capturing the moment of heartbreak

"Are you happy?" she asked. It was the first time in a long time that someone had even thought to ask about my happiness. 'Yes' wasn't the right answer, and saying no wouldn't be entirely truthful, either. The reality was that I hadn't given my own happiness a moment of thought in years. A seemingly simple question had revealed that I'd been living a life where happiness was nothing more than an abstraction. She was still standing there after all my deep thought, waiting for me to say something. All I could do was smile--wryly, I hoped--and shrug.

***

"What did the doctor say?" he asked. The doctor had asked me about my diet--vegetarian? Vegan? No, and no. There were the beginnings of osteoporosis, she'd said, and a vitamin deficiency. So strange for one so young, with the balanced diet I claimed to eat. She'd asked about my drinking habits, and I'd told some socially acceptable lie--a glass of wine with dinner and a couple of cocktails on the weekends, something like that--and she'd just nodded, slowly, her head tilted slightly in an expression of pity. She'd prescribed a vitamin supplement and given me a sheet of phone numbers to call "in case I felt like I needed to."

I told him, "She gave me a clean bill of health," which I regretted immediately. But I could never take it back, and it felt easier not to want to. That's when I knew: I'd let myself down the way everybody else had let me down, and it was no use to try to make amends now.

***

As we loosened up on the starting blocks, the guy in the lane next to me said, "good luck," in this tone of voice that might have been sarcastic. I didn't reply, but at the gun, I shot out into the water and started channeling my response into an exhausting kick and fast, strong strokes. Muscles burning, heart pounding in my mouth, cheers of fans muffled to a wavering whimper: this was it. I owned the flip turn and practically shot myself into the middle of the pool with my legs. I focused on my rival to distract myself from the thought that this could very well be my last chance. I didn't see him, so he was either way out in front of me or way behind. I reached the end of the pool and surfaced, gasping to ease my oxygen debt. I'd beaten the guy next to me, but the scoreboard told no lies: my lapse in concentration made me miss my Olympic dream by three tenths of a second. "Better luck next time," he said, his tone sincere. I knew there couldn't be a next time for me, but I tried to say, "you too," like I meant it.

The EP

I'm listening to the first master of the NRIs' first EP, titled 8:42AM. It's almost perfect now, and we're getting ready to get a bunch of copies printed, and to get the songs up on iTunes and everything. It's the first time I've been involved in something like this, and frankly, I'm really excited.

Growing up listening to my dad play the guitar, I always had this vague idea that I wanted to be in a band--sing in a band, really, because I didn't think there would be too many band opportunities for me as a violinist. It's one of those things I would fantasize about sometimes, in the shower, or after that first season of American Idol (when it was good), or if I'd just heard a song that I really liked. It's a popular fantasy. I could say something grad-schoolish about celebrity culture and all that, but I think this is more of a human nature thing. People like to be recognized. They like to know that their sphere of influence extends beyond themselves and their immediate families.

I have a fairly clear memory of sitting in front of Saturday Night Live one winter when I was supposed to be researching my junior paper on Hamlet, watching some sketch where the players left it all on the stage. I was sitting there under my laptop and books, thinking, "How did I miss my opportunity? Why am I hidden behind this computer, making these inane and mostly unoriginal observations about Hamlet and its interpreters, when I could be on a stage somewhere, putting it all out there? Where did I go wrong?"

Of course, that particular thought was imbued with all the histrionics of a frustrated student whose idea of foresight was seeing the end of the semester. At 20 it felt like the best part of my life was rapidly drawing to a close. My next stop, as far as I could tell at that point: administrative work and the "secretary spread" that came with it. It always feels like doors are closing, and okay, sure, I'm too old to be on American Idol now (not that I would want to be). But those doors have a tendency to close so loudly that they drown out the subtle appearance of new doors.

I got back into music in graduate school, and then when I moved to the DC-metro area, I eventually found some musicians to know and love. I waited for my new doors. They appeared. At the end of last year, I tried the knobs.

I've performed at the Velvet Lounge and Iota since then, two venues where I'd always gone as a spectator. Usually when I play in a string quartet, we're background music, but I performed in my very first featured string quartet at Silver Spring Stage. I've got a show coming up with the Machines on Vacation at The Red and the Black (Valentine's Day, opening for Barton Carroll). And the NRIs are going to try to do up this EP release party right: big venue (maybe), writeup in the Post, press release, everything.

Performing scares the hell out of me. I breezed through my Machines show--maybe it was because I knew half the audience, but it was probably because the lights bouncing off my glasses rendered me completely unable to see any further in front of me than where Ethan was sitting. At Iota, I had a moment of complete and utter panic ("WHAT AM I DOING???"), from the jaws of which I managed to snatch a decent performance. But what's the point of living if you never do anything that scares you?

I really appreciate all the support thus far, you guys. Why write--why make music--why make anything if nobody else can enjoy it? I wish I could promise that our EP show won't be snowed out like our last one was, but for now, please plan on coming. It will be so much fun.

Dear Blog,

I had food poisoning. It was so bad, I couldn't even blog. And then I found five dollars. Except that I didn't, I only wish I did.

The way I got it was fascinating--complete user error. When you are cooking dried kidney beans, here are the steps you should follow:
1. Go back to the store and buy some canned kidney beans.
2. Open cans.

Dried kidney beans are a nutritious staple food. But if you don't cook them enough, or if you have the foolhardiness to taste them before they are fully cooked, you are in for a world of hurt. Don't believe me? Check it: http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/foodborneillness/foodborneillnessfoodbornepathogensnaturaltoxins/badbugbook/ucm071092.htm

The long and short of it: raw kidney beans contain high levels of a poison that binds to your intestines to prevent absorption (of nutrients or anything else, for that matter). When you heat the beans to about 80C (not quite boiling), the poison's strength is multiplied. Undercooked beans are even more toxic than raw ones. This sounds like a big pot of crazy, but these are TRUE FACTS. I must have had 3 undercooked beans, tops...I missed 3 days of work and am still not really eating normally.

Canned beans, however, have been cooked and cooked and cooked again. They are safe to eat right out of the can (as long as you don't get dented cans), but you can also put them in your recipes.

In case you are wondering, the chili turned out fine (delicious, actually), and the undercooked beans currently residing in my freezer will have the hell cooked out of them before I attempt to eat them in the future.

Don't say I never learned ya nothin'.

a fragment and some musings

"It's not like everyone else is having more fun than you. I mean, everyone else is probably having just as much fun as you, but there are different time zones, you know, so it's like, you're already passed out when people in California are just starting their freakin' nightcaps or are already holding some chick's hair back in the ladies' room, you know? But it's ok because when you've already had your McMuffin or some shit and you feel better, they're just waking up with cotton shoved in their ears and that film in their mouths, especially if they drank milk drinks, like Bailey's milkshakes, I love those, but that's not the point. The point is that nobody parties all the time. And you are an idiot if you think your life is boring because you don't. You dig?" As soon as she finished talking, she snapped her gum and started to pull on the ends of her hair, a habit that belied her wisdom.

___

I've been making a lot of music recently. My husband is assistant directing Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden at Silver Spring Stage. As a special opening night thing, I'll be playing the first two movements of the Schubert quartet with my friends Theresa, Kellie, and Kate. I know the quartet is used to great (negative) emotional effect in the play, but it's still my very favorite piece of music in the world.

I think I like Schubert because he was squarely between periods (Classical and Romantic) and just happened to be working at a time when he had this solid Classical framework to innovate around and all this nascent Romanticism going on around him. That's a bit technical, but the upshot is that this quartet tells one of the greatest stories (ill-fated lovers--you know it's a great story because it's always retold) and really conveys the romance of youth, the passion of maturity, and the finality of death. It's amazing.

There are lots of rehearsals on my calendar, in addition to a random recording session that Kate recruited me for on Tuesday. There are going to be some extremely talented local musicians at this session. I'm terrified, of course, but at the same time I'm excited about it. I'm a musician because I love it, but I have to work pretty hard at it. That's not a bad thing, as I've been discovering recently. It's good to pour my creative energy into things that are somewhat immediately gratifying, such as performing music.

In other news, I'm trying to get 8-9 hours of sleep per night. Have you noticed that my blogging has been more frequent? The sleeping is why I'm coherent again. Hooray!

Readers: are you seeing results from your New Year's Resolutions?

Women

Serious posts kind of bum me out, but I've been reading a lot of things lately that are showing how our culture busts on women...maybe without even meaning to. Felicia Day posted a link yesterday to an article in Vanity Fair about the women of Twitter. Here's the article. But if you click it, promise me that you will also click the link right after it:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/twitter-201002

http://www.geekweek.com/2010/01/why-does-this-vanity-fair-article-hate-the-women-of-twitter.html

You can read it in the url: Why does this Vanity Fair article hate the women of Twitter? The geekweek blogger summed it right up, and Ms. Day herself reposted the second link when someone sent it to her. She said that she was finding it difficult to argue with the blogger's points (although the pic was sweet). It's outright misogyny. I mean, yes, Twitter celebrity is a little bit of a fluffy topic. But the women they chose for this article are highly impressive entrepreneurs, creative powerhouses, and--at the very least--pioneers in the successful use of social media technology. If they were men, this article would be "Six Social Media Pioneers To Watch" or something with equal gravitas. But instead, we get this horrible fluffy profile that talks about these powerful women like they're the frontrunners in the race for homecoming queen.

It reminded me of this article I'd recently read, in which a female author analyzed the new PW Top 100 books of 2009 list. Women in the top 10? Zero. Women on the total list? Twenty-nine. But women are, by and large, keeping the book publishing industry afloat--we are the largest segment of book consumers in the market.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122902292.html

What's going on, here? It doesn't matter, as Ms. Baggott explained, that the author of the offensive VF profile was a woman herself, or that there were women on the committees that chose the PW list. The male hegemony (oh crap, a graduate school word...now I know I'm in trouble) may be so deeply ingrained that outside the domestic sphere, the accomplishments of men are automatically given more weight than those of women. Women have to work twice as hard to be considered as equals (but are still earning, according to some reports, less than 80 cents for every dollar a man earns for equal work).

I've never really considered myself a feminist, precisely because feminists who came before me paved the way for me to have choices in my life--opportunities that women in previous generations only dreamed about. But now I'm a person who has written a book. And maybe someday I'll sell that book. And if it's good, maybe it'll be considered for prizes or honors. But if I were to lose that prize to a man's book of equal (or possibly lesser) quality, simply because the author is a man, that would be pretty soul-crushing. Even though it hasn't happened to me yet, my soul feels a little crushed knowing that it has happened to someone else.

What do we do about it? Is there anything we can do about it?

Tying up the loose ends from 2009

I left you hanging on a number of fronts, and for this, I apologize. Please have some closure, on me:

Screenwriting Contest
After the guy in charge claimed to have confirmed that my score had been re-sent, I continued to send him enough extremely polite e-mails to prompt him to ask me to send my entry directly to him so that he could score it himself. He did this quite promptly, and I was surprised to receive a fairly decent score and some rather positive comments. In fact, it was quite conveniently the highest score one could get without qualifying for the second round. I wonder how scoring my entry on time would have changed the outcome of the contest.

Novel Queries
I heard from one other agent, who is currently not taking any new clients. That's rejection #2, I suppose. I believe this means that I currently have one query (to two agents at the same firm) still floating around in the wait-space.

Tweet Me a Story
Those who follow me on Twitter may have seen a few plaintive tweets from me, asking for votes on my 140-character stories for this contest. That's partially what the title of the last post was referring to, but I'm not bitter. (I'm not, really. Amused sarcasm doesn't really translate to the blogosphere the way I'd like it to.) I did not move on to the second round of the contest, but I still consider it an accomplishment to have two stories that made it into the top 25 in my group.

Economic Crisis
Oh, sorry...I don't actually know how this one ends.

National Novel Writing Month
You may have noticed that I went on blogging hiatus for National Novel Writing Month. Happily, I achieved my word count (as seen in the celebratory graphic at right). The story leaves something to be desired, though. I won't be finishing it without massive revisions. I learned, in this experience, that third-person omniscient storytelling is not a strength of mine. While it may be a bit limiting to write in character in terms of being able to express what other characters are thinking and feeling, I find it much more personally satisfying. This particular story may require 3rd person narration, though...hence the massive revisions.

Blogging
Yes, I am doing that again.

more letters = more majesty

people drive fast/people drink deep/people smoke weed/people skip sleep

"Pimpin'. Ain't. Easy," she said. "And neither is this." The wintry air was beginning to penetrate the layers of sweaters she'd told me to wear under my wool overcoat. She plastered a bright white smile onto her face and turned toward the cameras. How did she stand there for so long, just smiling in her thin sweater and puffer vest? It was a cheerful Hollywood knockoff of a winter ensemble, the kind that looks perfect but doesn't have the wherewithal to block out the cold. A sympathy shiver shuddered down my limbs as I thought about how many more takes they might need to do before they let her go inside.

A man wearing headphones as big as his head started waving his arms and cursing at the wind, which was whipping through the trees. "Take ten," the director said, his voice at once authoritative and defeated. "Let the wind die down." It took less than fifteen seconds to clear out the set as people bolted for the little cabin. Inside, craft services had laid out a few snacks and what seemed like one hot beverage urn per person.

"Is it always like this?" I asked her. She smiled again, handing me a styrofoam cup of steaming brown liquid. I wasn't sure whether it was coffee, tea, or cocoa, but at least it was hot.

"It's not always so cold," she said. "But I wouldn't trade it for any other job in the world." She smiled again, a couple of smiles in rapid succession. I think she was testing her face for thawing. After sipping in silence for a few minutes, I felt the hot drink start to work its magic, warming me from the inside. She looked at her watch and caught someone's eye across the room. Then she said, "Well, I guess I'd trade outdoor commercials in New York for outdoor commercials in California. But when I get out there again I'm going to look like I love it. All of it. And I won't even be acting."

I thought about her while I was driving back home later that night, the window rolled all the way down to accommodate my chainsmoking. The cold slapped my bare hand until it was numb, but it was easier to mark time in cigarettes when I drove long distances. I stubbornly squeezed each filter between my fingers until the smokeable part burned itself out. Three-pack trips always went faster with the window down and my foot pressed firmly to the floor.

We were friends from when I first knew she'd be an actress and she first knew I'd be a n'er-do-well, which was shortly after we entered the third grade. I spent a lot of that year indoors at recess, always writing about how I could work to be a better person until the teacher was satisfied that I'd "learned a valuable lesson about myself." She spent a lot of time indoors at recess too, acting like she had migraines or something so they wouldn't make her stand outside where the popular girls could taunt her.

"They're jealous of you," I'd said once. A kid who spends a lot of recesses forced to think about how to be a better person learns some interesting things about human nature, even though all I thought I'd learned was better penmanship.

"You're on crack," she'd said. That was a very popular thing to say at the time, despite the fact that most of those sheltered, suburban third-graders didn't actually know what crack was.

"No," I'd said. "You're cute, like a kid in a commercial. And you always seem to get what you want."

"I guess that's true," she'd said. "I'm inside, right? Maybe they are jealous." And that was how I found myself, 20 years later, speeding down I-95 once or twice a month and burning through gallons of gas and cartons of cigarettes like someone who could afford either luxury.

I knew that my roommate (another n'er-do-well) would be passed out on the couch when I got back. He'd have spent the evening smoking a bowl and eating ramen on Doritos, which is pretty much only appealing after smoking a bowl, at which point, it's the best food on earth. He went to med school but dropped out to be a full-time bartender--"The hours are about as grueling, but you get free booze and it's rare for anyone to die during your shift," he'd said--and just spent the rest of the time going to rock shows and playing video games. He paid the lion's share of the rent, though, which allowed me to use my meager freelancing income to drive back and forth to New York. So even though he was kind of an asshole, I never told him that to his face. It was a sweet situation, most things considered.

If I were to consider all things--like the fact that she isn't my girlfriend, and the fact that she will never be my girlfriend, and the fact that I couldn't hack it in New York as a writer, which is why I have to live in Richmond with my asshole roommate--the big picture would be a bit less sweet. Let's just say I try to think about this as little as possible.

I'm procrastinating on today's wordcount

So I'm gonna make this short. I just wanted to call your attention to some links on the right hand side of my blog. I added links for the music I'm working on right now...the bands and orchestra that challenge me musically and thus (somehow) make my writing all the richer for it.

Also, if you're in the DC-metro area, the Sinfonietta is having a concert tonight. It's my first time playing first violin, and we're doing some killer 11th-position stuff. It's gonna be SWEET. See the link at right (NEW!) for more details.

The de facto writing exercise I happened to amuse myself with this morning

So, I'm sure you've all heard of FML. It's an anonymous gripe board for when your life just seems like one ridiculous (possibly ironic) mishap after another. Well. This morning, my husband sent me a link to MLIA--My Life Is Average. But as I read, I found that the stories were not average at all. Many of them, in fact, were tales of unusually humorous or strange situations. For example:

"Today, the woman's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls order their food, a man approaches our male coach. The guy looks at all us girls then at our coach then asks, 'Are all of these your daughters?' My coach, without missing a beat, says, 'No. They're my wives.' The look on that man's face was priceless. MLIA"

The complete non-averageness of this exchange disturbed me. So I took it upon myself to rewrite it to make it actually average (except for the spelling and grammar, upon which I improved). To wit:

Today, the women's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls are ordering their food, a man approaches our coach. The guy looks at all of us girls, then at our coach, and asks, "Is this a field hockey team?" My coach, without missing a beat, says, "No. It's a rugby team." Then we ate our food. MLIA

Now that's average!

Here's another one from the site:

"Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two HUGE leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I see my History teacher hiding behind one of the piles with a water gun about to attack my English teacher in the other pile. They were having a war. I feel like I chose the right school. MLIA."

What? How is a water fight between teachers average in any way? That seems downright unusual, to me. Here's how I would write it:

Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two huge leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I saw two groundsworkers raking the leaves. MLIA.

Much better.

Ok, one more...you twisted my arm. From the site:

"Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and a young boy fell to the ground and crawled away on his hands and knees. His mother asked what he was doing and he pointed to the man and yelled 'Smoke is bad! Get down low and go go go!' I hope he still acts this way when he's in his late teens. MLIA"

And my take:

Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and he got a few dirty looks from the other people at the stop. He had to put the cigarette out when it was about halfway done because the bus came. Then we got on. MLIA.

I thought I would share that with you, in case you were bored at work or something on this lovely pre-Halloween Friday. The link is above...you can make your own fun!

Real Live Writer

http://literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com/

I found this link just in time! I can enjoy it with the knowing nod of an insider, having just received my first real rejection.

In addition to a line regarding the personal thing I wrote to the agent, here it is:

"I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work.

However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation."

It's not so scary or bad, and I have to say that I'm not really depressed about it at all. Every good novel gets rejected at least once. And really, the idea is to get someone who will be passionate about my work...if he's not the guy for the job, then he's not the guy for the job. I hope I find someone who is!

I also hope I'm this sunny after rejection #18.

In other putting-myself-out-there writing news, I did enter that screenwriting contest. I wrote my scene, sent it in, and never heard back. Yep. That's right. The score they promised never showed up. I sent an extremely polite e-mail about it to their customer service address (which apparently they never check). Then today, I got an e-mail from the competition that basically said, "mea culpa, if you never got a score, e-mail me personally at the following address." So, I sent another extremely polite e-mail (excerpted from the last one, actually) and am hoping--enfin--for a response. I'll keep you posted.

Waving Goodbye

All right...we're closer to having a band name now!

Anyway, have a listen to this one and let me know what you think!

Waving Goodbye

If anyone knows how to get a player embedded in a Blogger blog, let me know!

Things have been suitably busy around here. Pat's play opened this weekend. He's doing The Laramie Project at Rockville Little Theater. The direction is wonderful, the cast is quite talented, and the story is beautifully told and completely raw with emotion. The information can be found here, if you'll be in the neighborhood next weekend: http://www.rlt-online.org

My rabble-rouser of a husband decided to let the good folks at the Westboro Baptist Church (I refuse to link to them) know that he's doing the play, especially because there was an equality march this weekend that they were coming to protest. But as far as I know, they didn't show up at the theater, and nobody had to tell anybody to eat a bag of dicks. I'm sorry, was that crass? It's hard for me to find love for people whose primary message is that God hates certain people (you can guess which ones, based on context, if you haven't seen these clowns before). It doesn't even make sense. I'm no religious scholar, to be sure, but why would an omniscient and omnipotent being create something that he/she hated? The thing about this world is that even the ugly things have something beautiful about them. Even the Westboro Baptists think that their hate is somehow helping people go to heaven. That's completely asinine, of course, but the thought is there, right? QED, God loves everyone.

I didn't mean this to become a mini-treatise on religion, but it's a big theme in the play, and I've seen it twice, now. Yes, I do go to Pat's plays more than once. I'm a good wife. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the story about Pat's doing Antigone in college. I went a lot, even though it was during finals. Between finals and seeing Antigone over and over again, I just about wanted to off myself. So...uhh...The Laramie Project. Yeah.

Anyway, I apologize if you've gotten this blog post emailed to you a number of times before it was filled with content. I kept trying to get the embedded player to work, which it didn't.

Hope you enjoy your Columbus Day!

Aughhh

I had a really bad day at work on Friday. I know it's not the best idea to discuss specifics and such on a blog, so I won't. I tried to write about it in generalities, but that didn't work, either. Suffice it to say, I did nothing wrong, but I keep replaying everything in my head to figure out how I could have done it better. Any solution I can come up with clearly falls into the category of "not my job." Now, I really just don't want to go to work tomorrow, as I'm dreading facing this ridiculous bullshit all over again. But other people are counting on me to be there, so I'm gonna put on my big girl suit and haul arse out of bed tomorrow morning like everyone else.

Maybe someday I'll hit it big--sell my book (and the next one) and then write full time. I bet it'd only take me 6 months to finish a book, instead of a year! At least I'm seeing the light at the end of this one. I can't believe NaNoWriMo is coming up again. I signed up, and I've heard tell that there may be a little writing group starting up for November.

The book I'll be writing is the first in a four-book series. That's a bit ambitious, I know, but all (except the last one) can stand alone. I don't want to spoil it (for me or anyone else!), but I can at least tell you the tag line: "Love, war, and cupcakes at the end of the world."

My October is already looking crammed...not only do I have to finish the edits on this book, but I have to get my query letter ready to go and send it out. Then I have to start seriously planning the next book. I have the generalities down, but I need a little more of a plot outline before I'll feel comfortable writing in November.

I'll also be practicing extra hard this month for next month's concert. I survived the last rehearsal for the sole reason that my ear is not terrible. We had to play this ridiculously high passage by ourselves, and I actually did it (maybe not as confidently as I might have liked, but hey) and didn't make a fool of myself. By our next rehearsal (in two weeks), I intend to know all that music cold.

So...do you have any advice for navigating office situations that seem more like "The Office" or "Office Space" than they should? Or, conversely, can you distract me with your tales of excellent projects on your horizons?

Get Your Earbuds Ready to Groove

So I may have alluded to the fact that I've been playing with a band recently. Well. We don't have a name yet, but we're close, I think. In the meantime, I can tell you who's in it:

Ethan -- the mastermind...vox/guitars/computers
Amanda -- the cellist...she works with Ethan's wife
Ashley -- the violist with the mostest...she's the one who knew Ethan and got us involved
Theresa -- the violist who is playing violin and rockin' it
Me -- violin

As for the super exciting part of this post, here it is:

Part of our demo...let me show you it!

Side of Life

This one is called "Side of Life." Ethan wrote it. The strings you hear were recorded last night. Enjoy!

Wikipedia Prevents Me From Taking Myself Too Seriously

This was going to be a navel-gazing post about self-actualization, and how I've always wanted to do certain things, and how I just decided to go ahead and do them, and how much happier I am as a person because I just went for it. But I wanted to make sure I meant the right thing when I said "self-actualization" (I was pretty close, actually) so I looked it up.

I'm not sure how visible this picture will be, so I will explain: it's a screenshot from the Wikipedia page for self-actualization. Some jokesters have renamed this first section "Self-actualization in Degeneres' Theory." It's not some scientist named Degeneres. It's Ellen Degeneres. Some hilarious fan changed Wikipedia to reflect Ellen Degeneres's theory of self-actualization, which is (as indicated by the purple arrow), "Just dance!"

It may be historically inaccurate, but I like it.

Beethoven Festival Was Beethoven-y

The Washington Sinfonietta's Beethoven festival concert has come and gone. It was good! It was a relief, really...that last movement of the symphony was HARD. I mean, it's not technically that difficult...until you play it as fast as the conductor wants it. My arm still sort of feels like it's going to fall off!

There were mixed feelings among my friends about the piano concerto. They really got into the bombast and showy fun of the Egmont overture, and it's hard to argue with a Beethoven symphony: they don't call these things "classical music" for nothing. The concerto, however, bucked expectations. The listeners said that they thought they knew where it was going, and all of the sudden, it veered off into something else. The change, they thought, was not altogether welcome. I found that it had a lot of repetition, but not necessarily productive repetition.

Afterward, we tried to hit up Palette, the restaurant attached to the Madison hotel, for some food and drink. Palette, unfortunately, was closed. However, they sat us in the lobby/lounge area of the Madison and served us from Palette's bar menu. The fried oysters were revelatory (sorry, no photos, but they weren't much to look at anyway), and they also had a mixed plate of small sandwiches (burgers, duck with provolone, and crab salad) and sweet potato fries that were all delightful.

The highlight may have been the cocktail I had, the Park Avenue:

This was a mix of bourbon, vermouth, and bitters, up with a cherry (but could also be served on the rocks). I'm usually a fan of sweeter cocktails, but I think I am learning to appreciate a well-made bourbon or whiskey drink.

Colorful Pittsburgh: The Strip District

I was a little confused when my parents told me that Daniel was taking us to the "Strip District." It's one of those things that sounds dirty, but isn't! It's a bit of floodplain along the Allegheny River, formerly home to industrial stuff like warehouses and probably some steel mills, seeing as how it's Pittsburgh and all. After the collapse of American industry (longer ago than you'd think!), this vacant industrial area was taken over by produce merchants, followed by fish markets, food importers, restaurants, and bars. Here's a history of the place, better than I can tell it.

The places that aren't selling food are usually selling souvenirs, with a few bookstores, culinary tools stores, and hippie clothes sellers thrown in there for good measure. There were also vendors of Italian pastries, shish kebab, and anything else you might want, either set up on the sidewalk or parked on the side of the street in brightly colored food trucks or tents. I took a couple of photos of the strip itself:



I got Pat a terrible towel as a souvenir...the one that has all the Super Bowls on it.



Yes, that's "Yinzers In The Burgh."

There were a couple of places that we really loved, such as the Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. It was an Italian market where you could buy olive oil from big vats. I mean, there were lots of other cool things there that I actually got photos of:



This is what you see right when you walk in:




Food is so beautiful!

This is the mural on the way out of the store:




We ate at Wholey's fish market that day (pronounced "woolys"):



It was a great fish market, very famous (see? the photo says it!), and the food was excellent. It was just simple food...I got a fried cod sandwich with some freshly fried hush puppies. The hush puppies were interesting...full of onions and mushrooms, so the bread was really moist instead of dry and crumbly like hush puppies sometimes are.



Oh, yeah, that was good. Fish all hot and crisp, fresh tartar sauce, hot sauce for the hush puppies. Yeah. So good.

We ended up going back to the Strip District another day for breakfast. The sign (and everything we read on the Internet) said that DeLuca's had the best breakfast in town:



(Yes, the dude eyeing me with suspicion is my brother.)

I had cinnamon French toast from a HUGE brunch menu:



I also had bacon, and if you really want to see a picture of bacon, you can find it on my Flickr. This was good, solid food. Nothing fancy, but very tasty!

So, all in all, the Strip District was great! Lots to see, good, decent food...and if we'd gone back at night, it probably would have been lots of fun! There were a lot of restaurant/bars with outdoor seating. In fact, we probably should have gone out. Buying beer in Pittsburgh is the most ridiculous endeavor...and we're originally from a state with fairly restrictive blue laws!! We discovered this about Pittsburgh when we went out there for my brother's graduation back in 2006, but we still haven't gotten over it.

1. If you want a six-pack of beer, you must purchase it from a bar.
2. If you go to a beer distributor, you may buy beer---by the case or keg ONLY.
3. You may not buy a half-and-half case, even though bottles are boxed in half-cases.

It's much easier to just get a bottle of vodka, which may explain why cocktail hour with my family was almost as colorful as the Strip District itself.

Under Construction

This blog is under construction, so if it crashes your browser or looks weird...well...that's why. It'll be better soon. Prettier, I hope!

Practically Overnight

Hey! Do you remember when I said that you should go out and play because autumn would be here soon?

Well, let me tell you something: when I blog, the weather gods of the DC Metro area read it. I went away to Pittsburgh this past weekend for my brother's housewarming party (more on that in a later post, with non-BlackBerry photos, even!), and when I came back, it was FALL. No lie, there was a tree in our parking lot that had, practically overnight, browned all its leaves and dropped them in the walkway. I came back from the airport and crunched through the parking lot to get to my door.

This week, highs are in the low 70's with rain in the mornings, and peep that photo of today's sunset through a fractured sky. I took that on my way out of work this evening, over the Verizon Center. There is no denying it anymore: meteorological fall MEANS BUISNESS.

While on my trip (and enjoying the Labor Day holiday), I had the opportunity to finish the book, "The Post-Birthday World," about which I had mixed feelings. I think that if you click my Goodreads thingie on the right there (not the photo of the book, but the widget itself), you may be able to see my review of it.

I'm kind of unfair...I really only write reviews for books if I don't like them (or have such remarkably mixed feelings), but I try to justify that to myself by saying that the good books make me more introspective and I would rather sit and contemplate them than review them.
This is probably a partial truth.

Tonight, I have to practice because I have two really interesting things coming up. Tomorrow night, I'm headed to this guy's house to play with a band he's trying to put together. He went to school with a couple of violists from my orchestra and he's already written (and fully scored for strings!) an album's worth of mellow rock songs that I really enjoy. If we gel, maybe we'll get serious and gig or something, which could be a completely awesome experience.

The other reason to practice is that I'll be playing a Beethoven concert with the aforementioned orchestra on Saturday, and the rest of the week will be filled with rehearsals for that. If you want to check that out, here's the URL (which I will make into a link later if it doesn't automatically become one): http://www.washingtonsinfonietta.com

In any case, autumn is lovely, so I'm still going to tell you to go out and play. I definitely count having a beer on the balcony as "play," and if I manage to find any time this week, you can be sure that that's what I'll do.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Blogging Outside

Alas, the food at brunch was so hastily devoured that even the camera with the fastest digital shutter could not have captured it.

If you are ever in the Washington, DC area, the Tabard Inn is an impressive place to take either a date who likes delicious food or a stodgy gentleman who likes his atmosphere dripping with eau de wooden library and leather chairs.

This is a photo of the adorable reception desk, as The Tabard is actually an old-style publick house.

It has been alluded to in many books, though I imagine it's not quite as literary as the original Tabard! I'm told that the guest rooms are equally charming, but I have not seen them myself.

Then the food: we ordered the house special doughnuts for the table. Fresh, warm doughnuts with thick-whipped vanilla cream...covered in sugar...really, they were quite like the little beignets I had yesterday, sans lemon. The thing about these doughnuts is the freshness...if you didn't know that they were fried in the kitchen just moments before, you'd swear they floated down from heaven and happened to land on your plate. On Top Chef Las Vegas, Wolfgang Puck criticized a contestant's doughnut for being heavy, throwing it at the cameraman (or in that general direction). If he could have mustered up the cajones to throw a Tabard Inn doughnut, it would just fly away and keep on going. They are THAT GOOD.

Then I had the eggs Benedict with house-made Tasso ham. It came with potatoes and onions. Everyone else had the omelette, which I think had asparagus and goat cheese. Jim asked for Tobasco, as he is technically on shore leave from France and I'm pretty sure it's hard to get hot sauce in a restaurant there, even if you know how to ask for it. Anyway, I put some on my potatoes, even though they already had plenty of other flavors from the onions and whatever herbs they'd cooked them with.

This other photo is of the pool at Jim's condo complex. After brunch, we went to hang out there, enjoying the unexpected sunshine. Also unexpected: the sheer number of babies we saw. Blair said that babies were the hippest new pool accessory, putting Jim's neon pool noodles to shame. This is, of course, patently untrue. Pool noodles are AWESOME.

I'm hoping to get a good GoodReads widget onto this blog so you can see what I'm reading (and maybe suggest more?). I just finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is actually kind of about geekery. I didn't realize that until after I started reading it! I recommend it, but if you haven't read Watchmen or The Lord of the Rings, I suggest you get those out of the way first. A viewing of Star Wars and some basic Star Trek may also be in order, just so you don't feel totally left out of everything.

And that's that! Go outside and play...autumn will be here soon enough!

A restaurant review: Eric Ripert's West End Bistro

If your city doesn't do Restaurant Week, well, maybe it should. Restaurant Week is the way for poor young professionals on a budget (like yours truly) to eat a slice of the good life while not breaking the bank. Twice a year, local restaurants offer prix-fixe lunches and dinners that, in most cases, showcase the strengths of the restaurant. Not only does it drive up numbers for that week (or two, if the restaurant generously extends the RW menu), but if they leave a good impression, they can hope that it will increase business in the future (when you start dating a sugar daddy or someone's rich parents are visiting).

Thursday night, Pat and I went to Adour at the St. Regis Hotel, which I would highly recommend for the ambiance alone: they've somehow managed to refurbish and modernize this gorgeous old hotel without making an abomination of it. More specifically, they've added contemporary touches (furniture, light fixtures, and the glassed-in wine rooms) but the juxtaposition of old and new is only pleasantly jarring. Luckily, I would also recommend it highly on the merits of the food alone. It was probably the best Restaurant Week meal we've ever had.

Unfortunately for you, I didn't have the presence of mind to take photos then, so you'll have to trust me when I say that the food was lovingly cooked and painstakingly plated. Pat's ceviche appetizer was melt-in-your-mouth and topped with some tasty hot and spicy popcorn. I described my watermelon and tomato gazpacho as a "gateway gazpacho"...while I'm not the world's biggest gazpacho fan, this light, beautiful, spicy soup made me understand what all the hubbub was about. We both had the lamb, which was practically fork-tender and dripping with flavorful juices. My strawberry and vanilla vacherin looked and tasted like something I could have made (this is a compliment, for those of you who have not had the privilege of my cooking), but I was so happy that they had gone ahead and done it for me. That's why I go to restaurants! Pat's orange sachertorte looked difficult, even for me, and tasted amazing. They also pampered us with plenty of extras: warm mini-baguettes with perfect salted and unsalted French-style butters, four one-bite gougeres as an amuse-bouche, garlic hummus with crostini as a second amuse-bouche, and six mini-macarons with dessert! We felt loved.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, this post is about the Restaurant Week lunch I had on Friday. Pat really wanted to go to the West End Bistro because he's into the celebrity chef thing. (N.B., Adour is chef-owned by Alain Ducasse.) I picked up this reservation not knowing anything about it other than Pat's interest, thinking that he'd be accompanying me. He ended up having to work, so I got my friend Caroline to come with me.

Now, I am quite bright in many ways, but I will go ahead and tell you that I am mental-map challenged, and that I experience the directions-induced anxiety that comes with that. If I haven't been to a place on a regular basis, the chances that I will recall its location from an address or even a set of directions are slim to none.

Imagine my surprise when I walked up on this restaurant today, in the pouring rain, and saw that it was smack-dab in the middle of the Ritz-Carlton! I'd been there before, eaten there, even (at another of their restaurants)! But I couldn't put the address with the place. Anyway, I was glad I hadn't worn a dress because of the rain, but when it turned out that I'd be having lunch at the Ritz, I kind of wished I was wearing a dress! Once I got over the initial shock of arriving at the Ritz in my pants and my soaking wet flats, I met Caroline at the bar and we took our seats.

The first thing they brought was bread, sliced, with a big pat of butter on a butter plate. The butter had a few beads of condensation on it, and it looked enough like the butter from last night that I went for it. Quelle surprise! This butter was much too salty! This made me worry about the rest of the meal.

Fortunately, the tomato consomme allayed my fears. It was as though someone had taken bruschetta and made it into a light vinaigrette, and made that into a dish of tangy, cool soup, served with plain crostini. You can see the bit of crostini floating in my soup because it was the kind of thing that tasted like it oughtta be mopped up by a crouton. Also, I'd placed it on the side of the bowl for the photograph and it promptly slipped off into the soup.


The second course was pretty fantastic. Caroline got the fish burger with greens and some sort of thin aioli sauce.


I got the potato gnocchi with asparagus, tomatoes, and supposedly some kind of cured meat in the sauce (but I couldn't taste that), with a duck egg on top.

I don't think I've had a duck egg before. I didn't detect a difference between the duck egg and a chicken egg, except for the size. I don't think that poaching is necessarily the best cooking technique to bring out differences in flavor between different types of eggs, but I didn't mind that...it was delicious as a whole dish. I love eggs as dressing for salads, pasta, all sorts of things.

Anyway, then we had dessert, which was lemon beignets with basil ice cream. WOULD EAT AGAIN. I've never met anything made with basil that I didn't like. For that matter, I've never met anything made with lemon that I didn't like. A tart lemon substance had been injected into the little beignets, making them explode with bright lemony love when you bit down on them. They were also dusted with granulated sugar. The tart of the lemon brought out the best in the basil, all the sweetness and earthiness. In all, the dessert was heavenly.

It was an excellent lunch. There was a bit of a mishap with my glass of sparkling wine: I ordered it and had to remind the waiter after the first course was finished. Of course Restaurant Week is much busier than usual, so I will give them a pass for that. I don't suppose I ought to rate the restaurants I talk about here. I'm not interested in being rigorous about a rubric or doing any math, so if I gave a rating, it would likely be arbitrary. And I am nice, so it would probably also be inflated and not as useful as, say, Yelp, or other sites that do this sort of thing on purpose.

As for this blog, I think I've limited myself too much. I know the prevailing suggestion is to specialize...find a niche and blog the hell out of it, right? But my life isn't like that. If I have to write about just one thing, I get bored and run out of things to say. So, watch this space for something! I'm alive, and I'm trying to make time for everything, as usual!