BaLtiMoRe RoLL

WouLd I LoOk LikE a FaShiOn MoDel, Or a HomE-Ec ProjEct?

As if I needed a new hobby, I've been thinking about sewing. Only abstractly of course, since I don't own a sewing machine. (Or wait, do I? I seem to remember a potential hand-me-down sewing machine in the family. I'll have to ask about that.)

I haven't actually gone shopping for clothes in years unless you count trips to the local Goodwill with J's family in Florida where I've picked up some of my favorite t-shirts, the Katamari prince t-shirt I made with Ianqui, and wedding dress shopping. I think I've shopped in the Towson Town Mall twice over the past six years of living in Baltimore (not counting the recent wedding dress shopping trip). If you have seen me wearing anything that looks remotely new, I can assure you it was a gift or a good thrift store find.

It's not that I hate clothes or shopping, it's just that I don't have any money. :)

However, I've watched enough Project Runway over the past couple of years to start thinking that sewing actually looks kind of fun. Doable, even.

I started thinking about this when I came across this top on this blog today. It's $48. But it looks like it might be simple enough to make, right? And if you make it yourself, then you get to pick the fabric and the color and make it in the perfect size. Win, win. Except, of course, if it turns out that I can't sew anything more complicated than a poncho.

I should probably keep in mind the shirt I made an ex-boyfriend years and years ago. This was way back when flannel shirts were popular (at least, they were popular at my New England preppy liberal arts college). I don't know why I felt like I wanted to make one instead of just buying one. Maybe I just wanted to make something? Anyway, it turned out really well, and I even lined up all the plaids so that they matched where the sleeve met the shoulder and where the front panel met the back panel. And it was long sleeve, with buttoning cuffs! I'm impressed with myself all over again, just thinking about it. But I think I'm forgetting two lessons: 1) that it took forever to make and, 2) that I had a lot of help from my mother.

Anyway, all this shopping for wedding dresses has got me thinking about my own current lack of style and about how cost has been the biggest inhibitor, so maybe when I move and start a new job, instead of shopping for all new clothes, I'll make them myself. I'm sure that'll make a good impression. :)

TotAl EcLipSe

I am on the wrong side of the planet tonight.

12:01 am

Assuming this entry posts at the right time, I was born at exactly this time thirty-two years ago. That's a lot of years. You can ignore the years part. But isn't the time part cool? I wonder if I was the first baby that day in the hospital.

I'd like to say that this was the one time I was up first thing in the a.m., but really we all know that I'd been up for hours and just hadn't gone to sleep yet. Good thing my mom's a night owl too.

If memory serves me right, Amber was also born on this day (or am I off by a couple of days?), except I beat her by a few years.

CaMeReYE

It's dangerous for me to visit this photoblog because I could really get lost for hours clicking previous, previous, previous, and never stopping. Leslie takes amazing photos and one day I am going to sit down and just go through her entire photoblog.

Today I only went back in her archives a little bit, and read about about a Tibetan Sky Burial (see large photo here). I couldn't help feeling squeamish as I read the details, but it's a fascinating account. You really have to read it.

I've always wanted to go to India, but Leslie's travel journal makes me want to combine that trip with travel through China and Tibet. Maybe one day...

aSSauLteD, VeRsioN 2

Tomorrow J is taking the car to an auto glass shop to repair the driver's side window. Why?

Because yesterday as he was heading out with our friend S, he was about to turn from 30th Street onto St. Paul but then backed up slightly, just as two pedestrians were about to cross the street with a laundry cart. He didn't back up very far, but he made contact with the laundry cart and the woman starting pounding on the car.

The guy she was with flipped out and starting screaming that J had hit his wife and came around, demanding that J get out of the car and kicking the door. Obviously J was not about to get out of the car; instead he locked the door. The guy just grew more enraged and started punching the window and ... yep, went right through it. And then, for good measure, he punched J in the face. (Somehow the punches had been strong enough to break the window, but fortunately the punch aimed at J hardly got him, so he wasn't even bruised.)

Realizing this wasn't going anywhere good, J sped across the intersection and then they headed to S's apartment (right nearby) to get his cell phone and call the police. The crazy guy grabbed the laundry (but not the cart) and ran up St. Paul to CVP, leaving his wife behind. I'm not sure what her intentions were, but she then followed J's car on foot.

J and S called the cops and circled around back to where the incident had happened. I don't know where the people were at this point (did they go home?), but in their place was a guy from CVP and a cop who had heard the story that J had hit a pedestrian and then sped off. So then he had to show them that the only reason he'd driven off was because he was being assaulted. Eventually the cop seemed to understand, and he asked if J wanted to press charges. He debated about it for a little while, and then decided against it only because he was afraid that the people would try to claim injury or something. Clearly the woman hadn't been hurt, but J decided (and I agreed) that it wasn't worth the risk of ending up in a suit like that.

So the window is going to cost about $130 to fix. And hopefully that will be the end of the story.

Ironically, this incident was just a few feet away from where J got mugged back in January.

Eliaday and Tae

Here are the promised photos from Eliaday's visit to Baltimore last week. She was passing through Baltimore as she made a week long trip through DC (for job interviews), Philly, NYC, and Boston, so I got to see her for the first time since she got married!

This time she came with her adorable 18-month-old daughter Tae. We went to the Paper Moon Diner for brunch and then to the playground at the Wyman Park Dell to play.

    

It was so much fun to watch Tae climb around on the gym, and equally fun to watch Eliaday as her mother (!).

For this photo (below) I had focused on Tae as she was looking away and just waited until she finally turned and I could take the picture. Apparently she's very used to cameras and always wants to see the display, even before the picture has been taken. But I guess she didn't recognize my camera as a camera (maybe because it's bigger and black?), so I got to take pictures pretty freely without her seeming to notice.

Afterwards we went back to the house where Tae did her best to entice the cats to come out from under the bed and play. Tako was not impressed and refused to come out, but Koji got some pets later on as J held him down and Tae pet his tail. Here she is looking for the cats.

Eliaday, it was great to see you and to finally meet Tae!

ThiS isN't ReAllY a PosT

I'm off to Philly for a couple of days for a workshop. Back soon.

When I return: Photos of Eliaday from her recent visit to Baltimore!

MoVinG OuT, BaLTimoRe StyLe

It looks like my upstairs neighbors are being evicted today. This is not terribly shocking, not because I know anything about them, but because this seems to be the way everyone on our block moves out. It's very rare that I actually see a moving truck pull up, and when I do it's because someone is moving in. But as for moving out, what we often see is someone's entire apartment being deposited out into a giant pile on the street. (And it's literally on the street, where the cars park on the side, usually taking up at least two spots.)

Today we saw some people who work for our landlord talking to a cop outside our apartment, and I overheard someone saying that they had this apartment, as well as one downtown to do.

I don't get it. Are all these people not paying their rent and then getting evicted? Or is it that they have decided to move and they just figure it's easier to give up their security deposit and abandon their stuff than to actually pack it up and move it somewhere? Is this unique to Baltimore? I never saw this in Brooklyn, but yet this seems to happen at least every couple of months here...

WeddInG DReSS

I changed my mind and took down the longer post that was here (but left the comments). I really needed to see the dresses laid out in the various colors for myself, but I think I've already made a decision. Plus, the colors were all wrong, not just of the dresses, but of my skin tone. ViSuaLLy MiNDeD pointed out to me that in the pictures my skin looked pinker than it really is, which is why the red actually looked ok in the picture. She also pointed out (as eliaday noticed in the comments) that the ivory version of the dress actually looked blue/greenish and it's really not! This is weird since I thought I'd completely desaturated it in black and white and it shouldn't have had any color in it at all - maybe it was an illusion because of the color in the rest of the photo? Anyway, there's no point in leaving up bad pictures of myself in dresses that don't even look like they did in person! So I figured I'd take them down and just leave this one b&w photo of the dress that I'm choosing. Converting to b&w comes with so many of its own problems (in general, the color in the photo affects how dark things show up when they're converted), so this is still not great, but I think it's a little better.

So in the end, I'm going with ivory, even though I got a fantastic email from my father last night telling me that he actually liked the red dress a lot! So much for the idea that my parents would be horrified if I weren't in white. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that ViSuaLLy MiNDeD was right and that the red just looked good in the picture but not in person. Plus, I am afraid that if the decor has a lot of red it in, then I'll just blend in with the tablecloths. So I'm going to trust the eyes that I had with me on this most recent shopping trip, and all the eyes that have seen the other dresses, who keep telling me that ivory is my color. Ah, so you get a traditional bride after all.

Thank you Chiaroscuro and ViSuaLLy MiNDeD for shopping with me and dealing with my indecisiveness and even taking seriously my idea to wear a bright orange dress! (Here's the dress in orange if you missed it while it was up here and you really want to see it.) And thanks to my sister too who helped me try on David's Bridal dresses for an afternoon, which was just what I needed to decide against them in the end. :)

Yippeee!

Who has time to blog lately? Not me, apparently.

(However, it seems the Baltimore bloggers have been well entertained by each other this week, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't missed there. I half expected a hallway monitor to come in and break things up...)

So I'll start with the best news first, which is that I finally got funding for the job I've been after for months and months! The position begins September 1st (unless I can convince them to let me start earlier), so I've got some time before I begin, but I'm as thrilled as I can be. The job is exactly what I want to do in exactly the environment I want to do it in. I'm probably too old to shout this out loud, so I'll do it here:

Actually, I don't know if that was the "best" news, because I have lots of other good things going on as well. Like the upcoming wedding in two and a half months. Check out this picture that my mom found somewhere online. J hates the pink (he wants red), so it won't look like this exactly, but this is the bright-colors-yet-airy atmosphere we're going for. (In fact, my parents will probably be relieved that seeing these pictures may have convinced me not to buy the bright orange dress I tried on yesterday and instead to go with an ivory dress. More on that later...)

And then after the wedding, we're going to the World Cup in Germany where we have tickets to the first three US games against Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic. I guess you could call it a honeymoon of sorts. Except that it won't be a romantic getaway, but more like an extended party with several of our friends interspersed with amazing World Cup games. Again, let me just say,

And of course there are other good things, like moving (more on that later), and this incredible weather that just lifts my spirts (and my curtains and creates such a wonderful breeze in the house), and good friendships that have developed that I am so grateful for, and a dissertation that might actually get finished one day soon, and an amazing husband, and terrific parents who've been so good about planning a wedding even as they are afraid I will turn it into a Bollywood extravaganza (I won't), and a couple other trips in the near future (Woodstock, San Francisco), ...