May in Photos

I haven’t written because I’ve been pretty busy over summer vacation. From sun-up to sun-down every day, there’s actually been very little time for “navel-gazing.” I haven’t even journaled as much by hand as I normally do on a school-year week.

I’ve been returning to my dream and practicing Korean for 1 hour per weekday. At this point, after 5 days (5 hours) of practice, I am not anywhere near where I left off in my Korean studies. I took my last Korean class in 2017, which is 6 years ago. In a sense, it seems like yesterday because most of what I’ve done since was taking classes at UTA, followed by a year of working. Korean classes were the last thing I did that stimulated me deeply, so that the years since then seem like an endless exercise of trying to catch up so that I could get back to my Korean language studies.

Well, I finally did. The very first week of summer. Today, I ordered the workbook to go with my Intermediate 1 textbook. I filled up the old workbook with my homework, didn’t keep the submitted, graded pages, and would prefer to have a fresh one. They aren’t that expensive.

Other books I’m waiting on are Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi and volume 4 of Lee Vin’s manhwa One. I’ve been wanting to read Naomi since I researched it for the Japanese modern vampire section of my dissertation. I find in retrospect that grad school has left me with a continuing interest in Japanese modernism that I want to keep pursuing.

One was a little slow for me at first, but it’s grown steadily more interesting. It’s a fascinating look at the Korean Wave pop music world, and it’s amazing the manhwa was written decades ago. I had to get over the fact that it has nothing in common with Crazy Love Story plot-wise and has none of the visual appeal, despite being written by the same manhwa artist.

Home Cooking

One of my summer goals has been to cook as many recipes as possible from Tea Time magazine. Since it’s my intention to cook from scratch as much as possible over the summer, I’ve also been cooking non-Tea Time recipes as well, though I don’t have any special goals related to those recipes.

Although I have subscribed to Tea Time off and on for years, I never tried a single recipe from the magazine prior to this summer. I always dreamed of making those recipes, which often include ingredients I’ll have to special-order, and are much too time-consuming to be practical for a normal weekend. As of now, I’m proud to say I’ve cooked four recipes from Tea Time: Herbes de Provence Sables, Everything Bagel Scones, Orange Crepe Cake with Orange Vanilla Crème Chantilly, and Mixed Berry and Thyme Scones.

I systematically went through all my issues of Tea Time and listed the recipes I want to try. I listed a total of 70. To my calculation, there’s no way I’ll be able to try all of those this summer. However, if I keep at the rate I’m going now, I will have tried quite a few by the end of summer.

My first from-scratch meal for summer break: Ye’misser Wot (spicy lentils) and Garlic Jojos (potatoes) from Kittee Berns’ *Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking*. Even as I opened the cookbook to check the names for this post, I touched pages gritty with flour and stained with spattered ingredients. This is the most-used and most-loved cookbook I’ve ever had.

My first *Tea Time* recipe: Herbes de Provence Sables. I would definitely make these again.

I forgot to take a photo of my Everything Bagel Scones. They were the tastiest thing I’ve made so far from my Tea Time challenge, however. They rose beautifully, and the Everything Bagel topping made them look so professional.

My Orange Crepe Cake with Orange Vanilla Crème Chantilly. I was really nervous about making crepes. This was one of the kinds of experiences I had hoped to have with *Tea Time*: stepping outside of my comfort zone and discovering I could make something that had previously intimidated me. I have wanted to make crepes ever since watching one of our friends make crepes with a fancy crepe-maker, probably 20 years ago. I’ve never been able to get a fancy crepe-maker because of our bird and the crepe-makers always being non-stick. However, I made these crepes in my old-fashioned frying pan, and it was incredibly easy. I won’t hesitate to make crepes now. This product might be on par with the Everything Bagel Scones. It’s definitely runner-up. It’s not much to look at but genuinely slices up and tastes like a fancy French dessert.

Mixed Berry and Thyme Scones. These weren’t a failure, but they were definitely one of the less inspiring dishes. The scones barely rose at all. I made them up the day before and refrigerated the raw scones, then put them in the oven the next morning. I don’t know if that’s what kept them from rising or what. I also forgot to brush them with cream and sprinkle them with sugar. All-around, they were kind of sad.

Restaurant Outings

We went to an amazing, relatively new place earlier this month in the Magnolia district, called the Radler Biergarten. It absolutely rocked. I had so much fun walking around the district afterward. I’ve seen this fire escape, I believe on the side of where Melt is located, many times, and probably photographed it many times before.

Flowers I photographed on our walk back to the car, through a residential area in the Magnolia district.

This sign was my first impression of Sikhay. I knew I was going to love it when I saw this sign, and I jumped out of the car to photograph it before we went inside.

Nathan has tried to get me to go to Sikhay for a while. It must have been a miscommunication, but I thought it was one of those fancy Asian fusion places downtown, so I always edged away from it. Finally, he reassured me that it was precisely “my” kind of place, and he was completely right. I was so excited to go inside.

This is the Khao Piek Sen, the thick rice noodle soup, and the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.

This last weekend we went to La Niña. Always a pleasure.

The cheese enchiladas with red sauce did not disappoint. This restaurant never disappoints. There’s no party atmosphere here, and no margaritas, but the food is quite simply the best, so it’s a good place to go when I can live without the other elements.

Dolls

One of my tasks has been to figure out what I am doing with my doll collection. Taking these Barbie photos was a great start, actually. I had bought a cheap lot of vintage Barbie clothes off eBay, laundered them, and tried them on some dolls. I discovered that there were two dolls I didn’t really like, which launched my listing more dolls on eBay and doing some more thinking about what I want with my collection.

Sun Lovin’ Malibu Barbie, 1979. In the recent clothing lot, I got her swimsuit, which was my main reason for bidding on the lot. I’m so excited to have her original swimsuit. The beach towel is for Sun Gold Malibu Barbie.

This pantsuit looked perfect for 1984 Heart Family Mom.

I also bought two dolls: a Flower Princess Prima Ballerina Leeanna and a Flower Prince Leslie, 11.5” fashion dolls akin to Barbie. Leslie is still NIB, while Leeanna is being de-frizzed.

Trying to fix Leeanna’s hair has been a real time-sink. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go forward with the Flower Princess line after all, since the hair may not be possible to fix, and I don’t want to collect only NIB dolls.

I’ve been fantasizing about beginning to collect this line for years. I had many Flower Princess dolls, including these two, as a child. As it turns out, this line has the most difficult hair to try to tame of seemingly any doll, anywhere, according to my hours of research. I’m letting her sit until after we get back from vacation with hair soaked in conditioner. I will probably repeat the procedure at least a couple of times. I feel like it’s getting better with my repeated efforts but don’t know if I’m going to be able to truly de-frizz it.

I also discovered that when I take Leeanna outside, her hair turns to vivid purple and pink shades. It’s dazzling. But even sunlight shining through a window doesn’t bring about the same effect. It’s very interesting. I’d love to be able to keep her and photograph her. I had hoped to start a line with her and Leslie, since they’re the “yellow” color-themed dolls and are kind of a couple, according to his box. I had hoped to do some fantasy-, wedding-, and flower-themed plastic canvas projects and sewing for them. We’ll see.

I decided to sell Pretty Changes Barbie and sell/donate my Betty Teen Tong. Pretty Changes has a bid on her. I took down Betty Teen’s auction because I wanted to experiment on her hair. As it turns out, her hair is quite different from Leeanna’s, so it might be fruitless to continue. I did tame her frizz but don’t know if I want to invest any further effort in her if I don’t intend to keep her, especially since my efforts are leaving plastic deposits on my straightening iron.

I’m also planning to list some BJD stuff and probably some BJD’s on eBay. I think I may have reached my limit on BJD’s for the foreseeable future unless factors involving shipping costs, postal success rates, or face-up artist talent within this country improve drastically. I’m strongly considering selling the ones in dire need of face-ups that I’m not over the moon about, as well as one other that was meant to donate a body to one of the ones I’m strongly considering selling. That would leave me with the tiny total of 11(!) BJD’s. Still a lot. And some of the keepers will need new face-ups, sooner or later, though I’m going to hold off on that as long as I can. I still hope to acquire a Tender Too. It seems to have worked before: selling before and “making room,” then finding my Dollmore Calvin so miraculously.

I’m still hankering after a Tonner Breathless. Either the Nu Mood Breathless or the Simply Breathless. Both are quite expensive, much more than they were originally. They tempt me because they wouldn’t require MSC, Magic Eraser, caution with sunlight, or new face-ups, not now, not ever.

I just don’t think I can deal with such stressful dolls as BJD’s going forward. I will continue to keep and maintain the ones that inspire me, but I do feel the urge to thin down my collection and cap it with Tender Too as my final old-school BJD quest. It will cost a ton in face-ups and MSC to maintain these 11 (or maybe 12) for the rest of my days! Things I didn’t know in my 20’s or even 30’s.