New obsession...

...champagne grapes. So diminutive and sweet!

Thanks for a truly excellent cheese plate, Peter's Inn.

Found today while record shopping with a new friend.

Perhaps it's from growing up near the beach, and the few too-short perfect Cape Cod summers of freedom I had, but there's a feeling I get at some point each summer ever since...that this is the pinnacle. Love it, feel it, take it all in, for this is as good as it gets.



This summer's moment would be the Beach House show at the Creative Alliance.

From the talented Krisatomic

Dreaming of desks

I think I'm in need of a desk. Yes, I've gone without since moving to Baltimore. There's something inspiring about a proper work space that I am really craving now.

First, a couple of dream desks:

Skram - Wishbone Slab Desk


Anthropologie's Intelligentsia Desk

And I will never forget my true love, my very favorite:

A George Nelson leather home office desk, spotted long ago at Oakenshawe in Hampden. If anything it was better than the pic above - the leather was a stunning greenish grey that contrasted perfectly with the warm wood and metal. I climbed the stairs to the store's second floor and my heart skipped a beat at first glimpse. Alas, it was not meant to be.


And now on to some more practical choices:


West Elm's Sawhorse Worktable
has such nice simple lines.

West Elm's tapered frame desk...in my favorite color.


But check out this Parsons in silver. I haven't seen that before (it's a new color), and I think it looks sharp.

July 2008 - the books.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise - Ruth Reichl

Tales from the Art Crypt: The painters, the museums, the curators, the collectors, the auctions, the art - Richard Feigen

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes - Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories - Tobias Wolff


Too stressed out for much reading this month. Hopefully I'll have better luck in August.

Very cool print from Stern & Faye Letterpress.

"1. Object: Find the still center. 2. Key: Use those circumstances which cause unexpected gaps & pauses to occur, as guide posts & stepping stones. 3. Clue: Although things appear to be fixed & solid, are they? 4. To Win: Enter the still center point. Expand it. 5. Advanced Instructions: Begin now."

Great Ideas

Someone over at Penguin is a genius for making this happen.

I've been a fan of the Great Ideas series for a long time now, having read a few from Volume I, and 2008 brings us Volume III, courtesy of David Pearson Design.

I LOVE these. I love the concept and I love the execution. And, of course, I love the books. They are actually better in person, the embossed covers and the slim shape make them such easy companions.

Aside from Volumes I and II, I see that there's also Great Loves and Great Journeys.





Obviously there's a lot of reading still to be done. Splendid.

We'll get there next year.

Until then...

It's been a while now since my big scary highway accident, and I'm still car free.

Life has certainly changed a lot when you don't have a car. In Baltimore especially, your world gets smaller. Like, neighborhood-sized.

I am very, very fortunate that I live in a walkable neighborhood (thanks Noel) and there's plenty here to keep me occupied. For instance, along with a lot of bars, I can visit a few different coffeeshops, a yoga studio, my gym, a few cool stores (but not too many, perhaps thankfully), plenty of restaurants, a WF, and the nicest looking post office I've seen.

A Baltimore based, travel-loving blogger Prêt à Voyager posted recently on the same subject, and I really liked hearing her positive take on the situation. And knowing others are making do in this city sans car as well.

"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story."

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Love these beautiful bird table number cards from Sesame Letterpress. Just gorgeous. I'd be tempted to be the cruelest guest and try to snatch them from all the tables at the end of the evening!

This perfect slice of happiness is courtesy of my friend Noel's friend BK.

I'd like to buy this man a drink, because in my humble opinion he is living the life. Vespas and photography exhibits. Doesn't get much better than that.

Finally - *finally* - have found a little side table for the guest room. This one was luckily on sale, right when we needed it.

It's the smaller version shown here:



I am already so fond of it. More fond than you'd think for a table (but then you haven't seen me with a DWR catalog...) The wood is reclaimed Douglas fir. It's handmade by a woman in Seattle.

Previous candidates included a glazed garden stool and a tiny table made completely of wire. These were vetoed, and now I'm glad they were.



Quite charming, no?

(edited Sunday to add): In fact, I loved it so much there was a return trip for its twin. Good thing that lovely big sale ran until today.

June 2008 - the books

*Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

*Re-Readings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love, Anne Fadiman, ed.

*Easter Island, Jennifer Vanderbees

*The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst

*The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq

*Schopenhauer's Porcupines, Deborah Luepnitz

Everything was quite good. Cloud Atlas is a new favorite.

grey room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

-Wallace Stevens

science tatoos

linky

I won't be getting one, but I'm impressed by the devotion to the cause(s).

nota bene: set design by George Nelson.

May 2008 - the books.

*Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson

*Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote

*The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall

*Runaway, Alice Munro

*The Cheese Monkeys, Chip Kidd

*Days Between Stations, Steve Erickson

*On the Shortness of Life, Seneca

one way widow

So many eager sinners, only 7 deadly sins; Hell's so God damn crowded that there's no one getting in.

The line goes to the river Styx, but she can get you in.







The end result is still the same -

- you can't go back the way you came.

PDX

Let's just move on now and address near steps off the mortal coil at another time.

For...there's pictures to look at, which is more pleasant for all, I'd think.

I fell in love - with a city (and with some good design). A wish came true for a special treat - I stayed at the Ace Hotel in Portland.


Fantastic location. The city matched the fog I was in, but I felt strangely comfortable there.


The lobby was excellent to hang out in.


The Stumptown coffee was some of the best I've had.


My room was very cool, and I wanted so badly to bring home a wool blanket for a practical souvenir.


The Eames shell chair came with the room, the Pumas and flipflops came with the traveler.

post-paradigm shift

April 2008 - the books

A little belated, and for some pretty conspicuous reasons.

*Sideways, Rex Pickett
*Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
*Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl
*Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl
*Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
*The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

Unsurprisingly at this point, the Murakami was my favorite.

Why I was dancing in the gym last night....

I am seriously considering switching to a tumblr.

The format is a lot more appropriate for the types of information I'd be wanting to share.

Which could lead to me posting more.

Perfect flowchart for the Prince fan in your life...

Via Cate.

taxes for the win

For the first time in my life, I did my taxes by myself.*

*by myself = with Noel's help. But no official accountant was involved, so I think it still counts.

Of course this dubious victory, like all good victories, was achieved at the last possible minute, so I braved Fayette street in all its traffic- laden glory to drop off my two envelopes of wonder at the Baltimore post office that stays open till midnight on tax day.

At least they had pretty stamps.

Possibly the coolest website for a song I've seen:

Arcade Fire's Black Mirror: http://www.rorrimkcalb.com

Toggle around to make your own remix.

Oh hai -



via Blazey via Noel. Exhibit A pls see below.

Anthropologie has some nice dresses right now.

March 2008

The books:

*Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
*Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels

*Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories, Alice Munro
*The Little Virtues, Natalia Ginsburg
*Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino


And the shows:

*MSTRKRFT
*Georgie James
*Raveonettes

The first book I have purchased for myself (other than textbooks) in a long, long time.

I sustained a black eye at the MSTRKRFT show this week.

It was a great show, so no matter. I've worn it like a merit badge. It's actually been pretty amusing - every day's a different color.

Except for this Saturday, when to my chagrin, I had both a baby shower AND a family event to attend.

Now, Baltimore has made me into a very casual girl.

Exhibit A: the new sneaks.

But a colorful shiner is just too tempting a target for future gossip fodder. I know how people work.

So, close to $200 later, I'm the proud owner of more fancy makeup, and a renewed sense of my ability to blend in and snob with the best of them. As the cliche goes, priceless.

Spring is usually my least favorite season to go shopping. All those brights and pastels...shudder. But J.Crew is treating me right!

sneakers shortlist

February 2008 - the books

*Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro - Excellent short stories.

*At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays, Anne Fadiman - From the author of one of my favorites from last year, Ex Libris.

*Seven Types of Ambiguity, Elliot Perlman - Loved this. An Australian import with a changing perspective.

*Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology, Paul Broks. Interesting, but as I read on, I realized I prefer my neuroscience and my philosophy a little less intertwined.

*Bowl of Cherries, Millard Kaufman - Loved this. Smart, funny and completely bizarre.

*Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Jenni Ferrari-Adler - Pretty enjoyable collection of stories and essays on pleasures and pitfalls of eating alone. Murakami's "The Year of Spaghetti" is included.

Murakami?

I'm in the tiniest bit of a quandry.

I just don't know what Haruki Murakami book to read next.

Late last year I read (and loved) Sputnik Sweetheart.

I've now collected:

*Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World
*Kafka on the Shore
*The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles

All three are now sitting in one of my many piles of books, waiting to be chosen. Any fans, please advise.

Stuck in my head...

...and I'm not ashamed to say I'm enjoying it.

Ork!

I dig these maps. You might too. From Ork Posters.

People have always taken me to be a clotheshorse. There's something about my looks and/or personality that must suggest a barely curated armoire/closet/museum documenting a history of tastes and whims.

I'll never forget the time a male friend stopped by my college dorm suite and saw my closet. "But....where are all the clothes?" They're right there! But evidently, I was expected to have more.

It's a deadly combination of both frugality (sigh) and plain old pickiness that keeps my closet from bursting at the seams.

This trait has only gotten worse since moving to Baltimore:

1. I have the sort of job that requires little -to- no dressing up.
2. Not a whole lot of shopping temptation in the city.

So when an architecture-benefit event came up, I was woefully unprepared. It took a stressful, last-ditch drive out of the city to try to find something suitable. A sartorial Hail Mary pass, if you will.

The fashion gods smiled upon me this Groundhog day. For on the marked down rack (joy!) there was a perfect frock for the occasion. A black cowlneck dress, half sweaterdress, half constructed of silk. Calvin Klein had saved the day - er, evening to come.

Sharp, but not too dressy. A little interesting. And just what I wanted. Scoring my new dress was the highlight of the weekend. Turned out that the event was forgettable - but I have a great memento, hanging up in my closet.

here we go again.

After a year, do you really think I could stop keeping track?

January 2008 Books:

84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff - so sweet. Really liked this. I think they made it into a movie, too.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark - another to add to my formative-years-in-prep-school pile of books.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsay - read like the TV show it was soon (destined?) to become.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie - a little tale from the Chinese re-education period.
Eating My Words, Mimi Sheraton - memoir from a former NYT food critic.
Come to Me, Amy Bloom - short stories. Really liked these.
Flights of Love: Stories, Bernhard Schlink - more short stories.

on the case

Timely: Domino Magazine's gallery on bookshelves.

My three favorites:

A friend tipped me off to the fan-freaking-tastic news that Helvetica: the film is on Google Video in its full-length typographic glory.

A thousand thanks - I know how I'm relaxing this weekend!

P.S. Is it hopelessly nerdy that I really want this mug?

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been observing one of the security guards slowly but surely (and at a faster pace than I had) making his way through that behemoth of a novel, Infinite Jest.

Somehow I find this profoundly heartwarming. Like I'm not alone --there are goofy, read-everything people out there in the world. Some of the security guards bring in little TVs or just the daily newspaper - no, this guy went all out, with a book was only slightly less difficult for me to get through than my old nemesis Gravity's Rainbow.

I'm bringing in my battered copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again for him tomorrow.

FYI

In case you were wondering, it turns out that you do not need to bring your own needlenose pliers to your MRI appointment - shoulder imaging now does not require removal of that ancient navel ring that seemed like such a good idea close to a decade ago.

(So why keep it? The ring > the leftover scar.)

kopi luwak

One more foodie adventure crossed off the list...

I mentioned it before - kopi luwak, the world's most expensive coffee. And this Sunday, I had the opportunity (courtesy of Zeke's) to try it. An inner gauntlet was thrown - I couldn't resist.

The Baltimore Sun covered the event and their article is here. I spoke with the Sun reporter but declined to give details, as I somehow prefer to not have my name associated with cat poop coffee forevermore. But the "smooth" and "earthy" descriptions were mine.

december 2007 - finale of the year of books

A partial illustration of the books I read this year. (Not all are included.) Several books have been given away to friends. (Both my copies of A Suitable Boy, Suite Francaise, Stiff, Never Let Me Go, etc) Many others, especially from the first half of the year, were simply donated in lieu of my summertime move. I could carry only so many books.

December books:

*Intuition, A. Goodman
*The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, J-D. Bauby
*What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, R. Carver
*The Island of Lost Maps, M. Harvey
*Old School, T. Wolff
*Birds of America, L. Moore
*Offshore, P. Fitzgerald
*Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category, D. Eggers et al (ed.)
*Moon Tiger, P. Lively
*Special Topics in Calamity Physics, M. Pessl
*We Don't Live Here Anymore, A. Dubus
*The History of Love, N. Krauss

I read (approximately - possibly more) 97 books total for this project in 2007.
*58 I classified as fiction
*20 I classified as short story, essay or novella collections
*15 were biographical or autobiographical
*14 were science-related
*6 were set in Baltimore
*6 were Booker prize winners (Offshore, Hotel du Lac, Moon Tiger, Possession, Amsterdam, The Blind Assassin)

This year of reading project was due to my ability, thanks to living in Baltimore, of getting books for free. The only books that I paid for were my Penguin Great Ideas - Darwin book, my textbooks for classes, and the books from McSweeney's. A few others I was lucky enough to receive as gifts, but mostly this is the benefit of my (obviously) favorite nonprofit.

Here's to reading.

Songs of the year

There's been a lot of good music released this year. I don't think I've even gotten through most of it yet. So, instead of a top ten, here's my favorite two songs of 2007.


Prefuse 73 w. School of Seven Bells - The Class of 73 Bells


Battles - Tonto

Runners up: "Someone Great", LCD Soundsystem; ("You Got Yr) Cherry Bomb", Spoon; "Paper Planes", MIA.

I can't wait to read this.

Each year for our lab holiday party, I am politely asked ordered to bring in what has come to be my signature dish -

Low fat chocolate truffles with apricot and cayenne pepper.

The night before, then, is a sticky melty mess of various baking chocolates, apricot goo and cayenne pepper going up my nose.

But the results are pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

the small stakes

I've seen examples of this artist's work before, here and there. (And always thought, "damn, that is a fine example of a well-executed gig poster.") His posters were always standouts, striking in their simplicity.

It's nice to see them all in one place. That would be here - the small stakes.

the drudgery of the take home final

I have music to keep me going...


And a copy of the Daft Punk Alive album - workouts or neurobio, it's motivating.


And not a half-bad book to work from...


There's even some Futura font in here....


But all I really want...

...is to get another fur hat.



Unfortunately it's on backorder. It feels like my life is on backorder.

I'll be up for air and a return to the real world on Thursday.

Does this article on Buffalo remind you at all of any other cities you know?

November 2007 - the books.

The Satanic Verses, S. Rushdie*
Middlesex, J. Eugenides*
The Emperor's Children, C. Messud*
Amsterdam, I. McEwan
The Great Man, K. Christensen*
Emperor of the Air, E. Canin
On Beauty, Z. Smith*
Sputnik Sweetheart, H. Murakami*
Hotel du Lac, A. Brookner
The Moviegoer, W. Percy
French Lessons, A. Kaplan

Favorites are starred.

This month was my best month for reading yet.