48/365 - February 17, 2010

47/365 - February 16, 2010

I made a king cake for Mardi Gras. When I was a kid and we lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I used to have a king cake for my birthday since it’s usually so close to Mardi Gras. A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to start this tradition up again, so I ordered one online, only to get ripped off when I paid for but never received it. So I decided I was just going to make one myself! And now that’s my new tradition.

They’re supposed to be in a ring/oval, but I made mine in more a long braid this year. Next time I’ll probably go back to the ring as it was a bit too thick and wound up having a spot in the middle that was undercooked. But otherwise it was yummy.

It made me think about why I only make it once a year. It’s basically just a big cinnamon roll, so you could make it anytime and have it for breakfast. I decorated it with the Mardi Gras colors, but you could put any color of sugar or just top it with the icing and use no sugar at all. If you’re interested in the recipe, I posted it last year on my food blog.

27/365 - January 27, 2010

I’m a little obsessed with red items for my kitchen. Can you tell? Also, yes, I do have a pair of onion goggles and they are awesome. Even if feel a bit ridiculous wearing them, the fact that I don’t go temporarily blind from cutting an onion anymore makes them well worth it.

12/365 - January 12, 2010

I became obsessed with getting these vintage Pyrex bowls after I read this post. It was like…visceral or something. I saw them and thought they were the most perfect bowls I’d ever seen and knew I had to have them. I do not understand why Pyrex would stop making such wonderful bowls. Because plastic or clear glass is so much better? Blah! Luckily, it didn’t take much effort to find a vintage set. I had to order from 3 different sellers on Etsy to get the whole set, but they are all in great condition. I know you’re not supposed to be into your possessions, but these bowls? They just make me happy.

Our trip up to Savannah for the Ben Folds concert was this past weekend and it was fantastic. Seriously, it’s the best concert I’ve ever been to. Brandon agreed with me except he had to put it at number two behind Pink Floyd which I can’t really blame him for.

It also helped that I was just really happy that we actually made it to the concert. I was stressed out the whole way up there. Brandon was supposed to leave early from work, but wound up being late. It was pouring rain the entire way so everyone was going slower than normal, plus we kept running into traffic at random places on the interstate. Both of us were starving from not eating anything all day so we had to make a detour and stuff greasy food in our mouths as fast as possible (which is always great for the digestive system). Then we wound up running out of gas about 5 miles from Savannah (less than an hour before the concert) so we had to make another detour to get gas. But our hotel wound up being closer to downtown than I thought (we couldn’t afford $200 a night to stay in one of the downtown hotels, so La Quinta it was), so we checked in, threw our crap in the room, rushed back to the car and rushed downtown where, thankfully, there was a (free!) parking garage a block away from the theater, otherwise finding parking would have been a bitch.

We got the concert with about 30 minutes to spare, so I could finally relax after that. We were in the third row, so the seats were great (We were on the right side, I would have preferred the center–Ben’s piano was closer to the left side of the stage–but I could still see him really well).

The thing that really surprised me was how good the opening act was. I hadn’t heard anything about who was opening and I was expecting them to be pretty bad because that’s how it’s been for many of the concerts I’ve been to, but this guy made a new fan out of me. His name is Eef Barzelay (yeah, I know) and if you like Ben Folds, then you’ll like this guy. He’s a bit more folky than Ben and he plays guitar, not piano, but it’s the same kind of interesting voice-good lyrics-simple catchy songs, type of music. He also had some funny songs that reminded me of Flight of the Conchords. I would definitely say he’s a cross between Ben Folds and Flight of the Conchords. Very good stuff. He was also really funny and totally won over the crowd. I realized halfway though that I had heard him before. If you’ve seen the movie Rocket Science (and if you haven’t, you need to Netflix it this instant, it’s a GREAT little indie about boy with a stuttering problem who joins the debate team at the urging of a girl he likes) he did the music for it. He even had a music video on the Rocket Science DVD and I remember watching it thinking “Wow, this guy is goofy” and he is, but in a super cute way. He plays the guitar kind of sideways so that he can do these little dances and flourishes while he sings. It is definitely a sight to behold.

So then Ben finally came out and, really, what can I say without turning into a thirteen year old girl? It was just a greatgreatgreatgreat concert. He played ALL my favorite songs (and I’ve loved Ben Folds for 10 years now, so that’s a lot of songs). The guy is a machine. I think he played for at least an hour an half or two hours? Half the songs were him with his drummer and guitarist (And a tamborine player that came out a few times and was awesomely hilarious. Ben said he knew he had finally made it when he could hire someone to come out and play tambourine on two of his songs. ), but there was a long stretch in the middle that was just him alone playing the piano. There were songs from every album, including his NEW album which they had just finished recording. They played at least 5 new songs and they were all great, so I can’t WAIT until the new album gets released.

The best part is the story he told about one of his new songs. He was in Japan and walked out on stage to start a concert, but it was so dark that he couldn’t see where the stage ended and he accidentally walked right off, fell on his head and practically busted it open (the chorus of the song is basically: “They watched me fall down”). He crawled back on stage and then proceeded to perform the whole set despite the fact he was bleeding all over the piano. After the concert he was rushed to the hospital and they took x-rays to make sure he had no head trauma or whatever. Obviously he’s fine, though. The cool part is he said those x-rays (with Japanese writing all over them) are going to be the cover of his new album. The even cooler part was the he needed audience reactions to add to that track on the album, so we did some cheering and some clapping and some singing for him. If he likes us, we could be on the new album, which would be pretty sweet! Besides that song he also got us to sing along to Not the Same and Army (he even got up on top of his piano to conduct us!)

The whole concert was just soo much fun and it was wonderful being back in Savannah again. It was really the best birthday present I could have and it was a nice release after three straight weeks of working with no breaks (for me and for Brandon who has been on a deadline at his new job as well). And I found a new musician I like in the process, which is always great. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to the Eef Barzelay album I just downloaded from iTunes.

My favorite character was Stacy. I would have given anything to be Stacy. But I also liked Mary Anne since she was pretty much like me. It’s so funny to read that website, though, because Stacy is SUCH a bitch. I never once saw that. But, man, she really is a snobby bitch.

Even though I don’t really like kids, I started my own Baby-sitter’s Club (I think I was the only member, though. I was friends with a couple of girls in my neighborhood, but I don’t remember them being part of the club). I put up posters at our neighborhood pool and everything. I even made a Kid Kit (basically a big bag of toys and games that you bring with you). I remember I regularly babysat for two little girls that I actually really liked but I don’t think there were any other little kids in the neighborhood.

I stopped reading BSC books sometime after we moved to Tennessee and I started 7th grade. I remember having an “I <3 the BSC" pin on my bookbag and one of my classmates noticed it and made some comment about them being baby books or something like that. I think I probably stopped reading that day. Ahh, peer pressure.

I still tried babysitting a few more times and that's when I realized I'm not really a kid person. The last job I remember going to was for a little boy and I had to read him a bed time story, which in and of itself would have been fine. But I had a sore throat and it was really hurting my throat to read out loud. I think I just needed a freaking glass of water. I have no idea why I didn't just go get one, that was just dumb. Anyway, I think my voice scared the kid because they never asked me back. After that I started pet-sitting instead, which I liked MUCH better. Cats and dogs are much simpler than children.

My digital cable has HBO and Showtime on Demand and you can browse all the movies they are showing and watch them whenever you want. So one day a few months ago, I was uber bored and looking for something to watch and lo and behold they had the Baby-sitter's Club movie. The movie was WAY after my time, so I never saw it. I think I kind of wanted to, but, alas, it was too uncool (sigh). My curiosity got the best of me and I watched the movie. Man. That was crap-crappity-crap. It had Larisa Oleynik (of Alex Mack fame) COMPLETELY miscast as Dawn. I'm glad I missed it the first time since it was pretty horrid. It didn't even look like a real movie. It was a slight step up from the BSC videos they used to have and those were really bad quality.

Anyway, you can't go home again, right? Or something like that. At least I can go to this site and laugh at my tween self.

I actually wanted to sign up for NaBloPoMo to challenge myself to actually write in this thing again, but I’m going to be gone for the first week of the month, so I’d automatically lose. Although, I know the point isn’t really winning or losing, but still. Plus, going from writing nothing to something every single day would be a pretty big leap, one that I doubt I could make no matter how committed I was. Here’s my goal for November: 1 post a week. That’s a good start.

One of last times I posted all those months ago, I talked about the Mayer/Folds concert and I mentioned I had gotten tickets for Maroon 5. Well, that concert was a week ago and it was pretty awesome.

I wasn’t excited for it ONE BIT. I haven’t listened to Maroon 5 since I bought their newest album last spring and I honestly didn’t like the album all that much. It’s not bad, but I didn’t listen to it over and over and over again for months on end like I did with their first album. I thought the new songs were fairly forgettable actually. I was thinking about forgoing the concert entirely because I knew my boyfriend sure as hell didn’t want to go. But I also knew we had really good tickets and it would have been a big waste of money not to go. So we went.

It was definitely worth it. Our seats were about 5 feet from the stage. Not that you even bother with seats when you are 5 feet from stage, so in reality I stood about 2 feet from stage. Can’t beat that. I may not have been excited before, but I definitely got excited standing so close to the stage. I just wish I hadn’t been so stupid and worn uncomfortable shoes. I wound up having to take them off about a quarter a way though the concert because my feet were hurting so badly.

The opening opening act was some HORRIBLE guy. When he first came out, I could have sworn it was Corbin Bleu from the High School Musical movies (and don’t ask me how I know who Corbin Bleu is or why I know he’s in HSM because I will plead the 5th on that one). The guy had the EXACT same gigantic afro. This guy’s afro was even bigger than Corbin’s which is pretty big feat. Except for his afro, he was pretty forgettable. I don’t remember his name at all. His songs were some kind of R & B/Rap hybrid, complete with onstage mixer and some K-fed look alike background singer (or rapper, I guess). My boyfriend was laughing all the way through the act and I kept having to hit him so he’d stop. People were nice and clapped half-heartedly, but right after he left the stage and the lights came up, there was this collective giggle that ran through the audience like “the wave”.

The real opening act, The Hives, were pretty damn cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band with so much energy. The lead singer was just cute as a button (his Swedish accent was the best) and kept running back and forth on stage and even jumped in with the audience a few times. He didn’t have a wireless mic, so this poor tech guy had to follow him around everywhere trying to untangle the long cord and make sure the guy didn’t trip or get snagged. It was pretty hilarious because the singer was completely oblivious to how much he was tangling up the cord. At the beginning of their set the lead singer said that we’d be fans by the end, which I laughed at, but my boyfriend and I are definitely fans now. Actually, I know that my boyfriend enjoyed The Hives a lot more than Maroon 5.

The worse thing was that there were these two girls near us, who sat through the ENTIRE set with their heads in their laps, hands over their ears! The girls were sitting right under the lead singer, so the whole band could see them. I honestly can’t think of anything more rude. I mean, I get that when you buy tickets for a concert, you are getting them for the headlining act and may not like the opening act, but come on! You don’t have to stand up and cheer, you don’t even have to clap if you really want to be an asshole, but if you won’t even LOOK at the band when they are two feet away from you, that’s just unforgivably rude. I don’t understand how anyone could act like that.

Right before Maroon 5 came on they got up and started stomping around and yelling to the security people about how they bought tickets for $119 dollars and all these other people who didn’t were getting in front of them and blah blah blah whine whine whine. First of all, they wasted a shit load of money, because mine were half that and I was only ONE row behind them. Second of all, get the hell over yourself! Finally they just got up and marked their territory at the front of the stage and snarled at anyone who came near them. After all that, I was watching them during the concert and they didn’t seem to be having ANY fun at all. They just stood there, didn’t clap, sing, dance or even sway. They looked positively bored. They could have TOUCHED Adam Levine on SEVERAL occasions and didn’t even try. What the hell was wrong with these people? Why go through all the trouble and not even try to have some fun?

Anyway. Maroon 5 did a good set. Compared to the ADD Hives, Adam and Co seemed kinda mellow, but that’s okay. I think they played more songs from their first album than their new one, which I was happy about and made for a better concert since I know all the words to those. And except for those two idiot girls, everyone else in the front with me was having fun. I got a BUNCH of pictures of the beautiful Adam Levine, but since they were all on my camera phone, they look like crap. Better than nothing I guess.

Anyway, I’m glad we went. But that’s two Maroon 5 concerts I’ve been to, so unless their next album is the. best. ever. I doubt I will be seeing them in concert again.

Next week we are going all the way up to North Carolina for a Decemberists concert. My boyfriend and I absolutely LOVE them (I’d say they are our fav band right now), and NC was the closest venue so we decided to make a vacation out of it. It’s really our first vacation together. We’ve visited parents and people like that, but we’ve never gone to a place we’ve never visited before and stayed in a hotel and all that. The concert is a two night event, so we’re going to be there most of the week, exploring the town during the days. I can’t wait!

I’m worried about being away from work of course, and I’ve warned all my clients that I’ll be gone, but I just know someone is going to to have an emergency. I am such a work-a-holic. I had to make sure the hotel would have wireless before I booked it. I am going to try my best not to ANSWER my email, but I’ll probably still be checking it. I want to have a REAL vacation though, so I’m going to try my best to relax and not worry about work. We’ll see how that goes.

So my new kitty as cute as he is…he’s kind of terror. My boyfriend and I went out of town yesterday and stayed the night. We weren’t even gone a total of 24 hours, but we got back this morning and the cat had gotten a hold of a roll of toilet paper and shredded the entire thing. All over the living room. Then when that was taken care of, he jumped up on the kitchen counter and found the roll of paper towels and proceeded to shred that as well. It looked like it had snowed in our apartment while we were gone. GRR. But when he’s not shredding paper or scratching my wood furniture, he becomes the cutest, most cuddly, most nuzzling-your-face cat ever. How can you be mad at that!

Anyway, so the reason we went out of town was for a concert in Tampa. It was John Mayer with Ben Folds. Pretty much my definition of Most Awesome Concert Ever as they are both my favorites. I didn’t get tickets until they had already been on sale for a month, so we didn’t have the best seats (though they weren’t nosebleed either). In fact I wasn’t even going to get tickets when I thought it was just John Mayer, but when I saw Ben was going to be there, too, I knew I had to get the tickets no matter what.

The best part was that I got a hotel that was right across the street from the venue, so we didn’t have to deal with traffic or parking we just walked right over there. It was an outdoor amphitheater, so as you can imagine in Florida in August it was SWELTERING. I thought I was going to die for about the first hour until the sun finally started going down.

Ben Folds did a great set, though I was annoyed with the people there because a ton of them were still milling around and talking loudly at the beginning of it. Like he was the opening act or something?! (Which he wasn’t, there was some random British dude I’ve never heard of that opened.) After a few songs most people finally got in their seats, though. Then all of sudden near the end of the set it started to pour. I mean like crazy, horizontal rain, crashes of lightning, wind whipping your hair kind of pouring. The amphitheater had a cover on top, but was open on the sides and back, so everyone still got pretty wet. I didn’t have too much of a problem with it since I had been so hot earlier. I felt bad for the people behind us, though. There was a whole section of lawn in the back that was uncovered and everyone sitting there got completely soaked.

As is usual for storms in Florida, it only lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. By the time John Mayer came on it was swelteringly hot again. His set was great as well and he did two acoustic songs as an encore. Then the rest of his band came back out in..I don’t know..their underwear, I guess? It looked like clown underwear, complete with striped kneesocks. I don’t think he knew there were going to do that. It was pretty funny. Anyway, they did one last song in their underwear. Unfortunately, John was never in his underwear. That I would have liked to see, the rest of his band…not so much.

All-in-all a really good concert. Not my favorite, mostly because of the venue and our seats. I could hear the songs fine, mainly because I already knew all the lyrics anyway, but it was definitely hard to understand them when they spoke because the microphone made them sound fuzzy. But getting to see two of my favorite singers was pretty much worth it all.

Next up is a Maroon 5 concert in October. I don’t know my exact seat yet, but I’m pretty sure we’re in the one of the first three rows! I don’t like Maroon 5 nearly as much as like John Mayer or Ben Folds, but any concert where you are that close to the stage is going to be an awesome concert.

First I found out that one of my photos is being included on this travel guide website. I have photo of the Orlando Museum of Art that was in my flickr account, which was how they found out. See, check it out! I even get a photo credit with my full name like a professional photographer.

Secondly, I was checking my stats and found that my portfolio has been listed on Daily Slurp as one the Beautiful Sites of the Day.

So really, both of those things should be enough to make my day, but I just can’t seem to get rid of the blahs. I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the second time last night and I know I said in my last post that I wasn’t depressed that it was over, but I think I am now.

Personally, I LOVED the book even more on re-read. The first time, I was just trying to get through it as fast as I could because I wanted to get the end and find out what happened to everyone. On the re-read I could take my time and really enjoy it. All the camping didn’t seem nearly as long this time around and I also didn’t mind the corny epilogue as much. I actually really liked it. Though I think part of that is because I’ve read or seen a billion interviews this past week where she has revealed more details about the characters that I felt were missing from the epilogue before.

I guess I’m just feeling like, “Well…what now?”. I’ve been looking forward to the month of July for SOOO long because of the book and the movie (which I also saw for a second time yesterday) and now it’s come and gone and I have all this obsessive energy and I don’t know where to put it anymore. I find I’m almost always better when I have something to obsess over, even if it’s something small. I feel like my obsessions anchor me in a way, otherwise I feel like I do today, which is just that I’m floating along grabbing at things but not really getting anywhere.

What can you do though? I know I’ll find something new to obsess over, I always do. In the meantime, I just have to keep going.

So, it’s over. I finished it last night at about 1am. I’ve been on a media blackout since about Thursday, so I wanted to get it done with this weekend so I could get back on the damn internet.

Freaking UPS took their sweet time delivering it on Saturday. I actually wound up sleeping on the sofa Friday night because I was absolutely petrified that UPS would come while I was asleep and I wouldn’t get my book. But of course, they didn’t deliver it until 4 freaking 30 in the afternoon. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I should have just waited in line at midnight with the rest of the world. Oh well.

Apparently, I’m a slow reader because I’ve been reading other people’s blogs and comments who got through it in 7-12 hours, but it took me more like 20. Still though, I feel like I read it too fast and I’m going to re-read it this week at a much slower pace.

It really was the perfect weekend. It rained really hard all Saturday and Sunday, and I always just want to curl up with a good book when it’s like that outside. It was fantastic. Poor Brandon was bored out of his mind because I literally said about 5 words to him the whole time. I made up for it a little bit by stopping about 200 pages from the end (because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop any time after that) and making him dinner, but then I went right back to reading.

Final thoughts (no spoilers!)…

I loved it (though I didn’t think it was perfect, the middle dragged A LOT and was overly depressing, but the beginning and end more than made up for it). It ended EXACTLY how I wanted it to end and all my predictions about Snape and Harry were right. Yay! I thought the epilogue was BEYOND corny, but at the same time I wanted it to be longer. I didn’t cry until the second to last chapter, but I did tear up quite a few times before that.

I’ve read a lot of people saying they are sad it’s over, but I’m really not. This whole last year and the year before the 6th book came out were awful! I hate waiting. I have no patience for this kind of stuff. That’s why I’m so glad that I (stupidly) shunned the books until after the 5th book came out. I got to read the first five books in a row. No waiting. It was fantastic. Having to wait for these last two books was torture and it would absolutely kill me to have to do it again.

Plus, here’s how I look it at it. I’ve read all the books (except for this one, of course) 4 times. I’ve read them once a year since I started reading the series. Despite reading them that many times, I NEVER get tired of them (ok, maybe it was a little bit harder to get through Chamber of Secrets on the 4th read). I still laugh at the funny parts, my heart still races at the exciting parts. I love all the characters and my love for them only increases with each read. So while there won’t be any new books, it’s not really over for me. Because next year I can re-read the series in it’s entirety and how fantastic will that be? A beginning, middle and, finally, an end. It’ll be like a whole new experience and I’m sure I’ll discover new things like I have all the previous times I’ve re-read the books.

It’s like how I love re-watching all my favorite shows on DVD. Knowing how Buffy and Scoobies turn out in the last season (and in the Season 8 comic book) puts this whole new perspective on the earlier seasons of show. This is most apparent in places like the Buffy-verse and the Potter-verse whose worlds were meticulously laid out to the finest detail by their creators, and who obviously had an end game set up from the get go (Unlike say…Lost). It’s why Tolkien is still so popular after half a century. Worlds like that live on in the minds of fans because they are so well crafted that they don’t diminish with time, they only get richer and richer.

That’s what Harry Potter is for me and it’s why I’m relieved to finally have a ending, and ending that I am completely happy and satisfied with. I’m happy it’s over and I can’t wait to re-read it again next year.