Blue Morning

I love how New York City is cast in shades of navy in the early morning when I wake up and walk to the gym. I always imagine the city as a gritty steel color in my mind, but when it's 6 AM and the lights are still winking, it's something altogether a little lighter and fresh.

How was your weekend? I went upstate to the Hudson Valley, which manages to be pretty even in the dead of winter (if you consider 50 degrees to count as winter). I don't mean Poughkeepsie so much as the woods and hills and creeks around it. I figured everyone would be confused if I used the modifier "pretty" for Poughkeepsie. I've been reading The Marriage Plot lately. Has anyone else started reading it? I'm halfway through, but the references and obscure quotes make me feel so unread (and I was an English major) that I can't decide how I feel about it. There's also the part where I'm obsessed with an entirely different genre and set of writers (dirty realism from the 80s; Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Richard Ford, Flannery O'Connor). Are you thinking of reading it? I know it received a lot of hype.

[photo cred here and there]

Slow Moments

When the wind starts to bite, don't you just want to curl up with a cup of spiced tomato soup (above) and a good book? At a SpaRitual event I attended last week, Carl Honoré of the book In Praise of Slowness spoke about our rapid-fire culture (What? Really? Wait, what are we talking about again?) and the inaccurate conception of slowness as a lack of productivity. I think I understand. I walk so fast on my way to work that I once steamrolled right over a baby. And, if you're a member of the three-person group that spans the entire sidewalk (an approximation that takes obesity rates into consideration), I will stomp around you before turning around to shoot you my dirtiest look.

It can't be healthy.

So.

I take this to mean that we should sit and do nothing this weekend.

Enjoy!

So It Goes

I've been so heinous about posting lately, but I have this recent and very uncomfortable addiction to applying to any job for which I'm vaguely qualified. In the words of Vonnegut, so it goes. Sorry about any and all unanswered emails and messages.  I'll be back on the map soon, I promise!


[photo cred, clockwise from left, to 1, 3, and 4 via That Kind of Woman, 2]

April Showers

April has kicked off on the dreary side, but I'm so excited to wear my navy Hunter rainboots and splash around in puddles. I had a weekend full of late-night dancing, catching up with good friends, and reading Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories (Interpreter of Maladies, to be specific, which won the Pulitzer Prize — absolutely beautiful). What are your plans for this week? I'm going to read for class, then read for pleasure, and finally wander out to the edge Lake Michigan when the weather brightens up. Happy Monday!

[photo cred to 1, 2 via Everly True, 3 via Patterson Maker]

Small Comforts

I usually prefer to spill my guts in my Xanga cool Moleskin journal, but man, this weekend really had its way with me — I broke up with my boyfriend of over a year, had a complete job-hunting meltdown, and spent my Saturday night with a vacuum, a bottle of... Windex (okay, even I'm surprised that I didn't type "wine"), and a Swiffer in hand. I like to take emotional messes very literally, so cleaning is my obvious coping mechanism of choice. This is about the time where I dive into a book and don't surface for a few days (I'm an English lit major, after all); there's only so much that hot tea and fresh flowers can do, although this video cheered me up immensely.

I've just begun rereading Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan: A Novel, but other than that, I don't have a ton of books with me on campus that aren't academic. I do, though, have a gift card to Amazon, and I'm more than ready to wield it. I like essays (like those in When You Are Engulfed in Flames)(or really, anything by David Sedaris) and pretending that I'm French (...I own Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl — and may have read it to shreds). Do you have any recommendations? What are your favorites?


[photo cred to JKLDesign and Pinterest]

Weekend Read

I love to read. I love to cook. I love to eat. Naturally, I'm a sucker for reading about cooking and eating. I was first drawn to Eat, Memory because Ann Patchett (one of my favorite authors) contributed to this essay anthology. Secondly, I appreciated that the editor, NYT food editor Amanda Hesser, required that the subject matter have no sort of frou-frou sentimentality regarding the stories and recipes. Not that sentimentality is always frou-frou or a bad thing -- I could wax poetic for hours about my grandmother's chicken cutlets. I do enjoy, though, how each of the contributors take what could be a mundane memory and inject life into it. Plus, the wide variety of cuisines and locations allows the reader to hop from Paris to China to Queens, NY within an hour. The best part? Even you don't buy this for the recipes featured alongside each piece, you still get one of the most hysterical George Saunders essays ever written.