Rodrigo y Gabriela at Ravinia

It was a fantastic show last night! 

This was my first time at Ravinia, and it is an absolutely gorgeous venue. The lawn seats aren't necessarily for the serious concert-goer, but if you want a leisurely picnic with wine and great music, it's the perfect venue. I love this blurb from the website, "Gradually, day turns into evening, and from the comfort of your perfect lawn spot, it culminates in a great concert by candlelight as you gaze at the stars above." 

I was definitely one of those people with a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. But once the music started, I found a place at the railing directly behind the pavilion seating, so I could get a bit more involved in the show. 

I am a poor cinematographer, and these videos from YouTube aren't much better, but at least you get an idea of what great performers these two are.

Tamacun



Diablo Rojo

The anticipation!

I have wanted to see Rodrigo y Gabriela live since 2007. I got excited about the duo before I went to Bonnaroo that year, and then sadly missed their show because I was taking some silly little board exam. But now, I finally am going to get my chance! They are playing at Ravinia, just north of Chicago tomorrow night.

In anticipation, I'm adding my favorite Rodrigo y Gabriela song to the playlist. (Look for Tamacun to the left!) I think I've put this song on every mix CD I've made in the last 4 years.

Carrot Cake

While both were unappreciated in their life time, unlike Gregor Mendel, the first person to put carrots in cake batter is still unknown. This is quite unfair, as carrot cake is far more enjoyable than genetics.

This is a particularly easy and delicious recipe from my cousin Maggie (who's actually my mom's cousin, but I don't know the appropriate title for that) who lives in Alabama. I have no idea why, but I think that carrot cake probably tastes better in the South, and that's why this recipe is so great.

Cousin Maggie's Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

2 cups sugar

4 eggs, slightly beaten

1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup grated carrots (buy the pre-shredded ones)

1 cup coconut

1 cup crushed pineapple, drained, but leave very moist

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix dry ingredients.

3. Add eggs, oil, and vanilla. Mix well.

4. Stir in carrots, pineapple, and coconut.

5. Bake at 350 degrees in two 9 inch or three 8 inch greased or floured round cake pans for 50 minutes, or until done.

Two layers! Although I think 3 smaller
layered circles would look elegant.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

12 ounces (1 1/2 packages) cream cheese, softened

1 stick butter, softened

6 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar

2 tsp vanilla

Beat cream cheese and butter together. Add confectioner's sugar and vanilla. Mix until smooth.

This recipe makes a LOT of frosting. Although, the more layers you have,
the more you need to frost between the layers and cover the increased height.
And if you don't use it all, it makes a perfect snack with graham crackers.

I made this for my friend's birthday dinner, and we all ate until we we could barely walk. 
I may still be full next Tuesday.

So darn good.

What If

Open criticism and public exposure of weakness is a time-honored tradition of medical training. I was a beneficiary of that style of "education" this morning. And, honestly, it makes me wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I went to medical school.

I don't know if this happens to people on other career paths (if it does, let me know!), but I find myself pondering fairly frequently what I would have done if I hadn't gone into medicine. I'm not the only one who thinks like this. My mother is a physician, and even as a child, I remember her telling me all the other things she could have done. And now that I am in the midst of my training, each and every one of my co-residents has a list of "What Ifs" as well.

In medicine, you end up on a career express highway with no exits and no alternate routes. I will end up a medical specialist because my training is applicable to nothing else. You start to feel a little trapped on this road, perpetually on the bottom rung of the hierarchic ladder, being weighed down by both monetary debt and a sense of obligation.

I am one of those people who calculated lifestyle into my specialty-choice equation. I am not a doctor, I work as a doctor. This is a crucial difference. There are way too many other awesome things in life that I refuse to let go. I think most young residents like me have a long list of doubts and What Ifs written in size 72 font across their minds.

In college, my dream was to write for Scientific American. I wanted to take scientific and biologic concepts and write about them in an interesting, accessible way for a general audience. As I've become more narrowly educated, my What If list has drifted further and further from my sharpened pencil tip of knowledge. Now, I think I'd like to do pieces for Spin Magazine or Rolling Stone instead, interviewing artists and writing reviews of new bands, concerts, tours, and albums. (Wouldn't that be awesome!?!)

Or, I'd open a bakery. How can you not be happy surrounded by cookies and cupcakes? I make homemade ice cream sandwiches that are to die for (if I say so myself). I've laid in bed at night dreaming up drool-inducing new cookie/ice cream combinations. (Or maybe waffle/ice cream, rice krispie/ice cream, etc.)

Here are a few What Ifs belonging to my medical friends:
Landscape architect
Songwriter/music producer/musician
Interior decorator
Comedy writer for 30Rock
Proud owner of a specialty pen store
Carpenter
Lead guitarist/vocalist
Mystery novelist

Speaking of my dream to become fat and happy in the kitchen. . . I refuse to anything remotely medically related tonight. Now, I am going to go bake a friend's birthday cake. (Carrot, with cream cheese frosting!)

Stornoway

I am blatantly "borrowing" this video from one of the best blogs out there, Muzzle of Bees. If you are a music fan in the Midwest, its a crucial resource. (And written by #59 on the list of 100 Hottest Milwaukeeans!)

I'm about to download the rest of this album, hoping it will be equally fantastic.

Stornoway, "Watching Birds" from the album Beachcomber's Windowsill

Happy to find I can get tasty beer here!

I ordered a delicious beer the other night. I'm a big wheat beer fan, and even a mediocre hefeweizen can make me pretty happy. But the Weihenstephaner Weiss was really, really delicious. (You can't drink just one! I had two, and considered a third, but had to work the next day.) 

I'm not one of those people who do justice to the beer's description. (The opposite in fact. Occasionally my Wisconsin upbringing slips in, and I go to the store to pick up a six pack of plural beers. And who ever really thinks a beer smells like toast and cloves or tastes like a mixture of banana and citrus and tater tots or whatever else those people dream up?) I just know if it's tasty or not that tasty. And this was solidly in the tasty column.

Lastly, you learn new and useless information every day. . . The Weihenstephan Brewery is the oldest working brewery in the world.

Mix CDs, but not like that

As I said, I love Mix CDs. But, Wow. 

I do not take the crafting of a Mix CD quite so seriously as these people:

• "Have you ever had such a great day that you had to make a mix tape to deal with the fact that it ended?"
• "It’s been a way more involved and personal process than I originally anticipated."
• Artsy Fuckers Mix CD Club (Maybe I'm just jealous, except for the Shirley Temple part.)
• "dubecho-orgy" (I don't even know what that means.)

Mix CDs

I love Mix CDs (yes, mix with a capital M). This grew from my love of Mix Tapes. In middle school I got a stereo with. . . wait for it. . . 2 TAPE DECKS. My life was forever changed.

Now, at the age of 27, I am like one of those women you see churning her own butter at Living History Farms. I perform a task that is essential to my welfare, yet the middle schoolers of today find the toil of this task oddly fascinating. Why would one churn butter when there's iTunes Genius?? 

I even have an iPhone. I can make playlists, put them on my iPhone, hit shuffle, and plug the darn thing directly into my speaker dock, home or car stereo in a user-friendly and efficient manner. And I do sometimes. But other times, I put hours of mental and emotional effort into crafting a stupendous Mix CD. And I tackle weighty issues such as-- Should this mix end with a bang? Or drift out softly? Or should I end it with Made For You by OneRepublic because I like the song but hate the boys' choir at the end and then I could turn the CD off before I had to listen to creepy prepubescent voices? (Note that this is all time spent not learning how to be better at my job. Ce la vie.) PS. On my latest mix, that last option won.
**New feature: When possible, I'm going to make the songs I mention in my blog available for playing on Yahoo Media Player. Please see the "Play Something!" list to your left.


I also feel the need to exhaustively label every Mix CD I make with the track list and artist. 
Reason 1: This way, just in case, when someone who's not me picks up my CD and inevitably loves every song, he or she can identify each song, be able to look up the artists, and find more music they love! 
Reason 2: I have anal retentive tendencies.

Then I take my Mix CD, and I play it in my car stereo. It gets sucked into the little slot with that satisfying sound. There is nothing, I say nothing, better than putting on my sunglasses (that I wish made me look cool but probably don't), driving somewhere across the Midwest, and hearing song after song picked out by me for me. It's a new slice of happiness every 3 to 5 minutes.

New stuff!

I get super excited about new music. And while I love discovering new artists or bands (and by "discover" I mean I finally start listening to something that most other people heard about 3 years ago), it is sometimes more exciting when a group I love is putting out something new!

One of my all time favorite bands is The Wombats, and one of my all time favorite songs is their "Moving to New York". I am listening to it as I type. Makes me happy inside. (Also, I tried to embed the music video, but it's a no go, you'll just have to visit the link.) I have been waiting in impatient anticipation for them to release a new album after 2007's Guide to Love, Loss, and Desperation. Now, I just have to wait until "the end of 2010"! In the meantime, I will be one of those people downloading the single off that album, "Tokyo (Vampires & Werewolves)" in September.

Never, ever mind your own business

As I hear on an almost daily basis, there's nothing more dangerous than "mindin' your own business". Nobody who gets punched is ever doing anything to deserve said action. They are always innocently standing by when a total stranger, for absolutely no good reason, socks them one. 

My face bones are broken, doc? The dude sucker punched me! Came outta nowhere. No ma'am, I was definitely not drinking, or talking smack, or yelling racist/homophobic insults, nor was I even thinking about smoking/shooting/snorting any remotely illegal substances while I yelled at a dude across the bar 14 times my size. We were just laughin' about how ugly his girlfriend is, and then POW! My face hurts.

That BB gun pellet in my eye, doc? That was a drive-by BB gun shooting. No doctor, my "best buddy" and I were not shooting beer cans/squirrels/neighbors' windows/messin' around in my mom's basement when he shot me in the eye. And we definitely had not been imbibing any combination of Bacardi Limon/Schmirnoff Ice/Boone's Farm before we did so. No way. I was walkin' down the street, mindin' my own business, and then, outta nowhere, BAM! My eye hurts.


So, watch yourself. When you're not possibly doing anything that could cause any trouble, mindin' your own business, is when the worst could hit you. 

Small snippets of stuff

That's what I hope to post!

Starting with two Saturday morning songs:

1. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, "Home"

2. Mumford & Sons, "Little Lion Man"

Perfect listening for a nice Saturday morning after a tasty omelet (one of the only things I can make with any confidence).

Also excited to hear this:

http://pitchfork.com/news/39752-justin-vernon-talks-kanye-collaboration-gayngs/

Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and he went to the same high school as a friend of mine. (Yes, I will cling to any small six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-connection and think it is incredibly awesome. Not ashamed.)