A Year in Review

That's right friends - I have now officially lived in CT for an entire year. A lot has changed since we pulled up in Mark Rauckhorst's driveway at 1:00 AM a year ago. For one thing, we were able to close on/move into our own house (luckily within about three days - I am not good at living in other people's houses and my kitties did not like living in the laundry room).

Some highlights of our year:

Finding/Moving In To Our House
We almost didn't get this house and if we hadn't, I honestly don't know that I could have moved here. We had a terrible experience with our realtor - she didn't want to show us anything in New London and we hated everything in our price range in Groton, Gales Ferry, Mystic, and all the other "desirable" places she showed us. I found our house online, had to fight with her to see it, had to fight with her more to get her to write up the offer, and then we almost lost it due to her stalling. A battle hard fought with a great reward.

Noe in front of our new house shortly after we closed

New York Trips
I'll never love NYC the way I love Chicago, but I'll also never complain about having it a (shorter) train ride away. The unexpected perk of moving out here was discovering that Noe's work badge got us into the major museums for free. So far we've hit the American Museum of Natural History (impressive but overwhelming), the Museum of Modern Art (adored it), and my personal favorite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The great thing about getting in free and being so close is we can leave before we get burned out because we can always come back...although I can hardly imagine getting burned out on the Met.

Van Goh at the MOMA

Egyptian Awesomeness at the Met

Skiing in Vermont
Yes, we only went twice and yes, one of those days was completely warm and awful, but I can not possibly ignore the fact that in the same time it would take to drive to Boyne or Nub's Nob from Ypsi you can get to real mountains from New London. Noe and I were even able to take a bus from a local ski shop and get discounted tickets. Sure, it's no Colorado but I wouldn't know because I've never been out west anyway. Hopefully this year I can make Noe like skiing a little more and we can go more often.

I was trying to show Noe how to "snowplow."
He was more interested in taking pictures.

Making Awesome Friends
It was rough going here for a little while. Once the rush of moving and getting the unpacked was over, Noe and I suddenly found ourselves in a strange town with no friends, no hobbies, and it was more or less the dead of winter. Luckily, around this time we met and started hanging out with the people who would form our core group of friends here. Even better for me, my new friends got just as excited about wine, food, and books as I did. Now I had people to go to restaurants and wine tastings with and who told me where the fabulous Book Barn was located. The nights were suddenly filled with darts playing, rugby games and dinner/theme parties. Like getting the house, hooking up with this group was a real turning point.

Classing it up for the Gatsby Party (best party of the summer)

The Trifecta/Manfecta dinner party

Martha's Vineyard
This is pretty much directly related to the last item, because if we hadn't made friends with the awesome John and Katie, I am not sure that Noe and I ever would have made it out to Martha's Vineyard. But we jumped at the chance to go when Katie invited us (along with Amanda, Kevin, Mini, Doyle, Chad and Sarah) to spend a weekend at her family's house with her and John. I was absolutely enchanted by Martha's Vineyard and I only saw one small portion of it. I can't wait to go back. And although the setting (funky old house, beautiful beaches) was amazing, it was the company that really made the trip. It was our first vacation with our Connecticut friends and hopefully not the last.

The group at Katie's Vineyard house

Of course, there were many other good things about this year in addition to the ones above - great shows and movies at the Garde, for example; seeing concerts at the Dodge Music Center and the MGM Grand (yay Killers!); and volunteering at the aquarium. These are just some of the major highlights and the ones that stick out in my mind as definitive "maybe I don't hate it here" points. I'm still getting used to life on the East Coast, but I have to tell you that September 12, 2008 is gearing up to be a much better day than September 12, 2007.

Things I like that I used to dislike

Over the course of the past few years, I have changed my position from not favorable to favorable on a number of things, most notably:

Tomatoes
I used to hate tomatoes. Not tomato-based products - I have always loved marinara, salsa and ketchup - but a slice of tomato on a burger was enough to make me gag. I think much of this has to with the fact that 1) I was very unadventurous when it came to food until I began working in restaurants (not that tomatoes are adventurous, but I wasn't eating any place that was serving fresh tomatoes) and 2) the few tomatoes I had been exposed to were disgusting, thick, light pink, not-in-season slices of nastiness.

My feelings toward tomatoes began to change when I quit eating Pace salsa (which I now think is gross, to be honest) and started eating chunkier salsas where you could actually see the vegetables. But it was my summer in the Upper Peninsula living with Aunt Missy (to whom I owe a great, GREAT deal of my food appreciation and current passion for cooking) that really changed my mind about tomatoes. Aunt Missy made the best BLTs. She made them with really good, thick-cut bacon, crisp iceberg lettuce (iceberg lettuce DOES have a place in the food community, and that place is on a sandwich), and deliciously fresh, juicy, in-season tomatoes. Because of Aunt Missy, the BLT is now my favorite sandwich, and I like tomatoes enough to grow them in my backyard (see the next thing I used to dislike, gardening, below). FYI - Aunt Missy is also the reason I started making my own pesto.

Gardening
I thought gardening was a lame, old lady hobby. My gardening consisted of growing one pot of mint and that was only so I could make mojitos.

Once I got together with Noe, however, I started getting slightly more into it. Noe's mom was really into flowers and plants and Noe definitely picked that up from her. He had really cool houseplants, and he and I worked on the front flower beds and the big deck flower pots at the old house.

Then we moved to Connecticut and not only did I inherit an awesome front flower bed (complete with a Japanese Maple) but I inherited a back garden patch as well. Since I am in to food and fresh, local food has slowly but surely been becoming the "in" thing, I decided to give it a try.

Well, those of you who have read the blog know that this experiment ranks as a success. I have in the past week alone eaten cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, beans and countless herbs that I have grown myself. They are not as pretty as the vegetables in the store (some of my cucumbers look downright alien) but I think they taste better. The garden is here to stay.

Knitting
Another thing that I thought was strictly for old ladies and people with too much time on their hands. Really, I thought pretty much all "crafty" hobbies were hopelessly lame. Even pictures of celebrities knitting on movie sets couldn't sway me.

When my mom starting knitting I was sort of horrified. Except that she turned out to be really good at it. Seriously, she graduated from fun-fur scarves to sweaters within like, months.

Mom tried to teach me several times, but I did not have the patience or the temperament for it. Plus, it took too long to make any noticeable progress.

One day though, I got really bored and started looking through Mom's copy of Stitch & Bitch (the cool knitter's bible) and found a pattern for a simple scarf knit on huge needles with chunky yarn. Apparently you could make this scarf in a time frame that could be measured in hours rather than days. My interest piqued, I bought some yarn and taught myself (from the pictures in the book) how to cast on and knit a basic garter stitch. Two hours later, I had my black and white scarf.

This scarf is by no means pretty, and if you look closely, the squares of black and white are totally different sizes because I was too lazy to really count rows. But it was a stepping stone on the way to much better scarves. As for other projects, well, I am still trying to build up enough patience for those. We'll see this winter.

Gwyneth Paltrow
For some inexplicable reason, I used to hate Gwyneth. The mere sight of her on a poster was enough to make me not want to see a movie. I didn't want to buy magazines with her on the cover. I have no idea why I was so anti-Gwyneth; perhaps because - even though I loved Shakespeare in Love - I thought she stole an Oscar that belonged to Cate Blanchett?

However, I have begun to warm to Gwyneth over the past two years or so. First of all, the woman can actually act. Second of all, she has AMAZING style. (Seriously, if I were tall and skinny and had legs that were 10 feet long, I would dress just like her.) Third, once I started watching all those Gwyneth movies I had been ignoring, I found that she has been in some great flicks - most notably Emma and Sliding Doors. (Honestly, I don't know why I waited so long to watch Sliding Doors. If you haven't seen it, rent it.) Now instead of studiously ignoring Gwyneth projects, I am counting down days to the premiere of her PBS series with Mario Batali where they eat their way through Spain. Yum.

John Steinbeck
I don't know what Steinbeck book you had to read in middle/high school, but if it was The Pearl then maybe you hated Steinbeck, too. My distaste for The Pearl was pretty much enough to convince me I wanted nothing to do with the rest of Steinbeck's literary repertoire (plus, I read the last few pages of Of Mice and Men and it sounded really sad).

Later on in high school and college, when forced to read Mice and The Grapes of Wrath, I started to grow lukewarm towards Steinbeck. He wasn't so bad. I'm not sure what convinced me to buy East of Eden. It could have been that I had just taken that bible as literature class (which was incredibly cool, by the way) and Eden is more or less a modern-ish retelling of the book of Genesis. Or...it could have been that I just liked the name. (Anyone ever notice how these guys - Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc - wrote the best titles?)

Anyway, Eden was a literary life-changing book for me. It immediately earned a place among my all-time favorites. I have re-read it twice and can pretty much open it to any page and start from there. I am not sure why I like it so much; it is certainly not a happy book, and it contains one of the most truly evil women ever to grace the pages of fiction. But it is storytelling at it's best and most epic. Plus, it made me like Steinbeck which in turn made me read Cannery Row, which is a delightful little book itself.

"Weaves a Sinuous Spell"

I have talked about books a fair amount, mostly in reference to my discovery of the Book Barn and the Twilight series. I have also taken the opportunity to sing the praises of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (if you haven't read it, will you please give it a try?)

However, as I was sitting down to write a blog that was originally going to be about my frustration with Cormac McCarthy (I LOVE the plot and story line of No Country for Old Men, but seriously, Cormac - can't you use quotation marks?) when I realized I have been completely neglecting one of my favorite contemporary authors - OK, probably my flat-out favorite contemporary author - Jeffrey Eugenides.

I admit, my relationship with Eugenides started out a bit dishonestly. I fell in love with The Virgin Suicides, but it was not the book I fell in love with - it was the movie. That's right, I said it. I'm very open about the fact that I was completely enraptured by Josh Hartnett's best performance ever as Trip Fontaine, the school heart throb. Yet more than Josh and his groovy seventies look, I was positively entranced by the whole feel of the film - which, upon reading the book three days later, I realized Sophia Coppola totally got.

See, The Virgin Suicides could be a hard book to get, at least on film. It is heavily atmospheric - the late seventies, suburban Detroit setting is almost a character in itself - plus it is all at once gothicly romantic, darkly comedic, and fantastically tragic. It is no way realistic , yet you don't entirely believe that the events couldn't happen. The collective and somewhat distant male narrative seals the deal for me - this book is something special.

(The movie is none too shabby either - check it out. It is so well done, in fact, that I may never dis Sophia Coppola for her awful performance in Godfather III again. I am also willing to overlook how over-rated Lost in Translation was on the basis of the fact that she did such a great job with this source material.)

Middlesex - Eugenides' Pulitzer-winner - is a totally different book, but similar in certain ways. Once again, it paints a picture of a Detroit from another era. Actually, it paints a picture of Detroit from several different eras, from the immigrant 1920's right up to the race riots of the '70's. The themes, however, are totally different, as is the narrative. Instead of this somewhat distant and removed third-party observer, we have a first-person narration begun before the first person even is a person. The themes of Middlesex are more complicated and less superficial than The Virgin Suicides, but it is just as juicy and satisfying a read.

(Personally, I prefer Suicides just a tiny bit over Middlesex, but that may be based solely on the fact that I read it first and it has a killer movie and soundtrack. Honestly, they are both amazing books.)

Now, you may think that I love these books because they are set in Michigan, where I am from. However, while they reference several points that I am geographically familiar with - the old Hudson's department store, Belle Isle, the Renaissance Center, Detroit Country Day, etc - these books are about a Detroit I never experienced. It is no different than reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and wanting to go to Savannah or Summer Sisters and wanting to go to Martha's Vineyard. I may know where Detroit is, yet I don't know this Detroit - but I wish I did.

Anyway, if you are looking for something to read, I hope you'll give Jeffrey a try. Trust me, he's less intimidating than other Pulitzer winners and ten times more readable. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had a great cookout with friends - and even some family - and I got to wear a pretty vintage dress. I would say it was a pretty good day. Thank you to everyone who came over and sent birthday wishes!

My cake with canned (Betty Crocker) frosting -
the only kind I like.

27 candles is kind of a lot.

Perhaps the jewel of my fledgling vintage dress collection.

Retro-active

I think that most girls go through a phase of being into vintage clothing. Jessica Travis and I went through this phase in 11th grade. Looking back on this time period, however, I realize that we were not necessarily into vintage clothing as we were into ugly clothing. Essentially we would spend every other Saturday morning or so scouring the racks of Value World (formerly Value Village) to make sure we didn't miss out on any obnoxiously patterned polyester shirts that may have come in since our last visit.

We were more into having clothes that no one else had (and trust me, even if some of these clothes were mass-produced at the time, no one we knew was going to wear them) than we were into actual vintage. Plus, finding good vintage clothes at your average thrift store or local salvation army is a lot of work with little pay off. There was an actual vintage store in Depot Town - Apple Annie's - but due to the fact that some of their stuff cost upwards of TWENTY DOLLARS (!) Jess and I more or less wrote it off as too expensive.

Flash forward ten years. I've been dressing like a normal person for awhile now, but I've always admired people who can pull off funky outfits. I've definitely made a few "fun" thrift store purchases over the years, but nothing too exciting. But lately it has been a different story.

I have become addicted to vintage and reproduction vintage clothing.

It started with Doyle and his stupid Gatsby party (OK, it was not at all stupid; in fact, I would call it the best party of the summer). Unable to find real flapper dresses in wearable condition, Amanda and I turned to the internet. Amanda happened to stumble upon Unique Vintage, a site specializing in reproduction vintage clothing with a niche in 20's themed outfits. (Amanda has also chronicled this addiction in her own blog, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.)

The Gatsby dresses were a huge hit. We started perusing the site more frequently and found the reproduction 50's party dresses. We used a coupon to buy a couple, but even at 20% off, these dresses didn't come cheap. (However, the Esther Williams swimsuits, at just under $70, are perfectly reasonable in my mind considering how well they are made and how much department store swimsuits cost these days.)

As it turns out, 50's and 60's clothing was a lot easier to find than flapper dresses (duh). New London's own Peacock Feathers provided us with some fantastic dresses to wear to sing-along Grease at the Garde, as well as several dresses that fall more into the "every day" category. Theyw ere also more affordable than the reproduction party dresses. We also had good luck at Aequinox on Martha's Vineyard, although the price range was a little higher than we would have liked.

The best resource of all has been Etsy (www.etsy.com). Etsy is a site designed for crafty people to sell their handmade goods, be it jewelry, knitted items, clothing, prints, etc. They also have an extensive vintage section, where individual sellers set up virtual "shops" to peddle their own finds and set their own prices.

The result? Several wonderful dresses, blouses, and even a coat - and unfortunately, an addiction that is pretty hard to beat. We check the site for new stuff daily.

The upside? We have plenty of unique and flattering clothing to wear to places like the Thames River Wine Tasting, Dev's on Bank, and all our regular haunts. We get to class it up. Of course, we have plenty of people asking things like "Why are those girls all dressed up to come to Hot Rod's?"

Because we're awesome, that's why.

RIP Baby Whale

The poor Australian baby whale was euthanized today. Read the story here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iZPap4fq9dXbvAYF6fNSAXUFot7AD92NFCSG0


Just to be clear, while I think this story is incredibly sad, I am in general agreement with the wildlife experts. Cestacians are extremely difficult to rehabilitate and they had no way of re-creating the mother's milk that this whale would have needed. I am upset about it because it is sad, NOT because I disagree with how these events played out.

Food for Thought

I know I have blogged about my garden way more than anyone cares. But gardening has become more and more of an interest of mine since moving to Connecticut and I am just thrilled with how well my first attempt is working out.

My peppers are really coming in nicely

Had I known the peppers and cucumbers would grow so well, I would have definitely ripped out the surprise beans and planted more peppers and cucumbers. Even my dying basil has made an end-of-summer rally. I will have more tomatoes than I know what to do with, but the upside is I will VERY carefully clear out any rotting tomatoes from the ground this year so they do not seed themselves the way my current crop did.

I am absolutely thrilled that my cucumbers blossomed after all!

Noe and I recently began actually eating things from the garden. So far we have eaten lots of herbs, a hot pepper and a bunch of tomatoes (the caprese salad I made with my own tomatoes and basil is the best caprese I have ever made in my life). If I am guessing correctly, we could be eating home-grown peppers within the next week or two and I don't think the cucs are far behind. (I was late planting my cucumbers which is why they are just now getting to mid-size).

I have grape, cherry, and big tomatoes. Want any? Take your pick!

My only regret about gardening? I just wish I had planted more stuff!

This basil helped make a delicious Caprese salad.
I can't wait to make pesto!