My thoughts are in London today

Last night police found a potential car bomb outside Tiger Tiger, a popular bar/restaurant on Haymarket St. just off of Piccadilly Circus. I was so shocked to find out the location of this near-bombing because it was around the corner from the building in which I studied during the fall semester of my junior year of college. Tiger Tiger was a place we would go for 3-pound lunches (that's price, not weight) or where we would stop and have a drink at happy hour before going to a show because it was right in the heart of the theatre district. I am just very glad that the police were able to identify the threat and remedy it before anyone was hurt. I remember during orientation for my semester abroad there, the head of our program, a very dapper British gentleman, talked to us about how the threat of terrorism was a way of life for Londoners, long before 9/11 and how they have learned not to live in fear. I think that is so remarkable how even though they have been victims of terrorist attacks for years (although none as ghastly as 9/11) the people of London do not approach their lives with fear of another attack. Of course the government is doing what they can to curb those attacks, but the people of London truly enjoy their lives and do not alter their habits or daily lives despite this potential threat.

London is probably my favorite big city in the whole world (that I've visited at least) and even though I've lived in Chicago for a full year, I can honestly say I know the city of London better after living there for a mere 4 months, 3 years ago. I was saying to Danny how even though this incident was scary, when I saw all the images of London on the news this morning my immediate feeling was how much I miss that city. If I had to choose a place to go live for a year I would choose London in a heartbeat, no hesitation whatsoever. I love that I know it well but still feel as though there is so much more I want to experience and explore there. I've already decided that the next time I travel abroad I have to go back to London. I know I'll always have other places I want to go too, but I feel like London is a place I'll always have to go back to every few years, I don't think I'll ever be able to shake the feeling of wanting to go back time and time again.

I'm sure the other reason I love London so much is because that's where Danny and I met. I think it will always be special to me because of that. It's just a wonderful place and there is no other big city in the world that feels like it. I know people say all big cities have a unique character and I guess they do, but they're all big cities. I almost feel like London should be in its own category, it is truly that extraordinary.

Late Afternoon Musings

Just a few things I've been thinking about this late afternoon, being very tired of working with an hour to go:

Dick Lugar, Republican senator from Indiana (yeah, Hoosiers) stepped up to the plate yesterday. He publicly announced, as ranking Republican for the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, that President Bush was running out of time to make very necessary changes to his policy/strategy for the war in Iraq. As a senator who has voted with Bush on everything regarding the war, this is a big step. I always thought I liked him, even if he was a Republican...

The season finale of this past season of the Office makes me so happy. I just watched it last night and can't get the last 5 minutes out of my head. I am literally going to be on the edge of my seat until Season 4 starts. Ok fine, not literally, but figuratively for sure, all summer long.

When I go to Salt Lake City next weekend, Danny's going to show me the salt flats, like in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, when Jack is alone (at World's End) in what appears to be a giant, snowy white desert. It's pretty much going to be sweet.

I am going to see Ocean's Thirteen tonight and I have to say, most of the members of that cast are enjoyable to look at, but I long for the days when my feelings about Brad Pitt were so much less conflicted. He is very good looking, yes, but I still hate the way he ended things with Jen, no matter how good of a dad he is now. Watching this movie would be so much less complicated if he had just kept it in his pants.

I am in grave need of sunlight. If I don't spend time outside this weekend and get some color on my face, I swear I won't go out in public anymore all summer long. I look like I'm on my death bed right now, seriously.

Ok, I should end on a less shallow note. It's my friend Melissa's birthday this weekend, and she's "sad" about turning 23 (which I've been for 9 months now), so I am bound and determined to make it a fabulous birthday celebration for her. I'm calling it the Melissa's 23rd Birthday Extravaganza Walking Tour 2K7, catchy, huh? Hopefully we'll have lots of fun and she'll forget all about the fact that she is officially mid-20s, HA! It's really perfect because after Melissa's birthday this weekend, Jenny's birthday later this month and Danny's birthday at the end of the month, they can all really put their energies into planning MY birthday, and only 3 months to do it! Come to think of it, I should remind them to start brainstorming ;)

All Danny, All the Time

Now that I'm starting to get the hang of this thing, I guess I can write some stuff that, believe it or not, is a little more important to me than foodnetwork.com. I can't think of any topic better to start with than Danny (and he complained to me last night that he wasn't mentioned in yesterday's Italy post). Danny is half-Italian, but by the looks of him after a few days in the sun, he might as well be straight off a beach in Positano. Yes, I, the very fair Midwestern blonde, have managed to snag a guy who is quintessentially tall, dark and handsome.

Danny lives in Salt Lake City currently and we have probably one of the most successful long distance relationships in history. We've been together for almost 2 years now and been long distance a full year of that, which I find astounding, because we do not act like a couple who has not been in the same city for a full year (minus the airplane tickets and nightly phone calls). Danny is doing research in a genetics lab in Salt Lake in preparation for applying to medical school, and he actually just began the almost year-long application process. He'll think I'm just sucking up to him by saying this, but Danny seriously is the smartest person I know and not in an annoying or dorky way either, he just gets things. I said before, he is very well-read and he is the guy who buys the Economist and can't wait to devour it, which I understand if I'm talking about an US Weekly with a good cover story. Beyond that though, the research he does in his lab, it's honestly incredible. He doesn't just do what he's told, he figures out how it all relates together and what the meaning of the experiment is. I honestly believe that if I wasn't dating Danny, I would be much less intelligent because he does a really good job of keeping me on my toes.

Danny is also hilarious and I owe his sense of humor a lot because it has introduced me to Dane Cook, who seriously makes me laugh so hard I almost choke and The Office, a show which I am now so addicted to I actually just re-watched all of Season 3 over the past few days. People who didn't know the Office would get lost during some of Danny and my conversations because we quote and reference the show so much. Sometimes we literally fill up a whole half hour with talking just about the most recent Office episode. We are that cool.

Danny also has a great family, which is nice for me because it makes my visits to Salt Lake much less stressful. He is the oldest of 4 kids, and he has 2 younger brothers and a sister. He's such a good brother it almost makes me wish I wasn't an only child, almost. But seriously, he really is so great with his family and you can tell a lot about a person by the way they interact with their family, so I can tell I've got a good one.

I'm realizing I have pretty much just bragged about Danny and inflated his ego this entire post, so I'll also mention one flaw. Danny is TERRIBLE about doing the dishes. Even if I have spent an hour cooking a 3-course meal for him, he doesn't agree with me that he should do the 15 minute chore of the dishes. I HATE doing dishes, I really think it's one of the reasons I got so into cooking because in my house, if you cooked most of the meal, you don't have to do the dishes, or at least all you do is dry. I think part of the reason Danny refuses to do the dishes is because he knows it drives me crazy. I can nag him into doing them eventually, but even then, I usually have to dry so that I can watch and make sure he scrubs well enough, etc. Oh well, I suppose if that's the most significant flaw I can think of, I should count my lucky stars. Maybe I'll just have to invest in a heavy duty dishwasher...

Wishing I could visit Italy soon...

I'm currently reading the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and although I'm only a hundred pages into it, I can already tell it's a book that will leave a lasting impression on me. The title refers to the main focus of Ms. Gilbert's 4 months of travel each in the following places: Italy (Eat), India (Pray), and Indonesia (Love). So far I am still in the Eat portion of the book, meaning the author's 4 months spent mostly in Rome, eating the food and immersing herself in the language.

I took Italian for 2 semesters in college and I would love so much to go back to Italian classes because it is such a gorgeous language and it really isn't horribly difficult to learn, especially since I took Latin in high school. (That makes me sound totally hip doesn't it?) Every time an Italian word or phrase is mentioned in the book, I can't help but say it out loud because Italian is just so melodic. Maybe after law school I'll find that time to take a class again? HA. PSYCH!

I have to say though, the part of the book that makes me miss Italy the most is the very colorful descriptions of the food in which she is indulging during her stay in Italy. I love Italian food that I can get in America, but there's just something about the way they cook in Italy. All the fresh ingredients and the olive oil that has such flavor and ohhhh the bread and pasta, I'm feeling faint just thinking about it. If it's possible to reach a state of nirvana from food, I'm pretty sure you could do it in Italy. Unfortunately, since I've learned that less carbs in my diet means less love handle, it's almost cruel torture to hear about the things she is eating in this book, full well knowing that not only can I not have this food because I am not in Italy, but even if I was or if I attempted to make or get something like it here, I would be racked with guilt at eating something that is basically pure carbohydrate. Ugh. I probably deserve a new outfit or something to inspire me to not eat badly, somehow that always makes me feel better.

The Supreme Court Is Ruining Our Country

Ok, so this is a little more serious than most of my posts but I need to vent big time. I just got done with my daily NY Times perusal and Oh. My. God. Most liberals are so busy bashing our essentially lame duck president that they're not looking at the real potential cancer of our country, the only branch whose power is much more solidified than any other, the Supreme Court. Why Sandra Day O'Connor, why why why did you retire? Now that Roberts and Alito have joined the Conservative ranks of Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas, the Conservative majority is on an animal-killing, freedom of speech and religion-stripping, big business-supporting, precedent-overturning rampage!

The most recent decisions that are just KILLING me are the decision which essentially ruins the McCain-Feingold law on Campaign Spending Reform and the decision in National Association of Home Builders and Environmental Protection Agency v. Defenders of Wildlife. What the first decision basically did was overturn a piece of the McCain-Feingold law which prevents companies and unions from paying for ads that even mention the name of a candidate for federal office in the 60 days before the general election and 30 days before the primary. Because the ads in question were "issue-focused," the Conservative majority ruled that they should be allowed even though they mention the names of 2 Democratic candidates and lead viewers to a website disparaging one such candidate. It kind of seems to me like these companies, you know like oil companies, insurance companies, big business in general, who ironically tend to support the Republican party, will be able to use this loophole to pay for many many "issue-focused" ads which basically support their candidate of choice or disparage the candidates in opposition. This has created a slippery slope to ruin all the progress that was made in the area of campaign finance reform, once again promoting platforms chosen only by those with money, a very small minority, and ignoring the wishes of the people. I am frightened for what this could do.

I can't honestly decide which I'm more frightened about honestly because the second decision I mentioned has decided that it is more important for the EPA to allow states to hand out water pollution permits to developers than to protect the endangered species that this development will inevitably kill. So once again, the Conservative majority in the Court favors big business at the expense of possible extinction of some species. Isn't it ironic that the Environmental Protection Agency is actually supporting the developers? Kind of seems like a conflict of interest to be called the Environmental Protection Agency and then allow corporate developers to pollute water sources causing actual entire species to go extinct...huh. GRRRRR, please please please, let a liberal or even just a moderate candidate get elected in '08 and let a conservative justice retire so a moderate or liberal can replace him, please please God. For the sake of our country and it's Constitution, because some serious constitutional rights are going to start getting stomped on by this Court soon if changes aren't made.

Hi, my name is Carly and I am addicted to foodnetwork.com

Ok, so it's true. I am completely addicted to foodnetwork.com. I really do love cooking, but it's fairly unlikely that I will get around to cooking all the recipes I have taken from the Food Network's website and yet still, every day, I look at the day's TV schedule and save the recipes that 1) sound good and 2) are actually possible for me to make. I do at least realize I have limitations when it comes to cooking, but still, when I first discovered this magical website, I didn't realize that, so I even have recipes saved from months ago that require more time and equipment and expertise than I will probably ever have in my lifetime.

Still, though, I looooove cooking, especially now that there are certain things I've gotten quite good at. I even have a few dishes that I can honestly say I make well, Danny's favorite being my linguine with clam sauce, ironically not even a recipe from the Food Network, but it is sooo good. Thank goodness for Danny that I have gotten better at cooking because he has been my guinea pig and when I was first starting out, it was not pretty. I made a chicken parmesan once that I swear was twice as much parmesan as it was chicken, and even though I love cheese, nothing should ever be this cheesy and poor Danny choked it down even though it was definitely not my best work. By now I've learned things like how to alter recipes to people's tastes and how to time my cooking so that I don't have one dish done an hour before the rest, but it's taken a few years of experimenting, at the expense of some people's stomachs.

Today I found a recipe for Chicken Potstickers and I've been on an Asian food kick, so maybe my next experiment (with Danny as my victim of course) will be some kind of Asian meal, I could do a whole theme! And here I go again...:)

Rainy Days in Chicago

Well, I'm fresh back in Indiana from my weekend in Chicago and it was a great weekend just because hanging out with the girls was great. Of course though, when Melissa, Tamara and I arrived in Chicago, it was 65 degrees and raining and all we had packed were teensy summer dresses in the spirit of the beachy boat bar. So then we all put on leggings underneath and we looked like the Three Musketeers but we were obviously very cute. Tamara got immediately tipsy and was saying the most hilarious things, but many were inappropriate to publish online. Let's just say Tam has no filter when she's had a few cocktails ;)

Anyway, Jenny and Mike met up with us and I was sooo excited to see them, they're the best married couple ever. They are so fun and in love and hilarious and wonderful, I hope I'm like that when I'm married someday. It's so weird how you don't realize how much you miss someone until you're with them. Jenny and I have both been busy and out of town a lot so far this summer so we haven't talked a ton and getting to talk and hang out with her last night, it was just great. Even with Danny, even though I talk to him every single day, on our weekends together it is so wonderful to be with him that there's almost a bittersweet element to it because I realize what I'm missing when I don't get to be around him. Luckily I am going out to Salt Lake City in 12 short days! This summer has been great because I get to see him every 3 weeks and I love visiting Salt Lake because he always shows me something cool. As a girl from Indiana, everything about mountains and mountainous areas is mind-boggling to me :) I only hope for that trip I pack appropriately because teensy sundresses just do not cut it in 60 degree weather...

Signs I'm Becoming a Grown-Up

I have started reading the paper every single day. This is huge for me. For some reason, even though I was fairly politically aware and passionate about certain causes I always shied away from the newspaper. It could have been because my hometown's newspaper is so abysmal in comparison to the NY Times or even the Chicago Trib or it could be that, quite honestly, it made me sad to read the paper most days, as shallow and childlike as that sounds. With the war in Iraq and the constantly terrible things in the news, it was really difficult to see all those horrible headlines and actually want to read the story underneath.

But thanks to a combination of boredom at the office and a desire to really be politically informed and motivated to act for the upcoming elections next year, I have made it my business to read the NY Times online every day, even the sad stories. I kind of do it throughout the day too, making sure to read at least one hard-hitting news piece and at least one softer piece like a movie review or a travel article. It's got to be doing some good and at the very least I have semi-interesting things to talk about with Danny, my boyfriend, who loves reading the paper and very serious magazines like The Economist. He's so well-informed it makes me feel very unintelligent sometimes, so this is helping me keep up with him. Now when it comes to the lighter stuff, I can tell you about all the actors' upcoming projects, who's dating who and of course, what they're wearing on the red carpet, but I think I need to add a little intellect to my repertoire.

So far today I've learned that the Japanese population is declining so much that it is hurting enrollment numbers at their universities; A Mighty Heart is a movie that, despite its commercial star-power is actually very evocative and well-done; and the government is beginning to release reports rating hospitals in various areas of care, most recently its care of heart attack and heart failure patients. So there you go, consider my horizons expanded.

drama, drama, drama in the office

Today there is serious drama in my office. All week I have been preparing for a trial for one of the partners, it's a really sad battery case where our client just got the crap beat out of him. Anyway, the defendants didn't have an attorney so they were defending themselves. The case is supposed to go to trial on Monday and the Court just called to let us know an attorney is trying to appear on behalf of the defendants, which means he'll file a continuance which means the case might not even go to trial on Monday after all this work! Ugh! The partner is not happy at ALL. He's on conference call with them now, so hopefully this will get cleared up shortly.

In other news, I'm leaving work early today to go to Chicago and I'm so excited b/c another of my roommates from college is meeting us there. Tamara is seriously the most random and funny person in the whole world so anytime she meets up with us for things, hilarity ensues. I really have to remember to bring my camera because Tam always throws out some great poses. The great thing about this trip is that it's so summer, you know? Taking a road trip, going to a bar on the beach, having cocktails with friends, it's just the perfect summer activity and I will defffffffinitely need a cocktail or four after the office drama. :) Hopefully I can call Jenny and her hubby Mike too. Jenny is my heterosexual life partner from law school, we're together all the time and I love her to death and on top of that her husband is awesome and they're always down for fun things to do, so obviously they will L-O-V-E the Boat bar, I mean who wouldn't?

My first post!

Yay! I'm so excited to start a blog because it gives me something to do when I just CANNOT handle some of my boring tasks at work. The thing is, there are parts of my job that I really like, I love most of the people in my office and I really do love learning about the practice of law, I know for sure that's what I want to do. The problem, however, with working for a small firm in a small town is that there isn't as much of the really exciting stuff to do. Everyone in a small firm has to do their fair share of crap work and I shouldnt' complain because obviously the secretaries have way way more of it, but I definitely get some stuff that is so boring I could fall asleep on my desk.

But anyway, enough complaining, I'm very lucky actually that my job pays pretty well and is giving me the opportunity to have one last summer in my hometown. Having a summer here after my first year of law school is incredibly comforting and the advantage of my building in Chicago not allowing subletting is that I have a place to stay if I feel like I can't handle the small town life for a weekend.

In fact, that's what I'm doing this weekend. My very best friend and I are going into Chicago because one of our roommates from college is having a get-together in honor of the longest day of the year! We're going to one of my new favorite Chicago watering holes, Castaways, or as I call it, "The Boat Bar." If you've ever driven or run down Lake Shore Drive, it is the giant fake boat about a half mile north of the Hancock building. There is really nothing exceptional about its drinks or prices or anything, but it's a GIANT BOAT, what's not fun about that? And, I must say, the beer garden up top is a great place to sit in the sun and enjoy some cocktails. It kind of reminds me of the Sex and the City when they have the roof party with the trannies, except no trannies. Well, there could be, I just didn't spot any last time I was there. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to that and I'm sure I'll post all about it soon!