Friday, April 30, 2010

5 on 5

Today marks the beginning of the first (and only) feature on this blog: 5 on 5. In other words, on the 5th day of the week, I will post 5 things* I'm grateful for. The purpose of this feature is 2 fold:

Fold 1: expressing gratefulness is supposably** linked to an increase in happiness and well, it's probably a good idea for me to stack the deck in this department because I have a tendency to droop like a thirsty shamrock.

Fold 2: it will give me the opportunity to take stock of my photos and share a variety of images with you that you might not otherwise see. Browsing flickr seems to have become too much for our stimulation-addled brains, and I refuse to post every picture I take on Facebook.

Now that I've insulted everyone and indirectly expressed my hatred for Facebook's world domination, let's get started.

#1 Ice Cream. Specifically, a large cone chocolate, from Carl's Ice Cream in Fredericksburg, VA. When you order a cone at Carl's, it doesn't matter how you say it, the person taking the order will yell out to the people manning the huge vats of fresh ice cream, "large cone chocolate!"

large cone chocolate!

#2 A Good Sandwich. (Maybe I shouldn't write this when I'm hungry because all I can think about right now is food). A well crafted sandwich gives me goosebumps. One of the better deli sandwiches I've had was a basic roast beef from the Candler Market (in Atlanta). The day I ate it, I was extremely hung over, and it was just the right combination of salty flavors to keep my stomach from churning (the chips played a key role in this experience).

roast beef, cheddar, banana peppers, onion

#3 Picnic Tables in Quiet Places. It's hard to find a quiet place in NYC. One of the things that I found overwhelming when we first moved here was the fact that there are people everywhere at just about any time of day. Yes, you can learn to tune out the rest of the world and sometimes it's possible to feel like you're in a remote place, but it's just not the same. This picnic table is in a park by the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg. Basically, I want to climb inside the picture and finish reading my library book.

peanutbutterjellytime

#4 People who say Yes when I ask to take their pictures. I don't generally ask to take pictures. Instead, I attempt to be covert and usually end up with a crappy picture OR I start to take the shot, get spied by my subject and swing the camera in some other random direction, pretending to take a picture of something else. This woman was in a record store in LA and she was very agreeable when I asked to take her picture because of her awesome outfit (sadly, the focus is weird and I didn't stand far enough away to get her whole outfit, but you get the gist).

peace out girl scout

#5 Being able to run again. I've finally settled into a run/walk routine that seems to be agreeable to my temperamental feet. It's no half marathon training, but it has made a huge difference in my day to day sanity management. (corollary to #5: I'm grateful we're no longer running in the snow)

fellow member of the crazy club

*things = I'm not sure how this is going to work so we're talking people, places, fuzzy concepts, gastronomic obsessions, etc.
**intentional misspelling

Friday, April 16, 2010

second breakfast

(un)majestic diner

Food that pleases me when I've been awake* since 3:30am due to a severe case of insomnia: plain yogurt with sauteed banana and sunflower seeds (this is of course in addition to my required cliff bar/coffee breakfast). It's 8:36am. It feels like lunchtime and I'm out of my regular yogurt, so I had to improvise a second breakfast.

It's not exactly a donut**, but it was still pretty damn good.

* if you haven't already heard it, check out the This American Story about NUMMI. It was great when I listened to it on my commute from queens yesterday AND a second time at 4:45 this morning.
**I plan to tag as many posts as possible with the word "donuts" so that it takes over my tag cloud like a good donut should.