miscellany

autumnal & apples & birthday

Yesterday was Adam’s birthday and I wanted to do something appropriately autumnal so we drove a bit up the Hudson and went apple picking.

We picked apples and got an early pumpkin and also the farm had bunnies and chickens. We also took a lot of photos, including Adam levitating and me in the first denim jacket I’ve owned since I was approximately thirteen years old.

Afterwards we came back to the city and ate All The Sushi at Sushi Yasuda. (We sat at the bar and said we liked salmon when asked our preferences and our sushi chef said “I have nine kinds of salmon!” so it was splendid before we even started eating and then the eating part was divine.) By the end of the day we were sunshine-tired and sushi-full and very happy birthdayed.

The leaves are in that stage where they are thinking about changing but not properly flame-colored yet, only a little bit around the edges, but the crispness in the air and the quality of the light are showing their autumnal cards, just before the equinox.

Autumn is my favorite.

By erin, 11 years ago

miscellany

home again home again

Returned from the road tripping and now I’m catching up on life, though the catching will likely take awhile.

Had a lovely time at a lovely wedding of a friend of Adam’s (they had a tower of donuts instead of a cake!) and got a lot of reading done and had a lot of delicious food and my first pumpkin spice latte of the season.

Also I had a cotton candy ice cream cone that was very pretty, look:

(It was not as cotton candy-tasting as it could have been, but it was very good. I have had more strongly flavored cotton candy ice cream, but this one was prettier.)

Back in NYC, reveling in the almost-autumn feeling even though I can’t believe it’s September already, getting into full-time work mode and looking forward to my first fall in the city. I’ve never seen the leaves change here, and I am fond of change and leaves.

By erin, 11 years ago

miscellany

brief psa

Erinland is on the road and not operating as usual this week, though Friday’s flax-golden tale will be posted because of the magic of pre-scheduling things.

(Erinland is not on vacation, per se, just doing stuff that is not occurring in NYC. If all goes according to plan, proper vacationing will occur in October.)

So I will not be properly blogging* for about a week & I will be quieter than usual on Twitter. I will likely keep Tumbling things that I like on Tumblr at the same rate, which is inconsistently.

Here is a picture from the road, complete with my feet floating in the sky through the magic of reflection and light and glass and the fact that Adam doesn’t mind my feet on the dashboard.

Will be back soon.

*this is a sorry excuse for a blog post and mostly just here to have something in between last week’s flaxie and the next one.

By erin, 11 years ago

miscellany

this started out about spaces & then became about writing & life

I did get back to The Evolution Store to get antlers for the fireplace. (Also got a quartz cluster that is sitting on my desk next to my statue of Thoth.)

It took me several tries to get the antlers to sit properly but then they just settled like that and looked perfectly at home and almost flame-like. I do think I’ll add ribbons or such eventually, but for now they look lovely unadorned in the flickering glow of the ersatz candles.

I am especially pleased with this as the fireplace was one of the only empty-feeling pockets left in the apartment, probably because it usually didn’t have a fire in it. It’s right in the middle of the living room so it was a bit like a central abyss and it feels much more finished with stuff in it.

It seems like it took ages to move past the cardboard box missing furniture stage of the moving, and other than a few little things (like antlers) the whole space is feeling properly home-warm and cozy. There’s a lot of green and blue and the bedroom ended up with a subtle honeybee theme, but the overall look is a little bit industrial, a little bit vintage, a little bit art deco in a Bioshock sort of way. (I am still on the lookout for an antique diving helmet.) (Also our bookshelves are already operating at capacity and eventually we will need new ones.)

It feels more like home than any space I’ve lived in for a very long time, which is refreshing and happy-making.

I like creating spaces, though most of them are imaginary. I’m still in architect mode with the new novel and it’s nice to have a real space to decorate and develop a lighting scheme for. I have a lamp that will probably find its way into the book somewhere. Not sure if there will be antlers anywhere, might save those for a different story.

There’s a lot of new (some of it is old and new-to-me) in this space which I suppose is good for trying and writing new things. Not sure I would have thought to put antlers in a fireplace before but I wanted something to fill it and I was thinking of branches and then thought antlers would be more interesting.

It’s often not the first idea that’s the best one but a lot of times the first idea leads to a better one.

That’s a sentiment that could be applied to a great many things, actually.

I’m still trying to work with so much new on so many levels in such a comparatively short amount of time. It’s disorienting, sometimes, trying to learn out how to live and work in a completely different way. I don’t know what works and what doesn’t for me now yet so I’m trying new things like honeycomb rugs and writing longhand and drinking lots of yerba mate.

Figuring out how to fill abysses both real and fictional with the right combination of antlers and light.

Looking for the new ideas that will lead me to the right ideas.

By erin, 11 years ago

miscellany

things i heart right now

This is an unnumbered list of things I really like right now. Snapshot of the happy-making tastes and sights and sounds of mid-August, 2013.

Homemade scones with maple butter.

I love scones but had never made one I really loved until recently. I finally found a perfect scone recipe, this one from smitten kitchen. I pretty much follow the recipe except I use gluten-free Cup4Cup flour & both times I’ve made them so far I haven’t had cream so I used a sneaky kitchen trick and substituted melted butter mixed with milk. So even without proper cream they are indeed dreamy cream scones.

Also, I don’t know how I managed to grow up in New England and not discover maple butter (also known as maple cream) sooner, or perhaps it’s just that my tastebuds have evolved and I like maple as a flavor more now, and also I’m not sure I knew what to put it on before, but oh, it is creamy autumnal heaven.

(I’ve also been putting maple butter in my coffee. I think I’m craving fall.)

The Killing.

I owe my parents an apology for not watching this show sooner because they’ve been talking about it for ages. We’re only mid season two (and I’m glad I was forewarned that s2 gets a little slow) so I didn’t even properly look at that AMC link to the show page because as far as I know s3 just ended. I love a good crime show anyway and this one has the best detective pairing I’ve seen in ages. It does make Seattle look super dreary, though.

The Backlit Keyboard on My New Laptop.

I have never had a laptop with glowy keys before and it feels all sci-fi and fancy.

(MacBook Air, for the curious. Same as my old one only glowier and with far superior battery life.)

(Typing on it now. The rest of this novel is in here, I can tell. Well, some of it is in fountain pens, but eventually all of it will be in here.)

The Evolution Store.

We stumbled upon this store in SoHo mostly by accident and I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. It is full of skeletons and taxidermy and wonderful-creepy things.

I spent a very long time contemplating whether or not I wanted a taxidermy duckling and then decided it was too “cute but sad.” (Also we have a moratorium on creatures in the apartment right now. From where I’m sitting I can see an elephant, a bunny, two ravens, a small plush white lion and something with tentacles. We have no rule about skeletons, though.)

Going to go back soon to get a pile of antlers to keep in the fireplace. Will possibly tie festive ribbons around them for holidays.

M83’s “Midnight City”

Tweeted this last night:

In that writing phase where I listen to the same song over & over & over again because something in it sounds the way the words should feel.

— erin morgenstern (@erinmorgenstern) August 15, 2013

This is the current song that the novel-in-progress wants to listen to over and over and over and over and over:

By erin, 11 years ago

miscellany

natural history

One of the things I love about living in NYC is that there are entire other worlds here, where you can forget that you’re in the middle of Manhattan and feel like you’re somewhere else entirely.

We went to the American Museum of Natural History today. I haven’t visited in a very long time and I’d forgotten how wonderful and maze-like and fascinating it is.

We saw a lot of whales in a fabulous exhibit that we were not allowed to take photographs in. (The whales kept reminding me of The Rathbones which I can finally tell you to read in about a week and a half.)

I learned that sea otters have the densest fur of any mammal. I became enamored of a tiger and a fluffy-footed owl. I found things that inspired writing ideas in shadowy corners when I wasn’t even looking for them, but maybe they were looking for me.

And of course, we only managed a fraction of the galleries, so we shall have to go back.