day 8, in which I talk about my new camera and the weekend in general

Oddly enough I think blogging is much harder to get around to on the weekend than during the week.  Especially on weekends like this one, where temperatures are ridiculously high for November (we broke 70!) and the sky doesn’t contain a single cloud.  The beautiful weather and general lack of scheduled events might be part of the reason that I am sitting here on Sunday evening wondering what the heck just happened to my break?  There is something about relaxing that tends to just suck up all the time you give it.

And of course I didn’t do nothing this weekend, although that was part of it (in the best kind of way).  Saturday consisted of an early morning breakfast with Becca and Jess at our neighborhood greasy spoon diner, followed by a furious burst of leaf raking by me (to counteract the stupefying effect of omelet and hash browns).  After which I made a quick trip to the bank for cash and to set up another saving account (for those larger purchases like a future replacement macbook/car/big trip/etc).  Then it was off to a local flea market with Anne (my housemate) and Jess, where we had lots of success buying old postal scales, glass bottles, children’s books and most importantly an old film camera.

Yes I am the proud owner of a Praktica FX, made in Germany in 1953, fully manual (and missing a light meter, which I will probably need to correct before I can take pictures).  For only 20 dollars, this is a much better deal than the Holgas and other lomography cameras I have been drooling over for ages.  While I still need to get it cleaned and buy some film, I am pretty darn excited to be trying this out in the next few weeks.  Of course there is lots of information out there on the internets about this camera, but that didn’t stop Jesse and David (my housemates) from spending a good half an hour figuring it all out for themselves.  But right now I just like listening to the sound of the shutter.

Other events from this weekend include a rousing game of Tichu, two lovely (if too short) naps, and a quite fun welcome home party for Tim in recognition of the ending of his 2 month period of deflection to the far off country of England.  So all in all it was a pretty good weekend, short, but refreshing, which of course means that this coming week I will actually need to address the various homework assignments I have been blithely ignoring.

Also I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been commenting as of late, you should know it makes me ridiculously happy when I see those little comment received emails pop up in my inbox.

Picnik, or my new obsession

While I had known about this free online photo editing program since this summer, I hadn’t really messed around with much.  However earlier this week, I discovered that it is actually now linked directly to Flickr, so with the click of a button and a little messing around you can do all kind of neat edits to your already uploaded photos and save them as new photos on Flickr.  You can also just save over the origional if that’s more your fancy.  Obviously the software isn’t as powerful as Photoshop, but for basic fixes and a few fun things it is a pretty nice program. Also if you feel like having unlimited options you can purchase their premium edition which includes even more edit options and lots of stickers/fonts/etc of that’s your thing.

Luckily enough I managed to get Jess into it as well when we both had to work late Thursday night.  So below are the fruits of our labor.  I highly suggest you all give it a try if you don’t have a Flickr account, now is the time to sign up!

These first three were all edited by Jess, who I must say did a bang up job, don’t you think?

The rest of these I edited, but this first one was taken by Jonathan and the last one was taken by either Erini or Becca.

very belated birthdays

So while I did actually remember to send my younger brother an email on his birthday a week ago, I didn’t pay homage to him on this here blog.  And considering this is NaBloPoMo, I am sure I will be scrapping the barrel even deeper than this, here goes my homage to my favorite baby brother.

Uploaded by AbbyN

Here,  in no particular order, my ten favorite things about my younger brother:

1. Jonathan is one smart cookie; he understands physics and math things in ways that make my head hurt and eyes swim.  Yet all the while he is really good at explaining things, which I am sure all the physics UNDERGRADS he teaches, appreciate (there is something about that sentence that makes me feel really old).

2. Jonathan is not afraid to do weird things with his hair such as dreads, french braids, bandannas, or a buzz cuts (although he hasn’t rocked this look since elementary school).  Also he let me cut his hair, twice.

3. Jonathan makes good friends.  Being able to find people who understand your awesome quirks and have some of their own is a huge gift, of which my younger brother has plenty.

4. In addition to keeping me endlessly entertained while we were growing up (Nonsense Software, recipes that involved solar ovens and AOL discs, made up songs about “dos manos” in the Boundary Waters, etc), he shares the very weird sense of humor that runs in my family and a willingness to laugh and my own oddness.

5. He makes crazy good bread.

6. One word – Velociraptor.

7. Sometimes he poses for pictures like this:

A huge kudos to my cousin Emily for helping Jonathan make this one of my all time favorite pictures.

8. In addition to being smart, Jonathan really thinks about things and makes thoughtful decisions about his life.

9.  Sometimes he lets me take him shopping, mainly due to the fact that he occasionally breezes into town with only one hole strewn pair of jeans to his name.

10. He rocks the Utilikilt or skirt with equal aplomb.

why I am pretty sure Jennifer Hudson hates me

My good friend Libby is getting married next spring, so last night Jess, Becca, her fiance Zach and myself all traipsed down to the J. Crew store on Michigan Ave.  Now this part of Michigan Ave is full of the ritzy stores, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, that type of thing.  So it wasn’t too surprising to see that there was some big event happening at the Michael Kors store as we entered the mall.  But we had more important things on our mine (Wedding Dresses!).

After spending an hour watching Libby look stunning in a variety of beautiful dresses, we finally left the store. Only to realize that below us on the first floor there was a fashion show going on.  Loud music, freakishly tall men and women wearing lots of sequins and lots of other fashionable hipsters watching the event were all really good clues for us.  Fortunately our timing was really great (as was our vantage point from the second floor balcony) and so we got to see all the models come out for the recap of the line.  Which for those of you who watch as much Project Runway as I do, tends to end with the designer him/herself walking down and back on the runway.  So I can now say that I have indeed seen Michael Kors (in his apparent uniform of black blazer and jeans) walk the runway with my very own eyes.

Now one celebrity sighting should probably be enough for one evening*, but as we left the mall and headed over to Ghirardelli for a quick treat, we noticed a horse-pulled carriage near the store with a small group of people standing around.  There appeared to be a video camera and a few big lights and then we looked and realized that sitting in the carriage was Chicago’s very own Academy Award winner, Jennifer Hudson.

So there we were outside of Ghirardelli and not 15 feet away from Jennifer Hudson and surprisingly there weren’t a whole lot of big security folks or even paparazzi around.   Jess and I quickly realized that this kind of encounter definitely needs proof, I tried to take a picture with my camera phone, before realized that duh, I had my big ole camera right there with me because of Libby’s dress trying on event.  So I took it out and tried to take a few pictures (which were turning out awful due to the fact that it was NIGHTTIME!).  And as I fiddled around I noticed that Jennifer Hudson kept looking over at me and she didn’t look happy.  See, my camera although not at all papparazi level is a larger one, SLR, bigger lens, etc and so I am assuming she figured me as one of those types, because just bit later, she got the carriage to move away from the sidewalk a little further down the street.  Plus she even turned around to look at me one more time as they finally drove off.  So that’s it, I will never by BFFs with Jennifer Hudson, however I will get to say I took crappy photos of a celebrity!

*Obviously this encounter was pre-planned because as I wrote about here, these kind of random Chicago encounters always happen in pairs.

UPDATE: Just to state the obvious if you use derogatory language in your comments, I will delete them.

Time change

Monday after work, I took my camera with me on my walk to the grocery store.  And thanks to the time change, this hour between 4 and 5 is now a lovely golden hour, where the sun is still bright, but very low in the sky.  Click on the picture to read about why I love this building so much.

my current reading system

Recently while adding yet another handful of DVDs to my insanely long Netflix Queue (currently 167), I thought to myself, “why don’t they have Netflix, but for books and somehow all free?” This in addition to the frustrating feeling I get sometimes of remembering a book I read once, but can not remembering anything more than a fragment of the plot, has led up to my current plan for book reading.

First I use Goodreads, which is one of those free social networking sites, but this one is all about books.  While I do have some friends on it, I don’t really use the social part of it, and instead focus on adding books I know I have read, rating them and adding books I want to read to my “to-read” list.

This lets you both add books that you want to read and books that you have already read.  So just by updating this, I generate a list of all the books I have read and keep track of all the good book recommendations I get.

Now to really take this to the Netflix level, I needed a way to get these books delivered to me in a regular pattern.  And thankfully someone very long ago came up with the idea of the public library and someone (also probably very long ago) came up with the idea of the holds list.  Now I know the holds list can sometimes have the reputation as being slow and archaic, but actually I love my library’s hold system!  While waiting for the newest bestseller can be like watching paint dry, most books arrive to my closest branch within a week or so.

So to make this all work, when I am close to finishing a current book, or just looking for something new to start, I check Goodreads and add a book or two from there to my holds list at the Evanston Public Library.  And boom, books appear out of nowhere (or more specifically the South Branch, which is only 5 blocks or so away from my house) and I can read and renew at my own pace.

How about the rest of you?  Do you all have systems for keeping track of what books you read?  Or do you have any recomendations for my To-Read list?

things that happened this weekend that reminded me of other things

I heard Brandenburg No. 3 by Bach on the radio:

• Which reminded me of playing viola in high school orchestra with a baton throwing conductor, lots of my friends and the real joy of making music with other people

I saw a peloton of weekend bikers heading north on a winding two lane road early Saturday morning:

• Which of course reminded me of Dad and his reputation as “that guy who bikes everywhere in Goshen”

I saw aspen trees at the Chicago Botanic Garden:

• Which reminded me of spring break with Meryl in Colorado during our freshman year of college

And one last thing on an unrelated note, if you haven’t read xkcd recently and you are a LOTR or Star Wars fan, go here!

where oh where did October go?

So in looking back over my posts (er, post?) from this past month I can tell two things.  First I was obviously pretty busy this month.  Second, I seem to be lacking the blogging motivation this past while.  While I can’t do much about the first one (other than stop taking classes/working/having so much fun), I can try to do something about the second.  So here goes my first attempt at that blogging concept with the odd weird name – NaBloPoMo!  I know several friends (*cough*Phoenix*cough*) who will be doing NaWriNoMo this month, but because I have no interest in trying to write anything that long, I decided to annoy you all with, what I am sure will be, a month of even more inane attempts to post something to this here blog every day.

My guess is there will be quite a few short late night posts, a few attempts at photo blog type posting, maybe a smattering of reviews, lots of lists and hopefully somewhere in all of that I will remember why I even have this silly blog in the first place.  If anyone wants to participate in NaComBloDa (National Comment on a Blog Daily)*, feel free to through your two cents into the ring.  I mean come on, if I am willing to blather on in public like this, you all should definitely feel free to join in.

As for what exactly I have been up to this month, here is the short list:

• went to Waco, TX for the weekend, which involved almost 40 hours in a van
• attended the US premeire of “Hipsters”, a Russian musical, at the Chicago Film Festival with Steph and Jess
• visited the Chicago Botanic Garden with Steph and Jess
• celebrated my birthday with an awesome surprise cake from Jess and Becca and an additional homemade cake by Becca that will go down in history as the richest thing every baked
• saw a ballet and an opera in the same weekend
• watched the new dolphin show at the Shedd Aquarium with Erini and Jess (and also had my first taste of Epic Burger)
• dog-sat for the weekend and managed not to feed the dog chocolate icing this time, which was a vast improvement
• went to a wedding reception for the dog owning co-worker
• attended 4 evening classes, one weekend class and worked a full time job

So you know, just a few things here and there.

*Pretty sure I just made this up, although I am sure someone somewhere has already created an html badge for it.

my very culture filled weekend*

This weekend in attempt to jam as much as possible into a two day span I went to both the ballet (first time) and the opera (second time).  The culminating weekend of what feels like a month full of events! and trips to the city in way higher numbers that my little homebody self normally appreciates, both events were terrific.  The first was on Friday night and consisted of Jess, Becca and myself getting all dressed up (we wore dresses and heels and earrings and broaches even!) and then taking the purple line downtown to the Joffrey Ballet.  Where we learned that is best not to just googlemap Joffrey Ballet and assume that will be where the company performs, or you too will find yourself standing dejectedly in front of practice studies 10 minutes before the performance is about to start in the theatre 6 blocks away.

Fortunately thanks to some quick phone calls, a stop at an ATM and a taxi-cab (first in chicago) we still made it to the theatre in plenty of time.  Thanks to Becca’s class related connections, we had great seats (second row first balcony) and the performance was incredible.  While I don’t consider myself a huge fan of Othelo, Joffrey’s version of Shakespeare’s play was incredible and a great introduction to the wonder and beauty of ballet.

After the show, we decided to continue our classy streak by stopping by our new favorite place ever, Epic Burger!  Where we shared some fries and two very greasy but incredible burgers.  Then it was back up to Evanston to head to bed.

Saturday found Jess and I heading downtown once again to meet Joanne and Miriam’s train and then head to a nearby movie theatre where, thanks to the wonder of live simulcasts, we watched the Metropolitan Opera’s Aida.  Which contained pretty much every stereotype of operatic performances: very large singers, live horses, lots of fake gold jewelry and a huge cast of extra.  Fortunately the voices were also spectacular and we all had a grand ole time.

So over all our weekend was an 11 out of 10 in the catagory of the arts and a 4 out of 10 in the amount of time to lie around the house, drinking tea, doing random patch work and reading a book.

*results not typical

Stuff on my Bed: Birthday edition

Stuff on my Bed: Birthday edition, originally uploaded by AbbyN. For the explanation of all that stuff, click on the photo and head over to Flickr.

I got home from work today and unloaded my stuff and was struck by the odd but very typical accumulation of things on my bed today.  Unfortunately my current habit is to just transfer this all to the floor when I actually go to sleep instead of, you know, actually putting things in their place.  But at least in the morning I know exactly where my purse is, right there next to my bed.

In other news today has been a very good birthday for a work week celebration.  I started out the day with a cinnamon scone and cinnamon latte that Jess brought me from Brothers K and the rest of the day went by smoothly with very few hassles.  Of course my attempts to dress up for my birthday have left me with a little birthday blister on my toe, but the shoes were still worth it.

Also I got lots of birthday messages on Facebook, two voice messages from family (Charletta and Tim (calling all the way from London!)), one birthday card in the mail, one birthday text and two birthday emails.  Days like today always remind me how blessed I am in all of my relationships.