Time After Time

When I was a sophomore in high school, I remember hearing the last measure of a song on the radio. I quickly turned it up recognizing the tune. It was the kind of recognition that didn't occur a few months ahead of time, it was the kind of recognition that now happened because it sparked something in my brain...but happened maybe even 10 years prior to the remembrance. My mom was driving and I asked her who it was that was singing. She didn't hear the tune, so I was left with this incredibly faded memory or recognizing this music without knowing how or why.

Days went by and the thought didn't really ever return until another time I was in the car driving with my mom and the song came on again. I quickly turned it up almost screaming "Mom, who is this...I know this, but I don't know how." My mom listened trying to recall her memories. Alas, she didn't know. After what seemed months, my mom came to me and said, "I remember that song, but not who the artist is. I remember your babysitter we had in California (I was 4 at the time) would always blast this in our house for you kids." Ah hah!! It didn't come back to me, but it made me feel a lot better that I wasn't crazy. Mom continued by telling me that the lyrics said "Time After Time" and that is when I called my very in-tune musically adept friends to ask them if they knew who sang it.

Within the next week, I found Cindy Lauper: a lyricist of my own heart. Time After Time was the magnet to this beautiful relationship. Girls Just Want to Have Fun, another memory provoking song. Yesterday, I worked out to her She's So Unusual CD.

Don't you love it when you rediscover some part of your past that has been locked in your memory...but it is not very clear? I love it. I have since been trying to unlock bits and pieces of my childhood and have recently discovered movies from my past, including The Challengers, Teen Witch, On Our Own (all of which were watched when I was 5 or 6 at my friend Erin's house), George Michael's Careless Whisper (I don't know the memory associated with the song...just that it is ingrained in my memory), WHAM and Blackbeard's Ghost.

The point is that the memories may have faded, but the remembrance of these songs and movies stuck with me until I could create new memories.

From Riches to....

Lindsey, how have you been spending your time?

Well, it all started with a trip to Walden Pond. Photo courtesy of Whitney Cutler...who also let me chill with her and her hub for 3 days. HOLLER girl...


Followed by a trip around Boston. From Fenway Park to the Freedom Trail....I decided that I am moving to Boston. Enough said. Some of my faves include:

• Finding Fenway
  
• Touring the Freedom trail with Whitney, making sure we didn't get off the brick path
• Finding glucose-free meals in the North End
• Eating pastries...yum
• Going to church in an old Episcopal church building
• Meeting friend Nicole for the best hot cocoa I have ever had. It was seriously like drinking Giradelli's straight
• Eating out with Nicole, Josh and Whitney and having incredible Salmon
• Walden Pond
• Touring Isabella Stewart Gardner's Museum..it was amazing
• Touring the Modern Arts Museum seeing Monet, Picasso, Rodin, Turner...incredible paintings and sculptures
• Seeing the places where our forefathers did remarkable things!
• Loving how accessible things were...the T rules!
• Studying and getting info at the Harvard Law School library
• Realizing all of Cambridge comes out for their community festival

After the trip to B-town, I headed straight down south to Havasupai Falls. The trip was short, sweet and pretty much incredible. I can't believe I lived in Arizona for so long without having visited it. Some of the highlights include:

• Sleeping in the car, having dreams about rolling off the cliff
• The hike down was beautiful
• Hiking 10 miles in to camp
• Seeing the falls for the first time and how blue everything was!
• Meeting people who lived on the reservation and joking with them about the fact that we were not going to make it out on time before the coyotes ate us for dinner
• Our campsite was off the main trail and on an island. We had the sweetest campsite in the whole place.
• Non-smelly restrooms
• Moody Falls, and the descent!
• Ivy surroundings
• Making it to Beaver Falls even though it was bush wacking the whole way
• Meeting people along the trail and giving them tips
• Realizing that we forgot our flashlights and we started hiking out at 4:30 p.m. and would be hiking in the dark with no moon
  
• Hiking in the dark
• Hiking out with one flashlight per 4 people...thank you Eric for holding it the whole way
• Crashing at a hotel in Kingman, thank you to the man who let us go in the hot tub even though it was closed
  

Next stop...Harvard!

I was sitting next to a guy on the airplane on my way to Boston. We starting chit chatting about my trip. He asked me what I was looking forward to the most. The patriot in my wanted to say, "I am looking forward to going to a place where it all started. A place full of the historical magic, where Paul Revere hung the light in the window, where John Adams lived, where John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere are buried, where George Washington gave his famous speech about liberation from the British, where Thoreau and other transcendentalists were inspired, to go shopping." But no...instead of saying some rather beautiful and patriotic things, I answered..."I want to go to the Harvard Law Library and do my law paper." The geek in me won on this one. And so, here I am....at the Harvard Law Library...doing research for my law paper. What a dream!

Few laughs

The beauty of keeping in touch with really funny people, like my former boss at Richter7, is that I get monthly emails that make me laugh really hard! Thanks Tim Brown. Hope you all laugh as much as I did.

Starbucks has come out with an instant coffee.
Just put it in a cup, add hot water, and then call out your name incorrectly.

- Jimmy Kimmel

Archaeologists in Ethiopia have discovered a 4.4-million-year-old skeleton believed to be the earliest known human ancestor and they're calling her "Ardi."
However, Larry King is insisting her name was "Jan."

- Conan O'Brien

There's a shortage of ammunition, so Wal-Mart is limiting the number of bullets they'll sell to a single customer...
Because if you want to tick off ANY customer, make it the guy who buys bullets.

- Conan O'Brien

The average woman can keep a secret for 47 hours.
The average man can pretend to be interested in the secret for an average of 30 seconds.

- Jimmy Fallon

Doctors are trying to decide whether being fat should be classified as a medical disease.
I think it should be. So next time your wife says, "Do these jeans make me look fat?" you can go, "Honey, I am not a doctor."

- Jay Leno

Nice Jacket

Today, someone approached me and said: "Nice Jacket. I saw it on someone else too." Would you take this as a compliment, or a subtle hint that maybe you shouldn't shop where everyone else does?

Getting Cocky

I think I have been getting a little cocky about my schooling. Here I am, totally doing all my reading before class, understanding if not everything..enough to allow me to participate in class, feeling like I am writing kick-butt arguments and papers...and then, I get a blow to the head.

Don't you hate when you turn in a paper and then the teacher explains in class what the paper was supposed to be about and you realize that your paper didn't reflect an ounce of what was discussed? Yeah, me too...totally don't dig that my cockiness took a jab in a major way. That'll teach me!!

Schooling: 1
Lindsey: 0

Stinky Fish

Maybe some of you know this already, but for someone *echem* me, that just barely started cooking fish at home, I had a revelation this week.

Salmon skin is stinky. You read it...STINKY!! I mean, fish is in and of itself stinky, but seriously...seriously, salmon skin reeks. My first 'cooking salmon whilst in the comforts of my own home' experience was fantastic. It was only but a year ago that I decided to try this out for myself.

It was if it were yesterday. I remember purchasing my first 4 pound salmon at Costco. I remember thinking, wow...this is the brightest color pink I have ever seen. After unpacking all my groceries, I proceeded to divide this massive fish into little portions. I saved one for myself to cook and put the rest in the freezer.

After putting all of my very exotic spices, followed by slices of lemon and a little dill weed on top, I cooked it in my oven for 20 minutes on 350 degrees. The first taste was priceless. I remember becoming the biggest fan of cooking my own salmon.

One thing I forgot to mention is the absolute BEAUTY of Costco salmon: they package it sans (that means without) skin. Oh, and how wonderful it really is! Well, one day I didn't have time to go to Costco to pick out a 4 pound salmon, so I went to my lovely neighborhood grocer, Harmons, the next best thing...and HAZAA, their salmon was listed at 1/2 price because they had a really large shipment and needed to sell all that wonderful fishy goodness. So, I bought it with full intention of plowing right through my 3 pieces within the week.

I noticed the skin and kept it on while cooking, thinking it might keep the juices in even more than the tinfoil I usually wrap it with. I cooked it...and ALAS, HARK, OMGoodness, my house stunk for days. I remember the last time I had skin on my salmon...I remember being at my Grandma's and she cooked it on her outdoor grill...an OUTDOOR grill. Makes sense now.

I have since dreaded finishing up my other two pieces of salmon. There they sat in my freezer, only really 'fresh' for two more days. I broke down tonight and just had to try this again. I cut the skin off the back of the salmon and sealed the skins tight in a Ziploc, which I threw into the trash can (I believe at this point I was grimacing) - but you all know my experience with those. Hoping and praying that my house wouldn't stink, I took extra precautions opening the door to the balcony and igniting my Scentsy. I crossed my fingers as I stuck my fish in the oven.

20 minutes later....I couldn't believe it...sans skins was TOTALLY the way to go.

Stinky Fish: 0
Lindsey: 1