where i realize i've been dormant here

it's late on sunday night and i'm listening to justin timberlake. snoop dogg is currently cameoing on a song. he also makes an appearance on my favorite lupe fiasco song. i smile at "hey lupe, it's snoopy" unfailingly. i alternate between laying on the couch and getting up and dancing. my windows are open, the only light in my wonderful and lovely and cozy apartment coming from a stained-glass lamp i made four years ago. walking home from dinner tonight, fireflies flickered and the moon looked like one in a nursery rhyme. life is busy, full of work and friends and people to hang with and things that need to get done. dancing, eating, sitting outside. in other news, i heard this song for the first time and am liking it.

where summer, cocktails, and john stamos arrive

where dirty dancing is done david lynch-style

the last david lynch movie i saw was blue velvet. i would watch this next if it were real.

where i show up on "eight forty-eight"

My latest piece on "Eight Forty-Eight" aired today. Thanks much to Jon and Mark who helped me out with the preliminary tech stuff and, of course, Bob for letting me profile him.

where a dude with a water molecule painted on his face surprises me

Jenny and I went to a show at Ball Hall the other day, biking down Kedzie and dodging a gazillion potholes along the way. Cute, hippy kids all living together; lots of pretty people I couldn't take my eyes off. Honestly, I thought it was going to be lame since music hasn't really been impressing me much, despite my renewed awe of life. That, and I needed to leave to work on a story. But this dude, Jordan O'Jordan, who strutted out in rolled up jeans, a plaid shirt, and a checkered vest, with banjo in hand and an H2O molecule painted on his face, Ziggy Stardust-style, made my night. Jenny bought a CD, which I burned to my mac since I couldn't buy one myself. Check him:

where bono unveils his elvis poem

Oh god.

I'll admit it: I used to listen to U2 as a kid. I used to listen to their songs without disdain when I was 10. I remember watching the "Where the Streets Have No Name" video on MTV and seeing the mobs of people clamoring to see Bono sing on top of a building. Things change. I don't have cable; I can't stand U2; I'm 27. Instead, I listen to urban hits in friends' cars and music that isn't crap at home.

where kristina scavenges a pasta dish from her fridge

Eggs can be kinda gross. At my favorite bar, The Whistler, just down the street from my cozy home, drinks with egg whites make appearances on the spring cocktail menu. I tried one once; I can't say I'll try one again (what I believed to be the egg smell completely overpowered what would otherwise have been a tasty drink).

Eggs aren't just for drinks and tasty eggs benedicts (recipe to come once I make it again and take a picture). When one doesn't want to make a red sauce or a white sauce for one's pasta, and when one is lazy and broke, an egg comes to the rescue. Add a bit of sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, gruyère cheese someone gave you, salt, pepper, and parsley, and you've got yourself a simple meal from stuff that was just sitting in your fridge.

Scavenged pasta of egg, gruyère, arugula, sun-dried tomato, and parsley

ingredients, serves one
Bucatini pasta, one serving, between the width of a quarter or a silver dollar depending on hunger level and type of pasta used
sun-dried tomatoes, packed in oil or rehydrated, however much you feel like adding (I love sun-dried tomatoes, so I put, like, 2.5 tablespoons, chopped up, in)
one egg
arugula, as much as you want
gruyère cheese, grated, maybe a bit less than a fourth of a cup
parsley, a gusto, if you need a measurement, a tablespoon chopped up
pepper as you like
salt

Boil water. Put some salt in it. Cook noodles. Note: you can use any pasta from your pantry, preferably noodles; bucatini pasta may seem fun to eat, but the hallow noodles are difficult to slurp into your mouth.

Meanwhile, scramble your egg, chop up your sun-dried tomatoes and parsley, and grate your cheese.

You'll have to work quickly when the noodles are done. Turn off heat, drain noodles, then return them to the pot. Stir in egg and half the cheese. (It sounds gross to stir in a raw egg, but the heat from the noodles cooks it and turns it into a semi-creamy sauce. When I lived in Barcelona, my Italian friend Stefano made a dish similar to this, sans gruyère and sun-dried tomatoes.) Grind as much pepper as you want over the pasta (the more the better, just not too much so that it's all you can taste). Add sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, and parsley. Top with the rest of the cheese. Eat. (You may find you need to put salt in; I don't like using a lot of salt in my recipes.)