karina jean

the following have improved my life by roughly 10,000%:

last night I bought a fan for my kitchen window and it is amazing. usually my kitchen is a sweat house when I cook, and last night with the exhaust on it only got up to about 85 degrees and slightly humid (instead of sweat pouring down the back of my neck rain forest conditions). Honestly, Wednesday night Nick and Elly stopped by and I had my kitchen door closed and the windows were all steamed up b/c I was foolishly boiling beets and rice at the same time. I wanted to show off my can-o-worms but we could only spend maybe 2 minutes in there before we were redfaced and hot as heck!

I am a tiny bit worried about it falling out of the window while I’m at work and either killing an innocent bystander on the sidewalk below (like the superintendent’s child) or smashing the gorgeous and amazing geranium I’ve got going like gangbusters below it. Especially as I installed it upside down so I could get it into the TOP of the window (the plants need the windowsill!). And by installed, I mean: lodged it between the window and windowsill and extended the sides until it fit exactly into the window. there are no brackets or such holding it in place. I bought the one that was almost 2x as much $ as the cheapest version (and still, it was just $30) because it’s got an air filter/bug screen built in and it has a very fancy temperature gauge and a self on/off so I can make it come on automatically if the kitchen gets up to 90 degrees (not uncommon, sadly).

the fan is responsible for about 9,975% of the improvement. the other 25% is due to:

this amazing beet salad I made night before last:

beets! granny smith apples! balsamic vinegar! drunken goat cheese! a touch of olive oil! I had a cousin of it at aurora and jesse’s house and LOVED the idea. it’s amazing.

and look who showed up at my office today: WORMS!

which means: yay! can-o-worms photos for you all next week!

because I firmly believe that chiropractors (like any other doctor) can swing wildly between quack and miracle worker, I tried so hard to find one who was recommended. sadly, my insurance might be kind of lame, because every single recommended chiro is not included on my plan.

So I took a leap of faith and picked the nearest one off of the insurance webpage and am going today at 3PM to get fixed up. I told the story about falling off of the toilet to the receptionist and she said there was another patient who had the same problem! I guess it’s more common a situation than I had thought. even if it is a pedestrian occurance, it is still HILARIOUS. so silly. (y’all know, there was a period of, like, 1 hour when I thought about not telling anyone what had happened re: the toilet. but it is TOO FUNNY not to tell everyone I meet.)

after my “spinal adjustment” I’m going to head straight up to get my veggies for the csa and then will return home and attempt to get some work done to make up for my wild afternoon. oh, it’s so great to be a consultant: the only white collar professional that has to fill out a time sheet weekly. snort.

so, after almost exactly a month of thinking and sad and clarity and sad and etc., I’m back. I wasn’t sure what to do with this space – while I’ve always had pretty clear boundaries as to what content I would post, I have never felt inhibited like I did this last month. But, well. Life goes on, and it has been.

Besides, this wednesday is my first CSA pickup. I sure as heck can’t ignore that! I even though my farmer has a blog now, I don’t want to stop documenting the vegetables and what I do with them. and with their remains…

Dear Internets,

So, I’ve been not-posting on purpose. You might like to know, perhaps, that matt and I have broken up. For the last two weeks I’ve been getting back onto my feet and I’m doing ok, but am, of course, very very very sad. Anyway, radio silence, for now.

Signed,

Me.

call me crazy, but I when I get a new cell phone I am seriously leaning towards the pink moto razr v3.

it is SO FLASH. I saw a girl on the PATH train with it and she was dressed entirely in pink and had a tiny little dog in a designer pink carrier bag and she didn’t look ridiculous at all. I loved it! sure, the phone comes in black and silver, and sure, I’ll probably have this new phone for several years (leading to the inevitable question: do I want a pink phone when I’m 33?), but it is so great. Want.

1. The wedding I went to was so pretty and all of the marvelous photos are here. we all had such a great time and improvized couples weekend with mariss and kelly was more than wonderful.

here are the handsome bride and gorgeous groom

I love this photo of kelly and I:

and this pic of the giant dead fish that was below our hotel room:

here’s a lovely pic of mariss and kelly

and I LOVE this winky photo of me.

2. I spent 3 days in our “philly office” and was so busy there! phew! I am also so stressed about the work load I have now. I have been tagged to work on a very large, high profile, lump sum, 10 year project in a position that is a titch better than my current position. if only it came with more vacation time!

3. very special bonus: new photo project: INSIGHT VS HUMMER!

my car is SO TINY. this is an H2, in case you were wondering.

4. last and certainly not least, and even more very special bonus: yay to sweet joy who has hatched! yay! welcome, little (BIG) benjamin!

a long time ago, I was tagged for the six things meme by stacey. Of course, I think SHE waited for a while to do the meme, so it’s no big deal that I’m a total meme slacker. Plus, she’s on a big bike trip so she won’t know I’ve even updated for 2 weeks!
so: SIX THINGS MEME, wherein I reveal six “unusual or little known” things about myself:

1. Believe it or not, I’m really shy. I think this is a cop-out thing to reveal because I am so used to thinking of myself as shy, but I guess it’s not. so here are my words of wisdom for shy people who want to stop being shy and to interact with other human beans like you are not worried about them or yourself or what people think or how they’ll react or how they’re perceiving you: Fake it ’till you MAKE IT. seriously! it worked for me.
2. Even though I’m an engineer I’m not that great at math. I’m decent at it, and I am awfully stubborn about doing it and getting it done, but I always score much higher on verbal standardized tests than I do on the maths.
3. This is all rumor, but although we lived a comfortable and typical paycheck-to-paycheck middle class existance when I was in elementary school, apparently, my mom thought we were poor, or maybe thought we were about to become poor b/c of all the regional layoffs of engineers, and didn’t feed us very much meat. we ate a lot of beans and rice and other veggies. this isn’t a bad thing! my work girlfriend majdah’ from palestine is super impressed that I am so well versed in hummus and falafel and tabouleh (“why on earth do you know about tabouleh!? your mother cooked it for you? and she’s AMERICAN?”), and also, I don’t feel like I need to eat meat with every meal, or even every day. Which is super helpful when it’s CSA time. (we also ate a lot of raw cabbage when I was a kid, which dad says was to keep us from catching the scurvy, and mom says was b/c dad didn’t like to eat any other veggies so she fed us all that one. and when I say raw, I don’t mean in a slaw. I mean a 1/4 or an 1/8 of a cabbage, smack dab on your plate.) [[mom — feel free to add or dispute in the comments!]]
4. I love to sing the national anthem. I sang it at my graduation and again at the new president of my college’s inauguration. so, at my wee small university, apparently if you are rumored to have taken voice lessons you are approached by the head of graduation ceremonies (also head of student athletics, which were strictly on a club or intramural basis) to sing, and then you don’t have to do anything else until rehersal when you stand in a special place and then 30 minutes before the ceremony when you get to practice with the brass ensemble. Aren’t they lucky, then, that I actually am pretty good at singing the national anthem?
5. I get pretty obsessive about new hobbies. I was obsessive about persephone books, I was obsessive about knitting, I was obsessive about spinning (though I haven’t had a chance to allow myself to open my spinning wheel yet), I get obsessive about sewing the perfect outfit days before I ought to have it to wear, and I get obsessive about my CSA veggies. I’m starting to worry about where I’m going to go with this Mary Kay thing: into obsession, or safely into casual thing I do sometime?
6. and lastly: I have a stepbrother! I have 2 stepsisters! and a brother! I know that a lot of my friends are shocked when they find out that I have a stepbrother b/c I usually talk about my brother-brother ad nauseum, and my stepbro lives on the left coast and I don’t see him more than every year or two. we’re friendly, but we just don’t know each other at all.

this weekend was beautiful.

firstly, three of my lovely friends got married to three very lucky men: libby, kayte, and celeste all hitched up on friday! how splendid!

I got to go to yoga on saturday for the 2nd time in the week. I usually try to go 1x a week but on those occasions I can make 2x it’s really fantasticly amazing. and then I puttered around the house. I finished reading mary kay’s autobiography, wherein I learned that while I get points for always wearing a skirt, I lose them for being so quick to tell people how old I am. Sigh. I think if I start wearing lipstick more frequently I’ll come out ahead on the “being a lady” scale.

Then sat. night was a fantastic wedding party in brooklyn, including karaoke and also my first train trip in and out of the city from my home. I usually punk out and stop in jersey city to avoid the scheduled NJTransit last train situation, but it went very well. and karaoke! awesome!

sunday I slept in, did 3 loads of laundry, and meet Kathleen for lunch in Montclair. we explored the town a little and ate, and then on our way to ice cream dessert got lost in verona and sidetracked by PADDLEBOATS!

the park in verona is awfully pretty, and also, so are kathleen and I. hee!

kathleen and I agree that getting lost and finding paddleboats (and more so, stopping and paddleboating) probaby indicates that we may be some of the Best Aunts Ever. Now, the next time we do this kind of thing we need to make it a point to have our nieces and/or nephews with us.
after all that fun, we finally found the ice cream and had a surprise guest appearance from the mister and his coworker on their way home from party weekend in montreal. and then I went home, finished up my homemaking, and watched 1940s house on dvd. not too shabby, really. like I said, BRILLIANT.