Cold day, warm apartment

My weekends are now Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so I'm not quite sure what to do with myself on two weekdays when everyone else is working...but today I decided not to stray too far from home since it was biting cold. I spent the morning completing the GW application (yippee!), praying that I will get in, and starting the UVA application. After a few hours sitting on my couch and watching daytime television (I can't resist The Ellen Degeneres Show-- sucks me in every time) I finally forced myself outside for a walk along York and some errand running. In a matter of days the Beanocchio's ice cream shop seems to have transformed into the Green Bean Cafe, an organic vegetarian restaurant that carries boba drinks. I love boba! When I was in college my friends and I used to frequent a bubble tea place around the corner. My favorite was the Peach Snow-- basically a peach slushie with tapioca balls. A bit too cold to get one today though.

I picked up some soup for dinner at the Amish market, along with a rosemary roll and a chocolate mint brownie that just looked too good to resist. Why is it that European food is so much prettier than American food? Do they just pay more attention to aesthetics (and, ahem, class)? I saw the most gorgeous box of tiramisu mix, but I forced myself to hold off since there is no way that I am going to eat an entire tiramisu.

My final purchase was a harvest apple scented candle and my belated GRE-and-GW-application present to myself, a tiny book of black and white photos and quotes about kisses. I think that photos of kisses are so beautiful...and the real thing is pretty fantastic as well. In my lifetime, I've been fortunate to have some truly amazing kisses--heart-pounding, knee-weakening, arms-encircling, lip-nibbling, body-cleaving kisses. You know Proust's madeleine, that object which triggers a powerful memory? (Read this Slate article about the madeleine-- fascinating). It's not exactly the same thing, but if I encounter circumstances that evoke a kiss I once had, it triggers a memory so powerful that I can physically sense it. Sometimes I have to steady myself because I can feel myself falling, as if falling back in time... That said, I have had some horrendous kisses as well, and unfortunately the poor kissers outnumber the splendid kissers. Why is that?

Anyway (that was quite the tangent) I just finished eating my splendid, warm, and poetic dinner. What could be better than hearty vegetable soup, rosemary bread dipped in olive oil, and raspberry tea by candlelight?

For dessert, I am currently working on this beautiful chocolate bar, which comes with a love poem inside! By...(unwrapping, unwrapping) Christina Rossetti! Oh my goodness, how perfect!...how she felt when first he kissed her-- like a tub of roses swimming in honey, cologne, nutmeg, and blackberries." ~Samuel Sullivan Cox