sorry

i have no excuse for not writing here. no one and not one thing has been stopping me except myself. however, for various reasons that i will hopefully explain very soon, many incidents are cooing me back to this space. and i will. i want to. but first i gotta study my but off for one more week.

please note: i did not stage this little fella. he's just an excellent tutor. really knows his stuff.

lance is waayyyyyy over this GRE business

love!

jkl

sweet little things

fairy whimsical nails are always a good idea.

celebrating the changing seasons with fresh fig cupcakes with mascarpone frosting. yum.

and the sweetest little thing of all, puppy lance. he fits right in with our family. his brother, dallas, is at randy and lizzy's. little lance here is the calmest, sweetest puppy ever.

now, off for a sweet little adventure. dashing up to ashland with the lovgrens and parents this weekend and i could not be more excited to be up in that funny little town, especially with lance there by our sides!

love!

jkl

yes no maybe so

it's been a long absence. and it's been an intentional one. it just seems as though i can't trust my thoughts or feelings right now. one moment i think one thing, but please don't hold it to me in the next. it's a polarizing uncertainty, where i waver between extreme optimism and extreme anxiety. the experience and consequential outcome of both sides are overwhelming and, hopefully will be (in the end), good for me. i don't want to block out this experience because it's important, but i do think, in some ways, that it's important to keep it somewhat neutral here.

besides the constant inner-monologue that's been going on in my head, i've managed to have a magical summer. both in brooklyn and at randy and lizzy's wedding, which was so beautifully them. in the long run, my 23rd summer will not be memories of insomnia, migraines, tears, and the general uncertainty that i'm sure i will one day become pleasantly comfortable with. it will be memories of fireflies, wedding vows, hot nights balanced by cool magic hat #9's in bar back patios, good wine set to a mountain backdrop, meg's dancing, asher's laugh, music in prospect park, adorable children who i can never seem to get into bed, and the continuation of my lovely, ever-evolving  relationship with words and how we all choose to connect to them.

i am back in the bay area on thursday (for good, kinda). i will be near my favorite family (my own, duh) and the land i love. and it's home for an indefinite period of time with no set plan in front of me. as you might guess from my angsty rant from above, all of these factors delight, excite, and terrify me.

at the very least, i'll hopefully be updating this more out of sheer boredom....or out of thrilling life changes to share?

no. no. it'll most likely be out of boredom.

love!

jkl

so an american, a russian, a dominican, and a haitian get stuck in an elevator...

last week i had a scary subway moment:

three stops away from home the conductor tells everyone on the subway that there's been an "incident" and we need to change trains. fair enough. we calmly line up to exit onto the platforms and wait. As soon as we're all comfortably lined up against the platform, a huge swarm of police men, FBI, people in protective gear, and various men in black come rushing down the stairs of the station and into the subway we just hopped off of. i didn't freak, not at first at least. but then these guys start yelling at us to "get back." what does that mean? up against the wall? leave the station? well not leave the station because as soon as we started doing that they yelled at us. my heart's racing and i'm trying to stay calm, but there are definitely some crazies going crazy by now. it was just so confusing to not know what was going on. 

eventually one of the policemen yelled for all his guys to come to one end of the station, away from where i was...myself and a few others took this as an opportunity to sneak out of the station at the nearest exit. there were police cars everywhere. "uhhh...can we get my fellow passengers out of there, too?" i ask a policeman nearby. scoff-it's under control-scoff. wtf?! i hailed a gypsy cab and got the hell out of there. i didn't realize my hands were shaking until i went to pay my driver.

luckily, i had so much going on the next few days that i was able to block it out. but today was a pretty slow day and i've found that my mind keeps wandering back to last week. hmmm.

and there's been nothing about it online. was this a normal incident? could it have just been a practice test? does this happen? do new yorkers not care about this stuff? 

and of course this is somewhat petty. the metro crash in d.c. is so crazy  and real. i have such a hard time hearing about it...yet i want to know. it's just scary.

in regards to my own personal subway incident, it's over and i'm safe. inconvenient things happen in the subway all the time and i'm going to go ahead and file this event with all the others that have made me late to various social engagements. 

another inconvenient city incident is getting trapped in an elevator, which happened to me at my internship a few weeks ago. but this incident is different, because it turned out to be a really great one. there were 4 of us in there...a very multicultural mix, too. it was great! other than the russian girl who "twittered" on her crackberry until the elevator was fixed 45 minutes later, i got to learn a lot about my fellow trapped inmates. when the super finally helped us get out of that wretched elevator, i felt like i had learned a lot more than i had in awhile. it was a good day.

i hope you all are having an insightful, happy, and safe week.

love!

jkl

sabbabah

shalom!

so we just finished our 14 days of birthright. it was, of course, great. the trip was not at all what i expected it to be, but it was a whole slew of many other wonderful things. more on that later when i have more than 5 min of internet time left.

sarah and our new friend ilana are now full swing into our next adventure. so far this has included a missed tram stop, a rapping 80 year old israeli, a man who (openly and proudly) peed 5 minutes into our overnight bus ride, and a camp out on the front steps of a hostel until it opened in the wee hours of the morn'. don't worry mom, we had some hardy guys with us to keep us safe.

as we hauled our bags into our hostel in eilat, a traveler-stranger-hipster-tragically boring -girl turned to me and said "well, this is an adventure. i'm gonna write about it in my blog, aren't you?" the audacity! i thought. how dare this hipster blogger claim me as a fellow...but yet, here i am. i just wanted to touch base and say "hey." so hey y'all!

love!
jkl

a really goode job!

check out my goober-licious video application for murphy-goode's "wine lifestyle correspondent" position:

and now click HERE to add the video as one of your "favorites." much appreciated, kind sir/madame.

i know. i know. my awkwardness is in full effect here, ain't it? but i'm going to stand by it being awkward in that charming kind of way. yup. that's my deal and i'm sticking to it.

even though the video is super duper silly, i do think that i would be GREAT at his job. i have a PIONEER WOMAN-esque blog in mind. you know, like whoa! how did i end up in this crazy and FANTASTIC life that is so different than where i thought i'd end up? 

and there'd be a tab on the blog for lots of things. like....

• wine making adventures. a documentation of the beauty and patience it takes to actually produce delicious wine.
• cooking with wine and meals that go well with specific murphy-goode wine
• confessions of a wine lifestyle correspondent. this entails lots of snarky tales from poker nights to wine tastings that got wild to learning to get dirrrrty amongst the vines
• photography of daily life on the vineyard that really makes readers feel like they're at the vineyard with me
• daily learnings. what little details i'm learning everyday about how to serve, taste, and enjoy the world's loveliest beverage.
• giveaways and contests!

oh it'd be awesome. don't you want to read it? i'd give every personality on the vineyard, including myself, some sort of sassy little nickname that people could identify them with. and of course there'd be a corresponding podcast, twitter account, facebook page, and flicker album all in connection with the blog. oh, too fun! too fun! now, go help a sister out and VOTE.

love!

jkl

p.s. i'm heading to israel with sarah on sunday. i'm acting a bit like a chicken with his head cut off right now as i shuffle, trying to tidy up my life before abandoning it for complete and utter FUN and LEARNING for the next three weeks. i will definitely try to update my blog while i'm gone (last summer's eurotrip blog entries are some of my favorite and most cherished).

p.p.s. i will also definitely miss all of you.

p.p.p.s. ya vote yet? http://www.areallygoodejob.com/video-view.aspx?vid=QAHf672T-L8

p.p.p.s. double love!!

i should get chinese food more often

there's one chinese food place in my 'hood that always has especially poignant fortune cookies. 

Writing is a craft.

not an art.

What do you think about this statement? I'm still grappling with it. It's well worth the grapple.

love!

jkl

p.s. in chinese, my favorite season is qui-tian.