Festa Dei Pesci

"Take some macaroni home!"

"No, I can't! I made macaroni three times this week!"
"I understand. [Pause.] Take some macaroni home!"-- two of my aunts

I'm Italian-American, so Christmas Eve in my family means a crazy, raucous, seafood-based meal with a couple dozen relatives and entirely too much food. Entirely too much amazing, incredible food so delicious that I had three helpings of it.

We started off with antipasto -- provolone and parmigiana, cured meats, dried sausages, bread with chunks of prosciutto baked in, and a variety of pickled vegetables.

Next came the macaroni course, and we offered three different varieties: linguine in a red fish sauce, rigatoni marinara, and penne a la vodka. Shrimp, fried calimari, and potato croquettes were available as hot appetizers.

The centerpiece of the meal -- zuppa di pesce -- followed. Though the name of this dish translates to "soup of fish," it's actually far more complicated and rich than the name suggests. Ours featured mussels, clams, scallops, lobster tails, crab legs, cod, squid, shrimp, and scungilli stewed in a zesty tomato sauce.

If anyone was still hungry after that, we also had some escarole and beans and veal valdestano (cutlets topped with prosciutto, mozzarella, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers). We then finished off the meal with a cold seafood salad.

I didn't photograph the dessert spread because I was too full and happy to pick up my camera by that point.

Ironically enough, the inspiration for our meal -- the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes -- came into existence during the Middle Ages as an exercise in abstinence from meat and culinary moderation. Ha!

Someone To Fall Back On

"I know the darkness pulls on you, but it's just a point of view. When you're outside looking in, you belong to someone. And when you feel like giving in at the coming of the end, like your heart could break in two... someone loves you." -- Brandi Carlile

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, mostly because of the food involved but partially for the traditions I practice. I head out to my high school on Wednesday morning, then I have lunch with friends, then I grocery shop, then I go home and start cooking. I finish cooking on Thanksgiving morning, then I have dinner with several branches of my massive Italian family with napping in between. And at some point during those two days, I blog about all of my reasons to feel grateful.

On my drive to my high school yesterday morning, I tried to decide what I was going to write about this year. I was going to stick with an updated version of last year's list, but a conversation with a dear friend inspired me to think outside the box.

As part of our high school's Thanksgiving festivities, my friend was asked to describe a memory from his junior year of high school that makes him feel thankful. Problem was, he couldn't think of anything to share. He had awesome stories from every other year of high school, but junior year stumped him completely. So he called up five of his best friends -- all classmates from high school -- to see if they could suggest any stories, but they couldn't remember anything good either. He then realized that, despite the fact that he graduated from high school over twenty years ago, he still has five high school friends on speed dial... and that's something incredible to be thankful for in its own right.

So this year, instead of providing a laundry list of things to be thankful for, I'm going to focus on friendship. More specifically, I'm going to write about how wonderful it is to be able to care for others and know that others care for you in return.

I'm perfectly aware that I'm not an easy person to get along with. I'm generally kind to everyone I meet and I know enough to find common ground with nearly everyone, but I don't go out of my way to make an effort to get to know strangers. I'm very quirky -- I have an odd sense of humor and lots of obscure interests -- and I lose patience very easily with people who don't immediately understand what I'm talking about when I speak. I'm also not the sort of person who ever puts on any pretenses; aside from what's required for polite conversation, I don't change my speech patterns or censor my conversation for anyone. I refuse to compromise who I am or pretend to be something I'm not to impress someone, either. I've been described as completely unapproachable, and I don't deny that for a second.

And despite all of that, I have a core of wonderful friends who love me. I have friends who laugh at my jokes, regardless of how stupid they think they are. I have friends who listen to my rambling stories and my complaints about life. I have friends willing to taste my more bizarre culinary experiments. I have friends willing to stay up until three in the morning watching obscure German musicals with me. I have friends willing to care for me when I'm feeling ill at work and friends willing to let me crash at their places for a night or a weekend. I have friends who have put up with some incredible crap from me and continue to call me a friend because they like having me around. I have friends who sense when I'm hurting and try to cheer me up. I have friends who defend me and fight for me, even when doing so will cause them endless personal inconvenience.

I'm thankful for all of them today, and I hope they know how much they mean to me.

Someone Else's Clothes

"I'll take your side. If I'm the only one, I'm used to that. I've been alone. I'd rather be the half of us... the least of you... the best of me." -- Jason Robert Brown

There used to be a restaurant on 70th and Broadway called Cafe Mozart. It wasn't a culinary paradise by any means, but I stopped in for dessert constantly and dragged countless friends there. Why? For the thrill of the moment when their eyes focused on the painting hanging above the piano... and the subsequent moment when they realized that the woman in the painting looked exactly like me.

I didn't pose for the painting, of course; I was six years old when it was created, so the model who once looked so much like me is probably in her forties by now. Ink-and-paint doppelgangers are nothing new in my world anyway; in addition to Ms. Cafe Mozart, I once blogged about a twin from the Notre Dame Class of 1948.

Things have been getting a little more real lately, though. A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues told me that she saw me on the upper west side on a Saturday afternoon. She spotted me from across the street as I was walking with friends, but since I seemed to be in a hurry, she didn't call out to stop me. Trouble was, I was nowhere near the upper west side that day. My colleague was bewildered -- she sees me every day and is perfectly equipped to recognize me from across a street in plain daylight -- but we laughed it off.

Today, one of the rotating MDs came up to me and apologized for freaking me out at the gym the other night. She was on the adjacent treadmill, kept smiling at me, and tried to initiate conversation, but I obviously didn't recognize her so I gave a nervous smile and switched treadmills to get away. I haven't been to the gym since I left college, but the MD worked out with me last Tuesday. She recognized my face, my hair, my body, and even my glasses.

So in this sprawling, diverse city of eight and a half million, some anonymous woman is living in my skin. She sees the world with my eyes, she tames my hair every morning, she flashes my smile, she keeps my body fit, she kisses with my lips. And though I'm pretty panicked about all of this, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I just hope she's treating me with respect.

Sick Sad World

"You've gotta love to hate." -- 114th Annual Varsity Show

6:22 PM: I sprint down the escalator to the subway platform and a W train is waiting for me. SCORE.
6:23 PM: I lean on the door to the conductor's compartment and load Doom: Resurrection on my iPod.
6:25 PM: Take THAT, chaingun zombie sergeants!!!
6:27 PM: I notice that the train hasn't moved and the car doors are still open. I lower the volume on my iPod.
6:28 PM: "We are being held momentarily by the train's dispatcher. Please be patient."
6:30 PM: My fellow passengers are starting to lose patience. Everyone starts to fidget.
6:32 PM: The conductor finally speaks. There was an incident at the next stop and service is temporarily delayed.
6:33 PM: The guy standing next to me curses out the MTA.
6:34 PM: The couple seated on my right decides to find somewhere nearby to get dinner. They exit the train and two other passengers take their seats. All of this takes some effort, since the train is now so packed that people can barely move.
6:35 PM: The conductor again informs us that there was an incident at the next stop and service is delayed all along this branch of the BMT. I'm slightly impressed that the conductor knows what the BMT is. More of my fellow passengers bail off. Cursing Man curses even more.
6:38 PM: DOOM level boss is annihilated after a few well-placed headshots. Gosh, my aim rocks.
6:40 PM: The conductor explains the nature of the incident. A woman didn't feel well on the train at the next station, so all trains on the line are being held until the ambulance arrives to examine her. The volume level in my car explodes.
6:41 PM: The woman next to me yells, "These a**holes! What part of 'Do not get on the train if you feel ill' do they not f***ing understand?!"
6:42 PM: Cursing Man curses a lot, bashes the handrails a few times, and calls the sick woman a pretty impressive array of insults.
6:43 PM: More people bail off the train.
6:45 PM: The conductor repeats his announcement about the sick woman at the next stop. Several passengers wonder aloud why the MTA can't "just make the b*tch get off the train" so service can resume.
6:46 PM: Another fellow wonders how long it takes to get a f***ing ambulance to a major transit hub.
6:50 PM: The conductor repeats his announcement. The mumblings, hisses, and sniping resume. The subway car is filled with an almost palpable haze of pure hatred, all directed at the ill woman at the next stop.
6:55 PM: I realize that I have to pee.
6:56 PM: I start to become enraged at the ill woman's audacity. Hell, I've fainted in the subway system several times over the years -- but each time, I had the decency to run off the train and pass out on the platform to avoid causing a train delay!
6:57 PM: It dawns on me that the New York City subway system is the only place on the planet where people will hear about a sick lady and respond with hatred and rage rather than concern and empathy.
6:58 PM: I remember that I'm a healthcare professional who has devoted her life to curing people. Part of me starts to feel guilty for resenting the sick woman.
6:59 PM: The doors close. The train moves.
7:00 PM: Cursing Man sighs an expletive of relief. For the first time all evening, I take a good look at him. He's wearing scrubs and hospital clogs.

High School Traditions

"I just can't wait for my ten-year reunion. I'm gonna bust down the double doors. And when I stand on that table before you, you'll know what all that time was for." -- John Mayer

Last Saturday, I spent my evening at my high school celebrating the fifth anniversary of my graduation. I had a wonderful, amazing time in the company of people I love (i.e. the same six people from high school that I still hang out with on a regular basis), and I officially became one of the first alumnae to ever take part in one of my school's legendary all-years reunions. We laughed, we reminisced, and we discussed the traditions that bind all graduates.

My particular group of friends had a few traditions of our own to remember, too. Between wasting free periods on the gym balcony, tap-dancing in the hallways late at night, finding back entrances into locked rooms, injecting theatrical spectacle into religious services, and eating The Big Cookie several times a week, we'd patronize the Flagship Diner.

The Flagship, a dive diner on Queens Boulevard, is not a culinary paradise by any means. It has two things going for it, though: killer matzoh ball soup and a bread basket filled to bursting with fresh, steaming popovers. The popovers are perfection -- crispy on the outside, tender and airy on the inside, and light enough to justify eating about six in one sitting. Even after we graduated, my friends and I would routinely head back to the old neighborhood, visit our former teachers, spend some time on the gym balcony, and head over to the Flagship for soup and popovers.

Saturday was the first time I'd been to my high school in a long time without patronizing the Flagship, and despite the reunion's cocktail hour, open bar, dinner, and dessert, I found myself missing those popovers. A recipe for them fatefully appeared on The Kitchn this week, which inspired me to spend my Friday morning making a batch of my own. I was in the market for popovers a little sweeter than The Kitchn's recipe would provide, though, so I added some sugar and spice to my batter. (I also added some baking powder to aid in the rising process, since I made them in a muffin tin instead of a popover pan.) These should be eaten while they're hot, so make a half-batch if you're dining solo. Leave out the cinnamon, chocolate, and sugar if you'd like to use them as dinner rolls.

Cinnamon-Chocolate Popovers


2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar (raw, preferably)
2 tbsp chocolate shavings -- I made these by attacking two squares of Lindt chili-infused chocolate with a microplane grater
1 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter, then let it sit for a while to cool. (Eggs and milk should also be left out for a little while to warm to room temperature -- gas laws being what they are, the popovers will rise better if the ingredients aren't too cold). Whisk eggs, then whisk in butter and milk, then add salt, flour, baking powder, chocolate shavings, and cinnamon and whisk until just incorporated. Spoon batter into a greased muffin tin (as close to the rim of each cup as you dare) and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 25 minutes. Do NOT open the oven at all during that time, since any escaping heat may cause the popovers to fall. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for one minute, then pierce the side of each popover so the steam can escape. Makes fifteen popovers.

On the Shoulders of Giants

"How do you numb your skin after the warmest touch?" -- Jann Arden

I left work so late today that I actually got a seat on my usual train. Thus, instead of my usual quest to avoid eye contact with my fellow commuters and remain standing upright without touching anything, I got to spend my subway ride people-watching. Specifically, watching the two people occupying the bench directly across from me.

Across the aisle sat the most fearsome woman I've ever seen. She was enormous -- six foot six if she was an inch and broad enough to play linebacker for the Jets. She wore choppy hair that looked as if it had been trimmed with an axe, steel-toed boots that could crush a human skull with ease, and a deep scowl etched on her ruddy face.

Next to her sat a small, balding, twentysomething man. He wore a blazer and jeans and he loosely clutched a briefcase. And, every few minutes, he'd doze off.

Now I've spent a lifetime learning how to recognize various breeds of subway sleepers -- the drunks, the druggies, the hung-over, the fakers, the ill, the crazy, the newly deceased. This man, however, fit into none of these categories.

He was clearly, obviously, just plain tired.

He'd jump, widen his eyes, and shake himself awake repeatedly, only to nod off once again a few moments later. Then, three stops from my home, sleep claimed him for good. His head drooped forwards, tilted to the left... and eventually came to rest snugly against the muscular, plaid-covered shoulder of the fearsome woman.

She froze, inclined her head slightly, and peered at the man out of the corner of her eye. The scowl on her face deepened. He cuddled a little closer.

I expected the woman to say something, move over, push the man upright, and/or crush his feeble body under her mighty fist. Instead, she shrugged and left him right where he was. They were still sitting in comfy, companionable silence when I reached my stop and exited the train.

Golden Poo

"Are you sad because you're on your own? No! I get by... with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney

I pride myself on knowing a lot of stuff about a lot of different things. I'm well-read and well-educated, I'm familiar with many subject areas, I can hold a decent conversation with many types of people, and I have a head filled to bursting with many random facts. Thus, it's very rare for me to find myself in a place or a situation where I'm totally out of my element.

Well, it happened last weekend.

After two days that fit every possible definition of "homecoming," I found myself wandering around Chinatown. It's something I've done countless times before -- I've traversed Canal Street, ventured into Pearl Paint, eaten dim sum, and browsed the wares of the street vendors pretty regularly for years. However, I'd never been to Chinatown accompanied by actual Chinese people... and, accompanied by Q and DW, Chinatown was a whole new world.

They led us to places I never even knew existed -- streets that barely looked like New York City and shops that contained no English signage whatsoever. We went to a grocery store selling live frogs in a garbage can. I became acquainted with dried shellfish, and I'm still not sure if it requires rehydration or if it's eaten as is. I waited on line to buy dried udon noodles and briefly panicked about whether I could use US dollars for my purchase. We had Vietnamese for lunch and I didn't know how DW's coffee pot worked. Q took me to a bakery to get some buns I once tried, but all I remembered about them was that they had sweet yellow filling and that description basically fit everything in the display case. We went to an underground shopping mall filled with plush depictions of bear excrement. ("Golden poo" is allegedly a symbol for good luck, but no one knew why.) I pointed at what I thought was an endive and was told that it was actually a torpedo vegetable. I then pointed at a vegetable that looked like a carrot, asked what it was, and was told that it was a carrot.

We continued to wander, deeper and farther into shops and streets that I never knew existed, and I truly began to feel as if I had been transported out of New York and onto a different planet. Despite my cultured upbringing, the obscene amount of time I've spent with my Chinese friends over the years, and all of the reading I've done during the course of my life, I was totally clueless about everything. I felt incredibly ignorant.

Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we stumbled upon a pocket of Little Italy. Q decided that she wanted sfogliatella, we stopped into an Italian bakery... and and all of a sudden, my world once again made sense. The sights, the smells, the biscotti in the window and panettone boxes hanging from the ceiling all felt comfortable and familiar to me.

We approached the counter. One of my companions pointed at a display case, turned to DW, and said, "Ooh, have you ever had a cannoli?" I'm not sure how he answered; I was too stunned to listen. Have you ever had a cannoli?! What kind of a question is that?! In my world, asking someone if they've ever had a cannoli is like asking them if they've ever breathed oxygen or if they've blinked at least once today.

I then realized that I was the only person in the crowd with any Italian blood, and that my companions probably weren't weaned off the bottle onto cannoli like I was. And then my entire day made sense. I wasn't ignorant -- I just have a different cultural identity than the one I happened to be facing. And I'm lucky enough to have an open mind and friends willing to help me fill it. All in all, it was a pretty amazing afternoon.

The Lure of the LBD

"I've got a new interpretation and it's a better point of view: while you were looking for a landslide, I was looking out for you. I was looking out for you. Someone's looking out for you." -- Brandi Carlile

This weekend, I drove out east and spent my Saturday morning at the mall. I made a few insignificant purchases, but they don't matter -- today I'm writing about the item I could not buy.

On my way back to the parking lot, I paid an obligatory visit to my favorite retail chain and spotted a gorgeous black dress. Do I really need another black dress? Nope. Is this particular black dress entirely too fancy to wear to work? Yep. Do I have more important ways to spend my money than on another fancy black dress? You betcha.

But god, this dress was perfect. Soft, stretchy, plain and tailored but with interesting origami-like folds snaking across the front. I knew the hem would graze my knee in exactly the right place, the seams would hug my curves to perfection, the neckline would make my chest look twice as shapely as it actually is. I had to have it.

I wandered around the store for twenty damn minutes searching every rack, shelf, nook, and cranny for the dress, but aside from the one on the mannequin's back, I couldn't find it anywhere. So I went to bother my favorite fitting-room attendant.

"Hi. I'm looking for that dress."
I pointed. She chuckled and shook her head.
"Honey, the whole world is looking for that dress. We have one left in a size ten."

Damn. No worries though; I work within walking distance of two more stores and one of them was bound to carry it in my size. Right?

I visited one of them after clinic today. Wandered around, located a rack of the dresses, found three size eights and a twelve, learned that the store was sold out of their entire stock except for those left on the floor and wouldn't be restocking any time soon. The attendant suggested that I try the other store but didn't offer to call ahead for me, so I headed towards Lexington Avenue and started walking south.

On 62nd St., a cab pulled over to the curb, the door opened, and an older lady slid her legs out and leaned back to collect her bags from the seat. Half a block away, an approaching cyclist shouted "Watch out! Watch out!" and sped towards the cab's open door. The woman turned and looked, but she wasn't fast enough -- instead of slowing down or (gasp) steering around the cab, the cyclist crashed into the open door at top-speed and fell off his bike. The cyclist screamed at the lady, the lady screamed back, the cab driver honked.

I know, I know -- that anecdote has nothing to do with my quest for the dress. It didn't seem like a good omen, though.

I went into the second store in search of my dress and -- surprise -- they carried a size two and a size zero petite. They wouldn't be restocking any time soon, either. I spent a good five minutes staring at the size two, debating whether I should try and wedge myself into it, before a sales associate approached me.

"Excuse me? I'm sorry, but I just wanted to say that I love your boots."
"Thank you." I moved my coat aside so she could see the cut of the leather and the little buckle near the back of the knee. "I got them at Bandolino."
"Bandolino? Where's that?"
"These came from Bloomingdale's, but I think there's a store on Madison, near 42nd Street. Shoe Woo across the street carries the brand too."
"Thank you so much! I have to go look for them." She blinked. "So can I help you with anything here?"
"Yes, actually. I've been to three stores looking for this dress in a size 4, but I can't find it anywhere."
"Well, you won't find it in any stores, I'm afraid. That dress is close to sold out everywhere."
"Damn."
"But... I actually have a 4 on the rack in the fitting room. The stitching on the front is torn -- some woman who was definitely not a size 4 tried to squeeze herself into it and ripped the dress -- but you can try it on for size and order it from the website if it fits you."

I tried it on. It was every bit as gorgeous as I thought it would be and it's due to arrive in five business days.

And in other news, this is my 100th post on Literatura Mundane. Many thanks to those of you who are still reading!

A Lesser Babka

"What are we going to do now?! If we can't get the babka the whole thing's useless!" -- Jerry Seinfeld

I had dessert in my favorite bakery this evening, and after I settled my bill, I decided to buy some pastry for the road. I waited in line with the intention of purchasing a particularly delicious-looking chocolate babka I had been eyeing in the window all evening. Then, when I approached the counter, a woman appeared out of nowhere, cut in front of me on line, and ordered my babka. She left, I repeated her order, and, as luck would have it, she had nabbed the last one right out from under me. With no babka alternatives, I left empty-handed.

As someone who can quote whole episodes of Seinfeld from memory, this was one of the most thrilling things that has happened to me in a long time.

Comfort Food

"Just give me a chance to hold on. Just give me something to hold on to. It's so clear now that you are all that I have." -- Snow Patrol

I just finished preparing my favorite meal -- baked fish with roasted potatoes and string beans -- and since it's elegant, delicious, and ridiculously easy to prepare, I thought I'd share it with you all. I used mahi mahi today, but tilapia, flounder, sea bass, and even salmon also work. I get all of my fish from the freezer section in Costco -- each serving is individually vacuum-wrapped and the quality is first-rate, believe it or not. My Italian bread was semolina, but I've used whole wheat and white with delicious results.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prepare the potatoes and put them in the oven first, then prepare the fish while your potatoes are roasting, then prepare the string beans while your fish is in the oven. Dinner serves four and will be ready in one hour.

Roasted Potatoes

4 potatoes, scrubbed
1/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth
Spice of your choice -- sage, thyme, parsley, and chili all work, though I used paprika today
Olive oil, salt, and pepper

Cut each potato in half lengthwise, then cut each half into slices approximately 1/2-inch thick. Place in a 9x9 baking pan (or a pie pan, or anything you have that snugly fits the slices) and toss with salt, pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, and whatever spice you chose to use. Pour broth into the bottom of the pan and bake for one hour, turning every fifteen minutes.

Buon Pesce

4 fish steaks, thawed, rinsed in salt water, and dried
A good three-inch-thick chunk of crusty Italian bread
2 tbsp Smart Balance or butter, melted
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbsp dried parsley or 2 tbsp fresh parsley
Juice of half a lemon, plus four slices from the other half
Olive oil, salt, and pepper

Cut the bread into cubes and throw it into a food processor with the butter, garlic, and parsley. Pulse until crumbly. Coat the bottom of a 9x9 baking pan with olive oil, then squeeze in the lemon and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange the four steaks in the pan, then flip them over so both sides are coated in seasonings, olive oil, and lemon juice. Spoon breadcrumb mixture atop each fillet and top with a slice of lemon. Tightly cover in foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and the lemon slices and bake for an additional 10-20 minutes, until the crust browns and the center of the thickest piece of fish flakes.

Sauteed String Beans

Four handfuls of fresh string beans, washed with the ends snapped off
Two cloves of garlic, sliced
Olive oil, salt, and pepper
Dash of balsamic vinegar

Blanch the string beans in boiling water until they reach your desired level of softness. (I like my string beans al dente, though you may like to go softer.) Heat a large skillet, then sautee garlic in olive oil on low heat until it begins to brown. Add string beans, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar, quickly toss until coated, then remove from heat and serve.

Brainy Specs

"Aw, and out they come! The brainy specs! You don't even need them! You just think they make you look a bit clever!" -- The Tenth Doctor

I got my first pair of eyeglasses at the beginning of the sixth grade -- horrible round-ish lavender wire-framed atrocities -- and, consequently, I hated my life for the next year. I swapped those out for a sleeker pair with Flexon frames in the seventh grade, then swapped out those for even sleeker bronze no-wire frames in the eighth grade. Then I went to high school, got contacts, and only wore my glasses for the five minutes in the morning before I could pop my lenses in.

After three years of contact lens-wearing, my prescription had deteriorated to the point where I had to get the lenses on my glasses replaced. I opted for a new set of frames too -- and chose a Nine West style modeled in chunky black plastic. Now this was 2003, way before horn-rims came to epitomize geek-chic, but since I hated the way I looked in near-invisible frames, I figured I'd try the other extreme. I found that my new glasses fit my personality surprisingly well, and for the first time during my vision-impaired life, I didn't want to vomit when I looked at my glasses-wearing self in a mirror. I started to wear my contacts less frequently and ignored the countless critics moaning about how my frames looked too retro and hid half my face.

Halfway through college, I swapped out my chunky black frames for an even chunkier pair. The same year, David Tennant replaced Chris Eccleston as the title character on Doctor Who and chose a pair of rectangular tortioseshell frames -- he called them "brainy specs" -- as part of his new costume. This blew my mind; I wore glasses like The Doctor's because they didn't make me completely hideous, while Tennant wore them because he wanted to. He was suave and confident while wearing his brainy specs, and for the first time in my life, I started to view my glasses as stylish... and even kinda hot.

I'm now on my third pair of brainy specs, and I love them so much that I only wear my contacts around once a week. I can slip them on with my Chucks and feel nerdy (in a good way). I can slip them on with a pencil skirt and pumps and feel professional. I can slip them on with an armful of unintelligible textbooks and feel smart. I can slip them on with tousled hair and an intense look and feel sexy. My glasses are a part of me, and I'm a total advocate of people like Tennant, Tina Fey, Diane Keaton, and Johnny Depp who try to redefine the public's notion of beauty by wearing their glasses to public events.

On Sunday night, I sat down to work on a graphics commission and turned on the Primetime Emmys for background noise. Andy Samberg was interviewed on the red carpet... wearing reddish glasses. Then Justin Timberlake presented in a pair of plastic tortioseshell frames. Then Simon Baker walked out wearing chunky horn-rims. Then Dana Delany slipped on a pair of brainy specs before reading a list of nominees. All of them looked absolutely gorgeous, too. I stopped caring about the winners and started watching for bespectacled audience members... and there were far more of them than I ever thought possible.

When I climbed into bed that night, I took a fond look at my brainy specs before setting them on my desk. It seems like the world has finally caught on, and the sixth-grader in me is jumping for joy.

Leave Unsaid Unspoken

"Another day is going by. I'm thinking about you all the time. You're out there and I'm here waiting. And I wrote this letter in my head 'cause so many things were left unsaid." -- Simple Plan

A couple of years after she wrote I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith wrote a romantic comedy based on the novel. The play was produced in England in 1955, was poorly-reviewed by London critics, and has been out-of-print ever since. As a result, I paid entirely too much for an ancient old library edition in hopes of gaining a different perspective on my favorite novel. I received my copy yesterday and devoured it in two hours. The content was largely the same -- the plots are identical and 90% of the dialogue is lifted right out of the novel. There was one major change that I didn't entirely agree with, though.

The novel is driven by Cassandra's love for Simon. They're friends and intellectual equals, but their "relationship" only exists in Cassandra's head. No romantic notions (aside from one platonic kiss) are ever verbalized or made tangible, and it doesn't matter that we never find out what the hell Simon is thinking because Cassandra has completed her arc of personal growth.

The play is also driven by Cassandra's love for Simon, but since they don't really talk and they don't really connect, her love basically comes out of nowhere. Then, at the very end of the play, all of that unspoken amazingness I blogged about two weeks ago is replaced with this:


Yes, it's the ending that most readers long for, and it's an ending that makes sense given the rest of the play. However, it turns a beautiful, moving story into a mediocre romantic comedy. Cassandra still turns Simon down, but it's not powerful, not tear-inducing, and, frankly, not good. I'm taking the author's advice (and yes, she actually wrote this instruction in a preface) and I'm currently giving it a re-read. Hopefully that will help.

Pens Envy

"It's a thousand pages, give or take a few. I'll be writing more in a week or two." -- Lennon/McCartney

I've always had some pretty weird habits when it comes to my pens. During high school, I'd take science notes in green ink, and if I didn't have a green pen handy, I'd take my notes in pencil and overwrite it in green when I got home. During college, I'd choose a differently colored uni-ball Vision elite every week in lieu of dating my notes. I sign consent forms at work using Pilot G2 gel rollers and I keep my journals using my Cool Ordinary Pen of the Moment (usually a TD Bank pen, a drug company pen, or a pen with my old high school's logo on it). I also like to hang onto the same pen until it's bone-dry and tend to panic when people borrow it for more than thirty seconds.

Last week, I bought a set of Sharpie pens and soon discovered that, though they look, feel, and behave like fine-tipped Sharpie markers, they don't bleed through paper. As a result, I fell in love, decided that they are the greatest invention ever, and packed one in my handbag for use at work.

The next morning, I arrived at work, clipped my Sharpie pen to my hip between my pager and my ID, and raved about it to anyone who would listen. Around three in the afternoon, I placed it on a countertop for a moment after using it to sign some forms. A guest then crossed behind me, said "Can I borrow a pen? Thanks," and snatched up my Sharpie before I could hand him a different one. He uncapped it and began writing. I could tell he was pressing entirely too hard.

He then snapped the tip clean off the pen. It scooted across the countertop, crossed in front of me, and landed on the floor a few feet away. I swear the whole thing happened in slow-motion.

"Sorry!" the man said, shrugging and tossing the remnants of my Sharpie in the nearest waste bin. All of my colleagues gasped, looked at me, and burst out laughing. I finished my signatures using one of the pens our storeroom stocks (ew), then I scoured the building for a suitable alternative to my poor defunct Sharpie pen. Luckily, I found a Pilot G2 near my PI's office.

The Pilot G2 served me well until earlier this week, when my boss borrowed it off my desk, took it to a meeting in a different building, and lost it. (If you're imagining a thinly-veiled expression of furiousness on my face and a neck twitch or two upon my discovery of this, you'd be absolutely correct.) I'm now down to my last half-dozen or so good pens, which suddenly don't seem like enough. I'm waking up extra-early tomorrow morning to go to Staples and will probably come home with entirely too many new pens... just in case.

Capturing Castles

"A few hours ago, when I wrote that I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have seemed heaven on Earth. And surely I could give him... a sort of contentment?

That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver." -- Dodie Smith

I just finished reading my favorite book, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, for the... Nth time, where N equals anything between a dozen and three dozen. I first picked up the novel during the sixth grade when my school imposed a mandatory half-hour-a-day reading period; it had been collecting dust in my locker for six months, so I decided to give it a try.

A hundred pages in, I thought it was an intriguing enough story. The narrator -- a mature, intelligent, hopeful 17 year-old named Cassandra -- lives in poverty in a derelict castle in the English countryside. Her journal entries (i.e. the text of the novel) speak of the castle, her eccentric family, her beautiful yet stone-dumb sister, and how all of their lives change when two American brothers become their landlords. Simon Cotton, the elder brother, soon establishes himself as Cassandra's intellectual equal and the only person alive who truly understands the way her mind works. Cassandra falls deeply in love with Simon... then he proposes marriage to her sister.

The novel, since it poses as Cassandra's journal, chronicles her interactions with Simon in minute detail, from their first meeting to their final touch. As a result, I too fell in love with Simon Cotton. Together, Cassandra and I dissected his words, thrilled in his kisses, mourned his impending nuptials, resented his fiancee, and dared to hope when the wedding was called off. Then, in the book's last few pages, Simon decided to return to America. I wept as he visited Cassandra for the last time... and then I cheered out loud when he asked her to come to America with him.

Then Cassandra said no and let Simon walk out of her life forever. Why? She recognized that he didn't love her in return and felt that both of them would be selling themselves short by ending up together.

For the next five years of my life, I thought Cassandra was an effing idiot. She found someone who saw the world the exact same way she did and she threw it away out of ridiculous sentimentality! My feelings were understandable, too; after all, I spent junior high and the first half of high school surrounded by immature idiot boys who had nothing in common with me. Ever finding a man as good for me as Simon is for Cassandra seemed like a close to impossible wish, so finding one and then letting him go seemed like downright lunacy.

Between then and my seventeenth birthday, I grew up a little. I learned more about how to critically read and analyze literature, I fell in love a few times only to later recognize it as mere infatuation, and I met a few men who understood my mind and my jokes. Consequently, when I re-read the novel during my senior year of high school, I adopted a new interpretation of the ending. Cassandra rejected Simon because she recognized that she may be in lust instead of in love and she didn't want to pledge her life to an emotion she may grow out of feeling.

I'm now twenty-three years old. In the last seven years, I've learned the difference between love and lust and I've said my fair share of goodbyes. I've also met men as good for me -- and maybe better for me -- as Simon is for Cassandra. I finished I Capture the Castle this morning and cried over the last ten pages just as I always have, but for the first time, I understood why Cassandra rejected Simon. Her feelings for Simon weren't lust and they weren't a crush; when you truly, honestly love someone, you want the best for them even when the best isn't you. More importantly, though, I now understand that Cassandra rejected Simon because she wanted the best for herself. She wanted to spend her life with someone who understood her AND loved her, and honestly, that's the best any of us can ever hope for. This morning, for the first time in N readings, I would have rejected Simon too.

The Beholder

"I have an eye for spotting men with designs. I have a sense for all the obvious signs. And pal, I know when someone's feeding me lines! Don't feel too bad; you had your try. You have the touch, but not with me! I have an eye." -- Lucie Arnaz

That quote sums up yesterday morning, and as such, it was a pretty amazing morning. Then I went to make copies. Scanned my document, asked for 60 collated and stapled copies, wandered away, wandered back, found the thing jammed and beeping on copy 47.

I'm unnaturally gifted at fixing copiers, so like any engineer with too much time on her hands, I peeled off my sweater, dropped to my knees, and popped the casing open. I twisted knobs, I flipped switches, I slid trays, and I found all the usual problem areas blissfully clear of paper. Then I noticed that one of my documents had been shredded in the narrow crevasse between the stapling tray and the output tray. And after a few moments of fruitless exploration, I realized that the machine manufacturers didn't account for paper ever getting jammed there.

I have thin arms and long fingers, so I was able to carefully reach inside the machine to tease the paper free in pieces. The jammed area had lots of sharp parts and little room for error, though, so I emerged from the experience with my right hand bleeding in four places. Open wounds aren't a good thing to have in my work environment, so I washed, treated, and bandaged my hand before returning to clinic. It looked pretty strange, but I swore off handshakes for the day and trusted people to not draw attention to it.

Then I got the hiccups. Big, scary, near-constant hiccups that refused to go away even after several hours. I held my breath, I swallowed three times, I drank water upside down, rightside up, and with a spoon in the glass, I endured countless colleagues jumping out of the shadows to spook me. Nothing worked, so I just came to terms with the fact that I'd have to talk to people around hiccups all day.

I perfected a little speech: "Hi, my name is Ashley. Before we speak about the research, you'll have to excuse me if [hic] I need to pause every sentence or so. I've had the hiccups all day [hic] and they won't go away." People tolerated it for the most part, surprisingly -- they laughed if I laughed first, but they had the grace to ignore my hiccuping if I didn't draw attention to it.

Then, at the very end of the day, after I had been speaking for several hiccupy minutes, one woman burst into hysterics. "Oh my god, this is terrible!" she said between giggles. "I can't believe you've been working like this all day!"
"It's been an interesting day."
"And if you don't mind me asking, what happened to your hand?"
I flexed my heavily bandaged appendage. "I had an altercation with the copy machine."
"Oh boy. You know what you need to do? You need to go home and go to bed before anything else happens to you today. Just get rid of August 20th a little earlier than usual and hope that August 21st is better."

I'm usually the one who sits in exam rooms and dispenses information to people, so to have it turned around on me was a peculiar change. Her treatment plan worked wonders, though -- I decided not to work overtime, declined happy hour with my colleagues, went home, changed into my oldest nightgown, and watched hours of Project Runway in the air conditioning. I woke up this morning with no hiccups and four beautifully formed scabs on my right hand.

Living Proof

"Almost cut my hair; it happened just the other day. It was getting kind of long. I could have said it was in my way. But I didn't... and I wonder why I feel like letting my freak flag fly. I feel like I owe it to someone." -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

I have ridiculously thick, riotously curly hair -- the kind of hair that a person can lose a hand in. When it's cooperating, it flows over my shoulders and halfway down my back in loose, glossy ringlets. When it's not cooperating, my head is covered in a vaguely triangular cloud of brown.

For the last few months, my hair has been more cooperative than usual thanks to Living Proof frizz products -- and as a result, I praise them to anyone who will listen. Developed by a team of biomedical engineers, they contain a novel polymer that seals the hair shaft against moisture better than silicone does. I don't have fierce loyalty to many beauty products (cough except for Tarte Flush, Too Faced Lip Injection Extreme, Hope in a Jar, and Kiehl's leave-in conditioner cough), but Living Proof's curl-making cream is an essential part of my daily routine. I've been able to ditch my arsenal of serums and treatments as a result of it; I get out of the shower, comb in my leave-in conditioner, smooth on a little frizz, and let my hair air-dry. Et voila.

The stuff works miracles, but having great hair in mid-summer in New York City in the rain needs more than a miracle. Thus, while my curls looked okay yesterday, they didn't look as good as usual.

I arrived early for an 8PM dinner reservation, so I killed some time by wandering around SoHo. I browsed through Michael Kors, J. Crew, Banana, Victoria's Secret, then eventually found my way to Sephora. Directly inside the front doors stood an enormous display of Living Proof products, and I approached the pyramids of bottles to see if they were offering anything new.

Almost immediately, a salesperson swooped down on me. "This is a fantastic new line, and you have the perfect hair for it! It will tame your flyaways and frizz, define your curls, give you shine..."

I let the guy ramble on for a few minutes, then when he paused, I gave him my most brilliant smile. "I actually use these products. I'm wearing that one right now."

"Oh," he said after a moment's pause. "Sorry?"

I thanked him, left, and headed back towards the restaurant. I had a good story to tell my dinner companions.

Carrie On

"After years of living in the city, I assumed that if my friends and I ever got our fairytale endings, that would be the end of the story. But real life always has a twist." -- Carrie Bradshaw

The mid-summer sun shone warmly over First Avenue as my colleague and I left our building for a mid-afternoon caffeine run. A crowd was gathered just outside our doors, and after sidling to the front of it, the reason for the traffic jam became clear: despite the sun, the skies and streets were slick with pouring rain. My colleague and I glanced at each other, smirked, simultaneously pulled jewel-toned mini-umbrellas out of our bags, and continued on our way.

We were paused at the corner of our block, waiting for the light to change, when it happened. A bus sped through the yellow traffic signal, crossed in front of us at top speed, and sent a sheet of puddle water straight at us. Neither of us were quick enough to lower our umbrellas against the deluge or even jump back out of its range, so we were completely drenched by it. We're talking wet hair, dripping hems, splatter-painted dress pants, and semi-transparent blouses here.

I spat a mouthful of puddle onto the sidewalk as my colleague stared after the bus, water dripping steadily from her chin. "That's never happened to me," she said. "I've seen it happen in movies and on TV, but it's never happened to me." I concurred; the opening credits of Sex and the City flashed through my mind. The light changed and we continued on our quest for coffee, soggier and strutting slightly less than when we started out. With my luck, I thought, watch me run into Mr. Big, Aidan, Smith, or Dante while I'm drenched and disgusting.

We entered the coffee shop and, luckily, it was full of middle-aged women. My colleague placed her order with a squat, smiling lady, then she stepped aside to make room for me at the counter. I tried to catch the barista's eye, but she moved away and headed towards the shop's back room.

Six and a half feet of olive-skinned, muscular man took the barista's place at the counter. He flashed me a brilliant smile with at least one dimple, tossed back his glossy black curls, and asked for my order in a stereotypically perfect French accent. I mumbled my request for a fresh mint tea -- my 'cute guy, ignore really hard' instinct had kicked in by that point -- and I fled the scene as soon as humanly possible.

Halfway back to our building, my colleague started laughing. "We got soaked by a bus, then we went to a trendy Upper East Side coffee house and a hot French guy appeared out of thin air to take your order. I believe we just had a Carrie Bradshaw moment." I chuckled and revealed that I had been thinking along the exact same lines.

Ten minutes later, as the fabric of my pants dripped little puddles onto the carpet under my desk, I thought of all the times I've openly laughed at women for moving to New York City in an effort to become like Carrie. To be honest, though, my ten minutes in her shoes felt like time well spent.

Changes

"Though we may not know it now, things are never gonna be the same. Here on Second Avenue, I tip my old top hat to you. I hope you find somebody who will love you like I do... and our time is running out and we still have to say goodbye. Goodbye Philadelphia." -- Peter Cincotti

I have so many things going on in my life that I feel deserve blog entries of their own, but between a massively increased workload, a sorrowful goodbye, a cautious hello that turned into an angry goodbye, and an anticipated hello that never actually materialized, I'm too physically and emotionally drained to put pen to paper with any semblance of heart. I'll try though, and if any of these half-assed snippets spark my desire to write more, I'll expand upon them another day.

Oddly enough, my hellish recent existence began with the most relaxing five days I've spent in recent memory. I went upstate for Fourth of July weekend -- far enough upstate that my cell phone barely worked, internet access was nonexistent, and my pager was as good as a paperweight. For five days, I let people cook for me and clean for me, amused myself by reading, crocheting, and taking ten-mile aimless hikes through the woods, and talked nonsense until three in the morning with two of my oldest friends. I felt closer to nature and more appreciative of the beauty of life than I have in a long time.

Then I had a very long workweek. And a very long half of the next workweek. After my Nth fourteen-hour workday in a row, I went out with my cousin and had my pedicurist paint my toenails blue. (The color is called Dating a Royal, actually.) I haven't had blue toenails since I was about eight years old, and I'm not entirely sure I had them then, either.

I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the film version of my favorite J.K. Rowling novel, on Friday and again on Saturday. Friday's viewing was a muted early-morning affair with Rutila and Saturday's viewing was a raucous all-day spectacle with thirty of my college classmates (including Q, Charles, and Wink). To kill some of the three hours we spent waiting on line outside the IMAX theater, we patronized a farmer's market and loaded up on quick breads and fresh fruit. I bought a carton of red currants, and when I got home around midnight, I pulled a recipe out of my ass and used them to make Sunday morning breakfast.

Red Currant Mini Muffins

3/4 stick salted butter, softened
2 tbsp citrus-infused olive oil (or 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil and 1 tsp citrus zest)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 egg white
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup flour
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1 tbsp whole milk
1 cup red currants (or blueberries), stems removed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter, olive oil, and sugar until fluffy, then beat in eggs and vanilla. Add baking powder and flour and mix until incorporated. Stir in red currants. Spoon into greased or lined miniature muffin trays; cups should be 3/4s full. Bake for 18 minutes or until muffin tops are browned. When muffins have cooled, remove from trays and arrange on a plate. Add milk to confectioner's sugar and stir until a thin glaze forms, adding more milk if necessary. Drizzle glaze over muffins and allow glaze to harden. Alternatively, you can dust the tops of the muffins with powdered sugar -- these are pretty tart so they'll need some sort of sugar on top.

Makes thirty miniature muffins. (This will also make a dozen regular muffins -- bake for about 25 minutes instead.)

Today, I went to New Yankee Stadium for my fourteenth Old Timers' Day, the once-a-year event where retired Yankees greats put on their old uniforms, line up on the field, reminisce about the good ol' days, then play a few innings for old time's sake. On Old Timers' Days back in the mid-1990s, my father used to point out the ballplayers of his youth -- Nettles and Gossage and Jackson and Dent -- and say to me, "Sooner than you realize, you'll be sitting here with your kid, Tino Martinez and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are going to be playing in the Old Timers' Game, and you're going to know how I feel right now." I scoffed for a decade, then the first two players from Yankees teams I watched as a child, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, showed up on Old Timers' Day. Last year, David Wells, Paul O'Neill, and Tino Martinez took the field. This year, Chad Curtis, Charlie Hayes, and my precious, cherished, beloved Mike Mussina (who won 20 games for the Yankees just last year) joined the ranks of "old timers." I'm starting to realize what Dad meant more than a decade ago, though I can't pin down the emotion just yet. I have some time before Jeter and Rivera are up there, though, and I don't plan on facing my thoughts until that day comes.

Proper Tee of the Half-Blood Prince

"Who blacked your eye, Granger? I want to send them flowers." -- Draco Malfoy

Two years ago this month, my friends and I waited on line for our copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows dressed in outfits specially chosen for the occasion. One of my companions wore a cloak, Gryffindor scarf, and prefect badge while another sported an "I Heart Ron" t-shirt. My style has always been a bit more understated, though, so in honor of my favorite character, I fastened my hair back with a Slytherin necktie and wore a simple grey t-shirt with the words "Property of the Half-Blood Prince" calligraphed in scrollwork across the front.

In preparation for this week's release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I decided to dig up my old t-shirt. Problem was, I couldn't find it. Anywhere. That turned out to be an easily rectifiable problem, though.

First, I dug this old, faded, $7 H&M tank top out of my closet...












Then I attacked it with a black Sharpie...





Then I drenched it in a pot of black fabric dye.








Here's the end result:






























See you in the theaters this weekend.

Hello, Norma Jean

"It's wonderful to feel the way a woman feels! It gives you such a glow just to know you're wearing lipstick and heels!" -- Lee Adams

A million words or so to fill you in about my past

"I told you that our love would last forever, and even that the tears would end for good. I told you that we'd get through any weather. Baby, that didn't work out... but we did the best we could." -- Jamie Cullum

My musical tastes have always tended towards artists whose lyrics speak the contents of my heart. They come and go and change over the years, but one man has been a constant presence in my soul, iPod, and journal entries since I first heard his voice. His name is Jamie Cullum, and I grew to love him during the summer of 2004 when my place of employment, Barnes & Noble, played his album Twentysomething around the clock for an entire month.

From a journal entry dated 08/17/2004:

My "Currently Playing" was on the air in B&N during the entire month of July, and I never tired of listening to it each day. Jamie Cullum is an amazing British singer and pianist -- kind of a cross between Billy Joel, Bowie and Harry Connick Jr. -- and he has an unbelievably sexy voice. Too bad he looks like he's ten.

style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">"I told you that our love would last forever, and even that the tears would end for good. I told you that we'd get through any weather. Baby, that didn't work out... but we did the best we could." -- Jamie Cullum</span> My musical tastes have always tended towards artists whose lyrics speak the contents of my heart. They come and go and change over the years, but one man has been a constant presence in my soul, iPod, and journal entries since I first heard his voice. His name is Jamie Cullum, and I grew to love him during the summer of 2004 when my place of employment, Barnes & Noble, played his album <span style="font-style: italic;">Twentysomething</span> around the clock for an entire month. From a journal entry dated 08/17/2004: My "Currently Playing" was on the air in B&N during the entire month of July, and I never tired of listening to it each day. Jamie Cullum is an amazing British singer and pianist -- kind of a cross between Billy Joel, Bowie and Harry Connick Jr. -- and he has an unbelievably sexy voice. Too bad he looks like he's ten.<p></p> A year passed before Jamie garnered enough attention in the United States to play any shows here, and I was fortunate to see him live at Irving Plaza on his first trip to New York. From a journal entry dated 10/12/2005, which morphed into a concert review that still appears on Jamie's official website: <span style="font-style: italic;"> I spent 2+ hours tonight standing ten feet away from Jamie Cullum the world-renowned British jazz pianist who has redefined the genre and never records a flop. He is 25 years old, looks like he's fifteen, acts like he's anywhere between five and fifty. He crooned, he keeled, he growled and whispered and scatted and shrieked and moaned. Every note was perfect, every syllable was impeccably executed in that soulful, raspy, incredibly sexy voice that belongs only to him. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmpj1Hu3kak9csJdGglK6_R7Q-hmhyphenhyphenptw7MINg6ii-NMGhV0K-tWJxAdQZ_QM09E3z1bxy5sH_6g0414rl-9JgENGkSFI13QfBv0X08AtX2xjnyl6_OaabwxTxuMXoWSuxpfMq1qJv4k/s1600-h/Jamie.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 100px; height: 100px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmpj1Hu3kak9csJdGglK6_R7Q-hmhyphenhyphenptw7MINg6ii-NMGhV0K-tWJxAdQZ_QM09E3z1bxy5sH_6g0414rl-9JgENGkSFI13QfBv0X08AtX2xjnyl6_OaabwxTxuMXoWSuxpfMq1qJv4k/s200/Jamie.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350964368621773234" border="0" /></a>He tickled the piano keys with symphonic precision, only to bang on them with his fists a moment later. His hands would move slowly, gently, deliberately, then he'd stop and begin poking out rapid patterns of notes with two fingers. At one point he played the instrument with his feet and his forehead. Then he sat on the keyboard. Then he reached inside the lid and started plucking the strings. Then he stood on the lid and took a flying leap onto the stage. The man can go from Harry Connick Jr. to Radiohead, from a rap to a disco tune, from straight jazz to Lerner and Loewe in two seconds flat without the slightest hesitation, which isn't as simple a feat as one would imagine. </span> I saw Jamie live again a few months later and the mastery of his performing style remained just as impressive as when I first saw him. Between then and now, I always gravitated towards Jamie's lyrics to commemorate moments of upheaval, change, and comprehension in my life. I cut an unhealthy ex out of my life on New Year's Day on 2006 and quoted Jamie when I told my friends about it: <blockquote><span>"If there's one thing I must do, despite my greatest fear, I'm gonna say to you what I've felt all of these years next year." </span></blockquote> I turned to Jamie again on March 28th of 2006 to help me work through some romantic confusion: <blockquote><span>"Who knows the answers? Who do you trust? I can't even separate love from lust."</span></blockquote> He even provided the soundtrack for my 20th birthday: <span><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>"Love ain't the answer, nor is work. The truth eludes me so much it hurts. But I'm still having fun and I guess that's the key. I'm a twentysomething and I'll keep being me."</blockquote></span> I had the privilege of seeing Jamie Cullum perform live for a third time last weekend. (Many thanks to <a href="http://rutila.blogspot.com/">Rutila</a>!) His music has grown more pensive lately -- his new album contains songs about self-reliance and longing and reflection, which shows that Jamie and I seem to have matured along the same lines. However, though "If I Ruled The World" and "Gran Torino" touched me, it was an old song -- the first Jamie Cullum song I ever heard back when I was seventeen years old -- whose newfound relevance to my life left me dumbstruck. The Quote of the Day borrows from it, and it can be heard in full below. <object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Up2HTq08fhA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Up2HTq08fhA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object>A year passed before Jamie garnered enough attention in the United States to play any shows here, and I was fortunate to see him live at Irving Plaza on his first trip to New York.

From a journal entry dated 10/12/2005, which morphed into a concert review that still appears on Jamie's official website:

I spent 2+ hours tonight standing ten feet away from Jamie Cullum the world-renowned British jazz pianist who has redefined the genre and never records a flop. He is 25 years old, looks like he's fifteen, acts like he's anywhere between five and fifty.

He crooned, he keeled, he growled and whispered and scatted and shrieked and moaned. Every note was perfect, every syllable was impeccably executed in that soulful, raspy, incredibly sexy voice that belongs only to him.

He tickled the piano keys with symphonic precision, only to bang on them with his fists a moment later. His hands would move slowly, gently, deliberately, then he'd stop and begin poking out rapid patterns of notes with two fingers. At one point he played the instrument with his feet and his forehead. Then he sat on the keyboard. Then he reached inside the lid and started plucking the strings. Then he stood on the lid and took a flying leap onto the stage.

The man can go from Harry Connick Jr. to Radiohead, from a rap to a disco tune, from straight jazz to Lerner and Loewe in two seconds flat without the slightest hesitation, which isn't as simple a feat as one would imagine.

I saw Jamie live again a few months later and the mastery of his performing style remained just as impressive as when I first saw him. Between then and now, I always gravitated towards Jamie's lyrics to commemorate moments of upheaval, change, and comprehension in my life. I cut an unhealthy ex out of my life on New Year's Day on 2006 and quoted Jamie when I told my friends about it:

"If there's one thing I must do, despite my greatest fear, I'm gonna say to you what I've felt all of these years next year."

I turned to Jamie again on March 28th of 2006 to help me work through some romantic confusion:

"Who knows the answers? Who do you trust? I can't even separate love from lust."

He even provided the soundtrack for my 20th birthday:

"Love ain't the answer, nor is work. The truth eludes me so much it hurts. But I'm still having fun and I guess that's the key. I'm a twentysomething and I'll keep being me.

I had the privilege of seeing Jamie Cullum perform live for a third time last weekend. (Many thanks to Rutila!) His music has grown more pensive lately -- his new album contains songs about self-reliance and longing and reflection, which shows that Jamie and I seem to have matured along the same lines. However, though "If I Ruled The World" and "Gran Torino" touched me, it was an old song -- the first Jamie Cullum song I ever heard back when I was seventeen years old -- whose newfound relevance to my life left me dumbstruck. The Quote of the Day borrows from it, and it can be heard in full below.

Growth and Invasion

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... and I'm feelin' good." -- Anthony Newley

Praise of the mundane will have to wait a while, since my past two weeks have been extraordinarily life-changing. Last Wednesday was my one-year anniversary at my job, and the following day, I left for my first-ever business trip. This was no run-of-the-mill jaunt, either: I got to spend six days at the largest cancer conference in the United States.

"For now there's life. For now there's love. For now there's work. For now there's happiness. For now there's comfort. For now there's friendship." -- from Avenue Q

Six other study coordinators were also selected to represent our department at the conference. We took turns driving, attended each other's poster sessions, stayed up until three in the morning confiding in each other, made each other breakfast, ironed each other's suits, sunscreened each other's backs, shared straws and clothing and bathrooms and beds, flirted and fought and compromised and laughed and took care of each other. Strangers often marked us as friends, relatives, or married couples... and we never made a correction or clarification.

"Anti-angiogenesis really works in TCC!!!!!" -- one of the presenting MDs

On the last day of the conference, I sat alone in the back of the biggest lecture hall I've ever seen and listened to three of our best discuss where our field is headed. A stupid grin was plastered on my face the entire time; two of the three speakers discussed my team's work as pivotal to the future of cancer care. My commute, my long hours, my diminishing knowledge of engineering... all of it became blindingly insignificant when I realized that the data flashing across the room's three projector screens was collected and abstracted by my hands.

"I'm finding who I am! And for the first time, I have no doubts! Yes, for the first time, I understand!" -- Phil Collins

The day before the lectures, I stood in the exhibition hall for four hours. Six feet to my right sat an MD from my team and between us stretched a poster representing her brainchild and my data. Doctors, scientists, statisticians, and pharmacists asked me dozens of probing questions about our work... and I was able to answer them, converse with them, share laughs and oncologic commentary and moments of enthusiasm with them. I've amassed more knowledge about this stuff over the past year than I ever thought possible, and when asked to put that knowledge to the test in front of the toughest crowd imaginable, I was able to deliver. Once my initial nervousness subsided, I began to operate with a confidence so genuine that, one week later, people can still see it in my eyes.

Secrets

"Time can never mend the careless whispers of a good friend. To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind. There's no comfort in the truth." -- Wham!

A long time ago, I wrote about the regulars, the people I encounter every single day on my commute. I've never mentioned Metro Man until now, though; he's almost always the first person I greet every morning, and he certainly deserves a blog entry of his own.

Metro Man wears an orange jacket, he stands at the foot of the staircase I use to ascend to the N train, and he hands out free copies of Metro newspaper. Every morning, he and I have the exact same conversation:

Me: Good morning.
Him: Good morning lady. [tries to hand me a newspaper]
Me: No thank you.
Him: [mutters something unintelligible]

Metro Man's mumbles never sound the same twice; hell, they never sounded like anything. For months on end, I listened very intently to Metro Man to try and determine what the hell the guy was saying to me. I'm no stranger to hopeless causes, though, and this certainly qualified as one.

I gave up trying to comprehend Metro Man's speech a long time ago, but I kept my optimism. Instead of trying to understand the guy, I've turned his rambling into my very own private joke. I have zero idea what on Earth he's actually trying to say, so in my mind, that gives me license to invent my own interpretation.

As a result, Metro Man takes a few moments out of his day to try and tell me the secrets of the universe. Last month, he named Kennedy's assassin, the location of Bigfoot, and what's stored at Area 51. A week ago today, he whispered the location of Jimmy Hoffa and what happened to the dinosaurs. Yesterday, he taught me how to achieve perpetual motion. And today, he told me I looked really pretty in my summer dress.

Ensign Ricky

"Nothing you have said is revelation. Take my blues as read! My consolation: finding out that I'm my one true obligation." -- Tim Rice

I don't work on Fridays, and since I'm lucky enough to have a few friends who share the same fortunate employment situation, we were able to spend the entire day lazing around midtown. After stalking an actor friend at his place of business having lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, discussing the men in our lives, and planning a camping trip or three, we caught a showing of Star Trek in IMAX.

The film is new, it's different, it screws canon to high heaven, it completely rewrites Star Trek history... and I loved every minute of it. The new cast kicked ass, the new Enterprise is stunning, Eric Bana made the sexiest villain since Khan, and the writers were able to include Leonard Nimoy in the film without campiness or contrivances. (Not to mention that I finally see why Rutila has loved Zachary Quinto for so long... he's talented, he's insanely hot, and his scenes with Zoe Saldana were way more intriguing than I thought they would be.)

We took a long walk after the film, went shopping for sheet music, and ended up meeting my coworkers at Butterfield 8. I had a few glasses of whiskey and a few laughs, scared off a few cocky bankers with the phrase "biomedical engineering," and handed my phone number to a couple of un-cocky scientists who didn't frighten so easily. I argued with a man who claimed that my straight hair and oversized sunglasses made me look exactly like Megan Fox. I watched the Yankees game, cheered and yelled and booed appropriately. I stood chest-to-chest with one of my colleagues -- a Twins fan -- as we screamed in each other's faces about whether or not Mariano Rivera has played his whole career for the Bombers. (I was right, of course; Mo is indeed homegrown.) Five of us went to Taj after that, then we went to a dive bar across the street after we were thrown out of Taj for wearing sandals, then we went to another dive bar half a mile away to sing bad karaoke. I hailed a cab on Park Avenue South a little after one in the morning, and while stuck in traffic, I watched a man throw a lit cigarette into a trashcan. He panicked as the contents caught fire and ran away as half a block's worth of garbage began to blaze. I could hear the sirens in the distance as my cab approached the Queensborough Bridge.

On my ride home, I thought about my incredibly full day and night -- the people, the moments, and, of course, Star Trek. And despite everything that happened over the course of the day, only two things really stuck out in my head: my lunchtime conversation and my in-your-face Mariano Rivera argument. The rest of the events and the individuals were interesting in their own right, but they were mentally expendable. To use a Star Trek analogy, they were my Redshirts -- or to borrow the term popularized by Family Guy, they were my Ensign Rickies.



For those unfamiliar with Trek lore, it's a fact of life that, on every away mission, the random dude in the red shirt always bites the dust first... and no one ever seems to care. It happened in the original series, it happens in the sequels, it happens in the old movies, and it happens in the new movie. And more and more nowadays, I'm starting to recognize Ensign Rickies in my own life -- people who serve a purpose at the moment, but if they were to encounter Nomad, the vampire cloud, or the orbital platform and vanish, I wouldn't be too devastated.

The complication lies in separating the truly expendable from the diamonds in the rough -- after all, Scotty wears a red shirt too. Thus, on Friday night, I made a conscious effort to fight the urge to only focus on the Spocks and McCoys of my day and take notice of the anonymous ensigns too, regardless of how little interest I initially showed in them. I thought things through, followed-up... and was pleasantly surprised. Twice.

The House That Ruth Did Not Build

"Then the night turned cold, colder than the moon. The stars were white as bones. The stadium was old -- older than the screams, older than the teams. There were three men down and the season lost and the tarpaulin was rolled upon the winter frost." -- Paul Simon

Last Saturday afternoon, I paid my first visit to the new ballpark where the New York Yankees play their home games. I can't verbally call it (and won't refer to it in print as) "Yankee Stadium," which should give you an idea of how I feel about the place.

That sounds a little cruel. The Yankees' new home is a beautiful -- no, downright stunning -- ballpark. Photos of Yankees legends are plastered everywhere, most notably in the Great Hall (where soaring thirty-foot high banners portray the greats in black-and-white on one side and color on the other). The fair portions of the field are the same dimesions, even down to the short porch in right. The exterior is resplendent with gold leaf and shining white limestone and cathedral windows and looks like Yankee Stadium did before its 1975 renovation. The facade crowns the seats instead of the scoreboard and Monument Park has been restored to center field, just as they looked in 1923. Most of the dirt was carted over from across the street, so today's Yankees technically play on the same soil that Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle did. The new ballpark is perfect, but nevertheless, it didn't feel right. I spent three hours sitting in a seat that's technically mine but felt nothing like my beloved Section 9, surrounded by forty thousand strong while a majestic deserted ballpark quietly rotted a few hundred feet away. I cheered and chanted and enjoyed the game, but I was always acutely aware that Yankee Stadium is supposed to sit on the opposite side of 161st Street.

The architects and designers of the new stadium tried VERY hard to pay homage to the history of the Yankees, but at best it all seems a bit cartoonish and at worst it feels like a slap in the face. To illustrate the former, consider that the foul territory has been cut in half to bring expensive seats closer to the diamond, the cathedral-esque exterior hides a shopping concourse, the gleaming white facade hangs over "cheap seats" that have been halved in quantity, and Monument Park is hidden under a corporate-branded sports bar.

I'll use a longer example to illustrate that slap in the face. When Thurman Munson, the famed catcher and former captain of the Yankees, died halfway through the 1979 season, none of his teammates could bring themselves to clean out and reassign his locker. It sat in the clubhouse untouched, looking exactly as it had the last time Munson hung up his jersey, for the remainder of that season... and the season after that and the season after that. For the next thirty years, Munson's locker was only disturbed for cleaning; the clubhouse was renovated around it, lockers were assigned and deserted and reassigned without heed to it, and subsequent Yankees captains were relocated to the locker next to Munson's. It was a private tribute made and maintained by those who shared a special bond with Munson, whether by friendship or by the ties of pinstripes. But when the Yankees moved across the street after the 2008 season, Munson's locker had to be moved as well.

The current captain of the Yankees dresses next to an empty locker before every home game, but it's not Munson's. The space adjacent to Derek Jeter's locker stands empty as a tribute to all lost legends... while Munson's locker stands upstairs in a museum, encased in glass, visible to fifty thousand people a day.

It's a perfect microcosm of everything that's wrong with the stadium itself. My Yankee Stadium, with its rickety frame and uncomfortable seats and peeling paint and quirks and nuances and undeniable baseball magic, has been replaced with a Stepford Wife fascimile and put on display for the world to gawk at. The Yankee Stadium I called home may not have had cathedral windows, but I worshipped there for fifteen years, poured hundreds of prayers into those walls, and emerged with just as many secrets and divine inclinations.

I'll get used to it eventually. I'll keep going to the games, and as my time spent in section 211 starts to approach my time spent in Section 9, I'll start to build a new set of memories to cherish and a new set of prayers to live by. But last Saturday, for the first time in my life, I sat in Yankee Stadium and felt homeless.

Bigger is Better

"At last, I think I know. The past is where we keep what might have been, but it's best to let it go because we'll never be December boys again." -- Peter Cincotti

I'm fastidious about food and choose freshly prepared dishes filled with quality ingredients whenever possible. That is, until it's time for dessert. Marshmallow Peeps, the infamous "mystery pastry" my hospital serves during Grand Rounds, anything made by Hostess -- it's all fair game. Oddly enough, I grew up with diabetics on one side of the family and pastry chefs on the other side; if I ate dessert at all as a kid, it was prepared by a master. I wasn't corrupted until I started high school and met The Big Cookie.

The Big Cookie was a lunchtime legend: six inches in diameter, loaded with chocolate chips, burnt around the edges, raw in the middle, and so buttery that the grease would soak through the wax paper wrapping. I delightfully consumed one of these monsters every other day or so for four years and would practically start experiencing withdrawal symptoms during long vacations and summer holidays. Even after I graduated, I'd make pilgrimages from college every few months to pick up a Big Cookie or two.

Then, about three years ago, my high school switched cafeteria companies and The Big Cookie went the way of the dodo. Students protested and alumni ranted, but nothing could be done. Every once in a while, the administration heralds the return of The Big Cookie and we all rush back to campus... but they always hand us a small, crisp, dry, inferior cookie and pretend like they can't see the difference.

My college's chocolate chip cookies were a decent enough substitute, but since I graduated, I've been on a mission to find a beautiful, perfect, crave-satisfying chocolate chip cookie recipe. This week, I gave my quest another shot using a modified version of a recipe I found online.

Trouble was, my culinary experimentation coincided with a telecast of Dancing with the Stars. Thus, Gilles Marini sensuously dipped his partner and I boiled my butter instead of melting it. I added it to a bowl with sugar and vanilla anyway and started mixing the ingredients. Then Dmitry Chaplin sashayed around the dance floor with half a shirt on and I let the mixer run for five minutes. When I came to my senses and checked the bowl, I had a thick, viscous, caramel-colored goo instead of creamed butter and sugar

I had inadvertently created butter toffee. And because I wanted chocolate chip cookies more than I wanted toffee, I continued with the recipe (with the addition of some chopped almonds to enhance the toffee flavor). I ended up with something unbelievable: a rich, complex chocolate chip cookie that's soft when eaten hot and brittle when eaten cold. It's not The Big Cookie by a long shot, but it's a keeper.

[Insert yet-to-be-chosen recipe name here]

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp salted butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tbsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup crushed almonds, pecans, or walnuts (if desired)

Mix sugars and vanilla in a large bowl. Melt butter in the microwave or in a small saucepan until it begins to bubble, then add it directly to the sugar mixture and mix for five minutes. The mixture should be thick, viscous, and similar to caramel in color and consistency. Add egg, then add flour, baking soda, and salt, mixing after each until fully incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts, and if you have some time to kill, refrigerate the dough for a few hours before baking.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a greased or lined cookie sheet. (They will spread out in the oven, so make sure to leave 2-3 inches of space between spoonfuls.) Bake for 18-20 minutes or until edges are browned. Yields ten big cookies, twenty medium-sized cookies, or a ton of small cookies.