Harpsichordian: Summer Journal 2017

I know nothing about Julia Cameron, except what I just learned after looking her up on Amazon, but I came across a quote of hers the other day and I've been thinking about it ever since.

"I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seatbelt. The most remarkable things follow."

I've also been thinking about my 6-year-old friend who came to visit me with her mother a few weeks ago, and the mantra she recited as she approached the monkey bars and other playground obstacles: "The mighty Regan doesn't give up!"

This blog has been dormant the past couple months, though I've visited it often in a weird state of reminiscing. After you've maintained some sort of blog for 11 years, it's like an old friend that indulges you with details of memories you'd otherwise forgotten.

If I look back on this post in another 11 years, I wonder what details will bubble up when I read this. As I'm writing, it already feels like a chapter is beginning, not just for me but for many I know and love. In times like these when I'm liable to draw inward as I process change, I'm least likely to document it. But I also know, after spending probably too much time revisiting these posts, that it's good for me to stick around here and post when I don't feel like it.

Which brings me to Summer Journal 2017! I began the Summer Journal idea a few years ago as a way to keep up my daily photo habit. It didn't really happen last year, but in the other years it was a simple documentation of mostly very simple things I didn't want to take for granted in the colder months of the year. So I'm reviving the tradition starting today because, at 9:24 p.m., it is officially summer.

I'm keeping the words of Julia Cameron and the mighty Regan close at hand as I head back into this world of blogging (not to mention the times throughout the day I call upon my "just do it" mantra).

Here's a warm-up.

Another tradition I'm resuming this summer: Daily walks around campus, even when it's sizzling out, while listening to food podcasts, and this year, learning Italian.

Time to stock the summer bar. Required: Campari, gin, vermouth, and white wine in the fridge.

Now that Spokane's black fly plague seems to have subsided, I am looking forward to more nights dining on patios.

My latest cooking kick is cutting recipes out of magazines and making them. This was from a recent issue of Bon Appetit - bucatini with garlicky bread crumbs and chard. It was also my foray into cooking with anchovies! This was good.

The bachelor buttons are blooming on the bluff.

Seen on the morning neighborhood walk. Reminds me of the Sesame Street scene in which an orange jumps out of a basket of fruit on the counter and sings Carmen.

First selfie in my new office! This falls under the "new chapter" category. Very exciting to get out of cubicle land and have a door. I don't have a real window, but it's something.

I have a category of desserts I call "Desperation Desserts," which are the kind you can make when you don't think you have any ingredients for dessert and you don't have a whole lot of time. If you have oatmeal and an hour, you can probably make Cook's Illustrated giant oatmeal cookies. Now you know.