This is one of my favorite parts of the new year. Is that sad?
1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?: Hmm. Earned the majority of my income from a non-music job, hiked in the Grand Canyon, lived by myself. I feel like that's enough.
2. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
A clearer direction in life, a bigger oven, and a better grasp of ethical slutdom.
3. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Just general finding-myself stuff, I think. It's been an unbelievable year for that.
4. What was your biggest failure?
Hmm... Having a panic attack at work maybe.
5. Whose behavior merited celebration?
fantastic friends, notably Erica, Anna S, Rose-Anne, Shawn, Anna P, Aaron, Madeleine, everybody at work and dal niente. New people, old people. Most people in my life.
6. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Sarah Palin, Blagojevitch, etc. Myself sometimes.
7. Where did most of your money go?
Food, alcohol, plane tickets, rent. Spices.
8. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
It was kind of an embarrassingly overenthusiastic year for me. Food, cooking, books, Amanda Palmer, Alaska, Denver, hiking, friendship.
9. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Amanda Palmer's Ampersand, Jeff Buckley's Lover, you should have come over (because I can't believe that i listened to such a cheesy song so many times), Fiona Apple's Parting Gift
10. Compared to this time last year, are you
i. happier or sadder? happier :)
ii. thinner or fatter? thinner, goddammit. What does a girl have to eat to gain a few pounds around this place?
iii. richer or poorer? maybe about the same.
11. What do you wish you'd done more of? hoo boy. Cleaning my stove? Reading, hiking (although for a city girl I did decently this year), sitting by the lake. But really, I'm pretty happy with at least the last half of 2008.
12. What do you wish you'd done less of? Getting angsty about unimportant things, overindulging in certain things. But nothing terrible, really.
13. What was your favourite TV program? Hmm. Did I watch anything? I'm liking Firefly :)
14. What was the best book you read? The Practice of the Wild (so much more life-changing the second time around!), dear god Lolita. A lot.
15. What was your greatest musical discovery? Jeff Buckley (for when you need an angsty girly man), Amanda Palmer, PJ Harvey in a much more real sense than before. Rid of Me is one of the best albums ever.
16. What did you want and get? An apartment to myself, a wicked sense of self confidence.
17. What did you want and not get? The Colorado Symphony job
18. What was your favourite film of this year? Twilight. Definitely.
19. What did you do on your birthday? had dinner with many amazing and varied friends, and then had drinks and bitched about conductors.
20. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
You know what? I'm good.
21. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? thrift store chic. what a nice girl! Semi-boring, perhaps.
22. What kept you sane? cats, Erica, the internet, coworker gossip.
23. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Amanda Palmer. Yikes.
24. What political issue stirred you the most? Prop 8, the election.
25. Who did you miss? Erica, Tabitha
26. Who was the best new person you met? so many! Madeleine, Rose-Anne (not new, but new as a personal close friend). Hopefully many more to come.
27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. Paying attention to myself makes me a vastly happier person, and being happy makes good things happen. It also makes me sound cheesy much of the time. Living alone is awesome, but convincing myself to clean is harder. I need mountains in my life.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. "And I wake up and I ask myself what state I'm in/And I say well I'm lucky, cause I am like East Berlin/I had this wall and what I knew of the free world/Was that I could see their fireworks/And I could hear their radio" Dar Williams What do you hear in these sounds. "I'll idealize, then realize that it's no/Sacrifice, because the price is paid, and/There's nothing left to grieve" Fiona Apple, Get Gone
41. Where did you ring in 2009? At Austin's house! We dropped a grapefruit at midnight. Then I made out with a random stranger. Good times :)
42. What was your status by Valentine’s Day? Not good, I can tell you that. Prepping 300 roses and then doing dishes in the bathtub? No thanks.
43. Where did you go on vacation? Alaska!!! Flagstaff, Denver (that wasn't much of a vacation, though).
44. What did you purchase that was over $500? A ticket to Alaska. My security deposit on my apartment.
45. Did you know anybody who got married? probably. Nobody super close, though.
46. Did you move anywhere? into my own place
47. What’s the one thing you thought you would never do but did in 2008? Hmm. I can't think of anything I'm willing to make public. Ooh wait, posted a craigslist ad!
49. What’s something you learned about yourself? I have a lot of potential.
50. What was your best month? Any of the last six, I think. Oh, except for late August/ early September, that kind of blew.
51. What pop culture event will you remember 2008 by? I agree with Lauren, Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.
I think I've blocked out the bad parts of 2008, but they've been so overshadowed by the good that I'm okay with that. I don't really do resolutions, but I have high hopes for 2009; change is coming, but I think it will be the good kind of change. Thank you to everybody in my life, I love you all.
See? Cheesy. That's what being happy does to me.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
day job
Wedding flower pictures! I made three of the white cubes on the bottom, the one taller arrangement (which used garden roses, which smell absolutely heavenly), and the boutonniere. That was fun :)
Also, does anybody else think it's funny--considering I'm not the hugest proponent of marriage--that both of my "careers" involve spending a lot of time dealing with weddings?
Also, does anybody else think it's funny--considering I'm not the hugest proponent of marriage--that both of my "careers" involve spending a lot of time dealing with weddings?
Saturday, December 27, 2008
world-class
Yesterday, I had an excellent day at work. I made a bunch of arrangements for a wedding that I didn't even know I was going to be working on and they all turned out really well. (Photos tonight, perhaps?) I sold a ton of Christmas ornaments. My boss told me that she "trusted me completely." (In a certain context, perhaps, but still it was nice to hear.) I went home feeling inflated and happy and confident, like I was a real florist who knew what the hell I was doing.
And then realized that I'd left the coffeemaker on (and empty) all day. It's a miracle that I haven't burned my building down yet, what with this and also the asparagus I almost flambeed a few weeks ago. Sigh.
And then realized that I'd left the coffeemaker on (and empty) all day. It's a miracle that I haven't burned my building down yet, what with this and also the asparagus I almost flambeed a few weeks ago. Sigh.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
the kitchen is kevin bacon
Happy solstice! Our first day of winter, as I noted earlier, was just hellaciously cold. And windy. And just all-around bitter. I cried nearly every time I left the comfort of the indoors that day. But there was a fair amount of comfort to be had, so that may have had something to do with it.
I haven't talked too much about our Candida dinners, but they've continued on since our first effort in October. We had our third dinner on Sunday, celebrating the new season and the fact that we all were brave enough to venture out in the "feels like -30" weather for soup.
There were six of us this time, which seems to be the number that we gravitate towards; no matter how many people are invited, we often seem to end up with six at the end. My old friend Miriam, on vacation from grad school in England, made an appearance, and a violist from Civic that I didn't know named Ben was our other guest. Most of the way through the cooking process, it became clear that all of us (including Ben, by pure chance) knew my good friend Shawn Marie, prompting a discussion of SM's Kevin Bacon-ness for our group. She was the only person we all knew and had introduced many of us, and she wasn't even present.
But truly, I do think the kitchen is also Kevin Bacon in this scenario. It's what brought this little group together, and indeed my first personal experiences with many of the people there had involved food. Four years ago, Miriam and I cooked a curry that, while delicious, made her aware of a nasty allergy to cilantro. Rose-Anne came to Thanksgiving at my house two years ago, the first time we'd hung out sans Shawn Marie, and brought some delicious garlic butter for our feast. And I vividly remember making my first-ever batch of homemade seitan with Shawn Marie, using it as a pizza topping during our first one-on-one meeting. Food has risen to a much more prominent position in my life lately, but I realized on Sunday that it's been a running theme for years. There's just something about food and kitchens, the warmth and creation and comfort that a group of people can experience there. That's exactly why I could never, ever be a professional cook: in the rush to prepare food for strangers, I'd be afraid that I'd lose the joy I find in preparing food with or for people I know and care about. (That and I'm really slow and can't deal with stress, but that's another story.)
Anyway, dinner (or lunch?) turned out splendidly. Candida dinners generally do. There have been blips--a too-lime-oriented jicama salad, some dessert issues--but nearly everything we've made has turned out quite well, particularly since most of our recipes are having their first outings at the event. There have been sweet potato-cilantro-ginger patties, spaghetti squash, miracle brownies... We're thinking we'll make a collaborative cookbook. The menu this time around involved some fantastic chickpea-flour savory crepes (with two filling options!), an amazing kale-and-bean stew that convinced nearly everyone present that they needed to invest in some smoked paprika, salad, and the aforementioned brownies. Afterwards, full and happy, we sat around the table and basked in the camaraderie of food before we all headed back out into the cold.
I haven't talked too much about our Candida dinners, but they've continued on since our first effort in October. We had our third dinner on Sunday, celebrating the new season and the fact that we all were brave enough to venture out in the "feels like -30" weather for soup.
There were six of us this time, which seems to be the number that we gravitate towards; no matter how many people are invited, we often seem to end up with six at the end. My old friend Miriam, on vacation from grad school in England, made an appearance, and a violist from Civic that I didn't know named Ben was our other guest. Most of the way through the cooking process, it became clear that all of us (including Ben, by pure chance) knew my good friend Shawn Marie, prompting a discussion of SM's Kevin Bacon-ness for our group. She was the only person we all knew and had introduced many of us, and she wasn't even present.
But truly, I do think the kitchen is also Kevin Bacon in this scenario. It's what brought this little group together, and indeed my first personal experiences with many of the people there had involved food. Four years ago, Miriam and I cooked a curry that, while delicious, made her aware of a nasty allergy to cilantro. Rose-Anne came to Thanksgiving at my house two years ago, the first time we'd hung out sans Shawn Marie, and brought some delicious garlic butter for our feast. And I vividly remember making my first-ever batch of homemade seitan with Shawn Marie, using it as a pizza topping during our first one-on-one meeting. Food has risen to a much more prominent position in my life lately, but I realized on Sunday that it's been a running theme for years. There's just something about food and kitchens, the warmth and creation and comfort that a group of people can experience there. That's exactly why I could never, ever be a professional cook: in the rush to prepare food for strangers, I'd be afraid that I'd lose the joy I find in preparing food with or for people I know and care about. (That and I'm really slow and can't deal with stress, but that's another story.)
Anyway, dinner (or lunch?) turned out splendidly. Candida dinners generally do. There have been blips--a too-lime-oriented jicama salad, some dessert issues--but nearly everything we've made has turned out quite well, particularly since most of our recipes are having their first outings at the event. There have been sweet potato-cilantro-ginger patties, spaghetti squash, miracle brownies... We're thinking we'll make a collaborative cookbook. The menu this time around involved some fantastic chickpea-flour savory crepes (with two filling options!), an amazing kale-and-bean stew that convinced nearly everyone present that they needed to invest in some smoked paprika, salad, and the aforementioned brownies. Afterwards, full and happy, we sat around the table and basked in the camaraderie of food before we all headed back out into the cold.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
winter with a vengeance
It's negative five degrees outside right now, but windy so it feels like negative thirty. Yikes. Wish me luck. My windows are covered in ice. At least I'm going to go eat soup soon.
Happy solstice!
Happy solstice!
Saturday, December 20, 2008
keep passing the open windows
When you live in a big city like Chicago, you have to take your connections to the world outside (outside of people and pavement, that is) as you can get them. There's a reason that people almost obsessively hang out by the lake in the summer; where else can you get a nearly-unobstructed view of anything here? Sometimes, after I've been somewhere with a lot less people and a lot more mountains, I wonder how I can live here. And then I remember: it's in the details.
The lake is good, and when I was at Northwestern (where the music building sits feet away from the water), the ability to watch the seasons reflected in the lake was one of the things that truly helped me through my day. But there are many other, less obvious things that I think get overlooked. Personally, I pay close attention to any "wild"life I can see (even pigeons are interesting to watch interact with each other) and I try to pay attention to plants and the weather. This is how I try to stay connected to the idea that, even though I live in a giant city, there are still things outside of that concept that exist beyond it. We might have impacted them dramatically (pigeons are a product of civilization, I imagine, and god knows what we may have already done to the weather), but they are ways for me to remember that there is still nature here, in some form or another.
The point of this all comes down to one wall of my tiny little studio apartment. There are many things wrong with my apartment: repeated plumbing issues, the inevitable stuffiness (and, grossly, smelliness) that comes from a person and two cats living in such a small space with no open windows, the overactive radiator. But this wall is my absolute favorite part of living here. My west-facing wall is almost entirely made up of windows. I can see the sky, and part of the building next to me, but there are no windows facing towards me that are close enough to bother with. I feel free to wander around in my underwear with the blinds up without worrying overly that anybody can see me. I'm also on the fifth floor, which cuts out any real noise connection to outside (especially in the winter when the windows are generally closed, but even in the summer I can't tell if its raining from up here).
The upshot of all of this is that I can see the sky at basically all times. I wake up early because that's when the sun rises and the sky begins to lighten up. I can tell from bed what the cloud cover is like, whether it's sunny, whether it might be snowing. At night, the sky can be pink, yellow, orange, dark. During the day it can be light grey, dark grey, deep blue, light blue. I can see snowflakes drifting by. I have times of day that I like because of the quality of light. I've never had this kind of friendly connection to the sky before, and I love it. I wouldn't shut my blinds for anything.
The lake is good, and when I was at Northwestern (where the music building sits feet away from the water), the ability to watch the seasons reflected in the lake was one of the things that truly helped me through my day. But there are many other, less obvious things that I think get overlooked. Personally, I pay close attention to any "wild"life I can see (even pigeons are interesting to watch interact with each other) and I try to pay attention to plants and the weather. This is how I try to stay connected to the idea that, even though I live in a giant city, there are still things outside of that concept that exist beyond it. We might have impacted them dramatically (pigeons are a product of civilization, I imagine, and god knows what we may have already done to the weather), but they are ways for me to remember that there is still nature here, in some form or another.
The point of this all comes down to one wall of my tiny little studio apartment. There are many things wrong with my apartment: repeated plumbing issues, the inevitable stuffiness (and, grossly, smelliness) that comes from a person and two cats living in such a small space with no open windows, the overactive radiator. But this wall is my absolute favorite part of living here. My west-facing wall is almost entirely made up of windows. I can see the sky, and part of the building next to me, but there are no windows facing towards me that are close enough to bother with. I feel free to wander around in my underwear with the blinds up without worrying overly that anybody can see me. I'm also on the fifth floor, which cuts out any real noise connection to outside (especially in the winter when the windows are generally closed, but even in the summer I can't tell if its raining from up here).
The upshot of all of this is that I can see the sky at basically all times. I wake up early because that's when the sun rises and the sky begins to lighten up. I can tell from bed what the cloud cover is like, whether it's sunny, whether it might be snowing. At night, the sky can be pink, yellow, orange, dark. During the day it can be light grey, dark grey, deep blue, light blue. I can see snowflakes drifting by. I have times of day that I like because of the quality of light. I've never had this kind of friendly connection to the sky before, and I love it. I wouldn't shut my blinds for anything.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
dating bi-as
So an interesting thing happened lately: I went on a date. With a boy. What? That information elicited a lot of different reactions, everything from laughter to puzzlement. "So you're dating boys now?" "How does that work?" And so on. Blah blah blah. But the truth of things is a lot harder to explain than I've been able to put into words, at least verbally and under immediate pressure. The lines are getting a little blurry.
The boy was somebody I met at Anna's girlfriend's nonprofit's fundraiser a few weeks ago, back when it was still warm enough that I was willing to put on a dress in return for access to an open bar and cheesecake on a stick. We talked (briefly, from what I can recall) and, along with another boy I didn't know, split a cab ride home. About a week later, I got a facebook message.
Being single has a number of interesting side effects that contributed to my actually following through on that message. For one thing, it's infinitely easier for me to define my sexuality (for better or for worse) when I can just say, oh, that's my girlfriend over there, have a cheesecake! The lack of a significant other opens me up to scrutiny, and to assumptions, such as that I'm straight or bi. Which is okay (and in the case of bi, not entirely untrue), but sometimes it's a little awkward. I don't know how to deal with boys, for one thing; it's like I've lost the tools, the skill sets, that seem to be taken for granted by hetero society. Boys approach me differently than girls do. (Well, so far women don't approach me much at all, which is a whole other problem.) And I can't tell when they're flirting, even more than I can't tell when girls are flirting. So I end up (apparently) flirting back, and then things seem to get beyond my control. It's confusing.
All of this would be far less of an issue if I didn't, ahem, feel a little more bi (although I prefer "homoflexible") lately, at least theoretically. I will not deny that I've had makeout dreams about boys, some of them involving victorian dress. And really, with my credo of tolerance, I've been considering giving boys another chance. Should it actually make that much of a difference? I'm not ruling it out as a possibility, although I'm pretty skeptical in light of all the evidence that that train of thought is ever going to get much past the theoretical stage.
But anyway, I basically said, what the hell, let's give this "date with a boy" thing a shot. Here's one thing about being on a man-date: I felt like I had this very, very media-based idea of what what that experience should entail and how I should act. Rules, if you will. I just couldn't seem to shut down this part of my brain that kept whispering "Are you doing this right? Think hard about romantic comedies!" With girls, I've never felt that kind of rule pressure before, and it added a whole new level of nerves to my experience. For instance, I ordered a salad (endive with roasted baby golden beets and whitefish in a creme fraiche, yum), which was actually what I wanted, but I felt like such a girl when I did it. I literally flashbacked about a million bad movies as I said "I'll just have a salad." And he paid for dinner, which for me felt terrible. I mean, here I was feeling like a fraud anyway, and then I didn't even pay for my food! It was the most uncomfortable part of the date for me. (And when I told straight female friends of mine that, they invariably said, "Well, at least you got a free meal!" Which is so not the point, and actually made me feel more gross, like my company was something to be bartered for. "I'll pay for dinner, and you look cute and eat a salad." This was not his fault, but the fault of gross tradition. Ick.)
But really, it was fine. A little awkward (ex-girlfriends kept coming up, perhaps in a very passive attempt to bring the conversation around to the topic that I haven't dated a boy in, oh, five years), but good conversation and good food and good beer. I actually had a lot of fun, except for the fact that I felt like I was sitting around the table with a boy, the personal, and the political. That made me a little antsy, truth be told. With girls, at least the personal and the political tend to be right out there on the table, and they're easier to talk about. If two girls are on a date, there is this whole world of overlap that they can access and assume that the other person will be able to reference. On a straight date, I felt like I was navigating without coordinates, and it was much harder.
I just hope I wasn't a total letdown as a date. "Dude, I went on a date with this girl the other night and she was totally a dyke! WTF!" is what I imagine him telling friends, although in truth I think he's a bit too nice to be so mean about it. But still, I think that through my lack of ability to just say "Hey, so I date mostly girls, but you seem nice," I've become a funny story he'll tell people during conversations about weird dates. Ah well, live and learn.
(Thanks to Anna for the title.)
The boy was somebody I met at Anna's girlfriend's nonprofit's fundraiser a few weeks ago, back when it was still warm enough that I was willing to put on a dress in return for access to an open bar and cheesecake on a stick. We talked (briefly, from what I can recall) and, along with another boy I didn't know, split a cab ride home. About a week later, I got a facebook message.
Being single has a number of interesting side effects that contributed to my actually following through on that message. For one thing, it's infinitely easier for me to define my sexuality (for better or for worse) when I can just say, oh, that's my girlfriend over there, have a cheesecake! The lack of a significant other opens me up to scrutiny, and to assumptions, such as that I'm straight or bi. Which is okay (and in the case of bi, not entirely untrue), but sometimes it's a little awkward. I don't know how to deal with boys, for one thing; it's like I've lost the tools, the skill sets, that seem to be taken for granted by hetero society. Boys approach me differently than girls do. (Well, so far women don't approach me much at all, which is a whole other problem.) And I can't tell when they're flirting, even more than I can't tell when girls are flirting. So I end up (apparently) flirting back, and then things seem to get beyond my control. It's confusing.
All of this would be far less of an issue if I didn't, ahem, feel a little more bi (although I prefer "homoflexible") lately, at least theoretically. I will not deny that I've had makeout dreams about boys, some of them involving victorian dress. And really, with my credo of tolerance, I've been considering giving boys another chance. Should it actually make that much of a difference? I'm not ruling it out as a possibility, although I'm pretty skeptical in light of all the evidence that that train of thought is ever going to get much past the theoretical stage.
But anyway, I basically said, what the hell, let's give this "date with a boy" thing a shot. Here's one thing about being on a man-date: I felt like I had this very, very media-based idea of what what that experience should entail and how I should act. Rules, if you will. I just couldn't seem to shut down this part of my brain that kept whispering "Are you doing this right? Think hard about romantic comedies!" With girls, I've never felt that kind of rule pressure before, and it added a whole new level of nerves to my experience. For instance, I ordered a salad (endive with roasted baby golden beets and whitefish in a creme fraiche, yum), which was actually what I wanted, but I felt like such a girl when I did it. I literally flashbacked about a million bad movies as I said "I'll just have a salad." And he paid for dinner, which for me felt terrible. I mean, here I was feeling like a fraud anyway, and then I didn't even pay for my food! It was the most uncomfortable part of the date for me. (And when I told straight female friends of mine that, they invariably said, "Well, at least you got a free meal!" Which is so not the point, and actually made me feel more gross, like my company was something to be bartered for. "I'll pay for dinner, and you look cute and eat a salad." This was not his fault, but the fault of gross tradition. Ick.)
But really, it was fine. A little awkward (ex-girlfriends kept coming up, perhaps in a very passive attempt to bring the conversation around to the topic that I haven't dated a boy in, oh, five years), but good conversation and good food and good beer. I actually had a lot of fun, except for the fact that I felt like I was sitting around the table with a boy, the personal, and the political. That made me a little antsy, truth be told. With girls, at least the personal and the political tend to be right out there on the table, and they're easier to talk about. If two girls are on a date, there is this whole world of overlap that they can access and assume that the other person will be able to reference. On a straight date, I felt like I was navigating without coordinates, and it was much harder.
I just hope I wasn't a total letdown as a date. "Dude, I went on a date with this girl the other night and she was totally a dyke! WTF!" is what I imagine him telling friends, although in truth I think he's a bit too nice to be so mean about it. But still, I think that through my lack of ability to just say "Hey, so I date mostly girls, but you seem nice," I've become a funny story he'll tell people during conversations about weird dates. Ah well, live and learn.
(Thanks to Anna for the title.)
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