latter day bohemian

Met de slee van de springschans

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Posted by brixton on February 1st, 2010 :: Filed under this n that

Good mail day! Excited about this, though bummed to miss out on…

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Good mail day!

Excited about this, though bummed to miss out on kfan’s new address stamp!

Posted by snicker-snack on January 25th, 2010 :: Filed under +1
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kfan: the debate rages on (via .April.) One of the funniest…

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kfan:

the debate rages on (via .April.)

One of the funniest things I ever read happened in the comments on one of April’s Facebook status updates.

So many choice quotes (“BIG BEAUTIFUL NACHOS” “WHY ARE FRIES EVEN UP IN THERE”).

Also that Michael has to pull his car over to the side of the road in order to participate in this debate, only to have April accuse him of having dystentery.

Epic. Click through, view large, live large.

so amazing u guys

Posted by snicker-snack on January 22nd, 2010 :: Filed under +1
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Eating my way into 30

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One of the things I learned shortly before my birthday is that in Ann Arbor, there are a number of businesses that give away free things on your birthday.  While this may be the case elsewhere, it is so prevalent here that there’s a whole page on the ArborWiki dedicated to free birthday items, and organized in such a way as to maximize your freebies.  After some consultation and careful planning, and in the absence of any other significant birthday plans, we decided to rack up as many free things in 24 hours as we could.

Let me preface this truly ridiculous list by saying that Shane and I split almost every single thing on this list, and some of the items went straight into our freezer for later consumption.  Still, I think I could not eat desserts for a month and be OK.

1. We started the morning off with a free ridiculous coffee beverage at Caribou Coffee – a sugar-free turtle latte with whipped cream and Snickers bits, to be precise.

2. Up next, free aero-press coffee at Zingerman’s Coffee Company, obtained while picking up beans.

3. And then, free “John-do-ya” gelato at Zingerman’s Creamery. We tried many flavors, but this was literally like frozen Nutella – therefore the obvious winner.  The gelato guy congratulated me on having a birthday in the best month of the year. His is next week, I think. We ate about 1/3 of the gelato before moving on to the next stop.

4. A free 1/2 dozen bagels at Zingerman’s Bakehouse! The bakehouse folks made sure to remind me to get the other 1/2 dozen at the Deli later.

At this point we took a break from the free stuff to enjoy a very lovely brunch, complete with croquembouche, at our friend Shana’s. More on this later!
5. On our way home from Shana’s, we stopped for the second free 1/2 dozen bagels at Zingerman’s Deli – it was too busy and crowded for photos, so one from home will have to suffice.

6. Having rested up and returned a few phone calls, we moved on to get a free chocolate-covered strawberry cupcake at Cake Nouveau. It was tasty, but had nothing on any of Buzz’s cupcakes. I miss you, Buzz Bakery.

7. Next door, I picked out my free tea at Tea Haus – a cup of the Vietnam Yen Bai.  The woman who made my tea recommended that we check out the birthday deal at Weber’s, where she very nearly got a free lobster on her son’s 2nd birthday.

8. We’re not huge fans of Arbor Brewing Company, but they offer a free appetizer, so we stopped in for dinner. We had free nachos, played some shufflepuck, and drank a couple of beers before rolling on.

Several restaurants offered a free dessert, free logo pint glass, and free $10 gift card for birthday people – however when we tried both Grizzly Peak and Cafe Habana, we were told that the purchase of an entree was necessary. After all of this free stuff, though, neither of us were hungry enough for an entree, so we made a mental note to edit the ArborWiki page and moved on.
9. …to The Arena, where you get a free shot with purchase. Any purchase. I have no idea what my shot was called, but I know it had Bailey’s and I know it was on fire. Shane took one for the team and purchased a beer for our required purchase.

Once we were firmly wrapped up in our alcohol blankets, we wandered around downtown, stopping in at an art gallery and a record store, where Shane bought Remain in Light, before continuing on to our final destination for the night.
10. …Ashley’s, where we got a Free Tollhouse sundae – freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, ice cream, chocolate syrup, etc. Sooo good.

11. On our walk back to the car, we stopped in for my free scoop of ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. This was, I might add, the first time all day that anyone had checked my ID to confirm that it was my birthday.

In addition, I might add that the following free things were obtained either shortly before or shortly after my actual birthday:
1. Free entree at Noodles & Company, split for lunch earlier in the week
2. Free “creation” at Cold Stone Creamery
3. Free scoop at Baskin-Robbins

All told, a pretty ridiculous way to spend one’s 30th birthday, and that’s without me describing the pastry-building process that took place just before brunch.  I was feeling pretty blue about not being able to celebrate my birthday with family and old friends – but I think we totally made up for it in fun and food.

Posted by brixton on January 18th, 2010 :: Filed under adventures, in the neighborhood
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30ish

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Tomorrow is my 30th birthday, and as one is wont to do on the eve of milestone dates, I’ve been thinking a lot the past.  I imagine that most people make a lot of stupid mistakes in their 20s. There’s a lot of fumbling around, and perhaps a quarterlife crisis or two, though I really hate that term.  My 20s were no different, which is one reason I have no problem with the new digit at the front of my age.  Many of my friends have already turned 30 and seem no less awesome than when they were in their 20s, and I see no reason why this won’t be the case for me!

Ten years ago I was living with my boyfriend and a roommate with whom I had a long and complicated relationship.  I was about to leave for London, where I would, in short order, meet my favorite band, hang out with them in Amsterdam, fall in love with Spain, meet my favorite author, spend hundreds of dollars on film processing and phone cards, help my friend avoid ordering 3 #3 meals at McDonald’s in Paris, and dig deep into England’s history with the most charismatic teacher I’ve ever had.  I was young, very insecure, and not at all sure what I wanted to do with my life.  I remember coming back from London and writing in my journal that a huge adventure had just ended, and I didn’t know if I’d ever experience anything like that again.

In the intervening ten years, I have:

  • graduated from college (English), then after a few years completed two graduate degrees (both in LIS).
  • got married, divorced within a year and a half, fell in love, had my heart broken, suffered through various crushes and flirtations, decided to be single for a while, met someone pretty amazing, and am now engaged to be married (details forthcoming).
  • worked as: bookseller, customer service representative (banking),  online support specialist for an internet banking service, commercial teller, barista, accounts representative (healthcare), graduate assistant (instructional technology; WISE project), practical (gyne) instructor, visiting computer assisted instruction specialist, reference/technology librarian (academic library), part-time reference librarian (law library), service star (mail order food company), and digital services assistant (business library).
  • gained and lost some weight, ultimately ending up about 20 pounds lighter thanks to running, biking, lifting, yoga, swimming, and discovering how much I really like walking instead of driving when I can. (related: broke my arm, but it’s long better now)
  • bought a house, lost a house, moved 11 times, and lived in 3 states: Illinois, Virginia, and Michigan.
  • had 5 cats and 1 rabbit.
  • went through fits of crafting, accumulating a lot of supplies and a lot of crafty friends along the way.
  • traveled all over the country and back to Spain and France, including walking a portion of the Camino Portugues.
  • experienced a crisis of faith and a gradual rediscovery (or re-exploration) of what I believe.  Also went through periods of deep depression, on and off medication, and had to get serious about my mental and emotional health in order to move forward.
  • really fell in love with cooking and dramatically expanded my palate and skill set, culminating in a breakfast for 104 this fall at SELMA.  Also became deeply committed to local food, supporting farmers’ markets, and making my own attempts at growing and preserving food for my family.
  • listened to hundreds of hours of music, danced my ass off at dozens of concerts and festivals.  Also read hundreds of books and untold millions of webpages.  Also wrote a novel thanks to NaNoWriMo!
  • met so many amazing people that I can’t even begin to name them all.  If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of them.

Tomorrow I’ll celebrate #30 with Shane and new friends and a giant croquembouche that I’ll be building tonight with two friends.  I’ll hopefully sleep in and cuddle some cats.  Maybe I’ll go for a run.  I have no idea what the next few years will bring, but looking back on where I’ve been over the last ten years, I’m confident that there will be many more adventures, heartaches, changes, and surprises to come!

Posted by brixton on January 15th, 2010 :: Filed under all about e, ends & beginnings
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Birthday wish list

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I wouldn’t mind finding any of the following under my birthday tree:

  • noise-canceling headphones, as my new office has several loud people who like to be loud
  • a soft and warm robe for first thing in the morning when it is very cold in our house
  • legwarmers that will fit my lower thighs, knees, and upper calves so that I can keep wearing skirts to work
  • yaktrax for safe winter walking
  • a rollerskating party with friendos
  • a postcard or letter from you!
Posted by brixton on January 5th, 2010 :: Filed under all about e
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2010 Resolutions and/or Action Items

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  1. Focus on my relationships and be a more patient and loving partner and friend.  Also cat parent to Basil, who is adorable but drives me freakin’ nuts.
  2. Get married. This should be action item #1, but item #1 on this list is actually much more important.
  3. Save aggressively for a house and for overall financial stability.
  4. Go camping and generally explore our new state.
  5. Get over my fear of DPNs and knit the kittyville hat.
  6. Write two more issues of my zine.
  7. Run 500 miles. This works out to roughly 9.5 miles per week. Totally doable.
  8. Learn CSS. I mean really learn it. More than just troubleshooting and/or fixing things.
  9. Read 30 books. This works out to 2.5 books per month.
  10. Kitchen Diaries project, which should result in achieving the following sub-goals:
    1. focus on healthy, flavorful meals
    2. try several new recipes each month
    3. learn more about the camera + take better photos
    4. update my/our blogs more regularly
Posted by brixton on January 1st, 2010 :: Filed under this n that
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2009 Resolutions, Resolved

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1.  Build up an emergency fund to cover my half of 3 months’ worth of the household budget (approx $4500).
I didn’t make it to this dollar figure, but I did save enough to be not uncomfortable for 6 weeks of unemployment and 2 following months of part-time employment.  At this point, my savings are pretty depleted, but I’ll start replenishing them with my first paycheck from U of M, due to arrive tomorrow!

2. Pay off laptop loan to SB.
Done!

3. Finish my CAS.
Done!  I defended my thesis in March and finished my last class in May.  Recap available here.

4. Get published (something, anything).
Done!  David’s and my presentation at ACRL was included in the official conference proceedings.  Buy your copy now! Oh, AND our talk was mentioned in The Chronicle of Higher Education!

5. Start eating beef again. (after almost 13 years!)
Done!  I had my first bite of beef in nearly 13 years at our fancee NYE dinner last year.  I’ve since become an enthusiastic omnivore, which has changed my life less than you’d expect.

6. Run a 10K (or two 5Ks).
I ran one 5K – the Race for the Cure, run with my friend Tina in June – and started running longer distances in the fall once we were settled in Ann Arbor and I was devoid of a gym.  Nike+ reports that I’ve run 169.05 since I started using it to track my runs in February.  I discovered sometime around May that the Nike+ calibration is off by up to .25 miles per mile – a pretty significant difference!  Regardless, this is far more running than I’ve ever done before, but less than I hope to do in 2010!

7. Do an unassisted pull-up.
Total unmitigated fail on this one.  With no access to a gym, I took a lot of time off lifting, and when I started working out in our home gym again last month, I could barely do girl pushups.  Adding this one to the list for 2010.

8. Make one craft project per month.
Done:

  • January:  Thesis, draft one.  Not a craft project, per se, but a substantial creative project and one that ate up most of my time and energy.
  • February:  A fantastic mix cd, which was my contribution to a year-long mixtrade.  My theme was “selling out”, broadly conceptualized to mean great songs that were popularized by commercials rather than their own merit.  The accompanying post of videos is available at the above link.  Also I tried my best to post somewhere every day, but I don’t think I actually succeeded.
  • May: Holy craft extravaganza! I celebrated finishing school by making a bunch of envelopes from USGS maps, the last of which just sold on Etsy over the weekend, plus sewing four aprons and canning a large batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam (mmm).
  • June: Feels like we were gone the whole month, so the best thing I can take credit for was improvising a recipe for strawberry and toasted coconut ice cream.  Let’s hope I can replicate it next summer when strawberries are back!  Also made more strawberry-rhubarb jam and baked a lot of homemade bread.
  • July: Mostly just canning this month – several pints of Lodi applesauce, some peaches, and also tomatoes, all of which had to be stealthily packed for the move in August.
  • August: Amidst the hassle of moving, I sewed a cushion cover for Mark’s lounger.  First time working with really heavy fabrics and velcro, and with making up a heavy-duty project as I went along.
  • September:  Unemployment turns out to be very good for craft productivity.  I wrote a zine!  The first issue of Bon Ton Fesenmeyer is about my favorite holiday, which is Thanksgiving – and about my family and food and tradition, all rolled up into 32 delicious half sized pages, about half of which are recipes.  Also I helped team #18 place in the top 10 in dishrag tag, and I sewed curtains for our bedroom and office and made a custom x-stitch project for Frederick Jones Quinn’s room (only 9 months after he was born!).
  • November: Hat and legwarmers for our new godson, Milo James Flerchinger.  Also a hat for Keem and one for my Pop.  I like knitting hats, though I really need to learn how to not fear DPNs so that I can branch out in my knitting.  We also made umpteen pints of apple butter and applesauce and several quart bags of dehydrated apple rings from the 40+ pounds of apples picked early in the month.
  • December: Several projects have yet to be posted as I’m waiting to hear from the items’ recipients – but I can tell you that I worked with bias tape and snaps for the first time to make a circular needle clutch – and made my first marshmallows and first (and second) batch of granola for holiday snacking and gifting.

9. Take a trip with SB.
We took a quick overnight trip to Rehoboth Beach in April – really our only vacation, as the rest of the year’s travel was either for work or weddings or family visits for the holidays.  I’m hoping that this next year brings more day trips and weekends away for us, though we’re planning to knuckle down and save towards a house in the near future.

10. Reduce magazine subscriptions to 5 or fewer.
Done!  I started out the year with subscriptions to: Domino (ceased publication, replaced with Vanity Fair), Blueprint (ceased publication, replaced with Martha Stewart Living), Everyday Food, Body + Soul, Self, Natural Health, People, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Cooks Illustrated.  I actually think there was one more, but I can’t remember what it might have been and I don’t have any issues lying around.  I have opted to not renew all but the following: Body + Soul, Self, Bon Appetit, and Cooks Illustrated, and am resubscribing to Real Simple.  The superfluous subscriptions will start running out soon, and the piles of magazines sitting around will decrease accordingly.

11. For the third year running – complete my Bond resolution!
Fail again, though I did make some progress.

Posted by brixton on December 30th, 2009 :: Filed under this n that
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New Commute

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26 minutes from leaving the house to starting up my computer in my new office.  Not bad at all, especially on a morning like this when the streets are quiet and it’s just cold enough to keep a spring in my step.

Posted by brixton on December 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under this n that, workity
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“CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In his book *The Way of Transition,* William Bridges defines the “neutral zone” as “that in-between time, after you’ve let go of your old life and before you have fully discovered and incorporated your new life.” Sound familiar? Maybe the neutral zone where you’re currently simmering isn’t as dramatic as that — maybe you haven’t been stripped of every single certainty and you’re not wandering in limbo. But I suspect you have at least let go of one aspect of your old familiar rhythm and have yet to ease into the one that’ll be familiar in the future. My advice? Don’t rush it. Get all you can out of this unique and educational time in the neutral zone.” - Rob Brezsny’s Astrology Newsletter, December 9, 2009
Posted by brixton on December 9th, 2009 :: Filed under this n that
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