Week 2

It feels like January lasts forevvvvverrrr. But I'm trying, as I do every year, to embrace it. My latest angle for appreciating this month is that there is no pressure. I don't need to buy stuff, I don't need to plan...anything, really. January is a month to do what I feel like doing, if I let myself. This week I didn't do much at all! And now we're pretty much halfway through the month and I get a three-day weekend. Woo hoo!

I did start this past week off right, with an impromptu wine tasting downtown with gal pals, followed by hosting a friend for dinner and the Golden Globes.

About a month ago, I started taking the Sunday New York Times and I think it is making our Sunday mornings that much more luxurious and allows me to stay off of various devices for as long as possible.

As for the rest of the week, weather comes to mind. The snow started to melt, then the fog came, then the sun came out for a spell and made us forget what month it was, and then on Thursday morning, we got hit again with a thick, fresh sheet. This is the stuff of January.

We celebrated a friend's birthday at Durkin's on Friday, and on Saturday, our trivia team unexpectedly won at Geeks Who Drink trivia at Geno's.

Reads:

I finished The Winter Hours. It spoke to my tired brain in a way that helped me return to a place of joyful observance of nature, to appreciating - relishing - the written word, and to a general feeling of hope. I plan to re-read a few passages before returning it to the library next week.

The morning hours

Movies:

Despite our better judgment we watched Netflix's The Polka King. Mildly funny at points, but Jack Black will always be Jack Black. True story.

TV:

We were all in for Dark this week. Guess we got hooked into the time travel. I'm also on episode 3 of Alias Grace. Should I continue?

Birthday party Friday night

New Recipes:
This week brought a lot of old stand-by meals, including this stir-fry without the cashews and adding red bell pepper and mushrooms, as well as made-up ones, such pizza, chicken burgers, and my economical hodge-podge of tomatoes and beans on rice with sliced and browned chicken jalapeno sausage and other spices. Joel made a to-die-for Pasta alla Norcina - a cream sauce with mushrooms, wine and homemade pork sausage.

Marion Cunningham's recipe for lemon yogurt muffins (from The Breakfast Book - a gold standard, IMO) saved our Saturday morning when our breakfast cupboards were bare. Quite a tasty way to tide things over.

Cookie of the Week:

This is just as good as it sounds, if coffee and cardamom sound good to you. You taste them both and it's unlike any cookie I've made or eaten before. I loved it.

Listens:
The other day I heard David Bowie's "All the Young Dudes" and it sounded so good. I learned later that day that it was the anniversary of his death. Heavy coincidence!

We went to see a local group called Tango Volcado at the Bartlett on Thursday night, which brought back warm memories of Argentina on a snowy Thursday. That act was followed by the premiere of a composition written by a friend of ours based on Willa Cather's book My Antonia, called "Prairie Songs: Remembering Antonia." It's easy to say it was the the best thing I've heard all year at this point, but I do expect it will stay with me for awhile.

"This was the dome of Heaven
All there was of it. 

The earthly wind blowing through me
Bringing the smell of ripe fields,
The dust and the heat
The burning wind
The grass is the country as the water is the sea."

-excerpted lyrics by Brent Edstrom, based on the novel My Antonia