All you ever brought me was heartache and traffic.

Moving Forward

Am I right in saying that a denim mini-skirt is no longer a wardrobe staple? Both because it's 2009 and because I am about to be 26 and don't really rock the short-short skirt look anymore. Really, what do you think? And do you want it? Or anything else of mine, really?

I am sorry for asking you what your address was. I am sure you thought I was going to send a postcard. I almost definitely won't. I wrote one postcard to my grandmother but I doubt that I'll even get it together to find a stamp to put on it. Berlin is really fantastic. I have found it profoundly relaxing. There's nothing I feel compelled to do. The weather could be better, but being inside isn't so bad anyway. There are lots of nice people here and fun things to do if you want to have fun. I am sorry I am not even really making an effort with this blog post. I'll tell you all about it when I'm back in New York.

Wilcommen, Bienvenue...

So I am in Berlin. I have been here for less than 24 hours and I'm not jet lagged! Yesterday was probably the longest day of my life. It began around 12:30am when they started serving breakfast on the flight into Zurich. I had about four hours to kill there so I walked around the historic downtown area, took some photos and ate some birchenmuseli (super delicious yogurt/fruit/granola combo) and got on another plane to Berlin. Honestly it is so different from what I was expecting so far. Kendra and I mostly walked around Kreuzberg which is the neighborhood next to hers in East Berlin. It's really lovely with lush greenery and lots of old buildings. We lit off sparklers for the fourth of July. And now I slept a pretty normal night and we're going to eat some breakfast and take care of a bike errand and go on a canal tour of the city. Honestly it all seems pretty Dutch to me. Which makes sense, but you know. I'll check in again soon.

Pushing Through

So I am working on an essay for a job application. I sort of thought essays were just for school applications, but apparently I was lucky enough to select a job that also requires essays. Some of you may recall from my attempts at law school applications that I am not very motivated about writing essays. In fact, it might be said that I am not very motivated about writing at all (if you were to judge by, for instance, how often I update this blog). It's sort of a mystery to me. Because I really do love to words and writing and reading. I don't know if it's just like exercise (something I'm also unmotivated to do) and all one needs to do is get into the practice of doing it. Maybe I just need to push through the awkward sentences that don't lie flat on the page like they do in my head just like I should push through those uphill steps on a run when my legs feel like they're forty pounds heavier than when I started and my lungs tighten up in my chest so my shoulders touch my ears. And if I can't push through this two page essay how am I ever going to write the things I secretly hope to say?

I don't remember this, but is it possible that I don't need as much sleep in the summer time? It was really late when I went to bed last night (like birds singing, gray skies). And yet, I awoke a ten and haven't felt like going back to sleep.

In the Morning....

... I get out of bed and putter through my email, news and Facebook until my eyes and body are awake enough for tasks like washing every single glass in my apartment (thanks for coming to Richard's birthday everyone!). Sometimes there is just so much jarringly dramatic news on the Times homepage that I just don't know how to process it so early. Today, for example:

1) General Motors went bankrupt.

2) A plan carrying 228 people abruptly went missing.

3) An doctor who performs abortions was shot in Kansas (what is this, the early 90's?).

The world can just be so large and scary. And so much less-preferable than bed.

I just deleted my MySpace and Friendster profiles. If that's how you've been keeping in touch with me, I am very sorry. Please don't take it personally. But we haven't been in touch for a while anyhow. That is all.

Recipes: Fage

So for a little while now I have been using 2% fat Fage (the Greek yogurt) as a substitute for creamy fatty things that would turn a normal meal into a serious undertaking of cholesterol (mayo, sour cream, ice cream, creme fraiche, etc.). It's great in dips and dressings especially, I find. I have recently developed two delicious new applications for Fage:

Berry "Sundae"

The other night I really wanted ice cream, but really didn't want to put on pants and shoes and a jacket to walk to 7-11 in the rain. I was working with things I had in the kitchen.

1 cup strawberries
3/4 cup Fage 2%
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
Squeeze bottle of agave nectar (to taste)

Dice the strawberries and put them in a bowl. Grate lemon zest directly onto the strawberries (make sure you spread it out, it's powerful stuff). Top with Fage. Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for a couple minutes and dice (you can dice then toast and it might be easier). Squeeze agave nectar directly onto berries and yogurt (this is the "fudge" or "caramel" or "strawberry syrup" element, so don't be stingy). Top the whole thing with toasted nuts.

This was sort of a small meal-sized portion. You could play with ratios but I liked that there were chunks of berry and nut in every bite. Richard and I shared by passing the bowl back and forth, but if you find it's more civilized to split it into two portions that could be nice too. I would be very interested to try variations on the type of nut and berry used.



BATS

I have long felt that adding avocado is a sure way to turn any sandwich into a luxury (this might not be true of a fluffernutter which is already sort of a luxury). When applied to the already scrumptious BLT, this fatty fruit has a sort of transcendent affect. It can, however, compound the already complicated structural challenges of this sandwich. But no longer. In this application the yogurt allows the avocado to act as an adhesive. It also replaces the mayonnaise (though you could certainly add mayo if you like).

2 pieces of your favorite sandwich bread, toasted
3 or 4 pieces of bacon, fried to desired crispiness
1/2 tomato, sliced thin
several leaves of baby spinach
1/4+ of a ripe avocado, diced
1/4 cup of Fage 2%
salt

Mash the avocado into the yogurt with a fork. Chunks are not a problem, but you don't want them to be too big. Add salt and mix in to taste. Spread on one side of each slice of bread. Assemble sandwich with remaining ingredients (I will not presume to prescribe whether your bacon touches your tomato, spinach or both). Enjoy!

Nadir

"Dowd: Put Aside Logic

Can we Kling On to our newspapers in the galactic age?"

This was the tag for Maureen Dowd's column today. It appeared next to a photo of Barack Obama, the president of the United States, photoshopped to look like a Vulcan. On The New York Times homepage.

Sixteen Years Later, A Shout-out to the Klutz Braids and Bows Book*...

This is actually how I'm wearing my hair today.


*Remember when every girl got that book for her ninth birthday? (Eight birthday? It's sort of a blur)

If I Had a Twitter Account...

... it would probably constantly say things like, "is Donald Sutherland really the father in Pride and Prejudice?* So be thankful.

*Yes.

Update

If you're reading this you probably know that I am not very consistent with posting on this blog lately. The truth is my life is somewhat sedate (or at least static) right now. However! There are a couple things on the horizon which you can look forward to reading about on EPE. Should everything go as planned, this blog will resume its initial function as a mechanism of keeping in touch around September. I will once again set off for distant lands. It's likely that I don't do a very good job keeping in touch with you now, but while abroad I expect to feel lonely and isolated at least some of the time at the beginning and I'm sure I'll be eager to reach out to all of you.

What (you may be asking) is the occasion for this adventure? Well, I guess I'm just feeling sort of bored (see above comments about sedation and stasis). So I have enrolled in a course to become certified to teach English as a foreign language. Hopefully I will find a job by the end of the summer in time to jet of to some Latin American location. I really don't know what country I'll be going to or how long I'll be there. Like I said, it's an adventure.

Prior to that I'll be taking a short trip to Berlin at the beginning of July. If anyone in Europe is reading this and wants to plan a meeting, let me know! I will be planning to update while there to practice for my longer adventure at the end of the summer.

SO while this is a pretty lame, perfunctory post, the not-so-distant future holds oodles of posts employing my signature observational wit and knack for unflattering photography.

Night Hunters

Around September my building got a new Super. Generally it's been a seamless transition. The most notable change has been that notes posted on the front door regarding proper recycling procedures are typed rather than sharpied onto yellow post-its. Until Saturday. On Saturday I awoke (far, far too early) and looked out the window next to my bed to see this:



EEK!! There is a huge, menacing owl on my fire escape! In the daylight! Surely it's a portent of doom!

No. After rubbing my eyes a bit and allowing rational thought to seep through the visceral fear, I saw that the owl was made of a plaster-like substance. It seems that in an effort to frighten the gaggle of pigeons (do pigeons flock? roost?) which lives on the telephone line behind my apartment building (and subsequently shits on every imaginable surface along the back of the property), my Super has installed a parliament (thanks!) of owls on the fire escapes and fences overlooking the offending cable. Which should be fine. I don't like the shit or the menacing sound of wings flapping against my window panes. But these are really scary-looking bird effigies. Let's take a closer look:



It's not so much that they are realistic facsimiles of actual owls. It's more that they are truly evil looking. If I were a pigeon, I would head for the hills. The actual pigeons are not so smart. They titter away on the phone line in spite of the dozen or so predators peering down at them. I am not so peaceful. Mostly I keep the curtains drawn tight to avoid the sight of them. But when falling asleep at night I sometimes imagine the hunkered silhouette of that stoic bird of prey illuminated against the curtain. Wild visions of those orange plastic eyes, lit by some internal, diabolical light play on the backs of my eyelids. I sometimes wonder whether this isn't some manifestation of a personal vendetta the super has for me. Were those Christmas cookies I baked dry? Does he think I am not separating my paper recycling properly?

The only thing to do is carry on with drawn shades. Hoping that when he sees the pigeons have remained he'll remove those monstrous forms. And my dreams will once again be my own.

On the Off-Chance I Didn't Send You This on G-Chat...

Baby flamingo:



And baby flamingo:

Sign of the Times

So my dad has a tendency to give some very random gifts. It's almost like he gets flustered in the middle of shopping by how many girl-y things he is expected to buy (for my mother, sister, me...) and just grabs at jewelry and small electronic items (flash drives really are excellent stocking stuffers though!). Anyhow, this year he got me this bottle of champagne:



Which is actually really nice, not because of my love for the Dutch designers Viktor and Rolf, but because I really love champagne and feel an intrinsic connection with rose (imagine the accent, please) especially due to my name* (which my father also gave me, so it's sort of all just a big circle). The point is that my dad, of all people, fell for the bizarre marketing of a bottle held upside-down in a plexi-glass box. To add more confusion to the matter, the box is not even a perfect rectangle! It tapers at the bottleneck end, making it impossible to wrap! And my father is obsessed with gift wrapping!** All of this brings me to the point: although I have had this bottle of champagne in my fridge since christmas, I have never felt like there was reason enough to drink it. Clearly, when I am not able to find a reason to drink champagne in nearly two and a half months, I (and the world at large, perhaps) suffer from a general malaise.

*Contrary to common wisdom, there are many rose-like things that I enjoy and don't find at all cliche (accent, again) as gifts. Rose champagne, roses themselves, these are all great gifts!

** My father has pieces of paper he uses to wrap christmas gifts that are fourteen years old. One year he challenged himself to use as few pieces of scotch tape as possible. He actually wrapped a fairly large gift using only the adhesive from a stick-on bow!

Haiku for the Season

daylight savings time
at four it feels like it's three
at five it is five

Is my inability to form meaningful goals the cause or merely a symptom of the fact that I am currently flipping between reruns of How I Met Your Mother and Star Trek: The Next Generation? And maybe also the fact that this sort of thing happens often.

"At this point, male readers may want to go outside and toss a ball around for a while. No matter how sympathetic, how curious or how deeply interested in life’s little yuck factors* you are, this collection is unlikely to hold more than the mildest intellectual appeal for you. But it is hard to imagine any woman, from the most straitlaced and body-denying to the most uninhibited and body-embracing, who will not read right through it with pure enjoyment, small flashes of recognition and the urge to buy it for every female preteen in sight."

-some lame NYT book review.

Seriously, it's about fucking time everyone- man, women, kids on the playground (well they're ok, I guess)- to just stop being so damn squeamish about menstruation. It's part of everyone's life in one way or another. And there is no better reason than naive fear that no one will admit that it's sort of fascinating. That it is a biological mechanism that essentially allows women three-quarters of the time of their fertile lives having sex for pleasure. We are fascinating beings!

*That's a female reviewer referring to the subject of menstruation as a "yuck factor." In my opinion, rotting feces left un-flushed in a toilet for days is a "yuck factor." Menstruation is something that is CONSTANTLY HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.

It's possible that my vampire obsession has gone too far...

Among other things, 2008 has brought a resurgence of my young adult fascination with vampires. Blame Twilight or True Blood or the new series Vamps (Gossip Girl meets Twilight, I am not made of stone, you know)... Whatever the reason, yesterday marked the culmination of this fad when I incurred this wound while at work:

*


Although it was a incident of freak glassware breakage and not the undead that caused the incisions near my jugular, I am going to take it as a sign that I should close the book (or books) on vampires with the close of the year. And move on to werewolves.

*Um, yes I am wearing the t-shirt from the 2001 Project Shakespeare production of Richard III.