day eighty-eight

funnest things first - i threw a little sushi dinner party this weekend (#60) and it went super well! i was sort of intimidated by having to provide sushi sustenance for some ten friends that came over that night, but really the most labor intensive part is preparing the ingredients (especially skinning the fresh salmon - tasty and worth it but ugggh). quick trips to uwajimaya (asian grocery superstore) and a fresh fish vendor in pike place gave us everything we needed: salmon, tuna, crab meat and tofu to be paired with carrot, cucumber, asparagus, avocado, sweet potato and cream cheese. oh and can't forget the nori (seaweed) and sticky rice that hold it all together. after a short tutorial, everyone took turns making their own rolls which we all happily picked at over a couple of hours.

my prettiest roll of the night

success!

we really should've gotten a picture when the sushi table looked prettier, before we had stuffed our faces and this is all that was left. i will most definitely be making more sushi at home - the fun and tastiness combined with the cost-effectiveness make it a must-do-more-than-just-once-for-your-list kind of thing.


i also watched the first of the twenty oscar-winning films i promised myself i would: "ordinary people" (#33). the movie came out thirty years ago and won awards for best screenplay, best supporting actor (timothy hutton - who i could've sworn carried the whole film, but oh well), best director (robert redford), and best picture. and wow, it was really good. it's the story of a family dealing with the drowning of a son and brother, and the three leads (donald sutherland as the father, mary tyler moore as the mother, and timothy hutton as the younger son) all deal with it, or not, in different and brilliantly portrayed ways. it may seem like a simple movie with no real, meaty plot guiding it, but the authenticity of the familial interactions and how ugly those relationships can get drew me in. and like i said before, damn, the acting.

fun fact: i keep stumbling upon stories that take place in familiar, umm, places. i had no idea ordinary people was set and filmed in my hometown of lake forest, illinois. it struck a number of chords in that respect - the surroundings, of course, but the characters even moreso hit really close to home. the film really captures what it can mean to live in an upscale suburb where image is everything and any messy realness is carefully hidden not just from neighbors but sometimes also from family.

and finally, in postcrossing news (#92), i've recently received cards from portugal, finland and australia. getting them is the perfect reminder that i need to keep sending them out, and so i did - three more to russia, austria and alabama.