the one in which rich argues against a cash bar

received in an email this afternoon: "I think they should have a cash dessert bar, since not everyone eats dessert, and a piece of fucking cake is probably worse for you than a glass of red wine."

i love rich logic.

thanksgiving is just around the corner...

i bet they could pass for turkey if served with enough gravy

...are you ready? i'm not! but, i did grab some awesome vintage thanksgiving postcards off of ebay and am getting more in the mood. i'd probably feel even more in the mood if i'd put away my halloween decorations.

when rich saw i was looking at vintage postcards, he said: "i want one with the turkey being eaten alive"...and then he laughed at menacingly. so, sweetie, this is for you. love you.

this may be the year to go vegan if haunted turkeys aren't your thing

there has to be a better way to evaluate a turkey than this

i can't even come up with anything here. it's just far too confusing. i have no idea what the artist was trying to convey as a tribute "for thanksgiving." do we really want to know why the little boy wearing a bow loincloth?

the master gardener in me loves these cards--i thought about buying them, then realized i could buy the actual trees they represent for the same price. this is a chestnut (horse chestnut?)...

...oak (red oak?)...

...and some lovely invasive-if-you-don't-keep-up-with-them wild grapes.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

rich, c. 1996

rich, atop san marco in venice. this picture just makes me smile.

crystal bridges museum of american art

interior courtyard at night, crystal bridges museum

this past weekend rich granted me a reprieve to go to the opening of the crystal bridges museum of american art in bentonville, arkansas. i'd been excited about this institution since i first heard of it; i was thrilled to actually get tickets and go see it in all its inaugural glory. i have to say: it did not disappoint in the slightest. it was beautifully designed by moshe safdie with a comprehensive american art collection put together, largely, by alice walton; it is the louvre of the ozarks. more than 50% of the collection is on view (but almost 100% of the paintings--i asked about this because most museums are only to show about 10% of their total collection). i actually went twice: first on 11/11/11, opening night, to get a general glimpse of everything, then the next day to really spend some concentrated time on the work.

and it was a flippin' joy to actually get to use my ph.d. for something, even if the museum is judd-free...

entrance and aluminum tree

this is what you see from street-level, before descending the pathway to the entrance

rooftop garden sproutlings (this is located on top of the gift shop, which you do not have to walk through to exit the museum)

interior at night, in the dining area

hallway between museum offices and "wonder world" exhibition space

detail, vaulted ceilings--these were made of pressed native arkansas pine and shaped to make ribs spanning the width of the wing

interior courtyard by daylight

lunch

this was tremendous, and definitely one of my favorites: devorah sperber's "after the last supper," 2005. it is made from ball chain (like what you find on a ceiling fan) and 20,736 spools of thread...and a sphere on a viewing stand. amazing.

another view of "after the last supper"

detail of the viewing sphere (image is righted by the curvature of the glass)

detail of christ, made entirely out of spools of thread. loved it long time.

"rosie the riveter," by norman rockwell. check out the copy of "mein kampf" she's got her foot on.

lovely little (yes, it is actually small) o'keeffe, "evening star VII"

josef albers, "homage to the square," 1964. LOVE this. this was about as minimal as the collection got, and it's not technically minimalism, but it's a masterpiece nonetheless.

intriguing copley portrait, not for the woman portrayed...

...but for her pet flying squirrel. it's rocky before he (she?) found bullwinkle.

gilbert stuart's "george washington"--this is one of the paintings east coast critics were complaining about losing to arkansas

a swath of abstract expressionism by adolf gottlieb

baby zane and E.T.

party on, silly boy...happy 100-day birthday, zane!

halloweeeeeen!

sophie bunny on halloween, and yes she did dress herself for school

halloween! it's one of our favorite times of the year here in the triangle. this year we were utterly blessed by the presence of my most beloved sister, lindsay, and little man zane, her two-month old. and the pumpkins were tremendous--rich and i stalked a guy in a pickup driving around town with a bunch of 100+ pound pumpkins, and we bought two for our house...and i got to carve 'em. we had such a blast and were totally thrilled to share zane's first halloween--can't wait for next year. boo!

kitty lindsay and pumpkin-headed zane

aaah--a vampire bat! or as sophie says, a vampirate bat

sophie's sweet little kindergarten class--such cute kids

gus the viking master--i should mention that those are my boots he is wearing, and they were tight. he's going to be ginormous.

even amongst halloweened sixth graders, the viking master still stands out

such a scary vampirate bat on the halloween parade

such a cool viking master on the halloween parade

such a sleepy baby zane after the halloween parade

blech! pumpkin number one has to be a throwing-up pumpkin, as demanded by sophie

pumpkin number two shared a similar nasty fate

and nothing lights up a giant pumpkin like a road flare! we went through 15 of them.

it's the wolfman! this is rich taking a break from eating all our halloween candy and scaring the crap out of little kids coming to the door.

run little bat, run!

in the mood(o) for nudo

what's in the box?

for my birthday this year, rich adopted me an olive tree in italy from nudo, from which we have all benefitted. we've received mandarin, garlic, plain and (drool) lemon-infused olive oils from them so far, but we hadn't tried the chilli flavored one yet. nudo asked, via its facebook page, for people to describe their favorite meals using nudo--ours was rich's homemade bread, lemon-infused oil and a bottle of pinot grigio--and then asked for a picture...which i sent...

...yummy...

...and they rewarded me with a nudo chilli lover's box!

chilli oil, chillies, pasta, and organic chilli salsa from italy

i can't wait to try these--superchillified dinners are a-comin'

give them a click and check them out--you won't regret it. thank you so much, nudo!

four different types of rodent...

...are clearly out to get us. it's getting cold in the upper midwest and the critters are trying to get somewhere safe and warm for the winter. unfortunately, the little fuckers think they should be sharing OUR space, which does not suit. chipmunks (outside, trying to get in the basement), squirrels (outside, trying to get in the garage), raccoons (outside, trying to get in the garage/attic--i don't even know if a raccoon is a rodent or not, but it's a nasty fucker at the very least so i'm classifying it as one) and field mice (outside and, sadly, already in the basement somehow) are all clamoring to invade our house. the mice have even invaded the cars as well, fuckers. i will say i'm in love with these mouse traps, which have a very satisfying little red flag that goes up when you catch one, kinda like the flag on the mailbox.

game on, bitches!

blog action day: food

today is blog action day, a day in which hundreds of bloggers around the world all write about a common theme: this year, it is food.

where i live, right smack in the middle of america, there is definitely no shortage of food. if you live in the united states, a respectable percentage of what you are eating most likely began its life within a 500 mile radius of me. we are beyond fortunate to have access to the abundance of food available to us 24/7, but such is not the case with much of the world's population. mercifully, famine is not my experience.

some of my fondest memories, be they of place, people, experiences or food, involve meals spent with others. in all cases something significant was happening: an engagement, a new adventure, a death, a birth. these are my top ten most treasured food memories:

10. baking cuban bread with gammy in her kitchen on west lane
9. drinking gallons of vanilla soy milk for gus...and later for sophie...because both of my babies were lactose sensitive
8. biting into a calville's blanc d'hiver apple from wilson's orchard and realizing i'd never truly tasted an apple until that moment
7. gingerbread every thanksgiving and every christmas at the houston club
6. lobster bisque at tony's on one of my first dates with rich
5. trying a bowl of duran's red chile for the first time and learning that food could indeed be "velvety"
4. sitting in a circle with people i didn't know (and one that i did), eating indescribably delicious, yet unidentifiable, food in a modified tent rock in central turkey a few hours after my first panic attack
3. drinking veuve cliquot for the first time at gammy's funeral, and then many times later with my friend julia
2. eating fettucine en carrozza at costanza in rome first with a group of new and to-be-lifelong friends, then with a friend from school (who died shortly thereafter), then with rich, and then again with rich, and then again with rich for our 10-year anniversary
1. running around the ile st. louis after rich asked me to marry him, eating a dinner of french onion soup at monte cristo

what are your favorite food memories?

treehouse v. 2.0

little miss thing up in the trees

YET AGAIN, rich proves he is the coolest dad, ever. a few years ago, rich built gus and sophie a treehouse in the backyard of our house in los ranchos...and now he's looking to do it again. it is still in the construction phase, but he thinks it will be finished, with a roof and all, by the time the first snow falls. there were some design challenges with this tree--it is on a slope, it doesn't have the abundance of low branches that the other one had, it is oddly bifurcated--so it lists a wee bit in one direction. it's still mighty cool--check it out!

sophie up high, during the early construction phase

sophie, gus, and his friend, victor

see that tiny little white dot in the center of this image? that's rich, as seen from the house, working his carpentry magic

sophie going up into the treehouse--she's about the only one who can fit up there (rich has a tendency to make those entrances a bit snug)

second phase complete--only the railings and the roof remain to be done!