paul simon + sting

last night i went to see paul simon and sting in concert!

reasons this concert gets a GOLD STAR from miss claire:
1. they sold $40 tickets.  there are so many concerts where all the tickets are over $100, and this is not okay.  let the common person (read: me) in!  so this was a totally affordable concert even though it was two huge starts on stage, and i loved that.  our seats were way way far away, but that is what is a-okay with me.  my view:

2. the concert was scheduled to start at 8 and started at 8:15.  i am NOT a fan of concerts that start 45 minutes late.  it makes me think that the artists are super high maintenance, and i do not like that.  be prompt!

3. there was no opening act.  YESSSSS.  i did not go to this concert to see the opening act.  i came to see paul simon (and sting).

4. they played for almost 3 hours.  yes!  do not put on a weenie concert.  put on an awesome concert!

as much as i LOVE paul simon, you can tell his is getting older and he can't hit all the notes that he used to be able to.  sting, however, has an amazing voice.  so i give sting props for his voice and i give paul simon props for his song writing.  the concert was about 1/3 paul on his own, 1/3 sting on his own, and 1/3 them singing together.  when they sang together, most of the songs they sang were simon & garfunkel songs.

this person had much better seats than me.  and their phone didn't run out of battery power 2 minutes into the concert, unlike moi.

my favorite moment (almost got a little teary - i love this song) - an "america"-"message in a bottle" medley:


my new favorite sting song (i didn't know it beforehand) - "fragile":



this was the first city in their many-city tour together over the next months, and you could tell.  there were some kinks to work out - who would sing when, their harmonies (though some harmonies were OUT OF THIS WORLD), and the didn't have a song planned for their second encore (because, yes, there was a second encore.  but i kind of loved that they came out with a second encore and then winged it).  if you get a chance, go see them.  they put on an AWESOME show and have an incredible band.

will someone crafty please make this for me?  please and thank you.

love,
miss claire

such a fun 4th of july!  we went to this outdoor amphitheater for what i thought was just fireworks and turned out to be fireworks + houston symphony performance!  for free!  miss claire was in heaven.

tracy's new cooler (full of beer and snacks) was defective.  the wheel fell of approximately 20 times (no exaggeration) between where we got dropped off and the amphitheater.  it was hilarious for the first 5 times and moderately hilarious for the following 15 times.

tracy had gone early to stake out GREAT lawn spots for us.  front and center.  yay!

we drank and snacked and made friends with the people around us, and then we listened to a VERY good symphony performance for over an hour.  i love patriotic music.  no battle hymn of the republic, but i survived.

and then there were fireworks!

people, i will be doing this every year from now until i no longer live in this city.  there were thousands of people there, such a multicultural audience, everyone so friendly, with free music and sing-a-longs (i need to learn when to clap during "deep in the heart of texas" PRONTO).  when they played the medley of hymns from each branch of the service, the conductor encouraged people who had served in each branch to stand for their hymn, and it was such an incredible reminder of how many veterans there are among us.  i am thankful for them and america and friends.

houston continues to treat me well.

graduation!

graduation was a two part affair.

part 1: teachers college graduation in the cathedral of st. john the divine (8 blocks from teachers college) on tuesday, which mom and dad came up for (yay!)...

getting ready to process in:

the enormous and beautiful interior:

with mom and dad at the reception afterwards:

and then part 2: columbia university's commencement on wednesday...

um, there were lots of people there.  this was my view of the proceedings:

and this is a pretty awesome photo from the top of butler library that i got off the teachers college facebook page:

(i am in the big set of risers on the right side of the photo - and then all the way to the front side of those risers, which was actually pretty close to the action.  all the blue people are the graduates.)

both graduation ceremonies were wonderful, and i have lots more to say...but i'm pretty tired at the moment.  more in the coming days.  tomorrow i drive to DC and friday i drive home to NC.  onward to new adventures!

file this under "things that would never happen in the united states"

new zealand lawmakers burst into song as they legalize gay marriage

(additionally, i don't understand a word of this song, but it's gorgeous.)

little luxuries in the life of a grad student

1. buying a book that isn't required for grad school.

2. reading that book.  it feels illegal, frankly...it's such a luxury.  i just downloaded the light between oceans onto my kindle and have been reading it before bed and on the subway.  move over, group dynamics reading - i've got something more interesting to read.

3. trader joe's coconut body butter. dominique introduced this to me and i'm completely addicted.  it smells AMAZING and isn't greasy like a lot of hand creams can be (huge pet peeve of mine).  i put it on about 5 times a day and my hands are very happy.

4. i have succumbed to buying the gloves that it seems everyone in new york city has: fingerless gloves with a mitten that comes over the top.  the mitten part keeps your hands so warm, but when you want to text or look up directions on your iphone, you can do that without taking off your gloves (hands in gloves do not work on the iphone screen).  i love these and am so pleased with my purchase.

5. a bloody mary.  any time it is appropriate...so: any time i go out to brunch.  i have brunch plans tomorrow and i can't WAIT.

my sleep cycle

when i was in atlanta in january willis told me about a new iphone app that he'd purchased that monitors your sleep.  you tell the app that you're going to sleep, then put the phone on your bed for the night.  when you turn over or move, the app registers that and thinks you are either (a) in a less deep sleep than before, or (b) awake, based on the amount of movement.  after he used it the first night and we pored over the results, i obviously had to buy it.  99 cents!  fun information about yourself!

the app rates your sleep from 0% to 100% based on...i don't know what, because sometimes it is wrong.  i'll wake up thinking i had been tossing and turning, but the app doesn't care and rates my sleep as very good.  who knows.  i love it anyway.  i think it must have something to do with how long you are in "deep sleep" and how often you wake up...

this is my best night of sleep, according to the app:

it clearly took me like 45 minutes to fall asleep, but somehow that didn't matter...

and this is my worst night of sleep so far:

i didn't get into the deep sleep very much at all, so apparently it was not pleased.

also, let's note that i am kind of the luckiest person ever, because i consistently get at least 8 hours of sleep a night.  the reason for this: i never have class before 9am.  i'm going to enjoy this life while i can.

you can also tell the app if you worked out or drank caffeine or whatever (you add the options) and then it will tell you if you sleep better or worse after doing these things. the app says i sleep 5% better when i work out and negligibly better if i drink caffeine with dinner, but both are based on just a couple data points, so could presumably change over time.

and that, friends, is probably more than you ever wanted to know about my sleep.

a screenshot a day

yeah, that's right: this group of friends lives in 4 different cities now, so veronica started an online book club.  our first "meeting" was last night to discuss the fault in our stars, and after we figured out the technological issues, it was awesome.  baby vivianne even contributed (by being cute)!  i can't wait until i get to hangout (online) with these girls again next month!

follow up on the vonnegut quote

anna sent me this link - have you seen anything more lovely?  sigh.  it makes me want to start reading a new vonnegut book.  or teach a class.  or do this assignment (is this a sign that i've been in grad school too long?).

http://mobile.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html

my aunt monica sent this to me, and i LOVE it - she knows me so well.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120710.html

it put a huge smile on my face and then i got teary.  humanity!  humans!  we're so alike - why do we often only focus on our differences?

some of you lovely readers out there will LOVE this.

rugby wedding

my good friend and rugby teammate from duke, rachie, got married this weekend!  rugby girls with the bride and groom:

this wedding was the best advertisement for a small wedding that i've ever seen.  there were about 75 guests, and rachel and joe put something in the wedding program about every person at the wedding.  every person!  it made me feel that every person was special to the bride and groom - each person was there on purpose to witness this event and celebrate with the couple.  i loved it.

additionally, there was funfetti wedding cake and smores.  this also pleased me.

i got back to new york late last night and consequently took a nap this afternoon after my 8:30 class this morning.  i did also make it to the library and i'm going to yoga in a couple minutes, so i'm not a total waste of space today.  or that's what i'm telling myself.

happy monday, all!

(bonus points for anyone not in DUWRFC who knows what DUWRFC after my name in the program stands for!)

i went to the olympics and it was better than i could ever have imagined.

my friends philippa, mike, larry, and larry's son jakob got tickets through the online (authorized) resale market that is only available to the brits (phil and mike are both british and thus able to buy these tickets).  tickets would pop up and then disappear as people bought them, so we stalked the website a lot hoping to find something good.  this popped up a couple weeks ago and we pounced on them.  we liked that we got a lot of tennis, too - 8 hours for a 40 pound ticket.  we bought the "B" class tickets, which meant we wouldn't have the best ("A") seats, but the next level up (the classes went up to "E").

olympic tennis is at wimbledon, and on monday when we went there were matches from 11:30am-8pm on 12 courts!  12!  you could buy one of three kinds of tickets: tickets to centre court, tickets to court 1, or tickets that didn't allow you access to either of those courts but allowed you to sit at any of the other 10 courts on a first come, first serve basis.  we had court 1 tickets, which meant we had an actual seat at court 1 but could walk into any of the 10 other courts (except centre), too.  (i feel like i'm making this explanation very confusing, so i hope you understand.  actual seat at court 1; ability to see matches at 10 additional courts if there was a free seat.)

we arrived at noon, and i did the smartest thing i could have possibly done: i took photos of the big board that showed which matches were being played at which court.  i am a genius.

(one of many such photos.  apparently the dutch fans like cheese hats just like wisconsin fans.)

throughout the day we would refer back to the photos to decide where to head next.  first stop, court 2 to watch andy roddick play (he won).

next stop, our reserved seats at court 1 to watch serena play!  court 1 was much bigger than 2 - and let me take a minute here to say that the courts ranged in size from "oh, is that a match?" with benches to seat maybe 20 fans on the pathway between the larger courts...to a couple hundred...to several thousand seats.

serena killed this tiny polish girl.  poor polish girl.

do you see the sun?  THERE WAS SUN ALL DAY!  I GOT A SUNBURN ON MY NOSE!  incredible weather.

then we went back to court 2 because the afternoon match there looked amazing - williams sisters!  my (excellent) plan was that we would get there before the williams sisters played their doubles match because i figured that would fill up quickly.  we arrived in the middle of a match between a german dude and a serbian dude that was really fun (probably my favorite match of the day, actually - the serbian fans were crazy and there was lots of banter - and the two men were pretty equally matched.  also!  as the german lost he had a hissy fit and slammed his racket into his shoe four or five times, breaking it in half.  omg!  eek!  we were near his (pregnant) wife, who was not amused with him).  the crowd was pretty small when we arrived, so we walked ALL THE WAY TO THE FRONT ROW AND SAT DOWN.  after about two minutes i realized it was too close (too close!  i was too close at the olympics!) because it was right in the line of the serve and i genuinely thought i might get hit in the face by their 200 km/h serves and die.  we moved back one row.

so i watched venus and serena play doubles from the second row - with this view:

incredible.  the place was entirely full by the time the match started, and my get-there-early plan was a huge success.

hi ladies.

if you, like me, are not a huge tennis fan, you might think "i can't tell venus and serena apart!"  you are kidding yourself, as i was.  you just haven't been paying attention.  serena has probably 40 pounds on venus.  i was scared of serena.

the five of us in our seats!

then it was off to court 1 again to watch federer play doubles.  while court 1 was bigger, i loved the intimacy of court 2, especially when it was full...and being in the second row DID NOT HURT MATTERS.

the swiss playing the japanese.  stop wearing the same colors and confusing me.

it got cold.  we put on our jackets.  federer served at 211 km/h.  omg.  there was a tie breaking point thing that i had to learn about.  earlier in the day i learned not to call deuce "a 40-40 tie" [jenny is totally rolling her eyes at this - sorry, jenny!].  philippa and mike were excellent teachers.  i decided i like the fast pace of doubles much better than singles.

honestly?  one of the most fun days EVER.  excellent company, amazing seats, fun matches, great atmosphere, sunshine, understanding in the moment that i was incredibly incredibly lucky to be able to experience all of this.  i'm not a huge tennis fan, but the ability to be so close totally hooked me.  we couldn't have asked for a better day - better tickets - better matches - better anything.  (actually, wrong.  better vegetarian food.  i could have asked for that.)

40 pounds incredibly well spent.

i subscribe to the sun magazine, thanks to other claire, who gave it to me as a christmas present last year.  it is an ad-free magazine out of chapel hill, north carolina that is full of pretty excellent nonfiction.  one feature in every issue is "readers write," where readers write in on a topic and the best get published in the magazine.  this is always my favorite part of the issue, and i LOVED these thoughts on the topic of "the best feeling in the world."  (the physical magazine has dozens of them in every issue, though only three are available online - but you'll get the picture.)

i know there are some of you lovely readers out there who will really enjoy this!

after yoga this morning i drove through the yucky rain to trader joe's and, as usual, went crazy in the frozen foods aisle.  (their frozen indian and thai food is pretty amazing.)  i checked out, walked out to my car, put the bag in the front seat, and then turned around and walked back into the store.  every time i go to trader joe's i gaze longingly at the flowers but never buy any because it seems so impractical.  NOT THIS TIME.  i bought two bunches of tulips - yellow and purple - that aren't fully flowered yet - i think they'll last for a long time.  the yellow ones are in the kitchen and the purple ones are right here next to my bed.

i have to remind myself that now and then it's okay to buy things that serve no purpose other than being pretty.  and $4.99 for some tulips is a small price to pay for a smile every time i look at them.

(bonus points if you know what book i'm reading based on the blurry cover you can see in the photo!)

like every child of the '80s, i loved the cosby show.  LOVED.  it came on at 8pm, if i recall, which was a good thing since for a while my bedtime was 8:30, meaning i had to miss the second half of murder, she wrote on days that it was on, a tragedy i remember well.

fast forward: during college, at a duke basketball game, the student section spotted bill cosby in the best seats in the house, sitting next to the president of the university.  maybe we were playing temple?  at halftime he came down to the court, someone handed him a microphone, and the first thing he said was "hey hey hey!" in his fat albert voice.  we may or may not have gone crazy.  it was amazing.

this is a pretty cool collection of bill cosby moments throughout the years.  i did some reminiscing.  you can, too.

best. day. ever.

saturday was pretty much the best day ever.

on saturday afternoon i went to a duke game, which is a VERY exciting event in and of itself.  even better?  we scored free tickets in the first row, center court.  now, we'd bought tickets already (which we then gave away so as to keep the karma gods happy), so these were not really free tickets, but they were incredible seats.  with four friends.  and duke won in a nailbiter.  all of this leads to a happy claire.

in this photo that i took of a tv screen (embarrassing, but true), you can see us - upper right hand corner!  put on your glasses!  i'm above the "e" in "applebees," behind the woman in the ref's shirt (she's the official scorer).  thomas, mike, and andy are to my left.

after the game we met up with three other friends for a late lunch, and while there we realized that no one had plans for the evening.  a plan was hatched to make dinner - free pasta (thomas and lindsey learned how to make this a couple years ago)

+ made-from-scratch sauce (kelly is a pro and made a meat sauce and a veggie sauce - love her!)

+ fresh ricotta (yours truly with kelly as my assistant)

= ravioli!

lindsey made two salads (one for the girls, with delicious things in it, and one for the boys with...cheese on it).

joey and his dad bottle wine, so we had "homemade" wine (or, as mike coined it, "homo-made" - which i hope offends no one, as it did not offend the gay man - we're the kind of friend group that can say this with total love and humor).

kelly did double duty and made tiramisu, as well!!  (kelly - i need this recipe!)

mike promised to clean up afterwards, which he did, and other claire brought beer.

it was honestly the best night ever in a long list of best nights ever.  i have an amazing group of friends, and we laughed our way through the preparation of this feast.  how the food tasted at the end almost didn't matter (though for the record it was delicious).  signs that you're getting old: this is more fun than going out to a bar.  eek.  i can't believe i just said that.

today is the one year anniversary of being snowed in together (you may remember my live-blogging of the occasion).  i'm reminded day after day, year after year of how truly lucky i am.  have i found myself a hot/kind/funny/special man yet?  no i have not.  but i have found myself some best friends for life.  and i'm doing pretty well.

some EXCELLENT radio - radiolab's episode entitled "patient zero."  typhoid mary, the true patient zero in the AIDS epidemic, and how high fives got started.  listen to all or part of it for freeeee.

LOVE IT.

love = love.

gender doesn't matter, silly.

(scroll down for the video.)

http://news.advocate.com/post/13324191023/possibly-the-most-beautiful-ad-for-marriage-equality

INCREDIBLY beautiful photography!  i heart national geographic.

layover

last night i got to see becky!  she had a layover in atlanta on her way to texas for the weekend, but her first flight was delayed so she got stuck here for 7 hours.  we only got to hang out for the time it took to drive home from the airport home, sleep in separate rooms, and then to drive her to take MARTA (our "subway" system) to the airport in the morning, but it was still really nice to see her.  hooray. :)

in case you didn't know, when it is 11:45pm there are no rules when you are waiting for someone to exit the airport and get in your car.  normally there are police cars everywhere and your ability to stop and wait for someone is minimal - if they aren't coming out the door, you better move along and circle back around.  last night i sat for 10 minutes by the curb - with about 50 other cars, none of us moving - while the police just sort of watched.  10 minutes!  i turned my car off.  no one cared.  what universe are we living in?!  (i guess if you are going to bomb the terminal you don't do it in the middle of the night.  makes perfect sense.)  and then a street sweeping truck drove the wrong way past me on the one way road there by the terminal.  you know.  like they do.