if a tree falls

Playing Letterman

I love end-of-the-year lists, so I thought I'd make at least one of my own. 2007 was a year that I re-prioritized and truly tried to live like I was grateful to be on this earth. I made a conscious effort to smile at strangers, learn to cook things from scratch and take beautiful pictures. And looking back, 2007 kicked some major ass.

I'm going to try to do a couple of top-ten posts, so keep checking in throughout the next two weeks.

Top ten favorite posts of 2007
In chronological order

A Love Letter

Mush

Milkshake-Up

My four-twenty story

Blast from the past, notes for the future

Overheard while watching UFC

Indecent Exposure

Therapy

Let me eat cake!

Bird's eye view

...does it make a sound?

I watched a great interview with Natalie Portman by The New York Times today (embedded below). In it, the interviewer asks, "What are your five favorite non-musical sounds?" I thought that it was a great question, something to make you appreciate the details in your experience. Here are my answers:

• The little squeak that Gonzo lets out at the end of a big yawn first thing in the morning.
• The sizzle of freshly minced garlic hitting a pan of hot olive oil.
• The soft crunch of turning on fresh snow in skis.
• The warm hiss of a yoga class breathing.
• The steady clicks of typing that follow a good idea.

What are yours?

Homeowner-ween

I was beyond excited to be a homeowner last year, the first Halloween in our house. I couldn't wait to have the doorbell rung by costumed local kiddies and give them candy. I wasn't a huge fan of trick-or-treating as a kid, but I loved the years where I stayed home and handed out the goods, munching on them throughout the night. Naturally.

On this day last year, even though I told my employers that I was coming in at 7:30 to leave and get home for trick-or-treaters, I didn't make it home until 7PM, evidently too late for the little ones on our street. I stared out the windows like a crazy woman and even put the candy out on the step, but there were no takers. I was pathetically heartbroken. Earlier this month, I threw out the twelve remaining aged Snickers bars.

This year I'm working at home, we have two giant bags of assorted miniature sugar handouts. Bring 'em on.

PSA

I've been preparing for Friday's trip to Spain this week, and half-wrote three posts, but haven't been able to finish one. I think it's time for a little vacation and neuron reset. Posting might be light or non-existent until November, so have a great rest of the month. I'll have plenty of stories when I get back.

The Muppets, the puppy and me

It's no secret that I'm a huge Muppets fan-- I grew up on Sesame Street, inherited a cheesy sense of humor from The Muppet Show and even named my dog Gonzo (after the endearing weirdo and the great Hunter S. Thompson). So I was both mortified and delighted to see SNL pay homage to Rowlf, The Swedish Chef, Janis, Zoot and Animal-- if that's what they were trying to do. It's not much of a skit beyond the sight of cast members in costumes, but for Muppetphiles like myself, it's worth a look.

Lost in Translation

When I was learning Spanish in high school, my classmates and I loved the story of the Chevy Nova. According to my teacher, the car company didn't bother to translate the car's name and sales suffered. As my teacher pointed out, no va means "doesn't go." They blew a marketing opportunity before the car even hit the market.

So I laughed when I saw this headline sidebar on a news site.

I'm sure that Jennifer Lopez will not be happy being called Ma-Lo. Because anyone who knows even some high school Spanish knows that malo translates to "bad."

Let me eat cake!

Joe and I had a great wedding cake. I remember that it was the one part of the wedding planning process where I knew exactly what I wanted and it came out even better than I expected. Mark from Confectionery Designs came with the wedding site and delivered, big time, so I thought he deserved the plug. The center was yellow cake soaked in Grand Marnier with chocolate mousse filling. The outside was whipped cream frosting with molded chocolate swirl designs. Here is one of my favorite pictures from the entire day, when Joe and I were getting ready to cut into its magnificence.

Another thing that came with the wedding site was delivery of the top layer to our honeymoon suite for consumption on our first anniversary. I had always been psyched that we got the whole top layer to take home, because there is never enough chocolate mousse and whipped cream in my life, ever. Plus, by soaking the cake in liquor, I thought that it would preserve well. We put the top layer in my mom's freezer and figured that we'd be back in Rhode Island for our anniversary.

Well, we spent our first anniversary in Washington D.C. and completely forgot about the cake. I remembered it every time I was in no position to eat it, such as in a car or 200 miles away from Mom's freezer.

Monday was our second anniversary and we were going to be not just in RI, but in my mom's house! I was so excited to eat some wedding cake for breakfast. For two years, I'd held out hope that it preserved well, despite the warnings of friends who had rock-hard cupcakes, Joe and my mom, who said that it would be disgusting. I had faith and nothing was going to stop me from eating a big old slice of sentimentally-valued sugar.

I asked Mom to defrost it while we were in Maine, and when it came out of the freezer I just had to sneak a peek.

Okay, not the most appetizing dessert in the world. Still, it was just that a lot of time had passed. The chocolate had leaked a bit. Whipped cream is so pure, a blank canvas for any visible impurity.

That didn't stop me from cutting a big slice:

And you know what? I was right! It didn't taste terrible! It wasn't as good as freshly baked cake, but it was completely edible, and I was hungry.

Joe had a bite and was satisfied. I wanted to plow through, using my anniversary as an excuse to binge, but the voice of reason, aka husband, made an excellent point. What if it made us sick on the three-hour ride home to New Jersey?  We already had 15 hours under our belt that weekend and couldn't imagine making the trip any longer than necessary. So I savored two more bites, bringing my total to five. Five bites and I had to stop. I was disappointed but consoled by my responsible behavior.

Isn't that the ultimate marriage metaphor? Sacrifice of indulgence for the sake of both parties' well-being.  In the end, the reward is even sweeter. Later that night, he returned the gesture with tiramisu. Yesterday I made him cupcakes.

Happy anniversary, honey. Many more desserts to come.

It's personal

This weekend wiped me out.

On Saturday Joe and his sisters threw a surprise 60th birthday party for their parents. My birthday is exactly between theirs, so Joe told them that he was throwing me a surprise party and invited all of their friends instead of mine. Well, it was a great party with way too much food, touching reunions and about 75 people. I wasn't allowed near the house until the coast was clear, so I didn't do nearly as much work as other members of the family, but I was still exhausted enough from mingling to nearly pass out at the end of the day.

On Sunday my sister and I took Mom for her birthday Broadway show, Mary Poppins. By the time we got back home, I felt like a zombie.  The only thing that could have been more fun is if I had turned into an actual zombie and started eating brains. In other words, I had a lot of fun celebrating other people's birthdays this weekend.

Therefore, I took today as a personal day to do what I would have done celebrating my own. I watched crappy television in the morning and saw Across the Universe in the afternoon. I ate cake and walked the dog in the park. I finally relaxed.

How was your weekend?

Hate mail!

I had a creative hiccup yesterday when I least wanted it. I wanted to replace a Twitter in which the quotation marks hadn't coded properly, and I wasn't doing anything interesting. I also was having trouble thinking of something clever. I started thinking about the most general and provocative thing to write, and entered "Keeping secrets."

Not two hours later I got my first piece of hate mail:

That's an awful post.  Just stoking the curiosity with no focus and
letting it run wild.  Whatever the secret is may have nothing to do with
anyone I know, but now I am horribly intrigued.  Jerk.

Thankfully it was from a friend, and a friend who I hadn't heard from in awhile. But I didn't realize that my seemingly innocuous experiment would work so well.

Now I'm hoping not to get hate mail for covering events from the blog ON the blog. I'm looking for ways to focus this site's content a bit more creatively, so if you're out there and would like to hear more, let me know what that might be.

Over on my other blog...

I'm chronicling the major milestones and thoughts on my latest endeavor, Attic Ink. Today, I record some lessons learned about self-employment.