Blogging Fail

Well, this has been a rather successful exercise of fail! A month ago, I enthusiastically started this blog with a post about chairs…and that was it. Oh, I had plans for posts. For example, the very next day I was going to post about the banana bread I had said I was about to make. Then I was going to post pictures from around the city. Then I was going to post about a book I’d read. And so on. But I’ve been too busy with life to post about my life!

The main reason for starting this blog was to describe life here in NYC to family and friends back home.  So I suppose that if I recap everything that’s happened this past month right now, then that will almost count as posting about it as it happened and I can consider this blog Not A Fail.  So:

I spent some time after the last blog posting cleaning around the apartment, because from April 12-15 my best friend Jerilyn came to visit!  It was super awesome.  We walked and subwayed all over the city and took pictures of lots of things.  It was exceedingly wonderful to see her again, and it was a very lonely bus ride back from LaGuardia after she disappeared into the depths of the Delta terminal.  I keep wishing that my family and friends would all decide to move here tomorrow.

Please enjoy some pictures of Jerilyn and me having fun:

I have spent a lot of the past month at work.  Around the time I started this blog, I went back to a full five days a week at Borders, and it is exhausting.  I love having a job, and I love having this job in particular!  But it is exhausting and time-consuming.  I feel like I spend all of my time either working or sleeping (I try to get a full night’s sleep because I had an awful migraine about a month ago, and would like to avoid ever having one ever again ever).  However, I repeat:  I love having this job in particular.  It's almost as cool as working in a library, and in some ways, cooler.  I get to work with books and with people (except for perhaps a few customers) who love books.  I get to see the occasional celebrity who comes in for a book/CD/DVD signing (Ken Burns, Brandi Carlile, Ozzy Osbourne, RuPaul, Jesse Ventura, Steven Pressfield, certain housewives of NYC or New Jersey, Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan [which was how, and only how, we booksellers were allowed to refer to her], and...well, I know there are more, I just can't remember them all right now.  I've been there for almost 6 months!), but have somehow missed all the ones who come just to buy books (Jon Stewart and Goldie Hawn, among others--bummer!).  And it's just plain fun, because my coworkers and supervisors and managers are so awesome and fun to work with.  I got really, really, really lucky back in November when they decided to hire me.  (I also got my rent paid.  That's important.)

Though I spend most of my life at Borders, I do try to get some things done on my days off.  This month I have cleaned the bathroom.  I have cooked (I figured out chicken pot pie a couple weeks ago, to mine and Brent’s mutual delight [and amusement; I put way too much biscuit on top, so the cross section of the final product revealed about half an inch of pot pie and about two inches of biscuit.]).  Brent and I finished the fourth season of Supernatural, and we have also watched Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess MononokeDeadwood.  I have read a few books, which I hope to post about soon because they were all good.  I’ve been following a lot of blogs (see the list at the right!).  I found an even quicker route between apartment and subway, and it leads us right past Convent Garden!  Last week it was aflame, Calcifer-like, with blue irises.  They have faded, but now the columbine is blooming, and I am delighted. and have just started in on the second season of

 Look, Dad, cobblestones!  Aww, it reminds me of home. :)

I’ve been writing—yesterday, my ms reached 7,639 words.  Not a lot, but perhaps slow and steady does win the race.  I’m at a point in the ms where I don’t feel like I can get much good work done by writing in little pieces every day, on the subway or lunch break or wherever.  At this point I want to give it large, uninterrupted chunks of time—and I just don’t have those right now, except for maybe once a week.  So, I’m writing in smaller chunks anyway, but I’m not really thrilled with it.  But as long as my word count keeps increasing, I’m satisfied.

Last Wednesday was Brent’s play reading at Eastern Mountain Sports, and it was a considerable success.  This man is amazing.  Here’s what he did:  he hiked the entire 2,176 (or so) miles of the Appalachian trail; then he spent 6 months writing a two-act, two-and-a-half hour play about it; then he set up a reading of it at EMS; then he set about accumulating seven sponsors for his play; then he got together all the actors he needed to participate in the reading; then he got out the cattle prod to make sure all of these sponsors did what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it; then he collected donations at the event to send to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the Dramatists Guild.  And those are only the major details.  Next week we are heading down to the Trail Days festival in Damascus, VA, for another reading of North to Maine, and it’s going to be pretty awesome.  Please go to Brent’s website and become a fan of like his play on facebook (apparently you can't become a fan anymore?); it will be worth your time!

Also Brent is writing his fourth full-length play, is trying to get a certain band interested in working with him on his third full-length play, is training to run the Chicago marathon in October (simultaneously raising money for Active:Water; let me know if you want to give!), and has just gotten promoted to a managerial position in his company.  Isn’t he impressive?  Yes, he is!

And that about wraps up life in apartment 3E since my last post.  I will apologize now, since I’ve probably left something out.  And now, please enjoy a picture of and recipe for that banana bread I’d intended to post about almost a whole month ago.

 while the bread was still cooling, i pressed a heart-shaped cookie cutter into the top.  adorable, no?

Melanie's Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C), and place 9x9 glass baking dish in oven to heat slightly. Mash peeled bananas with a fork in a large mixing bowl, then add in the melted butter. Add in the sugars, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last.

Remove the slightly heated baking dish from oven and pour in the vegetable oil.  As the oil heats, tilt the pan so the oil coats the top and sides.  Pour in the batter and smooth the top.  Lightly dust the top with white sugar.  Bake for 25 minutes, and allow to cool before serving.

In the near future:

• I want to go to BookExpo America!  As a bookseller, I will have to shell out $99 for all three days.  I think it's totally worth it, and I better take advantage of it now while I'm here.  And thank goodness for tax returns, because that means I have $99!
• Sometime after the Trail Days reading, Brent is going to have to go fly far away to train for his new manager job for five whole long awful days.  Guess where he's going?  Louisville.  The irony just kills me.  
• I'm going to go do laundry.  It's four blocks away.  Pity me.
  (I don't go to the one that's two blocks away because they're kind of jerks.  Please keep pitying me.)