coffee drinker

i'm all for sushi, but see-thru-shi?

howdy!  so there have been some pretty big & exciting developments in my life lately...  i found out last week (with only four weeks to go) that i will get to keep my beloved job for a few more months!  wow.  it was a complete surprise to me, i honestly hadn't expected that to happen since things are so tight in the academic world right now.

also exciting: a couple months ago my friend Kristin moved back from SF.  we're both avid bakers, especially of cupcakes, and we realized that, compared to NYC, DC, New Haven & Boston, Providence is sorely lacking in the fun bakery dept so we're starting up a little business of our own!  we've been doing the Providence Open Market on Saturdays to see if people would be interested & it turns out that people are very interested!  now our next step is to find a retail outlet.  or several.  or maybe even a truck...

i guess i'm going to have to finally get a drivers license now!  (pictured above & in this order are: vegan s'mores with choco graham bunnies, cappuccino with chocolate frosting, fresh lime margarita & fresh tangelo cupcakes!)

it’s sewn with a thread of hope so short you’d hardly believe

i have been experimenting a bit more with the recipes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. last weekend i baked the chai tea cupcakes for the first time & topped them with an improvised cocoa cinnamon frosting. i forgot to halve the recipe so now i've got a batch of cappuccino cupcakes in the oven to go under all that extra frosting.  oh, darn!

i promised i'd tell you about my trip to switzerland...  i'm still sorting through all the photos & really want to have them printed as a cool Blurb book.  i took about 900 photos so getting them edited down to a managable (affordable) size is challenging.

i was there for 3 weeks, living in the corner of my sister's apartment in Baden, just outside of Zurich.  we did a little traveling, i climbed an Alp or two, spent some wonderful time with my brother-in-law's family, ate my brother-in-law's delicious food, ate his mother's delicious food, ate so many wonderful things!  and, oh, the endless supply of fresh bread, cured meats & tiny cups of espresso.  heaven.

i returned home with a kind of feeling of detachment.  not in a bad way, but in a "i stood atop a glacier & the world is very big & full of things i haven't experienced yet" kind of way.  last year i spoke of feeling like Providence & i had broken up, i still feel that, but in a more positive sense.  i had never left the US before, not even to Canada or Mexico, and i have only just begun to see what is out there.  one of the things that excites me about working for myself is the potential for mobility.  i can take myself & my work anywhere.

and i hope to do so!

okey cokey pig in a pokey, good morning, job seekers

hello.  welcome back.

has it been a year?  no.  but almost a year.  a tumultuos year that felt like many, many years.  i turned 30 this past october & i was very, very relieved to say goodbye to 29.  i hope that for some time i can continue to say that 29 was the worst year of my life.  i would be incredibly grateful.

so.  where am i now?  well.  that's what i'm trying to figure out.  i've got just 5 months left of my beloved job in the rare books library & with the economy being so dreadful, i have little hope of staying on.  in case you hadn't heard, i love my work.  i've been getting some notice about it lately: a little spot in the Brown Alumni Magazine & i was profiled by Lawrence Biemiller in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  it's subscription only, but if you'd like a link to the full article i can email it to you & here is the slideshow.  i will be so sad to leave the library & abandon the collection.  i know that sounds terribly dramatic, but i care about every little (or gigantic) book & object that makes its way in to my lab.

although i'm still job hunting, i've decided to get back to working for myself.  it's a terrifying idea, but i certainly know how to market myself & with my recent press it seems completely logical. 

okay, there's a little bit of a catch-up for now!  next time i'll tell you about the 3 week trip to Switzerland i recently returned from...

we're doing a little retooling... and by we i mean me...

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