Complacency's Placeholding Platitudes

I was going to try to come up with a clever introduction to these photos and their links, but really, I just like cool clothes, for men or women. So, here are some rather classy, herringbone gray galoshes that would look just smashing with this asymmetrical wool jacket. Also, if anyone has that model’s number, facebook me, k?

I need to put together my Halloween costume this weekend, and that means shopping, which might mean I shop for … ahem… more than just my Halloween costume.

I need more closet space.

And a haircut.

This is getting a little random...

The Parents were in town this weekend. I wish I had been a more exciting host, but mostly we hung out w/ my friends and walked about. So, I did what I normally do. We did manage to go apple picking and, while I abandoned them to go to lectures on Gadamer, they took a tour of the North End. So, not a total bust.

As a result of apple picking, I have just oodles of apple-based baked goods in my apt presently and there are only going to be more. You should come over and have some so I don’t turn into a big, apple-smelling fatty.

I’ve got a nice queue of photos all ready to write about, just have to get a spare moment to do it. So, you’ve got that to look forward too. I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath.

Yes, that's how you spell "bated" in that usage. Bill Bryson says so.

I Get Paid For This...But Not By You

Well, normally you’d have had at least two posts in this stretch of time. I’ve been up to other creative endeavors lately. For one thing, I rearranged my apartment and cleaned it pretty thoroughly. There’s something genetically latent in me that just loves walking into a clean apartment at the end of the day. I’ve been getting my recycle/green/hippy thing on and taking all these disposable plastic bags I’ve got saved, cutting them into rectangles and then ironing them together 5 or 6 sheets thick. Then I iron three of the sides together, flip the whole bag inside out and (*TA DA!*) it’s a tote-bag. Well, it’s a tote bag once I fashion and attach a strap from a larger, heavier-duty bag by ironing it into the seams. If that was all a little hard to follow, I’ll post pictures of ‘em soon enuff. They come out quite nice, actually.

I’ve done a bit of baking, though I’m a tad behind in that department. I made what I affectionately call “grown up” bread last week. It’s made from whole wheat flour, a cup of Guinness and a cup of strong coffee. It tastes like grown-up things. I made some mediocre raisin-bran muffins and pawned them off on my friends heading down to N. Carolina for the week. They loved them and I only ate 3 or 4 of them myself. Then, on Sunday night, I finished off my giant bag-o-raisins and made some really delicious oatmeal-cinnamon-raisin bread. I think John dubbed it “breakfast bread” and I’m incline to run with that moniker. I’m scared to bake anything else cuz I ate just about all that damn breakfast bread by myself and now feel like a fatty. However, I anticipate some more bran-muffins this weekend and maybe some chocolate chip cookies when my girls get back from the shore.

I have friends who go to the shore! How east-coast of me.

I met a girl coming up on two weeks ago now who was very interesting. Gonna be an Emerson senior next year. Literature major. From the south. Raised by a fundy pastor dad and now an atheist. Spent the better part of a drunken hour trying to convince me to smoke pot with her. Smart and fascinating, but we were pretty clearly about different stuff. Still, took her on a date last Thursday and had a damn good time. Stayed out late and talked and talked. I offered a second date a few days ago and she didn’t return my call. Probably for the best, since I was gonna let her know I wasn’t interested in romantic thing and that we were in different places and blah, blah, blah, lets just be friends.

Come to think of it…she lives in East Boston. Like, bumble-F East Boston. Yeah, even as friends, this never had a chance.

BTW, all the pictures in this post are ones I took myself. I’m finally getting that digital camera I got for Christmas some use. How embarrassing.

What I’m…

Reading: All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Watching: Friends With Money (Film, 2007)
Wearing: American Eagle skinny-ish jeans, Thrift-store button down, H&M cotton sweater, Black on Black Chucks
Working On: A short story about hipsters and professors.

Pizza Joy

Oh yeah, and I'm going to try to make pizza this week.

(Photo stolen shamelessly from a Facebook photo album.)

Vociferous Variance and Vacilation

God bless OB. His class is yet another opportunity to blog. He just keeps going over the same stuff. He doesn’t trust that his students have learned the previous material sufficiently to move forward. And rightly so, since so many of them have not. And yet the more he repeats the system of terms, the more I see their eyes glaze over and become indifferent to the whole subject matter.

Why do I keep showing up to something that is so blatantly wasting my time? I guess to just not be an asshole, I suppose. And because sometimes I pipe up and help clarify things that are hopelessly muddied. And its good to be of some use to one’s peers.

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I’ve been baking a great deal lately. The whole thing appeals to me on many levels. The ordered, careful process of measuring precise amounts, laid out on my counters like the chemistry experiment they are. Prepared baking sheets and muffin pans receiving the batter or dough. The careful extrication of cookies and muffins onto a cooling rack, in a cloud of delicious smell. Like a monastic meditative exercise.

When I’m baking, when I’m a baker I am affected by the baking, the being a baker. I like what/who I am when I’m baking. I’m filled with a sense of compassion, for my friends, my family, my self…humanity even, though abstractly. The joy of my baked goods is to give them away. A few can be enjoyed in private, but that’s really not the point of the exercise.

The Baking Repetoire as it stands:
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Whole Wheat Coffee/Beer Bread
- *NEW* Oatmeal Cookies
- *NEW* Bran Muffins

That’s right kids; I bought a muffin pan. Ladies.

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In the middle of the previous section, OB asked me a very specific question about a presentation I gave more than a month ago. What?!

Now he’s giving an account of the movie “The Visitor”… poorly.

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I’m going out w/ Katie again tomorrow night. Someone asked me over dinner on Saturday why I’m putting my hand back in the garbage disposal. I told them lots of things that aren’t true but allowed me to be pretty-much left alone in my decision. I’ll spare you the dissimulations.

Final answer: I’d really like that to have a chance to be… I dunno, “something”

On the other hand, that I’m giving her the opportunity does not mean all my eggs are in one basket. If someone else captivating comes along, she’s S.O.L.

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I tire sometimes of the weighty-ness of my philosophical work. I need to vacillate between the aesthetic and the philosophical. The concerns of Blondel’s Action and Lonergan’s Insight and Kant’s Duty are all just so important. Its exhausting. Right now, I’d much rather spend my time (and money…) on baking and decorating my apartment and going dancing and reading design magazines and blogs and watching TV shows and on and on.

I did spend yesterday sitting on a blanket at a park soaking up the modicum of sun our Boston spring afforded. Today I weathered the thunderstorms with coffee and clam chowder.

I want to do arts and crafts projects. To paint and sew and recycle creatively.

But, I can read w/ a latte in hand. That works pretty good.

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I have wonderful friends. I aspire to their authenticity, their patience, their forgiveness, their kindness and their intelligence. God bless them, each and everyone.

Indwelling In My Dwelling

OB is giving the same lecture he gave last Wednesday. I have such a hard time following his staggering lectures anyways, going over the same material just excuses me from paying any attention at all. So, here I am writing, instead of notes, this silliness.

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I’ve spent two delightful days indwelling in my dwelling. A part of my apartment, if you will. After sleeping in a bit on Saturday morning, I brewed a full French Press worth of Trader Joe’s Sumatra, cracked open Maurice Blondel’s “L’Action (1893)” and sat on my Ikea love-seat. With the shades open, the sun beaming warmly onto my person and Passenger playing in the background, I engaged in my chosen leisure: that of an academic tinge. How much more Bourgeois could I be, eh?

Eventually, my eye-lids took to dipping towards my cheeks. With Passenger’s atmospherisms ringing around the room, I slipped into an afternoon nap the likes of which for which afternoons were made. Peculiar dreams, none of which I remember, lurked about in the sea of sound, like inky, loping Kracken of the cold, pressured depths. It’s when we straddle the border of consciousness that we encounter our wills at the emergent. I wake, not having chosen to wake, but then must decide whether to ratify this waking and rise from my under-sized resting place or rather close my eyes in pursuit of further sleep. Sometimes one can pursue the latter. Other times, there is no pursuing to be done. Only fruitless waiting.

And when fruitlessly waiting, I tend to incline towards DVDs. The HBO mini-series “John Adams,” in this case. (Thanks John B).

Thanks John B for dinner-buritto.

Thanks TT the Bears for that new Depeche Mode song. It’s sick.

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My favorite Chocolate Chip cookie recipe involves bread flour, two egg yolks, and two whole sticks of melted butter. They are called (by Alton Brown) “The Chewy.” If you’re friends w/ me in Boston, you’ve likely had some.

I made my first Saturday-Bread in Boston. Except I made it on a Sunday. And I didn’t read a damn thing besides the recipe all day. So, I deviated from the Saturday-Bread plan (mix and read and rise and read and knead and read and proof and read and bake and read), but it was totally worth it. And John B and EJ showed up to enjoy, with added Milchianism. Milchianity, as it were. And Karl later for Nachos and Kierkegaard talk.

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Café Fixe was full of babies today. I tend to prefer toddlers to infants, but today I had eyes for babies. I was at once delighted by their intelligence and startled by it. I interact so rarely with children of that age. I think I had remembered them as rather inert, passive balls of need. I watched the eyes of one very brand-new baby search the room, object to object. I watched intently as its face registered with responsibility. Again, startling are these tiny people, so new to the world.

A slightly older baby, sitting on his father’s lap was playing with a set of interlocking rings. At one moment gripping them, one ring in each hand. The next, banging them on the table and against his chest. Then taking up a further, different grip. All the while trying to accomplish some task. Not only being insufficient to that task in terms of dexterity, I also suspect that the baby’s own mental dexterity was insufficient to determining the task itself. He wanted to do something, but I suspect that something was rather inchoate in the child’s mental intention.

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Okay, repetitive lecture is almost done. Time to pack it up and go listen to Fred Lawrence be delightful and brilliant. Wish I had brought myself a snack tho….hrm…