I know I am hardly the first or last person to post this — I think I’ve been watching it over and over again every time someone puts a link to it online over the past week — but I’m sticking a copy here so I can watch it whenever I am feeling sappy. Which is often. Really nicely done commercial from Down Under.
I’ve been wanting to start canning for several years, but this August was when I finally took the plunge. My recent interest in canning began in 2009, when my friend Julie and I bought a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) share at a local farm. Suddenly I was getting all sorts of exciting, fresh fruits and vegetables, and sometimes at a rate faster than I could use them. It was a different experience than shopping at the Arlington Courthouse farmer’s market, where it was easier to make sure to only buy what I would absolutely be using over the next few years.
I was familiar with the idea of canning well before then, mind you. My mother has made and then canned her homemade preserves every year for as long as I can remember, and it’s always a joy to open up a jar and dive into those delicious tastes of summer no matter what it’s like outside. My grandfather on her side of the family was also into canning, using the jars to hold his applesauce, tomato sauce, and green beans.
When Charlie and I moved to Takoma, some sort of switch finally flipped in the back of my head, and I took the plunge: I bought a pressure cooker that could be used for canning, as well as some supplies, and checked books out of the library on how to can.
Since then I’ve made quite a few batches of tomato sauce (each batch tasting slightly different than the one before), hot pickles, pickled okra, and most recently—my favorite—butternut squash chutney, which with its cinnamon and cardamom and cumin flavors just screams autumn to me.
I can see why people do it. Not just because of being able to preserve an excess of produce, but because of getting the pride and joy in grabbing a taste and smell of a specific seasonal food and getting to halt it until later, and inevitably share it with someone else. There’s a great article on NPR right now about a woman who decided to make and can blackberry jam for everyone at her upcoming wedding. Reading the article, not only did I understand her happiness in doing so, but it brought back my own memories of picking blackberries for my mom in exchange for both blackberry preserves and pie.
I’m already plotting out my next canning ideas, as well as planning on making some more butternut squash chutney (it’s amazing as a condiment on sandwiches!) quite soon. And if I run out of room in the pantry? Well, half the fun is giving the finished jars to other people. I don’t think that’ll be a problem either.
There’s something pretty cool about (most of) the response to R.E.M. breaking up. I’m not referring to the people who are saying, “Who’s that?” or “About time,” of course, but rather the number of responses talking about why the band meant so much to them, and their favorite songs. (My friend Chris Butcher has a nice write-up of why he loved R.E.M., for example.)
But here’s the thing that I find the coolest, at least for me. Every time someone has said, “And here’s my favorite song,” I’ve started nodding along… and then realized that once again, no one among my friends appears to be picking a duplicate. I guess when you’ve got 15 full length albums (plus EPs, soundtrack contributions, and bonus tracks for compilations) it’s easy to hit that.
I won’t pretend I’ve got anything deep to write about the band—I first started paying attention to them in the mid-80s thanks to a co-worker at Giant Food, plus my friend Kira in high school—but I too have loved a lot of their music and thought I’d pick three favorite songs; one from the ’80s, one from the ’90s, and one from the ’00s. (I’ll be nice and include 2011′s Collapse into Now into that final grouping.) I tried to pick non-singles as well, if only because they’re great songs that you may not have heard.
A couple of years ago, I seriously cut back on my book buying; I started using the Arlington Library much more often, shifting what I bought to books I felt I’d actually re-read, or ones that just were not available at the library. (A lot of limited edition comics and art books, for instance.)
And then, of course, two years ago I got an e-reader and the number of physical books entering my home shrunk again. But all of this did nothing to change the number of unread books that I have owned, waiting for that day where they got tackled. So once we moved, I created one or two bookshelves with nothing but unread books, and now I’m going to try and make my way through them. The majority of them are ones that once read I’ll be giving away, so there’s added incentive to get moving through them.
(More importantly, having them all in one location makes it easier for me to hear their siren call, “Read me, Greg, read me.”)
So far I’ve finished off one book (Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni) and am almost halfway through a second one (DC Noir edited by George Pelecanos). Loved the first one, and am enjoying the second one. Now, I don’t see myself blasting through the multiple “to-read” shelves anytime soon, but it is gratifying to finally start tackling them. But heck, I’ve had that copy of Twinkle Twinkle for eight years now. It was time to finally cross it off the list. Between that and finally watching my copy of The Prestige from Netflix (which sat on my coffee table for several years, waiting)… well, I might make it 2010′s books by the end of the decade. Such progress!
My one consolation, of course, is that I bet at least half of the people reading this have similarly groaning to-read shelves… possibly more. Admit it.
As most people who were following this particular news story over the weekend will know, Hurricane Irene did thankfully little damage to the Washington DC area. Our cable/internet/phone service went out for about 24 hours, and a lot of Takoma and Takoma Park was without power as well. But aside from a walk up to the farmer’s market on Sunday morning, I hadn’t gone out until late in the afternoon when I hopped the Metro to downtown and caught The Help. My metro station had no power, so all the gates were open and we were told to get the station conductor at our destination to get our cards scanned there. (Happily the person running the exit gate at Gallery Place just let me out without having to pay. Free ride!)
But it was after the movie, when we were driving home (Charlie had driven down earlier in the day to get some work done) that we discovered that a lot of DC still didn’t have any power. It was around 9:30 at night, and as we drove up North Capitol Street/Blair Road, the one mile stretch between Madison St and Whittier St was almost completely dark.
It’s initially an eerie sensation to drive through a completely dark city street. Never mind the lack of street or traffic lights, there are no porch lights, or glimmers from people’s windows… nothing. And there were remarkably few cars out on the road, either, which plunged our ride home into even further darkness.
It was rather beautiful. It makes you feel like you’re the only people out there (even though it’s of course patently not true), gliding quietly through the darkness. Occasionally a car going southbound would pass by, but otherwise we were all alone in the night, the city to ourselves, our surroundings shifting back and forth from a purplish-black to complete darkness.
When we got to Aspen Rd (and power), it was almost a bit of a disappointment. Sure, I was glad that we still had power at home, and felt bad for my friends and neighbors that were going without. But it was a pleasant, brief experience that is rarely duplicated.
So in all sincerity… thanks, Irene. You really were good for something, after all.
When we first had our moving date, I had an incredibly ambitious plan. I was going to document the moving process, write up how the progress was coming along, take pictures each ste of the way, that sort of thing. And then, suddenly, it was over a month later and I’d done absolutely none of that. Why? Well, it’s pretty simple. It’s because we had actually, well, moved.
It’s a little staggering to me how much time and energy it takes. Maybe it’s because with each move I’ve been five or six years older and have that much more in the way of possessions to take care of? (Or alternately, it’s because I’m that much more old and decrepit. Please do not answer which of the two it probably is, unless you are certain it is the former.) But even with us hovering somewhere around the 90% done mark (I’ve got a handful of boxes to sort through and figure out what’s going away, the final step of hanging things on the walls, and the later task of putting some more books up for sale and/or donating them), it’s taken forever. And it’s been more mentally exhausting than physically.
Which is, of course, a great time for the edge of a hurricane to swoop by this weekend, right? I’m pretty convinced Hurricane Irene is doing its driveby merely because it heard about our 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday (which was disconcerting and exciting at the same time) and it wants to get in on the action. Honestly, I’m expecting it to be not as bad as Hurricane Isabel and its direct strike back in 2003, and I’m not even worried about it… if it wasn’t for its disruptive presence. Because even just strong winds and monsoon rains means no walking to the farmer’s market on Sunday (I suspect it will not even be set up), no trip to IKEA to get that nightstand we’re going to use to hold the printer, that sort of thing.
Right now so many things are at the “90%” done stage in my life that I just want them all to get wrapped up, feel closure, and move forward. I have a bunch of new projects I’d like to start. I have one writing assignment that’s been sitting untouched for two months (eek) that needs to get a jumpstart. I’d like to restart my “State Streets in DC” photo project from scratch and with a lot more focus. (Although for that I suppose I should first figure out where the heck my charger and spare battery for my camera have quietly relocated themselves. I’d settle for just the charger, honest.) And once I can strike all these other things off to “to do” list, then I can move forward.
In short, I’m putting this all out into the open to try and spur myself toward getting there. See if it’ll be the final gentle nudge to get to a conclusion, right?
Well, probably not. But eventually it’ll happen. It’ll be nice to add swimming, biking, photos, that sort of thing back into my life. Perhaps I can even start documenting some of the great new places I’ve found in Takoma, like I’d hoped. Tune in this time next month for another excuse why not. Or maybe, finally, some real progress.
Every now and then, videos on the internet go viral and suddenly everyone’s posting them. I usually try not to do so, not because I don’t like the video or because I think I’m too cool, but usually because I’m too late on the bandwagon and because it’s a matter of simply liking rather than loving.
Well, I don’t like these three (one minute) videos, I love them. Maybe it’s because I like to read travel books and guides, to see different parts of the world I might never see, to get to explore different locations. Even if, so often, it’s just through the eyes of someone else.
Now, to be fair, the ideas behind these three videos are ones that we’ve seen before. But there’s a combination of the joy and the technical excellence on display here that makes these stand out. (Especially “MOVE,” my favorite of the three.) Definitely check these out; Rick Mereki did a great job with them.
EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.
LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.
MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.
Saturday was our move-in day, which sounded great when we set it up after finally closing on our home last Tuesday. Sure, the air-conditioning had managed to stop working between our walk-through and closing, but someone had come by on Friday to fix it, and assured us that in a few hours it’d be back to normal. And everything was out of my old place and ready to be picked back up and moved. So easy, right?
Well, no. Not helping matters was Monday’s oral surgery, to which I’d been told quite firmly, “No strenuous activity.” Sure, we had movers. But on Tuesday when I’d hauled the three new rugs into my car, and then (with Charlie) from the car to the condo, just doing that had resulted in me having suspicious bloody specks in my mouth. So even moving heavy boxes around the condo upon placement was declared a big no. And of course, we’d gotten into the place on Saturday and were not even remotely greeted with cold air.
In short, the worst move I’d ever gone through. Being boiling hot, tired, sore, sick to my stomach (thanks to a week’s worth of antibiotics post-surgery), and hungry is not good. And of course, being told that Comcast will show up between 2-5pm and despite calling every half hour starting at 4:45 (and being assured that yes, the Comcast installer was still coming) and continuing to be a no-show at 7:50pm? Really not good. (The killer was starting around 6pm we’d even said, “We have no problem with rescheduling if this isn’t any time soon, just don’t string us along.” Argh. They put a credit on our bill by way of apology but still. Not cool.)
We finally left at 8pm and had what I can only describe as a “sanity-restoring dinner” at Mark’s Kitchen (the bibimbap was fantastic!), ice cream across the street, and just relaxed for an hour or so. And we ended up sleeping at Charlie’s old place so that we didn’t melt, which was also helpful.
Fortunately, Sunday was a big turn-around. We found someone to come out and properly diagnose and fix the air-conditioning (which was not only minor, but happily we were told that the unit is in great shape), we got a lot of stuff unpacked, and all of the new bedroom stuff put together. We’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do, but Sunday felt like major progress. It’s no longer a labyrinth of boxes, now it’s more of a bunch of clusters of boxes. I think by the end of the week we should be awfully close to being in shape.
The chorus of the weekend, from both of us: “You know we’re not moving again for a very, very long time.” It’s nice to be in agreement on that front.
It’s only 15 days later than planned, but it finally arrived: Charlie and I closed on our new home in the Takoma neighborhood of DC. That’s right, I am finally a homeowner. Also, that means after the end of this week, I am no longer homeless.
The original closing date was supposed to be June 27th, but I have learned something very important about buying a condo versus buying a house. There is a third party—the dreaded HOA management company—that can do things so slowly that your closing date keeps getting delayed. On the bright side, neither we nor the sellers had done anything wrong. All of us had everything in order, but we just kept getting delayed while waiting for required paperwork to finally arrive.
I probably wouldn’t have cared so much, save that I had to be out of my old place on July 5th. Oops. So, everything got packed up and moved to a temporary location (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!), as did I. But that brief stop-over is now almost at an end, and in a few days we can start focusing on our new neighborhood, unpacking all of those boxes, new license plates and driver’s license…
…wait, why was I looking forward to this again?
Oh yeah, that’s right. Our beautiful new home. I am utterly thrilled that it’s ours; partially because it’s a great place, and partially because it’s ours. I’ve never lived with a boyfriend before, and the last time I even lived with another person was 2001.
I’m looking foward to this new portion of my life immensely. Hello, Takoma. I’m thrilled to be here, finally.
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