Totes

By Mary | Published: February 25, 2011

I don’t use canvas grocery bags as often as I’d like because 1. I need the plastic ones to pick up after my dog, who refuses to poop in bushes and insists on doing it in people’s yards so that I have to pick it up, and 2. I have far too many ugly free bags that I’ve collected over the years, and being the superficial person that I am, I don’t like being seen carrying around ugly grocery totes.

I found these canvas totes as I was puttering around on the interwebs – problem solved! No more ugly blue Kroger tote for this girl.

I’m also in love with the packaging and branding for this CSA. The big pictures of bright fruits and veggies are making me super excited for spring and the return of our farmer’s market. The interactive pictures of the baskets lead you to a page with ideas on how to store and prepare the basket items – very clever, considering I’ve never heard of Kohlrabi and wouldn’t know what to do with it if it turned up in my farm share.

Posted in Food | 2 Responses

Shameless plug

By Mary | Published: February 23, 2011

It isn’t for my work, so I think it’s allowed. I just wanted to brag for a second that I’m friends with Caite, who I know from our days back at JMU when we used to spend, oh, every waking hour or so at the student newspaper as editors. She was (no surprise here) the style editor, and has taken her fashionable self to Charlottesville to work for two area publications and has recently started her own personal styling business, Sparrow and Whistle. I was lucky enough to jump on the bandwagon early and received a style board from her with some new looks to try, so you can expect to see me strutting around town in that romper and those wedges any day now.

All of this is to say, check out her site – her look boards are interactive and you can see where all of the pieces are from if you want to score some, which you will, because they are awesome. And if you need someone to help you shop or help you unearth cool outfits you already own but just can’t see in your closet, I wouldn’t recommend anyone else for the job!

Posted in Style | Leave a comment

Week 5 – from Africa!

By Mary | Published: February 22, 2011

Well, not exactly, but the recommendation for it was. This week’s album was chosen by my good friend Anna, who broke my heart and ruined all of our lives by moving to Gabon with her family, thereby robbing us of weekly wine drinking sessions at her beautiful home in Blacksburg. Despite being a total buzzkill, she, her husband and her unruly band of blonde children seem to be faring pretty well in Libreville so far, despite a run-in with malaria and being un-fluent in French. You should check out her blog – she has been chronicling her adventures in writing with all of the humor and grace she has in real life.

Listen here!

Posted in 2011 Music Project | Leave a comment

Bring the ruckus!

By Mary | Published: February 18, 2011

Because I’m feeling incredibly lazy today (more like stir crazy – sitting in front of my computer when it’s warm outside in February seems like a cruel punishment), I’ve decided my album review is going to be done Twitter style, in 140 characters or less.

Without further ado, the world’s shortest reviews:

Bon Iver: Really pretty tunes. I liked listening to acoustic versions of the songs on YouTube because I like being able to hear the unaltered vocals.
(140 characters exactly, in case you were wondering.)

36 Chambers: OK, I can’t do it. There’s just too much to talk about. I’ll try and be as succinct as possible.

I was (pleasantly) surprised by the amount of soul music samples on the tracks, which I learned was a new thing when this album was released, but I know to be pretty standard today in what little hip hop I’m familiar with. The first word I wrote down when I finished my first listen all the way through was “raw.” The production is raw, the lyrics are raw, the subject matter is intense. Tearz is only two verses, the first of which is RZA rapping about his little brother being shot and the second is the story of one of Ghostface Killer’s friends who contracted HIV.

Yes, there are lots of drug and violence references in the lyrics, but it doesn’t feel like they’re thrown in for shock value. They are stories that happen to deal with some really dark stuff, but some of the rhymes are hilarious: “Burn me, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea/Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea,” and “Ya gettin stripped from ya garments, boy, run ya jewels/While the meth got me open like falopian tubes,” are two of my favorites, mostly because “fallopian tubes” was not something I expected to hear on this album.

New album will be announced Monday!

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When positive reinforcement goes wrong

By Mary | Published: February 11, 2011

My dog is not like other dogs. I’m sure a lot of people think this about their dogs, but I really think mine is…different. Not because she’s extremely bright or intelligent (she’s definitely not), in fact, she is motivated entirely by three things: 1.) food 2.) figuring out how to get you to pay attention to her 3.) getting you to play rope toy with her. She has various methods to achieve her goals, like wedging herself into my lap while I’m reading so that I see her and not my book and managing to find food on the side of the road during our walks. (I once looked down and she had a chicken wing in her jowls. Living in a neighborhood full of sloppy college kids is great for her.)

The list of things she is afraid of includes, but is not limited to: squeaky toys, bridges, vacuum cleaners, babies, large dogs, small dogs, the dishwasher, the noise air mattresses make when they deflate, garbage trucks, her flea medicine, the hair dryer, toy trains that go around the Christmas tree, and being rolled around on a desk chair through the house. OK, so the last one might be understandable, but the rest of them are just plain weird.

She also does this thing when she wants to get your attention where she stands up on her hind legs, leans on you, and paws at your legs a little bit while giving you a face that says, “I-am-so-adorable-don’t-you-want-to-stop-what-you’re-doing-and-play-rope-toy-with-me?” I should probably discourage this behavior, but because she’s small it’s more cute than annoying. So a few days ago, she’s doing this while I’m cooking dinner, and I’m petting her head, and she…well…farts. And being the incredibly mature person that I am, I got an extreme case of the giggles, which of course made my attention-starved dog’s entire day.

Now, I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence (perhaps standing on her hind legs makes her gassy?), but at least three times this week she has repeated this. And I swear they are getting longer and louder. I know I should stop laughing at her, but seriously, you try and keep it together when your dog is passing gas and looking incredibly proud at what she’s accomplished. (Which I suppose is an improvement? She used to just look at her butt afterward in confusion like, “What was that?!”)

So, good news everyone, my dog has learned a new trick!

Posted in Bagle Bytes | 2 Responses