If I Only Had A Blog

School days

2009-09-01T09:17:00.002-05:00

Classes started up again at the Old Town Skyewl yesterday. I've got my hands full. Getting some private lessons rolling as well. I'm both excited to go back, and overwhelmed, and sad, and expectant. So pretty much the same as every first day of school, but I think I have more extracurricular stuff on my plate this year. Although I suppose that has always been the case for me. Classes went well yesterday but when I got home I was BEAT! I'm pretty glad that I still get to take it easy on Tuesday mornings, and then go to yoga and get my ass kicked by Tomoko. She is the best and the toughest!

The end of my brief vacation from teaching was good, and despite best intentions to be healthy involved a fair amount of (awesome) eating and drinking. From a gift certificate dinner in Little Italy to Moacir's extravagant going away party in the suburbs and the tail end of Molly's going away party, from random dinner with Julie B in our backyard to playing a solo set at a new bar for Jeremy's fundraiser, from a pancake-flight brunch will Molly at Orange to giant Kuma burgers and wine and performances enjoyed at Second Story, from all-day coffee at Lovely to Chinatown Chandler cousin dinner washed down by the Handlebar and the Hideout, from brunch at Feed to Manan's goat-roast goodbye party and Joe's nice-cream cake rooftop birthday party, from desayuno at Taco Veloz with Abbey to a Two Brothers pairing 6-course dinner at Simone's for Moacir...

Holy shit! I guess it was even awesomer than I realized!

I know some people like to spend their money on clothes that aren't falling apart and cars that have all 4 headlights, but I prefer to consume mine.

This poem is called "Cold Feet"

2009-08-21T12:19:00.019-05:00

It was fall when I woke up this morning
and I nearly cried
watering the flowers' final sparse and sleepy blooms

By the time I stood in corduroys
tasting a bite of turkey
with two hands around my coffee mug

I was ready
for the wind

------

I haven't written a poem in ages but I woke up with one. Also, a stranger randomly commented on my Hideout Block Party post from September 25 of last year, which is now an auspicious date... How much happens in a year! I reread my few posts since then and it made me want to post something.

The poem is about the way Midwestern weather teaches you to adjust. I love the seasons and I always change my mind about which one is my favorite, ready for each one as it comes and sad to see it go (okay, maybe not winter). Summer had me fooled this year though. I love summer more than ever. I love it. And I was dreading its end. In about 15 minutes this morning, I suddenly flipped from feeling heartbroken about the end of summer to excited and looking ahead with that crisp back-to-school energy. I forgot so much about fall until today: fabrics and sweaters and warm things to eat and drink and tights and the light and the energy of cool breezes. I also remembered how I always am so in love with Ben in the fall. That was part of the reason we wanted to have the wedding in September. I was distracted by biking in shorts and walking to the gelato place and concerts outside and the blissful ignorance of living in the moment, but there is something about fall that makes me feel solidly happy. It's good.

Summertime. Since the last post, Ben and I went to New York to visit friends, St. Paul for the Macalester 5 year reunion, Wauwatosa for my bridal shower and Door County for our last family vacation at The Farm. We biked another 150 miler through Wisconsin and each raised over $1000 for MS. We ate al fresco and saw free concerts in Millennium Park and played with trick bikes at Tour De Fat and drank margaritas out back at the Handlebar. We watched baseball at The Cell and in Wicker Park and on TV in our living room. We had a Memorial Day party. We went to Meredith's going away party, and Christine's going away party, and this weekend we're going to Moacir's going away party and Molly's going away party. We went to Emma's graduation party and months later helped her move into her dorm at Loyola. We put deposits on flowers, the Handlebar, Pulaski Park, setup a wedding website, made and sent out invitations, bought fancy clothes, got fancy jewelry made, made hairdo appointments, bought vases and balloons and serving ware, met with the photographer and baker and officiant, ordered rings on the internet. We went to Joe's funeral and met baby Isabella. I performed kids songs at seven birthday parties, five Family Fun Tent gigs, Wicker Park Fest, Bike Safety Fest, and on stage at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. It's A Girl played at Center Portion, the Green Mill, Folk & Roots and Phyllis's Musical Inn. Come Sund*y played at Space (my family came!) and recorded at Joyride Studios. I sang swing at the Old Town School's National Tap Day concert. The Lindsy Weinbrg Band played their debut at Folk & Roots. Ben produced a short film, shot two music videos, a couple live concerts, some commercials, the monthly Intrview Show. In two weeks, the Burnham Doc premieres and Come Sund*y plays at Jazz Fest.

I'm excited to play my fall songs. Moving on from "I get my kicks where I can get 'em" to "This fall, for the first time, my daydreams are fixed on the future that's yours and mine."

Now I will choose 15 photos of this summer.

WE MADE IT

2009-05-03T20:47:00.002-05:00

This morning I woke up and walked beneath branches covered in bright blossoms and green leaves to have coffee at Lovely. I came home, opened all of the windows, took the storm door out of the kitchen and brought the humidifier and space heater to the basement. Later Molly and I walked until we found a place to sit and eat and drink outside, which happened to be super nachos at Picante, with BYOB Hefeweisens from D&D Liquors next door. In the evening Ben came home and Molly left, and when we were hungry again Ben and I got on our bikes, ending up at Twisted Spoke where we sat up on the roof and watched the sun go down over beers and burgers.

Yesterday I biked to a Kentucky Derby party with lots of cool people I hadn't met before in Logan Square. I won $40 when Mine That Bird came in first. We ate artichokes and then Ben met me and Lara and Steve at a fantastic coffee shop-- New Wave-- where along with great sandwiches, coffee, and cupcakes they have one of those enormous big box TVs from the 90s where you can play original Nintendo for free. In case you were wondering, Ben rules at Nintendo.

On Friday I biked with my little guitar to teach 4 classes, then around Wrigleyville to teach 3 private lessons, to Lincoln Square for a mind-blowingly good rehearsal of brand new material with Come Sunday, and then I met up with my old friend Liz and we sat in Garcia's till past midnight enjoying burritos and margaritas.

This is what we have been waiting for. This is it. Winter is gone. This is why we live here. IT IS AWESOME.

Pretty good weekend of total free time after last week's insanity: 4 gigs with 4 different bands. Congress of Star1ings at OTS, It's A Glrl at Experimental Sound Studio, Lindsay & Jesse at the Beat Kltchen, Baba Man0uche at Cheif O'Neill's. Plus the last week of WW, voice and piano classes I was teaching, the last week of the songwriting class I was taking, and family in town for Mom's bday and to see the shows. Everything came together great, the Beat Ktchen show was packed... what a high point. And now, it's warm out. Yes.

A bandit!

2009-04-09T19:34:00.002-05:00

That's what I made out like today. A bandit.

In my voice class, Emmanuel brought me an apple. An apple. For the teacher. Wrapped in a little paper towel.

Jena brought me a piece of Dubble Bubble bubble gum! Yes!

Then I went to teach Megan's piano lesson.

Megan greeted me with an Easter Egg. Hard boiled, and the only two-tone egg of the bunch! It is blue and yellow.

Then when I left her mom gave me two (2) Easter cupcakes, decorated with green frosting, green-dyed coconut grass, jellybeans, and a Peep coming out of a little eggshell that is cut out of an Airhead candy. !

My measly dinner that I brought to eat before songwriting class is now a veritable feast! It's an Easter miracle!

Hello

2009-04-08T11:44:00.003-05:00

I had a birthday back there. Photos of all kinds of birthday goodness can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=235141&id=512180343&l=505927bc07

I went to Milwaukee for a weekend, saw Fiddler on the Roof at Tosa East. Biked around on sunny days, cried on snowy freezing days. Drank at the Handlebar. Did crossword puzzles with Ben. Wrote songs for my songwriting class. Cooked omelets and went to restaurants. Loved the cat. Had stress dreams about the wedding.

Mucca Pazza is going on tour and won't be able to play at our wedding after all. It is a total sad bummer.

Status quo, hints of spring fever, attempts at productivity, money stress. Planning a trip to New York with Ben in May. I haven't had a real trip for a long time. It will be good!

Working on being more focused as a children's music teacher. Cataloging songs, looking for new ones. Had a fun song-trade with Mom while I was home. Working on planning the concert I'm playing with Jesse in a few weeks. Thinking about thinking about recording that kids album. Doing lots more thinking about doing than actual doing.

You should probably come visit Chicago.

Incredible!

2009-04-01T09:41:00.002-05:00

Adeline had kittens!!

(click the photo for a closeup if you would better like to see their tiny faces)

Hey, how was February? And the beginning of March?

2009-03-11T11:47:00.023-05:00

Well, funny you should ask. A lot of awesome stuff has been happening. In the beginning of February I was sick.

I was talking online to Janna, my old roommate in Seattle about how I was home alone sick and nothing sounded good, and she helped me to figure out something that sounded good: chicken pot pie. AND THEN SHE HAD A CHICKEN POT PIE DINNER DELIVERED TO MY HOUSE.

HOLY CRAP. It was delicious. And from a fancy steakhouse. It looked real nice in our new white plates.

She even got me dessert. This incredible apple pastry thing, with a separate container with a scoop of ice cream covered in streudel. FANTASTIC. And there was also a bag full of fancy bread from the restaurant, which I made into French toast in the morning. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Thankfully I recovered from my sickness in time for Valentine's Day. Ben and I had a nice breakfast at Lovely, where we sat for a long time reading and crosswording, and then got ingredients at Whole Foods for a Hopleaf-style dinner of Belgian beer, frites and mussels.

We rearranged our living room this month, as you can maybe see in the photo. It's way better. After the dinner we biked to the Whistler (trendy new Logan Square hotspot) for Poppy's annual erotic fiction party, which this year was also a fundraiser for the Women's Heath Center. Totally cool.

MEN

And then we biked to the Hideout, where their third annual "Makeout Party" was taking place, complete with super cheesy 70's lounge tunes performed by mostly members of Mucca Pazza.

It was a good night. We're trying to get Mucca Pazza to play at our wedding, so we've been trying to see them a lot and let them know how much we love them. Ben and I, seperately, have had several serendipitous run ins with the leader of the band. We also keep seeing band members in their side projects and we saw Mucca Pazza as well. It's definitely helping our chances.... yay! It's kind of a fun thing to type "Mucca" into that "Search blog" bar on the top of the page and see the thousands of times I have recommended that everyone I know see that band. If they play at our wedding... EVERYONE I KNOW WILL SEE THE BAND. YES.

Chris K visited, and we heard all about his recent trip to Central America and went to a Mardi Gras party hosted by the mom of one of my students! Kind of crazy, but really fun. They couldn't have been nicer, and even brought me a sack lunch of muffaletta and gumbo and party leftovers in class on Monday!

I have been doing tons of recording this month. I recorded more songs for this guy, which is a strange project to be a part of but if he wants to keep paying me I'll keep singing his crazy songs. I recorded also with Come Sunday:

And with It's A Girl:

I love being in those bands. I'm super stoked for our recordings. Played with Come Sunday this past weekend at Elastic. Pretty good show, good turnout. So fun to play music I love with talented awesome people I love to hang out with!

Ben turned 27. His parents visited and we ate at Mado where they specialize in smoked meat and crazy homemade sausages, which they served on a pig shaped platter:

Emma also visited schools and we discovered some new favorite places: Metropolis Coffee in Rogers Park and the Bourgeois Pig in Lincoln Park. Oh the sandwiches! AH!

On Ben's actual birthday we ate Brazilian food (and flan dessert) at El Nandu:

And then drank the cheapest pitchers in town at J & M.

Then Molly turned 29 and we drank not the cheapest but maybe the trendiest tastiest drinks in the hood at the Violet Hour.

We had to wait over an hour to get in. But look at those fine ladies!!

Birthday speech after we all sang. "Is this thing on?"

And then we found cheap pitchers after all, at the Innertowner. Check that freakin' amazing mohawk!!!

In the morning Ben took me to "surprise breakfast," which is when I'm too sleepy/decaffeinated/hungry/hungover to decide where I want to eat, and he drives somewhere and I'm happy. But it was a real surprise, because we went to Lou Mitchell's, Chicago breakfast institution, where we had never been and where they greet you with a complimentary house-made donut. Dang it was tasty.

Other stuff: I started taking a songwriting/creative process class with Sue from Come Sunday, and it rules and is totally jumpstarting my creativity. I've got a kids show booked at the Beat Kitchen on April 26th where I will be joined by my fabulous and talented BROTHER. The wheels are in motion for the recording of a kid's album, which I will HAVE DONE by June 17 so I can sell it at my summertime gigs. The money from that will go towards an album of my more grownup songs. I lost two of my private lesson students but am gaining 3 (including one guitar student!) so it works out. I hung out with Emily all day yesterday, and we had coffee and played each other songs and had wings and beer and walked in the light rain. I love Emily.

This blogging thing is hard to keep up with. I'm going to try to do a little post more often because I like keeping track of stuff but I get bogged down if too much time passes. Plus I have this sweet camera now so I can show you all the cool stuff. And, as a reward for reaching the end of the post, cat in a bag.

Internet celebrity

2009-02-19T00:43:00.002-06:00

Hey cool I am on the internet again!

Try this link.

We had a super small class and ended up doing a bunch of partner poses at yoga on Friday. It was really fun!

I swear I am working up a really killer three-part blog post that has pictures and everything. It is coming soon.

Blahg

2009-01-28T09:12:00.002-06:00

My current schedule allows me quite a bit of free time. It looks like this:

Monday:
9am WW
10am WW
11am WW
12pm Lullabies
2pm Piano
3pm Piano
4pm Piano
5pm Piano

Tuesday:
Day off! Yoga at noon.

Wednesday:
3:30pm Piano
4:30pm Piano

Thursday:
4pm Voice
5pm Voice
6:30pm Private lesson
7pm Private lesson

Friday:
9am WW
10am WW
11am WW
1pm WW
4pm Private lesson
4:30pm Private lesson

Saturday / Sunday:
Probably at least one bday party gig

Mondays and Fridays are jam-packed, but Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I have tons of time to myself. I think I would appreciate this more if it were not winter and leaving the house was a little less daunting. I always am better off when my time is scheduled rather than unscheduled, and many hours alone in my house leads to a whole lot of nothing. Like usually I'd rather take my free time in chunks than in days at a time. I'm not complaining... I just need to get better at motivating myself to DO things.

My general feeling of winter blahs was not helped by some tragic news this week. My aunt Lynn died on Sunday evening, rather suddenly. She has been sick and battling all kinds of physical challenges for most of her life, but her death came right out of the blue during a period when it seemed she was on the up and up. She was only 40. I'm thinking a lot about my uncle Karl and her son Eric and the challenge of grief this is going to leave them. It is heartbreaking. Going home for the funeral on Saturday.

Anybody have tips for escaping these winter doldrums? Or for self-motivation? I've got half of a song I could finish writing, a piano and a guitar to practice, some books to read, some classroom songs I could practice/learn.... Writing this blog post has left me feeling slightly accountable to you, dear readers, so maybe that will encourage me to get more done.

On the other hand there is just so much I could Google!

New dawn

2009-01-21T09:30:00.002-06:00

This morning I woke up in a country with a black president.

Yesterday was my day off work, and Ben took the day off too. We sat on our couch in our little living room, coffee cups in one hand and champagne flutes in the other, watching the inauguration from entrances through to the parade. We cried. We yelled and laughed. It was a beautiful, unbelievable day.

I remember when Clinton was elected when I was in 5th grade, but I don't have any other memories of presidential politics that don't involve extreme disappointment. Disappointment in the American people, disappointment in the president, disappointment in the world, disappointment in humanity, disappointment in the future. Now it has all turned around. It is an incredible feeling to be lifted with hope, to dare to allow optimism to take charge. To feel excitement and pride about the American people, the president, the world, humanity, the future.

Watching Ben tear up at the magnitude of the historical moment and the barriers that were crumbling as Obama was sworn in reminded me of what caught my eye ten years ago. Ben stood out in our suburban high school as a fierce advocate for equality. He raged against capitalism and prejudice, and his political sensibilities made him unpopular with many and a fascinating source of inspiration to others like me. Since then I have learned the many aspects of Ben's personality and come to love everything about him, but watching his reaction yesterday reminded me of his commitment to doing what is best for our world. It made me love him even more, and what was most overwhelming was the proof on the stage in Washington that our country was making that commitment as well.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T16:26:00.005-06:00

Our 10th New Years Eve together seemed as good a time as any.

We're in love!

So we're gonna get married!

Big party this fall! Happy new year!

Christmas break!

2008-12-22T08:42:00.002-06:00

I'm on winter break. Two whole weeks off work. I'm a real teacher!

I love being a teacher. Had a great week of last-day-of-classes, with piano performances and voice class performances. Love my kids. I have two private piano lessons to teach this afternoon and I'll be done!

December has been busy and great. I wrote and recorded a Christmas song, which you should have gotten in your email. If you are a person who reads this blog and I don't have your email, just ask and I'll send it! Mine is my name at gmail. But the song was a big deal and I'm very proud and excited about it.

It's A Girl had our first performances December Fridays at the Viaduct. We played with all kinds of people and got a good response. It is great to be in a band that makes people happy. It is also great to be in a band that throws underwear, wears costumes, has lyrics written by a 9 year old, and does an oboe duet. Our final show was with Congress of Starlings, who I got to sing with. They have a bunch of new songs and I have enjoyed learning them over at Aerin and Andrea's house this month. They also learned my new song and we performed it live!

Did a lot of driving this month. Gigs in the suburbs, and the Women's Cookie Weekend at Emily's house in Rockford, where I wrestled the biggest mass of dough you've ever seen. We made tons of cookies and had fun in Emily's parents' cozy house.

Last night was the OTS holiday party, which I was on the committee to plan. It was at Schuba's, and it was a super great awesome good time. There was a mix CD exchange, and a photobooth, and live music, and a cookie contest. I made and thus got two mixes, took two great photobooth series, played my song and sang Star of Wonder with Andrea and Aerin, and WON the cookie contest which I myself had organized. I didn't expect that at all; when the judges called me over to cast a tiebreaking vote, and said, "It's between these two," and I saw that one of the plates was my eggnog cookies, I said, "I can't!" So I had to wear the silly Cookie Champion chef hat that I made, and I won the bag of baking goodies which I had bought and put together. I gave it to the runner-up actually, but I kept the hat and ALL THE GLORY.

We went to the Kartemquin holiday party on Thursday, and another great party on Friday at Becca's house, in between the Panto Christmas performance at the Hideout which Ben videotaped and some corned beef hash at Geri's with Molly and Jim.

Taavo is in town and it's been fun seeing him and Meredith; we walked through a blizzard to Taco Veloz on Tuesday night and had beers at Gold Star afterwards.

We saw the Snow Queen at the Biograph with Molly and Jenny, which starred a bunch of OTS people in the band who also played characters in the story. It was fun and then we got Pie Eyed pizza late night after the very tense talkback.

Ben played a rockin show at the Lizard Lounge with his protopunkers... He is a real drummer! It's so awesome.

And then we got tickets to the Packers/Bears game tonight. WHAT?? YES!! I have to remember to play guitar today as I fear I will lose all of my digits tonight. It's currently -2 degrees. It's gonna be awesome! And then it's gonna be Christmas!

Attention, Everyone:

2008-12-07T02:30:00.003-06:00

MUCCA PAZZA IS ONE OF THE BEST BANDS IN THE WHOLE WORLD!

WINTER BIKING IS AWESOME-- DRESS FOR IT!

SEE MUCCA PAZZA! SO HAPPY! JUST SEE MUCCA PAZZA!

That's pretty much it for now.

GASP!

2008-12-01T23:29:00.002-06:00

Check it out!

http://tinyurl.com/5dns8q

forgot one

2008-11-22T14:13:00.002-06:00

One of the moms in my class sent this picture. I love it.

Officially winter

2008-11-20T10:25:00.007-06:00

Snow and everything. Windows are all plasticked, scarf/mittens/hat are part of the daily ensemble, hot beverages always sound good.

This life as a music teacher is going pretty well. I'm making enough money and have a healthy amount of free time. I wish I was better at working on my own stuff in my own time but I'm learning. I end up being fairly productive, in a blogging/cleaning/homemaking kind of way, but I got a call from my friend Liz yesterday who was asking for some contact info regarding a grant she was applying for. For an art installation she wanted to put together. A grant that I told her about, at a venue I told her about. I'm in awe of her self-motivation.

Stuff I keep meaning to work on:
-practicing guitar/piano
-writing songs
-making lesson plans
-checking out piano books/curriculums
-finding new songs for WW and especially Lullabies
-the elusive recording of a children's album

Somehow these things always end up at the bottom of my priority list. Today, for example, I bet I'll get around to a load of laundry and browsing recipes for Thanksgiving and shopping for boots on the internet, but we'll see if my guitar or keyboard make it out of their cases.

-----------

I just stepped away from the computer and during that break read this in an article with Judy Blume: "I used to have to clean out all my closets and drawers before I could begin a new book. I'd think up excuse after excuse because beginning is the hardest part for me. I still think up excuses but they have less to do with cleaning out closets." I guess I'm not the only one. Thanks, Judy Blume. You still know how to make me feel better about my insecurities.

I read that in the introduction to this book which Ben bought me recently. Ben has been doing some great stuff for me lately, like surprising me with a turtle sundae from Scooters after I mentioned a craving for a hot fudge sundae after dinner, and taking me out to a super fancy and delicious restaurant for our 9 year (gulp) anniversary. That meal was incredible, which I fortunately still remember despite the fact that we were both TRASHED by the time we got home. The blessing and the curse of a BYOB restaurant. 10 courses. 4 blocks from home. 3 and a half hours. 3 bottles of wine. 2 people. D'OH.

I guess you just gotta celebrate a few months of high school dating + 3 summers at home + 4 college years long distance + 5 years of shacking up in style.

And now.... FALL PHOTO SPECTACULAR!!

She's taken to coming to snuggle on weekend mornings with her body under the covers. Did I ever tell you that she is the greatest flippin' cat ever.

It's A Girl AKA The Freddies at the Tonic Room

And the many faces of Halloween 2008:

Yeee-haw.

History

2008-11-06T10:42:00.028-06:00

Yes. I was there.

On November 4, 2008, election day, me and four other women from the OTS (Jenna, Vanessa, Cybele and Alisa) drove down to Chesterton, Indiana to encourage Obama supporters to get out and vote. We were excited and nervous. It was a perfect day: sunny and warm and the colors on the trees in Indiana were beautiful.

photo by Vanessa
We got our packet from the volunteer headquarters on Main Street and drove out to our little areas where we knocked on doors of know supporters to remind them to vote and where to do so. Lots of folks weren't home and we left door knockers. Lots of folks had dogs and we almost got our faces eaten by some rottweilers who were as tall us us when they jumped up against the storm door with enough force to push it open. But their owner was nice and was on his way to vote as soon as he raked his yard. One lady said she probably wouldn't vote, because she had to work and didn't have time. We tried to encourage her just a little bit. Another lady said she wouldn't vote because she wouldn't have time between picking up kids and grocery shopping and stuff, but if she had should would have voted for McCain. We did not encourage her. Way to not vote, lady!

photo by Vanessa
Here's me, Jenna and Vanessa, one of the door-to-door groups. We ate snacks back at headquarters and ran into some girls who take classes at OTS and perform a lot around Chicago. They recommended the coffeeshop where we went for lunch, and after picking up a new packet at the vounteer headquarters (KFC) in Portage, the five of us split one packet and then headed back to Chicago to get ready for the rally in Grant Park. (Not all the pictures ahead are great quality, but I hope they get the feeling across. Click for bigger versions.)

Ben came home around 5:30 and Molly and Meredith came over. Molly borrowed a bike

photo by Meredith
and the four of us got dinner at Silver Palm on our way downtown. We did not have tickets to the rally but Mayor Daley had smartly realized that lots of folks were going to come down no matter what and set up an area for the non-ticketed public. There were tons of people; some had been lined up all day. We locked our bikes on Michigan Ave and walked the rest of the way with many other people. Lots of guys were selling t-shirts and buttons, and everyone was very excited. Everyone had to enter on Columbus Ave. We got there shortly before 8:30 when they opened the gates to the park. Here is the crowd lined up to get in.

photo by caural

Once they opened the gates it was more open; they were just announcing Obama had gotten Ohio. Here are our reactions as captured by Meredith, as we walked to find a place to station ourselves for the night.

There were huge video screens everywhere showing CNN. The image was great, the sound was great, the crowds were great. The people in front of the screen we were close to sat down, and everyone in the area behind followed suit, which meant we got to sit for a good hour or so.

photo by Ben
Awesome. The crowds continued to get thicker and thicker; we couldn't even see the stage that Obama was going to be on. We were a bit north of Buckingham Fountain, which is closed for construction. To get an idea of where we were, please check out this picture. They were only showing the area that is lit up on TV. We were back in that tree-filled area, about halfway between the lit up official rally area and the USA building. It was incredible. People were up in the trees and sitting on top of the portopotties and garden trellises.

photo by zenia

People were friendly. There were all kinds of people, all races, all ages. We were watching CNN, getting excited as certain states were announced. Iowa.

this and following photos by Ben

Virginia.

Cell phone reception was in and out... everyone was trying to call and text everyone and the networks were jammed up. It got close to 10 when the polls would be closing on the West Coast. By this point people were all standing, all the ground was filled in. A couple times I jumped up to try and see the crowd. Literally people as far as my eyes could see in every direction. We were waiting and listening to the pundits. Everyone was eager for the results, and CNN had a little countdown clock that everyone started chanting along to. We were ready to hear some more states' tallies released, which would be exciting. I don't think anyone was quite prepared for what came up on the screen, which you can see in this person's video. Watch in high quality.

Here's another video I like, just because of the SOUND. You can hear the cheer go from regular to extreme as everyone reads the words on the screen. OBAMA ELECTED. In case you can't imagine it, I was doing a LOT of screaming.

And this video is taken by someone who had a very similar perspective to us, and shows a good 360 degree view. In the dark, video screen ahead, a billion people.

The screaming just kept going. In waves. Everyone was so excited. Crying, jumping, screaming, laughing, yelling, dancing. It didn't die down for a long long time. We watched CNN show the very crowd we were a part of. We saw Oprah, who got a huge cheer of course, and Jesse Jackson in tears. Here's me watching the screens, taking a brief pause from screaming and jumping.

It was overwhelming.

We saw McCain's concession speech. When I saw Sarah Palin I was flooded with relief; she will never run our country. I thought the crowd responded to McCain ver well, very respectfully. I thought he gave a good speech. And then the screens changed, and CNN was gone, and there was just an image of a podium. It was the live feed from the stage a few blocks away. A black lady, I don't know who she was, came out and sang the National Anthem. You could hear it echoing several times, bouncing around from all the speakers and the buildings everywhere. She fucking nailed that song. I have never in my life been so moved or excited by my national anthem. I have also never before called it "my" national anthem. When it was over, she left the podium, and they put on "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" and some other rockin' tunes. It was a big dance party while we waited. A huge convoy of cars came past us on Lakeshore Drive-- Obama! Finally the Obama family arrived and came out on stage. More screaming, more excitement, more flooding of emotion. Unbelievable!! His speech was wonderful.

When it was finally over, the crowd slowly filtered out of the park. We waited a little while. Ben and I climbed up to see the view people had seen from the garden trellises.

photo by Meredith

Everyone had to cross one of three bridges, and they were jammed and moving slowly. Here's a view of the bridge we were on, which looked just like the view we had of the bridge north of us.

photo by rdafforn

And when we got to the end of the bridge, here was our view of Michigan Avenue (definitely worth clicking to see full size):

this and following photos by Ben

A SEA of people. State street was also like this.

And the side streets. Endless. Everyone was behaving. Everyone was happy. There were cops everywhere; we'd heard that every cop in the city was on duty that day. And look how hard they had to work to keep the crowds in line.

They were doing basically nothing but smiling, taking photos and signing peoples' T-shirts. Look at the crowds. Just amazing. We waited around for a long time, taking it in. When we finally left it was 12:30, and even then, the Milwaukee Avenue bike lane was almost completely full of cyclists heading home from the rally. The view from atop the hills was a long trail of red blinky lights stretching out ahead. We passed people ouside bars, yelling and cheering. Cars would spontaneously erupt into joyous honking. Throughout the night peoples' excitement just kept bursting out in waves of sound and movement and happiness.

We were exhausted. The next day I was hoarse and physically sore from standing on tiptoe and jumping for joy. But around the city, the feeling was palpable-- Jon Stuart said it on the Daily Show, that he was experiencing a strange New York phenomenon of EYE CONTACT! With STRANGERS! It was the same in Chicago. Like you had a connection to everyone you saw. I screeched out "This Land Is Your Land" in all of my WW classes that morning, and almost broke into tears, looking at these new little babies whose futures seemed so much more hopeful.

I'm so proud of America. Of at least a slight majority of America.

And of course, it is tinged with frustration and worry about Proposition 8, which rendered gay marriages null and void. The response is rising and I'm hoping for the wave of change to continue.

As Barack said, there's hard work ahead of us. Check out the Chicago Reader's cover the morning after the election:

Tongue in cheek, but also eager. Just like the other potential cover would have been:

Article about the controversial cover here.

Also worth posting: a great Salon article from Gen-Xers to Baby Boomers following the election.

Good job, America.

YOU ARE A TOTAL DREAMBOAT, SIR.

2008-11-05T19:08:00.002-06:00

So much to say. I'll elaborate on canvassing in Indiana and the rally in Grant Park soon.

BARACK OBAMA WON.

In the meantime, please enjoy this stranger's blog post as much as I have: http://adinfinitum.livejournal.com/235775.html

Thanks

2008-10-25T12:20:00.002-05:00

--to the fine chefs at Meli who made me a perfect brunch this morning. I had delicious coffee and an omelet with smoked gouda, bacon, avocado and tomato. I have had some disappointing brunches the last few times I went out and this one hit the jackpot.

--to whoever decided to put my current skin-care products on sale at the Jewel and thus allow me to discover them. It took fifteen years but my face is finally clear and healthy! Also maybe this means I'm officially not a teenager?

--to the kids in my voice class who did a wonderful job at our graduation performance on Thursday, and to their parents, the strangers in the hallway, various staff members, the director of children's programming, the director of all class programming and the executive director of the school for coming to hear them.

--to Adeline for being really extra cute.

--to the people whose birthday party I was supposed to play at today. It was lame of you to not pay, not call anyone back, not respond to emails, and otherwise back out of the contract so that we had to cancel, but I'm pretty grateful to have a whole day without any obligations, especially before a busy week.

--to Miki and It's A Girl for the opportunity to compose and play an oboe duet horn part.

--to C0me Sunday for making the music I never know that I need until I get to rehearsal. In the words of Sue, "everyone could use this music." Ahem come to our show on Thursday at Space!!

--to Santos and the great guys at the mechanic shop for being super nice and fixing our brakes so as to render our car a death trap no longer.

--to Tomoko for finding a non-painful way to do pigeon pose.

--to Andrea for a late night walk.

--to kids.

--to everyone who's ever given me a mix CD.

--to the Proto Punk Ensemble for giving Ben an opportunity to rock out, and to Ben for bringing the rock.

--to the inventors of beer, coffee, chocolate, the internet, the bicycle, and the banjo.

Aaaahhhhhhhhhh.

2008-10-21T11:01:00.002-05:00

That was the sound of me finally getting a sip of coffee this morning.

I ran out of half and half. It's the lamest! When for some reason I am not able to make coffee at home I always think it will be a great way to kick start my day because I'll have a reason to go out first thing in the morning. Or sometimes when I'm in a hurry to get to work and I plan on saving time by not making it at home just getting some coffee once I get there. These plans BACKFIRE because without coffee I lack the gumption or focus to get myself to the coffeeshop in any kind of sensible time frame. It was almost 11 by the time I got to this coffeeshop. WTF. A cruel paradox of nature. And drugs.

I would like to point out that there was not a post in the last five days entitled "Guacamole Beer Dinner," even though Ben was in New York. I was busy and ate well and missed him but it didn't really matter that he was gone. In fact I had a really nice weekend. I think I finally grew up enough to be pretty happy on my own.* I even killed three centipedes.** I'm getting pretty good at managing my time and working on many projects at once with limited moping.

The weekend was largely focused on my kids' show at the Beat Kitchen on Sunday. This was the first time I played a kids' show with a band that I had put together. It was also the first time I played at a rock club, even though it was at noon on a Sunday. I was nervous. My bandmates were Heather, who is my co-piano teacher and who sings and played piano and bass, and Tom on the banjo. I hadn't really seen Tom since the last time we played music this summer when after several critiques of my sloppy guitar playing he told me that although my songs were "cute," he didn't really get their appeal. That statement was one in a series of three low blows to my musical self-esteem that came from different directions, all fell within one week, and left my confidence pretty shaken. That put the temporary kibosh on working towards recording an album and taught me once again what it is like to be nervous for a performance. This is why I was so nervous for the show of my songs at the loft party and for this kids' show.

And they both went great!

I was pleased with the songs I picked for the kids' show, I was pleased with the sound of the band, I was pleased with the audience involvement and the fun props and things I had at the show. Heather and Tom were happy to be involved and we all enjoyed ourselves. I even got some nice compliments on my originals. I am now eager for another kids' show and have already lined up someone who has agreed to record my kids' album.

The craziest part of the show was once we got there and realized we had forgotten music stands and they had none there.... We needed them as we'd only had one rehearsal and glasses-less Tom can only see about 4 feet in front of him. Heather ran to the music store down the street: closed. We were running out of time, and I finally gave my car keys and credit card to one of the two sound guys and asked him to run to Guitar Center to pick some up. He did, and didn't even drive to Mexico or buy himself any guitars or anything.

THANK YOU, PHIL THE SOUND GUY!!!

The rest of my weekend included lots of music, biking, drinking and dancing. Friday night I biked way out to a house party at Cicero and Addison to see Orange Mighty Tri0 with Lara. I think if I can just make sure I see those guys play every so often I will have enough happiness to last me through my entire life. I am their biggest fan. Lara and I got totally drenched on the long ride back to the Hideout, where I stayed just long enough to realize how wet my socks were before heading home to cozy it up. Saturday I was at OTS all day, subbing WW and rehearsing and subbing piano. Then I made a mellow fall mix for Becca's mix-CD exchange party and biked up to her lovely Lincoln Square apartment. There was dancing and Beatles on the TV and my second-ever Jello shot. Sunday after the show I had lunch and a bloody mary with Heather and later saw Steve Daws0n and Frank R0saly play a show at the Double Door. Monday my long teaching day, plus a C0me Sunday rehearsal for our show next week, and came home to see Ben who made it back from New York.

Now I am late for my yoga class and I promised myself I wouldn't skip it this week! It's been nice blogging with you.

*On my own = With the cat
**These three were teeny little baby centipedes, but I killed them good. I chickened out and left the huge one on the bathroom wall alone.

The good life

2008-10-15T15:40:00.003-05:00

I'm lucky. Life is good. I'm a busy teacher, performer, big-city girl. I haven't had time to tell you about it.

The gig at the loft was great. It was more of a party than a concert, but my songs went well, and the people who were paying attention said some nice things about my performance. Ben took amazing pictures and the party was a blast. Edited pics here; his whole set unedited here. Here's one of me doin' my thing with Chester in the background.

Ben was uploading the pictures to a projector during the party, and so people were having fun looking at them and then getting their pictures taken to be projected as well. It was awesome.

The next night Ben and I ended up at the Handlebar where for the second time we joined the staff in the construction of a beeramid made of Tecate cans. Once again, there was much rocking out to heavy metal, which progressed to Journey and Huey Lewis, and a lot of intense-faced singing with air guitar jumps off the bar and throwing of furniture. My knees were bruised the next day from climbing up to build the beeramid and dance recklessly on the barstools. Here is the first one we made. There are 95 cans in this beeramid. Also: note the hot waitress we are now totally friends with.

Our tab at the end of the night was a miracle.... We are IN now. We stopped by last night and got warm greetings from everyone working there and another huge discount on some food and a couple of PBRs. It is the greatest. We already loved that place with all our hearts and now we are part of its community.

I had Liz over for breakfast during the following week, when I learned how to make delicious scones. I love having friends over for breakfast. I love it so much that today I invited Meredith over, and I made scones again. Both times we had too much coffee and tasty food and a pretty table and nice music and good chatting and Adeline was really happy to sit on the guest's possessions.

Last Friday Ben and I drove to Rockford for Emily's CD release concert. Part of the concert was the projection of the music video Ben made for/with Emily. It is really, really good, and Ben worked really, really hard on it. Emily loves it and said from the stage, "You will all be telling people one day that you saw the early work of Ben Chandler." He is getting busier all the time and the stuff he is producting is getting better and better. Please enjoy the video here in best quality, or if that's not working on your computer try it on YouTube here. Click "Watch in high quality" if you watch the YouTube version... makes a huge difference. And then check out Emily's music! She is an amazingly talented friend. We had a wonderful night there at the concert, and getting drinks at food afterwards, and staying at the incredible house her parents' built with other folks who had come to the show. In the morning we shared a perfect breakfast that Emily made with our new friends and then headed back to the city. I hope next time we make it out to Rockford we can stay longer. I like those Hurds.

I played at Chicago Country Music Fest in the Kiddie Corrall. I played a bday party. I recorded vocal tracks for some more of Larry's songs. I had great rehearsals with It's A Girl, Come Sunday and the band I'm playing my kids' show with on Sunday. I have four concerts in the next 2 weeks with four different bands. Super exciting and overwhelming too. I'm subbing way too much in there and starting some new classes... I probably won't post again till that has past. Happy Halloween! See you in November! Vote Obama!

On my mind

2008-10-02T10:03:00.002-05:00

Here is some stuff I've been thinking about.

I rarely get nervous, and so I don't handle being nervous well AT ALL. I am very nervous for the solo set of original songs I'm playing on Friday night at the opening party of Molly & company's new loft apartment/performance space. Still shaken by a string of criticisms I received one week over the summer, feeling embarrassed about my songs and my guitar skills.

The main way I deal with my nervousness is through productive procrastination of practicing & preparing. (How's that for alliteration!) The more nervous I am, the more productive my procrastination must be in order to be justified. A week ago I cleaned my closet and donated tons of stuff I never wear. This Tuesday I cleaned out ALL of my junk spaces: desk drawers, bedside drawers, boxes in the closet in the music room, under the piano, the bookshelf, under the table. It took hours and hours but I am thrilled to report that I have less junk than you. I'm becoming obsessed with owning less stuff. It is hard because I am cheap, crafty, and nostalgic. But I have been inspired by two sources. 1) This paragraph by Natalie Dee in response to a question about being cleaner:

If you are not certain something (anything) is 100% important, get rid of it. There is no BUT WHAT ABOUT LATER? Later already came, and you didn't need it. If something happens in the distant future that makes you need junk from years ago, there are bigger problems going on aside from where all your clutter went. I have been on my "Don't Bring Anything In The House And Get Rid Of Anything That Looks At Me Crosseyed" kick for a while now, and the only thing that has resulted is a clean house. I have yet to be like OH SHIT, I ACCIDENTLY THREW THAT THING AWAY. You know what you need, and what you don't. You just have to be honest with yourself, and pitch the crap in the same way you'd rip off a bandaid.

2) Friends who are moving. Thank God I'm not moving right now. But I'm jealous of the part of moving where everything gets cleaned out and everything is assigned a place and placed there. I went to my friend Liz's new clean, beautiful apartment and it was soooooooo nice that I abandoned all other plans and spent the rest of the day with a huge garbage bag and drawers all over the floor.

Liz is my old friend from SMB's that I ran into at the Hopleaf last Friday when I was there with Ben, Erica and Kevin to celebrate Kevin's birthday even though he threw his back out and was on fancy pain meds and couldn't drink. Let alone move. But Liz! I ran into Liz. She had moved away and is back in town and invited me over for breakfast on Tuesday. As I stood there next to her stove in the bright kitchen of her single Sunnyside Ave apartment, coffee cup in hand, talking about jobs and goals and relationships and creativity while she cooked me food, mix CDs on the stereo, I realized: Liz is the new Emily. I never realized how similar my two friends are, or how our friendships function in almost the exact same way. I became friends with Emily when Liz moved away, and now that Emily has moved away Liz is back... It was a funny realization. And then it made me happy, because I really love them both!

It has occurred to me that I dress like a clown. Today, for example, I am wearing a pink hoodie, a blue t-shirt with a picture of an umbrella on it, jeans rolled up to my knees, striped pink and gray and white socks, and Chuck Taylors. I biked this morning in my red windbreaker on my red and yellow and green bike with my blue helmet and purple headscarf and pink sunglasses, carrying my backpack guitar with my bright red Sigg bottle, bearing its giant green heart sticker, strapped to its side. Sometimes I even wear ridiculous pigtails. They are so long that I'm nervous they make me look like an Irish Setter.

Yesterday I was at Vella with Meredith and noticed that I had the longest hair of anyone in the restaurant. It is long like a real girl.

Ben and I are becoming no-handed biking EXPERTS. (This does not help the clown issue.) On Saturday night we basically biked all the way home from Andersonville (7 miles) with no hands, using them only at stoplights and for turns. Daamn! The biking home was an excellent end to a long and very excellent night that included seeing the Sea and Cake and the Lonesome Organist at Symphony Hall for free, a super burrito at La Pasadita, and the 90's-est movie ever at Natasha and Dan's housewarming party.

Sarah Palin. What's to say? How can you.... sigh. This is a really good article and I wholeheartedly agree. And this is funny. And this is brilliant and maddening. I am reading columns and watching videos. I am enjoying jokes. I am nervous. I am flabbergasted. I am hopeful. I am made so uneasy by McCain's apparent obsession with war. I am frustrated that living in Chicago means I have no access to more widespread American opinion. Based on the environment here there's no doubt Obama's gonna win. But this is only Chicago.

Our neighbors need to change the battery in their smoke alarm. It beeps every 36 seconds and has been doing so for three days.

I'm medium-obsessed with the song How Did the Feeling Feel To You by Karen Dalton.

I'm having lots of fun rehearsing with It's A Girl. It's silly and pretty and energetic and fun.

Cat.

That's all.

curse you, ragweed

2008-09-25T09:53:00.002-05:00

My allergies have suddenly erupted. I keep remembering all these things that happen when the cold weather comes.... My sinuses become a problem which is constantly tended to, especially for singing. I feel like I have to drink tea all the time. My skin gets so dry. My hands are always cold. I have to wear a coat. The sidewalks lose their cafe tables and become vast bleak expanses of concrete.

Luckily I got one more amazing summer festival in last weekend. It was the 12th Annual Hideout Block Party, and it was faaaaaaaaaaantastic. I had to go to a WW conference thing on Saturday so I couldn't get there until about 6, but I did make it in time to see Neko Case headline.

Note: I didn't take any of these pictures, but found them all on Flickr tagged with Hideout Block Party.

Ben was there filming. He has been doing lots of video work lately and he just approached the owner of the Hideout and asked if anyone ever films the block party. Turns out nobody ever has, and Ben got hired to spend the weekend capturing the festival from all angles.

Late Saturday night Jesse got into town, and Sunday we went to the block party together. We biked over and then biked back home to get the tickets and biked back over again,

and started the day with bloody marys (do I have to capitalize that? Marys? Maries? maireeeeez) from Lily who was working at the bar.

The Jon Rauhouse Sexet that started the day was great.... everyone could use a little steel guitar and redheaded spitfire in the morning.

Pedal-powered TV, blender, shower with Working Bikes

Honeyboy Edwards is still doing his thing

The ever-entertaining PuppetBike

Lunch break bike ride to Pizza Metro, back in time for head-and-shoulders-singalong-watermelon-tossing antics of Tim Fite

Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza

I love the trombone girl. Actually I love all of them.

Robbie Fulks' Michael Jackson cover set complete with a full cast of zombies doing the Thriller dance through the fog. Incredible. Crappy Youtube video.

Lots of jumpy dancing to the New Pornographers my favoritest band.

And then more late night dancing to Ratatat and DJs and getting a backstage pass and watching from the roof of the Hideout as the whole thing came to a close.

Do you see?? It was so awesome! I was sore from dancing and my ears were ringing and I was bursting with joy. What a day.

It was great having Jesse there, because we share a lot of appreciation for the same stuff in music. He loved Mucca Pazza of course. Of course! You also love them! Everyone loves them! They are great. Jesse was a great person to spend the day with. For all the many artists I know in Chicago, I haven't really found anyone who shares my taste in music. I know people whose tastes overlap with mine, sure, but there's gotta be someone else out there who's crazy for vocal harmonies, horn sections, lyrics and banjos. And maybe a crooner and an acoustic guitar and a hammond organ. At the same time? Maybe. Sufjan can do it.

This week I have been subbing a little bit and working around the house. Our pantry is clean and I have a newfound appreciation for my Monday piano students. They are coming so far, and I'm getting better with my bag of tricks for teaching the class, and I really enjoy the time spent with them. This also leads to a new appreciation for my co-teacher Heather, and I'm glad we are paired together.

Cat's still cute. Made granola. Finally saw Molly's new sweet loft.

I was never much into playing dress up when I was a kid but I am really enjoying sitting here in my living room, blogging over coffee in Ben's boyscout hat, a zipup hoodie, running shorts and cowboy boots.

endings and beginnings

2008-09-18T08:57:00.003-05:00

Hello.

It has been a time of change. In the midst of my new/old/nonexistent job stress I was brought back to reality when my mom called to tell me that my grandma was in hospice care and that I should plan a trip to Milwaukee very quickly. I did make it home on Friday 9/5, after getting subs for first day of WW and piano classes and birthday party gigs. Grandma was to the point where she was just sleeping all the time and we could not rouse her. We visited with her and with our big family all weekend. There were sad and happy times, and lots of sharing of memories, both in and out of the hospice. Listening to a newly found recording of Grandma singing solo at Uihlein Hall in 1974. Singing The Lord Bless You and Keep you in her room. Singing karaoke songs we hadn't picked with Jesse at Frankenstein's. Listening to a cassette tape of my 8th grade interview with Grandma for a class project. Lunch in the Village with my mom and Betsy. Photos. Stories. Dinner and too much wine with Ben's family. Cousin Ryan's first football game. Frozen custard. Pizza or sub sandwiches in the family room of the hospice. Lots of hugs and tears and laughs. The nurses at the hospice told us we were giving a wonderful gift to Grandma and to the people on the floor by bringing so much laughter. By the end of the weekend Grandma's breathing was very labored and finally on Sunday night around 10, while her children and their spouses were around her singing, she took her last breath.

The funeral was the following Saturday. It was an incredible service. The Milwaukee Choristers (Grandma was a member for 41 years) sang, there were beautiful flowers everywhere, tons of funny and sweet photographs of Grandma and her loved ones, hundreds and hundreds of people, a wonderful meditation by J;m Rand, great hymns, bagpipes, and best of all the soaring high notes of Grandma's voice through the speakers. She would have loved it. So many people came. People from her many churches, friends from grade school, close and distant relatives, entire families of all of her children's spouses, Choristers, friends from the neighborhood. It was followed by a meal downstairs, also well attended, and finally at the end a little bit of time where it was just our family sitting around in the church basement talking and laughing and telling stories. We all drove out to the cemetery after that for the burial, where again we sang and cried and put flowers on her coffin amongst the big trees, as well as on the gravestones of her parents and uncles and aunts. We ate dinner at a big German restaurant, where we sang German songs and Scottish songs and cheered until they shut the door on us. We had custard for dessert, crowding around the booths in the corner of Omega. Butter Pecan-- Grandma's favorite!

I love my family.

Ben came too, for everything. He is part of our family and everyone loves him, including Grandma. We are so blessed to have such a family. This was the first time I lost a grandparent, and it was hard, but it was beautiful and a source of much learning. I was sad to leave all my relatives and head back to Chicago, but life goes on for the rest of us even after we pause to take notice of a life that has ended.

The new session of classes has been simultaneously energizing and exhausting. On Monday and Friday I am teaching six classes between WW and piano, which makes for really long days but I'm thankful for the work and at least there is a lot of variation from class to class. Kids' voice classes on Thursday, which have been fun and going really well with lots of help from Mom's folder of notes. I've been spending my vast new freetime doing productive things like drinking coffee, playing with the webcam Ben brought home from work, wearing my pajamas, and making a Facebook page for Adeline. I did manage to do some good hanging out with Meredith, plan some classes, go for a run, and clean a bunch of clothes out of my closets to try and sell/donate. I've subbed some classes and booked some gigs. In the evenings Ben and I have done some fun things like renting Paris Je'Teme and biking to Handlebar to do a crossword puzzle. I also had an exciting first rehearsal with the new band It's A Girl, which is Miki's project of songs of joy and redemption. Heavy on vocal harmonies and theatrics, made of Miki on vox and piano, Jason on vox banjo guitar, me on vox guitar piano drums (!), and Elizabeth singing too. What a relief to make happy music with fun people.

Gotta get out of the house!! It's not going to be 69 degrees and sunny forever.

Happiness

2008-09-04T13:01:00.002-05:00

I think my Google Reader is a little screwed up because it just told me about a few months worth of Pink of Perfection posts today. In any case, I've been really enjoying reading everyone's Happiness Lists, which was the July POP Project. I'm sad I missed the opportunity to make a list in time myself but I might do so later. For now, check out some of these other lists. They're great! http://www.pinkofperfection.com/2008/08/pink_of_perfection_project_jul.php

keeping it together

2008-09-02T10:00:00.004-05:00

Those piano classes didn't run. Which means I quit my job at the desk for no reason, and I'm losing a good third to half of my income.

Okay.

It is lame, and I keep cycling between feeling angry/devastated/hopeless/courageous and in denial. I often feel like I got tricked into quitting my job and upsetting a lifestyle that had worked well and made me happy for some time. But I know that quitting and making that decision to change was a risk, and nobody promised it would go well. Although I certainly was given the sense that I could count on at least some of those classes to run. Change, change, change. Julia went to Stevens Point. Summer is over. Friends move away. College, law school, grad school, Old Town Schoo1... I need to improve my ability to change. Or moreso, my ability to approach change.

Thank god Adeline is still cute.

The long weekend was good. Friday night I saw Mar Car!be at the Hideout and then got dinner at Thai Lagoon with Ben and Emma before going for ice cream at Taste of Heaven and to see Too Much Light. I love the Neo Futurists, a lot, and have often imagined another life path where I ended up one of them. At the show they made an announcement that they're doing a workshop which I am considering signing up for. The guy said they work on teaching you how to make theater about your life, and Ben made some crack about how he couldn't imagine me wanting to talk creatively about my feelings, which earned him a punch on the shoulder.

Saturday we got breakfast at Vella, shopped at H&M and walked down by the lake. I did a bday party and then Emma and Ben made a yummy dinner which we ate in the backyard. Emma headed back to Mwakee and Ben and I enjoyed a beautiful night biking down to the South Loop to see Mucca Pazza. There's another potential life I can imagine having; being part of Mucca Pazza. I LOVE MUCCA PAZZA. I am a Mucca Pazza ambassador. Watch out, because if I know you, I will probably try to force you to see Mucca Pazza, and then you will LOVE IT. People at Wabash Fest or wherever we were were not the kind of usual audience they have, and they were astounded and confused but ultimately thrilled with the band. They put on such a great show. In the morning I was sore from dancing. Ben and I had a less-fun bike ride back to our hood, which involved a lot of cabs, tourists who had never seen bikes in the street before, drunk drivers and assholes. We felt better once we got to the Handlebar, amongst our people, and even better once we helped the staff (both working and just hanging out there) complete a giant Tecate can beeramid, and probably the best when we were crawling around on the bar and dancing on top of the bar stools to hair metal and Huey Lewis and the News. It was an incredible night.

Sunday was a slow day, where I used most of my energy for a lovely bday party and spent the rest grazing. We ate some Pizza Metro, some apples at the farmers market, some Pasadita burrito. That night we saw Vicky Christina Barcelona at Piper's Alley, which I enjoyed very much. It was a fun date.

Monday was our Laborbecue. I made a peach pie and an apple crisp, and Ben made baked beans and a variety of meats and sides and corn salad. We had a good sized crowd, and Jason brought his banjo again and got some music playing, which recieved occasional applause from across the alley and lured a neighbor to visit and become friends. We have tons of leftover food.

I've been smelling some bad smells. Our alley smelled terrible with all the overflowing garbage cans from folks moving and the pickup day delayed for the holiday. Thank goodness they got picked up today. And when Ben and Emma and I were walking around the Gold Coast on Saturday, we noticed that the ENTIRE GOLD COAST SMELLS LIKE PEE. Ben thinks it's from all the small dogs and the total lack of grass. It's a good theory.

And in case you didn't know: WTF, St. Paul. Nightmare.

courage, hope, rum

2008-08-29T09:25:00.005-05:00

As my days at the desk draw to a close, I sit at work and obsessively check the number of students enrolled in my classes. And it is becoming clear that the piano classes that were added late, which I said I'd teach and which were the reason I quit my job at the desk, do not have enough kids enrolled to run. Perhaps kids will sign up at the last minute, but it's looking like they'll probably be canceled. I don't think I can get the desk job back, and I freaked out just a little, but I decided I'm going to stick with the plan. If I'm going to be a teacher and a performer, then that's what I'm going to do. If I have less classes, maybe I'll see if I can start teaching some private lessons, or do more self-promotion and get more gigs and parties. I had basically every hour of my life scheduled before; now it's opening up wide and who knows what will fill it.

Watched Obama's speech last night. He is amazing. This is all so amazing. I try to be a fairly optimistic, hopeful person, but when I watch him speak I realize that I have been cynical and reluctant to have any hope for the kind of change he is trying to bring. The invitation to hope is terribly emotional. Also exciting.

Went to this bar downtown called Angels and Kings on Wednesday night with Erica. She just started an internship with Venns Magazine and this was their issue release party It was very hip and there were free rum drinks and free purses of swag and some rockin' bands and live band karaoke at the end. Ben and Christos came too, and we all blew out our eardrums and had too much rum for a Wednesday. I sang Heartbreaker and Erica busted out 4 Non-Blondes and we biked home all happy. I am getting awesome at biking with no hands.

keeping busy, in no particular order

2008-08-26T13:50:00.005-05:00

-Julia visited; we biked all over the city, had Hot Doug's, saw Paul Green Rock School kids play at Millennium Park, ate gelato, ate eggplant parmesean that Ben made, watched Margot at the Wedding, breakfasted at Vella. Great sisterly times.

-Since my last post I've played 6 kids birthday parties, 2 Millennium Park Family Stage WW shows, 2 gigs with Baba Mnouche at the Art Institute and McCormick Place, and 1 gig with Come Sundy at the Green Mill (photos!).

-Tom and his banjo came along on the last day of WW class. So, so great. The kids loved it, I loved it, the energy in the room was incredibly happy. I saw little Alexander's mom a few days later and she was desperately seeking a cheap used banjo as he has been obsessed ever since.

-Picked up Finn for the last time; have to quit with the new job changes. Dropped off the carseat and keys at his dad's, along with a burned copy of every TMBG song in my posession for Finn.

-Brunches: Cozy Corner with Meredith, Mado with Ben. Lounging in Wicker Park near the farmer's market following each.

-Read "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell, at Janna's recommendation. Complicated. Multiple storylines. Liked it.

-Tomoko's Tuesday noon yoga class is still kicking my ass and I still love it. Meara came once and we lunched at Milk & Honey afterwards. Yummy!

-Dinner with Meredith and Ben, at Maiz, at Irazu. Handlebar drinks afterwards, joined by Molly and Jim.

-Got Meredith's bike fixed together. Biking with Meredith! Lunch at Cipollina.

-Penny's to go, brought downtown via bike with Ben to see An Affair To Remember outside in Grant Park.

-Internaional Bike Film Festival closing night shorts, followed by weird loft party.

-Coffee with the long-lost Emily at Lovely.

-Grilled cheese and too many beers with Erica at the Roscoe Village Tap, joined by Ben and Leah.

-Tornado in Chicago, while trapped inside Cleo's with Ryan Hagn over wings.

-Finish-the-keg-from-the-fundraiser party at Jeremy's. Vote for Jeremy!

-Trip to the vet with Adeline after finding a crawly worm in her puke. Ewwwwwwwww. She was super good and is now up to date on her shots and on her way to being roundworm-free. She has literally been sleeping since we got back yesterday afternoon; didn't get up for breakfast till noon today, and went back upstairs to sleep in the clothes in the laundry basket.

-Drive to a music store in the suburbs, followed by filling up with cheap gas and a corned beef sandwich on rye. Yes, Skokie.

-Missed being a part of this, quite sadly, but hey you can watch it on the internet. These are my relatives.

-Wrote a song on the piano for the first time.

-Met M, a flautist, pianist, and old friend of Taavo's at Lovely.

-Watched Walk Hard at the OTS movie night in the concert hall. Brought hot-out-the-oven peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. Let's duet...

-Watched some Olympics; mostly got teased by Ben for not liking the Olympics enough. Did not tease him back for his intense love of both the Olympics and of Canada's national anthem.

-Saw Ben do his first (mini) triathlon. Got shin splints myself, running from a mile away where I had to park but still missed the start. Ben did great; finished 263rd out of 742. Downed a breakfast at Ann Sather's afterward. The next day he videoed the big triathlon downtown; it was his first video piece for Chicagoist.

-Today's gorgeous and I have to get outside.

I'm a quitter

2008-08-21T11:27:00.004-05:00

I quit my job at the front desk.

I did so because I was offered the opportunity to teach another afternoon of piano classes. I said yes.

Which means that I am a full time music teacher/performer. If all of my classes run, I will have 17 at the school! 8 piano, 7 WW, and 2 kids' voice.

This is amazing, and a big change. I feel a little sad about it; I've been working at the desk since spring 2005, and all in all it has been a good run. I like being so connected in the workings of the school, and I like all of the opportunities to connect with people that come from being at the desk. Apart from my front desk co-workers and the good times I have with them, I have gotten to know all kinds of teachers, staff and students. I've hung out and befriended many, I've learned a lot, I've gotten gigs, I've found new collaborators, I've learned about happenings around the city, I've gotten tipsy. My built-in social network is changing. Of course I will still be around the school all the time, but I'm going to have to work a lot harder to see a lot of folks I currently see on a regular basis.

It makes me feel grownsed up.

But truth be told I have been stressed out by all of these exciting opportunities, and am finding it hard to keep my balance as I teeter on the brink of moving courageously ahead and falling into a sad pit of self-conscious despair. All these double edged swords. Being excited to teach and create this voice class quickly led to the realization that I've never done so before, and fear that I don't have the right skills or resources, and that the class will fail and the kids won't like it and the bosses will cancel it. The big step of full time teachering and performing daunted by the fear and sadness of leaving a comfortable, social, relatively easy job, and my embarrassment for those feelings and my own lack of enthusiasm for progress. The chance to record an album went from excitement about sharing my music to feeling dumb about all my songs and my musical skill level and not wanting to play them for anyone, let alone teach them to other musicians and ask them to play with me. Summertime hedonism filtered from relishing every lazy moment to feeling guilty about my unproductive selfish joy. That spread quickly to my job; pride in professional musicianship and my supposedly honorable status of "Teacher" shifted into shame and fear that my skills and I are no more than novelty for the wealthy.

There's this line from a Rilo Kiley song: "Folk singers sing songs for the working, baby; we're just recreation for all those doctors and lawyers." It's been stuck in my head for a few days. This sounds so dumb but I sometimes feel that I let Macalester down? Am I making the world better or worse? A big part of me would love to just drink booze and coffee and eat whatever I want and entertain myself and shoot the shit and ponder music and art and feelings and philsophies.... That's pretty much what I do every day in fact. Is it all just bullshit?

I was going to tell you about all the stuff I've been doing but now it's too depressing. It's been fun and I've been drunk a lot and eating and laughing and hanging out. Fuck. I feel terrible. I've guilted myself out of all my joy. I did it in my sleep too; last night in my dreams an exciting encounter with one of my favorite teachers took a negative turn when he morphed into a certain assumptive presidential nominee, we got caught and I realized I had ruined his candidacy and all hope for America.

Sorry this post turned into such a downer. If I feel better later I'll fill you in on the good times I've been summering.

Ok, I'm blogging

2008-08-06T10:52:00.005-05:00

I've been busy, and not feeling the blog this summer. Sorry everybody. I have done a lot of stuff. And there are pictures of some of them on the internet! Thanks to Ben (and Jana and Meghan) for the sweet pictures. UPDATE: You can view even more pictures of these things if you wish by visiting Ben's photos here.

I went to Molly's 4th of July party. Ate and drank and watched xplosions.

I went to Door County with the fam. Cooked food and biked and played games and swam and fish boiled and petted aminals at The Farm.

I worked and performed two times and had fun at the OTS Folk&Roots festival.
Rocked out, danced hard, got drunk.

Jana, Chris, friends came to stay at attend the Pitchfork music festival with us. Walking burrito party, rain, sweat, Vampire Weekend, Hold Steady, Les Savy Fav, blisters, party at our house, guitar playing for Jana, big breakfast in the backyard, mild exhaustion. (Jana's sweet post here.)

I played some kids gigs, at Millennium Park and at the Chicago Children's Museum. Take Me Out To The Ballgame is the big hit of the summer.

I went to Colorado with Ben, staying in Telluride with his family and in Boulder with Taavo, Kiki, Alex and Ben S. Hiked, ate, drank, rode bikes, rode a gondola, crashed a wedding.

The entire first floor of our house got covered with dust from the roofers next door via the windows we'd left open for Adeline; it was cleaned before we got home but Adeline had a gray tummy for a week.

Adeline totally rules.

I helped with a scene for Emily's music video that Ben is filming and hung out with her before she left her Chicago apartment for good.

I biked 150 miles in the BDBT and raised almost $800 for MS research.

I drank coffee, I drank beer, I ate late night pizza.

I played music, I heard music, I made up music.

I got kind of tan.

I got kind of burned.

I wore my pink sunglasses.

I am feeling both very present and very absent. Living in the moment has been good but I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by decisions and plans and preparations I have to make for the future. In the fall I am starting a brand new class at work, which I am super excited about, and which is starting to make me very nervous. My standards for myself are high and I want to do a good job, and I'm suddenly aware that I am starting from scratch with no official training. There's work to be done there. For my other classes too; I need to do some planning for the next sessions of Worms and Piano. Also, a friend pulled some strings for me and I have an opportunity to record an album, for free, which is unacceptable to pass up. There is work there too, and decisions to be made: Do I do my original singer/songwriterey things or do I do an album of kids songs? Solo or with a band? Who will play? What instruments? Which songs? I have gigs coming up with my grownup bands, at the Green Mill (!) with Come Sund.y and at the Art Institute with Baba M.nouche; I want those to be good, but I also have to decide how involved I want to be with those groups... There's a convention coming up that they're taking the WW staff to, and I have to decide how much of that I want to attend, although it's the same weekend as the Hideout Block Party where Neko Case and the New Pornographers, both of whom are high up on the list of artists I want to be like, will be playing one block from my house... I am a teacher and a performer and a kids artist and a grownup artist and a creator and a collaborator and a young person in the city, and I have to decide how to divide myself up. I want to do everything. But I can't. Saying yes is easy. Saying no is hard. Saying not anymore is the hardest. "It's the hour of action; I've got to decide..."

Someone just showed me this video. Have you seen this? It's wonderful; cute, and creative, and it makes you feel good. Really- I guess that's all I want to be.

The living is easy

2008-07-02T11:15:00.003-05:00

My favorite season has always wavered between spring and fall. But no longer.

Summer.

Summer is the greatest. Summer in Chicago is especially the super awesome greatest. This is why we bother living here the other 9 months of the year. I'll take the heat. Everything is so great.

This summer I've been biking everywhere with my little guitar strapped to my back, pink sunglasses on, t-shirt, cutoff jeans, chucks. Playing music on street corners. Getting inspired to write songs. Dancing with kids at Millennium Park. Sitting outside at night. Ice cream-- with fresh organic milk and strawberries! Watching terrible-but-fun action movies. Playing a set at a bike-safety event. Getting caught in the rain, only to have it eventually melt back into beautiful sunshine. Drinking beers. Eating grilled food. Heart to hearts with old and new friends. Phone conversations on a stroll down the street. Learning harmonica in the car. Frisbee. No coat, no purse. Saying yes and filling up every minute of these long beautiful days.

Mmmmm hmmmmm.

summertime is for rides

2008-06-22T22:37:00.002-05:00

Tonight, in an incredible feat of triple-dating, Erica & Kevin, Jenna & Jeremy and Ben & I ate an entire octopus. We also consumed two bottles of wine, a 6er of Red Stripe, two small pizzas and an order of super garlicky bruschetta. And THEN we went to a little carnival at Lane Tech high school, and we ate cotton candy, and we rode on the crazy ride that goes back and forth, and a ride that was lying down in fake hangliders, and a mini giant drop. The mini giant drop was also FREE, because they shut down the ticket booth, but Jeremy convinced me to ask the guy, and he waived us on. For the price of one Coke. Here is my impression of me on the Giant Drop ride, as it slowly rose up and then plummetted down:

"Oh boy.. oh boy. Ohhh, shit. Ohh shit. Shit. Oh fuck. Ohh fuck. Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahhh. Shit!! Ahh! Ahhh God! Oh no! Ah shit. Awww, fuck! Fuck! Ahh!! Ahh ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa fuck! Aahh! Ahh!! AAAh!! AaaaaAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEE! AAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE! AAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! AHH! AHHH!! AAAAAAAAH!!!!"

It was fucking fabulous.

Go go go

2008-06-05T10:46:00.002-05:00

Last weekend was good.... Spend Friday night with Meredith, hearing Tom's band at the Hideout, dinner at Silver Palm, met more friends for drinks at Happy Village. Saturday subbed classes, lunched with Erica, went to Steve & Barry's in the suburbs with the M's, biked up to Lula for a nice long outdoor meal with Ben, played Boggle at Whirlaway. Sunday we got breakfast at Vella Cafe (a new place to love! Yes!!), read and watched baseball in Wicker Park, biked to some grocery stores and had some friends over for a last minute cookout. It was a beautiful weekend with lots of time outside.

Then there was a rainy week of regular stuff....

And this weekend I'm going to an organic farm in Michigan! Last minute road trip with Tom. He worked there many summers, so we're gonna go and help out and go to the farmer's market and eat yummy organic things. I'm psyched. Ben's busy with video shoots all weekend... he is starting to get a lot of work which is very exciting. As my friend Emily said, it's always good to do the kinds of things that make you feel more like yourself; I have high hopes that this weekend will make me More Lindsay.

excellent fun times

2008-05-28T15:25:00.004-05:00

Last Thursday I was supposed to meet up with Tom after work to play some tunes. He called and asked if we could meet at his house instead of at the school, and I responded that I hadn't brought my guitar along, since I had been planning to just use one of the school's loaner guitars..... I mean, yes, sure. See you at your place.

So I bought a new guitar.

It is a Little Martin. It is about a 3/4 size, spruce top, big sound, easy to play, feels good, smells good, nice backpack case, easy to bike with, highly lovable. With all my gigs lately, and supposed government money coming, and 3 paydays this month, I decided to go ahead and buy this little baby that I've been eyeing for some time. Plus I got a sweet deal in the store. Great for teaching! I can bike to WW now in half the time instead of driving the mile and a half in crappy Lincoln Park traffic! It will be my summer guitar. One day I will also get an electric; that will be winter guitar. It was a highly exciting impulse purchase.

So Thursday: worky work, new guitar, good times Fat Tirin' and playing with Tom, then bus rides with Finn, then biking to Indiana Jones downtown. Excellent.

Friday: Little Martin'd WW, afternoon nap, dinner at Feed, The Strangerer at the Chopin, beers and 90's vampire movies at Gold Star. Excellent.

Saturday: Early morning outside seating brunch at Lula, wrapping bike handlebars (grannysmith-green for Roxy, Bianchi-teal for Lu), bday party in the suburbs, dinner at Spacca Napoli, early bedtime. Excellent.

Sunday: Biked the Drive. Gorgeous sunny breezy cool morning. With Saud and Megan. Clocked in 38 miles before 10am. Grocery shopped. Cleaned. Made a strawberry rhubarb pie. Ben worked on the rubbing and marinating of pork and brisket.

Monday: Memorial Day! Baked mango upside-down cake. Finished cleaning, arranging, and sprucing up. Put on a pretty dress. The rain stayed away, a ton of folks showed up, the food was great. Some OTS folks brought a banjo and a fiddle, and somebody even played my oboe, and I played my new little baby geetar. Everyone enjoyed the tunes, including the neighbor who came over and sat down with a Miller Lite in hand. Well, we were hit by a rotten robin's egg, but whether that was the fault of gravity, our frat-boy neighbors, or an old-time-music-hating robin remains a mystery. Pulled pork. Brisket. Homemade BBQ sauce. Pie. Cake. Salads. Chocolate toffee cookies. Egg olive mint fancy tart. Spicy cornbread. A hamburger cake. (Which Adeline mistook for a giant can of Fancy Feast after her dinnertime passed unnoticed.) We were left at the end of the night with the sign of a successful party: one beer left in the fridge.

Pictures here. Note: the topless guitar playing is an illusion.

It was a huge success but since the party I've been feeling down. Back to work, and picking up lots of extra subbing classes to cover for the money I didn't get to earn from the many classes I didn't get to teach on Monday. Hopefully skies will clear up... Ben and I are going to see a friend's play tonight, and this weekend I've got plans to hang with my Redheaded Ms (Molly & Meredith).

Hosting a party, eating and drinking, playing music, beautiful day, good people... Hard to make me happier than that.

OMG!

2008-05-21T08:59:00.003-05:00

Adeline is a celebrity!!! Chris posted her photo on cutewithchris.com! Scroll down to May 20! Look at the blender pet! Yessss! Cutewithchris.com is part of my daily website browsing. I love it and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see my bean on his site! I jumped and jumped and yelled, and Adeline's ears shot back in delight as she bolted down the stairs, presumably to do a victory lap around the kitchen floor that made her a star.

Adeline is a little bean. She is the best and my heart grew bigger with all of my love for her and she purrs and loves us and we all snuggle and rub our cheeks against each other and it is the greatest ever.

Her cuteness has been deemed official. Thank you Chris. OMG.

In other news, spring is awesome. And it brings on vices, like wanting to kiss beautiful strangers and celebrating each jean-jacketed day with a beer. Or 4. After several weeknights in a row of drinking to various reasons (Kevin's back on the Tuesday night shift! Tom and I are playing at an open mic and we don't go on for two hours! Taavo's in town and this place has great margaritas!) my stomach went on strike. Both from the rumbly inside and the squishy outside. I appeased the inside with many veggie-packed, healthy meals and homemade granola with yogurt. As for the outside... I realized that although in my head I believed I was in great shape, in reality it had been a while since I'd gotten any kind of regular cardio exercise. For a little while over the winter I joined a crappy gym in a park fieldhouse, where I learned that I hate going to the gym. I haven't been biking as much, due to picking up Finn after work, working less shifts up north, and having lots of days when I have to bring my guitar with me. So I bought some running shoes.

When we went shopping for the running shoes, Ben first encouraged me to seek out good quality, so we went to a fancy running store. There were no prices on any of the shoes. A nice salesguy came to help me, bringing me shoes to try on and then watching me jog on the treadmill to see if they made my foot line up right. When I found some Nikes that worked well he was like, "Awesome! You're getting your first running shoes! You must be psyched!" They were $95. I felt really pressured and embarrassed; everyone in there felt rich, and I was really uncomfortable that it had gone from browsing some shoes to an assumed hundred dollar purchase in 15 minutes. So I thanked him and told him maybe I'd be back later. We went to Kohls instead and I got some New Balance shoes for half the price. The reason I like the idea of running is that you don't need anything, and I was freaked out by the folks who were way into the fancy running gear. If I decide one day that I'm way into it and want to get the fancy shoes, I'll be back to visit my salesman friend.

Then Ben and I went for a run and I almost died and was sore for two days.

The most fun of all is playing music with good friends. I remembered this last Wednesday, crashing my old guitar class and then playing at the Bad Dog with my banjo friend Tom. Despite my many musician friends, we rarely sit around and play together. To this I say: Bollocks! There shall be more music playing amongst friends! I play lots of music, and even make a living doing so (!!!), but it's different to teach a class or go to a gig than it is to have fun sharing a favorite thing with a favorite person. This past weekend I did 3 parties/events. They were all fun enough but drained me of my energy and almost cost me my voice. I feel weird that so much of my music playing is connected to money, and if I'm getting enough, blah blah. I don't want to be all snobby. So I need to make sure I have that balance.

Stuff I've seen lately: Taavo, Iron Man, Molly in a play, Son of Rambow, a piano student terrified of the word "ghost," Meara, guitar students getting engaged onstage after class, my cat on the internet.

rainy wednesday

2008-05-07T13:15:00.005-05:00

My bangs are now long enough to accidentally go into my mouth while I am eating. But they are not quite long enough to go behind my ear. This is kind of gross. I need to make sure to keep a bobby pin in my pocket at all times. Miki's pasta with meat sauce is nowhere near as delicious as usual when the occasional bite includes a bunch of poky ends of hair.

Since I last posted, Ben went to New York and came back. So you pretty much know exactly what happened. I made myself breakfasts (on my new vintage waffle iron!), moped a little bit, hung out with the cat, visited lady friends, didn't eat enough. But now he's back. Yay!

I also got a new cell phone, saw Nina Simone's daughter play at the OTS, made peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and spent lots of money on dinner and brews with Meara. I also spent lots of money on lunch with Meredith and Molly, and again on lunch with Andrea.

I never posted about Ben's rock show. He is taking a class at OTS called the "Proto Punk Ensemble," which means he is the drummer in a big band made mostly of guitar players that learns to play old songs by the Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, etc. They had their graduation performance right before Ben left for New York, and it was an awesome show.

More photos here. As Ben said, now he doesn't have to say "I'm learning to play the drums" anymore. He can just say, "I'm a drummer." Sweet.

Pink of Perfection Project: April

2008-04-29T11:09:00.018-05:00

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

2008-04-22T09:02:00.003-05:00

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

2008-04-08T09:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-04-02T10:03:00.004-05:00

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.

sweaty sweatshirt

2008-03-13T09:29:00.003-05:00

This morning I biked the 5 miles up to work for the first time in many months. It was semi-sunny and a little damp on the streets. A lovely springy morning. I was in London last year at this time and I've been thinking about those days a lot. It reminded me of our rental-bike ride through Cambridge.

Anyway, I noticed that one of the buildings I passed has changed businesses. It now says on the awning in giant letters:

URBAN LOTUS BEACH SPA

Urban. Lotus. Beach. Spa. I just imagine the owners thinking, "We should make sure we have at least one word that will appeal to everyone!" But all together, it seems ridiculous. They have nothing in common! Those words give me strong images that are impossible to connect. I get like a busy sort of concrete and lightbulbs populated area, with a little peaceful mucky pond of lilypads and lotus flowers for some reason, oh and then also there is a sunny beach there with kids in swimsuits playing and splashing, and then a quiet perfumed indoor tan-painted room with carefully folded towels and sculptures made of smooth stones.

WTF?

guilty pleasures

2008-03-12T14:21:00.004-05:00

This blog post is dedicated to my friend Jana (not Janna or Jenna) who closes each of her posts with a short list of "guilty pleasures." Here are mine, as of late:

-Coffee in the afternoon

-Seasonal 50-cent chocolate-covered marshmallow candies from Walgreens. I buy one of these every time I am at Walgreens if the season permits them to be sold, whether they are in the shape of eggs, hearts, pumpkins, or santas.

-Biking to Andersonville, playing Euchre and accidentally getting drunk with new friends on Sunday night

-Hungover Wigglwrming (more guilty than pleasure)

-The Best American Non-Required Reading of 2007

-Pseudo "Cat Lady" behavior

-Girl Scout Cookies

-Feeling messengerish while biking on cold days

-Attending kids' concerts by myself

-Fantasizing about world travel

-Reading writing of friends

-Zines

-Not getting a haircut

-Converse All Stars purchased at Urban Outfitters

-Going out for lunch

-Imagining treacherous wisdom tooth removal complications

-Gin and milk

-Hanging out at work when I'm not working

-Procrastinating laundry

Stuff to blog about

2008-02-29T16:44:00.004-06:00

I've looked all over the internet, and it seems like nobody else has noticed that Wolcott by Vampire Weekend is the same song as August by Rilo Kiley, mixed with the chorus of Spectacular Views. Finding these things is my secret talent. Seriously, Rilo Kiley could sue. Except I kind of hope they don't because I'm digging Vampire Weekend lately.

Graduation Tuesday night was keggeriffic once again. Everyone drank and played and sang and danced and had awesome fun.

Julie B had a birthday get together at Black Rock, which is a pretty good bar that had Summit Oatmeal Stout on special. Yay Julie B! Yay new bars!

Ben's quote of the week: "How hard is it to put on your turn signal?? Answer: Not hard at all." Chicago: please take note. Especially cops. Just use your goddamn turn signals. The number one reason I distrust police officers in Chicago is their selfish, shitty, blatantly law-ignoring driving. I almost got hit this week by a cop car rolling through a stop sign at Greenview and Blackhawk. It was the same car that had cut me off moments earlier at Ashland and North.

Finn's quote of the week, when I asked what his dad's new girlfriend was like: "Her voice...... always sounds like she's kind of confuuuuuuuuused." Finn has been pretty hilarious lately. Apart from a major slipup in school (punched a kid on Valentine's Day) his day-to-day behavior has been much better, and we've been getting along swimmingly, finding lots of new TMBG songs for him to enjoy. Finn also said the new GF was "really nice," that her hair was "a little bit darker than yours, but her face isn't as round," and that it "kind of wiggle-waggles to one side, like it looks like she has more hair on one side of her head than the other."

Adeline cute report: Ben stayed home sick on Tuesday, and Adeline literally did not leave his side. After breakfast she went back upstairs to hang out in bed with him, coming downstairs only with him for bathroom and tea breaks, joining him on the couch, following him back up when he went back to bad. Ben went back to work the next day. He had a caring nurse.

OhMyGodAdelineIsSoCuteAndGreat.

Plantars warts are no match for apple cider vinegar.

Neal had a birthday party last weekend which was a good time, after a long day of birthday parties and cardio jazzing.

Feed brunch is definitely one of the best in town.

Saw Contraption at the Neo-Futurists last night. Neo-Futurists + Taste of Lebanon
= yes yes yes.

One day I will read and own every issue of McSweeneys. (See previous post) I currently own: none.

Tonight I'm going to see a band I might collaborate with at the Hideout. And then Sunday is Ben's birthday. Lookin forward to it.

Something else I like:

2008-02-21T22:15:00.002-06:00

Clever people who poke fun with precision.

I can't believe I found this site after writing that post.

dork

2008-02-21T21:08:00.003-06:00

Lately I have been getting back into one of my old favorite pastimes. It is really, really dorky.

I've been making a lot of origami.

I told you it was really dorky. I was way into origami when I was in grade school, thanks in part to a Japanese woman at our church. Anyway, it turns out that I still dig it.

It's no surprise, really. I am a big fan of all kinds of things where you follow the directions and see what you come up with in the end. Baking, assembling toys, using technology, riding bike paths, even solving crossword puzzles all follow this philosophy.

This reminds me of another one of my favorite things: a collection of someone's recommended items. I love to enjoy the product of other people's tastes. Mix CDs. Best-of collections. Literary magazines. TMLMTBGB. The 5 Oscar-nominated short films we saw last weekend. I am more likely to go for it when there's a set of things, rather than just one thing that one person recommends. Because I might not share tastes with that person. But if it's a compilation of different things that all have excellent qualities according to one person or many people, it is likely that I will either enjoy a majority, or find them thought-provoking. I love variety shows.

I guess I gain enjoyment from being patient and trusting that it's gonna be good when I get to the end. Especially from trust-worthy sources.

Hey! You are a trustworthy source! Got any recommendations of stuff you love??

sippin on gin and milk

2008-02-18T21:12:00.003-06:00

Try it; you'll like it.

Jesse visited this weekend, with his new girlfriend Kirsten who he knows from Green Lake. She was sick and needed to take it easy but we had a nice weekend. Things have been pretty great since Valentine's, which Ben and I spent eating and watching Sesame Street videos on YouTube. It was a happy time. Then Friday night I played a show at the Heartland Cafe with the band that I had been kind of dreading but which turned out to be a lot of fun. It was a benefit show for this organization, and we had a nice group of people playing and a good crowd. I've been feeling pretty anti-baba lately, and was considering quitting the band, but after this gig I remembered that under the right circumstances I really enjoy it. So I think I just need to be more deliberate about my yesses and nos.

Saturday I had a great Cardio Jazz class, and then Jesse and Kirsten showed up. We lunched at Taco Veloz, dinnered at Santullos, then went our seperate ways as they headed to the Super Furry Animals concert at the Metro and we headed off to Ben's college friend Pete's party. After mistaking a party guest's screwdriver ingredients for gin and milk, we decided to try the drink that didn't actually sound too bad. It wasn't bad at all. It's delicious. Refreshing. I'll have to try it warm some time. Turns out we didn't make it up. Ben and I capped off the night with a little dancing at the Handlebar's fifth birthday party. A fraction of Mucca Pazza was there, and when they were done playing the DJ busted out all kinds of stuff, including Ease on Down the Road from The Wiz. Dancing with Ben at the Handlebar with lots of dorky hipsters was so joyful.

Sunday the four of us tried to go to M. Henry for brunch but there was an hour wait, even though it was already 1:30 by the time we made it there. We ate instead at Pannekoeken, the new Dutch pancake place in Lincoln Square. Then we toured the OTS a little bit before dropping Jesse and still-sick Kirsten off to take it easy at home. Ben and I saw the Oscar Shorts and then picked up Soupbox dinner and a movie to watch back at the coach house with J&K. It was a nice cozy night for a disgusting soggy Chicago winter day.

This morning J&K came to see my worms. It was a fun day, especially thanks to the awesome two year old who didn't want to stop running around singing, "Call me!! Call me, anytime... Call me!!" I gotta learn some Blondie for next week's class. Bagel sandwiches at CBA before Kirsten drove outta town, and the Jesse and I did a little shopping and tea before I took him to the bus station. Piano classes, pretty good, but after a fun and tiring weekend I was really happy to come home to have a nice night with my cozy man and cat.

We just watched a trailer online for John Lennon vs. the United States, which is sitting on top of the stereo in Ben's Netflix envelope. At the end of the trailer I had tears in my eyes. He was such a vehicle for hope, and it reminded me of how hopeless I feel about the country I live in. While life has been fun and pretty happy lately, I was suddenly reminded that I spend most of my energy on pleasure and very little of my time and resources on working to make things better in this fucked up world. I haven't been able to really get my optimism back after watching Sicko, which made me feel like I must move to a different country, or perhaps galaxy, if I ever want to bring kids into the world. I am having a hard time envisioning any real change, and when I start to think about wars and food and the environment and education and prejudice and social classes and the media and the corporations, etc etc etc, I am overwhelmed and terrified. I think Barack Obama is incredible and I hope I hope I hope he wins but I'm really nervous that he's not going to.

I didn't know what to do about all this, so I wrote this blog. I also watched Nora the cat play piano, and a little bit of No Reservations and Good Eats with Ben, and then Adeline came to sit with us and decided to make her spot on the blanket over our legs. Between our legs actually, and also between the coffee table and the couch. She was in a little hammock of blanket, staring up at us. All this stuff has made me feel much better, for now at least. I realize it's not at all helpful or productive or good for the world. Maybe tomorrow I'll find something more revolutionary to do. Teaching music to kids is pretty good.

Or maybe I'll hide away with a gallon of 2 percent and some Tanqueray.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done

2008-02-14T10:48:00.002-06:00

Ah, Valentine's Day. Ben and I woke up early and went here for coffee and pastries, and after work we're going here for fatty reubens and malts. Nothing's more romantic than a pile of meat!

I listened to Help! on the way to work, and I am in a great mood. Sometimes I forget that I really, really, really love the Beatles. It's fun to listen to them from more of a songwriting perspective now. I think that if somehow there was Beatles music playing when I got home and the door to my house was frozen completely shut, again, I might be less grumpy as I hack away at it with a paint scraper.

Are you sick? Everyone is sick. We're sick-- of calling groups of students to tell them that their classes are canceled because their teacher is sick.

I just learned from spellcheck on Blogger that cancelled is actually spelled canceled. Uh, I mean, is actualy speled canceled. Spelcheck told me. Tod me.

Three cheers for good moods!

unable to blog

2008-02-04T13:48:00.001-06:00

Sorry folks. I have been unable to blog, despite lots of interesting things going on. Like a fun Hootenanny, and football with Aerin and Jenna, and drinking after work in the concert hall with Andrea, and Cozy Corner and Swim Cafe and yoga and Orange Mighty Trio with Meara, and the Daily with Mike and Bill and Karen, and lots of snow and freezing temperatures and shoveling, and taking Meredith to the emergency room until 4:30am after she fainted and hit her head during her play (she is fine), and Julia visiting and going to TMLMTBGB and Meli and Atonement and Navy Pier and Soup Box, and writing songs, and worms and piano, and Adeline being the bestest funnest snuggliest lovingest of all, and Cullens with Julie F, and Harold & Maude and tots and cake and Juno with Emily, and Earwax and shopping with Meara and cardio jazz and Milk & Honey with Meredith and Ben coming home and my new favorite place Lovely and the Superbowl party at Jeremy and Jenna's.

Theoretically I should be able to write about all that stuff. But I think that little list is all you're gettin'. I'm feeling a little under the weather and I think that's all I can muster. Basically, I'm pretty good, and stayed busy while Ben was gone, and wish I could sleep all afternoon instead of getting observed by my boss while teaching my piano classes. Wish me luck!

taking a solo

2008-01-20T12:12:00.000-06:00

It's day two of living single... Ben has embarked upon another world adventure. He just called me from LaGuardia; in a few hours he'll be flying to Israel, for free, with these guys. I'm jealous but it's an awesome opportunity and I'm excited for him too. But I'm not happy about being home alone again for two weeks. Luckily Adeline is keeping me company. I just made a yummy breakfast: mushroom onion pepperjack omelet with toast and some sauteed little tomatoes and half a grapefruit and coffee. I am determined to eat well while Ben is gone, to prove that I can in fact feed myself.

Friday night Ben and I got dinner at Bite and then went to see this show our friend Margaret helped write at Second City, which was pretty cool. Woke up early the next morning to see him off, played a bday party, went to my Cardio Jazz class (dancing myself into shape), grocery shopped, made guacamole (although I didn't remember then that guac/beer dinner is par for the course), went to a party at Jeremy's, lost myself rocking out to Queen. Today's the Hootenanny, which is sold out. I have to get my jammies together, tune up my geetar and get Cheeser looking his best. I'm a little nervous, but I'm sure I'll feel better once I see the kids. That's my style.

It's damn cold. The heater is blasting and blasting but our thermostat can never reach the temperature it's set to. Yesterday for much of the day the temperature outside was: a degree.

Ten images from yesterday, 1/19/08

1. 2-year-old birthday girl dragging her little blue folding table over for pizza
2. Hot dancers in Jeremy's living room lit by a blue disco ball, muted He-Man on TV and YouTubed Thriller video.
3. Backpacked Ben
4. The sign for Sunflower Market ahead on Clybourn
5. Kevin, arms up for a hug/pose, at the front desk
6. Xaviera's slick slide/stomp move
7. Half-skirted bad-toothed gamers at the party
8. Embroidered hippie shirt on a long-haired girl
9. Adeline curled up by my face in the middle of the night
10. View down into the vent of the space heater

Why hello!

2008-01-16T09:33:00.000-06:00

Happy new year, friends. I've been quite negligent when it comes to the ol' blog. I finally feel like writing a little update.

My life has been kind of sitting at status quo here in Chicago, and I've been feeling very grateful and trying to recognize the fact that, for right now, things are good. I love my city, my job, my house, my boyfriend and my cat.

Christmas was nice. I stayed home for 9 days, which is the longest I've been on vacation anywhere in quite a while, and certainly the longest stretch at home since college. It was great to be with my family. Times have been tricky, as my grandparents have been in transition from their apartment to hospitals to nursing homes to a nice assisted living facility. It has been hard work for my family members and it was good to spend a lot of time with them.

I bought a new toy. It is so good to have a (digital) piano at home again. I got it because I am teaching Monday afternoons in the , which is an exciting development in my involvement at the school. My classes have started well. Lots of returning WW students, which is a great sign and a lot of fun as I get to know the kids better, but also presents a challenge to find fresh songs. I'm also going to be involved in a sweet kids concert on Sunday; bring your teddy bear! Work at the front desk has been a little nutty; we have a brand new operating system and we've been working on ironing out the many kinks during our busiest registration time of the year. We're finally in week 2 of classes and are breathing the sweet fresh air of downtime in between phone calls! I am excited for this system to get to the point of running smoothly because it will be awwwwwesome.

New Years Eve was spent in a tiny lake cabin in Michigan with Ben, Taavo & Meredith. We ate and drank well, as is our custom.

Ben's doing pretty awesome these days, working on lots of film stuff, taking Italian classes, playing with his new toy, starting to swim laps for exercise. He is going to Israel this weekend for two weeks; he will be gone for three weekends. I'm gonna miss him, but I am super glad that I'll have Adeline to keep me company.

Adeline is funny and awesome and totally lovable. I could tell you one million things about her but I don't want to be a crazy cat lady and I recognize that stories about other people's pets aren't that interesting. But if you want to hear any, trust me, I've got 'em. I can't believe how much she makes my life better. Here is a picture of her, taken with Ben's fancy new camera:

While my life is currently pretty nice, I have been feeling a lot of empathy for friends and family who are having some rough times. I know friends dealing with life-changing moves, the tragic loss of a friend, identity theft, mistreatment by others, high/law/grad school blues, financial hardship... I'm thinking of you a lot and I love you!

I was lucky enough to be one of five staff members to get a spot in Lynda B@rry's two-day writing workshop that we hosted at our school. It was like yoga for my brain. All of us felt very alive and stimulated at the end of each day. And exhausted. Afterwards Julie B, who had also been in the workshop, came over for Ben-cooked dinner and story sharing. It was wonderful, even though the writing sample you are currently reading is definitely lacking in creativity. Lynda focuses on the power of images, and suggested journaling in the form of remembering ten images from the previous day, whatever they may be. So as a closer, her are ten images that come to mind when I recall 2008:

1. Julia on the couch with Sundae and a blanket
2. Ben's new brown glasses sitting next to his black glasses on the bathroom shelf
3. Aerin in her top hat at the (smoke free!) Empty Bottle
4. View of Miki walzing from the stage at the Dankhaus, OTS holiday party
5. Adeline sitting in the puddle at the edge of the counter by the dish rack
6. Seeing my breath in the car as I drive north on Ashland
7. Farm Hustle screen
8. Call waiting lights blinking on the phone at work
9. Scrap pieces of denim, covered in litterbox-dust footprints, on top of the slightly-clawed speakers on my new piano
10. Meredith and Taavo kissing by the table to ring in the new year

Happy 2008!

Craft fair this weekend!

2007-12-04T15:36:00.000-06:00

Check it, dudes! I'm a fashion model and designer!

Come and get 'em!

I'm still here

2007-11-28T16:28:00.000-06:00

Work and spending time with people have taken priority over blogging.

I'm stressed out in the back of my brain all the time. I think this stuff with my grandpa and my family is taking a toll. I've chipped two teeth, which unfortunately appears to be a new stress outlet. But other than that stress, life is great. Grandpa, incidentally, is frustrated by his situation but is physically recouperating quite well. His rehab docs are very impressed with his progress. Grandma was in the hospital too, for a bowel obstruction. They are finally both out and in a nursing home rehab-type facility. My relatives have been working hard, spending lots and lots of time and days and nights at the hospital with them. They couldn't come to Thanksgiving, and we're all trying to figure out what is going to happen when it's time for them to "go home," since Grandpa isn't really going to be able to care for the two of them in their house anymore. We are blessed with a big, strong, close family, but this is still a pretty stressful time.

Thanksgiving was 100% great. I had Thursday's meal with Ben's family and Friday with mine. Great food all around. I made 4 pies and a cobbler. (2 pumpkin mascarpone, 2 apple cherry streusel, 1 Door County cherry.) At my house we were all a little sad that Grandma and Grandpa weren't there, but everyone was so glad to be together and feeling festive that we got along better than ever and had a really nice time. It was one of the best Thanksgivings I can remember. Being home was rejuvenating. Visiting Grandma and Grandpa in the hospital was good.

We missed Adeline while we were gone. She's still great. We are in love with her. I'm trying not to turn into a crazy cat lady but we've only had her for a month and I still think she is, as they say, the cat's meow. You are welcome to come and play with her any time. She loves to play with her sparkly balls and fleece cat charmer toy. Also, paper bags and towels on the floor. She loves to hang out and watch everything we do. She likes to snuggle up with us at night, occasionally interrupted by polite requests to wake up and play with the toys she has brought onto the bed.

Ben and I had a great anniversary way back when. We dressed up fancy, and since it was an unseasonably warm night, biked from restaurant to restaurant. We went to Mirai for a cocktail and sushi appetizer, then to Green Zebra for classy vegetarian entrees, desserts at Hot Chocolate and a nightcap at the Charleston. We're all happy together.

I've been working a lot which is good for my pocketbook. I did two parties the weekend before Turkeyday, and got my biggest tip ever! It involved multiple twenty dollar bills.

I've been asked to join the group piano faculty at work. I'm very excited to be heading in the direction of more teaching. Hooray!

Our hit single came out on the internets! Check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Y8WJHK/ref=dm_dp_adp27/102-8834769-3274544

Thus ends the reading.

putt-putt-putt... sputtterrrrrr

2007-11-12T15:31:00.000-06:00

I'm running out of gas. The past several days have been jam packed with activity and emotions. There are more details than I'd really like to go into, but here's the rundown:

Mom was in Chicago with her co-teachers for the National Early Childhood Convention. The hotel screwed up their reservation and they pitched a fit until they could offer them something reasonable. Which ended up being the "Astor Suite" on the 33rd floor. 2 bathrooms. A dining room. A bar. 3 doors to the room. Great views. Big fancy TV. Ridiculous bedroom. It was amazing. On Thursday night I came bearing gifts of wine and beer, and we ordered pizza and were silly. Super fun.

The next day my Grandpa had a stroke. I first got the news just before teaching a WW class, and at that point things were looking very serious. It was the hardest class I've taught. But afterwards we learned that the situation was not quite as dire. My mom, aunt Debbie and I all happened to be in Chicago, and they decided to stay through the convention before traveling to Milwaukee. I decided to join them and drove up with my mom on Saturday afternoon.

Friday afternoon I went to one workshop with Mom and Debbie at McCormick Place, which is nuts. Though it was was fun to go to the workshop. Mom stayed at my place that night. She met Adeline and fell right in love with her. Of course. We had dinner at Artopolis.

Saturday morning I played a birthday party while Mom baked banana bread with my old black bananas, and then we drove up to Milwaukee. It was great spending so much time with her; we had some deep conversations and I feel better about my place in our family now. Living in Chicago when the rest of my very close family is together in Milwaukee is not actually so easy, but I think now both of us have a better idea of how to relate to each other in this situation. I was very glad to be coming home to be with the family.

We ate banana bread with our family and then drove out to the hospital to see Grandpa. He seemed okay when we got there, just very tired and weak, with the left side of his face drooping. Lots of family members were there. The people in the next room complained about the noise. When the sun went down though, Grandpa started acting very strange and confused, demanding that we give him the bottle of pills he could see while there was actually no bottle of pills there. His confusion and nonsense made me very upset and I lost control of my tears. Nothing scares me more than losing control of the brain, and to see my super-smart, capable grandpa acting so absurd was terrible. Later we found out that he was spiking a fever due to a urinary infection, so that partly explained his hallucinations. But at the time it was very freaky. We ate dinner at the hospital with Betsy and the Konkols.

Bradley was in The Nerd at Tosa East that night, and since Grandpa couldn't go I was able to use his ticket. They had constructed a sort of black-box feel, with the set and entire audience right on the stage. Being on the stage at Tosa East again stirred up all kinds of different emotions. During the play I snuck out with Grandma to take her to the bathroom, because I knew where the backstage rooms were. It was so bizarre, helping my grandma with her bad knees and fuzzy perception up flights and flights of stairs, backstage in my old high school theater where I had been so often, so long ago. Bradley was great in the play, but unfortunately the main thing I left with was anger after the director came to greet me and Jesse, and talk to us about Bradley's performance and our past performances, and totally blew off Julia and Leslie. He likes to put on exciting, impressive shows that are popular in the community, but his focus on the theater's impression in the community overshadows his concern for his students' feelings and opportunities. His rudeness broke my heart, and I really felt for Julia amidst the trials and tribulations and bullshit of high school. She is brave and strong and hanging in there, and I give her so much credit.

Sunday I slept through church, and then we spent more time at the hospital. Grandpa was much better. Improving by leaps and bounds. His doctors, nurses and physical therapists were amazed by his progress. He was working on a crossword puzzle with us, making witty jokes, joining in conversation with his visitors. He even walked down the hall with a walker. We'll have to see how much he improves, but he was starting to be more like himself. There are going to be some changes in the way our family works. It is overwhelming. But we are very lucky to have so many family members who take care of each other.

I ate with Julia and then drove home to Chicago, just in time for the Songbook volume 4 CD release concert. We recorded a track for the album, but unfortunately our track will only be available as an "internet extra." This is an unfair bummer for lots of reasons, but mostly because nobody told us and we had to find out through the rumor mill. Lots of teachers' tracks got the boot in favor of more famous ringers. The part that frustrates me is that 9 out of 20 tracks that are on the hard copy of the CD are not even in the songbook. Still, check us out come November 20! We'll also be on iTunes. It's a good track. The concert was a ton of fun, after I finally drove all the way back from Milwaukee and changed into my dress and drove to the school and hopped up on stage to swing Oh Susannah for a good crowd, and then I had the most delicous PBR ever. The other performers were all really good, and I love variety-show type performances with lots of different kinds of people doing their thing. And then I went to O'Hare to pick up Ben from the airport. He was in New York all this time.

Bodies respond to stress in different ways. On Sunday night I chipped my front bottom tooth. Get it together, body. I'll not have this weakness.

I'm working tonight instead of tomorrow night; it's going to be Ben and my 8 year anniversary and we're going out for fancy times. Thank goodness I'll have the day off.

Happy Homecoming

2007-11-07T07:37:00.000-06:00

Check out this great picture that my friend Erin took:

Awwwwwwwwwww!

I love this coffee

2007-11-06T10:18:00.000-06:00

I'm at Swim Cafe, sipping coffee, M Ward is playing, it's a sunny cold day.

[sip] "Ahhhhhhhh."

I'm enjoying this morning off after a lot of extra work lately. My voice is grateful for the break too; I did a Halloween/birthday party last Wednesday, then my 4 classes on Friday, 3 hour Hidden Cove gig with the band on Friday night, Saturday subbed 3 classes, Sunday birthday party, Monday 3 classes. Whew. That's a lot of sangin'. Otherwise, it's been a pretty good mix of fun stuff and staying home cozy with the cat. Halloween we ended up biking to the California Clipper for a late-night nip. Thursday we rented a great movie called The Lives of Others, which won best foreign film last year. Friday I came home after my gig and had tea with Adeline. She did not have any tea, but did enjoy a tuna-flavored treat.

Saturday night after work I ran some errands, and found a great Timbuk2-knockoff messenger bag for $25!! I knew I had found a really good deal when the girl at the register said, "It's funny, these bags are pretty nice for such a cheap price, so everyone who works here bought one." Sweet! Feeling all bikey with my new bag, Ben and I biked to Kuma's Corner for big burgers and heavy metal, and then came home to change and get fancied up for the Homecoming Dance. As part of the OTS's 50th anniversary celebration, we had a big party on Saturday night in the style of a dance from the year we began. Everyone got all gussied up in vintage clothes, bought corsages and took photos and voted for the king and queen. Aren't they cute? It was very old towney, and a lot of fun. Ben slicked his hair and wore his skinny tie, and I wore my red strapless dress and teased my hair out all big. We looked great, if I do say so myself.

The next morning Miki, who runs the cafe at the school, hosted a big brunch at his house. He and his wife and three girls live in a sunny second floor apartment on Lincoln, and it was full of sunshine and plants and people and food and music. There was a variety of people there, of all ages and backgrounds, and we stuffed ourselves with egg dishes and pastries and mimosas and sausages and good times. I loved it. It felt like a big family event. That afternoon I played a birthday party, which was another family event, and afterwards drove up to Milwaukee with Ben for Grandpa George and Roberta's birthday party. It was a day of feasting and family celebrations. I hadn't seen my family since Door County, except for my sister who had visited right before Labor Day. It was good to see them. Driving between Milwaukee and Chicago isn't too bad when you can plan to avoid the traffic, and while we spent about as much time in the car as at the party, we were both glad we had made the trip. Mom will be here later this week for the early childhood convention. I'm excited to see her and glad that she'll get to meet Adeline!!

Meredith came over yesterday afternoon to meet her (Adeline, not Mom), and she fell in love. We played with her all afternoon and wore her right out, and she slept straight through the night, between Ben's feet on the bed.

[sip] "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

I'm off to get a free flu shot (Thanks, Chicago!), go to yoga and bike up to Wrigleyville to return an inferior bag I purchased earlier. My biking enthusiasm is back lately, which is good, because the cold weather can tempt me into being a lazy blob on the couch. Which makes me grumpy and depressed. I have to remember that as soon as I'm biking, I love it, and am always glad I did. That's how I feel about doing most things. The force of inertia is strong in this one; a Lindsay at rest tends to stay at rest, but a Lindsay in motion tends to stay in motion. And a Lindsay in motion is a happy Lindsay. On that note, I'm so glad I made it out of the house this morning! These errands seemed so difficult while I was home in my pajamas, but now I feel like I have tons of time and energy to do them. Yay productivity!

Adeline update

2007-10-31T09:26:00.002-05:00

Her name is Adeline. Sweet Adeliiiiiiiiiinnnne... After the Elliott Smith song on XO.

She is a sweeeeeeeetie. I love her. She loves cat toys, and her cat bed, and scratching post, and sitting in the window; she's like a cat in a children's book. She meows a lot. She will go upstairs and meow for us to come up and play with her in "her room." Or meow at the cat charmer toy when we are not holding the wand and bouncing it, like, "Heyyy! Move arounnd! Be fun like you were before!!" She likes to hang out with us and follow us around the house. She's not much of an eater but she gets excited when it's food time. She loves to watch TV, especially baseball because she can follow the ball. She really, really loves to chase her sparkly ball toys. Especially in the middle of the night. She's real good at finding the balance between batting them all over the place and keeping them under control. But her most favorite game is played on top of our bed at 5am every morning and it is called CHASEMYTAILCHASEMYTAILCHASEMYTAIL. It's a little bit cute.

She's kind of dumb. But in a good way.

Apart from dangling fun things to bat at, I've been pretty busy. Last week involved a lot of late nights and a lot of drinking, so I'm trying to slow it down a little bit this week. It was graduation week, so I had my guitar class graduation on Monday and the Tuesday crew of course went out on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday I got a beer with my friend Robin from grade school who was in town for work. Thursday I was good and stayed in. Friday Ben, Molly and I went out for sushi, to see Kevin's play, to the Red Lion and the California Clipper. Saturday Ben and I slept late and then drove around going to multiple Home Depots and hardware stores to get stuff to make a scratching post for the kitty. Home Depot blows. It's too big to find anything, they never have what we need, and they put smaller nicer stores out of business. Luckily our day was saved by the best barbeque I've ever had at Smoque with Ben and Jess, followed by a beer at the Charleston, an excellent smoke-free cozy bar not far from home. Sunday morning was the Sp00ky Singalong, so I donned my Hungry Caterpillar outfit once again and played some fun Halloween songs for costumed kids. It was so much fun. Lots of kids from my classes were there this year, and we were all excited to see each other in our outfits. Happy times. We made the scratching post in the afternoon and then Ben and I went to his coworker's wedding at the U of C that evening; it was a real good time. Good food, good drink, good dancing, good company.

On Monday night Ben and I went to Soupbox for dinner, and we went to the one downtown so parking was a real challenge. We saw someone at the end of the block getting ready to leave, so we pulled in front of them to back into the spot after they left. But before we could do so, some other car zipped in from behind. Ben waved outside the door right away, before their car was all the way in, to say that it was our spot. But this lady, on her cell phone, acknowledged him and refused to give up the spot. She wouldn't get off the phone, and Ben got out and said, "Hey, this is our spot," and she was like, "Sorry, I'm late for class." And she took the spot. She wouldn't move, and Ben was just standing there next to her car, while she got her books together and kept talking on her phone and walkled away. It was infuriating. She was a total bitch. Ben said, "Well, you're gonna be a great lawyer!" We were both so mad. But what could we do? Punch her? Key her car? Yell in the street? As someone who does not do bitchy things like flat-out steal someone else's parking spot, I was flabbergasted. And frustrated. Hasn't she seen that commercial where everyone sees someone else doing a good deed, and it makes the world a better place?

Good thing I had a kitty to come home and play with.

Possibly the best cat of all time*

2007-10-25T13:02:00.000-05:00

Meet our new roommate. We adopted her from Treehouse last night, after months of waiting for clinic visits and dentist appointments. They called her "Sweetie," and she really, really is. She is the best cat I've ever seen. Ben and I are completely in love with her. When I was in the waiting room while they were getting her all set at the shelter, the woman working with her came into the office and said, "Are you sure we're charging this lady enough money to adopt this cat? She's awfully cute." She was a staff favorite, because she is so totally awesome and great. She is beautiful, and healthy, and cute, and very affectionate, and playful, and chill, and used the litterbox, and purrs when we enter the room. She is very snuggly, loves to be held, loves to nuzzle and be scratched. Holy crap she is a great cat. She is one year old.

We put her in our little music room, since when you bring a new cat home they recommend keeping them confined to one room to start out and then gradually letting them explore the house. She seemed very happy in there, playing with her toys and sitting in her little bed. She loves the "Cat Charmer," which Julia told me I must get for a new cat. (Thanks Julia!)

This morning I woke up and went right in there, eager to say good morning. But when I opened the door, I didn't see her. I couldn't find her anywhere. The door had been closed all the way, and there wasn't a way for her to escape. She hadn't gotten into the closet....

"Ben! Ben! Where is she? She's not in here!" He came in right away to help me look. And then suddenly:

Every time after that when we went into the room this morning, she would be in there, and we'd see her little black nose poking out, and then she'd come out right away to say hello to us. I think the bass drum is her house. There's a blanket in there to muffle the sound, and it's all cozy inside.

Sigh.

She is the best cat ever.

We don't have a name for her yet. But we have a lot of ideas:

Delilah (after the bar + Plain White T's song)
Gorby (Whatcha gonna do? She's one cool cat. With a white blotch on her head.)
Basie (in the bass drum, plus she's black and white like a piano)
Barack Obama (because he too is black and white)(just kidding)
Charlie (Chaplin)
Emily Kane (from the Art Brut song)
Danny Rodgers (after our boss when we worked for College Pro Painters)
Jackie (from many New Pornographers songs)
Boomer (bass drum, also Aerin's affectionate nickname for everything)
Lula (after the restaurant)
Susannah (Oh)
Catty Wampus

What do you think? Ideas?

I have an idea. You should come over and play with this cat ASAP! She's the best EVER!! You will be smitten.

*No offense to Sundae, Penny, Molly, Fraidy, Dorothy, Isabel, Jaffy, Jasmine, Taffy Jane, Mittens, Lightning, Comet, Thunder, Vanna White, Teaser, Tickles, Cleo, Chloe, Patches, Cuddles, Speckles, Riply, Betty, Leonard, or Satan.

Fattening up for the winter

2007-10-23T22:01:00.000-05:00

My appetite is insatiable! Since the weather has begun to change I am never too full to stop eating. Everything is delicious. I was worried for about a minute that I might be pregnant, but no, I'm just eating for one. One hungry girl.

I think my appetite is also a product of our trip to Seattle, which was amazing. When I'm on vacation, I just eat whatever I want. And for the most part I spend whatever I want. But I've been back for several days now and am still eager to trade my dollars for cookies, snacks and coffee. The coffee is the real tricky one; I justified that in Seattle I was allowed to drink coffee whenever I wanted, since it was Seattle. The city is a comical stereotype of itself in some ways: every other building really is a coffee shop. Full of grungy hipsters. With long shaggy hair. Wearing skullcaps and scarves. Over their big comfy cardigans. The update to the grunge scene of course is the skinniest pants you've ever seen beneath the oversized sweaters. And the truly amazing thing is that every single one of these coffee shops is thriving.

When we weren't drinking coffee in Seattle, we were catching up with friends, eating great food, watching free live opera at the public library, having Wigglworms class with Owen and the other babies Delaney nannies, getting lost on our late-night drive to a rented cabin with friends, drinking boozes, or hiking on snowy Mt. Ranier. It was so much fun. You can see our photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/benchandler/Seattle07

Sorry not to blog sooner everyone (Isabel). I've been working A LOT to make up for the shifts I missed on the trip. And when I finally had a day off, Ben and I painted our kitchen all day. It's lovely. We love our little house. And we are excited to share it with the cat we're adopting TOMORROW.

I thought it would be a good idea to paint the kitchen before we got our new cat. Ben said, "Yeah, definitely. We don't want our cat to think we have an ugly kitchen."

They don't call 'em itch mites for nothin'

2007-10-07T16:03:00.000-05:00

Remember when we thought we had bed bugs? The mystery has been solved. Chicago's infested with itch mites. They fall out of trees onto you and then several hours later little crazy welts show up and itch for a couple of weeks. I got a bunch of new bites in the past couple of days, because it's been so warm out and I've spent some time sitting outside. Anyway, they're not kidding about the name. These little fuckers itch.

I've been working all the time. And I've been tired. Spent a lot of evenings crashing early at home lately. Let's see, what is of note since last posting...

My family's cat Penny died. She was a sweet one. They spend a month or so dealing with her as she got pretty sick, but it seemed sudden from my perspective, since she was fine the last time I was home. I think about her from time to time. We miss you Penny Lane.

It's really, really hot and humid in Chicago. Especially for October! Today was the Chicago marathon and they called a halt to it early. I guess people were dropping like flies. One person actually died. Scary.

Last night, Ben, Poppy, her friend Joy and I had a little dinner party together. We decided to all make Indian food, and it all turned out great! Poppy made curried shrimp, she and Joy also made a yummy eggplant dish. Ben made saag paneer, and he made his own paneer cheese from scratch! It was really cool, and delicious. I made the desserts: coconut custards and galub jamun. Everything was delicious. Very rich. And spicy! We sat in Poppy's dining room, eating and sweating and mopping our brows with our napkins. Did you know that riesling pairs really well with spicy Indian food? Well it does. Everyone was stuffed by the end of the night.

Ben and I saw The Magnificents at the Viaduct last week. It's by House Theater, with some collaborators from 500 Clown. Good show; good spectacle, magic tricks, neat videos, interesting characters, audience interaction, surrealism.

The most exciting happening since last post was of course Jenna and Jeremy's wedding last weekend. Let's see if I can make this slideshow work:

It was a beautiful day, ceremony, and reception. We had a great time. The farm was incredible. Different friends of the couple played music all night long, since they know so many professional musicians! I played a song I had written for Ben. It was his first time hearing it, and it was very romantic, and I was very nervous. He loved it, and I was happy, and a lot of folks got teary. We were all googley-eyed and in love all weekend. We had a fun time road tripping out there, eating lunch at a small town Pizza Hut, dancing at the wedding, holding the limbo stick for some kids, staying at the hotel with Andrea and Aerin, sticking out as city folk over breakfast in "Historic Galesburg," and driving home to catch the end of the Packers game at Will's. Will's is so great, and ridiculous. Here, you really ought to take the tour. But it doesn't really look like that, because every time I am there it's during a game and there are about 300 green-and-gold-decked Wisconsinites packed in every corner. In fact, when we went last weekend, we couldn't even get inside. We stood outside on the sidewalk, watching the TVs and cheering along with everybody else.

Ben and I are planning to go there tonight to watch the Packers/Bears game. It's sure to be crazy. We're trying to decide how early we want to go to try and get seats/a good corner to stand in. There are free cheeseburgers, and a halftime raffle for cheeseheadstuff, and pitchers of Leinie's galore. Every time I go I always want everyone I've ever known who is a big Packers fan to go to Will's for at least one game. Seriously, it's worth making the trip. I know that sounds silly, to come to Chicago to watch Wisconsin football, but the crowds are so amazing, and the vibe is so exciting and fun. Lambeau is always sold out anyway, so you might as well make the trip hang out in this little corner of "God's Country."

All through the night

2007-09-26T09:45:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up and realized that I had not once woken up in the middle of the night coughing. First time in about a week. My sickness has been gone but my throat has been healing. Hip hip hooray for healing!

The weekend turned out to be good and full. After work on Saturday I went out for dinner with Molly at the Handlebar, where I am becoming a regular, and then went to Danny's with her and some friends for her roommate's birthday. I was excited to be invited because I never go out dancing, although I do have fun. The place really filled up while we were there, and the people brought tons of cigarette smoke with them. So much that I had to leave. It was like when you're camping and sitting by the campfire, and the smoke keeps blowing in your face but you try to patiently wait it out, and then you finally realize that you're in the smoky seat and you can't breathe and it's time to get up and move RIGHT NOW. So I went home a little early, but it was fun while I was there.

Then on Sunday I got brunch with Meara and Alan at Lula, and it was amazing, because it was brunch at Lula. Afterwards Meara and I shopped till I dropped, and then a little bit more. I'm not so good at shopping all day. But I did find some nice fall clothes at a resale shop. Took the train out to Duke's, where our gig was postponed due to the fact that there was a Bears game on and the bar was packed with fans. Eventually we did play a couple of short sets, and Ben showed up and drove me home.

I've been picking up a lot of work shifts to help pay for our upcoming trip to Seattle. Ben and I are going out there for most of a week in October, and I'm really looking forward to it. We were talking about doing some camping in the mountains, but we're now rethinking that because we may not have proper rainwear for Seattle in the fall. Still, it will be a good time, and we're going to go hiking, and see Brandon's show, and play with little Owen, and drink perfect lattes. I think it will be worth it that I had to miss the season premiere of Heroes when I picked up a work shift Monday night. Thank heaven for TV on the internet.

I made it!

2007-09-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had to teach four 45-minute classes and then in the evening I had a show with the Babas. I had been worried about getting through that day since my sickness really set in on Monday afternoon, and especially since it had been bad on Wednesday. I refrained from talking to anyone in between classes, but my voice was still raspy and delayed by the fourth one.... Stayed silent all afternoon drinking tea and sucking on lozenges and even spraying weird herbal sprays into my throat, and with the aid of a nice hot mic I made it through my gig!

What a relief. I hadn't realized how much my worrying was getting me down. I am a worrier.

So now I feel basically better except for an occasional cough. And one huge middle-of-the-night coughing fit. I'm crossing my fingers for uninterrupted sleep tonight. The worst part of my coughing fit was that when I woke up, for some terrible and unintelligable reason, I was dreaming the song Achey Breaky Heart. For serious. So then I was stuck with it throughout my fit, and every time I awoke to cough again later in the night, it started up again in my head. "Don't tell my heart, my achey breaky heart, I just don't think it understands...." And then my brain started to recall the line dance that goes with the song, which I know for some reason. Probably from when we had line dance as a unit in gym in middle school. What was up with that? You can only imagine how much a group of midwest 7th graders loved that unit. In any case, my brain is SO WEIRD.

I'm really sorry I just got that song in your head.

Ben's uncle Keith calls a song in your head an earworm.

I'm all about italics today. They're so slanty.

I ended up working today, picking up a shift from a coworker. It wasn't bad though; it is a slow week of the session, and I spent much of my shift working to clean the office. The school is an old-timey, quirky kind of place, but the kitch and dust and crap that had accumulated in the office was over the top. Earlier in the week our boss took a bunch of stuff down and cleared a lot of things out, and I followed in her footsteps and scraped off old scotch tape and organized and went through the small item lost and found.... The office has the potential to be really nice, without losing its home-grown quirkiness. I am happy to help it along its way.

Since I was working 9-5 on Saturday, Ben decided at the last minute that it would be a good time to go home to Wauwatosa. So now on top of working all day Saturday, I have no plans for Saturday night or all day Sunday. LAME. I will probably hang out with Meara, who is in town, which will be certain fun.

Boo sickness!

2007-09-20T15:42:00.001-05:00

Uhh, being sick is so BORING. My fever is gone, and my sickness is now localized to my throat instead of my whole body. Hopefully that will clear up, at least enough to get five hours of singing out of myself for classes and my gig tomorrow. I went to work today, and it was pretty slow so it was very doable. But man, I read the whole internet four times yesterday and today there was nothing new. I came home kind of early and there's nothing to do. It's beautiful out but I'm not up for biking or picnicking (I love the K in picnicking) or walking around. I have some songs I'm working on but my brain's too lame to be creative. I had to turn down an invitation from Molly to do 10 cent wings tonight. Boo! I love wings! I love beer too! Boo resting! Boo lethargia! Boooo!

This is why kings and queens have court jesters. I would like a court jester to come and entertain me now. Or maybe.... A ride on a train? Through the country with pretty music? Or a sunset. I could totally handle a sunset. Or maybe home movies.

I have a strong belief that in Heaven there is this room with big comfy chairs and a big TV, and you can go there and watch movies of any point in history. But mostly of your own life. So you can finally settle arguments about what really happened, and see the good times over and over, and see what you were like as a little kid, or what your parents were like as kids, or what it was like to just be in a normal day at any point in time. And since it's heaven it's real easy to forgive everyone in case you find out something that might hurt your feelings. I feel like watching those movies right now. Flipping through nostalgic memories.

I'm seriously going to be so bummed if that's not part of Heaven. I think about it all the time. It has helped me to put to rest many worries, second-guesses, and wonderings.

You give me fever

2007-09-19T15:32:00.000-05:00

100 degrees when I woke up this morning. I'm home sick. I slept till 12:30, watched 2 episodes of Star Trek Next Generation, ate soup, and am watching Sweet Home Alabama on TV. Daytime commercials are amazing. Have you seen this one for Cocoa Krispies where the milk turning brown is like this big special moment between the kid and the mom?

Oh my god, and now a few commercial breaks later there's a regular Rice Krispies one with the kid listening to the cereal talking? Amazing!

I am starting to want some Pizza Hut Dippin' Strips Pizza.

Sweet satisfaction

2007-09-18T13:10:00.000-05:00

Totally just beat Bloxors.

Yessssssss!!!

I'm sick too

2007-09-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

Just like everyone else on the planet, apparently. I'm in the sore throat, cracking voice mode. Yesterday was more of the stuffy headed zombie mode. I avoided people all day and focused my energy into cleaning; I was too out of it to distract myself so I got quite a lot done by focusing on one task at a time. Now our house is lovely and I just want to sit in it. And play (Warning: highly addictive awesome game!) Bloxors.

The weekend was good. I biked to the Riviera to see Rilo Kiley on Saturday night before late-night drinks at the Handlebar with Jess and Molly. Couldn't find anyone to go to the show with me, and I'm proud of myself for going alone. The show was okay. I was crammed into the crowd and spent the whole show craning my neck to see Jenny over tall dancy guy's shoulder in front of me and through the shifting space between wide neck guy and floppy hair guy. I didn't even notice the hotpants and silver tights until the encore, because I could only see sequined sparkly pieces of her at a time. She was good, like she is, all hot and strong-voiced, but I was a little disappointed that everything just sounded exactly like the record. My favorite song of the night was a totally different version of "Rise Up With Fists," which is a Jenny Lewis song but not a Rilo Kiley song. I was grooving into it but the crowd was not with me; they just wanted to sing along at the top of their lungs, matching Jenny syllable by syllable, and weren't fans of new, different, or Jenny-less stuff. I've often thought that if I was to build my idea rock band it would be similar to Rilo Kiley, or to the New Pornographers. After Saturday's show I don't know if I have the ego to be the front woman in the way Jenny is. I had much more fun watching the New Pornographers at Pitchfork playing with each other.

I guess it's another reason that my commitment to Baba Mnouche has not been 100% lately; I don't relate to the rest of the band. I'm the only girl and the only one under 45. Plus it's lonely to be the only one people are looking at. I have my fair share of ego, don't get me wrong, and it's fun to be in front getting all the attention, but in a bar full of sketchy drunk old dudes, I wish there was someone to share their eyes with. Or to harmonize with! My favorite! I feel like I do my thing and the band does theirs, but there's not much working together. Not to mention someone to have a conversation with between sets. My bandmates are nice guys and all, and really good musicians, but when I told Tony I was going to see Rilo Kiley he'd never heard of them, and when I said it was Indie Rock he was like, "Oh, wow, with the sitars and everything?"

In any case, our gig last Friday was really fun, and I have lowered my commitment in other ways, like telling the band leader that I just can't do every Sunday night anymore. They're still gonna play every week, doing instrumentals and things without me, but I'm every other week now. He recognizes that those guys in the bar are awful leery, that it's a long commute for me, that it's late, and that it's not enough money to make it worth it without being convenient or extra-fun. Now that we're the only band we don't have the crowd of friendly young folks that the other band we used to play with would bring in. Plus we have to play later, so we don't finish till 12, and it takes me at least 30 minutes to drive home, and at 12:30 the available parking spaces are far away from our house, and I have to walk home, take off my makeup, get to bed, and teach WW at 9 the next morning. I had started to dread our Sunday night gigs at about noon on Saturday as we planned out the weekend. I only recently stopped working at the desk every Sunday, and my newly free day was already hindered.

So this Sunday I had the whole day off! Ben and I had breakfast at Swim Cafe, and watched football, and I went to the Renegade Craft Fair, and we played with kitties at Treehouse, and went grocery shopping, and then went back to the Handlebar for dinner with Aer1n and Andrea. Good times. Good to hang out with different friends. It was a fully relaxing, fun day, which unfortunately developed gradually into sickness. It was good I wasn't singing that night.

Tea time.

I am totally on metromix

2007-09-15T15:50:00.001-05:00

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/events/festivals/summer/34845,0,4160918.event?coll=mmx-home_top_hedsh2o

Yeah dudes! Just got home from Celtic Fest Chicago. Show went well; I played a lot of regular kids stuff and then threw in Coulter's Candy and Leezie Lindsay and Loch Lomond. Jenny and Jeremy from Macalester showed up, and we sat in the shade eating fish and chips and watching some little kids playing fiddles and bodhrans and flutes. When fall rolls around and Minnesota calls, bagpipes are soothing to the soul. I left with a few less business cards than I went with, which was good, but also a throbbing scalp, a rudolph nose, and a strange patch on the front left side of my neck and collarbone. Last year the performer's area was in the shade. And though it's cooler out, standing in direct September sun from 12:30-2:30 is enough to do my poor skin in.

Last night was a fun gig at the Hidden Cove. Towards the end, a lot of kids on bikes showed up for the karaoke which was to start after our set. I remembered how much I like playing for crowds of happy good-mood people, surprise surprise. I was especially happy to see them after two giant free mugs of beer for dinner. Ben took me to the Golden Nugget for a more substantial dinner of biscuits and gravy. I like diners.

Off to put aloe on my skin. Stupid weak germanic-celtic skin.

Oh god

2007-09-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

I made a little salad for dinner with what we had around, which was lettuce, carrots, sesame seeds and tasty dressing. After I made and ate my salad I picked up the bag of sunflower seeds to put them away. The first thing I noticed was what seemed to be a string attaching one of the seeds to the opening of the bag; I realized it was some kind of cobweb, and thought maybe we ought to wipe out the shelf in the pantry. But then I looked closer, and saw how some of the seeds seemed to be kind of in clusters, and there was definitely a cobweb thing on the inside of the bag, and OH SOMETHING IS FLUTTERING ITS WINGS INSIDE THE BAG FLYING LIVE BUG and the bag flung out of my hand onto the counter as I suddenly found myself located on the far side of the next room. When I finished shuddering in horror I screwed up my courage to just pick up the bag and throw it in the garbage can, and went back into the kitchen with determination only to WHITE CRAWLING THING WHITE CRAWLING WORM MAGGOT ON THE COUNTER NEXT TO THE BAG and this time my convulsions of disgust nearly sent me running for the toilet as I wondered what I had haphazardly poured on top of my salad.

I don't know why my bug phobia always seems like good blog fodder. Why do I make these pathetic confessions to you people?

My limp and my eye are magically better. I don't think it was a sty, Betsy, because it was not on the edge of my eyelid where stys are, but the whole soft darker undereye area that was puffed up. I decided it had to be something in that eyeshadow I wore. Probably eyeshadow sparkle maggots.

Last night was a doozy of a Tuesday that got rolling with a big party in the office, thanks to two off-duty coworkers who just came by for the good times, and one Ben ChandIer who also came to hang out and share our Budweisers. I don't know if I had ever had Budweiser before we went to Wrigley a few weeks ago. The beer I had there that followed some perfect ballpark peanuts was totally delicious. Budweiser is pretty satisfying for a shitty beer. But here's a warning: Do not follow your bottles of Budweiser with bottles of Miller. I think the competing companies put something in there to make them fight each other in your stomach. Miller beers are $1 at The Store on Tuesdays, and Budweiser was there for the sharin' at the desk, so really I had no choice, but the forgotten number of bottles consumed gave me a fuzzy headed hangover that lasted all throughout this beautiful day. I just kept eating stuff. It was one of those.

Fall is here, all of a sudden, and the thing about Fall is that it is the best.

Good Weekend

2007-09-10T12:22:00.000-05:00

And it was. On Friday night Ben, Poppy and I got dinner at a new and fabulous sushi place in Logan Square, and then Ben and I hung out at Mike's playing cards. Mike is moving away today, which is a super bummer especially for Ben, since he's Ben's best friend in Chicago. We had a good time drinking Newcastles and just hanging around.

Saturday Ben made a tasty breakfast fit for kings, and then we went to the Hideout Block Party. It's less than a mile from our house and we saw some of our favorite bands: Art Brut and Mucca Pazza were the best, and we also saw Poppy and friends in the Blue Ribbon Glee Club, and The Frames. (Side note to everyone I know: please make a point of seeing Mucca Pazza, someday, somehow. Your life will be a little more amazing.) We didn't make it all the way to the end to see Andrew Bird, since we were hungry and a little festivaled out. Still, it was a cool event, in a big urban warehousey kind of space, perfect weather, kids watching the bands from nearby rooftops, good people watching. We biked to the Silver Palm, a diner in an old train car. It's not far from our house but we'd never been there. What a find! We had burgers and split a molten chocolatey cake for dessert. Since we always find ourselves saying, "Where can we get a good burger in this neighborhood?" and "Where can we go for a good dessert in this neighborhood?" and "Where's a good nearby place to sit outside?" and "Where can we go for a little cocktail kind of drink but that isn't full of yuppies?", we are thrilled to have found the Silver Palm, which answers all of these questions. Plus it's inside a neat train car and is the classy kind of dive with pin-up girls on the walls. Love it. Came home and watched The Illusionist. Remember when that movie and The Prestige came out at the same time and looked like the same movie? We picked the Prestige to see in the theater, which was pretty good and creepy, but we picked wrong. The Illusionist was way better.

Sunday Ben went to watch football at Delilah's with Mike, as has been their custom the past 3 years. I went for a long bike ride and enjoyed the gorgeous day with beautiful Lake Michigan. There's something about those warm days in September where you are still comfortable in short sleeves, but there is a breeze to let you know that fall is coming. It was a perfect day. Ben and I later had dinner at Earwax before my show at Duke's. Earwax is a long-time staple of the Wicker Park artist scene, and is already in its second location. However, it is one of the few remaining hipster venues in the neighborhood, as everything keeps getting squeezed out and replaced by banks, expensive restaurants and expensive bars/clubs with bouncers and dress codes. In the three years we've lived in the hood, we've seen many beloved places go (R.I.P. Leos Lunchroom) and many, many places move in; there has not been a single new place that Ben or I have liked at all. When we left Earwax at 6pm on Sunday night, it was about half full of interesting looking young people with hip clothing and tattoos. The place next door, Bin Wine Cafe, was jam packed with Gucci purse-toting makeupped women with straightened highlighted hair and men with gelled do's above their vertical stripes, cargo shorts and flip flops. Rent is going up, boutiques are taking over and there's nowhere to get a sandwich for less than $8. This neighborhood was in flux when we moved here, which is part of what made it attractive, but it is becoming rapidly unbearable. Bummer.

In other news, my usually reliable body seems to be falling apart. I've been walking with a gimpy limp due to the attempted removal of some plantars warts, and this morning I woke up with my right under-eye swollen to the point of obstructing my vision. Here is a picture of me. I have no idea what caused this, and while my eye is slightly better than earlier this morning, I still see a giant lump when I glance down. And the inner top of my cheek is starting to look red. Maybe it was something in the (not my usual) eyeshadow I wore yesterday? Maybe the smoke at Duke's? Something in Earwax's sesame slaw? A mid-dream punch in the face? I don't know. I called the doctor but haven't been able to get a hold of anyone. I'm hoping that tomorrow it will be magically better.

Gray skies smiling at me

2007-09-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

Today was my first day of WW classes for the session. They went well, some packed full and some with barely enough students to run, but I felt good about them and had a fun morning singing with the baybays again after a few weeks off. Last night I worked hard crafting a letter to pass out today. There already exists a little brochure called "Guidelines for WW" but you open it up and it's just a list of 10 or so rules and a couple of phone numbers. I wanted to give the parents something more welcoming and make sure they understood the reasons for the rules, because otherwise, what's the point? It's simple stuff: participate in class, no food, turn off your cell phone. Still, some people have never thought about the fact that their baby needs to be shown how to sing along or follow a fingerplay or be a member of a group class. Or the fact that introducing a handful of cheerios to an otherwise engaged toddler takes him out of the group dynamic, away from the song or activity, distracts the other kids, and leaves the carpet full of ground-in crumbs for the next class. I talk a little bit about this stuff on the first day, but everyone is eager to begin class and anyone who comes late or joins later in the session misses the infomation. I've never had any serious problems in my classes but I do feel strongly about how I want my classes to run and I'd like the other grownups in the room to understand and help maximize the fun and learning.

Ben helped me fine-tune my flyer and I am very proud of it. It is very me; friendly, eager, wanting everyone to be on the same page. I think it was well-worded and I hope it set a good tone for the session. I felt like a good, prepared, professional teacher. My goal this session is to use one new song each week. It's hard to find the balance between enough repetition for the kids and enough new stuff to keep the mood fresh and the adults engaged. Today's new song was John the Rabbit. (Yes ma'am!)

Yesterday I taught a bilingual children's choir. It's a class for 5-7 year olds that sings songs in English and in Spanish. The choir hasn't had a lot of kids for the past few sessions, but suddenly this session there are 15 new kids. Because of some miscommunications, the class was without a teacher on the very first day, a fact that was discovered just a few hours before the class was to begin. My front desk boss recommended me, and so I stepped in at the last minute. It went as well as can be expected for a hastily prepared lesson and a group of kids antsy from first week of school. We sang "Cantad Con Tu Voz," "El Cocodrilo," and "The Lady and the Crocodile." Mostly it was great to be asked, and I spoke a little with the director about working with other children's choral classes.

It was challenging yesterday, and I was nervous, but it made me so happy to teach my Worms today. I feel very at home in those classes. I love those kiddies!

Saved drafts are the death of this blog

2007-09-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

I started writing that long post last Thursday, and then didn't have time to finish, and saved the draft, and now another whole long weekend of stuff has happened. Everyone's trying to cram all the fun possible into the end of this summer and there's just no time to write about it.

Friday: Finnsat all day, rode many busses, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Millennium Park, exhaustion of entertaining a 5 year old for 10 hours. Evening perked up over a margarita and Mexican dinner with Ben, and some Arrested Development.

Saturday: Brunch at Cozy Corner. Groceries. Oil change. 3 hours at Treehouse Animal Foundation playing with kittens.

Oh yes, we're going to get some kittens. Or maybe a three legged cat.

Picnic at Montrose Beach, with crackers, cheese, olives, marinated mushrooms, fresh tomato, chocolate and Fat Tire. All romantic on a gorgeous summer night. Jump started a dude's car. Arrested Development.

Sunday: Played the kids stage at Millennium Park for the last time. Bought new shirts at Old Navy. (Take note: spending money is going out of style.) Cleaned the house. Were visited by the Konieszcka family, in town to take Gina to DePaul. This is the family of Ben's best friend from high school. We grilled brats and hung out in our backyard. I played at Dukes, in a weird setup without a bass player.

Monday: Labor Day. Brunch at Meli. (Banana pecan waffles are amazing.) It was a summer holiday, so of course our grill was fired up and friends were chilling in our back yard all afternoon and evening into the night. It was a huge success, especially for a rather last minute decision. No pig shoulders but a lot of sausages and beers. Meredith, Marjorie, Jess, Lauren, Margaret, Pete, Laura, Mike, Christos, George, Jessica, Saud, Megan, Poppy. A hodge-podge group of good-timers. We had the candles and torches lit which provided pleasant ambiance but not enough light to stop me from stepping on a pint glass and getting a piece of it through my shoe just far enough poke into the side of my foot. Nothing major, just a little sting.

FYI: Chicago's Pizza DOES deliver at midnight on Labor Day.

You callin me fat?

2007-08-30T10:48:00.000-05:00

It's like a scene out of Shallow Hal; this morning on my bike ride to work I went over a little bump in the road and my seatpost broke. Just straight up broke. It's still connected together by the casing, but now it bends at the base like a hinge. I've been riding on it for two thousand miles, and yeah, I'm hard on my shit, but it's not like I'm jumping curbs all day or something. Stupid carbon fiber.

Super lame. The lamest part was when the guy at the bike store had me sitting on my newly seatposted bike to check the height, and I hear behind me, "Carbon fiber is NOTHING TO ME!" and I turn around and see that he's snapped it in half. I said, "Hey, I wanted to do that!" and he was like "Oh, well me too, ever since you came in here." I have the pieces; they're real pointy and dangerous looking.

I've been busy, and I'm feeling worn out. My days are full and have been requiring a lot of energy, but have been worth it. Lots of visitors.

Friday Heathr Bunch was in town to get her visa. We lunched at Handlebar, shopped at American Apparel, met up with Jeremy for coffee and brownies, saw a man singlehandedly break the bus we were riding, walked by the lake, had a drink on top of the Hancock Building, ate at the Billy Goat.

Saturday started with super disappointing brunch at Hot Spot, redeemed only by the fact that they were showing Xanadu on the TVs. Holy shit. Then a Baba Mnouche gig at Glenw00d Arts Fest, and Poppy's birthday barbecue for a little while before biking to Lincoln Square to meet up with Kat1e Ferguson and friends to see the Ditty Bops play at the OTS. During the show, they played a song that went "Shake your thing, skinnybones," and when it was done they put out the call for a few people to come up and shake their things during the next song. Katie and I raised our hands, and before we knew it we were between Abby and Amanda, shaking our not-so-skinny booties and grooving and grinning like idiots. When we sat down we could not breathe from excitement, and then had a giggle fit. Ohmygodtheyresohot. Katie&friends went to find a hotel (that didn't reek of urine) and I biked to Ronny's to see Mike's new punk band, the Silent Scones. They were loud, and real punky, and it was really smoky, but it was so fun to see Mike rockin' on bass guitar. Ben silk-screened some shirts for them, which look great.

Ben is doing all kinds of awesome things lately, like making the screen and making those shirts, making himself invaluable at his internship with the Burnham documentary, and negotiating filming of a DVD of (Baba violinist) Tony's other band. Good job Ben, because you are awesome! I'm totally in love with that guy.

Sunday morning I was a strolling musician at the WTTW fun and run, which was an enormous event! I chilled with other performers (stiltwalkers, musicians, costumed characters) and played songs for the kiddies. Afterwards Ben and I met up with Katie & company at Wishbone, where we ate breakfasts smothered in gravy and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed till we were sore and wiping the tears from our eyes. We hung out there for a long time, and then hung out in Millennium Park. That night I had a gig at Duke's; it was our bass player's last gig with us. The band is shifting. We'll have to see where it goes.

On Monday Julia came to visit me. We had coffee at Swim Cafe, hung out a little at the OTown School, drove around a lot listening to music, lunched at Bite, had ice cream in Lakeview, saw Superbad, ate pizza dinner outside with Ben back at our house. We had a great fun day together. She had just called the day before asking if there was any day she could come visit before school started; I was like, "How about tomorrow?" and that was that. After Ben and I dropped her off at the station we had a little drink at the lakefront "Beachstro." It was all romantic but I was totally beat after the long weekend. On the way home we borrowed Mike's Arrested Development DVDs. So good!

Tuesday was another long day; worked 9-5 and then hustled to get ready and get over to Piece for the live band karaoke contest. Jessica from the front desk ended up saving the day and coming with me at the last minute. We split pizza (so much pizza these days) and beers, and Paul from Tuesday nights came too. The three of us were perhaps an unlikely trio but we had a great time and were buddies with the band. I ended up singing One Way or Another, which was fun but I didn't have it in good enough shape to deserve any prizes. Had I seen Isabel's version beforehand I don't think I would have picked that song, because no future performance has a chance of being that awesome. I goaded Jessica into getting up there; she sang Proud Mary and fucking rocked, and earned a spot in the Top 5. Christine met up with us afterwards and we went to Estelle's.

Wednesday I was beat again, and kind of hungover. Work, Arrested Development.

Thursday: Work, seat post drama, Cubs vs. Brewers at Wrigley! A last minute decision. My first time at Wrigley. A fun game. Brewers lost. Good times with Ben.

I made it home!

2007-08-23T19:37:00.001-05:00

When it's been a long day and you're grimy and rained on, aint nothin better than a beer shower.

Isabel says, "Blog, dammit!"

2007-08-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

I'm still in vacation mode. I went to Door County for five days with the family and now that I'm back in Chicago the school is on break so I don't have any classes to teach. Check out Ben's great pictures from Door County here. Can you believe he took them with his fancy new cell phone?

This past weekend was jam-packed; 3 gigs with Baba Mnouche, Ben's sister in town, driving to and back from Milwaukee to sing at Tosa Pres with the family and attend a Brewers game. Except for a bit of band drama, everything was fun.

In my down-time from classes I've been hanging out (with Emily Monday and Julia Tuesday) and putzing around. Normally I'm not a big fan of the stereotypical hang-around-in-your-pajamas-all-day game, but I did just enough of that on Monday and it was awwwwesome. I have vague plans to get things done and do some class planning too, but work at the front desk has been busy when I am there, and chilling out in my house has been oh-so-nice. Especially in the rainy weather we've had.

My drives to and back from Milwaukee were in pouring, storming rain. It was not fun. Today Chicago got hit by a flash thunderstorm, right after I had left to take my break from work. I had gotten one block away from the school when the two raindrops I'd felt were followed by a dumping, swirling mass of water and wind. I immediately sprinted back to the school, and in that 20 seconds got drenched. The A/C which is always a little too cold anyway felt extra chilly.

One of the things I've been doing in my downtime at home is googling songs from this list, finding videos of them on YouTube, checking the keys and measuring their rockability. Because on Tuesday I am going to compete against the other rockstars-at-heart for FREE BEER AND PIZZA FOR A YEAR. Live band karaoke contest. At Piece. Celebrity judges. For a good cause. Check it out. I am thrilled by the challenge. Leaning towards some Bon Jovi.

Now I'm trying to figure out if biking home is a good idea. T-storm warnings, but it seems light enough right now.... I'm gonna race!

I'm lazy, but my work is awesome

2007-08-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

I've tried to blog a couple of times and it keeps not working out. One of these days I'll get around to it.

In the meantime, you can read this excellent blog. If you don't know very much about the organization I work for, you can pretty much get the big picture here. Last Tuesday, as part of the year's big 50th anniversary festivities, we got into the Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the world's 1argest music 1esson. 1350ish people all learned to rock out in the park next to the school. This lady took some sweet pictures.

The lame part was that I had to work at the desk at the other location, even though most of the classes were canceled for the history-making event. So we held down the fort. The quiet, ghost town of a fort. It was very different from my usual highly social Tuesday night. It helped that this morning at work someone thanked me for "taking one for the team." From everything I hear, the event was a big success and a ton of fun!

Stuff to blog about

2007-08-08T09:23:00.000-05:00

The more I have to blog about, the more difficult it is for me to sit down and write it.

While I am wimpy about big crawly bugs, I am vicious when it comes to fruit flies.

We maybe have bedbugs. I have itchy bites but haven't gotten new ones since we washed and vacuumed and sprayed and sealed everything as best we could. Next year when Pitchfork rolls around, Hotel Greenview may be CLOSED.

I rode 150 miles on my bike in two days, from Milwaukee to Madison, and raised almost $1000 for MS research. Jana, I can't wait to ride alongside you next year.

Doobie Brothers at Ravinia (with Tuesday night crew) : Decemberists at Millennium Park (with Meara and Alan) :: Strauss at Ravinia (with Mom and ladies from Tosa Pres) : Poulenc and Ravel at Millennium Park (to see Hugh sing with the Grant Park Orchestra). All concerts were way fun.

I love long, slow building songs. California One/Youth and Beauty by the Decemberists, The Bleeding Heart Show by New Pornographers, Dialogue Pts 1&2 by Chicago, Midnight Radio from the Hedwig soundtrack. Ravel's Bolero left me grinning for a day.

I don't do nearly enough karaoke. After Margaret & Evelyn's birthday party and being a semi-celebrity on the bike tour after singing at the karaoke they had at a rest stop (one guy who missed me singing this year singled me out on the second day to ask what I had sung; he remembered my performance of Something To Talk About from 2 years ago!!), I am full of karaoke love. So much so that in a dream I had a vision of proposing a class called "How To Rock at Karaoke" or something similar, where I could help people learn to pick songs they can do well and master the skills needed to blow everybody away. I am constantly trying to evaluate my skills and think of classes that I could teach at the school, and I think this class, silly as it may be, could be a huge hit if I can get it together. My other plan is a youth choir, as we don't have many options for 8-12 year old singers.

Don't be a bad friend. It's not that hard to return phone calls or show up for plans. Being a good friend is more fun.

The new director of the school where I work is awesome. Every interaction I've had with him has been great; you can tell he's going out of his way to connect with staff, teachers and students and to really learn what the organization is about so he can become a part of it. He came to the school on a Tuesday night to check out the great community that has developed, and came out to the bar with all of us to play and sing. He even brought songs to share. He definitely is a good fit and it's very exciting.

Some people aren't into kids and babies. Some people are. Like me. They bring me joy and energy with no more than their presence.

I get into ruts. Even when the ruts involve fun things, it's not that fun to be in a rut. New stuff is exciting and stimulating. I'm looking forward to Door County next week with the fam and a two week break from classes, which bring travel, visitors, and new experiences.

Here concludes your semi-monthly update.

Sometimes we are fancy

2007-07-30T14:06:00.001-05:00

Four of our close friends are leaving Chicago to move to Boulder. Taavo, Kiki, and Ben Stub.r are all going to Naropa for grad school, and they are taking Alex with them. It is exciting for them but sad for us. They are on the road right now. Ben wanted to send them off with a dinner party, which we threw for them last weekend. Meredith came too, although she is staying in Chicago. It was amazing. I was in charge of ambiance and dessert, and Ben of course made all the food. Six courses, drink pairings with every course. We ate and dranked ourselves silly.

Welcome to Cafe Coach House! As the weather is lovely and there is not enough room to seat you anywhere else, please make your way to our outdoor dining patio!

Please, do your best to keep the groping to a minimum. Before we are seated, please enjoy a mojito, gin and tonic, or Newcastle along with the prociutto, melon and cherries.

Now let us progress to the table to begin the meal with a cold avocado and corn soup, served in martini glasses. We'll fill your goblets with prosecco.

Caesar salad with or without grilled chicken. Homemade croutons and dressing. Lettuce grown on our friend Chris's farm in Madison. Served with a white wine.

Orecciette pasta with pesto and mushrooms. Basil used to make the pesto from Chris's farm. Served with Belgian beers, courtesy of one T. Smith.

Huge zucchini from Chris's farm with a homemade marinara sauce, stuffed with roasted red peppers, onions, parmesean, and Italian sausage from the family owned market in Chicago's own Little Italy for the meat eaters. Served with a Beaujolais.

As the after dinner drink, cold limoncello from Italy. Warm peach and blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream.

The after after dinner drink, again courtesy of Taavo, Three Floyd's Dark Lord. Only a few precious drops ended up on the floor amidst the broken glasses.

Job well done, chef. Certainly Ben's finest show of his talent yet!

Running myself ragged with AWESOME

2007-07-16T13:53:00.000-05:00

So much has happened lately I barely know where to begin.

Last weekend (two weekends ago?) was good; Mike R1ng stayed with us on Friday night. Mike and I went to Cafe Gelato and the Hopleaf and played some Scrabble, and had a nice time. Saturday I worked all day and then went to Pete's birthday party in Hyde Park with lots of U of C kids. It was a good party, on the rooftop next to their apartment. The window only fell on my once as I was climbing through it, drunks wrestled in a disgusting puddle that had been gathering atop the roof all summer, Pete drunkenly demanded we all pay attention as he stood above us, reading from the Great Gatsby. We ran into a girl from Tosa West who knew Jesse from theater stuff. Crazy. Sunday Ben and I got to sleep in, ate an egg scramble, got some Italian ice, went to see Once to enjoy the air conditioning, red lined it to Duke's for a Baba show. The band that has been playing with us on Sundays is not there anymore, and in their place is a comedy troupe called Bruised Ornge Theatre that does this piece called "I Saw You," based on personal ads from the Reader and Craigslist. I wrote a song once based on a Craigslist Missed Connection, so I played it during their show. It was a big hit; it fits the style of their schtick perfectly. Good times.

It had been very hot, so on Monday after my classes, Meredith came over and we went to the "swim pool" a block away from my apartment. There were the two of us, and 3 other hipsters, and 100 chubby 11-year-olds playing Thow-The-Thing-And-Then-Race-For-The-Thing. After about 20 minutes in the water, the black clouds were getting awfully ominous and a strong gust of wind convinced the lifeguards to stereotypically scream "EVERYONE OUT OF THE POOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!" We got home before the storm stormed, and then we made snickerdoodles, which kicked ass. Meredith is excellent. She is Taavo's girlfriend. Taavo is moving to Boulder at the end of the month, along with Alex and Kiki and Ben Stubr. They will live together and go to grad school for theater. Except Alex, who will find some kind of job and take lots of pictures. Meredith will stay in Chicago, which is a bummer. Except it means that she and I will get to hang out more, which is an exciting perk of a not-so-hot situation.

"Third Half" at the bar on Tuesday night was especially fun. A funny guy from Toronto was visiting the school, and he came along with his mandolin and a raunchy drinking song to share. I belted it out, laughed a lot, sang hard through a string of Beatles songs and capped it off with I Will Survive. I hurt my voice. Haven't done that for a long time. But everyone was egging me on, and it was super fun, and I went with it. And then spent the next several days nervous and guilty for not taking better care of my moneymaker.

The rest of the week was full of rehearsals, because Folk & Roots was coming that weekend. It's always fun to see groups of staff members trying to meet up and find rooms to rehearse in, getting ready for the big festival. I had many rehearsals, because I was singing with three different bands!

Thursday night Ben and I had dinner at Handlebar, and then we wanted a little sweet something, so we decided to go to Filter. It was Filter's last night. Closing to make way for a stupid Bank of America. It was the most depressing place I've ever been. Still felt like Filter, people studying, hanging out, and the whole staff was there, in dresses, seated on the little counter around the side. But the cases were empty, and the beautiful chalked menu was covered in smears and cross-outs as they ran out of ingredients. While we were there someone yelled from the kitchen, "That was the last strip of bacon!" And the barista said, "No more bacon at Filter!" and stood up on the counter to scratch out the appropriate items. There was a sign under the register that said "I am sad and trying not to think about it. Please don't ask about us closing." Next to it was a sign that said, "Here is where our new address would be posted if we had one." This is the tipping point for the neighborhood. The most central corner, Wicker Park study hall, where artsy folks and hipsters meet and hang out, always full. The hub of the neighborhood, socially and physically. Another bank.

That night the Pitchforkers started trickling in. Just like last year, many out-of-towners were coming in for the festival, and once again we made our floorspace available. This year we had five guests: Ryan Hagn, Jeff Behrns, Ryan's friend Katie, Chris Kon1eczka, Chris's friend Levi. We joined them for a late dinner at Pizza Metro Thursday night, but then I didn't see much of them because I had my own festival to consume me.

Friday while they were all seeing Sonic Youth, the desk staff had our annual reading of the F&R manual, and then I biked to grab dinner with Taavo before we went to see a crazy butoh show at the Spareroom. Taavo is way into butoh; I went just to check it out. I don't know if I like butoh but it was interesting if nothing else. I was nervous for my big tomorrow and headed home to get all my stuff ready and give my voice a solid night's sleep.

Saturday morning: stepped over the sleeping bodies and biked up to Lincoln Square to open the festival. I was working at the Montrose gate all morning. The weather was lovely and we only had to crack down on a few people trying to bring in bikes and dogs. I wore my big hat.

That's me and Julie, who is a Tuesday night student. The Tuesday night crowd was well represented, and it was awesome that they all came out to see the various staff members they knew doin' their thing. On my break from the gate I sang harmonies in the kids tent with Stacymus1c, a band of one of the other WW teachers. Then when I was done, I played the staff stage with Andre@ Bunch and Friends, which was basically Congress playing different tunes. We covered Boys of Summer and Fuzzy Freaky, and played Andrea's new song and Aerin's new song and my new song. My song was Telling Time, and Aerin played drums and Erin E from the desk played bass and Andrea played piano, and it was SUPER AWESOME!!!!!

After that set, and a 30 minute break, I was back on the staff stage with Baba Man0uche, which was another INCREDIBLE set. Both had huge crowds, and drew in a lot of passers by. Baba played one of my originals for the first time, a song called Kissin, which fit into our set so well that somebody in the audience said she was sure it was an old standard. There are pictures of that set which I don't have yet but which you can check for on Erin's site. Once she uploads them they'll be at the top of page.

It was a big deal for me because there were so many people who I knew, students and staff, who knew I was a singer/songwriter/musician but had never seen me perform. I was playing for a group of very talented peers, and they really enjoyed what I had to offer. I was flattered. And also I was having the most fun I have had in a long long time.

Also, Ben came.

Spent the rest of the festival in and out of the VIP tent, drinking and eating for free, and seeing other people perform their awesomeness. When it was over I did some cartwheels in the office and then ate a giant burger at Latitude with Andrea, Aerin, Erin, Melissa and Meg.

And then the next day I went to Pitchfork.

By the time we had our giant breakfast of pancakes, bacon, coffee and juice set out on our backyard table for Ryan, Jeff, Katie, Chris, Levi, Ben and myself, the next round of guests were arriving: Meara and her boyfriend Alan will be moving back to Chicago in the coming months and they also needed a place to stay. Out with the looking-to-rockers, in with the looking-to-renters. So the suitcases and sleeping bags were swapped, Pitchforkers loaded their cars, Alan and Meara went apartment hunting and we set out for the festival.

It was another beautiful day. I only got gently sunburned on a couple of missed corners of skin. We stayed hydrated and ate well. We saw Menomena, The Ponys, Sea and Cake, Jamie Lidell, Steven Malkmus, and Of Montreal. Among others. And then Ben and I managed to get way up front at the end of the night to see The New Pornographers. About 8 people from the front, standing atop the thing over some cords to keep people from tripping, so we were a few inches higher....

THEY WERE TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME!

There is no way to overstate the awesomeness of seeing one of your most favorite bands rocking out up close. The giddy, excited, uncontainable joy. And when they were done, the sound guy tossed out their set list, and I caught it.

And then we ate tacos back at our house with Meara and Alan.

The times. They are good.

Every day's the fourth of July

2007-07-05T13:28:00.000-05:00

Good times!

Oh the good times!

Saturday was a fabulous day. I woke up early and did a ton of yoga. I went out for brunch with Meredith at the Heartland. We hung out by the lake in Rogers Park. We went to a rummage sale and I bought a teapot. We came home to my house and sewed over mojitos. We had dinner at Pizza Metro. Then Meredith left and Andrea came over, and we biked to her friend's birthday party, which ended early, so we went to Mac's and talked the night away. I was biking home, happy as a clam--Uh oh, here is the bad times. Look what I found:

Parked in front of our apartment. Hit and run. The front wheels were slammed against the curb with enough force to send the back end of the car out into the street. The neighbors heard the crash and saw a big dark van speeding away, but couldn't get the plates. I spent Sunday filing a police report and biking around the neighborhood looking for smashed vans whose bumper might be missing a piece like the one left at the scene of the crime. Came home with nothing but a sunburn. The extra crappy news is that Ben and his dad were going to switch the car over from his dad's insurance policy to Ben's at the end of this month. And apparently, Kurt can't make another claim, even one where we're totally blameless, without getting kicked off his policy. So we are up shit creek without a paddle. Ben's gonna take the car in for some estimates this weekend. It seems drivable and is turning okay and everything, but you never know what invisible damage lurks unseen.

Ugh, so that was totally lame. So totally lame. Back to the good times, please.

Babysat Karl! He's a total sweetheart! Ben came home! Yay Ben! It's been a bit of an adjustment back out of single-livin', which I had grown to like in many ways. But Ben's such a good companion, and he's fun, and it's nice to have him around again. He had a great trip. Monday night we had a fun date, got sushi, biked up to a great ice cream place in Boystown. (Good homemade ice cream in Chicago! It does exist!)

Tuesday Millennium Park gig, with the best group of singers yet, and many friendly and complimentary fun folks. And then Tuesday night at work, on a night before a holiday... One couple who takes guitar on Tuesday nights, Lucas and Lizzie, just moved into a lovely coach house around the corner from the school, and they threw a party after class for the social group of students and staff that has gotten so close from week after week of good times. Ben came over too, which was great. Everybody tied one on, or three, and we had a fuuunnnnnnn time. The next day I was magically unhungover, which may or may not be due to our bewildered bike ride home in the coldest, hardest, wettest, rainingest rain ever. Drenched. Just sopping wet. My shoes are still not dry and it is three days later.

Then it was the fourth of July! Ben and I took it easy, brunched at Flo, hung around playing guitar, people-watched at Filter. Meredith called to see if we wanted to join her and Taavo and Ben Stub.r at their friend Marjorie's barbecue. She was an actress in Ben's last show. We didn't know her but it was right in the neighborhood so we picked up some brats and walked over. As soon as Marjorie let us in I thought she looked familiar, and I asked Ben who she was reminding me of but he didn't have any idea. Finally I asked her, and she said she thought I looked familiar as well. We spent a long time trying to figure it out. Where'd you grow up? Madison/Milwaukee. Where'd you go to college? Seattle/St. Paul. Where else have you lived? Where do you work? What shows have you been in? What concerts have you played? Are you a friend of so-and-so? Where have I seen you in the neighborhood? What bars to you hang out at? We thought we had it when she said she nannies and takes a little girl to WW, but it's out in the suburbs, and we've never been there at the same time. Stymied. We could not get it and finally gave up. Then an hour later or so this guy was talking about how he knew the people at the party, and he kept saying that she had grown up in Madison, and suddenly I thought of all my cousins' musicals I'd seen.

I ran back over to her. "Where did you go to high school?" "Madison West." "Did you know Aar0n K0nk0l?"

Her eyes got wide and her mouth opened up and all of a sudden it clicked for both of us and the nickname that some people had been calling her finally registered--

"Lindsay!!"

"You're Molly! YOU'RE MOLLY!!"

We had been trying to figure out what neighborhood bar we'd seen each other at or something... This was my cousin's longtime highschool girlfriend, who had been to my house for Thanksgiving, who had vacationed with us in Door County, who I had seen in her high school's production of Into The Woods, who had come to numerous family events. Her hair was red instead of blonde, but still so curly, and the nosering was gone, and she was Marjorie now? "It just looks better on a headshot," she said. Ben has heard about this girl, even though they broke up before Ben and I started dating. Everyone in the family loved her. And here we were! We live within walking distance! We have the same friends! She was like, "Oh my god, I have to tell Debbie." (My aunt.) We called Aaron instead and left a message.

Now we will be BFFs. It was so awesome.

Then we walked back to our place and watched people try to blow up our neighborhood. There's something to be said for lakefront-quality fireworks being shot off in the street behind your apartment. Except you won't be able to hear the something that is said because it will be too loud.

I don't like bugs.

2007-06-29T12:03:00.000-05:00

Nope. Don't like 'em.

I'm terribly ashamed of the fact that I'm scared of bugs. Outside? Not really a problem. But inside? They make me uncomfortable. Heebie jeebies. I avoid them. Once there was a spider hanging from the ceiling during my shower, going up and down on her little thread. And I was okay with her as long as she'd stay up in that corner, but when she dropped down, I'd get all creeped out, and anxious, and hold my arms all close in front of my chest with my hands in fists like a cartoon scared lady. For the most part I'm cool with spiders; I just leave them be. We get these little strawberry root weevils in our house all summer; I can ignore them or flick them away. But still, I don't like them. Centipedes are the worst. So fast and crawly!! I remember in college when I lived in GDD we got these boxelder beetles that freaked me out so much... they wouldn't die if you smashed them, or they'd make a loud sound.... When I was a little girl I used to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about ants or bugs crawling everywhere, and I'd want to go to my parents' room but I was too scared to put my feet on the floor because I was convinced it was covered in crawling things. I would lie there paralyzed by my own imagination. It was terrible.

Don't like bugs. Am a scaredy wuss.

This morning I was getting ready to go teach WW, first classes of the session, trying to plan and head out early, when I noticed the HUGE COCKROACH IN OUR HALLWAY.

Ah! Ah! Fuck! Fuuucccck!! Ahhhhhhwwwoooooowwahhhhh!! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!.... Fuck!

I think it's a cockroach, but it was black and not reddish. It was about two inches long. If we have roaches I'm going to die. I almost left the house right then, trying to convince myself that nobody would care if I didn't brush my teeth today. But I didn't want this stupid bug to have control over me, and I wanted to be a grownup and responsible and not a scaredy chicken shit, so I waited for it to crawl past the bathroom door and went in, and brushed my teeth, looking back at it the whole time. But then it stayed in front of the door, and I had to leave, I didn't want to be late, but I was all riled up and scared feeling and couldn't leave the fucking bathroom and I was so mad at that little fucking bug and my stupid scared fucking self. I waited for it to keep walking, and it did, and I could finally get past it. I knew I should kill it. I didn't want to leave and spend the rest of the day and night and tomorrow and tomorrow wondering where it was, waiting for it to crawl on me. I wanted to be tough and not scared but the truth is I was REALLY SCARED and angry and all worked up, and kept convulsing into a little ball when I tried to get my nerve up.

I finally took the big stack of magazines on our coffee table and when it was in the corner I dropped them on it. I yelped and jumped away. Good job scaredy me.

Does anyone want to clean up a big stack of magazines? There happens to be one in the corner by my bathroom. It might be there for some time.

I was totally shaken up and must have looked like a crazy person walking to my car, twitching and shuddering and talking to myself and trying to calm down but failing. Furiously embarrassed by myself. What a way to start a new session of classes.

Ah fuck! You fucking bug! You make me into a ridiculous girly twit! I hate you! I hate you, adrenaline! I hate you, phobia! I hate you, overactive emergency response system! I hate you, ceaseless fearful imagination! Get it together! This is not who I want to be!

Guacamole beer dinner

2007-06-27T19:03:00.000-05:00

That's an okay dinner right? I can make some good things. Honest.

But seriously, Ben's been gone for 9 whole days, and I just made this guac fresh, and I found a little brown hair in it. Like I need to be reminded of how Italian Ben is.

In an hour I am playing a show with Congress of Starl1ngs at Uncommon Ground. I'm excited because lately whenever I am trying to decide what music to listen to I reach for Albedo. I've been really digging their music, and I have it in my head all the time. And then I think, hey, these guys are my friends! Awesome! And then I think, hey I'm in this band sometimes!! So awesome!

We just played a show last Saturday in Milwaukee at the Gay Arts Center. I was able to go to Lizzie's graduation party and then met Andrea and Aerin at the gig. It was a small crowd (my parents, sister, and six middle-aged lesbians) but a very fun show. Earlier that day Andrea said to me, "You should play some of your songs tonight!" And then when I got there she said, "Aerin and I worked out some harmony parts for one of your songs in the car! If you don't like them, I guess after the first chorus just.... kick your leg or something." If I didn't like them? I'm singing a song I made up and I get to the chorus and it suddenly bursts into lush 3-part vocal harmony? It was like my song was alive. I smiled so hard I almost peed my pants. It was a great night. I love those ladies.

Sunday was Pride in Chicago, and Emily is in town for a few days so I went to check it out with her. (Side note: Emily is living in Nashville for a month, learning about how the music bizness works down there. She says it's very biznessy. Sad: I can't visit her. Awesome: She took my old bike that I gave her for Christmas and uses it to get around Nashville.) So I'm biking north on Halsted with the aim to get as close to the parade as possible, when suddenly I realize I'm coming up on a bunch of floats all parked on the sides of the street. Cool! This is where they start the parade! I'm biking through, and it starts to get a little busier with people walking around and stuff, and I'm looking at all the people dancing and drinking and rainbowed out, and then right about the time I passed the guy in the thong on the unicycle I see that there are barricades set up along the curbs to stop people from pouring into the street. And behind the barricades are crowds of people 6-deep or so. The barricades are hooked together and continue right over the cross streets. I'm trapped in the parade!!! I biked real slowly alongside the floats, but there were lots of people walking around, waving and handing out condoms and beads and noisemakers, and lots of hands reaching from the sidewalk for said freebies, and I just moseyed along as best I could, smiling at the spectacle. I was probably trapped for a mile and a half. It was exciting.

And then I finally found Emily and she bought me ice cream and beer! And we had nachos! It was a good afternoon. That night I had a gig at Duke's, and Emily finally came out to see Baba Man0uche, and everything was great.

Monday: Taught worms, shopped for sunglasses, sweated like crazy at yoga, went to guitar class, went to Open Mic at the Store. Awesome open mic! 2$ pints of everything! You get to play 3 songs and when you're done they give you a CD of your performance. It was a last minute decision and pretty rad.

Tuesday: Brunch with Julie B at Cozy Corner. Then shopping at Brown Elephant for alterable items. Mid-checkout I got a call from Ben! He's in Sicily, and it's really hot, but he sounds pretty good. They went to Mt. Etna. And are eating yummy stuff, and having fun driving around in their rental car. He misses me. I miss him too. I spent the rest of the afternoon altering my finds and then braved the super thunderstorm to go to work. Both me and Kevin worked barefoot all night since our shoes had gotten soaked in the rain. Standard fun Tuesday.

This living alone thing is 85% good, with about 15% crushing lonliness. One of the main differences is that I keep staying up as late as possible before I completely crash and can fall into bed. But the TV has stayed off and I don't have to feel self-conscious about my puttering, and I can come and go and do as I please. And wake up at my own gentle speed each morning!! I realized that I feel perfectly happy when I wake up in the morning, unless there is a more-awake person present in a better mood to reflect against me and provide reason for irritation. But at my own speed, I am like a peaceful sunrise, gracefully gliding from a glimpse of morning into another bright day.

Ha! Gracefully!!

Guac is almost gone; I gotta brush the garlic outta my mouth and head to my gig! Later dudes.

I am a fraud

2007-06-22T17:56:00.002-05:00

For Christmas I got my sister a fun cookbook written by some teenage chef. For my brother's graduation I picked out a basic but beautiful how-to-cook book put out by the food network. As though I was some kind of responsible adult, passing my hard-learned knowledge down to my younger siblings.

I did this because the bookstore was all out of Living With Italian Roomates: Never Go Hungry Again!

I've been good this week, because when Ben left I promised him I wouldn't put off getting food and then end up eating crappy shit. I also talked to my old roommate Janna on the phone, and she encouraged me to go grocery shopping. So I did. To Stanley's for produce and Trader Joe's for other stuff. (On a side note, I have always thought the Stanley's logo of the dude in the watermelon airplane would be a fabulous Halloween costume. Or tattoo.) It doesn't matter that I went to stores I like, or that I bought myself treats like flowers and interesting beer and cherries, or that I went when it wasn't busy. I don't like grocery shopping. I might hate grocery shopping. Hate it. If you are familiar with my decision-making handicap you might understand why. Too many choices! Overwhelming! What do I want? What new stuff should I try? What old standbys should I stand by? What is the best deal? What is the best brand? Here is an excerpt from my brain at Stanley's yesterday-- This is 100% true, only make it take longer to accomodate walking in circles around the store.

Should I pay 20 extra cents and get organic lettuce? It's already washed.... Wait no it isn't. (Puts back organic lettuce.) Okay I'll go back and get the regular lettuce. Oh, there's the cilantro next to the lettuce-- I was going to get cilantro and maybe make that one salad. But maybe we have some. Do we? I think Ben used it. Is it still good? Probably not. (Gets cilantro.) Wait but then I have to get corn if I'm going to make that salad. Okay. 3 ears? 4? They're 5 for a dollar, that's really cheap. But I don't want to waste food. (Gets 4 ears of corn.) And beans-- oh they don't have the right kind of beans! Hmmm. Should I get another kind? (Inspects every can of beans with a magnifying glass.) I'll wait and get them at another store. Okay. Oh they have this organic corn that is already shucked! Only a little more expensive... but there are 5 ears in here. Is that too many? I guess it's worth it. (Gets package of organic corn. Puts other ears back.) Ok... The avocados aren't ripe. And expensive. Shit. Okay scratch that. (Put back organic corn and cilantro.)

I AM SO FUCKING BAD AT GROCERY SHOPPING.

And then when I got home, I had to put away the groceries. Which I most definitely hate! Ugh! Stupid groceries! Stupid dropping them off and then having to park the car and then come back and PUT THEM AWAY! So lame!

I do like having food around though. The thing is, I don't like making food when I'm hungry for dinner, or when I'm in a hurry, which incidentally includes any time I'm hungry for dinner. Baking is different. It's just for fun, and kind of medatative, and crafty. I have a hard time applying my fondness for baking to regular cooking. Maybe I should use more recipes... Yeah, that might do it. Except it feels lamer to use a recipe to cook dinner than to produce a magically delicious dessert.

So I'm not much of a food-fixer. I realized this before I went to the store, when I was looking for food and just cut up a tomato and ate it with salt and a basil leaf. I tried to buy things I could easily eat, with minimal preparation. Right now I'm snacking on snap peas. But I also bought sandwich stuff, because I like to have a sandwich for lunch. This morning and yesterday I made myself a sandwich in the morning. I HATE MAKING A SANDWICH IN THE MORNING. They were good sandwiches, but I do not like having to deal with making food while I'm trying to get ready to go.

I did pretty good last night; I ended up using some leftover gyro meat on top of a salad of romaine, feta, red onions, cucumber and tomato. It was yummy, though this morning I was attacked mid-WWclass by a stomach churn and watery mouth. I had visions of dashing out of class, hand over my mouth, seeking a trash can or toilet somewhere... Didn't end up puking but didn't feel so great. Hey, that gyro meat was only from Saturday night, and it was only Wednesday, and the fridge had only been without power for 7 hours, and hadn't been opened... Okay maybe it was a bad idea. Whatever, I'm fine, no harm, no foul.

Tonight I have stuff to make a pizza, which I'm looking forward to. And I'm good at making all kinds of eggs and breakfasty things. I like to make guacamole and hummus and salads for parties and potlucks. I'm really good at having ideas of things to eat, or ways to create something with random food we have, which Ben really appreciates.

But dudes: Ben does all this stuff for me. He does the things I hate (grocery shopping, making sandwiches in the morning, cooking dinners) so that I can do the things I love (eating). And he claims to enjoy doing these things! We used to try to do them together, which usually ended in bickering and moodiness. Until we figured out that if we framed things differently, so that instead of grocery shopping together or cooking together I am simply Ben's helper, we have a lot more fun. Now I just push the cart and have craving inspirations. And when he doesn't want to cook, we go get tacos! It is super awesome!

I am lucky, lucky, lucky. Living alone is an interesting and very fun experiment, but I'm learning things about myself. Like the fact that if I ever ended up doing this for real I might have to borrow some cookbooks from my brother and sister.

Treats

2007-06-21T10:07:00.000-05:00

Last night was really beautiful so I biked myself over to Cafe Gelato for a treat that I'm sure pales in comparison to whatever Ben has in his mouth right now. He is in Napoli, going to Pizzerria da Michele, which if you have read Eat, Pray, Love, you will remember as the restaurant that quite possibly has the best pizza in the whole world. I was standing outside, eating my stracciatella, when I ran into someone I know through the school. She was out for her birthday, and I told her, "I'm just having a little treat." She responded saying, "Good for you!"

I keep thinking about this comment. She was just being nice and fun, but it seemed to cap something I'd been thinking about all week. Yesterday at work I was browsing through Jane Magazine and Glamour, which are full of one million things that it's telling women we deserve. Because we're worth it. And all the relationship advice says that men have to realize this and treat us right, and we should work out because our bodies deserve to look hot but we should be worshipped because we're attractive just the way we are and we should splurge on dessert or be lazy or go shopping because we deserve to be happy and feel special. There was this post on Missed Connections too. I think it's good to be positive and strive for a good self image, but I am amazed how deeply this selfish-image has gotten ingrained. The fact that this girl on MC can assume her situation is universal and say to strangers, "You are awesome, the boys are lame, they are missing out because you're so fabulous" is ridiculous. But that message is everywhere. And it's taken as fact, for anyone, regardless of circumstances. But circumstances are really important! You can't believe that everything you do is perfect and blameless and owed to you, because we're humans and being alive is more complicated. I think it's why some women end up so high maintenence. Everyone is telling them that they deserve EVERYTHING they want. Even things that contradict each other. I'm all for feminism and strong women with good self-confidence, but encouraging self-esteem through entitlement is a recipe for unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Not to mention bitchiness.

So even though I didn't deserve to have that treat, I certainly enjoyed it. Mmm. American Gelato.

Taking a solo

2007-06-20T23:20:00.000-05:00

The weekend was crazy. Doobie Brothers concert was really fun, but somehow we WRECKED ourselves. I haven't been wasted like that since college. Just gone. When the bottle of red wine that we were passing around on the commuter train home ran out, we switched to a bottle of Jack Daniels and kept on toasting. Yeah, that kind of night. So Saturday was a little bit sucky. I prioritized my energy to put on a pretty fun show at Pratt Beach with Baba M.nouche, despite the sun and the heat.

Following the show we freshened up and then had a photo shoot with my friend Alex; you can see some more of his work here. Had Greek dinner with Ben and Mike. Wandered over to hear the Smoking Popes at a street festival, got cool treats at Dairy Queen.

Sunday was Father's Day and after fun times with Andrea's dad at the Doobies concert and a disturbing dream, I decided to go home and surprise my dad. The traffic was bad but everything else was good. Saw lots of folks in a short time; WKs stopped by, dinner at Grandpa George and Roberta's house, then Simon celebration at Grandma and Grandpa Simon's. Drove back to Chicago with just enough time to buy Ben some dinner at Pizza Metro.

Monday after my classes I cleaned my entire house. This was because Ben was leaving for Italy the next morning. When I am preoccupied by something I sometimes go into a nonstop cleaning frenzy. In this case I mopped every floor of every room of our house. Had my guitar class graduation that night after dinner at Taco Veloz, and then Ben and I went to Rainbo for a beer. I love Rainbo on Monday nights when it's empty. Love it. That is probably my favorite bar: Rainbo on Monday Nights. But not on many other nights.

Tuesday Ben and I woke up early to get breakfast at Cozy Corner before my Millennium Park gig. Some guy filmed my entire set, but then left before he told me where he was from. I called the public TV stations but it wasn't them. Maybe some guy from the city? One of the moms who was there who I know from class said, "I hope somebody sees you on TV. You're going to be famous. You're really exceptional with kids." It was really nice, and put me in a good mood after saying goodbye to Ben for almost 2 weeks. I got home and went for a long bike ride-- 20 miles!-- before I had to go to work. Graduation night again, and people were all fun. I went out to the Store with everyone, as is the Tuesday night custom, and I had a dollar beer or two and sang me some Queen. At some point on my bike ride home to the empty house, it occurred to me that this need not be a time of trial and sadness; it can also be totally awesome. I was in a great mood, and when I got home I turned on all the lights because everyone there was awake, and I was singing as I whipped up my customary post-bar egg sandwich. I was chatting online, my eggs were in the microwave, my bread was in the toaster oven,

WHHHHHHZZZZZSSSSSSHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh..........

Blew a fuse. And despite having the empty box of fuses on the counter for months, I never bought any new ones. We don't have a phone book and of course our internet wasn't working, so I called my coworker who I'd been talking to online to see if he'd find out if there were any nearby 24-hour hardware stores. The Home Depot near our house was open till midnight! But it was 12:30. Nothing open, no power. Shit.

I woke up early this morning and made two (stupid wrong size fuses) trips to Home Depot before going to work. Crisis averted. But it was certainly not what I expected from my first night home alone.

Being home alone, by the way, is awesome. So far. I'm trying real deliberately to keep it that way.

Full days

2007-06-14T09:29:00.000-05:00

So it's been, what, a week and a half since I wrote last? A month's worth of activities have happened in that time. That week I got accidentally drunk on a morning bloody mary at Handlebar, biked 32 miles with Ben and Mike Cart.r, had lunch with Meredith, Ben and I met up with an old high school friend to talk about the film industry, I went out for Tuesday drinks at the Store, took Finn to and from school, Ben got an internship with a documentary about Chicago architecture, I sat in on one song at 1am with a gypsy swing band at a creepy Serbian bar, was very tired, shopped till I dropped, got dinner at Bite with Ben and took photobooth pictures at Rainbo.

Then the weekend:

Birthday party gig on the beach in Rogers Park
Kids stage at Ribfest, followed by a brisket sandwich
New tires on the Corrolla
Drive to Wisconsin
Ben's cousin Jake's graduation party (at the park which was the century loop rest stop on the bike tour last year), complete with brats, Sprecher and croquet
Drive to Appleton
Cookout at Jesse's neighbors house, complete with brats, Coronas and a singalong
College partying, complete with hookah on the floor of a half-moved-out dorm room
Crashing at Jesse's new house
Sue's Bagels
The Family Church, where Jesse leads the music
Gradjamation (By the time we finished the whole crossword they were only on the Ps)
All 5 grandparents!
Lunch at a brewpub; "Look in the tunk" to find your present, a cookbook and grill!
Chillin' on Jesse's porch
Drive back to Chicago, complete with popsicles
Speeding ticket!
Straight to gig at Duke's, which was made awesome instead of awful by my tired loopiness
"Sisters" duet with Caroline= hot stuff!

It was a long weekend. I napped much of Monday. Then went to yoga. After the weekend's many brats and beers, I was feeling the need to shape up. Yoga and biking are good and I want to do more of them, but I decided to see how I might like running. I got some nice cool shorts and sporty things so I will not fear sweat and be more motivated. While I'm still feeling the effects of the run I took on Tuesday (going down stairs? ack!), it was pretty fun and was not as hard as I feared. Runner's high? True.

Yesterday I recorded some of my songs at Andrea's house, so I have at least some scrappy recordings of tunes I've written. Very exciting. Then Ben and I had a fun night. We picked up some picnic stuff (wine, rolls, pistachios, havarti, salami, olives, peaches, little piece of chocolate) and biked to the lake for a picnic. We were near Navy Pier because we were going to see Ocean's 13 after the picnic, and as soon as the sun set I was enticed by the lights of the Wave Swinger. So we went on a ride!! It was sooo fun and I laughed the entire time. I love rides. Fast rides. Aaaahahahahah! The movie was okay, but I'll take four minutes of centrifugal force any day!

Fun times ahead: tomorrow Baba Mnouche is playing a beach party family-friendly gig, and then we're going to have a photo shoot afterwards! And tonight I'm going to see the Doobie Brothers at Ravinia with a group of students and staff that have become friends from guitar class and going out on Tuesday nights. Needless to say, Ben will not be attending the concert.

Ben vs. Lindsay

2007-06-03T01:50:00.000-05:00

Reconvening at home after our separate drunken exploits, Ben and I got into a discussion/argument about the awesomeness/suckiness of certain classic rock bands.

Finn's dad has a ticket to see this huge show with lots of bands; ZZ Top, The Pretenders, The Stray Cats, and REO Speedwagon. We talked to him about it today at a rooftop party he threw at his apartment building. Tonight Ben said, "Tex is a rocker!" and we remembered how his friends all made fun of REO Speedwagon. I mentioned that they were the only group I'd like to see in that bunch. Ben said how much he doesn't like REO Speedwagon, and all the bands like them, including Journey, Boston, Kansas, and Foriegner. I reacted in shocked defense, and immediately looked up the best of REO Speedwagon on Amazon; the recommended albums were Best of Styx, Best of Journey, Best of Foriegner, Best of Kansas.

I want to own all of these albums. And throw in some Queen. And while you're at it, some Chicago, and The Band, and America.... This very morning I bought a ticket to see the Doobie Brothers at Ravinia with some friends from OTS.

I love me some power ballads. And dudes singing big harmonies in high voices while there are electric guitars playing. And tempo changes in rock songs.

Screw you Ben, with your Gang of Four nonsense. I'll be over here wailing on Guitar Hero.

See? It was a party.

2007-05-30T19:43:00.001-05:00

Also, a bird shit on my face in the middle of the party. Lucky me!

Crash, recovery

2007-05-30T10:29:00.001-05:00

So I wrote that last post in the final moments before my busy lifestyle switched from stimulating to exhausting. I didn't get enough sleep that night, or the night before, or the night after, or the night after that, and I became a zombie sometime Thursday afternoon. Zombie-Lindsay babysat for Finn and was glad when his dad came home early at 9pm, had a long day of Worms on Friday, napped, went to see Pirates 3 with Jessica from Texas who is the new girl at work, subbed four kids guitar classes early Saturday morning and only lost control of one of them, dropped off her guitar for fancifying at the store. At this point the zombie was barely able to bus it home in the rain, and once she got in she plopped on the couch and watched Dick Tracy on TV until it was time to play with Fiona for a couple of hours. Momentarily recharged by the power of cute baby, it seemed like a good idea to head over to the Handlebar for dinner with Ben, where the two of them made the most pitiful attempt at the Reader crossword puzzle ever. Zombies are bad at crossword puzzles. The next morning was Bike the Drive, which is so awesome, but when the alarm went off at 5:30am it was drizzling, and Lindsay was still a zombie, and for some reason her right knee had been bothering her, and so it was decreed that she would sleep in until she was no longer a zombie.

After five or so more hours I woke up, and was myself once again! Ben and I had a lovely Sunday, with the right amount of sleeping in and running errands and relaxing and getting things done around the house. He made a yummy scramble, and we ran to some grocery stores and spent the day cooking and cleaning in preparation for our Memorial Day cookout. Sunday night Baba had a gig at Duke's, which was for whatever reason our best one yet. Perhaps it was because it felt like Saturday night instead of Sunday. In any case it was solid and fun, and I was proud of the band and glad to be part of it.

Monday we woke up early-ish to get the pork shoulder on the grill and the pie in the oven. We put out a great spread for our friends, mostly thanks to Ben's cooking ambition and initiative: pulled pork sandwiches with homemade chili rub and barbecue sauce, specially spiced cheeseburgers with the cheese inside, homemade pesto pasta salad, homemade mango salsa, cornbread cooked in cast iron, melon, grapefruit, carrots, grilled portobellos and fennel and peppers, brownies from scratch and a strawberry rhubarb pie with vanilla frozen custard. People were over between 2:30 and 9, and we consumed lots of beer and margaritas and food. Hosting a party is my favorite.

I am glad to not be a zombie. Gotta love the moneys, but I love feeling like myself even more.

A busy Lindsay is a happy Lindsay

2007-05-23T23:58:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been in the money.

This is pretty awesome. Lots of performances and parties, two new babysitting gigs, picking up desk shifts, subbing WW classes, even subbing a kids guitar class this weekend! It's awesome but my days are literally jam packed. When I'm not working I'm sneaking in babysitting hours, and with summer plans everyone's looking for subs so I'm subbing Saturday morning classes three weeks in a row, and saying yes to every party gig I'm offered. Tonight I'm babysitting last minute for the kid of one of the guitar teachers at the school from 10pm until 1am. It's pretty sweet though, just hanging out, watching TV, petting the cat and the dog. They are as nice as can be and encouraged me to "have a beer or two" about five times before they left. Tonight Fiona's sleeping but I'm psyched to play with her when I sit again on Saturday; she is a super cutie. So I'm making a lot of money but I can't quite count on having this extra work in the future, and I still feel like I have to take whatever I can get whenever I can get it. It's tiring, but I do well when I'm busy, and every day is something new so it's still stimulating. It also has paved the way for two very awesome things:

#1: Health insurance! Basically emergency-only coverage, but still! I feel very grown up.

#2: SUNDAYS OFF! After paying my dues for two years, I have been relieved of my Sunday shift. I'm making enough to do without the money, especially if I can get gigs on Sundays instead of sitting at the desk. My boss knew I was trying to get someone else to take the shift, and she recently hired some new people, and told me that if I was still interested in getting rid of my Sundays she'd put one of them on the shift. So as it stands now, I'm done teaching on Fridays at 2, and then until Tuesday afternoon all I have scheduled (apart from any shifts/gigs/classes I choose to pick up) is 2 Monday morning classes. Weekend AND MonTues! AWESOME!

In other news, on Monday night I did something for the very first time. I performed at an "Acoustic Underground" showcase, solo, just me and my guitar, all original material. This was my first go at the singer-songwriter thing. I said yes to my friend and coworker Graham when he asked me if I'd like to be part of the "Ladies Night" show he was booking at Silvie's because I wanted a reason to complete the songs I've written bits of in the past year. Sometimes all it takes is someone else putting a deadline on you. For me at least. So six original songs! It went great; nerve-wracking but very fun. A TON of people came out to see me! Ben, Taavo, Emily, Jeremy and friends, Michael and Kris from my band, Kevin and Christine from the front desk, Jillian and Jessica from the school, Andrew from the store, Karen from my guitar class, Tony from high school, Liz from the bakery. I felt very loved. I felt good about the presentation of my songs, though all of the good guitar players in the room made me self-conscious. I got lots of nice comments, and the rather strange "Perfect for works in progress!", though I suppose they were all quite fresh and truly could use more polishing. It gave me new reasons to practice guitar enough not to be sloppy. Also I'm going to spend some of my extra cash on getting my guitar set up with a new saddle, and have a pickup put in. Sweet!

And I bought a new bike seat too. Go sit bones go!

Full days, good times.

2007-05-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

Check it out. Ben was on TV. http://wgntv.trb.com/news/ You have to find the video titled "North Side Industrial Fire Blankets Neighborhood in Smoke." You should be able to find it in the list at the bottom at least for a couple of days.

We were biking home down Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon and were almost home when a guy on the sidewalk asked if we knew what was burning. We turned around and straight up Milwaukee we could see huge, black, black clouds of smoke billowing up into the sky. Since we had nothing going on we turned around and biked to see the fire. We had thought it was at Western Ave or so, about a mile away, but we kept on biking and biking and after more than five miles we finally reached the hugest fire I've ever seen at Irving Park and Pulaski. It was some old warehouse, and the smoke was huge and black and blocking the sun and dropping ashy bits on us. We could hear lots of loud popping, and the fire hoses, and there were people everywhere who had come to scope it out. It was exciting. We stayed for a while and watched, until we needed some fresh air and headed back to our hood to get dinner with Mike and George at an Argentinian restaurant.

So that was Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning Isabel was in town and we went out for brunch at Meli and made chocolate chip cookies. Isabel's the best. Friday night Ben and I went to Looptopia, to see Poppy sing with the Blue Ribbon Glee Club before eating at Eleven with Taavo and Ben and later seeing one of my favorite bands ever, Mucca Pazza.

Sunday: long workday, Duke's guest night gig with a new clarinetist and fiddle player!

Monday Mom came to visit! She sat in on my WW classes:

They went great and we had a ton of fun! Then we went to Lula my favorite restaurant and I took her out for lunch for her birthday! Then I took her to OTS and showed her off and she got to meet Emily and Jenna and other friends! Then we went to Borders so she could use up her gift cards and we ran into Kevin! Then we went to Cafe Gelato and did the Reader crossword puzzle, my favorite crossword puzzle! The we went home and hung out with Ben! Then we all went to Feed for dinner! Then we took her back to the train station.

I had super great fun with my mom. It was less like hanging out with my mother and more like hanging out with a really good friend who understands you the best and the conversation never ends.

And then Ben and I watched Heroes on TV instead of the internet and then biked to the Hideout to see my guitar teacher head up the Wilco ensemble as they played a concert of the new Wilco CD that would be released at midnight that night.

Rockin.

Finders...

2007-05-10T21:14:00.000-05:00

So Ben leaves the house this morning and about 30 seconds later my phone rings. It's Ben, walking towards the el stop.

"There's a bike leaning up against our gate. No seat, not locked to anything, looks very left behind. It's a small old Schwinn."

I went outside to check it out; sure enough, there was a little bright blue Schwinn, in good shape except for some handlebar covering coming off and the lack of a seat. Leaning right against the front corner of our apartment building, inside near the gate. I stepped over it. It's a perfect fit. Ben and I thought it would be a good idea to bring it inside the gate, where it would still be visible and where anyone it might belong to in the front building could retrieve it.

At the end of the workday, it was still there.

Cute, right? It seemed like a stolen bike that got ditched. I posted this on the internet. I hope I can help someone get their stolen bike back.

ORRRR I hope nobody contacts me and I get to keep it and have a new free bike to tinker with and change into a single gear and have a better city bike instead of my fancy beautiful road bike to knock around and not worry so much about locking up outside. Ben recently bought a little old yellow Schwinn Caliente that some guy had converted to a single gear, and I'm very jealous of it. I've been itching to have new bike stuff.

Of course my mind races with the possibilities. I'd need a seat, but I could take the seat off of my Trek bike and then finally buy a better fitting saddle for long rides on that one. I could get clipless pedals and cycling shoes for the Trek too, since I wouldn't have to worry about wearing them if I was going to a bar or something cuz I'd take my other bike. I'd have to tune it up, get new handlebar tape, and figure out how to convert it to a single gear, maybe with a flip hub so I could have a fixie from time to time like a really badass bikey hipster. I could get a little Kryptonite lock that would fit in my back pocket to complete the look, since I wouldn't have quick release wheels and could just lock the frame. While I'm at the bike store I should probably buy a new messenger bag, since my plan for the summer is to get to work earlier so I have time to change out of bike-only clothes and into clean clothes, and stretch, instead of hopping off my bike and clocking right in and sitting in sweaty clothes until they dry. But I'll need room for the clothes and for a change of shoes now too in my bag. Also I could use a second pair of bike shorts. And more practical sunglasses that fit under my helmet.

Then I think, shit, I can't do that. My bike is already awesome and I have clothes and everything already. I can't afford all that!

But I am working a lot, a lot of extra hours as the summer reels in. Right now I'm Finnsitting, late. Jenna's booking me for birthday parties and school performances and festivals all over the place, and I'm subbing for 7 WW classes and quite possibly 4 kids guitar classes (!) in the coming month. It's awesome, and will give me some cash for summer fun (short trip to Nashville to visit Emily during her month-long stay?), but I also have to tuck some away for the unpaid 2-week break from classes at the end of August. Also I'm trying to buy myself some goddamned health insurance, so if that ends up going through I'm gonna have a new monthly bill to pay.

AND I saw these on Zappos and think about them like they're my new spring crush.

Not to mention this!!!

What can I say. My greed comes in bursts, it seems. Often with the change of season.

In other news, life is good and just full enough. Sang in a septet of woman I'm related to in Milwaukee last weekend, Baba M@nouche is working on booking studio time, I'm trying to finish some songs and prepare covers to play solo at a Ladies' Night open mic/cabaret thing that I was invited to perform at in a few weeks, Mom's coming to visit Monday to see my WW classes and so I can take her out for a birthday lunch, Ben and I are doing great but I'm jealous of and anxious about his late June trip to Italy, he made artichokes and grilled chicken Caesar salad for me and Mike last Sunday night while we watched Spiderman 2 in our living room, sitting for Finn is always full of challenges and surprises as the two of us get better and getting along, we're playing the new Wilco in my still-excellent guitar class, Monday afternoon yoga is consistently easier and simultaneously ass-kicking, Tuesday Emily brunch is good times, I'm still off caffeine in the mornings and it's totally liberating, gonna try to make it up to see the number one team in baseball with the rest of the overly-giddy fans, I've had great phone conversations with Janna, Meara and Brandon this week, the weather's been gorgeous.

The new intern at OTS also works at Sweet Mndy B's. I was talking with her today about that place, and it's still as fucked up and frustrating as ever, even with an almost-total staff turnover. I am amazed to remember how miserable I was only a few years ago, and deeply grateful for the place I find myself in now. Life is full of ups and downs, and when you find yourself on the upswing you've got to savor every second.

Spring cleaning

2007-04-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

I went 10 days without any alcohol, caffeine or sweets.

It was hard. Alcohol was the easiest to eliminate, though it was the main thing I wanted to cut out. Hanging around with these musicians all the time, doing gigs, working in a social environment... One Tuesday evening after having mid-day drinks at Emily's cookout I was feeling gross, and looking at the calendar I realized that in the past 20 days only 2 of them had been booze-free. So I decided to take a break. I was also feeling full of Emily's cake, and Easter candy, and miscellaneous sugary sugars, and since I wanted to see how I might feel different clean of poisons for a while, I decided to cut them out as well. And then I thought about the fact that my morning cup of tea was paving the way for a big coffee in the afternoon, which I never used to crave... so caffeine was out too. It was a good test of willpower and a good little spring cleanse. The caffeine was hard but now that I'm off it I am hesitant to get back on that horse. It's pretty great to feel awake as soon as you wake up and not be a big crab in the morning. Caffeine was a physical addiction and the headaches were a bitch, but I can't tell you how badly I WANTED some sugar sometimes. I ate a lot of fruit. And drank a lot of water. And herbal tea, which was my only treat. My insides feel good and hardy.

Last night I ended my cleanse in one go with the excellent Chocolate Stout Cake at the Heartland Cafe. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I can't really tell how my experiment affected me though because I have had bad allergies and congestion, which has made me sick to my stomach, and for the first time in my life I think I am losing my voice. This is very bad, because it is my livelihood. I think it's due to allergies, because I didn't do a ton of extra singing very recently, and I haven't even been to a smoky bar in two weeks. Unless I'm losing it because I'm not having enough beer and cookies and coffee. I'm trying to rest it. Not speaking much, sleeping a lot, drinking water and tea... I even bought a neti pot. It's crazy! Yesterday was a hard voice day, with 4 WW classes in the morning, and then I subbed two piano classes which involved hosting "piano parties" as it is graduation week, and then a gig with Congrss of Strlings. We sang a hot cover of the Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter. It was rockin! I only had to sing 4 songs with them, and they went fine, but that was in a loud smoky bar and when we left I realized that my voice was destroying itself and I didn't speak for the rest of the night.

Now I'm at work trying not to answer the phones if I can help it. Duke's gig tomorrow night. New session of classes starting Monday. Yikes.

Been doing well lately. My cleansing time was a good time. Tea with Emily at Bookcellar, Handlebar with Taavo, Meredith, Kiki and Alex, renting Notes on a Scandal, biking to brunch with Ben at a great place in Greektown called Meli, first ever kids' gig at Costello's with Baba M@nouche, Apart pizzas in the park with Taavo & Meredith before seeing Grindhouse at a crappy theater in Rogers Park, great birthday gig in Deerfield on my way to Pat's surprise party in Milwaukee, fun last days of the session in WW with some kids I've had for 4 months, yoga class, guitar class graduation (The Universe Song from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, complete with choreography and slide whistle), watching Heroes in bed, Earwax brunch with Emily, Finnsitting.

I am reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and I highly recommend it to everyone. Abbey gave it to me when she was in town. It's basically the story of this woman who decides to reinvent herself after divorce and depression through a three-part travel plan: she will go to Rome to focus herself on the pursuit of pleasure, to an ashram in India for the pursuit of devotion, and to Bali to somehow balance the two. It's wonderful. I am dying to travel though and my plans keep getting stymied. Ben is planning a trip to Italy with his parents this summer, and I can't go, so I've been trying to think of exciting things to do while he's gone for 12 days. I was ecstatic when I found that bike ride, and I was planning to go visit Emily for a few days during her month in Nashville. But I don't think I can do either. Turns out those 12 days cover the last week and the first week of a session at work, and I am not allowed to sub out the last day or first day of class. And then the last week of that next session? My family's Door County week. As Ben and I would say, TBT. In other words, IT SUCKS!

Who wants to visit me? June 12-24?

Forgive the long post. I'm trying not to talk today, and I'm not really what you'd call the quiet type. I talk ALL THE TIME.

Who wants to do this with me?

2007-04-25T15:06:00.000-05:00

Ben's gonna be in Italy. Anybody want to go?

http://www.geocities.com/letourdeshore/index.html

Awesome! Awesome!

Ode to my cell phone

2007-04-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, a girl was hanging her bike up on the bike hook. She had forgotten that her bike bag was unzipped, and as soon as she tilted the cycle upwards, her cell phone fell out of the bag and onto the concrete floor. As if this weren't enough, her kryptonite bike lock simultaneously fell off the end of her handlebars and landed right on top of the screen of the phone. Miraculously, the phone still worked, but the screen was cracked and crappy looking.

The girl used her phone regularly for several months. Then one day at 7pm, her phone said, "BEE-DOOT!" The battery was low. She plugged it into the charger. The next day, at 7pm: "BEE-DOOT!" The next day: "BEE-DOOT!" Her battery was dying. Instead of buying an expensive new battery, the girl decided it was time to make an insurance claim and get a brand new phone.

Yay! A new phone!

Boo. Losing all of the pictures from the past year.

Here are some highlights:

Cell Photos

Dudes!

2007-04-18T22:23:00.001-05:00

Look what I just found by accident! It's the highlights video from last year's F&R festival my work puts on every year. Check out the third band. Also, Emily's band is rocking in there somewhere with the full horn section. Awesome!

whirrrzZUG-ZUG-ZUG-ZUG-ZUG-ZUG-ZUG!

2007-04-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

I like that I work in a place that has a pencil sharpener. It reminds me of the time someone in Jesse's dorm at the music conservatory was roaming the halls looking for a pen, and nobody had one.

I had a dream that my family was on vacation in some kind of lodge and Jesse was supposed to meet us there, but he got kidnapped and they were going to kill him, and we didn't know what to do and we were trying to use the internet to contact people and the phone was ringing but we weren't sure if we should answer it or not and it was very tense and I felt so bad that I hadn't gone to see Jesse's musical this past weekend because now he was going to be dead. Good thing it was just a dream. But I'm still sad I didn't get to see his show.

I've been dreaming a lot lately which is good because it means I'm getting good sleep. Although it seems I feel sore all the time. This is maybe because I'm biking more with the spring-ish weather we're having from time to time. Or wearing high heeled shoes? I don't know. I keep having crazy cramps in yoga class where I have to break out of whatever pose I'm doing and stand up straight again so my hips stop winding into tiny knots.

Yesterday was a good day. I was overcome by springtime and spent the day sweeping our walkway, picking out plants and soil at the 'Po, potting pansies and filling our home and yard with living things. A homeless man asked if he could help me clean up the garbage in our alley and as I had no cash I gave him a bagel sandwich and a banana. Did laundry, was productive. Helped Ben make good pasta dinner. Went to guitar class and then came home and Ben and I split a bottle of Trois Pistoles and got all giggly.

Today was also a good day. Back on my birthday, Emily told me that as her gift to me she wanted to host a get-together of some kind and cook food for me and friends. This idea developed into a lunchtime cook-out today at Emily's nice little apartment, which is on the same block as the school, which means that people actually came because they didn't have to leave Lincoln Square. A lot of folks showed up and we ate all kinds of grilled things and a big chocolate strawberry trifle and a drink Jenna brought called a slippery fish. We talked and played with her dog Hank and pretended it was not dropping 20 degrees over the course of the afternoon.

Sunday was the annual wigglwrms retreat. Everyone left rejuvenated with lots of new ideas and fun songs. That night was another good gig at Duke's. Having fun with Baba M@nouche.

Saturday good rehearsal with Congress of St@rlngs. Saw a great movie at the Music Box; everyone go see Black Book.

Friday my dad and sister came to town. They visited my WW class and then we got some Italian ice. We spent the afternoon walking and shopping a little bit in Wicker Park, playing Catch Phrase, and then we went out to dinner at Lula before they headed back to Milwaukee. That night I saw William Elliott Whitmore play at the school; he was opening for the North Mississippi All Stars, and I went to see him with my friend Kevin because we always listen to his stuff on our shifts. It turned out to be a weird show. The school reeked of pot because the NMAS are a super jam band. WEW was wasted and only played 5 or 6 songs and we didn't get to talk with him at all. Then the next band dragged on and on, Kevin left before the show was over and I was stuck there by myself listening to 15-minute slow jams. It was lame.

Fading back further into the week... Fun at Handlebar with Ben... Babysitting Finn a lot.... Saw Emily at Davenports... Went to Body Worlds with the Chandlers... Easter in Milwaukee with the W-Ks, made a big salad with Julia, sent Mom off on her mission trip, dinner at Comet, rented Millions and Children of Men...

Springtime, keep a'comin!

April (snow) showers

2007-04-05T20:37:00.000-05:00

Congratulations, you've made it to April. As your reward for suffering through the winter, please enjoy an afternoon of snowflakes.

I got my bike out of the shop today. When it was 80 degrees a week ago I wanted to take it out for a ride and discovered that I had worn the brakes off. So now it's all re-padded and cleaned and tightened up and running smoothly, and I remembered that

I love it.

Got my hair cut today. Pretty short. Didn't end up dying it red, though a little something in me has been itching to play with the color. Problem is I'm a chicken, and I'm aware that my regular hair color is pretty striking the way it is, and growing it out would be really bizarre, and I'd have to color/draw on eyebrows every day. So it's short for spring.

Last night I went out for dinner and beers with my long-lost friend Liz from the bakery. She is awesome, and we get along so easily, but we're bad at seeing each other on a regular basis. We had a great time and had much catching up to do, but hopefully now that we're fairly caught up we can get together without all the pressure of filling in details.

I've had this really weird mix of busyness and lonesome time to kill lately. Busy with the band, which is starting to be really fun. We recorded a version of Oh Susanah for the upcoming volume 4 of the songbook CD. We've been playing at Duke's long enough that people are starting to actually coming out to give us a listen, and I'm hopeful that our other shows in April (15 and the 29, 6920 N. Glenwood, no cover) will have some friendly faces in the house. Look how fun it is!

Check out the dress from Portobello Road, henceforth known as my Susannah dress. I love to dress up for the shows. I'm getting good at rocking the high heels. Our show last Sunday was one of the best, and nobody we knew came out to hear us. But we put on a show for the other band that plays Sundays and had a blast. Getting to know those guys has been nice. We all like each other. It's exciting.

What else. Been working a lot, doing birthday parties for the kiddies, babysitting. But then I keep having weird gaps of free time when nobody's around and I'm trying to find a way to keep myself company. Ben is doing a lot of work with the Chicago International Documentary Festival, which is awesome, but means that our schedules have been totally off. We went to the opening night reception last Friday and had a really fun time, but then I was home alone all day on Saturday and he was home alone all day on Sunday, and all of our nights and days have been opposite each other. We both had the morning open today so we did get to have some breakfast at the Cozy Corner. But that's pretty much it all week. Between the Twins opening day and my guitar classes and shifting work schedules and projecting movies and gigs and visitors in town we just aren't lining up too well. I've been spending a lot of time with the ol' internet, or with a notebook and a pen, or a guitar, or a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, waiting. For my work shift to start or somebody to meet me or the phone to ring. I get my fun in on Sunday nights and Tuesday nights, but my weekends seem barren. And during the week it can get lonesome to have all of your free time condensed into 3 hour chunks in the middle of everyone's workday. Thank god that now I can fill it with bicycling. I need to always make sure I'm doing enough physical activity that I don't get too deeply entrenched in my own head.

I have been feeling lately like a very physical being, and at first I thought this was rather new. But the more I think about myself, the more I realize that I have always engaged myself in activities that allow me to combine the mental or the emotional and the physical or tactile. Swinging, crafting, fixing things, acting, biking, walking to my destination, playing instruments, baking, dancing. I have been thinking a lot about the physicality of singing. When I'm on stage at Duke's and I have the chance to just let my voice fill up my whole self, I feel really present and solid and secure. I have been playing the piano again lately too, trying to remember all of the songs I used to know, and I end up sore. I like the big chords and the rich sounds that I can feel. It's why playing a keyboard is never quite fulfilling, and why being able to experience a pipe organ opening all of its stops thrills me in a deep way. I've been thinking about trying to really take this further and instead of using my free time to sit and write or just think to myself, to take up running or just do hours of yoga or see how far I can bike before my time runs out. I wonder how this would change me. I can only think it would be for the better.

Couldn't believe it

2007-03-29T15:06:00.000-05:00

We haven't really been grocery shopping since our trip to London, since we've been busy busy. Last night I was really craving a bowl of cereal, and I wanted the Cinnamon Harvest Kashi shredded wheat cereal. So on our way home we stopped at Jewel and got one box of cereal and one gallon of milk. I was excited to come home and eat it, and I poured myself a bowl.

And the cereal was totally stale!

The expiration date isn't until December 2007 but trust me, they are soooo stale. It's gross. I hate stale cereal.

Totally lame.

sunshine, biking, singing, beer and greasy food

2007-03-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

If those aren't reasons for Jana to move to Chicago then I don't know what's gonna convince her. She's thinking of coming here for law school and I hope she comes because she is awesome! She stayed with us on Saturday night and we had so much fun. We went to Taco Veloz, did some window shopping, made frozen molasses cookies, had a pitcher and pizza at Santullos, and then rocked the house at Piece where there was live band karaoke. Jana, who has been a karaoke host in Minneapolis for a few years, was one of the first people to get up and sing. She timidly started by saying "I've never done this before!" referring to the live band, and then proceeded to BLOW EVERYONE'S MINDS with an out-of-control version of "Heartbreaker." It was amazing and she made instant friends with the host, the bass player, and several audience members.

Amazing. I followed with a slightly sexually subversive version of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right," which at least one guy told me was his favorite of the night. We tried to go to this other karaoke bar but it sucked so much that we came back to Piece, where Ben met up with us and where Jana was able to close down the night with a spot-on version of "Me and Bobby McGee." Nachos at home before we crashed for the night. Woke up in the morning and it was sunny in the 70s, and we waited in the glorious sunshine before having bloody marys and brunch at Flo. Jana is great; since we graduated from college the two of us have grown in similar directions in many ways. This makes for fun, fun times.

Sunday night I had a show with Baba Mnouche. The show itself was really great. I wore my new dress from London and we had a much better handle on all of our songs. Finn's mom stopped by which was pretty cool. We rehearsed for two full hours right before the gig, which was hard enough after spending the previous night shouting in a smoky bar. I'm having a bit of a hard time finding the balance of how involved everyone wants to be in this band. I have a lot of fun with it but I don't know if I'm ready to make it my whole world in the way some of them seem ready to do. I also simply don't have time. On the other hand, I have a ball performing and people really love us. We got asked to come back for three more Sundays in April. Hopefully my friends from the school will be able to make it out one of those times; it would be nice to have a fan under the age of 40. Not including Ben, my biggest fan.

It's the birthday boy or girl

2007-03-22T10:28:00.002-05:00

Well I'm 25 today. It doesn't feel much like my birthday except I don't usually wear a dress and fancy shoes to work. Ben made me a yummy breakfast of scrambled eggs with ham and onions, toast and tea. We're all about tea now since we came back from England.

Yeah England! Our trip was totally awesome. It was fun to visit Isabel, the weather was great, we saw lots of different parts of the city and took a day trip to Cambridge, we ate and drank well.

Here in my standard blog-list form are the highlights of our trip:

Tuesday
Gorgeous sunny spring day!
Dropped our bags off at Isabel's work in Kensington
Picnic sandwiches in Hyde Park
Prince Albert memorial
Jet-lagged stupor
Transferred bags to Isabel's school via Portobello Road
Attempt #1 to ride London Eye; changed our minds on account of extreme late-afternoon brightness
Street musicians
Fish & Chips at Chandos Pub
Wandering near Trafalgar Square
Chocolate & whipped cream waffle
Crowds and paparrazzi at premiere of Sienna Miller movie
Nodding off over pints at the Lamb & Flag
Met Isabel after class at 10, headed home
(Isabel rents a room from a lady with two kids, 25 and 14. Her landlady: energy conscious, protective of her space, clean, loud, dramatic, fan of weed. We always came and went with Isabel. Couldn't really hang out outside of Isabel's room. Couldn't put paper in the toilet or flush unless you went #2. Turn off all lights when you leave the room. Shoes off on second floor. We were always on our toes a bit when we were at home.)

Wednesday Amazed to feel awake and rested
London Eye
Guards at the London Eye discovered the pocketknife in my purse; the long-lost pocketknife I'd given up on finding, fallen into the lining, which had made it through airport security in my carry on bag. Funny, happy.
2012 Olympics publicity event
English lunch at Frank's Cafe
Tate Modern
Fun tube slides
Tea in the museum restaurant
Peek into St. Paul's Cathedral
Internet cafe
Indian dinner at Mela
Tube to Camden Town, which felt a little like Brooklyn
Went to Dublin Castle, hipstery bar
Met Isabel at school, went to pub across the street
TV producer in the pub bought us drinks and became our friend
Greek bartender- quite a character
Played a guitar and was joined by drunken Brit singing enthusiastically on "Blame it on Cain" by Elvis Costello
TV producer tried to convince me to come back to London to audition for X-Factor, the UK's version of American Idol
Fun times

Thursday
Buckingham palace pre-changing of guard
Harr0ds Department store food halls in Knightsbridge
Picnic in Hyde Park of food from Harr0ds
Met Isabel, double decker bus to Camden Town market
Kebab lunch
Pints in a corner pub
Ben & I went to get tickets to see Boeing Boeing, a French Farce playing at the Comedy Theatre
National Portrait Gallery
G&Ts before the show
Boeing Boeing! 7 doors on stage. Farcey. Funny.
Met Isabel at the Royal Oak
Master Kebab takeaway

Friday
Ben and I went from the King's Cross railway station to Cambridge
Rented bicycles
One zillion bikes are everywhere in Cambridge
Perfect sunny biking weather with a little breeze
King's college chapel
Bike path by the river Cam
Ploughman's lunch with homemade sausages at the Green Dragon
Beautiful English countryside biking
Free service at King's College chapel, choirboys and all
Ben started to feel a bit sick
Train to London
Met Isabel over crappy Italian food
Pints in Trafalgar Square

Saturday
St. Patrick's Day
Slept in!
Met the landlady for the first time
Went to Portobello Road
Lattes and almond croissant
Bought tea for friends from a girl with an American accent whose family turned out to be from Wauwatosa.
Peanut snacks
Nutella & banana crepe
Focaccia sandwich
Spicy chicken burger
Shopping the market
Red dress! On sale! Handmade in London! Fits perfectly! I'll buy it!
Not actually on sale. 65 pounds instead of 30 pounds. Put it back. Left sad.
Decided to buy it after all. Came back, ready to see if she'd bargain at all.
"You're back! I'm just marking this dress down! The sign's confusing and it's not just you who thought that it was on sale. I can sell it to you for 30 pounds!"
New dress!!
Went to Chelsea mid-football game but couldn't find a bar showing the game anywhere
Watched some rugby instead
Got caught up in post-game crowds on the tube
Waited in line to see art exhibition in East End; didn't get in
Got dinner from the Pieminister outside Vibe Bar
Drank wine
Shots from Shot Girl
Smirnoff Ices
As we left there was a big line and bouncers and everything; we'd just missed the cover charge
Realized Ben left his back inside; was only let in to get it "because of the accent"
Big Bhangladeshi parade of victorious Cricket fans
Free bottle of wine, Bollywood and Indian appetizers on Brick Lane
Fun drunken times

Sunday
British Mother's Day
Slept in again, through early morning POUNDING music and smoke drifing up through the floorboards
Met Iffy's cousin to pick up mysterious envelope
Trek for English Breakfast at highly recommended Alpino- Closed!!
Yummy English Breakfast at Turkish caff across the street
British Museum
Free organ recital at Westminster
Pints at Chandos pub
Sunday Roast at Masons Arms, just before kitchen closed!
Closed down Masons Arms
Walked home singing "Satisfaction"
Watched TV till we fell asleep

Monday
Took Isabel to work and left our bags there again
Went to the Kensington Palace Orangery for a fancy tea breakfast
BEST
SCONE
IN
UNIVERSE
Fancy fun times
Picked up our bags, said goodbyes
Tube to Heathrow
Flight back; broken TV on my seat!
Long crappy ride on the Blue Line to Division
Home again!

So there you go. It was a good time. We were sad to be back, but both Ben and I had lovely welcomes back to Chicago on Tuesday. I worked with my favorite Tuesday night crowd and then went to the Hideout with Kevin to see this 91 year old bluesman named Honeyboy Edwards play with Devil in a Woodpile. Ran into members of the band we open for at Duke's. Then Emily happened to show up! Tamales from the tamale guy! Danced late into the night. Diner food. Ben saw some punk and noise bands with Mike in a muffler shop in Logan Square. Barely slept, but it was a great welcome back to town.

I'm gonna go walk in the sunshine. It's (pretty) good to be back!

Home again!

2007-03-20T12:27:00.001-05:00

Londontown

Click the photo to view all of our pictures. Click on slideshow; turn captions on or off as you please. Recommended soundtrack: Good Day Sunshine, Two of Us (The Beatles), London Calling (The Clash), Good Weekend, Modern Art (Art Brut), All Things Bright and Beautiful (John Rutter), Portobello Road (Cat Stevens), Smile (Lilly Allen). More stories to come.

If I Only Had A Blog

School days

This poem is called "Cold Feet"

WE MADE IT

A bandit!

Hello

Incredible!

Hey, how was February? And the beginning of March?

Internet celebrity

Blahg

New dawn

Happy New Year!

Christmas break!

Attention, Everyone:

**GASP!**

forgot one

Officially winter

History

YOU ARE A TOTAL DREAMBOAT, SIR.

Thanks

Aaaahhhhhhhhhh.

The good life

On my mind

curse you, ragweed

endings and beginnings

Happiness

keeping it together

courage, hope, rum

keeping busy, in no particular order

I'm a quitter

Ok, I'm blogging

The living is easy

summertime is for rides

Go go go

excellent fun times

OMG!

rainy wednesday

Pink of Perfection Project: April

I <3 Wisconsin

Should have made more coffee

Sometimes people read this

sweaty sweatshirt

guilty pleasures

Stuff to blog about

Something else I like:

dork

sippin on gin and milk

There's nothing you can do that can't be done

unable to blog

taking a solo

Why hello!

Craft fair this weekend!

I'm still here

putt-putt-putt... sputtterrrrrr

Happy Homecoming

I love this coffee

Adeline update

Possibly the best cat of all time*

Fattening up for the winter

They don't call 'em itch mites for nothin'

All through the night

I made it!

Boo sickness!

You give me fever

Sweet satisfaction

I'm sick too

I am totally on metromix

Oh god

Good Weekend

Gray skies smiling at me

Saved drafts are the death of this blog

You callin me fat?

I made it home!

Isabel says, "Blog, dammit!"

I'm lazy, but my work is awesome

Stuff to blog about

Sometimes we are fancy

Running myself ragged with AWESOME

Every day's the fourth of July

I don't like bugs.

GASP!