A series of Blehs. But there's also good Food.

The series of unfortunate events continue. 1) We are stuck in the leaky house for one more month, until the end of June. 2) My academic advisor is otherwise a very nice lady. But she makes mistakes. A recently discovered mistake means I have to take 2-3 more hours of classes before I can graduate. I think I will take Child Psychology. 3) I still don't have a job. Short-term internship doesn't count.

On the other hand, I had success with making and serving a lazy man's sushi today, as well as an apple crumble. Dinner at Lantern with the big G last night was also wonderful. We enjoyed sake and tea cured salmon bento box with pickled radishes and wasabi mayonnaise, mushroom and cabbage dumplings, also fried catfish in Thai red curry sauce with cucumber salad and jasmine rice. We saved room for a dessert of hot chocolate cake with Thai coffee ice cream.

I take back my comment about Lantern serving not so good entrees - the catfish plat was delish. Dear G is an intense person, and likes to focus on the appreciation of one thing at a time. He also speaks softly. Therefore, there was not so much multi-task eating and talking. Eating and talking had to take turns. Still, lovely dinner.

I heard Saludos Compay play for the first time at Weaver Street yesterday, and they were very good. Also had a glimpse of the fabulously eclectic collection of people that make up the Carrboro/Chapel Hill neighborhood. Families and dreadlocked heads and birkenstocked feet. Sushi boxes, vegetarian dishes and organic local produces. Slender hula hoop girl in gypsy dress and a woman in black leotards, juggling wooden pins.

Tonight in our basement apartment, six girls attempted breast casting with eight packs of cheese cloth and a box of plaster. Laura made a remark on feeling like the object of an art project, while the rest of us were busy dribbling water and smothering plaster powder over her chest. Now that's an idea to hold on to for my next...art project.

And I'm making clay replicas of wooden twigs while listening a song by a French rapper with an Italian sounding name.

Hmm.

Amazing...

how profoundly uplifting a simple phrase can move you when said by the right person at the right time. All he said was "Ai-Ling, you are better than that." Tis it. That made my day, yesterday.

The doctors finally found out what's wrong with my mother. She's having surgery next Thursday, and all should be well afterwards, I hope.

I don't want to be a bitter, sad girl anymore. Beautiful moments are striking in part because of their fleeting nature. I want to throw myself into this brief life and make the most out of it. I want to be the maker of beautiful, joy-bringing things. (And I will.)

I'm looking out the window of my bedroom; the green leaves of the trees outside are sprinkled with flecks of golden sunshine.

Toast with sweet butter and strawberry jam, dipped in rich hot cocoa. That made my morning.

Love.

The Gotan Project

Current favorite: Queremos Paz from their La Revancha del Tango album. Check it out, it rules, in a sexy jazzy loungy latin fusion sort of way.

The joy of discovering wonderful new music. Lovely happiness.

Grenadine, Orange Juice, Vodka and Chambord

Makes a Broken Heart according to iDrink's website. Alternatively, TheDrinkShop.com offers recipe for a Broken Heart Martini with sugar, cocoa powder, orange slice, Absolut Kurant and Godiva liqueur.

Chocolate was also once given by French doctors to their women patients as a prescription to cure broken hearts.

That was what I came up with when I ran a random Google search on "recipes for the broken hearted" (When I really should be writing one of my many overdue papers) .

Not that my heart is terribly broken. It just struck me how much we identify with one another in matters of sadness and heartbreak. Coping mechanisms for hard times differ widely from person to person, it'd be interesting to run a study on this, or just hear people's crazy stories. I once ate a one pound loaf of challah bread and half a jar of peanut butter in a few hours while agonizing over oncoming exams.

I think I'm going to start a running list of recipes and cures for ill-humored days. Soul-soothing for those heartbreaking, lonely, dejected, high-stress, dog-kicking, (do not take this literally; I heart animals), stomach-aching days where every traffic light you encounter flashes red.

To start, I found a recipe on the BBC-Food website for Chocolate Souffle Tarts with White Chocolate ice cream, served with vanilla sauce and chocolate cubes in dark chocolate cups. Total chocolate overload with major sugar-high points.

Then there's always Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Fudge Cake. Paired with an optional case of Coronas and a lime.

I find a cup of rich, fragrant hot chocolate soothing in down times. Aromatic earl grey with a tablespoon of pink grapefruit marmalade and honey is calming as well. Drink while listening to Air's "Alone in Kyoto" and Savath + Savalas' "Folksong for Cello."

Perhaps I shouldn't look solely at the multi-purpose cure of chocolate, and ignore the energizing orange. Chocolate and orange are a great couple. For a second there the thought of zingy orange zest and the lively scent of citrus perked me up a bit and I sniffed the air, hoping to smell the scent of grapefruit or navel oranges.

Orange is such a bright, happy, yummy color. So is yellow. I have a wonderfully color-cozy room: Bright yellow-orange walls tacked with spots of warm hued paint chips; orange and red paper lanterns floating above a brick red papasan chair and a bed covered in similarly colored comforter; a row of colorful scarves (colorful means belonging mainly to the red-magenta family) dangling above a bright red magnetic board on my dark brown bookshelf. The colors of the room are especially lovely when the morning sunlight streams though the window and the room glows a warm yellow-gold.

Ah, the power of beautiful, happy colors. And happy-inducing chocolate.

Read On, there's more...