Houston and a Warm Quinoa Salad

To start, I want to whisper to you about this new favorite of mine. It's a food. I got these new small size blue pyrex bowls a few weeks ago, and I can't seem to stop filling them up with warm quinoa salad with pinenuts & feta and spinach and raisins and in this case, caramelized leeks and avocados. Oh, and a fried egg plopped on top. Bloop.


It's been quite awhile since I could justify taking the time to cook myself a meal. For months now, we've scaled back on making things from scratch, opting for fast and easy and non perishable groceries instead of bulk grains and fresh vegetables. It's been really nice getting re-acquainted with the kitchen and with real food and with slowness.

I mentioned last week that I'm headed to Houston in the fall to start the Master of Architecture program at Rice University. And surrounding this news, I've been re-acquainting myself with some other feelings, a bit more distant, more unfamiliar than lazy cooking. The feeling of making a decision for myself and by myself, the feeling of moving to a new city, a new life, a new livelihood and the feeling of knowing and not at all knowing what my future will look like. This is a little vague, but that's sort of how I feel about this newly acquired life plan I have. I know the plot, but not the language and I've just taken the book off the shelf. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, this feeling of beginning, but it's been a long time. When I'm not terrified, I am really really excited about it.

It'll be hard to leave this city, of course, and the people who have helped it feel so very homey over the last year. But I am excited for the challenge of Houston. I'm excited to live in a place less likable, less saturated with people so similar to me. I'm excited to live in the middle again for a while, excited to experience again what most of this country is like. I'm especially excited to do so, while studying the way we organize ourselves through architecture. I really agonized, to be honest. Before I saw Rice for myself, I was so uncomfortable picking up again within two years of arriving here, to move my life again. As you know, I am instinctively a nester. Our move to the west coast was so much harder than I thought it would be. But at the same time, I feel like I'm about to commence such a terrific adventure. That feeling, for now anyway, has completely taken hold.

It has been a long time since I saw what I wanted, and had it.

Librarian: Angel

This isn't a particularly Happy Halloweeny post except for that it happened to me on Halloween and I'm trying to be better about timeliness around here and anyways, haven't you had enough Halloween yet for one year? No? Well then: a trick or treat for luck lovers.

The mailman today brought this large flat envelope to our house, with my name carefully written across the front, with a stamp from the San Francisco Public Library as the return address. I of course assumed the worst: that somehow I'd forgotten to return some wildly valuable book and they'd sent my overdue bill in this envelope, so large it required over a dollar in postage to send. Happily, this was not the case, and rather carefully wrapped up inside was the book present I received from Elana as an early birthday gift three weeks ago, still with gift tag and wrapping paper in tact.



I realized at once that I'd slipped the little Russian children's book into my library book for safekeeping the day I received it and then upon my last visit to SFPL, unknowingly returned them both to the depository. If my life were a dramatic movie, there would be a close up of me dropping it onto the conveyor belt at the entrance (San Francisco is so fancy like that) only to realize the next day that the treasure had been lost forever. Antics would ensue to get it back. In real life, I had just this week begun to wonder where exactly I'd put that little book and some lovely person at the library happened to be looking over me all along.


Since I can't thank this lovely man or lady personally, I'd like to state for the record that this person has something really good coming to them. Twenty dollars found on the sidewalk or two desserts or SOMEthing. Hear that universe? What a nice thing to do for a total stranger.