Fresh pasta

I called a friend on a whim as I was driving near her house to see if she might want to eat falafel with me in her driveway. Sounds great, she said, but I'm already making pasta. How does that sound? 

Pretty delicious, actually. Tasted pretty delicious, too. She'd made pesto the night before, so my heaping pile of spaghetti was topped with fresh pesto and a generous helping of parmesan. And she sent me home with peppermint bark, on top of that. 

An excellent detour, and nice to have a tiny bit of spontaneity when it's so hard to these days. 

The sky

Today, the sky was lavender. Probably a combination of storm clouds and sunset. It was vibrant and unexpected and gorgeous. 

Read the comments

I always go into a comment section with apprehension. But seeing this as the first one on a story I wrote this week made me smile so big:

"I knew I'd love this article after the first sentence."

It had multiple likes, too. And as nice as it is to get feedback from strangers, it was even greater to hear from friends and colleagues who thought it was good. Hooray.

Favorite words

One of the options on a press-one-for-X menu I called today included hearing a radio personality say her favorite words. 

So I did! And she did. Among them: splendid and hilarious. 

Stamps

I got a new batch the other day - American Gardens. I finally opened them to send some letters tonight and one of the ones they chose is Stan Hywet in Ohio. It made me smile to see it there. 

Fortunes

I love fortune telling in all its various forms. So I was thrilled yesterday when a box showed up on my door and it was a kit from a friend teaching me how to read tea leaves.

There's a mug and some loose leaf and instructions about how the whole thing works. But the best part is the list of symbols - what everything means. 

I can't wait to practice it. 

So awesome

Video of a friend reacting to a birthday surprise I helped orchestrate, and seeing how excited it made her. 

Writing

Sometimes your brain does things that you don't know it's doing, but they just work. That's what happened with a story I wrote yesterday, where the kicker was accidentally perfect. 

I had no idea - I wrote it quickly then moved on to other things - but got two texts about it this morning. I went back to look. It worked so very well. 

Thanks, brain. (It's also why I'm suspect of literary criticism. But maybe I'm the only one who accidentally writes that way.)

Lunch

Was a tomato sandwich, with a tomato that I grew on foccacia that I baked.

And it was divine.

Road names

I have always been fascinated by the naming of roads. One of my life goals is to name them within a neighborhood. (Urban planner friends, help me out here!)

So today I was delighted by a street sign I saw while driving in north Georgia. The road was called Apple Ridge 2.

That's right - 2! Right there on the sign! Like, yeah, we know there's another one... but this was our destiny! 

I googled it when I got home, just to make sure my eyes didn't deceive me. Nope. Dawsonville, Georgia. It's there. 

Vows

I got to watch a friend's wedding on Zoom this weekend. I wish I could have been there in person, of course. But it was so nice to see the ceremony online.

They referenced wizards and Hedwig's Origin of Love in their vows, and it was so damn sweet.

P.S.

The butter carving was just as amazing as I hoped it would be.

Princess Kay

The New York Times had a story a couple weeks ago about Princess Kay of the Milky Way, the annual competition for dairy promotion at the Minnesota State Fair. 

Each year, the competition is capped by a sculptor carving a 90-pound butter bust of each contestant. The show must go on, so even though the fair os off, the carving must continue. They'll do it via Facebook Live starting tomorrow. You can bet I marked my calendar. 

I went on the Facebook page tonight to see the details and ended up watching the coronation. It was otherworldly. College students in gowns, wearing masks, talking about their love for dairy farming. There were videos with family members wearing matching shirts, terrible puns and beauty-pageant-like questions related to farms.

It made my night. I can't wait for a week's worth of butter carving. 

Scavenger hunt

As part of a friend's birthday celebration, I was a clue in a scavenger hunt (and directed him to another person who would direct him to another who would, eventually, lead him to a birthday present).

I thought it was such a neat idea and the long text conversation was so nice to have.

Foofaraw

I learned a new word yesterday: foofaraw, which means "frills and flashy finery" or "a disturbance or to-do over a trifle."

It's fun! And came about after I didn't succeed in finding it in the spelling bee game.

Out the window

What a neat pandemic creation.

http://window-swap.com/window

Look and see what people are looking at from their little parts of the world.

Book exchange

I've been in the same book club for nearly a decade, and one of the highlights is the twice-annual white elephant book exchange where people steal and steal and steal books and it takes forever to know what you're going home with.

That's hard in a pandemic.

While we've been able to keep having meetings on Zoom, the exchange was a different story. But tonight, we figured it out! And so if all goes to plan, I should be getting a book in the mail in the not-too-distant future.

That's pretty wonderful, as are the successes in normalcy, such as it is now.

Dairy princess

Everything about this story, regarding the butter-carved busts of decades of Dairy Princesses at the Minnesota State Fair, delights me more than I can begin to tell you.

So let me call out just one part.

“I think any time you can see a butter princess sculpted out of butter is a good day,” said Karal Ann Marling, the author of “Blue Ribbon: A Social and Pictorial History of the Minnesota State Fair.”

Ms. Marling said she had always been mesmerized by the skill required to turn a block of butter into a realistic bust in front of a crowd of curious onlookers.

“The hard part of it for me is you won’t be able to eat any of the tailings that come off when you’re sculpting,” Ms. Marling said. “That was always my favorite part.”

How can you not want to read more?

Better yet -- this year, you can watch from home! I plan to.

Virtual bookshelves

I just watched an author talk on Zoom with Curtis Sittenfeld and Roxane Gay (both of whom I adore). And like Curtis, I am in love with Roxane Gay's full-wall, wraparound, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

So I was so excited when they started to talk about them! And then wonderfully amused when Roxane admitted that they were a virtual background... of another room in her house. With a window photoshopped in.

How amazing is that?

Also, she's building a Little Free Library in her front yard to put the galleys of all the books she's sent, and if I didn't want to be neighbors before, I definitely do, now.

Yeast

I've been baking a fair bit through quarantine (and made a blueberry gingerbread cake this weekend!) but today was the first time I've made anything with yeast.

(OK, if we're being honest, I started it yesterday and it rose for forever, but it didn't come out of the oven until this evening.)

The foccacia turned out well enough to share, so I did: I brought some over to two other people. I ate a huge chunk. And I put some in my freezer, where it will hopefully stay delicious for more than two days.