Here’s the roundup of links to everything I blogged on Diary of a Smart Chick in February:
Why I Broke Up With A Great Hairstylist and Started Cutting My Own Hair
Sha-boom-boom-room Burlesque and Drag
Here are some of my favorite things I imbibed and ingested in February, some at home and others at San Francisco restaurants.
I’ve been on a bacon kick here at home but I also still eat healthier oatmeal and fruit on a lot of days. The other two pictures are from Stable Cafe; mine was the egg, bacon, cheese wrap and the other is the Nona (eggs, tomato, cheese, toast and ham).
I’m wanting to start doing more stlye posts showing some of the things I wear. I hadn’t planned to do this so this month’s roundup is impromptu and there aren’t many pictures but there are a few:
I wear tights almost every day because I love skirts and dresses and I’m always cold here in San Francisco. In the first photo you see fishnets layered over white opaque tights on a particularly cold day.
I’m actually wearing sheer hose in this photo too. The skirt is one of many, many items that I picked up in February at the Goodwill $2 sale. Continue reading
Some of my favorite snapshops of Golden Retriever Lucy, Swiss Mountain Dog Chief and some of the pups at the local park this month:
Finally getting around to posting some photos from my fun time a few weeks ago at the Sha-Boom-Boom-Room drag/burlesque show at Rebel. I thought it was fun to see the two performance styles side-by-side in the same show; they are arts that have similarities and differences and it was great to juxtapose them in this fun way.
I recently read this special book that is a teen’s educational memoir about what it’s like to live with autism.
The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
The book has been translated by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell and an introduction has been added by David Mitchell. They have an autistic child and explain how reading this book finally helped them to understand a lot about their child and gain more patience, compassion and communication with their kid.
The book is mostly Q&A format. The teen author highlights that this is just his personal experience and that he can’t say for sure what it is like for anyone else to be autistic. But he explains a lot about his experience in a way that might answer questions for others wondering what an autistic child is thinking or why they behave the way that they do.
For example, he addresses the question: “why do you ask the same questions over and over?” He explains that whereas other people seem to have their information stored in chronological order or clear files in their brain, his memory is more like a pool with dots of information. He says, “I’m always picking up these dots – by asking my questions – so I can arrive back at the memory that the dots represent.” And he goes on to explain that repeatedly asking the same question also offers the benefit of allowing him to play with spoken language because words or phrases he’s familiar with are easiest for him for conversations.
In addition to the Q&A there are some short stories/ essays integrated into the writing. It’s a quick read and one that I found really powerful. It helps remind me that people experience every single thing differently from others – not just autistic people but all people. We don’t all remember the same, perceive the same, experience the same. It makes me want to be more curious about what others are experiencing and why they do what they do, rather than sitting in my experience and judging what’s happening from the outside.
I shared this (and other books I read) on Instagram. Follow me there.
I was excited to see that Huffington Post had linked to an article of mine recently. They did a slideshow of Coffee Pot Cooking ideas in which they linked to my article on HubPages, written quite a long time ago but still popular there, of 12 Foods That You Can Cook in a Coffee Pot.
They specifically highlighted my info on how to make instant ramen noodles in a coffee pot. I shared:
“Basically you put the noodles into the coffee pot itself, you put the spice in the filter where your coffee is supposed to go and you run the water through the machine just as if you were making a pot of coffee. Let the noodles sit long enough to become soft and you’ve got Ramen noodle soup that is no different than if you made it on a stovetop or in a microwave.”
In my article I also talk about how you can use a coffee pot to cook other broth-based soups, oatmeal and grits, vegetables including broccoli, poached chicken and fish, couscous and rice, pasta, beans, eggs and chocolate sauce.
The Huffington Post slideshow includes some of these (and not others) and adds info on using your coffee pot to make hard boiled eggs, lemon pepper chicken and chicken pesto pasta, a grilled cheese sandwich, quesadillas, and corn on the cob.
Did you know your coffee pot was so versatile?! Of course this isn’t going to work for all of those trendy coffee people who have given up the old-fashioned coffee pot in favor of French Presses, Keurigs, etc.
Have you ever cooked anything in your coffee pot?
We recent got some much-needed rain here in San Francisco. Right after the rain all of the plants at the local park looked stunningly vibrant. None of these images were edited; they’re straight from the iPhone as I saw them.
I just loved this too much not to share it.
Dezeen says: “Canadian firm RAW Design has created a series of shelters that look like giant pompoms to keep skaters warm on a frozen river in Winnipeg.” Lots more info in the full article.
