Aaaaaaahhh...I love you, internet.

I'm soooo happy to be blogging again.

My long drought of "no internet service" is finally over. Stupid Verizon took freaking 2 weeks to get my line up and ready! argh!

I do so miss blogging. I never realized I liked it so much.

Ok. Now for some catching up...

Major events that have happened since I moved:
1. Moving. Here are some pics from our maiden voyage. (Click on any pics to enlarge)


What is behind door #10...?


Why, our living/dining room, of course!


And here is our kitchen.


And we love our nook...at the end of the very long kitchen. Notice the typical literature respective of Michael and me. He has a Time magazine on his side, I have a Neiman Marcus catalogue.


My first taste of Sandersonias. Delightful.

2. Our 2nd Anniversary.


Delphiniums for the happy couple.


We went to the Boston Commons to celebrate. Apparently, Massachusetts is so special that it calls its parks "commons." We walked down the posh Beacon St. and shopping district that housed Burberry, Louis Vuiton, etc...and boasts the residences of Senator Kerry and the like.


We also went to our corner market. The cutest corner market ever.



Ok...this blog is getting to be too long and time consuming. I'll put up more later.

Still Moving...

There hasn't been a day that's gone by since we moved last week, that I didn't construct some new piece of furniture.

Bookshelves, desks, chairs, utility carts, you name it! I've been building it.

No internet yet installed means no blogging...unless I make the 15 minute trek to my school to use their computers, which is what I'm doing now.

Moving is a b***ch.

Moving Time!

(This is our actual building!)

We move into our new place this Saturday! Yay!

I'm so excited to get settled in to our fabulous new apartment. I've moved in and out of apartments thousands of times before, but this time, it's different.

This time I'm really excited. Even though we've never even looked inside it, it already seems like the ideal space. And, it's got something I have never before had, a second bedroom!

Also, there's something great about knowing that (God willing) it is ours for the next 3 years. Ours to decorate and cherish and call our own.

I can't wait to make it efficient yet tasteful. Streamlined, yet graceful. Both aesthetically and ergonomically pleasing.

Maybe I'll have a L-shaped desk with a back-friendly chair. File cabinets neatly labelled. Closets purged of all but the 20% that I wear 80% of the time. It's time to get organized!

I'll be channelling my inner Martha (or rather a smaller, more frugal version of the paladin of polish).

Mahnolo v. Monogamy

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be single.

Watching Sex in the City (SIC) makes me think I'm really missing out. A whole city full of adventure and possibilities. I can imagine myself in fabulous clothes, working in a high-rise and never using my kitchen (for cooking anyway).

Even though I haven't even been married for 2 years now, it feels more like 6 since Michael and I started dating when I was 19. Nineteen. Everytime I say that number it reminds me of some magical time, long ago, when I was young and the world was wide open.

I've been so curious about singledom I even made the horrible faux pas of asking a single gal I just met at church, How's it like being single? And as soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I wish I could've taken them back...cause she was 31 and, well, didn't look very happy.

But when I seriously consider how life could've been, I must admit it probably wouldn't have been so great. To be a successful single, you have to be outgoing and optimistic. You have to believe everything will work out for you in the end (married or not). And you have to have a social network that takes care of you like a second family.

Well, I'm notoriously antisocial and pessimistic and even strike some as a cynic! So clearly, I would be a bitter lonely old maid, never meeting new people and never keeping in touch with old ones. I would find fault with any man that crossed my path and never trust my friends enough to feel un-alone. Instead of mingling and mixing, I would be home with a bucket full of fried chicken and enough video rentals to get me through each weekend.

God knows I would've been one bitter old misanthropic grinch.

But still, if one show can make this grinch feel like she might be missing out during the holidays, it would be SIC.

I Heart NY...on TV

In the battle of the coasts, I think NY is winning over Southern CA when it comes to popular media.

They had Sex & the City and (still have) Law and Order. "We" had Beverly Hills 90210 and (still have) the OC. They had Friends, we have Joey. They have Will & Grace, we have...no gay sitcoms.

Anyway, you get the idea. New York City. What an amazing city. It is THE American city.

When you think LA, you think decadence and paradisical landscapes.
When you think Flordia, you think retirees and golf courses.
When you think Boston, you think academia and uptightness.
I could go on and on.
But when you think of NY...you think: THE City.

Which brings me to ask, what makes a city so citified? What are the particular attributes of a city (vs. say a suburb or a rural district)? Here's a few:
1. Diversity
2. Heavy Commerce
3. Crowdedness

Essentially, people. Heavy commerce, you can see as a by-product of so many people trying to make a living.

The city: lots of people from all different backgrounds smooshed in as compactly as possible. Makes for good tv.

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.

Blue Moon Over Boston

(This picture was not taken by me. I got it off the web.)


There comes a time in everyone's life, I'd like to think, that one becomes what one despises. One does what one swears one would never do.

This entry is my concession to righteous defeat. I swore I would never wallow in sentimental drivel on my blog, my public face, but drivel now I must.

If the whole point of a blog is self-expression, I cannot but express the pervading feelings of gloom and doom that have hung over me for days, like the predictable overcast skies of San Francisco.

Moving to a far away city, for all its novelty, sucks. I miss familiar people, places, activities, etc.

Yes, it's trite, homesickness, or whatever you call it. But I don't think it will dissipate in a short time. I'm so tired of moving, like clockwork, from place to place every two to three years. I'm so tired of meeting people, getting acquainted, and then critically evaluating how/whether/and why to stay in touch. What to say and how much?

I don't think people are meant to live outside a community. And I believe a true community takes years to form. Years to know and years to trust.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere at all. To meet many is to know none. And to move a lot is to be all alone.

Geek Speak

What is a geek?

Richard, a self-acknowledged geek from the WB reality gameshow, "Beauty and the Geek," defined it this way for Regis:

"A geek is...a little better than a dork, and...a little lower than a nerd."

Well, there you have it.

A love-hate relationship with Larry Elder

One of the most frustrating shows I have ever seen on TV is Larry Elder's.

He is a fifty+ black talk show host (who I think used to be a lawyer) and seems to always talk about issues that are really interesting to me.

Yesterday, he had 4 women on his show. 2 believed that women should stay home with their kids and not go to work. The other 2 have kids and work and wouldn't change that even if they could.

Today's show was a wake up call for me. Blatant racism against blacks is alive and well. A white dad, mom, and 20+ year old daughter were on the show. They told her, ever since she was young, that interracial dating was immoral. They disowned her when she married a black man and disavow their mixed grandchild.

"Is there any kind of black man, with any kind of resume, acceptable to you for your daughter to marry?" Larry Elder asked.

Without a moment's hesitation, both replied, "No."

"If I came to your house and said that I was dating your daughter, what would you say?" asked Larry (who, judging from this question, seems to be some kind of glutton for punishment).

"I'd say, 'Don't let the door hit you on the way out'," was the mother's reply.

That show was frustrating. For 30+ minutes I heard the mom and dad spew racist ideas and at the same time, deny that they're really racist. Maybe they're not. Maybe they don't think that blacks are inferior to whites. Maybe, as they claim, they just don't believe that different races should mix. Whatever their views, I was unhappy.

I suppose I was unhappy that they even brought up race in the first place. I grew up indoctrinated by public education to believe that race doesn't matter. Race should not figure into any important equation. Race should not ever be a factor. A person's race is superficial.

But here they were. Husband and wife, parading on stage with a litany of ideas, completely beholden to them, unapologetically denouncing everything that I had ever been taught about race. How could they do that?! What makes them so confident and sure?

I am not satisfied to simply encounter a different opinion and say, "Oh well, different strokes for different folks." I want to understand. And I don't want simple intellectual understanding, I want an existentially satisfying understanding. I want to feel the truth of their truth. I want to feel the persuasiveness of their argument. I want to be seduced, but not give in.

But I can't understand the racist couple. I can't understand the moms-should-stay-at-home women. And for that, I hate Larry Elder's talk show.

How dare he bring up interesting topics and not even try to resolve them, just a little bit. He just asks questions that put his guests' eccentric opinions on display, never asking them to justify them. Never challenging them. Never getting the audience just one little step further towards any real understanding. He just leaves me hangin'.

Adventures in Middlesex

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, that's Middlesex COUNTY.

We have been thoroughly enjoying soaking up the local flava here. Lots of young people, modern stores, old books, and great architecture. See for yourselves.

Here at the Coop I'm trying to get into "school mode", which includes spending time in bookstores, wearing flip-flops, and trading in my purse for a back pack. 

Michael can't resist taking a picture with Mr. John Harvard himself. This statue is called "the statue of the 3 lies." 1) The date inscribed is wrong 2) John Harvard is not the founder (as the inscription claims), he is just a major donor. And 3) This isn't Mr. Harvard's likeness. What a sham!

This was taken on Harvard's B-school campus, which is very beautiful and rich (and a thousand times better than the law school) All the buildings are built in the historical style you see behind us. We spend all our time at the B-school since we live on the B-school campus (which is isolated miles away from the rest of the school)