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.

nueva casa

I think I found my first new home purchase:



It's the 'Before Dawn curtain' by Tord Boontje. It's actually been around for a couple of years, so it's not exactly cutting edge design. But...we will have a living room window that looks right out onto the sidewalk. I'd like to have this as sort of a first line of window defense - both to help keep people from seeing in quite as well if other curtains are open, and to help keep the exterior looking nice by diffusing the look of the 'other side' of whatever curtains we go with. (Does that make any sense?)

Dayna's comment on my cherry blossom pie picture has inspired me to wax poetic about something near and dear to my heart...

the porte-couteau.




Simply translated as 'knife rest', it's an idea whose time has...well, never left, really. An outrageously simple little device that is placed traditionally by the upper right hand quadrant of the plate until it is called into service during your meal.



And then - you rest your knife on it. That's all. But it works beautifully. No soiling the tablecloth. No precarious teetering of knife on edge of plate.



One more functional, yet decorative element. One more thing to love.

As an aside: they're not the easiest things to find. You can look for them under knife/chopstick rests, too. Ebay France seems like a good place to find antique versions, usually of the cut glass or animal-shaped variety.

bowl of cherries

I thought my cherry blossom bowl was a fitting vessel for said cherry DDP.

a most dangerous pie.

First cherry pie of the season.

It's a beautiful thing. And by beautiful, I mean tasty.

Totally worth the traffic-battling drive to Federal Hill.

Phd comics....hits a little close to home.

I sent off my Father's Day package Priority Mail, with plenty of time to get to its destination.

It contained:

One card, carefully selected. It's hard to find ones that have just the right sentiment - respectful without the 'you're the best dad ever!' fawning - because he wasn't. Fifties-style fathering - grades, chores, done.

And two pairs of SmartWool socks (Standard Hiking variety, muted gray color preferred), because I know he likes them. And he doesn't like too many things. Especially if they're things I'm interested in. We don't seem to have too much to talk about. The overlapping bits of our particular Venn diagram contain very little right now, save high quality socks.

This is what I can tell you.

My father has blue-gray eyes. Summers growing up were spent with his grandmother, who had a vegetable garden that was the stuff of legend. He had a pet raven and a pet rat. The rat's name was Squeaky. He was very handsome when he was younger - a Harrison Ford lookalike. He signed up to fight in a war. He bought his parents a house, even though he was a mere construction engineer to everyone else's loftier careers. He won a lot of sharpshooting contests. He sold his motorcycle when my mom got pregnant. He saved every one of the handmade cards I made him as a kid. He has cried only a few times: when his father died, when his brother died, and when our German Shepherds died. When he worked on the Big Dig, he saved all the old bottles from Bostons past, instead of just letting them get crushed beneath the heavy equipment. He enjoys building things. So far there is a complex irrigation system to keep the basement from flooding, a brick-floored sunroom, an inground pool, and now a giant garage to house all of his many toys. He is more outgoing to and forgiving of strangers than his family. We haven't spoken in months.

Who is my father, and how can I not really know much more than this, after 26 years?

Well, there's one more thing...

he likes good socks.

t minus 31 days

Looked at a seemingly endless rainbow of paints (Ben Moore) today.

There is something about those paint chips that conveys limitless possibility.

Left the paint store with samples of: November Rain, Revere Pewter, Driftwood, Kingsport Gray, Dusk to Dawn and Buxton Blue. They may not all work, I realize. It's just a start.

I also fell hard for Iced Marble, Smoke Embers, and surprisingly, Galapagos Turquoise.

My current place is full of bright, warm colors....deep gold, tomato red, apple green. They've served their purpose well - gave a cheerful, lived in air that comforted a distressed Boston transplant. I remember the first time I walked into this house, I instantly knew I wasnted to live here. It felt like home then, and I wish it still did. But extenuating circumstances have interfered with that. Given the situation, it's most definitely time for a change.

I'd like to switch to dark, sophisticated shades. A new palette, for a new phase in my life.

To my Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're loved by me.

-Ogden Nash

Happy Birthday, Mr. D.

I recently took D. to DiPasquales, where he enjoyed a meatball sub that came with a warning...."BE PREPARED."




Italians. More than a little insane about their food.