue outfit. I felt restless and excited all day, like it was Christmas Eve--a nervous and hopeful Christmas Eve. Everyone at work was talking about the ballot questions in Massachusetts: Would people really vote to abolish the state income tax? (Luckily, they did not.) Stephen and I stayed up late that night to see the results come in and watch the concession and victory speeches. When they called the election for Obama, of course I felt elated. But I also felt--and I wasn't expecting this--relieved. I felt like I could stop worrying about things. Not that there isn't still plenty to worry about, but I now feel that our national problems are in the hands of people smarter than me, and I don't dread the decisions they're going to make. It's a nice change.

Harvest

2008-10-29T23:10:00.008-04:00

We got our last CSA box of the season yesterday. There were lots of roots in it, some huge kohlrabi and a couple of butternut squash. We've still got a dozen carrots in the fridge; I'm adding grated carrot to everything I make these days. We got some popcorn-on-the-cob this week, too. The kernels are a beautiful deep red color, drying on the windowsill. The farmer, Karen, says it should be ready to eat by Thanksgiving.

Here's what we got in a particularly colorful box a few weeks ago. The viney things with pods are edamame:

The farm share isn't cheap, but I think we'll get one again next year. I love having fresh things in the fridge. The cashiers at the grocery store must think I'm very anti-veggie, because all I buy at the store these days is pasta, rice, milk and cheese. Everything else comes out of the box.

We managed to get a winter share, so that will extend the season a bit: it consists of two big pick-ups, one before Thanksgiving and another in mid-December. We'll have to try to find a cool and dark place for a makeshift root cellar. Then it's all foreign veggies for six months or so.

One thing I really liked about the share was learning what grows well in Massachusetts, and when. We got some surprising things, like fall raspberries and a bajillion hot peppers in September. I also got to try a lot of things that I would never have bought myself. I found out that I like spinach, cabbage, and bok choy, and that I don't like radishes, turnips, or rutabagas. Kohlrabi is best when grated, salted, and fried. Winter squash is more fun than summer squash. There is such a thing as too much lettuce. Dill in large quantities is trouble. The smell of basil makes everyone smile. And small garlic cloves are almost more work than they're worth. Almost.

Plimoth

2008-10-25T14:00:00.005-04:00

On our way back from the Cape, we spent Columbus Day at Plimoth Plantation. If not for the lack of plumbing and electricity, I think I could happily live in this town. I love the little houses. Stephen and I walked through every single one, comparing favorites like prospective buyers. Some of the houses were divided into two rooms, but most had only one, with an attic overhead for storage. Each had a bed, a table with chairs, and a big hearth. The windows had greased paper screens to keep the wind out. They must have been freezing in the winter.

If we lived here, we'd have a few goats in the yard, and maybe a sheep. We would grow potatoes and chard, but no fennel. (I don't like the licorice taste.) We'd make pumpkin bread and walk along the Eel River on warm afternoons.

I visited Plimoth Plantation with my school in seventh grade, when we took a three-day trip to Boston. I feel kind of bad for the people who were there that day; I'm sure it wasn't fun to share the experience with 200 thirteen-year-olds. I don't remember much about that visit except the view from the top of the hill as we entered the town. I was surprised to find it so unchanged on this trip.

One thing I like about Plimoth is how everything is so carefully made, so necessary but beautiful in its simplicity, from the wool blankets to the handmade pottery. It reminds me of the Shaker aesthetic, which I also love. I saw an article about the Plantation in the November issue of Living a few weeks ago, which is what prompted me to plan this visit in the first place. It was a great time of year to be there. Everything looked like New England, like autumn, like Thanksgiving. I'm a little sad about the weather turning cold, but this made me excited to go home and bake carrot bread. And grateful for modern conveniences like radiators and indoor plumbing.

Yurt

2008-10-18T13:12:00.010-04:00

We went yurt camping last weekend!

The first time I stayed in a yurt, or even saw a yurt or heard the word, was almost seven years ago, in my first year of college. I was in the Outdoor Association--I think that's what it was called at the time; it had several names over the years--and we went winter camping in a yurt in the Adirondacks. Our leader explained that it wasn't really winter camping, because we had a permanent shelter and a woodstove and got to lock our stuff up in the yurt during the day. I did "real" winter camping later and found out that he was right.

There weren't any bunks in the yurt on that trip, so we all slept on the floor--eight or nine of us. It got bitterly cold at night, and we took turns waking up to stoke the fire. I woke everyone up at 2am with my loud newspaper rustling as I tried to bring the embers back to life one night. Even with the fire, my face would get cold as I slept, so I would curl into a ball at the foot of my mummy bag, trying to seal up the head hole. You're not supposed to breathe into your sleeping bag, but I can't abide a cold nose.

The yurt we stayed in last weekend is in Shawme-Cromwell State Forest on Cape Cod, and you can rent it for just $40 a night. It seemed a little silly because there were 6 bunks in there, and just two of us, but I really liked it. No bugs and lots of fresh air. They even had track lighting and a little space heater inside! The things we packed were a weird mix of road trip and camping paraphernalia and housewares: a map, pillows, toothbrushes, headlamps, Smartwool socks, a table lamp, some French bread and a block of dill havarti.

The Cape was pretty quiet compared to the summer months; this was the last vacation weekend for the season. We got ice cream from The Smuggler on the day before it closed for the winter. We had dinner in Chatham one night, and in Sandwich another. There were crowds here and there, but what struck me was that almost everyone we saw was over 65. Everywhere we went, there were gangs and gangs of seniors. I don't know if that's what the Cape looks like when the tourists leave, or if they were tourists, but there were a lot of them.

We spent most of the time at the beach. It was far too cold to swim, but we sat near the water and read and talked. The beach in Dennis was incredibly shallow, and the strip of exposed sand widened spectacularly over the course of an hour as the tide went out. The sky was cloudless, and the sun was so bright that it was almost oppressive. There were other people on the beach, but as they followed the tide out, they became mere specks on the horizon. It felt quiet and bright and still, like a surrealist painting.

We visited a beach in Sandwich on Saturday night just as the sun was setting. This one was full of people starting bonfires and listening to music. The waves were quiet, and the moon was brilliant, almost as bright as the setting sun. We could see bats flying around, eating up the last of the mosquitoes, I guess. We went back to the yurt and roasted marshmallows over a campfire. It was chilly out, and I put on thick warm socks to keep warm.

Fall was in the air.

The Chemex in Action

2008-10-04T22:09:00.003-04:00

I'm sick, so we called off our planned camping trip this weekend and Stephen made breakfast: Rice Krispies with milk, and coffee in the new Chemex. This is our first coffeemaker, so I'm dreaming up all the things we can make now: coffee ice cream, coffee popsicles, cafe au lait...

Of course, it's too cold for popsicle-making these days. I cooked up some applesauce this afternoon. The Jonamacs we had were pretty tart, so I added maple syrup along with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Mark Bittman recommended adding salt, too, so I did that and it enhanced the flavors nicely. My mom used to make applesauce in the fall when the house was chilly, so it (like so many things) makes me thing of her.

I finished my September book last night, just three days late. I ended up sticking with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and it was different than I expected. I really didn't know what to expect; I'd never heard of it before I found it on a bookshelf at my parents' house, an ancient hardcover without a dust jacket. The spine crumbled every time I opened it. Most of the books I read these days are contemporary non-fiction, so this was a nice change. I came to really like Francie and spent a while thinking about what her life would be like after the book ended. I always find it so jarring to finish a book, and since the establishment of the Book Club of One, they seem as short-lived as mayflies*. I used to read just a few each year.

* "The lifespan of an adult mayfly can vary from just 30 minutes to one day depending on the species." - The Bastion of All Credible Knowledge (c) Adam M.

Herbs and Votes

2008-09-29T22:05:00.004-04:00

I got some chamomile and cedar at Cambridge Naturals a while back. I love shopping in the bulk herbs section there. They've got rows and rows of big jars holding everything from the mundane (cinnamon, oregano) to the extravagant (whole vanilla beans) and the fantastic ("ceremonial white sage"?). I've been drinking a lot of chamomile tea lately because the caffeine in black tea gives me a headache. (I know that caffeine is supposed to relieve headaches, but it seems to have the opposite effect on me.) I wanted to try making it the old-fashioned way, with a strainer, rather than buying tons of individually-wrapped bags. More fun that way, and less waste.

The cedar was an impulse buy. I ended up putting it in the coat closet. The smell of cedar always makes me think of my parents' house, where there is a grove of red cedar in the side yard. My dad cuts down the trees that grow too close together and carves the wood into elaborate, sweet-smelling things: headboards, shelves, walking sticks. He even made me a cedar doorstop when I left for college.

I was thinking about college this weekend when I started checking electoral-vote.com again. In fall 2004, one of my co-workers at the library introduced us to the site, and we checked it first thing each day when we arrived for work. Three of us were big-time liberals, and one guy was an undecided moderate, so we tried and tried to convince him not to vote for Bush. I think we finally won that argument, but of course, we lost in the end. Maybe our candidate just wasn't compelling enough; our arguments were anti-Bush rather than pro-Kerry.

But I'm feeling different this time around. I'm really excited and hopeful about Obama, even after last week's underwhelming debate. And really looking forward to the VP debate!

The Week in Review

2008-09-13T11:21:00.004-04:00

Really feels like fall all of a sudden, doesn't it? This picture was taken just a couple of weeks ago, when I was visiting my parents and some very good friends in the Hudson Valley. It felt like summer then, but now it's crisp and even chilly. We put the big comforter on the bed on Wednesday, and Stephen has taken his jeans out of summer storage.

Thursday was my two-year anniversary at my job. I remember that first day well. We were house/petsitting out in Harvard, Mass, and Stephen was teaching in Cambridge, so we had to get up in the dark to feed the pets and take the dog for a walk before making the slow drive toward the city on Rt. 2. Once we got to Stephen's school, I had a 45 minute walk to the office. I arrived early, and my new boss gave me a long list of stuff to do, and I felt completely lost. My predecessor had left a month earlier, and school had already been in session for two weeks, so there was a pile of mail on my desk and a sense that we were already way behind. Also, it was September 11th, which is a strange day in any place.

My first year of work was difficult. I didn't hire any interns at the beginning of the semester, so there was no one to help out when things got busy. If we were having an event, I had to hang up all the flyers and carry the food and set up the projector and chairs by myself. Everyone else in the office worked part-time, so I spent many days alone at my desk. Meanwhile, Stephen and I were moving into a new apartment, and I hardly knew anyone in Cambridge. I wasn't taking classes, I hadn't joined the gym, and I didn't know my way around. It was really lonely, and I wondered if I'd made a mistake.

It's hard to remember that now. My life feels so far from there. But it was difficult and sad, and it took a long time to get past it, and I think it's good to remember it once in a while, to think about how things change. As a kid, I used to think that adults were static. Like, once you stopped growing physically, you were also fully formed as an adult. I'm still amazed at how things continue to change, all the time. This has been a week of little milestones.

After seven years of vegetarianism, I started eating fish again on Thursday. I'm still not going to eat chicken or beef or bacon or anything, but I need more protein. For one of my classes this semester, we're assigned to undertake a Lifestyle Transformation Challenge. It has to be health-related, and it has to be difficult. Mine is to get 46 grams of protein a day, the recommended minimum for my height/weight/age. I think I've been getting about half that. It's tricky to track nutrition content, but with my handy nutrient database I'm muddling through. I'm also trying protein shakes. I thought I'd never buy those things in a million years, 'cause I'm not some kind of crazy athlete, but now I rely on them if I fall behind on any given day. Change, see?

Also, I took my first trip to the ER last night. I wasn't injured; I was with Stephen's brother, who had almost broken his arm on the slippery, rain-drenched streets of Boston. The ER was way different than I imagined it would be. It was very quiet and calm. There were worn-out New Yorkers on the end tables, and we looked at the cartoons. Some silly awards show was playing on the TV. People argued quietly with the receptionist about getting their parking tickets validated. If it hadn't been 9pm, we could just as easily have been at the dentist's office. No screaming or crying, no spurting blood. Probably it would have looked different if we'd been at the ambulance entrance, which I guess is what they show on TV, but it was nice. I'm glad it wasn't scary. I think the term "emergency room" makes it seem like there will be flashing lights and air horns going off when you get there.

So: emergency room, fish eating, and a work anniversary. How to cap off this momentous week? There's a Lebanese restaurant down the street that we've meant to try since we moved here, but never have. I hear that they have an amazing Pumpkin Kibby, whatever that is. So we're going out to lunch.

Success!

2008-09-07T09:15:00.002-04:00

I got not one but two of the things on my list done yesterday. The Rice Krispie treats were awesome. I remember convincing my mom to make them once when I was little. As she scrubbed the congealed marshmallow mess off of the pan, she told me that we would not be making them again "for a long, long, long time." And she was right! I didn't make them again until yesterday, so it's probably been about twenty years. I don't think I'll wait that long for the next time, though. Melting a whole bag of marshmallows is really fun.

I might have to retract some of my glowing comments about yesterday's weather. The rain was really nice, but the humidity was ridiculous; the kind that makes you sweat even when you're sitting still. I ended up camping out on the living room floor last night, sleeping directly under the fan, because it was the only cool place in the house.

Here's my progress so far with the embroidery. This little patch took about three hours, but some of that was prepping the fabric and fixing mistakes. (Also, we were watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, so that was distracting.) I bought some more gingham with a bigger check, so maybe I'll switch to that until I get my technique down.

I can't commit to a September book. I have a huge stack of potentials on my desk, but can't decide which to start. I've begun A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it's really long and I'm worried that it'll stretch into October. Also, the copy I have is an ancient hardcover from my parents' library, so I can't really carry it around with me on the T. And I don't feel like I'm quite ready to give up on Willa Cather just yet, so I bought Death Comes for the Archbishop at Porter Square Books yesterday. Maybe I'll switch. When you only read one book a month, you want it to be just the right one.

Stormy Weather

2008-09-06T09:40:00.003-04:00

Not really stormy, actually, but it was damp and light gray when I woke up this morning, some of my favorite weather. The geraniums wish they were outside soaking up the rain. My history with houseplants is pretty sad. I've killed four this summer: an ivy, a fern, and two jade plants. All I've got left are these five geraniums, a spider plant in the kitchen, and a huge philodendron that's threatening to gobble up the couch and Stephen's desk, Little Shop of Horrors-style. (My brother was the puppeteer for Audrey II in his college's production a few years ago.) I used to go through this cycle every year in college--I'd buy a plant, over- then under-water it, watch it grow tall and spindly, then wither, and finally throw it out at the end of the year. My jade plants all died suddenly and mysteriously. The ferns limped along interminably, dying just a little at a time, refusing to respond no matter what I did--more sun, less sun, more water, less water. No reasoning with 'em. The survivors of this summer's massacre all seem to be doing well now, though. I'm happy to say.

Classes started this week. I know I'll soon be bogged down with homework, so I'm trying to get out and have fun before that happens. Stephen and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts out on the Green Line on Wednesday night. I haven't been there since we moved to Boston. We only had a few hours before closing, so we went straight for the best parts: the Egyptian mummies, the Japanese prints, the musical instruments, European paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Stephen and I each picked our favorite painting--I like Manet's Street Singer and Stephen picked Van Gogh's portrait of the Postmaster Joseph Roulin. We also saw some ceramics by Diego Romero, which reminded me of living in Santa Fe. There was a great exhibit of portraits near the stairs in the Evans wing, too. A surprising number of rooms were either packed up or empty, though. I want to go back when the new stuff is up. I think the whole museum is undergoing extensive renovations, so by the time I get back there the whole place will probably look pretty different.

I don't know if it's Summer Nostalgia or what, but my To Do list lately seems to be leaning kitschy and domestic. I want to make Rice Krispie treats and homemade marshmallows, and I want to try embroidering Chicken Scratch on gingham, and sew polka dot curtains to go with my new polka dot sheets. This weather is making me feel like sitting and reading, though, so if I get even one of those done this weekend, I'll consider it a success.

Late Summer

2008-08-28T20:52:00.004-04:00

I went to a barbecue this afternoon and stood right next to the grill as we were cooking the wood down, so now I smell strongly of smoke. I love this smell, and I've been carrying it with me the rest of the day. People in my class at the gym probably wondered who smelled like fireplace.

My parents' house is wood heated, so the smell is all caught up with warmth and family for me. Once, in high school, a friend of mine buried her nose in a scarf I'd knitted and said, "This smells just like your house--wood smoke!" So I guess others have noticed it, too.

If I had to distill the image of my childhood home down to two objects, they would be a wood stove and a mug of tea. I think the former represents my dad and the latter my mom. There's nothing really symbolic about these things, except the warmth of the images, I guess, and the idea of sustenance. They're just things that I encountered often growing up. In the fall and winter, my dad would get up early and stoke the stoves, and the first thing we'd do when we got home in the afternoon was start the fires up again. And my mom drinks a cup of tea, or sometimes two or three, every single day. Always Lipton. (The Brisk Tea.) Always with milk and sugar. I find the taste of this combination very comforting.

The barbecue today felt very goodbye-to-summer-esque. We made black bean burgers with cheddar, and grilled pineapple and peaches, then marshmallows. The burger buns were from Iggy's, my favorite bread company. (When I eat at a restaurant where they serve Iggy's, I always order extra and take some home in my purse.) There was pomegranate iced tea with agave nectar, and mango and coconut for dessert. I sat in a hammock and watched the sun sink, all orange and gold among the Catalpa leaves. I thought about how much I'd miss this day in a few months, when it's cold and dark in the afternoons. I'm not quite ready for summer to be over yet. I think I want another two weeks or so. But school is coming; classes start next week, and then we'll be on the roller coaster again. I had a dream last night that I was at work during a huge storm, and lightning was striking all around my office, and little brush fires were spontaneously erupting in the shrub border. That's kind of what the next month is starting to look like: utter chaos, and lots of little crises to put out. I'm going to try not to think of it like that, though. I'm trying to look forward to it.

Animal Farm

2008-08-24T22:16:00.002-04:00

So many things. We visited Drumlin Farm last weekend. One of Stephen's brothers works there and drives the hay wagon, so we got to take two hayrides around the farm. There were chickens of many shapes and sizes (I liked the Bantams), sheep and goats, a huge sow due to give birth later that day, two mules, a 30-year-old pony named Midnight, many rehabilitated birds (a male pheasant, a turkey vulture, a pocket-sized screech owl), and some beautiful cows. They have an exhibit called Drumlin Underground that houses burrowing animals, with a subterranean level that lets you see into their lairs; that was one of my favorite parts, although we didn't see the foxes. It was a bright August afternoon--this past week has offered the best weather of the summer--and Stephen and I went out for ice cream (soft serve!) afterward at Dairy Joy.

This weekend, we hosted our own menagerie: Stephen and I pet-sat for a 15-year-old Siamese cat named after a Star Trek character, a color-changing Anole lizard who refused to eat his crickets, and a small brown tortoise named Turtle Boy. I hate the smell of cat food and Stephen can't stand the crickets, so we divided the work accordingly. Lucky for me, he also fed Turtle Boy. I don't mind crickets because they're compact and neat, but I really didn't want to have to reach into the worm jar.

I also fed a bunch of mosquitoes while canoing on the Sudbury River on Saturday. The water was kind of murky, and the mosquitoes feasted on my ankles. I found 14 bites on my legs afterward. The river was calm, though, and I saw lots of red-winged blackbirds near the shore.

Drifting downstream in a canoe reminded me of leading backcountry canoe trips in college. I led the same route a couple of summers in a row, and it was my favorite trip to lead by far. We'd spend a week passing through a circuit of lakes in the Adirondacks, sometimes loud with stories, sometimes silent. We'd swim and practice T-rescues, and my co-leaders and I dressed up as local historical figures. I miss that. I didn't like the bear-bagging or digging cat holes so much, but I did like hanging out by the campstove and talking or just listening or sitting quietly.

School's about to start again. I'm glad I work at a college, so my schedule continues to follow the academic cycle. It seems strange to see the campus fill up again, though; we've had it to ourselves for months. At lunch, everyone in my office heads outside to sit in the shade near the Quad, and it's usually deserted. Now there are gaggles of RA trainees, orientation groups, and sports teams criss-crossing the lawn. Most of the construction crews are packing up so the campus will look nice for matriculation ceremonies. It's an exciting time; it feels like change. I think late summer and early fall will always feel like change to me, which is why I sometimes feel so sad at this time of year. I have this feeling about time passing, that it's like having a glacier on either side of you. You can see a little ways forward and a little ways back, and you can move laterally in the moment, but the past and future are impenetrable walls pushing us along. Fall is definitely a time when you notice that the glaciers have shifted irrevocably.

Calm, Bright

2008-08-15T09:38:00.005-04:00

Hello sun! I emerged yesterday from the long dark tunnel of end-of-semester schoolwork. 74 articles of research heavier and 54 pages of writing lighter, I'm feeling weightless. There are so many things I want to do now! Eat lots of ice cream. Read by the fountain in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library. Read for fun. Visit my parents. Go to the SomerMovie Fest. Make popsicles. I found some popsicle molds while I was on vacation with my parents in July, but I haven't had time to use them yet. I want to try some coffee-based ones. We don't have a coffee maker at the moment, but we're planning to get a Chemex, because they're pretty and we don't make coffee much so I'm not too worried about convenience.

I'm on Nantucket now with Stephen's family. There has been lots of ocean swimming, lots of Olympics watching, lots of eating, and lots of schoolworking (for me). I pulled an all-nighter yesterday, and I guess if you have to do that, it's best to do it in a beautiful setting. The sun coming up over foggy fields at 6am was breathtaking. Once I sent the paper off at 9, it was so still in the house. Everyone else was asleep, and I was completely spent but couldn't nap because of all the caffeine I'd had. I laid on the couch next to an open window and stared into space. A cool breeze was blowing. It was incredibly quiet. The dog came in and fell asleep next to me. For the first time in a month, I had no pressing obligations, and the whole day ahead of me. It was one of the most perfect moments of the summer. I thought of it again last night when I read this in My Antonia:

I sat down in the middle of the garden...The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out, and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Here and There

2008-08-08T22:15:00.004-04:00

This is me on vacation last week. I look very relaxed, don't I? But the inside of my head was like, "Homework AAAUGH!!!!" This is the summer of The Assignments That Never End. I just turned in another paper, and I've got one last one to churn out in the next few days. Oh the agony.

At least I've had the opportunity to be work-burdened in some very picturesque locales lately. I took the train to Portland, ME two weeks ago, which was really fun--when is a train ride not fun? I wish I had more opportunities to go places on trains. I need to discover some long-lost friends and relatives along the Downeaster route, then I could head out of the city every weekend in the plushy comfort of its nice quiet cabins. I'd get a lot of reading done.

I spent last week in Acadia with my family, which was chilly and foggy and lovely. It was so nice to wake up near the ocean and be far aware from mundane concerns like going to meetings and cleaning the house and blah. We hiked a little and walked around Southwest Harbor and Jordan Pond and Thuya Gardens and went out to eat a lot. A lot. I started referring to myself as Bowling Ball Belly by the end of the week.

Tomorrow I'm taking the ferry to Nantucket to go on vacation with Stephen's family. As you can imagine, I also like ferries. I'm pretty big on any kind of old-fashionedy public transpo. Unfortunately, the computer will be accompanying me on this trip, as well. Oh, grad school. How you mock my plans for escape and respite! But I can't be too unhappy in a house by the sea. A view of the ocean always exposes the triviality of my woes. I admit, they are quite trivial.

So Much Time, So Little Done

2008-07-30T23:23:00.005-04:00

Spending vacation doing homework is messed up already, so procrastinating from homework while on vacation is just...wrong. I had to turn in a paper remotely today, so what did I do? Read the Washington Post, browsed jcrew.com, gazed out the window. What's on TV? Ooh, the Daily Show.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.

And I fell down the stairs yesterday, so I've got a huge purple bruise on the back of my leg. I've been dragging around a big pillow to sit on all day. And whining.

What else? Our WiFi died just when I tried to turn the paper in. The restaurant we were going to go to for dinner burned down last night. But I saw an ice cream shop with 64 flavors, including lobster! So the day wasn't a total bust. Cheers.

The Week in Short Stories

2008-07-23T22:41:00.005-04:00

Monday morning: Riding the bus to work, I look up at the LED date/time display and notice that it reads "12/25/97 09:31 AM". Merry Christmas, 14-year-old me!

Tuesday morning: Once again on Christmas bus. When a passenger points out that the display is incorrect, the driver looks up for the one moment that it looks normal, and says, exasperated, "The display is working fine, madam."

Tuesday afternoon: Working on an architecture project at the office over the past few weeks, I've littered the conference room with little house models. As I'm throwing several out, I hear muffled scuffling emanating from one. Moments later, a startled cockroach scampers out. A colleague suggests I start designing roach traps.

Wednesday morning: Running for the bus, I make a mental note not to step/slip on the stick in the middle of the sidewalk. As I pass by, I realize "stick" is a 5-inch-long slug.

Wednesday morning, cont'd: Still running for the bus, I pass a man in a business suit talking loudly on the sidewalk. Assume he's on the phone until I realize he's completely drunk and offering commentary on passersby. "She's in good shape. Running. Not like that other guy. He's not running."

NoCookBook

2008-07-19T14:04:00.006-04:00

It's 93 degrees out, we're without air conditioning, and I'm frying eggplant. What has happened to my judgement?

I was thinking much more clearly last weekend, when I bought this awesome "cook"book at Porter Square books. I want to make all of my meals out of here until this heat wave is over (so, until September). There's an awesome variety of popsicle recipes, including a chapter on coffee- and tea-based pops, and another on alcohol-based ones, which is funny because Stephen and I had just been talking about freezing White Russians before I saw this book.

We made the Sugar Pumpkin Pops last weekend. I couldn't find molds anywhere in the area (CVS, Shaw's, Ace, Cambridge Naturals and the local toy store all knew what I was talking about, but none had them on their shelves), so I used a muffin pan. The pops turned out very short and squat, like little orange flying saucers. They weren't quite sweet enough for our taste, either. But still cool and refreshing. I think I want to try the Coconut Yogurt ones next. This is the kind of weather where I just alternate between taking showers and buying ice cream. Nothing much gets done, except sweating.

The Stars at Night

2008-07-12T22:10:00.004-04:00

I thought summer was supposed to be a time for relaxation. Not in this house, it ain't. Stephen and I are both working full time and taking two classes this summer. It's all interesting, but an incredible, crazy time suck. I just realized that I'm going to be at work/class for 12+ hours almost every day this week.

We're also house/pet-sitting. Which is awesome, because the house has air conditioning, but it also adds to the list: Did we remember to feed the cat? To humidify the lizard tank? When does the garbage have to go out? Did I just miss the bus again? How am I going to get to work?

Anyway. Last night was a bright spot in this constellation of busy-ness: We went to see the Indigo Girls play at the Lowell Summer Music Series. The setting was awesome - enthusiastic crowd, warm night, progressive snacks (the food tent had organic chips and salsa, Clif bars, and herbal tea). I was surprised at how many memories bubbled up as the Girls played through their set. I remembered putting "Get Out the Map" on a mix for Stephen when he drove cross-country in 2003. We used to sing "Closer to Fine" at campfires after our backpacking trips in the summer. I put lyrics from "Galileo" on my away messages sophomore year. Wow--it's been so long since I last signed on to AIM. Years.

I was watching the news at the gym the other day when they reported on the hostages being freed in Colombia, and the reporter talked about all the things the hostages didn't know about, from the Iraq War to Facebook. It's so hard to imagine what it's like to be taken out of the world as you know it for 5 years - your brain must become like a time capsule.

My brain right now is more like molasses. I've got three papers to write in the next few weeks. Bleh. I write so slowly. How do people write quickly? Even writing a blog post can take me an hour, easily. With a paper, I usually have to take a day off from work. No kidding. Sooo painfully slow. I don't know how books ever get written. Randy Shilts, how did you do it?

M Dalloway Said She Would Buy the Flowers Herself

2008-06-29T15:55:00.005-04:00

Stephen has been in class all weekend, so I took the opportunity to go to the high-ceilinged reading room at the Arlington Public Library and finish Mrs. Dalloway, which means that the Virginia Woolf curse has finally been lifted! I'm relieved because this will free up time to devote to And the Band Played On, which I have to finish by the end of July for a class assignment. It's really engaging, but heavy (literally and subject-wise). I had hoped to read some Willa Cather next, but that will probably have to wait until August. Slow slow slow.

That picture is some rainbow chard from our CSA box, which I thought looked so pretty raw. I stir-fried it with vegetable stock and added some soy sauce, so it wasn't nearly this pretty on the plate, but it was delicious.

Speaking of delicious, I had two culinary revelations this week. The first was something I saw on Lidia's Italy on WGBH last weekend. There was a segment on Pecorino cheese, and Lidia made a dessert with sliced pear and Pecorino drizzled with honey. I got some cheese and pears at the grocery store on Monday so I could try it out with some raw wildflower honey we have. I loved it. Like, licked-the-last-of-the-honey-off-the-plate loved it. Stephen wasn't as impressed, unfortunately. But I grew up eating cheddar cheese with apple slices, so maybe I've acquired a taste for the sweet/salty, smooth/crisp contrast of fruit and cheese pairings.

The other delicious thing I found this week was this recipe for tomato sauce. Basically, you take a can of whole plum tomatoes, chop them, then put them in a saucepan with some butter, a yellow onion that's peeled and cut in half, and some salt. Simmer for about 45 minutes, then throw out the onion, and--ta da! The incredibly simple preparation belies the subtle and surprisingly complex flavor. Probably the best tomato sauce I've ever made. (Stephen agreed on this one.)

The bad thing about all this cooking is that it didn't involve any of our CSA veggies--and we got a lot of them on Tuesday. Our little wax box from the farm contained spinach, lettuce mix, carrots, kohlrabi, turnips, garlic scapes, scallions, chard, and a pattypan squash. To date, we've only eaten about 1/5 of the haul, so things are a little desperate. (A coworker of mine with the same farm share dilemma told me that she's been sneaking lettuce into her smoothies to use it up.) I think I'm just going to have to come to terms with throwing some of the food away at the end of each week. Half of the reason for this venture is to support local agriculture, which we're doing either way, so I'm not going to stress if a few things don't get et.

The Saft Strikes Back

2008-06-23T22:22:00.006-04:00

We've been making more saft. Lots more. I've got eight pints of berries in the fridge right now, waiting to be boiled down and sugared. We did an all-strawberry batch, which I thought would be nice and affordable compared to the raspberry-rich version we did the first time, but it turns out that strawberries don't yield much juice. The all-blueberry batch we did most recently was by far my favorite. The syrup came out a really nice rich indigo color, and it tasted like a subtle version of blueberry pie.

Other than a few ongoing projects--the saft; a quilt I'm working on; the record-player-holder Stephen's building--things have been quiet lately. I had a paper due last week and a 13+ hour workday that sapped my energy. I tried to get up the momentum to go to see the El Greco to Velazquez show at the MFA on Sunday, but it started raining so I napped instead. So easy to sleep when you're trying to read on a drizzly day, especially if you're doing so while lying in bed in your pajamas. In undergrad, I used to fall asleep so consistently while trying to do reading for class that I eventually started using class readings as a cure for insomnia on the rare nights when I couldn't get to sleep. That's never been much of a problem for me, though. I almost always fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.

I've gotten much better at not falling asleep during movies, though. I used to fall asleep almost every time we watched TV or a movie at home, and sometimes in the theater, too. Maybe I'm watching better movies now? We saw The Fall last night with Stephen's dad and brother. The storytelling was so rich and the visuals so lush, it made me wish that all movies had such a strong creative vision. From IMDb:

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.

It's crazy, but in a good way.

I've been watching less TV lately, now that Lost and The Office are on break. What's left but The Simpsons? Mostly I watch offbeat reality shows from Netflix. We saw 1940s House last week, which really opened my eyes about life in Britain during WWII. It's hard to imagine people coming together in the same way now, sacrificing things and growing their own food to support the troops (and to keep themselves from starving). Did you know that SPAM was invented by the US as a means of efficiently transporting meat rations to the British before America joined the war? SPAM stands for Specially Processed American Meats. Better living through chemistry, right?

Better Living Through Chemistry

2008-06-14T09:47:00.002-04:00

The grand no-soap experiment is over, and I'm going back to regular shampoo. Although my hair felt great the first few times I used baking soda, the results proved uneven. Sometimes my hair would be silky/shiny, other times it would feel weirdly tacky/waxy. No good. I think if it's really going to work, you probably have to switch over entirely to baking soda, because the oils in your hair have to rebalance themselves or something. But I use shampoo a few times a week at the gym, so I couldn't make a clean break. (Pun!)

Now I'm looking for other low-irritant hair-cleaning solutions. I found some mild, unscented shampoo at Whole Foods last week, which I fancied up with a little coconut extract. (I figure if something's gentle enough to bake with, it's probably not too harsh for my skin.) It smells great, and the results are a lot more consistent than my kitchen-chemistry method. My skin's still not happy, but I'm starting to wonder if it's the hot water, rather than the soap, that's freaking it out.

As I was mixing up my home-scented shampoo, I read the Free Recipe! on the back of the coconut extract box. It's so laughably post-WWII/pro-chemically-enhanced food products, I'm tempted to make it to see what kind of monstrosity would result. I can't even imagine what a cake would look like topped with canned pineapple, plastered with instant pudding, then spackled over with fakey-fake whipped cream. Just check out these ingredients:

Aloha Cake

1 pkg. yellow cake mix
4 tsp. imitation coconut extract, divided
1 pkg. instant vanilla pudding mix
1 can crushed pineapple, drained
1 tub frozen whipped topping, thawed

PREPARE cake mix as directed on package, stirring 3 teaspoons of the Extract into batter before baking. Pour into greased and floured 13x9-inch baking pan.

BAKE in preheated 350°F oven 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan.

PREPARE pudding mix as directed on package, stirring in remaining 1 teaspoon of Extract. Spread pineapple and pudding over cake. Frost with whipped topping. Refrigerate 1 hour or until ready to serve.
Makes 24 servings.

I don't know. Maybe it's delicious.

The Night House

2008-06-06T22:13:00.003-04:00

Mmm. Hot chocolate with Kahlua: Mother Nature's answer to a chilly, grey afternoon. I was tempted to go to the gym today just to sit in the sauna and warm up. They're predicting a high of 90 degrees for tomorrow, though. Wow.

I was reading Sailing Alone Around the Room the other night and remembered how much I like Billy Collins. You know those statistics they occasionally release saying that 75% of Americans can't name all the continents or whatever? I know it sounds ridiculous, but I would probably get some of those questions wrong, too. For instance, if you asked me who the Federal Reserve Chairman is, I would never be able to think of anyone but Alan Greenspan. Similarly, Billy Collins will forever be the Poet Laureate as far as I'm concerned. I think he's the only Laureate I've ever been aware of.

Here's The Night House:

Every day the body works in the fields of the world
mending a stone wall
or swinging sickle through the tall grass--
the grass of civics, the grass of money--
and every night the body curls around itself
and listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
from the body in the middle of the night,
leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless walls
to sit by herself at the kitchen table
and heat some milk in the pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
and opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
and roams from room to room in the dark,
darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

resuming their daily colloquy,
talking to each other or themselves
even through the heat of the long afternoons.

Which is why the body--that house of voices--
sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
to stare into the distance,

to listen to all its names being called
before bending again to its labor.

Food!

2008-06-03T22:33:00.005-04:00

I've got some homemade pickles pickling in the kitchen right now. These are really easy to make: dissolve kosher salt in boiling water, cool with ice, then add crushed garlic, sliced kirby cucumbers, and dill. Cover with cold water, weight with a plate to keep cukes under water, and let sit at room temp until desired level of pickleness is attained. They keep in the fridge for a week.

I've been eating like crazy these past few days. My office was closed for repairs yesterday, so Stephen and I went out for brunch at Sound Bites in Somerville, the best breakfast place I've ever been to. Then we drove out to Marblehead Neck and climbed around on the rocks by the lighthouse, and I read about the lack of cohesive food culture in America in my ex-May book*, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. When we'd worked up our appetites again, we drove to Whole Foods and bought stuff for a picnic: fresh mozzarella and baguettes, chick pea salad, black currant spritzers, romaine and Parmesan and lemons for Caesar salad. I was thinking about this passage from the chapter in The Omnivore's Dilemma where the author goes hunting for wild pigs with two guides:

Being Europeans, as well as accomplished cooks, Angelo and Jean-Pierre take lunch very seriously, even when out in the woods some distance from civilization. "So I brought with me a few little things to nibble on," Jean-Pierre mumbled. "Me, too," chimed Angelo. And out of their packs came course after course of the most astonishing picnic, which they proceeded to lay out on the hood of Angelo's SUV: a terrine of lobster and halibut en gelee, artisanal salami and prosciutto and mortadella, Angelo's homemade pate of boar and home-cured olives, cornichons, chicken salad, a generous selection of cheeses and breads, fresh strawberries and pastries, silverware and napkins, and, naturally, a bottle each of red and white wine.

Okay, so ours wasn't that fancy. But it was nice, and the weather cooperated.

Today, we picked up the first box from our CSA share. Inside there was Boston lettuce, parsnips, spinach, and what I think are turnips. (They're completely white, but turnip-shaped.) So we had mashed potatoes and parsnips for dinner. The parsnips look like pale carrots, and added a carrot-like sweetness to the mush. And we had salad. I'm not sure what we're going to do with the albino turnips yet, and we may give the spinach away. No one here is really into the bitterness.

* Yes, there's been more book-of-the-month fickleness. Lugging around the thick, hardcovered Animal, Vegetable, Miracle proved unsustainable, so I left Barbara Kingsolver for the much leaner, lighter Mrs. Dalloway. Things have been going well with the new book, except that I misplaced it last week, so now I'm bookless and the month is over. Gotta catch up!

Saft

2008-06-02T10:44:00.007-04:00

When we were traveling to my brother's graduation ceremony out in western New York a couple of weeks ago, my sister mentioned that she was thinking of making saft this summer. I'd heard of it before, but couldn't remember what it was. She said that it's a concentrate made from sugar and various berries--essentially fancy homemade juice. Stephen found an article on saft-making when we got home that identified it as a Norwegian recipe, but I've found versions attributing it to Sweden, too, so I assume it's sort of a regional Scandinavian thing. It sounded delicious and summery, so we decided to make a batch.

Let me begin by saying that this is not a cost-effective way to make beverages. It took more than $20 worth of berries to create enough saft for a gallon of juice. We used blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries, but you can use any combination you want. I think an all-strawberry batch would be a lot more cost-effective at this time in the season. The recipe traditionally calls for red currants, but we couldn't find any at Shaw's. We're going to try Whole Foods next time.

It's also a relatively long process, so it would make sense to make a huge batch all at once, especially if you had berries growing in your garden and they were all ripe at once. I don't think this works with frozen berries, so you have to do it when they're ripe.

Each pound of berries yields about a cup of syrup, which is later diluted in four parts water or seltzer to create a quart of juice. You boil the berries with water in a big saucepan until they get mushy and pale, at which point all of their juices are released. Then you suspend this mixture in a cheesecloth-lined sieve over a big bowl and let it drain for an hour and a half or so. What's left in the sieve is then discarded (and believe me, you'll want to discard it: there's nothing appealing about boiled, colorless berry glop), and the strained syrup (which is a beautiful deep reddish-purple) is reheated with sugar.

We wanted the saft to be shelf-stable, so we sterilized the bottles, too: a tricky process in which you have to get the saft and the bottles to the same temperature, then fill them while hot. If ever there was a process with great low-level burn potential, this is it. Once submerged, the bottles are extremely hard to get out of the water, and it's not like you can just slap on an oven mitt and reach in, so you have to try to coax it out with tongs. Meanwhile, boiling water is splashing everywhere. Once the bottle is out, you've got to hold the hot, hot glass steady while your partner pours in boiling syrup. There was a lot of foul language involved.

The final product is pretty amazing, though. We opened one bottle immediately and finished it within two days. I don't like soda, so I had mine mixed with water and ice, but I hear that a seltzer/saft combination is delicious and refreshing, as well. We're going to try to reserve the remaining bottle for the winter, but I want to try different combinations as various berries come into season this summer. One problem we encountered with this batch is that each bottle is pretty big, and once you open it, the contents have to be finished pretty quickly or it will go bad. So next time I want to think of a smaller container for this. Maybe jelly jars? That would be cheaper, too. These bottles were almost ten bucks each, and that could easily add up if we made a lot of this stuff. Which I hope we do.

P.S. I read somewhere that you can buy saft at Ikea. I don't see it on their website, but I don't think they list any of their food there, so I'll have to check it out next time I'm there. I wonder if mass-produced saft would be any good.

Much Better

2008-05-26T10:59:00.004-04:00

I haven't written in a couple of weeks, but I haven't been idle, I swear! Just look at this dress. When I bought it earlier this month, it was pretty ridiculous looking. This color combination just...doesn't work for me. I'm not sure the photo does full justice to the mess of weak red, grey-brown, and almost-pink that this thing came in, but believe me, it was bad. (If you love it, I apologize. I'm probably crazy.)

So I decided to dye it. I'd never dyed anything before aside from tie dye at summer camps, but I'd seen RIT dye at drugstores and had always wanted to try it. I also considered using natural dyes for this, but I've heard that it's hard to get really dramatic results with onions/tea/etc.

Isn't it surprising that pharmacies and hardware stores still carry this stuff? How many people dye their clothes any more? I imagine each store must sell about one package per month. Their website seems to be marketing to my demographic, so maybe there's some kind of underground dye revolution going on among the young folks.

The bad thing about using this dye is that it's got lots of chemicals (maybe not toxic, but I wouldn't want to drink the stuff), and the directions instruct you to scrub everything that came in contact with the dye (bucket, sink) with chlorine bleach. I really didn't want to buy a big container of bleach to flush into the water supply, so I mixed the dye up in an old stainless steel stockpot, and disposed of it in the kitchen sink, which is also stainless. And indeed, there were no stains.

I wanted to somehow unify the colors in the dress, and so I picked the midpoint between black, brown, red, and pink: purple. (Also, my choices were somewhat limited by what RiteAid had in stock: fire engine red, sunflower yellow, forest green, "denim" blue, mauve, black, and purple.) I didn't want the color to be too dark, so I mixed a third of the detergent into hot water with a lot of salt and a little detergent. I was surprised that you have to add soap to the mixture to get it to set, but I'm sure there's a good explanation for it. Unfortunately, I guess I didn't have enough water in this initial bath, or the water wasn't hot enough, because I later discovered that the salt and dye had not completely dissolved. As a result, there are some little speckles on the dress where dye pellets adhered to it in the initial dunk. But the pattern is so crazy that you can hardly tell.

Despite the long, long list of directions inside the dye pack, the process was pretty simple. Dissolve dye in some hot water, add salt and detergent, add to larger bucket of hot water. Pre-wash garment, then soak in clean hot water. Add garment to bath. Agitate. And agitate some more. The package says to stir the whole thing constantly for up to thirty minutes. I wore rubber gloves, but I still got overheated, standing over three gallons of steaming hot dye and swirling, swirling, swirling the dress. That part wasn't very fun, but it was cool to see the color take and develop.

I left the dress in for about 15 minutes. At that point, the color looked pretty dark, and I didn't want it to obscure the pattern altogether. I accidentally splashed a dish towel that was on the counter in the midst of my agitating, so that went into the bath, too. Now I wish I'd thought ahead and lined up a few things to dye, because the towel came out looking great and didn't add much to the workload.

The dye pack said that the color would dry much lighter than it looked wet, but I didn't realize how much lighter. I would say that the final color was about half as dark as it looked coming out of the dye.

I'm happy with the final results, though. The pattern still looks outlandish, but the palette is a lot more cohesive. And the process was fun. You could make it even easier by doing this in the washing machine (there are instructions for that, too, on the package), but we live in a big building with just two collective machines, and I was afraid I'd screw up the process and all our neighbors would end up with purple-tinged t-shirts. Someday I'll have my own machine, though, and then I definitely intend to try it that way. I also want to try shoe-dyeing sometime, but my current running shoes are still too new and nice to experiment with.

And that's not all I've been up to! But right now I have to go out and enjoy the long weekend, so next time: saft.

The Latest in Shoes and Books

2008-05-10T10:10:00.006-04:00

Did you know that five years is the Shoe Anniversary? Yeah. Actually, it's the Wood Anniversary, but that's for wedding anniversaries and we're not married, so I think I get to make up whatever kind of present I want. I got those Tigers on the right for Stephen. While I was shopping, I couldn't resist getting some new sneaks for myself, too. These Converse have Little Red Riding Hood on them, and I love the red laces.

Stephen stuck to tradition, purely by accident (I think), and got me this little bird, because I love sandpipers:

A few years ago, I sent out valentines with the Least Sandpiper on them, and did a little bit of reading on the subject. These little guys are the smallest shorebird. They're native to North America, and breed on the tundra. Groups of them are called peeps. See why I like them?

I had a final on our anniversary (it always falls on or just before finals week; rotten timing). At least it wasn't the day before the final, when I was studying like crazy. Actually, I was supposed to be studying like crazy, but I was mostly procrastinating. I had just gotten a new book and I accidentally read half of it instead of making flash cards about biostatistics. How did that happen.

Yes, there's been some upheaval in the Book Club of One lately. First I got the name of my April book wrong (I read The Psychology of Everyday Things, not The Design of Everyday Things, although the author and the cover image are the same), then I got way behind and had only finished the first chapter by the last week of April. It was due back at the library on April 25, so I just returned it and went to the bookstore to look for a quick read.

I found The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld, whose emotionally insightful and articulate writing style I really respond to, and finished it within a week. I love books and movies that are set in familiar places; most of this one took place in Somerville/Boston, so yeah, I really liked it. (When we saw 21 on the Vineyard, all I could think about during the Cambridge scenes was whether they were really set in Massachusetts or recreated elsewhere. Most of it was pretty accurate, except the T scenes. Why are the MIT students always riding express trains to Davis? Express trains to Davis don't even exist, and even if they did, MIT students wouldn't ride them. Unless they were going to Redbones maybe? That I could understand.)

Now I've started my May book, but I'm worried that I might not finish this one, either. So far, there's a lot of overlap with the Omnivore's Dilemma. But the truly damning feature is that it's hardcover. I've realized that if I want to finish a book quickly, I need to be able to lug it around in my huge bag for a couple of weeks without resenting its weight or bulk. And since I'm already hauling around some combination of lunch, gym clothes, work shoes, and schoolbooks on any given day, and since I pretty much walk everywhere, tiny paperbacks are much preferred to thick hardcovers. I think I'll try to finish this one up because I've always wanted to read Barbara Kingsolver, but afterward I'm going to try to stick to smaller books.

Lemony Fresh

2008-05-04T11:25:00.004-04:00

The lemon bars were awesome. I wasn't sure how they would turn out, because we ran out of both flour and sugar while making them and had to substitute bread flour and confectioner's sugar, which has cornstarch in it. And then I overbaked them, so they were a lot more cakey than they were supposed to be. But still, delicious.

The whole apartment smells like lemons now because Stephen deep-cleaned the bathroom in preparation for replacing the caulk around the tub. We've been trying to use non-toxic cleaners since we moved here, mostly relying on baking soda, borax, and vinegar. I hate the smell of white vinegar, so I add a ton of lemon oil to the mix. It's pretty fun to clean this way: the vinegar and baking soda foam up alarmingly, like an elementary school volcano project.

I've been using baking soda and vinegar to clean my hair, too, for the past couple of weeks. I went to a talk recently about all the hormone mimics and other nasty chemicals we put in and on our bodies. The speaker advised us to stay away from plastics and other synthetics as much as possible. Of course, it's pretty much impossible to avoid plastic (even the speaker was using a plastic water bottle), but I'm trying to cut it out here and there just for peace of mind. Since I make this stuff myself, I can keep it in glass bottles. Also, my skin is extremely sensitive and doesn't like shampoo in general, so I thought I'd give the no-soap regimen a try. It's not nearly as explosive as it sounds. First you rub a little bit of baking soda/water paste into your hair (I think this is different for long hair: you're supposed to dissolve the baking soda in a lot of water so it's much more liquidy--mine's like toothpaste), then rinse it and follow with an extremely dilute vinegar rinse (I use 1/4 tsp vinegar and maybe 20 drops of essential oil to 2 cups water). After I'm done, I rub a little clove oil into my hair for moisture and the nice smell. So far, I see no difference between this and shampoo; my hair feels the same as it always has. I'll let you know if it suddenly turns green or anything, though.

Sweet Talk

2008-04-28T21:44:00.002-04:00

It's my friend Sarah's birthday. Happy birthday, Sarah! I wish I could send you some cupcakes in the mail, but I think they would arrive in a sad state. So here are some to feast your eyes on.

We bought these for Stephen's mom's birthday earlier this month at Lulu's in the North End (for some reason, the website only seems to work in IE). It was a day much like today, rainy and cool but definitely spring. We walked through Haymarket on our way to the bakery and heard lots of funny conversations. One man, his arms so loaded with bags of produce that they were practically dragging on the ground, warned his wife, "You're gonna drive the Haymarket out of business!" A vendor chided an overly-picky customer: "You're not buying a car! It's lettuce, just lettuce." We hardly saw anything before we were swept away by the great river of humanity surging through the narrow aisles, but I noticed that the produce got progressively cheaper the deeper into the heart of the market we went. I guess that's your reward for fighting your way through.

Looking at these pictures, I can't wait to go back to Lulu's. There's another cupcake place just a few blocks from our house, but it's more expensive and not as delicious, in my opinion, although their flavors are pretty wild. Stephen had a mojito cupcake there once, with rum-soaked cake and mint lime frosting, and I had a lemony one that came with a fortune in the icing. I'm really into citrusy desserts lately. I've got some lemon bars in the oven right now. Baking for two is always tricky. Do you halve the recipe? Make the whole thing, and just eat as much as you can before it goes bad? We decided to make the full recipe this time, because the number of eggs (3) meant we either had to make one third of the recipe (too little) or two thirds, which would be a lot of confusing division of teaspoons and tablespoons for only a little less final product. Maybe I can take some of them to work. Or maybe I'll just...eat them all.

Lighthouse Debrief

2008-04-24T23:16:00.002-04:00

We went! It was one of those weekends that you realize is going to be legendary even as it's happening, that you'll try to recapture in the future but never quite succeed. It was sunny and warm, and all the flowers were out. You'd think that winter had never happened. The sky was incredibly blue. There was no traffic on the island, and just enough of a crowd that it didn't feel deserted.

I'd read about this fiber festival online, so we went out to the Ag Barn on Saturday and sat on bleachers eating healthy food (a relief after a vending machine breakfast and lunch) while they sheared goats and sheep. Stephen got sunburnt, but the outing felt very wholesome. Later, I saw some of the angora goats up close and petted their incredibly soft coats. There were dozens of white goats, and one black one named Roquefort who was very eager to get a haircut. He kept wandering over to the shearers and trying to cut in line, but the farmers explained that he had to go last so his fleece wouldn't mix with the others'. My mom and I bought my sister a share of the yarn that will be spun from the wool they collected. I wonder if she'll get any of Roquefort's yarn.

It took us a while to figure out the bus system on the Vineyard, but once we did, we went all over the island: to Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Aquinnah, Chilmark, and West Tisbury. I was surprised at how different each town was. Oak Bluffs was like something a child would dream up, rows and rows of tiny, incredibly ornate gingerbread houses. Edgartown looked more like Nantucket, with stately shingle-covered houses set in well-manicured lawns, but I think the buildings were actually historic rather than just historically accurate.

We walked out to the lighthouse in Edgartown on Sunday morning, and I napped in the sand while Stephen took pictures of the scenery. The bus took us out to another lighthouse in Aquinnah, but we could only stay for a minute before running back to the parking lot to get back on the shuttle. (The next bus wasn't coming for more than hour, so we didn't want to take any chances. The buses were cheap and the drivers helpful, but I wouldn't say that the system ran frequently.) We watched 21 in a tiny one-room theater in Vineyard Haven on Saturday night, and ate ice cream sandwiches on a porch swing outside of the general store in West Tisbury on Sunday afternoon. It was a great time to be on the island, before the crowds of summer descend. That said, I can see why so many people choose to spend their vacations on the Vineyard. Being on a island feels so remote and secure, and this one in particular has lots of charm. I wonder what it's like to be a year-round resident, watching the ebb and flow of tourists as the seasons change. It must be beautiful in the winter, though perhaps lonely.

To The Lighthouse

2008-04-19T00:58:00.003-04:00

I love reading Virginia Woolf, but I've never finished one of her books. I've read To the Lighthouse twice, but never made it to the end. Do they ever get to the lighthouse? That was one of the first books I read in college, and I remember being very confused and put off at first by things like Mr Ramsay's never getting to R. ("R was beyond him. He would never reach R.") I liked it better the second time (partly) through.

I've been thinking about To The Lighthouse this week because we're going to Martha's Vineyard on Saturday. I've never been there, either. I've gone to Nantucket a few times, with Stephen's family, but never MV. I think I'll like it, though. I like islands and the shore, and especially the New England coast.

These pictures are from our trip to Salem in March. I like taking public transportation in general, but especially the train. If I had to commute long-distance, I'd do everything I could to take the commuter rail in and out of the city each day. I've taken it a few times since moving to Cambridge, and I love sitting by the window and seeing each station go by, not worried about traffic or anything besides getting off at the right stop. The reason we went to Salem in the first place was because I wanted to take the train somewhere, and it was suitably far away.

We're going to a sheep-shearing this weekend. I'm excited because I like animals and farms, but also because we're going to take the ferry. It makes me a little nervous: I imagine dropping something over the side, like my camera, and seeing it splash and disappear. But I also love being out on the water, going somewhere but without anything pressing to do.

I read a book last weekend about early settlers crossing the Atlantic to Massachusetts. It's so hard to imagine travel taking that long, weeks between continents. As much as I like the ferry, I am glad that it's over after an hour or two. I don't think I'm reading for trans-oceanic boat travel.

Oh, and speaking of books - I finished Mountains Beyond Mountains this week, way overdue. Hopefully I can make up some time with my considerably lighter April book.

Spent

2008-04-11T23:11:00.004-04:00

I thought this week would never end. All I want to do is sit still for a very long time, and then sleep. Then I want to go to the gym, and eat something wholesome, then sit some more. Not even think. This week has been so crazy. At work, I ran our three biggest events of the year on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. There were a million little and big things to arrange, so many last-minute frantic phone calls and errands and dashings between my office and various auditoriums around campus.

My brain pretty much looked like this, hyped up on refined sugar and caffeine:

I haven't had time to cook anything for myself, so I've been relying on whatever's left over from the catering at these events to keep me going a little longer. I've had several meals that consisted entirely of carrot cake and/or Fritos and/or coffee. Bleh.

I think I'll go to the library tomorrow and try to regain my sanity by doing just one thing at a time. Maybe I'll try to finish my March book. I'm so behind.

Fever

2008-04-06T15:44:00.004-04:00

Spring cleaning madness has descended. I spent the morning washing down the counters and scrubbing the cutting boards with salt and lemon. Everything feels stale after the New England winter, so I've got the windows open even though it's slightly too cold to do that now that the radiators have cooled.

This is my favorite time of year: right now, and the next month or so. It was over 60 degrees on Tuesday. We walked up Mass Ave yesterday and saw rows and rows of pansies out for sale by Pemberton Farms. I'm at the library now, watching a slow rain fall on the trees outside, heavy with buds.

This season feels harsh, in a refreshing way. It's still brisk outside, but I get overzealous (because it's April; winter's over, right?) and then freeze when I wear a sweater to work instead of a coat. The early blooms (forsythia, crocus) are acid-toned and incongruous against the dull brown muddy yards. It's overcast most of the time, with fog and rain. I like this kind of weather better than bright sunny days. Everything feels close, whereas unmitigated sun can make the day feel so vast in an empty and unfillable way. Only sometimes, mind. I like summer, too. But April--April is a big favorite around here.

Pasta Pronto

2008-04-02T23:46:00.002-04:00

I've lately discovered fresh pasta. This stuff is awesome. There's a little store in Davis Square that will cut it while you wait, in any size you want. I've also found it for sale at Whole Foods, and even Shaw's. We bought a bunch of the stuff a couple of weeks ago and ate it with brown butter and sage until we were bursting at the seams. I'm not convinced that it's superior to the boxed, dried stuff, but it cooks so quickly, and I love ordering it at the counter and watching them cut up the blocks of dough.

I've tried making fresh pasta myself a couple of times over the years. Once, in high school, I spent a Sunday afternoon making dozens of spinach gnocchi. I'm not sure why; I'd never had gnocchi before, and I didn't like spinach. I think I was just into shaping the little dumplings, imprinting each one with the tines of a fork. I didn't realize they'd dry out so quickly, though, nor that they'd be so dense when cooked. I ate my way through about 15% of my yield before I had to trash the rest.

Stephen and I tried making pasta once, too, in college. We were cooking dinner for his parents, and decided to make the whole thing--orecchiette with fresh pesto--from scratch. The little ears proved time-consuming to mold, though, so ten minutes in we switched over to cutting fettuccine. I think we tried making spaghetti with a pasta maker, too. In the end, we threw it all together, along with the most extraordinarily verdant pesto I've ever seen. (The latter was made with a mortar and pestle, which may account for its vibrancy.) It was one of the most visually stimulating dinners I've ever had, that's for sure.

Projects

2008-03-30T23:41:00.003-04:00

Here's the chair Stephen was working on when he cut his finger in February. He's turning an Ikea Olle into a rocking chair. Progress on this project has stalled since then, largely because his hand was bandaged up for several weeks. But that always happens, doesn't it? I tend to run out of steam on a project the first time I hit a roadblock. I change my mind about a color once I've bought the paint, realize the sandpaper is the wrong grit and the store is closed, or find out a hat is too small as I bind off the last few stitches. Then I put the project away, eager for distance after this letdown, and never pick it up again.

We just got a notice about renewing our lease, which reminds me that we've been in this apartment for almost two years. It still feels so new in some ways, almost like we're still moving in. There are a few stacks of books in the living room that have yet to find a home, and two of the closets have never quite worked; everything's sort of piled up in there. I have a bunch of "house" projects on deck: refinishing Stephen's desk, sewing new curtains, adding shelves to the hall closet. I'll feel really defeated if we move out before these things happen.

Often, though, I imagine the projects I'll do after we move out, when I have more space and freedom than a 500-square-foot rental affords. We visited the Peaboy Essex Museum today and saw Yin Yu Tang, an 18th-century house transplanted from southeastern China to Salem, Mass. The building was beautiful. It made me want to have a house with a stone-lined courtyard and latticework windows. I'll probably never get a chance to design things like that; we're much more likely to buy something that's already been built when we get a house. But that's years off, so for now I can write these hypothetical to-do lists for myself with abandon.

Stephen, I'm happy to say, is much better at getting projects done in the here-and-now. While his knuckle was patching itself back together this month, he whipped up this little stool from a 19th-century Swedish design. I think it's from an old woodworking curriculum. I'm going to paint it some fun color, as soon as I can decide which one. (Some other things that Stephen has made are listed here: click "Craft".)

St. Patrick's Feast

2008-03-17T21:01:00.005-04:00

These geraniums are ready for spring, and so am I. It was warm and sunny out today, and we had lunch at the Blue Shirt Cafe in Davis Square. I had cheddar cheese with caramelized onions and Granny Smith apple slices on toasted sourdough. Apples seem like such a novel thing to have on a sandwich. I read this today and thought that I ought to try making fancier sandwiches for myself. I usually stick to PB&Js at home. A woman at Blue Shirt was telling her companion that she wanted to get a sandwich maker, and that suddenly seemed like a very good idea to me, too. I remember watching an infomercial for sandwich makers once when I was litle, and I thought they looked awesome, especially the way they cut the bread into triangles, like this.

For dinner, Stephen and I had a veggie approximation of my mom's corned beef hash. It wasn't quite the same (my mom definitely doesn't use SmartBacon), but still delish and very simple: diced onions, corned beef (or whatever) and boiled potatoes, fried in a little butter and milk, with salt and pepper on top. Can't go wrong with "fried in butter," can you.

It's Evacuation Day today, too, which is when Boston celebrates the British evacuation after the Revolutionary War. Stephen and all the school kids and government officials around here had the day off. I suspect that the popularity of this holiday stems in no small part from its convenient overlapping with St. Patrick's Day.

I read in the Boston Globe yesterday that the Franklin Park Zoo was admitting people named Seamus for free on Sunday, on account of the holiday and this little guy:

Seamus is a baby Baird's tapir, born on March 16, 2007. I first learned about tapirs when we visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History last spring, where they had a stuffed specimen in the Hall of Mammals. The plaque below said that tapirs are solitary, shy creatures who travel through the jungle with a characteristic shuffling gate, mostly alone, and usually at night. They have long snouts, and are somewhat related to horses and rhinos. Doesn't that sound like a creature straight out of mythology? Or maybe a Miyazaki film. We haven't seen Seamus in person yet, but I hope to this summer.

Night Out

2008-03-16T21:46:00.003-04:00

We finally saw the Mountain Goats at the Middle East last night. This is the third concert we've tried to get to in the past few months, and our first success. We're not so good at securing tickets sometimes. We missed getting seats at the upcoming They Might Be Giants show by about two days. Darn!

We met Nat and his friends early in the day for dinner in Porter Square, then pointed them back towards Route 2 and dashed over to Central Square so as not to arrive late--but we needn't have. The Moaners (warning: sound), an excellent all-woman rock/punk/blues band with delightful southern accents, opened for the Goats, and they didn't take the stage until two and a half hours after we arrived. I'll admit that I haven't been to very many concerts, but this seemed unusual. I began to wonder if they would cancel the show altogether. Were the bands stuck at Logan? Snarled in traffic? Getting ice cream? Stephen and I played Boticelli, Twenty Questions, and the Alphabet Game (take turns naming a brand/food/town in Massachusetts that begins with each letter of the alphabet) as we waited. Stephen got a beer. I found a bench to sit on. We people-watched. There were folks of all different ages and sensibilities there, which was cool. College students wearing witty t-shirts, hipsters in tight jeans, outdoorsy thirty-somethings with beards and polarfleece, older folks in wool sweaters and sensible shoes. The Cambridge Crowd.

Once the show got going, everyone was into it. John Darnielle told us his birthday was the next day, and we sang Happy Birthday. Stephen and I realized we could perch on the back of the bench and get a good view of the stage (difficult for me, at just under 5'2"). I haven't listened to any of the new Mountain Goats stuff, so I didn't know the lyrics, but the sound was familiar.

The show ended just before 1, with time to get the last train home. That's the latest we've been out in months, if not years, and I'm glad I don't do it every day. (Yes, that's right. I'm 100 years old and eat dinner at 4:30 so I can be back from Bingo by 8.) We were yawning by the end, and I slept in way too much this morning. But it was fun. Isn't live music always fun? Yes, it really is.

Sitting, Reading

2008-03-15T15:38:00.003-04:00

Look who we're hanging out with! Everyone is out and about for Spring Break, but Stephen and I are here working, which means we get to dog-sit. This is Cadi, short for Acadia, the sweetest border collie you ever did meet. Unfortunately, she is also an early riser who thinks Stephen and I and our over-sleeping are very lame. She may be right. I still haven't gotten onto Daylight Savings Time, so 10 am seems like a fine time to get up on the weekend.

I have accomplished one thing today, though - I finally finished my February book. It very much made me want to give up processed food forever. I'm shoving Doritos in my mouth as I type this, though, so there's some cognitive dissonance at work. But Michael Pollan did convince me to finally invest in a CSA share, so that's something.

For my March book (March/April, most likely), I'm going to read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains. Sarah loaned it to me, and I think it fits well with the theme I've unwittingly established: a non-fiction book that everyone seems to have read except me. I'm starting to think that's an illusion, though; while I was carrying Omnivore's Dilemma around, at least half a dozen people remarked to me that they'd heard about it and meant to read it, but hadn't. Only one person I talked to read it, and he hadn't finished it at that point, either. So maybe what I'm reading is Famous Non-Fiction: The Great Unread.

How to Make Caramels

2008-03-11T22:17:00.003-04:00

We went crazy with caramel-making last month. I always do something elaborate for Valentine's Day, and I'd been toying the idea of making candy for some time when I found a link to this, and started thinking how fun it would be to wrap up a hundred caramels while watching TV. And it was! The wrapping was probably my favorite part, actually. Repetitive, mindless, and rewarding. How could it not be rewarding. You've got a huge pile of hand-wrapped sugary homemade goodness at the end.

I got the recipe from How to Cook Everything, or, as we've dubbed it, Mark's Book o' Recipes. It's astonishingly simple to make, as long as you have a couple of somewhat specialized items: a candy thermometer (obtainable at most grocery or hardware stores, I believe) and corn syrup. We made the chocolate variation of the recipe, and halved it.

Then made it three more times.

Chocolate Caramels
Makes more than 1/2 pound.
Time: About 20 minutes, plus time to cool.

3/4 c. heavy cream
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. light corn syrup
pinch salt
3/4 t. vanilla extract

Line a small baking pan (we used a loaf pan) with parchment paper.

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in a small saucepan and turn the heat to low. Cook, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves, then cook, stirring only occasionally, until the mixture measures 245 degrees F (a small piece of it will form a firm ball when dropped into a glass of cold water, but the thermometer is an easier and surer test).

Stir in the vanilla and pour into the prepared pan. When the mixture has cooled to room temperature, remove the block of caramel from the pan and use a sharp knife to cut it into small squares. Wrap each square in waxed paper or plastic wrap. These keep for weeks, but are best eaten fresh.

Forward, March

2008-03-02T23:10:00.005-05:00

Welcome, March. This is going to be a busy month, and I've already screwed up the first thing I meant to do: see my older-younger brother, Nat, in his college's production of A Doll's House. It's the last play he'll be in before graduating, so I'm sad to miss it, but I got confused about dates and missed my chance. Hopefully he'll go on to be in lots of plays professionally someday, and I can go see him and bring roses to throw on the stage and shout "Bravo!" during curtain call.

Alex, my younger-younger brother, is taking to the stage this month, too, as Angie the Ox in the high school's production of Guys & Dolls. I hope to make it home to see that. I've never seen him sing, but he plays the drums, and taught me how to play Guitar Hero last time I visited, so I'm sure the musical genre will come easily to him.

I've been to a lot of concerts in that high school auditorium. My siblings and I were all in the bands (concert band, marching band, wind ensemble, jazz band, etc), and my brothers and I did the annual musicals. Nat was always the star of the show, though: lead in the musical, drum major, big parts in the dramas they started doing in later years. I'm proud that he's still following that dream. In fact, he's coming to Boston later this month to audition for post-college roles. I'll have to see if I can bring roses for that.

In the meantime, I've got a midterm to study for. I haven't taken a real sit-down, calculator-and-#2-pencil test since...well, since the GRE, but that was the first one in a long while. So there's much studying to do this week. Flashcards to make, review sessions to attend, panicked emails to send in the wee hours, asking classmates to clarify the difference between confounding and effect modification in a retrospective cohort study.

Next weekend, when the midterm is a happy memory, Stephen and I will fly to Maryland to visit our friends Sarah and Adam in Takoma Park. This is a fitting time to make the trip; ever since I drove to the White House with friends for a protest in March of my sophomore year, I've associated the DC area with early spring. We were there last year when the trees were full of blossoms, and I keep thinking about a walk we took in Georgetown, where there were petals scattered all over the sidewalks. Here's a photo I took of Stephen and Sarah that day:

DC is so lucky, getting spring weeks before New England does. So I like visiting in March.

(P.S. Ian: Want to borrow Chicken w/Plums? It's a good read.)

Interminable

2008-02-23T19:04:00.004-05:00

We've been wearing snow boots a lot lately; the city got almost a foot of snow last week. Winter goes on. A lot of people feel that February is the nadir, the very depths of the annual bottoming-out of life (have you heard Dar Williams' February?), but I love this month. Even though it's just a few days shorter than most months, it goes by fast. I'm so relieved in the first week just to be done with January (now there's a long, dark month), and then there's Valentine's Day to look forward to and cards to make. I usually spend at least a week of the month sick, so that changes things up, and then before you know it (as I realized once again yesterday), it's practically over. Honestly, I just got around to changing my calendar over.

Also, the sun is setting so much later these days. It's still light when I leave the office. In a week it'll be March, and then Easter, St. Patrick's, Daylight Savings, and spring.

The approaching end of the month means I need to live up to my resolution to read a book every month. I'm more than halfway through The Omnivore's Dilemma, and am hoping to make some headway this weekend. I heard somewhere that Terry Gross reads a book every day, which makes my goal seem sort of pathetic, but without this deadline, I'd be in danger of never finishing a book at all. I don't know how many (non-school) books I read in 2007, but it was definitely less than 12. Omnivore's Dilemma is engaging, depressing, enlightening. I'm not sure what to follow it with. Maybe fiction? Something a little less facty. I'm also reading Marjane Satrapi's Chicken with Plums, trying to finish before I go to Maryland in March to see my friend Sarah. We always trade graphic novels when we visit each other.

Sarah, I hope you'll like it.

In Stitches

2008-02-19T22:21:00.004-05:00

Poor Stephen had to get stitches today. He's got the week off from school, and had been planning to get so many things done. Here's his desk in its usual state: covered with school supplies and a dozen projects-in-progress.

We were away for the long weekend, but he got right to work this morning on the rocking chair he's been making for me. Things were progressing well until, on the last cut, he caught the knuckle of his left index finger with the hand saw. (Sorry. I hope you weren't eating.) Bleeding profusely, he dashed around the house looking for Band-Aids and trying to find the phone number for the doctor's office. I got a call at work a little while later and talked to him on speakerphone while he applied direct pressure to the wound and waited for his appointment.

Dude ended up with six stitches, a tetanus shot, some antibiotics, and an ice cream sundae from Emack & Bolio's (ice cream speeds healing, don't you know). Unfortunately, he's probably not going to be doing any more home improvements until the bandages come off. So no shelves in the closet, and no rocking chair--at least not this week. But I'm just happy to have him safe and sound.