By Laura Jacobs.
(Whoops, already got behind on posting every day — yesterday was a little nuts, what with moving out of the old apt and flying to portland. Double post for today, then!)
Hairstyles of the first ladies
July 4th, 2009I want rain
July 2nd, 2009For the past week or so in the evening, poofy clouds smoosh up the horizon outside the city, gathering up the day’s humidity and making those postcard, 80’s color-schemed AZ sunsets. The sky looks exciting, sometimes flashing some distant lightning from the purple underbellies to get our hopes up. And then.. the sun goes down and instead of a lightning show, or even a little rain shower, the clouds fade and the sky is black and I bet there are stars behind the city haze but doggonit, I want a big dramatic thunderstorm and a free car wash!
Ok.
July 2nd, 2009It’s time to reprise the commitment I made last year to post every day for 2 weeks. As for topics… um… to be determined.
Tonight I made these sunken chocolate cakes to satisfy a weeks-old craving. They were surprisingly easy to make (and emerged successful despite subbing in unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet, using regular muffin tins, and dropping the chocolate-butter mixture into the boiling water). I do always enjoy a good whisking and folding.
Photos from the past few months
July 2nd, 2009
*Jerome, AZ*
*Coit tower, San Francisco, in June*
*Hydrant on Telegraph Hill, CA*
*Seaweed on CA coast*
*Encanto Park, Phoenix*
*Parking lot rail, Portland, OR*
*Desert botanical garden, Phoenix*
*Jerome, AZ*
New home
June 30th, 2009
Nearly moved in to the new apartment in downtown/midtown Phoenix. My two cacti have a lot of new friends!
Lewis & Clark
May 11th, 2009I found myself unexpectedly moved by Ken Burns’ documentary on the Lewis & Clark/Corps of Discovery expedition (available on instant netflix, fyi). Their historians portrayed the men as exceptionally humane, though perhaps alternate accounts, or arguably the very “manifest destiny”-type motivation behind their journey, would say otherwise. Some aspects of their mission seem with post-colonial hindsight to be farcical: each time Lewis & Clark got to a new native territory they would announce that the land now belonged to the United States of America, even as they utterly depended on some of these people to keep themselves from freezing or going hungry. Against that (and other moments like it) are moments like one at the end, in which a particularly ardent biographer describes, with a quivering chin, Lewis’ suicide. The care and attention that these historians have put into understanding people who are long dead is half of what made this fascinating to me. Maybe I just need to watch more of the history channel. Tangentially, I wonder what it would take to be a really good biographer — how could you ever know what someone so long ago was feeling and doing with any accuracy? And how could you possibly avoid filling the holes with your own imagined ideal?
Growing numbers of atheists in US
April 27th, 2009
Speak up?
April 14th, 2009Is it just me, or does it seem odd that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t asked a question from the bench since 2006?
Very Handy
April 13th, 2009Seafood pocket guide by region, with special sushi guide, lets you know roughly how environmentally good or bad any particular fish is to buy, depending on where you live. Caveat: just heard about this from some article somewhere, so I can’t vouch for the source (Monterey Bay Aquarium). Still, in terms of making relative choices, probably not going to hurt to have this info. Plus it’s cute and foldable.
Oddly, Arizona and New Mexico have a guide of their own. I guess we are near that sliver of Pacific that sneaks up behind Baja California, but even so, eating sushi in the desert still seems weird, no?
Contest
March 30th, 2009What’s a dish that uses a bunch of eggs that lasts a long time (freezer or fridge encouraged)? All I can think of is german pancakes, which probably don’t last that long at all. Boy, but they do sound delicious.
fjslfjslfjs
March 30th, 2009I shall post. I must post.
How about some random things? Great.
1. I have been reading Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father. It’s way good so far and way engaging.
2. I have not been running as much but am getting back into it. As in, I ran today, slowly.
3. I’ve been cooking - sort of. Yesterday I made tabouli, today a chili casserole.
4. I’ve been making summer plans. It is fun. I think the final list will include: Michigan, Colorado, Oregon (twice), Massachusetts, California, and of course the ever-lovely Phoenix. And Nebraska, if early September counts. Yeehaw.
5. I have been without car. It died a little over two weeks ago. The uber-nice mechanic dude, Bob, (”the most trustworthy guy I know” according to two unrelated sources) is currently nursing it back to health, or rather transplanting not-dead engine parts into it. The whole situation’s had some good side-effects — finally started biking to school regularly,… um,… don’t drive as much. I guess biking is the main one. If it never got above 95 I might keep things this way, but alas. I would be a very sweaty, leatherly lady.
6. I finally tried one of the two pools in my apartment complex, thanks to Heidi and Allison’s vacation savvy. It was very pleasant. I painted my toenails.
7. I am thinking I might move this summer, to a little neighborhood just West of campus. My concerns are thus: a) the train goes through there. both a positive (yay train, whoo whoo) and a negative (would wake the man. dylan, that is, not big brother). b) it’s got a serious hipster vibe going on - could be good or could be bad. probably a partial biproduct of it being bike-friendly and near the side of campus with all the art buildings and the vegan-friendly coffee shop. c) safety? I dunno, but some friends of mine who lived just north of there were often sketched out by the neighbors. In a totally valid, probably non-paranoid (i.e., screaming and disrespectful behavior requiring cop intervention) way. The positives: a) closer to campus, b) bikeable to most anywhere I’d want to go, c) walkable to school, d) cute, with little houses and yards, e) with rental prices going down I’m now paying too much for my current apt.
Keep out
March 20th, 2009
Some recent pics I’m happy with
March 20th, 2009
Sony and ragnar
February 26th, 2009First, go watch this.
Ok.
I’m leaving tonight to go run 3 legs of a 200-mile relay race from Prescott, AZ back down to Mesa (about 12 miles total). I’ve got my fancy socks, my layers, my snacks and water. We start at 7:00 tomorrow morning and are projected to finish around 5pm on Saturday. I’m only a little terrified. Fortunately my team is all sweet and nice (for now), and won’t mock me too much if I walk some.
Here’s where I’ll be running:
Wish me luck!
Smiley faces make the world a better place
January 31st, 2009A little ASU pride:
As reported in the New York Times, showing energy consumption on a utilities statement as it compares to one’s neighbors — accompanied by a smiley face if they are using less energy than the average person in the area — reduces energy consumption at a rate approaching that of switching out old appliances for the newfangled, energy-efficient kinds. Pretty cool, eh? Brought to you by the Arizona State Psych Department (not me at all, but I must bask in our department’s glory — also a phenomenon brought to you by these same people in the ASU psych dept, but that’s a post for another day).
Smells
January 21st, 2009You ask for a post, you get a post.
As for quality… well, we’ll see what we can scrounge up.
It’s raining out, and I’ve got my windows open to cool off the inside. Yes, to cool it off. I left the windows open today when I left for school — in the habit of warming up the home before the heat rushes out again through the cloudless night sky — and when I got home it was 74 degrees in my house. Too warm. So now my windows are open to cool it off, and a tidy little rain has been falling for about an hour. And when it rains in this desert, the air smells like creosote, a stumpy, hearty plant with tough little leaves that release a smoky earthiness when wet. And yes, sometimes I love adjectives. Stumpy, tough little adjectives that release a smoky earthiness when wet. Cut me some slack. So yeah, the point is that in my house it now smells like creosote, which smells like the desert in rain, which smells nice. The end.
I just found a bunch of photos on my camera. Let’s see what we’ve got here…
Well, here’s one from a walk through Laurelhurst Park in Portland:
Here’s one with Dylan getting ready to tell us all about.. uh… something:
And one of a barroom dance starring Zach, Amelia, and yours truly:
There.
I can’t decide…
January 5th, 2009
… if this photo is really boring or kind of awesome.
Poodle art
January 5th, 2009
Courtesy of Dylan.
Some sights
January 5th, 2009
The above is from Dylan’s and my Epic Arctic Trek ‘08.
One morning, a squirrel walked with me for a couple blocks. It would stop every so often to check me out:
And then continue to the next pole:
Until it decided it had had enough and switched to a wire dangling across the street:
Yes, the pace has been deliciously slow.
