Slice of Pink

Scenes from a Café :: Crepeville II

There's this girl, she's maybe seven, wearing bright, crazy knee-high socks in the café. She's interested in the paintings that the café has displayed on the walls and she stands on a bench so that she is eye level with the closest artwork. She's inspecting the brush strokes, her nose just barely an inch away from the painting.

Her food arrives and this art-loving, knee-high-wearing seven-year-old announces that the painting on the wall reminds her of impressionism, then proceeds to eat her potatoes, salting each wedge individually just before she pops it in her mouth.

Proust Questionnaire: The Meme Original

I am beyond excited about this forthcoming book, Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

Since July 1993, the back page of Vanity Fair has been devoted to the Proust Questionnaire, in which a noteworthy person answers a series of personal questions. The questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust (1871–1922), the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.

Check it out! It's the original meme! And it's not a bunch of silly questions about your favorite color or your dog's middle name. This is serious business. These are questions that will reveal your true nature, for goodness sake, which is why I think we should all get busy answering the questions right away. I know, I know. Another meme, right? But this one is the real deal, used long before teenagers started making up Facebook memes on the Internetz. And, since it will reveal your true nature, allegedly, it may save you many years and many thousands of dollars in therapy (or, alternatively, could compel you to seek therapy, I guess).

For inspiration, you can find the interviews conducted between 2005 and 2009 on VF's website. Among my favorites are Jasper Johns, Julie Andrews, and (ha!) Marcel Proust's own answers to the questionnaire.

If you do answer these questions, please let me know! I'd love to put together a post with links to all of our questionnaire answers.

The Proust Questionnaire is after the jump, if you dare!

More Bright Tights

You gals are loving bright tights (and me, too!). It was almost feeling like fall this morning, so maybe it won't be long. In the meantime, more bright tights from Flickr:

1. Kate, 2. intergalactic traveller, 3. 20 Jan 2008 going to the Movies, 4. 11.6 self portrait thursday, 5. dance dance, 6. 365.118 red!, 7. yellow tights, 8. Day 83 - Yellow, 9. LoveColour-LoveTights, 10. LoveColour-LoveTights, 11. LoveColour-LoveTights, 12. Untitled, 13. Birds flyin' high, you know how I feel., 14. Home sick, 15. Pink Tights all over the place

Accessorizing with My Bicycle

One of the brakes on my bike went out a few weeks ago. The local bike shop is fixing it but, since it is the beginning of the school year in this bicycling town, they have a long queue of bicycles to fix and I can expect my bike back sometime in October. In the meantime, I was given a loaner, a neon green Boss cruiser.

Kinda like this:

Only more neon. Glow-in-the-dark lime green neon. And with BOSS imprinted all big on the side.

It's so not me, but they didn't have any pretty pink or sunny yellow or lovely lilac loaners and so I am spending a month riding around town on this neon green Boss.

Just after I left the shop on the loaner, a busboy standing on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette, shouted "YOU HAVE NICE EYES!" as I rolled by. (He very well might have been drunk.) I kept on rolling, of course, but maybe I should rethink the Boss cruiser. The neon lime green, it brings out my eyes.

Tight

Would it be too 2007 to spend the whole fall wearing black dresses with bold tights? Because I think that's exactly what I'd like to do.

{looks from Harvey Faircloth and Kate Spade via Cup of Jo}

Projected

I love projects. I have about one million projects that I am currently working on, but I'm about to start one more little project and this one will involve you. Yes, YOU. I'm working out the details but here's a hint in the meantime:

Any guesses? Are you ready?

Talking to Dogs

There are quite a few people with dogs in my neighborhood and, pretty much on a daily basis, I pass by a dog or two in the grassy area near my apartment. Mostly it's pretty much no-big-deal, but every so often this scene plays out:

Dog: Yap! Yap, yap!

Owner (in a sugary, high-pitched cooing voice reserved for babies and, apparently, dogs): It's okay Snookums! Stay here, sweetie!

Owner to me (normal voice): Don't worry, she won't bite.

Owner (to the dog, back to the cooing): You don't bite, do you Snookie? Do you? No you don't. You're such a sweetie, aren't you? Yes, you are! You are!

I'm never quite sure how to respond to all this, so I end up standing there for a moment, perplexed by all the baby-talk, and then quickly moving along. I get the impression that the owner is waiting for me to respond to the dog--like, compliment the dog's collar or comment on the fluffiness of the dog's coat--but I just can't bring myself to talk to the dog. I don't mean to be impolite or brusque, I simply don't speak yap.

Thirty Four

I don't know how it is even possible that the time has flown so quickly, but I met Will just after his 24th birthday. Today he turns 34. Thirty four!

Ten years I've been looking at this face. Ten years!

It's quite a lucky thing that he's so good looking.

Exceptions

For 20 days, minus a few days in Vegas and one unfortunate event with a box of San Diego strawberries, I have eaten only local foods. Will and I were shopping at the farmers' market and from local bakeries, carefully reading labels, paying close attention to where our foods were grown and produced. Everything was going great.

Well, everything was going great until about 5:45 on Friday evening when everything fell apart.

It started at the independent movie theater where I decided to order a popcorn. And then, against my better judgement, I went ahead and ordered a Coke. You know. What's a movie without popcorn? And what's popcorn without an ice-cold Coca-Cola?

Michelle offered to buy the Coke for me so that I wouldn't technically be purchasing a non-local beverage, but since the rule is not to ingest anything non-local, I just went ahead and bought the stupid soda so I wouldn't have to choke down the salty, buttery popcorn without a refreshing beverage.

(But at least I was supporting an independent theater, right?)

(We saw The September Issue, by the way, which was throughly entertaining.)

After the movie, we met up with friends for a girls-only wine night at a local wine bar, where happy hour consisted of jalapeño mac & cheese, tiny bowls of olives, cream puffs covered in chocolate and caramel, gossip, a bit of dancing, and, of course, flights of wine. I did my very best and selected the flight that had the most local tastings--but none of the flights contained solely local options. I am pretty sure I drank some wine from Argentina and some champagne from Germany.

(But at least I was supporting my local wine bar, right?)

I say: sometimes good times require making exceptions to rules.

Stacey + Todd

Here are a few fun snaps from a wedding I attended last month. My lovely, lovely college roommate, Stacey, is the bride and the wedding took place in stunning Santa Barbara, California, which I think is one of the absolute best places in the whole wide world to have a wedding.

Grace in Small Things: 38/365

1. Reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog before bed
2. Homemade strawberry jam
3. Notes on a Party
4. The tightrope walker who lives in my apartment complex (and who practices on a tightrope stretched between two trees!)
5. Ending class on Thursday (Thursday in the new Friday!)

Clink! Clink! Clink!

Do you know that slot machines in big Vegas casinos these days don't take coins? That's right: You can't put a quarter into a quarter slot or a nickel into a nickel slot or a penny into a penny slot. You can put in paper things, sure--dollar bills or paper vouchers--but you can't pull some loose change from you pocket and drop it into a coin slot for a chance to turn your quarter into one hundred billion dollars.

The result of this is kind of sad. Not only can you not put change in, you also can not get change out. Gone are the days when a jackpot win meant piles of quarters filling up the tray, clink!-clink!-clinking! one by one. A sort of computerized clink sound plays when you cash out, but all you receive is a paper voucher with a bar code to insert into another machine or take to the cashier to collect your winnings, whatever they may be.

Our friend Mike had a voucher for one penny and, mostly to see her reaction, he visited the cashier to claim his cent. The hotel cashier did not even blink, she simply scanned the voucher and handed over the single coin.

You can still find the old-fashioned coin-operated slots in some of the older casinos off the strip. These are the casinos that offer dollar hot dogs and dollar shots and dollar deep-fried Twinkies. These casinos have been open for decades without once updating the carpets or the cocktail waitresses or the slot machines. They probably have never even changed the grease that they fry the corn dogs in.

Somehow we ended up at one of the casinos, the whole gang eating greasy fries and drinking alcohol from football shaped cups. We were throughly enjoying dropping coins into the machines, hearing the satisfying clink!-clink! of money dropping into the metal tray, and filling up plastic buckets with coins.

Some hours later, upon arriving back at our hotel on the strip, heavy bucket of quarters in hand, we approached the cashier to redeem our coins for paper bills. And here's what's crazy: the hotel wouldn't cash in our quarters. Our coins--the very currency Las Vegas was built on, for Pete's sake--were simply no good. Not only can you not play with coins, not only are you deprived of the clink!, but you can't even turn coins into paper bills. Coins are officially obsolete.

In any event, we returned home from our Vegas trip with some good memories, a desperate need for a nap, and one big ass bag of quarters.

Twenty One

My sister-in-law, Nicole, is the master of scheming up grand festivities, which is how 18 of us from all over the state of California converged in Las Vegas, Nevada at 12:01 on Saturday to celebrate Nicole's 21st birthday in style (wearing "black with sparkles" at her request).

I'd say we definitely glittered it up.

Happy Birthday Nicole!

A Quick Hello from the Apple Store

Padding the Ol' Résumé

In a job interview today, the interviewer asked (as interviewers almost always do) about my internship in the White House. Even though I served in the White House years and years ago and was there only for a few months, as an intern, clearly doing nothing of any real value to my career as a lawyer, this is the thing people want to know about.

The truth is: I wrapped the President's presents. I did some other things, too, but mainly I wrapped little gold boxes in shiny gold wrapping paper, tied with shiny gold ribbon, and stickered with shiny gold Presidential seals.

But what I tell interviewers?

Psssh. I was, you know, the backup Press Secretary. And I have the photo to prove it.

It's just a shame that the real Press Secretary never called in sick.

Keep Moving

{via Tralalere}

Coconuts

No coconut stands at the law school.
No local coconuts at the market.
No coconuts with fancy straws to be found anywhere.

Sigh.

I miss vacation.

Christmas at Macy's

I ran out of makeup this week, so I made a quick trip to Macy's today. Since Macy's is in the next town over, I convinced Will to chauffeur me to the big city.

We rode the elevator from the underground parking garage to the first floor of the store, the cosmetics and fragrance department.

When the elevator doors opened, Will said, " it smells like Christmas in here."

It did not, in fact, smell like Christmas in Macy's--it smelled like any old day in a department store cosmetics and fragrance department--but anybody have a guess at how often Will visits a Macy's (or any department store for that matter)? Yep. Once a year. Christmas.

Lauren + Monty

I am so excited to share these photos of my dear friends, Lauren and Monty, who tied the knot last month. I snagged a seat on the aisle so that I could snap a few shots during the ceremony.

You can check out their proposal here. Monty is a musical director at a church and he told Lauren that they had to go to a studio to film something for the church. It was really a big set up to get the proposal on film! How sneaky!

Rogue Nation

Remember when I wrote this post about the day we ate appetizers and garden burgers and lots of Rogue ale and nachos and artichoke dip and Irish fries and bowls of Beer Cheese soup?

And, then, do you remember that we got bailed out of the bill?

A few days ago, we received a Rogue Newspaper in the mail and there we were on page 11.

We're famous among Rogue readers!

The $5 Summer Movie: Week 10

I love a movie with a dance sequence, particularly one of those impromptu dance sequences where a large group of people who are just sitting around suddenly get up and bust into a choreographed dance. Think of such great movies as Grease and Dirty Dancing and 13 Going on 30.

My dream is to be in a dance scene like that, in real life, even though I have no dance moves to speak of (other than the shopping cart and the sprinkler, of course) and things like that never happen in real life, unless you are talking about a line dance at a country bar, which obviously I am not.

In any event, (500) Days of Summer was a wonderfully delightful film with the added bonus of a dance sequence.

We need more dance sequences in our lives, I think. Especially ones with the so adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

At the New York Times, Marc Webb, the director of "(500) Days of Summer," discusses the dance sequence from the film.