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Gorgeous sunset tonight. #30daysofbiking #everydayonabike

I didn't think I was going to San Francisco last week after all because of moving and the hurricane. But MAGIC HAPPENED, and thanks to the talents and persistence of the hyounpark travel agency and our Bluepasses, my flight got booked Tuesday night, and 24 hours later I was ON A PLANE.

First stop: Udupi Palace for pineapple uttapam with high school friend Karen, my brother, and his college friend Ian.



We're talking cafeteria-size trays here. Enough that we all walked out with leftovers, and then a homeless guy asked us for spare change; we asked him if he was hungry, and he walked away with at least a day's worth of food for himself.

( Thursday, Bay Area: wherein I eat like a hobbit; what the ocean tastes like; a wide-eyed baby who likes watermelon sorbet. Korean barbecue. Sweets up the wazoo. )

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( Friday, San Francisco: the foodpocalypse continues. )

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( Repacked Saturday, and then skipped down to DC Sunday morning. Rockets, cupcakes, the meaty meat platter, the best burger Hyoun has ever had, and Vermont sugar on snow. )

So yeah, that's how I spent four days in a row in airports. ;) Thanks, Bluepass! Now to figure out where we're going this weekend ... we'd originally thought Pittsburgh, but that may get pushed back to next weekend, and we may do Chicago instead. We'll see!

0. People are talking about NaNoWriMo; my last 3 months I haven't been able to write anything longer than a tweet. What's up with that?

1. HI HI OMG I MISSED YOU ALL SO MUCH HOW WERE YOUR SUMMERS?

( got married, moved (back) to Cambridge, the rest of my life since then )

Okay, that's enough of that. Basically, if you're curious about the last three months of my life, my Twitter is probably the best place to find out. Or my Facebook, but I feel like most of us are already friended there (and if not and you'd like to be, ping me in comments :) )

In the meantime, it's supposed to get into the 60s today, so I will probably head down to Mem Drive for a bike ride through the foliage, though unpacking and laundering the winter clothes will also be a priority.



hyounpark and I wandered out to Homecoming yesterday. Didn't get a lot of the food we'd normally eat on a Pioneer Valley Food Run, but we did snag cider donuts from Atkins Farm and pizza from Antonio's. We don't really go for the football; I go more for the people and the music, and yesterday was full of that.

- gave advice to a few earnest and overwhelmed '13s (class of '13, wtf, when did we get so old?!)
- hung out with an adorable 19-month-old for dinner (babies grow crazy fast, and love things that let them make a mess, I'm just sayin':



- shortened but high-energy Choral Society concert was one of the best I've been to in years. I recognized at least one song from each group (and was bouncing in my seat mouthing along to it, I'm looking at you, Izatate Ikusabitoyo Glee Club boys' marching song), throwing candy at the student conductor is always fun, and we got to show off our bling to the person whose fault it is we even met in the first place (Mallorie, our beloved choral director; steered me towards the small-group Madrigals singers my junior year, where I actually met hyounpark).

Re dinner at Sunset with the visiting burrito19 this Wednesday:

hyounpark: So, we're not meeting at the Oak Room? Or Oishii?
ursamajor: Or Grill 23! Or O Ya!
ursamajor: Should I have said, "Oh yeah, O Ya!"?
hyounpark: Oy a.

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We made twenty-eight dozen hamantaschen today, for values of we equalling me, noghri and Cris, fes42, bryghtrose, the LJ-less-as-far-as-I-know Jen, richenza and Jack. Baby Nathan mostly yawned and burbled through the proceedings, but he is only about five weeks old. (I believe he slept through any shaking of the grogger that occurred, which is kind of amazing.)

This means I have a container full of COOKIES sitting on my counter in the following flavors: apricot, blueberry, cherry, raspberry, strawberry, ginger, and various combos of Nutella and peanut butter. Nom.

noghri's family recipe, for posterity ( (rewritten to use weights for the dries) )

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Mother and future mother-in-law in town this weekend. Sense of "HURRY UP AND GET MARRIED ALREADY" raised. Feel surprisingly calm and optimistic because there are pretty dresses that look awesome on me in my future.

Also, amount of good food consumed: more than satisfactory. ;) Thai food both Friday night and again tonight (Zoe's moved across the street, and Pho 'n Rice that opened up in its place is pretty darned good! Tangerine shrimp and excellent pad see yew), Om for Saturday lunch (lamb sammich, hooray!).

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Bikebikebikebikebike. To Harvard and back, to jpallan's and back, to the Porter Ex and back, to noghri's and back, pedaling past the "HO FOODS" sign on Putnam, dodging winter potholes everywhere, coat buttoned up just so to counter early spring breezes, bell ringing, heart pounding, clear skies, full tires, can't lose.

Thursday:

"Never forget," they say, and every year, the voices shouting that catchphrase get more and more shrill, as if we could forget what we saw, and who we worried for.

Seven years and one day ago, she wrote about seeing a rainbow from her office window near the top of the World Trade Center. Seven years ago, it was so bright out it hurt my eyes, and I couldn't believe that such horrible things could be happening on such a beautiful day.

I take a quick ride down to the river; it's grey and cool, and it helps.

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Tuesday

It rained for most of our trip to Vancouver last month, yet I spent three days out of four there riding around town on a rented bicycle. Pedaling around Stanley Park, hefting my bike onto the miniferry, getting lost in Upper Kits, losing track of time and having to pedal the fastest I've ever gone in order to get the bike back before the shop closed. Me, flying up the seawall, a steady drizzle trickling its way down my neck, joyful.

( Turns out this was good prep for my inaugural bike ride across the river into Boston proper. )

Friday

I want more of my days to be this full of magical discovery.

Biking up the Minuteman Trail to pick up a bridal shower present for melissaagray in Arlington Heights, my longest ride to date. Splashing through puddles, grateful for my fenders, even if I am thinking of spray-painting them to coordinate with my shiny blue thing. (Horrified at the man I followed from Park Ave down to Arlington Center; I now understand exactly what kind of wetness pattern bike fenders prevent on your clothing, and why it looks especially gross on a mustard-yellow shirt.)

Coasting down through Davis Square, dismounting to make the turn on Elm Street towards home, when I look up at the Somerville Theatre marquee and notice that ( Dar Williams and Shawn Mullins are playing that night. )

Saturday

Pedaling as fast as I can down the Mem Drive bike path towards Watertown. Quickchange into dress too delicate for that ride, then another hour in the car with fes42 out to the Wistah suburbs. Sitting in melissaagray's sister's living room, looking around at everyone who's come to fête her, realizing I've known most of these people for five years or more now. Biking back, a serendipitous turn down Mount Auburn results in me following my nose and the tempting scent of meat to Harvard Books and Bartley's; three used Tamora Pierce books, a chocolate egg cream, and a Sarah Palin (grilled onions and cheese sauce; sadly, not a mooseburger) make the trip home with me.

I've done three long rides this week, every one of them an adventure. Tonight, I'll bike down to BU for class again, and hopefully a quick dinner afterwards with a friend. Sunday, I'll go 10 miles at Hub on Wheels (any other locals wanna bike on Storrow Drive with me? and eat Redbones afterwards? :D ).

This is what life on two wheels is like.

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(I need a good biking icon. Where should I look?)

My love affair with my bike continues. Yesterday evening, I went up the Minuteman Trail to Arlington Center, and my world grew again a little. A cygnet, grooming its stubs of future wings; its parents nearby, majestic, wary. One man on a pyramidal frame with small wheels, upright, shifting side-to-side and propelling himself somehow forward. Watching the sun set over Spy Pond, then a model airplane looping over Thorndike Field in the last pinks and deep blues of dusklight.

Of course, there was also the panicked part where my chain came off the front derailleur(?) in the middle of a wide intersection - and the bike store at that intersection had closed half an hour earlier. But I eventually fixed it all by myself :) then decided I still wanted to keep going, so I stopped by noghri's to refill my water bottle and degrease my hands with real soap. ;P

( posted elsejournal to a friend having trouble with a boy and his promises to change, aka, how I may be slowly crafting an identity as a cyclist and therefore an athlete, what? )

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( unpopular boom de yada opinion, cf nostalgia and summer )

Happy birthday, mister_skip!

( golden compass memery )

In other news, that Supernatural Brownies recipe that was in the Times a few weeks ago has been getting test-kitchen levels of practice chez moi, between baking for choir and friends under the weather, and it's almost to the point where I've got it memorized. It's incredibly simple, but so moist and fluffy it's worth the extra 15% effort above and beyond box-brownies. And it scales very easily, too; I've quartered the recipe for a personal pan-size one and the only weirdness was that the baking time was still almost exactly the same, wtf. (remark, when you get a chance, how do I add a compact version of this to Gal's recipes? *G*)

( cut for food pr0n )

Things I never imagined doing that I in fact did last night: helping to teach noghri's mom how to play Wii Tennis. She had trouble with serves, but got a couple of good rallies going against Steve, who was playing with his non-dominant hand. He's pretty banged-up from the accident, but it could've been a lot worse, and at least both his parents were *already* coming to visit for the weekend; they just pushed their tickets earlier.

happy birthday, kelbelle and bubba!

i like this feeling i have of living in a neighborhood ever since i moved back to somerville. i guess that's not precisely the right word that i'm looking for, since it's a very different feel from when i lived in the fenway, which was quite a character. there, you had the awesome little restaurants on peterborough, a little bigbox mall close by with a movie theatre and an awesome art supply store, fenway park with all the cheers and jeers inherent to living four blocks away from america's most revered ballpark, and walking distance to back bay which meant many evenings rather than deal with fenway traffic on the bus or an overheated D train, i'd simply walk home from there.

it's not that i don't have amenities nearby in camberville - porter square a ten minute walk away, harvard square under twenty, all the restaurants of mass ave close by, the fifteen (fifteen!) independent bookstores within spitting distance, a supermarket three doors down, a pie shop four doors down, and kitty corner from some of the best deli sammiches and burgers in the area. but yesterday afternoon, i walked down to jen civ's for a barbecue. melissaagray walked; douglaslain walked; fes42 and stranger78 walked. (well, okay, from harvard square; i can't blame them for not wanting to walk from watertown!) and noghri commented to me, "i didn't realize how close everyone is once i hop on my bike." later that evening, hyounpark and i went down to the ljless jimmy's and ended up in a long game of puerto rico; it was almost 1 am when we left! but it was warm enough that i thought about walking home, though the timing just wasn't right.

it's a pretty miraculous concept to one who grew up where her nearest friends were at least a fifteen minute drive away. honestly, i think that was one of the things i loved best about boarding school and then college - people were suddenly so easily accessible.

i'm glad we have TV night every couple of weeks. we're geeks, so we trend towards things like mythbusters and good eats, though studio 60 is sure to feature prominently come next fall. but it's also an easy time for us to meander in and hang out with each other; catch up on each others' lives.

separately, both noghri and jimmy commented to me that not enough game nights happen, and i miss them too. so there should be one soonish, i say. locals, do you enjoy games like settlers, carcassonne, and puerto rico? are you a card shark in poker, or do you kick peoples' asses in cribbage or canasta? or are you more apples to apples? i know a fair number of you go to trivia nights at the local bars; would you be interested in a game night?