30.9.08

Happy Banned Books Week!

So the weekend totally lived up to the expectations. Friday night i was stuck about what to do- go over to lisa!'s and hear the debates with her and justin, or go to the michelle tea reading at women and children first bookstore. my mom called before the debate for Barak Obama's phone number. she heard someone on NPR explain the financial crisis with this WONDERFUL metaphor, and she wanted to tell it to Obama so that he could use it in the debates and this would make everything perfectly clear to the american people and they would all vote for him. (sadly, being a constituent of Obama's doesn't get me his cell, but i did google his offices for mom.)
So after all that talk with her about when the debates started i was rushing out of the house and when i got to W&CF i realized it was 9 Pa. time. it was only 8 chicago time. i had an hour to kill. So i gave myself permission to buy a book. I was SO SAD to see they had no ron koetrge, and they were out of the girls in 3B, so i bought the night watch by sarah waters and am very excited about it. i walked to kopi cafe and they had a little table in the window, so i sat on the floor and listened to paul simon's graceland, and ate my root beer float, and read my book, and had a lovely little time all by myself. Went back to the bookstore for the reading, which was great, but i had a hard time enjoying it because i ended up sitting next to d. i guess it was my own fault for introducing her to michelle tea. still, uncomfortably awkward.
afterwards, i took the bus to lisa!'s and justin had chocolates which he shared, and i had ANOTHER nice time. it was like i got the best of being single, then went to lisa!'s and got the best of being in a relationship.

Saturday afternoon was one of those "i'm so lucky to live in a big city" times. it was the banned books read out and SO MANY of my YA novelist heroes were there. Lauren Myracle, Louise Reynolds Naylor, Ron Koetrge, Lois Lowry, the guys who wrote And Tango Makes Three, Judy Bloom, and i'm sure more who i can't even remember. It was SO COOL. I really was glad i went- it was like the back of my personal red eye- all the celebrity sightings for people who only I (and a few teenagers and librarians) find as celebrities. Plus, i got a HUGE amount of knitting done on a project i want to be OVER, so that was wonderful too.

Saturday night was my birthday party and CH's with hugo and lisa! there was video games and birthday brownies and lots and lots of wine. i think fun was had by all.

Lisa! and my only goals for sunday were to recover, cut my hair and watch a movie. and we did all those things! lisa! did a great job with my hair, and the movie was stupid, but fun. plus we had thai food, too. Now you can see why i put off blogging about it- so many things, i didn't want to list them on friday, then rave about them todday!

25.9.08

overwhelmed

by the birthday greetings from everyone! i got, like, 15 happy birthday messages on facebook. and my aunt called, and a, and when i got home yesterday i had four boxes! one from mom, one from dad, one from krista and sarah (full of the best goodies- yarn and chocolate and books, oh my!) and then a birthday card from a relative, too. and a box of sewing i'll be doing for a friend of my mom's. but still, lots of love.

Lisa! took me out for dinner and it was oh so nice, and fancy, and scrumdilliumptious, and then i got my gifts from her- all sorts of funky papers from antique stores, old chicago postcards and pennsylvania maps and shiny cigar boxes and such. they're really fun, and very handpicked- a postcard from a hotel in franklin, pa. or a menu from a restaurant that was by my el stop 50 years ago.

plus, there's more party to come! the weekend is Crammed full of fun and exciting activities, more than i want to even list now. i'll tell you all about them after i do them all; i'll be sure and report back how much fun i have!

23.9.08

homepage

I have the "post an entry" as my home page, in hopes i will blog more frequently, but it's so easy to ignore, like other reminders in my life. but today i resolve: i will blog more when the window comes up. i will start my bedtime routine when my alarm goes off. i will live up to my happy and well adjusted discriptor.

obviously not THAT well adjusted, because i am taking the advise of the how-to wiki on how to walk in your heels and they say to walk around the house in them for a week before the party, and a sensible person would put on these torture devises and just say, this is crazy and buy flats. but not me, i plan on clip cloping around for the next week and a half (that's it!) before going to TX and running freely from austin all the way to san marcos in them.

i went back to yesterday's entry and realized you already knew that. but i can't be bothered to delete it all, so i want you to be aware, that i know it- plus it's an update. instead of being in the planning stage, the toes are actively being pinched.

this weekend, lisa! and i took the next step in a modern relationship- we combined our netflix queues. pretty serious, huh? unfortunately i couldn't figure out how to add my account to hers, so i started a new one, and will do some serious culling of my queue. because i REALLY want to get it under 100 again.

Thanks so much for the comments, all! i think there's nothing that inspires me to blog more than comments, so know that you, as a reader, have some sort of power over what you read here. Hugo, thanks! and i can't wait to party with you either! last night's miniparty wheted my appetite for more.

and sarah, indeed, my scam had an expiration date. I don't neccessarily believe in therapy per se- like, i always thoght more power to people who could make it work but didn't see the point for myself. i mean, i have lots of friends who i talk to about myself all the time. but i do think there was some sadness i couldn't find the root of, and once i figured out what the problem was i could do something about it, and now that said something is done, well, i don't need to talk anymore until something else comes up. personally, i just don't wallow very well, so if i can't find a way to take action, i just hate myself more and more. i went to therapy because i felt sad, and i felt powerless about how to fix it, and therapy was what one is "supposed to do" so that's what i did, though i didn't have any faith in it. And feeling sad worried me, because it'd been a long time since i'd felt that way, and i thought i'd grown out of it. so now that i'm feeling overwhelmingly happy, it's hard to find anything to talk to my therapist about, so i'm done for now!

22.9.08

just for hugo

Sure, d mentioned on thursday i hadn't blogged for a week, but then when hugo said he not only read but missed me, i thought i should post and catch up! I thought perhaps i'd start blogging more after tuesday, because I finished up with my therapist. Things are going so well for me, it seemed silly that my major stressor was figuring out what to talk about in therapy! When i told my mother, she ended the call with, "and congratulations on being a healthy well adusted person." which i found particulary hilarious. She was shocked- she said, "you can't be done with therapy yet! you still haven't discussed your mother!"

Christopher came over for dinner last tuesday, and that was so much fun. i miss working with him, and seeing him on a regular basis. but i'm so excited for all the new fun talented things he's doing. It seems like he's really working his degree and living his dreams- but maybe my life looks like that from the outside, too.

doesn't really look like that on the inside. my hours have been cut at the flowershop the economy's been hitting us so hard. It sorta rocked my worldview, but i need to take a deep breath and stand back and look at my life and it's really fine right now, i need to budget and be careful, but i always need to budget and be careful. it always works out ok, and i'm responsible and will not end up living in a box on lower wacker drive- or even in my parent's basement. My mother has an opinion on this, too. She thinks i need a real career to fall back on, and should take up accounting since i like to crunch the numbers at the flowershop. Lisa! is appalled by this idea, since she has more than one accountant in the family, and she fears i would become an unbearably boring person. I'm not sure how i feel about it- i think my strongest opinion at this point is unatainable. i'm not going to get into more debt until the ones i already have are paid off. and i don't think a quickbooks class at the discovery center is really gonna help me out much.

Lisa!'s all into my birthday coming up. She spent all sorts of time this weekend shopping for a present. She's terribly stressed out aboout it, trying to find something sufficently cool. I of course wish i knew how to allieve this stress, because a. i would adore anything she got me cause i like her so much, and b. trust her inherent sense of style, i can't imagine her gifting anyone with something ugly or stupid. I really doubt i'm going to end up with a starbucks gift card. PLUS, she's taking me out to a Fancy Restaurant on my birthday! i'm very excited. Especially now that i suddenly have my birthday off. i'm gonna dress all up!

I may end up coming downtown on my birthday, anyway, though, to take my suitcase to the shoe people and see if the zipper can be repaired before i go to texas for g's wedding. i can't believe it's next weekend already! the how to wiki suggests wearing new heels around the house every day after work until you break your feet in, so i need to start making those shiny silver shoes my house shoes in hopes i can walk for this wedding. there will still be flipflops in my purse, however, you can be sure.

I think a contributing factor to my lack of blogging is my busy social calendar. Lisa! and i went to the bar to see the drag square dancers call bingo, and then this weekend is a miniparty for my birthday and michelle tea's gonna be reading at women and children first bookstore. plus, the banned book read-out is at the freedom museum. Sure, the summer romance was fun, but i think autumn feels so much like a time of new beginings to me, i'm so excited to get out the wool and velvet and see what comes next!

10.9.08

fyi

you will NEVER score points with me by calling me "little girl."

not in any context.

some people just make me want to shout leah's manifesto against cute at them.

today's internet find

chicago loves this, and now i want to promote it too: umbrella today

8.9.08

maki

continuing in the delightful dining trend, went out for sushi with lisa! last night, and she doesn't like fish, so we could do the whole "share a tray full of maki" thing. i'm always a little jealous of people who have these elaborate combination plates, or a whole group who have all their little rolls on the communal dish. being a veggie-only sushi eater, it's hard for me to share. so having FOUR options of various shades of green and orange- lets just say, fun and yummy!

6.9.08

everyone's dream date is different

I need to get cooking on dinner, but i do have to tell you about thursday night before it completely slips away. It was the live taping of wait wait don't tell me at millenium park- for free! Ch and lisa! and justin and i were going to go and have a picnic on the lawn and it was going to be fabulous. however. It poured down rain ALL DAY, but i read the forcast and was prepared. and lisa! was still game! so i stomped down there with my art umbrella and my little flowered galoshes, and there were 100 people instead of 10,000 so i found us some seats and covered them with a shower curtain. and we were still wet, oh yes, oh so very wet, but it wasn't cold, and it was lots of fun, and we ate pita and hummus and drank vodka cranberry and cuddled under the umbrella. after they were done we caught the bus, and called in an order to the blue elephant, and so picked up thai on the way home. we took a hot shower together, found dry clothes, and enjoyed dinner. Lisa! wants to have a torrid affair with sarah palin, so we ended up watching her speach on youtube and yelling at the computer. it was one of those evenings that i hold up as an example, i think, this is what i want my life to look like. just like this.

3.9.08

returned

Yeah, i've been back since the day before yesterday, but there's so much week to squeeze into four days. bag lady has another show, the house is a mess, there's so much to take care of at the flowershop, and i'm still at the workroom. baby preview has been very understanding.

however, i have been wasting time on facebook, and i'm ADDICTED to sharing things on google reader. so y'all should get yourself google reader and use it, because you are missing so much by not reading my shared items.