Hello,

I've realized that I have outgrown this forum. I am going to abandon this journal. I'm not sure whether I'll abandon my life online, but it's possible.

I have made many good friends here. If you would like, please leave me your email address in the permanently screened comment box, so that we can keep in touch.

xo
Jenny

After checking out the antiques mall in Cambridgeport, we were walking through Inman Square and happened to find a box of free stuff on the street. Among the used textbooks and kids' clothes, there were two cobalt blue Le Creuset pans in very good condition: a chef's pan (without a lid, but I can probably find one somewhere), and a pour-ready sauce pan. I still can't believe it! What an incredible score. I tried to impress on Jase the importance of this find, but he doesn't fully appreciate it, I don't think. Hah.

Earlier this afternoon, at the antiques mall, I found a really pretty mohair scarf for six bucks, and a ten-inch saute pan from the same series as my Dutch oven, but the discarded Le Creuset pans were the nuggets of my day.

We spent most of the afternoon looking for wool fedoras for Jase's trumpet. Alas, we were unsuccessful.

It was such a nice day out today, though! I need to snap some photos of all the flowers blooming in the gardens across the street. I hope tomorrow is as nice as today...

xoxo
Jenny

Oof, I just ran for about a half-hour, with a few walking and water breaks in between long spurts. It wasn't as difficult as I had worried it would be, especially since I haven't run since our move.

After some agonizing over whether or not to do it, I got a pair of 7/8-length running tights today at City Sports; they were so comfortable that I'm glad I got them. I also got an REI long-sleeved zip-up running top this weekend, during a big sale. Wearing them was a boon. I was able to focus on my breath and the way I'm planting my feet, rather than feeling uncomfortably hot.

Today was my first day running outdoors; all the other times I've run have been indoors, on a gym treadmill. I didn't notice too much difference in difficulty level, but I was running on relatively even terrain, and a lot of it was grass, dirt, or semi-hard mud. There are some great spots to explore in my neighborhood, so I'm excited to go out again soon.

I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight. I always sleep well after a hard workout.

This weekend, I visited my parents in Rhode Island. It was great to see them. A trip to the beach proved disappointing as fog rolled in only an hour after our arrival. Oh, well. A bad day at the beach is still better than a hot, sticky day in Boston.

I roasted tomatoes on Sunday using this recipe. It's a surprisingly easy preparation. This companion article suggests some good uses for roasted tomatoes. I wish I had time to try them all!

My parents and I ate ours as a warm salad alongside steak and broccoli.

A co-worker recommended Fine Cooking a few months ago, and I'm grateful to her for the recommendation. The tips and techniques are very clearly and simply written. As an amateur gourmand, I enjoy reading the articles for their own sake, but I often end up with some new ideas and inspiration for the week.

FreeCycle never ceases to amuse me. People will ask for the most outlandish things! There's one woman who posted to FreeCycle Boston wanting a small barbecue grill and a sewing machine! A few months ago someone posted a want-ad for a KitchenAid standing mixer.

I have a mind to post an offer for my fully-functioning blenders (I have two extra) but I think I'll try to sell them first. Although, I am sort of attached to one of them, if only for its charming 70s-era pea-green base.

Current Mood: less cranky

What's your favorite emoticon? I like this one:

:/

It reminds me of Kogepan.

Current Mood: trying to cheer up

Where are you from originally? Do you think you'll ever move back home to be closer to family? How often do you see your family each year? I'm genuinely curious. I feel as if my family is scattered all over the place. I live close to my parents and elder relatives, but so many family members are elsewhere and it feels funny and hurts my heart a little.

pharminatrix got me thinking, in a recent post, about authors whose work interests me but whom I haven't remembered to put on my list of Authors to Read. When I was in high school, I had a dog-eared, several-pages-long list of authors to read, mostly culled from reading the Sunday NYT Book Review. I'm still upset with myself for losing the List. I don't know what rabbit-hole it's been tucked into at my parents' house. Oh, boo. I don't read the NYTBR anymore, as I find that its reviews are too short to go into much of a substantial discussion.

Anyway. So pharminatrix recommended Dawn Powell, whom I've been meaning for years to read. I keep forgetting to put her on my mental list. So I decided to try to keep a running, informal poll to link from my livejournal userinfo page, in which passersby could suggest a book or writer or two.

I recommend Tess Slesinger. She's most famous for her 1934 novel, The Unpossessed (which I have on my shelves but haven't read yet) as well as for her screenplay adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She died very young, at forty years old. I discovered her when I was working in the university library during the summer before sophomore year. Her volume of short stories had been misshelved, and I found it stuck in a totally different section than where it belonged. Its title (see: title of this journal entry) was striking, and I bet it was even scandalous back when the collection was published. The title story was sassy, and smart, and wise, and conversational, and really changed things for me that summer. I had just had my first real heartbreak, and was reading all sorts of trashy Erica Jong brisket out of righteous but misdirected anger. Then I discovered Tess Slesinger, and was a little sad that she was only a sidenote in the literary history of the 1930s. But I felt a little proprietary too, as if that thick volume of stories were my secret to keep.

Now you go.

I'm reading Czeslaw Milosz' ABCs right now. I just finished Sister Carrie a while ago and needed a break from fiction because that novel was too affecting and sad. I'll go back to Dreiser when I'm ready. I look forward to his work with determination.

I'm enjoying Milosz. I admire the subtle lines, the small nuggets of truth he produces seemingly effortlessly. I wish that I had read him sooner. I still haven't read his poems -- his prose is captivating in and of itself.

Kathryn [Feuer; Russian specialist and colleague of Milosz' at Berkeley for a time] is no longer alive, but I often think of her as a person who combined intelligence and goodness -- and what more can one want in a human being? Probably, such a combination cannot occur with impunity, because I think of her as an unhappy individual. I am not distributing laurel wreaths, so I shall not neglect to mention her heavy drinking (in which I often accompanied her), which developed into alcoholism toward the end of her life.

---Feuer