the world spins madly on

we had a lovely weekend in pennsylvania. the sun was shining and the sky was blue and the weather was warm and i was so busy enjoying my bike ride and eating homemade ice cream on a mennonite farm and being fascinated by the amish version of a hay baler that i did not take a single photograph. kellee did though, so here is a little proof.

we also took in the millersville parade, which seems to celebrate nothing in particular. but any parade with adorable kids wearing sequins and giant cows plus a hobo band and some roller derby girls is a winner in my book.

and we ate dinner saturday night at a chocolate cafe. if you are wondering whether chocolate-balsamic vinaigrette is delicious, the answer is yes. if you are wondering whether EH and i have a new cooking rule-- if it doesn't have chocolate in it, we won't eat it-- the answer is also yes.

after such a grand weekend away, this week has unfolded mostly uneventfully. i didn't have to work on monday (the church is true!) so i did 900 loads of laundry, ran some errands (how come you can never leave target having spent less than $60?), got my nails done and went to a movie by myself in the middle of the day. if i am ever so blessed as to be a lady of (even part-time) leisure, i will spend every afternoon at the movies, i think. i saw "the town." it was not as good as i wanted it to be.

oh, and i baked an apple pie for family night. it was delicious.

also for family night, we took a tour of the houses in our neighborhood decked out for halloween, but i feel as though that deserves a post of its own, so that is all i will say on the subject for now.

yesterday i helped ABK arrange his new apartment. did you know ABK moved to d.c.? downside: no more brooklyn brunches. upside: we could have brunch together every day if we wanted to! i have known ABK for seven years and this is the first time we have lived in the same city. i think it is 100 percent good news.

and today i learned how to hem a pair of pants and fix a leaky faucet. plus i caught up on some "30 rock." so i would say things are going pretty well around here.

how are you?

bye-atus

hello, children.

it has been crazy training week at work, which means hella long hours and not much time left over for blogging. or anything else really. and in just a few minutes i am off to pennsylvania for a weekend bike ride through amish country.

but then i will be back, refreshed, and ready to entertain you with all the fascinating details of my life.

until then, my sweets. have a happy weekend.

slow pony home

this short week has felt like the longest week ever, which seems like a mean joke. but, it is almost over (thank.goodness) and exploding heads and sleep deprivation aside, here are some things that are making me really, really happy.

1. my first order of business upon leaving work will be a manicure. i just decided. and i think it was a good decision.

2. yesterday i got a text message from heathergirl, my best source for awesome music and television and tracy jordan-inspired cross-stitch pieces, which said, "would you be weirded out if i sent you a whole stack of CDs?" my answer was no.

3. EH and i are going to see "easy a" tonight. have you seen it? if you have anything bad to say about it, keep it to yourself. because i have been wanting to see it for a while now, and i would like to believe that it is going to be charming and funny and good. if, of course, you saw it and thought it was charming and funny and good, speak up!

4. i bought a holga camera! it's teal. and i am pretty stoked about it. i haven't done anything with it yet except hold it lovingly in my hands and figure out how to load it with film (which took quite long enough, thankyouverymuch), but that is about to change. i really like the idea of a camera that is designed to take imperfect pictures, because those happen to be my specialty.

5. i met liz for dinner on tuesday and she gave me a fedora as a belated birthday present. it was actually supposed to be a joke, but when i put it on it fit and looked just as good as i think any fedora is going to look so joke's on... well... i don't know who exactly. but, fedora goal now = accomplished.

6. boot and scarf weather is finally here.

7. the yard people came for the autumn bush pruning and also weeded the fence line that i had been passively-aggressively ignoring.

8. i built time into my weekend schedule for a nap and a sewing project.

i hope you have a nice list of things that are making you happy, too.

have a delightful weekend, lovies!

the way i am

all day today i felt like this.

and then tonight i went to see my girl ingrid michaelson at the 9:30 club, and now i feel like this.

whew.

i needed that.

fourscore and brotherly love

i spent last weekend in new york (three cheers for long weekends! and for cheap bus fare to new york! hip, hip, hurray!) but i am not ready to tell you about that yet. so instead, here are some pictures of my last long weekend adventure.

behold, gettysburg. it was lovely and eerie and peaceful at dusk and made me sad that we are still fighting wars. it also made me want to read every book written about the civil war. any suggestions?

behold, philadelphia. i had never been to the city of brotherly love, so rebecca the wise and i just stuck to the historical downtown, but it was a delightful way to pass a holiday monday. we toured independence hall, saw the liberty bell and walked down the oldest continuously inhabited street in the country. or was it the narrowest continuously inhabited street in the country? or both? i can't quite remember. it was charming, anyway.

just before we headed out of town we stopped to hear a public reading of the declaration of independence and i might have gotten shivers and a few little tears in my eyes. it made me want to read every book there is about the founding fathers. any suggestions?

behold, a philly cheesesteak.

hard to believe that cheeze whiz was the most delicious option, but it's true.

other cravings i've had since visiting philly: a strong desire to watch both "rocky" and "national treasure." anyone in for either of those?

piano man

i can never remember if i am supposed to be embarrassed about liking billy joel, but this song started playing on my ipod while i was walking home from the metro tonight, and i decided that i don't care if i am supposed to be embarrassed or not. because it was just lovely.

i am a little embarrassed that the best version of it i could find on youtube was this one, but you can't win them all.

oh, fine. i'll admit it. i sort of like "13 going on 30," too.

are you my mother?

today i read a story about a toddler who calls his dad's iPhone "mama." i thought it was sort of charming and endearing and completely relatable.

and then i wondered what was wrong with me.

seriously, though, i probably love my iPhone almost as much as i love my mom and dad (almost) and i definitely love it more than i love some other people i know.

so what? am i setting myself up to my a slave to technology and a victim of the eventual apocalypse that is sure to come when all our smart gadgets turn against us? (because they are so much smarter than us.)

maybe.

but in the meantime i will never be lost or bad at scrabble or behind on celebrity gossip. so it seems like a good trade-off to me.

be ye doers

back when i lived in the salty city, the girls and i had a little tradition we liked to call family out evening. because your friends are your (urban) family, especially in your away-from-home, single life. so, every monday night, we would get together and have our own little family time. and it was grand.

last night EH and picked up the FOE torch and headed to robert and laura's for homemade cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate, and a discussion our of favorite conference talks.

i will tell you that one of my favorite things in the world is sitting around with people i really like talking about the gospel. and it might sound nerdy or goody-goody or boring or lame, but i don't care. i always learn something new and hold my own beliefs a little more strongly and a little more carefully after i have talked them out with someone else. and i dig that.

so i was particularly glad last night when robert brought up a talk about the principle of agency, because this is something i have been pondering a lot lately. i feel like i have recently experienced for the first time, or at least the first time that i am so conscious of, not getting something i wanted and expected and worked for and hoped for because of the choices of someone else. and that experience has caused me to think about and come to believe a few things.

mostly, i have decided that although it is really whimsical and romantic to think that there are things that are just inevitable, meant to be, fated and out of our control, that is just not the case. we always, always have a choice. and even when other peoples' choices limit our choices we still have choices, including the ability to choose how we are going to react to the choices of others. (still with me?) nothing is ever out of our hands, in other words. and i find this a remarkably empowering thing to understand.

because i also believe that the more good choices we make, the more good choices we are able to make. one because good choices open the door to more good options, which lead to more good choices and so on forevermore and two, because making good choices is something we can practice and get better at, just like everything else. less-than-good choices, though, really close the door on opportunities that could make our lives a lot better.

and now i would like to say this. i am not perfect and i am betting that not many of you are either and sometimes we don't make the best choices and that is just life. i also believe in a loving heavenly father who works overtime to help us make the best of whatever choice we have made. i know that's true because he has done it for me. but i also know it is true that we can sure make his job easier by choosing the best we can in the first place.

the bottom line being that, though it isn't the hollywood model of divine providence sweeping in and making something magnificent out of my life through a series of increasingly preposterous coincidences hopefully involved jake gyllenhaal, i would prefer to be a person who dictates the choices in my life, instead of allowing my life to dictate my choices. i would rather act than be acted upon, would rather be in control than controlled. we can let our lives happen or we can make our lives happen, and i feel newly committed to being a doer.

now, of course, if jake gyllenhaal would like to join me, i would be totally down for that.

meet the parents

the two most important pieces of information i have to report are as follows.

1. the creepy white van that has been parked across the street for weeks, which in addition to creeping me out has also been making it overly hard to get out of the driveway, is finally gone. i (not so) secretly hope it was towed, or maybe driven away by robots, but whatever happened to it, i am incredibly glad it's gone.

2. the inaugural visit of the parents was a grand success. by inaugural visit i mean the first time they have come to visit me since i've lived here and by success i mean that i made a list of expensive restaurants and they took me to eat at them.

food highlights were cashion's eat place, filomena, belga cafe, ray's hell burger, the tabard inn and baked and wired. plus a little saturday dinner here at the homestead.

event highlights included eastern market, the norman rockwell exhibit at the museum of american art, an exhibit about geckos at the national geographic museum and walking around georgetown looking in stores and peeking through the fence slats of the house where i learned to walk until mom and i realized there was a little girl playing in the yard and we ran away. and i got my safety inspection renewed. mom was especially glad we got to do that together.

(a sidenote about geckos. did you know there is a species of gecko that loses its tail if it gets too stressed out? i would really be in trouble if i lost an appendage every time i was stressed out. i mean, big trouble.)

mom and i also spent an afternoon walking around dumbarton oaks, where i had never been before and where i hope to go many times more. it is a gorgeous mansion complex right out of an f. scott fitzgerald novel with the most charming gardens. and, to ice the cake, the family that built it was the bliss family. bliss, indeed.

the biggest highlights though were, of course, my dear old mom and dad. i sure do like them, and i especially like it when they can have a peek into my life as i am living it. it was just the best thing in the whole wide world to see them, and it all flew by too quickly. so i guess they'll just have to come back soon.