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.

So if you look up there at the top of the page

You will see my new custom header.  It’s a bit stripped down, considering my older one and once again it is lacking a tagline or subtitle.  But I tend get a bit stumped when coming up with something to describe this blog that is both short, witty and at least partially accurate.  This is probably due to my own lack of clarity on why I keep writing this silly thing.  Anyways the photo is an artsy fartsy one I took this summer at the Shedd Aquarium at the penguin tank.

I mainly liked the color and the way the water formed a pretty line across it, so you can see I put a lot of indepth thought into its significance.

Oh and I finally put my old headers all in one little set over on my flickr page, so feel free to go look at them and get all nostalgic like I just did.  Or better yet feel free to share any good ideas you have for taglines.  It is always more interesting to hear other people describe you then actually try to do it yourself.

Next up in my blog fall cleaning, the about page!*

*this probably means I will get around to this some time during the next year or so

things I enjoyed about today

- watching Paris je t’aime with my housemates, I had forgotten how much I loved that movie

- eating tea cookies from Bennisons while sitting on my bed and editing photos

- finally finding a church document that I thought I had lost

- after much procrastinating washing and drying 3 loads of laundry

- going to the really cheap matinee of The Invention of Lying with Becca

- practicing my viola with Beth and Jess and then a little while later playing with David and Penny

- watering my plants

- getting a little bit of homework done

- listening to the new Genius mixes on iTunes that sort by your favorites and genres

- crawling into bed before 11pm

This is one of the photos I finally got around to editing this afternoon. Click on it to head over to Flickr and an explanation

Tonight’s very typical Friday night shenanigans

This evening I hung out with the girls and had an amazing supper of baked squash, apples and sausage. Plus we watched the newest episode of Dollhouse, browsed dating websites and had “girl time”. Then I came home and decided to finally edit a few of my many photos from the past few weeks. So this little set is a compilation of several photos Becca took of me being a goof during Joanne’s visit. We got all dressed up to go to Maggianos. Considering how good their food is, it is very good I was wearing an elastic waist dress, which by the way was purchased in Seattle with Meryl while vintage shopping. So here it finally is in all it’s purple paisley glory.

A very serious series, originally uploaded by AbbyN.

listening to Norah Jones and the rain

Isn’t that a perfect emo title for a blog post that is long overdue and probably won’t amount to much more than random bits of things?  Anyways partially inspired by Erini’s point in an email that I haven’t been blogging much (which was obviously completely correct ) and my own desire to start October with more content than I created in September, here I am!  In typical fashion I have half a dozen blog post ideas from the past month that aren’t even in draft form, but several of them involve getting pictures from my camera.  Which is usually just enough of an impediment to keep me from actually getting a post put together.

So instead of that you get a few paragraphs about my life as of late.  First autumn is definitely here and with it a kicker of a thunderstorm and cold drizzly weather.  But I still love this season, even with the hints of winter it keeps sending off, autumn to me is all about warmth, crispness, pumpkins, apple sauce, family, books, hot tea and the rapidly approaching holidays.  In other words many of my favorite things.

One of my goals as of late as has been to read more and I have been having some decent success.  Today I finished Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which was both very well written, incredibly creative, thought-provoking, a bit of a downer and a decently good book.  I also read Year of Wonders and Sum: 40 tales from the afterlives in the past few weeks with hopes to start A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg and God: An Intimate Biography soon.  I must say I really like feeling a bit like a bookworm again.  Curling up for a book is so different in many ways from watching movies or television shows on my laptop. Not intrinsically superior, but often more fulfilling.

But speaking of television, I also finally finished the last season of Battlestar Galactica and I think I can safely say it is probably the best acting/writing tv show I have ever seen.  I can’t wait to finally coerce Becca and Jess into watching it with me, so I will have more people to analyze and nerdily obsess over it with me.  The characters in that show stick with me in ways that very few other shows ever have, yet I can’t really even pick a favorite.

I also discovered a new “favorite” brownie recipe.  Who know that cayenne pepper (what I substituted for the chipotle spice) and cardamom made brownies taste so good?  Also it should be warned that these brownies are both highly addictive and really actually quite spicy (at least in my book).

Well I think that is enough rambling for the moment, other things of note that I may or may not get around to talking about include the Mennonite Relief sale, during which I bought ridiculous amounts of sausage and cider, cooking experiments with Jess, applesauce making and canning, visiting Jonathan at Purdue and car issues.  Goodnight all!