After several years of not cooking, I’ve been getting back into it lately.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I have people to cook for.  In Chicago I was pretty much on my own and limited my culinary activities to making myself salads.  Now however, I have my grandmother and parents in close proximity and willing to eat whatever I ( Read more... )

My parents and I went to a literary high tea with a Halloween theme yesterday.

It was held at a church in Jordanville, a small town about 45 minutes from our home.  It started off with tea and a course of all different kinds of little sandwiches, and then a story was read a loud.  After that there was more tea and a course of scones.  This ( Read more... )

I’ve deeply drawn to the films of Lars Von Tier. There’s something about his worldview that validates the pessimism about human nature that I feel as a chronic depressive. Stephan Rylance’s review of Von Tier’s lastest movie, AntiChrist, really clarified this aspect of Von Tier’s work for me.

The Agonies of an Antichrist by Stephan Rylance

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I just finished reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart.  It was really wonderful.  It’s the story of a twelve year old girl named Meggie whose life with her bookbinder father, Mo, is disrupted when Dustfinger, a charming but untrustworthy figure from her father’s past appears at their house one night with a mysterious warning.  Gradually, Meggie learns ( Read more... )

Whenever I’m confronted with a situation my first instinct is to curl up and die.  Luckily my second instinct is who get up, figure out what I have to do and do it so I managed to  work things out so I won’t have to go off my medication.

I had enough Abilify (the most expensive of my meds) to last two weeks so ended up refilling my generic ( Read more... )

I’ve come to expect that if something can go wrong with health insurance it will and it apparently has in the case of my COBRA plan.  I found out today when I was trying to refill my antidepressant prescriptions that it’ll be about two weeks till my coverage kicks in.  In the meantime I have to decide if I’m going to shell out around $800 for meds ( Read more... )

On Friday I went to an exhibit at the Fenimore Art Museum called “American’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City 1800-1900 that spotlighted the Roman themed work of 19th century American Artists. The exhibit included many painting of ruins and the commentary on these featured a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun that I really ( Read more... )

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is one of those books that I’ve loved as both a little girl and a grown woman. Visually it appeals to me enormously, the illustrations are gorgeous, but beyond that I’ve always been fascinated by the story (simple and epic all at once), by Sendak’s sly sense of humor, by the sense of joy and the edge of ( Read more... )

I’m going to see the film version of Where the Wild Things Are tomorrow.  I’m really excited about it since it’s based on what probably was my most favorite picture book when I was little.

My mother is going with me, she’s a children’s book dealer and loves Maurice Sendak (as do I).  Of course I sort of got her to accompany me on false ( Read more... )

I wrote most of this in August but only just got around to finishing it up. I’m currently into Season 3 of Dexter--

I recently watched the first two seasons of the Showtime series Dexter. At roughly the same time I was also reading the manga Death Note (I’m on volume 9 of 12) and I find myself sort of fascinated by the striking similarities ( Read more... )