Food Hangover

Yesterday I woke up with a food hangover.  You know the feeling--it always comes after a day of eating way too much, but you don't really mind since you had so much fun doing it. On Saturday, a good friend from college came to visit and a group of us wound up on an all-day food quest. We kind of made up our own Fairfield county food crawl, and honestly, it was pretty great.

It all started at Dinosaur BBQ in Stamford, which is right by the newish Fairway Supermarket (according to the sign, it's the most 'unique grocery store,' whatever that means).  I'm usually a grilled chicken kind of girl, and I tend to stay away from beef and pork, but my brisket sandwich was incredible. The sides were delicious too; I mean, how can you trust a barbecue restaurant unless it has really great macaroni and cheese? In case you can't tell, I'd be willing to do one of those weird trust falls with Dinosaur BBQ at this point because their macaroni and cheese was that good.

The weather was supposed to be horrendous but it turned out to be a beautiful, mild day, which totally made the local meteorologists look like fibbers.  We headed over to the new beer garden at Harbor Point and each had a few drinks. I forgot how wonderful it is to sit with friends on a Saturday afternoon with some beer. The beer garden itself is actually an awesome place to visit on a warm afternoon and we all enjoyed the selection; based on the crowds coming in when we were leaving though, it's probably not the kind of place I'd want to spend my Saturday night. Dear Lord, I'm apparently an old lady. Also, I have never seen so many pastel polo shirts and shorts in one place. Most of the guys looked like giant Easter M&Ms.

Afterward, we headed back north to Valencia Luncheria for arepas and empanadas. We ate outside in front of the restaurant at a picnic table along the sidewalk. I seriously loved my chipotle pork empanada. My friend had been jonesing to try the place since he'd seen it on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and he seemed pretty happy with his arepa too.  And I think the waitress who kept calling customers "lover" instead of "love" really made the trip worthwhile.

On the ride home, we stopped at the Shake Shack in Westport. Why not, right?

It should be easier for you to understand my food hangover now. I can't believe I didn't slip into an actual coma.  Way too much food, but the company couldn't have been better.  Aren't impromptu days the best? xo

Touring the Town

 
On Saturday, I met with a friend from college who is now back in Connecticut for a PhD program.  He'd never seen New Haven so we spent the day walking around the city as I did my best not to sound like a tour guide. 

I've worked in downtown New Haven for over seven years but I almost never walk around the Yale campus anymore.  When I first started my job, I used to take walks during my lunch hour but found that I loved reading in the courtyards so much that I could barely get myself back to the office for an afternoon of work.  This weekend, the weather was just perfect.  It was almost like we were undergraduates again, blending in with the groups on the sidewalks, talking about television and museums.  It was the kind of easy day that made my friend and I declare that we want to be professional college students and just live on a campus forever.

For me, the best thing about working on a college campus is that things are always happening.  The lectures and speakers and concerts are open to the public and if you really want to take advantage, you can attend an event every night and learn something new daily.  I loved being in school and attending classes.  I even loved writing papers, at least most of the time, and in a way, I think that being a student is the only thing at which I ever really excelled.  But if I can't perpetually be enrolled in graduate programs, working at a university is certainly an acceptable compromise, especially one with so much history. xo



Photo of Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University

Turning Thirty: Re-Watching Felicity

I'm turning thirty years old on July 6th so for the next five weeks, I'm embracing life and trying to do at least one new and/or enjoyable and/or spectacular thing per day. Click here for more Turning Thirty posts.




There have only been a few television shows over the years that have really struck a chord with me.  No show has more closely reflected my life than Felicity, the Keri Russell-led drama about a girl from California starting college in New York City that ran from 1999 through 2003.  Felicity coincided with my own college years almost perfectly, and I was hooked after the first episode.  I saw so much of myself in this leading fictional character, this young woman who was scared but brave, smart but not always the best decision-maker.  Her hair was curly and frizzy like mine; she had been shy and kind of lonely throughout high school like me.  But most importantly, she was living the life that I wanted for myself in New York City.

I didn't wind up going to New York University like I had dreamed, but I still had a poignant college experience.  Coincidentally, I was pre-med like Felicity but by sophomore year, I had dropped that and really fell in love with fiction and English literature.  I felt myself growing and changing almost daily during those years, but every week without fail, my roommate and I sat down to watch Felicity together.  When the finale aired,  I was sad but hopeful. I had so many expectations for my college years, and so many for my future, and I was excited for what was to come.

I started rewatching Felicity during my lunch hours last fall.  It took me much longer than I thought it would to finish the series but I wound up savoring each episode. This time around, I cried when Felicity graduated from college. I knew the emptiness she felt when she said goodbye to all of her friends and headed back to California. And I finally understood why she wound up with Ben in the end (I was a staunch Noel supporter for years). 

I'm grateful for the extra time with Felicity though.  It reminded me of how far I've come in the past decade, even if it doesn't always feel like that.  And if it was up to me, I still would have picked Noel. xo

White Walls No More

Growing up, my room was plastered with posters.  Any picture or card that I liked was attached to the wall with some kind of tape, and it basically stayed there until I moved out after college.  My dorm room walls in college were covered too.  The Muppet posters and certificates from elementary school were replaced by postcards and author quotes.  Since I've always decorated in some way, it's weird to think that the apartment that I just moved from, the one I lived in for four years, had nothing on the walls.

At first, I was too busy.  I wasn't able to take time off from work when I moved initially so I wound up unpacking at night and on weekends.  I put a few things aside that needed frames before they could be hung, but I never got around to buying any.  Then, for some irrational reason, I was worried about putting holes in the walls and getting charged for it by the landlord.  And now, I'm in a new place, an adult apartment, and I plan to actually follow through this time.

I've been collecting postcards for years, back to when I was eight or nine years old and bought a few in a hippie/bead store in Brattleboro, Vermont one weekend (yay, Beadniks!).  I have this idea of creating awesome collages with the mostly black-and-white postcards, along with framing some pictures of my family and Anthony.  And I have some photos from past vacations that might look nice if they were enlarged.  The goal is to make sure that people know that Anthony and I live in this place, and to make sure it reflects our personalities and the things we love at least a little bit.

I've had my eye on these Paris pictures for a long time.  I love Nichole Robertson's blog, Little Brown Pen, and her posts are always so wonderful, whether about France, traveling, her family or cheese (one of my favorite topics!).  Her photos focus on the little things that I love, the details not everyone notices but that add character and make a place special, like chairs, bicycles, sidewalks, coffee cups.  Now that her shop has these color collections in postcard-size, I think it's time to go ahead and buy them for our new home.  They remind me of the three days I spent in Paris and how, even though it was snowing and freezing, everything I saw was beautiful.  If you have time, check out Nichole's blog--it'll truly make you want to visit Paris.

 
Images of Color Postcard Collection from Little Brown Pen

Dreams of Far-Away Places

It's almost May but there have been very few warm, spring days so far.  The last two weeks have been foggy and misty, and I'm still wearing my winter coat more often than not.  Days like this make me think of all of the other places I would love to be (at the top of my list right now is San Diego) but after reading 36 Hours in Amsterdam, which appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of how wonderful Holland is and how magnificient it would be to see the tulip fields in bloom. 

About seven years ago, I was in Amsterdam for less than two days, on the last leg of a 10-day European tour that I booked the winter after I graduated from college.  Even though I went with a group, I was essentially alone among kind strangers.  In Paris, I roamed the Louvre for hours by myself; in London, I walked through parks and neighborhoods away from the Buckingham Palace crowds.  It was February, and England and France had been quite cold but once in Amsterdam, a winter storm hit. The trains were delayed, there were no brave souls riding bicycles on the streets, and no one in my tour group wanted to leave the hotel because it was too cold.  I ventured out myself and waited for over an hour for the train, then trekked to the Anne Frank House, where there was still a line around the block for admission (so worth the wait, obviously).  Afterward, I bought some souvenirs for my family at a shopping complex and just happened to walk into a winter festival of some sort.  There were food vendors and merry-go-rounds, and with everything covered in snow, it was absolutely beautiful. 

There is so much more I wanted to see in this city, like blooming flowers and museums, and after reading this, I just added more to my to-see list.  Maybe a spring trip to Europe for Anthony and I will be possible in a few years. Have you ever been to a place and felt like you missed some major attractions? Where would you love to revisit?


Photo of Van Gogh Museum courtesy of Iamsterdam, official tourism site

Happy Earth Day!

 (Photo from From Me to You)

 
Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and with today's weather in the Northeast, it feels like the Earth sending us a treat.  There's a slight breeze and the sun is warm but the air is crisp, my favorite kind of weather.  I'm using today to think about what I can do to reduce my footprint in the world, like remembering that I put cloth bags in my car for when I go grocery shopping and actually taking them into the store with me.  There are lots of small things that we can all do to make a difference and I need to start being more conscious of that. 

My favorite Earth Day memory is from my junior year in college.  One of my good friends on campus was president of the student club SEA (Student Environmental Association) and I somehow got roped into being the secretary that year.  We really wanted to do some fun activities and the club members (who were basically a bunch of our friends) were on board.  In the fall, we collected bottles and cans from the townhouses where senior parties were thrown--by Sunday mornings, there were hundreds of cans from the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night parties.  I also arranged for the head zookeeper from the Beardsley Zoo to come and speak in February. He brought many animals and we had a pretty decent turnout.  But for Earth Day, we thought that it would be a great idea to sell plants in the campus center to students, faculty and staff.

The big problem with this was that we didn't have any money to buy the plants in the first place.  I had been working on some other fundraiser projects and I knew that companies, large and small, were usually willing to donate to a good cause.  I called the local Home Depot store and the manager promised us 200 plants as long as we could pick them up.  The plants were in small, spongy planters, like the ones that are sold at elementary school plant sales and were all different colors.  I didn't have a car yet (it took me another 6 months to save up for one) so I had to borrow a friend's Pontiac to load up the plants, get them to the campus center, bring them in, arrange them on the table and make sure there was at least one SEA member there at all times to sell them for 50 cents each from noon to 4:00pm. 

The event was extremely successful--we sold every plant and people kept coming by while we were cleaning up asking for more.  We donated the money and for a few days, felt really good about our contributions.  I remember how stressful it was to get everything ready in time and still go to class, do homework, go to my job and go to meetings for other organizations I was in.  It seems so silly now but we all were thrilled when Home Depot offered all of those plants for free.  Thinking back on it makes me smile and wish I had window-boxes to plant some cheerful flowers of my own.