Utils in Bat Country

A high, flying day

Back a few months ago, Ally posted on twitter about going to NYC for a few days and since I'm more local now, I jumped at the chance to see a show and hang out. I was able to grab the 8:30am bus from by my aunt and uncles house which put me in the city a little after 10am.  Met up with Ally at the corner of 47th and 9th (so city!) and we went off to a yummy bistro for lunch.  I treated myself to a delicious bowl of cafe au lait and it was truly a bowl of caffeinated deliciousness.

After a meal full of chatty goodness, we wandered the streets up to Central Park, cut over by the Plaza and started making our way back down 5th towards the theater.  And we stumbled upon a travesty.  Lines - barricaded, winding lines - to get into Abercrombie and Hollister.  Were there lines to get into the Plaza or FAO Schwartz?  Nope. THIS IS TERRIBLE. All the problems in the world are suddenly clear (especially seeing as how both those stores are in nearly every suburban mall and if you just went there in your hometown or stood in line and bought the same thing on your phone, you'd save city sales tax).  

After bemoaning the sad state of retail and casting lingering glances towards the Zara window, we made it to the theater and settled in for Evita.  I hadn't seen the show before and just had a passing familiarity with the songs from various broadway cds so I wasn't sure what to expect and I was enthralled.  Stellar performances, fantastic music, and Ricky Martin?  I give you the slow clap of impressiveness.  Nicely done, sir. 

After the show was over, we sadly had to split up and I wandered around the streets for awhile before heading back to Port Authority.  I found an Italian espresso shop and grabbed a after show snack.

Great weather, great food, great music, and truly delightful company.  

Thank you Ally - I had a ball!!

 

Something to smile about

Within the next few hours, I have to say goodbye to Tilly.  Am sure I'll see her again - D's storing some things for me and I still have friends to come visit but still.  No excited tail wagging every day when I walk in, no one snuggled up under a blanket when it's cold out.

(Am glad I'll have Tass' dogs to play with while I'm staying with her, will definitely help)

Since I imagine the actual goodbye is going to break my ever weakening defenses and cause me to sob, finding this was fortuitous timing. The spaghetti and the shrimp are my favorites.

Just in time for Valentine's Day

Within the last few months, I've started to read Nicole's blog and enjoyed it.  A few weeks ago, she posted about a pay it forward kind of thing, where people can pool their goals and others can crowd source and help and get help on their own.  Excellent idea, no?

I gave my $.02 on a couple of items and figured, what the heck, I'll list one of my own.  I'm doing some big, scary things, surely seeking help from people is better than rocking in the corner, gnawing on cookie dough while staring and mumbling at a train schedule.

So I wrote out my wish (basically, to make friends), posted it and then, because I figured no one would respond, I FORGOT ABOUT IT.

My new tag line: A nincompoop that shoots herself in the foot.

I was reading another of her posts today and a light bulb popped in my brain that hey, perhaps I should check.  And lo!

Responses!  From honest to goodness non serial killer people including one of my favorite bloggers!

Who needs a date when I have the Internet to make me feel all warm and fuzzy on Valentine's Day?

(Though I may need some of that cookie dough while I sit here and compose emails to the very nice responders explaining that I'm a well-meaning dolt.)

Sh*t Fashion Girls Say

I'm not this ridiculous but I admit, some of these were rather familiar :)

 

2011 in review

From the always fabulous Sundry

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before? I have no idea actually. OH WAIT. How could I forget the cluster that EH ended up being?

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?  Lets see - For 2011: lose another 15-20 (yes, now no, ugh), get savings account back above 10k (nope), cut Discover bill in half (ha, no), go on a date (yep), travel somewhere by myself for a weekend (not really - I traveled long distances by myself but always met someone there). For 2012: get.the.weight.off.  Jesus, self. Savings account over $15k, pay off all non student loan debt, move, feel confident about my work accomplishments, be in a relationship, stick to a shopping budget, poach an egg.

3. Did anyone close to you have a child?  Yep, my nephew was born 1/2/11

4. Did anyone close to you die?  Great Aunt Suzy.

5. Where did you travel?  Jersey Shore (again!), Traverse City (again!), Petoskey, Houston (three times), Harrisburg, back to NJ and Aunt J's house, Centerburg, Pleasant Hill, Bmore to visit Tass and go to a wedding, Florida...I think that's everything.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?  Focus and contentment

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory? The FNL finale. Clear eyes!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Trying, sometimes?

9. What was your biggest failure?  Technically, EH wasn't so much of a failure so much of a fizzle with a spectacularly bad date story thrown in but blah.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?  Wisdom teeth drama but overall been trucking along

11. What was the best thing you bought?  Orange sparkle shoes

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?  Neighbors D&K. Super fun, always willing to help out, very happy I met them (and deserving of a repeat this year. Am going to miss them when they move.)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?  Ugh, it took me a minute to think but now am all enraged again. What an idiot.

14. Where did most of your money go?  Shoes.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?  The Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. I'd see them every week if I could.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?  All of Adele's 21 CD.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:  a) happier or sadder?  b) thinner or fatter?  c) richer or poorer? Sameish, fatter (stabby stabby hate), sameish

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?  Stretched. Don't fail me now, flexibility

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?  Snack

20. How will you be spending Christmas/NYE?  [I was at my parents, it was fantastic] NYE will probably be on the couch with TS cracking up at Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin (same!). Maybe helping the neighbors paint

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?  HAAAAAAA.

22. What was your favorite TV program?  Once Upon a Time

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?  Nah, not hate. 

24. What was the best book you read?  Black Hawk. Oh, Adrian.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?  Slow Your Breath Down by Future of Forestry

26. What did you want and get?  A not as stupid leg

28. What did you want and not get?  Financial forward motion

29. What was your favorite film of this year?  HP 7.2

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?  I turned 30.  Went of vacation with one of my bff's, J to northern MI.  Was delightful.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?  world peace

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?  Waiting for sale.

33. What kept you sane?  [Losing myself in books and tv and just being able to focus my brain on something not-my-life.] [Same! And taking long walks with TS were good for mood settling too.] It's a hat trick!

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?  Wilson Bethel

35. What political issue stirred you the most?  The train wreck that is the current Republican field

36. Who did you miss? the fam

37. Who was the best new person you met?  I must have made a new friend this year, right? Erm... I was actually rather more social this year, just with people I already knew.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.  Browned butter is good. Caramel sauce is bad.

Reverb 11 - Persevere

Prompt for December 22: Persevere:  How did you persevere in 2011?  Did you make the best of an otherwise not so good situation?  How did you cope?  What did you learn?

I'm trying to look on the bright side.  As a stereotypical Italian, I do love me the chance for some martyrdom.  Woe is me!  Now let me tell you about it! If I look for the positive, I'll find the magic, right?

Onward!

While the flights filled my stomach with the customary anxiety/dread combo instead of delicious Christmas cookies, both flights were small express jets so on the flight to IAH a little boy was pushing his Mom down the aisle while she said 'Wow, I've never been on a plane this small before' and he responded with 'You can do it, Mom!'.  Then, on the flight back, there was a Dad with two little girls in front of me and when we pushed back from the gate, the younger one said 'Daddy! Is this flying?!!!?'  When he said no, no yet, you'll feel us go really fast for takeoff, once we got to the runway and started accelerating she gave us all a countdown '10, 9, 8,...BLASTOFF!'.  Who can have a bad flight in the face of that?  And after our bumpy descent into DTW, when we were taxiing toward the gate and could actually see the turbulence causing snow falling, I think the entire cabin was filled with cheer when we heard 'Daddy! It's SNOW! It's falling from the sky!'

Reverb 11 - Challenges

Prompt for December 19: Challenges: What did you wrestle with in 2011?  What did you learn?  What challenges do you foresee in 2012?

It's been getting rather feelingsy around here of late so in order to pacify the part of me that squicks and cringes at lots of emotion my challenge this year was my hair.

No, really. Thanks to the stress of the last few years, I've decided that my hair is falling out. There's this series of books I read when I was a teenager and the girl has lupus I think and there's this scene where she knows she's getting sicker because of the amount of hair in her hairbrush.  I'm pretty sure this is the first (Ed: it's Julie and Matt before FNL!) but I may be mixing it up with another series. In fact I'm pretty sure I am now that the cobwebs are starting to come off.. in this series I think they have a baby named Danielle but she dies in the fourth book? Maybe the third.  Drat, now I'm going to have to find the series again.  I remember my teenage self being very impressed by a particular t-shirt scene. Sheesh, tangent much.  Trust me though, there is a series where the main character is sick and there's a hair falling out scene.

Anyway - to stave off the hair falling out, last December I chopped all my hair and got Carey Mulligan's cut (right at my ears, piecey waves) and enjoyed it for the month before it started to grow and look ridiculous. I'm always a let it grow, chop it off, repeat kinda girl when it comes to my hair.  Aside from over dramatizing it all being about to fall out of my head, it's there, it's fine, it'll grow.  When I had it super long (several inches below my bra strap) a few years ago, I wore it down one day and my co-worker said it reminded her of a Pantene commercial.  That was a good day.  Ordinarily though, I wear it off my face.  It's super dark and super wavy (Italian much, you say?) and anytime it's between my cheekbones and my collarbone, I resemble a frizzy triangle head. I shower at night and I'm not willing to spend 45 minutes every morning and who knows what product/tools to tame it into submission so most of the time, I clip the sides back and look slightly less than sleek.

I'm lucky that my hair grows fast and a year after my last cut (that's the other thing: I am not a regular hair cutter.  Once, maybe twice a year is it for me.  I'll pay for good cuts [best cut of my life was the $90 cut from Bumble and Bumble in NYC a few years back], but I feel like to get the most bang for my buck, I have to see a change.  I will definitely not pay $90 for a half inch trim.) my hair is a little below my shoulders.  But it's so wavy/frizzy/out of control that it just kind of curls up on my shoulders in an ever so attractive looking bundle. I'm getting it cut Friday with Mom and she speaks highly of the woman doing it so we'll see what she says.  I figure they're the expert, she'll tell me what'll look good.  I want to keep most of the length and definitely do not want too big TX hair (Mom's hair has absolutely gotten bigger over the years. Cracks me up.) but am pretty much going to go in a beg for a style/shape change.

In 2012, it'd be great to expand my current styling repertoire from ponytail and clip back the front piece without looking like a before picture on the hairstyling commercials. 

Either that or bite the bullet and allocate every penny of disposable income to weekly blowouts.

Reverb 11 - Self compassion

Prompt for December 18: Self compassion:  Were you gentle with yourself in 2011?  Tell us about how you were compassionate towards yourself in 2011.  Or maybe you want to be more compassionate in 2012.  How will you be kind towards yourself?

I'm not very easy on myself. Oh, sure, I have a million and half ways to justify not doing things or to rationalize lazing about or buying that next pair of shoes but if I had to choose some words to describe myself, idiot would be among them. Sometimes self-deprecatingly endearing, other times...not.

And I think most people are their toughest critics, so, so it goes. It is how it is and all that.

But, I feel like I made some progress this year in saying I'm ok with feeling a certain way, even if it's not the perfect way or the self contained everything's fine way.

Namely, I do want to be in a relationship and get married.  If I don't, I'll survive and flourish and do all sorts of exciting things with my life but still.  It's ok that I feel that being in a romantic relationship is a more ideal state for me than not. 

(So long as its a healthy, happy one, I know, don't worry, amn't calling up Butterfly Guy)

 

Reverb 11 - Make (Caaaaar(amel))

Prompt for December 17: Make: What did you make this year that you’re proud of?  Was it a success, or did it flop and you learned something about how to make it better next time?  Do you have any special handmade projects planned for next year?

As part of my snap out of it strategy, I invited Courtney over for a afternoon of baking.  Both of us are more than competent cooks and I figured with both of our brains available, we'd be able to tackle some of the more challenging recipes we'd bookmarked.

After a really good burger, we headed back to my apartment to finalize recipe choices and did a quick grocery store run.

The one thing that took the longest and came out the best is what I don't have pictorial evidence of. I made RR Macadamia Chocolate Tart except I used hazelnuts.  It came out really good. Super rich, my sweet tooth was surrendering with a maybe 10* wedge, let alone anything near traditional pie slice size. It also took 85 years to bake.  The recipe calls for 30 minutes of baking time, I left it in at least 50 before taking it out.  In between the dough making, the dough chilling, the sauce making and chilling, the molding and rechilling and the final baking (no 30 minute meal tart here), I attempted my first bread.

Now, I totally bunted and didn't do anything requiring yeast, because I am a weenie and because my apartment is so cold, the yeast would just shrivel up and die (still haven't turned the heat on!).  When I worked at a catering company, we had a recipe for caramelized onion beer bread that was beyond delicious. I'm constantly on the hunt for a similar recipe and thought this one might have similar flavor notes.

Definitely easy to make, pita to mix together. I had all these bits of half mixed flour in the bottom of my bowl. When I first pulled it out of the oven and we tried it, I was rather meh.  Alright but nothing fabulous.  Then I started taking slices to work to eat with my soup and does this bread age well.  Toasted with a bit of butter?  YUM.

C made some tasty citrusy cranberry cookies that also seemed to take a year and a half to come together. Tilly seemed to think so too as she not only jumped up and started trying to lick the mixer but jumped on the table after everything was done and grabbed the two cookies C had left for me. Coal for you, puppy!

Farewell cookies!

And then. There was a gingerbread cake I had bookmarked on pinterest that I wanted to try and it was served with either a lemon or caramel sauce. While at C's and flipping through cookbooks, I came upon a recipe for a brown sugar caramel sauce. Sold! Figured I could make the caramel sauce while I also had C with me and then whip the cake up later in the week.  People on the internet keep telling me that caramel is not that difficult to make but I've been skeptical. But fine, lets give it a whirl.

Now. If you see in the recipe, it says stir till the sugar dissolves STOP stirring and boil for 10 minutes, yes?  I read it multiple times, I had C check it to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to process the English language and we both concurred, it said stop stirring and did not say to start back up.  Fine. When it came to a boil, I stopped stirring and set the timer for 10 minutes.  We were still around but cleaning things up and after 6 or 7 minutes, I noticed a fair amount of smoke coming from the pot.  Turned on the fan, opened the door to try and prevent the smoke detector from going off (farewell heat from the oven!) and we peered into the pot to what had been very dark brown now turning black bubbling boiling sugar. This can't be right.  Pulled the pot off the heat, whisked and figured what the heck and poured in the cream.  And the entire thing seized into a blob like it had suddenly become sentient. Instead of caramel sauce, I had created the La Brea tar pits in my kitchen.

We were both cracking up because my stars, what an epically epic fail. Stirring! I failed at stirring!  I still blame the recipe :)

Overall I think I'm 1.75 for 3.

I will conquer you, caramel sauce. Just you wait.

 

Reverb 11 - Ordinary Time

Prompt for December 14: Ordinary Time: Tell us about an ordinary week in your 2011 life; describe your routine.  Do you hope that your day-to-day, week-to-week life remains much the same in the coming year, or are you trying to shake things up?  How will you do that?

One of the... I guess you wouldn't say benefit but one of the effects of living on auto pilot is that your weekly routine becomes, well, routine. And when you love control and try to plan and plot out more than is humanely possible, being able to relatively anticipate life is pleasant.

Weekdays: Alarm sounds, I turn it off.  Back up alarm sounds, I turn it off. Drag out of bed, feed cats, perform ablutions (namely scrubbing at eyes with heel of hand wondering when I began to look so haggard).

Get dressed - since I started doing an outfit of the day album on fbook (I know, is the height of narcissism but am really doing it to be practical, truly. On my own morning devices, I'll manage to put on clothes but that's about it.  If I'm laying outfits out five at a time on the weekends, then I actually use more items in my closet and combine them in different ways.)

Work - thankfully, this year has been relatively even keeled as far as projects coming in and my knowing how to do them. Huzzah!

Home - walk Tilly. Chat on phone. Scrounge up dinner, TV, bed.

Weekends: Wake up before the time of the weekday alarm, every. single. weekend. Feed cats, pull on yoga pants, walk Tilly. Head out to delicious cafe for a bagel sandwich or perhaps meet a friend for brunch.  Plan outfits, TV, cook, shopping, half-hearted cleaning.

I've arrived at a point where I feel like I would achieve a greater measure of happiness if I diverted some of the shoe budget to a cleaning service. It's a sad day.

Obviously, some shaking up would serve me well.  I'm hopeful that work remains even keeled or that if I'm at a new job that I pick things up quickly and can get settled. Not knowing and having to come up with answers makes me a panicked girl.  And while I do recognize my limits and adopting a shake, rattle, and roll routine is not going to behoove me, injecting a bit of a jig would be a good thing.

I can't just dance in the living room, right?