Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Tuesday night

Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes



YUM.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

my oh my oh my


I got my hair highlighted for the first time EVER yesterday. And I am still a little shocked by what I see in the mirror. For years and years I have had dark brown curly hair, and when I was finished at the salon yesterday, I had straight hair with caramel strands and toffee accents (Eric's words not mine- Eric is the iconic gay hairdresser- who yesterday I found out blogs.
Ericlosesweight.blogspot.com) My words- "It's so coppery."
I am still shell shocked and only am ok with the change when I am in certain rooms. Like my parents dark bedroom, or my bedroom with its light blue walls. But in my yellow bathroom- NO. I am not a fan- more of a freaked out individual.
But then I realized that when ever I have something drastic done to my hair- I.E the Georgia chopping off hair days - I freak. All I need is an adjustment period of no mirrors, and I'll be fine. After all it is just hair, and it grows. And this morning- its already grown on my a little bit more.
I went out with my friend sarah last night for dinner, and she reaffirmed what Eric, mama callimanis, and surprisingly Basil had told me (but he only told me after my freakout) that it looks good, and it suits me, and does not make me look like a totally different person.
So all in all, i think i am ok with the hair change, and will most definitly be ok with it within a week. So here you go- PICTURE TIME!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

summer is approaching

and the temp is creeping up
75°F | °C
Current: Partly Cloudy
Wind: SE at 5 mph
Humidity: 26%



Thu
Sunny
97°F | 64°F




Fri
Sunny
100°F | 66°F





Sat
Sunny
104°F | 67°F






Sun
Sunny
106°F | 69°F

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Playlist of the Day

Crazy Love: Michael Bublé
Days Like This: Van Morrison Fig Tree: Brett Dennen Santeria: Sublime Airplanes: B.O.B (feat. Hayley Williams of Paramore) Corona & Lime: Shwayze Bennie and the Jets: Elton John More than a feeling: Boston Rocket Man: Elton John Like You Do: Angel Taylor Magic: B.O.B Hey Soul Sister: Train Hello Seattle: Owl City Freedom Pt 2: The Beautiful Girls For what its Worth: Buffalo Springfield

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Travel Observations

Airports are strange places, people interacting with people that most likely they will never come across again. Through my experience as a creepster people watcher I've divided travelers up into three groups. The chatters, the fake polite, and the group of mismatched individuals- the silent travelers.

The chatters are people who fascinate me. They share details of their lives with people that they will most likely never come across again. And not details of trivial things like favorite tv shows, but of things like birthdays, memories, life plans. It completely baffles me that people are willing to share these intimate details with someone that they have 1) a 1 in I don't know how many chance that they will ever come across again, and 2) let alone remember. Not to mention that I have this complete skepticism of the chatting traveler, who's to know if the business man sitting in the row behind me really flew in from china this morning or if he is a middle school teacher, tired of the day to day and wanting to spice up his boring trip to a teacher conference.

The fake polite people are the ones that will answer questions politely with one word answers then politely put their head down in their book, or slide their headphones into their ears as to say please let me be. But the fake polite people that have taken to the skies as of recently are the flight attendants -now maybe it was just the last flight that I was on, and these woman had been having a rough day... But to me their job is to be helpful, respectful of the passenger, polite (even if it is just a nice considerate fake polite), and other traits of people who work in the service industry. They should not be rude, condescending, and short with the passengers. For example when a mother of two young restless children gets up to take them to the bathroom in the midst of some light turbulence, instead of saying "you're really going to get up now?!" Should say were having some turbulence, do you think they can hold it for a little bit? Or when a passenger holds his hand up to stop a flight attendant to ask a question and starts to say excuse me-they interrupt and say "I'm going to go make an announcement" how did she know what his question was going to be? Now granted she's been up in the sky a lot longer and a lot more than I have but if that gives you the ability to read minds... Sign me up! Now this has not been my experience with all flight attendants- on my short hop over to phoenix we had two characters as our flight attendants- comedians would better describe them. Which is fine by me! Talking to each other over the loud speaker, telling jokes to which passengers would yell out the punch lines making the already short 45 minute flight feel like 5. But once again, maybe this is just their routine to keep them entertained from their numerous flights throughout the day, but to me they encompass the fake polite characteristics, entertaining themselves with the passengers being entertained as an added bonus.

Now the mismatch group contains people like me. The silent travelers. Their either silent because a) they are keeping to them selves and have no interest in what's going on around them- only in their final destination (where ever that may be). They keep their heads down and involve them selves with no one. Choosing rather to bury themselves in their book or magazine, ear phones in, isolating themselves from their fellow travelers. Now to the b's) the people like me, also a silent traveler, but an observer. Watching everything and everyone around us. The traveling world had evolved tremendously in the past years. I've heard the romantic stories of air travel, people dressing up traveling with trunks and fancy luggage. And I know that things have had to change with world events, checking luggage is now not only a convenience but a necessity since air travel has become over priced, but the clothes that people wear while traveling now are ridiculous! I'm the biggest supporter of fuzzy slippers there is, even rocking them to the supermarket- but to the airport? That's overboard, and the sponge bob pajama bottoms? really sir? You're approximately mid 40's, it may be time to get rid of the cartoon character clothing. My favorite thing about airports however, is when something is so captivating- like the woman with the "Rachel" hairdo is discussing her relationship with a man named Jim on her phone, telling him quite loudly that he knew she loved him, that she misses him, that the past few months have been really hard with out him by her side - and that perhaps they can come up with a code when she calls, like call hang up call and hang up again then wait for him to call her back. And in the midst of this situation- you look up and see a fellow creepster people watcher observing the same situation that you are- you catch eyes, and smile a smile that says... Hello fellow watcher, you're watching this situation, I'm watching this situation- let's not judge each other or this situation that's happening before us, have a good trip.

And that's it. Air travel observation from a creepster people watcher.

(please excuse my horrible bb pics, hopefully I'll get better soon at taking non-intrusive creepster observation pics)


Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Bagel Shop Observations

Bagel shop observations of the day: aka observations from a creepster people watcher:

¨ familiar table of senior citizens sitting and chatting away the morning hours- all with free refill cups of coffee
¨father sitting with his three kids- taking them into school later after special breakfast
¨older gent sitting by himself with a HUGE college sort of ring that has a massive diamond in the center of it daintily tapping at an iphone
¨fashionista high school aged girl dressed in short short shorts with the only redeemable part of her outfit being her purple american apparel sweat shirt
¨kid that I went to high school with that back in the day had a massive white boy fro, taking payment for bagels
¨ super gwaky man in his mid to late 30's driving up in a mazda sports car breakfasting with wife daughter and perhaps mother (and in law)
¨group of moms and preschool aged kids eating breakfast of champs (fruit cups for them bagels for the kids)

Sunday, February 28, 2010

attack of the orange and chocolate craving.

So i woke up saturday morning with a craving for some orange and chunks of chocolate concoctions, and after going through my food network magazine and wanting to make the orange and chocolate bread pudding... and consulting with mama callimanis- and her shooting down the idea (she's not the biggest fan of bread pudding- and i had to take her word for it since i have never had the stuff myself) i went on an googling extravaganza. I ended up with four tabs open on my browser when i declared times up for recipe searching (mainly because the office dvd i was watching had ended and i had to get up anyway to put on a new disk... but that's another post all together.) One was Ina Garten's mini orange and chocolate chunk cake- which satisfied my need for orange and chocolate chunks, but didn't include the nifty new (really old school) way of infusing orange into deserts when i came across a fellow bloggers orange and olive oil cake- which i would have loved to add chocolate into but the crumby texture that olive oil adds to cakes was not going to satisfy the craving. And a tasty kitchen recipe for double chocolate and orange cookies which would allow me to use my nifty new cookie dough scoop which i got for making truffles... but after some internal debate the mini orange and chocolate chunk cake won over... with a slight change to the original recipe- I used the old school way of boiling and orange for around an hour- then letting it cool in the water that it was cooked in and then pureeing it in the mini Cuisinart. The dough used about half the orange mixture, and tasted a little bitter, so i added a bit more sugar- Ina's original recipe called for a orange syrup to be poured over the cakes then a ganache. The cakes turned out delicious - slightly dense, but satisfied the orange and chocolate chunk craving wonderfully.
Now what to do with the left over pureed orange? After going through my yia-yia's joy of cooking book, it hit me- marmalade. its so surprisingly easy! soaking the pureed orange in the water it was cooked in for an hour, the boiling it for an hour. After the boiling the book recipe wanted around 4 cups of sugar- I cut it down to 3/4 of a cup to make it equal proportions of orange puree and water, it was a little runny when it was still hot, but thickened up quite nicely as it cooled. However when tasting it on toast this morning- a bit more sugar probably would have made it even better. But the good news in all of this- i've been bitten by the jam/jelly/marmalade bug! eek.