Marginalia

It's all these people with their cotton-candy eyes.

2011-10-21T14:13:00.000-04:00

A theme song for Coney Island, courtesy of my iPod.
Good Old War. Coney Island.

Nowadays the truth is every breath you breathe.

2011-10-20T16:26:00.000-04:00

The way New York feels to me is the sound of this song by AgesandAges. It opens up a space in your body and your mind that you forgot you had inside you. It encourages a lightness, an openness to possibility.

Now your honey jars are frozen/and in the window, your books have browned.

2011-10-18T12:37:00.005-04:00

A couple weekends ago, I set off to visit one of New York University's premier graduate students. I was hoping for the perfect fall weekend--sunny, crisp, just right for wandering the High Line, indulging in Babycakes, and walking the Brooklyn Bridge.

But weather is weather. Short of morphing into a Greek god(dess), I cannot control it.

Despite the cloudy and often rainy skies, the trip was very New York. Great company, great walks, and some seriously great food.

The High Line.

Brooklyn Bridge.

Babycakes.

Times Square.

Back in Boston the past couple weeks, I cannot stop listening to this man, who sounds like fall. Fire-red leaves. Maple. Honey. Corduroy. You should give him a shot and check out what one high school class is doing out in my NYU friend's home state of Kansas. Room 125 makes me wish my high school had something like this when I was in school.

city of neon/and toes that freeze

2011-09-20T15:03:00.002-04:00

It's a gray rainy Tuesday here in Boston--the kind that feels suspiciously likes November and makes me want to curl up on my bed, reading or watching movies.

But because it's Tuesday, there is work to be done.

There is always work to be done on Tuesdays.

So I'm attempting another tactic: blue-sky visualization in the form of two snapshots from this past spring. I accompanied a friend on a trip to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The museum debuted its new Art of the Americas wing this year so it was my first chance to see it. While I reserve my opinion on the museum, the day was beautiful--a crisp spring day, perfect for seeing art and shooting pictures.

And while you (or really, I) stare at the beautiful spring sky, how about a song, which also debuted last spring? It's coming out in proper form in less than a week and I can't wait. I adore it--it will be playing a central part in my fall playlist.

Because there's only four seasons/and I'm looking for something more.

2011-09-14T16:40:00.002-04:00

Indian summer brings the confused muddle of fall.

I vacillate between the new and the old. Pumpkin spice syrup in an ice coffee. A light flowing skirt with a chunky knit. Beach trips without the bathing suit.

I also start to get more serious. I read books that have heft, weight, prominent authors with serious messaging. I take foreign movies out of the library. I plan weekend trips to colder places that boast impressive craft brews and fall colors.

My music goes between folksy, rocking sounds that pay rare tribute to we blue-eyed gals and songs that you should listen to while nursing a Scotch.

But really all these swings in taste, dress, and location are my favorite part of fall. I wouldn't have it any other way.

You said you wanted a better life.

2011-09-13T22:10:00.004-04:00

The end of summer weather is always bittersweet--it has me dreaming of the light in early spring at a modern art museum.

It also has me listening to songs that make me pensive. This gem from Deer Tick has particularly gotten under my skin.

To me, the song is a way of marking the year, but also celebrating the year I just had and welcoming fall. It's another season, another chance, another opportunity to continue becoming more fully myself.

Getting back into the photo groove

2011-09-11T21:49:00.001-04:00

With graduate school finished, my brain has returned to redeveloping my photos skills, if you will.

Here's a glimpse at a little slideshow of photos I took for a friend's bridal shower.

Oops . . . I did it again

2011-02-12T09:45:00.001-05:00

Excuse the homage to Britney Spears.

Last week I completed another project for Boston.com and I can't avoid the striking resemblance it bears to my last project for the site.

Check it out here.

See if you notice anything that looks familiar.

Love after love

2011-02-06T15:22:00.004-05:00

I'm sitting at the first desk I've had in years.
It was a hard-fought struggle to get it here, a battle against Murphy's proverbial law and sleet and slushy streets.

But it's worth it.

The light is beautiful.
It catches the bubbles in my flower vase, illuminating them like fresh snow on sidewalks the day after a storm when the sun finally, finally peeps its head out.

My books on second-wave feminism and Henry Luce are at home on the open surface, freed from my bookbag.

I have Simon & Garfunkel trilling their "li, li, li's" in "The Boxer."

What more could you need on a February Sunday?
What more could you want?

A poem, perhaps?
It is very appropriate, as welcoming and calming as the desk I'm sitting at really.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the strange who has loved you.

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

My name in lights, sort of

2011-01-27T18:53:00.005-05:00

On Tuesday, I had my proverbial day in the sun.
My fleeting 15 seconds of internet fame.

My work with my byline appeared on boston.com, where I've been interning (and getting paid, a rare feat for someone with the "intern" title) since August.

Although the project was my boss's idea, the execution--complete with cheesy copy--is all mine.

I photo researched this bad boy. I walked around Boston, head bopping to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes one day then Van Morrison's amazing "Astral Weeks" another. I walked around in the freezing cold (I never seemed to get those nice above-freezing days). I squinted at contact sheets of old black and whites and tried to think about where another photograph stood, years before me.

It was an amazing experience.
It was one of those constant reminders of why I love photography.
And it was a great moment of joy in a very snowy Boston winter.

The year of photo projects

2011-01-22T10:48:00.002-05:00

This year may just end up being the year of photo projects if I don't watch myself.

I ended last year with this one.

The editing is not perfect (captions are hard to read; audio clips at the end), but you'll get the idea.

It was a draft of a final project for an online publishing class I took.
I just love the song paired with the images. I love the fact I used to live in the featured neighborhood so I can remember what it looked like in the implied "before" of the video.

Take a look if you wish.

If not, my next project hits this week (!). I'm getting a photo credit in a major publication. It is a honor that calls for celebrating. On a Tuesday.

If you see a girl swinging a bottle of champagne walking down Bolyston Street after a pilates class, you'll know who it is.

New Year's Day

2011-01-03T18:26:00.002-05:00

A poem and some pictures from New Year's Day.

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Old Cape Cod

Pie in the Sky, Woods Hole

Ivy along the Shining Sea bike path

"Hidden" ladders

Golden branches, winter light

Old Silver Beach, Falmouth

Jetty Christmas tree

Mellow yellow

2010-11-10T21:54:00.002-05:00

I wandered the common collecting class interviews last week on a very brisk fall day.
The colors were beautiful, even if my hands were red and chapped from the cold.

In a sense, we're all winning

2010-10-11T20:31:00.006-04:00

This weekend, I finally made it out to a biking trial my parents have been telling me about for at least two years.

I'm not much of a biker anymore. The city doesn't lend itself to biking, despite many recent attempts to improve the situation. And even if I wanted to bike, I don't have one anymore(someone--cough, cough--forgot to put her bike inside for a month and it "disappeared.")

I do like biking though--I love the motion, the feeling of exploring a new area faster than I could on foot. When I'm doing something active on a beautiful day, I often could just go and go. It's how I run an extra mile or two some Saturdays. It's why I walked 2-3 miles home from work this summer. And it's how I ended up taking an hour-plus bike tour of my hometown last time I visited my parents.

Motion is addictive for me. It's better than beer. And if you ask me at the right time of day, I may even go so far as to say it's better than coffee. May.

It was actually my long bike tour of my hometown that inspired me to accompany my family biking on a local rail trail that same weekend. After that, I--shall we say--invited myself along with my parents on a biking trip down to the Cape.

For the bargain price of $17, I had a bike of my own for the day. I had a bell and a basket and long stretches of car-free trails.

The trees were brilliant collage of red and green and orange.
The weather sunny and crisp.
I found myself making up little poems in my head as we made our way up and down the trail (ostensibly to submit to the fabulous poetry project that Miss Alexa is undertaking, but truthfully to please myself because motion brings out my urge to write).

It was heavenly. It made me want to learn more about bike rentals and trails in the Boston area for next summer.

Biking also had the surprising side effect of leaving me reciting an old favorite poem at day's end. At first glance, it may not seem 100 percent relevant to the fall, but it's a long-time favorite of mine and you cannot beat its message: "In a sense, we're all winning. We're all alive."

Steps
Frank O'Hara

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)
and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

Raise your hand if . . .

2010-09-12T14:12:00.002-04:00

. . . you already miss summer.

Goodbye August, Goodbye Summer

2010-08-31T19:56:00.003-04:00

I cannot believe summer is almost over.
I am already mourning the loss of hot summer days like today, which I spent at Second Beach with an old friend.
I'm hoping to sneak in another day trip over the long weekend.

In the interim, I present the quirky Newburyport flea market, Oldies, as seen through the lens of my old and beloved Canon AL-1.

June 18, 2011

2010-07-27T15:51:00.001-04:00

In this tent.
In less than a year.
It's pretty crazy to think about.

Red, white and blue

2010-07-23T16:32:00.002-04:00

The Fourth of July "tradition" of camping with the boy's family turned two this year. This year it wasn't a full family affair, but we had his brother and his brother's wife, who are always a blast to spend time with.

We packed up and headed north for the weekend to Lake Dennison.

There was a visit to a little pizza place . . .

. . . that helped some people keep up to date with crucial World Cup games.

There was a cold wonderful lake with a field of grass, browning in the weekend's heat.

There was lots of swimming in the small cool lake, sandy feet, and clothes that smelled like sunblock for days after.

We cranked up the grill and loaded up on my favorite: grilled onions and squash with a dash of spices and a charred skins.

We took a promenade around the other sites at sundown on the holiday . . .

. . . and oogled the kayaks on the shore.

It was beautiful and relaxing and reinvigorating, not unlike listening to my new summer music obsession and dancing around the living room.

Bagels and Bongos

2010-07-22T11:56:00.002-04:00

When you go to a small college, barely bigger than your regional high school, you tend to search out refuge in your surroundings, even if it's a rundown city.

My college town was most certainly rough area the edges: its main street and downtown were barely visited (with the exception of a handful of bars), it had poor neighborhoods, it sprawled out across little hills and college ghettos.

But, for me, it always had its charms: Salisbury Street's rambling old houses, the quirky little coffee shops, the abundance of diners, and a beloved place to get bagels that somehow had magical, hangover-curing qualities.

The city was my small campus refuge and I loved it, despite itself and really, despite myself.

At the end of May, I attended my five-year college reunion, an astonishing and unthinkable feat. I never thought I cherished my college experience enough to return to the campus. But I did and I do. The little campus, which at times felt too small and stifling, gave me a good friend who will wait on her dinner to listen to me talk and talk and talk; it gave me a pass to a new country to find my ground and tests my boundaries; it gave me poetry and thoughtful professors; and most of all, it gave me that little city where $2 dollar Cape Codders co-exist with vegan cupcakes and I could still sit for hours sharing a bagel with old friends in a shop that puts strange old records on its walls.

Two days to freedom

2010-06-30T21:07:00.003-04:00

. . . or real summer break, in graduate student terms. No more papers. No more uncooperative teachers assigning giant essay-based finals two days before the end of term. Just enjoying the green of summer.

I may even make a list of pleasure books I want to read.
It should be fun considering I will already be making a list of sorts for the other big event in my life taking place on a certain date next June (already decided) at a certain lakeside venue (already booked--sneak peak below) with close friends, family and a kick-booty photographer (exact details on the to-do list).

In need of a drive

2010-06-27T15:19:00.002-04:00

Since I started dating the boy, I've come to associate "vacation" with "driving" because a lot of our free time we've spent driving across the state to visit his family.

It always feels relaxing to drive the length of the Mass Pike, listening to music, and knowing that we have a few days out of the city.

This holds true even when we're not relaxing, but say helping people move, like we did a few weeks ago. On a warm spring morning, we drove out to western Mass to help the boy's brother and wife move into new digs in a small New York town, which you may remember was the site of their beautiful wedding almost two years ago.

This town still feels like a farm town with pretty old houses, wide fields, and a perfect red antiques stores. There's no hustle or bustle, no trains to run down the street after, no rush-hour traffic.

Next weekend, the boy and I will pack up my aging, beloved car for yet another driving journey out to rustic campsite. We'll sing along to this band (our standard driving choice) or this band (my favorite), unfurl our tents, and take in all the green and lakeside views of another small town during another vacation.

Road tripping

2010-06-24T07:33:00.004-04:00

In my graduate program, I'm one of the few local New Englanders. At times, it makes me feel rather boring and unadventurous because I can't join in the many conversations about how Boston (and Massachusetts) differs from [insert the name of a non-New England state]. I was born here, I went to school here for four years, now I've lived in the capital city for more than four years. With the exception of a semester abroad, I've been all Massachusetts all the time.

But my localness can come in handy, especially when people are talking about taking a road trip.

I'm there 100 percent--and sometimes I can even play tour guide and direct my non-New England compatriots to spots they never would have heard of.

Last weekend, I did just that when a small group of us packed up our bags and left the city for Newport.

I was so excited for my school friends to see how beautiful it is there--at the vineyards, at the beaches, down Bellevue Ave. with its stately "summer houses," and out across Ocean Drive with its craggy jettys.

We made quite the day of it--picnicing at our first vineyard, sneaking in a swim at a small local beach, cutting cake at our second vineyard, driving through downtown, then playing on the jetty.

It was pure heaven for a local like me.
And I think pure heaven for my friends too.

On running, and remembering the marathon

2010-05-31T21:58:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, I went on a run.
A long run.
A half-marathon to be exact.

I signed up for the race almost two months ago, most ironically a couple weeks before the Boston Marathon.

I'd completed a few shorter "long" runs before the marathon--mainly just a six- and seven-mile outing--and was beginning to remember how much I liked training for something.

But on my first time watching the actual marathon in years (we're talking over a decade), I found myself more revolted by the prospect of long double-digit runs than anything else. Turning my camera to the runners and the crowd I felt myself growing disheartened and rather disgusted.

Four hours of running? Ummm, no thanks. Salt physically mapping little tributaries across your forehead? Ewww. The prospect of days worth of dehydration and pain post-race? Yeah, thanks, but I'm good.

For many, Marathon Monday is like a giant holiday.
For me, it was just a class photo assignment.

Or it was until I ran 10 miles in a training run. Then ran 11 miles in my last one before the race.

Running anything more than 4-6 miles isn't always pleasant. You do become salty--you feel like a fine silt has built up over your skin after a run. Your legs are sometimes sore the day after. Your shorts can chafe raspberries onto your legs. And if you're not in the right mindset, a long run can be boring.

But honestly, if you can deal with the salt and work around the chafing, you can conquer the sore legs and the boredom.

I started to find that the longer my runs, the more I liked them. If we want to be honest here, I'd even venture to say the more I loved them. It's thrilling to take a 1.5 hour timeout from a regular weekend to run along the Charles or throughout town. It's the ultimate "me" time--it's just you, your goal, and your choice music. When you meet your goal, there is nothing more satisfying. You have done what seemed impossible a week or a month before. You're stronger than you thought. You can do more.

It made me understand marathoners more: Why wouldn't you want to try? Why wouldn't you want to risk the salt and sweat and sore muscles for a chance at showing yourself what you can do?

Isn't that part of what life is all about? You take the words of Kurt Vonnegut ("There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damnit, you've got to be kind.'"), which is in itself like the Golden Rule but said in a much sassier way that I love. Then you mix that with you--what you can do, what you can create, what you can learn. You shape your world.

I know during the past year and a half, the outside world has seemed to dictate everyone's lives, often mercilessly, swooping in like a vulture. I've found if you listen too closely to all that outside news, you can easily forget how much you can do and control.

So on Sunday I ran 13.1 miles and I ran the whole time. I didn't stop and walk. I attacked the small sloping hills of the course. I did something I never thought I would do.

And I finished.
I even sprinted the straightaway at the end.

Now, I'd like to do it again.
But faster.
I'm already formulating plans.
There's nothing I want more than to see what I can do, to shape my own story.

Hello, May

2010-05-05T19:34:00.002-04:00

I hope you are as nice to me as April (and um, March).

Tally Hall, performing acoustic on the "wrong side" of the venue
Great Scott, Allston, MA
March 4, 2010

Light, beautiful light
Partially in honor of a poem I've rediscovered "Light, at Thirty-two" and its stanza:
And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.
Brookline, MA
April 2010

The boy walked down memory lane, the Worcester version
Worcester, MA
April 2010

Two words: vegan cupcake
Worcester, MA
April 2010

Long-awaited coffee shop opens, with a flood of Berklee students
Boston, MA
Marathon Monday 2010

Night and Day

2010-04-12T20:03:00.002-04:00

When the weather gods hit Boston with beautiful weather in April, I'm left with no other choice: I have to go outside.

And last Wednesday during our freak one-day heat wave, I did and really, I can thank my grad student status for the opportunity.

I spent part of the afternoon outside studying (quite "diligently") between classes, which is to say I spent two hours outside drinking iced coffee, people watching, pretending to read the book on my lap, and loving the 90-degree weather.

It was one full hour longer than what I would've gotten as a working professional and let me tell you, that one hour made a big difference. I felt like I was able to enjoy the one-day holiday that the first warm weather day always is (The rhapsody of warm weather! The pairs playing bad guitar! the totally nonathletic hipsters slinging around a Frisbee!_

After grudgingly attending copy editing class, I rounded up the boy for post-class drinks at Shay's in Harvard Square.

I'd always wanted to stop by Shay's. I've passed it on numerous walks through Harvard Square. It's small cafe tables nestled just below sidewalk level look cozy and welcoming. And who could resist a wine bar?

The boy drank Boddingtons, I sipped a semi-sweet white wine. We ate burgers. We talked about the Har-vhad atmosphere of the bar (and ahem, the fact that all the smokers make the patio a place to stay for just one drink.) Then we strolled through Cambridge into Allston just because it was nice enough to walk around at night, jacketless, and because the dusk was so luminous.

Our 90-degree summer preview was a Cinderella story. We didn't get a repeat the next day, but we got a beautiful 70-degree day yesterday. I once again was forced to head outside.

The park behind my house was filled with blooming trees and long-haired weeping willows.

It's pure spring and it's pure magic.

What I've been up to

2010-04-02T18:07:00.002-04:00

Spring is here--perhaps temporarily--but it's here.

Four weeks stand between me and schedule freedom.
Eight weeks stand between me and the half-marathon I signed up for.

This weekend it's supposed to be in the 70s. Heavenly. I have a whole slew of work and Easter festivities but I'm thrilled for the weather.

Last weekend, it was chilly and I was running around like the little reporter I am.

I toured the Paramount Center with parents and alumni as the photographer du jour.

I helped out a good cause and covered it for class (and think I'm going to stay involved--I'd love to learn how to actually garden).

The weekend before that though.
Heaven again.

It was warm enough for skirts. For wearing sandals for family birthday parties. For sitting outside with a friend drinking home-brewed cider.

I'm hoping this weekend turns out like that one. Brews on the Deep Ellum deck. Classwork in the sun. A couple six miles runs. And Easter dinner with the family.

Have a good weekend.

iPhoto mishaps and spring photo walks

2010-03-22T23:00:00.002-04:00

March tends to be my busy month.

It's my birthday.
It's the boy's birthday.
It's about half my family's birthday (as in five of us, in the two weeks).
It's the boy and I's official "dating" anniversary.
Oh and the weather just starts to get nice, which means I'm itching to spend time in the great outdoors.

Some years, I even get lucky enough for said nice weather to coincidence with my birthday.

I asked the boy to include a "birthday photo date" as part of my gift.

So, on a beautiful spring-like day at the beginning of March, we set out with our cameras in hand. Please note the boy's lack of coat.

We ate lunch at one of our favorite coffee places.

Then we took the T over to Government Center to wander Haymarket and the North End.

We walked far enough along the water to see some Coast Guard ships.

Then we turned around and headed home.

It was about a three-hour walkabout. And it was wonderful. I find that although I live in the city, I tend to avoid very touristy spots (I'm looking at you North End). Who wants to walk through gaggles of tourists, waiting in line for cannolis or standing in street corners consulting maps? No, thanks. As a result, I tend to forget how much I love the North End and other "touristy" parts of the city.

I ended up taking well over a 100 photos on the walk. I would share more but iPhoto didn't import all of them properly (gah!). I can recover them with photo recovery software, but I'm not sure what to go with? Any suggestions?

Goodbye, February

2010-02-28T13:07:00.002-05:00

February, you short crazy mad-dash of a month, I'm glad you're almost over.

Yes, you've treated me well.
I've won the wedding reception hall debate and am feeling good. (Details to come soon!)
I've gotten to hang out with friends and family almost every weekend--both as a host to friends visiting the city and as a guest at dinners and a great Super Bowl party.
I've gotten back my grad school motivation for the semester.

But really, I'm ready for March. I'm ready for it to start feeling like spring. I'm ready for a week of spring break (five days and two executive summaries, two news articles, one interview, one newsletter launch and one midterm standing in my way--yikes!) And I'm super ready for the whole slew of good music that is coming out this spring (including this one--preview it, it's great.)

So goodbye February.
Hello March and the way to spring.

A day in the weekend

2010-02-24T08:39:00.002-05:00

The first three weekends in February, the boy and I had a mission: Find out where we're getting married.

Our February weekends blended into a rhythm.

We visited old estates with wooden floors and great snowy lawns.
We visited one place that claimed to be lakeside (if lakeside means there's a lake across the busy street, I guess the place was right).
We visited one place where I'd had my senior prom almost a decade ago.

I brought my camera with us and a small entourage (yes, entourage) of family.

We asked questions. We peaked into bathrooms and bridal suites.

Because the boy and I wanted a tent wedding, we spent a lot of time crunching through snow and squinting our eyes to imagine the snowy-covered area in front of us green and lush.

One day, it was close to twilight and as we walked, I could feel my fingers tingling, losing feeling to the icy February wind.

At times, it feels a bit crazy to plan something so far away and so out of season, but it's rather fun to. I like snooping around these grand properties and taking photos that look blue and bruised and cold because of the twilight. I like imagining all the couples before us that did this same thing, standing in the same type of weather then returned when the weather was sunny and the grass was green and celebrated their marriages with their families.

A story

2010-01-26T20:20:00.003-05:00

Once upon a time, in a dirty neighborhood in a city not too far away from here, there lived a young girl. She was an early twenty-something with big dreams and a small budget. She had planned on being an English professor and a poet, but one day, almost on whim, she decided against it. She was not moving down the coast. She was, for the time being, staying.

So the girl kept her little job and her aging car. She moved to that dirty neighborhood. She lived in an old house with creaky steps and wobbly stairway rails on the third floor. In her first few months in this neighborhood, she'd return from nights out and peer out her turret-like window out onto the street and watch the student musicians smoking late-night cigarettes, taking breaks from their parties.

The girl took pleasure in the very small things. Friday nights spent in with old Hollywood movies and a bottle of wine that was picked out after an hour of deliberation at the neighborhood store where the frat boys bought their kegs. Finding new music and listening to it on errands. Taking the subway line into the city downtown to wander the vast stacks of the central library.

One night, the girl attended a party where she met a boy. The boy, as you all know him.

She hadn't thought this boy would call. But almost a week later, he did.

They drank coffee.

One night, the boy made her a dinner--the most painstakingly produced one the girl had ever seen, with perfect tiny cubes of vegetables, thick tuna steaks, and a fancy white sauce that the boy was disappointed with.

It was so thoughtful.

The boy and the girl kept hanging out, at a museum, at a restaurant, at a St. Patrick's Party.

One day, the boy and the girl began "dating."
The boy became "the boy"--the elbow to the girl's pictures.

And they dated.

They dated through all those things that never get mentioned in fairytales--new jobs, new apartments in cleaner neighborhoods, tough roommates, recessions, loss of loved ones.

The girl grew older. She took a lot of photos. She left her job. She went to school.

The boy also grew older. He wrote papers. He played soccer. Then one day, he got down on his knee and asked our heroine a question.

It was January. It was cold and gray like winter is this not-too-far-away city. But to the girl, it was everything January could be. It was fake flowers placed in snow-filled flower pots. It was brilliant blue sky against the city that she loves but she never she wanted. It was all the little details in the bigger picture.

A Very Ryan Christmas

2010-01-11T20:28:00.002-05:00

Yes, Christmas is now in the not-so-distant past. In my world, you'd never know though. See, I'm on this thing called vacation. You know what vacation is, right? In case you don't, let me shed light on my definition of it. Vacation is the time when after working through the semester and the beginning of the break as a holiday employee, a person sits on his or her butt and catches up.

I've listened to my Christmas song podcast today, almost a full month late (but totally worth it--Bob Dylan's "Must be Santa" is downright hilarious and terrifying).

I'm debating watching my go-to Christmas movies tomorrow (that would be this one and this one, if you're curious).

And just an hour ago, I downloaded all my Christmas pictures from my camera.

I feel post-event festive. If I had a Santa hat, who knows, I might be wearing it. So humor me, find your Santa hat (or just holiday spirit) and take a peak at my Christmas eve--a good mix of family, music, and my mom's infamous crescent cake.

Small blessings, new years

2009-12-30T22:01:00.003-05:00

I decided on a whim tonight that it would only be fair to write a short blog post. I've been lagging behind in writing with finals then the holidays and it only seems fitting that I'd write something--anything--to wrap up the year.

So goodbye 2009.

2009 felt like--to bring back a much-abused expression I associate with the 2008 presidential campaign--the bridge to nowhere.

It tried to kick my butt. It challenged me, like it challenged many people. It may even have one trick left up its sleeve to kick off 2010 with a challenge and possibly an ending in 2010, but I'm going to call that trick "2009" and leave the new year be. I'm finally starting to feel all right about a new year. I have made my peace with 2009.

Why do you ask? Quite simply because I'm here. And also because as I sat thinking on Christmas eve as my family sang Taylor Swift, Christmas songs and old folk songs like "Charley and the MTA" and "If I Had a Hammer" (yes, you are reading that combination correct), I couldn't help feeling that I'm quite lucky.

I've made it from girl editor to graduate student. As a student, I got into political rallies and parties. I had the pleasure of interviewing the brewmaster and manager of a kicking local brewery. I schmoozed with my local coffee places. And even before that, I got to travel to a couple new places this year. I got to spend a good amount of summer time lying on a beach. I also, perhaps more importantly--and I don't mean to sound preachy here--have a great family and at least one friend who I know I'll always be in touch with. My family--perhaps my most ardent readers of this blog--is a wonderful zany bunch. We sing on Christmas eve. We have this weird laughing-while-talking thing that the boy is confounded by. We tell a lot of stories that have become my oral history of Boston--my dad's father's family trying to pull matching shoes out of the piles at Dirty Harry's Shoes, my mom's father coming to pick up my grandmother for a first date and my greatgrandmother going into a fury because "This man was not 22!", my dad's family swimming at the now dirty Malibu Beach in Dorchester.

I live a life of stories--past and present--and I'm grateful to have them. And I'm more grateful to be studying a field that will allow me to share them with others. I have 2009 to thank for it too--in its own twisted way.

So cheers to you 2009 for making me like a character in a Jimmy Buffett song--I do it for the stories I can tell.

I don't know if I want to resolve to be or do anything differently in 2010. I'd like to be open to whatever comes--let go the things that don't matter, let go the people who disappoint me, embrace what's next and what's new, listen to others' stories, and find my next ones.

Hello 2010. Cheers to your carousel.

The Road to Somewhere. Otis, MA. November 2009.

Another road to somewhere--the road to Bryan's sister's house. Western MA. November 2009.

The circle game. Otis, MA. November 2009.

Strategy. Wrentham, MA. November 2009.

For my story on the Boston brewery. Taken while romping through Cambridge's Kendall Square. December 2009.

Adventures in homework without mittens. Cambridge, MA. December 2009.

For the love of pumpkin berlinweisser and Charles River Porter. Cambridge, MA. December 2009.

In the press box. With the other journalists. Sheraton Hotel, Boston, MA. December 2009.

They did it. Sheraton Hotel, Boston, MA. December 2009.

Improving my study skills with some Shiraz. Home. December 2009.

Oh two-foot-tall Christmas tree . . . you're one foot taller than last year's. Home. December 2009.

When tomorrow is one week later

2009-12-15T20:42:00.002-05:00

Ooops. I did say I'd post more tomorrow. Grad school life comes with an all-together different set of time. It comes with a different agenda than individuals have.

I meant to blog. I was at an election night for the Massachusetts senate race to replace Ted Kennedy. To be exact, I was at the election night event. I was at the winners headquarters, stealing slices of gouda, watching Boston best journalists cover the event, and taking photos of everything from the cameramen to the small clumps of balloons on top of each of the six bars.

You may remember from earlier in the fall that I'd already gone to one campaign event. Going to these events, wearing my hard-earned press pass is perhaps the best part of my program. You get peel back a layer of reality in a sense--you are no longer watching the events on TV, you're participating in the events. You can smell the hall, feel the cool air, watch candidate signs get passed from supporter to supporter before the candidate goes on. It's magic being that close, magic in the same way it's magic to get back a roll of 35 mm film with its beautiful grain and colors. It's another way of looking at the world, and it just makes it richer.

The event was the second to last one of the semester. This past weekend, in addition to see Boston's favorite burlesque (yes, you read that right), I attended a local company's Nutcracker. Note the Boston Ballet's, but the Boston Dance Company's. I encourage you to read about it on their web site. I'm putting together a feature on the company for my last story of the semester. They're doing magic for the community.

After the last story is turned in next Monday, I am free. I have a stack of film waiting by my camera so I can shoot for fun. I have found what's sure to be my break music (check out the band's cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's brilliant "In an Aeroplane Over the Sea" on YouTube). And I have a huge list of books to read for pleasure. Hello break.

In the interim, let's backtrack and wave goodbye to Thanksgiving.

No place like home

2009-12-07T20:28:00.002-05:00

A (beautifully grainy) peak at Thanksgiving. More to come tomorrow.

It's the great snooze, Charlie Brown!

2009-11-25T19:38:00.002-05:00

If I was to write a Charlie Brown book about my Thanksgiving break experience, I'd call it "It's the Great Thanksgiving Snooze, Charlie Brown!" It would be about two guests at Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving dinner who plan to use the holiday as an excuse to sleep (and eat lots of ice cream and apple pie.) These guests might even risk oversleeping the holiday because they're so determined to get in a damn good sleep over Thanksgiving. Charlie Brown will, of course, save these two guests from oversleeping and everyone will enjoy a nice, well-rested dinner with Snoopy. You can't forget Snoopy.

Sounds nice, huh?

I thought so. That is my current idea of a great Thanksgiving. Sleep, sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, eat leftovers, sleep some more. You have to understand, we graduate students are tired people

My break begins today, specifically it began about six hours ago when I took a train home to my parents' house. I do have to do a little work on Friday, but otherwise I'm focused on eating and sleeping. I've brought my backlog of New Yorkers and bought some trashy fashion magazines to read. I'm planning on playing lots of board games and taking pictures for pleasure since the semester's been so crazy.

It's nice to stand still and rest, to take a small break from the semester. I'm thankful for it and Thanksgiving. I hope everyone out there has a wonderful Thanksgiving, filled with all the things that you'd include in your own Charlie Brown Thanksgiving book.

Trying to reason with hurricane season (belatedly)

2009-11-15T22:06:00.003-05:00

This Saturday, a late-season tropical storm visited the Northeast. Likely, you heard about Ida. I certainly had and I made no plans to move or run or go out on Saturday. I was going to sit and relax because I was caught on with my school work for once.

The boy does not watch the weather though. He also runs on a different schedule that me most weekends. You see, he is a soccer fan. Have you met one of those before? I'm talking specifically about the intensely committed soccer fans who pay extra to get Setanta or get excited about having a certain cable service because it gives you Fox Soccer Channel as part of a regular package. The boy is one of those.

So on Saturday, when I was supposed to be wearing pajamas all day and reading and finally watching my Netflix movie from last month, I went outside. In the pouring rain. To watch soccer.

The boy and I trekked downtown to one of the only three bars showing the Ireland vs. France world cup qualifier and cheer alongside crowds of Boston's expats.

It wasn't a great day for the weather (or as it turned out for Ireland, who suffered a 0-1 loss to France). But, there was something fun (dare I say, adventurous?) in putting on my rain armor (wellies and a rain coat) in heading out into the crazy day to scream at the game alongside men as boisterous as my soccer-crazy boyfriend.

The first cold run of the season

2009-11-05T22:50:00.003-05:00

Right now, I'm reading what I consider the best runner's book ever.
Yes, I am, of course, speaking of Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running."

If you run, you should read it. I would recommend the book to everyone but I think that on a very basic level only runners will really appreciate it.

I find myself dog-earring every other page. I also found that tonight as I went on my nightly run I was thinking a bit about it. It was the first really cold night of the fall. I was wearing a light fleece, gloves, and capri running tights and I was cold. The first cold run of the season is a tough adjustment. I end up spending the first 10 minutes of the run thinking of how cold I am rather than doing what I normally do. What is that, you may ask?

Well, I defer to Mr. Murakami:

"On cold days I guess I think a little about how cold it is. And the heat on hot days. When I'm sad I think a little about sadness. When I'm happy I think a little about happiness. As I mentioned before, random memories come to me too. And occaisonally, hardly ever really, I get an idea to use in a novel. But really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning.

I just run. I run in a void.Or maybe I should put it the other way. I run in order to acquire a void."

As I realized I was thinking about the cold and about the book, I laughed to myself. I thought I might take this opportunity to post some last summer photos that I love. I won't be able to take any greenery-based photos until next spring now.

Fall love

2009-11-01T18:26:00.003-05:00

Hello November. I guess this means fall is almost over, huh? I feel like it's just begun. I find that school tends to do that to me. One day it's September and I am celebrating my last day as an editor. The next I'm twisting my watch gears and fixing the living room clock because we've fallen back an hour and it's November. We're less than 30 days away from turkey and cranberries and football. We're less than 2 months away from Christmas.

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to share my fall favorites. I love the palette of fall--the vivid yellows, oranges and reds. I love the pumpkin beers that appear on tap (and pumpkin beer festivals, like last night's at the Cambridge Brewing Company where I drank my favorite Cape Ann Pumpkin Stout and a burning spicy stout made with chipotle peppers and cinnamon). I love the weather and walking around with a cup of coffee and my camera.

Another day, another wedding

2009-10-22T21:50:00.002-04:00

Catholics have one wedding tradition I've always loved: the bride's family will hang rosary beads outside the night before the wedding to guarantee good weather.

I don't how the tradition started or if it has specifics: Does your mom have to use her rosary beads to ensure good weather? Can you put out your rosary beads for your non-Catholic friends' weddings? Can you ever put out too many rosaries? I just really like the idea of it.

When I saw the weather report for Erin's wedding earlier this month and for my friend Rowena's last weekend, my first though was "rosary beads." Erin's wedding morning, it poured. It was as close as I'd come to a monsoon type rain. Then for Rowena's, there was more rain predicted and worse? 40 degree weather. In October. The wedding was supposed to be outdoors, at sunset. To borrow from a Spencer Tracy movie, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Not knowing the rosary bead protocol, I didn't hang out my rosary beads before the wedding. But, like with Erin's wedding, the weather really didn't matter. The party went on. We moved it inside. The bride was beautiful and the groom looked suave. I teared up during the ceremony and managed to not trip over my dress when I fixed the bride's train.

The Catholic tradition has its heart in the right place--who doesn't want a beautiful weather for a big moment in one's life? But really, it doesn't matter.

My life as a procrastinator . . . of sorts

2009-10-13T20:55:00.003-04:00

Now that I have effectively removed myself from the workforce for two years and returned to being a student, I find myself remembering the perks of the working world.

It's the ultimate case of "the grass is always greener" here in my little apartment. At night, I turn on my computer and it's homework time. My work never came with this. Yick.

Do you remember homework? What it's like coming home to that every night? I thought I remembered it: the heavy perfect-bound textbooks, the spiral bound notebooks, my endless army of black pens (I only used black pens in high school). I remembered forcing myself to work and always working on the floor, squatted next to my radio. In college, I would sit at my computer or in my cubicle in the ghost town that was the third floor of the college library with my smuggled cup of tea and binders of philosophy notes.

With such clear memories of the act of homework, I thought I knew what it would be like having to do homework again.
What did I forget?

I'm a darn good procrastinator.

When faced with homework, I was never like my high school best friend who just went home and did the work. In high school, particularly senior year during offseason from field hockey and tennis, I'd head home, make a pot of french vanilla coffee then read for pleasure till dinnertime. Only after dinner would I begrudgingly take on calculus or AP English or whatever I avoided for the previous four hours. In college, I'd go running or hunt out new music or saunter off to work on the newspaper or another extracurricular. I never put things off so long that I was up at 3 a.m. hammering away on a thesis, but I wasn't vigilant either.

As a desk jockey for the past four years, I have been vigilant. I'd make a list every morning and do it, right then, right there. Procrastination doesn't pay off in the real world. Hence, the issue I'm having in the non-real-world of higher ed. I actually almost forgot that I had an assignment due last week. Forgot, straight out. Yikes. I remembered in the nick of time though, which was good because I needed to photograph an event for class the next day.

I got my contact and most thankfully got in with my little dSLR in tow. I have to admit, it was the most daunting, but most interesting homework I've ever had. To stand in a grand ballroom of a very expensive local hotel and try to do what I normally love to do--take photos--surrounded by men with professional cameras? Some homework. I watched through crowds of people drinking wine and eating apps, trying to what my shots would be and what would be my angle when the main speaker came on. I think that if my homework life was like that assignment every night, homework might become a bit more palatable, a bit easier to tackle because it requires no sitting, no books, no binders, no pens. It would make me think, years down the road, about my graduate life as the inverse of what I think of it now, a place where the grass is always greener, where class homework was photography and Tuesdays mornings were meant for sleeping in. Isn't that the way it always goes?

Introducing my best friend with a new name

2009-10-08T21:41:00.003-04:00

Last weekend my best friend from high school got married to her high school sweetheart. I know it's been coming for quite some time. February, if you want to get specific. I was so happy when I heard the news of their engagement the day after Valentine's Day, their anniversary. I didn't expect to be even happier than that at the wedding, but wow. Seeing my friend come down the aisle--the girl I met the first day of freshmen field hockey tryouts, the girl who I spent hours watching chick flicks with, the girl I would sneak into Jessican McClintock in Boston with to stare at prom gowns and wedding gowns--I teared up. She looked so pretty and her and her now husband looked so happy standing up there on the altar.

It was magic.

And it was a completely awesome wedding. Great people, great dancing music, and a great exit for my friend and her husband through rows of guests with sparklers.

Because I spent most of the day on the altar or later, on the dance floor, Bryan took most of the photos. I took a few behind the scenes and before the altar that I'd like to share just so you know what a lucky girl my friend is.

Congratulations Erin Elizabeth on your new husband (and your new name!)

The wedding colors were beautiful. We had black dresses and the most stunning red roses. Erin's bouquet of roses, which you cannot see here, had black edges.

I loved watching Erin's photographer in action.

The boy got a photo of the first married kiss.

What's hiding under those black dresses? Rain boots: Photojournalism and turning a rainy day into some beautiful photos. Photo from the boy.

We took photos at a local wildlife sanctuary. I loved all the fallen leaves on the ground.

Wine Country, New England style

2009-09-27T21:51:00.002-04:00

I think I hold a bachlorette party record: The first three weekends of September, I had a bachlorette party every weekend. It's a sign of the times. When you're mid-twenties, everyone gets married, or at least it seems.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of getting to attend a bachlorette party that included vineyards and lots of wine. New England is certainly not known for its wines (and its wines probably aren't the best you'll ever have), but they're worth checking out. On a beautiful early fall day when the temperature tips 70 and the sun is shining, it's the best way to spend your third bachlorette party in three weeks.

Freshmen year, redux

2009-09-17T22:54:00.003-04:00

The past three weeks have passed by so quickly and in such a flurry of activity that somedays I feel like I'm only a participant coming along for the ride.

In my mind, yesterday was only September 1. I have no clue who this other person is who found her way to September 17 without me, but we've both been busy. I haven't even unpacked my new apartment fully. I haven't read a book at night. I haven't even been hunting out new music or listening to NPR's All Songs Considered, thinking about how I really get a kick out of Bob Boilen.

How did I get here, being so busy, you may ask. Well, I hadn't told you. I owe you the story: I quit my job in August . . . to attend graduate school.

Why?

Well . . .

Last August, I was reading the Joshua Ferris novel, "And Then We Came to the End." The book details the lives of workers facing layoffs at a Chicago advertising company during the days of dot-com bubble's burst. The book is witty, written in the unusual third person and most memorably, its characters say that someone who's laid off "walks Spanish down the hall."

It may seem insignificant now, over a year later, that I was reading this particular book last August, but I don't think I'll ever forget when I read it and what it said.

The book was epically timed to my life. A few days after finishing it, a quarter of my company was sent to walk Spanish down the hall. It was my Pearl Habor--a devastating, surprising blow to the foundation of my twentysomething life.

I'd been planning leaving my job last fall and using that experience to parlay myself into a more creative and comprehensive writing and editing position. But my personal Pearl Harbor was just the beginning. I watched awestruck with the rest of the country and world as the things we'd believed were bedrocks--our economy, our job base--were altered before our eyes. Can you still believe everything that's happened? Sometimes I can't, sometimes I can. Sometimes I stop and think how for my generation, 9/11 and this recession were two reminders that every day you are living history, becoming history.

When my company, and many others, sent more employees walking Spanish down the hall in January, I was already beginning to think of how I move forward. What do you do with your dreams when the road is blocked? Do you make lemonade? Do you ditch the plan and as a friend aptly put it (and I'll make this PG-rated here) "Screw lemonade"?

I took a leap of faith. I said it: Screw lemonade. I left the one thing that most people in this recession cherish most: my job, which gave me more than I ever thought it would last year and challenged me to do beyond what I ever thought it could do.

So, now I'm busy. In school. Remembering what this whole "homework" thing is about. Meeting new people. Feeling like a college freshmen. And getting used to the fall.

It's a bit unnerving to be making such a big change, but at the same time, I want to pat my busy self on the back and say "Hey, you made it." And in fact, we all made it to another fall with its pumpkins, apple picking and fiery leaves. It's something that I needed to take a minute to step back from the busy-ness and think about. Happy fall. It's here and we're here.

Happy Accidents

2009-09-04T14:22:00.004-04:00

Last month, my trusty point-and-shoot camera died due to complications from the "Lens error. Restart camera" message, which happens surprisingly more than I'd ever thought. At the time I wasn't sure what to do: buy another lower-priced (and thus lower-quality) camera or try to get by using my ancient point-and-shoot and my dSLR? I'd originally opted for option B. I dug out my college camera, charged some batteries and did a test. The batteries failed to hold a charge for more than five photos and I felt that in the time it took to shoot a picture, I probably could run a mile. Or two.

It was clear: A new camera was needed. With two non-dSLR friendly events fast approaching (two bachlorettes to be exact) and two weddings followed fast on their heels, I acted fast, picking up a small 10 megapixel J20 Fuji camera. Out of all the other cameras at that price point, it seemed the best.

So far, it's worked well for what I need it for: a small versatile camera to use on trips to dangerous for nicer cameras. But then I took it along with me camping at Lake George.

After a morning spent hiking a local hill then another spent on an hour-long boat ride, I noticed in a few of my photos that a black edge appeared around the photo edge. I felt a sinking feeling--this camera could not perform afterall. I should have waited.

I downloaded my photos after the lake though and was greeted with a pleasant surprise. Those dark edges? While not really a figmen of my imagination, as I'd hoped, turned my point-and-shoot photos into funky Holga-esque snapshots. I was in love.

I declared the photos a happy accident.
And what's better? All the rest of the trip photos, from the general store that sold everything from guitars to fly swatters, to the ducks we fed at least one whole bag of tortilla chips, to some shots of our competitive game playing, are intact and accident free. Here's to more happy accidents in the future.

Where did it go?

2009-09-03T14:11:00.003-04:00

Seriously, where did it go?
Summer, are you here?

Everything feels so strange when Labor Day comes late. Almost a week in September, to be a exact. Traditionally, the last week of August stretches languidly out across the calendar, using Labor Day as its footrest before it walks off into the world of fall.

This year, the last week of August walked right past me, without me even noticing or giving it so much as a backward glance. I returned home from a weeklong vacation at Lake George and before I could even download the pictures from my camera, I was racing August to the month's end. There were two new editors to train at work and an entire apartment to pack up and move.

It wasn't until Monday night at 11 after the boy had finished helping me pack up my apartment and after we stumbled into the local Panera, the only place open in all of little Coolidge Corner, that I realized it was the last day of August. I sat in the middle of my neighborhood on a bench in a t-shirt and shorts, eating my sandwich. I was homeless until noon September 1 (well not really, I just moved home for 12 hours--moving trailor and all) and I was rather chilly. The air already had the bite of fall. It felt like Labor Day had already passed, like summer had made the executive decision that they'd be no encore, no Indian Summer.

Even now, two days later and still one day away from Labor Day, the traditional "end of summer," I feel sad because I do feel like it's already over. How'd summer go so faster? I can't even stop this year to reflect. There's boxes to unpack still and this fall will be filled with all sorts of wonderful, magical and strange things.

Like what? You may ask. Pumpkins (and my favorite, pumpkin butter . . . mmmm . . . ) and apple picking?

That and some other things as well. I'll talk about it more when I unload some of my photo backlog tomorrow and next week. I figure it never hurts to start fall, regardless of whether we've even hit Labor Day, with a small mystery.

And miles to go before we park

2009-08-20T12:57:00.003-04:00

A co-worker of mine recently noted that whenever the weather is hot and we're stuck at work for yet another day of fighting with our content management system, I inevitablly mention the beach.

Our normal exchange goes a little like this:

"Oh it's so hot/humid/insert other word for oppressive summer heat here," my co-worker says on route to pick up our morning iced coffees.
"Oh yeah, I know," I reply. "I wish I were at the beach."

At this point in the summer, halfway through August, I've probably muttered this phrase a good 20 times.

It's been one of those busy summers--birthdays, bridal showers and it seemed, everything but the beach though. I can count the number of times I've made it to the beach prior to last weekend on one hand: one, two, three. It's a sad, sad number. Even sadder when you consider my poor co-worker's ears, burning from my stream of psycho beach babble.

But, last weekend, I made it to the beach to advance my record to a mighty four beach visits. But really, what else was I supposed to do? Haven't you heard we Massachusetts citizens have a heat wave on? And haven't you heard I own no air conditioner?

The beach was nonnegiotable.
Unfortunately, the traffic to the beach was also nonnegiotable.

The boy and I hit the road early last Sunday, stopping first at our favorite bagel place to gear up with Bagel Rising bagels and large iced coffees, then rolling out onto cratered cement that is Boston's Route 93 North. Surprisingly, we made good time all the way up to exit for our favorite beach, Crane's Beach in Ipswich. We got there in an hour and even stopped for lunch food that we could eat later. We cruised along the suburban roads of Hamilton and Beverly, admiring the polo grounds (yes, the type of polo British royalty play, not water polo) and the expanses of green pastures at the local horse farms.

Then we got to the beach road. And we stopped.
For a solid 30 minutes.

I felt like an out-of-sorts Robert Frost as we inched past a winery, some farms, and finally stretches of boggy marsh. It was miles to go until the beach. Miles to go. The road traffic seemed to stretch on infinitely, beached sea-bound creatures struggling on to their desination.

It took us a while, but we got there. We parked in overflow parking anad walked past the beach marshes to the beach. We spent the whole day people watching and swimming, something I hadn't done yet this summer during our afternoon beach trips. We scouted the sea floor for snails. We took the ones we found (which were almost the size of my fist) and tossed them further out to sea, away from the greedy nets of the younger kids. We pretended to do water aerobics by running in place. And toward the end of the day, one of us (ahem) even fell asleep on the beach.

It was everything I needed out of the summer: a lazy relaxing day in the hot sun at a beach with soft sand and clear water.

On Monday morning when my co-worker and I ventured out for our morning coffees, I didn't even say a word about how much I wished I were at the beach (although I did, of course, I always will.)

A tropical heat wave

2009-08-18T09:35:00.003-04:00

Call me sick and deranged, but I've waited all summer for the heat. I waited through the rain and gray of June (and early July). I waited as the temperature sat complacently around the high 70s mark. Then last week I saw a peak at the weather forecast and there it was. The forecast practically shouted out the words I'd waited for: hot, humid, hazy.

Hello, heat wave.

I know it seems crazy for anyone to want a heat wave, particularly when this anyone doesn't own an air conditioner and lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment. (It's even crazier when you consider that this "anyone" also needed to do laundry this week, which involves walking down then up four flights of stairs lugging a 10 lb. bag of dirty laundry, but I digress.) I love the heat though. I like lying on my bed at night reading in front of the fan. I like the summer menu of fresh veggies, smoothies, and lime popsicles. And most of all, I like how the heat forces you to s-l-o-w down. I move slower and more deliberately in the heat. I notice more. I appreciate the smaller things in life, like my window fan, my fridge's ability to make water bottles make-your-teeth-hurt-cold in 20 minutes time, and the beach.

The only problem with heat waves for me is work, really. I would much rather be at the beach, diving into the chilly New England beach water, people watching, finishing up my latest book, and listening to the music that makes up my summer playlist (like this band that reminds the boy of Ben Folds and this band that I've loved since I heard "Oxford Comma" in the summer of 2007, and this song, which has a great John Hughes tribute YouTube mashup video and which NPR higlighted in its best of 2009so far podcast).

So, in honor of the classic heat wave dilemma (namely, if you call in sick in August when its 90 degrees outside, is it automatically assumed you're playing hooky?), I'm declaring this week Marginalia water week. I have a backlog of this year's beach pictures. Last weekend, the boy and I travelled to Ipswich to cool off and the weekend before was the annual college reunion Cape weekend with my friends.

I figure if you can't go to the beach or to a pool when it's a heat wave and you need to work, you should remind yourself of what it's like to relax in the hot sun by a large cool body of water.

A confession

2009-08-03T15:16:00.004-04:00

Let me get up on my soapbox for a minute. I have a little something to say.
As you may or may not know , this past weekend I put on two bridal showers for two different friends and honestly? I'm not quite sure how I feel about that yet.

I do feel rather tired.

I trouped into work Monday morning in a daze. I felt like I should be small talking strangers on the T, asking how this person or that person knew the bride.

I went through the whole day in this confused daze. I became slightly uncoordinated. Eating cherries later on Monday afternoon I proved myself absolutely incapable of spitting the pits anywhere but on the floor, by the radiator, or partially under my cabinent (thank goodness, my office cube area is practically empty). I worried about the fate of my poor little point and shoot camera, which fell ill during shower #1 with what I can only call camera cancer (or the e18 error . . . they just don't make cameras like they used to.) I sported a collasal headache, presumably from overconsumption of caffeine and a fellow bridesmaid's delicious party punch and underconsumption of water. Despite said headache and my highly dehydrated body, I cheered on the idea of an afterwork beer on a Monday.

The only think I can think of my two shower weekend thus far is really that two bridal showers do odd things to a person. If you see me tying pink bows and white tulle on your mailbox, please call the authortities.

The pictures tell a slightly different story from the weekend though. Cutesy favors, trays of food, happy brides, a frenzy of cleaning bridesmaids, an army of kitchenware. It was a weekend of two successes and two both similar, yet totally different bridal showers.

I may not quite be back in the land of nonbridal reality yet and I may never ever be able to pull off the feat of two bridal showers in one weekend without the aid of a Monday off from work, but it was fun and I'm now ready to take my place in the bridal processionals in October. Cue the organ.

The busy, busy bridesmaid

2009-07-30T22:18:00.002-04:00

This upcoming weekend is a bridal shower marathon for this blogger: Two bridal showers. Two days in August.

I have to pace myself through close to 20 hours of cheese and cracker platters, fruit salads, small talk and two slapdash bouquets of bows. I almost feel like I should be training for this weekend like I train for a 5K, practicing 10 sets of introductions and balancing multiple plates on my arm as I walk around my apartment.

I think the past few nights have more than prepared me for the weekend ahead. I've been bridesmaid organizer extraordinaire, making lists and assembling shower favors (and watching a couple of episodes of The Office to "destress").

I'm in busy, busy bridesmaid mode. When I stop running around on Monday morning and start nursing my appetizer overload hangover, I may even write a little book about the experience: The Busy, Busy Bridesmaid and the Bridal Shower weekend. Or I may just offer you a better peak at what surprises I was cooking up this week.

Obsessed

2009-07-24T13:56:00.004-04:00

A mere two summers ago, I'd never been camping before.
I'd never slept in a tent, not ever in someone's backyard.
I'd never spent gone on vacation anywhere where not showering wasn't a choice, but a fact of life.

Going on my third summer of camping, I have to admit that I'm a bit hooked.
More than hooked. Obsessed, really.

Last summer I went so far as to suggest a 4th of July camping trip.
This summer, the camping trip came to fruition. The boy, his brother and wife, his father, and I spent the long holiday weekend at a campsite not too far south of Boston.

We didn't go anywhere crazy. We, in fact, stayed at a campsite with cabins, pit toilets, and the most impressive array of chotckes I've seen (yes, those are dollhouse-sized chairs nailed into the wall.)

I'd never organized a camping trip before and it's amazing how much you forget that you need to organize: How are you cooking? What are you cooking? Who is sleeping in what part of the cabin? Who is bringing What food for what meals? What do you do it if rains?

All things considered we didn't do too bad. The boy's brother's wife pulled together a spreadsheet of duties for everyone. We made a spur the moment trip to a local WalMart the first morning because we didn't have a grill and we'd forgotten to bring lighting beyond headlamps (and some people--I won't say who, but they may or may not have taken these photos-- forgot to put batteries in his or her headlamp. Whoops!). But after our grill was in place and our campsite was properly lighted, we didn't move outside the camp area. The rain that has plagued almost all of this New England summer broke for a few days and we had sun. We went swimming. When it sprinkled, we broke out the Uno. When we got hungry, we grilled veggies and chicken and even a fish from the tiny campsite pond.

It seems my little noncamper self has flourished into a camper. At weekend's end, after our swimming and eating and lounging and campfire sitting, we discussed making an annual camping trip of our own, outside of the yearly Lake George trip. As we talked about trying another place with a bigger, cleaner pond and our different options, I got excited about the summer's next camping trip and next year's 4th of July trip. I almost marked next year's trip on my calendar when I got home and had showered, but that may have been a little too obsessive, even for this newly obsessed girl.

On boys

2009-07-21T19:43:00.004-04:00

It may or may not be a real fact, but it seems most girls want a partner who can cook.

I have never been one of those girls who tried to fill in a check list of the ideal man before I knew him (Height? Tall. Hair color? Blond. Cooking skills? A non-negiotable item). Therefore over the years, I've dated men with a wide range of not only hair colors and heights and interests, but also cooking skills.

When I was 18, my boyfriend cooked me a spaghetti Valentine's Day dinner and burnt the spaghetti. He had to start all over again from scratch with me peering over his shoulder, supervising.

In college, another boyfriend specialized in grilled cheese. The grilled cheese had to have three cheeses and you had to put the butter in the microwave to melt it a bit so it was just right to spread on the sandwich. I remember walking down the aisles of the impossible deserted supermarket and watching as this boy debated what three cheeses we should put into the sandwich like the safety of the country (or at least our stomaches) was at stake. I could have just done with a simple one cheese (specifically a jalapeno-flecked cheese) sandwich, but it really did have to be three cheese and the sandwiches were delicious--cheese would drip out onto the paper plates we ate them off of and leave its oily footprints behind.

With the boy, it's a whole other story. He worked his way through high school and college in restaurants, Tanglewood and Western Massachusetts restaurants that catered to the refined palates of New Yorkers. He has taught me how to live life without recipes. He's showed me how to make pizza dough. And having him around has made me more flexible in terms of my own meal schedule. Tonight as I read on the train home I was also thinking about what to make for dinner. Maybe I'd roast that squash from the farmer's market, cut it into match sticks and serve it with pasta?

But then I got a text from the boy saying that he was in the neighborhood and trying to study at the local coffee shop. Two minutes later I got another text saying he couldn't find a seat and was infiltrating my apartment. Dinner for one became dinner for two. A simple roasted veggie pasta got some meat added to it and garlic was sacrificed for roasting because the oven was on so why not? And while we were at it, why not a simple white wine sauce?

That boy, he makes magic out of dinner. As I was chopping up veggies, I couldn't help admiring them, stacked up and ready to go and be a part of a meal that got a lot better when it was shared by two. Thank goodness for a man who can cook.

People in Motion

2009-06-24T22:44:00.004-04:00

I'm sure it's surprising that I haven't said much about San Francisco.
The little girl from eastern Massachusetts who has only lived in Massachusetts and England finally gets to the Pacific Coast and she goes silent? She posts three pictures and hides the other 547?

Strange indeed.
Very, very strange.

I hadn't planned to wait so long until my next entry, but then one day turned to one week and one week turned into almost three weeks.

On Sunday I went home for father's day and brought along my computer to show my parents photos of the trip. It forced me to finally organize my journey (and set it to music to boot, thank you very much Mr. Apple Computer!)

I found my pictures of Coit Tower right where I left them.

I reminsced of all the wonderfully touristy and nontouristy places I visited.

I've thought about stopping blogging for a while now because I haven't made the time to feel inspired and to go out and shoot, but as I flipped through my San Francisco pictures, I hummed a little Scott McKenzie and decided to soldier on writing and taking photos.

What else could I do with 400 photos and a backlog of spring film that I shot in Boston in April sitting in my arsenal? I have the stories, I have the images. I'll make the time.

I left my heart in San Francisco

2009-06-04T20:34:00.002-04:00

I've been making a lot of excuses around here lately about being busy. Very busy.
But last week I was busy. Out of state. Touring San Francisco.
I'm still sorting through the photos, but here's a sneak peak.

Forget 15 seconds of fame

2009-05-21T17:59:00.002-04:00

Fifteen seconds of fame?
How about at least two minutes worth?
You'd be a fool not to take it, right?

Well, what I learned in Maine on graduation weekend, my brother is nobody's fool.

After my family had arrived at the graduation hall very very early then had sat through the announcing of almost 1,000 graduates, the ceremony ended and we had fresh air and freedom. You don't realize how great outdoor graduations are until you've sat through one inside a ricky hockey rink on a muggy May day.

Thankfully we didn't have to worry about any stray pucks, just poorly tossed graduation caps.

We found my brother and forced upon him a session of photos worthy of Hollywood celebrities. Halfway through, fame beckoned. My brother was pulled aside by a stranger. A reporter, it turns out.

So my little brother did what anyone would do.
He got his microphone hookup.

He posed with his diploma.

And he talked to the reporter about how he felt about graduating, particularly in this economy.
He had my parents cracking up.

My parents stayed up that night specifically to watch the news. And what did they see? As promised, my brother. But as no one knew, he dominated almost the whole clip. Nothing like some time in the spotlight before you head out of town, riding into the sunset with your diploma (and a car full of sneakers and dirty tshirts and DVDs) in tow.

Good intentions

2009-05-12T21:59:00.004-04:00

When I was 13, my favorite movie was Empire Records, a movie about a bunch of record store employees trying to save their independent music store from takeover by a chain store. The movie most inexplicably starred Renee Zellweger, Liv Tyler and a guy from "Dazed and Confused" among others. The movie was the 13 year old's Bible (well, that and Seventeen magazine). I could quote whole chunks of the movie at a moment's notice (I actually think I still can: "Say no more, mon amour" comes to mind). I could sing the entire soundtrack too, with its Todd and the Wet Sprocket, the Gin Blossoms, Evan Dando--it was the best music of the mid-90s if you look beyond the fact it included no Nirvana or Counting Crows.

I bring Empire Records up because as I sat down to write and explain my lax blogging skills (again), I couldn't get Todd and the Wet Sprocket's "Good Intentions" (which incidentally appeared on another 90s soundtrack CD, the Friends soundtrack) out of my head. Last year, I had the best intentions just like Todd and his posse. I wrote three times a week. I vowed to do so until I quit blogging. I had very good intentions, but well . . . life always seems to intervene lately. In the words of my favorite junior high school movie, damn the man. I'm throwing the three days a week thing out the window in favor on a Thursday post every week because well, you never know when you have to go somewhere.

Take this past weekend for instance.
On Friday, I had to go to Maine.

It was my little brother's graduation from college. So being the dutiful big sister I am, I packed my bags on Friday morning, hunted down a boy I know, and met my parents for the long six-hour journey up to Orono, Maine.

Along the way, I was forcedto stop at the beach.

I tell you, it was horrible.
It was a balmy 70 degrees.
The sun was shining.
The wind was tame.
Talk about a cruel world.

I had to talk off my shoes and squish squash my way through the soft sand of Oguinquit Beach.

I had to watch my boyfriend make little lovey-dovey hearts in the sand with his honky big feet and try not to feel sick.

As I said, it was horrible. Simply horrible.
I spent the whole time wishing I was blogging and not working on my freckle tan.

It was so horrible I took a bunch of pictures to make me feel better.
And in honor of my good intentions, I may even up my posting ante and show you the beauties of Maine and the joys of a 21-year-old graduate, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself. I don't really need great intentions then I'd be forced to create blogs that play off the themes in Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" and frankly, no one can be quite that great.

One for the blog, two for the road?

2009-04-27T20:52:00.003-04:00

Did you wonder what happened to my blog last week?
That one post that I've been eeking out a week wasn't there and I left no warning or a half-baked I'm sorry.

I know. I'm a horrible, horrible person.
I'm not even that sorry about it.

But before you go pointing your fingers at me, tsk tsking and "Jennifer-ing" me like my parents used to do when I was younger (and certain friends enjoy doing now), I have an excuse.

See this sun?

Don't see it? Let me offer you a close up.

This whole spring I've been thinking that this chalk sun was the closest I'd be getting to nice weather. I resigned myself to the fact. I left my jacket dangling close by in the closet. One morning I even put my gloves back into my wallet. My spring skirts looked at me each morning forlornly and asked what was wrong, was I seeing something else? It's spring. They should be in use, right? One morning, I even considering packing all those spring skirts with their linen fabric and pastel colors and jersey swing into a box so I wouldn't have to deal with their accusations.

It was getting bad.

But in my jacket, I still stomped on. Taking pictures. Reading books. Ignoring the chill.

I'd planned to blog on Friday.
But something happened.
That something was 70 degree weather.

There was the Mass Ave Bridge to walk, smoot by smoot by smoot.

There were itty bitty flowers everything and trees dressed up and standing in clusters like wallflowers at a 1950s prom, swaying and sho-be-doing along with the music.

And there was the Deep Ellum patio waiting all the way at the end of the boy and I's riverside walk, with its Maximilion drinks and luscious Belgian beers.

There was no way I could sit anywhere near my computer.
And when the weather warmed all the warm up to a summery 80 in April, well I was long gone and lying in the neighborhood parks then the beaches of Southie.

So this is my oh-so-lackluster request for forgiveness.
All I can hope is that you too got outside this Friday and this weekend. I hope you stayed far away from your computers and coats and walked around barefoot and sat in the grass. It's the only way to usher in spring.

Hey there, beautiful (weather)

2009-04-17T16:07:00.003-04:00

Up until this afternoon, I held one truth about April: it came in two colors. One being gray, the other being brown (as shown last week).

Everything about April 2009 has been drab.
The first weekend of April a posse of the boy's relatives and I went to cheer on the New England Revolution at their home opener.

We were excited. The boy and his brother were relishing the thought of hours spent kicking around a soccer ball in the parking lot pre- and post-game. I was looking forward to the fun that is going to the Revs with a large group of people who enjoy pretending they are English soccer fans (in particular, Manchester United fans, although I personally favor Liverpool) and screaming "Refereeeeeeeee" and "RED CARD!" every possible chance.

But despite a very good game, the excitement wasn't fully founded. It was cold. And gray. The parking lot lights were on at 6:30. 6:30!

We each pounded a coffee pre-game (the boy watched over them while we piled on ever more clothes). It didn't really help though. I was so cold. It didn't matter the Revs had an amazing win. I wanted heat or more coffee.

So up till today, I've been hanging out inside. Visiting friends playing at nice bars or making new dinner recipes.

But now today is gorgeous.
Sunny. Almost 70.
The patios are calling my name.
As is the weekend.
I hope you have a good one and enjoy this beautiful day in all its shades of greens and blues.

Peek-a-boo people

2009-04-09T16:26:00.002-04:00

I love the days when it really starts feeling warmer and suddenly you notice that all the barren park benches and courtyard tables around the city are started to be speckled with life. People in coats reading papers, or talking on their phones. It's not quite nice enough to go coatless, but the sentiment is the same. The ice cream truck comes out of hiding, tourists take a stroll through Trinity Church, and Red Sox fans clog up the walkaways.

It's April all right.

From a distance, it still doesn't look like too much.
I mean can you see the two table sitters in this photo?

And the trees just peering into the reflection of the Hancock Tower are still bare.

But I know, they'll hurry along.

Spring paper readers sit out at the Boston Public Library.

Lord and Taylor merchandisers brought out the spring party dresses and strung Japanese lanterns along the windows to get Boylston Street shoppers ready for spring soirees.

Tourists await a guided tour of Trinity Church.

Look, Ma, no hats! And a man without a jacket to boot!

Judging by the lack of customers, I'm not the only one not yet ready for ice cream and popsicles. Next month, maybe?

April is the brownest month?

2009-04-02T21:07:00.002-04:00

T.S. Eliot suggested that April is the cruelest month.
I'd like to go on record and suggest that April may also be the brownest month, at least the first few days and at least when you're walking around town with your Polaroid camera.
For all these shots suggest, it may as well be November or February around here still.

Spring-ish

2009-03-25T21:56:00.003-04:00

Nothing has changed since I last posted about my hopes springs eternal for the spring season.

But, lured by the rows and rows of brightly colored tulips lining the flower display at Trader Joe's this weekend, my apartment is looking rather springy.

I have a feeling that these are the first of many batches of tulips and daffodils this season.

Spring stories

2009-03-20T15:42:00.003-04:00

Almost a month ago, a colleague of mine suggested to me that our company runs on stories. If you go to a meeting and the three people you'd arranged to meet with bring the rest of their company (CEO to boot!), and you still knock the whole company dead with your savvy and intelligence, answering questions like some Wild West gunslinger? You live in infamy. The story is repeated. Then repeated. Then repeated again. You're the Paul Bunyon of the telco world. Or the Johnny Appleseed of new business, planting offers and growing acceptances at small, medium, and large businesses across the world.

While I'll save my cautionary tale about thinking about your coworkers in the same way you thought about Grimms Fairy Tales' characters, I will say that relationship between New Englanders and weather is not unlike my work.

We live for the big stories. The weather legends and folklore, if you will.
The Blizzard of '78.
The April's Fools Day Blizzard in 1997.
And this year, of course, we added in The Ice Storm of 2008.

New Englanders love to tell the stories of these big, bad storms that come huffing and puffing the power out of their houses and the energy out of their shovelling-wearied arms. When the first day of spring makes it grand, but quiet entrance with the prim and proper calendar note "First Day of Spring" and sunny cold 40-degree weather, New Englanders all shake their heads because it's not really spring. Have they told you about that one time? With the April storm? The one that almost had as much snow as the '78?

You feel a bit silly, being hopeful for spring with the great giant snowstorms legends leering over your shoulder.

But really, I'm always hopeful for spring.
I tend to be foolish like that.
New England weather can break my heart several times over. It can give me the coldest winter in years and deliver me a humid, gray, rainy summer July year after year and year and still whenever I see the words "First Day of Spring", my heart jumps a little.

I dream of silly things--like the return of the farmers' markets in May, and smoothies, and photo dates outside, and beach trips, and warm wind through wide open windows. I'm already scheming of how I want to use my new Holga's 120 AND 35 mm backs in the summer weather, how I want to find a beautiful lightweight jersey dress for my San Fran trip, how I want to paint my toenails for flip-flop weather's start in April.

I'm such a sucker for spring. I can't help it because really, if spring isn't the biggest folklore of all in New England, I couldn't tell you what is. With its promise of pale bare arms, bunches of egg yolk yellow daffodils, and blue spring twilight, the legend of spring looms bigger than the blizzards and topples the thought of the grayest rainy days. And I'm okay with that.

A serendepitious blossom on a curbside couch.

The Irish Riveria last spring--Kiteflyers at South Boston's famous Castle Island.

Some people I know on a windy April day. Mother's Day, I believe.

A sure sign of spring. Sully's at Castle Island. Hot dogs, french fries, and their unparalled, creamy chocolate milkshake.

Things that get you through

2009-03-12T20:18:00.004-04:00

Some days I marvel at how small the things that give me the most pleasure in life are.

I need good music. Things like this album or anything by this singer or this compilation of artists and this song.

I need libraries or book stores to wander, the type of places that can make me greedy for knowledge and see me leave with at least three books.

I need a day or an hour of a day each week to walk around outside with one of my plethora of cameras in hand and the aforementioned good music buzzing in my ears and zipping down to my fingertips and toes.

And if I'm being really honest, every once in a great while, I need someone to make me a cake. A delicious eggless cake to be exact.

Living with an egg allergy is something that has tainted my birthdays since age 16. While I've adapted to eating just ice cream or beheading the cake's frosting so I could enjoy that, I still miss the real thing. Life without eggs is not usually that big of a deal--what you can't eat, you can always make. And when you go out to eat, you know the rules. I know the restaurant waitstaff can’t always find out where the bread is from and if I’m eating at an “authentic Italian restaurant”, I need to find the risotto or the salad options. I also know that there will always be people who find being allergic to eggs incomprehensible. These are the people who say “Oh, it must be so hard to be allergic to eggs—they’re in everything!” (I personally think it would be much worse to live life without cheese or ice cream or trail mix). I vastly prefer them to the women (and it is always women) who say, “I wish I had an egg allergy—I’d be so thin!” because I usually can assure the non-weight loss people it's not that big a deal being allergic to eggs.

Except when it comes to cake.
I will always miss cake.
This is why I'm thankful for my mother (well, among many other things such as birthing me and helping me with my algebra homework).

You see, my mom has taken to making me birthday cakes. Eggless birthday cakes.

To many readers, this may not seem like a big deal, but let me preface this statement with the following information: My parents don't really cook. We heat, defrost, and microwave like champs. With the exception of the famous crescent cake, my mom is a box baker. Duncan and Betty are old buddies.

So every year I'm honored my mom bakes for me. From scratch. Without eggs. Pretty eggless chocolate cakes.

It's just what I need to keep me going.

Down in Snowy Dixie

2009-03-05T21:30:00.002-05:00

Did you find it suspicious that I mentioned nothing about how many pictures I took in Virginia? Did you think for a minute or two that maybe I didn't take any pictures? That all I had to say about Virginia was that the airplane windows were smudged and that my journey down south was fairly disaster free?

Clearly, you knew something was awry.
Clearly, I had more up my sleeve.
200-plus pictures more, that is.

Oh and I had snow.
Yes, snow and more than 200 pictures.

The boy and I flew down to Virginia with the hopes of warm weather, something to the tune of 40 or maybe 50 degrees. We had a breezy, easy flight down South and when we got there, it rained then . . . . (drum roll here) it snowed.

Apparently we New Englanders can't escape it this time of year.
We might as well pack it in our suitcase with our travel-size shampoo and hairbrush because it snowed more in Virginia than it had snowed the past eight years. Eight, people. Next time, I clearly need to limit my travels to the Deep South or Southwest when I tag along with the boy on a jaunt.

But the thing is, I didn't mind the snow as much in Virginia. It was kind of like the really heinous paisley bed spreads at the Red Roof Inn--they were so ugly, they were kind of fun and amusing (especially given the hand out left on the hotel bed about how the room's bedding had been recently redesigned. Yikes).

It was an excuse to drink way more coffee than I normally do and linger at neighborhood coffee shops like Cafe Cubano and the amazing Fox Park Coffee Shop reading the local Charlottesville rags and figuring out what, if anything, was open in the winter in Charlottesville.

And when the snow finally stopped, I had to admit that the University of Virginia looked pristine. Its red brick and white columns looked refreshing against the blue sky and white snow. I took at least 100 pictures walking around agape at the beautiful campus and the students trying to use skateboards to "snowboard" down the slight hills in the Academic Village's yard.

It was so pretty that I even told the boy I'd consider going to school there sometime. The boy, of course, laughed at that. There technically wasn't too much to do outside of the University and the "Corner" neighborhood where we stayed.

But there were some things, like the vineyards and little restarants with patios. And really if you were carrying around reading material and your camera, it could be all you need.

And really, for a travel-loving person like myself, it was a nice, cold vacation. Further proof of how I'm always happy to travel anywhere, anytime really.

Down in Dixie

2009-03-04T21:45:00.005-05:00

Remember how you felt about your first school field trip? The thrill of being allowed (allowed!) to play hooky from the classroom, drink soda (kept "chilled" because your mom wrapped it in tin foil) with your lunch, and sing "This Is the Song that Never Ends on the Bus" loop after loop after loop?

That's how I feel about travelling. Every time I get on a plane to go anywhere, I get giddy. Nevermind that not every trip is perfect, much like every school field trip seemed to feature a lunch sandwich that got smushed like road kill by your sacred soda can. Travelling is travelling, I will be smiling from baggage check to takeoff to landing. I love the way the earth looks from a plane, how clusters of houses look like milky ways and nebulas of light when you're flying at night. I love how I always seem to meet chatty people who tell me that I remind them of their daughter, or who ask if because I'm journaling, I've read Anais Nin. And I love the feeling I get as a pull away from the airport in a cab or a bus or whatever transportation is available and I get my first look at the place I'm visiting. My breath always catches a bit and I feel a bit braver and more fearless than I normally do.

About a month ago when the boy got accepted his first paper accepted into the AOSD workshop and asked if I'd want to tag along to Virginia with him, I really couldn't say no. A chance to visit the slightly warmer climate of Virginia and check out the University of Virginia. Yes. Please.

So off we both went on Saturday to Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Monticello, the University of Virginia, and a whole slew of vineyards.

We flew in the smallest planes I'd ever been on, including a propeller plane, something that appeared like it was straight out of TailSpin. But, it was still wonderful. There was absolutely no smushed sandwich part of the journey down to Charlottesville. Just a bit of turbulence and a slightly murky airport window.

Let there be light

2009-02-26T18:37:00.002-05:00

The first week that I come out of work to find and find twilight hanging out, it's magic.
I almost feel like the winter is over, even though, of course, it's nowhere close to being over. I don't even put away my winter jacket until I've survived the first week in April.

But the light. It's worth it.
And it's rather pretty too.

The inevitable

2009-02-25T20:56:00.002-05:00

I'm guessing a few of you out there saw this one coming.
No, I'm not talking about wedding season (although I should have seen that one coming--friends in their mid-20s with classy, intelligent boyfriends? Of course, their classy, intelligent boyfriends would propose--those ladies are all good catches, that's why they're my friends. Obviously, people, but alas, I digress.)
I am talking about my millions of references to Cafe Fixe's coffee. If you knew the amount of time the boy and I have spent talking about the coffee shop and finding ways to visit the coffee shop, you'd have signed us up for some time of counseling or intervention. But, because you didn't know how bad our obsession was, or how smitten that boy was in particular, you might not have recognized the inevitable, chug-a-chugging down the line.

What happened?

Well, one day I was talking to the boy and he let the bomb drop: He ordered two pounds of the coffee beans used at the shop for his own personal home use.

Surprised?
I wasn't, really. I just hadn't realized how smitten that boy was until this weekend.

The beans arrived without any ceremony on Friday. I returned home from the world of brides and red taffeta at around 8:30 at night and was promptly offered coffee. Decaf or regular. I could choose my poison. One used coffee cup already sat by the sink at that point.

In the time that I've known him, the boy has never been one for excessive coffee consumption. That apparently happened during the darker days of his youth, drinking the same coffee while working shifts at Bistro Zinc, drinking any coffee during college then drinking coffee by the pound while working as Boy Barista Extraordinaire at Starbucks.

For about 3 seconds, I wondered if something had happened to my newly-coffee-obsessed boyfriend.
But then I stole a sip from his coffee cup before we headed out to indulge our inner nine-year old with Coraline in 3-D (which coincidentally, I think most inner nine-year-olds would love, hint, hint). It was as amazing as a Cafe Fixe coffee (because well, it basically isCafe Fixe).

Now I'm debating ordering a pound or two of beans to call my own.
But, I'm sure you saw that one coming.

Seeing red

2009-02-24T21:17:00.002-05:00

Bum bum bummmmm.
It has started.
Bridal season is upon this girl.

This weekend, I trekked out to Rhode Island to meet up with the bridal party for Miss Rowena Cowie's wedding and pick out dresses.

The task at hand was innocuous enough.
But if you've ever been to your local bridal store, you know how quickly innocuous moves to overwhelming.

Our mission was red dresses.
We were confronted by rows and rows of silk, taffeta, and tulle in all the colors of the rainbows, not unlike Skittles.

Even once we selected the dress, we still had to start discussing the details--hairstyles, shoes, jewelry. And don't even get me started on the details of the bridal showers--with its favors, themes, and invites--and the bachlorette party with its drinks and dinner and dancing locations.

If only creating bridal shower invites and bachlorette plans were as easy as creating Valentine's Day cards for the boy.

The madness has begun, my friends.

Spring-ish fever

2009-02-18T19:29:00.004-05:00

Exactly one month ago, I launched into an all-out rant on how the winter seemed a little too long and a little too cold this year.

Well apparently someone somewhere was reading my complaints because although it is snowing most ironically right now as I type, last week the weather was gorgeous.

Thankyouverymuch Mister Weatherman!
I'll send you a nice card next Christmas (and maybe your birthday too?)

It was a balmy 50 degrees on three separate days, with one day even inching suspiciously close to 60. The icy walls of snow that had barricaded the sidewalks and narrowed the streets slipped into rivers and streams at our feet.

Sidewalks were crossable from any point (jaywalkers everywhere rejoiced!) Suddenly it seemed like every flower shop in the neighborhood was pushing pastel tulips out into sidewalk displays to taunt walkers with further thoughts of spring.

And I think that the population of the neighborhood may have doubled in size, but I really don't have any factual evidence to back that one up.

The first days of warmer weather in New England always have such a heady celebratory quality to them that makes me feel like some prepubescent who could skip down the streets, moony in puppy love with the weather.

The days were just what I needed to remember that winter, like all things related to weather or life, isn't forever. It got me to the long weekend with its surprise Valentine's Day flowers and its Deep Ellum date with the boy, and its wonderfully great news of a wonderful old friend's engagement. And the days got me to today, which again is cold and snowy and oh-so-winter-like, but with its homemade vegetable soup and promise of wine and a movie, really is not so bad.

It's great to be back, back, back

2009-02-17T21:59:00.004-05:00

To borrow from the joyous song of Mister Magoo in opening of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, "It's good to be back, back, back (blogging)."

I have to admit though, the hiatus was nice.

When I first learned I would be the "Woman Without the Internet" my first thought was of how ridiculous that seemed. This child of the 21st century was sure she wouldn't survive. Sure, I survived without a computer or a regular Internet connection when I studied abroad in college, but that was before I even knew what a gmail account was. Before Facebook came to my college (and then conversely, the greater adult and high school community). Before I'd ever even heard of a blog. Or Dreamweaver. Or anything really besides Google and email and AIM instant messenger. Clearly, that era of my life was so 2004.

Once I got used to going home and being unconnected, I was pleasantly surprised. I feel like I read a bit more (though maybe that was just catch up for all that class work). I watched an extra movie or two. And when the weather went wonderfully haywire for February, delivering to us temperatures close to a heavenly 60 degrees (ahhh!), I made excuses to take my nondigital self with my nondigital camera everywhere. Nondigital Jen needed a chai latte so she walked to her favorite cafe. Then nondigital Jen needed to find some replacement running tights (after three hard years, hers were starting to show major wear) so she walked a solid twenty minutes to scope some out.

Technically everything I did was no different than anything I normally do on a daily basis or on nice days. But it was freeing to know I was taking photos because I wanted to, not because I thought I had to because I didn't like others for my blog. It was nice to also not think in vignettes. I hadn't noticed I was vignetting my experiences until I stopped.

It was freeing, my little hiatus.
But I'm glad to be back in this space.
I'll post my photos from the week and offer a more interesting rehash tomorrow but in the interim, just wanted to say hi. I'm back, back, back.

Woman Without an Internet Connection

2009-02-03T11:23:00.009-05:00

The title of Kurt Vonnegut's second-to-last literary work (and technically the last literary work to be published while he was alive and what the author wanted to be his final work) was called "Man Without a Country". It was a collection of stories on modern America--life in George W. Bush's America, as the subtitle boasts.

The past couple of days I can't help thinking that if I could name a series of short stories about my recent experiences, I'd need to borrow heavily on old Kurt's title. Riff on it, if you will. I'd present you with a magician's hand flourish (whooooooosh): "Woman Without the Internet." Or even "Woman Without an Internet Connection!"

You see, I have, in this modern age of high-speed internet and FiOS (with its "blazing 50 Mbps" power!), found myself without Internet.

How does this happen per se? Well, let's say that's a rather prickly and winding story (or rather, not much of either . . . but it sounds far more mysterious that way). So rather than writing what I'd hoped, namely a whopper of a post on Harvard Square on cool winter days and little out-of-the-way tea shops and maybe even some Southern literature because I find I'm living and breathing and obsessing over it of late (and will be through May if you want the real truth), I bring you my request for a time extension on my post, if you'll accept it.

"I had some--ahem--"technical difficulties" with my pictures."
(Which is to say, I have no Internet with which to upload said pictures. I am currently borrowing Peets' internet, squatting at Peet's for wireless like some type of strange internet vagabond, down and out in Boston and Brookline rather than Paris and London).

At least it's better than "The dog ate my homework."

My magic internet connection should return on February 10, but until then, expect it to be a little quiet around here. I'll still be snapping picture. And as I am taking a non-photography course this year to decide whether I want to go back to school, not just think about going back to school, I'll be reading. And reading. And reading. My southern literature course has a whopper of a startup reading list, which I'm slowly slowly plowing through (or as our Oxford supervisor would say, usually in a whisper tone, "Slowly slowly catch ye monkey")

So slowly slowly I post ye blogs.
Consider my Harvard Square photo a promise that I'll be back in this space soon and tell you about nice things like that delightful little tea shops with bright green walls and a long bar for caffeine addicts like yourself (okay fine, that's myself here).

Have a golden day. Harvard Square. The last day of January 2009. Outside of Cafe Crema, on route to the Dado Tea Cafe.

Post scriptum: If anyone is looking for a dummy proof sweet for Valentine's Day, check this out. : It's not super duper healthy (helllllo chemicals), but it's fun. You could make a,pink, purple, and red version.

Pumpkin butter life lessons

2009-01-29T19:43:00.003-05:00

When I started this blog, I just gotten into cooking and photography and had intended this blog to be about both of those things.

Once I started writing though, I felt that I quickly fell into my format of photography and small talk. The food fell by the wayside until a couple of weeks ago when I got to thinking that to break up all the snow pictures I was lavishing on you, maybe I'd work on my studio lighting techniques by ya know, doing a food post.

Then I found this recipe for pumpkin butter.
It was fate.
It was so easy. Child's play!

I consume pumpkin butter like a mad woman. I put it on my toast, in my yogurt. I mix it with cream cheese if I'm having a bagel. I've been eating two jars a month! In the back of my head I knew that nobody likes to eat pumpkin butter year round and that at some point Trader Joe's would cease pumpkin butter production until next fall. What better way to prepare for this horrible dreaded time when there is NO Trader Joe's pumpkin butter than to learn how to make it.

Talk about an ideal situation, huh?

So I gathered the ingredients--the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, maple syrup, and spices. I pulled out my largest stock pot. I measured and mixed. I snapped photos. And . . .

Man. It's a good thing I didn't start a food blog.

The pumpkin went from a sludgy orange color to a sludgy brownish color. When it finished cooking, the kitchen smelled wonderful, but the butter wasn't smooth or luscious as I was hoping it would be. It was dull. I felt not hungry just looking at it and bored taking pictures of it and I normally love the stuff. Alas.

Moral of the story in this case? I probably should pick a recipe with more ingredients or just invest in cases of pumpkin butter to tide me over until next fall. Or maybe I should plan a trip to somewhere without snow so the diversity of my pictures returns (coincidentally this may be in the works . . . stay tuned!)

Getting mental

2009-01-27T16:55:00.003-05:00

I have a theory that some days are just meant to tax even the most patient of us.
For those not quite that patient (the author of said blog whistles a bit, attempts to look innocent, points at self), some days are nothing short of a mental gauntlet or, my preferred image, a mental steeplechase.

Sprint.
Hurdle puddle.
Sprint.
Hurdle puddle.
Sprint.
Hurdlepud--
SPLAT.
Not quite. Nothing like a refreshing fall into the water lurking below.

I usually tend to combat these type of days with the consolation of the weekend with its sleeping in, running outside if it isn't too icy, reading, drinking of delicious dark beers, and joint venturing of the boy and I into creative cooking (last weekend's dish: the shepherd's pie.)

I realized something this Sunday though. Something fairly serious as this is my general line of thought more or less regardless of season, with only the most minor of alterations say a trip to the beach in lieu of the sleep and the quest to make the best smoothie in lieu of actual cooking.

My entire, entire reason for looking forward to the weekend has not been good enough.
This Sunday blew away the competition and I think it's all more or less due to this new coffee shop that the boy and I are courting if you will.

I became enamored with it in November when I noticed on route to drop off some shoes for heel repair. The shop had the sparse almost Ikea Zen look of a coffee shop we'd been to (and loved) during our summer trip to Lake George. We didn't actually get there until Martin Luther King weekend, but we got there and loved it. I loved it so much that it's making it's second blog appearance (or I'm just getting grumpy and stodgy and set in my ways in my old age. You decide).

The usual barista is a bit odd. He's reserved, but unafraid to make comments to his customers such as "You don't want extra hot. It will ruin the taste of the milk and thus the coffee" or "I've never heard of a plain chai tea bag. You understand that in India, chai is stepped in milk." He's contrary to the whole "the customer is always right" mindset of American retail stores and restaurants.

Once you taste his coffee though, you'll understand.
The sizes aren't huge, but the richness and depth of each coffee you get is unparalleled you really wouldn't want more.
The only thing you really want to do is stick around, which is exactly what the boy and I did all last Sunday.

He brought his thesis materials.
I brought the Sunday paper, the latest issue of the New Yorker, and my camera.
We had two drinks a piece.
I read and people watched and snapped photos and slowly sipped away at my Americano (then my chai latte).
It was everything you could ask of a winter Sunday when the wind chill is topping out temperatures at 10 to 15 degrees max.
And now it's all I'd really like to do until April or May comes and I can lay outside in a park with my coffee.
I clearly need to alter my weekend expectations to make it sure it does happen, every Sunday. Maybe Saturdays too.

Smitten blogger

2009-01-22T14:53:00.007-05:00

So lest you think that all I have been doing is walking the streets of Boston, head down, moping, kicking angrily at little pieces of snow, I have some fun news to share.

Well a bunch of fun news and things, if you will. This week I have been dang near knocked on my butt by the wonder of the things I've found and seen and heard.

First, these little poems.
Some of the poems are so sweet. You feel yourself ready to make a little happy soft sighing noise to imply that you get it, you recognize that feeling. Then there are others that had me in stitches at my computer. Stitches.

Consider the bear poem:

Box of Baby Bears
I’ve purchased a box of live baby bears
via mail order.
Three brown cubs, two Kodiak, and one bonus polar.
The advertisement states they are simple to train
and have been genetically tempered
for ease in overwhelming.

They are shipped three day priority
and come with a safety whistle
set at a pitch
which will immediately incapacitate them
should trouble arise.

But I don’t anticipate any trouble.

Only optimum companionship.

See? Aren't you smiling? Even, a little? Don't you want to read the rest of them? Or dig up your old Shel Silversteins (because as the blogger who I discovered this from mentions, his poems have that Shel Silverstein tone and magic to them).

Okay, still got that smile--little or otherwise? Hold that.

News #2: Polaroid film isn't totally dead!

Whoops. Okay, my bad. I think this may be something that only I care about, but if anyone else has a love of old film cameras or the classic Polaroid picture shape, the Impossible Project is worth at least a peek, a tiny little curiousity peek to match your tiny smile from the poems.

And finally in a "kindness of strangers" moment on Inaugration Tuesday, I was left with the nicest comment on a roll of film I had developed. The photo machine had apparently broken down earlier in the day at the Mass Ave CVS. My pictures managed to escape and get printed under the wire as I was able to pick them up, but like all picture packets picked up that day, mine had a little note. The boy's had one too that said "Three pictures were not printed." Mine was much nicer and more upbeat. It said "Great pictures! :)" with a smiley face facing upright, not sideways. I know many of you are nice enough to comment about my pictures and even pose for them (although sometimes you pose when I want a natural shot, you know who you are. I wag my fingers at you, but obviously will still take your picture any way you slice it.) And I love that feedback. So needless to say I was blushing as I am want to do in situations when strangers compliment me.

The film is a rather nice roll--a documentary of the parts of my weekend I hadn't told you about.

The trip (finally!) to the hip minimalist cafe in Washington Square.

The journey and walk to the MFA to reap the benefits of the free admission offered for Martin Luther King Day (and oogle at the Karsch 100 exhibit with its portraits that look like film film stills).

My view of the city on route to such wonderfully enjoyable things as this movie at this old moviehouse and this neighborhood bar with such wonders as dark Chimay Bleue and Three Philosophers beer. Oh and fries. Their fries could star in my dreams.

Oh and the most fitting picture of all--new grafitti outside Bryan's building, but good grafitti, pretty graffitti. All sorts of nice little things to smile another nice little smile or two remembering.

Nothing but blue sky for right now

2009-01-21T21:03:00.003-05:00

Even though certain history buffs (cough, cough my father) have pointed out there was an error in Obama's inauguration speech yesterday (Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, which makes Obama the 43rd president to be sworn in), the inauguration speech is certainly worth a re-read. I will spare you my lengthy analysis of such things like how the scripture passage Obama references ends with the fitting line "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love" and how the literary nerd in me loves the idea of choosing "the better history" (akin to how a mass of readers a few years back read "Life of Pi" to essentially choose its better story). Just re-read it.

A hazy shade of winter

2009-01-19T19:23:00.002-05:00

Calling all New Englanders: Is it me or has this winter already been a little too long? Last week temperatures plummeted to zero and below. Saturday while waiting on a time to Providence to visit the fabulous Rowena Cowie, it was 9 degrees. Nine. And while those temperatures weren't as bad as those of the Midwest where some ski resorts declared it too cold to ski and closed for a day or two, it was colder than we'd seen around here since 2005.

2005.
That's four years ago, people!
Four.
Four years ago, I was still in college, writing for my school paper, laying out the literary magazine and spending Thursday nights drinking watered down Cosmos and Cape Codders at the long-defunct Club 208. If four years ago isn't ancient history, please tell me what is. (I know, I know--Lascaux, the caveman, the Egyptian burials, the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, and so on).

This "coldest weather in four years" stuff is for the birds, or really, the penguins.

But it isn't just the cold that has me huffing and puffing in aggravation that this winter had the audacity to get so cold. It's the sheer amount of snow we keep getting. Last weekend, it snowed all Sunday. This weekend, it snowed on Sunday again. Everything has taken on that flat gray look that I usually associate with February when I swear the bare tree branches might as well be singing Simon and Garfunkel to me as I skulk and shiver on by:

"Ahh, the seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime"

It's a cool forgettfully sad light that falls on the salt-stained streets and the white mantillas of the tree branches. It can be quite beautiful if you take the time to walk around the city (clad in mittens, boots, and a heavy jacket) and document the sad light and the snow, the hazy shade of winter if you want to borrow a line from Simon and Garfunkel. As it is really only January and I do live in New England (where it snows and is cold for a good portion of the year), perhaps this year is just the year for me to try something other than winter photography, something more traditional like skiing or snowboarding. There could be hope for me yet, or perhaps I just need to keep waiting for the seasons to change with the scenery again.

Yummy, if you will

2009-01-14T19:21:00.001-05:00

The South End
January 2009
4:30 or so

Ranting, Reviewing, Raving

2009-01-13T20:41:00.003-05:00

So you may not realize it, but I was going to write a photography rant this week. A pure genuine rant on film photography in the twentieth century and the perils of shooting too much 400 speed film and the ways winter wreaks havoc on poor unsuspecting SLR.

I was hyped up enough to even consider throwing in the towel and going all digital. I know. Gasp! Wheeze! The girl who only in August lectured the poor on why shooting film is still so fun and rewarding thinking about giving it up?

I could barely believe it myself.
Actually, I didn't believe it. Like my resolutions to give up caffeine that inevitably end with me hunched over my French press or percolator frantically prepping my morning brew just a minute before I need to be locking the door and sprinting outside to what I hope is a not-too-crowded T, the idea was fleeting.

So my SLR is not a winter trooper like the boy's, whose camera apparently was one of those that had to walk to and from school uphills both ways in blizzards. So what if my camera refuses to talk pictures if it is outside in 20-degree weather too long. Oh well. Film life goes on. And even if the local photography store (cough, cough Hunts cough, cough) failed me again by not having any (any!) warming or cooling filters or any filter really other than the basic UVs and polarizers, I can deal. If I can still get my beautiful and discontinued (as of January 1st) 600 Polaroid instant film online, I can find the rest of whatever else I need. Thank you very much, Mr. Internet.

And really when you get a roll of film developed that was as satisfying as like I got back last week, you don't really want to give up film. You only want to shoot more pictures and dream of Leicas, Yashicas, and Holgas.

I don't often get a roll of film that I love right off the bat. Normally I practically run over to the film store to pick up my film, breathlessly pull the pictures from the slim envelopes, then proceed to hate almost every one and consider myself a film failure. If I had a career as a film photographer, I would clearly need to learn some lessons in taking it easy on the self-criticism or I wouldn't be able to give clients any images. Ever. Usually an hour or two after I get new photos, I usually look at the pictures again and realize that I do, in fact, like a number of them and I'm not a film failure. Huzzah! With this role, I actually loved a few photos right off the bat.

Miracles apparently do happen, and they're much nicer than rants.

The Holiday Recap, Part 2

2009-01-08T17:04:00.005-05:00

The trickiest story format in the literary world is probably the flash fiction story. The most effective stories pack an incredible punch into a mere page or two--there are poems longer than these brief little stories. I always found myself a little too verbose to pull off the eloquent brevity of the best flash fiction (consider Grace Paley's "Mother" my ultimate example), but I have always loved the idea of it, considering it almost like a love letter piece of fiction--brief, somewhat restrained, but emotional. In pulling together today's post, I started thinking about flash fiction pieces and decided to cheat the format a bit. I've pulled together mini-flashes for each photo of Christmas day that are more like a short poem or a blurb summary than flash fiction. I wanted a more detailed dive into the Christmas photos than my usual long post format. I think the shorter bits and pieces can pick up and explain the amusing details or the reason I post or like a photo.

Christmas day gift opening is always chaos, especially now that my cousin Matthew is 4 years old. Everyone alternates between digging into their own gifts and helping Matthew with his. The boy took active involvement in my 4-year-old cousin's pursuit of opened, accessible toys.

The Ryan fridge has a lot of character--old photos, postcards, and magnets from everybody's vacations. We don't have nearly as many magnets as my mother's parents do, but I imagine when my parents retire, they might be close. I might not be able to find their fridge for all the magnets. Lately, my own apartment fridge has begun taunting me with the idea that the visually-noise fridge face runs in the family. Between the magnetic whale magnets made of felt, a small army of Polaroids, and random informational scraps, I'm walking a slippery slope.

On my father's side of the family, we call the crescent rolls "croissants". We sometimes use an over-the-top faux French accent (or at least I do). "Crooooix-sant!" You can blame it on my cousin Chris, who one Thanksgiving fatefully asked if someone would mind passing him the croissants. Ancient history never dies in this family. Croissant, anyone?

Despite the potential risk of sleeves or croissants or napkins catching fire, we've always had candles at the dinner table. Two candles to be exact. My father actually picked out this year's iteration. What a stylish guy.

Mom's China has never looked quite as ready for a Better Homes and Garden shoot than it does on Christmas.

Colloquially that brown bird is called "Tom" as in "Have you picked up Tom from the market?" and "When will Tom be ready?" An entire generation of turkeys have been Toms. I sincerely hope they value conformity.

My parents' kitchen is not exactly the hang-out place on holidays. We all try to squeeze in, some of with our cameras even (image those nosy people!) But really with a kitchen only double the size of my little studios, there is only room for one or two people. The things that never get too crammed are the plethora of pots and pans and plates waiting in the wings to be used. They sit cozy on their burners without any problems.

The Holiday Recap, Part 1

2009-01-07T12:16:00.003-05:00

Happy 2009!
Did everyone survive the holidays in one piece, or as close to it as is possible?

In the years since I've graduated from college (a number that keeps increasing much to my surprise year in and year out), I often find myself with a bit of a holiday hangover January 1st. I'm not talking about a traditional hangover, derived from too much champagne or wine or beer or whatever your New Years' drink of choice may be. It's more a hangover that comes after you've been running around busy for a week. You feel a bit tired, a bit confused, and kind of fearful that maybe you forget that you were supposed to be at a holiday party or something today or tomorrow or next week?

This year, the annual December revelry seems to have treated me much nicer, gliding me into 2009 feeling oddly refreshed (this is a new New Year's feeling! Ahh!) Perhaps it was the two exceedingly long weekend "vacations" I took that allowed me to participate in things like visits from old family friends who discussed the professional hockey scene in Chicago and, the family favorite, the family "war movie" trip (Long before "Saving Private Ryan" gave my family ample ammo to joke about my grandfather's army legacy, they watched and loved and discussed "Gettsburg" and "Zulu" and "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon". If you only somewhat like military history, don't mention the topic. They can talk about almost any war for hours.) Or perhaps it was the fact I feel asleep at 9 or 10 every night I was home (can you say Grandma?). Either way, vacation was kind to me, and the holidays kinder still. Kind enough to almost make me miss them when I look back through my photos. Or at least want to share the photos of Christmas Eve--with its annual Chinese food dinner and "Running of the Crescent Cake" dessert hour--and Christmas day--with its turkey and fireside viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life", which suddenly starts looking a whole lot different when you watch it during a recession and after the housing crisis (as the New Yorker pointed out in Talk of the Town last week, George Bailey was essentially dealing subprime mortgages!)

For auld lang syne

2008-12-31T09:43:00.005-05:00

My favorite movie of all time ends with Auld Lang Syne, the Scottish folk song.
I always loved, that much like New York Times writer Wendell Jamison recently wrote about that movie, the song captured how bittersweet the holidays can also be.

Yes, you have the wonder of friends and family, colorfully wrapped gifts and cinnamon-scented cakes, but you also have the knowledge that another year has passed. The song's lyrics, which aren't heard as often as the famous chorus, are telling, recounting what happened "a long time since":

"We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine ;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne."

This knowledge is what inevitably not only leads to the top ten lists of the best political moments and movies and music that burst from the seams of local papers, but also to the question of whether the year was what you'd hoped for last January. How far have you come? Are you where you thought you would be? Are you happy?

It's a tough process evaluating your year. The questions are large and they bring up the incidents that were wonderful as well as those that did not go as planned--whether professional or personal. But I would also argue reflecting on the good and bad is what makes the holidays as good as they are. It is only by reflecting on the bumps in my life that I can be even more thankful for the good--learning about photography as I always wanted to, moving out on my own, travelling back to England at last, being able to spend a nice long Christmas break with my family. And then I can put aside anything that might have been lingering and give myself the blessing to let it go and move on, wearing my nicest party shoes and readying myself to count down--10, 9, 8, 7 . . .--to the next year with its hopes of travel and classes and time with people I love.

New Years is in a way the truest test to the human spirit--we soldier onward, always hopeful for more, always a bit like Fitzgerald's Gatsby--running harder, moving further until that one day. Our joy and embrace of the new year is the resolution we make to ourselves without knowing it--and it's better than the others like calling home more often, losing weight, or being nicer to others because they will all fall into place in time if we continue to embrace each year as a gift.

We will take a cup of kindess yet, 2009.
Here's to the New Year--May the year be kind to you.

Snowed under

2008-12-21T18:46:00.004-05:00

Three days of snow=
-3 large jars of homemade granola
-2 Christmas movies and counting
-1 batch of brown butter spoon cookies with jam

-1 secret design project wrapped up
-A dozen handmade Christmas tags tied to newly wrapped Christmas presents
-Massive amounts of reading

Joyeux Noel, as the French say

2008-12-17T18:30:00.006-05:00

So I must say that I have been a bit . .. errr.... lax about cranking out my three blog posts a week this fall.

However, I've been particularly bad about posting this month. December I find tends to be like that, and I'm not even someone who makes batches upon bunches of cookies to hand out as part of their gifts.

There are plenty of other distractions though.
There are holiday cocktail parties with champagne toasts to engagements and new jobs. There are not-so-classy holiday parties that end with pseudo-fights over who gets to wear one of the few Santa hats circulating.
There are harvest salads with cranberries and apples and almonds that need to be made for company potlucks.
And then there's daily life, which requires you to do things like get crushed at team trivia, but have a good time anyways, sipping porters while learning (through the brutual crushing) that Burger King--not Dairy Queen--was founded in 1954 by two Cornell businessmen and that Ted Turner won a sailing award. Ted Turner.. Of all people. Who knows that? Really?

I'm getting off topic.
You get the idea.

The December holidays tend to pack up the month with commitments and activities that make it easy to neglect the uploading and image scanning necessary to blog.

When the silence of January returns and I'm left with only buzzing ears from singing Auld Lyne Syne with an unknown number of friends and strangers a little too loud, I promise I'll get back on track.

In the interim, I can offer polaroids.

Holiday-ish polaroids.
Holiday-ish, secret crafty mission polaroids, which is really the ultimate in polaroids if you ask me.

I went out photo hunting for signs of the season on Monday. There was no snow in sight so I tracked down garlands and giant Christmas ornaments and sparkling lights.

Then this morning, it snowed a bit.

Go figure.

I hope you are all surviving the holiday bustle, eating too many cookies, writing Christmas cards, and looking forward to spending time with your families.

I leave for my ancestral homeland this Friday so my posts may be more sporadic than they've been this past fall. I will try to pop in though. But if not, I raise a candy cane to you and wish you a joyeux noel!

100.

2008-12-11T16:51:00.003-05:00

I hadn't really realized until I went to start this post that today marks my 100th blog post. It seems like such a large number--100 posts!

I know, I know.
I've been writing since March, it makes sense.
But still.
100 feels impressive.
I wish I had a snazzy bow tie or some birthday candles or a cupcake to offer up or some snow.

I was, quite strangeley for my warm-bodied and heat-obsessed self, pining for some snow. Or rather, the first snow of the year feeling if you know what I mean.

The first snow of the year always feel so festive. It brings up all sorts of memories of snow from the past such as the complaining sessions in high school school where impatient 15-year-olds would ask the teacher why we were still in school because wasn't it dangerous for young drivers to be learning math and chemistry when they could be at home drinking cocoa or building snowmen and not driving? Geesh. Or such as that time during my last year of college when my roommate and I stayed inside making blizzard cupcakes (eggless, milkless cupcakes for those with allergies) and watching Garden State, completely oblivious to the fact campus maintenance's plows were barricading my car into a 10-foot snowbank. Snow memories tend to be funny memories like that for me. And each year I look forward to adding another to my arsenal just because snow days always seem to bring out the camaraderie in people. Everyone's happy for the first snow and so, happy to share in the eye rolling of slow trains home or the fact they're stuck at work while everyone's gone home.

This year, I hope to even be able to take some good pictures of the first snow to capture that feeling. But in the interim, in lieu of cupcakes and bow ties and first snows, I offer up a pomegranite. It's the first one I've ever had. The first one I've ever opened all by myself (or almost all by myself). And I think with its cheery jewel-toned flesh, it makes a pretty good way to celebrate 100.

Thanks to everyone who's followed me so far. Your comments and your emails always make me smile.
Here's to another 100 more.

Playing hooky

2008-12-09T21:36:00.003-05:00

During all my school days, I skipped school just twice--once in high school, once in college.

The first time I skipped, I skipped a finals study period with my high school best friend, a straight-A student who shared the title of valediction with me at graduation. We took off for an hour to get french fries and pizza at the local pizza house. The fries were greasy and salty and heavenly, but I kept watching for a teacher to bust through the door (perhaps with handcuffs made of pencils) and dole out detentions to us.

Class rebel, I certainly was not.

When I started working, my work ethic matched my school ethic. My company didn't give us any sick days so I was at work, colds be damned, every single day. The prospect of vacation days always trumped sick days.

When I left that job for my current position, I came into a veritable bounty of sick days--five whole whopping sick days. I was blown away. But given my already-mentioned straight shooter (or "goody two-shoes") tendencies, I didn't really use them. A few weeks ago I realized that I still had a huge batch of sick days left that I'd lose the last day of December.

It seemed like such a waste of days.
So in an unprecedented move for this non-rebel, I took a mental health day.

I have apparently gotten much better at playing hooky because the day off was amazing.

After I shoved my guilty thoughts aside, I hung out, attempted to bake these cookies (unfortunately I was among those in the note at the bottom who found the cookies tasty, but crumbly), hung out at the neighborhood's local Peet's, took a long run, and well, got into the Christmas spirit.

How, you may ask.

Well, on Sunday, I found that Trader Joe's sells mini (mini!) Christmas trees decked out with a sprinkling of silver glitter in lieu of tinsel. I was smitten. Then later at CVS on an errand, I found lights. And being an 18-year-old college student at heart, I snapped up a set and on my mental health day, strung them around my room.

I must have they look quite festive.

The devils in the details

2008-12-05T18:56:00.003-05:00

I have a confession to make: The boy and I shot a solid three rolls of film a piece on our Thanksgiving break.

I know it doesn't seem like a lot.
You could fire off a solid 72 images on a digital SLR in a matter of minutes. But as I tend to be very careful with my film, only shooting when I really feel moved by what I see, 72 is a crazy amount. Crazy especially when you consider most of the weekend was spent as previously mentioned--eating, playing board games, chilling with families, and so on.

But it's true. Three rolls of film documenting the Wrentham Developmental Center, which has these big green fields and a monument/park area, my parents' house, and a couple of wild wooded areas out in Otis and a town whose name I don't think any of us hikers knew.

The best of the shots are below. I tried shooting black and white film and I'm still debating if I like it. I loved in during my darkroom class, but this roll had me on the fence.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Eastern Massachusetts

Western Mass

Thanksgiving, revised

2008-12-03T20:46:00.003-05:00

It always seem so hard to get back into the groove after a holiday.

Maybe it's the fact that the job I've had for two Christmases now doesn't allow its Editorial department to take much (or last year, any) time off during the holidays. Or maybe it's just that after a weekend spent hanging around and eating food at other people's houses (namely my family's and the boy's), I want to spend a day hanging around my own house being as low-key and lazy as I was at other people's houses--looking at the film I developed, watching movies, doing laundry, and making even baking egg-free cookies (how could you resist these? Mmmmm. Heavenly.) But any way you slice it, I have a hard time recooperating from Thanksgiving.

Like last year's holiday, this year the boy and I had the cross-Massachusetts Thanksgiving--one meal in Eastern Mass, then a leftovers meal in Western Mass. We went on photo walks in both places, ate turkey and leftover turkey sandwiches, played old school Mario Brothers, spent a night being served by the boy's sister who works as a weekend waitress extraordinaire at this restaurant, and spent five days sleeping in narrow twin beds and pull-out couches.

It was a bit like being a lazy itinerant traveller in one's own family's house and town. Everyone's excited to see you. You (or well, I . . . I was the only one excited to wake up early and run) can go running on a weekday in actual daylight for the first time in months. You can drink lots of English breakfast tea with sugar and milk because the house is colder than your apartment and because English breakfast tea goes best with the morning paper (Dad, I'll buy you some replacement Barry's Irish Breakfast tea for Christmas). You can see the scene up the street slightly differently because you no longer see them every day.

All these things are so lovely. But, if the truth be told, you quickly realize that the food that goes on the table rarely is the best thing about the Thanksgiving holiday.

I do love my mom's stuffing and the infamous Ryan family green bean casserole, well known for its lead-like presence in your stomach for the remainder of the day. I pine wistfully each year for the Thanksgivings when we were lucky enough to get my Nana's apple pies or mashed potatoes. But really, food, runs, hikes, rolls of film and cups of tea aside, my favorite part about Thanksgiving is hands down family board games. I think it also gets slotted as one of the things I'm thankful for--a competitive family who likes to ease their stuffed bellies with some "mind exercises" if you will. And you can only imagine how thrilled I was to realize Bryan's family likes board games on holidays as well.

This year I was lucky enough to eek out three straight days of board games--two with my family and one with the boys. I won one Scrabble match and in another, the boy and I paired up and scrambled together phoentic gems like boyz while awaiting out our turns. Oh, and there was an epic Risk battle. The boy's first in 14 years and against a family who used to bring the game on family vacations. We were proud he held his own.

For many years, in my family, board games were the best part of all holidays. There's team camaradie and friendly family rivalry as we talk the talk (without necessarily having the accompanying "walk") and hand out nicknames based on each others habits ("The Human Delay" for my mother and I when we spend excessive time pondering our Scrabble plays or the "Green Meanies" for a particularly rampant Risk team).

Even though I don't know if I get holiday time off and I'm not quite fully excited at the prospect of a holiday that isn't Thanksgiving, I'm looking forward to the rest round of board games.

I hope everyone had an equally wonderful Thanksgiving.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2008-11-25T21:47:00.003-05:00

With each year that passes and finds me still living in this city, the more I come to appreciate the time spent away from it. My parents' house seems eerily quiet now that I no longer call it home. There are no steam heaters belching through the night and hissing warnings that they could just fall right.through.the.floor if they wanted to. On Sunday mornings, I don't hear the one particular church's bells dinging and donging out hymn after hymn for ten minutes straight (that isn't a joke either. Every Sunday before 10 a.m., off they go and go and go). At home in the suburbs, there are no people returning from the bar singing or yelling or screaming with joy outside my window late at night. And the house seems much colder than my little apartment whose belching hissing aforementioned steam heater keeps my third floor perch warm, almost too warm.

It is a wonderfully quiet and low-key escape for me.
I find myself pining for the holiday breaks in the suburbs on days when the green line runs late again or I get trapped (and soaked) in a surprise rain storm. Oh for the quiet, for the more empty streets, for the fields I run by on my runs there.

Don't get me wrong, I love the city. I love living in a city. And I love this city despite its cranky trolleys and crazy sports fans and abundance of undergrads claiming squattors' rights at every nearby coffee shop.

But I like getaways.
I'm thankful to be able to have them without the need for airplane waits for now or longer than an hour train rides.
And I love holidays, especially Thanksgiving, which to me is akin to the stress-free younger sibling of Christmas.

So off I go today to the suburbs for the holiday and for peace and quiet. I hop one final slow green line trolley car to the commuter rail, meet up with the boy, and walk our bottles of wine and gingerbread biscotti and rolls of film and cameras out on a little vacation.

I hope the holidays for everyone are good, filled with friends and family and the other infamous Thanksgiving "f", food.

Now for the rest

2008-11-21T15:13:00.003-05:00

Technical difficulties prevented me from posting my second batch of images last evening, so here they are, a day belated.

I have to say that what I love about shooting en mass on little mini-trips is how the pictures inevitably come together in a group to tell a story of the day--the golden light falling on the cats tails as their fluffy leaves drift with the wind, the cold red fingers cradling the equally cold sandwich, and so on.

Happy Friday to all!

Good fences make good cases for herbs and small plants.

The boy was calling these cats tails--I hope that is right.

Mediterranean burritos. Cold burritos. Cold day.

A figure in the far, far distance.

Christmas is coming. Would you fancy some red berries?

The little climbing leaf.

Trees with leafy blankets.

The woods are lovely, but neither dark nor deep.

Fall's sole survivors.

The cinnamon tree--a "the boy" photo.

How bare was my valley--a "the boy" photo.

L'auteur--a "the boy" photo.

You guys are good

2008-11-19T21:26:00.004-05:00

I swear.
The title doesn't lie.
You guys are good.
I mean it could have just been that my picture hint was an easy guess, but I'd like to think it's really because the company I keep are hip to the good things in life, specifically in this case, the good place I visited this weekend.

Boston's savviest Torontonian checked it out a couple weeks back.
And the man behind the short-lived Post-Luddism blog sang its praise.
And my friend Jules' boyfriend (a non-blogger known affectionately in my circle of friends as "that guy") religiously walked his dog there when he and Jules lived in Roslindale.

I had to go.
Call me a follower if you want, but really, I had to go.
Arnold Arboretum is that cool.
You'll want to take my friends' lead too.
Oh, and bring your camera.

I've been meaning to go to Arnold Arboretum for quite a while now. What is it, you may ask. The Arboretum is this big green area in the Jamaica Pond neighborhood of Boston. It is part of the famous Emerald Necklace I mentioned in an earlier blog. It's maintained by Harvard University and houses the most amazing variety of trees, everything from standard willows to exotic maples trees from China with the color and texture of cinnamon.

And the names! Wow! The trees remind me of kindergarten. In my kindergarten class, we learned the alphabet by meeting new letter friends each week. One week, it was Mr. S with his super socks then the next week, it was Mr. T (no, not that Mr. T) who was shaped like a slim tube of toothpaste and carried a snazzy toothbrush at his side. Glancing at trees with names like umbrella pine, my imagination couldn't help running a little wild at the prospect of taking school kids here to learn about Mr. Umbrella Tree with his needles so long and so sprawling, you could hide under him during a rainstorm.

The Arboretum is basically a big kids' playing area and a living museum, as all the trees are nicely labeled so much like you can learn when Degas created this and Hopper created that, you can learn what this tree's species and country of origin are.

The boy and I had decided in advance to spread the day wandering around and checking out the area. We packed the equivalent of homemade Mediterranean burritos (hummus, spinach, tomatoes, turkey, ham, and cheese) and loaded up our backpacks with multiple lens and plenty of film like field photographers.

The trip was, as I am so fond of saying, very nice. I offer enthusiastic, though imaginary high fives to all who recommended it to me or have gone before me.

In the future, I'll have to seek out some new green spaces or cityscapes to surprise everyone, but in the interim, I'll give my props and share some photos.

Due to the massive amount of film shot, everyone gets to double their pleasure with two days of Arboretum photos. My enthusiastic new film shooter will have his first film shots debuted here as well.

Come on down. The price is right.

The Arnold Arboretum

The boy's new camera. Hello, Mr. AE-1 Program!

Snap.Snap.Snappy.

The impressive Umbrella Pine

The wonder of botany=leaves the size of my feet

The last green leaves

Sneak Peak

2008-11-18T22:28:00.003-05:00

So this past weekend, things got rather photo crazy.
The boy, inspired perhaps by the sheer amount of time he has spent sitting victim to my crazy photographer ways, got a camera.
A beautiful old AE-1 SLR to be exact.
With three lens to boot.

God bless eBay, huh?

The boy was eager to try out his hand at shooting his first few rolls of film.
I was eager to borrow (cough, cough steal cough, cough ) his wide-angle 28 mm lens (oh the beauty of compatible Canons!)
We spent the entirety of Sunday doing some travelling and shooting several rolls a piece on the first cold day of winter.

See if you can guess from the photo below where we went.
The tag should be a big hint.
If it isn't stayed tuned to hear more tomorrow.

The library lunch break

2008-11-13T19:49:00.002-05:00

Last fall when I accepted my current job as copyeditor extradoraine, I cited one of the perks of my new job was my proximity to the Boston Public Library.

I'm sure it seemed silly to many people. I was off to work in hub of Boston's Back Bay, a place packed with bars and restaurants and a mere 5-minute walk to Newbury Street, and I was excited about a library?

We book nerd editors are odd people.
Or at least this book nerd editor is.

Having worked so close to my literary heaven for more than a year now, I have to admit that I still find it one of the biggest perks of my job. It's a place to walk to on the days you need to leave the building and get some much needed mental space from the inevitably petty issues of the day-to-day work world. And it's a place without expectations. You don't need to buy a coffee to peruse the stacks. You don't need to explain "you're just looking". You don't need to find for a seat.

You can just walk in and be. You can walk into the old library, the architectural wonder that tourists float to year round. You can walk into the new library and ascend the three floors to stairs to the silence of the third floor non-fiction section then peruse literary criticism or sit down between the two stacks and read.

All you can do

2008-11-11T09:50:00.003-05:00

There comes a point in late fall when suddenly I start feeling rather wintry.

This year it seems to have started a bit earlier than usual.

Last week, I spotted municipal workers stringing white lights on the trees that line Newbury Street. I heard the beginning strains of Christmas carols in queue at a neighborhood store. And then this morning, I popped into Starbucks to treat myself to a coffee and walked away with not just a grande mild coffee, but a grande mild coffee in a maroon, snowflake-patterened Christmas cup.

Eeep!

It all seems a little sudden. Yesterday it was Halloween, wasn't it? There were leaves on the trees, not in the streets. How is it already feeling like Christmas and winter? Who's the joker pulling this stunt on me? Because you know, you got me. Reeaaaallllly funny. Can't we just go continue raking leaves and eating obscene amounts of pumpkin butter on our bread, in our yoghurt, and on crackers?

Nope.

As my cup of coffee this morning proved, we apparently cannot reverse gears and steer ourselves back to the month of October with its pumpkins and light scarves and mitten-free hands. So, I'm feeling a bit wintery.

Some people find the rush to the holidays invigorating. For me, I find that the rush to the holidays makes me feel not unlike Joni Mitchell's famous River. But instead of wishing for a river to skate away on, I'd settle for at least skating down the sidewalks of Boston, preferably on a day when they're not so crowded.

I don't particularly like to wallow in the melancholy of the changing seasons (I vastly prefer to watch a sappy movie that always makes me cry--usually It's a Wonderful Life--and just get over it all at once. Unfortunately my copy of It's a Wonderful Life is at my parents' house.) So, I have concentrated my efforts on embracing winter as much as possible and the things I do like about it--the multiple layers of comforters and their coziness, soups and chilis, and weather photos. Real surprising, I know, but it's all you can do really. It is like Adrienne Rich's brilliant poem "Storm Warnings" says,

"Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters."

I have no shutters to close, but I did what I needed to do this week.
On Sunday I took pictures of the shrinking trees and yesterday I made a big batch of tomato soup and today I almost put on some Ella Fitzgerald because I love that music when it's cold.

I feel a bit better already.

Pleasant surprises

2008-11-09T17:24:00.003-05:00

This past week was nothing short of a week of pleasant surprises.

The election was a huge part of said surprises (I believe that Democratic voters everywhere were holding their breath, afraid that something might go awry at last minute, while waiting for the official announcement of the new president elect. I was, at least.).
But the election wasn't the only nice surprise of the week.

I slept late on Saturday. Not really a surprise or a big feat for some. I know of co-workers who sleep until 12:30 or 1 every weekend like it's their part-time job. Not me though. 9 a.m.? Wow, I really was lazy and decadent. This Saturday though, I rolled over and checked my alarm clock only to find it read 12:30 p.m. I had no clue I could still sleep in that late!

Then that night, a couple of my close friends and I set up an impromptu ladies' night that consisted of dinner at the charming Fat Cat followed by a tour of my friend Julie's new apartment and some wine and gossip. Nothing is better than surprise gatherings with friends who don't always live as close as you wish they could. It may just be the most pleasant type of surprise.

Today was a bit of a lazy day. I walked around, tried to document the last of the fall leaves, and sorted through my recent photography work that seems to keep missing the blog and stalling in my photo archives. In sorting through, I remembered a pleasant surprise I'd stumbled on a few weeks back: a rose garden.

Having spent two years living in a city neighborhood where the only close park was always cramped and trash-filled, I'm constantly shocked to keep stumbling upon small green areas in my new neighborhood--one by the library, one by the school, two off St. Paul street. I could go on and on.

When I found the rose garden though, I was flat-out floored. It was such a fun, unexpected sight in the city. There were pale pink, soft yellow and electric red roses, among others. There was a rose-covered trellis. There was a small gate you needed to push open so you could walk around amid these amazing flowers in person.

With fall wrapping up, the leaves falling from the trees and carpeting the sidewalks in dull browns, I doubt the rose garden will last too much longer, but I look forward to next spring and the prospect of being surprised by all varieties of roses grow quietly in a hidden corner of this city.

Vote '08, A Celebration?

2008-11-04T15:16:00.007-05:00

I woke up early this morning.
Unlike most mornings where I run around frantically throwing together a lunch and attempting to color coordinate in my pre-coffee state, this morning was all business.
My lunch was made.
I'd showered the night before.
I'd picked out my outfit for the day.
I was ready.

I just unceremoniously rolled out of bed, crunched my way through a bowl of breakfast cereal, brushed my teeth, dressed, then walked out the door.
To vote.

The polls opened this morning at 7:00 a.m.
When I got to the polls at 7:15 a.m., I slotted myself at the end of a line that curled out of my precinct's voting area, down the street, and around the corner.

I shuffled along in that line intermittently for more than a hour and a half.
In shoes, not appropriate for standing outside for longer than 20 minutes.
In back of a woman who when 15 feet away from the actual polls, slipped out of line to be sick, then returned to vote.

But it was worth it. At 8:50, I cast my vote. Finally.
I still feel rather giddy from the whole experience, but can you really blame me?

Today is a day that makes you think and feel like you are a part of history. As a member of a generation that has seen neither world war nor the loss of its greatest and most aspirational leaders, in a way it feels--if you like me, are feeling Dramatic with a capital "D"--like our moment for history. Our grandparents will remember WWII, our parents will remember where they were when JFK was assisinated, and perhaps my generation of twenty-somethings will remember where we were and how we felt during the 2008 election.

Perhaps that was why a handful of early morning voters stepped a little to the left or right and took a photo of the lines snaking behind or in front of them. Or perhaps it was just this feeling that seems to be in the air today. I felt it when I saw the line this morning, swaying along Longwood Ave and still going strong when I left after 9. I felt it when I heard a bicyclist whoosh by the precinct's lines and yell in his clipped German accent "Obama!!!" And I felt it again talking to a poll volunteer about this year's turnout ("It wasn't like this the last time!" he said). And when the boy who I thought I'd been forcing to watch the debates with me (and forcing to turn in his voter registration form) sent me a text saying he was in line to vote (and vote he did. Good man).

A lovely passage from a Washington Post op-ed sums up my feelings well:

"In Obama and McCain, the country found two worthy presidential nominees. Not every moment of this campaign has been noble or uplifting. But after such a long and hard-fought campaign in a year with so much at stake and with a historic transfer of power possible, the fact that both are seen positively by the electorate speaks to the character and values people see in them.

With their votes Tuesday, Americans will begin writing the next great chapter in the story of the nation. They will also put a final exclamation point on this remarkable campaign, and everyone might miss it when it's gone. As Obama put it, whatever happens, it's been extraordinary."

It is an election that feels ripe with the audacity to hope (to borrow from Barack Obama). A hoping against hope in the future, in our country, in ourselves, in the belief that things will get better because everything is cyclical. And I think this hope is why there is that something in the air today--that something akin to how everybody acts just before the Thanksgiving holiday, stepping with a little extra bounce and cheer. There is no promise tomorrow will be better. Or that a single man--be it Obama or McCain--can solve all the problems of the nation. But for now, there is hope and even happiness. I smile with every "I voted!" sticker I see.

I hope you voted out there. It doesn't matter for who or for what. Blue, red, tie dye.

Tonight I plan on sitting in front of the TV to see what happens when everybody gets out to vote, to cast their lines of hope forward. I'm going to make and eat soup and have a glass of wine and sit with the boy and revel in the history I'm breathing and living today.

'Roid Week

2008-10-30T22:24:00.003-04:00

Don't misunderstand me--I'm not talking about steroids or hemorroids or anything undesired.
I'm talking polaroids.

This week, Flickr is running their Polaroid Week, shortened by Flickr and its users to just 'Roid Week. Mentions of all the cool polaroids are popping up on many of the blogs I follow. If you are in need of something to do for 2 or 3 or 33 minutes, I highly recommend checking it out. I mean look at this (Ahhh Paris!) and this (Can't you just hear the "crunch crunch" of your feet walking across this one?). It's pretty amazing what images people can capture with such a basic straightforward point-and-shoot camera.

In honor of this great week, besides pondering yet again if I should get a flickr account (I know I really really should), I'm pulling out my own polaroids.

(Muah haha! she cackles.)

After I bought my Kodak polaroid camera way back in the winter, I have to admit I wasn't totally in love with the images I was producing. They were okay, but not good, or anywhere close to great/spectacular/breathtaking/etc (although I'd argue spectacular and breathtaking aren't the point of Polaroids really . . .)

This summer I found my polaroid grove though and have been slowing acculumating a small collection. My scanning laziness prevented me from putting them on Marginalia until today.

(At this point, rest assured, I'm sitting here typing and I'm muah haha-ing again. "Oh I'm so clever! I scanned! Muah haha! I have digital evidence of Polaroid amazingness! Muah ha HA HA HA!" Not a super human feat, but if you saw the first polaroids, you'd understand my enthusiasm).

The shots below are from Bryan and I's walk to Jamaica Pond a few weeks back. After a run around the pond the week prior to the walk, I couldn't get the idea of a polaroid of the lake with the foliage and the little sailboats floating in the middle out of my head. It was polaroid perfect in my mind. I, ironically, didn't quite end up getting the sailboat shot I'd envisioned, but a got two lovely pre-walk shots and a few really nice waterside ones.

I'm hoarding my 600 film for a jaunt around Coolidge Corner because I have a few other Polaroid perfect ideas floating around. I will try my best to get them to you before Flickr's next polaroid week.

Goodbye to the Four Printed Ws and an H

2008-10-28T21:42:00.003-04:00

Through the years of English classes and college newspaper staff meetings, I heard a lot about those infamous questions that make up the pillars of journalism:
-What
-Why
-When
-Where
-How

Today, this building below, the Christian Science Monitor, made big news in the journalism world.

The Christian Science Monitor announced that it will cease to print old-fashioned newspapers in April. Everything they write will be printed strictly online with the exception of a weekend magazine.

As a blogger, I'm obviously a big fan of the online medium. I fanatically read each day's New York Times online. I get my weather every morning through Channel 5's web site. However, to me, the Christian Science Monitor's announcement was bittersweet. As the New York Times said, they are "the first national newspaper to largely give up on print." Printed newspaper has been called a dying medium for years, so the Christian Science Monitor's news made be the first announcement of many. Perhaps it is because I'm not fully a child of technology that I cannot imagine a world without printed newspaper, but the idea of a world without newspapers makes me a little sad. Can you imagine Sunday morning breakfast with a thick newspaper to read over as you eat your toast and cereal? I think I'd miss the way the newsprint stain your fingers gray and my coffee mug stamps out its presence on the arts sections and city news.

I don't mind the dark discovering the day

2008-10-23T19:02:00.003-04:00

When I was in college, I had this tendency to sit down at my computer to start a paper but end up staring at the wall dissecting the lyrics of the music I was listening to.

Despite the depth and breadth of my music collection (once deemed "completely random" by a friend freshmen year), I listened to the same kind of music when I wrote papers--if the lyrics were thoughtful, the song was slow, and the song sounded a bit morose, you bet it was streaming through my headphones.

Every year I had a few songs were my working bible. For a while, it was all things Joni Mitchell with singing about last time she saw Richard and a time when love was constant as a northern star, then Bob Dylan because no one can counsel a lit major in love of beauty and hope and heartbreak better in my opinion, and finally the sad songs of Counting Crow's Hard Candy album.

I would look up each song's lyrics, reading them while I listened and meditating on the phrases like "Only a phase these dark cafe days". After a half-hour or hour of listening, I'd finally force myself to write that paper on Tom Stoppard or William Carlos Williams or "The Wasteland".

After I graduated from college, I became one of the great earbudded masses, walking around the city or sitting on the train "tuned out", encapsulated in my own world of beats or be bops, electric guitars or citars or pianos. There was no computer I felt chained to or assignment to finish. My music tastes changed--there were new artists, different albums, a revised soundtrack for my creative (and not-so-creative) writing.

Lately though I see something I want to capture in a photograph and find myself coming up with handfuls of the old lyrics as if they'd become a part of me, something as mundane as the lost lipstick or loose change that I find in my winter coat at the beginning of another season.

Walking home from work recently, I was particularly struck by the way twilight fell over Beacon Street, smoothing out the brick corners of brownstones. I couldn't stop thinking of an old Counting Crows song whose lyrics say:

"But I don't mind the dark
Discovering the day
Cause the night is a beautiful bright blue and gray"

The meat of song lyric's have a beautiful melancholy feel, like a good poem, and they almost seem to contradict that image of the night as something beautiful to look at it and experience. They capture the sadness that comes when you're halfway through fall, not yet at Thanksgiving and you start readying yourself for another winter, another year:

"And it's a dangerous time
for a heart on a wire
Shuttled from station to station
noisily not knowing why
So I put my head on the ground
and the sky is a wheel
Spinning these days into things that I've lost
But you can keep all the years
But I don't mind the days
gone rolling away
Cause all this sunlight feels warm on my face today"

I couldn't shake the song.
I had to take a picture of the sunset for the lyrics.
Then I had to return to my computer and to my musical roots.

The apples of my eye

2008-10-21T21:13:00.003-04:00

Despite growing up in New England, the region of the country most known for fall things like leaf peeping and apple picking and visiting colonial villages, I don't really remember going apple picking.

I can recite all the times I went to Old Sturbridge Village. My 5th grade field trip to the Fruitlands was so boring it may have scarred me for life. And during my hunt for a college, my family set out on many cross-state journeys to upstate New York that were always punctuated by my father's commentary on the leaves and whether they were spectacular or just so-so.

But apple picking?

I have a vague memory of an apple picking trip on a rainy day, finding a dead turkey in the orchard, and getting a rare trip to McDonald's afterward when I was 7 or 8, but not much else (sorry Mom and Dad). I have seen photos of my 3-year-old self wearing one pair of corduroy overalls from my extension collection and standing in a field of apples, so I do know that at some point I picked apples.

Given my spotty memory of apple picking, it may come as no surprise that for the past couple of falls I've been trying to beg, bribe or blackmail most everyone I know into picking apples.

This year, luck and weekend weather were on my side.
On Saturday a couple of weekends back, I trekked out to Honey Pot Hills orchard in Stowe. The orchard was packed with families riding around on the hay ride tour of the orchard, people patiently queuing to wait for fresh cider and donuts at the orchard store, and clumps of people snaking up and through the orderly rows of apple trees.

Having misread our orchard map, the boy and I managed to avoid a lot of the heavy foot traffic in the orchard. We cruised past some picked over pear trees and found an almost untouched group of apple trees. We ate a couple of illegal apples off the tree, snapped some photos, and came away with a big hearty bag of golden delicious and mac apples.

Falling for fall

2008-10-17T12:19:00.002-04:00

Last weekend summed about everything that I love about fall in New England.
The weather was last-hurrah warm. The sky was clear and bright blue.
I just wanted to be outside and maybe take a long lazy walk around with my camera in hand.

After creating our masterful granola Saturday night, I'd mentioned to the boy that I kinda just wanted to go on a walk on Sunday to Jamaica Pond or maybe Harvard Square or something. I really wanted to shoot film too--I had visions of a couple of images of sailboats and red brick framed in precise Polaroid squares and a box of Kodak Gold 200 film I was itching to use on the fall foliage. Being fairly ambiable, the boy agreed to tag along (my offer of sole use of the DSLR and the opportunity to take nature photography also couldn't have hurt).

I'd been running to Jamaica Pond, which is part of Boston's esteemed Emerald Necklace, the past few weeks. For whatever reason, I thought it was just a quick walk away from my apartment, one that would take 10, maybe 15, minutes.

Errrrt.
That would be the buzzer sounding a resounding "no!".

The walk ended up talking almost 30 minutes, which was made longer by our frequent photo breaks along the Riverway and Olmstead Park, both on route to the main pond, our end goal. We ended up being gone from 1:30 p.m. until about 4:30 p.m., but it was worth it.

The fall light is a lot like the spring light to me--when you catch it at the right time, it illuminates everything. Light glints off the water, the leaves on trees glow softly. I like to stand back and consider each tree as if it were made up for a party, dressed up in a shawl of loosely-woven small Chinese lanterns. And when the trees are dolled up in red and gold and yellow, it's a beautiful sight. It encouraged me to run out and develop my film immediately.

Note: I don't usually get the CD of images when I develop my film, but for these two rolls, I figured I'd skip scanning on my own and purchase the CDs. Bad idea. Most of the images weren't scanned badly, but some just looked poorly scanned, with oversaturated colors in one image and distorted colors in the next. I tried to adjust them on my computer so hopefully a couple of the images below don't horrify you as much as they horrified me.

Extra note: The underwater heart was not planted by the boy or I. We found it in the pond underwater. It was a just a little red felt heart cut-out. A little bit of serendepity if you will.

Public service announcement

2008-10-13T19:17:00.005-04:00

Dear readers, we interrupt this blog to bring you granola.
Yes, granola.

No end of the world visions or news about the stock market or questions about the upcoming election.
Just straight-up, homemade granola.

Before you run away convinced that I have become a hippie--making granola and trying to pawn off on you chunky (and itchy) hemp necklaces and turning this blog into a discussion forum on the merit of Cat Stevens versus John Denver versus Peter, Paul, and Mary--let me reassure you that nothing of the sort is happening.

I do own Cat Stevens and John Denver albums and can sing most songs off the Best of Peter, Paul and Mary (my father owned the vinyl 33 as well as one for John Denver), but I'm happy to stick to my anti-category ways--neither hipster nor hippie nor trendster nor prepster nor punkster be. Thankyouverymuch. (And besides, I never really liked hemp necklaces. When I wore rarely the one I had during high school when most cool people had hemp necklaces, I spent all English or physical science restraining myself from itching my neck during our discussion of Newton's laws or Charles Darnay.)

I really just want to talk about granola and making granola, which is exactly what I did over the long weekend.

Making granola on a long weekend in fall made it feel like fall. It made me feel happier about fall than my apple picking trip/photography romp did last weekend and that left me kind of silly and smiley for a couple of days after. Homemade granola makes the kitchen warm with the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar and tastes better than any granola you'd buy in the store (Trader Joe's "Just the Clusters" Maple Pecan Granola, how the mighty have fallen!). If you live near a Trader Joe's or a store that sells bulk nuts and dried fruit for reasonably prices than making your own granola is fairly easy and less expensive in the long run than buying it from your local grocery store.

I made granola with the bottomless pit known as the boy.

Our start-up costs set us back about $15.00 for walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, oats, and honey. The other ingredients I had around my kitchen.

The boy and I joke that sometime in the future we're going to make a kick-ass cookbook with silly illustrations, my food photos, and the boy's sweet LaTex lay-out skills. As we're not quite ready to self-pub and we're just beginning to build our arsenal of "Amazing Food to Cook", I'll post the recipe below.

On a slow weekend, I'd definitely encourage you to give it a whirl. If you are worried that you won't be able to eat it before it goes "bad", stash the granola in a Tupperware jar in your freezer. It will keep for eons as opposed to two weeks in a air-tight container in your fridge.

Jen and the Boy's Maple Granola
Adapted from Orangette's Daily Granola recipe

Molly at Orangette adapted Nigella Lawson's granola recipe from Feast to create her granola. The boy and I tweaked the tweak recipe so it reflected more of what we wanted. You are welcome to further adjust this recipe to your specs--if you want no walnuts, go for it. Want to add in pepitas? Definitely try it. I've seen some granola recipes that have added in fruit to the baking process. Our granola is just straight up oats and nuts. The boy and I have both been eating our granola with dried fruit added in right before the milk or the yogurt. As a big fan of dried cherries, I've been sticking to adding those in. You could easily add in other dried fruit as well--cranberries, blueberries, golden raisins, etc.

Ingredients
-5 cups rolled oats (we actually used rolled oats and barley from Trader Joe's)
-3 cups pecans and walnuts, mixed and broken into smaller pieces
-1 cup raw sunflower seeds
-3/4 cup light brown sugar
-2 tsp. cinnamon
-1 tsp. salt
-3/4 cup applesauce (we used sweetened applesauce)
-1/3 cup maple syrup
-1/4 cup honey
-2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Set racks in upper third and lower third of oven then preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

In one bowl, combine all the dry ingredients together then set aside. In another bowl, combine the applesauce, maple syrup, honey, and vegetable oil. Mix well. Pour wet mixture over dry mixture. Mix well. Distribute the mixture evenly across two baking sheets. Bake 35-40 minutes or until golden brown. Set a timer for every 10 minutes. At the 10-minute mark, remove baking sheets from oven, stir mixture, and rotate pans. Stirring your granola makes sure it cooks evenly.

Once the granola is cooked, remove from oven and stir one more time to break up chunks. If you are like me and enjoy the clumps of granola you often find in store-bought granola, you can give the granola just a gentle stir to ensure that you have some small clumps. Let cool. Store in air-tight container. Mixture should keep for two weeks. If stored in freezer, granola will be good for a very long time.

This recipe makes 10 cups of granola.