All the news that's fit to print

The only reason I'm blogging right now is because my Catan Online isn't working for some bizarre reason.

Catan is my newest addiction and I'm devastated that it has been down for about 30 hours now. Sigh. Cruel withdrawal! How could you do this to me?!

But this gives me a chance to catch up on what's up.

What's up?

Well, I think my right foot is broken.
In fact, I think evereything from the waist down is pretty much a mess right now.

It all started when I decided to do a little bit o' exercise in my living room since the weather has been so horrible that to go outside is to die. I did lunges. Something I hadn't done in a little over a year. And maybe I went a little overboard with them.

Now whenever I have to sit, or shift, or stand, I groan like an eighty year old woman. And strangely enough, I must've pounded my right foot down into the lunges so much that I broke it. Thank God my insurance starts next week so if I'm still hobbling, I can hobble on over to the clinic and get it checked out.

In other news...I've been trying to prestudy some law. That's really very boring. I have five textbooks that I read and take notes on. Yawn.


I do look forward to moving into out new apartment soon. August 5th is D-day, when we do the final leg of our journey to Boston. That's right. It's not officially over until we move all our stuff out of storage. Our new "permanent" address will be just 2 minutes from Harvard's main campus and 11 minutes from my law school. That's walking, by the way. No one drives in Cambridge (the opposite of LA in more ways than transportation). And we'll be just 5 minutes away from the Coop, our new four story yuppie bookstore of choice, complete with a tiny Starbucks wannabe cafe.


(Note the Coop sign in the background and there are no cars, just bikes and pedestrians).


School starts Septemeber 6, after labor day. Just like elementary school.

Marriage is like a two person kayak...

First of all, you're stuck together.
Once you've "pushed off" there's no escape without great discomfort.

Therefore, and secondly, you must work together.
That involves frequent communication and compromise.


For instance, we encountered difficulty at first when Michael wanted to play the game How-close-can-we-get-to-the-river-bank. And I wanted to stay as far away as possible from the bank because I was under the impression that it would make us more susceptible to flipping.


We communicated and compromised. Well, actually, everytime we veered toward the bank I screamed like a banshee and paddled furiously away and Michael pitied me (and his bleeding ears) and eventually gave up.

But anyway, that leads me to the next similarity between marriage and kayaking, which is that sometimes, you can really enjoy the view...and each other.


To all my newly wed friends, Michelle, Peggy, Suzanne, Jen, and soon to be Joy... Here's to a great (two-person) adventure!



*(These pictures were taken on the Charle's River, right outside our apartment building! Boston, what a great city!)

The Weekenders

Over the weekend Michael's mom and sister came to visit.

They were very good sports about being cramped in our 500 sq ft single br apt and sleeping on the floor.

Here are some highlights.

(Click the picture to enlarge it)

Here they are on the streets of Cambridge. Coming from rural towns, they are both delighted to be in such a metropolitan area.


We discovered the joy of frisbee and spontaneously founded the Harvard Frisbee Team. We started counting our consecutive succesful throws and everyone, even Michael's mom said, "That's just like that one episode of Friend's!-When Chandler was 'the dropper.'" (I bet even my mom knows which episode I'm talking about.) Ah Friends, what a litmus test of cultural literacy.


What is a trip to Boston without eating at the famous Legal Seafood Restaurant? Unfortunately everyone thought the food was overated and overpriced.


But mostly, we snickered at DVD episodes of the OC, Season 1. I miss California.

Mmmmmm...

Really? Like, thanks!

So I guess it's the obvious consensus that I'm more "legally blonde" than "legal eagle." Almost everyone I know has made it a point to say to me, "Wow, have you seen Legally Blonde?" And then the next phrase is inevitably, "You're just like her!"

Yup, whether it be my best friend, professors, church acquaintances, and even my own mother.

Certainly I'm not like her in a Ms. Hawaii Tropics Runner-Up way, what with her full curves and tight, uh, everything. So it must be our mutual innards?

Well, I only hope so. Elle Woods is a high role model to aspire to. She's genuine, caring, and quite capable of understanding the law. I admire her bottomless pep and sleeve-rolling-up drive...all without even chipping a nail!

Since the opposite of Elle is pretension and snobbery, I'll feel like I'm doing something right if people keep making these comparisons.

But maybe the comparisons refer more to my sometimes cavernous superficiality and ignorance of the world around me. It's no surprise to anyone that I'll read People and US twice before I deign to pick up Time or USNews (and then only to look at the pictures and captions). And I do recall people saying (with alarming frequency) that my "blonde roots were showing" throughout elementary school and junior high.

At any rate, I certainly feel strongly as Elle does that, "Whoever said orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed." People, take it from those who know. Orange is for Holloween and reliving the 80's. Pink, like basic black, will never go out.

Earth to Major Tom

This is Tom Barrella's billboard.

This, apparently, is his last and greatest effort to find a wife.
Oh, but not just any wife.

As his website will tell you, this "first captain" is seeking his "firstmate...his soulmate."

Yes, the S-word.

The One.

When asked by an interviewer about her qualities, Tom replied, "I'll know when I see her. She'll give me butterflies. She'll motivate me to love her everyday."

Well, Tom, I wish you luck. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. First of all, you should know that the billboard bachelor is 41, very wealthy (otherwise how could he afford this huge panorama in NY), and has dated a lot. He's succesful, healthy, and filled to the brim with good things. All that's missing, the last piece of that pie...is Her. But Tom, sorry man, I don't think she exists because you are TOO PICKY!

People like Tom are idealists. It's gotta be perfect or not at all. Well Tom, people aren't perfect. Love isn't a fairytale. And no one is going to "motivate" you to love 24/7.

There's nothing wrong with being idealistic...but this realist just thinks that Tom needs to let it go. Face the music. You're never going to get married. You're hurdles are too high for any human being. You want perfection, which doesn't exist this side of heaven. Move on.

Tom reminds me of all those poor dissipated seekers of old. The Fisher King. Don Quixote...dreaming the impossible dream.

Actually, Tom reminds me of all of us...sadly. I'm sure we all dream of a land where things are perfect, skies are blue, and we have someone or something that gives us butterflies 24/7. But I don't know of anyone who's found it. I don't know of anyone, in all of history, who wasn't still looking forward, even up to the very moment they were laid to rest.

Lost in Chronation

This is my stop watch. I live by it.

When I wake up, I strap it on to time my morning jogs.

When I do my daily studies I start my watch. When I need to eat, go downstairs to get the mail, etc... I stop my watch. And then I come back to study and start my watch again.

At the end of the day, I hope my watch reads something close to 3:59:00, signifying that I've studied around four hours that day.

I have yet to decide if I like quantifying my life so chronologically. But actually, this is not a new phenomenon.

It reminds me how in highschool, I used to time myself to see how quickly I could shower and brush my teeth. There was such a sense of urgency to get as much done in the day as possible. I needed to squeeze a minute so hard that 70 seconds came out. I was intent on carpe diem-ing to the point where I actually took only 4 minutes and 50 seconds to take a shower from fully clothed to fully clothed again.

It's been 7 years since I've been in highschool now and 7 years since I cared to carpe diem. I wonder what happened to that spirit of ambition and exuberance? Why am I now so content to channel surf for hours at a time? And take I-don't-even-know-how-long showers?

Perhaps the all elusive hope of attaining a meaningful goal is gone. When I was young and naive I thought that happiness could be obtained through diligence and lots of it. If I worked hard and plugged and chugged through school and piano lessons, somehow...happiness would be waiting there at the end of the finish line.

But somewhere along the road, in the midst of this metaphorical marathon, I must have clocked in at around 7years:2months:1day:8hours:56:minutes:and6seconds only to find that I was running on a treadmill all along. Or I looked around and realized that I was lost. Off the track that would take me to "victory". Where are the signposts that point me along the way?

And so time started to not matter. It's abusrd to see how fast I can get from nowhere to nowhere. But according to my stop watch...it takes me about four hours a day.

Happy Cooking!

Jacques Pepin is a happy chef.

And for good reason.

At a young age, he was the personal chef to three French heads of state, including Monsieur Charles de Gaulle, himself.

Later on, he worked at New York's historic Le Pavillon restaurant.

Now, with decades of masterful cooking behind him, he is one of America's best-known chefs, food columnists, cookbook authors, and cooking teachers, appearing often on public television, where I watch his shows avidly like the food groupie I am.

But as I watch his shows more and more, I'm beginning to wonder if Jacques is happy for an entirely different reason.

Jacques, like any good French cook worth his weight in herbs d'Provence, adds a lot of wine to his dishes and always caps off his show with wine suggestions for the meals he cooks.

But once, I saw him pour some red wine in a skillet to braise pork chops and then proceed to pour that same red wine into a goblet for himself, saying, in his thick French accent "Ah, why should we save it only for the cooking?"

And another time, while he was making the final garnishes on a plate of seafood linguine, he poured himself a glass of white wine and relayed to the cameras, "Master chefs say that you should never serve wine with seafood pastas, but they are wrong. Wine is always good. Wine goes with everything. Even it is good on its own." And then he took a big swig from his glass, contemplated putting the glass down, and then quickly took another swig.

But perhaps most telling, is when he showed the audience how to pour champagne straight from the bottle. "You want to pour once and then again," he explained as he poured the sparkly liquid to demonstrate. "The first time, you have a lot of bubbles. After they settle, you pour again." And then, with a sparkle in his own eyes, he added, "and again...and again...and again..." Hmmmm. Ok Jacques. I think you've had enough.

Jacques, like all PBS chefs, ends every show with a little sign-off. Daisy Martinez says, "Buen Provecho." Ming, being the Asian fusion chef that he is, says, "Peace and good eats." And Julia Child ends with the classic, "Bon Apetit!"

Jacques ends with "Happy Cooking!" And now, I'm beginning to see why.