Almond Butter Cookies

Tonight, in the midst of flustered term paper writing and thesis plotting, Jenny and I decided to bake some wonderful winter cookies. Our housemate Laura had recently received a large shipment of small kiss-shaped chocolates from her parents and wanted us to help her consume them, and Jen and I thought it'd be great to incorporate them into some cute baked good.

We settled on almond butter cookies, and worked off of this recipe: http://aspicyperspective.com/2011/03/almond-butter-chocolate-chunk-cookies.html, with several alterations:

- we halved the recipe because we didn't have enough almond butter, and to compensate for the yield we just made the cookies smaller and more adorable

- instead of chocolate in chopped form, we settled on a kiss on top of each bite-size cookie

- we reduced baking time to 9 minutes instead of 12 because a) the cookies were smaller, b) our oven has no mercy, and c) we like 'em gooey.

The batter was incredible, and the cookies followed suit. I usually don't like to mix my savory and sweet, but the salty kick in these pastries is really unique and pleasant.

I can die happy

A three-year-old child whom I babysit on occasion and play with for several hours weekly at my shift at the preschool said the darndest thing the other night. According to his mother, at their Thanksgiving dinner, she was attempting to explain to him the meaning of the holiday.

"I'm thankful for you and Poppa," she offered, "what are you thankful for?"

"Evelina," he answered. She said he proceeded to name some delicacies such as pizza. But my name came first.

And I can now die happy.

Morning, world

Thanks to my body still apparently living in East Coast Time, I have been waking up one to two hours before my alarm clock every morning (although to be fair, my alarm is set for 9:10 am every morning. Will I ever be this free again?!) My favorite things to do upon waking up is to stretch in bed, make lots of noises, and feel the incredible warmth and comfort of my bed. Seriously, it is heaven on a box spring. Anyway, I usually make myself some tea, grab my computer and catch up on some of my favorite blogs.

This morning I came upon a blog with which I am completely in love. It is called Raptitude and, according to its author, is all about getting better at being human. Everyone should check it out. It is incredibly well-written, insightful, and down to earth. http://www.raptitude.com/ Enjoy!

Snuggle Time

December swiftly approaches, and Walla Walla promises to be cold until at least the end of February, but for some reason I feel as if I've paid my dues to cold weather already. I am now in the midst of accepting the fact that many weeks of possibly sub-zero temperature await me; weeks during which walking the five minutes to class will seem positively unbearable, and the only sane thing is to snuggle in bed.

I am a big snuggler. I love to snuggle, cuddle, spoon, hug, you name it, more than the average person. And as the winter envelops this town, my hunger for snuggling grows and grows. Sadly, snuggling, if it occurs these days, is short-lived and ultimately unfulfilling; housemates and friends are encumbered with term papers and exams, my cat is in Seattle, and the boy I long to snuggle with is far, far away.

SO. I bought myself a candle. That's right--I went candle shopping in Walla Walla today in hopes of finding a warm, calming scent to pervade my bedroom as I fight my way through the final, at times very lonely 16 days of my last fall semester of Whitman College. I settled on a soy candle from Studio Opal, a boutique in downtown Walla Walla that is vastly overpriced and seems to carry lots of Anthropologie rejects. Despite this glowing review, Studio Opal was the only place that carried what I was looking for (freaking Macy's had ONE candle. ONE. It was a disturbing Christmas blend.) Put on your wool socks, climb under your comforter, and light those candles, fellow lonely snugglers. We'll make it through!

Fun Times in Burlington, Vermont

hello! This morning I touched down in Seattle after a week in Vermont spent visiting a dear study abroad friend. The trip went swimmingly and, apart from a moment of severe turbulence on my first flight (Seattle to DC) during which I was minutes away from begging the two burly men on either side of me to hold me as we all plunged to our death, the travel was not that much of a pain. A little aside: airport security has gotten insanely high tech lately! Perhaps I am a bit late in noticing it but shoot, every time I feel like I am stepping into a sci-fi flick. Fun tidbit: I got selected for a "random screening" TWICE--once they rooted through my luggage (the attendant very courteously asked me: "May I?" before unpacking every bit of luggage. What if I had responded: "I'd really rather you not.") and the second time they swiped my palms with some magic terrorist-detector cloth that they ran through some secret machine before pronouncing me, seconds later, good to go.

I spent most of the week in Burlington, Vermont, a lovely town. Locals brag about it, saying it's a "slice of the Pacific Northwest" and they aren't wrong. My favorite part of my visit was probably the last full day. hannah had gone to work at the Gap on Black Friday (poor, poor soul) and I nestled myself in a nearby coffee shop called Muddy Waters. I ordered my London Fog and cozied up in a large leather armchair to read short stories by Nabokov. But people kept talking to me! And not even in a stop-talking-to-me-can't-you-see-I'm-trying-to-read sort of way, but in a really friendly chat-up-your-neighbor kind of way. I had two separate looong conversations with locals and they were just the greatest. The second one invited me to join him in a protest against WalMart (apparently I "looked like the right kind of person to ask"). I didn't end up going because it involved my traveling by car to which I had no access, but I enjoyed the invitation nonetheless. I like being included, what can I say! he then bid me adieu, well, actually he told me "good karma." Yeah, I like Burlington. I just about finished my book and spent the rest of the time doodling cringe-worthy doodles (that's right--so little talent that not even my doodles come out "right") phrases from the stories and am thinking I will start a new blog dedicated to these downright dowdy doodles (however, I am sufficiently embarrassed just thinking about the possibility so don't wet your pants about it just yet).

Anyway. I am very content and thankful for my time in Vermont with my good friends. It's always fun seeing a bit of the country outside of your own little bubble. The places I want to discover most are Portland, New Orleans, Quebec City, Montreal (not exactly in the country, I know), Nashville, Chicago, and everywhere in between. Speaking of in between, something this week of travel made me think of is the importance of all the "in-between" time. Particularly with travel, you have hours of waiting around for the next step, be it changing flights, buying a disgusting and disgustingly overpriced sandwich but you are already so hungry you don't give a crap, waiting for taxis, waiting for takeoff, waiting for your friend to get off work. Some of these periods of time may seem almost unbearable, but that's because we're only thinking about our lives as a series of appointments and are just so hopped up on moving on to the next big thing. You're probably missing a lot of opportunities for new connections, enjoyable eavesdropping, good writing material as you "kill time." Most of life happens in the in between moments so I'm working on giving them the time of day.

Life in a Day (2011)

Oh, the little pleasures in life. I just love it when I'm scanning the 'flix and something I had wanted to watch months earlier suddenly pops up on my "New to Instant" list. That's how I ended up finally watching "Life in a Day," a unique little movie whose preview I first saw this summer while enjoying a screening for the Seattle International Film Festival.

The idea behind "Life in a Day" is that two directors told the world to send them footage of whatever they pleased--as long as it occurred within the 24-hour span of July 24, 2010. They ended up with upwards of 5,000 hours of footage from 190+ countries (dude, there are only 196 I'm pretty sure...) and after what I can only imagine to be one of the most grueling processes in film history, compiled selected bits and pieces into a loosely-directional piece.

At only 90 minutes, it is not a huge investment, and I would recommend it to most anyone. Some of the pieces are more like vignettes--my favorite was probably about a single Japanese father and his zombie-esque son, but that was mostly due to the fact that he used a fisheye lens which really highlighted the absurdly chaotic, small, and crowded 'apartment' in which the two live. The rest are little snippets. The film strives to cover the major things that arguably make us human, and make us One: What do you love most? What do you fear? What's in your pocket? Overall, the film fulfills its role of the arty, voyeuristic, optimistic little flick and my only major complaint is the last scene. I'm sorry, but it really had me going and then lost me completely on a non-compelling, non-novel final bit. And it does feel a bit like an elongated Kodak commercial. It did, however, remind me to continue to work on being present in everything I do; hell, if footage of an overweight dude in his undies brushing his teeth can make it to hollywood, it must be important.

I'm Baaaack!

Dear 12 followers,

Whether or not you check my blog consistently for updates does not matter. What is far more important is the fact that I have finally, after several months as you can tell, figured out how to re-login to my blogspot account. I am not the most clever when it comes to computers and internets, but I managed to figure out I had some weird "gtempaccount" from which I was supposed to be signing in instead of my regular Whitmail account.

ANYWAY.

It's late November! Go figgur. Time flies, darlings, and how I have missed reporting on movies I watch and things I bake! Because both you and I have been deprived, I will promptly recommence my reviews.

Be well.