Christine Lee Zilka: The Unlimited Mood

still thinking

...i'm still thinking about stuff. the crazy schedule is starting to subside; and i am lining up all my rituals: hot drinks (tea or decaf coffee), cookies (my creativity has a sweet tooth), my music playlist (i have a special 2 hour playlist of moody songs on my iTunes/iPod), reading like a banshee (I'm on "Prep" right now)...surrounding myself with pretty things, trying to broadening my mind, trying to become more permeable.

everything and anything i can do, to feed creativity.

what do you do to feed your creative soul?

on the cusp

It has been a busy few weeks. A trip to Europe, where I found a culinary surprise in Antwerp, the meaning of red light in Amsterdam, and decadent relaxation and romance in London. All in 8 days! Then rush home for another busy few weeks around the holidays: (taking time to feeding ourselves, a day trip to Tahoe, and getting together with friends, and then a quick trip to my parents for New Year's (we had not seen my parents in over a year!).

There has been no time to think and review (year end meme is about as much as I've put into it here), though I am invigorated and my life is full of joy and stimulation. So many things happening! My flickr stream is full of new pictures documenting this life. And yet, still so much is left off these pages, in my heart and in my private life.

I am trying to digest it all!

Like today--a rooster woke us up. There is a rooster in my parents' neighborhood. What a surprise, it's not like they live in a rural area; they live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. What's a rooster doing there? Cock a doodle doo! It crowed at the crack of dawn and kept up its persistent crowing until the sun was fully up (and still, he bellowed late into the morning).

It delighted me. And yet I did not take too much time to think about it. It was a very joyful noise to begin the year.

Happy New Year 2006

It's 2006! As per the usual, Ari and I passed out before seeing the calendar year pass at midnight. It's our custom to have a lowkey meal, relax, and then nod out before seeing the clock strike midnight. The days where we went out to party the end and beginning of a year are now gone!

Then again, we have never been that partying couple. I may have been a party girl before I met Ari, but he is my stabilizing touchstone; I now realize that we have stayed home every single New Year's. No pictures of us with noiseblowers and cone hats, all gussied up and drunk! We once went to Manhattan for New Year's and ended up leaving town on a New Year's Eve red eye flight because the city began to have a rowdy feel, too rowdy for our taste. The pilot announced the New Year over the intercom that year. We were happy for the peace and quiet we finally found up in the air.

I like to think that our tradition makes for peaceful years. This year, I fell asleep to images of penguins in Antarctica in my childhood bedroom (we watched "March of the Penguins" before Ari nodded off)...after spending a quiet evening out with my parents at Todai and a couple hours reading Prep.

And before we headed back to the Bay Area, a Korean New Year's brunch. Which of course included dduk gook from my mother's stove. She made sure we left the house with our bellies full, a good omen for our journey ahead.

A very good kitchen

I have written about ideal days, the kind that are almost choreographed to goodness and joy and comfort, and where there are no worries. And though life isn't so predictable and malleable that you can plan it all out, you can go out and attempt an ideal day and succeed. The ingredients, once there, meld into something fantastic.

Friends, love, laughter, good scenery perhaps, definitely good food, and definitely lush sensory stimulation. Usually, a good view will do it all for me, something in nature.

My friend Anne and I have started something of a pattern in our get-togethers. We love to take an afternoon off to bake a pie, or break in my new ice cream machine. It's a natural thing that makes for some very ideal afternoons, if not ideal days.

Yesterday, Anne and I gathered at Rose's home. The three of us have a passion for food and cooking, our conversations almost always revolve around this common passion. What good restaurants have you eaten at lately? Any new ingredients you've run across? New cuisine? Interesting tastes? New recipes? Techniques?

We were going to have an ideal day together--all circulating around a Spanish dinner menu. We started the day with a light lunch of tacos on International Boulevard, then traipsed around Berkeley for the ingredients to tapas and zarzuela (Berkeley Bowl, Cheeseboard, and Andronico's). It felt like an epic meal was about to take place, as we took care to shop for ingredient in this selective way (meats and produce at the Bowl, cheese and bread at the Cheeseboard, the rest at Andronico's).

Then back to Rose's home, where the kitchen first simmered, bubbled, then erupted into a paprika infused island of smells and warmth. Our hands mixed meatballs together, stuffed and wrapped medjool dates, we coordinated stovetop versus oven dishes, thoughtfully planning out the sequence of our dishes. ("Meatballs first, they reheat best. Mushrooms last. We'll throw the lobster in the pot for the zarzuela during the salad course...")

Busy and comforting and wonderful. A bustling kitchen--and who said multiple cooks cannot be in one kitchen? For we were all there laughing and having a great time.

"Our guys" joined us for the feasting. The meal seemed so easy to cook because the three of us had done it together, and shared in the work and planning. And of course, company makes time fly by, and work doesn't seem like work when you're doing it for friendship and fun. It was this awesome sense of community and bonding.

On the menu?

Several tapas: small meatballs in saffron sauce, sauteed mushrooms with garlic and parsley, patatas brava with aioli, and fried stuffed medjool dates (stuffed with chorizo and cabrales cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and then dusted with flour and dunked in egg and fried).

A salad of escarole and oranges and olive in a citrus dressing.

Our main course: zarzuela (which you see in the picture).

And for dessert: a lovely 1999 Dr. Loosen Riesling Auslese with cabrales blue cheese, brunet goat cheese, and parmesan reggiano (I just realized, we each ended up picking one of the cheeses).

And we went home quite full and happy.

Blogosphere Holiday Cards Part Tres

Forgive me--this is my Martha shot of Eric's holiday card to me (for context, refer to my previous post initiating this blogosphere card exchange). Like Martha (and actually, Oprah too), I've included myself in this picture of his card. But then again, Eric and I made a commitment to take a picture of ourselves with each other's cards. So here it is! I'm all smiles with his greeting!

I've detected a pattern--the cards reflect the personality of the giver! I love it, your cards are so unique and full of compassion and give me hope that there is room for connection in this world from all directions.

Like my impression of Eric, his card has a bright light filled image. Parts of it are slightly out of focus giving off an abstract mien (as I know Eric loves to analyze the abstract), and yet parts of the image are crystal clear, reflecting his search for clarity.

And it's oh so festive and cheerful! And very kind of him to send me a card all the way from Canada. This is my first piece of mail ever from Canada! Thank you, Eric!

it ain't dandruff

I was born and spent the first five years of my life on the East Coast. So technically, I have seen snow falling. I just don't remember it at all. Though I have many images of fallEN (past tense) snow on the ground, in both past and recent memory.

My dimmest, earliest memory involves snow. I remember a snowfight in front of our apartment building in Queens. The older kids were flinging snowballs; one hit me like a gust of arctic air. I remember trying to throw snowballs back and wondering why my snowballs weren't hitting them. "Shit, why aren't my balls hitting target? What do I have to do to get my ball over there?!" I was very very young, and of course, had no strength or coordination to fling a handful of snow further than a foot or two. Still, that's my earliest memory.

No memories involve snow falling. It's been a low-key goal of mine to see snow falling. I thought I had a strong shot at seeing snow falling during my recent European travels. In Belgium, the temps stayed too high to turn the rain into snow. In London, the skies remained clear (I'm not complaining! It was beautiful). I know falling snow isn't a rare thing in the world, but I'm not chasing it. I figured when it eventually happened, it would be spontaneous, natural, and magical. (Just like all your "first times" should be). :P

Today, driving into Tahoe, I saw snow falling, as the raindrops turned into drifting snowflakes. It happened gradually, and yet it still surprised me when I saw the snowflakes swirling outside. Wow. It was like some fucking miracle.

It so happened that that was the point at which we had to put chains on our car. A great excuse for me to step outside and stare and wonder. I'm sure I looked like the biggest nerd ever, but I don't care, I was fucking amazed and fascinated and mesmerized. I felt like I had just discovered Narnia.

The snow came down hard and heavy at one point, leaving piles of white snow that resembled the soap flakes we used for fake snow in our childhood school plays.

All the rest of the day, the weather fought between rain, snain, and snow. I was distracted, always looking for a window, and at the sky, peeking at that snow falling down. "I'm sorry," I would say to people all day today, "I'm a bit mesmerized by that falling snow." It was like watching stars, focusing on one snowflake...and then seeing the entire body of snow falling. At times, the snow would fall in a gentle sprinkle, other times, the wind would gust and send it flying sideways. Wow. And no noise at all, but tons of movement.

Turducken

We bought a frozen turducken last week! A big whim, a consequence of shopping hungry, and shopping with the intent of filling an empty fridge at home. A friend of ours had asked us a couple months ago whether or not we had ever eaten a turducken, given Ari's Louisiana roots.

"A what?" was our immediate response. But the concept of a turkey (tur) stuffed with duck (duc) stuffed with chicken (ken) pierced our psyche. We knew we would be trying it someday, when the time was right, our bellies empty, and our tastebuds looking for new territory.

While we didn't make it from scratch like maki, I'd say we got quite a good idea of this food invention. We bought a box of Tony Cachere's frozen tur-duc-hen. And waited for it to thaw (that's two days my friend) before we stuck it in the oven to cook.

And crossed our fingers.

The best thing about this thing is the stuffing (we bought the kind with a seafood (shrimp, crawfish, etc.) stuffing). It has a true cajun taste. Of all three poultry layers, the chicken part tasted the best. The turkey was decent, and the duck really faded into the background (it looked as if there was very little duck in this turducken, though perhaps there were other factors pushing the duck taste into the background).

curative powers

There are things you do in life that I believe changes you. Simple, straightforward things; you don't have to have a near death experience or anything.

Running a marathon. Traveling. Writing a novel (Junot once commented, "If you're writing a novel, I believe your brain chemistry changes.").

This year, I visited a handful of places. The most significant place for me, as I think about it, was Japan. "All Asians are not the same"; in Japan, I was blown away by the differences between Tokyo and Seoul. Uptil now, I had never visited an East Asian country other than my mother country of Korea. I thought, naively, that Japan would be pretty similar to Korea (not the same, but pretty similar). And it ain't.

The toilets are different, the cultural obsessions are different, the landscape is different. Duh. That's obvious stuff, ain't it? There's miles of difference, pleasant difference, interesting difference, beautiful difference. And I really love that country now.

I also walked away from Japan with maybe another gift. At Senso-Ji, I wafted incense from the shrine's large incense bowl, known for its curative powers. I wafted for quite some time, as my traveling companion needed some time to get the camera shot. I was also pretty sincere in my thoughts as I wafted--what could I lose? If I believed, I could only gain, and focused on my neck muscles. I smelled like incense for HOURS afterwards. I thought, "I hope I'm healed."

As regular readers of my blog know, I have a history of chronic neck pain. Crippling neck spasms, tragic (yet humorous) days spent with my neck completely locked, nights awake with pain. I can't sleep with a regular pillow--I sleep with a bath towel rolled up and tucked under my neck for support.

Eric and I have corresponded some about the lessons and gifts of traveling. And as I read some of his travel journals, I came across his post on Senso-Ji...and in doing so, I remembered my visits. And realized my neck pain has considerably decreased. Wow.

Journeys have so many gifts. I must remind myself to embark on many many more in my lifetime.

Country Club

I think the first time I'd ever heard of the notion of a "country club" was on a TV sitcom. Maybe Bewitched? The Brady Bunch? Or I Love Lucy? Anyhow, the characters on the show were trying to get into the country club, and getting interviewed for membership. They made a big racket on getting their appearances right, coaching each other on the "proper interview answers," worrying about the membership fees, and then of course, on the day of all the interviews, everything fell apart. And the country club membership panel left in a huff of some sorts, apalled at their "unsightly" way of life, which to me seemed pretty damn nice.

I am a daughter of immigrants, and "country club" was not in our day to day vocabulary. Very little American mainstream culture penetrated our household, where I was not allowed to listen to the radio until I was twelve years old (until then, I had casette tape after casette tape of classical music from the Franklin Mint Library that my father loved). I watched my first movie in a movie theater at age eight, far older than most of you were for your first movie. I was allowed television (my mother claims that I became nearsighted watching tv with my grandmother all day everyday. Wonder Woman, Charlie's Angels, Six Million Dollar Man being some of my non-English speaking grandmother's favorites). If it were not for TV, I would be a bigger nerd than I already am.

Anyway--back to "country clubs." What the hell was that? If the blonde people on television couldn't join, I definitely couldn't. And they seemed to really want in. So what was I missing out on? I kept my ears and eyes open for mention of country clubs in my ongoing life. Someone was having a wedding at one, someone was lounging by the pool there. Clearly there was a life inaccessible to me, out of my grasp and sight.

To this day, I have yet to step into a country club. I have no desire to join one; the thought of paying money to hang out by a pool, drink, and golf or play tennis alongside a bunch of other people who enjoy exclusivity turns me off. It's not like I even get a ton of privacy with that membership! And I am not a big fan of golf or tennis. I've got a pool of mine own, thank you. Plus if they are not serving samosas, kimchee, burritos, or pad thai in that snack hut of theirs, I'm not into it.

How funny then, to realize that I am part of a "country club." My professor and friend Yiyun (you should run and buy her book, it is amazing writing and storytelling) has been denied a green card because her work is not good enough. (Thank you to nequila for bringing this article to my attention). We are talking about a writer who has received rave reviews from the SF Chronicle (who said, "next to her, Ha Jin is a carpenter"), the New York Times, and been published in the New Yorker, etc. I will not continue, because her work speaks for itself, really and I don't want to sound like a kiss-ass either.

What an exclusive club we are in, a literal country club.

The INS is no more. Immigration is run by the "Department of Homeland Security," certainly not the kind of organization that sounds like it would welcome anyone through our doors and allow membership. Protection and security is important. But when our lives and our country are motivated by fear, then we shut the doors to everything (I am reminded of Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall"). China has a wall. We have one, too. You can't see it unless you slam into it and find yourself locked out.

And our country, so damaged by 9/11, will languish inside our exclusive gates.

it's like a fart coming

emotional constipation. it's a problem for me. sock those feelings away, delete them or at least compartmentalize. i was trained by the best, parents who finetuned these skills in their war torn youth. you can't let your fears through or break down in real time when you've got survival as priority.

"when you cry, cry in an empty room, and into a pillow," said my mother, "except to mommy. i am here for you." good idea, most of the time. not many people in my life have seen me cry or seen me at my vulnerable. i believe i am commonly perceived as "the hard-ass," or "the aloof one," or "the rock." i'd rather scream than cry. i understand those stock brokers on the trade room floor of wall street. i think they're all really just avoiding that pillow in an empty room.

(does that make me a good artist? shouldn't artists be RIGHT there with their feelings and emotions? but then again, i don't have much "street cred" as writer: i drive a shmancy car, i'm financially stable, i'm happily coupled, i don't even smoke cigarettes anymore. i spend a lot of time hiding these facts from my MFA peers. i don't look good in bohemian/hippie clothes either. i look like ass in them. so by appearances, i'm a failure as an artist/writer. well, i used to be depressed, but that's so in the past, and i find it rather boring so i don't really "hype" it. oh well, i am also a bad korean girl anyhow.)

i married the one man who saw me break down and didn't go crazy (didn't want to save me or run away from me) over it. his first reaction was, "do you want to go for a drive and just sit in the car?" and i knew why i had fallen in love with him. to this day, i love being chauffered around. it's my most soothing place, where i relax, break down, and even where i brainstorm my stories and writing.

one of my biggest goals over the last few years has been to "let myself feel." some of you may be thinking, "that is such a basic task." it isn't for me. i'll feel things later, waaaay later, hours, days, weeks, months, years later. and by then it's an ugly messy knot...and i'm alone, with a pillow, in that empty room. i won't even know the heart of the problem. and then a mystery story begins for me, unravelling why/how/what/when, to learn a lesson that could have been learned in real-time instead of in hindsight.

...i had to take a break to fetch some red wine for the spaghetti sauce ari is making right now, the bubbling of the sauce competing with the drizzling rain outside.

maybe you men are familiar with this process. it is, in general, considered a very male trait, to swallow your feelings. maybe that explains your fascination with video games. junot once made a comment after i pointed out that men/boys just seem to love anything with a video screen and little thumb-controls. he said, "think about what happens in a boy's life that is so shitty and fucked up that he wants his life and thoughts reduced to a small video screen and his thumbs." brilliant shit, brilliant man.

but it's like a fart coming, it's gonna blow.

and it's good, it's good. and for the writing that i love so much, i know it's excellent, it's excellent. who wants to read a story void of emotions?

and i can't help but think that my ability to distance myself from emotions helps me as a writer too. after all, you have to observe!

so there you have it, a doppelganger christine.

Hanukkah Latkes

With every holiday, it seems, there is a food to go along with it. After all, eating happens everyday; and with the exception of Yom Kippur and Ramadan (which involves fasting, but still has food to kick off and break off the fasting), celebration and holiday usually includes a feast.

Of course, as things recur, people tend to set down traditions: Christmas hams, Thanksgiving turkeys, Korean rice dumpling soup for New Year's, Easter eggs, Passover matzah, and for Hanukkah, all things fried like sufganiyot (fried donuts), and latkes. And if my own ignorance would not stop me, the list would go on and on.

(the donuts are timely--as everytime I think about Hedgebrook, I want to eat a donut. I have even been DREAMING about all kinds of donuts).

I like making holiday meals, the concept of food that has layers of meaning with personal, cultural, historical implications. All intersecting on a particular date and time.

So today, latkes. An indulgence in both starch and oil. An homage to a history that I have adopted and one that has adopted me.

Each year, my recipe of latkes goes through an adjustment. Each year, it becomes closer and closer to my ideal. This evolution of recipes is a regular occurrence. Food gets more and more personal, as it goes from a cookbook through my hands, and my gradual adjustment through the years. That's when you get from "Martha Stewart's recipe" to "My own special recipe."

What I'm saying is, I think I finally got the latkes right this year. The first year I made them several years ago, they were a soggy, gluey stack of impostors. This year, they were crisp and flavorful.

My recipe follows...
Continue reading "Hanukkah Latkes"

Happy Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah! Why is it that whenever there's a Jewish holiday, the displays at the grocery store always highlight...matzah? That works fine for Passover, and that's about it.

Highlighting matzah for Hanukkah is like Easter eggs for Christmas.

Believe me, we Jews don't want to eat matzah more than once a year. :)

hardcore mother

A Christmas Island frigate bird named Lydia flew 2,500 nonstop miles for her baby's food. That is freaking hardcore. The questions as to why she had to fly so far are heartbreaking (is the water polluted? is her food source depleted?), but her effort is heartwarming. This is what you call bittersweet.

What animals do to survive is amazing shit.

Shopping on empty

Our fridge is no longer empty. We woke up hungry again, our stomachs still on London time. Tomorrow's Christmas--with no food reserves at home. Groceries now a priority!

You know what they say about shopping on an empty stomach--you'll buy everything in the store. Yes, we did! Plus a tur-duc-hen (pronounced (and often spelled): turducken). We've never eaten it before, just conjectured about it. A fascinating food item: it's a hen stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a deboned turkey. Plus stuffing. All in a frozen square box.

We're staring at it now, wondering how long it'll take to defrost, what it will taste like, what it will smell like! The cashier at the store commented, "You eating that for New Year's? Because it won't defrost in time for Christmas tomorrow." We answered, "We're Jews, on no timeline." But then of course, the thing comes with a seafood crawfish stuffing. So we're pretty naughty Jews.

Shopping on an empty stomach AND on an empty fridge. Yup. Desire, combined with necessity, can result in a great bounty and discovery!

Happy Holidays 2005!

Happy Holidays to all of you! Happy HanuChristmaKwanzaaKah! (Christmas and Hanukkah on the 25th, a rare intersection of dates, and Kwanzaa on the 26th). Woo!

May you receive all you wish for.

Aftertastes

Our fridge is empty. Not empty, really, because there are plenty of condiments and basics (milk, bubbly water, etc.), and hunks of frozen meat in the freezer. Ingredients for future meals. It's actually full. But "there's nothing to eat" inside our fridge, a consequence of being on the road for over a week and not having gone grocery shopping since our return. There are no quick bites, the staple of our in-home culinary lives. We have a box of Harry and David pears that someone sent us as a gift. Thank goodness for those.

So we've been eating out this week. Breakfast at LaNote, burritos at Gordo's Taqueria, and last night Fat Slice pizza. Eating out for a workday breakfast was a luxury, the burritos satiated a craving we developed and could not fulfill in Europe. But the pizza gave us indigestion, and made us wake up bloated this morning. It didn't taste so great going down, either, even though this is a pizza we eat semi-regularly (I admit, Fat Slice isn't exactly top of the pizza pyramid and Gioia's pizza in North Berkeley is so much better, but Fat Slice is open late and is minutes away by car). But still, we were surprised to find it so inedible and indigestible.

Every time we go away, there's a food we can't eat in the U.S. anymore. We went to Spain a few years ago and gamely went to Chevy's Fresh Mex upon our return. We could not get beyond a few bites into our meal. Everything was a flavorless, processed, salty mess on our tongues. "Chevy's tastes like crap," we said to each other, surprised and dismayed at what had been a regular dinner place for us. We don't go to Chevy's anymore, even to this day. After all the fine food in Spain, we couldn't handle Chevy's.

In Tokyo, we ate fish straight off the docks at the Tsukiji fish market. I have never had sushi and sashimi like that, the fish was so sweet, and melted in my mouth, almost buttery velvet in texture. I had a sashimi dinner near the Ginza district later in the week and the fish there was also equally sweet and fresh and the cuts more and more exotic (extra special ultra fatty toro--not just "toro," and names of fish i have never heard of before).

It was amazing stuff. When we came home, Ari wanted to go out for more sushi. We went to our neighborhood sushi place, Tachibana, and I ordered teriyaki. I couldn't handle the thought of eating sushi again, not after the Tsukiji fish market experience. Nothing could compare! I didn't eat sushi for months. It's only now that I can eat sushi again, and even then, my standard for sushi is higher than ever (Tachibana is still on my approval list, as is Grandeho's in Cole Valley).

And now? After London and Belgium...I wondered what it was that I would not be able to stomach anymore. Usually, it's a food I've had overseas, or a taste i've had overseas (not to say that Mexican=Spanish, but perhaps the spices intersect, their histories definitely do). I'm surprised to find out it's Fat Slice pizza that I can't eat anymore. But that's what London and Belgium did. It crossed Fat Slice off my list.

You'd think it would have been chocolate or french fries or something like that.

Long after the vacation ends, the journey continues, as we savor the aftertastes of our new gained knowledge and experience. It's exciting, this tangible evidence of how I've been changed by travel.

Blogosphere Holiday Cards Part Deux

Continued from Part One of blogosphere holiday cards! Keep the physical exchange coming, it's great receiving blogosphere tokens that I can hold in my hand, touch and tuck away. This desire to connect with people is satiated.

I feel your uniqueness, your love in these holiday cards!

This card is from Angry Little Bitch. Her name, not mine. check out the wonderfully sassy greeting: "She enjoyed the holidays almost as much as she had enjoyed that last root canal." Something about it rings very true. And something about it makes me think it's a great potential first short story sentence.

Thank you!

Blogosphere holiday cards

I love holiday cards. Writing them, sending them out, receiving them. Which is of course, why I initiated a physical blogosphere card exchange. I write you a card! I put ink to paper, send you, my dear readers, a physical greeting.

I loved doing it. I hope you received all my cards (except those of you who sent me requests in the last 2-3 days, I haven't sent those out yet).

In turn, some of you have sent me cards! I'm tickled. And I bring it now full circle, back to the blog. Your cards to me, on display.

Here's one from fishlamp. It's some sort of beachcomber Santa! I keep thinking it's both whimsical and deep, much like my impression of the blogger fishlamp, himself.

opportunities everywhere

I beat Ari by three hours. I woke up at 5am, he woke up at 2am. Waking up in the dark, confused as to where I am--is the bathroom to my left, or yes, I'm at home, we're remodelling our bathroom, the one we use is out the hallway and through another room! For a split second, I almost peed in our closet, and not my hotel room. That was almost a really cool jetlag story.

What to do when you're up before most everyone in town on a drizzly weekday morning? We thought, "Let's go out for a workday breakfast," a decadent notion (one we have never indulged until now). So one last bit of vacation this morning, eating eggs at our favorite French Provencal breakfast place. Another moment of intense satisfaction.

Even when you wake up in darkness and find yourself off sync with the rest of the world, there's an opportunity at hand.

We picked up our dogs, our darlings, next. And now with two little furry creatures by my side, I really feel we're home.

Now I must get to work. Work being a job that I go to each week, work being my novel, work being intense writing, sincere writing.

Happy Holidays to you--and I say it with the cheeriness and exuberance of the Londoners who love Christmastime so much. ("Merry Christmas!" they would chirp everytime we greeted people with, "Happy Holidays.")

Year in Review Meme

from booyahman...

Instructions:
Go to the FIRST BLOG of each month for the past year.
Copy-n-paste the LAST SENTENCE of each blog.
That is your Year in Review.

Dec 2004: I never got to land's end.

Jan 2005: A very bright kimchi pickling future lies ahead.

Feb 2005: It's a new world out there -- and a baby is a passport to it -- and it's not a bad world at all.

Mar 2005: What does that mirror do to you?

Apr 2005: Or is it just butterfly weather?

May 2005: The next year, Rosebud attacked the Chancellor in his campus mansion with a knife -- no more lemons after that.

June 2005: I have to go buy some watermelon.

July 2005: Strangely enough, roadkill's the answer.

Aug 2005: Still, it's interesting how matters pop up.

Sep 2005: They will be there by dawn tomorrow.

Oct 2005: On to 1994!

Nov 2005: No, she did not purposely plan to go "head to head" with Madonna.

Dec 2005: I'm flying.

...hrmmm. I write lots of short sentences.