1123! 1123! 5! Eureka!

Watch this!

what'd YOU get?

Apples! Silver ones that hold sugar and cream!

So cute!!

and an apron, and nigella lawson cookbooks, and and and and a necklace and an LSAT book.

Post-Christmas

Ah, the glories of going home for the holidays... mom and dad, this is what happens when I come home for christmas. except you're at work.

and speaking of mom - she is doing much better, as I understand, and has, indeed, begun to lose handfuls of hair. My Christmas gift to her, fabulous hats from Headcovers.com are well timed.

I love the princess...

Princesses have made the New York Times magazine this week. Oh, how I wish I were 10 in this day and age! You know I always played princess... though I didn't need disney to tell me what sort of princess to be. I had my own princess names - Sapphire was one - and I'd play "locked in a garret escaping evil parents" and run around the neighborhood with my handmaid/guardian (Ambre). What's wrong with that? :)

oh the smell of saltmarsh in the morning...

Well here we are in Maine, in our little apt. with matt's parents and sister and a view of the salt marsh. ahhh...



Merry Christmas!

just an update

so mom is doing well, according to dad - walking around, occasionally without oxygen, feeding the birds, watching movies. so that's fun :)

Matt and I are planning christmas dinner, to be made when we go with matt's family up to maine (brrr!!) again this year. And I spent an inordinate amount of time tonight - with no small amount of injury to my person - trying out a new recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto which I HIGHLY recommend! Tasty!

mom update

well, they ran the blood test early (just for my mom, I guess!!) and it is, in fact, Wegener's Granulomatosis. But Mom should be going home today - yay! They started treatment on Saturday, which means mom had a chemotherapy treatment that is a slightly lower dosage than for cancer patients. (Cytoxan works on a lot of different diseases, turns out.) Downside - yes, mom will apparently lose her hair. So says the doctor.

Food and Wine Matcher

Thank you Nat Decants, for having an amazing wine site with the coolest thing ever - a Wine and Food Matcher. I will spend hours on this...

Christmas Dinner thoughts are brewing... game birds with sangiovese? Mille feuilles with sparkling Italian Asti Spumante?

Or more eclectic: what wine DOES pair with haggis?? (Answer: New World Cabernet Sauvignon, of course!) Sushi? How about a nice champagne blanc des blancs? Marshmellow sweet-potatoes (listed improbably under "vegetables")? Viogner.

your mom... no wait, my mom

I always knew my mom was one in a million... but she's also 1 in 30,000... 1 in 30,000 people to be diagnosed with a disease which is known to most doctors as the answer to trick questions on their medical school exams (no kidding!): Wegener's Granulomatosis.

She's been hospitalized since Tuesday and will stay there until confirmatory blood tests are run on Monday (apparently the blood test is so rare/complex, only one lab in Oklahoma does it, once a week).

I talked to her yesterday and knew she was feeling better when she started listing the types of flowers in the arrangement I sent her. (imagine: [labored breathing] "Your flowers are beautiful honey ..." "I'm glad you like them, mom, are you feeling better?" "... lillies ... irises ... [labored breathing] ... delphinium ... canterbury bells ... [labored breathing] ... some sunflowers ... and ... and some red things I can't see because ..." "because it's on the shelf?" "yeah, I can't see it. Oh and a pink rose.") (Those of you who know, know that in her emails my mom only tells me about her garden and what birds she saw that week.)

Anyway, she said she doesn't mind being at the hospital because people bring her food, she doesn't have to do dishes, and she gets to watch cartoons all day. And more people have come by to talk with her in the past two days than she's seen in the whole month.

whoa... too much free time theater

on the suggestion of Matt's dad Peter I took a look at the Althouse blog, blog of Ann Althouse, law professor and general commentator on politics, law, and the pretty shadows made by the holly branches in her office. Her articles - fine, interesting. But don't get mired in the comment threads!!!! I have wasted an entire day going through them... whoa. (And some of them are CRRR-AZY!)

Oh Christmas List, oh Christmas List, how lovely are your contents...

just in case some of you occasional readers (i.e. my parents, brother) needed some guidance, for your convenience:

- pink ipod nano
- alphonse mucha art nouveau book
- annie leibovitz photography book
- j crew gift certificate (or light sweaters in wool or cashmere)
- Emily Post's Etiquette (17th edition)
- LSAT study book
- cute fun books about etiquette, style, or event planning
- Nigella Lawson cookbooks
- things ingestible and comestible

SHAME ON NEW LINE CINEMA

TheOneRing.net, a fan site devoted to Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings, published a letter today in which Peter and Fran disclose that they will not be directing The Hobbit. This is due to the fact that New Line refuses to settle a dispute about Peter's still unpaid salary for the Fellowship of the Ring. WaPo story here.

Backbenchers in white wigs are standing up and yelling SHAAAAAME!

total wedding madness

can't... sleep... can't focus on school... must think about cakes with buttercream (or royal? or fondant?) in shapes and flavors - flowers (diy? splurge? pink? lilac?) - maps - must make a map and must find more ... more hotels! and put it on the wedding website! wait, must update this too! and when will we have time for pictures?? between? during? before? wha... six and a half more months of this?!?

oh, poor, poor Matt.

:)

we really ARE getting married...

just put the save the date cards in the mail!

totally creepy stalker ecard

Well, if you care about someone enough to bother sending them a halloween card, why don't you send them a creepy stalker card - one that's realistic enough to seem totally threatening and psycho.

Not taking credit for finding it - saw it first on Wonkette, who linked to this blog.

Coming Home to Georgetown... remembering food

Georgetown's homecoming is about two weeks away... As a student there, coming from Oklahoma, I considered McDonald's cheeseburgers a treat (the closest one is so far away!) but I did manage to have several culinary experiences... I remember:

- dessert-only trips to Bistro Francais, for their strawberries and raspberries in sabayon...
- california chicken sandwiches on a croissant from Wisey's (seemed so sophisticated on a croissant!) or of course the Chicken Maddness (no peppers for me)
- the first time I ever had crab rangoon, from Hunan Peking. Sitting on my dorm floor being introduced to chinese delivery (they didn't deliver in oklahoma back then!) and lemon chicken
- first eggs benedict, possibly first brunch experience ever at Daily Grill (Martin's Tavern also good!)
- going out to I Ricchi on the medieval studies department tab to wine and dine our internationally recognized guest speaker! I wore my easter dress... we were early, my friend Kristin, a senior at the time, marched up to the bar and asked the bartender what he recommended. I, a junior, was not carded... the bartender told us he'd invented a drink, based on the bellini, called the carnevale... raspberry puree and champagne. mmm... That night was also the only time I've ever seen someone order from the "special" wine list (not the department! one of the guests treated)
- on a diet which consisted mostly of individual frozen pizzas, kraft mac n' cheese, and salad... learning to cook on my own. My first recipe - spaghetti aio e olio.
- being taken to 1789 by a then-boyfriend and ordering (then my favorite food) caesar salad... and being served whole romaine leaves. (Do I cut them with my knife?? do I try and fold them up so I can shove the whole thing in my mouth?? I didn't think you were supposed to cut your salad...!)
- crab and artichoke dip at the Tombs. !!
- being taken to Cafe Milano by my thesis advsior with friends and other profs to celebrate graduation/thesis end. It was the day Michael Camille died. I was introduced to carpaccio - they insisted I try it. thinly sliced raw beef, arugula, parmesean, lemon. It is now, still, my favorite food.
- two filet mignons! with sauce at Nathans
- my first grape-leaves wrapped whatnot at Bistro Med, trying to impress first date Matt with my culinary adventurousness... didn't work. Ew. Chewing slower and slower... swallow... erugh. Still don't like olive tapenade, either. (Good opportunity for Matt to promise to take me out somewhere else next time!)
- Cheese sampling at Dean and Deluca for my dad's birthday present
- Chai from Uncommon grounds - late nights with Kristin in the leavey center
- snooty sandwiches and a glass of white wine for outdoor lunch at Peacock Cafe
- my first coffee.

wow... facebook.

ok so I was following up on the Reggie story when someone said that a comment had been made on the "Reggie" group on Facebook... so I caved and started a Facebook account... and I have to admit... it's WAAAAY better than friendster! Wow!

Facebook me!

Reggie loses his job at the Gregoriana

Reginald Foster, Latinist extraordinaire, was unceremoniously dumped from the Jesuit Gregoriana University because of exacerbated relations between himself and the bureaucracy (Reggie's general distaste for hierarchies, plus the fact that he would let students sit in on his classes without paying tuition). See the story here and here. [Note: these links take you to an ultra-conservative Catholic blog which is otherwise kind of obnoxious.] Reggie has taken this opportunity to announce the creation of his own Latin Academy in Rome, location TBA!

I have TWO friends! (at least!)

Beth, Me, and Anna on Wollaston Beach (just down the street from my house)


and inside the house!


And the angora bunny, as promised. (on columbus day we went to the Topsfield Fair, which was really weird, but we got cider doughnuts and saw a bunny. Lots of them, actually. And goats and bees and a pig race, too. Then we went to Gloucester MA and drove around.)

Well, that's pretty much up to speed (or up to meth, whatever). This past weekend we went to Matt's Homecoming up at Dartmouth, which was beautiful - all the fall leaves and Hanover is such a cute town! And Matt enjoyed getting tossed around by his Jiujitsu friends, too. :)

Dissertation Research is Hard!

Especially when the Red Sox lose!


Plymouth Rock - booooo.


Yep, that's it. That's the rock. It was designated so in the 19th century, so it has to be the right one.


So then we decided to go up to Maine, because lobsters are brain food. They help dissertations! Let's go get one!


Matt caught me a crab! Real live green crab! (No, not a lobster - but close!)


Lobster is food for brains!


They make you smart!

Albany - I have a friend!

Bethie! Iiiiiiiiit's been so long since last we met, lie down forever lie down! (OK, that's the georgetown song, not a strange solicitation...)


This *looks* like a college, but it's actually the Emma Willard School, where Matt's cousin went to high school. Damn.

The driving continued through Toronto and Niagara Falls

Oh Centre, how I've missed thee!


And then the falls, where of course there were rainbows, and lots of water, and ticky-tacky tourist things.


All of these are in one building next to the falls... get your teeth cleaned, then hypnotize your lover and convince them to marry you. One stop shopping!

Pictures!!!! Of Everything!!

So these go all the way back to Chicago during the road trip, when we visited Sohkeing. I vowed to stop working on my dissertation right then and there, having had the opportunity to try on Sohkeing's robes. Since that's all I've ever wanted to do - wear the velvet beret - I have no reason to continue my research on Gerald of Wales.


Here is the venerable Sohkeing - that IS brilliance at work.


Matt and Sohkeing outside her lovely apartment building (near Northwestern, where she's doing her postdoc).

matt *almost* got his camera cord...

So, I have over 150 pictures to share with you from road-trip chicago on (including me eating my first maine lobster, physical evidence that I have friends, and a real live angora bunny). Matt left his camera cord at his sister's - and then she moved - but rumor has it that she managed to find it while unpacking. The spare cord matt ordered from amazon electronics came all the way from Hong Kong - and it didn't work.

Last week we went and saw SPAMALOT! it was very good. Though if you know the movie too well (cough, cough) it can be hard to stop criticizing the actors' delivery of movie lines. They've obviously been told to "own" the part, so they do it differently, which can be not as funny...

sad news from last week

Nicholas Howe, professor of Anglo-Saxon at Berkeley, died last Thursday morning from complications with cancer. He was a great supporter of all graduate students.

It's hard to imagine that he's not on the other end of his email.

left sidewalk?

was it the house burglar alarm, announcing a breach from the "left sidewalk" over an intercom we don't know about, or a local college kid (those eastern nazarenes!) with a bull horn on the street, or some emergency vehicle? Well, it woke me up from my nap. I guess we'll never know...

But while I'm up, allow me to proceed with this update. Ironically, I began these posts as a way to keep in touch, but now they're actually a way for my family and friends to TOTALLY AVOID CONTACTING ME and still find out what I'm doing. Gee, thanks guys. You can CALL. :P

(No, no, it's ok! sniff!)

Hm, I think I'm a little cranky from being disturbed from my nap. :) Aaaanyway... In answer to everyone's bated breath YES, I finally did get a Harvard ID (one more to add to the collection!) and now I have supreme access to their materials. (mwahahaha... except that I just had to ILL a book from Berkeley. How ironic.) It took 3 hours of concerted door-knocking (student ID office, then registrar, then student billing, then student ID office, then registrar again, then student ID office one last time). Wow did they HATE me by the time I was done! But props to harvard for having really high quality ID camera setup - backlighting, screens, etc.

I sat in on a couple Harvard classes - wow was that a lesson ... called "Reasons I *heart* Berkeley!" I'm pretty sure some of the students here have cultivated affected vaguely british accents. They must practice at home. Really, though, there's nothing to make you appreciate Berk-town like leaving it for a while. I miss: cheap lunch near campus, being given the benefit of the doubt (no, it's not a stupid question, it's a really damn good question which you guys just haven't thought of yet!), and spacious library stacks with tables in them which are well-lit and, perhaps most importantly, all catalogued according to a single system in alpha-numeric order. Ironic that the organizing principle of the Widener library syatem, arguably the best library in the world, is, to use a favorite phrase of Matt's, totally retarded. You really have to be here to appreciate it.

Actually, I'm having a great time though. Because I get to smile and say, "actually, I'm from UC Berkeley" and hear responses like "Oh, I went to berkeley undergrad. Sometimes I wish I were still there." And "Oh. Berkeley rejected me." And you DO feel uber-collegiate walking through Harvard yard in the fall with a huge stack of books. And Matt and I are just now meeting some very, very cool people. So it's working out.

And we're going to see SPAMALOT next week!!!!!!! Spam spam spam spam...

Hello from Harvard!

At least, that's what I *would* say if Harvard had managed to assign me an ID number so that I could get an ID and have access to their libraries and computer system. But as of right now, that is sadly lacking... Considering that the registration period is already over and classes begin Monday, I'd say that, well, it's kind of disappointing.

So instead, Matt and I have amused ourselves by going to a Red Sox game, scouring Filene's Basement, and taking a road trip to Plymouth and then to Sandwich, just barely on Cape Cod. (Yes, we saw the magnificently disappointing Plymouth Rock.) And I bought tickets to Spamalot, which we'll go see on Oct. 4. So it hasn't been a complete waste of time. Just in terms of dissertation work. :)

Just to get us up to speed...

We're off the road - after chicago we drove through Michigan - stopped in Grand Rapids to see Ambre, yay! and then spent the night with Christine R. in Ann Arbor, where she's about to start law school! Then we went up to Toronto for a nostalgic visit... everything has changed! The 20$ bill is different, my favorite bagel place has become a "fresh" juice bar and restaurant, my favorite pub no longer sells Scrumpy cider, and my restaurant choice (Bar Mercurio) was closed for the week. Booo! Thank god Futures was still in tact.

From Toronto we crossed back into the US at Niagara Falls (and had a horrible lunch stateside at a place called Red Carriage Inn - ick!) but the falls were pretty, of course! And then we made it to Albany to stay with Matt's uncle and aunt, and we had dinner with BETH who I have not seen in forever! and then we went to Boston - Quincy, actually - where we are now safely ensconsed in our lovely loft, which can be checked out here.

Chicago

Hello from Chicago! Evanston, actually, home of Northwestern University and our friend, Sokheing, who is a postdoc here now. We're leaving today, actually, and I have no pictures, but thought I'd check in. We walked around Chicago without going into any buildings or doing anything in particular - walked down the magnificent mile, through the park, saw the bean, etc. And spent a lot of time on the wireless internet connection.

Through Michigan today, then a stop in Toronto before Matt's uncle's house in Albany...

Minneapolis

We visited Matt's sister Sarah for a few very rejuvenating days, starting with a spinach salad and a Tom Stoppard play at the Guthrie and including a very adorable new kitten, Tybalt.


He becomes very sharp and pointy at night when he wants to play.


Sarah and Tybalt. 

Badlands II

You can see it's just stripes of different sediment layers, eroded into very strange shapes... miles and miles of this... (You can also see impending doom coming from above - a thunderstorm which produced no rain, but plenty of thunder and lightning strikes)


Yipes Stripes!


Impending Doom over Amelia

 

Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands

So initially I had thought that Devil's Tower was Chimmney Rock, of Oregon Trail fame, but it is not...

It's much bigger, and really neat anyway.


Very, very tall.


And then we went to Mount Rushmore, which was sort of on the way - it's very accurately summed up in a picture. To get there, you have to pass through the unbelievably ticky-tacky town of Keystone, which is full of RVs, Olde-Tyme Western recreation dinner theater and photo booths, 101 ways to part a tourist with his money shops, etc.


Then we went to the Badlands, which are truly, truly bad... Very alien.

More Badlands, next post (having some trouble posting pictures) 

Wyoming and South Dakota

Hi All - we're in Chicago now, but (until I get the pictures off Matt's camera, again) here are a few thoughts to tide you over:

- Devil's Tower is not Chimmney Rock
- the Badlands are truly bad
- Mount Rushmore: the national park most accurately summed up in a postcard (Matt's phrase, not mine)
- another observation of Matt's - weeny computer nerds on the coast drink inky black coffee, while manly men in boxy states drink weakling tea-colored coffee. Discuss.
- thunderstorms that don't rain (only lightning and thunder) are very scary, especially when the lightning starts prairie fires right off the highway
- South Dakota is long

After this rousing day, we got to Minneapolis and stayed with Matt's sister Sarah, who administered restorative measures of culture and vegetables.

Montana - up to speed (or up to meth, as you prefer)

The long road through Montana... it was long. But it wasn't entirely flat - in fact, it was quite pretty. Oh, and we saw the strangest anti-meth display yet - not the government gross-out posters. We were passing through the small town of Moccasin (population under 50) - it was mostly wrecked shacks and a few trailers. And along the highway is a giant, probably 9 ft. plastic grim reaper modeled mid-gesticulation, presiding over about a dozen white crosses stuck in the ground with the motto "Meth Kills" written menacingly nearby. Very odd.


We slept last night at a Super 8 in Great Falls. Bats sleep at the Super 8, too.


Carzor the Magnificent (covered in bug splat)


And we stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield, because what else are you going to do in southeast Montana? Here is Custer's grave. They've added a little exhibit about the Indians who died there now, too. (The Indian one is much more artful, in fact. And they've marked two of the Indian graves with tombstones, at which other visitors have left offerings of unsmoked cigarettes.)


Ready for a honky-tonk good time through Wyoming and South Dakota!

Tonight we're at a Motel 6 which obviously has high-speed internet access in Gillette, Wyoming. No good food news since we lost sight of the coast, really, though in West Falls just before Glacier we found a specialty food store which carried Sharffenburger chocolate and all our favorite CA cheeses - Red Hawk, Humbolt Fog, and the rest. We got turkey sandwiches there. We stopped at a Montana Brewing Company in Billings today for lunch - I had a wheat beer which has won lots of awards, and it was very good! We've only eaten at a McDonalds twice this trip, and have mostly stayed away from chains (though tonight we opted for the Village Inn instead of "Hong Kong Restaurant"). OK, off to bed!

Glacier II - the Continental Divide

This sheer knife-edge of rock is the continental divide...


Me, sitting precariously on the little stone ledge that separates you from ...


huge, steep, 9,000 ft. drop.


Matt was unfazed. And he was driving!


And we saw a goat. We saw lots of goats, in fact. One of them was walking on top of the stone guard rail while cars were whizzing by! (Until the stupid cars pulled over to gawk, and then it hopped down onto a lower rock.)


And there was an awesome canyon river. I'm sure it's more impressive with snowmelt, but it was low enough for Matt to do this...


The most frequent cause of visitor death at Glacier is drowning.

We popped out of Glacier at St. Mary's on the east side and started our long, long journey through Montana...

Trip Recap - Glacier!

Matt and me at Glacier National Park! (Yes, it was very out of our way... we thought that Chris might have sent us on a wild goose chase... but you'll see it was totally worth it!)


View of the lake and mountain.


The neatest thing about the lake was that the stones of the lake were all different colors of the rainbow (different metal contents or something, I guess) - but they were all polished smooth by the lake and looked like jewels. (my feet)


Matt and his view.


You can see that for being Glacier, there wasn't much snow - of course, we missed the entire east exit of the park being closed off for wildfires by about a week. So there's no snow (the glaciers are, I hear, still there) and all the rivers are very, very low. But you can see how this one usually carves out the rock at high speeds...


Pretty!