Uncategorized

2 comments

Five Good Things: “Honey, Take Me Dancing” Edition

001. Last night was date night, which meant new shoes and fancy cocktails. One thing about Tom is he knows how to show a lady a nice evening. I had blackened swordfish and the most delicious scallops of my entire life. Yum.

002.  I may or may not have bought myself this dress yesterday.

I figured I can wear it in Mexico in March, and with tights before + after, right? Plus I love how it looks with those boots. We’re well into February now, which every year means my wardrobe is in desperate need of defibrillation. This feels like just the ticket.

003. The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. I’m going to echo Kim here and say that so far, it’s not my favorite thing she’s ever written, with the caveat that my favorite thing she ever wrote (Prodigal Summer, oh holy CRAP that is a good book) didn’t really grab me until about a hundred pages in. In any case, I’m just so glad to be reading something new by her that quite honestly…I don’t really care what it is. It’s BK. I can be wooed. I am so woo-able.

004. Your neighbors think you are whimsical and strange if you leave polar bear cupcakes outside their door. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there are worse things to be than whimsical and strange.

005. Rachel comes tonight! She is amazing and got into approximately one thousand PhD programs. I’mma make her a pie. Because if you can’t eat pie to celebrate a bunch of universities fighting over the genius brain of one of your very best girls…when CAN you eat pie? I’m also taking her on a romantic date to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo, because she’s weird like me and into that kind of thing. ACTUALLY, in case you’re weird like me, too, here’s some Ladysmith of your very own to enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OafqYNCzq5U&feature=related]

Happy weekend.

0 comments

Spotted.

Kal continues to be the coolest girl in the universe. I want one of these faux-vintage bus rolls STAT, and have absolutely no idea how I’d go about making one. She said maybe she’d do custom prints, and if she does…I am all over that that like a TENT.

2 comments ,

Live Together Die Alone.

I’ve said before how much I love TV. I love TV. I think TV gets a bad rap it really doesn’t deserve. I grew up in a house where the set was on all the time, one more voice in a cacophony of chatter, and it didn’t stunt my creativity or make me suddenly obese or keep me from playing outside. Instead it served as background noise, part of the landscape of home:  Jeopardy while my mom made dinner, a weekly ER date with my sister and dad. In high school I’d get home from a good night or a bad one and find my parents watching old movies on Turner, on PBS, shifting to make room for me, my head on someone’s shoulder. I got to college and started watching a crap ton of Law and Order for the same reason I started going to Barnes and Noble all the time–it made me less screamingly, achingly homesick. It made me feel less alone.

I’d argue too that all the watching helped me as a writer, developed my ear for the way people talk: the rhythm of good dialogue, how to build a believable world. Sierra tells me David Foster Wallace opined that writers are attracted to TV because of their tendency toward voyeurism; while that’s part of it for sure (I am the stare-iest of starers), I’d say that mostly we’re drawn to it because we love a good story. Or, frankly, a bad one.

Of course, an inevitable consequence of watching TV all the time is you start to get really, really impatient with TV. “That guy totally did it,” I tell Tom with confidence ten minutes into any crime procedural. “Ugh, now, watch, that chick just left her purse on the desk and she’s going to have to come back for it in a minute and she’ll see the guy she likes making out with that other–see? I told you.” There is very little left that surprises me in serial storytelling, no secret pregnancy or drug cartel or extraterrestrial activity I cannot anticipate.

That’s why, when Jackie told me last summer that I needed to start watching Lost immediately, I put her off for as long as I possibly could. “It’s going to blow your mind,” she promised. I laughed in her pretty face, sincerely doubting my ability to be wowed by, of all things, a one-hour drama on ABC about a plane crash and some polar bears.

To quote Jerry Orbach in Dirty Dancing (which is, coincidentally, available for viewing on cable almost any night of the week): “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”

Lost, for all its flaws and weirdnesses, is probably  one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever watched on television. Besides being visually gorgeous and packed chock full of characters I want to cuddle on my couch (and whose faces I want to smash together, Barbie and Ken style), it’s TV for writer-types, meticulous and intricate and completely un-call-able. I never have any idea what’s going to happen next–and I always know. It’s terrifying and refreshing, to be surprised this way–to be so blissfully engaged. I want to tell everyone I know about it. I want to evangelize to the whole world: watch this, seriously. It is so effing cool.

Lost starts its final season tonight, and in my house we are all aflail. Oh yes, I brought Tom down with me this time–and I’m not going to lie, watching with him is one of my favorite things about watching. I  love the idea that we are starting TV traditions of our very own, popcorn and a blanket and “Previously, on Lost…”

Happy Tuesday. You know where I’ll be.

4 comments

Five Good Things: Oceanic Six Edition

1. Thanks to everybody who chimed in about the long dress dilemma! After all that drama and flail, they didn’t even have my size in the long one, so I went ahead and ordered this:

in a deep, plummy purple. Hopefully it won’t make me look creepily pregnant, as J.Crew dresses have been known to do. Speaking of which (looking weird, not being pregnant. Didn’t mean to scare you, Dad!), I also bought a bathing suit this week, and have since eaten absolutely nothing worth talking about. Noticed a lack of tasty cookie recipes on this blog recently? YEAH THAT’S WHY. Luckily, vodka is very low in calories, so…crisis averted!

2. It is census time! I LOVE THE CENSUS. I’m sorry but I do. It’s so orderly! And also makes me feel like I’m in the Bible, ridin’ a donkey back home so I can get myself counted. A giant roll call, if you will.

3. Currently reading: Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, which has already made me cry on the T once so far. It’s not great literature, but I love all the moral complexity and how distinct the voices of all the different narrators are. Worth checking out, for sure. Anyway, I had to take a break from the Pulitzer project when I realized I hadn’t picked up a book in three weeks.

4. Tom and I are spending Valentine’s Day in Manhattan, which means I’ve spent this week clicking through approximately one million restaurant websites. I love trip-planning. Anybody out there have can’t-miss suggestions for drinks and dessert in New York?

5. Lost comes back on Tuesday, and I’m all spastic about it. Look for a giant flaily maudlin TV post next week.

Happy Weekend, kittens! I’m off to hang out with my mom.

2 comments

Mama Said

My mom comes in tomorrow! Exciting times all around. My mom is excellent because she likes to go for tacos and to the movies and talk to me about books and writing. On the agenda: dinners at Picco and Border, plus some serious browsing at Trident. Sounds like a plan to me.

5 comments

Also!

I am super excited to report that a story of mine just got picked up by the Apalachee Review. The piece is a love letter (or not) to my all-girls Catholic high school,  a hideous sort of wander down memory lane. I might send it to my twelfth grade theology teacher with a note that says, see what I did here?

No really I might.

0 comments

celebratory.

This week’s Monday Funday extravaganza: dinner and drinks at dbar, which is tucked away down in Dorchester in between the twin icons of urban Massachusetts, an Auto Zone and a Dunkin’ Donuts. One the menu: duck confit and ceviche and Moroccan-herbed lamb, plus the most revelatory roast chicken any of us had ever experienced. They cook it under a brick. Note to self: find brick.

«< 18 19 20 21 22 >»