[quiet] is the winter of our [dis]content

if my blog accurately reflected the comings and goings and otherwise -ings of my life, i would still be utterly ill at the moment. but luckily this blog is really only a snippet of daily proceedings, so no i am no longer vomiting out of taxi windows, but am instead happily healthy once more. huzzah for health!

to celebrate my last week of non-sickness, i returned to normal new york routines: a great deal of working, meetings, film screenings, lots and lots of park-walking (the leaves! the leaves!!!), park avenue-apartment wine/cheese-ings, but mostly i feel that the best moments of my hours outside unicef are filled with an ever-increasing amount of home-cookin'.

i tell you. something snapped when i was in berlin. the combination of working from home, having a loveable someone to cook for on a regular basis, and the uber-attractive glow of food blogs has turned me into a bona fide domestic:


maybe it's also that i'm getting "old"? ha! i will be a WHOLE quarter century this week - and look at this picture i just took with my computer (laughing whilst looking down at my roommate):


old - right? ok, maybe it's just the dark lighting.

but in addition to those scrumptious lemon-lime baby cakes above, tonight i made the best curry possible, and am wondering if one can start a food blog which simply reviews all other food-blogs? i may go down that road should i find myself for-whatever-reason-unemployed within the next year. (not likely, however - unicef is very good to me.)

but in other news, i'm staying in tonight. is this further proof of my burgeoning domesticity + age + eventual boredom? if so, bring it on. i'm incredibly content to step my way into a quiet winter. revisiting authors i've let fall by the wayside, make more yummy food, and simply bask in calm - so utterly scarce in manhattan. my life is so very full: there is a great deal of love in it, i am healthy and comfortable, i feel regularly renewed to learn and grow, and the future is hopeful. could i ask for anything more at this stage? methinks no.

so here's me transmitting love and baked goods to you all from my quiet apartment tonight in upper upper manhattan :)

[oh yes and duh - happy halloween! nowadays the only point of this holiday as far as i'm concerned is to see nieces and nephews look cute in their costumes. blog away with pictures fam! i can't wait to see! :)]

tender is the night

i'm horribly ill today... worse now in the night. sicker than i can remember being in a long while. it came suddenly - violently - today at work, forcing me into a cab at 3pm - vomiting out the side window as we drove up the FDR from midtown to harlem where i crawled in between sheets, bowl at my side, and tried to sleep to prevent myself from feeling all the pain and yuckiness.

since then i have watched a full 2.5+ hour documentary and then fictional film on rembrandt's "nightwatch", whilst (nervously) eating saltines to regain some strength...

and all this rembrandt night watching (literally) reminded me that i live within a subway ride from a whole room of gorgeous rembrandts and resolved myself to go to the met more than i have been this last year. (when i can actually stand upright that is.)


sigh.

i really do need to sleep now! i simply can't seem to. sickness and all that mean sleepless, long, reflective, weary, and tender nights for me...

so in the meantime i'm reading keats...*

*ironic, yes - considering i'm just nigh on turning 25. (weird!) but i'm comforted to know it's not 1821, and i do not have consumption. even if it kinda feels like it.

back at my desk (with a few alterations)

1. i'm wearing the FAB red curdoroy dress that steph very kindly made me. (click on the link and you can get one yourself! they're wonderful!)

2. i'm sipping the DELISH mighty leaf african nectar tea that mom lovingly bestowed on me.

3. i'm staring at the INTENSE playbill posted on my cubicle from the broadway production of hamlet (with jude law no less) which leslie and i were privileged to attend on saturday.

in other words, the weekend of the p fam women was a success, and i'm still reaping the benefits. thanks mom, les, and steph for coming all the way back east to the freeeezing cold city :) it was absolutely the best new york weekend i've had in a long long while :)

love you all lots and lots.

(sorry les: totally stole those pictures from you! hope you weren't going to blog them! ha!)

excited! excited!

SO excited that ...the angels will be in town this weekend to kick the yankees' trash.
(though NOT excited that the cheapest way-in-the-back-bench-not-even-real-seats-tickets are over $150 - dang yankee stadium)

...my boss is working from home today, so after my afternoon meeting i'm bookin' it home to complete my assignments there.
(NOT excited that she didn't tell me friday or earlier this morning she would be working from home, or else i would have never left)

....i can eat more of my banana bread yumminess stored in my freezer this afternoon while working. seriously everyone - make this stuff. it's amazing.

but above all, i am STOKED beyond STOKED that mom, les, and steph (and maybe stella!) are all descending on the city this weekend! ah! it will be so fun. i'm bouncing in my seat now thinking about it. i love visitors. especially when they happen to be the fam.

huzzah! go angels!

home early tonight

ah! i'm getting into this hyper-stimulation mode again. stepping into a thriving place like new york just morphs me into this huge sponge where every subway encounter and cultural event i am exposed to soaks up into me...

and after 3 over-full weeks of such sponging, i end up feeling really, really tired. ha.

today was such a day of almost overindulgent absorption: 'twas the first day of open house new york, where hundreds of awesomely interesting locales in the city typically closed and locked to the public are opened up for free perusal. awesome, yes? yes. after visiting 10 such sites scattered far far apart throughout the boroughs, topped off with an excellent film screening tonight at the maysles institute, i just had to come home. i planned to stay for the post-screening poetry reading, and then meet more friends to go dancing on the lower east side... but... all the way back down from harlem to avenue A after a week of readings and screenings and subway insanity and i just couldn't muster the strength. heck, i can't even muster the strength to tell you all about what awesomely interesting locales i went to and visited.

instead i was home by 10 to bake some banana-cinnamon-sugar-chocolate-bread-cake amazingness. and speaking of that, why yes that photo is in fact 3 stacks of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie pancakes that me and dear xarissa made last weekend to celebrate general conference. we feasted that weekend, with a perfect farewell-to-summer key lime coconut cake as well. oh and did i further mention that i also made my first scones recently?

homemade bagels are next.

and a very large p.s./fyi.. i cannot express in proper words how much i miss this:





















and maybe that's where most of the actual exhaustion comes from after all. :(

11 weeks until we're reunited. (not that i'm counting or anything)