Pink of Perfection Project: April

You may have taken the opportunity to explore the links I have listed over on the right there... I hope you have, and I hope you have gotten to spend some time with the gem that is Pink of Perfection, written by my college friend Sarah. It's full of delightful ideas and musings on food, creativity, and life's small pleasures. Beginning this April she challenged her readers to complete and share a monthly project. This month: Take Yourself Out On A Date. Last Tuesday was gorgeous and I had my morning free, so I grabbed Ben's little camera and took myself out to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Chicago.

I thought hard about what to wear on my date. As it was an unseasonably warm spring morning, I was excited to bust out my standard summer uniform of a favorite tank top, rolled up jeans and sneakers. I was going to just throw on my clothes and head out the door, but I knew I wouldn't feel date-worthy with unshaven legs. Many people scoff at me when I talk about dealing with my basically invisible leg hair (not to mention the eyebrow wax I spent money on a few weeks ago), and I'm lucky to not have to deal with it that often, but sometimes taking a little time to make yourself feel smooth and put together is worth it. It felt fairly indulgent and seemed like a good way to make sure this was a date and not just a lazy morning.



Ahh, nice and pasty. Sometimes I wish I could cultivate a Victorian skin tone, porcelain white and well pampered. Although the idea of carrying a parasol has its points, I always remember that ultimately I'm not too big on gracefulness and am a lot happier knocking around carelessly. So my scalp gets burned, my face gets ruddy, my body gets sweaty, my clothes refuse to look new for more than one day. Thus, many of my favorite looks are a little ripped up, and I was going for kind of a bike messenger enjoying her city. It's a look I feel good in.

Observe-- springtime for Lindsay and Chicago:



I am extremely proud of my bikey musculature in this picture, and also of the scar left by the teeth of a gear ring. Yess!!



Speaking of extremely proud, this is Roxy, my new bike. She's a babe. I rode her down Milwaukee Avenue to Chicago Avenue, which I took almost all the way down to the lake before locking her up outside the MCA. I saw some neat exhibits-- Gordon Matta-Clark's holes cut in buildings, Karen Kilimnik's Pink Panther stuffed animals having a picnic in Antarctica, high school bathroom murals. I observed and was irritated by some other patrons and their loud know-it-all voices. I hoped I looked artsy and cool like other young people I eyed. You're not allowed to take pictures of stuff there, but I snuck one in the rest room:



Ooh, I'm like, so hip and unaffected. Yeah I'm probably an art student. I browsed the gift shop. I took my time. It was fun.

No date is complete without a little something tasty, so I stopped at Lovely on my way home. It is my most favorite coffee shop. If Sarah from Pink of Perfection came to visit it is the first place I would take her.



They're not actually so blurry there. Apart from the comfortable atmosphere, good music I've never heard, friendly staff, and excellent reading material, they also have yummy food. I got a fancy little tuna sandwich.



***UPDATE*** Upon remembering this part of the date, I can't believe I ever forgot about it: After my sandwich I bought a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. They served it on a tiny plate. I forgot to take a picture of it because I was so eager to have a taste. It was beautiful, soft, chewy, and balanced the peanut butter and chocolate just so. Rest assured, it was the perfect offering to my sweet tooth.

And I also decided to buy my date (me) a little present. I had a new hat that needed some decoration:



That was my date. It was cheap and felt special. It reminded me of the Artist Dates from when I was doing the Artist's Way, which I remembered fondly as time to reconnect with myself. Thanks for the suggestion, POP Projects!

I <3 Wisconsin

I've spent the past two weekends in WI and felt the deep love of my home state good and strong. Weekend number one was in Tosa and weekend number two in Madison.

#1 - "Superstar Family": Home-cooked dinner (by Mom), Wizard of Oz at the high school (featuring Julia, Leslie, Bradley, Ryan), Nessun Dorma and Pizza Shuttle (with Ben and Jesse), American Tail, home-cooked dinner (by Ben, with Chandlers + Keith), Chorister Concert (with Grandma and Grandpa, featuring Chris and Jim and Katie), Jazz Estate (with Katie, Becky, and Tosa Easters, featuring Mr. Owens), home movies (featuring obnoxious Me and my much cuter siblings). Weekend rating: twenty-five stars.

#2 - "Sunshine of Your Love": Home-cooked dinner (by Chris), shuffleboard and beers at the Brass Ring, amazing drunk pizza at Leo's Ian's, brunch at Marigold (with Jana), farmer's market, swings, lakes, campus, pitcher on the Terrace, Chocolate Shop ice cream x3, guitar hero, cookout at Chris's, coffee, tiki bar, biking, undergrad party (featuring 3 Geisthardts), wine on the porch, brunch at Sophia's (with Aaron and Sarah), college bike race around the capitol (featuring Gina K), porch in the woods at Carolyn and Dan's house, coffee with Debbie and a Natty Nation shoutout, picnic on the way home. It was forecasted to rain all weekend, and instead the weather was as perfect as could be. Weekend rating: tight calves, pink skin, mild dehydration, exhausted grins.


Good times. And then coming back to Chicago, which although dirtier and noisier and cementier, is happily my home sweet home.

Should have made more coffee

I was maybe going to start teaching a class with this new kids' play place in 90 minutes, but I just called them to find out that they decided not to start until next week. I feel a little wary... I mean I guess it can't hurt to teach one class a week, and make some extra money, but I'm definitely turned off their disorganization. Like, having SMB flashbacks. I'm so glad to be part of a well-established awesome organization. Sigh.

In other news, what is the deal, Home Depot on North Avenue?? How can you ALWAYS be out of whatever it is that I go there to buy? Hardware stores are so easy to love and I am beginning to hate them after every time I need to pick something up I go to my local place, which doesn't have what I need, and then another one, which is usually closed, and then to Home Depot, where I have a terrible experience getting helped by no one and scouring the enormous aisles for what I finally figure out they do not have. Whatever; by hookhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif or by crook, Roxanne has new yellow fenders securely attached.

Spring, thanks for showing up! Ben and I spent all day Sunday working on our bikes, getting them spiffy clean and tuned up. Adeline sat in the open window and meowed, and meowed, and meowed, and meowed! I wished that five-year-old Julia was there to sing the "You're Not Going Outside" song. Although I think her upset was less caused by the desire to go outside and more by the fact that she could see us but there was an impenetrable screen between us. She is such a people cat. She calmed down once we were back in the same room together.

Damn. I really want to make a totally indulgent website with one million pictures of Adeline, but I don't think Ben will let me, and the photos are on his camera. He is working with me on not becoming a crazy cat lady. So far the most crazy cat lady-like thing I do is obsessively watch Cute With Chris. But really that's less about the cats and more about Chris.

Sometimes people read this

Surprise, surprise. Someone was talking to me about "reading my blog," and I thought, "Wow! Maybe I should write things." I'm due for my semi-weekly update.

I've been busy. I realized lately, as I was saying yes to several opportunities that would conveniently slot into my free chunks of time, that I like to have things to do all the time. I only need a couple hours of sit-at-home-time a week. Not everyone is like this, which I have to remember when, say, family members come to visit. I'll never forget the time my family came to visit and I dragged them all over the city to show them all the funnest, most exciting things I could think of, only to have Julia sadly remark at the end of the day that we never got a chance to just hang out in my house.

What I really like to do when I have free time to myself is what I did yesterday morning. I woke up and managed to get a load of laundry in (why it is so difficult to make this happen I'll never know). Then I biked over to Lovely, my most favoritest coffee shop, where I finished my book and got into new music they were playing and found a fabulous book about Chicago and spots around neighborhood as described by kids: A Sunday Afternoon Hotdog Meal. Check out some snippets here. I love this book. THEN, I went to Tomoko's yoga class which I love. And THEN I biked to Rapid Transit to get a new seatpost, but they didn't have it, so they called the guys at Boulevard Bikes, and so I biked up there, and all the bikey guys I dealt with were really nice and I felt all cool, and with a new longer seatpost my NEW BIKE is totally awesomagical. Then I went to work, and it was fun.

Yeah dudes. I got another bike. It's a little old Schwinn Sprint, converted to a single gear. It is red and spunky, and will be my icky weather/lock-up-outside-a-bar bike. I named it Roxanne. I also named my good bike: Lucy.

Anyway, I had this nice Tuesday morning to myself, which was especially nice since I will supposedly be working for these people on Tuesday mornings starting next week. They're just starting up and we'll see if the music classes are gonna run, but it will be interesting to start something new.

Lotsa stuff happened since last I wrote: Magnetic Fields at OTS, Ben's fantasy baseball draft and corresponding influx of friends to Chicago, dinner at Feed with Mike and Ben, women's short film festival with Dan and Natasha, scary bike rides through drunken hordes on St. Patrick's weekend, Haley Bonar/Coat concert at Schuba's, birthdays and music making with Tom the banjo player, my 26th birthday (miracle no-wait brunch at M. Henry, drive to Tosa, Weinbrrg family silliness, Mom's tasty dinner), Easter in Tosa and Madison, dentist appointments, Meara's birthday at Tuman's, many 1st and 2nd year old professional birthday parties, dinner with Taavo and Meredith at Cozy Noodle, broken and fixed ignition on car, excellent birthday gathering at the Hungry Brain, hungover brunch with Taavo Meredith Meara and Alan, a Baba Man0uche gig at Northeastern, and much continued cuteness from Adeline.

It's been a festive, busy time. And the sun is out! I'm gonna walk to the bank.