things* i miss about oxford

it's official: i miss oxford.  when i got back to atlanta i was just happy to be home, enjoying the comforts of being back in the US.  but every year at about this time i start missing oxford and those experiences again; i start thinking about going back next summer.  here are a couple reasons why:

1. alpha bar.  alpha bar is this incredible food stand in the covered market with lots of fresh and healthy food; i often got a small box (4 items) for lunch.  you can mix and match from lots of salads and cheeses and proteins.  my favorite small box combination is lentil salad, hummus, carrot and cabbage slaw, and grilled halloumi cheese.  i also love the roasted veggies and feta cheese, so sometimes i sub one or the other in.  in short: if alpha bar existed in atlanta i would go DAILY.  sigh.

2. the pizza artisan van.

here i am talking about food again.  oops.  the pizza artisan van is a, well, van with a wood burning oven in it.  the van man parks on the side of the road in town and makes fresh pizzas in literally 2 minutes.  (ignore the question of how he is allowed to have a super heated fire in a van that obviously has gasoline in it.)  i became obsessed with this pizza.  in 2 minutes you can have a mushroom pizza with roasted garlic on it, topped at the last minute with spinach and rocket (aka arugula).  YUM.

3. walking places.  in atlanta i drive everywhere except (sometimes) the grocery store that's across the street from my house.  places i want to go are far apart and traffic stresses me out.  in oxford we walked everywhere, and living in a town where that is possible was wonderful.  would i want to live in a place that small year round?  probably not.  but i miss it.

4. the weather, though atlanta's late september weather is similar to oxford's hottest july day, and i'm appreciative of the fact that we're moving in the right direction.  jeans and sweaters and clear days that aren't hot - that's my favorite climate.

5. feeling like you're in college again - sort of - in that there are people around all the time and at a moment's notice you could always find someone to go grab a drink with you or play uno (don't laugh) with you.  when we weren't on duty our job was to be free in case of emergency, which also meant that people were free to hang out.  real life isn't like that - i, and all my friends, are busy and scheduled and finding time to just hang out requires forethought.  ugh.  while i understand that real life can't be like a summer job, i'm still sad about it.

*again, obviously not people, as i miss my oxford friends a lot...

i'm taking the GRE in november (more on that later) and i'm studying some vocabulary in an attempt to get as good a score as possible.  the vocabulary is ridiculous, though - i consider myself to have a pretty large vocabulary and i've never even heard of some of these words.  ugh.  but i'll play the game - i'll learn some words - if it helps me get a higher score.

as i learn definitions i take the index cards out of my stack, but these four words have been in my pile for a couple weeks and i can't seem to get them.  can anyone think of some tips and tricks to help me remember them?

irascible: easily made angry

assiduous: showing great care and perseverance

sycophantic: attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery

pertinacious: holding firm to an opinion

thankyouverymuch.

st. louis needs to fall apart right now.  WHY ARE THEY NOT COOPERATING.

a new york moment

while visiting becky in new york this weekend - which, by the way, was awesome - the following situation occurred and i pretty much could not believe it was happening.

the characters: 
me
becky (my sister, who has lived in new york city for five years)
talia (one of my friends from working in oxford this summer who also lives in new york)
the cab driver
random dude who is a jerk

the scene: 
it is saturday night.  becky and i have had dinner with some friends of mine from the summer program i work for, and then we've had a couple drinks at a bar down the street from the restaurant.  it's close to midnight and we're ready to leave.  talia lives just a couple blocks from becky, so we share a cab.

the events:
we find a cab, climb in, and drive several blocks.  there's a lot of traffic, so we're moving slowly in the far right lane.  the man who will soon be known as "random dude who is a jerk" is standing on the side of the road with two female friends and as we creep slowly by he hits the top of the cab two or three times.  my first thought is that the cab driver hadn't turn on his sign that says he's got a passenger (or however they alert people of this - this has always been a mystery to me), and random dude is trying to get the cabbie's attention so that he and his friends can get in.
cab driver freaks out.  he stops the car, unbuckles his seat belt, gets out, and says a lot of cuss words while asking random dude why he ran into his cab.  random dude yells back while the three of us in the backseat are like "ummmm..." and then cab driver gets back in the car while random dude is still yelling at him.  as we are about to pull away, random dude says "your mother attacked the world trade center!" and (middle eastern looking) cab driver yells back "your mother!  your mother!" in the only real life yo mama joke i have ever experienced.  except at the time it is just absurd, not funny.  i say "ignore him! whatever!  let's go!"  cab driver does not ignore him, but reverses the cab really fast and drives backward to the random dude, who is walking away.  becky says, "no!  drive the cab!  drive the cab!  no!  we are getting out and not paying!"  but cab driver man does not care and continues backing, then gets out to yell at the random dude even more.  the three of us in the backseat scurry out and run away and get in another cab.

o.m.g.  discuss.

(note: at no point was this scary...just extremely confrontational, which i hate, and so bizarre - i couldn't believe it was happening.  in no way should random dude have said what he said, but the cab driver also had an extremely short fuse.  but who knows?  maybe he deals with random jerks all the time and has had enough.)

i'm going to new york this weekend!!!

hooray for spending the weekend with becky - our plan this evening is for her to have indian food takeout waiting for me when i arrive at her apartment.  life is so good.

heh.

how has it taken me so long to tell you this story?

over labor day weekend i went to the lake with some friends, one of whom is a 5th grade teacher.  the teacher showed me some little projects she was grading where the kids had to illustrate some of the amendments to the constitution.  i was flipping through them, and found that one of the students had written our president's name this way: brocko bama

brocko!

it's even funnier when said out loud.

in fact, i can't stop giggling about it.

my mama came to visit this weekend!  hooray!  excellent times were had - lots of good food was eaten (including some perfect peaches that she brought from north carolina), we went to the martin luther king memorial downtown (which i had - embarrassingly - never been to), we played trivia on saturday night (just the two of us - and did pretty well!), and had yummy brunch with some of my friends on sunday morning before she left.

can we talk about the weather this weekend?  perfection.  after mom left on sunday i took my book out to this little grassy area at the back of our condo complex that borders the train tracks (it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere, which i love) and read my book / napped and it just felt GOOD.  lilly and i went to see brandi carlile and ray lamontagne on sunday evening and the weather continued to be perfect.

great weekend.

book club + jam tart

tuesday was the first meeting of the new book club that i am in!  yay book club!  i was in a book club a couple years ago, but it became clear that reading the book wasn't important - gossiping and drinking wine was.  this frustrated me.  when i joined this club i wanted to make sure that we were really going to discuss the book and - success! - we did (AND we drank wine and chatted) - and great conversations ensued.  (the book was the red tent if anyone is interested.)  i'm already looking forward to our next meeting.

i brought dessert - easy jam tart from smitten kitchen.  it was my first time making this tart (actually: my first time making any tart.  but really, a tart is pretty close to a pie and i've made several of those before).  i was very nervous about how it would taste - it looked beautiful, but you can't exactly sample a tart before taking it to a party without it being very obvious that you've sampled it.  but omg people: it was delicioussssss.  and really easy.  and it made me feel like an awesome chef (obviously the #1 reason to make this).

let it be known throughout the land that i will definitely be making this recipe again.

on sunday i'm seeing ray lamontagne:



and brandi carlile:



with lilly.

!!!!!

things liz lemon has said that apply to my life, part 2*

jenna: "liz, that guy wanted to buy you a drink!"
liz lemon: "really?  but i already have a drink.  do you think he'd buy me mozzarella sticks?"

i may or may not be giggling uncontrollably.


*yes, part 1 was in february.  deal with it.  this is a very occasional series on this here blog.

what i'm listening to right now:

thanks to my belfast friends nick and jen, i have discovered lissie.  (nick is the kind of person who knows all of these bands that i've never heard of.  he is a good friend to have.)  this is my favorite song of lissie's:



(sorry about the ad.)

i have lived in the south for so long (my life minus ten months) that today i did the unthinkable.  i was walking towards the gym and a guy was walking towards the gym from the other direction and we were going to awkwardly arrive at the door at the same time, creating the problem of who opens the door.  so i slowed my pace and arrived a second after him.  (you know you do this, too.)  he was pulling open the door and then paused for a millisecond, which i took to mean "after you!", which is often what that means here in the lovely south.  so i moved to walk through the door only to realize he was NOT holding the door for me and in fact was just going through it himself, and i looked like a jerk face who tried to pass him and speed my way into the gym first.  argh.  and he had to pause and say "go ahead" but i knew he didn't really mean for me to go ahead.

door holding.  i love it.  it happens all the time - men and women.  this the south.  we are equal opportunity polite.  but simmer down, miss claire.  don't assume everyone wants to hold the door for you.

when i lived in new hampshire i was shocked - SHOCKED - that people didn't hold the door, or at least hold the door open behind them so it didn't slam in the face of the person behind them.  common courtesy, people.  common courtesy.

for your friday afternoon:

this is really cool...and i don't think that's just the history teacher in me talking.

weirdest post ever.

here is what i have decided the netflix call center is like:

they are in california.  everyone is really hip and interesting.  they wear jeans to work and have fun toys on their desks.

i have decided this because they are so CASUAL when they answer the phone.  and seem genuinely happy to be at work.  i called in june with a question related to going on vacation for 7 weeks and they solved my problem by creating a new user within my account called Vacation IsAwesome.  as in, that is the name of the new user.  i mean, they are happy to be alive if they are coming up with fun stuff like that.  (there was a very convoluted reason why they had to do this, but it made perfect sense for my situation.  i will not bore you with the whole story.)

i called again today with an issue and they were so nice and reasonable again.  i do not think they have a script to read and they are actually allowed to use their brains.  this makes me happy.

the end.

update (after actually doing some research): it's oregon!  i should have guessed...  this article is a couple years old, but i find it spot on.  as in, "[netflix] picked the location because [they] found oregonians to be polite."  this is a little more updated and also entertains me.

today...

...is the very lovely becky's birthday - and the very dashing joey's birthday!  to my sister and my roommate: happy happy birthday!!  i love you both!

i am...

...going to the lake for the weekend!  and i'm turning off my computer and leaving it at home.  craziness, i know.

see you on monday - happy labor day weekend!!

what i'm listening to right now

discovered via NPR's "tiny desk concerts" podcast:



clearly i bought the whole CD on itunes shortly after hearing this.

this photography is GORGEOUS.  and so reminiscent - obviously - of the lewis hine photos of the building of the empire state building.  looking at these two sets of photos - separated by 80 years - i am struck by how people are PEOPLE, regardless of whether they're living in 1931 or 2011.  what makes us human doesn't change.

(as you probably know, photography is my favorite art form.  duh.)

august: 23 & 24

here we are at the end of august and i have no idea where this month went.  crikey.  the first of these books i read in oxford, the second back here in atlanta.  i tie books very much into the location where i read them, and thinking about the hand that first held mine takes me right back to the office in oriel college and to christ church meadow, the two places where i read most of this book.  bossypants takes me to...my bed.  less exciting.

here is august:


the hand that first held mine, by maggie o'farrell (another book borrowed from a friend in oxford.  halfway through this book i was like, "seriously?!  i knew from the very beginning that this was going to be the 'twist.'  sheesh, book.  you are stereotypical."  15 pages later i was like, "ohmygod i did not see THAT coming!"  turns out the "twist" wasn't the twist at all.  it got out-twisted.  so then i liked the book again.  a good, light-ish read!)

bossypants, by tina fey (LOVED this book - tina fey's autobiography.  equal parts hilarious and inspirational, and i didn't see the inspiration coming when i picked the book up.  i waited through a reserve list at my library with 132 - literally - people on it before me in order to read this book (for free).  totally worth it.  reading this book makes me like tina fey even more.)