I’m a firm believer that good people and good food is the cure to a lot of ills, even extraordinarily rough days. Five years in with J. and I’m still incredibly amazed at how just hanging out with him makes hard things easier. He’s my hands down favorite. Unfortunately, in spite of a gloriously sumptuous dinner (tried scallops for the first time, if you can believe it – what else have I been missing?!), work is still a bit hectic today, kittens, so here are your links:
Here’s another Oscar nominated short film – and warning is a subtle sort of tear inducer. Warning the second for pearl-clutchers, there are some hints a nudity but very faint, very stylized, appropriate to the subject matter (they abandoned the proverbial fig leaf) and truly nothing that I think would offend. Don’t let that scare you off in anyway, because it’s really heartwarming and well worth watching! (Update: alas, the vid has been made private! Here’s a Jazz Age style cover of Macklemore’s Thrift Shop instead. Also, pretty nifty.)
This photographer decided to do portraits of his daughter in the style of the Dutch masters – the results are great.
Suddenly I’m feeling a desire for too much rouge and the charleston. What a great cinematic find!
Tumblr find of the week – oh this brings back memories of middle school! Peregrine and I once spent a whole afternoon choreographing a dance to an N’Sync song – not one of our proudest musical moments perhaps, but still quite funny to remember.
I’m not actually a major watch wearer, but this brand is singing a siren song to my wrist…
“Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.” – Lao Tzu
Historical accuracy is the way to my heart.
I’ve never been big on Valentine’s day, some of it is a bit over processed for me (although the history I can clearly get behind) and a lot is just a bit too cheesy. When J. and I were dating and we both knew we were moving towards getting married, I actually threatened him with rejection if he proposed to me on V Day – to which he burst out laughing and declared, “Understood.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the love but the pink and red of it all just strike me as a little bit too much.
Longwinded way of saying if you came here looking for hearts and sparkles, kittens, trot off elsewhere. It’s just isn’t our style.
I spent the first half of the day at the office finishing up some pretty somber assignments for a couple of really sad cases (the kind that are hard to work on) and half battling a sort of pre-cold that refuses to either go away or develop into the full blown thing. I threw in the towel at lunchtime, got home, worked frantically on the MP for a couple hours, trie to get some sort of rest in because we have a newborn in the flat below us and a baby being sleep trained in the one above which means haven’t had a full night of sleep in weeks (subtext: I am never having children!), only to be thwarted in the rest attempt by…the screaming infants.
I actually forgot it was Valentine’s Day until I lurched through the door and J. (working at home in his basketball shorts and an old t-shirt) reminded me from the couch.
“Good,” muttered I. “By the way, our tax return came through, let’s pay off the credit card.”
We didn’t do presents and the only way we are celebrating is by going out to a nice dinner in a restaurant we’ve both wanted to go to for a while. We’ll dress up a bit, him in the suit he likes best, me in my favorite little black dress and we’ll enjoy ourselves. But the truth is, we’ll probably go to the gym first.
Here’s the thing about stylized romance that I find so annoying – I think it’s often used to sell a bad product. No amount of roses or over the top dates turns The Bachelor into a show about love. Oceans of wine and acres of flowers don’t make a steady relationship. Making out in the rain is cold, wet, and uncomfortable and only to be attempted when making a perfume add under the watchful eye of trained couturiers. Romance is not (in my opinion) dying for love, or sonnets, or grand gestures – those are surprisingly easy, even the first one if half the poets are to be believed. Sometimes it’s about not buying flowers so that money can go to our upcoming move to London – where we both want to go and have been working towards for years. Together.
*Oh fine, minions here are some valentines for you:
These are for the history nerds (and I’ve decided when in London I am going to seek this woman out because anyone with that level of love for the Plantagenet dynasty is someone I was clearly destined to be friends with).
And these are for the Lizzie Bennett Diaries/Jane Austen fans out there. Let’s not dissemble, we’re all friends here.
“It’s a terrible thing to see and have no vision.” – Hellen Keller
Five days in with contact lenses and I vacillate between thinking they’re gifts from the gods and instruments of purest torture. I’ve given up mascara entirely out of sheer fright that I’ll paint the town black, or possibly jab unwittingly at the lens and have it pop off into space never to be seen of more. The sensation around my iris that feels like nothing so much as a freak, circular eyelash is taking some getting used to. And J.’s newest form of entertainment is to watch me wrestle with my eyelids muttering curses while I try to make the things stick and offer unhelpful tips – which I find more than a little annoying.
On the other hand, I can see. Which demonstrates the ingratitude of the whole human race, I think.
My vision has never been spectacular and I’ve had periods throughout my life where things got weird optically, but it was university that really killed me. I think it was computer screens, dim lecture halls, and horrible powerpoint presentations on bad projectors that did it. Christmas break of sophmore year, I believe, I went home to England and got a pair of really nice glasses in a great shade of red so I could see the blackboards. I remember putting them on for the first time and the shock of realizing that the world wasn’t soft focus and fuzzy, it was full of sharp edges and bright breaks between colors. Looking around made frightened for a second that I could cut myself on leaves. Where had all of this been hiding?
Glasses perched firmly on face, I considered the matter closed. Unfortunately my eyes didn’t. Slowly the sharp bright world has needed more effort to stick around. At first I only needed my glasses to see things that were far away. Then the next year I needed them to slightly closer, and so forth. For about the past year I’ve needed them to watch TV.
So on Saturday I threw in the towel and got fitted for contacts and again went through the dizzying experience of discovering that the world looks differently than the reality I’ve been living with – and it isn’t framed in a rectangle of black. The mountains looked like they could slice and I could drive without hunting for face gear. I can read the clock on the microwave from the couch. I could read signs across the street without squinting. I’ve been kicking myself for not considering contacts earlier ever since.
It’s amazing how we can get used to things that don’t seem like a big deal until we take the trouble to fix them. It’s always good to be reminded that there’s a technicolor, HD world on the other side of only a little bit of bother.
“Oh thank goodness…tomorrow’s Sunday, not Monday!” “You forgot what day it is?” “We’re lying about in pajamas watching PBS, it’s a totally plausible mistake.” – C. and J.
“There aren’t enough days in the weekend.”
~ Rod Schmidt
It’s been another week of lunches mostly at my desk, except for Thursday when a lovely friend rescued me and dragged me to the university art museum – which is really quite an impressive place with an extensive collection, but for the point here also contains the best cafe on campus. A great and much needed interlude in a week filled with a lot of rejection (entirely vicarious, but it’s odd how it still smarts and still feels disheartening), and a bunch of changes at work, but that’s another blog post.
I’m tired, and grumpy, and not much feeling like myself, which is always a chore to get out of – like trudging through a pit of glue. The mere thought of cooking dinner fills me with a churlishness fearsome to behold. My weekend to do list feels acres long and two days to do it all in feels ridiculously short. I am, minions, in short, out of sorts.
I proscribe myself tea and taking projects one at a time. There’s nothing tea doesn’t fix. Here are your links, amuse yourselves:
Curry – sustaining desperate people since long before midterm cramming and last minute dinners.
It’s official, Richard III has been found! The whole story behind his body’s discovery is incredible, from finding the skeleton on the first day of the dig, to the confirmation of physical deformity that scholars have debated as being either truth or Tudor propaganda. History nerds, revel in the awesomeness.
We’re all about the genderswapping here at Small Dog Inc., it allows us to pretend we’re like Shakespeare.
Here’s the story of two girls who left the Westboro Baptist Church. Putting aside my own feelings about that organization, which are far from cordial, the tale of these girls and their journey from absolute truth to uncertainty is really powerful.
“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill
Another day, another hectic week, minions. But there’s always a few bright spots:
I have lunch with an old acquaintance today who I haven’t seen in months.
The existence of my first godchild has been confirmed. My own godmother is candy coated awesomeness so the bar has been set pretty high, but I’m excited all the same.
Dad turned up a bond in my name long past its maturity date that I get to collect.
And on that same note, J. did our tax return last night and hooray, we’re poor! But we did get a nice return this year that will allow us to pay off a couple of things and put a small but tidy little sum into savings – a feat not as easily accomplished since student loans reared their heads.
Community, my favorite show and really the only thing off of PBS that I make a real effort to watch anymore (at least until Game of Thrones and Mad Men are back), returns tonight after a long and rather silly hiatus.
Any quick and cheap things getting you through this Thursday?
“You need to see this puppy rescue video.” “No way, those make me cry. Besides, I’m watching a murder mystery, those are much less upsetting.” – J. and C.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
~ Andrew Wyeth
So, a couple days ago I was begging benign forces to just let me make it to April, which seemed like an awfully long way off, and bam! Suddenly I looked up and it’s February already. Either my prayers were answered or I have a very slippery grip on the reality of space/time interactions. Probably the latter.
Anyway, I like February. It’s a quirky little month that likes to throw people off with how short it is – clearly, we’ve got something in common. It’s also the month of Chip and Dip For Three Meals Sunday (the Superbowl), the excuse to have a really fancy dinner (Valentine’s Day), and the Small Dog Annual Couture Smackdown (the Oscars). Delightful things to look forward to, yes minions? Here are your links:
So, most of our friends long ago left our university town for bigger things which should mean we’re not doing anything for the Superbowl, right? Wrong, minions! Honestly, don’t you know us at all? We’re throwing a two person party complete with pizza and homemade dips and salsa. Anyone left in the area is welcome to just show up, throw yourself on the sofas, and indulge. J. is also hilariously excited about this relatively new tradition. Which doesn’t help our puppy lust.
For a variety of reasons, personal and political, I want about fifty copies of this. I want to paper whole walls with it!
Another useful thing to hang on a wall, since I can never remember the exchanges.
One of the strangest things to watch is how a word or idea with a certain definition takes on a new meaning within a group. I have personal fascination with the word “modesty” when used by various religious groups – it’s anthropologically engrossing and personally discomforting to see how a word originally describing a behavior or mindset has come to refer to how long hems or sleeves are, almost solely for women.
This article comes recommended by Peregrine, and is doubly hilarious to me because recently I was channel surfing to find something to watch while I folded laundry and flicked through a station where one of Suze Orman’s programs was playing. I only got a sentence fragment: “I realized that all the financial advice I’ve given is wrong -” And yet, somehow, people are still paying her to give it.
Caitlin Kelly, friend and favorite of the blog, shared this on Facebook and I giggled mightily at it.
My father hiked the the Grand Teton (edited: corrected by Dad) when I was young and we were living in Germany. Apparently somewhere along the way, a marmot chewed through his knapsack and ate his trail mix. In commemoration, he bought me a plush toy marmot that I’m pretty sure is still tucked away safely somewhere. Where my father failed to bond with the beasts, this boy did not!
“Their pretensions are naked and vulnerable and for that reason, to me at least, rather charming.” ― Julian Fellowes, Snobs
Make this your mantra, and all will be well.
Judging from social media, the entire fandom is just about ready to riot and tear Dark Lord Fellowes limb from limb, to which I say: really? I love Downton Abbey with the deep affection of pretty costumes, good actors, and clever writing, but the truth is, it’s a soap opera. A gorgeous, sumptuous soap opera in a marvelous setting with (usually) higher quality characters, but at this point I don’t think the soapiness can be denied.
Lest you think I’m being judgey and turning up my nose, never fear, I’m still sucking it down in gulps. I just find it odd (and sometimes morbidly hilarious) that story arcs, once finished are seldom referred to again – and when they are resurrected, the effect is sort of stilted. Lavinia’s father leaves Matthew a fortune, but Matthew is too guilt ridden to accept it. Until he’s miraculously not anymore. Ta da! Problem solved. Slightly more hilarious to me was Cora trying to ask Mary if she wanted any sex advice on her wedding day – lest we forget this wedding almost didn’t happen because she once took a lover. In soap operas, characters go from one crisis to the next and somehow life goes on and past dealings are forgotten – despite the fact that the disfigured man may be your cousin, you lose the use of your legs, you do battle with your siblings, you get left at the altar, your fiance blackmails you, and papa’s just lost the family fortune. Again. The disfigured possible cousin will literally vanish never to be seen of more, all the doctors will be wrong and you will walk again, you’ll still do battle with your siblings because drama is as permanent in this world as death and taxes, you’ll go on to start a column (Dear Downton Abb[e]y?), the blackmailing fiance goes the way of the cousin, and money will present itself in an improbable way.
Which means, cynically, that as ticked as I am that my favorite character was killed off, I doubt it will make much difference in the show. It’s formula is largely season contained crises with a cliffhanger at the end. It’s a successful TV model, there’s a reason soaps ran for decades, but I wonder how long it’s sustainable. Soaps are also dying, you may have noticed. But as long as the writing’s good (and Maggie Smith’s involved), I’ll feed the addiction.
With that in mind, we bring you a play by play of tonight’s episode:
“Lord Grantham dislikes medical detail.” No kidding. With dire consequences.
O’Brien, you scheming cow. Soapiness.
Thomas, keep your hands to yourself.
Ha! The proof is, literally, in the pudding! Pastry will out!
Isobel meddles so cheekily.
I still can’t tell exactly what got up the nose of Bates cellmate and the gaoler, they seem to be evil for absolutely no reason. Soapiness.
Being business like is being middle class – quelle horreur.
“I’ll get a baby out of you one way or another!” Words I hope never to hear a doctor say to me. Pompous ass.
Tom is truly a tame revolutionary now, an evening jacket at dinner? For shame, bolshevik.
Matthew wants to talk about his gentlemanly area, doesn’t have the words. Britishness.
Edith makes progress as a person, high five. Immediately smacked down by Robert who knows better than everyone, especially women and peasants. Snobbishness.
“Nobody could look at you and think that Mrs. Byrd.” *Snicker
Another love triangle in the kitchen, Daisy gets uppity. Soapiness.
“I hate to get news second hand.” First Dowager quip of the night.
And downstairs, Mrs. Patmore lays down the law. There’s only one queen bee in the kitchen, thank you very much. Soapiness.
Everyone knows that men with titles give better medical advice, you silly plebe doctor. Snobbishness.
Kidney souffle. That sounds absolutely dreadful.
“Or the footmen!” Carson the Butler, guardian of young boys’ virtue. Britishness.
The Dowager Countess is not put off by bodily functions – one wonders how her son turned out so boneheaded.
“The decision lies with the chauffeur.” This woman. I want to be her. Fabulousness.
“Isn’t a certainty stronger than a doubt?” And there we have the trouble with this particular class system summed up in one sentence.
It’s a girl!
Thomas, hands off. Soapiness.
Everyone’s happy. Brace yourself, that always means Fellowes is about to do something evil.
…And here it is.
Sir Phillip is a useless ass. Surprise.
Lavinia Swire gets a saintly death, the nicest character on the show dies horribly and much more realistically. Yep. About par for the course. Soapiness.
“But this can’t be.” Says the man who categorically refuses to look any sort of reality square in the face.
The baby cries – direct hit in the upper left quadrant of the torso.
“Is there anything we can do, Mr. Carson?”
“Carry on, Daisy.” Britishness.
Thomas is crying – good grief the evil guy is human.
Oh good, someone’s mad at Robert! We’re squarely on Team Cora here.
“Do you think we might get along a little better in the future?”
“I doubt it.” Oh Lady Mary, never change! Soapiness.
Matthew gets along with business, Mary shuts it down with a surprising amount of class given that she looks capable of ripping off her husbands face. Delicious self-restraint. Britishness.
Will I be shot for saying that I’m beyond ready for the Bates in prison storyline to wrap up?
Evil guard and evil cellmate twirls their mustachios evilly. Soapiness.
And Maggie Smith out-acts everyone by walking away from the camera slowly and suddenly looking old for the first time in the whole series. Second punch in the chest.
Small Dog Syndrome 