Boom has moved.

{Click here} to be redirected to the new site. :)

Target.

So let’s talk about how Target is basically my disneyworld. They’ve got all the great stuff, sometimes.  I’m especially loving their newest superhero/comic strip theme going on. (and I may have just had to buy the holographic superhero place-mats despite the absense of any real need…). I’m pretty sure they’ve got the best rotating selection of cards and stationary too. Thanks, Target. You’re the best/worst distraction ever.

out and about in carrboro and chapel hill

 

sycamore trail

 

 

We went hiking along the Sycamore Trail while Christy was visiting. It was fun-ish. It was a great opportunity to talk and I enjoyed hearing the childhood shenanigans of Luke and and the family brood back in the day about as much as they enjoyed retelling them. Its always a bit entertaining to realize there are certain similarities of experience that seem to play out in every family despite their otherwise extreme differences. Also, we saw not one but two snakes along the way which was great. (You know I love communing with nature.)

 

 

dead shark; resists resuscitation

We’ve had our Shark for 3 years and yesterday it died. I stumbled downstairs to find this surgery playing out as Luke took it apart piece by intricate little piece and put it all back together. At long last it looked as though it might be revived and then “POP”  – a tube busted and water leaked everywhere. So that’s it for clean floors for awhile… :)

work. lunch. ethiopian love.

One of the things I miss most about living in Seattle is eating at Enat. I love, love, love *vegetarian* ethiopian food and it is SUCH a sadness that we have not found a single ethiopian restaurant to write home about in all of the Triangle. Leave it to my ethiopian customers to bring me homemade food made in celebration of their Easter. Sometimes my customers are the greatest.

pumping iron

favorite broiled brown sugar salmon

We’ve got a new staple around here and it’s not what you’d expect. We’re newly obsessed with broiled brown sugar salmon and I’m pretty sure we could eat it, like, 4 times a week. I know, I know. Not that obsessed but close. The best part: its easy and quick!

Here’s whatcha do:

Gather a 2 pound salmon filet (skin on or off, doesn’t matter), 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp each of paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes.

Then you’re gonna heat your broiler to high and move the oven rack to the highest position it’ll go. Mix the brown sugar and spices and rub it onto your salmon. Place the filet onto a baking sheet and broil for 5-7 minutes. *If your salmon is thick (more than, say, an inch at the thickest part) you may want to move it down a bit lower after 6 minutes and continue broiling for 3 or 4 more.

Now, what are you waiting for?! Eat!

 

some stuff i’ve photographed this week…

May 12, 2013

It’s mothers day today. A day for celebration, love, and appreciation for mothers everywhere — the women who raise us, the women who love us, the women who give us a spoon and a pint of bluebell and tell us everything is going to be okay. There are not enough hours in the day or characters per page to share the many special memories and stories I cherish about my mom and the times we’ve spent together.

It’s funny too how the memories at the fore of my mind can change drastically depending on the capriciousness of the day — you know, whether I got the yellow plate or the blue plate; chose chocolate or vanilla; drank coffee or tea.

Right. So a few memories of my mother on my mind today:

There were the big tee shirts she bought me as a child that I played in at night and slept in amongst many, many stuffed animals. Minnie mouse tee shirts, a colorful San Diego Zoo tee shirt, a Pocahontas tee shirt. I loved those big tee shirts – so large I’d never grow out of them. They lasted for years. We named stuffed animals together and let them ride with us in the van.

There were the trips we took together. Disney world, of course was a big one. Trips to Colorado and a visit to San Diego that are hazy with the passing of time. But also there were day trips and little adventures throughout the years. Roaming Austin on the hunt for beanie babies, leisurely afternoons in bookstores, warm summer nights at the country club pool because we would get too sunburned if we went earlier in the day. Yes, the country club where we’d cart our noodles and towels in, order cheese sticks, and, sometimes, my cousins and I would conjure up excuses to meander down to the golf course simply because we weren’t supposed to.

Growing up it was always my mom who understood the importance of playing barbies and horses, of playing vet and teacher and doctor and lawyer, of singing along at the top of my lungs to blaring music or just making my own in the bath tub. Oh, the baths! With big foam letters that stick to the side of the tub and my favorite over-sized thin blue towels that I’d wrap around my body and make a tent with the space heater as I dried off.

I remember eating cherry ice cream with Nash Bridges or Northern Exposure on in the background. There were happy meals and “crispies” and the fun grocery store with all the random soaps shaped like butterflies and animals. We played skipbo and “danced” and stopped by starbucks after school for coffee frappucinos.

Basically my mom is the best. I’m getting all nostalgic and sentimental about my childhood today and fear this could go on forever… Perhaps is the chocolate coffee I had earlier today. Suffice it to say, Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere — especially mine. I hope your sons and daughters remember the wonderful things you did for them as children and show their appreciation to you all today and always for continued love and support. Moms make the world go round.