Cheese and Its Friends

If I were to name my diet it would be the above.  Catchy, isn't it?  I put it in the raffle for my autobiography title but we'll see.







Cheese is having a moment in my life.  Every Sunday it's practically all I can do not to tear out of third hour and run home to my cheese.  The thing about cheese, though, is that it doesn't just have moments.  Cheese has been a staple in society for....ever, basically.    The kid in the goofy movie was obsessed with cheese (here).   The women whose blogs I follow -- lives that seem to be directed and produced by Anthropologie and Madewell --  eat perfectly arranged cheese plates with their high-class girlfriends.  The French are known for their cheese, and once the French do it well, you know the world will cling to it and dub it timeless. Do you know what restaurant all my Arab students are familiar with?  CHEESEcake factory.  That's their lifeline to American culinary culture, I kid you not.

Cheese. It's what brings us together.

There it is. I'm churning out poorly-conceptualized slogan. Happy now?

Anyway,  things like cheese don't have just moments.  I feel like once cheese is in your life and heart, it's there to stay.  My life was changed two and a half years ago when I had a brie-and-cheese panini right on the France/Belgium border and it changed. my. life.     Brie.  I've been eating it on everything lately.  Mostly on bread I've broiled in the oven (no toaster to speak of).  Luckily for me, my roommates are cheese-lovers as well.   They're all much more skilled in the kitchen than I am, though I realize that holds little weight.  I'd even say they all have above-average cooking proficiency.

Anyway, they buy hard cheeses.  Asiago. Parmesan.  My knowledge of names ends there, but I know they throw around bourgeois adjectives like "sharp."

A few weeks ago at Thursday dinner group GRILLED CHEESE was chosen as the headliner attraction.  An assortment of breads and toppings and, yes, cheeses.  It was a hit. You wouldn't believe how many people will trek through an East-coast snowstorm for cheese.  I was so distracted on the way there I ran into a trash can.  The nice (and very bundled girl) walking behind me was concerned.  If I've been given one talent from God it's laser focus.

I just wrote an entire post dedicated to cheese.

bye.

the mouse chad

We named the mouse.


I insisted that we couldn't, because once we named it we could no longer kill it.  But the subject persisted, and so we named it Chad.  Because invading our apartment was really a d**k move, MOUSE CHAD, and have you ever met a great guy named Chad?  Ok, but did you actually like him, deep in your gut?  That's what I thought.

I just googled "d-bag names" and the first link gave me this.

Sidenote:  Suits is my current favorite show.  Thanks, optimized advertising; you really nailed it!

Anyway, now that Mouse Chad has a name, even a dirtbag name, I'll do everything in my power to protect him.  No traps will be set; no cheese poisoned.  I am like the Marshall Service of Mouse Chads.

Please don't let there be more than one Mouse Chad.

The Happy Day Account in Which I Overuse Dashes

This winter has been so bone-crackling cold.  In the teen degrees.  Whiny, bratty teen degrees. Bone-crackling cold like that just sucks all the life out of me and then Seasonal Affective Disorder (self-diagnosed but REAL. The acronym is literally SAD) builds a cubicle on top of my suppressed, suffocating dreams and will to live.  Just sets up office right on top.   Camps out until mid-March comes around when SAD reluctantly unpins the photos from the cubicle corkboard and packs up shop, vowing to return the next January.

This winter has been no different.  Aggravated, even.

But today.  Monday, March 2nd. Today was 42 degrees and it seemed downright balmy.  I walked to the metro in the morning -- late, because work had been delayed for snow -- and I actually removed my coat because I was overheating.  On a snow delay day, of all days.   The irony.

Hours later I walked out of work and I felt so alive in the most cliché, trite way.  Look-at-the-dew-on-this-flower-petal-isn't-life-so-fragile-and-exquisite,  am-I-on-drugs-or-did-I-just-have-a-really-good-workout kind of endorphins.  Endorphins my brain had been depriving me of for months. So I did what I had tried to minimize for months and started to walk.





My feet carried me from Rosslyn over the bridge to Georgetown.  At this point I had no direction and was just following my feet. I was pleasantly surprised when they walked me to the hole-in-the-wall students frequent.and bought two of their best: Oreo-chocolate-chip cookies. Those cookies deserve their own post so I'm not even going to get into it with you right now.

It may have been warm, but the sidewalks were thoroughly iced over.  Inches of slickness layered over unevenly-laid brick.   My endorphins didn't care.  My endorphins made me invincible.

I Bambi-walked my way through Georgetown. Through the West End, through Dupont and Logan Circle.  I essentially ice-skated all 4.2 miles home from work, alternating jamming to my February playlist (here) and wielding phone calls from my grandma and best redheaded bff.





Here's to the rest of 2015 unfolding like today.

it felt like a photograph.

j u n e 2 0 1 4


Even in the moment,  it felt like a photograph. The grainy light of late evening coalescing with the static roar of a strong  river, fuming after a storm.  Backlit in shredded shades of charcoal and gray.  

Our silhouettes navigated  the crags jutting out into the water. Rabid waves lashed at our sneakers, soaking them thoroughly. I paused to get sure footing and take inventory of the mist droplets clinging to my cheeks and the tips of my eyelashes.  He scrambled over another boulder and paused there, standing upright.

The sound of the risen river’s discontent. A figure, hardly defined from the velvet night. This vast contour of a man, looking back over his shoulder and holding a kite.

Snap.   

February Playlist

Gold //   Imagine Dragons
Got Love //   Tove Lo
Opque // Smoke Season
Medicine //  The 1975
Love Me Like You Do  //  Ellie Goulding

Sanity. February has me losing mine.

These dreary February days have me browsing my summer archives.

Please enjoy these surprisingly artsy photos of me taken by my new Indian friend who talked to me on the street and followed me into the museum. He gave me his email afterwords, so I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious. Except he didn't tell me I had brownie remnants on my face, so we're fighting. 

BELIEF + DOUBT = SANITY

THE FIRST THAT WAS TECHNICALLY ON THE SECOND.

It's the second day of the year, and nothing says "Auld Lang Syne" quite like a new blog.
Digital white paper, metaphorical white paper, etc etc.

Welcome to you, welcome to me, and welcome to 2015.