Some jerk ran over my suitcase!
Yes, I was crossing ONE street to get from the bus stop into Penn Station to take NJ Transit, and some ginormously fat out-of-towners in a huge SUV RAN OVER MY WHEELED SUITCASE. Like, I am wheeling it behind me, and the next second it's under someone's tire.
Let's just say this was not the highlight of my holiday. However, James said the culprits looked suitably terrified when I cursed them out, so I guess that was a small win mixed in with all the lose. Thankfully, my bag was almost all clothing, which survived their squashing none the worse for it.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Merry Christmas!
And a happy 500th blog post to meeeeeeeee...
Merry Christmas to all of you. I am home in New Jersey, where the pace is a bit slower, hence my being on the internet Christmas night (there is not much else to do except bond with my Netflix subscription, though granted I did bring a rather dull book with me--Henry James's The Ambassadors, which is more of a good idea in theory).
Single best and most unexpected Christmas gift: an ice cream maker! Which we have no idea how to get back to DC. I think my dad is shipping it to us.
The weeks before Christmas were quite lively, though I guess that's to be expected--A-100 happy hours, a weekend in New York to see my long-lost (well, not lost so much as moved to the West Coast) friend Claudia, my first professional sporting event ever (a Capitals game--hockey, for those as clueless as I am)... we also saw The Black Swan the other night. Um, creepy.
But Natalie Portman was great. I am so proud of my once-upon-a-time sitting-on-the-same-airplane-and-attending-the-same-university-mate.
New York notes: Hearth was great. Xi'an Famous Foods was even better. Of course, my heart was in the bagels and whitefish salad. The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is super nice and well done and stinks of rich people's care for its fate.
I actually documented the holiday in photos for once (an assignment for Chinese class) so maybe we'll get a taste of that someday.
Merry Christmas to all of you. I am home in New Jersey, where the pace is a bit slower, hence my being on the internet Christmas night (there is not much else to do except bond with my Netflix subscription, though granted I did bring a rather dull book with me--Henry James's The Ambassadors, which is more of a good idea in theory).
Single best and most unexpected Christmas gift: an ice cream maker! Which we have no idea how to get back to DC. I think my dad is shipping it to us.
The weeks before Christmas were quite lively, though I guess that's to be expected--A-100 happy hours, a weekend in New York to see my long-lost (well, not lost so much as moved to the West Coast) friend Claudia, my first professional sporting event ever (a Capitals game--hockey, for those as clueless as I am)... we also saw The Black Swan the other night. Um, creepy.
But Natalie Portman was great. I am so proud of my once-upon-a-time sitting-on-the-same-airplane-and-attending-the-same-university-mate.
New York notes: Hearth was great. Xi'an Famous Foods was even better. Of course, my heart was in the bagels and whitefish salad. The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is super nice and well done and stinks of rich people's care for its fate.
I actually documented the holiday in photos for once (an assignment for Chinese class) so maybe we'll get a taste of that someday.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Some books and some eateries
I have been reading like a fiend lately. Once The Return of the Native picked up, it really picked up (as is the way with all of Hardy's novels, I think). I thought this was the weakest of the three of his I've read though. I can't believe Holden would steer me wrong!
Then I read a very short but very fun and then very sad book, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop. I think if I had not just read the less-witty Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, I would have appreciated it even more, but that slightly precious English lady voice gets a bit cloying. However, Fitzgerald is also a razor wit and a great champion of economy of language.
Now I've just started Xiaolu Guo's Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. This is part of the China blitz (you should see my Netflix queue! In other news, words I find really difficult to spell: queue). The novel was originally written in Chinese (and translated into English) before the author, who splits her time between London and Beijing, decided to rewrite the whole thing in English herself. It's a quick read so far and gives you some feel for modern-day Beijing--though it is not a novel where the city itself is the star, the author being much more content to let youthful angst take center-stage.
Not sure where this blitz of reading energy came from. I've certainly been doing plenty else. Mostly eating. (However, by way of not eating, the Library of Congress is totally interesting to visit--good exhibits--and has a pretty, yet uncrowded tree perfect for holiday photo opps.)
Okay, and as long as we're here, our weekend in food:
-Friday night at Kushi Izakaya, which was a bit of a disappointment. The charcoal grilled food was INCREDIBLE, and the sushi was very strong, despite it explicitly not being their focus. But the things off the robata (wood grill) were uniformly terrible. And the whole place was trying to be really stylish and of-the-moment, trying to be all things to all people, and I just didn't feel like it succeeded as much as I hoped (and expected, given the reviews).
I guess it's CRITICISM day. Sorry, restaurant.
-Burgers at Good Stuff Eatery. Those were some solid burgers and fries. Would I go all the way to Capitol Hill just for that? No. But after you work up energy feeling smart at the Library of Congress, it works.
-Dim sum at China Garden--the closest to home right in Rosslyn, and the most satisfying restaurant meal of the weekend. Yum. If you don't hold me back, I may be there every weekend. Nothing like those porky buns...
There we go, my thoughts on everything. You're welcome.
P.S. Your reward: SOOOOO GOOD.
Then I read a very short but very fun and then very sad book, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop. I think if I had not just read the less-witty Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, I would have appreciated it even more, but that slightly precious English lady voice gets a bit cloying. However, Fitzgerald is also a razor wit and a great champion of economy of language.
Now I've just started Xiaolu Guo's Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. This is part of the China blitz (you should see my Netflix queue! In other news, words I find really difficult to spell: queue). The novel was originally written in Chinese (and translated into English) before the author, who splits her time between London and Beijing, decided to rewrite the whole thing in English herself. It's a quick read so far and gives you some feel for modern-day Beijing--though it is not a novel where the city itself is the star, the author being much more content to let youthful angst take center-stage.
Not sure where this blitz of reading energy came from. I've certainly been doing plenty else. Mostly eating. (However, by way of not eating, the Library of Congress is totally interesting to visit--good exhibits--and has a pretty, yet uncrowded tree perfect for holiday photo opps.)
Okay, and as long as we're here, our weekend in food:
-Friday night at Kushi Izakaya, which was a bit of a disappointment. The charcoal grilled food was INCREDIBLE, and the sushi was very strong, despite it explicitly not being their focus. But the things off the robata (wood grill) were uniformly terrible. And the whole place was trying to be really stylish and of-the-moment, trying to be all things to all people, and I just didn't feel like it succeeded as much as I hoped (and expected, given the reviews).
I guess it's CRITICISM day. Sorry, restaurant.
-Burgers at Good Stuff Eatery. Those were some solid burgers and fries. Would I go all the way to Capitol Hill just for that? No. But after you work up energy feeling smart at the Library of Congress, it works.
-Dim sum at China Garden--the closest to home right in Rosslyn, and the most satisfying restaurant meal of the weekend. Yum. If you don't hold me back, I may be there every weekend. Nothing like those porky buns...
There we go, my thoughts on everything. You're welcome.
P.S. Your reward: SOOOOO GOOD.
Mapo doufu magic
My bloggery has been sub-par lately. I deeply apologize.
But not that much, because I do basically the same thing every day, and you don't need to be subjected to that.
But a couple weeks ago I did something out of the ordinary, and that was cook Chinese food, for realz. We had a class immersion trip to a Chinese grocery store (the seriously major Great Wall in Falls Church), which is fantastic and filled with all sorts of mysterious ingredients (plus great deals on random things like imported Italian cookies that cost three times as much at normal supermarkets).
I bought my fair share of mystery ingredients--I think the fermented black beans were the most off-putting:
But in the end, our mapo doufu (a spicy Sichuan dish with tofu and ground pork) turned out really well. I mean, I'm just going to put it out there: it was awesome. (Let's just be honest.) Soooo good. And really not hard, once you have the proper ingredients, which of course requires a trip to the Chinese grocery store. So not going to happen every day... especially with no car.
Here is the recipe we followed, from a really wonderful-sounding cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop. And the finished product, though a bit brown to appear attractive in photos, still excellent:
But not that much, because I do basically the same thing every day, and you don't need to be subjected to that.
But a couple weeks ago I did something out of the ordinary, and that was cook Chinese food, for realz. We had a class immersion trip to a Chinese grocery store (the seriously major Great Wall in Falls Church), which is fantastic and filled with all sorts of mysterious ingredients (plus great deals on random things like imported Italian cookies that cost three times as much at normal supermarkets).
I bought my fair share of mystery ingredients--I think the fermented black beans were the most off-putting:
But in the end, our mapo doufu (a spicy Sichuan dish with tofu and ground pork) turned out really well. I mean, I'm just going to put it out there: it was awesome. (Let's just be honest.) Soooo good. And really not hard, once you have the proper ingredients, which of course requires a trip to the Chinese grocery store. So not going to happen every day... especially with no car.
Here is the recipe we followed, from a really wonderful-sounding cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop. And the finished product, though a bit brown to appear attractive in photos, still excellent:
Monday, December 6, 2010
Food update, part 1
The less exciting part--tune in next time for our adventures with Chinese cooking at home.
For now, pasta with proscuitto, breadcrumbs, cherry tomatoes, and basil. Molto bene!
For now, pasta with proscuitto, breadcrumbs, cherry tomatoes, and basil. Molto bene!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Hello from somewhere off the face of the earth
Oh goodness, I have been a terrible blogger. December has been crazy. I feel like every minute of every day is scheduled, which is pretty tough to do when you only have to be somewhere five hours a day (did I mention I love being a language student?).
Lately we have been:
-in Jersey for Thanksgiving and New York after. New York! Visiting is more depressing than anything--it reminds you how much it's just not as fun as living there. And how Washington is like a dumpster. Or a junkyard. Okay, not that bad, but I get pretty down on it during a visit to New York. But we did get to spend time with family in both places and take in the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Asia Society--fun, a lot like the Nara exhibit I saw in Taipei.
-reading again! Well, not we, just me (James is mostly not reading because he made the terrible, terrible mistake of not heeding my advice and going down the path of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy--however, unlike me, I doubt he'll ever get through all three, or even just this first one). Victorian British literature--my bread and butter--to boot. I finally started Hardy's Return of the Native 12 years after Holden Caulfield recommended it to me (and I thought he was really really cool once). So far, so good. I always find reading a novel by Hardy to follow the same pattern: about three unreadably dull chapters describing the heath at the beginning; finally the plot picks up and it's a roller-coaster; then at the end you're thrown off, left broken and sobbing on the ground at the horror of the ending. Or is that just me? I cried for an entire weekend after reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles in high school.
-seeing another play--a sort of modern dance/physical theater interpretation of The Master and Margarita... hmm. Certainly different.
-and of course, studying Chinese, which yesterday meant an immersion trip to a restaurant and grocery store. I am supposed to cook a Chinese dish this weekend and document in photos, so I'll have to post about that here too.
Lately we have been:
-in Jersey for Thanksgiving and New York after. New York! Visiting is more depressing than anything--it reminds you how much it's just not as fun as living there. And how Washington is like a dumpster. Or a junkyard. Okay, not that bad, but I get pretty down on it during a visit to New York. But we did get to spend time with family in both places and take in the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Asia Society--fun, a lot like the Nara exhibit I saw in Taipei.
-reading again! Well, not we, just me (James is mostly not reading because he made the terrible, terrible mistake of not heeding my advice and going down the path of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy--however, unlike me, I doubt he'll ever get through all three, or even just this first one). Victorian British literature--my bread and butter--to boot. I finally started Hardy's Return of the Native 12 years after Holden Caulfield recommended it to me (and I thought he was really really cool once). So far, so good. I always find reading a novel by Hardy to follow the same pattern: about three unreadably dull chapters describing the heath at the beginning; finally the plot picks up and it's a roller-coaster; then at the end you're thrown off, left broken and sobbing on the ground at the horror of the ending. Or is that just me? I cried for an entire weekend after reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles in high school.
-seeing another play--a sort of modern dance/physical theater interpretation of The Master and Margarita... hmm. Certainly different.
-and of course, studying Chinese, which yesterday meant an immersion trip to a restaurant and grocery store. I am supposed to cook a Chinese dish this weekend and document in photos, so I'll have to post about that here too.
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