Back in the saddle

When the habit of blogging is broken, it can be so hard to jump back into it. The pressure to compose something worthwhile is greater than the pressure to say anything at all. A reprehensible marriage amendment has to pass before I'm compelled to pick up the blogging pen. It's a bad cycle. So this is me trying to recapture the habit, with odds and ends from my corner of the world and without artful composition. You'll notice that I'm sharing some of this news woefully late... so it is:

• Black Wings Won! You'll remember the Austrian hockey team we fell for over the holidays, due in part to our relation to the goalie, but also, you know... because they rock? They won the Austrian League Championship! We couldn't be happier for Alex, who finally won a championship after 13 years as a pro, and for T's sister Avery, who's the most badass hockey wife ever. Linz ist Meister!!!! #32!!
  
  



• I'm going to be an aunt again! Shortly after their wedding in September, my brother and sister-in-law announced that they were expecting! My nephew will join big sister Taylor in late June, and we couldn't be more thrilled for them.
   
  



















• Prom. My cousins rocked the prom in their dresses we shopped for until our feet fell off. Rocked it.
  
  
  


















• We have roses. Lots of them. I didn't like these roses last year, but that's because they didn't grow like this. We just planted a slew of new stuff, too. Updates coming soon... really.






















• Wedding shoes, at long last. Nearly three years later, I finally had a chance to wear my wedding shoes again, at the wedding of one of my favorite DC couples. So many memories represented by that red satin... I really should've worn them years ago. (Rare awkward photo of T = cutting his head off on purpose)

Tick tock, North Carolina

Before yesterday, North Carolina was the last Southern state without a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Before today, I also believed North Carolina was the last Southern state to secede from the Union. I just google-checked my memory and discovered that Tennessee actually seceded a week after my home state did. There goes a youthful assurance, a little piece of why I've always loved home. (Google: killing dreams since 1998.)

The truth of the matter, though, is that what matters more than when. North Carolina did secede from the Union. North Carolina now does have a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Last night was a deja vu moment for me. I saw myself driving my high school car (a hand-me down from my grandmother), with its "Jesse Helms Doesn't Speak For Me" bumper sticker on the back. I'd found it at a little bookstore in Chapel Hill that offered a discount if you could name a historical event that happened on the year they pulled out of a hat. Any nerd like me knows that the French Revolution began in 1789, so my bumper sticker cost me practically nothing. It wasn't the only lefty bumper sticker in my high school parking lot, either. We were in the Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill after all, a dynamic region for research, universities, and industry. (The marriage amendment lost 4-to-1 in the Triangle last night, for perspective.) But back then in the 1990s, gun racks still outnumbered peace sign decals. We liked to show our stripes.

Those stripes are everywhere, if you're looking for them. The problem with making assumptions about any "red" state is that it ignores not only the pockets of blue, but the legions of people working hard to change the tide in their surroundings. There's a particular kind of state pride among those who love their state despite their state, who have a seasoned respect that's deeper and more honest than sheer boosterism. Making blanket statements about regions does so at the expense of the folks working hard there to make a difference, and it's something I take personally. Change is slow, and it starts small. Bumper stickers matter. But more than that, so do conversations on front porches, at the neighborhood park, in churches, in the checkout line. This small, steady change is happening all over the South. It's why some of my favorite people are progressive women from Texas. It's why North Carolina voted for Obama in 2008. It's why my teenage cousin half my age just went to her junior prom in NC with her girlfriend, and no one raised an eyebrow.

That same cousin's Facebook status yesterday was "And we keep fighting... and we keep going," said with all the assurance of a seasoned community organizer. She knows that time is on her side. We all do. While headlines are made about irrational amendments being passed, my family and friends at home, some of whom are gay, are trying to go about their lives just as they did yesterday. They're talking with their neighbors, raising families, and adding value to their communities. Their hearts are hurting, but they know the clock is ticking. The bravery in their hearts is the best thing I know. The second-best is the dedication of those on the ground already trying to peel this thing back, already laying the groundwork for how progress will reassert itself.

Tick tock, North Carolina. The march of progress has never left you behind completely, and it won't now, either. You're too beautiful to be shadowed by hate, too smart to be labeled something you're not. Time will tell.

Unread/Snippets

Last night I opened up Google Reader, my sorely neglected portal to the rest of the blogosphere. I currently subscribe to 490 blogs, separated into folders for my sanity. These folders range from Food to News to DC Neighborhoods to Interior Design to Transit Planning. Oh, and then there's "Personal," and that's the folder where you probably reside, if you're reading this and have a blog of your own. My overall Reader count will pop up over 1,000 posts in a single day if I don't open it (I've always viewed Reader's policy to stop counting over 1,000 to be kind), but I normally have certain folders under control. Normally. Only, here's how bad it's gotten: my "Personal" folder, your folder, had 716 unread blog posts in it as of last night. 716. 

So if you're wondering why I haven't commented or chimed in on your stories, both big and small, that's why. I'll get there.

In the meantime:

I cooked this weekend! This is a big deal... my kitchen has been used mostly just for coffee and eggs all month long. But behold, fish tagine and lemon curd tart!

It's awesome having a National League team to root for now. And the stadium a 25-minute walk from my house? Bring. It. On.

I accidentally got sucked into The Voice. Embarrassing.

Aaaaaaand.... that's about it. My life is so crazy, right?

I would ask what's new with you, but I suppose to find that out all I need to do is wade through that Personal Blog folder, don't I?

[Confidential/Hidden] Cities on the small screen

Favorite cure for insomnia: television shows that combine place with crime.

My longtime favorite show for this is City Confidential on the Biography channel. We've been going strong for a decade. The reasons for my love:

• Topic. The show spotlights a single crime in a town somewhere in the US and how that crime came to reflect the changing nature of the community. This could be done badly or without much effort, but City Confidential truly digs in. It also picks its cases really well. When I first saw "Scottboro: Foul Play in the Bible Belt," I steeled myself for how much this Alabama town near my cousins was going to be the butt of jokes. I mean, there's snake-handling involved. But by episode's end, I have to admit to myself every time... nope, they got it right. That's hard to do. And putting on my planner hat for a minute, I have to say this is also the only show not about planning (because seriously... who would watch that?) that regularly talks about suburbanization, loss of community character, and McMansions. And, you know, the killer next door. Yes please.

•  Narrative structure. Every single episode follows the same narrative arc. There's something so predictable and soothing about this, when you watch it at the time of night that I usually do. Part 1 (first 10-15 minutes): setting the scene and helping you understand the community, history through the crime. Part 2 (bulk of the 1-hour show): delving into the particulars of the crime. Part 3 (always the very last bit after the last commercial break): how the town changed after the crime.

• Narrator Paul Winfield. This guy's voice is the best. After he died they found a new narrator, and let's just say that the last few seasons with the newbie are not as awesome as the golden age of PW.

•  The writing. Oh, the amazing tongue-in-cheek camp of the writing! I always thought it'd be silly fun to write for this show. Find "Dallas: Arsenic and Old Money" playing in the middle of the night sometime to see what I mean. You can practically see the writers winking.

There's barely any City Confidential on YouTube, so here's just a taste with the setup for "Phoenix: Shady Deals in the Sun City." You'll see all the points above: A) lots of good planning talk, B) setting the scene in Phoenix, C) Paul!, and D) Camp.

The growing problem with City Confidential, though, is that I've seen nearly all of the episodes. So now what?

Enter the new guy in town: Marcus Sakey, he of Hidden City on the Travel Channel.

Hidden City has a slightly different approach than City Confidential. First, the focus is not just on one crime, but on three, from varying eras of a city's past. In this way the city is the star of the show... although actually, Marcus Sakey steals the show. This wouldn't work if he wasn't likable, or if he truly didn't want to dive into the dirty belly of a city, or if didn't want to invest the time to find the right people to frame the story in a compelling way. But he does all of these things. The other way this show differs from City Confidential's documentary approach is that as the star, Sakey gets interactive with the stories: he climbs into a rigged sedan with a shotgun to see what it felt like to be the DC sniper, he gets pepper-sprayed by cops to understand how 1968 rioters felt, etc. It's good television. He never lets us forget, though, he's a crime-writer. There's less camp in his writing than in my old-time favorite, but by the same token, the writing's much more real.

So yeah... this might be my new fix. City Confidential can never be replaced in my book, but I'm happy to make room for Hidden City. The stories are fantastic - new twists on old ones we all know (HH Dillinger in Chicago or the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco, for example), and older ones we might not know (Madame LaLaurie in New Orleans or Black Caesar in Key West). And all the way through... one city. Over time. Ch-ch-changing.

This night, long ago

So it's late right now. Late enough that I should either be asleep or smiling. But instead I'm deeply involved in a PowerPoint. This is how too many of my nights have been recently.

Here's the flashback that just hit me:

Me, in the Planning building computer lab. Grad school. A cool 3 a.m., probably. A crumpled-up wrapper from a Frontier breakfast burrito beside me, definitely. Headphones on. Indigo Girls: blasting. Who listens to the Indigo Girls loudly, you're asking? This girl does, when driving alone and fast or when up way past her bedtime on deadline. So there's me, the work, the burrito wrapper, and the Girls. But a couple of computers down, there's also my girl Mikaela, my ultimate all-nighter-in-the-computer-lab partner in crime. I need a break. Headphones come off. We take a few minutes to do that thing we do, which is discuss relationships or politics or gossip or who the hell cares because we know each other so well and we really don't need much besides the smallest distraction from the sentence that is slowly becoming the run-on from hell (like this one). We stretch our legs, go out into the courtyard. We feel the cool night air on our faces. Mikaela is probably smoking (I'll never tell your daughter, M, promise). We make each other laugh. We bounce ideas for each other's work around. Then we go back in, and we hunker down. We finish. Of course we do. We're good at this. We nailed those nights.

I miss that kind of flow. I'm getting glimpses again these days of how sure I was that I'd only do this profession until I was bored with it, then I'd have my creative career. I was sure I'd be writing by now.

But instead I'm PowerPointing. And not in the cool way, either, with Mikaela beside me.

And that's okay. This is okay. I believe in these bullets.

But tomorrow I'll send them out for dozens of people to review, and we will tinker and talk it to death and finally we will present it to the community, and it'll be fine. I'll still believe in those bullets.

But I don't believe in this process as much as that process, the one with just my brain, a friend, a burrito, and a blank screen.

Time to cue the Indigo Girls. Time to send my old friend a hug across the Internet.

Also: time to plan my annual return to New Mexico, where I'm certain everyone else is still having those resplendent 3 a.m. strikes of inspiration without me.

Pictures, not words

Lately I'm enjoying Instagram so much more than Twitter. I think it's because my head hurts from being overworked, and all the words of Twitter flying by at a rapid pace only ramp up my crowded brain. Looking at pictures, though, makes my head feel clearer, calmer. And so while I've been a terrible blogger, my phone is bursting with images that hint at just what I've been up to the last couple of weeks.

Not pictured: working. Working working working.

But fun things I've been doing, and photographing, include admiring the colors of my neighborhood.

 Being blessed with gorgeous wedding invitations.

Turning a head of cauliflower into a dessert-like substance.

Eating lots of oysters (which happen to go really well with martinis).

Replacing a toilet (surprisingly easy, it turns out).

 And working... again.

But then, finally, it was time to jet off to Austin. Oh how I needed this trip.

I spent the first day with my dear Kate, introducing new Bebe L to the wonders of Austin patio lounging.

T arrived and by the miracle of all miracles, we did not call into work. We did a lot of this instead.

We ate ourselves silly at Salt Lick for the rehearsal dinner. We also spent a lot of time looking up at the sky, marveling at all the stars. It's sad how long it had been since I'd done nothing but look up at the sky. Feeling small under all those stars is an amazing feeling.

The next day, it was time for the wedding. And oh, this wedding. One of T's best friends from Dallas married a woman who is his match in every way. It was stunning, and so full of joy.

We arrived back in DC late Sunday night, and the first thing I saw was the bounty of pink blossoms, bright even against the night sky. Our cherry blossoms had opened over the weekend. The next morning I took the same shot, in awe of these pretties right outside the door. 

Spring has sprung. And now I'll be taking pictures of flowers every day to document it.

A new leaf

Lately I can't bring myself to open up Blogger. I've had a handful of recipe posts lined up (in my head at least... but pictures already taken and recipes already written out), and I can't bring myself to post them. Maybe it's the weather here... cherry blossoms are open, dogs and kids are out to play, the neighborhood is opening up to say hello more each day. I love my neighborhood walks, and couldn't be more excited to have more sun soon to fit them in. Daylight Savings or bust.

Pretty in Pink, last weekend

I'm ready for the weather to change, ready for new blossoms and ready for... newness. And while I doubt this spring will turn out exactly as we hoped it would, it's easier for me to feel upbeat when there's such beauty everywhere. I'm thankful for the big fun we've been having as the season turns, with friends who make my sides hurt from laughing so hard. I'm thankful for the three weddings we're attending this spring - in Austin, here in DC, and in New Orleans - and all the hope those events engender. I'm thankful for a yard that gets my landscaping wheels turning in this great weather, despite my decision-making paralysis about layout and fencing and plantings. But mostly, it's the walks that settle my brain down that I'm so thankful for... and the guy who's often with me for them. 

Lincoln Park at dusk

I want to go and play outside with the ferocity of the birds outside my window. There are literally two dozen of them in a single tree right now, flitting around and celebrating the moment. These budget spreadsheets I'm working on seem especially cruel by comparison. Isn't it terrible that adults don't get Spring Break, too? This is why smart people get married in the spring, I think... providing Spring Break for their loved ones. In that light, then, my Spring Break is two weeks from now, in Austin. Just in time.

Friday I'm in Love

I'm so ready to sleep in and relax with friends this weekend... how about you? Here are three little gems from my week.

Hank for Senate

Meet Hank, a cat running for Senate in Virginia. Do you notice that he looks shockingly like our cat Switters? Poor Switters is pretty pissed. He was convinced he had the right mix of dashing good looks and humble roots that would help launch him into office, and then Hank went and stole his thunder, before DC even had its own Senate seat. Switters is licking his wounds in the windowsill right now. It isn't pretty.

The Women of 'Community'

I'm giddy that 'Community' is coming back to NBC mid-month. The 'Community' fan base is a rabid one, and we are proud. This Daily Beast interview with the women of 'Community' shows exactly why our show is better than your show. I raise my glass to women written as whole characters, to blowing apart stereotypes, and to the magic that can happen when women write for other women. Well done, team... well done.

Hometown Kitchen

This is me, glowing with hometown pride, pointing you to a fantastic article written about the family of one of my favorite high school pals. The reporter joins Saleem's family for dinner, where the Rs have been churning out innovative fusion cooking since way before it was cool. Read about family rice wars and get hungry, then go dive into Saleem's creative work, which consistently makes me feel close to him even though our days of daily conversation and high school hijinks are no more. Big props to Saleem for being vanity-aged in this piece, by the way - is it really that easy to shave a couple of years off that number? Note to self.

Have a happy weekend, everyone!

February, in pictures

I ended February on a blur of a work trip featuring lots of work and little sleep, and now it's March. I suppose that's how time slips away from us, isn't it? At any rate, I'm back in DC looking out my office window at early cherry blossoms, and wishing my knee was 100% again so that I could walk around in this gorgeous weather. (So much nicer out than the monsoon I drove through back to DC last night.)

Despite time rushing by much too quickly, I do have one great visual reminder of the month, courtesy of Instagram and the February Photo a Day Challenge. I had so much fun responding to the daily prompts with pictures that I'm doing the March Photo a Day Challenge, too.

Not on Instagram? No worries. You can find me online here, where you can also see the pictures in full size and view their captions (i.e., figure out how I justified a random shot as "sun" on a day that was as rainy as yesterday).

Come play along! (And I know, I know, Instagram really needs to develop a Droid App already.)

PS: I always have my Instagram feed running on the blog, too, down on the left sidebar.

Friday I'm in Love

Yesterday I fell flat on my face while walking. I was crossing a park to meet T at our neighborhood Metro station, and a slightly uneven brick hit my foot in just the right way, and... splat. Kind thanks to the homeless men who hurriedly rushed to my assistance. Oh my. So today, my knee is the size of a softball and the opposite foot is unable to bear weight. I'm feeling pretty graceful heading into the weekend... how about you?

SIGH.

Let's hurry up and make it 5 p.m., okay? Here are three things that made me smile this week (I've missed you, Friday I'm in Love!):

The Partisans: Birth Control Hearings (Redux)

This is the best response I can possibly imagine to the brain-exploding lunacy that is a bunch of men on Capitol Hill talking about birth control. Thank you, Andy Cobb and Second City, thank you...

U.S. Interstates as a Subway Map

Subway art will always be my favorite, but I'll give a nod here to the Interstate System as well... even if its existence is responsible for the sprawling of America. (getting off my soapbox now...)

Friends with Kids

You know those movie previews you see and in the first five seconds it's completely obvious that you will watch said movie and love it, due mostly to the fact that you love everyone* on screen? This movie is that [latest] movie for me. 

Have a great (and graceful) weekend, folks!

*Megan Fox excluded (obvs)