marc johns.

makes me smile big time.

things that go bump in the night, especially last night if you were sleeping in the basement and definitely heard something

The Bell Witch is one of my favorite scary stories.
Even if it's not true (though if you visit the website, the story is documented through annotations, biographies and historical facts!), it's a great scary story of a poltereist/witch hybrid that weaves American history and folklore together.

The haunting starts with John Bell seeing an animal in his Tennessee cornfields with the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit. Honestly, all i can picture is a Koa/Waffles hybrid and I think we can all agree that would be adorable. But I guess it's pretty scary considering he couldn't shoot it or anything and later they heard it pawing at their log cabin.

You can read the legend for the rest of the story but highlights include the suspected suicide of John Bell Sr., a love triangle including Betsy Bell (pictured above) and the promise of a return. Spoooooooooooky.

One of the best things about the Bell Witch, she haunted Andrew Jackson! That's what you get for signing the Indian Removal Act, though admittedly that was after the haunting. When I took an American Indian Studies class in college, my professor who was a member of the Cherokee Tribe literally spit when he said Andrew Jackson's name.

Anyways, I thought sharing the story would be appropriate for the Halloween weekend and if you are interested in any more, then call Alli Heaney because she is obsessed with ghost stories and knows a ton of them. Definitely ready for Halloweekend this year.

two damn hours

some things are worth the time you put into them.

these aren't.

they aren't even pretty.
i hope you enjoy them book club.

oh and FYI, the top right apple is a poorly executed drizzle technique and not a chocolate avalanche like the others.

m street northwest to m street southeast.

the navy yard and capitol hill

georgetown after the metro

20 minutes by metro. 50 if you include walking to the metro stations.
point a to point b and back again, these two neighborhoods are the alpha and omega of my day.

on 8th street in capitol hill you will find poverty-stricken people begging for change. you will find young people in black framed glasses walking to their renovated row houses. you will find marines sweeping the streets of fallen leaves with assault rifles strapped to their backs.
how funny to be in georgetown 20 minutes later.

the apple festival.

syria, va

i love fall, obviously. but there's also a lot of anxiety that comes in october. every so often i get panicky that i'm not giving autumn the attention it deserves. i explain this and offer it as an excuse as to why i have a lot of mini pumpkins.

this weekend we went to an apple festival in the blue ridge mountains.
we made apple sage chutney and apple pie as we played cornhole under what may or may not be a maple tree.
i think this weekend calmed some of my seasonal anxiety. now i just need to start watching scary movies. i love scary movies like i love fireballs. they can be tough to get through at points, and sometimes you need to press pause and remind yourself that you're sitting in your parents livingroom in the middle of the day and later you're going to be eating lasagna.
but there are such things as ghosts.

thanks to drew for photoshopping apples. i can't wait until santa brings me my own photoshop because i gave a dollar to the hobo with the bright blue eyes yesterday.

movies to watch in the fall
the crucible
rosemary's baby
the village
love story
rudy
the birds
margot at the wedding
pet semetary
monster house
elephant
all the real girls
the exorcist
michael clayton
harry potter and the order of the phoenix
everyone says i love you and manhattan
and hocus pocus, obviously.

The Killers of A. Lyons

the punishment one receives for fooling with my camera while i'm asleep.
though i might point out that rob seems to be the better photographer.

monet's potatoes

every once in a while after using my cutting board, i notice the juice from the vegetables or whatever i'm cutting has left really neat patterns. same thing when i bake in the oven.
sometimes i'm too lazy to take a picture, but last night i took a third and thought that was enough to make into a blog post.

purple and yukon potatoes.

? looks like strawberries and raw chicken.

butternut squash chip food stamps.

oh, the photos are too dark?

deal with it. i took them on my iphone and uploaded them on a computer from 1998.

karma (and guests) pizza night

in an effort to make amends for the last karma dinner, which involved some questionable shrimp tacos and more US Open than well, you know-bonding, we decided to have a pizza night at my apartment.

i got a pizza stone and we made a few different pizzas, drank lots of post road pumpkin beer, and had cupcakes norite brought from georgetown scoops.

there was a thin layer of flour that settled like dust on the table after we formed the pies. i eventually let megan take the lead in doing this after our first pizza was shaped like a pac-man.

we put acorn squash on one of the pizzas and had to scoop out the inside like a pumpkin. it smelled so fresh and was so so good after we roasted it.

we left the windows open and the cool air felt great after gathering around the heat of the oven waiting for the pizzas to cook. we lit candles and played the iron and vin station on pandora. alli unbuttoned her pants and megan made everyone leave early so they could get up early for bootcamp the next morning (suckers).

eatsing.

though i would love to leave everyone with the impression that i cook fabulously delicious meals every night in all my free time (i actually do have a lot of free time, i just make a point of wasting it), the fact is i had 1/3 a bag of frozen edamame and an oversized mug of hot chocolate for dinner.

eating out is expensive, yes. that much is obvious. sometimes i think about the money i've spent in restaurants recently and realize i could have bought a round-trip ticket to london.
but you know what can be even more expensive? cooking. on my walk home from trader joe's i calculated how much i spent to make soup, and it was more than i would ever pay for soup. i guess you can justify it because you're paying for 3 things. 1. the food 2. a sense of accomplishment 3. publicity: it's totally fine if you want to tell people i'm a good cook. it's not like you'd be lying, unless you were talking about anything other than pasta.

i've found teaching yourself to live on a budget is really hard, if not impossible. the way i've handled it so far is to cook and eat out every once and a while, and survive on <3 style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">fennel, anise, thai basil, terragon: they all have a licorice flavor, used in a lot of fish and egg dishes.
cumin, coriander, chili powder, turmeric: some people like to use them in a lot of middle eastern and indian dishes. i like to use them never.
nutmeg, ground cloves, ginger, cinnamon: the spices of baking and autumn
marjoram, thyme, sage, rosemary: chicken and beef spices.

another thing i've been trying to do is try and look at the farmer's market as a treat and NOT a regular grocery store. maybe one day when i become a stay-at-home owner and my dog godric is making the big bucks, i can buy all the grass-fed bison cutlets and apple butter i want. but for now the occasional produce splurge is all i can afford.
so look out acorn squash, because tomorrow marks the first foggy bottom market of october.

Now, it's common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch

because i wanted to make every random little muscle in my arms ache and because i remember the shortage last year, i decided to cram my grocery bag with cans of pumpkin.
earlier in the day i had made the journey from fairfax to southeast with a fairytale pumpkin in tow.
so not only do i have a freakishly strong extensor carpi radialis longus, but i'm super ready for october!

i'd like to make a lot of soup this fall. last fall it became achingly apparent that a life without a hokie passport and an abp means an unfulfilled autumnal dietary satisfaction.
my soup aspirations will warrant a larger food processor. and a lot of sherry.

happy october, month of beer and leaves sharing colors, of halloween and ghosts, of twitches, hocus pocus and rosemary's baby, and most of all, comma splices.

the marshmellow test.

this video makes me so happy. i saw it on another a cup of jo, but found it too amazing not to share.
it reminds me how little growing up i've done in the past 18 years. i could never wait for the second marshmellow.

besting me

broccoli rabe: terrorists vegetable of choice.
-my roommate

why is this vegetable suddenly appearing everywhere? last week i decided to try a recipe and see what this broccoli rabe, this rapini, is all about.
well this vegetable is all about sadness, if you must know. sadness, terror and dissapointment. i literally spit it out and admitted that broccoli rabe got the best of me that night.

how did the phrase "got the best of me" come about?
did broccoli rabe look at me and say: not impressed
well screw you broccoli rabe, you hipster broccoli, you bitter green stalk of vitamins A, K and C.

i can't decide if i want to start a lifelong campaign against the lesser of the broccolis, or turn around and get the best of it.

celebrating national coffee day

happy national coffee day

peregrine macchiato.

in honor of national coffee day, starbucks is going to try their best to make their coffee not taste like shit. perhaps that sounds a bit hypocritical coming from someone who documented her first starbucks pumpkin spiced latte of the season on her iphone.

i still love a lot of starbucks drinks, but anything i will actually order is more likely to induce a sugar coma than get me started for an invigorating day of calendars and all-around time wastement. there are a lot of independent coffee shops in dc, and at the risk of sounding insufferable, i would choose any one of them over starbucks - if not for the hand crafted coffee, then for the abundance of foamed milk leafs, dogs and hippies.

my favorite drinks lately have been espressos. they remind me of france where everyone sipped from tiny little cups and you could find dispensers everywhere that charged only a euro. i was never able to taste any different flavors in coffee, but in espressos i can. it makes the experience more like drinking wine. ugh, french people and their refined palates and hand-rolled cigarettes. i hate envy adore you.

today i am celebrating national coffee day by letting the rain and melancholy get the best of me and generally acting like i need a big cup of coffee. happy day.

spirit animals.

Heather - The Domestic Hen

let the wild rumpus begin.

palm canyon reminded me of the land of the wild things.

which just so happens to be a great fall movie
(don't listen to anyone who said it was bad)

ps. i have a flickr.

Palm Springs, CA

from dc to dallas to palm springs to dallas to st. louis and back to dc.
palm springs. i think the heat makes the people there crazy, they are eccentric and gay and colorful and in a world of their own.

we stayed in a retro hotel in the middle of a desert down the street from liberace's house. most of palm springs is built on an indian reservation and we were very close to palm canyon.

an ancient friendship bracelet ceremony:

palm canyon

arizona through a few filters:

a few facts: our room was constantly stocked with champagne, red velvet cake, water and cheese balls. palms don't sweat in the desert. i'm going to tell people american indians made my new moccasins. at one point on the trip, i found myself laying on my stomach with a lady knee-walking on my back, this is apparently what they call a massage. people don't usually get rufied at the village pub, but they might. i have a free ticket to anywhere.

birthdays.

going to dinner tonight to celebrate this girl's twenty fourth birthday

then off to palm springs at 4am tomorrow morning to visit monica for the first time in california for her birthday

i couldn't be more excited and i'm going to take a ton of pictures unless, of course, i drop my camera into a canyon. or more likely, the pool. helllllo cabana boy.

spirit animals.

Kerry/me - The Deer















Megan Farnsworth Snyder - The Chipmunk


















Alli - The Squirrel
















Please let me know if you would like me to explore your spirit animal.

If i kept this gift to myself, i know my american indian ancestors would be very displeased. Know that it's the spirit animal that chooses you, and I am merely a medium.

Like,
the Deer.

orange, va

the street festival. a giant pumpkin, American flags (spell check was basically calling me a terrorist for keeping "American" in lowercase), kettle corn, the high school marching band and a boxer puppy.

fried chicken crisis in his press badge.

scrabble and oktoberfest on the porch. croquet in the backyard.

tornado chips with lots of salt & malt vinegar & pale legs.

starr hill brewery in crozet, va. black and white because drew's eyes were red-rimmed on account of the crack (just kidding! please please don't get angry...again). just kidding again there. i think i'm going to go watch tv.