Reading Challenge Update 2

The year's half over (ish) so it's time to check in on the reading challenges again.

For the Reading Suggestion Challenge, here's where I stand

April: A book from your childhood

For April, I decided to pick up Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I considered reading the rest of the series, but there were too many other books on my list. Still, it was fun to revisit this one and see how much it has shaped me as a person and a reader.

 May: A book from another country

This month was fun, because it lined up with my honeymoon. We visited three countries, and I read a book from each of them. In Barcelona, I read The Shadow of the Wind, which was written by Carlos Ruis Zafon, who hails from Barcelona. The book takes place there and does a great job of incorporating the city. When we got to Paris, I began reading The Three Musketeers, written by French writer, Alexandre Dumas. Once I'd finished that, I picked up the biography of Roise Rua, who lived on a island off the coast of Ireland. The book was originally written in Gaelic. I really enjoyed reading books that were set in the parts of the world I was visiting, and I hope to continue the tradition when I travel in the future.

I also read Persuasion this month, which was written and takes place in England. May involved a lot of European literature.

June:  A classic you never got around to

I bought Treasure Island years ago and attempted to read it several times. Somehow I never made it past the first twenty pages. Until now! I was determined to finish this book for this challenge, and I finally did it! Having finished it, I'm surprised it proved so difficult for me, given what a quick, easy read it was.

I've made a ton of headway on the Monopoly Genre Challenge.

I only have two books left to finish off this challenge. I'm planning to read JK Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling for the crime novel. Then I just need to find a Chick Lit book (maybe Gone Girl? People seem to like that one), and I'll be all done. I'll probably hold off on these for a while. I bought a ton of epic fantasy to keep me busy for the summer, and I don't want to buy any new books for a few months at least.

Risotto

Several months ago, The Toast posted a Risotto Template. It's not a recipe so much as a guide for making risotto. One that you can personalize to your heart's content, but that gets a lot of the basics right. It's the kind of thing that might not work for the chemists in my life, but it's exactly the kind of recipe I've come to love.

I wanted desperately to try it out. But I was so busy planning the wedding that I couldn't seem to find the time. Then there's the fact that risotto is high in both fat and carbs, which didn't really mesh with my weight-watching goals leading up to the wedding. So I decided to wait until after the honeymoon. And last weekend (after a supremely busy month) I finally found the 2+ hours I needed to attempt this.

It didn't come out perfectly - the rice was still occasionally crunchy. Which, I don't even know how that happened. I was thinking that I maybe didn't cook it enough, but Kevin thinks I may have burned some of the rice grains in the toasting step. Whatever it was, it's something I'll hopefully be better about next time.

As I said, this recipe was pretty open to interpretation. I used tumeric instead of saffron because have you seen the price of saffron? And I threw in a little extra wine and a lot of extra cheese. I did the full 8 cups of chicken stock (minus what ever boiled off), which meant that I was adding stock and stirring for about an hour and a half. And drinking wine during that time.

To my finished product, I added mushrooms, shrimp, and peas. I should have added more of all three, but I was worried about overpowering the rice. I did about a handful of each, and will probably double that next time.

The risotto tasted really good, if occasionally crunchy. The wine helps with that part, though. It was fun to make. I watched two episodes of Orange is the New Black while I was chopping and simmering and stirring and eating. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening. Hopefully I'll find time to make it again in the future. This is one of those dishes I'd really like to perfect, as it works really well both fresh and as leftovers.

BBBBQ

This weekend was the Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ festival, another annual tradition that has gained traction as more of our college friends have moved East. It's held down in National Harbor, which isn't the easiest place in the world to get to. We have to take taxis from the closest metro stop, but we usually have enough people that this isn't too much of a hardship.

The festival is always a lot of fun, especially since the VIP tickets we buy mean we get in two hours before the general public. There are a ton of bourbons and beers to taste, and the ticket gets you unlimited tastings. It always turns into a rather boozy day, full of sampling so many things it's impossible to keep track of them all.

There's also a special VIP area that has the higher end bourbons and beers. They also have some free food samples over there, though none of it was really worth standing in line for this year. The cheese was mediocre and the bacon was flat-out bad.

We stayed at the festival for over four hours, which is the longest we've ever lasted. We must be learning to pace ourselves as we grow older. After we finished drinking, it was back to Zach and Sarah's for tacos and horse races. And, yes, more beer. Then it was time to metro home, which was involved some fun people watching. Everyone was coming home from the Pride Parade, so there were rainbows and beads and glitter everywhere.

On Sunday Kevin and I went over to the community's annual used book sale. The selection was a bit picked over, since most people had gone on Friday and Saturday. We still managed to find some cool things, including the sequel to one of my favorite books as a child, a book I had despaired of ever finding. And since it was the tail end of the sale, prices had been slashed. We took home eight books for only $5, and we could have gotten way more for the same price if we'd found anything else we wanted.

Embracing the Feminine

A funny thing happened when Kevin insisted I wear makeup for the wedding. I discovered that I liked it.

Back in middle and high school, I had to glob makeup on my face every time I performed in a dance recital or musical.  It was always heavy and felt caked on. It always made me break out. The experience led me to reject makeup altogether, and for years I almost never wore any. Unless a friend decided she wanted to make me over for a party, in which case I often felt awkward unless I managed to forget I was wearing makeup. But then I inevitably smudged my eyeliner or mascara or whatever, and looked awful by the end of the night.

Once Kevin asked me to wear makeup for the wedding, I knew I'd have to get in practice. I needed to remember how to apply it and learn how to get through a day without messing it up. I bought some stuff at the drug store and started playing.

It was surprising how quickly things started coming back to me. The realization that I needed to buy some extra brushes to get my eyeshadow just right. Mourning for the eyebrow brush I threw away so many years ago. Not to mention that it was satisfying. When I got my eyes looking just right, I was proud of myself.

In addition to this, I'd been looking for a specific shade of lipstick I loved in high school. It was being re-released in a limited run, and tracking it down was really difficult. In the process of trying to find it, I ended up visiting a lot of beauty sites and began to see tips on applying eye liner, keeping lipstick from smearing, finding brands that actually last all day. It all looked so fun and, more importantly, accessible. See part of my disinterest in makeup can be traced to my mom's disinterest in makeup. Without her to teach me the finer points I had a hard time learning. Though if I'd really wanted to I probably could have.

I also started seeing articles about women wearing too much makeup. Hand in hand with articles styling their hair in the wrong way or wearing the wrong shorts or just generally not being appealing in the right way. And I thought fuck that. I've never much cared about fashion or anything, opting for ease and comfort over style. But if men were going to tell me not to wear makeup, then I was damn well going to start wearing makeup.

And finally, the snowflake that caused the avalanche. Being one of the only women at work. Seeing twenty interns hired with nary a woman in sight. I got fed up with being one of the guys and decided to deliberately other myself. Because it turns out I do have a pretty strong contrary streak. I'm surprised I wasn't a more rebellious teenager (though I didn't really have anything to rebel against, so).

I went out and bought eyeshadows in fun shades. Blues and purples and pinks. I picked up some bright lipsticks to play with. I signed up for birchbox, because getting samples in the mail every month seemed like the ideal way to experiment. And in the very first box I found a hair product that I definitely have to start buying and using. It's amazing.

Incorporating makeup into my morning routine was surprisingly easy. I never do anything that takes more than five minutes, so it's not a big time suck. And it's so fun and satisfying that I find myself wanting to do things. I probably shouldn't have tried eyeliner for the first time on a work day, but it all worked out okay in the end.

Through all of this, the words of a guy I almost dated have started echoing in my head again. When I asked him about his tattoos, he replied "You only get one life, you might as well decorate it." It was these words that pushed me into getting my first tattoo and that are defining my experiments with making my face up every day. It's one more way to play with color, decorate myself, and define the way I look. It really is an art form, one that I'm getting better at and having a lot of fun with in the meantime.

Weekend Fun

In the past year or so, a lot of our friends have moved east. This makes it a lot easier to see them more often, and looking at our calendar for the next few weeks it seems that we will be taking full advantage of that fact.

Last weekend two of our friends came to DC to visit, one from Boston and the other from NYC. Chev was here for a week, training for her summer internship in Nepal, while Alex came down with his girlfriend to spend time with both her friends and his. As our social circles expand, it's harder to carve out time with everyone. We weren't able to just spend an entire weekend lounging around and playing games with our friends this time, but we still got in some quality visiting time.

On Saturday evening, Chev, Zach, and Sarah came out to our house for tacos and board games. We pulled out some old classics, like beer pong, and some even older classics, like Twister. I am not nearly as good at Twister as when I was younger. But the alcohol helped with the falling on my ass part of that game. Both in facilitating it and in dulling the pain.

The next morning we went downtown for mimosas with Zach and Sarah, then Alex and his girlfriend joined us for brunch. At noon, which is less brunch than lunch. But if there are eggs and mimosas, then it still counts. Then we met up with other friends to wander around the zoo for the afternoon.

Visiting the zoo is definitely something I need to do more often. It's free, it's fun, and it's walking distance from nearly all of our friends' places in DC. I haven't been since before I moved to DC, and now I'm kicking myself for letting so many years pass between visits.

A lot of the animals weren't out, probably because we went sort of late and everything was either eating or sleeping. But we did get to hear the lion roar, see the tiger cubs annoy their mom, and watch the otters play. Sadly my favorite animal, the sloth bear, was nowhere to be seen. And the panda was hiding up in a tree. But these are just reasons to go back more often. Wandering around the zoo is a great way to spend the afternoon.

The Official Start of Summer

I've always been amused by the idea that summer officially starts with Memorial Day Weekend, almost a month before the actual start of summer. Of course, it makes sense for any number of reasons. This was always when school let out for the summer, so it marked the beginning of those blissful months of freedom. The weather is starting to seriously heat up, which makes it feel like summer. It also marks the beginning of what promises to be a friend and activity filled few months for us. So it makes sense to mark this as the beginning of the season.

We had a bunch of friends over for a barbeque on Sunday to celebrate Memorial Day. Though if we're being honest it was mostly to celebrate the fact that the weather was perfect and we didn't have to go to work on Monday. Plus we hadn't seen anyone since the wedding.

We were expecting 12, maybe 13 people. And as always, we got too much food. But then we only had eight people at the BBQ, which meant that we had way too much food. We're going to be eating chicken thighs and drumsticks for the rest of the week. It's a good thing I like leftovers so much.

It was a lot of fun to see our friends after all the craziness of the wedding and the honeymoon. Settling back in to normal life is exactly what I wanted to do. We ate burgers and chicken and drank beer and bourbon and played some games. It was a perfect afternoon.

On Monday, we went to Rappahannock winery with Kevin's mom and some family friends to drink wine and have a picnic. The winery was a little farther out than we usually travel, but the wine was delicious. And there were a bunch of dogs running around begging for attention.

The rest of summer promises to be both busy and fun. We already have plans for almost every weekend in June. After that, my brother is staying with us for a week to attend GMU's orientation and find an apartment before he officially moves here in August. I'm looking forward to spending more time with him and with friends who moved here at the end of last summer. It should prove to be pretty epic.