2014

Hey there, blog. I took a not so little break during Christmas and I've been dragging my feet when it comes to blogging. And basically for no good reason. I finished Gym Christmas with a swimming work out that never made it onto the blog and then I enjoyed several days in a row where I barely touched my computer.

Christmas at my parents' in Indiana was great, as usual. I spent a lot of time with Mr. Tobes and a lot of time doing nothing. But because of the timeline for SMT submissions,  I also spent a bunch of time editing a conference paper and an abstract that were both due in early January.

Other highlights: Mom took us to an IU game!

BoBo decided that my parents' fireplace is her favorite spot in the world. 

My mom graciously offered to help out with some dental bills I had in the fall, so I got a crown for Christmas! Not wanting John to feel left out, she got him a paper crown, shown here. 

She also got us this large bottle of tequila and we had margarita Christmas once again. Never gets old.

Dave and Carla came to town for the day. Naturally, we began with a visit to the Spoon, then a walk around campus, and finally, board games with fancy beer at the house.

John's grandpa came to visit and at the end of his trip, we took him back to catch the bus in Indianapolis. Mom suggested we take in a museum and have lunch at Three Sisters in Broad Ripple. We had a nice time visiting Indy with Mom. It made all three of us want to go back again (to the NCAA Hall of Champions, perhaps?). Here's John modeling his "I <3 actual="" christmas="" for="" got="" he="" hot="" p="" sauce.="" shirt="" some="" sriracha="" that="" with="">

Nearer to the end of break, we rang in the New Year with Mark and friends, including Amanda. She was dressed the sparkliest so she descended the stairs at midnight, in place of a glittery ball in Times Square. 

And since then, lots of other mundane but good things have happened. I will deliver the current 2014 highlights in a conveniently lazy list format. 

1. I decided to join the whole TriClub (rather than just the swimming) with the hopes of being able to run at some point in the next few months. I now think the expectation of running so soon was unrealistic (a topic for another time), but I'm really enjoying the rest of the club. I can go to spin class on Monday and Friday, swim three days a week like before, plus they also do strength training and a mystery workout on Wednesday. I don't typically make it to all that, but it's nice to have so many structured work outs available. Also, I'm having so much success with massage therapy that I really haven't had one of my motion sickness episodes in a while, and spin class doesn't make me motion sick! 

It turns out, triathlon club members get up VERY EARLY, so I'm still trying to get adjusted to that. But I think that it's actually going to help me graduate. I get up early for the work out and then I'm up.  I get in 2-3 hours of solid dissertation time before lunch, or a solid single hour before I teach. It's pretty awesome. Of course, I also fall asleep around 9:30 every night. 

I'm going to an indoor triathlon in Toronto in a couple of weeks to swim as part of a relay and I hope to post about what that's like. In general, it is so nice to have a group of people to spend time with who have no idea who Rameau is. 

2. Speaking of Rameau, a week or so ago, I went to Tallahassee, FL to talk about Rameau. I presented a chunk of Chapter 4 at their Forum, a conference run by grad students. Even though it was "cold" for Tallahassee, it was nice to get a break from our weather and enjoy some 50 degree days. I also go to catch up with Little Gillian, a former UWO student who's now ABD (time flies!) at Florida State. 

Side note: I have two friends named Gillian/Djillian/Jillian. I met them both at Western, neither of them goes here now, and both have attended FSU. Both currently live in Florida. Yet I don't think they've ever met. This is not the premise of a riddle. 

I also get to present "Rameau and Friends/Frenemies"* at the IU student conference during "spring" break. I'm lucky to have gotten on two fairly economical conferences - one where I could stay with a friend, and one in my parents' town. 

3. And speaking of my dissertation, I actually felt really good coming back to school and starting 2014 because THIS IS GOING TO BE THE YEAR: I am going to finish this dissertation, come hell or high water. My current plan is to defend late in the summer, or, if everyone important is still out of town, in the early fall. Of course, I'm meeting with my advisor this week and he may put the ki-bosh on all of that. Still, I've got a lot of stuff written and I feel good about the progress I've made. I've also learned that writing and presenting conference papers on my dissertation topic is, on the one hand, more efficient than on unrelated topics, but ultimately still a time suck. After the IU conference, I'm done for the school year. 

4. While stuck on the tarmac on the plane coming back from FL, I read most of Rachel Dratch's book, A Girl Walks into a Bar. And it's great! If you liked Bossypants by Tina Fey, or Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? by Mindy Kahling, you will probably enjoy this book. Parts of it made me laugh out loud and others were simply touching and clever. I highly recommend it. Have you read anything by a woman comic lately? If so, please send me the title! Also, when is Amy Poehler going to write her own hilarious and brilliant memoir? All the cool ladies are doing it!

4. It's cold here, like it is everywhere else, apparently. Western canceled class on Day #2 of the semester and I think they vowed never to do it again. But, you know, it's Canada. It's colder than in previous years, but enduring the cold winter is a point of national pride, so they don't complain the same way Americans do. They seem especially excited about the cold because of the upcoming Winter Olympics. If you have a few minutes to kill, check out #WeAreWinter on the twitters. You'll see what I mean.

5. I signed up for the Ontario Masters Provincial Championships swim meet in March. There's no minimum qualifying time and it's in Windsor (about 2 hours away), so woohoo! I'm doing the 50M, 100M, and 400M Freestyle (400! What am I thinking!!), and the 100 IM. It's so exciting to have an actual event to train for. I'm sure I'll post here about the weekend in Windsor after it happens.

And with that, it's 9:30. I've been up since 5:15! Time for bed!

If you're reading this, then I hope your Near Year has been great so far!

*Not the real title. In case you're curious, the real title was, "Rameau, Voltaire, Castel, and Public Image in Enlightenment Music Theory."

Smells like Fall at our House

The squirrels are still enjoying the acorn buffet in our front yard. 

Besides squirrel watching, John and I have been up to a few other things around London.

We went to our first London Knights hockey game, and we sat  almost high enough to see the Northern Lights (j/k, it just felt scary while we were climbing to our seats). Before the elementary school kids sang the national anthem, they announced that Wayne Gretzky's dad, "THE FATHER OF THE GREAT ONE!" was in attendance. John and I watched the Knights beat the crap out of the Plymouth Whalers while we ate too much pop corn and cherry slushees. 

Our friend's daughter turned two, and we all celebrated with a potluck. John and I brought chocolate zucchini muffins (more on those in a minute), and a small collection of children's books we bought at Goodwill. The birthday girl is really into books - when they come over to our house, she always shows me her new books, and she looks at the two we happen to have (in French and German - we are nerds). 

The chocolate zucchini muffins are oil free, from Oh She Glows.

They are unbelievably moist and taste more like cupcakes than muffins. You can't even find a strand of zucchini in them! I love these muffins. They are a dream come true. Several people asked me for the recipe. 

All the leaves have peaked, I think. John and I stared at them from our bedroom window, since we both spent almost all of last week sick in bed. We watched about 6 seasons of the Office, and John watched Lawrence of Arabia on his own, while I graded assignments and midterms. 

Before we got sick, we had some squash! 

No recipe here, just roasted halves of acorn squash, filled with caramelized onions, lentils, and thyme with a little olive oil. I think adding goat cheese and/or mushrooms would crank these up a notch.

We also made this loaf, which may be the main dish at our American Thanksgiving dinner this year:

Glazed Lentil Walnut Apple Loaf, also from Oh She Glows. We made a loaf once before, but this one was hands down better. It held together so well that we could take it out of the pan and slice it for left overs. Even better, the glaze is amazing. We made a second batch of it to add to the left over pieces and I wanted to lick the leftover spots off my plate. It would be a great vegan entree for any holiday meal (or any other fall dinner).

These are the final harvest from my tomato plant:

It produced about 1 tomato per month for June and July, and then it went crazy near the end of August. Unfortunately (for the plant), we've had a very wet and cold September and October, so these toms didn't get enough sunlight and warmth to ripen on the vine. When I told my mom, she offered two suggestions: 

1) Cellar them in newspaper and they will very slowly ripen. Apparently my Grandma Madge does this. My priest seconded this recommendation and said she does the same thing with a paper bag for her tomatoes. I feel like my mom is full of random gardening advice that I didn't know she had. I need to get some more advice from her next year, as I plan to expand the tomato plant to 2-3 tomato plants, including one cherry or grape tomato plant. 

2) She also told me to just slice the green ones and fry them, and have fried green tomatoes. I'm not from a big city, and I often feel like a country mouse compared to my friends and relatives in places like Chicago and Toronto, but seriously - I did not know that unripe tomatoes and "green" tomatoes were the same thing. I thought it was some special variety of tomato that never got red! Color me ignorant. 

So we've fried a few and cellared the rest.

These were part of a recreation of the Amazing BLT from the FARM cookbook we made earlier in the summer. We used almost all the same ingredients, except the basil, and made BLTs with these fried dudes and some fake bacon (fakon). Their batter is simple - flour, egg, cornmeal with seasonings. They're best with some chicken seasoning. and a pretty fun fried appetizer all on their own. 

Other upcoming highlights this fall: the Halloween Haunting 10k/5k, then we're off to NOLA for the AMS/SEM/SMT Triumvirate.  It's hard to believe we're already at the end of October!

Sushi Making Party!

One of the things I miss most, now that I'm a vegetarian, is sushi. Some places offer creative, delicious vegetarian options, but they aren't as common. Recently, I started to think I could probably make my own sushi. When I say "homemade sushi," I mostly mean maki rolls, since they are fairly straight forward: just some rice, sheets of nori, and veggie fillins'. How hard could it be? What could possibly go wrong? 

(I refer you to the robot ccokie monsters, and the terrifying snowman cookies, but two examples of how I've demonstrated just how hard it can be.)


John and I consulted a couple of sources before setting out to make the maki rolls. First, we used a book that came in a set of things his mom gave him a couple years ago, for making sushi at home: Simply Sushi, by Steven Pallett. This book came in super handy, and we used it to make the sushi rice - by far the most time consuming and impressive part of the meal. How can rice taste so good? It's amazing, and well worth the time. Pallett also gives a guide to all the products you need to make sushi, and where to find them. I used his book to make our shopping list.

Going to buy the ingredients was a whole other part of our sushi-cultural experience. We went to United Supermarket, aka, the happiest place on earth, our favorite Asian supermarket. Here's the thing: I've never bought sushi rice before. And they have probably 20 kinds of rice, with very little English in their labels. So when we went to find it, I was the confused white girl in the rice aisle, saying things like, "This is short grain white rice. But it's from Thailand? Should it say sushi on it?"
Yes, it should. We also took a while to find the nori sheets, since kombu (a different kind of seaweed product) was sold in a separate aisle. Yaki-nori sheets were the ones we needed, and we happily stumbled upon them.
John and I also watched the sushi episode of Good Eats, where Alton Brown gave step-by-step directions that matched Palletts perfectly (side note: you can find the whole episode, "Wake Up Little Sushi," on youtube). After that we relied solely on the book, since all the directions were so consistent.

Ok. On to the sushi!
We asked Matthew to come over for dinner, since we hadn't seen each other in a while, and because he seems to have finely honed culinary instincts. He had also been to a make-your-maki party before.

First, we layed a half sheet of nori on a rolling screen (which came with the book). John covered it in what turned out to be 100% too much rice.

He drew a line down the center with a tube of wasabi, also purchased at United Market.

He stuffed it with avocado, mango, and a (fried) sweet potato. I didn't fry the taters, so much as cook them in oil in a skillet, to save time. John rolled it, per instructions, tucking the fillings in with his fingers as he went.

In the end, it looked like a little sushi-burrito hybrid, with the filling bursting out. We quickly learned that less is more, if you want the roll to close. The picture below is of his first roll after we cut it. So instead of plating that one, we just ate it in pieces off the cutting board, and went on to the next attempt. And it turns out that falling-apart-sushi tastes just like regular, beautiful sushi!

John went about a second attempt, while Matthew tried for an inside-out roll, where the rice is on the outside. He figured this would allow for more fillings.
First, he covered a half sheet of nori with rice, as before, and sprinkled it with sesame seeds.

Then he flipped it over. Note: for inside out rolls, we put a sheet of plastic wrap on the rolling screen, and it worked perfectly.
With the nori-side up, he layered on mango and avocado.

Then he rolled it up, and it looked great! This one completely hung together, so we cut it and put it on a serving tray to eat when we had a couple of other successful rolls.

Naturally, I forgot to take pictures of everything once we started eating (the gin and tonics may have had something to do with that...and they might be the reason why so many of these pictures are a tad blurry). But I did snap a picture of the last roll I made: also just avocado and mango.

It was my most successful one.

Here's another shot of a moderately successful roll on the serving tray.

 

The biggest lesson we learned was to keep it simple. John and I tried to think of a bunch of fun veggie fillings, and we had too many. While the mango, avocado, sweet potato, and shiitakes were gone by the end of the evening, we didn't even touch the carrots or cucumber (but we ate them separately the next day). But keeping the shiittakes were the one thing about this dinner that we did absolutely right: I just gave them a quick sautee in some soy sauce with a little sugar, and they were so good. We got a big package of them at the market, and I would completely do that again. Shiitakes are very easy to over cook, so they probably only spent 2 minutes in the pan, max. The texture was perfect, and they went well with all the other ingredients. 

 

I think that's Matthew's sushi face.

All in all, we were so happy with this meal! It turns out, sushi is hard to make, especially hard if you want it to look nice. But everything tasted fantastic. The three of us agreed that making it gave us a whole new respect for chefs in sushi bars who just crank out beautiful rolls all evening, in minutes. That's some real skill.

Now that we know how to make it and what to expect, I think we would definitely make this again. But we'll probably wait until we have an occasion to have a couple people over, since it's definitely a fun group activity.

7 Day Green Smoothie Challenge and Hemp Protein

Last week I participated in a 7 Day Smoothie Challenge, which I heard about from Jen at Peanut Butter Runner. I love a challenge that involves something I would normally do (so...a "challenge"), and so I joined in.


























The only remotely difficult aspect of eating smoothies every day for a week was that the temperature dropped back down to normal, seasonal weather with highs in the 40s. Smoothies are my preferred breakfast when it's warm out, not when the morning temps are in the 20s. It was a bit like eating ice cream for breakfast in the winter. Lest you think I want to make a #whitegirlproblem out of this, let me say I enjoyed it and I felt healthier for having consumed veggie smoothies every day for a week.

My basic recipe didn't change, but I experimented with a couple of new protein powders, both made of hemp.


I solicited some suggestions for protein powders on facebook, and I was happy to see how many of my friends had one that they liked. For now, I've started using Manitoba Harvest Hemp Protein, suggested by my dear friend Jess (some know her as JHoles, my favorite hippie) for a couple of reasons. First, it's made in Canada, and I think that makes it a little cheaper than it would be otherwise. Also, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of dairy I eat for a variety of reasons, so whey protein just wasn't my first choice. They have Manitoba Harvest at my local grocery store, so it was easy to find and about $20 or less a pop. You can read about the different types of protein powders they make here.

I've tried two kinds. First, the Hemp Protein 50.


























It's ideal for people who want a little more protein in their diets but who aren't ultramarathoners or anything extreme. Its green color blended perfectly in my green smoothies, and while I could taste that something else was in them, the powder's flavor doesn't come through much (this is ideal). It helps make the smoothies a little more filling so I can make it all the way to lunch without feeling super hungry.

I also tried the Chocolate Hemp Protein, which tastes a bit like hot chocolate mix on its own.
























This one has fewer grams of protein per serving (both call for a serving of a 1/4 cup), and it has a little cane sugar for sweetness. It made my smoothie taste like a chocolate milk shake. And to be honest, I try as hard as possible to make my healthy breakfast smoothies or oatmeal taste like dessert, so this one is great for me. I also don't add any other sweetener to the smoothies, so it adds just a touch of sweetness.
Adding chocolate-flavored powder to a smoothie with spinach was kind of a mental hurdle, but I'm glad I did it. Totally tasty.
I also made a sort of faux-ice cream with it last night:

1 frozen banana
3/4 cup almond milk (3/4 cup-ish...)
2 tbs peanut butter
1 tbs chocolate chips
1/4 cup chocolate hemp protein powder

I blended it and the froze it for about 10 minutes while I waited for John to start watching X-Files with me, and it was perfect. I would eat this for every meal if I could.

Two other random things I wanted to include in this post:

John and I made these Ancho Lentil Tacos from the PPK, and LOVED them.


















We just used regular chili powder, but the addition of the adobo sauce goes a long way. Lentils make a perfect meatless taco filling. It seems so obvious that I'm surprised I don't see more recipes like this on the food blogs. They were also super easy, so we'll definitely be making these again soon.

























And finally, I'm nearing the end of Born to Run, but I wanted to give it another shout out because it's so awesome. McDougall's writing is fantastic and really entertaining. The other characters who show up to run this crazy race in the desert are hilarious and I literally don't want to put it down. If you love to run, you will love this book. If you know someone who loves to run, and you think they're kinda nuts, you will love this book. Actually I think anyone who enjoys reading about sports would probably like it.
Sadly, one of the runners in the book, who goes by Caballo Blanco, was found dead this week out on the trail in New Mexico. It's strange to me that he died while I'm reading the book. He and the other runners in it are inspiring.

March Meals, Running Plans, and Smoothies.

This month has gone by in a flash. I think that's what happens when you're writing your dissertation proposal. A little scene like this has played a few times in my head:


[looking at the calendar] "What day is it? The __? Already?! But I'm supposed to have this proposal done in another month or two! HOW CAN THE CLOCK BE MOVING SO FAST??!!! AGHHHHH!!!!!!"


It'll get done. Little by little.

Anywho. Here are a couple of delicious foods we've eaten this month.


Southwestern Pizza, found on Kira's blog, Cook-Pray-Love.


















This is the first Mexican pizza I've made, and we were both really happy with it! Avocado+Greek yogurt+lime juice = happiness. It was perfect for some of the unseasonably warm weather we've been having. I love the mashed black beans as a sort of base instead of a sauce. To make this vegan, I'd omit the cheese (duh) and just mash avocado with lime juice for the topping. It reheats well! This will definitely be on the menu again soon.


Chickpea Picatta from the Post Punk Kitchen


























John and I both loved this recipe. It's really easy, especially if you already have some bread crumbs on hand. The sauce just takes a few minutes to make, and the aroma had both of us drooling while we waited for it to finish. I took Isa's suggestion and made mashed potatoes. You can't see the under the chickpeas and greens, but they're perfect. We also served this over a portobella, which I loved, but John felt was just unnecessary.


In non-food-related news, I decided that THIS YEAR IS GOING TO BE THE YEAR.

I registered for the Fort4Fitness Half Marathon in Fort Wayne, IN. It's on September 29, 2012, so that gives me lots of time to get ready in what are debatably London's best running months of the year. Seriously, running in the summer here is designed for people like me who are a) students and b) too lazy to get up early. You can run in the afternoon here in the summer.

I digress. The half! I'm excited and nervous. My official training for it won't start until May, since I'm running the 10k at the Forest City Road Races on April 29th. That's a goal race for me, in my efforts to beat a 60:00 10K time. But I'm increasing my long runs to help train for that, so I should be in good shape to get ready for the half marathon.

Running the race in Fort Wayne is strategic. Besides just the weather, Fort Wayne is a fairly flat place (just like London). I'll get to run past mostly places I know, and the finish line is on the home plate of the relatively new baseball stadium in downtown. I feel like I need to prepare mentally more than anything, and I hope to write about that process here.


Slight subject change (no attempt at a transition here).
For me, one of the best ways to get motivated to run is to read about running. It's part of what I love about Runner's World and the may running-related blogs I follow. After Kira wrote about having read some running books, I decided to check out Born to Run from the library.

























I'm about fifty pages or so into the book, and I'll just say that this story is way more complicated and interesting than I expected. Drug cartels. Ghost stories. Impossible terrain. Cultural traditions. Chia seeds. And running. I'm really enjoying it so far! Only some of the story is focused on the Tarahumara tribe and their running. The stories about other crazy trail runs in Colorado entertain me just as well, and hearing about other people's running experience gives me the itch to get out on the running path. It's great motivation.

But you don't have take my word for it! It's on Amazon, of course, and (probably) at your local library.


And finally, this week one of my favorite health and fitness bloggers, Peanut Butter Runner, invited her to take part in a 7-day Green Smoothie Challenge, and I decided to join. On her site, you can see a list of readers and bloggers who are participating.


















Day 1: check. You can see my collection of ingredients in that picture: spinach, almond milk, frozen banana (in tupperware), and frozen strawberries. Tomorrow's will be slightly different in that I've bought some hemp protein powder to experiments with. I have two different kinds of hemp powder so far, and I plan on writing a similar post about them. We'll see how well they blend into the taste. No matter what I put in those green smoothies, I find that the peanut butter/banana combo dominates. Just how I like it. I plan on trying a few variations on the usual recipe.

Here's to March somehow also going out like a lamb!

Californ-i-a

Last week I got to go to L.A. to present at a conference. During the trip - subtitled "Random Girls Weekend in the Desert" - I got to spend time with some of my favorite people, like my brother Andrew and my good friend, Sargibso.

Obviously, I took about 5 pictures to commemorate my travels.





2 of the five pictures were of Zorro, Andrew's dog. Surprise!


















Instead of tons of picture of sunny Santa Monica, here are some highlights!

- This was the sixth trip I've taken to L.A. since my brother moved there in '94 to go to film school at USC. And I finally had my first celebrity citing! Nothing too life changing. We went to a restaurant called Rustic Canyon and saw Michael Keaton at the bar. Andrew asked if I knew who he was (a fair question, I've only seen about 12 movies in all my life), and I said, "Of course! He's Batman! And Beetlejuice!" At that point Andrew told me to stop looking at him, so as not to be obvious. Michael K. looked good for his age, but older than I picture him.

- I went on two pretty memorable runs while on the trip. The first was during my day alone in Andrew's neighborhood in Santa Monica. Since his house is only about a half mile from the ocean (!), I started there and ran 6 miles total along the ocean-front path, including a brief stint in Santa Monica Pier. To my right were trendy, cool houses, to my left was the ocean, and dead ahead I had a great view of the mountains.
The second run was more impromptu. I left on Sunday morning from Sargibso's apartment, in a totally different part of town than where Andrew lives. From his house, it's hard to get lost, since the ocean is a good mark of where you are (duh, on the land). But from Sarah's, all I had was a giant mall (The Grove), and my mental image of the route she and I mapped. Unfortunately, my 3-mile route turned into a 5.35 mile exercise in suppressing fear, since one of the key turns did not make it into my list of directions. I managed not to panic, though, and got directions from a dude at a Von's grocery store.
Related side note: for some traveling entertainment, I bought the Kindle version of Mindy Kaling's book, Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?, which I would totally recommend. Near the end of the book, Mindy reveals that she lives in a Spanish style house near the Grove - Sargibso's neighborhood! In my 10-block hike up Sarah's street (after getting directions and figuring out that I was a mile out of the way), I may have passed her house! Very exciting. Maybe even more exciting than seeing Beetlejuice.

- The real reason I got to go to California was to present a paper on George Crumb at the Frederick Loewe Symposium on American Music, at the University of Redlands. It was a productive little conference of 5 papers by grad students and 1 young scholar, followed by a keynote by Larry Starr. We had a modest panel discussion at the end of the day, and the topic was something like this, "Analysis: what's the point?" My favorite topic!
Sargibso agreed to go with me to Redlands, and we stayed for the night at the Dynasty Suites, a perfectly nice motel with a few oddities inside. Sarah kept referencing an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Frank recounts the story of a bar he once owned called "Shadynasty," (terrible youtube clip, but it's the only one I can find and you get the point) pronounced either sha'Dynasty or Shady-Nasty. What with the fake fire place in the entertainment center, or the torso-level mirror in the shower,* you can guess which one we used to describe our lodgings. But it was fine, for what it was. Sarah and I bought cheap wine and bridal magazines at CVS and then settled in to Shadynasty for the evening.

- The night after we returned to L.A. from Redlands, I went with Sargibso and her boyfriend, Aaron, to a vegetarian restaurant named Hugo's in West Hollywood. Hugo's had a HUGE menu, or so it seemed, since I'm used to picking the one veg thing on the menu and calling it a day. I ended up choosing the vegetarian club sandwich, with tofu, guac, and fake bacon,** and it was delicious - though not better than the AMAZING lentil soup with carmelized onions. I need to recreate that.

- The only other restaurant whose name I wrote down was Zengo, where I had brunch with Andrew, his wife Nora, and some of her family. It was a belated birthday brunch for Nora and her brother, David, and the food was tapas style. Of course, they had several delicious vegetarian items, like the veg omelette, the veg benedict, and veg sushi with a tasty sauce. I loved having so much choice! It's a wonder that I did not eat my weight in brunch food. The hilarious - and best*** - thing about brunch at Zengo is the DJ. Oh yes. They can't just play an ipod or internet radio. They had an actual DJ for brunch. Andrew leaned over and said he expected to hear a record scratch, followed by, "This is BRUNCH, muthafuckas!"

- Andrew and I got to take a walk around Santa Monica the day before I left, where he graciously bought me beer at bars on Main St. The weather was perfect for my entire visit, and it was great to do something relaxing and mundane with my brother, who I rarely get to see.

- Sarah had some errands to run at USC the day we left for Redlands, so I chilled in the main library and (theory nerd alert!) read Thomas Christensen's edited book of papers presented at a conference on early tonality (two thumbs up, if you're interested). Andrew pointed out to me that the inside of the main USC library has been in several movies, like - wait for it -

Ghostbusters!

It has an impressive painted ceiling, and when I walked in, I immediately thought, "Wow!...Private school." And then I pictured Andrew, Nora, Mike, Heather, and the other folks I know who have gone to USC, studying for their undergrad classes there.

It was a great trip! All this is to say, I wish I lived closer to California.






The view from basically every spot on the Redlands campus.













*"The mirror I never knew I always wanted."
**or, "fakon."
***not.

A Practical Wedding

As a Christmas-and-engagement present to myself, I bought a copy of A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration. It's by Meg Keene, who created A Practical Wedding the blog while planning her own wedding a few years ago. After reading a post on her site today I decided to write something here about the book.*

I can't remember how I stumbled onto A Practical Wedding, but I'm glad that it's one of the first wedding-related media I found. Meg and the other writers present a sane account of a variety of wedding issues, along with stories from couples planning their weddings and "Wedding Graduates" who share what they've learned. She's a proud feminist and I admire the way she writes about LGBTQ couples (just when you thought a hetero wedding couldn't be any more complicated).


















While we're pretty excited to be engaged, John and I both have reservations about wedding planning. So many people we know are happy for us, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But in the short time we've been engaged, I've already gotten a small sense of how many expectations come with wedding planning. Meg covers a lot of the issues that concern me, and she does it with compassion for all parties involved. She also discusses something she calls the Wedding Industrial Complex, and the perceived need to have OMG EVERYTHING at your wedding, but to also make it as personalized as possible (read: spend money). This book devotes a whole chapter to the history of the modern wedding (which I obviously love), and points out that many traditions that we may consider super important are less than 50 years old. Her point is not to abolish wedding traditions, if, say, you really love the idea of walking down the aisle. She just means that if you don't want an aisle at all, your wedding can still be meaningful. The same goes for favors, a unity candle, a white dress, a sit down dinner, or fancy chair covers.



















Unless you really like fancy chairs, in which case, go for it. That's the tenor of the book, more or less, and I find it helpful as I start to think about wedding plans. John and I want our wedding to have some very traditional elements, but it's nice to have some guidance on how to sort out which traditions are important to us. For example: yes, we're having attendants, but they won't be divided by gender (in fact, we're having one big ol' group of them, and we're calling it the Fellowship of the Ring. I know).

The book the blog also deal with difficult topics, like how to grieve the fact that, for whatever reason, you may not have both parents with you to plan your wedding. She has stories of couples planning their wedding while one is severely ill, or when a parent dies close to the wedding date. While I'm grateful not to be in that situation, it is interesting to read accounts of people who overcame them, and to think "if those people can plan a wedding while their dad had cancer, then surely we can do this without making ourselves crazy."

Some other general guidelines from the book and the website:
- "I will not remember what my wedding looked like; I will remember what it felt like."
- If, at the end of the day, two people marry each other, then your wedding was a success.
- One and done. As in, make a choice and stick with it. Second guessing will make us all nuts.
- Your wedding guests are "grown ass" adults (unless they are, you know, actual children) and it's ok to treat them accordingly.
- Where you spend money matters more than how much you spend, and spending money is a political act.


So that's my 2 cents. Our wedding will probably be a fairly frequent topic here, but this isn't a wedding blog. Obviously, it's a stuff-we-eat-and-happen-to-do blog, and I don't want to ruin that incredibly consistent theme by letting the wedding take over. Just a wedding-related post now and then.

*Meg posted these ads a couple days ago on A Practical Wedding and gave permission for people to use them on blogs, websites, etc, as ads for the book. As usual, I'm not receiving any kind of compensation for this post and I payed for the book myself.

Books for Fall 2011

Instead of a list of foods I made this week (mostly grilled cheese) or a list of random events that happened to me, I thought I could confirm my nerd status by making a list of things that have been going on in my brain parts. Here are some books I've been reading. As you'll see, they obviously relate to each other in a logical and inevitable way.*

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno (originally published 1944).
























Adorno and Horkheimer (or "Hork," as I call him in my notes) were 20th-century critical theorists. My advisor put the first chapter, "The Concept of Enlightenment," on my fall reading list, since I'm studying Rameau, the 18th-century music theorist (and the two obviously go together...*sarcasm*). In a way it was a really obvious thing for me to read in regards to Rameau, since they deal with the Enlightenment values that effected his theories - and I'd argue, as others would, that we still practice and teach music theory in a very Rameauian way. He's stuck with us like not many else have. So I've decided to take a social/cultural angle and study him, specifically the idea of Nature as something Enlightenment scholars wanted to master through rationalism. Dialectic of Enlightenment deals more with the idea that Enlightenment is a totalitarian phenomenon that commodifies our thoughts and our sense of self, and that enlightenment culture eventually led to the Holocaust. The more radical aspects of their theory aren't what interest me so much, but I am intrigued by their idea (similar to Foucault's) that when we "know" a thing, such as Nature, we dominate it. You could say Rameau did something similar, since he was obsessed with finding a natural source for tonality as we know it - the corps sonore.
The Dialectic is among the hardest things I've ever tried to read, but I would say that this translation by Edmund Jephcott is more readable than others. I'd recommend it, if this is the kind of thing that floats your boat.

Enough. I'm sure you're thinking, "Save it for the diss."

2. The Nutcraker and the Mouse King, E. T. A. Hoffman (1819-21).

























After I looked into the Nutcracker performances in Toronto, I learned that E. T. A. Hoffman wrote the original story. That kind of blew me away, since most of what I know about him I learned from IU's trippy production of Tales of Hoffman a few years ago (could you do a non-trippy version of that opera? Maybe, but it'd be boring). But then I realized that it makes total sense for him to written the Nutcracker, since it's plenty weird itself.
If you're into reading Christmassy things this time of year (as I'm wont to do), I would recommend this story. It's not very long, maybe 10 short chapters, and it was readily available to me through the UWO catalogue. The story is stranger than the ballet, though the book jacket and wiki tell me that the ballet is actually based on Alexander Dumas's "watered down" version of the story. Clara in the original story is named Marie and she's only 7 - which I know doesn't conflict with every production, since sometimes Clara is pretty young and not en pointe. But the story is really a coming of age, and little Marie definitely has some adult feelings for the Nutcracker doll when she realizes there's a prince trapped in there. I won't give everything away, but some highlights:

• there are actually multiple battles, and Marie cuts the bejeezus out of her arm in the first one, so everyone thinks her fever made her hallucinate the whole thing.
• there's a crazy story-in-the-story that explains how a princess is the one who originally gets turned into a nutcracker by the Mouse Queen; Drosselmeier and an astrologer travel all over trying to find a cure for her condition. Then they meet his cousin, whose son is involved in breaking the curse. Through a series of events, we learn that the younger Drosselmeier (son of his cousin) is the one trapped inside the little Nutcracker that Marie wants to save. Eventually, as in the ballet, they do make it to a land of sweets even more elaborate than any ballet production (obviously), including a sea of rosewater that has sparkly gold dolphins in it. Crazy.
• All the romantic weirdness between Marie and the Nutcracker/Prince does explain the way some productions portray their weird relationship, since he's her Godfather, but he's sometimes in an awkward competition with the Prince for her affection.
  

Short and sweet, and I'd definitely recommend reading it if you've only ever seen the ballet, like I had.

3. Christmas Customs and Traditions, Frank Muir (1975).















I'm one of those obnoxious people who have to restrain their Christmas spirit until it's almost seasonally appropriate. This year I decided to temper my outward enthusiasm for Christmas by by reading a book about its history, and a brief search on the UWO catalog led me to this one. I don't know much about Frank Muir, but in preparation for this post I stumbled onto a blog dedicated to Muir fandom, so check that out if you'd like to know more.
I realized recently that this book combines a lot of my favorite topics: history, early Christian rituals, the Church's appropriation/adaptation of pagan rituals, all combined to be Christmas-specific. Muir covers a lot of the figures that you may associate with Christmas, like St. Nicholas and St. Stephen (you know him from the Good King Wenceslas carol), as well as Wenceslas, traditions like wassail, the boar's head, and the Yule log. He also describes lesser-known traditions like the Lord of Misrule, whose job it was in the Middle Ages to keep the party going from Halloween to New Year's, lest winter depress everyone, or the Mummer's Play that involved Santa Claus narrating a dual between a Knight and a Turk during the Crusades. I'm only about half way through it so far, but it's great for bedtime reading.

I'll spare you the other stuff I'm reading, since it's mostly for my proposal preparation and not for fun. These three are the most memorable of the semester so far.
What about you? Anything you'd like to suggest for my reading list? Or anything that shocked you when you read it? Or was wildly different than your expectations?




*spoiler - they don't.