status update

December 2016 shall henceforth be known as the month I became Very Boring. After months of frustrating unemployment interspersed with exciting travel to exotic places, I finally took a perfectly acceptable temp job at a Real Company. It's a very dry temp job though. I spend my days staring at spread sheets and sending follow-up emails and tracking misplaced pieces of paper, and though I get a full hour for lunch during which I take a brisk walk around midtown, I sit right back down in my cubicle at 1:15pm each day to reacquaint myself with those darn spreadsheets. It's a good change of pace for me though. I'm finally learning what having an actual office job is like (answer: dull, but they give you things like free flavored coffee and a whole swivel chair to yourself), and it's been a relief to take a pause on the ole' job search. I've also used this time to take a pause on the ole' blog posts, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I have a list of posts I want to write - I have honeymoon pictures to share, a whole wedding to process, and lest I forget the idyllic Thanksgiving weekend we recently spent with friends in Palm Springs. On the other hand, I've been putting a lot of my spare time and energy into my Etsy shop which I've found to be a much-needed push into a different creative direction. So who knows? Maybe I'll come back from this little break with a million more words to write, maybe I won't. What I do know is that the holidays are almost here, I don't have a white dress to fit into anymore, and yes I will have a second helping of Christmas Day Lasagna. Stay cozy, my friends.



- Make good talk not small talk
- Welcome back
- Guilty as charged
- This might be my Christmas present to myself
- A quick, easy, and winning weeknight dinner
- Check yourself before you wreck yourself
- Between the holiday gift exchanges and my burning desire to wrap myself up in a blanket and hibernate for the next four years rest of winter, I thought it best to invest in a few new candles

status update

Welp, this month has been a doozy of emotions. There was that whole depressing/upsetting/baffling election debacle that I'm still not over (not even close), but I also spent two glorious weeks on a boat in southern Europe AND the cubs won the world series. So I'm in a quandary: how do I reconcile the fact that the world is (probably) going to hell in a hand basket and still take such pleasure in remembering some of the happiest times of my life (wedding, honeymoon, world series)? Is it wrong to post pictures and think, aw that was so fun! while we collectively have so. much. work to do to turn this country into one of peace and respect? Oy. I don't know. There must be a middle ground between dwelling on the negative and blithely skipping though life, pumpkin spice latte in hand. What I do know, however, is that these questions are not going to be answered quickly or entirely by me. So in the mean time I will take long walks with friends through crunchy fall leaves, spend way too much time planning extensive Thanksgiving and Friendsgiving meals, and cozy up with as much tea and bad tv as I possibly can without actually becoming one with my couch. Be well, my dears.


*I already bought my 2017 calendar, but this was a close 2nd
*You can sleep in a bubble!!
*I love me some trial sized anything and this might be my next indulgence purchase
*It's been a time for comfort food and I've been making chicken soup on repeat
*Didn't think an ESPN article could make you cry? Think again.
*Heartbreaking
*I could stare at these all day
*Welcome back 
*I don't know what I'm doing so obviously I opened my very own etsy shop (!)

status update

You guyssssss - I did it! I actually for real's not for fake got all gussied up and walked down an aisle and got married in front of 100+ of our closest friends and family and didn't fall down once!! And it was fun! It was also stressful and overwhelming and something I need not do again, ever. But it was also a ton of fun! My b'maids were total rockstars. Or rather, they made me feel like a rockstar. They fluttered around me like they were the birds in a Disney movie and I was one of the princesses, shoving me into my spanx (seriously, thanks ladies), buckling my shoes, and last-minute (literally) sewing my corset to my dress because somehow I and my seamstress, over three different dress fittings, failed to notice that the bustier was visible to anyone taller than me (which is most people). We traipsed around a nearby mall taking pictures at the Barnes & Noble and Johnny Rockets (apologies to all the people we made switch tables so that we could have the cute corner booth), had a most beautiful ceremony, and then danced like idiots for the rest of the night. I still can't feel my feet. I have a ton of ideas for separate and subsequent posts that offer actual wedding planning advice instead of just a bunch of exclamations, but for now I'm simply going to bask in the rest of this post-wedding glow and get my honeymoon on. Happy fall, y'all!!

* I'll be taking this advice very, very seriously this week
* My new obsession (and time-waster)
* I put a temporary moratorium on all things baked goods due to the wedding (see: above) but this is a strong contender for First Thing I Bake When I Get Back
* Political pockets
* I'm not alone!
* I needed this a few weeks ago when I swear every line I waited in was the LONGEST ever

(new year's res) Roll of Film #3

In a burst of fruition and serendipity, I happened to actually read one of the dozens of promotional emails that crowds my inbox every hour and learned that the Lomography store was giving away a free roll of film during a "Photo Week" (or something like that, I didn't read the email that well) in August. So I scooted my way down to the store and picked up a roll of their own brand of film, Lomo Color Negative. I shot on my La Sardina wide angle camera over the next few months - my journeys took me all over Manhattan and up to Portland, Maine for a most lovely bachelorette weekend, and I made sure to snap at least of couple of pics every few days. The results are stunning - the colors are vibrant and saturated, and while the few pictures I took at dusk did not come out at all, hazy, overcast days were no problem. For being a cheap and plastic camera, the La Sardina takes some fun and dreamy photos. It's not as "gimmicky" as some of the other Lomo cameras I have (the Diana camera is good but a little too retro and blurry for my taste and the FishEye is frankly annoying) and the pictures tend to be much richer than anything I can natively take on my iPhone. I'm taking this camera and a handful of film to Europe and I can't wait to see what images I get!

Film: Lomogropahy 400 Color Print Film - ISO 400
Camera: La Sardinia 35mm
Photo locations: Midtown Manhattan, Portland Head Light (Portland, ME), Central Park

book report #10

*Mother Tongue (Christine Gilbert) - I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir about a mother's (admittedly crazy) idea to become fluent in three languages - Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish - and raise her family in a multi-lingual household. I admired Gilbert's honesty. She made a few huge mistakes in her journeys (China was a giant bust) but wasn't afraid to fess up, ask her husband for forgiveness, and move on - a lesson in humility she wasn't shy in sharing and one that we as readers could probably use ourselves.

*Eleanor & Park (Rainbow Rowell) - all the feels. All the teenage angst. This book was every John Hughes movie rolled into one hormone-fueled, modern-day Shakespearean drama, and I loved it. I was surprised though - I normally can't stand love stories, but this wasn't a typical romance novel nor was it a splashy beach read. It was a tale of pure yet unrequited love between two desperate teens told with both innocence and passion, and I never wanted it to end.

*The Flood Girls (Richard Fifield) - not a fan. The first 97% of this novel painted a vivid picture of an odd and quirky small Montana town that was part A League of their Own and part American Graffiti. I enjoyed peeking into this world so unlike any I've ever experienced, even if most of the fictional residents freely oscillated between character and caricature. But then the story turned tragic for no other reason (it seems to me) than sensationalism, and the last 20 pages were entirely dark and depressing with little chance for hope or redemption. It was by no means a long or difficult read, but I wouldn't recommend this one. It left me feeling strangely empty and dubious of humanity's ability for compassion.

*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer) - I grabbed this book off the library shelf for two reasons: it was a softcover small enough to fit into my purse, and I had a train to catch and couldn't spend any more time in the library. As it turns out, my methods for choosing reading material aren't so terrible because this was a delightfully surprising book. Set in the years immediately following WWII and written as a series of letters and telegrams, this tells of the inhabitants of Guernsey - one of the Channel Islands (between France and England) that spent the entirety of the war under German occupation. I had never heard of Guernsey, let alone it's particular role in the war, and this book was a wonderful introduction to a time and a place unfortunately glossed over by my teachers. It was written with humor and empathy and had me googling all sorts of historical facts alongside my reading.

*Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty (Ramona Ausubel) - an intensely compelling novel about a couple's infidelity and how a series of events and one small decision can completely unravel a previously happy family unit. Ausubel created an inhabitable world and often revealed fascinating details and backstories of minor characters for the sole purpose of adding color to the story, which made me want even more from the book. The characters were all flawed but relatable, and toward the end I was rooting for no one and everyone. Definitely one of my favorite books of the year.

*Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany) - so...I didn't like this. And it pains me to say that, because I love the Harry Potter books. I read each one within 48 hours of their release dates back in those early '00s, and hell, I spent this very evening taking a quiz to discover my true Patronus (spoiler alert: it's a grey squirrel. I'll be unpacking that one for a while.) But this play was vapid. And not written well. Or rather, written at a much lower reading level than the final books in the original series (a literary device I truly appreciated), which frankly just pissed me off. Either the playwrights didn't think a play can be written with compound sentences (it can) or they were intentionally writing for the grade school set, but either way it created a disjointed narrative. Also - the scenes were JARRINGLY short. From both a literary perspective (let's try a little harder, shall we?) and a technical theater perspective (SO many scene changes!!), it was distracting. Finally, I just didn't like the story. Without giving anything away, it felt forced, unbelievable, and obvious all at the same time. I've heard the London production of this play is fantastic, so maybe all the smoke and mirrors help hide the structural flaws in the script. But since it's unlikely I'll be seeing the play in person any time soon, I'm going to need a little more than this version of the script to keep me interested.

status update

I don't want to be one of those people who only talks about her wedding, but my wedding is in 15 days and I can think of no other worthwhile topic to occupy my every waking thought and most of my sleeping thoughts as well. The programs have been written but not printed, the dress has been hemmed but not picked up, the card box that goes on the gift table is a task I keep shuffling to the bottom of the to-do list and you guys, NO ONE TOLD ME WEDDING PLANNING WOULD BE THIS TIME-CONSUMING!!! Blame Pinterest (obviously) and those cutesy little 6-word programs that say "music starts - we kiss - everyone parties." Granted, I knew it was going to be a little more complicated then that, but it's as though I've been in a year-long production meeting for a one-day party. Oh and on top of that I'm still trying to find my purpose a day job and jumping in on a few theater-related gigs because why the hell not. So I guess it's a good thing that my focus has been elsewhere, because this is one of the few status updates that didn't begin with a blithering recap of the current weather situation. Yay me!

*There's an entire world of competitive steel drumming and it's a rabbit hole but one worth going down
*I'm seriously considering signing up for this and this
*The eye of the artist
*I can't unsee this
*The best sushi in all the land
*It turns out I've been slow blogging this entire time!
*I don't know the first thing about neuroscience, but this was one of the sweetest stories I've heard in quite a while

status update

I don't want to be one of those people who only talks about the weather, but you guys, it's like a sauna out there. Seriously I broke a sweat just walking to yoga the other day. I really don't remember it being this hot and humid when I was a kid, but then again I spent the first 18 summers of my life at our local pool, first as a pool rat then as an actual lifeguard. So it's entirely possible that it was this hot but masked by my ability to jump in freezing cold water whenever I wanted. Since this adult life of mine does not have such easy access to a cool body of water (note to self: become friends with someone who has a rooftop pool), I instead have been obsessively watching every moment of the Olympics while setting a personal best record for ice cream eating. Those athletes are working so hard down there, it's only right that someone compensates for all their burned calories, right? Here's to Team USA!

*Read this, watch that
*Be still, my fabric-loving heart
*This sparked a fantastic brunchtime conversation
*Just in case you forgot
*Method man
*The darkest of comedies (but still so funny)
*every.single.one
*"...Leona Watson Chalmers would cite those grueling six-day weeks of theater life as the inspiration for the Tassette, the first commercial menstrual cup."

(new year's res) Roll of Film #2

Even though I try my hardest not to keep too much unnecessary "stuff" around the apartment (small-space living ftw!), I have been slowly collecting film cameras over the years. The most recent edition (given to me for my birthday by my most lovely fiancé) is a Lomography La Sardinia, a wide-angle 35mm no-frills camera. I loaded it up with a roll of film as soon as I took it out of the box but as it is wont to do, life got in the way and it took me a few months to shoot the entire roll. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with the new camera. It didn't handle shadows very well and a few pictures I took around dusk were so grainy and distorted that the subjects are barely identifiable, but shooting in bright daylight produced some vibrant colors and even few fun light leaks. I'd been toying with the idea of bringing a film camera on our upcoming honeymoon (does one person really need to bring three cameras on vacation?) and based on this first roll, I think I'm going to do it.

Film: FujiColor - ISO 400
Camera: La Sardinia 35mm
Photo locations: Central Park, Jones Beach, Coney Island, Astoria Park

top 10 ways to not write your blog

1.) Start four different posts that you immediately hate because they are trite and/or uninteresting and/or boring for even you to read. Do not finish these posts.

2.) Sign up for a three-week new student pass at a local yoga studio and take a vinyassa and a barre class back-to-back. Be amazed at how much your abs now hurt and decide that your computer is much too far away from the couch; you couldn't possibly write anything now.

3.) In anticipation of blogging about it, take a zillion pictures of your favorite necklace that broke in a Macy's dressing room but you managed to fix so it's nearly as good as new. Compare your pictures to any number of necklace-based instagrams, get discouraged, delete the pictures, do not write about the necklace.

4.) Have a meltdown about a variety of wedding-related issues, including but not limited to: a never-ending search for first the "perfect" pair of shoes, than an "acceptable" pair of shoes, than "any f'ing pair that fits and looks remotely close to what I originally wanted;" the sheer panic you feel every time you get a wedding present and have no idea where to put it in your teeny-tiny one-bedroom apartment; the outrageously high cost of hiring a hair and makeup artist to turn you into a photogenic sun goddess for the day of the wedding; the incredulousness of "escort cards" (those things that tell your guests what table they're sitting at) and how something that someone will use for five seconds can cost so damn much and be so complicated to organize. Do not use any of this material as fodder for a series of articles to feature on your blog.

5.) Take a day trip upstate to see an opera recital. Romp through the woods, revel in the quiet of nature, and take an obscene amount of selfies with your iPhone camera remote (because that's who you've become now). Share the best selfie to instagram and fall asleep on the bus ride home because you've had a long day.

6.) Mope around like a sad puppy because one of your closest friends in New York had the audacity to move all the way to Boston to be with her fiancé. Bake two dozen unnecessary yet delicious rosemary shortbread cookies in an attempt to dull the pain.

7.) Have a second meltdown because you can't find a dress to wear to your upcoming wedding shower. Try on every dress in Manhattan and most on ModCloth. Curse the clothing industry, your genetic history of short torsos and large ribcages, and your penchant for tater tots. Try on a jumpsuit. Curse everyone and everything. Search Pinterest for more ideas and get instantaneously demoralized because every dress looks as though it's being modeled by a professional fashion blogger because everyone on that site is a professional fashion blogger. You can't get five people to read your blog. You just need one peach-colored dress to wear. You should go back to bed.

8.) Use the time you'd normally spend prepping posts for the week to apply for dozens of "real jobs" because you're 32 and this whole freelance thing just isn't cute any more. Obsessively refresh your inbox as you wait for those offers to roll in. Wonder if gmail is down. Send yourself an email from another address to make sure the internet is working. Contemplate moving to a country with free universal healthcare. Like Iceland. Iceland could be fun.

9.) Spend waaaay too much time researching options for the upcoming NYC Restaurant Week and make sure to get your reservations in as soon as the site goes live because last year you got crappy time slots and you will NOT be slighted again.

10.) Contemplate opening an Etsy store for your embroidery designs. Do not let the fact that you have no previous embroidery experience deter you. Spend hours at Michael's fussing around with different thread color combinations, doodle a bunch of new patterns, and make a test piece to give to your partner for his desk at work. Decide it doesn't look too bad and move forward with your new business venture. Do not waste precious time blogging about it because that would be ridiculous.

status update

Today, my beloved Fitbit app told me that I have walked a total of 1,600 miles since first donning the tracker a year and a half ago - the equivalent of the length of the Great Barrier Reef. I for one am just grateful that we in this world have the technology and the means to aggregate such ridiculous data for people. I mean, think about it: I put on a rubber bracelet, go about my business, and then months later I get a notification from the tiny computer in my pocket that I've covered a distance equal to one of the natural world wonders. It's a technological amazement. You know what else is a delightful advancement? The internet. It's full of weird and magical and sometimes even informative things, and in case you've had enough awful news this month (I know I have), here are some things that aren't so awful and that may brighten your day. Be well ;)

- Sweet (home) Chicago accent
- Be more Hemmingway
- Aziz for the win 
- Claire and I made this last week and it was delish
- This one hit close to home
- Are you confused as I am about this whole Pokemon thing? Rolling Stone explains it all
- Life hacks of the poor and aimless
- The most delightful piece of mail I've ever received

book report #9

*Love With a Chance of Drowning (Torre DeRoche) - a fun and entertaining memoir about a woman who overcame her fear of water (hence the title) and embarked on a three-year sailing adventure from LA to Australia and beyond. I'm not normally a fan of memoirs but I am a fan of boats and love stories, and the humorous and familiar tone DeRoche took to tell her story kept me engaged instead of at arm's length. While I doubt I'll sell all my possessions to live full-time on an 18-foot boat, this book almost made me want to take sailing lessons and definitely made me want to jump on the next flight to French Polynesia.

*Undermajordomo Minor (Patrick DeWitt) - this one was strange and not in a good way. I never quite figured out if it was a fairy tale, allegory, magical realism, or some other type of literally genre I never learned about in college. Amazon reviews call it "delightful, wacky, quirky, and charming" but I just thought it was weird. Not my cup of tea.

*Wild By Nature (Sarah Marquis) - honestly, this book eventually pissed me off so much that I stopped reading it about 75 pages from the end. It started off with promise - independent female explorer sets off to walk the length of entire countries - Mongolia, China, Thailand - on her way to Australia. After some obvious setbacks (weather, equipment failure, more weather, a tooth extraction) her trek totaled nearly three years in time, and this book is her memoir about the walk. But at no point did she ever say why she was obsessively walking. Was she running from something? To something? To discover something? To learn something? And even though she had helpers and fixers throughout her journey (she was given a contact person in each country and boxes of supplies at each stopping point) she never justified how she could simply take three years out of her life to walk. I guess it was a sponsored trip? Even if it was, she wrote with such a jarringly jib tone throughout (oops! almost died again lol) that it was entirely off-putting. I had high hopes for this one and it sadly did not come through.

*A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland) - I've obviously had female-adventurer memoirs on the brain this year, and this one was interesting and informative, if not a little too heavy on the dry research. Regardless, it was an interesting concept - a post-marriage woman in her 50's goes in search of silence - but what is it, exactly? And what does prolonged silence do to a person? I most enjoyed when Maitland got personal and reflected on her own silent discoveries as opposed to the more scholarly sections, but even so, this book got me thinking about my own auditory experiences, including but not limited to the ironic fact that I read the majority of this book on the subway, a notably loud method of transport that leaves little room for silent introspection.

*The Nest (Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney) - an all-around wonderful novel. A smart, funny, and captivating story that was a welcome blend of epic family saga and modern relevance. The characters were beautifully flawed but entirely relatable and the plot was so enticing that I actually woke up early one morning to finish reading it before heading out for the day. I'd been in a bizarre literary rut for the past few months (see above) and this was the perfect story to get me back into the reading game.

*We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Karen Joy Fowler) - part mystery (but not really), part anthropological study (but not really), part memoir (but not really) and part tell-all (but not really), this beautifully bizarre work of fiction is narrated by a woman who was raised alongside a chimpanzee back when these kinds of things were still kosher in the scientific world. Needless to say, her upbringing screwed her up in all kinds of ways, and even though I tend to stray from the "I had a terrible childhood" kind of stories, this one was just enticing enough to keep me reading and get me thinking about what exactly determines the difference between humans and animals.

status update

I've been light on the posts this month for reasons that range from acceptable to excuse. I got caught up in a work project, I got caught up in an arts and crafts project, I had to drop my winter coats off at the dry cleaners, I spent too much time lounging in a park with friends over Memorial Day, I'm doing a 30-day plank challenge AND a 30-day step challenge and after all that planking and walking I'm just plum tired out, I didn't have (and still don't have) the appropriate words to talk about Orlando, we cleaned out our storage closet and it took longer than expected, I started taking a class about brand management, I had to pick up my winter coats from the dry cleaners, I spent too much time lounging in another park for a friend's birthday, and ultimately, I ran into good old-fashioned writer's block. But this marks my 300th post on this little blog of mine, and while I certainly didn't expect to make it this far, I'm really glad I did. Though I'm decidedly less pie and more smorgasbord these days, this site has been one of my longest non-human relationships outside of an ill-fated seven-year tryst with T-Mobile. And despite the writer's block and the post-travel blues that descended upon me after my whirlwind world tour of this past April and May and the fear of having virtually no plan or foreseeable path towards any form of consistent employment, I write and I photograph and I post because frankly, I just really enjoy creating this space. So thank you, dear reader, for sticking with me this long - and I hope you will join me in raising a (digital) glass to the next 300 ;)


*This was me at a BCBG in boca
*Spread the light
*Art, anyway
*Are you as obsessed with the Brady Bunch as I am? No? Well you should be because this exists.
*Cultural literacy is an Always Food
*I dedicate this book
*love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love

Springtime at the New York Botanical Garden

In the midst of some truly awful New England springtime weather systems and some truly wonderful travel opportunities to exotic tropical locations, J and I managed to find an entire day that was a.) a Saturday b.) warm and sunny and c.) one in which we were both free and in town. And while J had visions of curling up on the couch and doing nothing all afternoon, I was all nope! Look at this glorious day! It's a day made for doing things! And we're gonna do those things! And then I pressed pause on the music I had swelling underneath my proclamation and we headed straight for the New York Botanical Garden.

I'm a sucker for a good garden walk, and this one did not disappoint (but with over 250 acres and home to the largest botanical library in the Americas, I was not expecting someone's backyard garden). I lost myself in a sea of azaleas and tulips, and while walking one of the many trails, we were able to have a few moments where we didn't see any other people or hear anything but birdcalls above us - a rarity for New York City.

If you find yourself at the garden, I highly recommend taking the tram tour. It's a (roughly) half-hour narrated, hop-on-hop-off tour that's not just a good way to get from one corner of the park to the other, but is also surprisingly interesting and informative. I for one know so little about plants and trees and anything else that grows naturally from the ground (oo look a pink flower! a tree with leaves!) that I was able to learn a good amount of flower and tree types and the history of the surrounding Bronx area on the tour.

We lasted a good three hours before our allergies got the best of us, but we felt the benefits of being amongst nature and out in the fresh air long after we returned home.

If you go:
*Getting to the New York Botanical Garden is a hike - if you're inclined to take public transportation, it's a 20-minute walk from the nearest subway or a ride on the Metro-North. If you can, take a car - although with tolls and a $15 parking fee, you could easily find yourself spending over twenty dollars before you even get inside the garden.
* An All-Garden Pass (which includes entrance to the Conservatory and the Tram Tour) is $25 for adults on the weekends ($20 on weekdays), but if you just want to walk the grounds and not see any special exhibits a $13 Grounds Only ticket is available. The Garden has two Ground Only Free Days - Wednesdays (all day) and Saturdays from 9a - 10a.
*So is it worth it? Possibly - we used a corporate discount and got our entire entrance fee waived, so our expenses were simply tolls and parking. I might be singing a different song if we had spent $50 to walk around the gardens when I knew that a similar (although not as good) "nature walk" could be had for free in the much more accessible Central Park. Find a coupon or discount code if you can, or take advantage of the Gardens-Only options if you're looking to save some pennies.
*Hours, directions, and a whole lot more info can be found here.

status update

Thanks to a recently diagnosed tree nut allergy, I've been starting my mornings with an egg as opposed to my usual bowl of allergens vanilla almond cereal. I'm uncomplicated when it comes to my eggs - one egg scrambled and fried on a piece of toast, sprinkle some shredded cheese during the last five seconds of cooking, maybe a swipe of avocado if I'm feeling fancy. It's quick, easy, and foolproof, and I've been making my eggs like this for quite some time now (and even more so now that I have to remove my beloved cereal routine). Except that this morning I completely screwed it up. I don't know if I added too much milk or didn't use enough heat or maybe I scrambled the uncooked egg too vigorously? Whatever errors I made, the egg was bubbly and oversized and entirely too runny and took over the toast like a b-movie blob. I still ate it, though. Runny or not, it was still an edible breakfast, and anything can be tasty if you cover it in enough cheese.

*Speaking of breakfast, it's 8am somewhere
*And speaking of cheese...
*Nail biters anonymous
*There's more than one way to write a recipe
*An old friend and her new endeavor
*This is everything I love about everything (did I mention I love this?)

book report #8

*The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante) I was hooked by book no. 1, and now with this second Neapolitan Novel, I have become fully addicted to all things Ferrante. It's a little like the first-year psychology student discovering that he has all the issues he's studying, but I found so much of myself, my teenage years, and my current feelings toward life-long friendships in this book that it was almost as if I was reading my parallel universe. I'm at the mercy of the Queens Public Library to decide when I get to read the third book, but if it takes much longer I may just buy the series myself.

*Among the Ten Thousand Things (Julia Pierpont) a slightly disjointed narrative that annoyed me at first, but then I got used to it. I can't say I ever got fully onboard with this book, but the storyline was interesting, if not the tiniest bit tired (husband cheats on wife, their entire family derails). A quick read that does well on airplanes and subways.

*I Will Teach You To Be Rich (Ramit Sethi) I haven't proselytized a book in quite some time, but I cannot shut up about this book. Seriously, ask my friends. I've talked about the financial lessons I gained in this wonderfully comprehensive and plainly stated how-to book over dinner with friends, in bed with my fiancee, to my parents around the breakfast table, on the subway, at work, and even while driving a golf cart in Hawaii - because it's just that good and easy to understand. By breaking down money management to its' most elementary terms and practices, Sethi makes having and keeping money entirely possible. I read this book off a suggestion of a fellow blogger and wish I'd read it five years ago. But there is NO time like the present to get started on making smart financial decisions that will benefit you for the rest of your life.

*The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende) it took me a REALLY long time to get into this book. It's not a nice story - set in pre-revolutionary Chile, the men are mean, the women are persecuted, the rapes are rampant, and there was such a graphic abortion scene that I had to skim over a few pages. However, once we met the mother of this multi-generational saga, the harshness of the characters' lives eased up (slightly) and things got good. Above everything else, it's a beautiful tale of love, life, and revolution in an era and country I know so little about. Also, it counts as the second of ten translated works I'm hoping to read this year.

*The Vacationers (Emma Straub) A light, quick, and breezy read (which I really appreciated after the heaviness of the aforementioned Allende), but nonetheless surprisingly poignant and delicately written. The setting (a two-week vacation in Mallorca) didn't hurt either, nor did the dime-store descriptions of the sexy Spanish tutor. The perfect beach book.

*A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara) Devastating, depressing, and over 800 pages long, yet somehow also easy to read and impossible to put down. By the last 100 pages, I was crying so hard that I could barely read the words on the page, and this book was ultimately the catalyst for not one, but two evenings of actual weeping. This was my pick for my book club (I know, good job, Mar) and everyone who finished the book had equal-if-not-worse visceral reactions to any one of the horribly violent and sadistic rape scenes. One member had such bad nightmares that she threw in the towel at page 400 and didn't even finish the book. So it it worth a read? Well, the ensuing discussion at book club was one of the longest and deepest we've ever had - so many themes and questions emerged from the reading that we couldn't stop talking about it. If you're looking for a meaty but upsetting tome to sink your teeth into, this book is for you. Just be warned that it is not a nice story.

status update

I'm between gigs right now and as a result, my brain is a giant jumble of thoughts and schedules and to-do lists and all the things I want to get done and all the things I need to get done and all the things I know I'm not going to get done even though I add them to my list each week and make a truly half-hearted attempt to accomplish. I did manage to knit almost 20 giant squares that I will eventually sew together to become a blanket (which is 20 more squares than I ever thought I'd make) and I treated myself to a float session in a sensory deprivation tank for my birthday where I discovered I could isolate individual muscles and learn exactly what they do and how they operate. Also, we saw Hamilton and I openly wept for the last 1/3 of the show because it was just that damn beautiful. April, yo.


*Building a better sandwich
*I can't stop scrolling
*Count memories, not calories
*How to find the allergen-free product that's right for you
*I thought I loved my Fitbit, but then I got the Alta. Now I'm obsessed.
*Equality parenthood

(new year's res) Ride the Staten Island Ferry

You guys. When I added "ride the Staten Island Ferry" to my list of new year's resolutions for 2016, I a.) assumed it'd take me nearly all year to get my butt down to Battery Park to then actually get on the ferry and b.) figured I'd have to make it a solo journey or heavily bribe an unemployed friend to join me. So imagine my pleasantly quizzical surprise when I found myself on the Staten Island ferry on a blustery April day with friends who were more than eager to take the trip.

I was playing tour guide to three friends from college - two of them had never been to New York but didn't really care what we did or where we went as long as it didn't involve a lot of walking (a recent car accident had rendered one friend fairly immobile), and the third had been here a million times already and was over all the "usual" tourist stuff. And after a disappointing stroll down Canal St., we quickly realized that this city is made for walking and there are really not a ton of options that are affordable and provide seated views of something interesting. Oh, and did I mention that it was pouring rain?

I was about to throw in the towel and tell them to just hang out in a restaurant until they needed to catch their bus later that evening (I was not on my tour guide game) when Brian had a stroke of brilliance. "How about the Staten Island ferry?" he said. "Is that doable from here? I've always wanted to set foot on the 5th borough." And I was like, "YES THAT IS NOT JUST DOABLE IT'S THE BEST IDEA EVER!" because it was a quick train ride away from Chinatown, provided seated and covered views of New York, was free, and secretly knocked off another item on both mine and Brian's personal bucket lists. So without too much further ado or complication, we soon found ourselves on our way to that red-headed step child of New York.

We didn't have time to get out and explore the island (Brian and I put that on our "next time in NY" list) but even without a subsequent romp around town, it was still an utterly fantastic ride. Yes, I realize that if I were using the ferry as my daily commute I probably wouldn't be singing this song, let alone devoting an entire post to the trip. But as someone who once took the Ikea boat just to get meatballs with a view, the Staten Island Ferry is a delightful ride with exceptional views of Lady Liberty and lower Manhattan.  Also, standing on the back of the boat and singing "Let the River Run" as we sailed back to Manhattan is now easily in my top 10 favorite New York moments. Because #werkitgirl

(new year's res) Baking Bread #1

One of my (many) new year's resolutions is to bake four loaves of bread in 2016. And since I love nothing more than making a brash justification and blurring the definition of what "bread" really is just to be able to check off another item on my personal resolution list, I spent an afternoon baking an Americanized version of an Irish bread shaped like a British pastry. Why, you ask? Well, it all started with a deep moment of nostalgia for the Irish soda bread I grew up eating at my best friend Terri's house at their annual St. Patrick's Day dinner. While my Sicilian/Italian family paid more attention to the following day's St. Joseph's Day celebrations, Terri's family was more than happy to indulge in their Guinness-drinking, limerick-making Irish heritage. And as a result, each year her mother would make the entire traditional feast - corned beef and cabbage, potato soup, and the heartiest soda bread this side of the Atlantic. I haven't been able to partake in their dinner in quite some time (thanks, work schedule), but I found myself thinking of those nights around her dinner table in anticipation of this year's St. Patrick's Day.

I had to work on SPD this year and knew that I wasn't going to be able to commit to the full menu - but the soda bread was something I could handle. This would be my first time making the heralded bread, so I took to the internet for guidance and inspiration - only to discover that there are about a million different "authentic" family recipes that each claimed theirs was the "true" Irish soda bread. Ok, so I'll just ask Terri's mom for her recipe, that'll solve my problem! But I unfortunately didn't plan ahead and decided to start looking up recipes about five minutes before I left for the grocery, and didn't have time to wait for a response. I started to fret. How was I going to pay my respects to the patron saint of Ireland?? Then I remembered the gold mine that is Smitten Kitchen. Ahh yes. That's where I'll find my recipe!

And find a recipe I did - one that looked delicious, not-too-complicated to make...and was for an Americanized version of Irish soda bread. In scone-form. But whatever. I've learned to put my trust in the wise words of Deb Perelman, and figured that if this soda bread was good enough for her, it'd be good enough for me (which, obvi, it so was). So there you have the story of my first of four loaves of bread made in 2016, even though the loaf of bread I made was neither a loaf nor a bread ;)

status update

I recently downloaded a new app for my phone that displays the weather, MTA travel alerts, a three-day pollen count forecast, an icon that let's me know if my hair is going to be frizzy or not, and a humorous meme inspired by the results of the previously named factors. One of the recent graphics told me, in a giant "greetings from dallas" postcard font, that TACOCAT spelled backwards is TACOCAT. So basically, even though the weather has gone from gorgeous to awful once again and the pollen count is through the roof and I've already taken three more than the recommended amount of allergy pills and my hair is so frizzy I need two hats to tamper it, it's pretty cool that we live in a world where all this depressing information is immediately aggregated and beamed to our phones in an instant. Also, it's March which means it's my birthday month which also means that I have to put another $100 in my "in case of travel fund" (because age 32 = $3200 in the travel fund), but it's also pretty cool that I'm at a place in my life where I can have a separate "in case of travel fund," something that never even occurred to me four years ago when I was merely a silly and unrefined 28 year old. And now for some other news:

*Food for thought
*I want to spend one week here and one week here
*Art for Insta's sake? Guilty as charged
*Let's bring back the walkabout
*9 ways to tie a scarf
*This month's artist crush
*I've spent many a night at his bar, and I can attest that he is truly a class act (and pours a great drink)
*The ultimate road trip
*Misty + Degas = simply gorge
*Good news/finally/it's about damn time/oh thank god