The Case of the Missing Bridal Boutique

Last weekend my mom flew out from Colorado for the official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. I'd made appointments at a small bridal boutique that had gotten great reviews and at the local Macy's. I'd also attempted to make an appointment at Nordstrom, but that basically fell apart. It all worked out in the end, though. Which is to say I found and bought a dress. After a bit of an adventure, that is.

The boutique I'd made an appointment at was a place called Vivian's. It had a bunch of great reviews online, most of which emphasized how cheap the dresses were. Cheap as in price, not quality. Everyone seemed impressed with the dresses they had been able to find. So I was excited to check it out and see what they had.

We left twice as early as we needed to, because I like to schedule time to get lost. I had the address of the place and figured it would be easy enough to find. I wasn't expecting to find myself in an office park on a Saturday morning.

We went inside the building, but we didn't see the name of the company on the directory. I called and left a voice mail asking if I had the right place. Then we went upstairs to see if we could find the suite.

We couldn't. As far as we could tell the place didn't exist. None of the doors had either the suite number or the boutique's name on the door. Kevin's mom eventually asked someone, who said there was, indeed, a bridal boutique on that floor.

I tried calling the number a few more times, but it always went straight to voice mail. After we'd waited for almost half an hour we decided to cut our losses and head to the mall. I emailed the person I'd been in touch with to find out what happened, but I have yet to hear back from her. I'm not sure we'll ever know, but I'm sticking with my theory that she had to flee the country in the middle of the night.

We wandered around looking at formal dresses in Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom and got lunch before heading to Macy's. Where I bought the second dress I tried on. So at least I can call the day a success, as strange as it was.

Soup 3: Curried Carrot-Squash

The last couple of soups have been pretty easy, so this week I'm graduating to a purée. The ingredient list is pretty simple and somewhat healthier than the tomato soup I made.

Look at all those vegetables

First you need to chop up all the veggies.

Veggies: sliced and diced

Now heat up some olive oil and a bunch of garlic

The recipe called for five cloves, but recipes always underestimate the amount of garlic you actually need. I used six cloves.

Then toss in the onions and carrots. Cook for a few minutes until the carrots are tender and sprinkle in some salt.

Then add the squash and some more salt.

That's a big pot of veggies!

Let that cook for a few minutes while you measure out the curry and wine. These two ingredients are the whole reason I chose this recipe.

I think I may use a bit more curry than that next time. Just a bit.

Then pour yourself a glass of wine for good measure.

The best part of cooking, really.

Now stir in the curry

It smells so good!

Then add the wine and a box (48 oz) of chicken broth

And now it looks like soup!

Mmmm. Now cover the pot and let everything simmer for an hour. While your kitchen smells progressively better and better.

An hour later, it's time to puree the soup. Once again, I took a bunch of pictures of this process, but my blogger app seems to have eaten them. Next time I'll have to triple check that that things syncs once I've finished my draft.

Pureeing the soup was quite an experience. We ladled it into a blender, then poured it into a separate bowl. It took three batches to do everything, and we made quite a mess. I'm glad Kevin was there to help out. I'll definitely be sticking an immersion blender on the wedding registry.

We served the soup with a fish that I took a cool picture of, but that has since disappeared. Stupid iPad.

Next week we're hosting a fancy dinner party, and I'm considering making a batch of this for everyone. It's actually both vegetarian and paleo-friendly, which is a rarity among the things I cook. We'll see how ambitious I'm feeling.

SHIELD: 0-8-4

 It's hard to talk about a show this new. Things aren't quite where I want them to be yet, but they're moving in the right direction. You need to be patient with new shows, especially new Whedon shows, while they find their footing. You also need to be patient while everyone else gains confidence and backs off so the people in charge of the show have some room to try new things.

So what we have is a second pilot, with a touch more character development, a ton of action scenes, and a reference to nearly every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Did you know that Stark is officially a S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant, not an agent? Or that the last 0-8-4 was Thor's Hammer? Or that Hydra used Tesseract technology and Gamma Radiation to make weapons of mass destruction? Fury even made an appearance in this episode!

Eventually we'll movie away from the movies as SHIELD learns to stand on its own legs. For now they're doing their best to remind everyone why they started watching this show in the first place.

But on to the characters, because that's what I'm here for. At least, it's what I should be here for.

I know it isn't the popular opinion, but Simmons continues to grow on me. I like that she and Fitz are starting to get some definition. They're beginning to become individuals instead of a single character split in two. So far, Simmons is far more gung-ho about being in the field. She's the one who dragged Fitz out of his comfort zone so they could go in the field. And she's the one teasing him about snakes and Dengue fever.

Ward remains my least favorite of the group. The actor can't quite pull off some of the dialogue, but I hope he gets better with time. For now he's basically Riley 2.0, the new and not-improved version. (Or maybe he's Riley 2.5, since Ballard was Riley 2.0? I don't know.) If he was just a little less serious, he'd work so much better. There are hints of it, like in his scene with May at the end. Actually, both of his scenes with May. I really like the two of them on screen together, so here's hoping they build on that relationship.

Ward and Skye on the other hand. I don't really know what to make of them, because their conflict did not go where I thought it would go. Instead of an argument about the good S.H.I.E.L.D. does versus the people it steps on, we got an individual vs team conflict. Maybe the other conflict is just being saved for later, though, when Skye's double-agent status is revealed.

Speaking of which, Coulson knows, right? He has to know. He's not that stupid. I can't figure out if he genuinely wants her on his team or if he's just using her to find Rising Tide, but there's no way he thinks it's this easy to get her on their side.

Lipstick

If you know me, you know I don't wear makeup. I had a whole blog post about my inability to even buy makeup a couple of years ago. I actively resisted it in high school, and now it seems like way too much of a hassle to wake up early and paint my face every day. Especially because I like my face the way it is.

But back when I was twelve, I fell in love with a lipstick. I was officially too young for lipstick, I think. I wasn't supposed to be wearing it to school or anything. I did, however, get to wear makeup once a year during my dance recitals. And I chose to wear this lipstick as often as they would let me.

The lipstick in question was Revlon's Sandstorm. I first discovered it in a magazine ad. The kind where they give you a sample just big enough for a single wear. I put it on immediately and bought a tube as soon as I could. I had it for years. Every time I wore it, I got tons of compliments. If I put on this lipstick and nothing else, people still reacted as though I had made up my entire face. It was basically this effect:

Even though the lipstick wasn't red, I had found my "red lipstick".

By the time I finished my first tube, the color had been discontinued. I guess that sort of thing happens a lot. At that point I didn't have the energy to devote to finding another perfect lipstick, so I let it go. I tried my hardest not to look back, and eventually I almost forgot about those few blissful years when the simple application of lip color could change my entire day.

So why bring it up now? Well thanks to the magic of the internet, I just found out that Revlon has decided to re-release this exact shade of lipstick next year. It's like they know that I'm getting married soon, and they're firmly on the side of me having perfect makeup at my wedding.

I didn't even realize it was still possible for me to get this excited over makeup. Nor did I think the day would ever come that I would happily fork over $15 for a tube of lipstick. But here we are. I guess I don't completely fail at this woman thing after all.

SHIELD: Pilot

You can't really tell from this blog, but I watch a lot of TV. Some might say a scary amount. I love the long form story-telling and character growth that you get to experience watching a TV show grow and evolve over years. I like the anticipation of waiting until the next week to find out what happened. And I like seeing how different shows comment on or fail to comment on a variety of social issues.

My television tastes are wide and varied. I loved silly, escapist TV, like last year's The Carrie Diaries (which I still think has one of the more nuanced and thoughtful depictions of a teenager coming to terms with his sexual orientation), True Blood (vampires and cliffhangers!) or the new show Sleepy Hollow (time-traveling Ichabod Crane! Also one of the most racially diverse casts currently on television). I like happy comedies like How I Met Your Mother (which has a lot of fun playing with structure and time) and Parks and Recreation (honestly, one of the happiest, feel-good TV shows around). I also enjoy some harder-hitting dramas, like Justified and The Americans which deal with, respectively, trying to break free from your parents' legacy and what it takes to make a marriage work.

But I'll always have a soft spot for Joss Whedon's shows. I grew up watching Buffy (and then Angel) every Tuesday night, and made it a point to catch both Firefly and Dollhouse when they were originally airing. I'm beyond excited to have a Whedon show to look forward to on Tuesday night's again, even though Joss' brother and sister-in-law will be more in charge of the day-to-day running of the show. But since that team was responsible for most of my favorite episodes of Dollhouse, I have every confidence in them with this new show.

All of this brings us to the point. I've sort of been wanting to talk about TV on this blog like I do with books. I watch way too much to comment on everything (that would be a full time job). But I figure I can handle a single series pretty easily. And what better series than Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (hereafter, SHIELD)? I'm sure there will be some cool things to talk about as the series progresses.

But for now we just have the pilot. I've gotten the impression that I'm more pleased with this show than a lot of people. I think disappointment was to be expected, though. There was so much hype since this was announced, that there was just no way it could live up to those expectations. Add in to that the fact that Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Marvel, Disney, ABC, and probably countless other people all had a vested interest in their vision for this show and you end with something that was perhaps a little too broad. When you also consider the fact that Whedon is historically pretty bad at pilots (Firefly being the exception), and the show can only get better. (Hopefully.)

So yeah, I'm pretty optimistic. There are some strong characters here and hints about backstories that will help flesh out the walking stereotypes we saw in the pilot. Agent Ward has some serious family issues. Something happened to drive Melinda May away from fieldwork. It was heavily implied that Skye erased her own identity for some reason. And there's the central mystery of how Coulson was resurrected (maybe Tahiti really is a magical place). When the show gets a little room to breathe and finds its focus, I bet we'll end up with something excellent.

Of course, I genuinely enjoyed the pilot, too. Sure, J August Richard's character had some pretty awful dialogue. His speech at the train station was too broad and obvious, likewise his scene at the factory. Neither had that Whedon flavor that I've become so enamored of over the years. But his line about living out his origin story made me laugh. And Skye's insistence that "With great power comes...a lot of weird stuff" was a nice call to the fact that the Avengers legally have to separate themselves from Spiderman.

The thing I'm most interested in seeing developed is the antagonism between Skye and Ward, which will, of course stand, in for the transparency vs security debate. Whedon is aware that with the recent trial of Private Chelsea Manning and the whole Edward Snowden debacle, this is very much in the forefront of a lot of people's minds. And he has the perfect vehicle with which to explore it. Then again, this is also the part of the show that I can see falling completely apart.

Whedon is anti-establishment. This has been a theme in his work as early as Buffy (with Buffy fighting against big bads like The Mayor and Adam/The Initiative, and ultimately rejecting The Watcher's Council). Mal Reynolds was fighting against The Alliance (Big Government) while Echo and her friends were taking a stand against Rossum (Big Corporation). Even in The Avengers, there are hints that S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't the altruistic organization it claims to be.

The show, however, has to do its best to make S.H.I.E.L.D. the goods guys. Or at least, Coulson and his team. They're the protagonists that we need to be rooting for, and I want to see lots of coll superheroes and superhero-related shenanigans. Whedon is going to have to find some middle ground between the individual and the establishment. He's going to need to get better about articulating Ward's and Coulson's sides in this debate, so that Skye can reasonably justify working with them.

Ultimately, I worry that this will become a rehash of Angel's fifth season. Don't get me wrong; I love Angel's fifth season. In my opinion it's the best season of that show. But I want to see something different from SHIELD, something more nuanced than good guys vs bad guys. S.H.I.E.L.D. may be shady, but it's no Wolfram and Hart, and I'd hate to see it become that over the course of this show. So here's hoping we get some interesting morally grey area and good debate about the need for secrecy in some cases versus the right to knowledge in others. Where should that line be drawn and who ought to decide that? That's what I'm hoping to be able to talk about with this show.

That and the adorableness of Simmons. Did you see her face when she welcomed Ward to the team? Or when the alien tech actually started dripping? I can already tell she's going to be my favorite, even if I have trouble understanding half of what she says. That's what subtitles are for, though, right?

Soup 2: Sherried Tomato Soup

I fell in love with tomato soup years ago. Not when I was a kid, but shortly after college, when I hurt my jaw. I was on a liquid diet for several months and tomato soup became one of the main components of that diet (along with Jamba Juice, scrambled eggs, and protein shakes). It's about time I learned how to make it.

I found a recipe online at The Pioneer Woman's blog. It looked simple, and I loved the tone and pictures in the post, so I decided to try it first. Plus it has the added bonus of having lots of sherry and cream. How can you go wrong with that?

On Saturday evening, I began cooking the soup, taking pictures and cobbling together a blog entry as I went. The whole thing was pretty great if I do say so myself; it even included a few Alice in Wonderland inspired witticisms. Unfortunately, just as we were sitting down to enjoy the soup, we lost power. The lack of wifi meant that my Blogger app couldn't sync up with my online account. And for some reason this meant that Blogger ate my wonderfully constructed blog post. So you'll just have to click through that link up there if you want pictures and the recipe.

Suffice to say that the soup was delicious and super easy. It took about 45 minutes to pull together, and that was when I was taking time to take pictures. With better timing, I could probably get it down to half an hour, which makes it possible to make this almost anytime I want it.

Dress Shopping, Take 1

My mom is coming out at the end of the month for the Official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. Unfortunately, this coincides with one of Nordstrom's trunk shows. They don't allow customers to make first appointments during trunk shows, because they want the customers who do show up to have some familiarity with the designer on display. To get around this, I scheduled an appointment two weeks early and Sarah and I went out to look at dresses.

The whole thing was a bit strange. I tried on 3.5 dresses (one wouldn't come all the way up). Luckily, one of the one's I liked happened to be from the designer doing the trunk show. So we were able to schedule an appointment while my mom's in town. But I wasn't particularly thrilled with any of the dresses. And now I'm actually considering heading off in an entirely different direction.

I may end up canceling the second appointment that I went through so much trouble to land in the first place. But that's all part of the process, right? At least I have a better idea of what I want now. I actually have my eye on one dress in particular, though I have yet to try it on. Hopefully I'll get a chance to when my mom's here.