Busy Bees

The past couple of weekends have been really busy in a good way.

Two weekends ago, I went up to Red Hook, New York, for Freedom Fest 3 (for which Eric's friend created a website). It was basically a mini-wedding. They rented this huge, awesome house with a giant in-ground pool and 12-person indoor hot tub. There was a big white tent, a Grateful Dead cover band, and of course a lot of booze and food. Eric was in charge of cooking over 50 pounds of pork. He really hit it out of the park! I was thinking people would be drunk and not care about food, but everyone was raving about it. He made three different sauces (vinegar-based, mustard-based, traditional) and it was so good. My only regret (and boy do I regret this) was not eating more. I literally had three bites of his sandwich. ARGH. Despite drinking TWO red bulls and vodka, I passed out a little earlier than I wanted, and my stomach was like, 'aaa' so I ended up bringing saltines up to my bed and eating a couple and then trying to fall back asleep. Eric, on the other hand, was up until almost 5am. How, I do not know why..

Normally, the best part of a party is the late, drunken part, but I think my experience was the opposite. Unlike most of the guests who came up in a party bus (about a 2 hour ride from NYC), we got to stay the whole weekend. The anticipation, have a chill hang out Friday night, lots of quality romantic time with the boyfriend, the hungover breakfast the next morning--that was the best. And there's something about sneaking off with your boyfriend when you're in a crowd that feels very romantic. I met a lot of his old friends and hearing everyone compliment him and really enjoy his company made me really proud and happy to be his girlfriend.

Also--we woke up in the morning to NO POWER and thus NO WATER. It was hilarious (in retrospect). I walked into the kitchen, all disheveled looking, and said--"So, there's no power and no water?" and everyone was like, 'Yup." Pretty funny. I also lost my new J. Crew bikini which pissed me off--I looked EVERYWHERE for it--I mean that house was a mess, we spent hours cleaning it even though most of the party was outside, and still no swimsuit. On the plus side, I took advantage of the J. Crew take an extra 20% off final sale to buy 8 pieces of bathing suits (only one matches, and that one I don't really like, because as Eric says (in the negative) it makes me look naked and it also doesn't have the most flattering cut, and instead of sunshine yellow it's MUSTARD yellow. I'm most excited about this suit that is white with blue polka dots on the bottom and a really pretty navy top on top. So cute! Each suit piece was just $7.99!! Even at $64 for the eight pieces, I got one great suit and a few other ones I will be happy to mix and match in PANAMA. Woo!!!

This weekend I was really proud of myself for being super-social. I really enjoy hanging out with my friends but sometimes I have to force myself to do it. I don't want to say it's like medicine, but here goes--the whole making plans part is the medecine and everything else is awesome. When I get anti-social it's so self-reinforcing. I'll start to feel blah and then not be in the mood to hang out with anyone, even though seeing a friend would be EXACTLY the thing to perk me up. With Eric around, I rarely feel lonely during the weekday evenings, but if it's a weekend with just us and nothing but errands and cooking as activities, I'm more likely to get in a blah mood. I love Eric's cooking but he has WAY more stamina than me.

So Friday:
My yoga teacher didn't show up so I decided to call Anna for a last-minute coffee, and we ended up with tea at d'Espresso. I hadn't seen her for awhile so that was good--she's on my commute home so I'm hoping I can meet up with her more after work

Friday at Midnight: My cousin hosted a Midnight Soul Brunch. It was one of the things where the only person I knew there was my cousin, so the party itself was a lot more effort, but I'm so glad I got to hang out with him in a "friend" setting and not a "family" setting. He and Eric seem to get along pretty well, which I also appreciate! We bought growlers of beer at Whole Foods and and were the toast of the party for it. It works like this: You buy a $5 jug at the store, then bring it to fill up--the beers we chose were $5.99 and $7.99--and one of them was a truly awesome pumpkin ale. I LOVE craft beer. I've always been against getting growlers when it's just me and Eric, but I may change my tune - 64 oz is 2 and 2/3 beers each. That's tipsy, but not WASTED (and I only like to have a couple beers generally--If I get drunk it usually involves wine or spirits). The next party we host I definitely think we'll fill them up, especially with the bikes we have now (though I ended up having to carry them in my front basket, which made it very difficult to streer. Eric tried to bungee cord the growlers in a soft cooler case that he attached to his back bike rack, but it TIPPED over--I screamed--but thankfully did not fall to the ground. We were racing on our bikes to get to Whole Foods before it closed at 11pm, and it made me realize how much I miss getting out and partying like I did when I was single. The city is so ALIVE at midnight--the early birds are going home, everyone else is getting ready to party until 4. I love it!! I am not through with bars, time for me to try to go out more.

On Saturday I went with Rita to Greenpoint Open Studios, which was another really fun experience. We've gone to Bushwick Open Studios the past three years (is that possible, or was it two??), which involves getting a map and then checking out where artists work. They display their work, maybe have some wine and pretzels or whatever for you to munch on. The best part is you actually get to talk to the artists, find out what makes their work tick. Some of this work is SO good--like I would buy it if I were more wealthy and had some cash to spare--and each person's work is that much more interesting when you hear what inspired them or how they created it. LOVE. Rita got way drunk, we biked home (perhaps dangerously), and Eric made some awesome chicken parmesan. To die for. He also took a cheesecake out of the oven which we ate the next day. This cheesecake is perfect. No cracks. Firm on the outside and fluffy in the middle. Huge (It used FIVE blocks of cream cheese). A little sour cream-y and lemon-y. It's perfect. So perfect.

On Sunday, we were planning on biking up to my friend Johanna's place in Morningside Heights in the West 120's (9 miles) then going to a Medieval festival in Fort Tryon Park. I didn't realize that the park is actually in the west 190's--another few miles. I think I biked 17, 18 miles that day?? (We ended up biking back to Johanna's, then taking the subway the rest of the way home since it was getting cold and dark). The Medieval festival was fun, something I wouldn't normally do. I was shocked at the scope of the thing--over 40,000 people were there, apparently, and there were tons of enthusiastic but often amateurish performers, people were in cosume, and of course Eric and I had a turkey leg and fried dough. I saw lots of cool instruments, including a player of a hurdy gurdy (thought you would like to hear that, Laura!). Back at Johanna's apartment, she had just moved in but it looked fantastic. She had painted one wall in each room, and it was such a good look. I went to the Benjamin Moore store at lunch so I plan on doing the painting that I have been putting off forever at my apartment, simply because it's been ambiguous about our lease and we'll have to paint it back when we leave.

That's all folks!

Weekend Update

BIKING
I am really getting into this biking thing! On Sunday Eric & I took a ride around the lower perimeter of Manhattan, up to Chelsea Market (my previous haunting place). There, we stuffed our backpack full of Manhattan Fruit Exchange goodies. I was very excited to get my fix of unpasteurized juice—I bought grape and, to try something new, Spinach Orange. I have always been intrigued/afraid of veggie juices, but this juice was wonderful—sweet from the oranges with a mild, pleasant spinach flavor.

They opened an Anthropologie in Chelsea Market. Of course. Two months after I move away, they open my favorite store ONE BLOCK AWAY. We briefly went in there, and I went to the hardware section and ended up buying a cute discounted hook to hang on the back of a door. I have been buying a lot of those lately. Gotta love hooks.

We went back through Manhattan (I think the total was about 10 miles round trip). My friend Rita had biked over from Brooklyn, but instead of riding more we went up to the apartment and had some dinner. The heirloom tomato we bought from Chelsea Market sadly turned out to be bust, but we grilled it and had a warm caprese salad, which was still enjoyable, especially with warm mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella pretty much makes everything better. We also finished the ravioli I bought in Little Italy. I had also made Molasses cookies the other day, which were wonderful, and still had 2/3 of the batter left in the fridge. I put them in the oven, but because our usual kitchen timer was outside, we just thought we would remember…but we didn’t. I remembered over FORTY minutes later. Miraculously, the cookies were fine. They’re crisp, and I prefer chewy, but they didn’t burn or anything. I suspect it’s because they were made with (trans fat-free) shortening, which probably has a higher burn point than butter. Crazy.

THE WIRE
Later that night, Eric & I watched the last episode of “The Wire.” I am very sad to finish this series. It’s just so, so, so incredibly good and thoughtful and deep and intense. Eric and I had great conversations about this show and I actually feel like I’ve learned things about how police, gangs, politics, public schools, and how unions work. The show has a pretty depressing theme overall, with the idea that institutions hold you back and nothing will ever change and the same cycles repeat themselves over and over again. The last episode brought that all back, setting it up for the cycles to continue and repeating some of the scenes from the first episodes. I can’t wait to go through the blogosphere and read more about the show now that I don’t have to worry about spoilers. I miss you, Omar and McNulty!!

Now that we’re done with “The Wire,” I think we’re going to move on to Damages and Treme. We saw the first episode of Damages, and it was pretty good, with lots of information about high-powered lawyers, and Treme is the next work from The Wire creators. But now that it’s warmer out not sure if we’ll be watching as much of the tube.

...AND THE WORRYWART STRIKES AGAIN
My Mom and Aunt are visiting this weekend. I am very excited but also nervous because I want them to have a perfect visit with all good weather and events and nothing bad happening. But I am trying to be less anxious/people pleaser/perfectionist so instead I have been telling myself to throw all those expectations away and just have an adventure. An adventure!!! I am sick of worrying myself sick…literally.

Today I have some discomfort in the back of my throat and sneezed once and started freaking out. It’s like, calm down Sarah, it will be fine. My worrying is something I want to address. I know I’m being irrational about a lot of my worries, especially when I freak out about my health or think I have some sickness or random disease, but it’s really hard to find a way to stop and get out of that thought cycle. I wish I were a cool, tortured neurotic. Maybe I should work on shifting my anxieties over to brooding, existential things instead of thinking I need a root canal.

So that’s a good example: My dentist did a filling, which turned out to be much deeper than he thought because it was partly a replacement filling and there was more decay than he anticipated. As I left the office, he told me to beware of shooting pains, because there was a small chance the tooth wouldn’t calm down and I would need a root canal. Enter me: beleaguered with tooth pain for two weeks until I went in and he told me everything was fine.

It’s really the power of suggestion. If you focus on an area of your body, you can make yourself experience pain or sensation and your brain can twist that however you want. I guess on the bright side, my mind has the ability to control how I experience my body in a more active way than most people (I suspect). I just need to figure out how to use this power for good (i.e. calming) rather than bad. Or maybe I need to not try to control my body at all, and just acknowledge how my body feels and move on. This makes me feel New Age-y….although speaking of it, I need to do more yoga. Yoga is a lot about experiencing your body and not trying to control it. There are points where you try to do things like breathe away stress and relax your whole body, which can unconsciously be tense. But it’s also about not forcing your body and allowing it to do as it wishes. I need to get back into that. I think it makes me feel better (which in my case, means virtually nothing, because I can make my body feel anything), but at least I get that sense of well-being. So that's it for me worrying about how much I worry, the main worry in my life right now...

Weekend re-cap: cookin' and decoratin'

This past weekend was great. Terrible weather kept us inside except for some hair-drenching trips to the market (E had to force me to go both times), leaving us with time for some home improvement, relaxing, and cooking.

Friday night we made these awesome burgers, seriously some of the best ones I have had in my life. I used to dislike burgers--I would always order a grilled cheese off the kids menu or the chicken mcnuggets at mikey d's--but I've come around. They're far better for you than baked goods, my main vice, so I feel free to indulge now and then. E had me buy a pound and a half of meat, claiming he would make three half-pound burgers, so I bought two hamurger buns and one brioche bun from this new place in Essex Market, Pain D'Avignon. That made the difference. This place is also a restaurant supplier, and the final burger (also thanks to Eric's superb cooking) had a real restaurant taste. But anyway, he ended up making two twelve-ounce burgers, and I ate the whole thing. I felt fine, since I had a small lunch, but three hours later the foods was still sitting in my stomach and I started making some groaning noises. toooo mucccchhh fattttt. I also drank red wine with the burger, which I would have anyway, but I heard there is something in red wine that neutralizes a bad thing released when you digest red meat. So doubly awesome.

Our next big cooking adventures are going to be in bread, so that night we started on a yeasted coffee cake that we had for breakfast the next day. It was a little dry and possibly overcooked, and the cinnamon-pecan crumbles on top kept on falling off, so they probably should have been tucked into the dough, but it was a good start. Yeasted things are also less sweet than chemically leavened cakes, so I look forward to developing a more adult, less sweet palate when it comes to baking. I found this recipe for St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake that we plan to try next, for a more decadent takeb. I also attempted the much-talked-about no-knead bread. I used the recipe in my copy of "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman (also where we got the coffee cake recipe from), and it called for 2 cups of water, when a lot of the other online recipes called for less. This turned out to be a problem when I got to the baking time and the dough was wayyy too wet to shape into a ball. I had to add more flour and let it rise more, and then I had to disrupt the dough once more to try to plop it into a pan (it cooks in a covered cast iron to produce steam similar to steam-injected. I think the latter part disrupted the air bubbles and created the dense loaf that popped out of the oven. It did have an awesome look to it and great crust, so, again, good start. This isn't as easy as making chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday Eric made omelettes (new for him) and we made another Bittman recipe, Chicken with Chickpeas and Lentils. I am so used to eating really rich food with Eric that it tasted kind of healthy and bland. I added some yogurt and mango chutney, however, and that fixed the whole thing. It was yummy. Since we were so healthy and had some processed peanut butter left in the fridge that neither of us will eat plain, we made peanut butter cookies that night. Seriously, so much cooking!

HOME DECORATING!!!
Last week I bought this cute lampshade at KMart to go with the vintage lamp I got in Michigan that it beaded white milk glass. Now we have more lighting in the bedroom, woo! It also matches the bedspread pattern so I am excited about that. I also bought a side-hanging plant bracked that we were able to install, after our failed attempts to drill into our steel beams near the window. I couldn't hang up this cute shadowbox in the bedroom for the same reason (so annoying), but I did hang up the photo calendar Eric made that has a lot of pictures of us in Costa Rica. But, my most exciting DIY project was the handkerchief one!!

My grandma sent me this beautiful handkerchief from the 1940's (she's an antique dealer, so she knows) with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle and four other tourist attractions on the side. I thought it was cute and was going to hang it up with tape where the shadowbox couldn't be hung up, when I had a flash of inspiration.

I've been carrying around this picture frame I found in my old apartment's "take it" section for over two years. It said $39.99 on the back and was from Bed Bath & Beyond, but it has a thick mat and I could never think of anything to go in it. Still, I was happy to have it because I've discovered that framing shit is expensive but makes your walls look really, really good. Also, the saw hanging thing on the back was missing. I bought an additional saw hook from Home Depot a few weeks ago, but still had no picture.

I fitted the handkerchief into the frame and voila! It was a little too big so I did some artful adjusting. It's not perfectly straight and it has a little wave in it so you can tell it's fabric, but I like the overall effect. We hung it above the bed and it looks really, really good, with the black matching the black bed frame. I had planned on getting New York City-themed prints anyway, but this is totally unique and a nice way to remember my Grandma. Plus, you can look at the picture then look out the window and see the Brooklyn Bridge! I LOVE IT!

Last night we watched the Season Finale of Season 4 of The Wire. SO AMAZING. I love this show, but it can be so depressing. Boiled down, the theme of the show is "anytime you try to fix something the system/society will prevent you from making any meaningful change." This season

Dear Crystal Ball...

I had another rather splendorous weekend with the boyfriend. We made tons of food, as per usual, and I made cranberry nut bread. More than the meat and butter concoctions Eric dreams up, these things are the death of me. I am such a sugar addict, and I'm always chasing that sugar high with one more tiny slice of cranberry nut bread. Thankfully I have Eric who I'll implore to regulate me. It's funny, because I, under my notions of health, tend to eat more in the morning and during the day, whereas Eric is the king of after dinner food, including his inexplicable bowl of rice krispies or whatever after a big dinner. Why not just eat more dinner? Anyways, my 'I eat more during the day so it's okay to eat more quick bread' is not going to fly, at least according to the numbers on the scale when I got home after the weekend.

Yesterday I went to see Capitalism: A Love Story with Eric. Normally I don't talk about movies on the personal blog (ugh, I've had enough!), but since this one is more personal and political, I have to say a few things. One is, see the movie! Second is, in my opinion Michael Moore's films aren't the strongest in breadth or depth or accuracy, but challenging conventional wisdom. He's great at coming up with different thought experiments--like, ways to visually depict Wall Streeters as bank robbers--that help equate white collar crime with its more violent cousin. I also liked the personal stories, and his description of how the $700 billion bailout bill was passed was eye-opening. Finally, he talks a lot about America's glorification of capitalism, including why we equate Jesus and religion with capitalism. I liked the film, and hope it comes out a success like Farenheit 9/11. I also need to watch Sicko, which I think I missed and certainly has a lot to say about our country's health crisis.

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about job security and my career and my future--and by a lot I mean not enough. Frankly, journalism isn't the greatest field to be getting into. People are doing it for free. There's also a lot of talk about changes and shutdowns and layoffs that occur periodically and stress me out. My plan before, when I heard this four and six months into the job, was that I have money saved and I will travel the world, something I never got to do, and then come back when the recession is over. Although now having a boyfriend complicates everything. I really hope that my job, and those of other magazines, won't be eliminated--everyone would like to move on at their own time and of their own accord. But I updated my resume tonight slightly, and did some searches for jobs I think I would be interested in. From looking at my resume, it gave me some ideas about how to grow my position. I have the opportunity to really invent things, I think, and break ground in the new media area. But I certainly don't know how to monetize that for the company. I'm trying to think of ways I can excel at what I'm doing, to learn the ropes more aggressively, and break new ground. I have so few peers at my job, so I think I want to seek out more people in my field so I can learn more about the state of the industry. I also did some job searching, for the type of job I would be interested in a year or two from now, since it's understood that my position is not a growth position and would require me to move on. I'm interested in doing qualitative research, like being a moderator or an analyst or what have you. Turns out most of the jobs I found there require much more experience than I have. And some have more quantitative requirements than I would care for. But they seem like they pay well, and most require lots of traveling--which is both a good and a bad thing. I'm really glad that I spent some time--seriously, like an hour max--thinking about my future. It's something I need to do more often and actively, and not out of fear but out of desire for personal growth.

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches!

Now, the slideshow:

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