Tulips in Bloom Day 1

It was a shame I kept my tulips in my bedroom; without my contact lenses in, I couldn't really see them from my bed, and I spend so little time in my bedroom in any case. I should have brought them to work, but I've had bad luck transporting plants around and didn't want to risk the streetcar trip, as I would have inevitably had to balance the flower pot with my coffee, a book, my gym bag and my purse. All the same, on their first day in bloom, they were a pleasure to look at first thing in the morning:

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I read, in order:

Nadja by Andre Breton (1928); Last Nights in Paris by Phillipe Soupault (1929); White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000); The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011); McSweeney's Issue 39 [This took me from after New Years until last night, when I finished the story about Carlos the Impossible (bullfighting! And the bull won!)] (2011).

Of the first two, surrealism... I suppose. They're both French, though I read them in English. Maybe something is missing from the translation. White Teeth was a book club book, but I was the only one who actually read the book and so the book club failed. The Marriage Plot I loved so much that I recommended it to other people. McSweeney's Issue 39 was 95% excellent. That last five percent is missing because I couldn't get behind a poem called "Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover". I tried, but "When he says he needs some time off, jam his hand into a toaster oven" and "When he shows up with flowers, nibble the hair from his arms" were two of the most benign of Amelia Gray's poetic offerings and I have a weak stomach for tortured love.

A Month of Tulips

A couple of months ago I decided I was going to try to become a vegetarian. I like hand-packed burgers, Sunday roasts, and meat platters as much as the next girl, but for a variety of reasons, the time seemed ripe to make a change. My friend Claire is a vegan, and for the most part, it's difficult to figure out what to cook for her, but I'd bought a new cookbook to help me with the new diet and was inspired to try my hand making Claire dinner. I tested out the ratatouille recipe three times before inviting her over and I spent so much time making the main, I ran out of time to make us dessert. Claire brought me a tulip plant as a hostess gift, which was incredibly thoughtful and totally unnecessary. The first day it looked like this:

It bloomed for four days before it looked tired and I had to trim it. However, it seems to have at least one more flower in it. More photos to follow on Mondays to come.