full of meat pies and radical life changes

So! I have had a few exciting weeks. I got a shiny new iPhone, vacationed out of the country (for the first time ever) in England, got laid off, had my home broken into, and had a rockin' job interview.

Those last two things happened in the past 24 hours. I kinda want whiskey right now.*

While I work towards that: Here, have some pictures of some things I saw on my UK vacation:





The supermoon! And a li'l bit of Reading, Berkshire, which is where we were staying. It's maybe 30 minutes west of London via train.



Reading seemed to be composed mostly of malls, but it also had a lot of old churches (this is St James's church), a 12th-century abbey, a large park/walking garden, and a fuckoff statue of a lion. Like y'do in England.



You can see a corner of the aforementioned abbey around the bend of the path here. It was closed to visitors 'cause apparently they're having a hard time convincing its stones to not drop perilously close to people's heads at the moment.



One of my favorite things in the park in Reading was this black mulberry tree that was so old and hunched that the keepers had put large cut branches under some of its limbs to hold it up. From a distance, it looked like it was rearin' to crawl straight into a Tim Burton flick. From up close, it looked like an octopus tree.



One day after a ridiculously huge and inexpensive English pub breakfast, we wandered into the middle of the Reading Half Marathon -- this is the second wave of runners around minute 33 of the race, coming through the old town center. The clock tower in the background is the town hall.

There's a bunch more pictures up on my Flickr -- I'll maybe do another post of things I saw in London and Oxford later on, and I'll definitely do a UK food post if I manage to collect my thoughts before I forget them. (I ate 4 meat pies in 5 days, and it was magical.)

Oh, and all of the square-shaped photos here were edited with Instagram (username: grammarmonkey). If you have an iPhone and have been living under the same social-media-lacking rock as my wonderful boyfriend, you should check the app out.

And hey, if you know of any editorial positions open in the greater Atlanta (or Intarweb) area, holla at grammarmonkey[at]gmail[dot]com! You will win my eternal gratitude and possibly some baked goods.


*I began writing this post on Wednesday, April 6th. I was interrupted by said whiskey, which, fear not, was mightily obtained.

feliz el too-busy-to-update mes!

Faithful readers! Fear not, for I have not abandoned you (entirely)! The past few weeks, I've been quite busy traveling to Boston again, doing that aforementioned job-what-makes-me-work thing, and making Halloween happen (I mean, not for everybody, but for some 80 people, anyway).

While in Bostontown I ate here and here, and had a tasty cocktail here. More about that later on when I have fewer wines and encroaching bedtimes the wherewithal to serve up proper foodpr0n.

Here in Atlanta I've been living the questionably glamorous life of a Social Media Nomad, which comes with an 80s-Saturday-morning-cartoon-style theme song, frequent visits to coffee shops with patient baristas & free wi-fi, and a really psyched dog (see illust., right). One of these days I might post a whole entry about all the coffee shops in town, and about how I'm spending too much money on Jeni's Ice Creams at Star Provisions and on sandwiches with Vietnamese-style pickles at Bocado now that I'm occasionally hanging out around the West Side. Until then, you can count on me to be fading in and out of shadows, a loaded MacBook on my back.

Somewhere among all that dull "necessary" stuff, Halloween happened! Through careful planning and wonderful friends, I managed to make this calavera Catrina costume go (please excuse the mess):



A seamstress friend, Jennifer, made the Edwardianish dress for me -- and if anyone else out there is looking to commission a garment (not necessarily Edwardianish), contact me and I'll get you in touch with her 'cause she's fabulous. The crucifix was cobbled together with bits from the jewelry-supply sale rack at Michael's, the makeup is Ben Nye cake and grease pencil, the gloves are Leg Avenue fingerless things from Sock Dreams, and the hat is all the spray paint, ostrich feathers, 50-cent ribbon, and hot glue that you can apply to a straw hat while in a mild state of hat-panic on the afternoon of your Halloween party. Both the makeup & hat were completed with the gracious assistance of a certain dreamthrum, who I guess I like pretty well.


So! What've you been up to?

consumerism wow: motivations

Another side effect of my trip to visit my family in upstate New York is that I have fallen hopelessly, tragically in love with Ojon's Hydrating Conditioner -- hopelessly because it smells wonderful (like musky vanilla, and the scent actually stays for at least a day) and leaves my hair & scalp neither greasy nor dry, and tragically because it costs way more than I'm willing to pay for a conditioner. Hair & skin care products occupy such a terrifyingly steep & slippery consumer slope. 'Cause. Sometimes expensive products work really well. But. I like not spending 22 bucks on a bottle of conditioner. But if I'm willing to spend 7 bucks on a bottle of conditioner, then why not 10? And if 10, why not 15, why not 20? After all, I'd drop that much on a round of drinks any night, and those drinks last significantly less long than a bottle of conditioner would.

This is why I'm not allowed to go into Sephora.

This is also (partially) why I've been thinking lately about how I assign value to things. I mean, consumable things: food, experiences, media, beauty products, wearables. I blanch at the idea of spending more than $20 on a piece of clothing, unless it's something nice that I can wear to the office (where I care much more than usual about how I look) -- but I'll gladly pick up the $40 check for a nice dinner with a close friend. I won't buy an $8 paperback book (~400 pages) if I don't have a coupon or can't find it cheaper used -- but I'll buy $15 worth of comic books I've never heard of (~70 pages) because they look weird and funny. I'll order a $12 cocktail but search out the cheapest entrée on the menu. Sometimes I won't buy an entire album on mp3 for $10 because I can pick & choose the songs that immediately strike me as likable for only $7 (even if I enjoy the artist and know full well that I feel differently about songs once I've warmed up to them), but I'll order 5 samples of perfumes I've never smelled for $3.50 apiece.

Do you do things like this? Surely I can't be the only mercurial spender out there.

The conclusion I've come to is that what I'm really shopping for isn't the product, but the experience of that product. Of appearing responsible and capable to my coworkers and bosses. Of sharing conversation and plates of good food and not having to clean up afterwards. Of feeling like I'm cultured and supportive of independent artists. Of drinking something I'd never conceive of on my own. Of finding out exactly what roses mingled with graveyard dirt smells like when applied to my skin.

Why I value these experiences more than others I'm not sure. It's probably one of those highly individual, annoyingly unsaleable, unique-snowflakey things that drives advertisers to drink. Although it's true that somewhere in my motivation to purchase these things and experiences lies the concept that they'll make me more attractive/loved/happy, my personal idea (anyone's personal idea) of what is is to be attractive/loved/happy is necessarily strange, even to myself. But because self-awareness is awesome, I'm working on sussing out the particulars. I'll let you all know how that goes. I just hope you'll forgive me for not having the softest, flowingest, musky vanilla-scentedest hair while I'm at it.