More Manimals

Mr. D. D. D. : Hamster. Solitary, burrowing, nocturnal animal, with short tail, soft, thick fur, and large external cheek pouches used for holding food. Non-monogomous. Kinda cute. Entertaining for about 10 minutes. Works harder, not smarter.

Also likes to play in cedar chips.

Mr. C___ : Owl. A nocturnal bird of prey, with eyes directed forward and surrounded by disks of radiating feathers. This peculiarity lends it an appearance of studious intelligence. Its eyes are especially adapted to see in partial darkness, and it spends the day sleeping in caves, hollow trees, in the library, and other secluded places.


Owls feed on hamsters.

Mean Girls and Cocktail Party Questions

I've been thinking a lot lately about:
A) Spenser
B) Rabelais
C) the anecdotal structure of travel narrative
D) If you were an animal, what kind of animal you would be?

Answer: D.

Yes, if you come across me at a party, dinner, club, or bar, I will invariably ask you this question or it's counter-part, if a movie star were playing you in a movie, who would it be? Of course, it's also fun when you assign animals to OTHER people without their knowledge, and you can be meaner, too. Huh, Rachel McAdams, what?

  

And so, on to my first pairing, helpfully anonymized by 19th century novelistic conceit:

Mr. R___ : Walrus. Styles himself the big gay teddy bear, when in fact - though he looks cuddly - he has sharp tusks and is very territorial. Entices unsuspecting oysters out to play on the beach, lulls them into security by talking "Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--/Of cabbages--and kings--." And then he eats them!



Next,

Ms. M___ (by her own devising) : Gazelle. (They proink.) A lithe-limbed, cloven-hoofed creature with a short attention span, examining bits of brush and dirt piles with great interest for hours at a time, and then, unexplainedly, blithely hopping off. (Proinking.) By and large a timid creature, though graceful. With an aversion to birds, I hear.



Yours Truly : A tough call. In college we decided I was a mink, the prettier version of the crafty weasel. SOMEONE, however, thinks I am now better categorized as cattus domesticus...

Some pictures from Vagantes...

Well, at the request of my Fan, here are some pictures from the night we all went out and got drunk.


The medievalists at Berkeley are obviously the best looking in the world. Matt, Jennifer (my prof!), Marisa, Jamie, and me.


And then all of us with Chris. (I think of him as the Will to my Grace. Er - but that doesn't make Matt Leo. So don't push it.)

I hate Spenser

Oh God, please make the song of Spenser cease
(Quoth she) a student deserves not such pain,
For even now my headache does increase
For thinking of the pages that remain.
No tortures such as these deserved my brain,
Already tired amidst the booky pile
Assayed to finish for exams, in vain!
Oh Lord! please do release me from this trial!
And let me look upon The Simpsons for a while!

I've officially finished an item!

I'm sure you all are breathless to know, that I've officially finished an "item" off my exams list.

Oh my poor, poor blog... your carefree summer musings have given way to the autumnal frost of scholarship... the drafts of academia are already seeping through the cracks...

It's Over, yay!

It's over it's over it's over! Yay Yay Yay!!

www.vagantes.org

now I get my life back! now I get my life back! now I get my li-
oh. except I have to start reading for exams again. drat.

what fun

Really, nothing new has happened. I'm sitting in Yali's coffee shop, and I should be reading. But I'm updating my blog. But with what new information? (Very meta.)

my books hate me.

chaucer chaucer chaucer

Here's fun - let's read hundreds and hundreds of pages of middle english!

Pour me a drink, little man 

Would this be weird? This would be weird.

I was posting an ad on craigslist to sell my bass guitar (the end of a beautiful, short lived era...) when I happened across this. Normally I skip over these things, but ...

INTELLIGENT EGG DONOR NEEDED - $10K+ for right match

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Loving San Francisco area couple seeks your help in having a child. If you academically gifted (SAT above 1200 - Verifiable SAT scores required), involved with regular extra curricular activities, are 21-29, naturally blond, blue/green eyes, 5’10” or less, small/medium build, healthy family medical history, with Irish, English or Scandinavian ancestry, and would like to help this couple, please call
Jacquelyne XXX Nurse Attorney, (XXX) XXX-XXXX. $10k plus expenses for the donor
who is a good fit!

It would be totally weird to finance a wedding by selling one's eggs. (Right? Right?!?) But how uncanny the description! The ads in the Berkeley rag are always looking for Asians!

Now a surrogate mother can get $25-30K - that's where the real money is.

Asian Bling

My hundreds of rabid readers have all asked me - what is Asian bling? Well, readers, it means that Matt's friend Jing offered to let me wear her wedding dress, which she designed herself and had made in Thailand out of the highest quality Thai silk, and had hand-beaded by the smallest of little brown fingers...


Indeed.

It's lovely, and it would have saved me, but it's not really my style... and I think my parents might object to the one-shoulder look. In a church. Just maybe.

PS Notice I'm standing next to a column.


 

exams

honestly, how's a girl supposed to plan a wedding when she is required by her program to read a hundred books by May? I mean, really.

My study buddy, Jamie, has apparently already started having panic attacks. Um, was I supposed to be reading over the break? I'm sorry, I was trying on crazy Asian-bling wedding dresses and finding Italian photographers. Should I have written that paper for my incomplete? I'm sorry, I was looking at stationery at the Crane store and, incidentally, playing Burnout Revenge on Matt's friend's Xbox. As Matt and the game can attest, I acheived a "Maniac" rating and my best scores come from "Traffic Attack," in which one attempts to use one's racecar as a battering ram against the regular "innocent" traffic flow in any number of CGI-rendered global cities.

More points if you can get them to crash into that oncoming semi.

What's that you say? The wedding is more than a year away, and exams are scheduled-ish for May? Pish posh. Details.

a teaser...

Where is this church?

 
 

Merry Christmas!

I'm in NY! This after a stint in Boston, again. I'm at the new york public library at an internet terminal. NY library is displaying its medieval mss right now. Is it a bad sign that I found it dull??

still on about the dresses

talking now to Anna -- check the comments, everyone -- so yes, I had been thinking pink would be fun (since I *like* pink) but that may not pan out.

And about the bodice bit - yes, seeing the pink dress standing up leads me to believe something a bit more, ah, slimming, might be called for. So, this caught my eye early in the running. It is supposedly a Melissa Sweet dress called Pearl, as spotted in the Fall 2005 Martha Stewart Weddings ("In Full Bloom" article). Catch - can't find it on the Melissa Sweet website, therefore don't know if its still around. And also tres expensive pour moi.


pretty! 

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I'm in Maine! Last night we went sledding.

Goat Couture II

OK I saved you the trouble and got a screen capture thing.

Yikes!

Goat Couture

I only wish I could get this picture, but it's in a flash video, so I can't. But, thanks to the sleuthing skills of my soon-to-be mother-in-law, Connie, I have come across a picture of the Drew Dress on a model who is standing up! Yes, with only the tiny bit of information contained on this blog, Connie gets us here:

http://www.christianlacroix.com/english/archives/pe05/cdsom.htm

You then must click on "Haute Couture" and then "Collection Haute Couture 2005" and then wait for the video to load and THEN you might have to hit "play" and then keep hitting "suivante" until you get to number 43.

Unfortunately, the dress looks hideous.

So... we're back to the proverbial drawing board. I think I'm going to sketch out what I *thought* the dress looked like based on the Drew picture, and work from there.

PS I'm in Boston!

A Disney World Wedding

Some of you may have heard that Matt and I attended a wedding at Disney World recently... well, it's true. And in fact, it was truly disney magical-riffic. So magical-riffic, in fact, that Matt wants me to order the Disney Wedding Guide just so we can explore the magical-riffic-ness a little more. I told him *he* could order it.

But there was one element of the wedding which I want to share with you today (the pictures of me with Mickey at the reception will come later, when Matt emails them to me). That is -- the Cinderella Princess Coach.

o lusty princess!
(this isn't Matt's friend; I just got it off the internet)

No kidding - you, YOU TOO can arrive at your ceremony in a Cinderella Pumpkin coach, pulled by 6 white Welsh ponies, one driver and 2 footmen in full regalia. You too can achieve the dream of millions of pre-adolescent girls and gay men all over the US and for one moment be a princess in the most magical place on earth!

Tickets for two to Orlando: $700

Cinderella Coach: $2,500

Being Princess for a day at the most Magical Place on Earth (TM): Friggin' expensive!!!

 

The Drew Barrymore Dress

OK Everyone... it's finally happened.

I've updated my blog. AND - I'll be posting wedding things here. I would appreciate everyone's feedback!

Soooooo... I love this dress. Love Love Love.

love.

The backstory - this dress appeared in the April 2005 Vogue with Drew Barrymore on the cover, featured in a "Beauty and the Beast" spread. So I, loving fairy tale dresses and also Drew Barrymore, bought it. And kept it. And thought, one day, just maybe one day, I might need a fluffy pink princess dress.

Well and now I'm engaged. :)

The sitch - I ran this picture by my professor-slash-dressmaker. She said A) that it was very easy to make - just a lot of piece work and finishing, but basically big rectangles, and that B) I would have to use very high quality fabric (silk organza with a satin core) in just the right colors, or else it would go from gorgeous to gaudy.

The problem - She estimated a cost of $2,000. (one for the fabric and the other for the dressmaker.)

Heart Broken. Thoughts?

AFFIANCED!!!

Saturday, in a fit of passion no doubt induced by the known aphrodisiacal qualities of the chef's tasting menu at a restaurant called Jardiniere, Mr. Matthew Sargent - longtime boyfriend and all around good guy - took a knee at my side and pulled out a three-stone diamond and platinum ring, which I allowed him to place on my finger. Blinded by the brilliance of what can only be described as "quite arock!", I was unable to finish my maple cream tart and Hungarian Tokay. I will no doubt be dazzled for weeks.

My bling!

 

What I ate for dinner

Two recent events have convinced me that there are big bucks to be had in chronicling my dinner habits on my blog. The first is Tucker Shaw's Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth, in which he documents every bite to pass his lips for 2004. A book deal from that! The second is the realization on Saturday, after saving a month's worth of receipts, that Matt and I spend the GNP of a small, developping country (or maybe Rhode Island) on - wait for it - eating out. I mean, we spend some poor graduate student's entire stipend at our local eateries. Now, I heart Cesar (and E&O, and A Cote...), but at some point we've got to go to the Berkeley Bowl and buy our own goddam jamon serrano - where half a pound costs THE SAME as the 3 dressed-up slices at Cesar.

Oh Cesar, when will you be affordable for graduate students?

So. On Saturday I decided to made Seared Ahi Tuna on a bed of sliced potatoes with a blackberry-cabernet sauce. But guess what? Ahi tuna is $22.90/lb! Dammit - shouldn't this be cheaper? Oh well, it was quite good.

On the menu for tonight: Pasta and Pesto with Potatoes and Green Beans (pg. 177 of Marcella's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking). I will keep my public posted!