Everything for camping

Things I have:

• cold weather sleeping bag
• backpack
• sleeping pad
• hiking boots
• long underwear
• camelback
• tarp
• rope
• first aid kit (with CPR mask!)
• headlamp
• waterbottles/nalgenes
• hammock

Things I don't have

• Cook stove and pot set
• 2-person tent (with footprint)
• water filtration gear
• multi-tool

I'm so close to having it all! It's hard (but not impossible) to camp by myself without a tent and a cook stove, so those are first on my list. They are also the most expensive. I've held out because whenever I've gone camping someone else has had everything I haven't. But the last time I went camping was two years ago. I should probably stop waiting for someone with gear to invite me to go camping and just buy the stuff I need and then make the time to go. It's on the agenda for this summer. Just like straws, its going to happen.

Vanity

The way my room is set up right now is pretty perfect: big bed, huge dresser, closet, sitting space, bookshelves... but there isn't space for much else. If I had a huge room, or maybe just more wall space (I have a corner room with 3 windows), I would start shopping in earnest for a vanity table.

The pictures are of two vanities I saw in antique stores in the Cherokee Row Antique District. The first one is really my ideal table. It has a huge mirror and drawers to fit all of my make-up and hair accessories. Maybe I want one of these because I've watched old movies where all of the best female lead characters are shown getting ready at their vanity tables. Maybe it's my practical side showing: it would be nice to have a place to just sit while I get ready, instead of rushing around like a crazy person running around half dressed between my room and the bathroom. Also, standing in the bathroom and leaning over the sink to get close to the mirror just doesn't make sense. Women, why do we do this?! There is a perfectly good piece of furniture that facilitates a relaxed pre-event environment. I'm going to wager that if I have a vanity table to get ready at, I will be less anxious when I am getting ready to go out, and might actually make time to get ready in the morning. I've already got an image in my head of me as the elegant Greta Garbo living in high society Paris in the movie Camille (except I won't die of TB in the end).

Portable External Hard Drive

My laptop's hard drive is full.

Unfortunately, I am too tired and burnt-out from the semester to even Google what I could do to free up some space. I bought some time by deleting all of the Sublime from my music library, but it also can't hurt to ask my fairy god parents for a portable external hard drive.

One of the Housing and Urban Design students (a.k.a. cool future architects that are technology and design saavy) in my class at Wash U pulled one of these out today. She had saved her power point presentation on her external hard drive and just brought it to class and plugged it in to the computer hard drive like a USB.

If I had one (in red, if possible) I would be killing two birds with one stone: I would have a foot in the door to the cool kids club and I would have some serious extra space. Win-win!

μπρίκι

I am gearing up for Greece, June 2010!! The μπρίκι is on my list to purchase while I am over there. As it's been uncomfortably hot in our apartment this week, I've been experimenting with making iced coffee to keep me awake through my not-quite-all-nighters. I am the Lester Bangs to your William Miller, you could call me at 3 a.m. and I would be up. "Of course I'm home. I'm always home. I'm uncool." I wonder what my roommates think when they open the fridge and see the coffee pot on the top shelf (not to mention see the pile of dishes from midnight snacking I have yet to tackle). Anyway, the best homemade iced coffee is done the Greek way, I like mine sweet. Mmmm, the μπρίκι kind of reminds me of what mate, a traditional tea that Argentinians drink, is made in. I can't WAIT to travel! "Morocco. A seat by the window, please."

On a side note, I've realized that the majority of the things I want thus far are for my kitchen... that will not remain the case, but my kitchen must be the area most lacking things, or at least, the area with the most room for improvement and expansion. I'm all about utility, and not one for decorations, so that might be one reason why I'm content with everything else.

And, I LOVE FOOD.

But not cleaning.

Straws

At 11:44 p.m. it is 83 degrees in our apartment. Anything cold, including the grapefruit sherbet I tried making, melts in less than five minutes if it is left sitting out. Though there is little I can do to keep my iced coffee from melting, having cool-colored bendy straws would brighten each sip. They might not be on my long-term list of things I want, but every time I make an iced drink it's something I reach for that isn't ever there. This summer will be different because they are on the agenda!

Salad Spinner

This might be embarrassing, but until yesterday Carrie and I went without grocery shopping for three weeks, or maybe more. We usually mooch off of Matt's food stamps, but he hasn't been home long enough to go shopping lately. After a near p-a moment about some chili, defrosting half of my frozen soups and all the chicken breasts and three straight days of eating out, I began to have produce pangs. I needed food. fooooood. food! fooooood (fast forward to 4:36).

So yesterday, when I came back from Schnuck's with my glorious salad ingredients and whipped out my cutting board and knife and started chopping away I only paused when I got to the lettuce (always at the end, it makes it easier to toss the salad with dressing). Having to do the dance of rise-shake-blot with the lettuce leaves drives me CRAZY, it throws my whole groove off and it still never gets all the water out AND the lettuce isn't sprightly, its a depressed, wilted mess. Having a salad spinner would solve this problem, albeit, it would make for a less entertaining salad-making viewer experience when I finally get my reality TV show deal. In the mean time, I guess I'll busy myself with customizing my ideal spinner. salad spinner. Do you know how many varieties of salad spinners there are out there? SO MANY. For all of you out there who have no idea what I'm talking about here's a demonstration.

Emile Henry Artisan Ruffled Pie Dish

So, I have only had my own stove and kitchen for two years, but in that time I've managed to get wrapped up in a baking frenzy. I've baked Greek pastries (not without frantic phone calls to mom and yiayia), pastries from Craig Clayborne's New York Times Cookbook (again, props to Momma) and from my Martha Stewart Living cookbook (which I got because my sister, Erica, always gets mondo praise for ANYTHING she does that was inspired by Martha, and I want a piece of that). My proudest moments were when the pies I cooked (two apple, two pumpkin) turned out to RAVE reviews. The feminist side of me sulks in the shadows when this happens, but really, it is just jealous that my domestic side ROCKS. Also a great thing: cooks can derive SO MUCH attention from a fixing up great meal, especially when they're aware of their power.

What really gets people going about my pies is the crust (THANK YOU Martha)... despite the fact that I bake these pies in those cheap little tins you get from Baker's Square pies. I want to enhance the eating experience for my dinner guests (read: starving grad student friends). I also want everyone, even manly lumberjacks like Dylan and Matt, to squeal and exclaim: "Ooo! SO pretty!!!" I believe, without hesitation, that the Emile Henry Artisan Ruffled Pie Dish will help me accomplish the reaction I want. It's all in the ruffles. Ruffles are in right now, just look at any jcrew catalog from the past eight seasons.

I want that pie dish. So that, when I cook my pie, I can wear Carrie's pretty ruffly apron and win over the masses with my frilly pies.

Montblanc fountain pen

My mom said it. Women just love things, they can't help it. And if my budget can't embrace this consumer ideology, I'm hoping my blog will serve as an outlet for my own devotion to things, and at the very least, serve as a wish list: a record of everything I want so that when I sell my first million books or marry Mr. Darcy... I can get it all! YES. so great.

First item for my writing table: The Montblanc fountain pen (last on Justin Saunders' Spring Classics List). (Did I care or even notice that his blog is about Men's fashion? Absolutely not! We all have a bit of Annie Hall in us, right?) Saunders asks if anyone still handwrites letters... to which I answered, YES, ME, I DO! THIS PEN IS FOR ME! So, that, when I write my best friends (and someday, my lover), not only will the receive a letter with cool, classic penmanship, I might even have ink stains on my right index finger... just like Jo did when she met Professor Bhaer. "You know, when first I saw you, I though: Ah, she is a writer." "What made you think so?" THE INK. It was the ink! And then I'll blush, just like Jo. And then I'll end up marrying Professor Bhaer, but still have the occasional passionate dream about Teddie. And you know, have it all.