http://www.whyilovevermont.com Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:33:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/self/music http://www.whyilovevermont.com/self/music#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:30:01 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1929

Wow. It’s been forever since I last posted here. It’s been a long, hard winter, baby. Dark. Cold. Boring. I don’t remember having such a lackluster winter in a long time. But spring is springing. Clocks have been set ahead an hour. The temperatures were downright balmy over the last two weeks. Slowly taciturn, little Vermonters are creeping out of their dens, exposing their pasty white skin to the daylight. Things are looking up. One thing that’s been making a huge difference for me is that I’ve started seeking out and downloading new music again. Familiar music makes me feel braindead and depressed. When I listen to new music I can feel my brain expanding and growing new cells. New music works to elevate my mood and makes me feel smarter. Odd? I don’t know. But it really works for me. Have started my own music station on Blip FM. Am loving it. Check it out here. So many great new songs. Le Corps Mince de Françoise (pictured left) is one of the bands I’ve been listening to. They hail from Helsinki in Finland and have a clean, off-beat sound like orange snow.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/self/music/feed 0 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/food/gelateria-del-teatro http://www.whyilovevermont.com/food/gelateria-del-teatro#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:45:38 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1920

On my last trip to Rome I made it my mission to find the best gelato. I walked around the city visiting all the top-rated gelaterias and many of the not-top-rated ones. In the process I ate lots and lots of gelato. Gelateria del Teatro, located in a hard-to-find alley near the Piazza Navona, was my favorite gelateria. Everything was made in the shop. The flavors were intense and refined. Its not as commercial as the popular Giolitti (which is very very good, but a complete scene and the servers are overworked and rude), and not as sterile and insipid as San Crispino which is a bit of an institution in Rome. Definitely try Gelateria del Teatro and Giolitti if you are ever there. For those of you who are curious, gelato is actually not the same as ice cream. Gelato is made with a greater proportion of whole milk to cream, so it contains about five to seven percent fat vs. ice cream’s 10%+. Additionally, gelato is churned at a slower speed, so it’s denser because not as much air is whipped into it. While ice cream is served frozen, gelato is typically stored and served at a slightly warmer temperature, so it has a softer consistency. Finally, gelato comes in much more interesting flavors like nutella, baccio, stracciatella, cream, pistachio, coconut, zabaglione. Yum.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/food/gelateria-del-teatro/feed 4 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/photos/heck-yeah-nerdy-men http://www.whyilovevermont.com/photos/heck-yeah-nerdy-men#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:44:59 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1910

Stumbled upon this blog unexpectedly when I was searching for a photo of Colin Firth in “A Single Man” (which is a frickin beautiful movie, by the way). “Heck Yeah Nerdy Men” may not have the sharpest graphics, but what a fun idea for a blog. I’ve only surfed through a few of its pages and don’t necessarily agree with all the author’s (Kristin’s) choices (Steve Carell is annoying, not sexy. And where is Jason Schwartzman and Jon Stewart?..) but by and large I’m a fan and am in full agreement with Kristin regarding Jim Parsons, John Krasinski, Jason Segel, Zachary Quinto, Lee Pace, Joel McHale, etc… I’m adding a new nerd to the mix… French actor Gaspard Ulliel.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/photos/heck-yeah-nerdy-men/feed 0 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/emily-garrett-yoga http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/emily-garrett-yoga#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:13:29 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1899

Lately I’ve been distracted by all the things I dislike about Vermont and not focusing on the positives. Good and even great things do exist here. Take Emily Garrett Yoga, for example. I’ve been practicing yoga with Emily off and on since 2006 and consider it one of the nicest things I do for myself. Emily is certified in both Kripalu and Vajra Yoga. She is currently on maternity leave, but offers both individual and group classes, privately and at local yoga studios such as Yoga Vermont in Burlington and Winooski. If you can, go and check out one of her classes.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/emily-garrett-yoga/feed 0 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/nutella http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/nutella#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:17:54 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1892

I was just an empty shell, a body walking around without a soul, until I found Nutella. It’s ambrosia; the perfect snack. Nutritious (kinda) and delicious. The fact that Nutella is not the most popular sweet treat in the United States or probably even in the top 50 is an indication that something is very wrong with this country. In Europe kids eat it for breakfast, women take baths in it and lovers smear it all over each other. The guy to the left is clearly European.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/joy/nutella/feed 1 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/international/tintin-snowy-herge http://www.whyilovevermont.com/international/tintin-snowy-herge#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:21:02 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1872

J’aime Tintin.

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Diego Gravinese was born in La Plata, Argentina and currently lives in Buenos Aires, a place I was going to visit a few weeks ago. Buenos Aires is beautiful. So are Diego’s photo-realistic oil paintings. Check them out here.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/self/diego-gravinese/feed 0 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/whimsy/josh-finkle-wooden-creations http://www.whyilovevermont.com/whimsy/josh-finkle-wooden-creations#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:06:43 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1827

Josh Finkle makes handcrafted wooden toys, tables, chess pieces and hooks to hang things on. I like these toys based on recently extinct animals. They sure have lots of attitude.

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Captures the imagination more than energy efficiency research does at the moment.

]]> http://www.whyilovevermont.com/photos/francais-kiss/feed 2 http://www.whyilovevermont.com/sci-fi-fantasy/the-big-bang-theory http://www.whyilovevermont.com/sci-fi-fantasy/the-big-bang-theory#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:55:09 +0000 admin http://www.whyilovevermont.com/?p=1808

If I hadn’t been stuck on a long plane ride with nothing else to watch, I would never have given “The Big Bang Theory” a chance. Reason being, CBS does a very good job of making the show look painfully bad in promotional commercials. The premise of the show: two nerdy physicists share an apartment and an unlikely friendship with their “beautiful” neighbor with whom one of them is infatuated. There is a laugh track. The nerds are over-the-top, unrealistically nerdy. The neighbor is a blonde bimbo-looking waitress. Having watched the promos, there was nothing about the show that appealed to me (and I like sci-fi and geeky things). Yet despite the poor marketing, the show is laugh-out-loud, refreshingly funny. No matter how you spin it, it’s hard to do “The Big Bang Theory” justice, so I won’t even try. But it’s one of the only shows on big network television, other than “LOST” and “30 Rock”, that I enjoy. **A few days later… Watched an episode on TV last night and I liked it well enough, but the laugh track is super annoying.**

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