The Schelle 100

Inspired this evening by my favorite issue of Saveur "The Saveur 100: Our favorite foods, restaurants, drinks, people, places and things" (issue number 99 February 2007,) I've decided to compile my own 100 list. Perhaps a hackneyed blogging device, but heck, sounds like fun and so that's enough for me. I doubt I'll be able to list 100 things, though I am positive I have them. So perhaps this will be a work in progress. And these are in no particular order, but since I thought of this idea while taking a shower, the first things on the list are kind of on that cleanliness theme.

The Schelle 100:
1. Dr. Bronner's All-One Hemp Lemon Pure-Castile Soap. Maybe makes my skin a little too dry, but if not this soap (which smells like lemon chiffon) then perhaps french lemon verbena soap.
2. Jason Nutrismile Orange, cinnamon & mint All-Natural Ester-C CoQ10 Tooth Gel. You have to trust me on this one, makes brushing my teeth kind of enjoyable.
3. Vitamins from NewChapter Organics. These vitamins just make me feel good from start to finish. Can't explain it, but they've ruined me for other vitamins. And they are too damn expensive, but worth it.
4. Bumble and Bumble Curl Conscious Curl Creme - makes my hair a thing of wonder.
5. Pantene Relaxed and Natural Conditioner. Same as above, the two working together, I can actually wear my hair down, as long as the cut is good. Life-changing! (I think it works because it actually has jajoba and coconut oil in it.)
6. Saveur magazine. I look forward to this magazine each month. Cool design, nice layout, interesting articles. Oh yeah, and the recipes are good too.
7. The Best American ..... series of books. They come out each year and they have the best articles, stories, etc., compiled from the year. My favorites are The Best American Science Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and the Best American Essays. Yay for good articles that broaden my mind, are interesting, little gems of inspiration and education.
8. Ridiculously unrealistic romance novels by Mary Balogh, Catherine Anderson, Lavyrle Spencer, Pamela Morsi, Judith Ivory and Betty Neels.
9. Jane Austen and the BBC and others for bringing her books to life. Thank God for Sense and Sensibility or I would never have been able to laugh about last year with those moments of recognition and humor.
10. The entire Liaden Universe series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.
11. Kick-ass women in Elisabeth Moon's books.
12. My new Frieling French stainless steel plunge pot coffee maker my parent's gave me for christmas. http://www.peets.com/shop/essentials_detail.asp?id=1157&cid=1000079 Along with number 13, morning coffee is pretty damn sublime. So gorgeous, and so well made. There was obviously tons of thought that went into designing this pot, the metal plunger fits perfectly in the pot, the steel is thick and sturdy, kind of like a modern day craftsman item, each part designed perfectly for the job it was meant to do. The sugar spoon is just the right weight, curves elegantly and the notch in the sugar container allows the lid to stay on tight with the spoon left in. I'm perfectly serious. I think I'd better buy another one just to make sure that I have one if something bad happens to it (falls on our tiled kitchen floor and gets a dent or something.)
13. My new Capresso Infinity Conical Burr coffee grinder.
14. Peets http://www.peets.com/ Especially the Pacific coffees: Sumatra, aged Sumatra and Sulawesi Kalosi.
15. My imac G5 - especially the all-in-oneness of it all. How cool is the side loading disk slot?
16. My Mac Powerbook. Design, design, design. The care that goes into apple products - what Disney once had in the quality and consistency of the theme park experience, but no longer. Maybe Jobs will improve that.
17. My ipod, ditto from above apple products.
18. My insanely expensive (but worth it). E4c sound isolating Shure earphones with foam sleeves
19. Sweet peas (the flowers, definitely not the food version of peas - blech.)
20. Writing by Catherine Newman, Waiting for Birdy, and her articles: http://benandbirdy.blogspot.com/ (I'm not usually the jealous type, but I want a husband like she has. Okay, he doesn't have to be a husband, but a guy like that in my life. Though if she didn't write about him, I doubt I'd believe such a man existed on the planet.)
21. More laugh-out-loud writing, this time by Alexa at Flotsam
22. Vitry Tweezers
23. My new canon PowerShot A540. I'm actually taking pictures again. However, I have not sucessfully integrated flikr in my life, so it is not life 2.0-like yet.
24. The Michigan Marching Band - It's great to be a Michigan Wolverine! Dad used to wake us up on Game day in Japan when the Armed Forces Radio Network would broadcast a game, and Blast the band record as loudly as he could to get us all in the mood. The band is probably responsible for more choked up alums on game days than they could imagine....
25. Waterman fountain pens with blue ink.
26. New Yorker cartoons
27. The Daily Show
28. The cats in my life present and past.
29. Birkenstocks
30. FLAX clothing
31. My 500 count cotton sheets made in India - they are like silk.
32. Shakespeare
33. Zingermans www.zingermans.com
34. Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan
35. The coolness of most librarians
36. Huge fluffy cotton towels
37. Dangly earrings
38. Saturday and Sunday mornings, with coffee, a good book and the
day ahead of me.
39. Walking on a beach.
40. Real maple syrup.
41. Breakfast at Jim's when I am in the mood for the pork verde omlette with rice and a walnut waffle with real maple syrup (Con: I have to bring the syrup in myself.)
42. Rapadura sugar
43. Whole wheat scones made by Sconehenge.
44. Bob's Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal millstone ground. Soak in milk and water overnight and cooks up in minutes the next morning. serve with a knob of butter, maple syrup, sea salt and more milk. Like pudding. www.bobsredmill.com
45. Giusto's Specialty Foods Organic Whole Wheat Pastry Flour.www.giustos.com
46. Berkeley Bowl.
47. Trader Joe's Organic Creamy Peanut Butter. I always stir in a little molasses, tastes like Jiff but without the trans-fat and its organic!
48. Tapioca
49. Picholine olives
50. Chocolate cherry bread toasted, with butter (Zingerman's Mail order!)
51. Straussberg Organic European style butter
52. Organic milk from Clover Stornetta Farms They have the best advertising, ever. Their milk is yummy and the cows look pretty darn happy, they should, they live in wine-country. Check out the historical billboards
53. Stephen Sondheim
54. Timbuk2 bags http://www.timbuk2.com/tb2/retail/catalog.htm
55. Chez Panisse I've only been there once, but it is my kind of place. (Number 55 will be the stand-in for any really good food, served well in a place with a wonderful atmosphere and excellent service.)
56. Midwifery Today http://www.midwiferytoday.com/
57. Fuyu Persimmons
58. Sheep Idiazabal smoked raw milk mitica cheese
59. Caramels made from milk, sugar and salt. No corn syrup, ever.
60. Pilot Hitec 4.0 and 5.0 pens in a rainbow of colors
61. Levenger http://www.levenger.com
62. The smell of Eucalyptus trees
63. Sara McLachlan's "I love you" and "Do What You Have to Do" from her Mirrorball album. My theme songs for last year.
64. My 1998 Camry V6 luxury edition. Best car ever.
65. Salon.com - The daily downloads, Cary Tennis, Ask the Pilot, and the Broadsheet.
66. The San Francisco International Film Festival
67. Indian food in general and the best Indian food blog in existence: Mahanandi:http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/
68. Watching hockey, baseball, or football live, with a team I care about. (infrequent, but I do love the wildness and fast pace of hockey, the slowness and scoring a game for baseball, and paying attention to the march up and down the field in football. However, everything in moderation. I did run the yard marker flags for my brother's football team when we were growing up, so I do know a little about the game....)
69. Calistoga Sparkling Water. (I stopped drinking regular sodas, fruit juices, and other sweet drinks about 7 years ago, and only drink coffees, teas, water and milk these days. I wish I could say that I have lost a lot of weight as a result, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way. Must be because of my weakness for good butter and good food.)
70. Cherries
71. Emily Dickenson
72. Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. I think I like the first and second edition best. Raised my consciousness when I was a very young girl.
73. The renovated street cars that run up and down Market Street in San Francisco. In particular, I love the orange ones from Milan. They make me very happy when I see and hear them.
74. The Dave Brubeck Take 5 Album
75. The sound of the Oboe
76. Biographies by Claire Tomalin. Especially the one about Jane Austen, and Samuel Pepys.
77. The diaries of Samuel Pepys - especially this incarnation, what the Web is all about in a nutshell: http://www.pepysdiary.com
78. DailyKos and Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall. Both have made me feel less alone during some pretty dark days, and keep me relatively current on politics and current affairs.
79. Jigsaw puzzles (but only if they have really really fun and colorful pictures that can sustain hours of frustrated puzzling.)
80. Standard (shift) cars
81. Painting pottery
82. Pastels & creating art with Pastels. (It has been a while since I've done that, but I loved it. Time to restart!)
83. Writing in the sand on the beach and making life changing decisions (that I sometimes subsequently implement) while walking along the water and listening to the surf. Something about walking on the beach makes me very introspective and deep.
84. Being a Scorpio and all that seems to entail
85. Using tarot cards as a kind of self-learning therapy tool (See number 84, above.)
86. Turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, and our fabulous buttery parsley laden stuffing.
87. plummy, fruity, smooth, red wine
88. "Stolen plum Jam" I made this jam in 2003 using fruit from a rental neighbors backyard that abutted our house. The tree died after it fruited that year and it broke my heart. I don't think I'll taste plum jam that good ever again. Just one of those things.
89. The garden behind the Rock Creek Park Old Stone House in Georgetown, Washington, DC http://www.nps.gov/archive/rocr/olst/history.htm - The English style garden was a slice of heaven on earth and I used to spend lunch breaks there in the summers when I used to work in DC.
90. Breakfast at Cafe Kevah at Napenthe in Big Sur
91. Point Lobos http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us/ Absolutely is the most beautiful place on earth.
92. Museums of all kinds, especially the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan in NY, the National Portrait Gallery, and all the Japanese museums I visited when I was a child living in Japan.
93. Advil. Thank God for pain relief. However, the possibility that they will find out about some new nasty side effects tempers the joy.
94. The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate bridge. Fast track to get through the tolls quickly!
95. PASTE magazine CDs. http://www.pastemagazine.com/
96. Alice in Wonderland, the Oxford annotated edition
97. Knitting with wonderful yarn on my Addi turbo circular needles
98. Candice Olsen & Divine Design http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/shows_hdivd
99. Dim Sum
100. My friends and family - you know who you are.

lame-o blogger

Oh I am so very lame. However, my lameness means that I have ever so many posts to catch up on, no?

So expect to hear about my lovely, yet bitter (I admit it right up front) Pasadena Rosebowl trip, the President Ford and WebINK (is the archive of the issue still available somewhere?) / Japan / Schelle connection, and more....

(Hail to the Victors Valiant, anyway!) I'm pretty sick of the clomping hooves sound that USC band made (ad nauseum) and I'm gonna tell my very good friend who happens to be a USC Alum, that the USC Band is a bit repetitive - they need to get creative with the thematic elements of the whole Trojan horsie bit.

Back at work, happy new year.

This is the year of No Verbalized Resolutions (NVR) but untold numbers of unconscious wishes, dreams and plans (uwdp) ... Because, if you don't call them resolutions, and don't consciously think about them at New Year, (and do not capitalize them) you may not crash and burn later, when all resolutions are but a sheepish memory. A theory anyway - we shall see. You will be the witness.