this city man

So I spent summer at home being a camp counselor on a farm. Here are some of my fave things about this summer (mostly starting after mid-July because I forgot to take pictures before that)..

on headbands and materialism

Today, I was quite literally dragged off the couch by my mother (I was taking a lovely siesta) and forced to drive to the mall. According to all media ever (except those pesky quirky nerd girl shows that Zooey Deschanel has had a hand in proliferating), this situation, in combination with the fact that I am a 20 year old girl, is an oxymoron.

Actually, no, not quite an oxymoron, because dictionary.com defines oxymoron as

a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous,seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “tomake haste slowly.”

and my description above is less of a figure of speech and more of a "situation" (imagine me being sassy and doing air quotes here). But you understand the contrast I am trying to indicate here.

Anyways, I have been feeling very gross about materialism lately. I think it's more general grossness about the blogs that I spend my time reading, ie lifestyle blogs that promote materialism, eg joannagoddard.blogspot.com, ohjoy.blogs.com, pinterest, etc. Basically I am grossed out by the fact that I spend so much time coveting ITEMS, when, instead I should be filling my brain with knowledge and exercising my body. So due to this general feeling of being grossed out by material goods, I have clearly been avoiding most shopping complexes, and as you would probably know, a mall is nothing but a GIANT shopping complex.

Anyways, long story short, I bought some bras and browsed all the stores and it was pretty fun. And then I popped into that devilish, well-scented hell hole named Anthropologie. YEARRRGHHH. I love it, I hate it. It smells so nice and I just want to die in that bobo fantasy world (bobo here meaning bourgeois bohemian.. ick.com). HOWEVER. How can you justify a $28 headband that is literally just a handband with some fabric on it??? I get that people need to make money, but please, I also need to be a sane consumer. But another part of me is like.. it's beautiful, I'm going to cry.

And then I put it on. And I looked like this gorgeous princess with perfect hair. It was ridiculous. I literally looked like an off-duty celebrity caught on my way to the farmer's market. My brain began playing all these scenarios:

Scenario 1: I'm at school, studying in the library and I haven't slept but my hair looks amazing and the headband makes me look cute while everyone around me looks like a turd.

Scenario 2: I'm frolicking off an airplane and rolling my wheelie suitcase through the terminal while everyone around me looks like a turd.

Scenario 3: I'm walking through the mall looking fetch as fuck, while everyone else around me is wearing that hideous fluorescent sweatsuit trash that is called Victoria's Secret Pink (and they are all looking like turds).

HOW CAN I NOT SHELL OUT $28 ON THIS HEADBAND?! It's not just a headband.. it's an EXPERIENCE. It shouts to the world, "I am an interesting girl who put minimal effort into her look, but am still fashion forward member of society and maybe I care about the fate of our country's meat industry!"

Wow.. $28 for that? I mean..

Well I didn't buy it. Because I'm not stupid. But I am still thinking about that headband, so here it is, so you can think about how good you would look in it too:

 

halloween 2012

here are probably my costume ideas:
1. Wilson from Castaway
2. A Piet Mondrian painting
3. A bouquet of flowers (pretty basic.. but i just wanna wear a crown of flowers, LIKE TAVI! And Anna Dello Russo)

1 thing i freakin love

1. Sitting In a Spinny Chair That Is Pumped So The Seat Is At the Highest It Can Be, And Then Pressing Down The Lever So You Slowly Sink

This TIFL pretty much needs no explaining--you are basically doing your own cute little pantomime of a very short elevator ride, and at the same time, it's like a super mini version of Drop Zone! And what's more fun than a cute little hybrid pantomime/thrill ride all bundled up in a piece of furniture? Nothing!

project thx

My lack of blogging has had two evil roots:

1. I don't have an English class right now! And this doesn't mean that I'm now lacking an education in the proper methods of writing (although that is true. . .), but it more means that I don't have any essays to procrastinate. I'm not exactly sure what this says about my work ethic, but let's keep our outlooks very positive!
2. At the beginning of 2012, I started a new Word document entitled "Project Thx."  Project Thx is one of four Word documents that help me to document my life in a collection of diary-cum-list-making-cum-journal-cum-time-capsule-cum-time-wasting documents ^1,2. Project Thx is about posting things that I'm thankful for, and it came as a personal response to the impending 2012 apocalypse. For the most part, most of the things that I otherwise would have posted in TIFL have instead been privatized (not the correct usage of the word, I realize) inside of Project Thx.
1. A very important sidenote: Here, "cum" refers to the word in its much underused and non-sexual meaning, which is described by dictionary.com as follows:

   cum  (kʌm)
   — prep
   	used between two nouns to designate an object of a combined nature: a kitchen-cum-dining room
   [Latin: with, together with, along with])

2. Another sidenote, not equally as important: The other 3 word documents in the series are called "Rando," "Life Lab Reflection," and "Dream Journal."

Anyways, these are my excuses, and I acknowledge that I am clearly not following rule #76 of wedding crashing, but whatever. 

Regardless, what brings me back to TIFL currently is that I was feeling bad, and decided to put up an old school TIFL, Drink Edition:

1. Turkish Coffee and Turkish Tea (çay, pronounced chai)

      I know I never blogged about my travels to Turkey last summer with the Globalist, but tiny aspects of Turkey will turn up in posts, and here we have a splash of Turkish draaaaank. But don't go bustin out your Solo cups, because in today's post, the addictive substance of choice is CAFFEINE! 

     Turkey's national jolt of caffeine comes through two popular sources. The first, is, of course, Turkish coffee. Rich, muddy and strong, Turkish coffee (Türk kahvesi) is probably best described by comparing it to the taste of dirt, although much more delightful! I think that coffee connoisseurs would pastoralize my description by saying that the coffee is "earthy." It comes in a tiny tea cup, and I would say it's about 3/4 liquid and then 1/4 dregs, giving it its muddy texture. (The muddy texture makes it look like the most wonderful hot chocolate, but you will be sorely disappointed if you take a sip thinking that it is hot chocolate, and maybe you will even spit out some into your napkin. To avoid this plebian outcome, make sure that you remember that this is coffee and not hot chocolate.) One time, while in Turkey, I ordered Turkish coffee as my dessert, and it came in a tiny tea cup, wrapped in tissue paper and covered in rose petals. Then, the waiter set the tissue paper on fire, and my beautiful tiny ass cup of bitter coffee was slowly revealed. It was magical.

      Though Turkish coffee is significantly more popular than Turkish tea in the rest of the world, in Turkey, Turkish tea is more omnipresent than Turkish coffee. Every shopkeeper in the Grand Bazaar will offer you a tiny cup of tea, and every family in the country owns a set of çay cups, which are these adorable little tulip shaped cups, which are nearly impossible to break despite how delicate they look. You'll be invited to put ample amounts of sugar into your tea, but no one will judge you if you drink it straight.

Turkish tea fare (from left to right): Pistachio baklava, apple tea (not discussed in this blog, but simply delightful, although perhaps a little too sweet), and a tiny cup of Turkish Coffee!

A tiny cup of çay in its tulip shaped cup.

  

2. Route 44 Sonic Slush

      The Sonic Slush is mythological. To put my compliment into perspective, here is a little about myself: I am usually that girl who only drinks what I will now christen "Betch Drinks." Betch drinks are things like water, tea, coffee and maybe water with Crystal Light in it. These are drinks that are naturally no sugar, no calories, no nothing drinks. I don't drink soft drinks, I rarely drink juice, and every time I drink Hawaiian Punch I just think about diabetes. (How much do you hate me right now? Hence why they are called Betch Drinks.) Thus, me putting the Route 44 Sonic Slush into TIFL is kind of a miracle. Why is the Route 44 Sonic Slush in here? Because it is sooooooooooooooooooo big and the flavors are soooooooooo incredible! The Route 44 Sonic Slush is just your typical slushie. But it's from Sonic. And it's 44 oz. According to Yahoo! Answers member, "Beautiful Biologist," your bladder only holds 8 oz at a time (this is actually not true, as a quick search in the US Department of Health and Human Services clearly says that a healthy bladder can comfortably hold 16 oz of liquid. So that means that either you shouldn't trust Yahoo! Answers member, Beautiful Biologist, or Yahoo! Answers member, Beautiful Biologist has a reeeeeally unhealthy urinary system). If you are in the mood to just drink a ton of amazingly fruity slushie, head to Sonic. This slushie is as big as your head!

Here I am holding my Sonic drink to prove that it is, indeed, as big as a human head.

3. Smyth's Trinity Farm Milk

         Speaking of 16 oz bladder capacity, I am mildly lactose intolerant (and a drinker of Betch drinks) and I once drank 16 oz of Smyth's Trinity Farm Chocolate Milk in the span of 45 minutes. That's how amazing it is. I'm not sure any of the details about Smyth's Trinity Farm, but I know that the cows are all grass fed and happy, and I'm sure that plays a part in what makes me so happy! Whenever I go to the Wooster Square Farmer's Market, I always make sure to by some chocolate milk, because it is sooo bomb. It's rich, chocolatey and addictive, but not too sweet. They also have wonderful things like coffee milk and regular milk. If you like milk, at all, you should definitely get in on this dairy company!

The milk taste may be enhanced by how adorable the entire operation is.

4. High Tea in London 

      Two years ago, I went to London with my brother's fiancee, and I begged to do high tea simply because the idea of it was so utterly British. So my most wonderful future sister-in-law made reservations for afternoon tea at the Wallace Restaurant, and we had tiny cakes and tiny sandwiches and tea from tiny tea pots. Out-of-this world delicious isn't exactly the phrase I would use to describe the fare, but only because while the food was quite tasty, but it was practically just cake and sandwiches, and it is rather difficult to make cake and sandwiches not tasty. However, the entire process of getting high tea was REMARKABLE! I felt so civilized! Tiny cakes and sandwiches all on a three-tiered tray? The atmosphere was definitely not plebian, and if I would have spit Turkish coffee out into a napkin here, I surely would have been reprimanded by the waitstaff. To get a feel for the atmosphere, just be sure to go to this website, and scroll through, with your volume up, and with you sitting straight in your chair: http://bernideensteatimeblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/three-tiered-afternoon-tea-tray-what.html. High tea in London is a TIFL for experience rather than for flavor, but that is not a bad thing! 

Oh, so classy I might just die.

5. Hot Chocolate from the Dirt Cowboy Cafe

          Another one of my departures from Betch drinks comes in the form of hot chocolate. Specifically, hot chocolate from Dirt Cowboy Cafe in Hanover, New Hampshire (basically on Dartmouth's campus). This hot chocolate was absolutely the bomb, not just because it was incredibly chocolatey (this should be a given with all hot chocolates, but gravely, it is not), but also because this place makes its own marshmallows! If homemade marshmallows were given a category on US News College Rankings, then I'm sure Dartmouth would be number one on the list. . .which makes you wonder, if homemade marshmallows aren't taken into consideration when ranking the colleges. . .what is?

Hot chocolate mustache