12.28.16

the dirty dozen {12 things in my purse*}

01 sport beans
02 12" rubber garter snake
03 lipstick queen frog prince
04 plastic jaguar
05 two paper oshibori towels
06 skeleton gloves
07 two s-bahn berlin tickets
08 il duomofox
09 gehe balance multi-vitamin+mineral brausetablette
10 too cool for school fresh gore sleeping pack
11 preen knightsbridge floral sunglasses
12 the travelin' domino


*bag? it's a tote bag, but bag sounds like something one takes on a plane.

06.13.12

i do try to avoid photographing and talking about things here - though the fact that i'm an inveterate, indiscriminate hoarder is obvious and kind of unavoidable, you don't need to hear all about the dominos and plastic animals and moist towelettes and bits of icelandic licorice i carry around the city - but naurnie got me all worked up when she posted about her day-to-day jewelry. mine is very meaningful to me as well, you see, and it would be a great shame if, say, a crocodile ate one or both of my hands and you never saw it (i saw romancing the stone several dozen times in the eighties, so that was my primary concern when we bought my engagement ring, easily the fanciest thing i've ever owned: what if a crocodile makes off with my hand?). and so.

the silver cuff ring at top is from a tibetan shop on union street in san francisco; i bought it to replace a similar ring from a kiosk in the garage in harvard square. the script is a six-syllable mantra associated with the bodhisattva of compassion. it's particularly handy as a hook for the rest of my daily pieces, all of which are removed and set aside on a regular basis (some people sleep in their engagement and wedding rings; i remove mine when i eat chips).

the white gold band perpendicular to the cuff is my wedding ring, part of the late, amazing tobias wong's diamond project; it came in a little plastic bubble from a grocery-store toy machine. i also have one of tobi's diamond-embedded dimes, but i can only wear it once every week or so; i'm allergic to the nickel-copper blend (if we are ever in a superhero battle royale, you can defeat me with costume jewelry).

the platinum solitaire framed in the tobi wong ring is my engagement ring, by henrich & denzel (compliant with UN resolutions 1171, 1173, 1306, and 1343). the modern bezel setting suits me and my interest in playing with cats without putting their eyes out, and the jeweler is really understanding when joe and i come back in to have our rings polished up after feats of strength or especially nasty manual labor.

11.30.10: the dirty dozen {contents of my purse}

01 nine napkins from gracie mansion*
02 small blue "it's a boy!" lollipop
03 studded black leather gloves
04 carpenter's tape measure
05 STM l'occasionelle card
06 post-it with cho dang gol's address
07 manhattan cocktail classic matches
08 a discovery of witches (deborah harkness)
09 studded white leather sneakers
10 can of spray adhesive
11 bag of sour patch kids
12 justice

*not to be confused with gracie's mansion

08.05.09: the dirty dozen {twelve useful things}, part II

04 via the sacramento bee (via my mom), a recipe for homemade ginger beer! gaining the ability to turn things in our apartment into ginger beer makes me feel like a modern-day rumpelstiltskin, except for the part where your guessing my name would make me screech "the devil told you that! the devil told you that!" and tear myself in two* (god, the brothers grimm are excellent).

05 via 101 cookbooks (via jen, who knows a thing or two about marathons), marathon cookies. quoth jen,

keeping in mind that they are not actually cookies but rather are healthy, cheaper-than-clif-bars, make-big-batches-and-freeze post-run snacks, they are pretty darn good. i recommend them, and don't be put off by the fact that the recipe calls for beans. seriously. recommended tweaks: double or even triple the amount of dates it calls for, don't be shy with the lemon zest, and don't forget the aniseed like i did.

kooky japanese tea cakes have desensitized me to the sweet bean thing; i am intrigued.

06 via david lebovitz, absinthe cake.** you guys, my contribution to the last jersey barbecue of the season will be epic.

*speaking of tearing one's self in two, joe and i saw about five minutes of U2's rattle and hum on cable the other night - specifically, the five minutes when they perform "bad" and bono's wearing these terrible high-waisted pants with suspenders up around his ears. "i'd had no idea robin williams was in U2," joe said. "i was about to say that," i replied.

**did i ever mention how we smuggled two bottles of absinthe (one french, one czech) back with us after our honeymoon a few years ago? i was very proud of us, though i am a terrible liar and would have spoiled everything if we'd actually been questioned at customs. we were only the second-best smugglers of our wedding party, actually: my mother developed a complicated system of band-switching that enabled her to spirit a bunch of cuban cigars back to california. she actually wrote bogus letters home about how sad she was to have had to leave the real things behind: amazing.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 is it us, or is bono really channeling mork in that rattle and hum clip?

02 would you eat absinthe cake?

03 have you ever smuggled anything? were you successful?