ma po tofu.

sure it looks amazing, but it’s wayyyyyyyy too spicy. my stomach is paying the ultimate price.

I omitted the… chicken broth, salted black beans (where can i find this?!), substituted ground beef for ground pork, and substituted black pepper for szechuan pepper. And roughly doubled the recipe.

i’ll fix it next time, i promise.

Filed under: uncategorized

Not my own.

I picked up (er, downloaded. off iTunes!) Owl City’s new album, Ocean Eyes, Tuesday morning at 12:01am. Yes, I stayed up and waited. I can safely say that if you’ve enjoyed any of Owl City’s previous airy, expansive melodies about the mystical tides and oceans from landlocked Minnesota, you’re going to love Ocean Eyes.

Plenty of happy, get-up-and-dance songs like Rainbow Veins and Hello Seattle (actually, Hello Seattle is on the new album. Twice. That’s how good it is.) from their old albums show their faces in Cave In and Dental Care (a happy, upbeat song about going to the dentist!). But there’s a good, sobering dose of reality too.

Track 7, a slow, heartfelt song entitled Meteor Shower. It’s a very quick song, lasting only 2 minutes 14 seconds, and everyone I’ve talked to about it says it ends much too soon. But it’s clearly the standout powerful and solemn track on an otherwise uplifting CD. The lyrics go,

I can finally see,
That you’re right there beside me,

I am my not own,
For I have been made new,
Please don’t let me go,
I desperately need you (x2)

And I was immediately reminded of 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (I had to look it up… I’m not that good):

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

And of 2 Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

If Christ has truly paid the price for my sin and spared me from death, then I am truly not my own any longer; I cannot live for myself. I owe my life to Him who has redeemed for me, and I live for him. I exist to bring Him glory.

I am a new creation. I do not live for myself or for the world any longer, but only for Him.

And we very so desperately need God if we’re living for Him and only Him.

Filed under: uncategorized, music, owl city

thoughts on the new place

So I’m finally a Newtonite… and I’ve spent 3 nights there already.

Still no roommate (yet). Maybe he’s just giving me an extra day to change all the locks. Or I could look into subletting. But maybe not.

some quotes from visitors (yes! i haven’t even spent a week here and i’ve had visitors already!):
“wowwww…. this place is nice.”
“you have really huge windows.”
“do i have to take my shoes off?”
…YES.

My commute to work is now 18 miles, 20 minutes, one-way, even in constant 40mph traffic. Don’t ask me how that works out mathematically, it just doesn’t.

I’ve visited the Target in Watertown at least 6-7 times in the last few days, spending a truly absurd amount of money. No single item has cost more than $25.

We currently have (at least!) 16 place settings worth of knives, spoons, forks, plates, bowls, mugs, etc… but we only have a single pair of chopsticks. They’re disposable bamboo chopsticks I got from a takeout place, and they’re in the dishwasher right now.

I saw what I thought was 32 rolls of toilet paper in the closet. So of course I went to go buy 8 rolls of paper towels. We now have 24 rolls of paper towels, probably enough to last us two years.

We have a white-beige-brown-black color theme going on. So if you can’t stand adjacent swatches of brown and black, you have been forewarned.

I wanted to bake cookies yesterday, so I had to go out and buy flour, white sugar, light brown sugar, oatmeal, raisins, butter, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla extract, cookie sheets, parchment paper, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a spatula, and an electric hand mixer. Basically everything you need to make cookies, literally from scratch. We have NOTHING.

My closet space is currently not very efficiently utilized. It bothers me.

I received a gift of hand soap the other day. I am very grateful.

Filed under: uncategorized

Do not eat watch.

Filed under: uncategorized, fail

Martin OMJM, or, proof that John Mayer is uber cool.

Everyone knows John Mayer’s really cool. Even John himself knows it. That’s why he twitters (tweets?) so much; his narcissistic side thinks people care about the day-to-day trivialities of his life. (You know how much I care? I won’t even link you to it.)

Maybe that’s why Martin has a John Mayer signature model… or the Martin OMJM, the technical term. The man has a GUITAR named after him. and not just any old guitar, a $3100 beauty.

I thought Sasha would’ve curbed my GAS for a while now, but seeing and hearing this baby seems to have brought it back in full swing… mmm…

It’s got the shallow neck profile, a 1-11/16″ nut… Englemann Spruce/Indian Rosewood… and it seems to be signed by the man himself!!

win-win-win-win. So that’s how he plays with the thumb on the low-E without making his fingers fall off.

anyone know where i can play one of these? they’re not at GC…

Filed under: music, gas, guitar, martin, mayer

John Mayer on Michael Jackson.

John Mayer wrote an article for TIME (obviously because he ran out of space on Twitter) about Michael Jackson.

some tasty excerpts:

…I mean, what are the ’80s? A Rubik’s Cube, 3-D glasses and Michael Jackson. And that’s the giant cornerstone that’s gone.

Michael Jackson proves, in a really sort of perverse way, that maybe we’re not as offended by behavior as we are entranced by music. And think about that. Think about what level of quality you must have to attain to have somebody say, “I know that you’re accused of having molested children, but I can’t hate you for that as much as I love you for your music.”

There’s just one Michael Jackson now. We don’t have to reconcile the Michael Jackson we love with another Michael Jackson. In a way, he has returned to pristine condition in death.

I don’t know if he’s actually smart or just trying to sound philosophical. Maybe he’s just jealous.

Filed under: uncategorized, mayer