get well soon

Soupe de poulet? (préparation), originally uploaded by Christophe Mendes.

i love this photo, with all of the fixins for a big, beautiful pot of chicken soup. look at those chicken legs wrapped with leek tops! so lovely.

everyone i know is ill right now--i've been narrowly avoiding getting sick by eating about five thousand mandarins a day. the best ones i've had have been from riverdog, monterey market, and woodleaf farm. i can't believe citrus is so sweet already.

a friend who claims to be clairevoyant (and another who claims not to be) both told me this week that they think my big project is going to pay off big time next year. i'm trying not to think about it. (my friends are on crack, by the way).

i had the best dinner (with the sweetest of my friends) at nopa last night. gosh, it was so good. everything was seasoned so perfectly. i only wish the broccoli had been cooked a little more slowly in the wood oven, but even as it was, it was delicious. and the mural by brian barneclo is bright and blocky--i could look at it for hours. if i lived nearby (and didn't work in a restaurant), i'd probably eat there at least once a week. so, so good.

sorry for the randomness....

not so much in this shot, but i've found that i have trouble sometimes getting my lens to focus on what i want it to focus on. sometimes, when i want the front to be in focus and the back blurry, it ends up with the middle focused, and the forefront and back of the shot blurry. it's really annoying, and upsetting when i get back home and upload the photos onto my computer. dad, what am i doing wrong?


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going on lately:

+went to emmy's spaghetti shack and the seward st. slides with cynthia (though looking for the slides might have been more fun than actually riding them). i'm not going to link to it, but the slides have their own yelp page with 149 reviews. wtf?

+almost done with my big project (kind of). it's due 10/19, but i pretty much have to be done with it by 10/1...i'm feeling pretty good about it, but not good enough to blab about it on the internet. if anything comes of it, i will definitely celebrate here.

+crazy novella's brought one of her piggies to the restaurant for us to butcher with her. today, we made prosciutto, pancetta, soaked the heads for soppressata, and cleaned the loins and tenders for her to take home. tomorrow we'll show her how to make arista, boil the heads, and clean the shoulders for salami. i think she plans to make bacon, pate, and a bunch of other stuff with the other pig. she's a maniac, and i see a LOT of pork in her future. yikes. i'll try to remember my camera for tomorrow so we can take some photos of the heads.

in the battle between industriousness and procrastination, one of my sides has finally prevailed....

i can't believe how much i got done today. i'm really happy with myself! i wrote about eight letters in italian (!), three in english, took major notes, and did a ton of internet research on a big project that's been hanging over my head for months. it feels so good to have knocked out so much in just one day.

the good thing about procrastination is that i stew so much about stuff that i work through most of the difficult thought processes before i ever actually have to do any work. by the time i sit down to the computer, i've sorted through most of my thoughts and can just type. it's quite freeing, actually.

i'm also really happy because i was planning on recycling a bunch of work for this project, but i kind of made a mental breakthrough that is going to make this project even better than the last one. yay!