merry new year!

ba-booly-ba-booly-ba-booly-ba-hah!


2010 is going to be the def-est year ever.

oo la la

I have 3 more weeks of vacation left and I'm getting a little stir crazy. I think i'm getting a sinus infection too or i have some sort of California allergy/face disease because I can now blow snot bubbles out my eyes. Anyway, here are some rap videos.

luda!


other songs for the club featuring creepy baby voices include

duh

RIP angel

but more importantly

watch whitney houston. i'm pretty sure that face is french for "oh hell to the no."

white chocolate city, pt 2

I didn't take as many photos as I'd intended during my DC vacay, but here are a couple. mine was the last plane to land at Reagan before this shiz got real.


also, I went to 30 minutes of a Ravens game in bmore for my anniversary. we saw not a single touchdown and sat in the very last row and huddled under a blanket while our limbs turned numb and black and fell off, just like at the innauguration. on the way home we stopped for apple pies at McDonalds. = Romance. ps, ravens fans are bammas.


that's it for pictures, but other things i did:
pizza party time and excellent snowball fight until kate slammed me into a concrete wall
everything bagels and Counter culture coffee at Big Bear
movies (not Avatar)
ethiopian food at Etete
Scategories and flaming sambuca toddy at Tryst
whisky sour at Marvin
gingerbread cookies and icing
beer in mason jars with old friends at Trusty's in Barracks Row (supposedly the new Bloomingdale)
lady dinner with Smirnoff ices and rummy nog
more pizza and presents and hyphy juice

hopefully I'll make it back to the DMV next summer. xoxo

hyphy, pt 2 (super hyphy version)

I'm back in california. Barf. Although I learned some new dance moves this xmas.

Shake your thizz face, DC.

Also, learn something about E-40 please.

Oh I miss you DC, come back to me.

faves

i'm taking a break from packing for DC to bring you this list of some of my favorite videos i remember seeing on MTV2 in the early 2000's while in the gym at Reed College. do you remember how awesome MTV2 used to be? ugh.

the strokes 2 dollar bill show


life changer


california love


this is the only emo album i've ever bought. i think i was on the treadmill for this one


Sia before she was Sia, unfortunately she was a trip-hop diva caught in waking life


i totally thought New Order was a band of teenagers after watching this

holiday road, pt 2

first, my parents are in town. they got lost driving my car from south San Francisco to the east bay and blamed me for having my window bashed in and someone stealing my GPS. quickly i took them to Saul's, a not-kosher deli in north Berkeley and plied them with latkes and phosphates until they were subdued. Usually when they take me to dinner, we sit around the table squawking and bellowing and resenting each other, like the Costanzas. so much Jewish guilt.
whatever, i made them buy me one of these bad boys:

In Israel they eat DONUTS for hannukah. bomb.

Second, I'm coming to DC on Friday and I am going to DESTROY MYSELF with hanging out and pie and whisky and friends and fun. good riddance semester, don't let the FUCK YOU hit you on the way out.

sigh

my car got broken into and i took my econ final today. a playlist, as such:

to start off, identical pubescent jailbait talk-rapp-sing about getting hosed tonight.




girls, listen

quit the gaga fakery

its been done better than you

you're welcome.

ps,

and in case you forgot

this is just like the end of fight club

its finals week and i feel like this

holiday road

i sincerely love thanksgiving. I always go to my parent's house in kansas and my brothers all come over and we hide from my parents downstairs and watch youtube videos of stupid shit like powerthirst and some mexican guy shredding to pachelbel canon. then we sit down to eat like the family in Christmas Vacation. my mom is always red-faced and manic about finishing all the food in time, my Grandma is mean to your face in a really nice-sounding way while my grandfather nurses a crown royal on ice and avoids my grandmother, me and my brother Max quietly make fun of my dad for being a huge dork all the time, my brother Brian carries around an empty beer can that he spits chaw juice into, and my brother Fred always does something weird, because he is cousin Eddie.
happy thanksgiving.

my humps

are cancer-free! check it out. in case i haven't already told you, blubbered into your shoulder, called you at 4 in the morning, inappropriately gchatted you, shown up at your workplace uninvited to talk about myself, or over-nighted you my ultrasound results, I've recently had a not-really-but-kinda cancer scare. i won't go into gory details, but the moral of this story is LADIEZ. go to the doctor right now and demand they feel you up until you're sure there's nothing in there that shouldn't be. its never too early to get checked (update: apparently it can be?). tell your friends, go make an appmt, I'll wait.



good girl.

ps, i'd like to thank the US health care system for providing me all that awesome insurance while I was an independent contractor/unemployed that allowed me to catch this creepy lump of not-cancer before it had grown to the size of a gumball. Not.

young americans

Hi, so I have no idea how I did on my midterms but i know that I feel AWFUL. but slightly less awful than before or during the tests. thank god there is such EGREGIOUS GRADE INFLATION at this school that it is in fact impossible to get less than a B+. For example, if, hypothetically, on my first Microeconomics exam, I got, let's say, for illustrative purposes, a 57/100. THAT'S A B+. Someone call the world bank and give me a Nobel because I am an above average economist.

This week has seen the transition from failing Econ and Quant exams to ramping up for the Great Big Fat Budget Simulation for my Politics class. For this project, the whole class is assigned a role either in the Obama Administration, the Senate, the Press, plus OMB and CBO. We have 3 weeks to pass a budget lowering the federal deficit from nearly $1.5 trillion to $279B or the gov't shuts down. Guess who I get to play. Come on guess... Kathleen Sebelius! I am the muhfuckin US Secretary of Health and Human Services and all your health care reformz are belong to us. Go Jayhawks.

This friday, my administration is releasing our budget to the full Senate for them to hack to pieces before next Friday, the 20th, when we all get together and make floor speeches and debate late into the evening until we all vote on a budget and then break for pizza. just like in real Congress! except if dickheads like Joe Leiberman or Tom Coburn or Olympia Snowe cause problems and we don't come to a vote before pizza, we all come back together and start stabbing each other in the back and drinking out of flasks and gchatting strategy across the chamber and buying and selling votes like commodities futures. just like real Congress! i'm feeling so patriotic.

weakonomics

sorry i can't come to my blog right now, but abby is busy trying to crawl out of a dark pit of midterms and unhappiness. after this week's events, i will hopefully achieve a pareto-improvement in my level of barely-holding-onto-a-thin-facade-of-mental-stability. someone hold me back before i jump straight off this utility possibilities frontier. this week is one fat stretch of dead weight loss. omg econ humorz hahaha.

are you there jams? its me, grad student

this isn't even new. update: this is new. also this isn't a real video. update: this is a real video. still, this is what i've come to.

an education

this week was the halfway point thru my first semester, plus it totally monsooned on Monday which, together, made it really seem like Fall. big sigh.

not to mention, a couple weeks ago we went to visit friends in Redwood City and they had the garden of Eden in their backyard, from which I came away with a bucket of figs straight from the tree and deez apples.


So on Sunday I put on a pot of apple butter and wrote my memo for Politics.

for this assignment, I had to pretend I worked for a German petrochemical corporation and I was proposing a strategy to evade an EU-wide carbon tax.



i learned its so much easier to be the bad guy because you have more options, like, totally having no scruples about screwing the environment.


thanks, berkeley.

noms and the city

ugh school is killing me. but last weekend was good, especially the part where we got heirloom tomato croque monsieur, Bellweather Carmody/Strauss Cheddar/Idiazabel pressed sandwich, and an elcair to go from Tartine and ate it all in the (cold, windy) sun at dolores park. mc hammer was emceeing at some bluegrass festival at GG park, but this was better I think.

see here:

closer

too close, back tfu.

geek love

My friends Toshio and Caitlin started the website Where's Lulu as a place to feature user-generated reviews rating local businesses in terms of their accessibility for disabled people. So far the site is only active for Portland and San Francisco, but they're talking about expanding eastward soon. They just started a new feature called 'Accessible Intercourse' where they take questions from the public about disability and answer them in short video form, kind of like pot psychology on gawker but not as WACK.


Accessible Intercourse, Episode 1.

Gotta stop saying retarded. and *&^%%$$. and #@@)(*&^!.

jamsmakin me crazy

WTF is going on at the moment with all the jams about getting pregnant? for example:

"pregnant" - R.Kelly ft. Tyrese


"have a baby by me" - 50 Cent ft. Ne-yo


"headboard" - Hurricane Chris ft. Plies and Mario


is it me or is hip hop like on its period this week? someone needs to REGULATE your hormones, jams.

until then, I'll be listening to this:

it really just makes you look girlier

This article got me thinking about those 5 minutes when I was a courier in DC.

These are things I miss about being a courier:
knowing my way around the city like a cabbie and being able to get literally anywhere by bike
riding down the median on Pennsylvania Ave at rush hour with no hands
getting a rush to the state department or an embassy where i'll have to wait forever inside where its warm and still get paid double
women in offices giving me high fives for being a woman in a male dominated industry
men in offices looking at me like I was an alien
and, you know, looking cool


These are things I don't miss about being a courier:
cabs
bamma couriers
capitol effing police
getting doored
bamma dispatchers
the smell
having to enter thru the loading dock and deal with power-tripping security officers and take dirty service elevators like i'm a piece of garbage
snow
never making any money because I am slow and don't give a shit

Anyways, I'm going to Portland this weekend to hang out and drink all the Stumptown coffee in the world. They ride bikes there too:

good morning

oh hey there, beautiful peach halves canned in light syrup. how's it hangin. oh you know. what it is. and you, 3 half pints of leftover peach-flavored syrup to make ice tea with or drink straight like heavenly manna? what up.

Today I turn in my first Econ problem set AND Quant problem set (nice symmetry there with the due dates, guys). Then, on friday I get to go to PDX. Then in the distant future I have more visitors coming! So I'm feeling less emotionally barfy already this week.

this is my jam

I made jam yesterday. I went to Chico this weekend for labor day to visit an old friend (like I've been doing for years). On the way back down I-5, I committed highway robbery at a farm stand in Winters, CA, and came away with this golden booty:


The peaches are ripening another day before I can them in syrup. But the plums, oh the plums. My mom used to make plum jam from a tree in our yard when I was a kid, and it was the bomb. I on the other hand had no idea what I was doing. But I picked up a copy of "Putting Food By" at the flea market a couple weeks ago and I'd been eyeing this giant canning pot at the hardware store and then it went on sale so like it was a sign. A sign to jam.

This is what it looked like:




Then my camera battery died, until the next morning when it looked like this: Jam!


Thanks to Elizabeth for some welcome mid-jam triage. Maybe I'll try homemade pectin next time (let's get real, i'm not that intense).

and here's the money shot.

now i gotta go look for more stuff to slather this on and put in my mouth (that's what she said).

my herbs, let me show you them

the set-up


chives, thyme, savory oh my.


sage babies


dill, garlic chives, parsley, marjoram.


mustard WIN!


and a big fat fail, peppers.

things and stuff, pt 2

i finished Infinite Jest, was pretty disappointed. i started school, am withholding judgment for now. berkeley is fine, my neighborhood is the safest I've lived in since i was 18. when i walk home from the BART late at night, alone, it smells like flowers and i can see the stars and no one bothers me. my neighborhood is 100% aging hippies with like a lot of equity in their homes and serious gardens which they water a lot despite the tremendous deficit in this state. inexplicably most places in california, water is included in the rent. meanwhile in the east coast you're charged for water and yet there is so much lately that neighbors are calling the skeeter police on each other to come suck up the festering pools just laying about. weird. lately i've been on a kick of watching movies about san francisco. i just watched 'the wild parrots of telegraph hill' and 'the Bridge' which were both depressing. i just netflixed Bullitt and Dirty Harry. i also recently started a subscription to the sunday Times because i figured adults read the paper and i'm like half an adult so why not. i can't seem to get through it in a week, altho i totes make time to read the wedding announcements which are hilarious. everyone getting married in new york went to the University of Pennsylvania. my brother went to the University of Pennsylvania and hated it there and joined a goth/metal frat. also, i planted an herb garden finally.

represent, pt 2

welcome to the yay area.

the emancipation of auto tune

i can picture Phoebe in like a sequin halter top and suede hot pants dancing on the bar at Big Bear to this.

dolores

SUNday at the park.

new home, still eating

click.

new digs

this is my new studio in berzerkley. check out the TWO OVENS and ENDLESS BUILT-INS and fire escape ouside HUGE SOUTHFACING KITCHEN WINDOW where i'll be growing HERB. s. hahahaha california marijuana joke hahahaha.

life is a highway

hey guys, i'm in california, san francisco to be exact, staying with a friend while I adjust to poverty, anomie, and psychic desolation. i mean grad school. the trip out here was pretty rad. first i drove from kansas city to boulder and saw some trippy storms on the plains. then i hung out with a friend who I'd interned with on the Hill a long time ago. We went to the Kitchen for sustainable/local type veggie snacks and cocktails (thanks for the suggestion Emily). the next day we drove to Salt Lake and had dinner with another DC friend and then brunch the next morning at this little vegan place, Vertical Diner, in the industrial section of town, where I ordered cream with my coffee bc i'm dumb. Then we drove thru the salt flats and took dumb photos next to the 'Tree of Utah.'


























We stayed at my family's house in Truckee, which is north of Lake Tahoe, for 4 nights and it was awesome. We grilled and read in the hammock and rented sea-doos on the lake and went hiking around Emerald Bay and drank beers overlooking historic Truckee and watched scary movies and didn't see any bears and i dominated at monopoly.


Then it was time to come down the mountain and so we drove to San Francisco and picked up my boxes at the Emeryville Amtrak station, except for 1 which they lost temporarily, then came back to the Mission district and drank beers. The next morning we walked down 24th St and got really delicious coffee and bagels at Philz and watched all the active San Franciscans take advantage of the street closures for Sunday Streets.

since then in the 2.5 days i've been in SF I've: had my car towed and got a ticket, been lonely, got kinda drunk twice, and ate a burrito. things are looking down. also, yesterday i looked at 4 different apartments in the East Bay, mostly in north Oakland. its kind of a shitty place. today i'm looking at smaller and more expensive places in Berkeley. hopefully by the end of the week I'll have found something decent, preferably with a tree or two and no drivebys.

hyphy

this is my last night in DC. I put all my earthly belongings on a train to the west coast today. then i got a muhfuhkin cheddar stuffed 'shroom burger and toasted marshmellow shake at Good Stuff care of Spike from Top Chef. It is sunny outside and i'm full and sleepy and i'm going to nap before I finish packing and folks come over to grill in a couple hours. then tomorrow i'm 5 thou.
this is how i'm getting to california:

the freshness

click.

first and hopefully last feminist rant on this blog

i walked to CVS at 7th and FL this morning to get claritin bc i was dying of allergies and was street harrassed by some bozo. he's all "hey girl you look so sexy in that girl i wanna..." to which i normally would've ignored it and walked on but this morning i was like drowning in snot and hadn't even had coffee and i wasn't having it at all so i was like "hey man its like 9:30 in the morning" and he's like "its just a compliment" and i'm like "that's not a compliment, its rude" and he's like "so what's a compliment?" and I'm like "just say hello" to which he says "well you shouldn't be leaving the house like that if you don't want 'compliments'." see below documentation of exactly what I was wearing, as if it mattered which it doesn't, but like fuck you asshole i am not even wearing anything scandalous, which would be fine even if i was because like this is america and it is my birthright to dress as skanky as i want without you getting all up in my stuff at 9:30 in the fucking morning, you cretinous shit.
UGH WHAT A JERKFACE I AM SO PISSED UUUUUGH.

new jamz

yes


no

its go time

i'm leaving DC July 7. I'm flying to Kansas City to visit with fam, friends, and my favorite little thrift store on the plains that never fails to yield a girly dress or two. Then I'm driving from KC to Boulder, then Salt Lake, then Tahoe, then SF. that's the plan.

oh but first i need to sell all my shit on craigslist, and plan a swap to get rid of all my clothes, and send my books to Powell's to sell, and find a box to pack my bike in, and pack up all my remaining crap and figure out the most economical way to ship it 3000 miles across the country, and cancel my gym membership, and switch the gas bill out of my name, and hang out with all my friends before i go, and see any last DC cultural markers I never got around to seeing in the last 4 years, and make sure my new student loans are on their way into my Berkeley account, and gaglak;dlgkha;lkdg.

needless to say i didn't do any of that boring shit today. duh, i leisurely drank some coffee, watched a Top Chef marathon, and started to read INFINITE JEST. AGAIN. finding inspiration in this effort, i've decided to get back in that hard, junk-chafing saddle again and just finish it.

some history: i bought the book at Politics and Prose on my birthday in January 2007 but felt too intimidated to even pick it up until early 2008. then i took 6 months to get through the first 200 pages and another 3 months for the next 100 and then infinitely frustrated, i threw it at the wall where it left a large dent.

but this time my confidence is up and I'm ready to try again. only thing is, I start grad school (lo, not even grad school, but pre-grad school dork camp, like wtf) on August 10th, so I have only 8 weeks in which to slog through 981 pages of incomprehensible mind-fuckery plus 96 pages of endnotes, most of which are as mesmerizing as the catalogue of ships in the Iliad. but no matter, its on. finite jest it will be this time. you hear that, DFW? finite.

beach weak

Last weekend for Memorial Day I went to Dewey Beach. That's in Delaware in case you're wondering. That's right. a beach. in Delaware.


It was awesome in the trashiest way. I'll try and paint you a picture. One night when we got back to our rented condo after doing Jager shots at a bar on the beach called the Rusty Rudder, we played charades which is like my favorite game. we decided the theme of this round should be "Dewey Beach" so everyone wrote down like 4 things that had to do with Dewey Beach and put them in the hat for others to act out. These were some of the charades that Dewey Beach inspired in us:

Douche
F.U.P.A.
mohawk
shrinkage
rasta mon
rohypnol
preakness (as in shitshow)

I don't remember the rest but trust me we were surrounded by the kind of mtv spring break crowd that makes you sad to share a species. but did i mention there was a beach? yeah, a real beach with sand and waves! and a giant rusty metal pipe running a mile along the beach and out into the atlantic where a dredger was anchored! but whatever! I bought a red string bikini (!)! and my national security dork friends made a sand Pentagon! behold:


So after everyone left the beach to go back to the condo to make lunch, I stayed a bit longer and sat in my beach chair in my red string bikini (!) and read THE FOUNTAINHEAD and enjoyed my day at the beach in DELAWARE. Inevitably some d-bags wandered by and go "HOLY SHIT THE PENTAGON COOL BRAH!" and chest bumped. then they turn to me and one is like "oh hey you a fan of Ayn Rand?" and i'm like "we're not having this conversation" but really I say "well, she's an uber-capitalist and she's got some fucked up ideas about gender, but I like it so far" to which they say "oh yeah... wasn't she like a LESBIAN" to which i say nothing because i died. the end.

ps, I made veggie burgers for beach bbqing.

meh-barb

things i'm so! excited! about! right now!

1) I just ordered this 12" Lodge cast iron skillet and this lid!

2) I also just ordered a copy of Baking with Julia!

3) I'm going to try my hand at making my own natural yeast starter for sourdough bread!

4) I think my next cooking insanity-fueled purchase will be a baking stone for some serious chewy, yeasty, french style loaves. fuckinay!

5) I'm going to hear Michael Pollan speak at a free lecture in Baltimore this Saturday! Even tho the food portion of the evening is already sold out and it will probably be standing room only!

Also, I've been planning in my mind all the delicious things i will be making in my perfect kitchen in my perfect pink victorian-style studio apartment in Oakland with hard wood floors and claw foot tub and a deck off of the kitchen where I will never need air conditioning or heating. Quick someone smack some reality into me please and remind me that i will be going to school 900 hours a day and won't have time to make pop tarts you idiot!

and now with a frying pan

cha!!!!

gee this economy, eh? haha? ... sigh

i quit my job again. i know, i know, this is beginning to be a pattern. but the first time was forgiveable, right? given the respectful amount of years spent with the organization and the lessons learned and achievements achieved and even my desire for a break and a period of relative irresponsibility before going back to school were understandable and justified. but come on. who quits not one but two FULL-TIME PAYING JOBS WITHIN 6 MONTHS DURING A GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS. what an asshole (points to self).

whatever, i didn't really want to quit this job. but like, i'm moving to California in 8 weeks (that's 2 months dickhead. yes but it sounds sooner in weeks. fuck you abby.) and I have like a lot of stuff to do and people to spend time with and snacks to snack on and places to putter around in before i go. and it was like a really stressful job (you. rode. a. bike. dumbass.) and so you know, i realized i have better things to do than like spend all my time working for wages. and i tried telling my boss this but he wasn't trying to hear reason, he was all "you have to come to work 5 days a week," and i was all like "no." so i quit and now i'm working at the farmers market 1 day a week and trying to live on free bread and produce and the kindness of strangers.

and i'm going to buy a truck!!!! (maybe, realistically probably not, but i want to).

no news

i'm too tired and sore and dehydrated and hypercaffienated and farmers tanned to actually "log" on the "web" what I've been up to lately. instead i'm going to slough some food porn off on you and be done with it so i can heave myself snout first into bed.

so here's this
(click)

and this
(click)

and zzzzzzzzzzz

i'm the decider

and i've decided not to go to Columbia. i checked out the graduate school of public health's MPH program in health policy this past weekend for their newly admitted students day in nyc and was thoroughly unimpressed with every aspect of the school: facilities, faculty, alumni, etc - all dingy and uninspired. the only thing that did impress me was that they have an entire office devoted to helping students find off-campus housing, which spurred a momentary daydream of moving to new york and finding a sunny pre-war Morningside walkup with fixed rent and going to the corner bodega for coffee in a bag every morning before class. maybe when i have a high paying job i'll move to brooklyn for a few years and live the dream but until then i really don't want to be a poor grad student in new york city.

the rest of the weekend consisted of coffee, pastry, pizza, pizza, rain, pastry, cookie, madeline, beer, whisky, cigarette, pizza, rain, bagel, candy, beer. it was totally awesome. we stayed in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, which is like the most adorable brownstone-lined idyll with a bodega/bar with beer garden/artisan bakery every 10 feet.

Friday after Columbia, we went to Mars Bar for a bucket of jameson each before meeting up with friends at Heathers where JD from le tigre was serendipitously djing then ended up at Manitoba's which I've heard is famous for its former punk legend and sort of asshole owner.

Then Saturday we walked down Court St, stopping in every bakery along the way (canoli, raisin croissant, banana muffin, 7 layer cookie, bagels, etc.). It got cold so we went into Brooklyn Industries and I got 2 sweaters. then we went to Grimaldi's in Dumbo and stood in line for 45 minutes in the wind for the bomb pizza which was totally worth it. on the way back we stopped in at the brooklyn flea market and found more adorable and delicious things to buy. then we went back to the house and drank coffee and beer and then got mediocre bagels in midtown before catching the bus back to DC.

and I'm going to Berkeley. fin.

cherry blossoms bikes and nuns

more = here.

yawn

i honestly don't do anything anymore except cook and ride my bike so there's really nothing new to blog about. um... i did 24 runs today? and did my taxes this weekend? and i made some food?

like this soup?


and these cookies?


oh and i'm MOVING TO CALIFORNIA IN JULY. i guess there's that.