I've been staying at my dad's house since Thursday. Wednesday night my bellydance class was on Spring Break so my mom kindly drove me out to Laura's house so I could check out Trivia Night at Stout, the Irish pub in Brighton. I joined the Young Turks team for the evening, and though I didn't play a big role in winning the rounds, I had a lot of fun! Too bad I don't have a car or moped so I can't come out to trivia nights more often. I suppose I will have to find some in Ann Arbor. The other problem is the fact that I have just resigned myself to staying in most nights.
Lately I've been reading about gardening, as Spring is quietly sneaking up on us. This year I am going to have a garden, and I want to make sure I do it right which includes starting my seeds early enough.
I decided that container gardening would be the best option for me, in addition to the flower beds at mom's. I want to order some Michigan wildflowers, the butterfly mix, which goes for $10/oz at the Michigan Wildflower Farm. Here is another great michigan wildflower resource:
http://www.wildflowersmich.org/
From my reading, however, I learned that potted plants don't use soil because it is very heavy and not porous or nutritious enough for the root of potted plants! Instead, you need something called potting mix, shown below
or you can make your own out of vermiculite (or perlite or sand, but vermiculite seems to be the best way to go), peat moss, and fertilizer such as Osmocote, a slow release fertilizer and limestone, which balances pH levels. This is necessary because certain plants need more or less acidic or alkaline soil. I found this information at this really clear and to the point info sheet:
http://consumerhorticulture.psu.edu/files/homemade_potting_media.pdf
I'll probably just buy a ready made mix because I don't want my potting medium in bulk, nor do I want to spend that much on buying the ingredients.
I need to look for pots though, as well as germination pots. Mom wants me to do a little bit of fake flower arranging inside our house, so I'm really excited to have to go buy some flowers for that. I'll take a picture when I'm done. It's going to be an exciting challenge.
I have a few other craft projects in mind such as attaching beads, feathers or paint to some little hair clips I have; collaging; knitting; sewing pockets to the inside of my winter jacket and my Northface zip-up, a project I found in ReadyMade magazine and I also want to make a travel journal out of the scraps I brought back from my time in Maine.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday
On Thursday the snow really started to melt, now on Saturday morning, there is not hardly any snow left at all. It is refreshing.
The weather was weird on Thursday, I describe it as muddy. It was a brown, squishy day on the ground. I read in the morning, then Laura gave me a call to tell me I could come and get my scarf (the French one that Sister bought me) that I'd left at her house last Saturday.
I stopped at the People's Food Co-op on my way out of town so I could pick up ingredients to make Baked Oatmeal. It was a recipe that mom found, it supposedly came from the Amish, and she thought sounded good. I was going to try and healthify and veganize it (adding extra nuts and seeds, taking out the cows milk and eggs), but mom didn't think that sounded good.
I bought the ingredients in the bulk foods section, and I brought my own containers. I love doing that, and there are a few reasons why:
*saves on packaging (the energy required to make it, and the waste of throwing it away)
*bulk is fun because you get to pick from a variety of products and choose the amount that you want. I suppose I always get an "I did it!" feeling, it's a sense of self sufficiency.
*You get to choose your own packaging. You can keep all your bulk-bought goods in clear glass jars.
It was a calm day for me, I was coming down with a cold, and the muddy weather just made me feel kind of strange, but the drive out to Brighton was lovely, and a route that I do not venture on very often, not having my own car and all.
I listened to this song right before I got to Laura's - Suite Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. The final part of the song makes this one of the best songs of all time. Haha, in fact, in this youtube version I linked above, the person precedes this ending with the text, "here comes my favorite part!" It's that good.
It's beautiful, and deep. I'm still not quite sure that I get the message.
I got to Laura's, and fatefully, luckily, I had grabbed my yarn and crochet hooks, and Laura had grabbed hers from her mom's house that very morning as well! We proceeded. I got to teach her some stitches. I hope I taught her well enough that she understands and remembers them. But it seemed to me that she knew what she was doing.
Laura had to go to work in the afternoon, and I had to head back to Ann Arbor to pick mum up from work at 5. Karen invited to me to go to her yoga class at the CCRB so I did, it was only $7 and good for my health. It was hard! The teacher was kind of a hard-ass, with a smoker's voice and boot camp attitude: "I can't hear you! That must be you need it to be harder!"
I woke up the next morning feeling achy in my muscles and sick! But first I baked the baked oatmeal in the morning, and repotted my strawberry baby and little Madagascan Palm. Those plants have been needing that. The base of the palm sprout was getting skinnier than the top, which is not a good sign. So yesterday it was finally warm enough to step out onto the porch and play with dirt. This morning they are both looking fabulous, and I even new little leaves on both plants! Good job guys!
I layed on the couch for almost the whole day, and then I went up to bed and fell asleep before 9pm, listening to NPR. Thank goodness I didn't have to listen to On Point (which comes on at 9). No, I like that show sometimes, but I'm just not that interested in politics.
Yesterday I also caught up on some blog reading. My favorites are the DIY craft blogs, and the people who post old pictures of women so I can see what I would have worn if I lived back then, and how to recreate the image now.
The weather was weird on Thursday, I describe it as muddy. It was a brown, squishy day on the ground. I read in the morning, then Laura gave me a call to tell me I could come and get my scarf (the French one that Sister bought me) that I'd left at her house last Saturday.
I stopped at the People's Food Co-op on my way out of town so I could pick up ingredients to make Baked Oatmeal. It was a recipe that mom found, it supposedly came from the Amish, and she thought sounded good. I was going to try and healthify and veganize it (adding extra nuts and seeds, taking out the cows milk and eggs), but mom didn't think that sounded good.
I bought the ingredients in the bulk foods section, and I brought my own containers. I love doing that, and there are a few reasons why:
*saves on packaging (the energy required to make it, and the waste of throwing it away)
*bulk is fun because you get to pick from a variety of products and choose the amount that you want. I suppose I always get an "I did it!" feeling, it's a sense of self sufficiency.
*You get to choose your own packaging. You can keep all your bulk-bought goods in clear glass jars.
It was a calm day for me, I was coming down with a cold, and the muddy weather just made me feel kind of strange, but the drive out to Brighton was lovely, and a route that I do not venture on very often, not having my own car and all.
I listened to this song right before I got to Laura's - Suite Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. The final part of the song makes this one of the best songs of all time. Haha, in fact, in this youtube version I linked above, the person precedes this ending with the text, "here comes my favorite part!" It's that good.
It's beautiful, and deep. I'm still not quite sure that I get the message.I got to Laura's, and fatefully, luckily, I had grabbed my yarn and crochet hooks, and Laura had grabbed hers from her mom's house that very morning as well! We proceeded. I got to teach her some stitches. I hope I taught her well enough that she understands and remembers them. But it seemed to me that she knew what she was doing.
Laura had to go to work in the afternoon, and I had to head back to Ann Arbor to pick mum up from work at 5. Karen invited to me to go to her yoga class at the CCRB so I did, it was only $7 and good for my health. It was hard! The teacher was kind of a hard-ass, with a smoker's voice and boot camp attitude: "I can't hear you! That must be you need it to be harder!"
I woke up the next morning feeling achy in my muscles and sick! But first I baked the baked oatmeal in the morning, and repotted my strawberry baby and little Madagascan Palm. Those plants have been needing that. The base of the palm sprout was getting skinnier than the top, which is not a good sign. So yesterday it was finally warm enough to step out onto the porch and play with dirt. This morning they are both looking fabulous, and I even new little leaves on both plants! Good job guys!
I layed on the couch for almost the whole day, and then I went up to bed and fell asleep before 9pm, listening to NPR. Thank goodness I didn't have to listen to On Point (which comes on at 9). No, I like that show sometimes, but I'm just not that interested in politics.
Yesterday I also caught up on some blog reading. My favorites are the DIY craft blogs, and the people who post old pictures of women so I can see what I would have worn if I lived back then, and how to recreate the image now.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Just Passing Through
I've got an idea, since I haven't been very good at updating lately. I'm taking a que from Kerry Bradshaw in Sex and the City where I will write more complex updates over the course of a week, and I'll post once a week, around Friday. This will allow me to explore more complex ideas and write more multi-facted entries, by building on a theme all week long rather than summing things up like a list. I aspire to be a journalist and write articles for the public, so that is why I am going to write more like a journalist on here. :)
Matt Kelley, one of my greatest and most generous teachers passed away on Monday. He contributed to the way I view the world in a big way. He loved photography, retro aesthetic, good movies such as Shaft, and rock n roll.
One way that I think of death, no matter how a person passes or how young, I think that when they die, it is their time to go. It's deeper than that, I believe that when they die their soul is used up, wrung out, like a wet sponge, like when you start crying and then you stop and you don't need to cry anymore, or when the clouds are heavy with moisture and it rains and the clouds are gone. I believe our lives and our souls are the same way, everyone has a capacity. Everyone can only wring out the amount of soul that is in them. Soul's come in different sizes, and some people fulfill their soul capacity quicker, like Matt. I believe he really utilized his soul. But that is just my opinion, let me know if you find it offensive, I would like to be enlightened to another POV.
This is a hard topic to follow up, because it feels like simply dismissing a person's whole life, and I don't want to do that (because he was and always will be an incredible man), but I also want to tell you about the rest of my week.
Yesterday morning I settled into my couch to read Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Their Circle by Lois W. Banner. It is a great book, I am learning so much from Ms. Banner about young women and their culture and lifestyle from the late Victorian era up til the 1920s so far. It's absolutely fascinating, and part of what is fascinating is the fact that social norms really are very fluid because they were so different just 100 years ago!
The culture of Smashing or Crushing, for example, was where girls engaged in semi-romantic (bosom buddies) relationships with each other, and the strange part is that this was not considered homosexuality but a healthy way to keep girls away from boys before marriage!
Matt Kelley, one of my greatest and most generous teachers passed away on Monday. He contributed to the way I view the world in a big way. He loved photography, retro aesthetic, good movies such as Shaft, and rock n roll.
One way that I think of death, no matter how a person passes or how young, I think that when they die, it is their time to go. It's deeper than that, I believe that when they die their soul is used up, wrung out, like a wet sponge, like when you start crying and then you stop and you don't need to cry anymore, or when the clouds are heavy with moisture and it rains and the clouds are gone. I believe our lives and our souls are the same way, everyone has a capacity. Everyone can only wring out the amount of soul that is in them. Soul's come in different sizes, and some people fulfill their soul capacity quicker, like Matt. I believe he really utilized his soul. But that is just my opinion, let me know if you find it offensive, I would like to be enlightened to another POV.
This is a hard topic to follow up, because it feels like simply dismissing a person's whole life, and I don't want to do that (because he was and always will be an incredible man), but I also want to tell you about the rest of my week.
Yesterday morning I settled into my couch to read Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Their Circle by Lois W. Banner. It is a great book, I am learning so much from Ms. Banner about young women and their culture and lifestyle from the late Victorian era up til the 1920s so far. It's absolutely fascinating, and part of what is fascinating is the fact that social norms really are very fluid because they were so different just 100 years ago!
The culture of Smashing or Crushing, for example, was where girls engaged in semi-romantic (bosom buddies) relationships with each other, and the strange part is that this was not considered homosexuality but a healthy way to keep girls away from boys before marriage!
Bahrain is an Island Monarchy
The uprising's that are spreading across the Middle East and into Italy are incredibly inspirational to me. I am very moved by the momentum of it all, and how people are willing to stand up to corrupt dictators/regimes for a chance at freedom. They are mostly young people, they say on the news, who don't understand the complexities of life or economies in these countries where the dictators hold things together, but in Egypt they were not just young people, and not just poor people either. And if they are just young people in Bahrain and Libya then that is ok, because even though they are naive, they are also the people with enough hope and idealism to change things for the better. Reality of the everyday has not squashed, oppressed and molded them yet. But they are not just young people.
As for me--
I work on the weekends only, at minimum wage mind you, so I have the whole five-day week free (cross your fingers). I don't need to work full-time right now because I have to pay only to support my wants, and I try to keep them minimal (although I really could use help sticking to a budget, and with investing my dollars).
This morning I woke up at 7am and I proceeded to make crepes from a recipe my French sister Laura emailed to me. I used rice flour rather than wheat because I'm going gluten-free, I also used hemp-milk just for the heck of it, but I did use eggs as the recipe called for. next time I am going to use flax seeds instead of eggs: 1 egg = 1TBS flax seeds (ground or whole) mixed with 3 TBS water and mixed until gelatinous.
It was difficult figuring out how long to wait before flipping the crepes, but it would have been easier if I read Laura's directions first, "flip when the edges are golden brown." I started doing that and it worked perfectly, though I think they're just a tad too golden brown on the bottom.
Suddenly while I was making the crepes, I was reminded of being back in 7th grade when Jessie and I made crepes to represent our country for some activity. Everyone had a country and had to bring in food from that country. We had Ireland and found that they ate crepes there. I just remember being in her kitchen, and ending up with this huge bowl of a watery mixture when her mom stepped in and made the crepes for us because whatever we made were not crepes, haha.
Now I'm getting hungry again so I think I'll lightly steam some broccoli add lemon juice (mmm) and maybe a little shredded cheese and wrap it up in a crepe! Yum!
After that, I might see what movie is on TCM now... maybe! I know that I should definitely go outside because the high is in the 40s today!! Crazy warm compared to last week when it was like 04 degrees out. I feel I should spend one hour outside, walking on trails or sidewalks but we'll see...
I have some books I'd like to read as well. Maybe start a new craft project.
Finally, later I have bellydance class at 8:05pm.
***
I spent almost the last week at Dad's, and when I am there I feel like I can let myself out of the tight self-school and health food shaped box I have put myself into. This means that I snuggle up under the electric blanket on the couch in front of the tv and I watch old movies and E! and the Food Network.
I've been sick the past couple of days, so I watched a lot of good old movies on TCM, because they are showing award winning films from the past. Some that I really enjoyed were:
"The Goodbye Girl",
"A Free Soul" (1931) with Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, and Lionel Barrymore. This movie was made in the first few years of talkie films, and presents the cold and airy houses of the Victorian era and the tension with the freedom found through Women's Liberation movements of the Roaring Twenties and before then. In the film I was surprised with Norma's flirtatiousness with her father, it was somewhat incestuous in appearance and made me uncomfortable! However, i liked their openness and closeness to each other, and this is an OK thing, but different than I'm used to.
What Norma was wearing in this scene I thought would pass, no questions asked, as fashionable today in 2011, except the gloves, but lets bring gloves back! I don't understand the etiquette and fashion surrounding them, but I'm sure with time you figure it out. Hm... Anyway, it's interesting that something fashionable in 1931 could be equally so today.
I'm reading a biography about Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict right now, and they are graduate students in the late 1920s, so about the same time this movie was produced. The idea of being a free soul was widely thought about in American society back in this era. So this movie was not a completely random idea, but was contiguous with things that the masses were pondering in this era. So, if you are to ever see this movie (but this goes for most movies, really) consider it an insight into what sort of thoughts were going on in the minds of the me's and you's 80 years ago.
I watched two Woody Allen movies:
"Radio Days" - is so funny! And I remember it from watching the Carmen Miranda clip in one of my American Culture classes called The Latin Tinge about Latino music, it's origins and influences with Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff.
After that was another Woody Allen movie I haven't seen called "Hannah and her Sisters" which my boyfriend Bryan summed up very well substituting me and my sister Laura for the sisters in the film.
He said, "I'm Michael Caine and I'm leaving you for Laura because I realized I'm in love with her" but then in the movie Michael Caine goes back to Hannah because the other sister who he was cheating with dumped him because he took too long to leave his wife Hannah, and then he realizes how much he really does love Hannah after all.
Ah, life. Who knows what is will bring. It's wonderful because you don't have to worry about what will happen, even if you plan you can never predict. So go ahead and plan, but don't worry because what happens in your life really is not up to you, at least in the big picture. You may try at one thing while it lands you a job at another. I like this idea. It is exciting.
Finally, I watched "My Man Godfrey" starring William Powell and Carol Lombard (who, evidently, died soon after) It was the prime-time movie of the night so Robert Osborne said his piece about it. It was very good with some big names. Mostly I wanted to watch it because I had heard so much about it before and I thought it was my duty to watch it.
The plot:
William Powell, a "forgotten man" -aka a homeless man who lives under the bridge in a tent city- is taken in by a wealthy daughter to butle (i like this word) for the family. Interestingly, this family reminded me immensely of the Hilton sisters and the Kardashians. Who knew? They must have always existed and are not modern phenomena. He ends up being from a wealthy Boston family, lands back on his feet, provides inspiration for the family, leaves them and builds a community to house and support the other Forgotten men he lived with.
The plot was not as I suspected, but it was a good movie. And now I've seen it so I've enriched my film knowledge, and understanding of cultural references.
This is a good representation of the movie because the mother (on right) and the two daughters (one pictured in back) were really dumb, ignorant and spoiled characters.
***
tata
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