This post is dedicated to my brother, partly because it centers around the events of his 21st birthday, but mostly because we were each other's first guardians.
Well, I was his first guardian--aside from our parents--and have always been protective of my little brother; he's not so little anymore, but I'm still protective. He, on the other hand, was the first person to understand that I dislike being "guarded," and so to watch out for me without trying to save me from anything. He is always observing me and thinking about me (and his younger sisters) and, because we have been partners in crime since 8 or 9 months before his birth, we destroy all other teams when we are paired at Cranium. (These days he's crushing all of us at the Man Game, but that's as it should be, I suppose.)
Anyway, as a result of all this, combined with his love for art and special effects, it's not so surprising that it was his idea to start our grown-up tradition of going to see animated movies for each of our birthdays. We've seen "Tangled," "The Muppets," "Arthur Christmas," and most recently (yesterday) "Rise oftheGuardians."
OK everyone, listen up: WATCH THIS MOVIE. It's so good.
I know that I'm a sucker for this kind of touchy-feely, "good things in the universe" business, but I think everyone can benefit from a dose of that stuff every now and then. This movie features Santa (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), and the Sandman, brought together by the Man in the Moon--all the guardians of our childhood, our innocence, our capacity for joy and wonderment, our ability to dream and to believe in anything of consequence.
And when fear starts closing in and extinguishing all these lights from the world--a topic I could almost write a thesis on--the Man in the Moon appoints another Guardian: Jack Frost (Chris Pine), the Guardian of Fun.
For me, jaded beyond reason this Christmas season, the Rise of the Guardians actually did save me from totally succumbing to cynicism. It reminded me of the true significance of holidays and rites of passage. Not that I had completely forgotten, but the older I get, and the more immersed in an individualistic, dog-eat-dog societal routine, the more profound and necessary these messages appear to me. The more I need movies like "Love Actually" and, now, "Rise of the Guardians."
But really, we are each other's guardians in the day-to-day. It falls to us to remind each other of our innocence and joy and dreams, year-round. My brother, for example, is the Sandman (and not just because he conked out on the couch halfway through "Back to the Future" on Friday night). He is the Sandman because he is utilitarian in his communication, and he creates art out of nothing, like dreams out of sand. He reminds me of the weight of details, the importance of paying attention to them and remembering them, every day.
Happy birthday, bro. And everyone else: happy new year. May your 2013s be full of wonder.
Welp, as you may have noticed, the world didn't exactly end last week.
(I'm still not convinced that there isn't a missing pin somewhere in the scaffolding of the universe, that is causing the whole thing to sort of slide gradually into complete disarray... But it looks like the Mayan calendar ending was more of a technical issue and not a cosmic one.)
So that left us to the shopping we put off in case the world were to end, to the stuffing our faces with all the food we were bummed to think we might never get to eat again, to the going back to the same old taking things for granted in absence of a definitive moment when they might be ripped away.
Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas.
For me, this Christmas felt like my first real adult Christmas. Here's why:
1. I woke up in my own house, and had to leave to go "home for Christmas." Obviously this isn't the first year I've done that, but let's be real: being a college kid home for the holidays is a TOTALLY different animal than living up the road and coming back to open presents and eat and then going back home to sleep in your own bed again.
2. Along those same lines, I've never been a holiday family hopper until this year. If you're not familiar with this term, I might have made it up. Basically, Jason and I had joint invitations to at least 3 different places on Christmas day, presents to open and/or food to eat at each of them. This belly-full day brimming with sometimes conflicting expectations and extra people to consider was a new thing for me, and certainly a learning experience that I'll have to remember when coordinating Christmas 2013. (Do we have any foretold apocalypses between now and then? Maybe just a surprise rapture here or there?) Plus, our Christmas dinner table had 11 people squeezed around it, and each of them was a part of our "immediate" family.
3. Somehow I've never experienced the Christmas Gift-Giving Competition until this year. I think this must be how adults make Christmas into a game, after we lose the excitement of Christmas. I guess the plus side of having multiple Christmases is increased chances of "winning Christmas"? If you don't win at one, there's always the hope of House & Family #2 to boost your personal odds.
To be slightly less cynical, it is nice to give a gift that hits the spot for somebody else, because honestly there isn't much stuff I still need in my life. And, it's a materialistic way to show new people that you have been paying attention, and/or to get brownie points with key players...
(I didn't say it was NOT cynical, I just said it was LESS.)
4. My sister asked me if I wanted to go shopping on Black Friday, and I said it sounded like my worst nightmare. Been there, done that. I would go nowhere near the mall on the day after Thanksgiving. I think I actually managed to steer clear of that place through the whole Christmas season; I made a point of it. I did end up doing some last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve, but I have vowed to avoid it until 2013 and so far I'm succeeding. Knock on wood. I did almost all my shopping online this year, and even had most of it in hand by December 15.
I understand that this level of forethought will be almost certainly short-lived, if my parents are any indication of later adulthood, post-marriage and -children. But for now I'm basking in my uncommitted young adulthood.
5. Also speaking of making Christmas fun after toys, and now that I'm out of college my win list has become populated with a new kind of toy: kitchen appliances. So far I've got a toaster oven and a blender, plus an adorable lunch bag that puts me securely in the running for cutest lunch bag at work, a colander, adjustable measuring spoon, cookbooks, coasters, mugs, and a gorgeous wooden fruit bowl. I am SO set for 2013: The Year of Smoothies & Slow-Cooked Meals. Can't wait to get started.
6. And last for now, my Christmas CD of choice (one of 2 I can stand at all) is a $6.99 Classic Soft Rock Christmas album from Walgreens that includes hits by Elton John, Kenny Loggins, Hall & Oates, and Carly Simon. My other 2 bearable picks are something by Straight No Chaser, and... Well, that's it. A hit here or there from the Biebs or Mariah Carey, and a few of the musicians and songs featured on NPR. I've tried on a few occasions this season to listen to Christmas music, to no avail. It pretty much makes me want to gag.
Maybe since it's been the only thing playing anywhere, and on my favorite radio station, since Halloween.
Merry Christmas, friends, and welcome again to adulthood. (If you're still a kid, disregard this message. Thanks for reading!) The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future swirl around us as we speak.
There have been some very difficult conversations being had over the past few days. Come to think of it, it's been a big year for tough conversations: The presidential election was one of the most exhausting "conversations" I can recall, and brought up all kinds of broiling, touchy subjects. You know, everything we're "not supposed to talk about" - religion, politics, personal health, the works. And right after the election, our reps launched into "fiscal cliff negotiations," if you can call them negotiations. From where I'm sitting there doesn't seem to be much negotiating going on at all.
But I'm not talking about those kinds of difficult conversations, as you might have guessed. Since last Friday, December 14, 2012, I don't know many people who have really been able to erase that sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs. I feel sadness settling heavily into my diaphragm, my intestines, the nape of my neck.
There is nothing I can say that will make this better. Nothing anyone can say. But still, I think it's important to talk about what happened in Newtown, Conn., and to talk about what is happening to the greater community that we all share with them.
On Friday, when I heard about the shooting, I texted my sisters. Not to talk about anything. All I sent was:
<3
My mind was blank for most of that day. I wanted to share space silently with other people, since the air felt too heavy for any words to penetrate anyway. I wanted to be around people I love, people I would rather take a bullet for than live without.
On Saturday I called a friend from college and we talked for a few minutes, not wanting to speak aloud what had happened 24 hours before, but unable to avoid that void weighing down our minds and our hearts. (Incidentally, she was the one who told me that the Hebrew word for mind and heart is the same. I don't remember the word, but I understand why it is the same.) She said she is having a hard time accepting all the horrible things that happen to people. For her, this year, the biggest blow has been cancer. It has sprung up around her over and over and over again, too close to be coincidence. To me, this has seemed a year of suicides. A colleague of mine has been particularly struck by the endless chain of shootings and violence in our area. And then, of course, there are the Hurricane Sandys and Bopha typhoons of our meteorological present. All of these things and others hammer away at us, merciless.
In high school I got really into Dead Poets' Society and from there I fell in love with a few of the dead poets, Thoreau in particular. He wrote about the personal responsibility to exist fully on this earth, and in society where possible. Back then I had memorized a quote from Walden about sucking the marrow out of life... But the one that has stuck with me more through thick and thin is one I didn't memorize, and it's from Civil Disobedience:
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."
To me the incessant hammering of tragedy these days is the cry that comes from a growing inability to contain this desperation. Although we try to silence it by increasing our standard of living, by buying new gadgets and suing everyone who blinks in our direction and medicating ourselves into oblivion, our desperation is not quiet anymore. And I think the earth is crying too.
I wish I had an answer to this cry. I wish it could be soothed with something as relatively simple as better gun control or a perfect balance of revenue with expenses. I wish I thought there was an answer that is within our power to find, but I can't help but feel right now some kind of apocalpyse closing in on us. I can't say yet if it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I suspect, or if our imperfect reality is finally caving in on itself; but it sure feels like something pretty dark is happening. And I hope, as many newscasters have been saying, that we are finally ready to recognize that there are some serious conversations that need to be had.
And let them start with "I love you." Let those be the first ones we have. Whether the world is about to end or just the year, let us say the things we have been afraid to say to the people we care most deeply about. And let this remind us what power comes from community and from working for its good.
A friend told me about a text her mother sent: "I'm sorry for bringing you children into a world where such terrible things happen." I know she's not the only one who thinks this. But my response, after a pang of guilty empathy, was to repeat a conversation from the last episode of Castle where Esposito says to Ryan,
"The world's always falling apart, bro. Since the beginning of time.
But having kids, making a family - that's what keeps it together."
There have been a few events this year that tore the words from my tongue and even from my chest. I know that I am one of the lucky ones who has covers to burrow under and people who will let me bury my face in their necks, but the fact that this is any comfort at all - the fact that moments of pain and moments of beauty follow so quickly after one another - give me hope that there is an answer, somewhere, if we can work long and steady enough to find it.
While you and I put our minds/hearts to the question, know that we are not alone. People everywhere are working on it as we speak - on NPR, for example, which played a beautiful story called Would A Good God Allow Such Evil? Because I am my father's daughter, I latched onto the section called "A World Both Beautiful and Shattered," which finishes with the following quote:
"I have a responsibility as a human being...to look at what's
broken in the world, to mend it and then...to be a partner with
God in completing the work of creation which is incomplete."
I'm doing my best, but the beautiful/shattering thing about it is that no matter how close we come to getting it right, it's still incomplete. But maybe that's the point.
2012 in review, the good, the bad, and the...whatever
I officially declare the holiday season in full swing. It happened kind of fast for me; first I was waiting "patiently" for my birthday and Thanksgiving weekend, and then suddenly November was over. And then suddenly we're barreling into part II of December and the light at the end of the tunnel of things to do is somewhere vaguely in the middle of January (assuming the world doesn't end on December 21).
Speaking of the impending apocalypse, I'm obsessed with it. I have always had a thing for apocalypse movies (except those of the zombie variety) and I love to track the cultural psychology defining the vessel of human destruction each time a new one comes out. For example, I've been watching a decent amount of suspense movies from 2003-ish and the common plot thread is computers becoming too smart and trying to assume authoritative control over American society. Now, 9 years later, we've just given in to being controlled by technology and have turned our terror to slow scorching/drowning via climate change.
Back to the latest apocalypse, which is cloaked in the mystery of a forecaster extinguished by the very ancestors of we who will suffer the rapture... As I flipped through the month of December in my planner (which I am excited to replace in just a few short weeks) I discovered that I already have a plan for the apocalypse. Apparently there is no out, either. I have committed, in capital letters, to spend my last night on earth at Applebee's with my roommates. Drinking our regular drinks and eating half-price appetizers.
In other parts of the country, friends of mine are hosting apocalypse parties where they will collect nonperishable food items that, in the event this whole end-of-the-world thing turns out to be a hoax, will be donated to the food bank. My mom asked me if I would be free for a dinner with some family friends on that evening, and I said, "No, Mom, I'll be celebrating the apocalypse DUH."
There are many things to celebrate these days, though, and many less morbid than mass oblivion. As you may recall, I have been looking forward to the Spirit of Christmas in Old New Castle, an annual event on the second Saturday in December (i.e. the day before yesterday). On Friday night, though, while I was at an Eric Hutchinson concert (!!!) I got the following text message from my friend Annie: "Hi, crazy question- any interest in going to NYC tmrw?"
Guess how much I miss text messages like that in my routine, responsible, adult life. SO MUCH.
She told me the next day that I was the only person she could think of in Wilmington who would even consider doing something so wild. We ended up deciding between the holiday tour of New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and after being made to see reason we settled on Philly's Christmas Village and that city's Macy's lights show.
love park at christmastime
We spent the day checking out different crafts from all over the world, watching German-American heritage groups performing traditional dance, finding our birth moons (here's my really awesome birth moon), eating German food and drinking hot spiced wine. We also got talking about how we can cruise on spontaneous, exciting events far longer in the sunny summer months than in the cold dark of winter. We decided to link up and help each other keep things fresh (and keep popping vitamin D) until the sun comes out again. THE LESSON: Having a partner in crime makes this a much less daunting task.
I'm still cruising on the concert Friday night and having the most awkward possible meeting with Eric Hutchinson on Friday night in order to get the new album autographed (see photo). Concertgoing is not a hobby of mine, but I've seen Eric Hutchinson live twice and it never gets old. Plus, all Jason and I have wanted to listen to this weekend is the new album. Check it out: Moving Up Living Down. It's excellent.
And I'm still cruising on Saturday's excursion and the warm, sparkly holiday spirit of the lights and the wine and tradition. Plus, we were counting Santas from Philly's annual Running Of The Santas pub crawl... which got me SO EXCITED for Wilmo's Santa Crawl pub loop next Saturday.
As if I don't have enough of a cloud cushion to cruise on, Annie and I made brunch plans for Sunday that turned into an all-day hot spiced wine pumpkin pancake homemade granola extravaganza. It's been rainy and foggy and damp and cold here, and no snow on the horizon, but it really turns the world around when you have good people to share it with.
Keep an eye out for:
- our fambly Christmas card, complete with all THREE roomies and BOTH cats
- holiday finances inspired by a fellow post-grad blog and my dwindling bank account
- a cookie exchange
- the Santa Crawl
- Longwood Gardens
- holiday food and drink and the long-promised pumpkin beer post which I SWEAR really is in the making!,
- my brother's 21st birthday
- AND gatherings of good people (siblings, grandparents, friends, other people's families, etc.) through the holiday season.
Stay on the bright side of this holiday season, friends. I wish you love and happiness this season.
I'm not good at being from anywhere, and I'm not good at being a regular. I'm not good at showing interest in people I might get to know, even though disinterest couldn't be farther from the truth (at least in many cases).
This is probably a result of some stunted attachment mechanism as far as my social development goes, and on a deep-seated psychological level a result of a strange juxtaposition of fears: namely, the fear of perpetual insecurity confronted by the fear of perpetual routine.
I won't go into this too much, but to make a long story short I will venture that this Battle Clash of the Fears has been the driving force in my life on all sorts of different levels. It is what keeps me from stillness. It creates such energy in my core and as some of us managed not to hear until earlier this week at work, "things in motion stay in motion."
So, since I am simultaneously battling both nesting instincts and nomadic instincts, I am not good at being a local. Being a local requires staying in one place.
There may be hope for me yet, though, because staying in one place requires dedication to the idea of staying in one place long enough to become a community fixture. And although I still feel that irrepressible fight-or-flight urge from time to time, I am at least putting a lot of energy into fostering my commitment to staying somewhere.
This morning was a great testament to my efforts. I got up at the crack of 7:40 to take my car to my (formerly local) mechanic. D & J is located 5 minutes, if that, from my parents' house, and these guys have been taking stellar care of my car for over a year now. I always look forward to shooting the breeze when I go there: we've talked about beer, theater, traditions, friends, travel, and books, to name a few. These are strikingly well-balanced, two-sided conversations. I aspire to be as nonchalant about social interaction as these guys are. Plus, I'm fairly certain they are Car Whisperers.
Revved up the now-purring Bizz III and swung by to pick up my mom for Delaware Writers' monthly breakfast. It's at the Panera also 5 minutes from my parents' house, and less than 10 minutes from my house. I like Panera (they have pumpkin spice lattes to die for in the fall) but it's not technically a local business, so it doesn't get a real shoutout.
Yes, I am a bit discriminatory on this. You may know that the day after Black Friday has been named Small Business Saturday (by American Express, ironically). I don't know that I have ever actually celebrated this holiday; I avoid crowds and mainstream things at all costs. But I'm glad that it exists. Plus, I just learned this week about National Small Business Weekend: the first Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of every month. Hey...that's THIS weekend! I don't get the impression that it has really taken off, but it will be interesting to see how the whole thing unfolds.
I'm going to divulge one of my priceless secrets to all of you: Clara's Foolproof Method of Immersing Herself in Every New Place Ever. (And take my word on this, because this is one thing I excel at beyond all others.)
Start doing everything you can think of to do, starting with touristy things if you have to. (For example, I started on the Visit Wilmington website.) It may be helpful to make a list (because I have already forgotten scores of places I meant to check out, that I haven't yet). If this list starts to grow at exponential rates, do not be alarmed; this is normal. The more places you go, the more places you find out about or stumble upon or notice that you also must add to your list. I warn you, this may be one list that never ends.
Patronize local businesses. This will get you quickly up to speed with important local issues, with the way people know each other and the way people do business. Plus, you just get invested in the community where you now live, because you are putting your dollars into it. A third added benefit of this is that you can choose to become a regular patron of these places, and the people who own and work there start to recognize you and know you, and they start to trust you. It may not go beyond that, but it never hurts to build that cred and rapport.
Join groups. You might stumble upon these groups at your favorite businesses, at the gym, at places you like. You can also do Twitter, Facebook, or web searches or try Meetup, which hasn't done a whole lot for me but has been a lifesaver for a lot of people I know.
OK, so it's not a grand, dangerous DaVinci Code-type secret. But still. I promise you, it works. And if I had to boil it down into one bite-sized, 3-syllable masterpiece it would be simply this:
Leave your house.
Easy peasy.
So, Mutti and I headed to Panera and sat down in the meeting room with other area writers. This is her third meeting, and my second, with this tirelessly interesting crowd, and we have met and spoken to different people every time. It's inspiring and incredibly motivational.
It is December 1, but it's 51 degrees and sunny. As usual, I walked here (to the library), and stopped at Papa's Italian Market around the corner from my house for a piece of tomato pie.
QUESTION: Is tomato pie a Delaware thing? Our informal poll at work says yes. This is the second, more widespread informal poll. Let me know in the comments if you eat it where you're from/where you are now.
So I am walking through my neighborhood to my local library (a phrase which always reminds me of PBS), eating tomato pie, and I get this sense of almost belonging. I savor this in moments since it seems to much to hope for to ever take that for granted: belonging.
I'm taking a break from mincing dried dates to catch up on the blog. Why am I mincing dates, you ask? Because it's fruitcake time. According to tradition, Thanksgiving weekend is fruitcake baking weekend. And of course I've left it to the last minute, sort of, since the dried fruits need to be soaked overnight in sugar syrup. Yum. Let me just tell you, cutting dried fruit into small pieces is NOT easy. It builds up my kitchen knife calluses and causes high sugar intake; dates, you should know, are the candy of the natural world.
I'm swaying toward doing another "All Good Things" list tonight. The consta-writer in my mind has been absorbed in National Novel Writing Month, which I am not even trying to finish this month, but I have still found that November is a great time for me to think about the novel perpetually in progress in my mind. The structure of this story is finally starting to take shape, and yes, I have managed to jot down a few pages. Moleskine pages, but pages nonetheless.
Anyway, Thanksgiving is cut out for All Good Things lists. "10 Things To Be Thankful For This Week."
1. In the spirit of KSTO Sunday nights, let me set you up with a song. Thanks to the AMAs last Sunday night, one of my coworkers discovered the acoustic ("deconstructed") version of Die Young. We all got pretty into it last week at work, and we've got a countdown going to the EP release of Deconstructed on December 4.
2. Tomorrow is my birthday. I feel like a cheat, though, since I threw myself a party a week ago and have zero plans for tomorrow. Or if not a cheat, something is incomplete: I celebrated something that hadn't happened yet. Not that birthdays make anyone feel any different, really, and not that this is a "big" birthday. But still. The party, and all the fantastic people who showed up, definitely makes this list in flying colors.
3. Dancing. Dancing. Dancing. The other night I was moving around the kitchen feeling like I was about to explode/stumble on something world-shattering, frustrated, with a growing itch. Like wanderlust. And then it suddenly occurred to me that I miss dancing. I miss dancing so much that it's starting to detract from the goodness of my life. The wedding made me realize this, and looking at all the wedding photos has made me realize this again and again over the past two weeks. So on Wednesday, to kick off the holiday weekend, I convinced Jason to take up an invitation from a friend to check out this bar downtown called Nomad.
4. This place deserves its own number: one for the dancing, and one for the place itself. It's in a part of town I haven't ever visited before, one that felt too quiet as we drove into it at 9:45 on a Wednesday night. Except for a flashy club called The Rebel on the corner, it's the only thing on the block, and we hardly even noticed it at all. It's got this speakeasy vibe, a door set sideways and cut into the solid white wall, with one set of blackout windows and a small neon sign flashing the word "open" in the middle of it. The owner was standing outside when we walked up, and she beckoned us over and invited us in, shook our hands. Inside, it is a narrow, deep room, dimly lit but warm with old brick and dark wood decor. On Wednesday night the crowd was treated to an excellent reggae band called Island Vibe. The bartenders were great, the drinks were great, the people were friendly. I felt that we were among friends -- and some of those friends even managed to get Jason on the dance floor! I am impressed.
I could have just directed you to the Nomad Bar's Yelp page. The comments corroborate my story.
5. You know me; discovering new fab pockets of Wilmington with each week that goes by. This next one, though, I have to credit to my roommate and her boyfriend: Borgia's Subs & Steaks. It's a block from my house, super clean and charming on the inside, and a great piece of Little Italy history. I got their home-cooked roast beef sub -- I love roast beef sandwiches, but I did NOT know it could be as delicious even in a bite by itself as it is here. Jason got a burger sub and I'll just say I didn't even get a bite of it, because he strategically finished it before asking if I wanted to trade tastes.
Don't worry, I still let him have a bite of mine. Because as we all know, I like to share good things with other people.
6. Borgia's was the flourish on the end of a mindblowingly great day. Jason and I both had Friday off from work (never happens), and while it was tempting to bum the day away in sweatpants, we both knew that I would get cabin fever quick if we didn't get out of the house. I suggested we take a short jaunt over the bridge by the library, to pretend like we were going to work off our double Thanksgiving dinner the day before.
On the other side of the bridge, though, someone had installed plaques divulging the history of "Bancroft Parkway - An Historic Greenway" (second blurb on this page). How pumped was I to discover that Wilmington has a greenway? SO pumped. And when I discovered that the greenway leads to the lovely historic Rockford Park, not so far away, there was no way we were not going to follow it. (I think I even got some sun on my face, we were out so long!)
We ended up at the Tree of Life on the edge of Rockford Park, rolling out in front of us, with the Delaware Art Museum to our right. Which way to go?
'nuff said.
7. We decided to go to the art museum, which I've been reading about since I moved here but have never visited. I assumed it would be in an old house somewhere in the heart of town, with some local artists drinking tea in the kitschy gift shop. (Sorry for underestimating you, Delaware!) But this place is a legit art museum, with a great variety and a beautiful display of different kinds of painting and sculpture. We got there an hour before it closed, and had just enough time for a whirlwind tour of some really satisfying, inspiring art.
8. Also, I managed to stay awake for all of Love Actually for the first time in four years. Score!
9. I'm thankful for pies. The partners at work bought us all Thanksgiving pies from Bishop's as Thanksgiving gifts; I chose apple cranberry crumb and it was to die for. (Also last week they gifted us lovely ceramic platters from a local potter, which I've already used twice. I'm so into it.) Anyway, in addition to that pie, I also got to taste Jason's mom's pumpkin pie and my mom's pumpkin pie; banana cream pie; light, creamy pumpkin cheesecake; and sweet potato pie made by the fabby baker Shari (Jason's brother's girlfriend). Talk about DELICIOUS. I won't describe every single thing I ate but the yams were to die for. Also, I am in love with sharing food, and with other people being proud to share their food with me and my loved ones. It's such a great way to weave a tight community.
10. This is sort of silly, and unrelated to pretty much everything, but on Wednesday morning I packed up my stuff for the day and hit the gym before work -- the last day of work before the holiday weekend. I got to the gym and realized: I'd forgotten my work shoes. So it was either sneakers or 6-year-old Target flip flops hanging on by a thread with my nice black work dress. I called Katy, who was still at home, and asked her for a HUGE favor: "Can you drop off my heels at the Y on your way to work?"
And she did. No sweat. I don't think she thought it was as big a deal as I did, but it really did blow my mind.
You know, I do the whole "All Good Things" schtick for myself almost as much as I do it for my faithful listeners/readers. It's becoming clearer and clearer that I am feeling the season closing in on me. The dark and the cold give me cabin fever bad. I'm irritable; nostalgic; lonely for no reason; restless; homesick for every place except the one I really live at now; tired; unfocused. Maybe it's a natural reaction to the prospect of spending the holiday season so far away from a lot of people I love to death. But it's not all doom and gloom, because I can make lists like this, and because I have been legitimately happy a lot in the past two weeks, and because I have laughed so much and so hard. Maybe it's seasonal affect rearing its unpleasant head. I'm doing my best to tackle it at its core, and I'm doing an OK job. But this time of year is never easy.
I guess the point of sharing this is, some of you may be in the same boat and I think it's so important to know that we are not alone in feeling like this. Because I know that I'm not. And, despite this morbid umbrella hanging over my head, I really do enjoy some things. The happy just doesn't last quite as long as it does in the summer.
I'd better get back to work. It's getting pretty late, and I'm being called for dinner. I can also hear two pounds of pineapple calling my name from the kitchen, begging to be chopped...
I used to drive to work on DE-41, Newport-Gap Pike. It picked up in Newport, near my parents' house, and shoots north into Gap, Pa. Thus the name.
Approximately 4 minutes from my office, depending on how I catch the red lights, DE-41 merges with DE-48 at this strange, curved, tangled intersection. I used to approach this intersection daily with an incantation: Stay green stay green stay green stay green!Those suckers on 48 don't need to get through the intersection as badly as I do! Plus, if I was stuck behind a truck all the way up Newport-Gap Pike (apparently a critical truck thoroughfare), that intersection was my one chance to gun it and dart around him as 41's single lane split into two momentarily at the merge.
Since I moved into the city, though, I take DE-48 straight northwest out of my neighborhood.
Today, I was cutting it close on my morning commute. Traffic wasn't too bad all the way, and my incantation worked its magic on enough red lights that I was almost doing OK by the time I rounded the curve ahead of the merge.
Then came that fateful intersection. Against all odds, and at the expense of my former self, I found myself uttering the incantation -- with one key alteration.
Stay green stay green stay green! Those suckers on 41 don't need to get through the intersection as badly as I do!
I don't actually remember if it worked or not, because suddenly I found myself dazed by a head-on collision of my past and present self, an identity crisis, a clashing of worlds. As I coasted past the light and on my merry way to work, I was shaking off the strangest sensation of traitordom, an impossible contradiction in the way things are. Like a tear in the matrix.
I know, I know, I'm sensationalizing my Friday morning (can you really blame me, though?). But I have always felt particularly sensitive to world-clashings, as I juggle what feels like a whole solar system in my cerebral identity-centers.
In a related vein, I'm excited for this weekend because I'm throwing a birthday party for myself, to which I invited friends from at least 3 of my worlds: high school, college, and Delaware. And within those worlds even micro-worlds are fairly represented: people I met doing this or this, through this or this person. There are spontaneous sparks and slow-burning flames that resulted from sometimes seemingly sourceless chain reactions.
It can be supremely unnerving, but I think secretly I like throwing worlds against each other to see if they stick or absorb each other or bounce off in separate directions. I like watching people I like discover that they in fact like each other. I think people are like ions, and that connections between us completes something incomplete in the world, corrects awkward static in the fabric of a macro-universe.
In a much less abstract vein, and to finish off this quick philosophical lunch break blog, here's how I kind of like to imagine my life:
"The most random collection of groomsmen in the history of weddings." - Zoë, I Love You Man
I just finished drafting our 2012 St. Olaf Class Newsletter, and I don't want to spend much more of today sequestered in front of a screen. Besides, my car is in desperate need of washing... But I'd say it's about time I write again! So the following items have made my life better lately.
Better than what, you might ask? Better than it would have been without them. Better than it was before they happened. I think life is continually, simultaneously getting better and worse with every passing moment. Bittersweet, perhaps, but that fact brings a promise of eternal richness to an otherwise potentially very dull world.
So here goes: a flashback to Sunday nights on KSTO senior year, All Good Things. The 10 things this week that have made life awesome.
1. Skyfall. I LOVE JAMES BOND. My second cousin Stephen just posted on Facebook some baloney about his girlfriend being extraordinary for going to see James Bond with him on their anniversary. Sorry, Stephen. I'm sure she is just as extraordinary as you say, but James Bond is a woman's man. A girl who will go see Avengers, though, or Wreck-It Ralph, is the girl to covet. JUST saying.
BUT let's be serious for a moment. Skyfall, in my opinion, was a particularly brilliant specimen of Bondery. NPR did a pretty rad interview with the director, Sam Mendes. The part that struck me most was a brief discussion of the darkness of Bond's character, highlighted in the latest installment. This darkness struck me equally in the film. I'm seriously considering reading the books now, if I can get my hands on them. I've found them singularly elusive in the past...
2. This Is How You Lose Her. Speaking of reading, just this morning I finished the latest from Junot Diaz. He was one of my most admired writers before this book, but has only been lifted higher since. Unlike The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (a brilliant piece of literature, although it begs a disclaimer as an emotionally tough book to read), This Is How You Lose Her is a collection of short stories excerpted from the life of a recycled Diaz character named Yunior. With a suspicious aroma of autobiography, the stories collectively dissect the life of a pathological cheater: "A cheater's guide to love." I liked the last story best. It closes the book with a sentiment that has rocked my world all day today: "The half-life of love is forever."
3. Harpoon UFO Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale. Another spoiler to the mythical pumpkin beer post. This is delicious. Pumpkin-y and spicy and beer-y all at once. Pleasant but not pansy. Delicious.
cha cha now y'all
4. Pat Benatar: The Hits. Found it at Target. Only cost $5. Makes life epic. The only weird thing about it is track 7, "Hell is for Children." Just don't get it...
5. JIM AND GREEN GOT MARRIED!!! I love Jim; I love Green. But I have not been so happy that they are together as I was at their wedding. It was perfect. So them. The whole thing was obviously very carefully planned. The reception was great: hand-decorated by the family, catered by their favorite restaurant, with beer and wine made by Green's family, DJ'd by the great DJ Felony (i.e. Jim's excellent pre-picked playlist). Also provided an opportunity to see quite a few people I haven't seen in a long time. For some it had been two years or more. Mostly it was good to dance with those people again. This is something I miss most nowadays.
6. My company just won some awards for social media! I am proud just to be associated with this rockstar team, but I'm especially proud to have put in a lot of personal time on these projects, both in making them great in the first place and in compiling the contest entries. So validating.
7. I have started cooking meat. As you may remember from some of my first-ever posts on this blog, I often eat a lot of tuna fish and canned beans. Since moving out this year, I still eat a good amount of canned tuna; but I've gotten into dried beans instead of canned, and even some frozen tilapia filets! This week, though, I've had non-fish meat TWICE! The other day I got some beef cubes from the Italian market on the corner, and sauteed them up with some onion and green pepper (which I found out you can chop and freeze to make them last longer!) and put it on rice. DELICIOUS! Also, on Friday night I had a friend over who is originally from Jamaica, and she showed me how to make chicken in a brown sauce. Still not totally sure what to do with all the blood and skins and all that, but I guess I can get over it...
8. Actually wrote a poem yesterday. Maybe this will kick me back into motion on the "pulling my stuff together and maybe even writing more poems" front.
9. We turned on the heat this week! In the grand scheme of things, running heat doesn't make my life better (it raises the energy bill, it makes the house stuffy, can be a fire hazard, gives me colds and allergies, basically symbolizes a surrender to winter...) But in this particular case I will tell you that it was getting unbearably frigid in our house, so now that the heat is on it's a little easier to get out of bed in the morning... and we can't see our breath in the kitchen anymore.
10. There is a lot to look forward to, and a lot of people I love. This is partially a cop-out (because the other things I can think of to fill this spot would make anticlimactic "number 10s," i.e. pruning the tree branches hanging over the power lines in the backyard) and partially a way of collecting all the good things, past, present, and future, into one: having tea with my mom on Thursdays; the rare moments when I and both of my roommates are in the house at the same time; being in touch with classmates and old friends; getting to visit my sister at St. Olaf and running into a bunch of other people while I was there. Also, my birthday is 2 weeks from today, and Thanksgiving is coming up soon, which is arguably my favorite holiday. No. Second-favorite. After New Years. And tomorrow I'm going to start up my workout routine again, which has been challenged lately by hurricanes, Noreasters, travel-related exhaustion and potential illness, so I should be more on my game and less irritable than I was last week. Oh YEAH!
Thanks for playing, friends. Always remember-- there can be more than 10. To be continued...
I have taken a little break from blogging (not really on purpose) and since my current circumstances would love to let me go another full week before posting, I'm getting on top of this.
This is ironically perfect timing for me to be making excuses for not writing, since November has just started and along with being Movember, or No-Shave November, it is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I failed last year on day 1, but this year I've stashed a Moleskine in my purse and I'm shooting for the 250 words a day required of MiniWriMo, a Delaware Writers' Group activity. To be honest, I failed day 1 already AGAIN, but I've been writing in my head? I used to write papers that way in college. It counts, right?
So what are my current circumstances? I'm hiding behind the Delta baggage claim at MSP, waiting for my partner in crime/research/wedding attendance to pick me up after an orthodontist appointment. (I mean Liz, for those of you more curious readers out there.)
I'm back in the Midwest for a whirlwind weekend and mainly for a wedding tomorrow somewhere in Iowa. I'm planning a few quick rondez vous in N-field, one of them being my sister, who is eager to be my Ole host instead of the other way around.
My roommates and I were certain our schedules would clear up after the summer months, but that seems less and less realistic the more time that passes. In the last two weeks (since my last post) I have tasted 10-13 new pumpkin beers (yes, my roundup is forthcoming). I have roasted weenies. We had our first gathering at the not-so-new-anymore house, and filled the living room with great girls and ill-behaved cats. I went to the Fall Festival at church intending to chaperone a youth sleepover that no one showed up to.
The next afternoon I met two long-lost friends in Manhattan from two different past lives, and managed to hop one of the last busses out of the city before the whole city shut down in front of Sandy. (Props to the coolheaded Greyhound employee with stellar communication skills and a steady voice. Quote of the night: "My main priority is to get all of you out of my city." Oddly comforting.)
Then, I was trapped inside my house for two days while Frankenstorm raged outside; saw "Seven Psychopaths" which was pretty phenomenal; threw a couple of dresses and something soft to sleep in into a duffel bag and came here. It's been the good kind of "one thing after another." Mostly. I'm rolling with it.
I don't know my library card number by heart yet. I can feel my muscle memory on the keyboard number pad just starting to stir... But after a few weeks of blogging from the library computers, it still hasn't quite kicked in.
It's funny how I've started to measure my time in Adultworld. Between undergrad and momhood, or a second degree, there is no "start of fall term" to tell me when summer is over; there is no "winter break," or even "fall break," for that matter. There is no "putting my stuff in storage" at the end of each year, no semester transcripts, no midterms.
Instead, there is the start date on my lease; the anniversary of the day I met my first friend in this state; the day I suddenly realize, hey!I walked across the street into work on this day last year; the weird undefined period that marks a year since I first discovered Bishop's Coffee Co., but before I shook hands with Jason for the first time; my "6-month" dentist's appointment, which actually fell more than a year after my last cleaning; my contact prescription update; 5 years since I bought my last pair of glasses; the "time to make your next annual appointment" postcard from my doctor; the inevitable urge to refresh my professional wardrobe every time the weather changes; buying a new planner because I actually have stuff to start writing in it for 2013...
Most constant, probably, are bills. This is new for me. The bill from Delmarva (utilities) comes in Kristy's name every month, and we spend a good 5 minutes every time trying to figure out why it's so expensive, if we haven't run the AC in October. (It takes us that long to figure out that October's bill covers mostly our energy use in September, and September's covers mostly August...) I also have to manually transfer my portion of the rent into Kristy's account toward the end of every month, so we don't get saddled with late fees. Then there is my cell phone bill, which comes due on the third of every month, and student loan payments, one of which comes out on the first of the month, and the other on the fifteenth.
Student loans are a big one, because they mark not only months, but years; theoretically, the principal will shrink in some sort of measurable pattern as the years go past. If you remember, my student loan grace period ended on my birthday last year. You might also remember as my favorite birthday present ever. (Not.) The gift that keeps on giving. "Happy birthday, girl! Enjoy your gift: Another year of interest. Party it up! Love, Your Education."
Thanks to this lovely present, I am alarmed every time I check my balance only to find what seems to be no change at all. And for the first time, I'm really connecting emotionally with my middle-class American heritage: Indebtedness. Really makes you feel patriotic.
But even bills aren't so consistent. As you might imagine from that beast of a list, there seems to be another bill due half the days in the month. Or at least a week's worth of days. How can I measure time when the months overlap according to my different creditors?
How about this: How often I buy produce, and how many of my vegetables have turned inedible from neglect? How old are those leftovers, exactly? Using the principles of the hourglass, the level of granola in my awesome granola jar? Time to buy honey, or soap, or toilet paper?
Is it swimming day, Bose ball day, running day, Zumba day, or yoga day? Am I eating dinner with my family tonight? Am I going out with Jason, eating with the girls, or do I need to plan to cook for myself? When's the last time I spent my lunch break talking to Liz or Audrey or Mary on the phone? How soon will I need another book to read?
And then there are holidays. The official calendar "first days of spring/summer/fall/winter" are pretty inconsequential; the solstices and equinoxes are less of a big deal than whether the days are getting shorter or longer. More critical time-measuring holidays are the beginning and end of daylight savings, and how many hours of sleep I have to pretend like I am going to make up this week, or sigh of relief at the extra hour of sleep. Gone are the days when I watch the clock turn from 1:59 to 3:00am as I'm just getting back to my dorm room from being who knows where; now I care about my sleep schedule and how alert I will be for the rest of the work week.
But now it's fall, it's Halloween season, and it's the best. This morning I got up to go to the Brandywine Zoo with my friend Marina. Neither of us really knew where we were going, but we pulled into the parking lot within a minute of each other. Weird. It's in the middle of the gorgeous Brandywine Park, right on the river, which was sparkling autumn-gold. My favorite color, next to the deep, just-after-twilight evening blue.
The Zoo is small, but spirited -- like a lot of the Delaware that's stolen my heart. The gate was decked out with faux cobwebs, the staff dressed up in spooky Halloween finery. Little kids in costume swarmed the walkways. One of them looked exactly like a 3-year-old version of the adorable little girl from We Bought a Zoo, and even matched her temperament. (Great movie, by the way, and so fitting of today's excursion.)
It's the only zoo in Delaware, and not surprisingly it's not the most stunning zoo in the world; but it definitely made my Most Charming Zoos list. It hosts a unique collection of animals, from a coati to a cloud leopard to a python to llamas and rheas and a furry South Asian tree creature whose name I can't pronounce, but have never seen before. The staff are also exceptionally friendly and informative, humbly offering these random answers to questions you never would have thought to ask.
For example, condors are the only birds whose gender is distinguishable without close inspection. They are the largest of the world's flying birds (I could go into this more, since it is the national bird of Ecuador, but I won't). The thing I found most fascinating is that they spread their wings in the sun to dry them off, after burying their bald heads in carrion and rinsing off in a stream or pool of water. Gross, but who would have thought?! We also got to touch cloud leopard, python, and anteater skulls, and see a tiny brown bat skeleton. Haven't seen one of those since the educational pages of the kids' book Stellaluna, where I decided not to be afraid of bats since they are one of the most closely related mammals to humans -- evidenced by their "five-fingered" wing structure.
Speaking of measuring time, the informational plaques at each enclosure spelled out the habitat, offspring, and lifespan of each species represented at the zoo. Rheas live, on average, 20 years in the wild; in captivity, they live 40. River otters usually live about 23 years. And the prize for the longest lifespan goes to...
The blue-and-yellow macaw, which can live to over 100 years! I know what animal I definitely will not be choosing as a pet...
***This post dedicated to Mary & Jason: Commence the "Like" race! Thanks for sharing many, many good things with me.
<3 is everywhere
Good things are better shared.
For that matter, almost everything is better shared, if you ask me. Bad things become easier to bear with the relief of shedding their secrecy and working through them with someone else. Good things become even better, more beautiful, and longer lasting as their memory outlives the actual flavor, aroma, vision, experience.
My mainstay Mary Lynn just texted me that she got back safely to Alexandria, where she now lives, after a weekend of sharing things with each other.
I love hosting friends. I told her as we set out yesterday morning, "I'm excited to share my life here with you, because I've worked really hard to make it good." She replied, "That's very apparent." And as we sat on the jungly patio of the Blue Parrot at brunch this morning, she marveled at how thoroughly and well I have adopted Delaware as my home and made it meaningful.
She also said about a billion times over the last 40 hours, "I love Delaware."
I couldn't hope for anything more.
Yesterday I drove my sisters (Asha and Yana) to their friend Kat's house, their HQ for the Homecoming Dance. Asha had a date. Weird. I haven't seen pictures yet, but I'm sure they looked beautiful, because every day I'm amazed at how old and gorgeous they are.
I like sharing people with each other most of all. I like sharing my family with my friends, and my friends with my family. I like sharing Jason with everybody and everybody with him. (...But not in a creepy, let's-all-date-each-other kind of a way.) I love throwing parties because I love sitting back and seeing people I care about interact with each other. It's really just the best.
Case in point.
Mary and Jason got along ridiculously well. Walking around Old New Castle with the two of them all day yesterday was strange because every time we walked past something cute (a baby, or an animal) they both did a major double take and exclaimed in stereo, "Kitty!" or "Awww!" There were a lot of babies and puppies and kitties out yesterday.
There's a guy who sets up tables outside the old courthouse and fills them with produce from his farm down near Middletown. I didn't catch his name, but it starts with a T... Every time I see him I'm reminded of the crew from Tiny Planet Farm in St. Croix Falls last summer. He is a regular fixture on that corner, and the lady who walked past with her little curly-haired dog knew him by name. He was telling us how he rescued the last bushel of wax beans, but lost most of them to Friday night's frost, as the dogwalker leaned against the leash to keep her dog from laying waste to the vegetables.
"He loves a good salad!" she said, dragging him off. "I'll be back later to see what you've got left." As she stepped off the curb, though, the little dog made one last leap at the radishes laid out in a crate on the ground and snagged three of them in his teeth.
The five of us parted ways, laughing. Jason and Mary and I set off to Jessop's Tavern for dinner and meant to come back before 7 to get some veggies, but sadly we missed him.
Jessop's is a colonial-style tavern with ship models in the windows, crooked wooden floors, heavy wood tables and heavy silver dishes. The staff dress in full colonial garb and the room is crowded and dimly lit. The host set our table with a stack of literature about the extensive beer list. Needless to say, we were all pretty excited about it.
And we were completely satisfied. I got the shepherd's pie, which will feed me all week. At least 2 more times, and even 3 wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Plus it was delicious, and the beers were HUGE, in tankards and two-pint bottles.
After dinner we ran over to the Amstel House for Hauntings & History, New Castle's ghost tour. It's only $10 per person and tours start at 7:00, 7:30, and 8:30 on Friday and Saturday nights until the end of October. The hauntings were not the scariest I've heard (French Quarter trumps all, so far), but I love history, especially local history, and the group was an engaged one. We learned that libraries used to be membership-only, even until the 1930s; and also that Betsy Ross's father-in-law was the first reverend of New Castle's Anglican Church, shipped over from England. Bonus trivia: The first "graveyard shifts" were worked by gravediggers and cemetery maintenance workers paid extra to wait by fresh graves overnight, listening for the bell attached to recently deceased fingers in case of accidental burial. Creepy. Worth $10? I say yea.
Between registering for the tour and go-time, though, we had 20 minutes to kill. So we walked back up the street to Nora Lee's French Quarter Bistro for a quick round of beers. That place is really pretty convincing: full of dark, rich colors and macabre skeletons dancing from ceiling beams. Everything in the old town is dark polished wood and lovely.
big boy, little espresso
Our original plan was to leave New Castle early and head back to Little Italy for dinner; but after a turn around Battery Park we stopped for coffee at the Penn's Place cafe, Traders' Cove. Their back patio is beautiful, with mosaic tabletops supported by cast iron detail. They support local artisans, some of whom do tarot card readings in these October evenings, related to the ghost tours. They also make delicious mini espresso brownies (mini for a good reason), delicious recommendations to add cinammon to a soy latte for best results, and delicious beer recommendations (a Yards Thomas Jefferson Ale that turned out to have an 8% alcohol content, but was rich and hearty and fruity with just a hint of hops--perfect!).
Anyway, it was the coffee shop crew who told us about the ghost tours, and we decided to stick around town, get some food and drinks and wait for the sun to go down.
It's nice being able sometimes to just let things happen.
I think part of what makes this possible is being where you want to be. I mean this figuratively: If your feet are solidly grounded, if your eyes are set on the prize, if your arms are linked with other strong, lovely arms, you have a beautiful freedom to recognize possibilities.
If our perfect trio yesterday held on stubbornly to our schedule rather than to our company, we would have missed out on some priceless experiences. I suppose we would have done something else wonderful instead--but therein lies the beauty of it. Experiences are better shared because they are shared no matter the experience. More sensically: It doesn't matter what we do because we are doing it together.
Here's the rub, though. Those linked arms are possible because I put so much energy into discovering the hidden joys of my new home. I was the most versed person in local history on our ghost tour because I have loved drinking up the rich past of this place. I have drunk it because it's rich, and it's rich because I've drunk it.
And every person, or every group of people I share it with, it becomes richer and more delicious.
Bring on the feast, world. My people and I are ready to eat, drink and be merry.
G-g-g-greetttings, readers, from the frigid state of Delaware! (...Whaaaat??)
Yeah. It's cold here. I was well aware of that from the moment I woke up, with my bedroom window wide open. (Typical.) I drove to the Y for my regular Monday morning swim, only to find the insulated winter pool closed for maintenance, and instead the outdoor pool open for business. It was supposed to be 81 degrees, and clouds of steam rising off the top supported that theory.
But when I jumped in after dancing across the icy concrete on my bare feet, the breath exploded from my lungs in classic gasp reflex form.
I'M IN DELAWARE, PEOPLE. COME ON NOW!
All said and done, it was actually a refreshing way to start the week. Nobody could say I wasn't awake when I got to work today.
My roommates and I have been saying for at least a month now that we'll be around more, and have an easier time planning things, and maybe even SEE each other every now and then, now that summer's over.
So far this hasn't fleshed out. We literally have to clear our schedules for a simple hangout months in advance, and just so you all know if you want to get the three of us together in 2013 you'd better make the call now. Because right now we're scheduled through mid-December, and that's not counting Christmas. So good luck ever seeing us.
Here are some key points I'm looking forward to for the rest of the year:
I've invited some of my besties from all over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to Wilmington for a birthday extravaganza mid-November. So far only my roomies and boyfriend (OK, and Mary and Lisa) have RSVP'd, so I'm a little worried about having space for everyone at the party... Ha. Ha.
Then there's Thanksgiving and my actual birthday. This year, I plan to finish and ship the fruitcakes BEFORE the holiday season. Stay tuned for the second annual fruitcake saga.
On the second Saturday in December, Old New Castle opens its historic doors to tourists. There are sales in the shops, tours of old Revolution-era mansions, toasty drinks and snacks, and festive music. You might recall the Spirit of Christmas as my first moment of endearment to this tiny old state.
In that same post I mentioned the Santa Crawl, which I am DETERMINED TO DO this year. I swear I have been waiting since that moment to get in on the fun. This year, it's not on the same day as the Spirit of Christmas, but the week after.
Fortunately all of these things are scheduled to happen before the Apocalypse on December 21, so that's positive. Still debating if I should even bother to buy Christmas presents this year...
BUT. We all know I am not the kind to live in the future. Sort of. I refuse to put all my stock in the next two months, so instead I am predictably doing fun and interesting things left and right.
It turns out PR kicks into high gear in the fall and winter, so I'm suddenly throwing myself into my daily checklist, scraping away at it all day long, and never quite getting to the end of it. The best part of this is how many new things I'm learning about every day, from trendy high-end products to cultural rituals to economic and industry patterns and concerns.
After leaving work late almost every day, I go grocery shopping, to Zumba with my roommates, out to eat. On Wednesday Jason and I checked out Ernest & Scott Taproom on North Market Street. It's been on our radar for awhile, since they advertise in the same magazines that all our other favorite places advertise, and their selling point is a ridiculous number of delicious draft and craft beers.
We were not disappointed. Its burgers were rated #2 People's Choice in Wilmington, second to Union City Grille right around the corner from my house. I will say, Union City had some killer burgers, but Ernest & Scott's was unlike any burger either Jason or I had ever tasted before. We also tasted some pumpkin beers, and since I'm planning to write an entire post on pumpkin beers by the end of the season, I won't go into it, but I will say this: DO NOT miss a chance to taste Wolaver's Organic Pumpkin Ale. It's #1 on both of our lists so far this season.
While we were waiting for our food, and then while we played a half-hearted version of the debate drinking game (we basically just drank when anyone said "taxes"), the manager Elvis stopped by our table to talk about the business. It's new, refurbished from what used to be Public House, which I hear had a bit of a sleazy rep toward the end. Before that, it was Delaware Trust. The inside is super spacious and elegant, high-ceilinged, with beautiful antique detailing everywhere. It's named for Hemingway and Fitzgerald:
The contrast between Hemingway– the macho, gritty and somewhat disheveled character and Fitzgerald- the stylish refined aristocrat, parallel the available offerings at Ernest & Scott and aims to capture the spirit of both writers.
Romantic indeed. Anyway, we promised we would recommend it, and I have. I do now, in fact, for great food, great beer, great ambiance, and the opportunity to support local business.
On Friday I got done with work and as I left had one of those terrifying driving moments where you realize you may have just missed a red light, or a stop sign, or one of those important things you should note while driving. So I convinced Jason to go out to Shellhammer's, which also had a delicious, if oversalted, burger. And, of course, good beer. Their Facebook page is a pretty fun one to follow. Not quite as clever as Dead Presidents', but they post tantalizing specials that make you want to go to Happy Hour every day. Yum.
We stopped at RedBox on the way out, and picked up What To Expect When You're Expecting. With an all-star cast, it looked decent. Substantial enough but mostly funny, a little romantic, but not mushy. When we put it in and started the previews, I got hooked on the preview for Friends With Kids, and decided I would FAR rather watch that, so we went on a Harold-and-Kumar adventure to every RedBox and Blockbuster Express and spin-off insta-dollar-DVD rental in the area.
An hour and a half later, we finally started Friends With Kids, which turned out to be one of those great, agonizing movies about two people who are obviously supposed to be together but everyone can see it except them, and they just keep missing each other. Cast includes some SNL staples (Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph) and the movie tackled the modern family/parenting issue with just the right amount of humor and reality.
And when it was over, we decided to watch the other one, which was considerably less good, with less developed characters and storyline and less substance. But funny nonetheless.
On Saturday night, the most thrilling part of my weekend, Jason borrowed a friend's season tickets to a Philadelphia Union game (soccer). I like soccer, the way the chants sound more European, the constant motion on the field, the flopping...
Plus, Union won.
This weekend also marked the first writers' meeting, the one I've been looking forward to since before I knew it existed, since I even thought about setting foot in this state. I met up with my mom there (at Panera) and got my first pumpkin spice latte of the season (smashed Dunkin Donuts' overly sweet pumpkin sludge into the ground with its goodness) and a french toast bagel. Yummm.
More to the point, we got to talk craft with more than just each other. We met some monster/comic/experimental writers, which was new for me, but well-timed for the Halloween season. I miss talking about writing for fun, and I think my mom misses it in general. She really does love to learn new things, and to write, and unfortunately she's been doing it in a vacuum for awhile now. I, on the other hand, get to talk about writing and to write every day at work. PR: Where writers go instead of journalism. I love my intellectual, grammar-freak, word-nerd work crowd. But it's good to talk about monster writing and graphic novels and where to start when writing fiction every now and then.
In college, the question is: "So what's your major?" In a group of writers, we ask, "So what do YOU write?" I say I blog, and that theoretically I write poetry although that's taken a backseat recently, and they say about what, and then I am inevitably surprised that some writers blog about things other than their own lives.
...What?!
By the way, stop by second set of baby steps, the Facebook page, and click "Like" to get an update every time I post. I waffled over posting other, related items, but I've decided to mostly keep that to a minimum. So blog only.
***
ALSO, check out our claim to fame! Last week's #WednesdayNightDateNight got us into Spark magazine, the "what's happening in Delaware for mostly young people" guide with infamously bad grammar (which I keep misspelling...) Our claim to fame:
