Wedding quilt

This is the quilt my mom made me, in honor of our first wedding anniversary. The topside of the quilt has a bunch of personal references; the red is for my red wedding shoes, the dogwood blossoms in the middle are for Virginia, where my husband and I met; there's an Ohio design in each corner, since he's from Ohio; and so on.

The backside of it is handwritten blocks from the wedding itself; all the wedding guests signed a big piece of material in permanent marker, and that was woven into the quilt. Here are a couple of selections:

Gardening update



Tomatoes, squash, and cauliflower seedlings. Note inventive use of lawn as grassy garden patch.


Rain. That's the update.

For about two weeks straight here in Boston, it rained. Every day was cloudy, grey and overcast (when it wasn't actively raining), and late May temps struggled to clear 60 degrees. For several days, there was standing water in the garden, because the ground was too saturated to absorb it.

I'm really, really pleased to report that it looks like summer has finally arrived. The forecast is rain-free and sunny for at least the next 10 days, and temperatures are in the 70s.



Early morning shot of actual non-lawn garden. Note vigorous kale in far left row.

 Which is good, because I still haven't transplanted all the seedlings yet. I've been transplanting the tomatoes, a few at a time (the ones I transplanted right before all the rain started are on the verge of dying--they're all limp and yellow, so I'm holding some seedlings in reserve to replace them, if the sun doesn't perk them up). The rest of the garden is planted (green beans, corn, cucumbers, etc.), and the early stuff (kale, peas, spinach) is finally showing signs of life.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the tomatoes and all the peppers transplanted within the next two weeks. I'm hoping that's not too late.


Tomato seedlings, in lawn.




More tomato seedlings, in lawn.



Containers moved outside and finally showing actual greenery.



Eat: Dinner at the British Consulate, a Pop-Up

There's a blurry line between "underground restaurant" and "pop-up restaurant," though one of my fellow attendees at this past weekend's pop-up opined that "underground" is technically illegal, and "pop-up" is just in a non-restaurant venue--i.e., legal.

Whether legal or illegal, it was awesome. Eat hosted a pop-up dinner at the British Consulate, featuring a British-inspired menu. This was my first foray into the underground/pop-up world in Boston, and it was a smashing success.

First, the British Consulate. I've no idea how they got that space, but let's just say that the Brits have their conference room lighting down to an art. The meal was held in the lobby and a large conference room, both equipped with automatic chain-mail curtains and automatic lighting worthy of a Pink Floyd concert. It was full dark outside, but the lighting stayed at a perfect 9-AM-sunlight-just-coming-through-the-curtains setting the whole time. Sometimes pink, sometimes blue, but always bright-daylight-esque. Everyone was impressed. James Bond jokes abounded.

Second, the meal itself. Cocktail hour featured a local Berkshires-made gin, Greylock Gin, in Tom Collinses for everyone. Appetizers were haggis on toast, grilled cheese sandwiches with mango chutney, and boar sausage wrapped in puff pastry. There was a string quartet playing Beatles songs. There were quite a lot of people there, I'd say at least 60 or 70, far more than I was expecting. But that's the best part of this kind of dinner--being able to interact with all the strange new people. It's much more fun, and intimate, than a restaurant meal.

First course: Seared foie gras on a crumpet with maple gel, HP powder, and pickled berries. Imagine breakfast, with foie gras. A crumpet is sort of like a cross between a waffle and an English muffin. Best of all, the lady beside me didn't want her foie gras, so I got a double portion.

Second course: chicken korma soup with fiddlehead ferns. The lighting changed to a blue setting for this course, which is why the soup looks blue. It wasn't actually. They added a dusting of fenugreek to give the whole thing a curry vibe.

Third course: a riff on bangers and mash. An Earl Grey-smoked duck sausage with egg, grilled tomato, brussels sprout, and local fried egg. The sausage and the egg were the best parts.

Main course: locally-caught hake (not cod as per the menu) wrapped in a sort of pastry shell, with basil tartar sauce. The fish was excellent, light and flaky, and I really liked the basil tartar sauce. My husband said it was the best fish he'd ever had. Note pink lighting.

Dessert: Sticky toffee pudding, sort of deconstructed. The plates were fun, but beware of serving food on a sloping plate. A good portion of everyone's dessert ended up sliding off the plate onto the table.

The wine was by Bear Flag, which I'd had in California, so it was good to see a wine that I was already familiar with.

It's heartening to see such a lively alternative restaurant scene in Boston; I'm looking forward to attending a lot more of these, now that we're settled in. Maybe I can finally get my own underground restaurant up and running.

Theatre review: The Comedy of Errors

I first saw Propeller Theatre Company at BAM in New York in 2007, when they presented Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew. Propeller is a UK-based all-male Shakespearean repertory troupe, and as I pointed out four years ago, their graceful and delicate handling of the play belies the all-male casting. Indeed, the actors are so skillful that after a few minutes, you almost forget they’re all men. These aren’t simpering drag queens or men bent on making a point about gender relations; they are simply very, very good actors.

Also very, very funny actors.

Comedy of Errors is one of those lesser Shakespearean works, “lesser” in the sense that it relies heavily on those old comedy chestnuts, mistaken identities and bumbling servants. (And those were chestnuts 400 years ago.) We have identical twins separated at birth, both with the same name—Antipholus—who have identical twin servants separated at birth, both named Dromio. Got that? So when they find themselves in the same city, the two identical twin brothers and their identical twin servants, with the same names no less, naturally everyone mistakes one for the other and high jinks ensue. Each pair is blissfully unaware of the other’s existence, until the very end of the play, when they are all reunited with their missing brothers and parents. In between, there are a lot of double-takes, pratfalls, and at least one naked man with a lit sparkler in his ass. (No, really.)

It’s to Propeller’s credit that they never stoop to making jokes about men in drag, and that they don’t allow the physical comedy to overshadow the complex Shakespearean language. Their production is set “south of the border,” in a modern-day version of a Three Amigos Mexican town; with graffiti-covered sheet-metal walls, haphazardly-strung Christmas lights, and sombreros. The best part of this concept is that the cast doubles as an impromptu mariachi band; in fact, should their acting careers ever lapse, I daresay these guys could make a decent living as a mariachi band. The pace is crisp, the ensemble is tight, there’s just enough shtick to keep the audience amused (but not so much that we start rolling our eyes). Director Edward Hall is to be commended for perfectly balancing the production on that particular tightrope.

Propeller is running Comedy of Errors in repertory with Richard III. I didn’t get a chance to see Richard III, but I have no doubt it’s just as good, and innovatively staged, as their Comedy of Errors. Propeller has become my new favorite Shakespearean troupe; at this point, I’d pay to watch them dramatize the phone book.


Written by William Shakespeare; adapted by Edward Hall and Roger Warren
Directed by Edward Hall
With Richard Clothier (Duke), John Dougall (Aegeon), Dugald Bruce-Lockhart (Antipholus of Syracuse), Sam Swainsbury (Antipholus of Ephesus), Richard Frame (Dromio of Syracuse), Jon Trenchard (Dromio of Ephesus), Robert Hands (Adriana), David Newman (Luciana), Wayne Carter (Balthasar), Thomas Padden (Angelo), Dominic Tighe (Officer), Kelsey Brookfield (Courtesan), Tony Bell (Pinch), and Chris Myles (Aemilia)
Design: Michael Pavelka
Lighting Design: Ben Ormerod
Original Music: Jon Trenchard
Running Time: Two hours and fifteen minutes with one fifteen-minute intermission
Boston University Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
Tickets begin at $25
Presented in repertory with Richard III; schedule varies
May 18 – June 19, 2011

Happy first anniversary to me!

Just think, a year ago today I was getting married. What a fun wedding that was!

And married life keeps getting better and better. Yesterday we saw Comedy of Errors in Boston, then had dinner at a pop-up restaurant (more on those later), and even did a little shoe shopping. For the both of us, not just me. I bought the first pair of heels I've bought since the wedding shoes.

The weather, as you may know, is dreadful. Cold, rainy, not spring at all. Did I mention the rain? I'm trying desperately to get some action out of my garden, but it's hard with no sun. I keep transplanting tomatoes into the yard, only to watch them turn yellow and shriveled. If we don't get some sun soon, I fear for my sanity.

Possibly the weather is affecting my cat, too. He's better, but still not 100%. I think it's hairball trouble.

We got the dates for my stepson's visit this summer hammered down, finally. There was quite a bit of drama around that. His mother and grandmother insisted that he had to participate in Junior Lifeguards, the dates of which took up most of the summer. They were trying to make us take 10 days with him instead of 38. I finally stepped in and took over negotiations--the threat of a lawyer was enough to make them knuckle under, I think. We'll get a month with him (early August to early September) and another three weeks at Christmas. It's also time to get a more specific visitation agreement in writing; I've drafted something, and if she balks, then it's time to lawyer up regardless. We're both tired of the endless back-and-forth with them.

So today I'll fix us a nice dinner, with a really good bottle of wine, and try to forget the weather.

Spending money apparently cures sick cats

My cat Steiff got sick the other night.

He threw up three times and was uncharacteristically lethargic. He didn't move much at all, and snapped at me whenever I tried to pick him up. Naturally I was very worried--he's never been sick like that before.

The next day I checked on him at lunch and he still wasn't any better. So I made an appointment at the vet's. His only previous trips to the vet were for neutering and periodic rabies shots.

When I got home from work to take him to the vet, he seemed a little better, at least a little more energetic. But I took him anyway.

The vet poked him and prodded him and said he'd give my cat extra fluids and an appetite stimulant, to make sure he didn't get dehydrated, and he'd do some bloodwork, just in case. Then he charged me $265 for the privilege, and sent me home.

Of course, the minute I got in the door, Steiff ran directly to the food bowl, and returned to his normal, energetic, nosy self. Maybe it was the fluids that made him feel better, but I maintain he just needed someone to pay him $265 worth of attention before he'd deign to act normally.

I also want to point out that getting him neutered--actual SURGERY--only cost me $35.

Island Creek Oyster Bar

On Saturday night, my husband and I treated ourselves to a rare night on the town, by going to the new Island Creek Oyster Bar on Commonwealth Ave in Boston.

I confess it wasn't in our budget. But we'd had a bad couple of days and desperately needed a pick-me-up. This was money well-spent.

We had a bottle of Honig Sauvignon Blanc with our meal, as it featured oysters (naturally). The waiter wasn't much of a sommelier; I asked which bottle, of the many on the wine list, would go best with all the different kinds of oysters and he said, "Sauvignon blanc." Well, yeah. Duh. I could have figured that out myself.

A couple of cocktails to start. I don't remember what was in this, but it was good.

My husband had the lobster roll.

I had the scallops, with asparagus, tasso, and celery root puree.

Mmmm...scallops.

Dessert was heavenly: a rhubarb and blackberry crisp with basil ice cream.

Of course the highlight was the oysters (which we did not consume after dessert, don't let the order of the pictures fool you). We had two of each kind:

Island Creek, from Duxbury, MA
Rocky Nook, from Kingston, MA
Chatham, from Chatham, MA
Moonstone, from Point Judith, RI
Umami, from Narragansett Bay, RI
East Beach Blonde, from Charleston Pond, RI
Wild Belon, from Harpswell, ME
Misty Point, from Pope's Bay, VA
Hama Hama, from Lillywaup, WA
Blue Pool, from Lillywaup, WA
Shigoku, from Bay Center, WA
Kumamoto, from Puget Sound, WA
Cape Spear, from New Brunswick, Canada

Contrary to previous findings, the East Coast oysters were all much brinier and meatier than the West Coast specimens.

They were all good, though.

Who needs retail therapy, when you can have restaurant therapy?

It's just Wild Kingdom out there

Now I have a GROUNDHOG, too. (Insert swearing here.)

The rabbit at least had the side benefit of being cute (and eating dandelions). I haven't seen an ant inside the house for a couple of days, so maybe the ant bait is working. But a f*%#ing groundhog has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever--and is a lot harder to get rid of than a rabbit.

For the first time in my life, I wish I had a shotgun. (More to the point, I wish I lived in a place where I could actually fire it at a groundhog--there's a strict no-gun-firing rule in the 'burbs.)

Short of setting the groundhog burrow on fire (not recommended) or pouring concrete down all the tunnel openings (difficult, as I suspect his burrow is in the woods), I can't really kill him without a gun. And there isn't such a thing as groundhog repellent, like the rabbit repellent spray I bought. I'm going to double up on the rabbit spray and hope that the groundhog, being a rodent like the rabbit, will also be repelled. I'm also going to scatter various other smelly substances around the back fence, to include ammonia, mothballs, and cat poop (I read somewhere that the smell of a dog, or at the very least dog poop, will keep a groundhog away; all I have is cat poop, which may not work, but hey, it's not like I have any other use for it).

But if I find anything in my garden nibbled, I'm getting a shotgun anyway, 'burb laws be damned.

Call me the Tomato Queen

I've started transplanting my tomato seedlings outside.

It's a bit early still, but I have to.

You see, I realized I have 57 tomato seedlings.

57. Individual. Tomato plants.

If all those take, I'll be swimming in tomatoes this summer. I could start my own tomato factory.

And that's not including all the other seedlings--peppers, squash, herbs, etc. And all the other seeds that have yet to get started at all--corn, beans, cucumbers, etc.

You're probably thinking, "You bit off way more than you could chew," but no! I refuse to admit defeat! I will find a place to put all these plants, or die trying!

Oh well. It's a good problem to have. It was all an experiment, anyway; I wasn't sure if the growing-seedlings-indoors thing would work at all, given my limitations (climate, unheated sunroom), so I know for next year that I can halve the number of seeds and still come out ahead. If you guys want any, you're welcome to them.

But still, I have all these plants, many of which are getting root-bound in their little containers, so I have to do something with them. I certainly don't have the room (or money, or equipment) to plow up an actual garden, and I don't have the money to buy a bunch of large containers and dirt, so I will just dig up holes along the sunnier edges of the yard, stick a tomato plant in each one, and see what happens.

If they all die, I still have plenty to spare.

In other news, there is a bunny rabbit in my yard. We watched him eat up all the dandelions one night. I think that could be a great cottage industry, actually--training domestic rabbits to eat dandelions, then hiring them out to people who want to get rid of their dandelions. Cheaper than pesticides, and cuter, too. But then one morning I caught the rabbit hanging around my containers of herbs and greenery, and while I don't mind him eating dandelions, I mind very much if he starts eating my garden. So I got some of that deer-and-rabbit-repellent stuff. I haven't seen him since; not sure if it's because of the repellent, or for some other reason, but as long as my spinach doesn't get nibbled, I don't care.

And we have quite the carpenter ant population, some of which have found their way indoors. I'm pretty sure there's a colony in the woodpile, which is along one wall of the house. I was going to move the woodpile to the far corner of the yard--until I discovered that our chipmunk has taken up residence inside the woodpile. Remember him? With the snow tunnel? Now he's inside the woodpile, making friends with all the ants, no doubt.

So I got some ant bait, too. Stupid ants.

My 9/11 story

I woke up last night to the sound of the TV blaring in the next room, and stumbled out to find my husband watching the news. "Bin Laden is dead," he said, and I stumbled back to bed and went to sleep. I thought it was a dream until I woke up this morning and saw the headlines.

Well, Bin Laden is finally dead. Yippee. I'm not sure how to feel about that--I mean, I'm glad and all, maybe this means we can finally get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, where we shouldn't have been in the first place. Then again, maybe we can look forward to more terrorist attacks as retaliation. Who knows.

What I do know is that it is impossible to not think of 9/11 today.

So here's my 9/11 story, for those of you who don't know it already.

On 9/11, I was at work. I was working at Barnes & Noble Publishing at the time, on 17th Street and 5th Avenue (just around the corner from Union Square, and about a mile and a half northeast of the World Trade Center). Someone came into the office and said they'd heard a plane had just crashed into the WTC. "Dumbass," I thought. "It's not like they're hard to miss." Like everyone else, I thought a little prop plane was involved, maybe a pilot asleep at the wheel.

So I tried to log onto http://www.nytimes.com/ and http://www.cnn.com/, to no avail.

That was my first clue.

Then I started getting emails with subject lines like "Are you ok?" I think I got an email from every single person I ever knew that day.

More people were coming into the office, with bits of news trickling in after them, none of them good.

I called my boyfriend at the time. We were living together in a high-rise apartment in Midtown. On a clear day, you could see the towers way off in the distance. He was working from home. I thought perhaps he could turn on CNN and tell me what was happening.

I woke him up. "Turn on the TV and tell me what's going on," I said.

"I'm sleeping, that's what's going on," he said.

"Look out the window," I said. There was a pause.

"Oh my God, the World Trade Center is on fire," he replied.

"Duh! That's what's going on! Now go turn on the TV and tell me what's happening."

So for the next hour, he dictated the news to me and I relayed that to everyone in the office.

My boss finally showed up--she'd been stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway. From her unmoving car, she'd watched as the second plane plowed into the towers.

Someone found an old radio, and we turned it on just in time to hear that the Pentagon was on fire.

"Oh my God, we're being attacked," said my boss.

"Fuck this shit," I announced. "I'm going home. Clearly no one is getting any work done today."

At the time, I walked to and from work (it was a little over a mile each way), so I was prepared to hoof it rather than getting on the subway. I called my boyfriend back to tell him I was on my way.

"I'm coming home," I said.

"I can't see them anymore," he said.

"What do you mean? The towers?"

"I can't see them anymore. I think they fell down. I THINK THEY FELL DOWN."

"If I'm not there in an hour, come looking for me," I said, and hung up.

If you've ever been to New York, you know how loud it is. And how busy. The streets are always filled with people, who are talking. There are sirens, horns, traffic noise, helicopters and planes overhead, the screech of subway trains coming up through the vents, birds, dogs barking, cell phones, you name it. Even at 3 am, it's noisy.

When I walked out onto Fifth Avenue, it was deathly silent.

There were no people. No cars. Nothing. Even the birds were silent and unmoving.

That's when I got scared.

What few people were on the sidewalk, were just standing there. Looking toward downtown. There were lines 17 deep at the few working pay phones, and everyone was waiting patiently. Silently. All the cars had pulled over to the side, many with people inside, listening to the radio and crying. The only sound was the occasional siren, of yet another emergency vehicle screaming toward downtown.

I rounded the corner, to where there used to be a view of the towers. There was nothing there now--just an enormous plume of dust and smoke. And more people watching, silently. Crying.

I rounded another corner, and almost collided with a woman running full-tilt toward downtown, her shoes gone, tears pouring down her face, her cell phone clenched in her hand.

When I got home, I parked myself in front of the TV and didn't move for two days.

My dad called me every day for two weeks, wanting to know when I was going to move back home.

I didn't sleep through the night for months.

I had a friend who worked on the 7th floor of the south tower. She was late to work that day (thank God); she got there just in time to turn around and go right back out again in the first wave of evacuations. She got turned around in the subway and ended up going south, instead of north. When she went above-ground to change directions, she was far enough away to actually see what was happening. She saw the jumpers.

She came to at Park and 57th, half an island away, still wearing her WTC ID badge. She'd walked all that way in shock, in a complete daze.

On September 12, I ventured outside to buy a newspaper. That's when the silence really hit home. Still no people, no cars, no planes. It was like being inside a zombie movie. All the newspapers were sold out--I had to go the New York Times headquarters to buy one, and stand in a line of at least 40 people.

I opened the newspaper, and saw the photographs of the jumpers. I read the entire thing, start to finish, closed it, and put it in a box. I haven't opened it since.

Two or three days later, the wind shifted direction. Even with the windows closed, the smell got into the apartment. It smelled like burning plastic, and bodies.

I think the NYC skyline is one of the most beautiful sights on earth. But I still can't look at the skyline without seeing a hole there.

Every year since then, on 9/11, I go into full media hibernation. I don't turn on the TV, don't read the newspaper, don't listen to the radio. I don't want to be reminded of the anniversary. It'll just make me cry all the tears I never shed. This year, I have a feeling that won't work. It's going to be especially hard the next few days, as 9/11 gets full media rotation in the wake of bin Laden's death.

At the risk of sounding trite, I can't believe it's been ten years.