Mail!

As Zach and I were heading out the other day I noticed a parcel sitting on the radiator in the foyer. I figured it was for the downstairs neighbors (as usual) but when I saw Sephora on the box I had my doubts. I looked at the address and it was for me! Jenny sent me all sorts of loveliness in the post.

Not everything I got is shown in the photos, but I received a roll of Japanese masking tape (!!!!), a box of Jasmine tea, some beautiful needlework scissors, a mug (much to Zach’s chagrin – my tea cabinet is overfilled already and he never fails to mention this whenever we do the dishes), an adorable thermos with a black cat and roses printed on it, and a really nice mini sketch book.

The sketchbook came wrapped in this pretty paper and I LOVE the cat tape on it.

This tape is really adorable. Thank you so much Jenny!

Merkel is at it again

So if you’ve not had enough Valentine’s candy and kisses and especially cheesy bad love tunes….I can help with that last one.

My friends have released TWO more EPs of Merkel and the Merkelettes songs. One EP came out Valentine’s day and is of course about love songs titled Merkel’s Funny Valentine. The second came out the day after  and is titled Merkel’s Jaded Post-Valentine. I should mention those are the titles of the tumblrs they are on. Here are the photos for the two albums respectively. Click on either for a direct link. Enjoy!

Christmas

Oh goodness, where to begin. I feel as though the week leading up to Christmas was all manner of hectic as I ran about getting last minute things and working. Today is the only day I get off work. Boo. Poor Zach didn’t get any time off at all. Major Boo.

The living room still has wrapping paper and boxes spread all over the floor. The kitchen looks….. yeah… can’t even describe that one it’s so bad. I wish I had vacation time – just to clean. Ridiculous, I know.

But the holiday was very nice and we both had a great time. Zach got off work early on Christmas Eve. We drove to his parent’s house for the traditional dinner out at a chinese restaurant. His father’s side of the family is Jewish, but his dad is non-practicing. They just like to go for tradition’s sake, which I love.  Luckily the restaurant we always go to has a sushi bar, which is always delicious. We then opened presents with his family afterwards. Zach got some much wanted gun accessories for his collection and I received another cook book, which I’m very glad of since I was thinking the other day I’d like to have more to choose recipes from. A couple years ago they got me the Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook and this year I got the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. I know Cook’s Illustrated magazine has great recipes in it so I was quite in awe of getting the cookbook with all 20 years’ worth of recipes. They also got me an amazon kindle gift card so I have quite a bit now I can use towards downloading good versions of books I want.

After teasing Zach several times about opening our presents on Christmas Eve, we went to bed. (He’s such a goody-good type. He prefers opening them on Christmas Day). I took some last photos of the tree and Bijioux, laying in her bed under the tree, before we nodded off for the night.

I won’t go into detail of all we gave each other, but we were both happily surprised by what we received. I will mention I was shocked when I got a wrapped piece of paper, which was a  print out receipt for us to see My Neighbor Totoro at the IFC Center in NY on New Year’s Day! I LOVE Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films with a passion. I’ve collected all the Miyazaki and I’m now eyeing up the rest of the Studio Ghibli catalog. We’ve watched almost all of them, but don’t have them on DVD at all. Recently all new transfers have been made to ALL Studio Ghibli films and over a week half they are being shown in NY. So on NYD we’ll be taking a bus (already scheduled/paid for as well) to NY and watch one of our favorites on the big screen. SQUEEE!  If any of my NY friends have recommendations for places to eat and maybe a couple things to do around the IFC, please let us know! We’re not overly familiar with NY so recs are highly appreciated!

After lounging about in our PJs and letting Bijoux sprawl out on all the wrapping paper on the floor (seriously, what’s with cats loving paper and crinkly things so much?) we got dressed and trekked it out to my parent’s house. Gifts were exchanged there between us, my parents and my sister & brother in law. Basically, it was another kitchen themed Christmas for us. But it’s all stuff we very much wanted/needed. We now have knives – that actually cut things! This is a new phenomenon for us.

My family confronted me on why I decided to start eating meat again, which seemed to them something truly spectacular. Unfortunately, my response was not anything that was going to wow them or anyone else. I honestly don’t have a reason for why I started eating meat again. Although my diet won’t entirely be meat meals now. I prefer to do a 50/50 with vegetarian meals I’ve been eating for the past 14 years. My dad laughed and said my response was like Forrest Gump when asked why he was running and he responded “I just felt like running.” Well, true enough, the same can be said for me. There’s no grandiose soul-reaching reason why I was vegetarian for so long, nor why I’m no longer one. I think part of me realized I was limiting myself and while I know many vegetarians would scoff at such a statement – meh, I’m ok with that.

The afternoon was spent eating my mom’s assortment of Christmas cookies, playing Wii games, playing with Mischa- my parent’s dog, and terrorizing Squirrel- my sister’s cat. A few games of Uno around the breakfast table after dinner concluded the night. At least our portion of it at my parent’s house. When we left, instead of taking the exit to our apartment back along the highway we zoomed on past and back out to the suburbs near Zach’s house to hang out with our friends.

Every Christmas day our friends Jess and Jule have friends over once family leaves their house. This can range from a small get together to a large noisy gathering, such as it was last night with roughly 25 people packed in  Jess’s room before spreading out into other areas of the house to chat. We got to see friends who we’ve not seen since last Christmas and catch up with those we see on and off. It’s always a nice gathering and a tradition I rather like. There tends to be a lot of those with Zach and his family/friends.

Several hours later we were back in the car and finally heading home. Now to figure out where the heck to put everything in our already bursting-at-the-seams apartment and somehow do mild cleaning without it feel like cleaning on my only day off this holiday season.

Another Merkel Christmas

My friends in the ‘burbs have done it again.  There is another Merkel and the Merkelettes Christmas album this year called ‘Tis the Season to be Merkel. So click the link for another round of funny holiday songs by my friends.  There’s even liner notes on the tumblr page this year for it, dripping with sarcasm that I know was written by none other than Jule.  Why the name Merkel? Well, it’s actually the last name of a friend who sings the songs, although I had to laugh when I saw what his first name was listed as in the liner notes. Actually, all the names were rather funny.   Enjoy!

A Very Merkel Halloween

All Hallows Groove is the name of the tumblr my friends are using to share their Halloween songs. Some of you might remember the link I shared to  ”A Very Merkel Christmas” album made by Merkel and the Merkelets last Christmas. Well, here is the “A Very Merkel Halloween” EP to enjoy. My friend Jule is part of the band and while at the Wild Flag concert a couple weeks ago I got some details from him about these Halloween songs and what might hopefully be a slew of Valentine’s songs as well. I loved the Christmas album from last year and asked if there would be more, but they are still working on that. Enjoy these silly songs made by my friends! Btw, the skeleton in the car for the “Spooky” song has actually been sitting around in Jule’s car for a while now, which I’m sure is rather interesting when people notice his passenger.

I also wanted to write up a few words about my last Gothic novel for the month, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. This is considered a gothic mystery novel – AND HOW! Counts! Ghost like women! Mistaken Identities! Secret Societies! Crazy Italians! Evil Old Ladies! Evil Old Men! Insane Asylums! There are not enough exclamation points to do this novel justice! If I even attempt to give a plot summary I’ll end up giving too much detail and it’s best not to give any at all because this novel is So. Full. Of. Suspense! I couldn’t sleep at night because I was too busy gorging myself on this novel and pressing the button on my kindle for the next page with rapid-fire machine gun intensity! The writing is easy, simple and fast to get through. Some parts of it had me choking with laughter as a sort of slap-stick moment or thought would be thrown into the writing for a relief when it started to take itself too seriously. Wilkie has a damn good sense of humor. The nice thing about this novel was it being more of a suspenseful mystery than gothic, which transitions well into other stuff I’ve been wanting to read this winter.

Concerts and perspective

Tonight Zach and I met our friend Jule for the Wild Flag concert at the Union Transfer (also formerly known as Spaghetti Warehouse and for those of us familiar with the building will always refer to it as Spaghetti Warehouse).  The opener was good, but it was a “meh” sort of good. Halfway through the first song I thought – this is the sort of music you end up hearing on the local “easy listening” rock station and ends up being half sung/hummed by people like my mom. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it was that sort of boring music that’s good for being background white noise while you’re focusing intently on something else. The whole set was like that and halfway through it I got so bored I sat on the floor against the wall and started reading from my iPhone.

Wild Flag were so much more entertaining and lively. I was immediately drawn in and entertained by the crazy loud and dancing guitarists. [For those interested, Wild Flag has two members of Sleater Kinney.]  It wasn’t until the last song that I started to wane. I don’t mind the occasional solos or off-shoots in the middle of songs, so long as they don’t go into the mind-numbingly boring Phish/Grateful-Dead-2001-Space-Odessy length. Unfortunately, the last song was getting to that length and I was starting to yawn a lot more and noticed the audience was completely lost as well. Luckily they picked up the vibe again with the last two short encores.

The next concert I want to attend is Beirut in the middle of November. Zach isn’t too keen on them though so unless I can convince Jule to come with me, I might be on my own. [Unless local web friends are interested, *hint*.]

We asked Jule for a ride back to the apartment and as he was pulling away from his parking space down the street he almost turned down the wrong way of a one-way street.
Jule: Can I go down that way? Hmmm… maybe not.
Zach: You could, but you know….
Jule: Yeah…
Me: You could, but it would be illegal.
Jule: The illegality part doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the possibility of being crushed by oncoming traffic.

I laughed and realized that my response was so straight-laced-law-abiding-citizen and his so completely opposite. I inwardly laughed and thought his perspective was much better for being more open (yet safe) than my own. I like it when I’m reminded of that and realized I need that more often.