a girl can dream...

Library hallway....with an Eames lounge chair.

Delicious.

(Image courtesy of Metropolitan Home)

I dream of...

...bookshelves.

For the library hallway.

Because it's hard to read a year of books when they're hidden away in boxes.


Michael Haverland

Angela Free

Glen Gissler


Chotda's gorgeous room on Flickr.

on the move

We're waist deep in cardboard chic. Heavy boxes and the heady perfume of primer.

Lime green's last stand. One shade down from pure neon - it had - er, has- to go.

How can we have so much and yet so little?

The door is closing.

The first home that felt like home. My sanctuary. Crumbling at the end.

The site of dinner parties that went until 3 am and lazy afternoons curled up on the loveseat with a book and a cup of tea.

The ancient push-button electricals.

The antique key in the side door.

The shockingly bold colors I grew to love. Goldenrod to teal to tomato red (with accents of orange). Bubblegum pink hiding beneath the apple green of my bedroom.

The Mr. Boh peeking out from a nautical porthole.

The fat Elvis, resplendent in his baby blue suit and tinny golden frame, in his place of honor....above the fridge.

Every fading color, every esoteric sticker. I'm sure they'll be gone soon. The crack of the auctioneer's gavel will signal the end of this house as I know it. Soon it will be gutted, stripped down to its bones. The drafty, creaky character I knew drywalled over in Everyday Eggshell. Refinished in the latest designed-for-profit style.

Sundays are Postsecret days. At this point, checking the site is a compulsive habit - it's been around for ages in interweb time. It's always been interesting to see what people will say when their words are no longer attached to them.



I do love this one - but for the art even more so than the message. Does anyone know anything about that beautiful statue?

serenity now

Call him Ishmael.

My crazy roommate departed this morning for Miami.

Why is he crazy?






Because he's SAILING there.

With one intrepid friend, on a sailboat named Serenity.

Godspeed, Gary. I'd prefer to not hear about how you got rescued off the coast of Cuba.

epicure's lament

I believe that blogs can often be best when they have a singularity of purpose. A theme is decided upon and developed, and then you (you plural, the blog reader) always know what you'll be viewing once you click on that particular link.

And I'm (actually not very) sorry to say that this one does not. You get the same non sequiturs that you would if you talked to me in person. That's okay, really, because I'm not writing for an audience. If there's any sort of theme, it's just what I happen to think about while living in Baltimore.

And with some great restaurants in this town and some friends and loved ones with developed palates, well, it's often thoughts on food.

Enter the food blog.

I've found three consistently good Baltimore-specific sources -

• The local Chowhound board - of course.

• http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/reviews/blog/ is the Sun's critic's blog.

• Coconut & Lime is quirky, neat recipes. It's where I first learned of the ultra-summery Baltimore lemon sticks. (Don't those sound so good right about now, in this heat?)

There are others, certainly. But ones that looked promising weren't, and I won't be bothering to link to them. Guess there's an semi-open niche to fill....if I ever decide to keep my thoughts to one subject.

I'd heard of the elusive (for a reason?) 'cat poop coffee', but this LA Times article really brought me up to speed.

Adventurous eaters - a new bar has been set!

Somehow I doubt you can find kopi luwak at BlueHouse.

desire to inspire

A website that lives up to its name.

I am so in love with these beautiful rooms.


Domino Magazine


Angela Free


Elle Decor


Marc Cutler


Graham and Green


Greg Natale


Judith Miller

snap crackle pop

Happy 4th of July, friends. I like this holiday because I love fireworks, and the city of Baltimore puts on a pretty decent show. They're the definition of the word ephemeral, and therefore difficult to capture with my rinky dink digital camera. Shutter lag is not my friend.



The thunderstorm today had us taking shelter inside my roommate's boat. While I wished we had cards to play rummy, we idly talked of whether the fireworks would be rained out. It was good that they weren't.


This one looks a little...synaptic, doesn't it? Maybe I just have work on the brain. (ha)


Right moment (and the right settings on the camera) and the whole harbor looks lit up.



An attempt to document the fireworks finale. My favorite part is the very end, when the sky goes red, and the very last big golden spray of sparks falling from the sky.

June 2007 - the books.

Understanding and Treating Adults with ADHD, B. Doyle
To Cut A Long Story Short, J. Archer
The Maltese Falcon, D. Hammett
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, B. Yagoda *
The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, R. Roberts
The Better of McSweeney's, D. Eggers (ed.) *
An Alchemy of Mind, D. Ackerman *


It's a beautiful day here. I think I'll come back later to talk about this month's selections.

****************************************

July 3rd edit:

Ok, so it's been a beautiful few days. My ideal weather - comfortable, not hot, sandal weather. Maybe with a thin sweater at night.

About the books...

(n.b. - the starred books are the ones I enjoyed most)

The New Yorker book was such a fun read...all about how the magazine got started. I really enjoyed it. I plan on going through the book again, and this time looking up any especially good writing mentioned with the Complete Archives on CD that D. got me.

The McSweeney's compilation was (predictably) very good. I bought several items from their store to help with averting their funding crisis, and it was nice to see that I wasn't the only one.

And Alchemy of Mind...wow. For only two hundred something pages, it's a very dense book...it's prose on neuroscience! Loved it, of course. I carried this book around with me like a talisman.

6 months into my year of books - 45 books read so far.