Yummy Doodles

cake and cupcakes have been on the brain lately, what with the NYT doing a piece on the hilarious cake wrecks blog (<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/dining/14cake.html>), and free chocolate cupcakes on the corner of 34th and walnut this past tuesday just as i was in need of a quick pick-me-up snack before biking to a philobiblon meeting in center city, and the buttercream cupcake truck (<http://buttercreamphiladelphia.com>) twitter stream now part of my google reader feed, and kristen roth '05's amazing cakey confections...

and then, this: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlfish1303/4014215141>

slurp!

An Evening Frittered Lightly Away

take:

1) a convenient, if somewhat loud and snotty, location (mad mex, on 34th and sansom -- rock music in the background about 20dB too high, plus they had the most intense ID-checking machine and weren't afraid either to use it or to chase down evaders).
2) a delectable wine (a glass of potent chardonnay).
3) good company (wim). and
4) deep, relevant, honest conversation.

mix well. consume. walk away happy, contented.

totally worth the mediocre guacamole and the one wharton gent who spent part of our evening blow-own-trumpeting to us.

Bubbly

i just bought another gorgeous titan watch!

pick@flick[r]: <http://flickr.com/photos/girlfish1303/3317092197>

it's the most delicate, petite thing i've worn on my wrists in a long time, but i like it a lot.

(see my post about my first purchase here: <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/05/pretty-pretty.aspx>)

***

update, sunday, march 1, 2009:

in case the post title doesn't make any sense, it's because the watch is supposed to look like a bottle of champagne, with the crystals representing bubbles. (also because new bling makes me happy, but that's secondary.)

Thanks Are In Order

to all that is holy.

thank you google, thank you thank you thank you, for finally bringing out the picasa for mac application for which i've been waiting and waiting.

(i don't have boot camp, so i couldn't have run the PC version on my mac.)

<http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2009/01/announcing-picasa-for-mac.html>

i was just thinking yesterday, as i uploaded my pictures from my winter break travels to picasa web albums, that iphoto is really not an intuitive or user-friendly piece of software. although the slider thing where you can choose how many pictures you want to see in each row in your albums is pretty neat, and although some of the edit features (especially the special effects like sepia and vignette) are cool, too, those are about the only front-end features in iphoto that are actually exciting to me.

(i just recently discovered "smart albums", and even that is strictly OK, because i can totally see how the conditional logic it requires would fail quite easily given how i work with my photos).

so yeah, other than silly cosmetic things -- ugh. i mean, what on earth is an "event"? and why can't you see all of them in the left-hand bar if you want to? why is "last import" the only pre-set viewing option, instead of a nice calendar-like thing like picasa has? why can you not trash photos from within your albums, making you go back to events view all the time? why can you not view photos larger and click between them using simple arrow keys?

this is not even to mention the features i was missing out on by not having picasa installed on my mac (although these, admittedly, are failings on google's end). like, why does the picasa web uploader for iphoto only allow uploading and not downloading (the entire album download feature is the best thing ever!!!)? and why does the uploader not integrate more intuitively into iphoto, such as by being housed in the "share" menu and not the "export" menu?

on and on i could go. but i'll stop now, cuz i wanna go download the thing asap, already. i bet it'll be sleek, and pretty, and exciting. yessss!

Bullseye Bridal

dailycandy <http://www.dailycandy.com> did a weddings-on-the-cheap special today -- RSVPs online, cupcakes instead of a three-layered white cream monstrosity, the whole shebang.

but, as someone who has lived in 2 cities now that have disproportionate quantities of bridal boutiques (replete with silent, desolate white window displays, and often showing off several dresses i don't think anyone in their right mind would buy) in their downtown neighbourhoods, what really surprised me was this:
<http://www.target.com/b/ref=in_br_display-ladders/602-4643302-5076628?ie=UTF8&node=347006011>

izaak mizrahi wedding wear for under $100. not bad stuff, either. you can order online, with free shipping, and your choices even include a pantsuit in case you want to be all gender-neutral or business-like or whatevs.

wow. now that's the kind of wedding shopping i'd like to be doing. no bling, no crazy bills, no debt.

(i wonder what their return policy would be on this line... and how funny it'd be -- hypothetically, of course -- to see hungover brides coming in the next day to stand in the customer service line, tags still attached.)

(before anyone starts freaking out, no, i will not be picking out a dress to match the $42 ring i wrote about here last year <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/09/ring-of-truth.aspx>.)

God Is In The Rain

for my first ten days in my new apartment, i couldn't open any of the windows in my living room, as they had been painted shut by my landlord's apparently-unconcerned maintenance folk.

a considerate maintenance person came by and knifed them open this morning, about an hour ago. i jumped at the chance to get some fresh air by opening them all, propping one up precariously with a bug screen (there's no chain on the window to keep it open -- evidently my apartment windows have long been neglected!)

then, five or ten minutes ago, it started to thunderstorm. the air is cool, electric as i sift through my email. my living room and i are refreshed. grey skies or not, it will be a good day!

Thank God For Senuti

3188 songs, 10.2 days, 13.63 GB... all locked up, thanks to the fact that macs control ipods better than pcs do. maybe i was doing something wrong, but getting one's music off one's ipod is well nigh impossible on a mac -- just as is getting one's photos off one's sony digital camera without erasing the contents of the memory stick. it has something to do with the files being invisible, i think.

but then brian and adam told me about senuti ("itunes" in reverse -- genius, eh?). simple download, one-click install, native to mac, and easy as pie. it looks just like itunes, except that it works in the opposite direction, allowing you to (see large green arrow) transfer music to a hard drive.

i think i've made one gross mistake by not fiddling with the preferences, so that all my music is currently getting sorted by artist and album (so many folders! gah!), and i'm a teensy bit sad that my nice [artist] - track name.mp3 naming system has been replaced by a rather more primitive trackname.mp3 system, but these are the days of front-end-not-back-end computing, so who's complaining?! at least my beloved music is safe -- and i get to keep the ratings and the playlists, too!

75° Never Felt This Good

after a 4-day philadelphia heat wave (99° on the mac widget! blazing sun! insane heat index! excessive humidity! thunderstorms that never came!) that knocked me off my feet and put both my little window fans to work pretty much non-stop, the change in weather starting last night was an absolute godsend.

lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and lovely cold raindrops pelted me as i stood on the porch last night, staring down into a bleak back alley lit by a single spotlight and thinking about life and all its surprises. the perfect storm for my state of mind. and this morning, the breeze dancing around me -- air that wasn't muggy! air that moved! -- was like a miracle.

object lesson: even if you're from india, you can feel too hot for comfort. but all you need is a little summer rain to make everything better.

The Unthinkable

i'm no longer the kind of kid who's all anti-microsoft (being 25 means i don't have time for soapbox tirades -- and, cough, i now have a mac). but i was willing to give the free office substitute program a go, because it's, well, free.

but after neo-office shut down on me for the nth time, and i realized that my never-ending paper of doom (currently at 33 pages, without the 5 pages of images i need to stick in there) was going to be even longer and the formatting get all messed up when emily opened it with ms office, i decided it was time to succumb.

so: office 2008.

i never realized just how comfortable i am with word (as opposed to neo-office "writer"), even though it's the 2008 edition and i've hardly ever used it before. i also hadn't realized how much prettier it is than the no-frills, weird-buttons neo app.

*sigh of relaxation*

yes, dear readers, before you freak out, yes. yes. i sold my soul to the devil, and i'm ok with that. at least my headers (first page different) and my footnotes (all 40 of them, in times new roman 10 with superscript numbering and one space instead of one tab space between number and note) don't need to be individually formatted anymore.

Romeo And Juliet

i remember watching baz luhrmann's william shakespeare's romeo + juliet for the first time 10 years ago, under perfectly delightful circumstances (read: sitting next to my first "boyfriend"). but even without 14-year-old girlishness factored in, shakespeare's text was powerful enough, even to my then-untrained ear, to jet the movie straight to my all-time favourites list. i think leo might have had something to do with it, too (no surprises there...) anyway, the important thing is that i didn't pay much attention at the time to the siren who crooned sultrily at the capulets' ball as a drugged romeo first laid eyes on a fairylike juliet.

fast forward 3 years, to when i finally figured out the significance of sade (and how her name was actually pronounced).

and then cut to another 7 later. the song -- in all its spectacular brevity -- has very unexpectedly made it to the top of my playlist. it may actually be the most intense song i own. [apparently sade may have had something to do with the lyrics -- unclear -- but the voice is that of des'ree. no matter, still hot.] more important thing is that this admission comes from the girl who usually vacillates between trance, hip-hop and hindi remixes. hua kya hai mujhe!?

Kissing You (Love Theme from Romeo + Juliet)

Pride can stand a thousand trials
The strong will never fall
But watching stars without you
My soul cries

Heaving heart is full of pain
Oooh, oooh, the aching
'Cause I'm kissing you, oooh
I'm kissing you, oooh

Touch me deep, pure and true
Give to me forever
'Cause I'm kissing you, oooh
I'm kissing you, oooh

Where are you now
Where are you now
'Cause I'm kissing you
I'm kissing you, oooh

More Thoughts On Shopping

(god, i feel like a freak discussing this girly stuff on a regular basis! see <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/11/everything-thats-right-with-world.aspx>, <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/09/ring-of-truth.aspx>, and <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/06/i-am-shopping-fiend.aspx> for just a sampling of what i'm talking about.)

we all know that spending money is addictive, especially in new york, which seems to practically pull money out of one's wallet. just ask anyone who's indulged in serious retail therapy, like, ever. for me, this time, the wallet was precisely the issue: the zipper on my old faithful (read: boring) tri-fold black wallet broke last week.

so, the mission: to go out and get a new wallet which would allow me to carry change along with credit cards, cash, cvs coupons, business cards etc.

preemptive strikes: nothing tri-fold. nothing too thick. nothing in a non-basic colour.

and then guess what i found? a chartreuse-green faux croc bi-fold with a big silver g [for, yes, you got it, guess] on the buckle. definitely not black, but small, and super freaking awesome, and on sale, too.

pick@flick[r]: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlfish1303/2142927266>

Everything That's Right With The World

or, finding deals at old navy.

earlier today my darling roomie and i went shopping so that she could buy a winter coat and stop freezing [and denying she does] every time she walks to school or back.

well, old navy was having an outerwear sale, so that was our first stop. she picked out a pretty, mildly puffy black weatherproof zipup jacket with a fur-lined hood. as she posed in front of the mirror, i poked around the jeans section trying to find some nice flared jeans for myself (2 pairs of levi's just don't do it for a girl in a capitalist economy!)

here comes the first awesome part of the afternoon: i went to try on 2 pairs of size 4 diva/flirt jeans, but they were too loose! usually i'm against the ridiculous dropping of sizes in the world of retail just to make people feel thinner, but this time (after all the ice cream i've been consuming) it felt great.

anyway, i went back to the shelves, but couldn't find a pair of the jeans i wanted (diva flares, which are apparently rare and don't even feature on the ads) in size 2. so i asked a sales associate for help, and she found me a pair in my size in about 3 seconds (even though it was on a hanger that said size 16). so that was rocking, too.

part 3: i tried them on, and they fit perfectly.

the pièce de résistance: i was talking to sandy while i stood at the check-out line to pay for them, so didn't really pay attention to the cashier when she took my credit card and announced the price to me. but when i went up to the little electronic tablet to sign for them, i saw this under "total": $6.97. not the $34.50 i'd seen on the label and decided to ignore because i liked them so much. that's right, just under seven dollars. for a limited edition pair of jeans.

you should have seen me grin.

(the icing was that sandy managed to find herself a pair in her size, too. so now not only did we both get the deal of the century, but we can match as we show off our steals!)

Ring Of Truth

here's the engagement ring i want (no, really):

<http://hrccornerstore.myimagefirst.com/store/product.asp?sku=11220&id=598&mscssid=EMS30M339NPJ8PC1E5WB5XJBSP0V9NF9>

now, to find a boy who hasn't succumbed to the myth that absolutely all women, "no matter what they may say", want bling.

Ever Get The Sense...

that this is the first day of the rest of your life?

today, i have that sense.

the sunrise was especially beautiful. i'm grateful i was up to see it, jetlag be damned. hello, philadelphia!

CityLurve: Philadelphia

if i hear one more person tell me that philadelphia is a shithole/the ghetto/crime-ridden and depressed/not as good as new york, i will give them the look of death. or bust out my talons and rip right into them, depending on how annoying i found them before they went and opened their pie-hole.

i haven't spent much time in the city, admittedly, and the statistics do give reason for worry, and septa is about as inspiring in the field of public transportation as king kong is in the field of microsurgery, but the unmitigated hating? that just needs to stop already! because you know what? i like the skyline, i like the grid-like layout (boston, you have a lot to learn, buddy), i like 30th street station, i like the little squares with archaic names (fitler? rittenhouse?), i like the ubiquitous homage to ben franklin, i like the south st. creperie i was taken to on my first "real" day in the city (and the atmosphere of south st. in general), i like the view from penns landing, i like the street signs with rainbows on them, i like the architecture and the robert indiana sculpture in/near jfk plaza, and i like the painted little victorian houses in university city. so shush.

in this vein, the aarp magazine (which i was reading over lunch at work today because it had an ancient-looking kevin costner on the cover and i just had to find out what would inspire them to put his wrinkled fake-tanned goatee-wielding shaved-chested self in such a position of glory) is just beyond impolite.

you see, the magazine's july/august 2007 issue boasts an article on "50 things to know at 50" or some such (i guess you could call this advance reading... or something to make the tasteless food go down easier); #42 is "how to stay married". the advice for the more poetic among us is to "pretend your relationship (marriage) is a road trip. your wedding was the holland tunnel. your life is the new jersey turnpike. death is philadelpia. pretend there are no exits, only rest stops."

umm, hello? not only is that the most depressing vision of marriage i've ever heard (and i do consider myself at this stage an anti-marriage cynic), but also, how about we make death, like, idaho or somewhere else instead of the city in which i'm going to spend the next semi-decade? hmph!

A Cloud On The New York Skyline

well, actually, today there aren't any (literal clouds, that is) -- and i can attest to that authoritatively because i am sitting sealed in on the 32nd floor, capable of seeing over the roofs of pretty much every building for the next 10 or so blocks uptown and the next 5 or so cross-town.

but my new york landscape is changing more quickly than ever before, and it ain't never going to be the same again. see, mel-lo left years ago. luis and jackie have slowly faded into the background. xan i last saw after she broke up with dan (ancient history now, i imagine). but gaurang, kunal, udayan, diksha and gautam have left over the last year. soon bani and nishad will leave. rhea will presumably make a new home in the next six months. michael and tarini are here for the summer, but how long will that last? and amit and amrita, too, are in transition.

sure, caitlin might be here... but she's a part of my boston past now, i guess. tina and sushil are probably still here, but i haven't spoken to them in a long while. (sway will stay, as might devang -- but i hardly ever see them anyway!) and i still can't call jack.

but anoushka will move here in the fall. and lindsey, bethie and aditi will stay -- and i suspect they, along with daniel and the faithful LIRR and the suburbs (like stamford and paramus), will be fragmented consolation on increasingly-intermittent visits.

i will still love new york, but abhi, under the street but above the subway on 49th street, was right: life here is too damn fast.

Shoulda Played By The Rules

one of the rules of the fast life, the experts tell me, is to try everything once.

well, i now know that it should apply to the nerdy life too.

because, you see, i was given the opportunity earlier today to cast a sort -- a little gothic letter "a" with its own little type-high body (exactly 0.918", if you please) and its own little "jet" (or "tang") and its own little idiosyncrasies -- using a 600° F alloy of molten lead, tin and antimony, and a hand mould made by stan nelson. (for more information on hand typecasting, see the wikipedia article here -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_casting_(typography)> -- or ask james mosley.)

and i passed it up.

next time someone offers me such a nerdy opportunity, you can bet your well-worn copy of harry carter (or daniel berkeley updike, if you're old-school) i'll be first in line.

Pieces Of Eight

the "eight random things about you" meme has been floating around for the last little while... and it makes sense that this round seems to be the province of book people, too; only librarians and other varieties of bibliophiles could conceivably concern themselves with digging up and digesting this degree of personal trivia.

well, here goes.

1. i've been a calligrapher for about 12 years now -- half my life. if you asked me what hand i most preferred, i'd vacillate between italic and gothic, but my heart really belongs to copperplate, for which my pumpkin nib is perfect but at which i'm not as proficient as i'd like to be.
2. my favourite kind of flower is the gerbera daisy.
3. countries i currently want to travel to: egypt, greece, turkey, italy, peru, australia, the maldives.
4. i have 10 piercings (7 in my right ear, 1 in my left, nose, navel). next up: a tattoo.
5. i am obsessed with the new york times's real estate and weddings sections. what can i say; all those heart-warming stories about people finding beautiful rent-controlled apartments (and equivalent soulmates) make for addictive reading! (i can't remember where i found the following website, but this couple's story, although not narrated in as much detail as i would have liked, mixes the two genres, and therefore takes the cake: <http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/9-month-cure/index>)
6. one of my guiltiest shopping pleasures (which i think proves that i am not really that high maintenance) is buying fruity-smelling shampoo. my sense of self depends on few things more than it depends on the way my hair smells when i randomly get whiffs of it on the wind while whipping busily around at work. for years i used generic crap by revlon (oh, right, it was called flex. ugh.) but then i finally invested in some orange-scented stuff by suave. i can't remember what came after that (it was junior/senior year of college, which is a total sensory haze)... until i discovered herbal essences. fruity goodness in all colours of the rainbow! w00t! and then, a few months ago, courtesy of royal chemists near liberty cinema, camellia, chamomile and hot tea. not so much fruity as... clean and classy, but clairol and therefore damn good. last week, though, came the pièce de résistance: i was poking around at the local on my way to my daily swim, and saw the curviest, prettiest pink snap-top bottles -- body envy volumizing shampoo and conditioner, with a fusion of white nectarine and pink coral flower. "do i want to feel uplifted?" hell yeah! (my only disappointment? yellow liquid in pink bottles. what the bleep is that?) (yes, i am a cross between a ditzy teenager and a stern anti-blatant-false-advertising biznatch. deal.) but whatevs, all is forgiven, for the glorious smell, and since they even come with trivia on the bottles for when i'm shampooing away earnestly and need on-the-fly reading material! yummy.
7. i prefer silver/platinum/titanium jewellery to gold/diamond bling.
8. i could totally subsist on noodles (maggi/ramen, flat rice noodles, udon, soba, glass noodles... not to mention dishes like mee goreng, hakka, pad thai...) and veggies. basically, if it has a slurp factor, and mushrooms, i can eat it.

i like how this list randomly ended up being all about the good things in life. i must be happy.

(last time it was five rather more intense things -- see <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/01/five-things-you-dont-know-about-me.aspx> for a total of 13 factoids!)

Mars And Venus

i will confess to having stumbled upon this very cool series of photographs almost a month ago, but for some reason i didn't blog about it immediately, and it got lost in the depths of blogger's "edit posts" page (and my ridiculous social life).

however, in light of some recent profound conversations about marriage, men, brains and biology (names of participants redacted for the benefit of everyone's mental health), it now holds extra dimension as the most appropriate metaphor for... well, everything:

<http://saraheartbacon.com/pages_html/hands_page.html>

heartbreak lies in overthinking, but life is in the details. this is an inalienable truth.

(i've never seen anything quite like her work before. the fact that she is a seven sisters alum further warms the cockles of my heart.)

Pretty Pretty!

(twice, because it has two dials!)

i am now the owner of this beautiful object:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlfish1303/522739219>

CityLurve: London (Redux)

home safe, with a riddle solved (see <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/04/where-would-you-go.aspx>), a new friend solidly in the kitty, a diary completed, and about half the monopoly board checked off.

london was amazing, and although i spent a lot of my time alone this trip -- and had a great time doing it -- due credit for a lot of the highlights must go to milan (<http://web.mac.com/msamani>), heather, and rishab (<http://rishab.nomadlife.org>).

heather, the quintessential wellesley woman, and my medievalist warwick castle companion: i had a fabulous time, trebuchet and train rides and long walks and all. i hope we can be companions on more such adventures!

rish... "bhai" to me too, although in a different way. thanks for letting me crash!

and milan. how can i thank you enough? right from waiting for me at the airport to riding the london eye with me to our fabulous avenue q experience to lip-smackingly good dinners at ping pong and crazy bear to zooming around central london -- st. katherine docks, st. paul's, the millennium bridge, fly one, hammersmith -- all day and all night (in the beemer, on the underground, and on foot) to the seamless laundry ka intezaam at 1 pickwick place to listening to me rattle on about grad school to explaining the origins of the anglican church and the congestion charge to co-opting vishwa's bed for me to contemplating smuggling me across the french border to offering me a place to stay "when you come here for penn-in-london [4 years from now]"... you are a gem.

my visa is valid until 2010. mel and michael will be there in the fall, too. more more more!

***

update, wednesday, june 20, 2007:

check this out: <http://www.animalsontheunderground.com>

most versatile subway system ever!