To Build a Home

My Anusara teacher played this song for savasana tonight... I thought it was gorgeous so I am sharing it with all of you :)

Read

To Build A Home Lyrics

here.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
T. S. Eliot

Family Ties

So I had a completely different post planned for today. It was a sure-to-be-riveting account of me moving furniture around in my apartment.

Then, I found this:


This is my grandfather at age 18, dressed in his manly Serbian garb. The photo is from SerbWorld Magazine (yes such a magazine exists, and my cousin Nancy writes articles for it. Who knew?), which I found lying around my parents house when I stopped by to pick up some things I needed for the weekend. Here's another of my grandpa, and my great uncle Will as an adorable bebeh:

My grandfather grew up in the U.S. but his parents immigrated from Serbia. I can't remember if he was born in Serbia or not - but either way he continued playing the balalika all through his life... one time he came to play it for my 3rd grade class as "show and tell" (for some reason I found it appropriate to bring my grandrather in for show and tell...?). It's nice sometimes when all of the pressure is on where you're going next, to remember where you came from.

Happy almost Friday... speaking of where I'm going next, tomorrow I'm off to southern Wisconsin for the weekend to meet up with Ben at a B&B for a weekend of relaxation, food and beer!

Blondies and first video post!

So... remember how I've been posting all of those healthy recipes full of vegetables?

...yeah. No more of that. Inspried by the lovely Brittany and Jenna, both of whom have posted AMAZING looking blondies in the past week, I decided to whip up a batch of them for myself...granted they are from a box, but I'm pressed for time with class tonight and a paper due tomorrow, so box it is.

And then, for some reason I decided to make a video. No idea where that impulse came from...none. If you've read my "about me" page, you'll know I'm actually kind of shy and awkward...although I do like talking to myself and also to inanimate objects, and besides, who doesn't want to watch a video of me walking around my kitchen and talking to my baking pan?

In any case, these videos are probably totally ridiculous, and in reviewing them before posting I already noticed several glaring problems:

1) My microwave/thermos/paper towel/cookbook shelf features quite prominently, as do my Emeril recipe card box and Land O' Lakes coffee thermos... maybe they should pay me advertising fees. hint hint. product placement??
2) Total fail on showing the pan with the brown butter in it. You can see like... a corner or the pan, and the rest of the shot is basically the front of my shirt and the kitchen floor. Completely not intended.
3) They're kind of useless.
4) I sound SO Minnesotan... do I always sound that Minnesotan??
5) Also I have no idea how to do video editing on my computer, so instead of one continuous video, there are three. It's like a trilogy. Let's pretend I planned it that way.

3)





...so... here's the verdict. These are DELICIOUS. Not quite as delicious as a from-scratch batch of Deb's brown butter blondies, but really great in a pinch...they are RICH though. And you can definitely taste the brown butter so I'm glad I decided to add that step :)

Sorry it took so long to get this up...uploading the videos took for.ever. Hence these video posts will probably be few and far between (yep you can breathe a sigh of relief now... ) Have a great night!

Monday Funday

So here's a little of what I've been up to lately other than going to the opera and ranting about various wedding shenanigans:

Finishing off the Quinoa salad....

A LOT of yoga, and a little music... although, it turns out when you try to tune really old guitar strings they tend to snap and go flying across the room, taking the peg with them and nearly killing you. Not that this happened to me on Friday or anything.

... trying to clean all the salt off of my boots... poor boots, the MN winters abuse them so badly. And I hate to say it, but these tall black boots may have seen their last winter. We'll see how they look after cleaning and a little polish, but either way they've had a good long run.

Today I had brunch with Ben's mom at Prima on Lyndale, which was really fun. Ben's dad is a law firm partner who moonlights as an EMT for Target Field and the metrodome, so they get lots of fun swag from the Twins which often is re-gifted to me and Ben... this year's giveaway was pretty awesome if I do say so myself:

Adorable, right??? Looks like there will be a cheese plate at my B-day party...

There has also been an abundance of homework...boo... Luckily I have a couch and snuggly blanket as my workspace. Not half bad. I also went to William's Sonoma yesterday in an attempt to spend my gift-card from my aunt and uncle on something practical. Somehow this happened instead:

Oh yes. Get ready, folks. When Jenna's post on Heath Bar Blondies made me practically drool on my keyboard, I knew it was only a matter of time before I whipped up my own batch, and this box just takes care of a few of the preliminary steps - normally I don't bake things from a mix but this looked too good to pass up. It was a little expensive but that's what gift cards are for, right??

If you're in my Tuesday night class....get excited...

Dueling Sopranos!!!

Yes, I realize it's 1am and I have to get up for choir in the morning...but this blog is about SOPRANOS, which is in the title of this blog, see how it all ties together? More importantly this is about why sopranos rock, especially when two totally bad-ass sopranos duel it out on the opera stage.

I went to see Mary Stuart at the MN Opera tonight with my friend Nicole from choir. To sum up, Mary Stuart is in prison and wants to not be in prison. Queen Elizabeth would prefer that Mary Stuart remain in prison because Mary is the rightful heir to the throne and it would be sort of awkward to have her roaming about, plus people love Mary and hate Elizabeth so logcially the best solution to this problem is to lock her away forever...?

Anyways halfway through the first act, Mary's ex-lover convinces Elizabeth to give Mary an audience, and this is when shit gets real. Elizabeth shows up and is all "well if you admit to everything you did wrong and them a bunch of other things you didn't actually do, maybe I'll go easy on you and let you go free." So Mary starts out going "oh I'm so sorry please go easy on me etc.", but then after several minutes of listening to Elizabeth call her a dirty slut and accuse her of murdering her husband, Mary's decides she will put up with this nonsense no longer and gets all 'BACK OFF BITCH, YOUR MAMA ANN BOLEYN WAS A HO AND SO IS YOUR CRAZY ASS!", and Queen Elizabeth is PISSED, and the three dudes in the scene are standing around like "ohhhh SHIT, bitchez is CRAZY!"... and what ensues is basically one of the most awesome Opera ensemble pieces ever with dueling sopranos like whoa.

Logically, Queen Elizabeth then decides to have Mary Stuart beheaded, because she can dish it out but she can't take it. She struggles a bit with whether this is the right decision (it isn't) but goes ahead with it anyways...?

Brenda Harris (awesome) vs. Judith Howarth (awesome) in the ultimate showdown of ultimate destinly. Both are also fantastic dramatic actresses... I mean I'm partial, but I thought Harris' acting was exceptional. She managed to make Elizabeth even a little sympathetic - a monarch struggling with her lower-birth status, feeling like she needs to legitimize herself to her subjects who prefer Mary and dealing with different forces pushing and pulling her from all sides to do what they want her to do. I saw her sing Norma a few years ago but I was sitting so far back that I couldn't see any facial expressions, so having the opportunity to sit a bit closer was really nice.

So two morals come from this story:
1) Sopranos are awesome.

2) Brenda Harris should just sing everything all the time.

Plus, I'm just saying, the tenor looked like a wet dishrag in comparison to these two. he had a nice voice but his brain was clearly not onstage. No acting or attempt at emotion whatsoever - when the guards were supposed to drag him offstage before Mary is beheaded he sort of halfheartedly flopped his arms like a dying fish to free himself, and the guys are like "oh our stage direction is to let him go, so we should probably let him go." So...the love of your life is having her head detached from her body, shouldn't you maybe seem like you care and are pissed off? Just a little bit?? GAHHH TENORS. Because there are so few of them they can get away with anything just by having pretty voices (sorry tenors but you KNOW it's true)...

So I guess there is a third moral:

3) Tenors are the worst.

Well that's all! Time for bed, hope you enjoyed this late-night, somewhat delirious, extremely mature and reasoned opera review from yours truly :)

Opposite Day

Because I am lazy and my current motivation level is hovering somewhere between "meh" and "none whatsoever", this will be a short blog with little to no writing and mostly pictures. However, if you consider that a picture is worth a thousand words, this post could count substantially towards that Healthcare Marketplace paper that I really do not want to write.

I decided to change it up a little this morning. It was crazy.

I had tea instead of coffee.


Took a bubble bath instead of a shower.


Had some cheese with my breakfast... and apple butter. But let's face it, anytime a triple-cream brie is involved it tends to take center stage. Cheese is pushy like that - pushy, but delicious. Get in my belly, cheese!

Walkin' on the wild side. My life is obviously very exciting and cool. OK... I'm clearly delirious and need to go to sleep. To much twistyness in yoga tonight? Or maybe it was this pose that did it?


photo by Illusive Photography on Flickr
(I'm not very good at it - my foot keeps slowly sliding down my arm towards my elbow until it just slips off. Ali says "hug the midline" which I of course interpret as yogi for "don't sweat or be slippery AT ALL." which is hard to do when you're twisted up all crazy like and hovering over the floor. It is kind of a sweat-inducing situation. And then I remembered that whole "lift up through your core instead of just flopping down on top of your arms" trick that finally helped me master Bakasana and things improved slightly).

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.
~ R. A. Hayward

Things I am Loving in an Extreme Way

I've seen a lot of people doing these "Five Things" posts lately, and while five seems like a pretty arbitrary number I think it's a good idea to look on the positive side on a mid-week day when it's butt-freezing cold outside. Side Note - My brain kept trying to skip Wednesday. It just went straight from Tuesday to Thursday with nothing in between, and no matter how many times I reminded myself by saying "no, self...tomorrow is WEDNESDAY. You have an 8am project meeting and two assignments due tomorrow..." two seconds later I'd be like "oh so tomorrow is Thursday right?" False.

Anyways, here are some things I'm loving:

1) Valentines Candy! I know I usually try to advocate healthy living, but I really like candy. Sorry. I'm not really a fan of Sweet Hearts but I always buy them anyways around Valentine's day just because they're there. And peanut M&M's because holiday peanut M&M's in different colors are really just an excuse to constantly stockpile them in huge amounts. "Hey but we won't have black and orange/red and green/pink and white/bright green/random pastel colored M&M's until NEXT YEAR. We must BUY THEM ALL RIGHT NOW AND HOARD THEM FOR THE APOCALYPSE!" The fact that all of the colors taste the same is completely irrelevant. But I think my favorite Valentine's Candy award goes to these guys:

Not because they're the most delicious, but just because I have nostalgic memories of buying them in bulk in my childhood and savoring them for as long as possible. They're hard to find but I was pretty excited when I saw them at Target yesterday, so I bought two bags.

2) Our Guest Signing Album from Kelly Brown. Kelly is AMAZING. If anyone is looking for a wedding photographer I would recommend her without hesitation. Granted, we haven't been through the actual wedding day yet but I was so happy with our engagement photos and I can't believe how quickly she whipped the layout for this book together. For the full spread and more of her work check out http://kellybrownweddings.com/blog, but here are a few of my faves:
(all photos, layout ect. by Kelly Brown at Kelly Brown weddings)

3) My Mittens - This is just a simple appreciation for a great pair of mittens. I bought them at Mississippi Market two winters ago and have never been happier with a cold-weather purchase (besides my Uggs). People in other states don't realize that winter accessories are not just a fashion statement in the Midwest - they are actually necessary if you want to avoid certain death or having body parts amputated. My hands never get cold in these, and they are the only mittens I've actually gone through pains to retrieve after forgetting them somewhere (restaurant, yoga studio, coffee shop bathroom etc.) .

4) Music:


Sometimes a song can just lift you up no matter what mood you are in. I listen to Matisyahu in the morning a lot, to put me in the right mood for the day - happy music in general is really helpful if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

5) Rumi

THE GIFT OF WATER

Someone who doesn't know the Tigris River exists

brings the caliph who lives near the river

a jar of fresh water. The caliph accepts, thanks him,

and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.

"Since this man has come through the desert,

he should return by water." Taken out by another door,

the man steps into a waiting boat

and sees the wide freshwater of the Tigris.

He bows his head, "what wonderful kindness

that he took my gift."

Every object and being in the universe is

a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty,

a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained,

by any skin. Every jarfull spills and makes the earth

more shining, as though covered in satin.

If the man had seen even a tributary

of the great river, he wouldn't have brought

the innocence of his gift.

Those that stay and live by the Tigris

grow so ecstatic that they throw rocks at the jugs

and the jugs become perfect.

They shatter

the pieces dance, and water...
do you see?

Neither jar, nor water, nor stone,

nothing.

You knock at the door of reality,

shake your thought-wings, loosen

your shoulders,

and open.

...just remember, you are always enough. Happy Wednesday :)