June 24, 2010

My blog and I moved

Yes, it's true. I've left Blogger for WordPress. It's OK, I took all my posts with me! I know you were worried. So come find me, I'm here http://liveeatrock.wordpress.com/

June 20, 2010

Etsy envy

Oh my God, how cute?! Why are my large feet too large for them? If you wear a 7.5, please go buy them and wear them for me!


This started as a shoe envy post. Turns out I envy most everything in Tiger Cult's Etsy shop.

Orange salad spinner. She calls it kitsch. I say pure awesomeness.


Adorable bathing suit. I'm into one pieces this summer.


I love Etsy. End.

Of robes and pastas

I remember one Christmas Ian and I asked my mom what she wanted from us, what was on her wish list. She told us she would love a new robe. A new robe? As a kid I could hardly comprehend wanting that kind of a gift. It sounded so freaking sensible! I always thought of Christmas, Chanukah, and birthday gifts as things you wanted not needed, and a robe sounded suspiciously like something you'd need. You wanted things like a new Barbie, a dress for your American Girl doll, a Breyer horse, a barn for your herd of already 30 Breyer horses to live in, a new dress, or the newest books in the Thoroughbred series. Not a robe.

Tonight I stood in the bathroom putting freshly washed towels into the linen closet (wow, I already sound way older, don't I? Putting laundry away in the linen closet on a Sunday night?) and, as I hung up my faded, pink terry cloth robe, I thought, Wow, I would love nothing more than a new robe. But we all know I'm not about to splurge on buying myself one! And that's when I realized that the things I used to see as necessities have moved over to the "want" column. I'm getting dangerously close to halfway to 27-years-old guys.

The horse and the barn are still in the want column, by the way. They're just a little bigger now.

I have a recipe for you, too! OK, I actually have three. Two of them involve baking as the only way I think of to cheer someone up, so I hold those til tomorrow maybe.

This one is a bright spring pasta dish, pasta with tomatoes, shrimp, and favas. I made it tonight for my parents, who came over for dinner for Father's Day It's not the kind of pasta that you can throw together in 15 minutes. (Those are my favorite kind. Saute some veggies with some spices, boil some pasta, toss 'em together, BAM, a meal.) This one does take a bit more time, but it's not overwhelming by any means. And it's so good! I think you could easily switch out the fava beans for peas. Fava beans are a little time consuming to shell and whatnot, but I like them because they're different. The recipe as it is on Smitten Kitchen where I found it uses sausage instead of shrimp, but I find the sausage makes the whole dish too greasy. I always end up with a stomach ache after. If you want to go vegetarian, maybe substitute some mushrooms for the shrimp. Also, the original recipe says to cook the meat in the sauce. I opted for grilling the shrimp and setting them on top of the pasta. I'll note where you add them to the sauce though.

June 17, 2010

Art for the sake of...teeth?

Trendy, cutting-edge jewelry is one thing. Jewelry adorned with human teeth is something else entirely. 
Exhibit A: a tooth ring


Found this ring on Etsy. Per the description, you can readorn yourself with human teeth, often mistaken for ivory by admirers. This particular ring has already sold, but the artist will make you another with her tooth collection gathered from interested friends, friends of friends, strangers, and tooth fairies. I cannot comprehend. 


It's only on a rare occasion that I find these odd things on Etsy. I'll try to post my kickass finds more often.

June 16, 2010

Maps

Julia Blog Overload.

I am in love with this map created by Famille Summerbelle.


I find maps fascinating (as well as 13 inch biceps..ahem). Something about being able to see how far one place is from another, and being able to imagine taking a journey to a faraway place. One of my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings is the maps that Tolkien drew of Middle Earth. Every time the Fellowship travels to a new place, I turn to the maps in the front or back of the book, find the spot, and trace with my finger how they got there.

I like the details on maps too. This particular map (find it here) differentiates each country, and even the oceans, not by color, or by the mountains in the area, but by animals. A fresh focus.

Fruit Loops

It's funny the things people respond to.

I update my Twitter with all sorts of randomness almost daily. Same with my Gchat and Facebook statuses. Only occasionally do I get responses, and even less often do they come pouring in. I think I'm going to start tracking which updates get the most.

Stats for this week.

Fruit Loops
Last night my power went out. That's not the reason I ate Fruit Loops for dinner. I decided on my dinner pre-power loss. That is the reason, however, that I ate three bowls of Fruit Loops, and the reason that my teeth ached with a pain only brought on by too much processed sugar. My admission to eating three bowls, and the hopes that a power loss made up for the over indulgence got quite the response on Facebook. I wonder if that's because people love Fruit Loops or because everyone can secretly relate to doing the same thing. I know I'm relieved to find out someone else has the same secrets and vices as me. It's good to not be alone in my three bowl Fruit Loops eating world.

The Winds They Did Blow

Blah blah blah, weather small talk, blah, blah. But seriously, we've been having some crazy intense storms here in Indiana lately. Seventy mile per hour winds, yellow-gray-green skies, torrential downpours, tornadoes.

As a quick side note, my mother is a lush when it comes to drinking. She has one glass of wine, her face turns red, and she starts giggling like a tween while making dirty jokes. No, wait, she makes dirty jokes without the help of a glass of wine.

Back to these stormy nights. Earlier this week I sat down on the couch with my dinner and flipped on the t.v., hoping to catch Jeopardy. Instead all I got were local news teams standing in front of green, red, and yellow-splotched weather radars, warning me of the aforementioned winds and tornadoes. I then received this text from my dad, "Mom had 1 half glass of wine & is on the couch." I immediately pictured my mom laying on the couch, cracking up at the weather reports as the winds swirled outside the glass sliding doors. Shortly after my dad called me. "Julia did you hear? There's a winter storm advisory out." "I heard!" I replied. "Hail and everything! I predict 5 feet of snow by morning." "I can't get Mom off the couch," he joked. "Oh stay inside! Here comes the snow!"

"Drunk" mothers and winter storm warnings in June are definitely laughing matters.

June 3, 2010

On Second Thought, I May Be Offended

I'm Jewish. That makes me a minority. I realize that there are people in Indiana, especially in some of the smaller towns, that don't know a lot of Jewish people, or maybe any for that matter. In fact, I rode with a girl in college who said I was the first Jewish person she knew and was really friends with. I'm OK with all of this. I actually enjoy that a lot of my non-Jewish friends are interested in my faith. One, a staunch believer in Jesus (she says Jesus is the one reason she could never convert), even came to Friday night services with me once. How cool is that?

What I am not OK with is someone turning my religion into a novelty.

Last night I met (well I suppose re-met technically since we went to the same high school, though never knew each other) a girl. Suddenly, mid-catch-up-on-our-lives conversation, she looked at me and asked, "Are you Jewish?" I know, I know, it's the nose and the dark hair that give it away, right? I replied, "Yes." She then squealed, "Oooh I LOVE Jewish people!!" I laughed. I'd had a few beers. For a split second I thought, Huh, that's a weird thing to say, but I let it pass. She then proceeded to tell a story about a Jewish guy she'd gone on a few dates with. She said some fairly bitchy and rude things about him, which I also let slide. I really regret not getting up and walking away at that point.

I woke up this morning and the more I thought about that comment, the more unsettled and angry I got. This girl was turning my religion, my belief in a higher power, my faith, into a novelty. How can you say that you love Jewish people? That's such a ridiculous thing to say. She loves every Jewish person? Why? We're not all the same. Some of us are giant assholes. It's true. We do share the same beliefs and traditions. You could love those, sure. Nobody walks around saying "I love Catholic people," and not because Catholic people aren't cool. A lot of them are. You just don't say that. It's a broad, sweeping statement that's honestly very ignorant.

It's rare that someone offends me based on my religion. I don't have stories that involve me being harassed because I'm Jewish. I guess I just hang around people who are classier and more open-minded than that. To my friends, I'm Julia, who also happens to be Jewish. To this girl, I felt like I was only Jewish, that's it.  

Followers