Ramble On

I can't count how many times I've uttered the phrase "the only good thing to come out of New Jersey is Bruce Springsteen", but it's not a small number.  Admittedly, Bruce Springsteen is an incredibly redeeming force.  He makes a lot of things that could otherwise be bad, good.  But after this past weekend, I noticed that my view of New Jersey is changing. The Boss holding Long Branch, NJ close to his heart.   When in the course of Karla events, it becomes necessary to visit a place many times, without ever really wanting to go there, I start asking questions.  Why here? Why so many times? What am I supposed to do with my long and unsought relationship with this specific locale? My 15-year history with New Jersey starts with my high school/college love.  His family moved there after he graduated high school and it became a place for which I subconsciously pined during the summers.  He was spending most of his year just outside of Philadelphia at...

Old Town Alexandria.... How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. The Potomac. This river, while full of unsavory things, is still very beautiful to look at, calming to my soul, and is a neverending source of joy for me.   I can walk to all my grocery stores.   the GW Parkway.  A beautiful and stoplight-free stretch of road with stone bridges and lovely panoramas.   Evening walks down on King St. make me feel like I am crashing about 150 dates at any given time.   The lights in the trees on King St.  PX - swanky cocktails with a side order of pretension.  But I always feel special when I go there.   The rooftop of my building, where I can seek a cool breeze, watch thunderstorms roll in, or get a great perch to photograph sunrises or sunsets.  Biking or running into the District.  It's close, but I still feel like I live a world away. Moonlit walks on soft summer evenings along the water. The more romantically inclined from ...

One week ago, I was on a plane flying to Las Vegas, NV to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of a dear friend from college.  One week ago I lived in a different apartment than the one I'm writing from now.  And one week ago, it was Lent, and now it's the Triduum, almost Easter.  It's been such a huge week that I can barely believe I'm almost through it and that so much has happened in such a short amount of time.  I feel like I need to capture it somehow, so the best I can do is write to try and recollect. So we'll start at the beginning of the week. I'm not really a Vegas kind of girl.  I own things with sparkles, but I never find occasion to wear them since I stopped doing things on New Years Eve that don't involve pajamas.  I don't generally like places where the only thing to do when you get there is to constantly spend more money.  Everything about Vegas is the promise of money, the chance of glory, the seduction of glamour, and the brightly-lit ...

Though I have always been suspicious of my own susceptibility to this commonly recognized phenomenon, it wasn't until the month of February that my all-out defenselessness was revealed and given a name: Guitar Goggles.  It's so bizarre and mysterious to me but I also can't deny that it's true. I assume some of you have heard of "beer goggles", the situation in which one's consumption of alcohol makes physically unattractive persons appear more attractive.   For guitar goggles, this same principle is applied, only more specifically it is from the female perspective applied to gentlemen musicians who play guitar on stage.  I was at the Lord Huron show in early February watching the opening band, Night Moves, when the most striking presentation of this weakness I have ever experienced occurred. I was already having a lovely evening, having just found a new group of music-loving, concert-going friends.  We were getting to know one another and riding high o...

The preamble to this is so long I'm sure it's hard to believe I could have anything further to say.  You guys, I haven't even gotten to the actual song list yet. Fasten your seatbelts. 2013 was an incredible year of music.  Artists are using production, sound, and their instruments in groundbreaking ways.  I, for my part, worked at being a more attentive and active listener.  Somehow, music never sounded so sweet.  I went to fewer live shows but diversified the ones I did attend. My rotation also broke more into the cringeworthy Worship genre.  ( Michael Gungor writes very honestly on this subject, even as the leader of a "Christian" band, and about how sometimes music in the genre has a strange "soulless" sheen to it.  In part, I agree with him, and it is for this reason I call the genre cringeworthy. He's since written a response to his first essay sort of correcting himself a bit but the initial premise and discontent remains intact.  As I ...

Thanksgiving was so late this year, coming directly on the heels of Advent.  This year I wanted to explore more of the many activities DC offers at Christmas time, and revel in the beauty of this city under the limited winter light.  A majority of the new people I meet in DC are from somewhere else.  But my closest friends here claim the metro area as their own hometown.  This resident tourist series sparked from a kindling of love for this area and a desire to know it better, despite the length of my relationship with it.  Even though I have kept up with the promise to undertake in one new DC thing per month, I haven't kept with the blogging part.  So now with Christmas upon me, I figured I should get it out there before the moment has passed. One thing that DC does well is museums.  They are excellent museums, with expertly curated collections and they are free! Since going to South Africa, zoos are pretty much ruined for me, but I still love to go....

It's that time of year again.  List after list chronicling, categorizing and ranking the musical year pops up in my inbox. I love looking and listening through them as much as I can because there is so much new, undiscovered territory for me.  And I am about to finalize my own year-end list. It's an annual tradition friends and family have been collaborating on and it's one I hope never falls by the wayside. One of the opinions professionals shared this year more than ever is that there just isn't enough time to cover all the music being made.  Even if you only focus on one genre, or sub-genre. Music can be recorded on an iPhone, mixed, uploaded and disseminated so quickly, there would be no way to stay afloat with all that's being produced.  But even the well-known bands with big followings seemed extra prolific this year.  Take, for example, the Avett Brothers.  They released two full-length,studio albums about one year apart.  The Avetts tour ...

Now that I'm into my 30s, I've been noticing a shift in the relational dynamic with both my mother and father.  When did I ever get the idea that at a certain point I would know all the things I would need to know about them?  Somehow I convinced myself that there is never anything more to them than what has already been disclosed, and that they are, in fact, done changing as people.  How I would despair if someone cast me with such rigidity!  Yet I am guilty of that very thing. I recently looked back through my own scrapbooks, ones that I kept and ones that my mother kept before I took over as a teenager.  I read some of my old papers, looked at old photos, and it all seemed surreal.  Is that person, staring at me, wearing diapers and a pair of her mom's sunglasses drinking her bottle at an attitude replete with sass... me? Did I really write a letter in 4th grade to the school board trying to dissuade them from taking "The Giver" off of the curriculum? ...

Waking up for the last full day of our trip was bittersweet.  It was a gray day in Montreal and even raining a bit.  We went for a run through Mount Royal Park where the fall colors were gorgeous against the gray sky. I always think of my mom when the weather is like that.  She says its her favorite: a cool, even chilly gray day when the leaves are all at peak color. We packed up and then headed to a Bagel Cafe to get some authentic Montreal Bagels .  They were DELICIOUS. So after carb-loading and a hot drink, we drove out of Montreal, across the bridge, and into the U.S. of A.  Burlington, VT is very close to Montreal and so we were there before much had happened.  Didn't stop us from going to a local brew pub, getting some craft beer, ordering more food, and then walking through the town in search of souvenirs and local charm.  Burlington is even more college-y than most college towns, and even though there were gray skies and a chilly wind, we ha...

And sample it we did! We arrived in Montreal around 6:30pm on Wednesday night. After we got settled, we decided to go out to dinner. The front desk clerk recommended a place, and after checking it out we found it dead and uninspired.  Of course, it's a Wednesday night, but we had hoped for a more fun atmosphere.  So we hopped in a cab and went to a cocktail bar called Lab where, again, we were pretty much the only people there, but we had a great chat with the bartender.  Lab is like the Montreal version of my favorite cocktail place, PX, which is in Old Town and never fails to make me feel fancy and serve me delicious alcoholic treats.  After we had both had some cocktails, and chatted a good bit, Gabrielle sent us to the place where we had the best meal of the entire trip. We walked a few blocks through a bougie neighborhood and found Le Chien Fumant to be warm, intimate, delicious-smelling, and packed with people.  We had a GREAT meal.  We had foie-gr...