First time for everything...


Snack:

smoked salmon spread

To start:

lobster bisque

Main:

brisket with carrots and potatoes

Sides:

brussels sprouts roasted in balsamic and truffle oil

green beans with almonds

sweet potato mash

farro with parsnips and cherries

Dessert:

apple pear chardonnay pie

cherry pie

ginger cookies

This is a necklace done in collaboration/inspired by Where the Wild Things Are.

(The bird monster was always my favorite.)

Checked in with the April bride. The long JCrew strapless gown in graphite is still her preference. Mine too. Now I just have to buy it at the right moment - aka on sale!

I am really liking some of their dresses/colors lately:


Violet Stone


Black Plum

May 6
You are proud, persevering, conscientious, and sometimes stubborn. You are constantly striving to elevate yourself socially and intellectually. You have a tendency towards pessimism that with increased unhappiness or failure might cause you to become bitter and caustic. You are usually kind and tender.

September:

Books:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
Darkness Visible, William Styron
The Stranger, Albert Camus

Cesar's Way, Cesar Millan
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, PG Wodehouse

Movies:

The Rage in Placid Lake
Melvin Goes to Dinner
The September Issue
Stolen

October:

Movies:

This American Life, Seasons 1 & 2
Where the Wild Things Are
Let the Right One In

August 09

The books:

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (don't do drugs)
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (the month's book club selection)

Men in the Off Hours, Anne Carson

Finished Sept 2nd:

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy



It's better than you think.


And the movies:

(500) Days of Summer
Gigantic
Seraphine

In the Loop
Metropolitan
The Anniversary Party

re: books

I read whatever crosses my path. Since ceasing to just buy books outright and get them either through the library or through my volunteer work, I take a lot more risks with choosing books. It's surprisingly rewarding.

I do like to keep an eye out for other works by authors I already enjoy (cf: the Murakami , Carson, and Oliver in July).

I especially take note of articles that clue me into something worth tracking down - for this month, that includes:

this Believer article on the Codex

and this NYRB article by Zadie Smith that references The Remainder (and Netherland, which I read back in March)

also there was a lovely NYT article on Mary Oliver and Provincetown, not far from where I grew up (and you can hear her reading her poems).

July 2009

Books:

And Now You Can Go, Vendela Vida
Thirst, Mary Oliver
The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami
The Atlas of Experience, Louise van Swaaij
Collected Poems, Elizabeth Bishop
Codex Seraphinianus, Luigi Serafini
The Executor, Michael Kruger
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vendela Vida
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
Minotaur, Benjamin Tammuz
Remainder, Tom McCarthy
The Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick

Movies:

Lolita
Bringing Up Baby
The Money Pit
I've Loved You So Long
The Royal Tenenbaums (my favorite movie)
Rushmore


Surreptitious pictures of some of my favorite Codex illustrations:

june 2009

Books:

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
Averno, Louise Glück
The Secret of Scent, Luca Turin
The Beauty of the Husband, Anne Carson
The Look of Architecture, Witold Rybczynski
Very Good, Jeeves!, P.G. Wodehouse


Movies:

Smart People
Arrested Development (re-watch)
Away We Go
Sweet and Lodown

Another 20x200 print:

Filter Samples
by Jessica Eaton

venezia

Carnevale and Biennale - both are (one day) must-sees.

For the latter, the NYT slide show.

Um, definitely (desperately) want a print of this.

more 20x200

I love watching this site to see what turns up next. Much of it isn't for me but I enjoy the updates anyway!


Yuha Basin
by Michael Lundgren

A favorite from April. (yes I totally meant to blog these earlier)

And one from March:

Snarky - it makes me smile.

One of the great luxuries of my life is taking a bath.

It's been rough going as of late and this indulgence was totally called for.

Only very recently have I had the occasion to be able to draw a bath - the last home I had was shared with so many roommates and consequent houseguests it just never felt right. And places before that....well, I realized close to my birthday that I've lived with strangers for the last ten years of my life - and what a range of places it's been.

Those times didn't stop me from finding bath products I loved...I just never actually got the chance to use them.

I remember years ago splurging on the most wonderfully scented bath items while wistfully shopping at the local Anthropologie. I've kept them, moving them around from place to place....until now (and luckily, they've kept! The scent ("white musk blended with pink rose, muguet and angelica root") is still heady and gorgeous.) They are by La Luz, which if Googled now seems to be totally out of business.

The only vestiges left on the interweb it seems are some candles on Overstock:

I'm sure they'd be great for increasing the ambience, but at this point, I'm just happy about the tub.

The Atlantic's article on happiness and the Harvard Grant Study -
it's an interesting read if you haven't seen it already:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

May 2009 - the books.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Louise Bouregois: The Secret of the Cells, Rainer Crone and Petrus Graf Schaesberg

The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich

The Leaf and the Cloud, Mary Oliver

Also, the Domino book on decorating, but I don't really think that counts. (The magazine issues were far better, anyway - more sourcing)

Mmmm...nothing says summer like neon pink.

Don't laugh...I kind of want this shirt.

This month's book club selection was Alan's War. Above, the artist's amazing technique.

I'm very pleased that I was able to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibit that has been at the Hirshhorn (and of course elsewhere - it's quite the retrospective). Yesterday was its last day.

This was my favorite sculpture:







"Femme Volage (Fickle Woman)"
1951
Painted wood, 72 x 17 1/2 x 13 inches
Guggenheim Museum, New York

So I was reading Pitchfork just now and they have an interview with a DJ called A-Trak. I've heard of him because he's a big fan of Baltimore club.

Going from that, I was totally blown away when he name-dropped Proust in the interview:

Last Great Book I Read

Marcel Proust: "Un Amour de Swann" [Pt. 3 of Du côté de chez Swann, or Swann's Way]

My brother is obsessed with Proust, and he gave me-- I guess the work of Proust, you can buy it split up into smaller books, if you don't want to carry around a huge brick [laughs]. So this particular section that I read, "Un Amour de Swann", I was just reading and thinking, wow, this guy has figured out all of humanity, he's figured out what really goes on inside my head, and he's saying stuff that I'm probably even too scared to admit to myself, but he's saying it and I read it and I'm like, holy shit we all really think like this. And then he pushes it even further, and brings out all these strange comparisons that you wouldn't really think of, that are so well-argued, but at the same time, kind of clumsy, because his sentences are really long and really... I guess just the opposite of what, traditionally, writers try to achieve-- a sentence that lasts a whole page, and it should be clumsy and long, but it's just so good and so dead on, you're like, "Jesus, how does he do this stuff?"