Sundowner

I can't believe I never instagrammed this. What an amazing place to eat a custom ice cream sandwich, as the cows are about to get their evening meal. Moomers, you are delicious. Chocolate salted caramel ice cream, amazing; cookies for the sandwich—underwhelming, will not repeat.

I can't blog tonight because of an intense sugar craving and irresistible exhaustion. Maybe tomorrow will be the day I actually write some posts.

Thanksgiving

We got home from dinner at my parents' house close to midnight. What can you do?

Hope the cats don't find the piece of John's apple pie I brought home with me but stowed...somewhere. 

A bit of whole wheat in the butter crust, and oh so good. 

Glow-Wine

Today was pretty warm for November (tomorrow the high is in the 60s! plus rain...), but this was the first night in a while that I remembered I had a bottle of Witches' Brew open from Tuesday night, so after a couple loads of dishes, I heated some up. I guess that makes it our nightcap.

I really like mulled wine now, but I'm not sure how much of that is that I'm more used to the taste of wine now, and how much of it is that Witches' Brew (made with Michigan wine) must be sweeter than the Glühwein I drank with my German tandem partner at the Christmas market in Freiburg. My friend Jeff, who also studied in Freiburg and was my Ireland travel buddy, among many trips, is back in Germany as a Fulbright teaching assistant. He has already been to a Weihnachtsmarkt. I'm jealous, but also...isn't it still November?

How's the Glühwein in Osnabrück, Jeff? The people need to know.

Good Sunday

It was a good Sunday because we had an extra hour of sleep due to daylight savings or whatever it's called, so it was okay that I was at work until midnight and we didn't go to bed promptly. (I was too tired to achieve promptness.) It was good because my legs are so sore from working out yesterday that I can't move them easily, which is good because the fatigue means I accomplished something. For our Sunday dinner, let's called it—we ate after two, and our bodies thought it was an hour later—we had chicken roasted in a bath of chicken broth and carrots and shallots. Roasted potatoes on the side.

Not long after that, I had to go to work for a while, and Cooper had to suffer on through essay planning and writing. But in the background he had lots of chicken bones cooking in a pot of water, and now we have chicken broth for soup tomorrow. And a pie crust for a quiche! And I cooked extra bacon with our bacon breakfast, so that's already ready for the quiche.

This blog post basically reads like an online chat with my brother—John is always asking me which path he should follow toward sustenance. I think the answer is pretty much always quiche.

Let's hope all this rich food contributes to a richly productive and healthy week. Begone, dry throat! Next week is a busy one, and I will not stand for sickness!

This was a roast chicken dinner a few weeks ago, in the evening, with less work and fewer obligations in the way. It was also delicious.

Sustainable Motion

I want to write to you about body image, and exercise, and whatever. But I don't want to do a good job at it.

I also want to share with you the glorious lunch I had on Friday.

I'm sorry. I know it can't possibly look good, especially in its ugly office surroundings. It is half my mom's leftover hot beef sandwich from the Sidestreet Diner, along with some mashed potatoes covered in their glorious gravy, and then leftover matzo ball soup from Zingerman's on the side. And I ate dried apricots for dessert. And I ate a whole hot beef sandwich the night before, when John and I were at home visiting our parents. This is a tangent, but the four of us sat in a circle in my bedroom, upstairs, eating hearty diner food out of styrofoam boxes on perplexingly ugly trays my mom had purchased at a dollar store and previously used to make and store jewelry projects on. She was reclining in my bed, because she had back surgery recently; John and my dad and I were sitting on chairs brought upstairs from the dining room.

It was a supremely tasty meal.

I haven't been to the gym since. I'm a little guilty about that, but I worked a full day that Thursday, a full day on Friday, four and a half hours on Saturday, a full day Sunday, and a full day today. Tonight I'm going to yoga; last Monday I went to yoga. Tomorrow I'll probably go to the gym, now that I'll have free mornings again, as well as a few evenings.

This time last year, Emma and I had just joined the local YMCA, and I was starting to use MyFitnessPal. It was my first-ever real dieting experience. Definitely the first time I counted my calories. It was interesting, it helped me decide what to eat, but it also gave me another OCD thing to keep track of (now I'm stuck on minutiae of my spending habits), and that is good when you have nothing else to do while sitting at your meaningless office job, but it is not good when you want to focus on other things. Anyway. I lost enough weight to fit in all my pants again, and Ali and Drew got married. Emma joined tango, and Emma's and my combined dedication to going to the gym faded to a point where neither was strong enough to motivate the other. I worked a lot. A lot a lot.

Exercise was a duty at that point. An extremely unappealing duty that neither of us wanted to fulfill...so we didn't. I'm trying to change that. When we first joined the Y and spent a large chunk of our free time there, it was fun. It was a joint commitment to our well-being. It was partially motivated by our upcoming role as bridesmaids. (We also learned all about wedding etiquette and planned a party and picked out dresses and thought about makeup and shoes.) We looked at it as a luxury, tried to make time to relax in the sauna afterwards. But then we burned out. We didn't have the same schedules, we couldn't spend every morning there, didn't want to spend many evenings there.

Now I'm trying to be less ambitious, less rigid in my requirements. I go to yoga once a week, most weeks, so as long as I can afford that, I can spend less time at the gym and still have exercised the same amount (or more -- Foundations class is hard work!). Yoga always starts to feel good by about halfway through, even as it's getting to be too taxing. At the Y, the elliptical hasn't gotten painfully boring yet; instead, it usually feels good, too.

I don't really have goals for my exercise, though. Sure, I would like skinnier arms (by summer). But not really. I don't have to exercise a certain amount to make up for the ice cream I plan on eating. On the weeks I get to the Y a couple times and go to yoga, I feel pretty happy with myself. I moved my body and it wasn't awful. Just keep doing that, regularly, for the rest of forever.

That's probably a big enough goal for this category, right?

End-of-Week Attention Grabber

What if I were a real blogger? Someone who thought they were she was interesting enough to add their her favorite posts/photos/songs this week to the deluge of Friday link-roundups? (No, the pronoun article did not really interest me in the least.)

This would mean I thought I was pretty cool. Look, guys, look at all the things I liked this week, most of which you did not read or see or hear, because you are not me, and we read different things. (This is actually a useful practice, in that respect.)

But a list of links makes me panic a little. It's like the pile of tabs I have above this draft post, waiting for me to read them/send them on/put them on the list of things I meant to read but haven't yet. Those lists. Those lists. There are so many links in the world! So many links.

Should I really contribute? Can I even remember what I liked this week? Do real bloggers keep a running list on an e-sticky note on their desktop, so they know where to send their readers at the end of the week?

*  *  *

A-ha!

Nico posted this great video of old-timey Moscow. 

Emma returned to the blogging world recently! And blogged about captivating photos from the USSR.

Russia continued to be a bad place. (Spiegel probably told me this a lot, but I delete Spiegel newsletters as soon as I've looked at them, because anxiety.)

I continued to not be Emma, and didn't read that much about Russia.

I'm halfway through this post about William James and being an expat in Berlin. It was published in December. I like it.

John showed me how he makes these delicious chicken pot pies, adapted from Stephanie on 3191, adapted  from a cookbook. (We added potatoes and decreased the other veggies.) All I want for the rest of forever is a pile of them in my fridge. And a few useful belts. 

I thought a lot about big dogs, and soon John was, and now I have this great series of photos to look at whenever I want.

The Billfold posted a link to a useful-looking budgeting spreadsheet. I'm attached to mine, which is unwieldy, poorly organized, and almost six months in, so I don't know if I'm going to try this one out.

*  *  *

How'd I do?

I Resolve

...that this plastic-wrapped, chocolate-enrobed peppermint oreo (it's a "jo-jo," ssshh) is going to be the last sweet I eat for a week. Because it's the last prepared sweet in my apartment, so it probably has to go before I've got a shot at this.

In the meantime, I've had two cookies at work, because THEY WILL NOT END. They're not even good after five? days on the counter, but I'm hungry and I can see them and they are chocolatey.

I Want

a loaf of bread
2-5 apples (get me through the weekend or the week)
new red lipstick (lost mine)
a borrowed iron
the will to hem my curtains (hinges on iron)
donuts and cider
$20 to get through the week

That's all I want this weekend, at least that's tangible/measurable (if the curtains are hemmed, the will was there).

Paying back student loans, it turns out, saps all your extra money. No paid sick or vacation days kills the possibility for extra money. Life, friends, is boring!

 My brother's baking bread today, so hopefully by tomorrow I'll have some. Free, and so delicious.

I'm going to the cider mill tomorrow, even though the money was spent yesterday on mulled wine at the new beer garden and Strongbow and cheddar ale soup and ravioli, split with Emma. A beautiful evening followed by a lovely date with cocktails and pizza and a tasty s'more.

As for lipstick – red lip gloss forever, I guess. It's been running out for a year, but never actually does.

Salt Tooth

I need some new snack ideas.

Or maybe I should have just bought a new box of stone-ground wheat crackers when I was at Trader Joe's two hours ago. Three or four crackers and a few slices of cheese is an entirely reasonable snack, especially accompanied by a little fruit. Lately, though, with the demise of my fancier cheese (1,000-day gouda, so hard, so salty, so good), I've turned back to my old habits. Butter just goes so well with these crackers. Just three buttered crackers, just tonight, not so bad.

Just two more buttered crackers. Two more.

Every night.

And so today I told myself, no more stone-ground wheat crackers right now. Butter is too addictive.

Now I am bereft. I need a little salty snack to finish the day; lunch was too big to warrant dinner. Frozen custard around four was too everything to warrant anything.

Perhaps popcorn. Made with at least a quarter-stick of melted butter. That will show my non-cracker buying self!

(Emma and I went to Somerset and Birmingham for Important Wedding Preparation Errands. Namely eating pizza and browsing Anthropologie's sales rack and housewares--Very Important. Now you know.)

Hot Beef

Emma:  I think I'm going back to the part of my life where I try to not eat flour

 me:  oh SADZ

NOW

 Emma:  I know

except for like a treat

 me:  i was trying to give up a thing or two every week

like, sweets 

 Emma:  it makes it easier to be less hungry

 me:  or snacks

or alcohol

but not all three

but i couldn't even pick one

or decide if a smoothie was a sweet

so i gave up

and then i had a hot beef sandwich at the sidestreet diner last night with my parents

omg

the fakest white bread plus roast beef so good covered in such good gravy the whole plate

and a big scoop of delicious mashed potatoes in the middle under the gravy

and then a scoop of my mom's potatoes

and a corner of my mom's sandwich too

and then three bites of peach cobbler covered in whipped cream with cinnamon on top

oh my god

can this be a blog post?

 Emma:  that sounds like a bob dylan song

Buying Extra Calories

This:
was followed by this:
and this:
(Emma's pancakes were stuffed with honey and oats and almonds and brown sugar and amazingness.)

Unfortunately, we didn't use the facilities today. I was on a tight schedule (now I'm at work! blogging!) so there wasn't really time to change into workout gear and break a serious sweat and all that. And all I'd had to eat so far was a banana. Breakfast celebrated the days, weeks, months of fitness to come.

I'm excited. Part of me even wants to go back tonight (if I get off work at the restaurant before 8:30) and face my first go with an elliptical in over a year and a half. Part of me thinks that can wait until tomorrow/until I get new sneakers. But I know it has to come soon. Momentum! Building momentum is important. Wish me luck.

Tiny Food

January: The Month of Tininess? Tinyness?

No. But, maybe.

The other day I felt kind of sick, so when I finally got around to eating something for dinner, I got out my smallest nice-looking bowl--a red ramekin--and filled it with leftover mac and cheese. It was lovely. It wasn't actually that small of a portion, though. Smallish, but not crazy if it had been just one pile on a plate with three or four different things, instead of just a clementine. I think. It was really more than a few days ago, I don't remember!

(Here comes the first internet-glimpse of my cooking/eating area!)

When I reheated my leftover Chinese food from the weekend, using two ramekins seemed the most logical. Neither the rice nor the chicken and broccoli would get overcooked while trying to heat the other fully, and it wouldn't let a lot of steam out--important for rice.

And it was cute.

Cute red little ramekins and tasty food make me happy. And are good for portion control, maybe.

Okay, you're right. Time for a better post. Soon!

Out of Great Misery, A Miracle

One of my favorite things to eat in the whole world is my parents' "Bread Soufflé" (not the most appealing name, but that's immaterial). I prefer to call it a cheddar soufflé, because that describes the flavor, not the part where the whole recipe is cheating. Instead of doing all the work for a soufflé, which, I guess, might not actually rise, you cut up (generally sandwich, preferably staleish) bread into squares, mix it with grated cheddar in a baking dish, then soak the whole thing in a milky-egg mixture and bake. Delicious.

I got home yesterday, from day fifteen of my nineteen-day work-every-day stretch, and the only thing I wanted to eat was this soufflé. But it takes an hour to bake. I was hungry and tired. So I spent an hour on the computer, and I was still hungry, and still tired, and no soufflé.

Then it came to me. A thought I'm sure I've had once or twice before. The miracle.

French-toast grilled cheese. (Sadly, not actually an original idea. I checked afterward.)

And some bacon, because—why not? And apple cider, because 'tis still the season.

How did I accomplish this feat? Egg and milk in a shallow bowl like usual, minus vanilla or cinnamon or anything like that. Soak the bread, not too much. Cook one side of one slice, take it out. Cook one side of the second slice, flip it over. Put the cheese on the cooked side, which is facing up. Place the first piece of bread, cooked side down, on the cheese. Cook, flip, cook, cut, watch the cheddar ooze out, enjoy.

Soufflé is better. The crispy edges and crispy cheese on top. The cheese mixed in with everything else. It might be good to sort of burn some grated cheddar onto the outsides of the sandwich, but then it could get messy. I wasn't feeling that adventuresome.

(How many times can you say 'soufflé' in a blog post without sounding completely ridiculous? For example: soufflé soufflé soufflé soufflé...)

Thanksgiving 2011, Part II of IV

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's mom and brother, before heading to Cranbrook. Today, I took off the last hour and a half of work at the restaurant so I could make it to my brother John's apartment in time for the appetizers at his and his roommate's lovely Thanksgiving—which was the site of my brother's first turkey attempt. It was a success, and the gravy was, in one guest's words, the "best [she'd] ever had."

Skins in mashed potatoes is a crime in my book. But never fear—you can bake the skins with oil and enjoy them, instead of throwing them in the trash! This was a revelation for some of us.

The great tragedy of the evening was that the double-batch of corn casserole, which is a must for any Thanksgiving meal John attends, failed to bake in a timely matter. The shape of dish and the sheer mass of it resulted in a jiggly mass of corn muffin mix, sour cream, and canned as well as creamed corn hours after it should have been done. The crispy edges that baked were still delicious. But I, foolishly thinking my stomach was recovering from the meal, ate two buttery little morsels of it. And I could feel how there wasn't any space free for them.

The table was beautiful (complete with name cards!), thanks to Rachel, his roommate, and the mulled white wine sangria was delicious. We finished it all off with raspberry chiffon and apple pie—prettier in person, I promise.

Eventually, I ventured forth toward bed. I cannot convey to you the pain of biking with Thanksgiving in your stomach.

Well Maybe Just Half a Drink More

You know what's great? Sidecars. Look how goldy that beautiful thing is. Look how pretty, the sugar rim. And the shadow!

If only the Coach Insignia, the restaurant at the top of the Ren Cen, was less boring-slick and more cozy-fancy. It's still a great stop on a birthday night (that was almost six months ago but I can still bring it up), and you can't beat the view in this part of the world. It's even better to have a Detroit expert with you, but either way you're so high in the sky and there are so many lights forever, because that's how this giant metro area works.

We were there on the weekend (two weekends ago already!) with Emma and Ali and Drew. Drew's friend joined us, taking a break from night three (?) of the anime convention taking place in the building. Why I didn't take photos, I don't know, but there were teenagers and not-teenagers in all sorts of costumes running all over the place. Not so much in the restaurant. We didn't see many people who were old enough to drink, and if you're doing it all weekend, you probably don't want to be paying Coach Insignia prices. Cocktails, all weekend! Nope.
Ali and Drew posed perfectly. It was their last dating anniversary—next year, they'll be married! I don't know why they wanted to spend it with us, but I enjoyed it. The photos with me in them failed, so I shall allow them to fade out of memory.

Ali's drink was also pretty. It was pomegranate liqueur and champagne. Not as good as the nineteen-dollar Kir Royale I had once by accident (the accident was the price, not the drink). Drew passed up drinks for a huge, delicious piece of apple pie. Also not pictured, because I'm not used to keeping up with my blog.

Now comes the part where we think about winter.

This is what's coming. I'm sure of it. Sunsets, and broken-up ice the whole width of the river. And down coats with fur-trimmed hoods—I got one this year. I'm ready. Just like Emma, pictured above.

My ice-cold indoor nose is not ready, however. I get that computers are hot, but do they have to air-condition the Fishbowl this much? Glühwein, anyone? Such a nice word. Glow-wine. Mmm.

Stream of Consciousness and Stone-Ground Wheat Crackers

I really want to eat those Trader Joe's stone-ground wheat crackers I have in my cupboard at home. Let's be honest here—I want to eat those crackers with generous portions of butter on each one.

I want to want some decadent ice cream, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't enjoy my crazy fudge moose tracks fancy store brand ice cream as much as those crackers with butter. I'm cold. The Fishbowl, that famed computer lab where, the tour guides tell you, "I've never had to wait for a computer," even though the Mac section with seats is usually almost or completely full, and the PC side not much better, is so cold.

My strawberry banana with pineapple juice smoothie (smoothie 4A!) is also cold. My fingers are very cold. If I had internet of my own, I could write you a blog post that was about something, because I could be warm and reclining on my couch at the same time. I was supposed to have internet today. But the website lied, the service it sold me is no longer offered in my area, and though I will eventually receive a Visa rebate card for the stupid expensive modem I have to buy, I have to wait until the ninth of December for it to be activated. (Can you guess how excited I am to buy a $100-item during holiday-shopping-time, and not get the rebate Visa card until after holiday shopping is over? Bad timing.)

UPS delivered the setup package for the other, simple DSL to me today anyway. I was excited to get a package—could it be cookies from New York? Something else from New York? (My favorite aunt lives in New York. State.) No, it's instructions and cords for internet that I don't get to have. Thank you, AT&T.

I finished the current Outlander book I was on. Safely landed on the coast of Georgia, thank goodness. Books like that are addictions. I got within forty pages of the end and there was no way to stop. So I'm waiting, a bit, before I start the fourth book. I don't want it to go too fast. (At the same time, I want to read other books, Literature of Merit, Foreign Language Literature, that thing I guess I'm trying to translate for a competition eeeeeeeeee, seriously,  that's how I feel.) It can't really go too fast, because there are four books left, at this point. Two of which I haven't read before! But the tunnel vision, that great need to be reading the book—I've got to stave it off for a bit or else I might not think about anything else. And then what will I blog about for the rest of this demanding month?

So I'm going to bike home, stick that disc of 30 Rock in my laptop, and eat some buttered crackers. Two episodes to go before I have to return it tomorrow. So doable!

I can't believe there aren't any pictures of those crackers on the internet. In the first few rows of Google Image results. How?

My Favorite Cake to Bake

I first made this cake in the Art of Pastries and Dessert Preparation class I took to fulfill one of my "practical arts" requirements senior year of high school. It's from the Food Network website, and I'm just going to link to the recipe because it's not like I made it up or tweaked it or discovered it on my own. It's one of the best cakes ever because:

1. The caramel. Four tablespoons of butter for half a cup of brown sugar, how do you go wrong?
2. Apples! Autumn!
3. The actual cake is moist and tasty and simple.
4. The actual cake has a little cornmeal in it, which makes it taste better and be more autumny.
5. It's beautiful!

The photos are from last year, but I just don't need to photograph this cake that many more times.
It's not that difficult to make, especially if you remember to let your butter soften and own an electric mixer. But I made it for our big Thanksgiving meal in Germany, where I didn't have a mixer, and both times I've made it this year it was without a mixer, and one of those times I didn't even let the butter get really soft and it was okay. I also made it once or twice in a springform pan, because I was in Germany and that's what they've got. If you disobey the recipe and do that like I did, put a cookie sheet or something underneath to catch the caramel that oozes out. Or maybe I put foil around the bottom of the pan. I don't remember any great disaster, not like the first five times I made chocolate ganache cake and kept filling the pan up to the brim because I was using the size pan it told me to, so why did it always run over and burn on the base of the oven? (So much yelling by my father.)

I guess peeling and slicing 2-3 small apples might be a pain for someone who doesn't peel every apple before they eat it because they didn't like skin as a kid and their parents indulged them and then it was too late...but just think how much easier 2-3 apples is than an apple pie's worth! The recipe tells you to scatter the apples in the caramel and then pour the batter on top. I think "scatter" is the wrong word. By scatter, I'm pretty sure they mean "arrange the apple slices in near-perfect concentric rings." But, you know. Whatever you want. It will taste delicious.

Sundays In November When the Weather Bothers Me

I don't like Mondays, but this bright grey skylight Sunday has got to end. Unfortunately, it's going to end slowly with sweeping and scrubbing and mopping. Wanting money is a horrible motivator that gets you into bad situations, like working closing shifts four nights a week three weeks in a row.

The sky is glowing the worst glow it could, an oppressively bright grey, almost white but in no way reminiscent of snow. From my room, it feels like our attic is floating in a vacuum, just us and these ugly, naked weed trees. There isn't a break in the clouds in any direction, which is all too clear thanks to my three skylights. It's smothering, how the heavens are ceaselessly reminding us of mediocrity right now. I feel horrible about life, and it's not my fault. Sundays like this are the worst.

Emma just walked into my room: "The sky's so big. There's like nothing that would make me happy right now." If I didn't have to go to work in a few minutes, I could maybe have escaped this feeling today. There are cheerier places to work on your computer or read a book. It will get dark, and the Christmas lights that have been on the trees for three days will turn on. But I'll be in a kitchen, or at a cash register, and I'll miss it.

On certain Sundays in November when the weather bothers me, I empty drawers of other summers where my shadows used to be...

Thinking about the summer won't help. Nothing will help besides maybe a shower and getting lost in a good book and some candles to lighten the atmosphere. But here's a cheerier Sunday, two weeks ago, that I forgot I took pictures of. I was in Detroit, and an apartment-warming party took place that Saturday, and I baked caramelized apple upside-down cake, which I have baked so many times in the past five years, in a cute little old oven.

It doesn't normally look exactly like this—here it's capturing the afternoon sun. That weekend's Sunday sky was less bleak than this one's, even if the steam in coming out of this street in Midtown is a little ominous:

Here, now, in Ann Arbor, the clouds broke a little, but then everything just got darker.

Emma: Whatever you do, don't look up the weather for the next ten days. It gets worse. So much worse.

Best and Worst (Warning: My Life Is Mundane)

Last week, I finally finished sewing the curtains for my bedroom windows. It took a while because I had to cut the fabric—a nice, white, vintage cotton (bedspread? it was reeeeally long, but not symmetrical in all four directions like you'd expect a tablecloth to be) originally from Italy, hand-stitched together, with a handmade lace border on one end that's a great detail for curtains, that my aunt had had in her attic in Rochester, NY since an old Italian woman gave it to her—and that requires a clear table. I had to iron and pin the seams and hems, and I hate ironing and pinning. Then I had to sew it. But I finished, although I don't have thread in the right red to hem the grosgrain ribbon I'm using for the curtain tiebacks, and this was exciting, because I made something! Something pretty. And I could stop potentially flashing the pedestrians on the street three stories below. The streetlights still filter in, but at least there's that.

During the sewing process, I came across this little packet in the sewing machine's kit:

As it dawned on me that "3 STK" stood for "drei Stück" (3 pieces) because it said "einfache Nadel" (basic needle), I thought to myself, "This is the best thing I've seen today!"* Sometimes, it's just a nice feeling to know that some things aren't made in Asia. And the design of the little needle packet is simple but pleasing, and it's cool that it wasn't translated into English.

Now, the reason I was looking for extra sewing machine needles is that my theoretically higher-quality German needle did not withstand its meeting with a pin:

Oops. I hate pins.

This broken needle unfortunately foreshadowed events that evening. I was biking to work, canvas bag hanging from the handlebar because the handles on the bag are too small to stay on a shoulder, and suddenly there was this loud horrible noise and my bike wasn't moving and RRRRIP and my bag was caught in the wheel. Okay. I took out the small things that could get lost, put them in my pockets, and hoped I wouldn't lose my glasses case through the gaping hole at the bottom of the bag.

I stopped at the bike racks by the restaurant and pulled out my bike lock, expecting the usual sight and sound of all my keys coming out with it because I never pull the bike lock key out when I unlock it. Nope.

 

Instead, there was just a little stub of key sticking out. The head of the key was still attached to the errant keychain. Worst sight of the day. Look at how stretched out my (previously perfectly round, two circles thick) keyring got from getting caught in the bike wheel! Thank goodness my brother was walking down the street at just that moment, because he was able to lock my bike up in his building, and I rushed to work. The worst part was that my extra bike lock key met its death while loose in my pocket one day this spring. It folded just enough to crack. I had known the keys were low quality and had been meaning to get a copy made for months, but hadn't gotten around to it.

It turned out that the locksmith I went to the next day (Vogel! Another German word! Since 1913!) could make copies from the stub of key that had been stuck in the lock, so I didn't have to waste money on a new one. But seriously. That picture. My keyring is hilarious now. (No, it didn't occur to me to buy a new keyring while I was at a locksmith.)

The worst sight of today undoubtedly occurred while I was preparing broccoli to go with my lunch. I had three little pieces in the pan already and then accidentally lopped off a huge chunk. I picked up the chunk, preparing to cut it into smaller pieces, when I saw something wriggle.

I don't have a problem with caterpillars, but I do have a problem with bugs in my food. I shrieked. The cats were perturbed. Upon closer inspection, I noticed there was a nasty, webby material in between the stems. I threw it all back in the bag and back into the fridge. (The fridge! Where it had been for a few days! Why were they alive?) When I got it out tonight to show Emma, I discovered there was a second caterpillar, half out of a cocoon-like structure. Don't they know they're supposed to come out as butterflies? And not in my broccoli. And not in the fridge. Ew.

Eeeeeeeeeeew. (Also, Blogger has captions now? This is great. Except for the apparent double spacing.)

This was nothing like Sunday's caterpillar experience. So cute, so fuzzy, so happily (until I used the flash to get his stripes) and appropriately on the ground on Belle Isle. He wasn't so safe either, being in the middle of the path, but I think he was doing all right.

To round this out, let's end with the best sight of today. Emma and I made an expedition to IKEA and had a delightful lunch/dinner. I guess the scary broccoli was (meant to be) part of my lunch, and IKEA followed that and the FREE cupcake at the Cupcake Station, so IKEA was probably dinner.
Look at that. Meatballs, mashed potatoes, apple cake—wait, didn't mean to give away that we got dessert after cupcakes, but there was a misleading buy one dessert, get one free deal so we couldn't help it also let's not talk about the 1 a.m. donuts in Ypsi last night—and beautiful sunlight through the huge windows. Sure, the view out of IKEA is never great, because it's bound to be a huge parking lot, but the clouds and the sun were pretty enough to temporarily make up for the commercial sprawl.

Freiburg's IKEA does have a better view than Canton's, parking lot and all, because there are the hills of the Black Forest
with wind turbines atop. But Canton's was good today.

I think dinner might not have been the best sight. I think it might have been this:

Stuffed animal mountain, yes. Customary giant hot dog ad, always funny (in a lame way). I love the elephants. Giant sharks, hilarious. But wait. Wait. Is that—? Could that be—?
Weasels. Maybe ferrets. We considered stoats. But weasels is funniest. There's nothing not funny about a weasel. Just say it. Weasel.

I didn't buy one, no matter how funny, or how cheap stuffed animals at IKEA are. (The huge sharks are surprisingly affordable.) I do own an IKEA rat, because who buys a stuffed animal rat? My mom owns one too. We love them. But I didn't buy a weasel. I'm broke, remember?

Weasels.

*You might think the paycheck I received that evening was better, but I'm not sure. Paying the bills isn't that exciting. It's just one of the basic things I require.

A Collage of Information of Varying Levels of Usefulness

You should know that as I write this, I am enjoying a baguette with butter and with gouda. Yes, today is the day that I finally broke down and bought the Trader Joe's double cream gouda, even though it feels all too squishy every time I longingly pick it up as I peruse the cheese section, and think of the delicious mittelalt Gouda—middle-aged, I guess, although I don't generally like to think of my cheeses as having life trajectories or anything—that I ate in Germany. Anyway, my suspicions were valid. This cheese is just so squishy and pretty much spreadable and I've got to go somewhere more expensive to get me some perfect gouda. It does taste like gouda though, which is good, and it has the pretty goldy wax instead of boring red. And the bread and butter I'm eating is perfect. The kitten can sense this: he keeps springing up onto the coffee table and whining.

Last week, Alex quoted me passing judgment on the claims of both "science" and "the internet" on his Tumblr*, Hunting for Ghosts. It's insightful, I promise. I guess I'm one step closer to internet fame? Unlikely. He also provides evidence that Germany equals China. (He studied in Qingdao in Shangdong, which was a German colony, he told me. Also, it has the largest brewery in Asia, of course.)

*I guess I have to stop saying I don't get Tumblr, because I do, but...is that really just a noun you can use, like blog? And Twitter? I hate Twitter. Do we have to keep capitalizing them? How do you have a Tumblr (without "account" or something attached)? Confusing.

Now for news item number two. On Thursday evening, I was taking what was intended to be a mini-nap in the middle of reading about the iconoclast crisis in Byzantine history, when suddenly, a loud beep awoke me from my slumber. Or maybe it was my phone vibrating...that was around when my volume wasn't working because I spilled a glass of water all over the coffee table.  Anyway, I got a text message, and it read: OBAMA IS DELIVERING THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. Embarrassingly enough, this was too complicated a formulation for me in my sleepdrunk state and my first response was "What's the commencement address?" I tried to think of what Obama would be saying on television now, and why it would be a surprise/exciting that he was doing what must be a president's job, and whaa—and then it hit me. Somehow, somehow, the possibility we had thrown about was happening. Someone once said he wouldn't go to the big graduation unless Obama was the speaker. No one else would make sitting through it worth it. I pretty much agreed.

A lot of people are going to graduation this year. Myself included.

When I called my mom to tell her about Obama speaking at my graduation, she told me that she had almost called me the day before because our no-longer-fat, darling orange cat Mr. Pepys hadn't made an appearance to gratingly meow for food in a long time. My parents' conclusion was that he'd crawled somewhere to die or had escaped into the snowy cold and then died. (Such cheerful people, right?) They looked everywhere, even my uninhabited bedroom, and my dad took the dog out to look for frozen cat bodies, but (luckily) had no luck. But when he opened a can of cat food in the kitchen, he heard the faint meows of greedy Peepers in the distance. Thank god. Pepys had been under my bed by the best heat vent in the house, but my dad hadn't checked there because under the bed? That's where the trundle bed belongs, not cats! Oops. The trundle bed's mattress currently resides in Ann Arbor with me.

This weekend, the horrible feeling of ineedtogetout, ineedtobegone crept in again. Damn you, February. But then I went to a fancy cocktail party and got to wear the jumper Emma and I made a few weekends ago for the first time. (It's the middle one, don't worry, and for the party, I wore it as a dress without a shirt under it.) Today I read about how the Texas school board is horrible—"How Christian Were the Founders?." Apparently the rest of the world did, too, seeing as it's the most emailed article right now on the New York Times. Then I read some mystical Turkish poetry. Now I think I'll do some yoga and go to sleep. Or maybe just go to sleep. Why is it 2:00 am? Someone is playing "Tearin' Up My Heart" in the other room.