Currently freelancing

Actually, just finished up Nappily In Bloom by Trisha R. Thomas, the sequel to Nappily Faithful.

Summer lovin'

Now that I'm a city mouse, as Kathryn would say, it's nice when I get to go home to the burbs and experience some nature. Or really just give a view that doesn't include concrete and I'm happy. Saturday I went strawberry picking with my mom at Parlee's Farm, which is only five minutes from our house. The pickin' was great and there really is nothing like picking your own fruit. These smaller, glossy berries are just zillions of times better than the mutant-size monstrosities you find at the grocery store.

I put some of them in a trifle layered with cubed pound cake brushed with lemon glaze, cool whip, and blueberries, for my aunt's annual summer cookout.



Also special props to Sam's delicious homemade watermelon sorbet, with extra pretty points for presentation (the little cups! the sprigs of fresh mint!).

Gilmore Girls quote of the day

"Because sometimes you have something you need to say but you can't because the words won't come out or you get scared or you feel stupid, so if you could write a song and sing it then you could say what you need to say and it would be beautiful and people would listen and you wouldn't make a complete idiot out of yourself, but all of us can't be songwriters so some of us will never be able to say what we're thinking or what we want other people to know that we're thinking so we'll never get the chance to make things right again ever . . . so give this guy a license!"

(Season One, "Love, Daisies, and Troubadours")

go away.

Anyone want to pitch in and do an anti-rain dance with me?

It's the little things . . .

. . . that make my day. Like a cupcake van sitting outside my office building. I swear, everything is more fun when it comes in a food truck (plus you can find out where the truck is on Twitter).

www.cupcakestop.com

wicked easy pasta salad

Second new recipe tried out of the June Everyday Food: pasta salad with goat cheese and arugula (minus the goat cheese for me). The dressing was three ingredients quickly whisked together--olive oil, red wine vinegar, and Grey Poupon, tossed with pasta, cannellini beans, red onion, and the arugula. It's a great, fast, summery recipe to add to the side-dish repertoire, although I'll admit that this was pretty much my dinner last night.

The July issue arrived today, and I basically salivated looking at the gorgeous pictures of grilled veggies and kebabs while cursing my grill-lessness.

fancypants

My company has a fabulous thing known as summer Fridays where we get every other Friday off in exchange for working an extra 45 minutes on the other days. (Lucky, I know.) This past Friday was my day off so I had a nice, long, relaxing weekend. And one of the best things about that? Having the time and energy to devote to a little extra-special breakfast on Saturday morning: classic Joy of Coooking french toast topped with strawberries and powdered sugar, on a pretty plate.

Currently freelancing

The First Law of Motion by K. R. Moorhead

The Haunting of America by William J. Birnes and Joel Martin

Not quite as exciting when there are no pretty covershots yet to look at.

...but for tonight, I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance (for the first time this summer!) with a glass of wine.

Modern life

Most unnecessary website ever . . .

or greatest website ever?

http://isiticedcoffeeweather.com/

So remember back when I said I wanted to do Etsy? Yeah, never happened. But even so, I can at least still feel good about supporting handmade crafts at the Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg on Saturday. This is not your grandma's church-basement craft fair. Over 300 vendors participateds, and holy lord, everything was so cute and beautifully made that I could have dropped a couple hundred bucks there, easy. Tons of handmade jewelry, cute stuff for babies, art prints, handscreened shirts and bags, letterpress cards . . . it was awesome and a great place to shop for gifts for people. Best purchase of the day:

Gnocchi-licious

It's the first weekend in recent memory that I haven't been either consumed by a freelance project or away somewhere, so it's great to have some time to veg out and watch movies and try a new recipe. Thanks to some gnocchi inspiration (gnocchspiration? should I even go there?) from Rachel—I didn't know my grocery store sold frozen gnocchi!—I decided to try out this Gnocchi with Summer Vegetables recipe from Martha Stewart Everyday Food, which was super simple and came out great.

Gilmore Girls quote of the day

“He’s adjusting. He probably just went out and realized there are twelve stores devoted entirely to peddling porcelain unicorns.”

(Season Two, “Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy”)

Quote of the Day: Sister Act 2 edition

If you wanna be somebody
If you wanna somewhere
You better wake up and pay attention

Don't even try to play like this isn't a fantastic movie.

Hairdon'ts

Oh, Daily Beast. You sure are good for a lunch-break smirk now and then with awesome slideshows like this. If you want to know what Kate Gosselin and Adam Lambert have in common, you need to see this.

A Brief History of Kate Gosselin's Hair

time travel

Do you ever feel like you born into the wrong decade? I remember wearing my "hippie" Halloween costume in the seventh grade and thinking how frickin cool I looked, and why couldn't I live in the 70s?

Now I'm on a 50s and 60s kick. I've been watching a lot of Mad Men (set in 1960) episodes on my ipod and last night I rented Mona Lisa Smile (takes place in 1953). Mad Men is awesome; Mona Lisa Smile is a mediocre movie that doesn't ever quite go anywhere . . . but hot damn are the clothes gorge. Why doesn't anyone dress like this anymore?