There's Something About Mary

tallgirltales: Anchors away | J.Crew I love Anchor prints!...

Thu, 31 May 2012 11:33:49 -0400

Anchors away | J.Crew

I love Anchor prints! This dress is perfect.

I fail to see how 50 Shades of Grey is any different from any...

Thu, 31 May 2012 11:17:38 -0400

I fail to see how 50 Shades of Grey is any different from any other “romance” novel that has ever been written with Fabio on the cover.

PS: Major props to him for making a LIVING out of book covers.

Today in things that made me feel fat and useless… My...

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:17:11 -0400

Today in things that made me feel fat and useless…

My friend’s brother (far left) and 7 other people are running the length of Route 66 (yes like all of it) to raise education awareness. It’s amazing to me to see all the dedication and hard work that goes into training for something like this. The thought of running a ~~marathon~~ half marathon is daunting, let alone the whole length of Route 66.

The organization is called Run It Forward and here’s a little bit about them:

Run It Forward(RIF) brings awareness and focus to some of America’s most underserved schools.We will address a childs health care, dental, nutritional, and physical needs so they can focus on learning. We have partntered with 8 elite ultra runners sharing their stories of strength and perserverance. With Great need along the most historic highway, Route 66, every step of the highway is covered by a pounding of the pavement by a runner. Each step is a stride towards a better tomorrow.

Things that are lame

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:05:20 -0400

I can run 5 miles a day and count calories until the cows come home and lose a pound every blue moon, but Matt stops drinking soda for 2 seconds and loses like 10 pounds.

Boys are the worst.

definitelyjennifer: i often wish we had a Zara near us and now...

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:02:09 -0400

definitelyjennifer:

i often wish we had a Zara near us and now i wish i had somewhere with appropriate weather to where this

This is SO good. I love the simplicity.

“Everyone here can sing” bahahahahahahaha

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:01:28 -0400

“Everyone here can sing”

bahahahahahahaha

THIS is what I love about America! Have you guys heard of the...

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:46:29 -0400

THIS is what I love about America!

Have you guys heard of the project Dinner With The Smileys? It amazing how a community has come together to support this family. I think we can learn so much from them.

The project is about a family with a father who is deployed overseas. The mother didn’t want an empty seat at the dinner table every night so she started inviting people over to fill the space. She’s had everyone from neighbors to Senators over for dinner. Her boys learn a lot from all their visitors and while it doesn’t completely fill the void - I think it’s important for her kids to know that people care and that they will never have to look at an empty seat at the table. I think it’s also nice for the father who is deployed to know that the community is looking after his family.

I’ve linked the Facebook page above - if you have a chance, look through the photos. They are truly amazing.

Since Tumblr really delivered this week with a great pasta...

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:31:47 -0400

Since Tumblr really delivered this week with a great pasta recipe, I’m wondering if you could pass along some more of your tried and true recipes.

I’ve kind of been in a cooking slump lately - making the same thing every week and we’re getting a little bored.

What have you been eating lately?

I’ve seen Steve’s Gyro covered on so many food shows...

Wed, 30 May 2012 23:09:00 -0400

I’ve seen Steve’s Gyro covered on so many food shows and tonight after seeing it again, I couldn’t help but think I NEED to get to Cleveland to stand in line for one of these.

Who’s down for a Tumblr foodie roadtrip?

(Pic via)

One more piece by Marina Keegan - she was so incredibly...

Wed, 30 May 2012 22:51:18 -0400

One more piece by Marina Keegan - she was so incredibly talented. As tragic as this was, I am glad so many are reading her work. This one is long but so worth the read.

Song for the special by Marina Keegan

Every generation thinks it’s special – my grandparents because they remember World War II, my parents because of discos and the moon. We have the Internet. Billions and millions of doors we can open and shut, posting ourselves into profiles and digital scrapbooks. Suddenly and totally, we’re threaded together in a network so terrifyingly colossal that we can finally see our terrifyingly tiny place in it. But we’re all individuals. It’s beaten into us in MLK Day assemblies (one person can make a difference!) and fourth-grade poster projects (what do you want to be when you grow up?). We can be anything! Our parents are divorced but we’re in love! Vaguely, quietly we know we’ll be famous. For being president, for starring in a movie, for writing a feature at 18 in The New York Times.

I’m so jealous. Unthinkable jealousies, jealousies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I’m reading and the Oscar-winning movie I just saw. Why didn’t I think to rewrite “Dalloway?” I should have thought to chronicle a schizophrenic ballerina. It’s inexcusable. Everyone else is so successful, and I hate them. There’s a German word I learned about in psychology class called schadenfreude, which means a pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. The word flips into my head like a shaming pop-up when a girl doesn’t get the internship either or a boy’s show is bad. I was lying in bed the other night wondering whether the Germans created a word for its opposite when I realized that the displeasure derived from the fortune of others is easier to spell. I should have thought to coin its green eyes.

I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything. Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are just SO MANY PEOPLE. 1035.6 books are published every day; 66 million people update their status each morning. At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking me what I want to be when I grow up don’t want me to make a poster anymore. They want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say Hello This is What I Do.

I went to an arts conference in Manhattan last spring and everyone was scrambling to meet everyone, asserting their individuality like sad salesmen. This is my idea, I would say, this is my thing. We stood in cocktail circles and exchanged earnest interest. Hoo, hoo! Open spaces! Ohh yes! The avant garde! I didn’t have a business card. It didn’t even occur to me. It might have been funny or endearing but I ended up just being embarrassed. I don’t have one, I’d say again and again. (Ha Ha!) Then I’d sit down for another panel to take notes and nod. There were so many people there. There are just so many people.

The thing is, someday the sun is going to die and everything on Earth will freeze. This will happen. Even if we end global warming and clean up our radiation. The complete works of William Shakespeare, Monet’s lilies, all of Hemingway, all of Milton, all of Keats, our music libraries, our library libraries, our galleries, our poetry, our letters, our names etched in desks. I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library.

Everyone thinks they’re special – my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite like you. But I searched my name on Facebook and got eight tiny pictures staring back. The Marina Keegans with their little hometowns and relationship statuses. When we die, our gravestones will match. Here Lies Marina Keegan, they will say. Numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

I’m so jealous. Laughable jealousies, jealousies of everyone who might get a chance to speak from the dead. I’ve zoomed out my timeline to include the apocalypse, and, religionless, I worship the potential for my own tangible trace. How presumptuous! To assume specialty in the first place. As I age, I can see the possibilities fade from the fourth-grade displays: it’s too late to be a doctor, to star in a movie, to run for president. There’s a really good chance I’ll never do anything. It’s selfish and self-centered to consider, but it scares me.

Sometimes I think about what it would be like if there was actually peace. The whole planet would be super sustainable; windmills everywhere, solar paneled do-bops, clean streets. Before the world freezes and goes dark, it would be perfect. The generation flying its tiny cars would think itself special. Until one day, vaguely, quietly, the sun would flicker out and they’d realize that none of us are. Or that all of us are.

I read somewhere that radio waves just keep traveling outwards, flying into the universe with eternal vibrations. Sometime before I die I think I’ll find a microphone and climb to the top of a radio tower. I’ll take a deep breath and close my eyes because it will start to rain right when I reach the top. Hello, I’ll say to outer space, this is my card.

Matt & I decided to try to be real adults when we started...

Wed, 30 May 2012 21:56:53 -0400

Matt & I decided to try to be real adults when we started living together and bought expensive kitchen stuff. One of our best purchases was a set of Calphalon pots/pans.

These things scare me to no end to cook with because I’m afraid I will scratch it so I was anal and bought wooden spoons as to not scratch anything. Anyway, while I love cooking with these non-stick godsends… I hate how heavy they are especially when they are full.

Whenever I cook pasta in one of these pots, I always have to get Matt to come help me drain the pasta b/c all the stuff plus the pot is just way too heavy.

Anyone else feel the same way or am I just a weakling?

Reasons today rocked: I didn’t hit a single red light on...

Wed, 30 May 2012 18:01:00 -0400

Reasons today rocked:

I didn’t hit a single red light on the way home today
We’re one day closer to vacation/eating seafood/digging our toes into the sand
Nice weather - I thought it was going to be iffy today since it rained last night
Figured out how to hide my email address on Facebook so none of this Tumblr madness will go down.
Matt’s sister sent me 3D photos of my niece and nephew, Avery and Landon and I almost cried! You can really see what they’ll look like and their facial features - it’s amazing! I can’t wait to meet my new BFFs.

"FINALLY, I can link my Facebook account to my Tumblr account so all my friends and family can see..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 17:41:30 -0400

“FINALLY, I can link my Facebook account to my Tumblr account so all my friends and family can see what I do online all day!”

- No one, ever. (via christophernolanss)

I saw this and said HAAAAAILLLLLLLL to the NAW.

Marina Keegan, Yale ‘12 tragically passed away just days...

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:50:54 -0400

Marina Keegan, Yale ‘12 tragically passed away just days after graduation. In a special Graduation edition of the Yale Daily News, she writes an essay titled, “The Opposite of Loneliness” that I wanted to share with all of you.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

Ice Box...

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:02:00 -0400

I’m sitting under 2 vents shooting air at me and I can’t switch seats.

BALLS.

Send hot chocolate and a North Face sleeping bag please.

Politics are a touchy subject so I will preface this by saying...

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:18:29 -0400

Politics are a touchy subject so I will preface this by saying I don’t like political commercials at all and I know that for the foreseeable future, these will continue to be aired. Also, I don’t mean to offend anyone or their beliefs. I just want to mention this in hopes that we can have a civil discussion.

Have any of you seen the Mitt Romney commercials that have been airing lately? The gist of the commercials are what Romney would do his first days as president if he does get elected. So it starts off with something like “Day 1, President Romney would…”

And then around 0:14 it says, “President Romney stands up to China on trade and demands they play by the rules.”

He knows that’s not how it works right? You can’t just say “Yo China, play by the rules.” It’s not that easy.

I think that every candidate who runs for president or any office, goes in with the best intentions. The truth is, things don’t change over night. Things go through congress and don’t always get passed. You can’t just make a whole country (that isn’t even your native country btw) just do something because you “say so.”

That is my gripe with this commercial - sure he has a lot of noble things he’d like to accomplish, but no actual explanation of how he’d get it done.

If anything, I’d like to see commercials with a plan of action and not just someone saying they will “make someone play by the rules.”

"And I’m not surprised that you didn’t get in any trouble with the cops considering you..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 21:24:42 -0400

“And I’m not surprised that you didn’t get in any trouble with the cops considering you were one of the chosen few who did not get ticketed in college. Oh, memories.”

- A FB message from my friend Drew and once college roommate

Because kids coming out of surgery are the best.

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:19:41 -0400

Because kids coming out of surgery are the best.

4 million thanks to kimbaland in the form of double rainbows and...

Tue, 29 May 2012 19:07:00 -0400

4 million thanks to kimbaland in the form of double rainbows and Lisa Frank unicorns for such a good pasta recipe!

I halved the recipe (and also the pepper flakes - thanks for that, solid call) and made it for dinner tonight and it was such a hit. SO INCREDIBLY good.

I can’t say enough about how delicious this is.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This one will be added to the family cookbook.

Saw this on The Today Show this morning and now I have to have...

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:56:00 -0400

Saw this on The Today Show this morning and now I have to have it.

Makaronia tou fournou by Helen Tsanos Sheinman

There are a lot of ingredients involved and it seems like it would take awhile to make, but Greek pasta is so worth it. There are no shortcuts.