Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

Everyone's blogging but me, it seems. Rest assured that I'm out in the real world, over-analyzing and under-sleeping my way through these crazy few months. I've started no fewer than 6 posts since my last one, and they all are more worthless than the last.

So I'm diving into some prompted blogging- attempting to roll with Gwenbell.com's Best of '09 list. She suggests that you do every day, or just choose a few. I'm aiming for 15 total dates, but let's be honest- I hadn't even realized it's been a month since I last posted.

December 1: Trip

What was your best trip of 2009?

In June, I met the college girls in San Diego to visit Kretsch. Within an hour of arrival we were seated on K's couch surrounded by three bottles of Andre, an abundance of dips and chips, elbow deep in gossip we'd been saving up for months. College is over, but the few weekends I have each year with the old crew remind me that we can still hang on to the 2 best things that came out of our years together in Madison: 1) Our friendships and 2) Katie's idea to create a restaurant that has serves only a wide variety of nachos

December 2: Restaurant Moment

Share the best restaurant experience you had this year.

No-brainer. A few weekends ago, Greta signed us up for Spill the Wine's Taste of Tuscany. There's nothing better than enjoying a 3-course meal with wine pairings, with your best girlfriends, on a Wednesday. The only down-side was realizing that a few of us weren't cool to drive right after- and even that turned into another hour and a half discussion of the ad/marketing/PR world in my car outside the restaurant. We're definitely going back, and Em and I are lobbying for some Spanish red to be brought into the mix next time.

December 3: Article

What's an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends.

Clearly, this question was made for me. I read and share 10 articles a day, I think. The one that stands out most clearly in my head was The Power of the Purse from the NYT magazine's issue "Saving the World's Women". While short, it was inspiring to me as someone who used to work in the non-profit world. For now, I can only afford a donation here and there to NARAL and my other favorite charities. Someday, I want to have the capacity to put my money where my (big fat) mouth is. The sentence "Women are the conduits through which change is made" reminded me of a Harriet Beecher Stowe quote I have written on a Post-it at my desk- "Women are the Real Architects of Society".

December 4: Book

What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time. I was hooked after the first paragraph and refused to open it unless I had time to savor every word (so it took me 4 months). I love books that can properly represent the absurdity of the Midwest without resorting to writing the characters as simple-minded hicks. Population 485 is told from the eyes of part-time voluntary firefighter/EMT Mike Perry from New Auburn, Wisconsin; as the title suggests, he introduces us to his life and town by detailing different emergency responses he has participated in over the years. It's not that dry though- the main can reflect on life, death, and the frail moments in between (which often require his help).

I also love how he writes Wisconsin. The first paragraph reads:

Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun. The swamps grow spongy and pungent. Standing water goes warm and soupy, clotted with frog eggs and twitching with larvae. Along the ditches, heron-legged stalks of canary grass shoot six feet high and unfurl seed plumes. In the fields, the clover pops its blooms and corn trembles for the sky.

If I had one wish to be granted, it would be to have imagery like that at the tips of my fingers. I just borrowed my copy to a friend, momentarily forgetting that I made scratches that read things like "Dylan Thomas- and death shall have no dominion" in the margins. He'll either think I'm schizophrenic or brilliant, depending on how closely he understands all my bizarre associations.

December 7: Blog Find of the Year

That gem of a blog you can't believe you didn't know about until this year.

Matt Logelin. He's smart, witty, and has the cutest child on the planet. My friends and I discuss him as if we're pals and we're not even remotely alone. I'll be the first in line for his upcoming book. Moreover, he's not one of those people that you'll be bitter about if he does become a famous author/memoirist. He deserves both happiness and glaring success for being so transparent about the tragedy that he is still working to overcome.