Winter Cheer

I'm feeling oddly cheerful.

He looks cold.

I'm several days late in posting these photos of winter, glorious winter, but I think they're beautiful. For someone who always hated the cold, always reveled in heat waves, I sure do love snow an awful lot. Or, rather, I love when it's snowing.

Contrary to popular belief, Southeast is lovely.

It's just so peaceful and calm when it's snowing, the romantic period between the first flurry and brown slush choking the streets. This week's snow days made me feel cheery and comforted.

Brrr...

The ensuing sidewalk ice slicks that threatened another emergency room trip with every cautious, slippery step? Not so much.

One Appendix Lighter

Winking-Eye Alcohol Suggestion

Not last Wednesday but the Wednesday before, I didn't feel so hot.

My stomach had been hurting for several days, just a dull (yet quite persistent) ache. I had dinner and watched some tv with the White Rabbit, who left his car parked outside my house and left me his key when he left -- just in case I needed to high-tail it over to urgent care the next morning, if it didn't feel better. I went to sleep, thinking it would just go away with rest, and was rudely awakened several times during the night by the pain. At 3AM, when I could stand it no longer, I got up, got dressed, got in the car, and drove myself clear across the city to GWU hospital's emergency room.

After waiting what seemed like an eternity, they started a slew of tests to rule out several different causes of abdominal pain (boo). They also started putting hefty doses of morphine into my IV (yay!). I developed a low fever and they put me in line for a cat scan after forcing me to drink a liter of that hideous contrast dye. The cat scan confirmed appendicitis, and they whisked me off to surgery, put me under, and pulled that sucker the hell out, after which I had to spend the night in the hospital (my first time).

So yeah. I've been MIA, but with good reason! Thanks to the White Rabbit and all the rest of my best friends for going out of their way to visit me in the hospital multiple times, bring me food, and watch DVDs with me while I drifted in and out of Codeine-induced naps.

When I came out of the anesthesia, the surgeon told me I had six visitors waiting for me in the waiting room. That felt good. Even better than the morphine.

Oh, My Darling

I was just recently lamenting the inherent lameness of winter fruit. Cherries, berries, melon and stone fruit in the summer, apples and pears in the fall... dry, tasteless oranges in the winter? I haven't enjoyed winter fruit since my late grandfather passed two years ago, as he used to send a huge box of perfect oranges to my dorm every winter from some farm in Florida. All other oranges paled in comparison.

But oh, my darling Clementines! How dare I forget about these juicy little gems? Their peels practically fall off, and with them go the winter blues. The White Rabbit taught me to toss their peels into the disposal, which makes my kitchen smell lovely. I can't even look at this photo without feeling cheerier!

Orange you feeling cheerier?

And oh, my real darling: a very merry birthday, White Rabbit!

Inheriting the Wind

It's been a while, kids. First I fell into a blogger slump where I didn't have anything to say (not that I ever have anything to say, really, but I digress). Then I went home to California for the holidays (photos to come).

But now I'm back in DC, and reeling with the joy that was 2008. This year was good to me. However, this morning I heard a crashing noise and went to the window to investigate. As a tumultuous end to a fabulous twelve months, the out-of-control wind that's ripping through the city on this last day of the year uprooted a tree right outside my building.

The view from my front door.

All things considered, this was the ideal treefall. It didn't hit the building, passing pedestrians, parked cars (including the White Rabbit's car, which was parked a mere two feet away from the tree in its upright position -- miraculous!), nor did it fall into the street. In fact, thirty minutes ago the city of Washington had already dispatched a truck to my house, and the workmen were revving up chainsaws. The whole mess is already gone.

The view from the White Rabbit's car.

Yep, 2008 is out with a bang.

Family Resemblance

My boyfriend (who, for the sake of continuity with my previous Wonderland-themed blog format, will henceforth be known as the White Rabbit... enter a weak parallel of how I find his bespectacled self extraordinarily intriguing, and how I like to go where he goes, and how this name is being bestowed upon him despite his exceptional punctuality, and HOW DID THIS PARENTHETICAL GET SO LONG?)...

Where was I? Oh yeah, last Saturday the White Rabbit came back to DC from spending Thanksgiving with his family, and he brought with him a handknitted scarf made by his grandma -- for me. For me! And it's darling, shaped like a Florida gator:


I knew it looked familiar, but why? Then I finally put it together -- he recently posted about how he cannot draw, save from a single, famed sketch:


Uncanny.

Blue Screen of Death

Oh, FUCK.

Sweet Potato Pie

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to cook and bake, especially when I can do so for other people. I also, if I may be honest, like making things that make me look like hot shit in the kitchen. Things like the manchego-stuffed bacon-wrapped dates I made for my own birthday party this year, which caused many a partygoer to straight-up swoon.

Cut to me making my own pie crust. Many people do this, so it's not that impressive to some. But my mom taught me to bake early on, when I got to stir things and lick the batter off of the KitchenAid beater -- and pies were not something she made. She insisted she never got the hang of homemade crusts, so I had never tried until last year, with so-so results.

But this year's crust was a success of epic proportions, and although I owe this mainly to my food processor, I like to think my mad kitchen skills left their mark as well. In the form of a handcut fall leaf decoration I sliced out of rolled-out scraps.