conversational snippet

"I'm pretty much my own art house at this point."

Simply delicious.





On both counts.

I am so very lucky to have a friend like you.

House

Today marks two years in this house.

Two years, and so much history.

I'd write more, but I have to finish cleaning.

The realtor is taking pictures tomorrow.

fells point

lost and gone forever:

matisse painted door
toys! sign on the side of a rowhouse
dangerously delicous pies storefront (ok, that was in canton. but close.)
st stans
fleet street cycles
reptilian records
9th life (another life in hampden)

still here:

green cobblestones
brunch at Blue Moon
eastern ave house
peacock mania at eclectic elements
exhibitionist house
A-1 taxedermy
mermaid house
pretzel dogs
13 Broadway

the poet with his face in his hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need any more of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

-Mary Oliver

Look what we have here...

even Pitchfork shares my soft spot. Even the snobbiest of snobs are not immune to the charms of Charlie Brown.

cyclical + subliminal

Over the past few days:

It's gotten colder. Makes a girl much more into the idea of staying in, cozying up, developing some recipes, dipping into a well-stocked pantry.

(Enjoying some tea - my box of Pixie Mate is almost cashed!)

Commence the Trader Joe's run.

As per usual, pick up several TJ's items that have not been tried, including one Black Raspberry lemonade.

Get home, try out said lemonade, get blasted to past by distinct memories of your Snoopy Sno Cone Maker and your favorite cherry ice flavoring.



Enjoy nostalgia.

That makes holiday events attended this week better than tolerable. Continue usual tradition of aimless 'holiday shopping'.

Find new remastered copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas at Sound Garden.



Immediately buy and take home. Fall in love (again) with jazz of your childhood. Maybe the childhood I wish I had, but none the less.

Staying in + nostalgia....perfect.

You really just need a guy you can dance with.

Disco pimp styling optional.

An old favorite that deserves another viewing: http://headrush.typepad.com/

conversation snippet

"He's a good looking guy."

"Yeah, but he'd be a lot better looking with a ball gag in his mouth."

You may notice that I've updated the section over to the right.

No, nevermind the wishlists - take a look at Lifehacker, my favorite new website. It's just so.....useful. I'm not quite sure whether it's a testiment to efficiency or procrastination (perhaps overlapping circles in the Venn diagram), but I adore it.

Post-prandial posting:

The only way to properly follow up a satisfying Thankgiving meal is simply to keep on the same decadent, epicurean path. As we discovered tonight after the symphony, some very good dining can be had at Sotto Sopra. Northern Italian with a hint of French influence. Gorgonzola and lamb risotto to die for. ( I know, I sound like a bad rest. review. I'll do better next time.)

Science rock star Steven Pinker sets the Harvard Committee on General Education straight here. Nice.

Black Friday shopping - I'm so not the type that gets up at 4 am for a discount DVD player. But Belvedere Square had a fun evening event. Before dinner and a bottle of pinot noir at the beautiful but untimately doomed Taste, I found some gorgeous Snow & Graham letterpress holiday cards to send to the very nearest and dearest.

And so it begins.

The sea creatures above are from Egg Press.Very cute, no? All the fab stationery I've been finding lately gives me grandiose ideas of starting up my own teeny tiny sophisticated and particular little design firm. Finding the perfect name is half the battle.

grazia

I am grateful for:

• Healthy pumpkin custard and the chinese five-spice powder that makes it so delicious.
• Good friends, whether in person or through email. My priceless network of laughter and tears and hope.
• A fascinating, challenging, ever-changing job.
• A father who just celebrated his 64th birthday in good health, and is persuing a project that makes him the happiest I've ever seen him.
• A mother who loves me with all her heart, and overlooks our myriad differences.
• A little brother that (I think) is now ready and willing to listen to what I've already lived through.
• Roommates that are wonderful 97.5% of the time, and annoying only 2.5% of the time.
• A city that forces me to be humble.
• An affable mechanic who fixed my car for a fair price.
• Down comforters in drafty houses.
• A pretty kickass farmer's market. And Honeycrisp apples.
• Non-profits I believe in.
• The chance to put the dark blue Japanese sauce cup I didn't care for to a new use: to hold the little bar of Lothantique soap that I fall in love with all over again each shower.
• Turkeys. No, not to eat - the real, live, goofy looking, goofy-sounding thing. They never fail to amuse me.
• The ability to put the past behind me. To acknowledge my regrets without allowing them to paralyze me. To disable the intentions of those who wish me harm.
• The many lessons I've learned, from the many mistakes I've made.
• A future I look forward to.
• The love in my life.

New favorite song is actually an previous favorite that I've now returned to. ...Beirut's Postcards from Italy.

There's just something about it.

Listen to it here.

We were pummeled by rain yesterday in Baltimore. The house was dark and cold, even with the window shades open - that dim, ineffectual light that has a primal resonance to hibernation. I had to stay home from work, because with the combination of driving rains, a very old roof, and a disappointingly lax landlord, there were leaks. After each particularly scary moonsoon blitz, I ran from room to room, listening intently for the drip-drip-drip of damage. Worrying that the roof would simply give up and cave in upon my poor housemate upstairs.

All the while trying not to connect the dots in my head, trying to ignore the fact that my creaky, leaky, potentially-falling-apart place of residence is, at times, a very apt metaphor for my life.

(n.b. - Everyone on my block seemed to stay at home yesterday. Either rowhouse renovations aren't what they're cracked up to be, or my personal hiberation urges struck a chord with the Fells Point crowd.)

How the country was won

Very cool, from the New York Times.

Election 2006 Results

mur·mur
n.
1. A low, indistinct, continuous sound: spoke in a murmur; the murmur of the waves.
2. An indistinct, whispered, or confidential complaint; a mutter.
3. Medicine. An abnormal sound, usually emanating from the heart, that sometimes indicates a diseased condition.

My personal anthem

Dart For My Sweetheart - The Archie Bronson Outfit.

You may like it too.

Nike commissioned LCD Soundsystem for 45:33, a running mix. Pitchfork has already reviewed it. When I first heard about this collaboration, I spent a while trying to decide whether it's deridable sellout (Losing My Edge, indeed), or more likely, a little bit cool. Musically, though, it's very good. No superfluous lyrics other than a couple of vocal samples, and plenty of warm-up (~5 minutes)/cool down chillout (~10 minutes) sandwiching approximately 30 mintues of discopunk we all know and love from James Murphy.

Yeah, this will be the soundtrack to my next jog.

too good not to share

I have a natural disdain of (most) Yalies for myriad reasons.

But here's one more, straight from Bizzaroville: Aleksey Vayner. Every little thing he does is magic.

The entire saga can be found here and here.

All I know is....


...I should be in Atlanta right now.

Due to the former stalker situation, I'm not posting exactly which shows I'm attending.

And I apologize for that.

Because you really should have been at the Alias & Tarsier show last night.

It was beautiful.

And to a crowd of ~ 40, max.

They're about halfway through their tour.

typo?

If you like fonts and typography as much as I do (and I hope you don't - it's probably not healthy, esp. if you're not in the field), early 2007 will be a very happy time:

Behold.

Helvetica. The film.

P.S. And in the extremely unlikely event that you're wondering: my personal faves are Futura (the Royal Tenenbaums font), Grotesk, and Century Gothic. Mmmm, modern.

Bad week.

How I've been perceived.












Note the ruffled feathers.

Despite current interest in estimating the diversity of fossil and extant groups, little effort has been devoted to estimating the diversity of dinosaurs. Here we estimate the diversity of nonavian dinosaurs at 1,850 genera, including those that remain to be discovered. With 527 genera currently described, at least 71% of dinosaur genera thus remain unknown. Although known diversity declined in the last stage of the Cretaceous, estimated diversity was steady, suggesting that dinosaurs as a whole were not in decline in the 10 million years before their ultimate extinction. We also show that known diversity is biased by the availability of fossiliferous rock outcrop. Finally, by using a logistic model, we predict that 75% of discoverable genera will be known within 60–100 years and 90% within 100–140 years. Because of nonrandom factors affecting the process of fossil discovery (which preclude the possibility of computing realistic confidence bounds), our estimate of diversity is likely to be a lower bound.

Wang SC, Dodson P. Estimating the diversity of dinosaurs.

PNAS September 12, 2006 vol. 103 no.
37 13601-13605

Hmmm. There's still time for a career change....

Escapism.

Little Miss Sunshine.
I had to see this twice - the first time hit too close to home. The second time was beautiful. Look for a quiet showing - the audience's laughter in a packed seating detracts from the subtleties.

Hollywoodland.
Hometown hero Ben Affleck does a pretty good job, the best I've seen since Good Will Hunting. If you liked LA Confidential, you'd probably like this.

exhibition

James Rieck. The Dealer, 2006. oil on canvas, 41" x 120"

Recently I attended my first gallery opening in Baltimore.

The new exhibit was titled, "The Exhibitionists."

I had fallen for the painting shown above* and thought the show would be some sort of interesting take on the art business world.



Boy, was I ever wrong.


*only $21k, by the way.

one more for the road.

The Rapture play the Apple Soho store Sept. 12 @ 8pm.

Hmm.

Upcoming

Shows. That I may or may not be attending.

9/13 zero 7 - 9:30
9/16 the gossip - black cat
9/20 lambchop + wilco people - black cat
9/25 architecture in helsinki - black cat
10/2 the hold steady - ottobar
10/3 cursive + thermals - 9:30
10/4 be your own pet - sonar 10/5 black cat
10/11 shawn colvin - rams head
10/20 tv on the radio - sonar
10/26 futureheads - sonar
10/31 tapes n tapes - black cat
11/1 hot chip - sonar
11/5 + 11/6 black keys - 9:30
11/9 pretty girls make graves w. she wants revenge - 9:30 (long sigh at larger venue upgrade)

Chasing Cars

I love this Snow Patrol remix, but haven't been able to track down an mp3 since Pitchfork pulled theirs.

It is, however, on Myspace - so I suppose that will have to suffice.

http://www.myspace.com/theheyteammusic

Housewarming presents.

Hug S&P shakers. Everybody loves these.
And, the Vasemaker.
I LOVE this.

Both from www.momastore.org

We're the subject of a big press release. Finally, some recognition for the work we've been doing, some of which is light years ahead of what other places are putting out.

It's usually rather frustrating working for a socially inept (luvyameanit), tactless, scheming and dreaming maverick, but occasionally it pans out just fine. After all, that's why I work here.

conversation snippet.

"It's like, you know, practical jewelry."

"Oh, okay. Like a cocaine spoon."

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be Ryan McGinness.

Fabricated Cultural Belief Systems, indeed.

My new mission in life is a perfect little brown dress. Polished yet casual (much more cas than the LBD), something pretty I can wear again and again. Rich espresso color to set off turquoise, or blue topaz, or labradorite.

It's fun to think of such things. Light years away from science.

Some days, the guy who buys you chocolate is your knight in shining armour.

Someone from the current batch of summer students BROKE one of my pipets. Really broken - unrepairable. I was borrowing that one from a colleague - it wasn't even mine.

And the kicker -- they just put it back and didn't say anything.

I was on the warpath. Luckily for them, they left right after lunch. Luckily for me, I had some of this treat.

latest acquistion

A better way to work out aggression.

What can I say? I overreact.

Luckily I am forgiven.

The only love which has lasted
is the love which has
everything
every disappointment, every
failure
which has accepted the fact that
in the end there is no desire
so deep
as the simple desire for
being with each other.

Graham Greene

diversion

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Click your mouse to change colors.

finally.

1. I don’t often lie, but I did on my driver’s license. It says I’m 5'4". (I am 5'3". And ½ ")
2. I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.
3. With regards to the above, I actually care less about money than many people think I do. I’m pretty sure that’s not a complement.
4. That said, I’m not shedding loose this mortal coil without owning an Alfa Romeo.
5. And a Vespa.
6. I must have good circulation in my feet, because I love sandals and would (um, and have) worn them year-round.
7. 100% Italian. Need to apply for citizenship, there’s a sweet EU passport to be had.
8. I still miss Boston, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
9. Love cashmere. I pine for a boatneck sweater in charcoal grey.
10. I am so unlike my parents, I have to wonder sometimes.
11. Example: no Boston accent here. Except maybe when I fight with my mom.
12. In elementary school, I was a child prodigy on paleontology (pre-Jurassic Park) and my classmates made fun of me mercilessly. I eventually gave up. The nicknames continued until high school.
13. I would still be a paleontologist. I still think about it.
14. My attitude towards most people ranges from indifference to active dislike.
15. Despite this misanthropic tendency, I would take a bullet for my true friends.
16. Crossword puzzles should be done in ink.
17. I tend to destroy things after breakups. Less evidence that way.
18. Actually I think overall I’m pretty good at ridding myself of the trappings of my past lives.
19. Tasting my own mortality is bittersweet.
20. Australian red licorice and Cadbury chocolate are my downfalls. Also, Swedish fish.
21. Rolling Stones > Beatles.
22. Baseball games are a lot of fun in person.
23. It took season tickets to Fenway to get me into the above mindset.
24. Scary recurring nightmare for as long as I can remember: driving off a bridge into water.
25. My original favorite painting: Matisse’s Goldfish 1912.
Second favorite: In the Car by Lichtenstein. I could actually type up a top 20.
26. Bad boys are a major turnoff. I like being treated well.
27. Doesn’t mean I go for the goody two shoes, either.
28. A great breakfast involves Eggs Benedict.
29. And good coffee.
30. I agonize over restaurant menus.
31. Life is too short to sleep on bad sheets.
32. California fascinates me, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.
33. I am a good listener, and I like being around extroverts; usually their enthusiasm is contagious.
34. I like poetry but I don’t know enough about it.
35. The best year of my life so far was 2002.
36. I want a pet (dog) really badly, but I enjoy the lack of responsibility I currently have.
37. I love my initials, all four of them.
38. A library room would be nice.
39. Favorite nail polish: OPI, in Bubble Bath or Black Tie Affair
40. My favorite place in the world is Venice.
41. Or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
42. My imaginary friend was Danger Mouse.
43. I know how to shoot a gun.
44. And a crossbow.
45. Sigmund Freud and I have the same birthday.
46. Definitely a Democrat. I hail from Kennedy country.
47. I'm guessing that at some points in my education, I spent more time at the museum across the street than I did in class.
48. The inner artist never really went away. I care -a lot- about the way things look.
49. Tact: the underdog of personality traits.
50. Laundry is the bane of my existence.
51. Up north, my favorite season was summer. Here, it’s either fall or spring. Probably fall.
52. Going by Vivaldi’s versions, the best season is winter.
53. High school reunions don’t appeal to me, as I have no desire to prove my awesomeness to people I could care less about.
54. My first cat was named Puma.
55. My first dog was named Primo.
56. My first horse was named Pharoah.
57. I have a set of highly personalized morals and ethics that I rarely if ever go against. Very few people know what they exactly are.
58. Love to travel. Hate to pack.
57. My first introduction to sex was through Native American folk tales, a book I got for free at a library giveaway and that my parents never bothered to check out.
58. Slight obsession/ deep appreciation for random postcards, beautiful stationery, and obscure stamps.
59. Very special people are privy to my very special dances....such as the "going out for brunch dance" and the "didn’t get a parking ticket dance."
60. Black jelly beans? Hell no.
61. Creme brulee? Hell yes.
62. I’ll never be a food critic because I’m too damn picky.
63. My favorite number is 8. I also like 16 and 5.
64. Fascinated by Sanskrit, Arabic and kanji/katakana.
65. Music > movies or TV, by a long shot.
66. Not a morning person.
67. I continue to always be surprised when someone envies something I have.
68. I have broken my nose, dislocated my jaw, and broken 8 out of 10 toes.
69. The broken nose is rather subtle, except in certain angles in photographs.
70. I read the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the free weekly alternative paper.
71. I could read before I could speak. Because I could relate to books more than people, I'd actually say un-word words I'd seen written in books, such as phew! and sigh.
72. My first car was a silver Audi 5000, and I still miss it.
73. Someday I’d like to have a job that affords me a glamourous, killer wardrobe. Or maybe just a social life that requires one. Black tie gala, anyone?
74. My favorite cassette tape growing up was a compilation of the theme songs to Bond movies.
75. I’ve had the same summer perfume for years.
76. I need to know that I live near the sea, even if I can’t always see it.
77. My eyesight is messed up: nearsighted in one eye, farsighted in the other, both to the same degree.
78. People should frequent farmer’s markets more. I love mine.
79. I am a classic black sheep: I have one younger brother who can do no wrong.
80. I can’t seem to finish Magister Ludi, it’s the only book that’s taken me years to read.
81. Sometimes I go to movies alone. Especially the pretentious indie ones.
82. I hate musicals.
83. I love opera.
84. I follow along in the libretto.
85. I have a compulsion to read the backs of things. (cereal boxes, etc.)
86. I collect 45 rpm records. Sporadically. For a 1970 Seeburg Golden Jet jukebox.
87. Myers-Briggs: INTJ.
88. I played men’s varsity ice hockey not for love of the game, but because people told me I couldn’t do it.
89. I taught myself shorthand so I could keep a journal without others reading it.
90. I enjoy a calculated risk.... every once in a while.
91. Halloween is my favorite holiday.
92. My favorite architectural style is a nature-influenced modernism.
93. Once I saw a palace on an island on a lake, and vowed to return and set foot on it. I did so four years later.
94. I wish I could achieve all my goals so quickly.
95. I hold those close to me in high regard and to high standards. This often ends up being a problem - whether moreso for them or for me is yet to be determined.
96. I have no concept of time
97. My favorite beach has no name, is rocky and terrible at low tide, and requires parking illegally, climbing a stone levee, and losing sandals in muck. I swear, it’s worth it.
98. I like anything cherry flavored.
99. My true calling in life is to be a philanthropist.
100. I have a thing for blondes. (well, one in particular)

evo devo

In keeping with the post title, I'm currently reading this, and it is very, very good. This is what good science writing is all about - taking a topic that is intrisically boring, and adding clarity and passion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The recent developments have been indeed been drastic.

I'm overwhelmed at (many) times. But this gritty little godforsaken city hasn't bested me yet.

My best friend recently moved close by. We walked on the cobblestones and I told her, now you live only ten minutes from all this. This view will bring you contentment. This walk will do you good. Only afterward did I realize I was speaking for myself.

My expensive, stressful trip is over. Now I can look forward to a long, hot summer.

At least the location's good.

ps - I never want to be a (long distance) bridesmaid again.

Things about me

Things about me.

Coming soon.