A Favorite Feeling

Even at small parties, when the swell of the Happy Birthday song grows and everyone is singing really loud, perhaps in desperation for cake, I love that minute where you're just standing there in the glow of the candles, gathering your breath to blow them out, thinking about your wish. Year after year, I find it overwhelming, but great.

Big Dee

This post is wildly overdue. I was in Detroit just before Christmas, visiting my best bud, and this is a collection of images from my trip. I ended up working through the whole visit, like a terrible, horrible friend, but we eked out some nice meals and some adventures in between my homework. As the first stop of my three week stint in the Midwest, I still found the freeze and snow a bit romantic, through the window of Jacob's bedroom say, though it made exploring a little painful. So in lieu of walking around the city, we had a few nice drives and some tasty comfort food and some really smooth Polish vodka. These photos are linked in series, only in that I experienced them all over the course of my time in Motor City.

I was pretty self-conscious about taking photos of Detroit's well-publicized blight, though some of these are that. Instead, Detroit reminded me of the other industrious centers I've seen nearby--Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis and I imagine Cincinatti, Pittsburgh even. They are proud, amidst depression; hard but bright; working, if fairly unemployed. Sure, they're frayed and fraying, especially in comparison with the younger, more lovable coastal metropolises, but there is a latent might in their skylines that nods to their devoutly American past, referring without saying, to the memory of what used to be.

Even covered in ice and slushy snow, I'd find Detroit catching the breath up in my throat. It may have been a sort of surprise at finding unexpectedly, an optimism. Five days just wasn't enough.

Hometime New Years

I am entirely too disorganized to post all the food and the adventure and the holiday I've been having, but in the spirit of 'one step at a time', I thought I'd just stop in to wish you a happy start to this year. I crossed into 2011 happily in the company of both of my siblings and my old time besties Abby + Matt in their fair Madison, WI. (This, you may realize, is a mere stone's throw from my hometown hometown, Neenah.) New Years's in Wisconsin have never been in my experience terribly memorable and this year, we were hoping to change that.

We made homemade ravioli! I've never done that! And despite their filling being a little 'overwhelmingly hazelnut', they were tasty. Other perks of the holiday included some scrappy rum and coke pre-gaming, champagne and cocktails at the new cozy & hip farm to table spot downtown for midnight, an awesome show in a crowded bar to finish off our livers, hot, frosted cinnamon rolls and breakfast sammies to cure any lingering hangovers this morning and, then, college football. With the exception of Badger defeat at the hands of TCU, it was perfect.










Not bad, Wisconsin, not bad at all. To the new! Cheers.

Sweet Spots

I should confess, I still have a suitcase on the floor of my room full of clothes. It's not exactly still packed, but the stuff in it is that sort of in between clothing that you don't want to devote one of your three precious drawers to, but also, that you actually wear. I believe its a medley of athletic clothing and old t-shirts that are really only suitable for sleeping in, when you've run out of otherwise more suitable pajamas and shorts or ruffled bloomers I wear under dresses while bicycling and enormously bulky Russian socks and long underwear and the odd pair of sweatpants. They are things I don't need right now, but might need someday and the whole mix leaves me really uncertain about myself. Let alone what kind of storage solution I require.

So, yes, I haven't documented the state of things here, as they are still very much in progress. Sorry. I really need a dining table and I think all other negligence in my apartment sort of orbits around that main issue. And in my defense, I am almost never actually here. So never here, that my neighbor was shocked to see me in the daylight the other day. I actually startled him.

But there are some little spots where in between brewing coffee or reading or brushing my teeth, I've put down little roots and hung up the things I love. Sometimes, I've just used the nail that was already in the wall. But even the little wispy bitty roots we put down, they do help to hold things up.
















I've always been really attached to my house. (Nester, obviously.) But here in Houston especially, I realized that the things I've held onto, through all the moves and all the shakes, are the things that will always remind me of some very specific moment or person. And all these silly little things, tacked to the walls of this little apartment, is a way of surrounding myself with all of the moments and with all of the people with whom I've known love and felt life. To linger over them in the minutes between the usual, ho-hum everyday? Well, it just, it really helps.

Can't Be All

I daresay, if you can manage to make a perfect peach pie and drink some nice whiskey with a friend once in a great while, it can't be all bad.

That half that's missing we ate to celebrate the end of our first review and one quarter pie each was well-deserved.

Ok, Ok.

We were celebrating and I have a million or so photos, but then we were relaxing and then, you know, one thing leads to another and three months go by and here I am excusing myself, yet again to you.



We were celebrating Emily & Ryan's wedding in Delaware. Here they are, wife and husband:


Helping your best friends get married is so much fun. So much fun, in fact, that we spent two weeks recovering after we got back. Going to bed at 9:30 for a week is actually pretty epic, in its own, underrated sort of way. A more complete recap is in order, but not just yet.