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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).

Happy belated birthdays, hotsauce and stevieg!

SO GORGEOUS OUT ALL WEEKEND. So glad to spend this time out in the sunshine with people I love. :)

- aforementioned shindig to celebrate david_grana defending his dissertation

- hosting a barbecue Friday night! Learning *how to* actually go about barbecuing, thanks to the visiting rustnroses. ;) jennifer and david_grana brought over Brawl; stevieg and elyssa joined up in time for ice cream at Christina's. :)

- hyounpark wakes me up Saturday morning with, "It's absolutely gorgeous out, let's go have lunch at Judie's!" Judie's is out in Western Mass. We have to be back in Allston for Seder at 5:30 pm. We drive out anyway. Viva Pioneer Valley Food Runs ;)

- richenza has reset the bar for Seder food rather high. *g*

- Her friend T. makes really freakin' funny faces; when I have resolved camera-computer issues, I may share some of those expressions. ;)
- Not enough yarmulkes, so the two rabbis' sons in the room declared the roof a blessed head-covering for all of us. *ggl*
- We failed to MAAAAAAA at fractalspackle this year during Had Gadya. :(
- craftattack_rss made horseradish jelly, which was actually pretty damned good. I'd eat it on all other nights.
- The Manischewitz shots *bounced*. Next year, we'll go one better - make them in Star-of-David cookie cutter molds, so we'll have properly Jewish Jello Jigglers for Pesach Time.
- sandboxdiva was the only newbie this year and thus the only one required to eat gefilte fish, though amusingly enough, said fish is popular enough that we actually didn't have enough. Buh?
- No, you can't have Peanut Butter Pesach Time if you're Ashkenazi and observant. ;)

- Brunch at Z Square Sunday morning before mrieser went back home to DC. Making horrible duck puns on a "Make Way For Ducklings" postcard being sent out to an absent friend.

- Bestowing cider donuts from Atkins on rustnroses, knowing she had a six hour drive to be endured.

- Puttering around Cambridgeport yesterday afternoon - finally dropped that book off at jennifer's that I've been meaning to for awhile; visited with jpallan and acerbic and camieal for awhile and had girly time that resulted with me learning how to put my hair up in a French twist.

- Second Seder at Craigie Street Bistrot last night. YUM. When local asparagus comes in, I am so duplicating the asparagus dish I had last night; I'll just need to learn how to make gribenes. Which tasted rather like chicharones (fried pork skin, about as nonkosher as you can get!) to me. *ggl* (noghri and other local hungry Jews, they are offering a vegetarian version as well - don't know if they've still got spaces open for tomorrow, the other night they're doing this, but if you've got the time, it's well worth it. :) )

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I've also gotten to catch up with many others this weekend via the amazing device known as a cellular telephone. Dear self, stop being neurotic about thinking you're interrupting your friends' lives and being intrusive when you want to call. And also worrying about not being a conversationalist. Srsly.

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7/2/23: It is so delightfully fun reading between the lines here, with the secret hyounpark and I would be holding onto for a few more days. Mostly at my request, because there were people I definitely wanted to tell in person, or at least on the phone, before going public. But "let's go to Amherst for the day!" "Um, we have to be back for Seder and Chris found Passover Coke in Brookline so I was about to go meet him ..." Ha!

And then glowing, glowing, beaming at each other, sitting through most of the seder with the new sparkly on my finger waiting to see who would notice first if I was subtle enough. (My memory says Steve was the first to notice, quirking an eyebrow and wistfully smiling at me, but Micha was the one who, basically as soon as we were two cups in and dinner had been served, went, "Do you possibly have some news to share?" :D Though it's been long enough my memory might be mistaken!) Seeing more friends at Z Square Sunday morning who hadn't been able to make it to the seder the night before; squealing with them. More girly squee with the spr0tties; Heather shrieking as I ostentatiously handed her a bag of cider donuts with my left hand and she noticed the new adornment.

It was a good weekend. :)

I'm in love.

Well, I mean, I'm in love with hyounpark, yes, we established that months ago :) but I've found perfection in a used bookstore on the country roads of western Massachusetts. With comfy chairs and sofas to curl up in, free wireless, and a homestyle cafe attached; a river bubbling up just down the hill from it. The owner had both doors open to let the mild spring breeze sweep through yesterday, and it felt wonderful and calming.

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When we decided to go to Amherst this weekend, he asked if we should go out Friday and stay overnight. I replied, "Nah, that'd be overkill; let's just go out Saturday. Besides, we've got Restaurant Week reservations."

Which we did, at Brasserie Jo. Service was a little uneven, and the prix fixe didn't look that exciting to me, so I went back to the regular menu and ordered garlic-butter escargots. Ladies and gentlemen, they have got that one DOWN. The sauce was so incredibly tasty that I kept dipping my bread into the leftovers. The steak tartare was good, though slightly odd - they'd shaped it into the form of a hamburger patty, and the pommes frites came along American-style in one of those old-style metal milkshake containers. And then île flotante for dessert, an airy cloud of sweetness that I have yet to be able to duplicate at home (particularly at that scale).

And then the next day, we had Bub's (which Hyoun had never been to!) and Antonio's; walked around campus and marveled at the lack of triples for frosh and how shiny-new Stearns and James looked and where the hell did the wood paneling in the South and North libraries go and how they got rid of the Fishbowl and THEY'RE PUTTING FREAKIN' ELEVATORS into Pratt and Morrow.

Nightcaps at Black Sheep (the cream puff of doom for him, a demure cinnamon-white chocolate chip cookie for me) and Judie's (we have popovers!), where of course I ran into Rikita and Deby; and then it was time to go. Winding our way down 9 to 202 to 181 to 20 to 32 to the Mass Pike (and until you hit the pike, all of those routes are 2-lane curves that we can navigate practically by feel now) to 95 to 9 again, past oishii's and then home.

And we still missed Bueno and DP Dough's and not even enough room to stick in tea rolls from Fresh Side or AmChi (which I still regard with a great deal of suspicion - if you're sticking the town name in something, that's automatically suspect to me - but apparently, AmChi gets their veggies from the same farmer I do in season, so maybe it's not so scary) and Pasta e Basta and the Crazy Noodle place that replaced Nancy Jane's and the new breakfast cafe Lone Wolf and there's even an AFRICAN restaurant there now.

I love Pioneer Valley Food Runs. :)