Amy in Egypt

Color Inspiration at AIC: Ceramics

2011-10-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

Went to the Art Institute Museum awhile ago and actually remembered my camera. I've loved the ceramics in the Asian wing since my long-ago ceramics class but have recently gotten into them more for the colors. Unfortunately due to my own incompetence I forgot to fix the white balance but you can pretty much figure it out. The last three are in the Middle Eastern art wing.

This one claims to have a "pseudo-inscription." The only thing I can guess that means is that the writing means nothing. It doesn't look to say anything to me but I'm no expert. Anyway what a cool idea! I used to be, as a kid, very into gibberish writing but to just stick it on your plate seems... awesome.

I'm obsessed with the roughly-painted blue glaze over the low-relief high-detail background.

Next up: kimonos.

1970s Indian book cover design

2011-09-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

I used to work in a library and was in charge of the India and Pakistan collection. Apparently, back in the Cold War, the US offered a deal to countries they were afraid would fall to Communism: give us your books (in key subjects like religion and science) and we'll give you food. I think this is how it went down; I don't have any sources but my memory. We had a collection mostly from India and Pakistan, with smaller collections from Yugoslavia and Indonesia and maybe somewhere else, mostly from the 70s. Anyway a great number of these books were pretty boring but as I had plenty of time to shelve them, I spent a lot of time looking at the interesting ones. A lot of the ones below I just liked the design of the covers. I don't know the languages involved or the subjects, but a lot of the more colorful ones look like pulp novels. (It was through this job that I also learned about weather modification, Rabindranath Tagore and Zainul Abedin). I've posted one of these covers before, but here's the whole of my photos.

Some cool marbelized page ends

vivid color everywhere

Sorry about the poor picture quality. These were taken with my cell phone camera on the sly!

Storage for Rainbow Shoes

2011-09-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is my room! I've been very excited about this shelf I made-- since it got cold and I took my sweaters out from under the bed, I needed to make room for them. The boxes where the sweaters now live was busy holding my shoe collection. So I found some IKEA brackets I'd squirrelled away and my friend got me a board from Home Depot. I figured that it made sense to put it up high so you don't have a moment of "am I gonna hit my head" fear when you walk in the door. It's too bad that short people can't see the rainbow of shoes unless they stand on my bed.

Also pictured: a print I got at Renegade several years ago, candles from Athenian Candle in Greektown (they're made in the back!), birthday cards, an absurd amount of earrings, random crap. Someone told me once "Wes Anderson would have a field day in your room." I'd be a terrible Quaker, I love clutter too much.

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle

2011-09-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

I went to a movie by myself yesterday for the first time ever. I went to go see Pillow Talk, a Doris Day movie, but it turned out to be preceded by a long college lecture so I snuck out and went across the hall to see the Eric Rohmer movie Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, which I'd wanted to see too and was much more fun. It's about two young girls who meet randomly and end up sharing an apartment in Paris and how their new friendship holds up as their value systems clash. It was made in 1986 and I found myself laughing at the absurdity of 80s fashions even in super-chic Paris.

The girl with the lighter hair is Mirabelle, the Parisienne, and while she wears some crazy stuff, I won't lie and say that I don't now want some high-waisted jeans, oversized sweaters and little canvas sneakers. I also like the ridiculous polo/turtleneck teal shirt thing she has going on in the last photo, and the giant quilted coat, Wellies, and black tank top she wears when she meets Reinette out in the countryside. I also like her attitude: she's the one telling off the snobby art dealer above.

California

2011-09-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

This post is just a few pictures from my trip to California. I love the fall weather we're having here in Chicago but really do think I would be perfectly happy in a warm, dry, Mediterranean climate every day. I love the little daytime moon in the picture below.

And the last two are from the dorm where I stayed (it was an academic conference).

Hurray for sunshine! The end.

On Cleanliness

2011-09-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

I've come to realize that I have a "thing" about cleanliness. So I live in this new, cheap, air-conditioned apartment, which is all well and good except for my roommates, who are lovely and friendly in every other respect, are lacking in home hygiene habits such as regularly removing the trash and cleaning the bathroom. I have no idea how in the past I lived with unacceptable situations such as cat litter (sure, defecate in the dining room or next to my bathroom, little animal! spread your little pee-absorbing pellets all over the place where I walk with my bare feet!). I cannot stand it now though. I do not produce tiny hairs in the bathroom, I hang my towels rather than leaving them wetly on the floor, I do not spill sudsy water all over the floor, I wipe away my general bathroom dirty presence.

In addition, I prided myself on the character trait of assertiveness, but that seems to have almost wholly deserted me in the face of these daily assaults to my preferred state of cleanliness. I think I feel that since I moved in after the roommates, I have no right to ask them to change their preferred method of living in filth. But I am paying rent, and I suppose I do. It's become a silent battle inside my head: do I ask roommate 2 to take out the trash which is almost all his anyway and is no longer nicely inside its bag because he stuffed it too full of beer cans and frozen pizza boxes (the manufacturers should start putting those in bags if they insist on continuing to produce them) and so therefore will be particularly nasty to dispose of; or do I just do it myself again? I have gone to bed resolving to choose the first option in the morning, but I still feel anxious. And I cleaned the bathroom before taking a shower (I prefer to clean my own body in a clean space) as a way to ease this anxiety.

Which leads me to my second point, which is that I consider my relationship to cleanliness neurotic because of its connection to anxiety, as expecting clean shared spaces is really quite normal. Exhibit A: 3 am, July 31, like 3 years ago, my roommate S and I are cleaning out our old apartment and moving into a new one a few blocks away. This apartment had been continually leased to about 6 years of students, we estimate, without the barely-legal landlords ever cleaning it or really, looking at it at all. We are the end of this line of roommates and must leave it empty and clean. Despite our landlord's general tendency to not give a shit, we also know that they can be somewhat arbitrary and vindictive. A few years ago, for example, we got eviction notices because they had lost our leases. So I am annoyed at the injustice of continually moving into dirty apartments that I am required to leave clean, for a faceless corporation that I hated. But since I also feared them, rather than leave the apartment just marginally clean enough to not get in trouble, I went totally insane. S refers to this as the "oven cleaner incident" wherein against his advice, I pulled the stove away from the wall and applied oven cleaner to the side to get off years of accumulated sticky gunk, and he had to make me go sit outside when I became light-headed from the harsh fumes. I was also cleaning the walls with Windex, pleased at how much dirt was coming off. At our final apartment move-out show-down, I compromised by leaving a dirty corner of the top of the fridge and leaving random cleaning supplies and related crap in the apartment for the new tenants who we knew were a bunch of not-giving-a-shit college students. This cleaning insanity is not only related to my fear/hate of my landlords, but is also a self-reinforcing cycle. Both moving and huge and somewhat unjust cleaning tasks cause me anxiety, and cleaning soothes anxiety, and I enjoy seeing things that I never noticed before were dirty become clean, and very quickly things get all out of proportion.

This picture is only somewhat related. It is my very dirty feet from the crap sandals I wore this summer, which were approximately $5 at CVS and left little cheap-metal dark spots on my feet and also caused me quite a bit of pain. My personal hygiene habits are not nearly as neurotic as my apartment-cleaning tendencies, but I do require clean feet & face to go to sleep under normal circumstances. This was one of the habits I developed in the summer I spent on a ranch in Wyoming working as a maid/kitchen wench (the term is "cabin girl"). The other habits are making my bed and whiskey. In one of S's rare dispersions of free psychoanalysis, he pointed out that an anxiety about personal hygiene that does not meet the standards of others (my mother, most prominently) may relate to episodes such as the oven cleaner incident. He might be right.

California!

2011-08-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm in So Cal for the weekend for a conference. It's already lovely and I'd forgotten just how much I enjoy traveling by myself! Bought some Blenheim super-spicy ginger ale from a cute soda-fountain shop, all the way from South Carolina. Upon arrival, I also ate an orange that I bought in Chicago and was likely grown around here. It's funny how much food travels around.

It's clear, sunny, hot, and kind of boring here (more antique stores than seems even remotely sustainable), but I strolled around, met a lot of friendly people, ate some tasty tacos (So Cal does seafood tacos RIGHT), and now I'm going to see if I can't take a dip in the pool. I'll try to take some pictures, and I'll try even HARDER to get to the beach (it's only a train ride away but I have to, you know, work).

Free Music! Art & Stuff!

2011-07-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Maine! It makes me feel like this picture! I'm going to visit my beloved friend J, eat lobster, be by the OCEAN, smell some salt air, maybe eat some blueberries and soak in the awesomeness that is New England and the Atlantic and Maine. Oh man, do I have some Maine memories... here's hoping these will be less emotionally fraught :)

I went to Windy City Soul Club last night and danced myself clean. I wore the sexy dress I bought at Forever 21 (with shorts under it for biking!) but no pictures have surfaced, sorry. I suggest you go to the link and download (for free) the Second Anniversary Mix, it's over an hour of "rare" soul and totally danceable. This monthly dance party is always really crowded and sweaty but I really enjoy seeing a packed room full of people really get down, and it's only $5.

I've also been listening to a lot of this playlist from Nylon magazine. Today's the last day to download it for free so get on that and join me in being obsessed with that one song by Duran Duran!

I also got this playlist from Pitchfork music festival for free. I'm a little less excited about it but I like the Baths and Toro y Moi songs so far.

At work I listen to a Pandora station of awesome oldies and soul which you can replicate by just setting up a station based on The Ronettes and then saying you "like" everything that you like, which for me is basically every song.

Ok, I'm going to get a library card, look for French Vogue at Europa Books, and see if I can hit up the MCA and/or the beach! Sunday funday! (I'm not going to bike because I'm afraid of ozone though, sad)

Image by Richard Burbridge and artist Maurizio Anzari with stylist Robbie Spencer for Dazed and Confused, via Trendland, via Design Crisis. whoa, linky linky!

Blanket Espadrilles

2011-07-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

I apologize for my lack of a better image, I tried to put a few together with paint which is hopelessly frustrating. Will get photoshop one day. Anyway, I started seeing some woven multicolor flats like this and wanted to make you guess: which one is most expensive?

Ok game over. Top left is Rocket Dog, $31.50 here, far right is Rachel Rachel Roy, $59, and the bottom is Missoni, similar ones for $311 here (it comes in other prints or whatever). I dig the Rocket Dog ones but also these by Havaianas in conjunction with Missoni ($130). They also don't seem to have the jute sole that I know from experience gets awful as soon as it gets wet. Cue daydream about Brazil....!

Summer, Longing

2011-07-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

Summer in Chicago is absolutely the best thing ever. My new roommate stood on the porch and declared: "Another day in paradise!" Yet yesterday I was in a funk, feeling that it's slipping away, that I'm not DOING what I want to be doing, that summer will escape without me grabbing it and shaking the living daylights out of it. It bothers me that I can't just let it happen, that I feel the need to wring it out completely. I think sometimes blogs and the internet makes this tendency worse-- when all you see is swimming holes and sunbathing and glamorous beaches and boats and impossibly beautiful women lounging in the sun, and running through sprinklers and BBQs and fires and backyards and and AND AND (seriously though click on my links, they're some of my most-read blogs and/or most summer-evocative posts). I think this is also, for me, compounded because I am only part-time employed and am waiting on a "real job" that will be "fulfilling" and "pay my bills." (I had a real unconsciously Scarlett O'Hara moment the other day, declaring to myself that I'll never borrow money like this again!)

Anyway, I feel this way when I travel sometimes too, the urge to suck it all up and DO THINGS and HAVE EXPERIENCES and not waste time lying in a hostel bed even if I am feeling sick or tired or really actually enjoying reading my book on the roof or whatever. I think it's a fear of the winter, of the dull months where I don't do anything "interesting" when I'll wish (fear of regret?) that I'd not spent my summer mornings inside typing but outside biking and swimming and being gloriously deliciously happy. I don't think it should be this way. When I take a nap on the grass in the sun with a friend, I shouldn't (shoulda, coulda, woulda) feel a twinge of sadness because this feeling will end. Not everyone does.

I think it's why we document, photograph, try to prove to ourselves that we're taking advantage of things before they slip away (suddenly, I can't imagine what it would be like to have a child, growing up and away before your eyes). This morning, I took back up my planner to which I'm devoted when working and in school, and wrote in what I've done this summer. I've certainly been busy, social, having fun, doing summer things, but it gets overwhelming, somehow. It's very graspy, it's very anti-Zen. It's much easier for me to let go of bad feelings than good ones, which I want to preserve like the summer zucchini in my fridge.

Pictures: by my friend T + Instagram of me at the beach, by me of my friends on the 4th of July.

Doppelganger

2011-07-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

I got on the Sartorialist! Just kidding, but according to my friend K this girl looks scarily like me. Also, she's searching for chairs in an alley-- could we be more soulmates?

Since dying my hair I've shied away from wearing red but this looks awesome. I think redheads can wear red, it's just a really bold look. Not for the days you want to try to blend in, I guess.

Clothes for Grown-Ups

2011-07-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

I went to Forever 21 yesterday with a friend, even though I'm morally against the throw-away and ripped-off fashion of stores like that, sometimes in a moment of weakness I cave to the lures of fast, cheap consumerism. A week or so ago we'd gone and I tried on an orange loose drapey dress, and I couldn't stop talking about it. My friend had picked it out and told me to try it on -- usually I avoid loose silhouettes, and orange, because it clashes with my hair.

There it is! It was nowhere to be found when we went back to the store last night, but I found it online. It was both more expensive and less cute than I remembered, but still a good dress. I ended up buying something "overly sexy" on super-sale. It's short, tight, black and a subtle purple print, vaguely reminds me of a wetsuit, has an exposed black zipper all the way up the front, and has enough coverage for a bra. I'm in love. I don't usually go in for both short and tight, but the rest of it is perfect, and at least it's tough and sexy rather than little-girly and sexy.

Anyway, I was surprised at how few of the dresses there look alright on a tall person like myself. There's just gobs of very short, kinda frilly, flowered dresses that would have looked adorable on me if I was 5. I've noticed a few bloggers seem to go in for this kind of silhouette with a short full skirt, but when I dress like that I feel infantilized and also nervous that I'm flashing the whole world every time the wind blows (which is constantly, because this is Chicago). I actually really like these bloggers, but maybe this style is just not for me. On the other hand, the whole conflation of childishness and sexiness really bothers me. Add my voice to the growing crowd asking for a more grown-up, vintage-inspired look for women. While the femininity signaled in "vintage" clothing is also problematic, I'm much more comfortable in a pencil skirt than a short ruffle.

I hear dudes expressing some kind of interest in "sundresses" and I think the short floral dresses is what they mean. And they look awfully cute on the models, but that's maybe because the photos are cut off above the knee! When you see some girl tugging it down all the time, it's less cute. Heaven forbid she try to bike (not that I can bike in my new dress either). Am I being a prude?

My New Apartment

2011-07-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

This is what moving feels like! I've been trying to unpack but ended up slumped against a pile of winter coats on my bed that I don't know how to find a home for. BUT! My new place is great! It is God-awful hot here today and yesterday and I am so grateful for air conditioning. Sometimes I feel guilty for a/c, like that I'll get used to it and not be able to deal when I don't have it (surely, in my next apartment) or that I'll appreciate the cooler nights less, or something. A constant theme in my life: being afraid of any luxury. The illustration is by Julie Morstad and I found it on What Possessed Me.

Haha unpacking sucks! But check it out, dudes, I have a closet! I have very carefully packed it chock-full of all my stuff that was ferreted away in various shared closets in my old apartment. My dad was a master packer, and I inherited the same obsessiveness.

My room is so big that my bookshelves fit in there too! It's out of control. Turns out I have even more books than fit because I was colonizing other roommates bookshelf space. Oops.

This is the view out one of my windows. I have another tiny one way up in the corner at the top of the wall, above my bed. It made a nice cross-breeze when the windows were open the first night I was here. One might ask, but you have a/c, I thought? Ah, but the first night I was here, there was an epic thunderstorm! I watched lightning crack across the sky from my front window, and saw it hit the lightning rods on top of the Sears Tower which I can just barely see (!!!!). Then there was a floor-shaking crack and the power went out. A few minutes later, the hail started (!!!) and we heard a cry from the bathroom, where a hailstone broke the bathroom window and hit my new roommate! Bad omens, said my best friend. But I thought it was auspicious, a mark of a new, exciting phase of life.

Here's a couple quotes about big changes and courage that I read on comments on What Possessed Me that are bucking me up:

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin

Live to the point of tears. - Camus

I'm Afraid, I'm Afraid!

2011-06-23T07:02:00.000-07:00

I'm moving! I found a place. Things fell through with my dear friend with whom I was going to find a two-bedroom for the summer, so I looked alone for rooms. I found a ridiculously cheap room in a beautiful three-bedroom in Pilsen, where I worked last year. I know the neighborhood well from working there, and while it's not the most hip neighborhood, it's hardly at all gentrified, which is exciting, and also a little scary. My beloved neighborhood is green and lush and rich and gorgeous, with some cheap-ish student housing thrown into the mix. This neighborhood is Mexican and urban and (a lot) grittier. So I'm living the bohemian dream, I guess: cheap cheap cheap rent, hipster stranger roommates, working-class neighborhood, vintage building.

I'm terrified. Not of what could happen (you can get mugged anywhere, even friends can turn out to be annoying roommates) but of... newness, of change, of losing my intimacy with my neighborhood and having lots of friends right down the street. I think it's the alone, cut-loose feeling that scares me the most. And moving away from the lush green beauty that is my neighborhood. I took a whole slew of pictures of flowers one summer in my neighborhood, this rose is one of a profusion.

But, change causes growth, right? I think I need to re-read the Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, like Jane posted about the other day. When I first read it I was a little too horrified by the main character's infidelities to care about what was being said philosophically. I also tend to turn away too quickly from a philosophy that seems existential enough to give up on striving to be a better person. But, I the questions, as Jane poses them, really resonated with me: "Should life be light or heavy? Should we pursue untethered freedom or bind ourselves to one another and to place? And can we know which is better when we have only one shot at it?" What a thought for a moving day.

Empty and Hot

2011-06-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

So one roommate moved out. Turns out me and roommate S have NO furniture. He's got even less than me. I literally woke up only once when A was moving out, and when I woke up later in the morning, only a garlic skin had blown under my door.

And the whole place was totally empty. Ok, I own that bookshelf and the pillows. And most of the crap in the closet.

My stuff too. The light blue velvet chair is from my grandma's house, there's a tall skinny bookshelf I picked up a couple apartments ago, and the little chest that my mom got for me when I started college. This is the room with the dining room table and the rug, all of which is gone now.

It got hot again today, so this is what I'm wearing. It's this hot pink tunic thing with some crazy gold embroidery around the neckline. My favorite part is these little dots on the shoulders. I think one of them is a patch for a rip and the other is just to make it symmetrical. I got it at a thrift store, I'm sure, probably Goodwill in SC. It's a total rectangle, so though I've worn it loose before, I like to belt it. I also curled my hair with foam rollers last night, which always comes out a little messy looking but I like the sort of retro effect.

Moving is Such Sweet Sorrow

2011-06-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

Actually, moving is just sad. It's exciting to think of getting a new place, but very unsettling to me to have roommates leaving, a mostly empty apartment, all their stuff in boxes, all before I've even found a new place to live! Yikes. I tend to be really laid-back about apartment-hunting, trusting that something will come together at the last minute, it's not like I'll be homeless, maybe if I wait a bit longer I'll get lucky... etc. And often, I do. But for all this laissez-faire (or laziness?), I'm kind of a "nester." I feel so uneasy in my heart when my home is in upheaval. I'd like to think that I'm ok living out of a suitcase, but I think that's only the case if I know that my Stuff has a Home somewhere. And when I've lived out of a suitcase, I got very into routine and making a room full of someone else's stuff feel nice and like a mini-home. Anyway, here's our dining room, the bookshelves are all packed up and you might be able to catch a glimpse of the kitchen insanity behind it. This room has a lot of my stuff in it so it looks partly normal.

Except, of course, for this wall of boxes.

The living room is going to be completely empty except for that little bookshelf as of tomorrow. OH MY GOD. I kind of like empty apartments, their white walls and seeing the floor all the way to the walls. It feels weirdly relaxing, free. But yeah, a little lonely.

As for my apartment search, my problem, I think, is that I'm TOO flexible. I feel like I could live anywhere, so it's hard to narrow it down. I'm basically like, oh it's cheap? Awesome. Let's take it. No closet? Basement? No problem. I saw this quote from Otto Dix, the German artist, on Eilis Boyle's blog, which I found today via Ill Seen, Ill Said:

"I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful."

It struck me, what a wonderful problem to have, everything I've seen IS beautiful. The ugly places have charm, the dark points in life have wonderful, resilient people that survive through them. I've wanted to write about this before, but I've really struggled recently with reconciling the beauty and happiness in life with the sadness and harshness that I see, not as much in my own life, but in others. We all have a lot of sadness, and sometimes it can seem like that is deeper or more real than the joy and beauty that is also flowing in and around and through us all the time. Theoretically, I believe they have the same strength but it's hard to be sure. Throughout this last year I've felt like I'm swimming in extremes: witnessing some of the worst parts of human experience but also some of the best. I guess I've always been willing to take suffering very seriously, but it's become important to take joy with the same "seriousness," afford it the same status in my view of the world.

So that's all rather abstract, but has to do with the same empty-apartment feelings: it's sad, but freeing, lonely, but exciting, and you have to just deal with those both at once.

On the Hunt Again

2011-06-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'm on the apartment hunt again! This time, I'm finally moving out of the neighborhood where I've lived for almost 7 years (!!!) I love my neighborhood but I'm ready to go. I've been looking at places on the FAR FAR other side of the city, which is a huge pain, but it's a great neighborhood and I think it's time for a change. Unfortunately, as always, apartment hunts are a huge pain, especially with roommates with differing schedules and preferences. Tension always ensues. As I remember from Egypt, it's pretty all-consuming when you're doing it by yourself, too. But on the bright side, you get a glimpse at the kinds of places that people live in all around a vast city.

Notice how this toilet is at an angle to the wall? THIS MADE NO SENSE. Also, talk about all-white.

World's tiniest kitchen. I LOVE IT but don't think I could find a roommate who would. But it was a great location. I'd live there, but I have low standards, apparently.

Oh god, this place was beautiful. Old building, vintage features, lots of sun... but it's also practically in the suburbs it's so far from the center of the city. I am not a New Yorker, therefore, I do not have to live in the Arctic Circle to get reasonable rent. But oh, how I long for this apartment.

LOOK AT IT'S CUTE SUNROOM! (look at my faithful apartment search - helping friend! the best kind of friend!)

The kitchen is half-janky, half adorable vintage. It's got no cabinets, but a huge pantry with a window, random shelving, an ancient metal sink, a new stove (actually not yet installed...?), old linoleum but adorable back porch. I don't quite know what to make of it.

It's in a really cute building! In a really random far-away neighborhood! I don't know what to do!!!

Ok, here's another place. It's so hard to tell if a place is nice when random people's stuff is all over the place. Is this a reasonable kitchen? I do not know. BUT the doorway to the outside was taped across the bottom and super old-looking, making me think: drafty, icky, bad. I have a high tolerance for old and crappy apartments, but... life is short.

What's hilarious to me is that this was obviously a Muslim family, but what tipped me off wasn't the Arabic wall-hangings but the sectional sofas. What is it about putting seating all around every wall? The one time I went to an actual Egyptian's apartment, they had this going on too, and it worked because they had like 20 relatives over chilling out in the room. Behind the somewhat excessive seating, you may be able to see from my crappy pictures that there is a lot of windows going on here-- on THREE sides of the room. Awesome. I would lose the curtains.

Again, cute building. Also, it was on like the only hill in the city, which was kinda cool.

Happiness

2011-06-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if this video upload will work. I like the flash of green light, though. I took this on a loooong bike ride back from work one windy day, earlier this spring. It was just so beautiful out, and one of those days you feel so full of life you can barely contain it.

Finals

2011-05-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

I love finals week because it is a time to be totally self-absorbed and coked-out on caffeine, a sensation I always strangely enjoy. Today I felt entitled to ignore people I recognized but didn't feel like talking to, because I was too busy muttering to myself about WHERE DID THAT REFERENCE GO. I should do that more often (the ignoring, not the muttering).

I hate finals because I get no sleep and still have to go to work and care about people and not sleep on the floor or otherwise embarrass myself.

But mostly, I like the single-minded focus about it. Obviously I'm procrastinating, but spending days obsessing over one paper or major idea has such an appeal. I've written before about how great it is to really focus and relish in an activity, even if it's kind of unpleasant. I think that this kind of concentration and mindfulness leads to creativity, the state of "flow" that you always hear about. Sometimes paper-writing is like pulling teeth, but its ok to let that happen too.

Scope out my 1 am lifestyle!

Pretty awesome, huh? Bet you wish you were here too!

Flea Market

2011-05-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

I went to some insane flea market out in the suburbs with my roommate on Sunday morning. I got some random stuff- yarn, an alligator pin (now all my clothes are Lacoste!), some "Maine Woods" brand lace-up hipster/Laura Ingalls Wilder boots, an ice cream cone.

But MOST IMPORTANTLY I got this dress!

OH MY GOD!!

It's Diane Von Furstenberg, which I know enough about fashion to know "designer" if not the trendiest thing in the world or like Chanel, this baby retails for $325. And it's sold out on Bluefly (picture source) so ha! I got it for $15. I got it because it screams MIAMI BEACH!!!! And it's the skankiest thing I own. Especially because it's like stretch silk, and size 0 and I am skinny but no size 0. Who is anyway? So it doesn't really look like it does on this mannequin. I don't know if I should keep it (roommate says "wear it to graduation") or sell it on ebay. Cash rules.

Oh my god, I love this dress. This is the first designer thing I've owned. I guess I have a Guess coat but that doesn't count. DVF has been a judge on Project Runway, so you know she's legit!

Man Repelling, Losing Stuff

2011-05-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

I went on two trips out of town in two weekends and now I have more work than I can handle and a court date on Friday! Caffeinate!

In other news, I'm into The Man Repeller. I thought I wouldn't like it because it's about a hip(ster?) New Yorker who has expensive clothes but WHO AM I KIDDING I LOVE THAT SHIT. If you see someone giggling uncontrollably in the oh-so-quiet library, that's me. Hiiiiii.

Anyway, the girl behind the man repeller is oh-so-funny and into clothes that men hate, like mismatched loud prints and culottes and rompers and harem pants and nary a defined waistline in sight. I have more traditional taste but I like the attitude.

A classic man-repelling outfit by me, earlier this spring. Shapeless tunic, check; baggy cardigan, check; topknot, check; excessive scarf, check. Sexyness? Nope.

On one of my weekend trips I lost my black cardigan. I used to wear it like 3 times a week and took it on every trip I went on during its life in my wardrobe, but now it's gonnnnne and I'm sad. The rental car company can't find it and my friends deny having it and it isn't in my room anywhere and I'm going crazy. I know it's "just stuff" but ugh, it was so perfect and did I mention it goes with everything? I think I'll go home and tear my room apart again. Maybe it's under my bed or something. Maybe it went to join my other fuzzy sock (RIP, snowflake socks) or that awesome plaid fedora I got at a thrift store in Wisconsin and used to have as a rain hat (umbrellas are just too much work) and now I have to use the hat that looks like "some dorky Annie Hall shit" (thanks, T, you're the sweetest) except my Bosnian coworkers think its adorrrrrable! This hat is a brown brimmed kinda floppy hat I got from grandma and I made a pink felt rose and safety pinned it on during a weird Anthropologie-feuled craze for embellishment I was having. I still leave it on because it gets comments like "spring-like" and "so feminine!" and (this is gonna sound bad) foreigners love that kind of thing. I think I mentioned before how Egyptians just went nuts for my brightest, patterny-est, crazy-pants-est skirts. So, to tie this all together (see how I did that?) man-repelling clothes are Bosnian or Egyptian- attracting clothes, and that's how I like it.

Here's a picture of the cardigan, the weekend just before it disappeared. Also note my awesome man-repelling face, hah.

I HATE LOSING THINGS.

I left ANOTHER thing on my last trip, a kinda silly but weather-appropriate short khaki trench-like weird-nylony jacket that is from Limited or something but I got at a yard sale. It was all professional and spring-like so I'm sad I left it but in return I got a sweet way-too-big San Diego lifeguard sweatshirt so I can repel the men some more. Nothing like swapping your girly narrow-waisted light coat for a giant hoodie.

The source of the hoodie, pictured above through New Orleans twilight and headlight glare.

Domestic Concerns

2011-04-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today was pretty horrible and depressing, despite a middling to good day at work, I was ridiculously tired and irritable and impatient coming home. So I cured it the best I know how: a long bath (with school reading to feel virtuous), laundry (new Unique purchases! finally got the plain white button-down every style person seems to think should be a staple of every woman's closet), some cleaning and straightening up, cooked up some healthy food (chickpeas and chard, with onion, garlic, and garam masala) for dinner and for two small lunches in the future, mended a couple things, made some dye from the red chard stems (don't quite know what to do with it, since I added vinegar it might not really work as a food coloring), and orange juice.

I sound so boring! But really, puttering around the house is a great way to cheer myself up on a dreary day. And tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer so I'm taking hope.

Took the picture a couple weeks ago on a pretty sunny evening.

Sick Cure

2011-04-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

I got sick a little while ago. I'm better now, and I submit that this is why: I stopped drinking coffee, drank like a gallon of orange juice, and forced myself to chew a garlic clove before bed. I also drank a special drink made of hot water, lemon juice, jaggery, garlic, and cayenne. Lots of cayenne. If that can't cure your cold, there is really no hope for you.

Skirts: Swingy, Pleated, Sheer

2011-03-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I keep seeing variations on the springy-est skirt ever, and it looks like the perfect thing to wear every day (if only it were a little bit warmer!)

Ha, I can't believe I got all those images to stack up. 1 - Alejandra Alonso in lookbook for Mango spring 2011 via fashion gone rogue via {this is glamorous}*; 2 - Mariechen W. from Berlin on lookbook.nu in American Apparel's skirt**; 3 & 4 - The Sartorialist; 5 - E. from Academichic; 6 - Valentino Paris Fall 2011 Ready to Wear via style.com via {this is glamorous}

*I love Mango. I think the first time I went in one of their stores (they're a Spanish brand) was in Aruba on a trip in high school, and I was smitten by their cool clean look and carried around their lookbook with me for way longer than was necessary.
**We all know how I feel about AA, but they're really into chiffon recently and I do like this skirt.

I actually have a knee-length gored (it's words like this that I've noticed are totally lost on boys or people who are not into clothes) swishy pleated chiffon skirt, though it's black. I wore it a lot last fall but its been awfully light-weight for the depths of winter. Maybe I'll break it out again in an attempt to force spring on Chicago.

Mindfulness and Creativity

2011-03-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Sunday, y'all. I'm eating leftover diner omelette from last night's adventures and cleaning all the things. And blogging. Holy crap, there's nothing like being freed temporarily from the worries and stress of work and school to remind you of long-forgotten creative plans. I took a class last quarter where we had to use different mediums to produce our reading responses each week, things like taking a picture, drawing with oil pastels (maybe that was just me and my love for oil pastels), writing poetry, cooking, singing, doing yoga. It was a touchy-feely class, and I gave the assignments a fair share of eye-rolling, but one comment by a classmate on the last day stuck out. She said that it was game-changing to think of creativity as part of normal work and life, not the "reward" we leave for ourselves when nothing else is really going on. For those of us who aren't artists and don't work in a creative field, how can we make the pursuit of creativity and beauty a part of our busy lives, not just something to add on?

I think a lot of us (bloggers, women, friends of mine, people who appreciate aesthetics, I dunno how I'm defining "us" here) seek to add beauty and creativity in to our everyday life in little ways, but those often strike me as something to add on when we've got money and time. I'm thinking of things like buying flowers, sewing and drawing and knitting during our free time. These things are valuable, but sometimes I literally don't have time or money for them (soon, hopefully, my life won't be so damn intense but you can't just wait around living in a future time). I've been thinking of ways to do the shit I have to do in a more mindful, creative way. I read (in Martha Stewart, referencing an unnamed "recent Harvard study") that people spend 50% of their time thinking about something other than what they're doing, and that this makes them unhappy. Let's totally ignore my nagging need to read the whole study and criticize it, and assume that mindful presence in as much of daily life as possible is a positive goal. There's a lot of boring shit I have to do that I don't want to be mindfully present for, though, I just want to get through, like commuting and paperwork and eating old food because I hate for food to go to waste and school assignments I can't get into. Sometimes, though, if I try or just pay attention, these can become enjoyable too. I kind of love commuting sometimes, watching the buildings flash past and the birds and the light sparkle through falling snow and the faces of my fellow metropolis-dwellers. I write little observations on receipts and shove them in my purse and find them later, a little slice of mid-January. My coworker play music while she does paperwork.

I think sometimes what it takes to introduce creativity to ordinary tasks, paradoxically, is ritual and routine. You know, you decide, ok, it's tax time, motherf*ers, time to dress up like my weirdly romanticized version of an attorney, get absurdly into knowing the workings of the IRS website, and pump myself up with a fancy coffee. I know those are kindof add-ons, but if you're going to dress and have a coffee anyway, why not specialize them for taxes? This is an odd example. Maybe like my coworker, when you have an unpleasant task at work, set it up so you're happy and comfortable and then get into it as much as possible. I kind of relish the stress of exam week because I'm so single-mindedly focused on one thing.

I'm going to think about this some more. After I do my taxes.

Took this crazy double-exposure picture in New Orleans on the hotel balcony in the morning, and of my friend's dog in the back of the truck, with my old-school Sabre 620 camera, which I finally got it together to use.

Reflected Light

2011-03-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

These pictures of mirrored ceilings and walls really snagged my imagination. The first is from The Corinthian Club in Glasgow, via Lace & Tea.

Then the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin (which as we all know is the coolest city in the world) (ok, check out their website, I was just going to cite to be thorough but it's pretty awesome and there's a button that says "it's all too much" that you can push to turn off all the music and animation. every website should have that easily accessible! I think I'm in love) via {this is glamorous} via Design Shimmer. When I was in New Orleans, I stayed a night in the guest room of some friends. They said the room was the only one not yet remodelled in the century-old house, which I only saw in the bathroom, a bit worn around the edges, but completely walled in with mirrors. You have to be pretty vain to like that kind of thing, but I was fascinated with seeing reflections show up in unexpected angles, plus it looks totally glamorous in Hollywood dressing room kind of way.

It all reminds me a bit of this "Swimming Pool" installation by Leandro Erlich. This photo is from the original at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. Wouldn't it be cool to sleep or eat below that shimmering watery reflective light?

I love light reflected off water, bouncing back on the side of houses from pools, the underside of bridges, the sides of boats. It looks like summer, and it makes me excited and happy and eager to jump in, but it's also so soothing and dependable, even in its sparkling. I would like a house where I can sit and eat breakfast or go to sleep wrapped in that light. Anyone got one?

Spring Fever, New Orleans Edition

2011-03-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"
-Mark Twain

So.. all that I was saying about accepting what I'm given and being ok with winter? Well, I went to New Orleans for a visit last week and it shot all those high-minded plans all to hell. New Orleans was warm and beautiful, and I was less than pleased to come back to a chilly, rainy, gray Chicago. I still love Chicago, really, I do, but am starting to think that it might not be so bad to live in a place that makes me happy.

We biked around the Crescent City, and I was continually just overwhelmed by how gorgeous everything was. Azaleas blooming really gratuitously, beautiful old homes, flowers and sunshine, morning coffee on balconies and a glass of wine outside in the evenings. The plants are familiar to me, but even more tropical and gorgeous, so it has the relaxing quality of going home, but it's also a city with a lot of cool things going on, indie shows, coffee shops, things I thought I would give up if I left the big city. I have some big decisions to make coming up, so any input would be welcome, especially if you know New Orleans!

Wish List for Spring

2011-03-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

I know I talk about having everything I need, and not shopping, and so on, but sometimes there are a few (hopefully versatile) items that I really want! Most of these things would have been practical this winter but probably would get a lot of use in a Chicago spring too.
1. a solid-color maxi skirt

E., from Academichic, wears them really well, and she's the main reason I want one so bad. I actually have like 5 maxi skirts which is WAY too many, but they're all spangled and patterned and asymmetrical and insane. I hold on to them, honestly, because they garnered compliments in Egypt (they love over-the-top, just like I do) and I refuse to admit that I'll never go back and don't need to hold on to a wardrobe that is perfect for a completely different continent than the one I live on.

Here's a super-blurry picture of one of them. I got this from my cousin who got it in a hippie store in Madison, and I wore the shit out of it in Egypt, tied it as a dress in Dahab, and sometimes wear it and the others in the summer here when I go dancing or just want to be a hippie.

Lauren Moffatt gets it right, even though these aren't solid colors, the high waist looks great and the patterns are subtle. I love her.

Anthropologie, via Academichic, and Nordstrom.

2. knit pencil skirts in dark colors like navy and burgundy
American Apparel was my original vision of what this should be, but I hate them and can't afford them anyway. Etsy is, suprisingly, disappointing, as what I've found so far have low waists and look not that well made. I might have to make this myself at grandmas.

First, American Apparel, and then a cute version from Pretty Birdie by Stephanie Teague on etsy, who is from North Carolina and makes (I think) really chic clothes with natural fabrics and dyes, like hemp, linen, and organic cotton. Unfortunately her pencil skirts are not stretch, though they are really cute, and they're really expensive. One day when I have money, she's exactly the kind of seller I'd give it to.

3. leggings or tights to go with navy skirts
I have a navy dress and a navy skirt, and I think navy looks great with my red hair, but I haven't worn them all winter because of my distaste for black with navy. I have brown tights but I live in Chicago and need something much thicker if I'm going to wear them all day.

4. a fake-leather jacket
Leather is soooo cool but gives me the creeps. I'd like to have a jacket in canvas or something with all the swagger of motorcycle jacket--assymetrical zipper, short waist, big lapels. I'd even take studs.

Still Winter

2011-03-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

I am trying hard to live in the moment and place where I am. All of my professional training leads me to believe this is a wise course, as well as Annie Dillard who says in Teaching a Stone to Talk that she wants to live by "choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will."

And what I'm given is more chilly gray days in Chicago, and loads of work to do. So ok, so be it, it is still winter. I make myself look at catalogues of winter clothes. I almost tripped when I saw three daffodils in an other-wise familiarly dead bed. I can still see my breath in huge humid clouds. I'm no longer fighting it. I've retreated to muted earthy colors for the most part, simple outfits and sensible, cold- and water-proof shoes. And it works-- I went to a party where I knew only one person and was complimented on "all those earth tones." This very complimentary person told me that I have beautiful skin that would be ruined if I moved to L.A. as I've been threatening to do. Perhaps they're right, maybe I do belong here, quietly hoping for spring and turning more and more translucent. Maybe redheads, even fake ones, really are better off in climates such as mine, and I should embrace my Scandinavian roots!

These beautiful wintery photos are by Swedish photographer Anna Ådén. Check out her blog, too! Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what blog led me to her, but I'm guessing it was Design is Mine.

Romantic Candlelight Dinner: the Aftermath

2011-03-09T19:29:00.000-08:00

This is an old post but thought I'd put it up.

A good friend and old roommate is visiting, and on her first night here we had a romantic candlelit dinner. We made Mediterranean Fish Bake, from a recipe given to me by a friend who took a cooking class at Camaje, a restaurant in NYC, back in 2005. It was pretty delicious, and we had it with grits, which if that sounds weird to you, call it polenta, but we only cooked it for 5 minutes, and mixed in some feta and butter, I think.

Mediterranean Fish Bake
2 servings

1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 plum tomatoes, chopped
2 sprigs thyme, leaves only
10 leaves basil, sliced
2 Tbsp. capers
2 (6 oz.) fish fillets-- just about any fish works, except tuna, we used cod
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbed (ok we used a lot more)
1/4 cup breadcrumbs (we just toasted the ends of a loaf of bread and tore them up)

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine onion, garlic, tomatoes, thyme, basil and capers in a small bowl and toss to combine. Lightly oil a small baking dish. Place fillets in dish and season with salt and pepper (do a little happy dance when you get to use your new mortar and pestle as you are out of ground pepper but have lots of whole peppercorns). Top with tomato mixture. Combine feta and breadcrumbs and sprinkle over fish. Bake for 20 minutes or until fish is just beginning to flake and a knife inserted into the fish is very hot to touch.

I baked it 20 minutes and hoped the fish was done, which it was, since I would have no idea when it was "just beginning to flake." This is the first animal protein I have ever successfully cooked "on my own," (my friend helped a lot, and her confidence helped even more, especially as I stood in front of the meat and fish case in the grocery store at a total loss). I am generally deeply afraid of cooking meat of any sort as I recall two failed attempts in college that practically burned down my apartment and were inedible, so I just stick to vegetables. This wasn't too hard though. I might try chicken next time.

We also mixed some feta and butter into the grits, and it was delicious.

You can see in our "aftermath" picture that we also had wine, whiskey (that was later), and Root, a Pennsylvania-made liquor based on old recipes for the pre-Prohibition root beer. It tastes like very-alcoholic root beer, and it has a charming label with drawings of all the ingredients.

Warmer Climes?

2011-03-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been talking with friends and thinking a lot about why I live where I do. As winter stretches into March and I spend two hours a day in transit, why don't I live somewhere easier? Like Dahab, above, where I went snorkeling in February?

I have never been that attracted to "easy" places, because I feel a really Midwestern guilt about it. If it's too warm and comfortable and beautiful, I might get complacent, and forget that there are cold and inconvenient places, start to feel that I deserve to have an easy life, and lose the ability to appreciate littler pleasures. One friend thinks it is the folly of youth to think that we should make life harder than it is-- she suggests moving to L.A. Another says I really would be happier moving back to the South, if to a larger city. Others seem to advocate going abroad merely for it's own sake.

I really am not sure if there is anything better than spring after a long winter. But then I think about Hawaii and surfing every day, and surely that's better. Many people I know have no qualms about longing for a "better" place-- somewhere with mountains, the sea, a more cosmopolitan vibe. This always makes me first hotly defensive of Chicago's merits, and then uneasy about the valuation of natural and man-made beauty. I think this might be because I grew up in a pretty mediocre town in a state known for its natural beauty. Though I have a love-hate relationship with my hometown, I'm a staunch defender of the (moral?) superiority of "mediocre" places.

My Sabre 620: Weekend Project

2011-02-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, enough about that. You can read Al Jazeera yourself if you want to, and it's making me cry again. So anyway, I decided to party like an Egyptian last Friday, and spent all Saturday recovering from that. Vitamin Water and Neko Case work wonders, and when all else fails, a Turkish coffee and some lentil soup.

I finally bought 620mm (color) film off of ebay, and I figured out how to load it into my old-school camera from instruction on this website. It has pdfs of manuals from almost every old manual camera you can think of. Unfortunately it's been either dark or kinda gray outside lately, so I'm waiting for a good opportunity to take pictures. I think I only get 12, and then I have to find somewhere that will develop it...if you know of a place in Chicago, let me know!

A friend is coming to visit this weekend and we are going to do touristy and groovy Chicago things, so consider this my reminder to take pictures!

I think the picture is from the Sartorialist, but I'm not sure. It's relevant because... it's a photograph and I'm talking about photography?? haha. It's relevant. Trust me. Ahem. Moving on.

MABROUK, YA MASREEN!

2011-02-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

I stayed up way too late last night, with the intention of celebrating Egypt's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. To be perfectly honest, I spent most of yesterday reading or watching or listening to news from Egypt and weeping in public. I'm a teary person, but the jubilation of seeing a nation free themselves from 30 years of oppression and tyranny is just too good to keep any kind of composure. It was wonderful hearing everyone in the streets, crying out "be proud, you're an Egyptian!" It's just so rare to hear good news, especially from this region, that has such a sense of hope. I've spent a lot of time hoping for this day, both for Egypt and for other countries struggling under unjust regimes. It's insane to think that finally a revolution based on human dignity and the desire for social justice and freedom has succeeded. To have words like freedom and justice bandied around in a totally sincere way is incredibly moving, and I think it was the contrast between the protesters complete life-and-death sincerity and Mubarak's empty rhetoric in his last speech that made it so enraging. Was it just the right time? Why now? Why Egypt (first, I hope!)? Things to think about.

One thing that gives me hope that the Egyptians will find a peaceful and democratic government moving forward is the communal spirit of the revolution and the sense of responsibility for their future that Egyptians feel. As they banded together to clean up downtown after the fights and protests of the past 18 days, a flyer distributed says:

"Today this country is your country. Do not litter. Don't drive through traffic lights. Don't bribe. Don't forge paperwork. Don't drive the wrong way. Don't drive quickly to be cool while putting lives at risk. Don't enter through the exit door at the metro. Don't harass women. Don't say, 'It's not my problem.' Consider God in your work. We have no excuse anymore."

First, that's kind of hilarious, because it sums up all the daily ills of life in Cairo, but it's also amazing, because instead of the usual cynicism and resignation that was so embedded in the national psyche, it shows an incredible sense of agency and hope.

French Classics

2011-02-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

I saw this book, by French model Inès de la Fressange, on the blog A Lovely Being, and images from RDuJour. It's already available in a French version, and an American version will arrive in April. Unfortunately, neither seems to have the clean cover style of the image above, which is upsetting because the cover alone makes me want to buy it. I read style books like this as a guilty pleasure, but unfortunately it is a pleasure that always lets me down. It's all very nice to think of dressing like an ever-classy Parisienne, or like Kate Spade or the people from What Not to Wear, but I don't, and I don't want to.
I guess the premise of the book is that it shows the French classics worn by mother and daughter, who is 17-year-old Nine D'Urso. Perhaps it shows that there is no age limit on being a sexy and sophisticated rich Parisienne? Please excuse my bitter tone.
It's not that I don't think this style is beautiful (except the yellow text boxes, which remind me of my old Spanish textbook). In fact, I think a variation on the classic French style might be a perfect solution for my need for a work uniform.
Maybe not the mini or the cargo, of course, but the stripes, simple shapes and colors, some nice jackets and good expensive-looking fabrics could elevate more a more casual style to be work-appropriate. No?
As soon as it's spring, I am going to wear white jeans to work. Is that ok? I have them, I love them, they love me... but I'm too much of southerner to not get heart palpitations trying to wear them in the winter. Also the slush would destroy them, and that would be sad.

I'm Too Sexy for my ... Job

2011-02-05T14:08:00.001-08:00

Mosey suggested heels and form-fitting clothes, and an attempt at wearing make-up, as a way to look more adult and professional at work. I agree, for the most part. But, my work environment has a few strange requirements. I work with people, (not paper or computers) some of whom come from cultures more conservative than mine, so I feel a need to dress with careful modesty. I have actually been hit on by homeless people waiting to get into a clinic in the building, when I've worn more form-fitting clothing, which made me extremely uncomfortable. (This picture is actually a great example of my kind of failure of biz cas clothing-- technically it's a business-like skirt and a button-down, right? but the shirt is too thin and her hair is all "I just got out of bed" and when you're that tall all skirts look short on you, and it just comes off all wrong.)

I also do a lot of walking around including, some days, being outside and on public transit a lot. Often it is impractical for me to, say, wear boots for my commute and then change into heels, as I'll be running outside a couple times a day. So was wearing the life out of my black winter boots, but it came back to haunt me and they got soaked this morning and I was miserable. So I have a pair of flats I leave in my desk drawer that I can wear when I'm in the office.

And to make matters more awesome, the temperature in the building is insane-- one week we brought a thermometer and one office was 90 degrees. We were dying even with the windows open to the winter winds, and we asked for it to get fixed. Now it is chilly inside, sweater-weather chilly.

Soooo, I have found a few biz-cas outfits that really work for me. Corduroy, black, or khaki pants + striped button-down is one of them. Add a cardigan for chill, roll up the sleeves for the sauna rooms, and button up modestly. I dug a knit blazer out of the bottom of a stack of sweaters and it worked really well on Friday, over a nice-ish drapey top I got at Unique.

And sometimes, yeah, I try to wear makeup. But I don't really have that down, as my makeup routine is much more geared towards going out. At night I wear black eyeliner and mascara (I started wearing makeup on a semi-regular basis in Egypt, actually, where super dramatic eyeliner is The Thing), and sometimes some red lipstick to look retro. I own chapstick, a couple eyeshadows (gold and tan), a reddish lipgloss I recently stole from my cousin, and sparkly "golden sand" eyeliner. I also own concealer, which I do use pretty regularly, and bronzer and blush which I inherited from roommates and never never use. None of this seems particularly appropriate. So I've been going to Sephora after work and thinking about what I could buy that would be more versatile.

picture credits: via This is Glamorous, German model Julia Stegner by Tesh via Fashion Gone Rogue.

Cross-Country Skiing in the Park

2011-02-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, since it was a SNOW DAY, I got out my cross-country skiis and went to the park, via the middle of the unplowed roads! In the park the snow was fresh except for some snowshoe and rabbit tracks, but near the south end of the park I found that other xc skiiers had been there as well! There are not many xc skiiers in the city, as you can imagine, and I got a lot of comments and grins from the neighbors. I told my roommate that it was "so fun" but he doesn't believe it, and it seems he's not alone in this opinion. It's true that xc is very tiring, but once you get moving and you're nice and warm and the snow is blowing and it's quiet and you're alone in the snowy world, there's nothing better.
Maybe you have to be at least a tiny bit Scandinavian to really enjoy it. Plus you get to be sore in places you forgot had muscles.

Snow Days!

2011-02-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

We had some major snow in Chicago, which resulted in TWO WHOLE SNOW DAYS! I didn't have to go to work OR class! It was awesome. I lay around and read, went to a bar in the middle of the blizzard (and post-blizzard), took a walk around the block to observe the neighborly helping-out, ate chili, and sat in the window to watch cars struggle in the unplowed streets.

On the second snow day, it was clear and beautiful but still the roads were not clear. I had never had a snow day here in Chicago before, and two in a row? Words cannot describe how happy I was.
It was so bright and clear as I made my way home, on Chinese New Year, no less!

Revolutionary Protests in Egypt!

2011-01-26T19:16:00.000-08:00

And now, a break from our regular programming of fashion and nonsense to show you what I've actually been obsessing about. The revolution going down (maybe) in Egypt!

Video from al-Jazeera. The facebook event page (yes, the revolution will be facebooked (and tweeted)) is already taken down, but the organizers' page is here, and it looks like they're planning another protest for Friday. Seriously, I don't care if you don't really care about Egypt or watch the news, but watch this video, especially the end, the tear gas and police scene is really... disturbing/riveting/intense.

I can't stop watching these videos, it gives me hope and makes me so happy. Even though I wonder what will happen, if it will just get squashed (more than 1000 protesters have been arrested, and 6 people have died), but it is so encouraging to see people coming together and demanding change for a regime that has been trampling on their rights for 30 years. Knowing the kind of rage Egyptians have been building up for years, it's just so good to see it come out. To spare you a google translation, it's the revolution against torture, corruption, injustice, poverty, and unemployment. HORREYA!

Side note: turns out my favorite bar in Cairo, Horreya (it means freedom) has undergone a facelift that I consider very unwelcome. It used to be a place where "expats, intellectuals, and artists" could hang out with cheap beer, and it was totally gross and dirty, and I spent many a Monday night there listening to impassioned conversations I barely understood (and plenty that I did). Everything changes, I guess. But a ban on playing chess?? Unacceptable.

Anyway, I like al-Jazeera as a news source but I think it's best here to take it from the source Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt Today), an independent newspaper, has an English-version website. They seem faster updated and have more impressive numbers, which I hope reflect the truth (except for the higher death and arrest tolls, of course). Anyway, hope you enjoy this as much as I do!

Snow Falling & Looking Older for Work

2011-01-24T21:11:00.002-08:00

One day a couple weeks ago it snowed one of those picture-perfect snows with big clumps of soft flakes. You could see crystals on your mittens and it wasn't so cold you want to cry. So I took this picture of the building across from my bus stop.

Also, today a coworker told me that I look too young to be professional. I "dress like a teenager" and look like I'm about 18. Granted, today I dressed a little young, but really? I try so hard to look professional. Usually I bore myself to tears with solid colors, dark modest straight skirts, and wool pants. Sometimes I go a little out there with a bright patterned skirt, or like today, a more fun shape, but this is a pretty casual field. My supervisor wears jeans. So anyway, I am not happy about this. I don't really know what to do to look older, that doesn't sacrifice my budget or sleep too much. Any ideas?

New Years Day Picture

2011-01-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

I took this picture with my phone camera on New Years Day. Guess where I live? Doesn't it look cold? That river just looks like ice!

I'm procrastinating, so therefore struggling to upload all recent camera phone pictures to my computer. All kinds of fun.

Sick Day!

2011-01-19T09:41:00.000-08:00

Today I'm the most awesome kind of sick-- still too ill to really go out and be productive, but not utterly miserable (like I was yesterday, ugh!) So I get to stay home, do my laundry, catch up on little tasks like homework, thank-you notes, mending, and so on. I'm listening to A Story of Her (the main singer is a post-doc teaching one of my labmates classes! Don't tell anyone that we e-stalked him and found his band... I think it's ok since I met him at a party a few weeks ago). I particularly like "Days and Nights and Weeks and Months." I also recently got the She & Him albums from a friend, so that's been good listening too.

Sick Day by amyinegypt featuring shawl collar cardigans

I love hanging around on the couch in my truly ancient long underwear bottoms and a thrifted flannel shirt. I talked to my family, drank a bunch of tea, looked at the internet... Seriously, the only downside of today was that the hot water ran out while I was taking a shower.

Inspiration: Dolce & Gabbana

2011-01-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

I am really loving this look from Dolce & Gabbana, from the Sartorialist. I have been wishing for more gold earrings and these big hoops are simple but dramatic. I also like the clean, sexy silhouette, despite the fact that I have zero occasion to ever dress like that.
These weird images are from D&G's Spring/Summer 2011 ad campaign, the same as we saw from the runway shot. They give me a weird feeling, perhaps they play too much into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy or a hyper-sexualized portrayal of female jealousy. But anyway, I like the big gold earrings, the chandelier ones are especially cool.
The shirt in this photo reminds me of a still from The Leopard that is on the cover of the February schedule at the Siskel Film Center downtown. The print dress the actress wears in the film is less seductive, but it has a really fitted, pleated bodice with a little black drawstring around the scoop neckline and a full skirt. I really like this look, and think I need to add more fitted waistlines into my everyday wardrobe. This kind of fitted peasant top is so Italian-sexy, but it might be hard to find one that didn't look too costume-y.

Rainbow Shoes

2011-01-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

So, I arrange my shoes by color. It's true, the secret's out. I've got every color but green, and I have teal sort of to replace it. My collection of high heeled shoes I rarely wear lives on an inverted drawer from a dresser that I found in the alley. I never got around to painting it, but it adds some much-needed storage. Black and brown and everyday shoes are on the bottom, along with some sewing supplies in boxes.

What I actually wore for new years eve

2011-01-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

So this is a two-days-later picture of what I ended up wearing for New Years Eve. We had a party at my apartment, not a big one, but I was still baking carrot cake and wearing what I'd worn that day when people started showing up, so I never changed. It was a bit too cold during the day to not wear tights, sadly, and just the right weather for a short-sleeved sweater, which is rare and must be taken advantage of. I did switch out socks and LLBean boots for the sparkly gold flats you can just barely see in the picture. Try to ignore my cluttered little room and poor quality picture, as these are taken with my computer and it's hard. I didn't take pictures then because I don't have a camera, but mosey requested one, and you know I can't say no. If you care, you can see behind me the lavender boxes that I painted and now use as a desk drawer/closet.

What did I wear? The sweaterdress and herringbone leggings come from Express but I got them at a yard sale, the sparkly flats come from Old Navy but I also got them at another yard sale. The top hat I swiped from a sleeping guy at a party I went to later on (party stories are much too incriminating to put on a blog...)! The dress was a funny shape-- pretty loose on top and tight on the bottom, but it's actually really comfy for a party. I still felt dressed up but everything stayed put and I stayed warm.
Haha, this is a ridiculous picture. I went to go get my driver's license this morning and should have made this face for the ID! Or this one (taken as my computer starts to fall off the stack of magazines on my windowsill):

New Years Eve: What to Wear

2010-12-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

This Friday night is supposed to be warm (well, 50s during the day, but trust me, that counts as warm)! So I think I'm going to try to wear a skirt when I go out on the town, without tights. I know, bold move. I've been looking at these images for inspiration. Maybe I'll try out socks with heels?

Maybe not. I can't really see myself having a good time stumbling around on heels all night. It's supposed to be really rainy too. I looked at my closet and I think I'll try just a short dress and some sparkly flats (the rain will probably ruin them though). Bare legs is enough daring for one night!

But I do love that look with the short dress, tights, and gold flat brogues. They're all from Lauren Moffatt's Fall 2010 collection, which I found via This is Glamorous, and I seriously love every single thing on there and will be posting more. Well, all but the tiny one which is from Sally Scott's 2009-2010 Fall/Winter collection, which for obsessive referencing karma, I found via fieldguided.

Or maybe I'll go with thin tights (otherwise unthinkable on cold days) and a sparkly dress, like this one from Urban Outfitters. Wait, I don't have thin tights. But I do have lacy ones!

Afrikan Boy: Lagos Town

2010-11-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been digging this song. It includes my favorite rhyme in the history of ever, which is "1 2 3 4, 5 6 7 8, I'm great." Also the girl dancer is my life and fashion idol, I want to have her moves and her technicolor style. This dude, Afrikan Boy, is somehow affiliated with M.I.A. (I think he's on her label and toured with her). Can you tell? Yeah, it's pretty clear, but nevertheless, I like him, and he's adorable. My coworker is from Lagos, too, but she never sang me an adorable rap about it, so I'm less interested. Finally, check out his Obama t-shirt and then, check out this fact: I saw the President himself with my own two eyes on Saturday night!

Venice, Spritz: Drink Recipe!

2010-10-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

So, my friend, we'll call her T, has a radio show. She plays classical music from 12-1:30 on Tuesday afternoons. You can tune in online! Anyway, I've been hanging out with her during the show, and kinda learning how it works and bumbling around giving announcements. It's great fun, but we only get like 5 listeners online, so you should listen! We play good stuff, and it's a very chill mid-day break. Especially for us.

Anyway where was I going with this? Oh yeah, T & I looked at the internet while our records played, and were looking at the Toast blog (again), and found these gorgeous pictures of travels in Venice. This picture made T swoon because she works as a barista in a bougey coffee shop and is really good at making excellent espresso and foam, and wishes she had such a beautiful machine with which to work.This last picture made us both swoon, probably because we're alcoholics. (Just kidding. Alcoholism is a real and serious disease, and we do not have it. We just like us some booze, preferably European booze in elegant glasses with atmospheric lighting. We will not say no if some sexy Italian bartender makes it for us, either.) So anyway, the next post had a recipe for Spritz, a common drink in Venice, so that night we went home and made it. It is very easy: one part Campari, one part white wine, and top it off with soda water. I had all these things at home, since I bought Campari this summer for aperitivo-making inspired by ReadyMade magazine's recipes for drinks like the Americano and Negroni. Anyway, the spritz was delicious, easy, cold, kinda bitter, and a great mix between T's-roommate's-grandmother's-favorite-drink and sophistication.

Coming soon: T & I swoon over all things Portuguese, and T & I have California Week in preparation for my first trip to the Pacific Ocean!

Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting

2010-10-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

Listening: eh, you know, Beyonce, stuff like that. Whatever is loud enough that I can hear it on the train to & from work.
Watching: Lolita, the Kubrick version. Maury on the TV in the Nigerian restaurant where I had lunch. The leaves change color. The interior of offices.
Reading: sure as fuck not my homework, unfortunately. The first part of this post is hilarious, and I completely agree.
Wearing: forget trying to look cute, I'm back to my uniform: cords and button-down shirts, preferably plaid. Actually over the weekend it was hot and I went swimming, and wore my beloved ratty cutoff jean shorts and a uber-hippy loose tank top I stole from my cousin, and a red cardigan from a yard sale.

Rainy Saturday Night by amyinegypt

Wanting: balance

Work Clothes

2010-10-07T11:44:00.001-07:00

First Day at Work

Now I'm back to work at a "professional casual" workplace. For my first day, I wore the black pants from Express (the "Editor" pants. My mom made me buy these in high school and I actually wear them all the time--they're insanely versatile, despite the fact that "Express girls" was a disparaging label given to the trendy high school girls who wore stretchy black Express pants at my friend's high school in California). I also wore a saffron or marigold or something short-sleeved sweater, from the Gap via the Goodwill back in South Carolina. I thought earlier that this color wouldn't look good on me, but I've found, since becoming a redhead, that I can wear different colors. Before, tan and taupe just kindof washed me out, and I didn't really like gold or yellow (I always thought it didn't look good when your skin, hair, and clothes are all about the same color) but now I can wear them. I also was skeptical of the concept of short-sleeved sweaters-- when it's sweater weather, you want sleeves; when it's short-sleeve weather, you want something light. But now it's the perfect weather for it, as long as you bring a cardigan, which I did. My nicest cardigan is a black one from Zara via a yard sale, and I was wary of black on black (what is one is more faded than the other or it just looks too black?) but I think it worked since the shirt was so bright. To finish it off, my everysingleday bronze pointy-toed flats (from Eddie Bauer, my new love, via Unique) and some gold and pearl earrings I took from my mom last time I was home. And to break a final fashion reservation, I didn't match my bag to my shoes or non-existent beld--I carried a tan (p)leather one with a kindof woven pattern that my grandma gave me.

Introduction to Polyvore

2010-10-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

I ended up going to a party in the cozy wool sweater & LLBean boots combination I wrote about the other day, and I got really hot and I felt kinda dorky and under-dressed compared to all the hip stylish undergrads at the party. There were a lot of girls in short-ish dresses with black semi-sheer tights and tall leather boots. One girl had a gold panelled dress, one had a huge loose gauzy white blouse with huge poufy curly hair. They were so cute, that I wanted to dress up too. So the next day, I decided that one solution to my struggles with making tights and skirts look alright was to keep them all in the same relative color family. Unless you have the ubiquitous sheer black tights and perfect-fitting boots, I reasoned, best to not try to compete. So I wore a light blue dress over a dark blue slip, with light-blueish-gray lace-patterned tights and the gray ankle boots. The boots didn't make me look too much like Robin Hood when the legs poking out of them weren't radically different-colored. The slip showed too much out the top of the dress's neckline, so I wore a blue floral scarf. It was a lot going on for one outfit, especially considering my simplicity trend as of late, but I think it worked.

I don't currently have a working camera, so I tried to recreate something similar with polyvore. I am about to waste A LOT of time with polyvore, uh oh!

Style Inspiration: Eddie Bauer Dorky/Outdoorsy

2010-10-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Somehow the catalog people found my new apartment, and I've been getting all kinds of catalogs unrequested: Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, Land's End, and (my favorite name) Long Tall Sally. The preppy/dorky/outdoorsy pictures in Land's End and Eddie Bauer (I love the cardigan above! SO MUCH!) have caused me to give up on my idea that I should try to dress up more, and embrace the kind of clothes that I usually wear and that make me the most comfortable. A friend of mine usually wears simple, dark colors, like fitted black jeans and loose jersey navy tops. She says her mom dresses like that too, and it's a very understated, urban style. I think I tend to dress like my mom too, laid-back and outdoorsy, with a little ethnic-hippie thrown in ("oh yeah, I got this on my travels in Turkey, no big deal" haha). Of course my mom doesn't always dress like this, which is a shame, because she feels she needs to look more Southern and put-together or "dress her age" or cover her hips or some other total nonsense that she should ignore.

So I totally gave up on nonsense, and today I'm wearing Levis, LLBean rain "mocs" (they're like shoe-boots, if that makes sense, but they were the first totally waterproof footwear I owned and I love them forever and ever), an American Eagle long-sleeve t-shirt that I got in middle school and is wonderfully soft and comfortable, a "Made in England" tan v-neck wool sweater that I got at Unique a couple weeks ago, and a tattered pink silk scarf my mom got from Pakistan 25 years ago. It's the best outfit for getting tea, textbooks, and work done on a rainy, chilly day.

Yesterday I wore the same jeans... and I can't even remember what else, because I was THAT comfortable. Oh right-- a long blue & green plaid button-up I stole from my brother, with an old long leather belt I got at a thrift store in Riverton the day I left Wyoming. The day before that: cords with a ratty silk hippie tank top I stole from my cousin and a ratty thin purple cardigan that I got at a thrift store and wear constantly, with my boyfriend's white scarf to kinda hide the holes and make the loose top a bit more modest. I also have been wearing a gold Huguenot cross that I found on the sidewalk in Paris, on a silver chain. On the first day of class I wore a nice black skirt with a crochet detail at the bottom with some shirt and my new (from Unique) taupe cashmere v-neck sweater and a long striped scarf my coworkers brought back for me from Al Ain, and I froze my butt off because my school building is way too cold. So that's why I'm back to the cords/Levis rotation.

Redmoon and Sartorial Struggles

2010-09-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up feeling unable to get the "Amy's productive day" show on the road. It doesn't help that I was feeling sick again, perhaps from sitting outside in the cold for a few hours last night watching Redmoon's The Astronaut's Birthday. It was a pretty cool show, though I didn't appreciate being packed onto uncomfortable bleachers with irritating children and craning my neck upwards. The show was done entirely with over 4,000 (or something, I forget) hand-drawn, hand-gelled slides and overhead projectors shining from inside the building windows, with occasional people as shadows and puppetry animation. The story was a little "meh" (this review suggests it was too slow-paced, but I also think the overt moral was a strangely uncomfortable one: "don't dream big or shoot for the stars, because love is all that matters.") But I love Redmoon for their commitment to fantastic public art and elaborate low-tech spectacle. And afterwards I got a "blood orange" hot chocolate from a 7-11 and went to a potluck party at a friend's house. I brought a cous-cous salad with grapes, orange pepper, and feta, a combination of two Mark Bittman picnic ideas from the New York Times. Most of them look super good and fast, so I'll be trying them for more than just picnics.

Another thing slowing me down is trying to wear something other than my corduroy pants that I love so much. I think it would be nice to wear skirts and tights, but can never get it to look right or feel comfortable. It's mostly an issue of improper footwear. Somehow, the flats I wore all summer with skirts don't look right as soon as I add tights to my legs, which I can't figure out. And as great as heels look, I just can't bring myself to wear them to walk the 20 minutes to campus, where they will slow me down and make me uncomfortable all day. How do women who wear heels every day do it? I have some ankle boots that I bought last spring and really liked for awhile, but now I feel like they make me look like Robin Hood with my skinny legs poking out of their wide tops. This post from Jane at Ill Seen, Ill Said, inspired me to try to make flats look just as sophisticated, but I can't pull it off. I always love her "Sunday best" imaginary outfit posts, and she's so smart and posts a lot of interesting things about art and books.

Thursday Night Fun

2010-09-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

Slowly chipping away at a to-do list this morning: getting ready for classes and internship to start up, cooking projects so food doesn't go to waste, sending a wedding present, cleaning and so on.

On Thursday night I went with some friends to the Chicago Chef Battle at Goose Island Brewery's actual brewery/warehouse. We got in for free (my friend is in a show at Second City and one of her fellow actors works for Chicago Public Radio, which sponsored the event). We showed up late (department beginning-of-term party) and missed the food, which was sad, but the winning chef, David Carrier, showed us a bit around the brewery and explained how beer gets changed by being put in old wine casks. He told us about Cru, a fortified wine made in Virginia that's aged in Jack Daniels barrels, which sounds so good. We actually didn't know at the time that he was the winning chef, just that he was a huge man in a white coat who knew a lot about alcohol. We learned later that he also just got fired from his restaurant on the previous Monday. I'm sure he'll find a new job fast! Good luck to you, David!

We also got to taste a bunch of beers. We saw Goose Island's new beer, Madame Rose in the barrels (I think so, because it said "cherries" on the side) and tried Harvest Ale, Sophie, and Matilda, my personal favorite ("spicy in character," yes please). Fret not, they were only in small samples!

While I was standing around there, some creepy old men came up to talk to us. At one point, one of them was like "Look at the moon? Can you see Jupiter? Have you ever seen it?" And I was like, "Yeah, I see it, I've seen it before," since know-it-all is usually my default when I'm uncomfortable and want to hurry someone along (and away). But I had no idea what they were talking about until today when I learned (from the lovely clothing company Toast's blog) that night there was a Super Harvest Moon, which NASA teaches us that this year was a rare occasion when Autumn Solstice falls on the same night as a full moon, causing a cool glow at sunset, and then, right at 11:09 pm when apparently fall officially begun, Jupiter was right up in the top of the sky next to the bright, full moon.

So where were you when this event of cosmic importance took place? I was standing happily in the quads eating and drinking free food at sunset, remarking happily about what a beautiful warm night it was, and then by 11:09 I was probably in bed! How funny to learn, later, that it was the last night of summer... I'm glad I went out and enjoyed it! Especially because the weather here has really behaved properly, and now we're all getting cozy in flannel and corduroy and sweatshirts.

Other things:

Here's a funny (perhaps unintentionally) Egypt video.
If you're in Chicago, check out the rooftop deck at Bottom Lounge (where I went last night) before it gets too cold! It has a really cool view of the city and reasonably priced drinks.
Tomorrow's the last night for Redmoon Theater's The Astronaut's Birthday! See you there!
Ooh, maybe I'll watch the marathon at Simone's, a cool bar in Pilsen I went to for the first time a couple weeks ago.
I don't remember where the picture comes from, but it's a cozy fall-looking room!

Geometric Wall Art Ideas

2010-09-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm really into geometric DIY wall art right now. The top image is by U look like a bunny via Design for Mankind.
This photo is from flickr photographer Graphic Surgery taken somewhere in Sweden, also via Design for Mankind.
This is the dining room of Anne-Claire Rohe, whose home was featured on Design*Sponge. She made the hot pink wire installation as a homage to Fred Sandbeck.

There's a lot more out there, Design for Mankind is also really into geometrics. REALLY into. Design Crisis will also hook you up with a lot of fun graphic wall treatments, especially huge colorful ones that involve a major paint commitment and look best with gold. For example, this cool laser light show wall paint job, which is actually pretty subtle and very cool.

Anyway I'm thinking something maybe outside on my front porch? The kitchen is also rather boring, but maybe not after we put up the long-awaited liquor shelf?

OMG it's FALL!

2010-09-03T07:07:00.001-07:00

I saw this post this morning, while I was having my coffee hot, and wearing jeans and a cardigan, and hearing the wind blowing the leaves outside, and I got really really excited. I love fall! Even though I pine for summer and love it so much, the return of cooler weather is just absolutely wonderful. I wonder how I would deal in a place that doesn't really have a change of seasons.

Unfortunately I am starting this fall off more broke than ever, so there won't be much or any back-to-school shopping for me, which is probably good. You don't care about that anyway, do you?

I made that key lime cheesecake and had it the last two nights while sitting on the front porch with friends. I got to see two of my best friends, one of whom was in town to visit before she leaves for Cameroon for two years! I'll miss you so much! The other is back in Chicago and we made plans for some sewing project together. We even got to Skype in with another one of my college apartment-mates, who is far away in Utah, which was lovely. Even the one who just started grad school in Massachusetts hasn't been a stranger, and I've gotten heartening text messages from her. I love you, friends. Oh also the cheesecake was not bad at all.

Tonight I decided to stay home, make curry lentils and chocolate-covered strawberries for myself, and read. So far, so AWESOME. Also, it was all stuff I had at home, so that's good too.

Hipster Dinosaurs

2010-08-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

So my dad sent me this, with the tagline: "I thought you might enjoy these, if you don't already know everything about it." ZING!

There's much more where that came from, at Molly23's twitpic stream.

Other stuff my dad sends me is more along the lines of this potentially significant scientific discovery (which is actually SUPER INTERESTING), and ominous articles about terrorism in Egypt.

I spam people with this article about linguistic relativism, this key lime cheesecake from Smitten that I bought the ingredients for and am very excited to bake, and pictures from 24freedinners. Also this hilarious illustration of the two paths women can take, from NoGoodForMe.

Uh, two more Harrison Ford pictures

2010-08-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I love Harrison Ford. Especially in his Star Wars/Indiana Jones days.
via 24freedinners.

Hi, I'm random.

2010-08-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

Here's how it's been in my life, recently: busy. So that's why no posts. Also, like I said earlier, I've kind of lost interest in looking at stuff I can't afford to have.

BUT there is some stuff I'd like to share! For example, this tumblr, 24 Free Dinners, by the blogger of Daddy Likey! Great pictures of sexy people, pretty stuff, and funny funny words. Seriously, and a small obsession with the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You. I love that movie. I also love Empire Records, which has a very young Liv Tyler in it, who is also on 24 Free Dinners looking incredible. Fun fact: one time I watched Empire Records with a boy I liked, and he didn't get why I liked it so much, and when it didn't work out with him, I didn't care for very long. Because he didn't like Empire Records. That's how much I like it.

I'm also a big fan of some stupid lyrics, for example:

"baby you the whole package, plus you pay your taxes" - B.o.B.

"toodles to you bitches" - Drake

"would I be violating if I grabbed me a handful?" - T.I.

"brain so good, good, school you went to college... baby you can do whatever you like" - T.I.

"I could teach you to speak my language, Rosetta Stone" - Drake

Anyway, I went to Kimbark on my birthday, to get ready for my party, and my roommate was buying a nice bottle of Scotch and the girl working there was like, "aw yeah, he knows how to treat momma right on her birthday! You can do whatever you like!" Yesss.

At a party on Saturday night this guy was talking about James Murphy, the lead guy of LCD Soundsystem, who apparently has done a lot of coke: "He took care of all the bullshit for us. He's like the hipster Jesus."

I've been eating the leftovers of my birthday cake, which is the best carrot cake ever even though I forgot the oil, and I've made it for my boyfriend's last two birthdays, and I'm not sure if I'll ever bother making another cake again. I've also been eating some Christmas curry, which is green peas and red pepper and white tofu and green curry paste and coconut milk.

It was too hot last night so I had bad dreams and stayed up all night thinking disturbing things about fate and how bad the world can be, which is what I always do when I can't sleep, and then I found out that my boyfriend's personal genie is a lady genie "from the ocean" who gets really jealous because she really digs him, so it was probably her just trying to mess with me. I swear I am not making this up.

Picture from 24 Free Dinners. I love Harrison Ford.

2010-08-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Moving Week at Natalie Dee's comic. Timely, a bit crude, funny.

I'm moving all my stuff into my new room now that I have a wardrobe to use for storage. I think I've got more stuff in the bathroom than in the bedroom itself. I'm not going to lie to you, I'm pretty proud of myself for fitting it all in there. Ikea's got nothing on me: I'm cheap, Scandinavian, and good at storage.

No Closet Problem = Solved!

2010-08-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

After a long Craigslist search filled with many failures and missed-boats, I finally secured a solution to my no-closet woes. I bought the above Ikea wardrobe from a nice family in a not-too-far-but-still-far suburb. This is the picture they provided on Craigslist. It does it justice, somehow, as it is kindof a piece of crap BUT it is nevertheless functional.

More importantly, it fits in my bathroom! I have a giant bathroom, and there's this huge space between the toilet and the wall where this dresser fits perfectly. It's like Ikea somehow knew the dimensions of my crazy-sized bathroom. I must admit I had my doubts, as I measured the wardrobe in the Craigslist-lady's house and it was 36" and I knew from multiple measurings back home that I only have exactly 35", but then, once we got it home, it was freakishly 35". "What changed?" we asked. "Embrace the mystery," the wardrobe said.

So we also moved it in a Prius, which was epic to begin with, since Priuses are a) tiny and b) lacking a hook in the trunk latch to affix a bungee cord. But because of my vast knowledge of how to attach strange objects to cars, I knew of hooks underneath the bumper and also had the foresight to bring twine (which is quite frankly all I had that was even remotely cord-like). Another fun fact about Priuses is that they like to beep at you a lot to remind you to do things like buckle up, not stand too close, and also, to close the door. So serenaded by a steady beep beep beep, and cushioned by some old blankets, we cruised to a really good cheap Indian place, called Ghareeb Nawaz, and hovered around the car (which also couldn't LOCK, you see) and ate some fine food while standing in an alley. Finally we figured out that Jay Z beats are at the same frequency of the beeps so we managed to get it home, sanity AND wardrobe intact, up the stairs, into my room, only to discover, of course, that it doesn't fit through the bathroom door.

So we took it apart, obviously, and then put it back together inside the bathroom which was quite an undertaking and to be frank I would have given up without my wonderful friend Brandon helping me this whole time like the total champ that he is. But, tomorrow I'm gonna go buy some L-brackets at the hardware store just to make everything a little bit more sturdy and then! finally! I'll have a closet!

Total cost: $15 for wardrobe, $7 for Indian food, about $10 for the beer I'll buy the roommate whose car I borrowed.

Thoughts on Consumerism

2010-08-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Have been thinking a bit about this post on Ill Seen, Ill Said, about how much blogs promote consumerism and promote a lifestyle that few of us have or could afford. I'm a big fan of being honest about my cheap lifestyle, and I know I post some ugly pictures. But, the reason I like reading blogs is because it makes my life richer to see beautiful things, and often, beautiful things cost a lot of money.
I was trying to explain to my mom how I have a whole system in my own head to justify being cheap as better, somehow. It's better to wait, better to learn to make things yourself, better to have original pieces with emotional attachment. It makes you more creative, more grateful, more social (gotta pay back all those friends who help you carry furniture in from the alley!).
That said, here are some pretty things that I can't afford from Beklina, an eco-friendly boutique. First from I. Ronni Kappos, then Gemma Redux with the beautiful lapiz & gold bracelets (this is Amy in Egypt afterall), then Shabd who've I've blogged about before, then Rachel Comey.

Making me Laugh

2010-08-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

El Koshary Today: like the Onion but for Egypt

Seriously, read it now. I'm unsure how funny it is to people unfamiliar with Egypt, but it's probably almost as hilarious as it is to me.

Miss the World Cup? This made me smile all day.

More humor along the lines of "international soccer players are so hot I can't stand it."

Drunk babies?

(This is a bit old but they're all still so funny.)

Back in Chicago

2010-08-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

Got back last night, it's too hot, my room is a mess and closing in on me. Taking relief in air-conditioned work and this post from Apartment Therapy. My rolling clothes rack fell down and seems to be an unsturdy POS so I'm getting rid of it. I desperately need more storage, want an armoire like this great old ancient one I had in Cairo. It had some random stuff in it like Christmas decorations, a photo, some trash, a white board, and some old hangers, but it held my small collection of clothes and looked solid. The pictures on the wall I tore from British Vogue and some postcards from friends.

Currently I'm still living out of boxes with my clothes hung on every available bump in my room. Craigslist, please come through for me! I just want to move a huge piece of furniture in a borrowed Prius, is that too much to ask?

Top 10: Columbia, SC

2010-08-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight's my last night in South Carolina (ok, so I'm posting this late), so I thought I'd compile a little list of stuff that's cool in the state capitol, Columbia. The current slogan for Columbia is "famously hot" and while that's appropriate, there are also better things. For example, as you can see in the picture above, it's super jungly, even in the city! This was some house we looked at during my friend's apartment search a few years ago. That's a maternity dress I got on ridiculous sale at Old Navy and took in the shoulders a bit. It's too hot to wear black in SC but I keep doing it anyway.
So, I wrote a top 10 list of things to do & see in Columbia!

WUSC, the college radio station, 90.5 FM. Thanks for taking my request for Umm Khoulthum, DJ Watson! Y'all rule. You can stream them online, highly recommended.
The river walk. Columbia is at the crosshairs of two rivers, the Broad and the Saluda, and there's a nice long nature trail along one of them, which is where I took the picture that is the banner of my blog. It's super jungly and you can swim in the river, and also tube down it if you put in further upstream.
The Olympia quarry. Olympia is an old mill neighborhood, so there are some mills converted into apartments, which is cool, but there's a working quarry which you can climb up some rocks and look over towards the river. It's very pretty at dusk, but it can be a shady neighborhood so be careful.
The Horseshoe. This is the central quad of the University of South Carolina, and it's pretty and very Southern and genteel. Nice to stroll around with an ice tea from the nearby Cool Beans or Immaculate Consumption (say hi to my dad who chills out there a lot), and go visit the McKissick Museum at the top of the quad to see the geology collection or whatever historical artifacts are on display (once it was pre-Civil War quilts, once it was stories and photographs of bbq places around the state). The Caroliniana Library is also very pretty inside, and useful if you're interested in SC history or in sitting in a quiet air-conditioned place with lots of books and busts of famous South Carolinians. And there's a cute garden and greenhouse at the far end.
Finlay Park. This used to be called Sidney Park, back in the day. It's a huge place on a hill, with a giant fountain leading to a series of rock-rimmed streams, a giant waterfall you can walk under, playgrounds, fields for frisbee, laying around, listening to free concerts, a view of the city, swings high up on the hill for surveying the grounds. Lots of fun.
Nickolodean Theater for independent and art films. Tiny adorable theater that serves beer. A classic French films series is this fall!
New Brookland Tavern to watch shows and drink Yuengling (it's big in SC), and the coffee shop next to it to watch scene kids coming in and out of shows while you drink your tea like an old lady. There's a pretty decent used bookstore just down the street, too.
The downtown Richland County Public Library. I know I'm a dork for putting two libraries on my list, but it's a really cool building with a giant green glass facade and a undulating center atrium, a good music collection, a cool "Where the Wild Things Are" children's section & lots of programs for kids (at least when I was a kid), and a lot of places to read and cool down.
Mac's on Main for jazz & blues, and a really cool, chill atmosphere. They also have bbq and drinks, and sometimes old couples dance to the band playing. You can also walk across the street and see a giant chain "holding together" two buildings, the work of local artist Blue Sky, who also painted a giant mural Tunnelvision that looks exactly like a tunnel going into the side of a building.
Group Therapy, by far the coolest bar in Five Points, the college drinking center. It's got one of the most diverse and laid-back crowds I've seen, all kinds of different people, and a lot of people go there just to dance. Columbia's actually got a pretty decent DJ scene and there are people who aren't afraid to breakdance or really show some moves. Art Bar, in the Vista, isn't bad either but it felt a little more hipster to me, less of a mix of the crowd. But it is cool-looking, with its shiny undulating bar, graffiti blacklight dance room, and giant robots.

Wow, I had a lot of trouble packing that into 10 points! Growing up, I always moaned about how boring my area was, but on this past trip I really gained an appreciation for how interesting it can be, if you know where to look. A lot of these places are free or cheap, good for all ages, but I guess for a few of them it helps to be a bit older.

Charleston

2010-08-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

I went to Charleston for a couple days with some friends last weekend. It's one of my favorite places to be, so I wanted to share some things that we did.

We went straight to the beach at Isle of Palms. It's easier to park in the residential part of the island and use the public access paths to the beach rather than deal with the crowds near the middle of the island where the public park is. You can always go back there to use their outdoor showers and bathrooms. When I went the weekend before, we swam at Sullivan's Island, which is even less popular, but currently there is a big sandbar blocking all the waves. We walked out to the sandbar and found a lot of starfish and sand dollars (and jellyfish!). The picture is from the beach at Isle of Palms a couple years ago.

After everyone was good and salty, we took showers (my friend's aunt lives on the island so we stayed with her) and headed to Charleston Crab House for dinner. There's one downtown that I've been to several times for the rooftop dining with a view of the market and the water, but we went to the location on James Island. I had bacon-wrapped crab-stuffed shrimp (yeah, that's right. I'm definitely not vegetarian in South Cackalacky) and she-crab soup. She-crab soup is my second-favorite thing to eat in the Lowcountry, but I already had shrimp and grits last weekend at Shem Creek Bar & Grill, another fantastic place to eat. Shem Creek is in Mt. Pleasant, and you can sit beside the marsh and enjoy the evening while eating some delicious seafood.

After dinner, we went to Surf Bar in Folly Beach. This sounds like a lot of driving, but it's all pretty close, and you get to look at pretty marshland and live oaks while you're going from place to place. We sat out on their big patio and played Uno and had some local brews (from COAST and Palmetto Brewing Company, I had a Mobius, which was very refreshing and tasty). We waited out the worst of an epic thunderstorm and then spent the night at our friends' house on James Island. In the morning, we hauled out the boat and put in at Wappoo Creek, then cruised over to Red's Ice House on Shem Creek. I had an oyster po' boy (I only eat oysters when I can smell salt water) and a lot of sweet tea. It was really cool to see Charleston and its surrounding area by sea. We went out past the bulkheads into the open ocean, where we saw a lot of dolphins playing, a mysteriously-colored "dog shark" and a lot more jellyfish. We went past Fort Sumter to a little beach at the end of a long peninsula jutting off of Folly Beach, where we swam and hung out and got worse sunburns. Some other people were having a shrimp boil, which looked and smelled like an excellent idea, but we had to get back. We had showers, I had a nap, and a quick dinner at Jack's Cosmic Dogs on James Island, before heading home.

Now I just have to have a Cheerwine before heading back home!

Night by the Lake

2010-08-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Seriously, y'all, there is nothing to do in my town. I went to sit on my friend's grandparents' dock a few nights ago to just look at the sky and talk. At least there's a bit of a breeze out there.

Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting

2010-08-08T20:23:00.001-07:00

Listening: youtube covers of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" because it sucks, but it's catchy, so I'd rather hear some teenager beatbox it. "Bebe Requin" by France Gall. Francoise Hardy, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin. "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (so true!). "Mr. Brown" by Bob Marley.
Watching:

Shakira's World Cup song "Waka Waka" has pretty much everything I like in it: Shakira, soccer drama, little kids looking happy, good-natured patriotism, nostalgia for last month, and sexy international soccer superstars. I also just found out that she's sampling this apparently very popular Cameroonian song, rivalling Kenyan music videos in "wtf factor":

Also, today I watched the Shania Twain "Live in Chicago" video with some Nepali/Burmese and Iraqi people that my mom knows, and now I have "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" stuck in my head and a new appreciation for how intimidating it can be to live here with no money and little English skills. I like visiting the people my mom knows because you get the wild card factor of being abroad and you still get to sleep in your own bed.
Reading: Always Running, by Luis J. Rodriguez. It's about gang life in L.A. Also, wikipedia articles about Georgia (the country) and various ethnic groups in northern Iraq.
Wearing: uh, right now? an old green t-shirt with a little picture of a shark and the words "white death" and my friend's borrowed "jazzy" green plaid running shorts. Earlier today, my vintage yellow and orange dress, and to go visit my mom's friends, my green skirt and a thrifted teal Michael Stars t-shirt. Yeah, costume changes.
Wanting: TSA to relax their regulations so I can bring back a bottle of this Carolina muscadine wine. To somehow both live in Chicago and Charleston simultaneously. For my boyfriend to stay safe from this. For my sunburn-soothing plan to work (hot showers and lots of aloe).

Saffron

2010-08-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

I like the color saffron. It's so bright and yellow and rich, and one of the colors of India's flag. I doubt it would look very good with my new red hair, but I don't really care. When I read Midnight's Children, I loved the way Rushdie played with the colors saffron and green, spinning a life of a person and a nation in them.
First image is a book my parents have on their coffee table. I can't get it to rotate!
Second image from The Sartorialist (it's not exactly saffron but it's the right saturation).

Tonight

2010-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

A few images that caught my eye tonight. Seriously, my blogroll is out of control. If I ignore it even for a day it's unmanageable. I like this mostly for the shape of the door behind her, and the reflection of the sky. It reminds me a little of Gaudi. It's by Nicole Bentley for Vogue Australia September 2010, and it's taken at Sheraton on the Park in Sydney, wherever that is. Via dustjacket attic.
This is from the Day fall/winter lookbook, a Danish clothing company, shot by Ditta Isager, via Seesaw Designs. From a brief look at Day's site, they've got some good-looking clothes, almost Edwardian winter shirts and super-Euro dresses. Ditta says her style is "simple Nordic" and I really like the way she's set up this and other photo shoots on her website: a big surreal, a bit bleak and cold, artsy like Anthropologie but cleaner-looking.
From Facehunter. Look at those legs! A Latvian, it seems. Scandinavian enough for me.
More Ditta Isager, this time for Blommingdals. Aw, I love Scandinavians! They even spell Bloomingdales in an adorable way!

Chandeliers from Little Mountain Antiques

2010-08-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

I love me some sparkly chandeliers and have been hunting for one for my new bedroom. I saw a few at Little Mountain Unlimited that I liked, but they were all a few hundred dollars, which is actually cheaper than craigslist in Chicago, for the most part, but I'd have to somehow get them back to Chicago with me. Too difficult. I really don't know how I feel about this one. It's awful girly and disgusting, but it's also unique with the fruit and flowers and stuff and I think in the right context it could look kinda cool. There were a lot. I have no strong feelings about this one, or the rest that I didn't photograph, but I'd take any of the lot. They also sold a lot of single crystals, either for replacements or (as I thought briefly) making your own crazy chandelier. Hmm maybe I should just hang a bunch of blinged-ed out necklaces from a frame?

Packing for the South!

2010-08-05T02:09:00.000-07:00

Even though I own a lot of clothes, I travel really light. The picture above is what I brought on this two-week trip to South Carolina, plus shoes (below), the fancy dress hanging on the wall (below) and underwear. It fit in a small backpack and a small duffel bag, along with some books and toiletries and various other things that you have to tote around with you all the time.
This came out rather dark, but the heels are only for the wedding I was attending, and they go with the orange and yellow dress. The sandals, Eddie Bauer bronze pointy-toe flats, and small leather Guess purse are all from Unique thrift store on various trips, and I use them constantly.I put everything in the second drawer of this old dresser, which wasn't mine when I had this room as a kid, but is pretty nice. You can also see that my parents now use "my" room as a place to stack tons of books, although a lot of these were mine in high school. The vanity that matches the dresser is also covered in stacks of books, such that the mirrors are barely visible. I bought the dress on the wall for $5 at an antique mall with Jess and her family when they came to visit Chicago. It's vintage 1950s, with its own belt, and I had to take it in a little in the top, but once it's on it has that nice full-skirt silhouette. I realized that I tend to bring the same things on every trip. The black dress makes it a lot, even though my parents have a white dog so it always gets covered in hair. The white-and-red hippie blouse and the pastel-striped blouse have also made it on several summer trips. I remember wearing the turquoise scoopneck t-shirt when I bought the green skirt, at a thrift store in Maine, so I know it made the travel cut before too. The floral dress (worn here as a skirt) I bought at H&M one time when I stopped there with some visiting friends who had a pool in their hotel and I needed a swimsuit in order to swim with them. It was less than $5 and while I generally make a point of not shopping at H&M, it worked then as a swimsuit cover-up and now I wear it as a long skirt (folding down the empire-waist top), a short dress, and a short skirt with a top over it (here). It's kind of skimpy on top, so I've tried to find other ways to wear it when I'm not at the beach or in an insanely hot climate.

Well, I'm in one now! Today the high was 95 and the heat index in the 105-108 range. I wish I was kidding. Thank God, we have air-conditioning. I'm not quite sure how people down here lived before it. I've been tired all the time since I got here; I don't know if it's the unreasonable heat, the lack of a schedule or work, allergies, recovering from an almost-sleepless night and somewhat grueling move right before I left Chicago, or what, but I'm a total sloth.

Here is a crazy post I started to write at 3 am while I was unpacking my apartment and packing for this trip, about a week ago. I didn't post it because it was disjointed, so I've edited a bit:

I'm going home in a few hours to South Carolina to see my family and chill out. Unfortunately it is going to be insanely hot while I'm there. [how prescient of me!] I've got a wedding to attend and the beach to go to, but other than that, I'll probably be mostly hanging around my tiny boring hometown or pestering friends who live in the closest (and still smallish) city.

I try to show some class on the plane in case there's the slightest chance of getting upgraded. I've been bumped up to business class a couple times due to delays and other harrowing snafus, but let me just say that transatlantic business class on Air France is the Best Possible Thing that could ever happen to you. Anyway, I understand that it might have something to do with classy dressing, so I try to look good. This time, of course, I'm going to look insane and tired, since I've been packing and unpacking all day and then packing my bags again. It's also ideal to have something with pockets for stashing your boarding pass and ID and other gunk you might be acquiring while reading magazines standing up or buying overpriced iced coffees.

Fortunately for me, I've got a green a-line knee-length skirt that I wear to work, and some super comfy pointy-toed bronze flats (slip-off and -on footwear is crucial, bonus for avoiding bare feet on airport floors.) Add my new black Zara cardigan I got at a yard sale for $5 recently and I'm set. I'm not sure I can travel without my giant scarf, but I might have to cut the cord. Maybe I'll bring a tiny scarf. Just a little one? [my better judgment actually won out and I didn't bring any scarf at all, realizing I wouldn't use one in this kind of heat where you want as little as possible touching your skin.]

Ugh, gotta dig out earrings... now which box were they in? [I brought 2 pairs of earrings: my old Turkish coins my mom got before I was born, and some pink faceted drops I got at a yard sale after Claire's wedding a few weeks ago. I've also been borrowing from mom.]

Vintage Cameras

2010-08-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

I am not going to lie to you: I did go back and buy something at Little Mountain Unlimited. I bought this old camera, a Sabre 620. This camera was made between 1956 and 1972 by Shaw-Harrison, which I've never heard of, and takes 620 mm film, which isn't made anymore. But, it is the same thing as 120 film, which can be found (but not in my rinky-dink town) and just rerolled onto a 620 reel. So, I've got a project ahead of me!
I found it on this shelf full of old Brownie cameras and other fun stuff. No flasks, though, or cocktail shakers, which was disappointing. I only found a smallish selection of pictures taken with the Sabre 120 online, and I liked them a bit more than those taken with the Brownie, which uses the same film size.These first four are by Sean (I think) who writes a blog dedicated to old camera photography, moominstuff. The last one, I believe, was taken with a Valiant, which is identical except for the name.
These two are by Violet_3 on Flickr. I love the double exposure, and the light leaks, while a bit much, are charming.
These two are by rjcarroll on Flickr.

So anyway, there's a preview of the sort of potentially awesome pictures I might start taking, once I figure out the whole film thing, and find a place to buy it and get it developed. Fortunately Chicago is pretty good for that kind of thing. I think I'll start with some black and white film!

Little Mountain Antique Store

2010-08-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

Mom & I went to Little Mountain Unlimited (beware the website's bad country music), a giant antique store in a tiny town next to ours. It's pretty much the only thing in the town, but it's a winner. I took pictures of stuff I liked since I'm not feeling rich enough to buy anything.

Mom tired out way before me, so I bought her a coke, and she sat in a chair and waited for me. How the tables have turned! I spent large portions of my youth waiting on her to shop, so I tried to hustle as I know how boring it is.
I really liked this black velvet fedora but realized I've got a zillion hats I never wear at home. Also, why am I always making this weird floppy-wrist pose?I just really liked the color of this cobalt blue necklace. The photo came out a little lighter than it looked without the flash, but it's still pretty.
I love glass bottles, especially this collection of purple ones. But I wonder, would they look so good if they weren't all massed together?
This lamp had been converted from an old oil-burning lamp. A bit traditional for my usual taste but still really nice, and simple silver and green would look good anywhere.
There were a ton of lanterns but this one was actually a toy, made in Japan, and was battery-operated. I am considering going back and getting it, as the tag says it "Really Works!" and it's so cute. It's $15. Should I get it?
My favorite booth had a small collection of old lab glassware. I really want one, ever since I saw some of these posts that I wrote about earlier that use old beakers and flasks as vases. I really don't feel like carrying glass on the plane, though, and also I hold out hope that I'll be able to scavenge some old chemistry lab glassware one of these days.Unfortunately this picture is a bit blurry, but there's another skinny lab flask and some small heavy stoneware cups from the US Army Medical Corps. The whole store had a lot of this stoneware; I wonder why?
More old pretty bottles. There were a lot of old apothecary bottles that I really liked, some with manufacturers and contents and "Union Made" stamped on them. I have a glass bottle problem and really want them all.
Like this stoneware jug for mercury! There was also a cool jar from an old Ekhert's, the drugstore that used to be in our town until it was recently replaced by a RiteAid.
Some pretty amber pressed glassware. I loved all the little cup sets, and couldn't possibly photograph them all.
I liked this tortoise chain necklace. It's similar to a necklace I saw awhile back in JCrew.
Some really cool rugs. I thought of my friend Lila who needs some rugs for her new kitchen!
I discovered that I really like jadeite. It was the color that Jess and I discussed painting my new room, and it really did turn out very similar. More pictures of that later-- I took one during the painting process but the color is awful.I loved these door knob pulls, especially in jadeite, of course, but they were new ("made in Hong Kong") and not vintage, so I passed. I also don't really have any furniture crying out for new knobs.
I love this tin mug with it's unique swirled enamel! The blue and white looks so cute, and it reminds me of the similar mugs my family had for camping.
A bunch of cute aprons. There were some cute patterns and one was printed with a calendar, with illustrations in pink and black for each month. But half-aprons are totally impractical and make me think too much of Betty Draper, which makes me uncomfortable (please do click the link; it leads to an interesting discussion of vintage fashions from a time that was very different from today in terms of opportunities for women and minorities, and I've got more to say about it later.)
I loved this old school chair. Also, the whole place is full of pretty, old, huge Persian rugs, most of which appear to be for sale.
These enameled cabinets were a set of two. I couldn't decide if they were ugly or awesome. I think they are cool and interesting, but can't imagine them looking good in a house.
More adorable glassware and pyrex. I have plenty of mixing bowls but this makes me want another set.
I really liked the rainbow embroidery on this very old tablecloth.
I loved these colorful bowls too. The irregular spots of stoneware peeking through the glaze on the green one were interesting, and of course it's my favorite shade of green.
More pretty bowls and tiny glasses, and I like the rose pattern: it almost look like a spray-painted stencil. And wow, that's the end!

Rainbow Falls

2010-08-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Check it out: this is in South Carolina. It's Rainbow Falls, up near the NC border. The trail is pretty new. My friend (in yellow) and I went there yesterday. It was a really sweaty and humid hike, but once you get there and play around in the cool mist of the waterfall, everything is perfect and you know you can just hustle downhill the whole way back.

A Nook; Moving

2010-07-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I moved into my new apartment, which was crazy-making, and stayed up to 5:30 am unpacking and moving boxes around, and then left a few hours later for a two-week trip home to see my family in South Carolina. Procrastination, scarce car resources, and a camping trip conspired to keep me from moving early, which would have been less stressful but, what's move without a meltdown or two?

Anyway, I got just enough rearranged before I left to start to see our new dining room as a real room I can live in, rather than a staging ground for boxes. It's a big room and the dining room table is tiny, so I think we'll have a lot of bookshelves and my big comfy blue velvet chair. I got the chair from my grandma, and it definitely shows its age but it's still pretty nice and really great for sitting and reading and drinking coffee. So I'm going to position in by the window, kind of like in this picture.

Picture is from Kathryn Ireland, an interior/textile designer, via Ill Seen, Ill Said.

I did it: Red Hair

2010-07-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

So I actually went through with it and dyed my hair. It went from looking like this (above) to this (below).
Oh my. This is exactly one day after I henna-ed it, so it has mellowed out a good bit since then. It's now a pretty solid red. I missed a few spots, since I put it on dry hair, so I might go back when I start seeing roots and redo it a touch. Anyway, it's a big shock and rather hard to get used to, but I really like it.

Biking Scandalicious!

2010-07-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Saw this on Dress, Design & Decor the other day. It's from Elle Russia via Oh Fashion Models. Sorry, DD&D, I like your blog but this is ridiculous. I know biking is super trendy and all right now, but ain't no way she's going to bike in that short of a dress. Some of us, like the girls at Academichic, bike to work and class and everywhere, and know the perils of skirts on bikes. I sent this over to Daddy Likey who has a funny feature called Don't Show-Cha Your Chocha, we'll see if it makes the cut!

There's so many pictures of models looking super cute and biking or pretending to, and even Martha Stewart is in on the commuter bike trend, but it just kindof annoys me. I guess I should be happy that the greatest form of transportation is getting the love it deserves, and is being taken out of the uber-hipster world of fixies or super-pricey mountain bikes. And I am, I just want to point out: this picture is ridiculous. Notice how she has to do the awkward leg-cross just to keep it PG? Yeah, you can't do that while biking.

In fact, once a little boy yelled at me on the street while I was biking, "I can see your panties!" So, getting over the fact that the word "panties" is totally unacceptable, I'm going to chalk that up to childish rakish mischievousness, as mine were definitely not showing and it was in fact Halloween, the only time it might be even slightly appropriate. And my dress was way longer than hers.

Side note: in Egypt, I only saw one woman riding a bicycle. And she was a foreigner, and it was in Maadi (a neighborhood rather far from the city center where many foreigners live). I envied her a lot, and frequently entertained thoughts of stealing the little old bike leaning against the wall in my alley, totally unlocked and ripe for the taking. I think it belonged to one of the kids that delivered tea or something to the scores of guys who hung out at the barbershop at the front of the alley. But, you know, gotta maintain some kind of respect from the neighbors (who am I kidding? I suspected some of them thought I was a "lady of the night" while others were really nice to me, like the fruit stand man Abdullah, my buddy, and the sweet potato seller lady).

Rustic, Done Wrong.

2010-07-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

I love rustic & old & repurposed as much as the next person (arguably more than the next person) but this first image gave me the heebie-jeebies. I do not want to sit there, at all. My back hurts just looking at it. DANGER CHAIR! (My roommates came up with this name for the chairs I collect from the alley that are not in the best shape-- one had an alarming tendency to flip you backwards, another creaks dangerously if anyone over 130 pounds sits on it.)
Then it gets worse. This makes me think: wartime orphanage (except the pom poms which are really pretty cute, and I wouldn't say no to the ceiling beams or the lamps).
Rusty chair and iron bed? No thanks. I'm sure it will stain the perfect white linens and probably give you tetanus. Also, chinks in the ceiling = wicked draft.
Don't move the pendant lights or they'll drop rust flakes into your food. Ew!

First two images: house in Nimes used for photo shoot locations and movie sets from the company Light Designs via Bliss. I can see now that it's not meant to really be liveable.

Last one: Atlanta Homes & Design via Griege via Dress, Design & Decor.

Sorry to be drinking the hateorade. I really do usually like the stuff that these blogs post but it's kindof freeing to break off the "omg so pretty" blogger vibe.

Up Chairs

2010-07-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

I rewatched Up, the Disney/Pixar movie, a few nights ago and was impressed again. It has some of the most moving dialogue-free animated sequences I can remember, and the attention to detail, especially in textiles, warms my heart (maybe) even more. I'd take Ellie's chair--the wildly disproportionate top-heavy one on the right, please. Oh, and an art deco blimp, that too.

And P.S. - google image search for "up chairs movie disney" brings some insane gems. Enjoy.

Lions & Tigers & Bears, oh my!

2010-07-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

WTF?!

I think I fall in the "this is not ok" camp.

via What Possessed Me, a funny funny blog.

"My house has 100 bafrooms!"

2010-07-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Remember when HomeStarRunner was like, the funniest thing anyone had ever seen? My roommates and I (I'm starting to realize that I refer to "my roommate" like it's one person, but really I could mean any of about 2o people over the years) always went around saying "My house has 100 bafrooms!" "You mean your parent's house? You mean 2 bafrooms?"

But really, my own house (/apartment. /with roommates) has two bathrooms, and I, personally, have my own. It's accessible only from my room. Which means, let me just be sure I'm clear here, No One Else Can Use It (unless I let them, and I'm pretty nice, so I probably will). I've been obsessing about this a lot, but I've never had my own bathroom before and I'm pretty excited.

Check out how nicely the little dinky shelf thing I bought on the neighborhood craigslist fits in that annoying little crack between the sink and the wall! I must say I think the remodel sucks and the boys' bathroom has much nicer vintage features, but who cares? They share, I don't. This is going to spoil me, I'm never going to want to put up with the kinds of bathroom situations I've put up with in the past again.
This is how it looks in my room! Note the rolling clothes rod hanger thing that I got on craigslist to replace a closet! And the drawer that I took from a discarded dresser that I'm going to paint and expand to be a shelf (it's next to the mini radiator). I'm also going to paint my room green; I hate white walls, off-white is even worse. I feel hot and bored just looking at them. You can't really see, but the bathroom is actually kindof huge, with enough room for my smaller dresser, which takes some of the heat off the tiny-room-no-closet problem. It also has a tub, even if it's freakishly shallow and has ugly new tile.

Please ignore my painting clothes: I made the shirt from an old Norge t-shirt and it is great for "wearing as little as possible while sweating it out in your new apartment."

Mid-Century Modern lust

2010-07-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

I came thisclose to winning this gorgeous Eames chair in a giveaway from This is Glamorous. Seriously, it was given to someone else with my name.

I would gladly throw away all my alley chairs for chairs like this. I have a quiet but ardent love for mid-century modern furnishings, probably because they, you know, cost money. For example, I have been quietly obsessing about whether the chairs in the lobby of my school are in fact the famous Barcelona lounge chairs designed by Mies Van der Rohe who designed my school. I'm not going to say it's site-appropriate or at all a comfortable or practical building (one of my professors referred to it as "the auto showroom" and the huge windows make the rooms too hot or too cold or too bright to see overhead projectors or too cramped for a normal classroom layout or otherwise stupid), but it has a beautiful clean school-like feel that I love.

Cheap Food and a Less-Cheap Cocktail

2010-07-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

This is what I ate for dinner not long ago: rice with onions, raisins, garam masala, and grated carrot. It was super easy and just stuff we had lying around. I eat pretty sad food when left to my own devices.

But I drink well! I had bought Elderberry Flower Concentrate at IKEA a long time ago (and not opened it, I'm not that gross) and found a recipe for using it on Apartment Therapy.

1 oz IKEA elderberry flower syrup
1 oz gin (I think we had Broker's at the time, but before that we had Junipero, which I heard about on a Design*Sponge article)
1/2 a lime (the recipe calls for 2 slices of lemon, but we only had lime. We're big gin & tonic drinkers round these parts)
the rest of the glass (6-8 oz) chilled soda water

Mix it up with ice, add the soda water, and enjoy! Your drink is officially way classier than your food!

Oh, and this is our back porch & cat, both of which I will miss to varying extents when we move. In the spring we took all the glass windows off the porch and put in the screens, and it makes a lovely place to sit and enjoy the backyard, and for the cat it is a giant moth trap.

NASA, check it.

2010-07-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

I love NASA. Always have, always will. Even their logo rules.

This is artist Tom Sachs, image from The Selby. His studio is majorly cool and looks almost like my friend's physics lab. Other people who like the aesthetics of science:

Vincent Fournier, who photographs space program training stations around the world, via Mint. Go look at it, it has ROBOTS.
Kitsune Noir will hook you up with a cool picture of a spacesuit every week, among other wonderful science/art combinations. Yeah, you're welcome.
Beakers as home decor found all over the place, mostly Design*Sponge.
Some really cool microscope photography of booze from Deb at The Debonaire who posts some good nerdy science images pretty frequently.
And cool images from UofC's Argonne lab.
Please read this quote by "Digital Philosopher" Amber Case from Swiss Miss, when she tells briefly how her father explained to her the concept of worm holes. I learned that concept straight from Madeline L'Engle, but it reminds me of my childhood when my dad explained the fourth dimension and protein folding and how math works to my malleable little brain. Thanks dad, you're the best!

Big Color Changes = Insomnia

2010-07-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

So last night, instead of watching a movie, I painted my new room in my apartment green. I mixed together a bunch of old green paint with some really light blue-ish green and Jess helped me get it all on the walls, so yay! that's done now. I'm going to try to move some of the big stuff tomorrow when I have the assistance of a friend and a car.

While I did that, I also dyed my hair with henna. It's not dry yet, and it's supposed to darken over time, but right now I look like the chick from the Fifth Element (that Bruce Willis science fiction movie?) and I am kindof freaking out. Much like the chick from the Fifth Element was when she woke up dressed only in like masking tape in a weird glass coffin. Whew, at least I'm in my own bed.

Alls that to say, I can't sleep, either from freaking out about my hair or the coffee I drunk at 10:30 in order to force myself to go back and finish the paint job (lesson learned). Also if you were in my neighborhood around 10:30 you might have seen me walking or biking around with a plastic bag on my head and covered in paint, not a pretty sight!

Leather Jackets

2010-07-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

I was never a leather-jacket kind of girl. I kinda have some vegan qualms about wearing animal skin, as I had a traumatic childhood run-in with a neighbor's fox-fur scarf (it had the heads and paws still on! unacceptable.) I borrowed my roommate's brother's leather bomber for awhile, but it wasn't warm enough and was kinda boxy and ugly, so that ended quickly. And this scene about "leatha" from Project Runway "the greatest show on television" makes me super happy. I love Blayne! "My husband's leatha... my kids came out of me leatha..."

But these are so awesome. The first one is so badass I cannot stand it. Obviously, they're from All Saints. Sign me up!

NPR + Gaga = Awesome

2010-07-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

I was hating on NPR the other day, because I love to hate and I was probably hungry and cranky, but I take it all back after watching this video. Thanks, Jess, for posting this for me to see!

Red Hair!

2010-07-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

So I like red hair. I started this post in April and was compiling images of pretty redheads long before that, drooling over their hair. When I was little and read Anne of Green Gables, I decided that I wanted to have blond, red, or black hair. I guess I didn't quite realize that only left out brown hair, which is beautiful too. I was born with black hair, then it turned super blond (really freakishly--I still suspect I was somehow switched out with another baby around 12 months), and the blond slowly darkened until recently when it's become a kind of light brown, sometimes blond. Sometimes it looks red in pictures or in the sun, which always pleases me a lot, so I thought I'd take the plunge and dye it.

Oh yeah, I found the cookbook image I think first through frolic, and it looks like it's published in Australia only but you can buy it here. I like how her red hair manages to look all rustic and laid-back.

A banner from Ruche, an online store with vintage-inspired and often eco-friendly good deals that impresses me a lot and I've blogged about before. I like her strawberry-blonde.
This is actress Piper Laurie, best known for her role in Twin Peaks, a show that I like in theory but fall asleep during every time I actually try to watch it.
This is from an old Toast catalogue, whose images were SO GORGEOUS that I ordered it from the UK and brought it with me for airplane reading on a trip. I was actually looking at it last night too. Some people think its weird to re-read catalogues, but I really don't get bored looking at the good ones.
It looks like I found this on daydream lily but I think it may be from some street style blog? Also, I love her bangs. LOVE THEM.

This is the super-beautiful Alison from the band A Fine Frenzy. I first saw her in this awesome video called Lost Things. I suggest you take a look. She's so pretty it makes me kinda sick.
Oops, there she is again. If you'll forgive me, I kinda tend to obsess. The photo is by Angela Kohler who made the video I linked to above, which is cool and dream-like fantastical magical and stop-motion and you should watch now if you didn't before, ok?
This is some model, shot by Gabor Jurina and found on Dustjacket Attic.

Ok! So it comes as a shock to no one that there are a lot of beautiful redheads out there. Since Jessica Rabbit (and probably before), red hair has been a blaring sign that says SEXY. I've never really been one for blaring signs, but I feel like a change and think I might be able to make it work for me. My grandpa had red hair, and I've got the ridiculously pale Scandinavian skin, so I decided to finally try.

I'm always super-wary of chemical dyes and like to be all eco-friendly and stuff, so I looked into a lot of natural dyes before deciding to use henna. Using websites like this and this, and asking Claire who has used henna on her dark hair before (but didn't want to right before her wedding, although that would probably be the proper Uzbek thing to do), I decided to buy some at an Indian imports store. I lucked out and got a ride to Devon Ave (where all the Indian/Pakistani stores and restaurants are in this city and is super far from my house) but wasn't prepared to choose a brand, and ended up grabbing a packet of "instant henna" which later research revealed to be not real henna and probably suspect. So, I pestered everyone I knew with a car until I got another ride up there and bought some Jamila brand henna (I also got weird herbal Emirati toothpaste and a huge cheap box of tea). It's not the "body art quality" that the henna enthusiasts say is necessary/preferred, but it's also not a "henna hair dye" that promises a color other than red (which means: suspicious unnamed chemicals--ugh, I hate it when people harbor a blanket suspicion of "chemicals:" chemicals are in everything! but some hair dye chemicals really are quite harsh and can dry out your hair and give you a rash). So last night, following the recommended recipes from the internet, I mixed it up with some lemon juice, and today I'm going to add some other stuff (tea, paprika, something to make it not smell like hay) and put it in after work (it takes hours for the dye to "release," and then it has to sit in your hair for hours. T says it sounds like I'm cooking up some crack.) I got Princess Mononoke from the library so I guess we can watch that while I let it do it's thing.

I've almost never changed my appearance in a major way, and when I do (cutting bangs, ear piercing, shorter haircut) it usually takes me months to decide and obsess over, so thanks, friends, for listening to all my self-centered ramblings on this hair topic.

Dream of New York

2010-07-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I had a dream that I went to New York City. I took a train (only $12, how convenient), it was on a whim, just for the day. I was with some of my favorite friends; I helped one of them apartment hunt in old huge rambling buildings with curving stairways and endless waiting rooms. Then on the train on the way back, I sat across the aisle from a young Barack Obama with his little daughter in his arms! He was very friendly and we talked about how cute she was.

I felt so good the entire next day! The whole dream had a wonderful quality of freedom, happiness, exhilaration, exuberance, and serendipity. It felt like these pictures.

In fact, I've only been to NYC three times. And while it was fun, it kind of tired me out, drained my finances, got me soaked to the ankle in slushy ice water or traipsing through endless blocks trying to get somewhere I thought was much closer. I think I prefer the fantasy of New York to the reality, but if I ever end up there I'll be sure to reconsider.
Images: The Sartorialist; Bonnie Tsang for Pictory via the always-good Aubrey Road; Hafeez Raji also for Pictory; Trey Hill for Pictory, Sandra from Niotillfem on vacation in New York.

Furniture-Painting Adventure

2010-07-19T21:22:00.001-07:00

So I bought 5 wooden boxes off the local version of craigslist for $10, where they were advertised as "hideous boxes." And oh god, they were! Avert your eyes from my blurry camera phone picture! Shiny black on the outside and red on the inside, and beat up. They stuck to each other and to anything placed on them, and the previous owner had tried to repaint one with what I can only assume was faulty glow-in-the-dark paint. It was all drippy and sticky and translucent: a hot mess.
So, since they were clearly unacceptable, I did some rummaging around and found this rusted-shut can of paint. With a lot of maneuvering and at least three tools, I got the bent and rusted lid off (note the hole I busted in it with a wrench) and found a totally acceptable color. The top of the can said "Sophisticated Blu" but it really should be "Uber-Girly Lavender."
Since I'm awesome and had nothing to do on Friday night, I primed the hell out of them while getting delirious from being alone in the new apartment and forgetting to eat dinner.
Then the next day I painted them the pretty purple, and did a lot of lying on my back on the dirty floor, sweating, listening to Shakira, and reading the week-old Wall Street Journal I used to protect my shiny new floor. In the background, please note my sweet new fireplace, which unfortunately doesn't work, and my built-in pantry.

These new boxes are going to be stacked in the corner next to a rolly clothes rack, together to become my best excuse for a closet. Total cost: $16 (boxes & clothes rack, paint & supplies were free)

Peach Cobbler

2010-07-19T13:15:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago, I made myself some cheese grits & peach cobbler. Although Georgia is known for its peaches, South Carolina actually produces more of them. We just have more important and interesting things going on to be famous for, so we let that slide.

In addition to Smitten Kitchen, as previously mentioned, we in my house love Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen. To the extent that we are disappointed that one cannot be a "fan" of them as an entity on facebook, and must be a fan of the TV show, which we do not watch. We have the cookbook, The New Best Recipe, and we are fanatic about it. I really appreciate their scientific approach to cooking. Multiple tests with controlled variables and a totally obsessive pursuit of perfection: it warms my compulsive little heart.

But, in real life, I don't cook like that at all. For someone so in love with perfect scientific recipes, I really play fast and loose with them. How hypocritical.

Click here for the recipe I used, sortof. (You have to be subscribed in order to use Cook's Illustrated's website, and I happened to have one issue with this recipe in it. Fortunately, other people have typed it up for me.)

I had bought a pint of peaches at the farmer's market, but they went bad in about 3 days, and I was vexed. I salvaged what I could of them, leaving me with about 2 cups, if we're lucky, of peach mush. That's not at all the 2 1/2 pounds of firm but ripe peaches that the recipe calls for, so I halved the rest of the recipe (again, more or less.)

I used more than the proper proportionate amount of lemon juice, and didn't drain the peaches at all, just added extra cornstarch. I also didn't have plain yogurt, so I used sour cream. In addition, I ate about a quarter of the dough before I baked it (it was delicious).

We ate it with ice cream and watched the Up Series documentary. Lovely!

Image from here.

Deconstructed Part III: Random Edition

2010-07-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

These first two are from Oak NYC, another online store I love. I'm not usually a big fan of the asymmetrical look (are you sleeves or not? make up your mind.) See this article on the insanity of one-sleeved shirts from Allie Brosh, the hysterically funny creator of Hyperbole and a Half webcomic which has pretty much caused me to lose all bodily control on multiple occasions. GO NOW AND READ IT. I'll wait while you compose yourself.

Ok, diversion over. Let's return to the important business at hand, which is looking at clothes. This skirt isn't really deconstructed but I found it yesterday and I want it. It's from Alexander Wang, and you can find it all over the internets, like at Revolve Clothing.

Way over on the other end of the fashion spectrum from Alex W, we have the Brooklyn-based etsy shop ruffeoheartslilsnoty. I found them a long time ago when I wanted some undies produced by someone more responsible than Target and not slimy like American Apparel (turns out that's not that hard, who knew, and instead I ended up just making some myself), and they make a lot of their stuff from deadstock (new fabric discarded from other manufacturers I think) and vintage. So they're actually really deconstructed.

I really want the t-shirt on the jumping girl in the first photo. And the last tank top reminds me of high-school cross-country so hard. And there's a cool Jane Jetson-meets-Wilma-Flinstone minidress that looks like something from an acid-tripping Star Trek.

Don't be scared off by their hipster talk! They've got some more normal (one or two non-neon color) stuff too, like some sweatshirts with cool stand-up turtlenecks and hoods. And crazy neon triangles bodysuits. You know, everything you need.

Deconstructed Part II: All Saints

2010-07-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with everything from All Saints Spitalfields and I want it all. This long parachute dress recently was removed from their website which made me sad. Although I could never afford it...

There's a short version though, in white and a crazy print.

The print is not on their website, and I don't like it anyway. Here's the long dress on some British soap actress, Loui Batley. The tabloid where I found the picture found it unflattering, and perhaps the short one is more practical, but I like the drama of the long version.

Anyway, All Saints is opening a new store in Chicago, and I'm pretty pumped. I suppose if I ever get some cash to drop on a fancy dress or something (that is completely not appropriate for any occasion I ever go to) then I'll go there. Right.

Or I'll just go try everything on and sigh. I could officially not like this any more.

Deconstructed Part 1: Raquel Allegra

2010-07-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

I love Raquel Allegra. A young designer who works with recycled jersey from the Los Angeles county jail, she stretches and destroys the fabric to make it drapey in some places, sheer in others. I love it, and wish I could dress like this without looking like some kind of super-fashion woodland elf.

Wait. I do want to look like that. Um, well really I just can't afford it.

You can find her clothes, including some interesting and luxurious versions of basic shirts and leggings, at Assembly New York, Switch Boutique in LA, super-snooty Blake in Chicago, and all over online.

Maybe I'll watch some videos online and see if I can't learn how to make something like this myself, add it to my ever-growing list of impossibly time-consuming projects.

Images from google. The last three are from her new Spring 2010 line, and there's a slideshow at Refinery 29.

Summertime

2010-07-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

A few evenings ago we went to the lake to swim. It was such a relief after a hot day, even after some people in speedboats almost killed our friends (a big almost, but still scary!)
I took some photos of my friends but I like these of strangers too. I can't figure out how to not make the camera auto-adjust to the sun. I should go back to my disposable so I can take pictures straight into the sun. The couple below looks funny, like some kind of two-headed sea creature.

2010-07-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Today I found a bunch of old dressers in alleyways and moved them onto my new back porch. My roommate is going to kill me, but I have big plans for them. I found this cute bookshelf - from - dresser hack from Country Living via How About Orange. I can't believe I like something from Country Living, but basically I love anything that justifies my dumpster-diving habits.

Relatedly, I dug through some old papers and found a list of "Key Facts" that my roommates and I made for each other in college and hung on the kitchen cabinets in our apartments. One of my facts was: "vultures are to dead meat what Amy is to abandoned chairs in the alley." So true, so true!

Anyway, like I said, big plans. I'm going to use one or two of the bigger drawers to make a narrow shelf for my shoes that'll fit in the little hallway next to my radiator. I'll use the shallower drawers for storage under my bed, currently an inaccessible mess. And I want to use some of the bigger pieces of wood for a headboard on my IKEA bedframe. If there's anything left, I'll use them to make some kind of shelving unit like the one above. Ambitious? Perhaps. Deeply annoying to my roommates who have to put up with the mess? Definitely. Awesome? Certainly.

And that's it.

2010-07-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

My roommates and I rented the documentary 7 Up, which follows 14 British kids who were 7 years old in 1964 until they are adults. 56 up is due out next year, and I for one am stoked. The other night we watched the first 3 installments, until the kids are 21. It's great! This is my favorite scene, where this kid explains why he doesn't want to get married.

Lazy Summer

2010-07-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

As I don't have a set time to be at work this summer, I've been really bad about sleeping late and then lazing around in the morning. I guess today I got something done: I put two new vintage clothing items up on my etsy shop! But, it's getting ridiculous, I have money that I need to be making! So I'm thinking of buying (makes sense, right?) this vintage alarm clock from etsy seller AMradio. It's only $12! She has lots of cute industrial & mid-century modern home decor items, and she's a midwesterner (+10 points).

Jess's Sour Cherry Pie

2010-07-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Today I'm at work munching down the last of Jess's delicious sour cherry pie. I'd actually never heard of sour cherries. I love cherries and can eat them exclusively for days, but sour sounded less than ideal. But I was obviously missing out my entire life, because this was great! I had to take a picture before it all disappeared, so sorry about the camera-phone quality and the unattractive desk background.

I can only assume that she used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, as we love Smitten in our house, and click on all the links to look at pictures of her uncommonly adorable baby, and make one of her recipes at least once a week.