AAAH so much sushi.

Okay okay. I kinda went crazy.

Here we have four different types of yumminess. The nigiri around the plate are prosciutto, tofu, and sweet potato. In the middle there are sweet potato and tuna sushi. I shared with the family. The tuna was everyone's favorite.

Dad came home last night! It's so nice to have him back ^_^ He's always going to Saudi every few weeks for work. Here's the blog he sometimes updates about his adventures.

Tonight was a standard ballroom group lesson for waltz. It was great! I haven't done any standard ballroom in like, two months. And I got to wear my new fancy standard shoes. Hee.

All considered though, I'm kinda bummed. It's pretty lonely out here. There aren't many people who are interested in dating socially, and most of my friends from high school are still in school, so they can't play. I've been keeping myself busy, of course; ballroom three hours a night, blues on Thursdays, driving my sisters around to ballet, and making sushi. I still haven't found a job, so I feel a little useless. But soon, friends will be done with finals and come back to Suds, and I will find a way to make some money! And being home is pretty wonderful. I missed the trees and greenery, hanging out and rockin to rad car jamz with my sisters, talking to my dad, and having breakfast every morning with my mom.

Determination!

As one of my friends told me, "If you give up, I'll never dance with you again."

Dance-related threats work on me, I guess.

PS. I really want a Toothless figurine. Maybe I'll make one...

More sushiiiii.

We did another mad-dash sushi dinner today.

tofu nigiri, prosciutto nigiri, sweet potato sticks

I think my favorite was the tofu. But the prosciutto was pretty good too, it didn't need soy sauce at all.

Misomisosambaaa

I made homemade miso soup today! It was ever so tasty ^_^ This is the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

4 cups water

1/3 cup miso paste

3 green onions, chopped

1 tbsp shredded nori or wakame (seaweed)

1/2 block firm silken tofu, cut into 1 inch cubes

Dash soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

Bring water to a slow simmer and add seaweed. Simmer for 5-6 minutes, or more depending on your preferences. The seaweed will taste less salty/fishy if you simmer it longer. Reduce heat to very low and add the rest of the ingredients. Stir until miso is well dissolved. It is best not to boil the miso, because it will lose some of its nutritional value and the soup will taste different.

It was kinda rainy and cold today, so it was pretty much the perfect thing. Nice and warm and salty asian goodness.

Ballroom tonight was painful but productive. The first hour was a group samba technique class, and we did a full hour of crusado walks. SO much technique in my poor little brain and for my body to pick up. Practice makes near-perfect, I suppose. Then the next latin class was rumba. I had such a hard time with the spin turn to aida(sp?). Good thing I have all summer to practice!

My new favorite quote: "I don't practice until I get it right, I practice until I can't get it wrong!" (stolen from my friend on the BYU ballroom tour team)

Sushi!

Today was crazzy! It was the day of mad-dash sushi! It's kinda hard to make sushi for three hungry girls in an hour and a half before rushing off to ballet and ballroom. But we did it! We ate it on the drive over.

left to right: sweet potato & avocado cucumber sushi w/ roe (fish eggs),

salmon nigiri, plain sweet potato sticks

It was incredibly tasty, and the nigiri turned out perfect. I got the sushi salmon from Whole Foods, and it was perfect.

The rest of the night I did salsa and worked on cha cha with Ray, my partner for the Am-Am comp at Yankee Classic on January 20th. I forgot how very bad I am ^_^; He gave me CD of some rad swing/blues guitar by Stevie Ray Vaughan. I can see how John Mayer got his inspiration from this guy, his singing style is very similar. I want to see how it works as dance music.

Ginger peanut somen noodles dinner

clockwise from top: ginger-lime dressing, soba noodles, scallions,

crushed peanuts, and rice noodles for mom. everyone had coconut juice to drink :3

My sisters have what we call The Frister List. It is a list of places to go, things to eat, things to bake and cook, etc. while I'm home for the summer. One of those was to make the ginger-peanut soba noodle dinner they love so much. We had quite the adventure food shopping, and dancing down the grocery aisles. I love cooking with my sisters. It's like I have a small army doing half the work magically.

Now, this little dinner was supposed to be only part of a enormous feast for my mom for a belated mother's day gift. It was going to be appetizers of various seasoned edamame, then miso soup, the ginger-peanut noodles as a side dish with all sorts of sushi as the main feature, with mango sticky rice for dessert. *sigh* I think it's going to end up being spread out over the week. We'll see how it goes!

Mother's Day & Snow White

Today was Mother's Day! So I'll spotlight me mum's blog. Go say hi! My sisters made her a lovely breakfast-in-bed, complete with fresh fruit and gluten-free pancakes. I love you, Mom!

It was also my sisters' last Snow White performance. The Boston Ballet School in Newton had a showcase of all their classes for three days, coupled with a short ballet. It included dancers from the Boston Ballet Pre-Pro program, as well as from their more intensive division classes. My sisters were tree spirits for one cast, and members of the Evil Queen's court for another. There are some watermarked professional photos of the ballet here, if you feel like taking a look. I was very impressed with the performances of both casts, but my favorite was today's. All the lead dancers were focused and expressed their parts perfectly. The ballet was originally created to be a way to get the younger generations interested in ballet dance performance. I'd say it does its job well, but it's also very well done as a short ballet on its own.

Congrats to Lise & Sasha!

Day Before Mother's Day

One of my best friends at home is my friend Jeremy. Today we finally got together (family and New York adventures prevented me from seeing him in any of his end-of-semester concerts) and caught up on life stories. We went to Big Fresh (an amazing stir-fry, organic, hippy food kinda place) like we usually do when I'm home. Then we went on an adventure to find the perfect mother's day gifts. I already had mine planned, so I was along for the ride. We forgot that the mall was swarmed, so we got out of there speedy fast. That's one weird thing about me. I really don't like shopping. The shopping part of shopping that is. I love being with people and talking and running around together, but I hate spending money and trying to figure out what fits/what matches/what "just works". Happy ending: we found the perfect gift. Then we went back to my house and made cards out of construction paper, markers, and stickers. It was so fun!

My mom has given me the task of backing up and ultimately clearing the home computer. It might be slow because it's just dang old, but it doesn't hurt to virtually tidy things up. I'll be happily occupied for some time with this. :)

~Me

New York Trip!

I got to visit Sarah at Bard!! The drive up was so gorgeous, sunny skies with lazy poofy clouds and gorgeous rolling hills for miles around. I really like driving, especially on the highway. I love being able to go fast.

Stopped somewhere nice to eat my sushi

I listened to the "Car Jamz" CD Sasha made for me. Lots of rockin tunes like "Fergalicious" and "Love Drunk" and "Human". The Volvo has a pretty nice sound system, so I took full advantage of it. I also listened to the Owl City Concert mix I made after I saw them in Salt Lake. It was so happy and chill.

I finally got to Bard after three hours and found Sarah. We ate the delicious food from the mess hall and listened to hipsters talk of scary things that happen when kids do drugs. Sarah took me on a mini tour of the campus. We:

played on an art exhibit

ran through the courtyard

and took a trail to the edge of the Hudson River

Then we bought veggiemonster food and candy and watched three episodes of Battlestar Galactica (season finale of season 3!) with Martin & Sarah. I was a huge BSG fan my freshman year. Katherine and I would watch an episode every week. I still haven't watched the very last two, so no spoilers please. Then we listened to Matt play the uke and sing to Beirut until we fell asleep.

The next morning was so sad. I really wanted to stay but I was tight on time. Right when I was almost home, I got hopelessly lost in Framingham for an hour. I was so stressed and upset with myself that I broke down in tears at a nearby bank. I think I need a GPS next time. I was fine going to NY, got there in less than 3 hours with just Mapquest directions. But the lack of roadsigns in Massachusetts does not help at all.

I calmed down though and went to the opening night of the Boston Ballet School's production of Snow White. It was really quite amazing! I took notes on sisters' technique and ideas for myself. And now I REALLY want to complete the Imogen Heap dance I started choreographing months ago. Maybe I can find a few high school girls that would be willing to do some modern-ballet kinda stuff.

We'll see.

~M

You Keep Staring Like You've Never Seen the Stars...

If you need me to remind you who you are...

Yeah, I'm on a little bit of an Elbow kick right now. They've got such chill, lovely music.

[Station Approach, The Stops, The Bones of You, Mirrorball, Grounds for Divorce, Weather to Fly]

Basically the biggest thing I did all day was eat a slice of pizza at Sweet Tomatoes. I talked to a mom there who has a job in nutrition, so it was a huge treat for her kids to have pizza. :P They were super cute and were telling me all sorts of crazy stories. I also planned my trip to Bard to visit Sarah. Hopefully that will happen Thursday. I need to get cracking on studying calculus, I'm going stir crazy without a job! And I really want to paint something. Inspiration just seems to elude me. Maybe if I find the right song... "The Stops" is really stuck in my head.

...and I'll miss you the way you miss the sea.

~Marina

Summer 2010: Week 1

Tuesday, April 27th:

Mokay. So this morning, I awoke to my phone buzzing from several txts from my sisters telling me to wake up and get my butt over to the high school, so I went and gave them their presents (Lise got a BYU sweatshirt like mine, Sasha got the first book in the Wheel of Time series called The Eye of the World), talked to my old science and calc teachers (below are the doodles I drew on Dr. Pegram's board), and then drove my sisters home (with much car jamz). Then I took them to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes (DELICIOUS italian thin crust pizza with crazy awesome tomato sauce), then to ballet. While they were at ballet, I went and hung out with my ballroom teachers. Everyone was super excited to see me, and I talked to Ray for a while. He knows some awesome lindy and blues places, so I'll be going this week. ^_^Then drove my sisters home, screaming lyrics all the way, making people look at us weird. Came home. Kinda worried about finding a job. The end of day 1 home.

Wednesday, April 28th:
Today I was going to do a lot of stuff (like laundry, visit more teachers, talk to students about college, etc) but no. I was lazy. SO I ended up visiting my awesome friend Steph after I dropped my dad off at the bus station on his way to Saudi :'( . We made tortilla soup. It turned out SO GOOD. I don't even know how, we didn't follow the recipe. We just threw stuff in we thought would taste good, like black beans and corn and peppers and chicken. It was so so fun. After that, I drove over to my sisters' ballet studio in Newton. My old ballet teacher was there and she was so excited to see me! Ms. Busch was so nice, and she let me come in and watch the class. My sisters have gotten so incredibly good. I'm really amazed. I do miss ballet a lot, but not quite enough to go through the pain again ;) Turf Toe once is good enough for me. So then I went to dinner at Lam's with my mom (really good Vietnamese food). I got tofu vegetable red curry with summer rolls and coconut juice. It was so amazing. The guy next to us had a ridiculous accent and was really loud about how awesome he was. He and his date(?) even started singing some hokey song at one point. It was all we could do not to laugh out loud. I could barely contain myself. After our lovely dinner (and me being interrogated on various points of my life), I drove off to ballroom for the group lessons. Everyone was so happy to see me, but I can't believe how out of shape I've gotten after only a few weeks! I'm going to be there so much this summer. It's gonna rock. BYU ballroom team, here I come.

Thursday, April 29th
Today was pretty dang sweet. I took apart my mom's MacBook (because the hard drive died) and went Blues dancing. It was pretty cool because there's basically a clone of every blues dancer I know in Provo. But now my toe is acting up again. Joy.

Friday April 30th:
Ordered the harddrive for the Macbook. I plan on taking apart our other two MUCH older computers for kicks. I went to ballet (took the Tahoe, man that thing is a monster) with my mom and sisters. I helped weed and water the ballet garden, which was quite nice given the uncharacteristic warm sunny weather. Then when my sisters got out of ballet, we went to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Karoun with my relatives from Alaska. I also discovered, while I was chatting with some of the ballet people, that Mr. Anderson has a huge thing for ravens! I think I might make something raveny for him, like a tribal raven painting or something.

Saturday, May 1:
LOBSTER DINNERRRR that I have been dying to have for YEARS. We had lobster and mussels and clams and oysters on the half shell. I've never had them on the half shell, so it was a pretty fun experience. And I've heard that they are an aphrodisiac? I'll have to test that out one day in the distant future :P Must be the zinc.

Lobsterrrrr. He's looking at you.

Lise...you're doing it wrong.

Sunday, May 2nd:
Drove my sisters to Snow White rehearsal. Then Mom, Lise, Sasha, and the Alaskans went to theCoach Grill for dinner. Whoa-expensive, but really tasty.

Left to right: Granny, Grumps, Lise, Me, Sasha, Mom, Roz

in front of the picture we were talking about all night

Monday, May 3rd:

Basically lazed around the house all day. Cleaned up a bit, did laundry. Alaska people left on a plane today.

The hdd I ordered Friday for my mom's broken MacBook came around 4 pm. I didn't have the proper screwdriver for extracting the old hard drive from its protective little metal home. So my friend David ran over with a Torx driver. Installed it beautifully. Then we went on a Best Buy adventure to find the Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The hunt for the snow leopard was a success. After a bit of confusion formatting the new hdd, it's now installing smoothly and happily. I'm actually really glad about this because now I can just put all my music on the mac for my sisters to use! The hdd I bought off NewEgg is 320 Gb, so it has more than enough room for what my mom/sisters need it for. Happiness!!

Until next week ~ Me.