the metafictional blues

Posted via web from Caryn’s posterous

2009 is rapidly winding down and as I sit here wondering where exactly in the world this year has gone (anyone?), I will indulge in a little retrospective listmaking to commemorate just a sliver of the highlights from this year. The sizzle reel from ‘09:

Saw George Washington’s Christmas camel at Mount vernon (January)
Went to Chicago for user testing and observation, but the best part involved caipirinhas and loads of meat with a long table of co-workers, especially Tam. (February)
Held our 3rd Annual Be My Awesome Valentime swap (February)
My husband decided to move in with me, novel approach, that (February)
Got a lot of use out of the line “Gonna be in the Hudson”
Sought out Spring at Leesylvania State Park (March)
Instituted Wednesdays as “Taco Night”
Went to Frederick, MD to attend an opening for the photo art of Linda Plaisted (April)
Commemorated Passover with a visit from Abby (April)
Became the mom of a 12 year old (!) (April)
Packed up and moved to a nicer, bigger apartment (May)
Had a visit from Daniel, who was nice enough to help us move some furniture (May)
Saw The National at 9:30 Club (May)
Reseated a chair and learned how to weave Shaker tape (June)
Succumbed to the Wii (June)
Saw the Mets play in the new CitiField (but still liked Shea better) (June)
Went to Wolf Trap to see the Ultimate Doo Wop Show and had a picnic under the stars (June)
Spent a relaxing week with my family in Indiana, chilling by the pool and roaming the countryside. (July)
Bumped into the next demographic bracket (July)
Went back to Chicago to experience the wonder that is BlogHer Conference, including participating as a speaker/panelist. Met a lot of great people and reconnected with some old friends. (July)
Spent a few days lolling around Virginia Beach with my parents and Maddy (August)
Headed to Maryland in search of lightlhouses and crabcakes (August)
Played a lot of Wii Music and visited the Museum of American History with Abby (August)
Hit up both the county and state fairs to get our recommended yearly allowance of fried foods and farm animals (August and October)
Discovered the beauty of 5-minute artisan bread
Made an end of summer visit to the National Arboretum to visit the koi, butterflies and bonsai. (September)
Had a great night of Ethiopian food, beer and leopard-print bathrobes with one of my all-time favorite people, Julia (and finally met the infamous Kurt!) (October)
Spent a great Indian Summer Sunday picnicking in Occoquan with Maddy. (October)
Said goodbye to my Geocities website (October)
Sangria, beer and BBQ with my favorite girls in the office.
Made a crazy bird-witch mask and bought several pounds of candy only to have no trick-or-treaters show up for Halloween (October)
Decided to try blogging again for NaBloPoMo (November)
Celebrated Marc’s birthday by catching Jersey Boys at the National Theater and spending the day playing tourist in DC. (November)
Survived another wacky Thanksgiving, complete with karaoke and police (November)
Pretended like we were cool enough to hang out with Liz & Chris on “the scene”. (November)
Rocked Categories and celebrated Hanukkah on Long Island (December)
Secretly started liking the “What up with that?” skit on SNL
Made an Elvis jumpsuit-inspired Snuggie for my mom (December)
Dug my car out of the East Coast blizzard with a dustpan and golf umbrella (December)
Journeyed to Indiana to eat a lot of noodles and spend Christmas with my family. (December)

Bonus: Miscellaneous fun stats from 2009:

Most played track (according to last.fm and I dare not doubt them): “Blue Hotel” by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Most viewed Flickr photo this year: c.o.d.
Top search phrase for 2009: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again” (which points to this blog post, which is from the 2005 Blogathon.)
Favorite lyric of the year: “Black is the color of a strangled rainbow” courtesy of Elvis Perkins “Shampoo”

Whew… no wonder I’m tired. And that was only a sliver. A sliver! Can’t wait to see what 2010 has in store, should be a good one with even more fun milestones, adventures and experiences.

And so another National Blog Posting Month comes to a close. I think my second time participating in NaBloPoMo was a little easier than my first go-round a few years ago, but I will admit that the simplicity of “just post every day in November” is a slightly deceiving. I’m not going to claim that there were 30 posts of genius or even 30 really good posts (or even 15 mediocre ones), but so it goes when you’re writing on demand. I always have mixed feelings about doing things like NaBloPoMo, mainly because while I did accomplish the goal of posting each day this month, I don’t exactly feel as if I’ve grown or discovered something as a result. Or maybe I discovered that sometimes, posting every day can make blogging seem a lot harder than it needs to be. In any case, it was fun to jump on the bandwagon again, to read Jamelah’s Q&A sessions and to post on my otherwise neglected blog for 30 days in a row, just to say I could. So, there.

Although we were traveling for Thanksgiving and didn’t have the luxury of a home base kitchen this year, I wanted to make a homemade contribution for the meal. I decided on pao doce, Portuguese sweet bread, as this year’s effort. After a few false starts (think Yosemite Sam yelling “My biscuits are burning!”), I thought it turned out to be quite tasty. This is a rich, slightly sweet (but not cloyingly so) recipe, but makes a light dough that’s very easy to work with. Yeast breads have this rap for being difficult and time consuming, though I’m not sure it’s well-deserved. Making bread is pretty straightforward and the end result is worth the small amount of effort — plus people seem genuinely impressed with this edible parlor trick.

There are many variations on “massa sovada”, I’ve been using this recipe and I think it’s one that results in a nice flavor from the mix of butter, eggs, potato and flavoring. Sure, you can probably get a similar taste by grabbing a bag of King’s Hawaiian bread … but it’s nowhere near as good.

Tonight we went out with my stepdaughter and her fiance. It was a great endcap to a fun extended weekend with family for the annual Thanksgiving romp. It was great to get a glimpse into their social scene and meet some of their friends with whom I hope we’ll become more acquainted with before the wedding in June. The music scene reminded us a lot of the acts we caught in Memphis and Nashville during our honeymoon and we hope that they will find as much fun and adventure in their lives together as we have. I can also say that if you’ve not heard a rockabilly version of “Paper Moon” or “This Thing Called Love” then perhaps you need to expand your horizons just a teeny bit.