chili/chilly

i'm making chili and my favorite kind of cornbread, with corn kernels in it. here i am chopping garlic with this absolutely amazing knife, a gift from our german friend andreas (david's dad). i think it is primarily for chopping herbs, but it is also so fun to chop garlic with.

my chili-making playlist:

you got yr. cherry bomb, spoon
o valencia!, the decemberists
challengers, the new pornographers
boy with a coin, iron & wine
be good, tokyo police club
on the radio, regina spektor
kissing the lipless, the shins
heavy metal drummer, wilco
lately, the helio sequence
the ghost of you lingers, spoon
naked as we came, iron & wine
take me to the riot, stars
mistaken for strangers, the national

update

it is still january.

my girl

apparently she's been spending her time in germany becoming more beautiful by the day.

still?

is it still january, really?

photo essay: self portrait after shoveling very heavy snow

did i mention it was very heavy snow?
























it was sleeting, too.
























mascara explosion:

please vote for me

thanks to m, who started recording every single episode of independent lens on pbs after watching the kind of heartbreaking operation filmmaker, i saw please vote for me yesterday, a documentary about an "experiment in democracy" in a third grade chinese classroom. it's absolutely fascinating -- funny and a little shocking at times.

what is the what

i just finished this last night, and it was truly amazing. in fact, it has been kind of haunting me the whole time i've been reading it. one night i had a dream which started as a lighthearted fantasy wherein i was selected to be on what not to wear. in the dream, i happily forfeited my extensive collection of five dollar flip-flops and rogues gallery t-shirts, as well as my single pair of old navy jeans, for five thousand dollars and stacy and clinton's help with acquiring a new wardrobe. somehow, this morphed into one of those apocalyptic/dystopian dreams. there were dead bodies and deserted cities and smoldering fires... utterly influenced by this book, i'm sure, which is the most vivid look i've ever had at what's been happening in sudan for decades. click on the picture to read more about the book.

holga

here's a photo of boo with his new holga camera, taken via my brand new MYphone app, camerabag! go check it out, adam!*


*since you can't really appreciate fully the polaroid-style-ness** of this photo on my blog, go to flickr to see the various forms it can take with this application: holga-esque, 1972-style, infrared, etc.

**now you can totally appreciate the beauty of this camera-thing, and all it took was a change of background color. i was wrong, though, this isn't polaroid-style. i think it's actually "1972" style.

liberry

i just checked out my librarything account, prepared to be all impressed with myself about how many books i've read in the last two years since i started logging them all. i have a total of 114 listed - not as many as i'd imagined, just an average of 57 books per year. i barely beat out george w. bush.

jan...u...ar......yyyy

does anyone else feel like this month is lasting forever?

milo in japan

our box of stitched and printed wares made it to japan! it was confirmed by an email which included this:

"thank you for the goods,

i will deliver to customer.

customer will happy for that."

sleepy

(image from au carrefour etrange)


this is me, after all the excitement of today's historic happenings and our mini-voyage to cambridge and back and our stolen four-day weekend. as planned, i bawled. it was good to be with my mom, who cried too, as well as m, dad, and boo (no actual weeping for them). my favorite moments included:

*obama stumbling over the oath
*malia's camera
*sasha's color combo (orange and pink!)
*aretha franklin's hat
*dick cheney: is he more like a)mr. burns from the simpsons, b)mr. potter from it's a wonderful life, or c)mr. lebowski from the big lebowski?

so proud and happy.

happy birthday, david!!!

dinner with obama

we're watching the inauguration concert with mom and dad. i'm going to
be bawling tomorrow.

sacred games

i just finished reading sacred games, which my dad loaned me before christmas. i was completely absorbed in it most of the time i was reading, and it is a big, fat 900-pager, so i am feeling a little bereft now that i've finished it. it is a mystery/police/gangster novel that takes place in india, mostly in mumbai. it was really odd and fun (and a little confusing) to see slumdog millionaire at the same time i was reading this. when i read books that take place in india, even when they vividly illustrate the dirty, crowded, and dangerous nature of a city like mumbai, i always get hungry for indian food. i love when characters buy chai from the chai-wallah or eat homemade pakoras. i propose an indian theme to my upcoming oscar night party (confirmed guests so far = m, boo, and my mom) - i have a feeling that slumdog will be well represented at the oscars. who wants to come?!

dirty laundry

further evidence of my dorkiness (as well as the lingering influence upon me of '80s music): i believe it's accurate to say that every single time i put clothes in my washing machine, this song goes through my head. as i'm sorting things, you know, into hot and cool.

diorama!

made by boo for math class.

tara and bella

i challenge you to watch without weeping. okay, maybe it's just me.

BIG NEWS!

(image copyright mypetchicken.com)




the city council is going to vote on allowing chickens in portland!!! i am so excited...

braggy

just thought i'd take a moment to brag:

boo not only made the honor roll at school, he also won the geography bee for his social studies class!

a radio piece that bean produced last year was picked up by a huge radio station in upstate new york!


i am so lucky to have such brag-worthy kids. and they're pretty cute, too.

weather report

it's cold. really cold.

guess who came to dinner?

yes, it's lulu, seen above in all her shepard fairey-style glory (do it yourself obamafication here, hours of time wasting guaranteed!). she is here for a week-long visit with us while my parents frolic on the warm white beaches of sanibel island. it's been fun leading a two-dog team around the snowy streets. today we achieved simultaneous pooping (and by "we" i mean minnow and lulu - no humans were involved). the planets were clearly aligned in just the right way...

tea

i sampled a vanilla rooibos latte from starbucks today. at first i thought it was pretty delicious, but it has kind of a weird aftertaste. or maybe it's just a little too sweet for me. according to the nutritional information, it's sweetened with starbucks classic syrup. i don't see any explanation on their site of exactly what that is...probably just a simple syrup made from sugar. which would mean that buying a big pump bottle of the stuff for $10.95 would be a silly thing to do. anyway, i think if i am being ridiculous and spending $3.00 at starbucks, i will probably buy a regular espresso-based latte in the future.

obama dog

the obamas have confirmed that they will adopt a dog from a shelter or rescue! just thought you should know.

cinematic

i had a long and movie-ish dream last night that bean was lost, or stuck someplace, and i couldn't get to her, and i kept calling people on the phone and trying to get cars to start, to rescue her. no need for analysis: i get it.

i've been watching so many movies my brain is brimming. old ones on tv while in my stitchery:

gaslight, with ingrid bergman and her horrible husband (charles boyer) who roots around in the attic all the time scaring her. i remember a similar story line (making someone think they're crazy) on general hospital, back in the day. i love joseph cotton -- did he ever play anything but a good guy?

the children's hour -- audrey hepburn and shirley maclaine, old college friends who run a girls' school together, until a horrible little girl (she seems like she could be the same kid from "the bad seed") falsely accuses them of "unnatural" acts (being lesbians) and shirley maclaine, who realizes she IS in love with audrey hepburn after all, ends up hanging herself.

to sir, with love -- i have a big retro crush on sidney poitier. i love when he dances to the "groovy" 1967 music. he is a fabulous teacher of difficult teenagers with great accents from london's east end.

and the new movies i've seen recently, in the order i loved them:

rachel getting married
synechdoche, ny
slumdog millionaire
milk
the curious case of benjamin button

i may have forgotten some. movies on my to-see list:

let the right one in
frost/nixon
revolutionary road
the reader
the wrestler

2009

when i took this picture, during a nighttime dog walk (so much colder than the dog walks in chapel hill, i might add), i was musing over which i find sadder: christmas lights after christmas is over, or naked christmas trees thrown to the curb. i still haven't decided. i always feel pretty melancholy post-holiday, missing my sweeties and my bruddies and the busy festivities of our celebrations. i miss waking up in the morning knowing i'm in a house full of people i love. i am lucky to wake up every morning that way,...it's just fun when there are a dozen or more of them.

anyway, we celebrated the new year with the dancer and family (minus artemis, who was elsewhere), playing cards and gorging on cheese fondue and roasted vegetables. we watched rear window and played spoons and greeted 2009 with a fair amount of enthusiasm. i continue to remind myself that 2008 didn't utterly suck. here are my reasons why:

1. stella.
2. barack obama
3. bean won her cbyx scholarship
4. good movie-watching
5. my pellet stove


there must be more, but without moving into somewhat negative territory (i.e. "no one in my family died," "we did not lose our house to foreclosure" ), i can't think of anything else right now.

so i welcome 2009, in which i will be the mother of two teenagers, my girl will come home, my business will grow, i will finish the crafty projects i've started over the last nine months, and i will remember people's birthdays. uh oh, that's starting to sound awfully like resolutions, which i've resolved not to make. and i hope everyone else in portland feels the same way, so my gym doesn't get unbearably crowded during the month of january. actually, i did settle on three *resolutions for myself:

1. be brave
2. be optimistic
3. be here

the third has a bit of a buddhist flavor to it -- i'm going to stop browsing craigslist for dream houses in the countryside and dream apartments in brooklyn. i'm going to just live here, in portland, maine. because it's actually a pretty wonderful place to be.




*i have not resolved to stop my photo thievery, hence this image from christmas, stolen from my bruddie, of my grandfather, ribby, holding my newest sweetie, stella kate: