chicago, part 2

walking from the car to wolfbait. has anyone ever been in wolfbait? they're full of hand-crafted goodness: clothes, purses, jewelry and artwork of all kinds. some pretty cool stuff.

chicago, part 1

i shot over 100 photos in chicago on saturday. so i'm going to break 'em up like i did louisville.

apparently i make people nervous when i stick my hand out the window at 70mph to take a photo. i had the camera strap wrapped around my wrist ... it was safe. regardless, these are driving from paper source to logan square.

update: the great 28

two months into the goals. how am i doing?

1. visit 3 places i've never been before. i visited mel & dan's new house a few weeks ago. yay me!

2. lose 40 pounds. i was down 9.5 pounds at my last weigh in. hey! i never told you guys what came in the fed ex box! i ordered myself an ipod in celebration of hitting the 50 pound mark. they offer free engraving, so the back says "fifty3 and counting". again, yay me! :)

3. havbe a booth at a local craft fair. we might do a booth in july at the crown point jazz festival. we will definitely do one at the popcorn fest. we just need to sign up ... and make all the goodies. :)

4. take 2000 photos. i'm at 581. that's 29% to goal!

5. eat a gallon of mustard in one week. i haven't scheduled this yet.

6. enter 3 items in the county fair. i got my entry form in the mail this week. i can't enter anything until june 11 (that's what the fair office opens), but i want to have everything decided & ready to go for that day.

7. finish 3 quilts. i've got one done already. and i'm about halfway done with the squares for a second one.

8. take an art class. nothing scheduled, yet.

9. be able to play Christmas Rhapsody on the piano by Christmas. yeah, i should sit down & start working on this.

10. be able to play a song on my accordian. again, i should start working on this.

11. bake something new once a month. my march baking will be this thursday evening for friday's game night. i don't know what i'm going to make though ... and suggestions? laure sent me a recipe for black-pepper cookies that i think sound really good.

12. update my portfolio. haven't touched it, but i have been good about brining pieces home to add to it.

13. make my halloween costume. i have some ideas. but you'll have to wait & see.

14. cook dinner once a month. in january i made green pork burritos with cilantro rice & black beans. february was baked macaroni & cheese (patti labelle's recipe). march was pretzel chicken & homemade potato chips for girls night.

15. redesign my online portfolio. again, haven't touched it.

16. hang out with old friends. yay for bunco! i still need to send a card to marisa. but i have gotten in touch with dave recently (hi, dave!) and i talked to nick today, too. yay!

17. learn to use my screen printing supplies. i may set aside a weekend to do this.

18. catch up my thumbnails. i bought ink for my printer this weekend, so i should start printing those out ... now.

19. read 3 new books. i did a thorough skimming of bob greene's total body make over, does that count?

20. eat breakfast at lynn's paradise cafe. yumm-o! ya'll missed some great crunchcakes a few weeks ago. :)

21. finish bob greene's total body make over. i've kinda dropped the strength training part of the program, but i'm still doing well with the cardio & the core exercises. i'm on week 9 right now, and habits are forming pretty strong. however, the exciting news is how it affected my metabolism. consistent exercise should boost your resting metabolism - bob greene says so. well, i went in for my yearly med check right before my birthday. my doctor raised my synthroid (if you didn't know, i had a tumor when i was 17. they hacked out the left side of my thyroid, so now i take meds every day to replace the thyroid juice, which regulates metabolism.) from 200mcg to 250mcg, which ticked me off because i don't like taking the meds to begin with ... and i really didn't like it being raised. but if it needed it, whatever. so a week later, i started the make over. and 6 weeks after that i went back to have my meds rechecked - and she lowered it to 175mcg! less than it was at my yearly check up! yay! so i go back in another 6 weeks to check it again, but that made me really happy. nothing like a little natural medication from exercise. :)

22. take a trip by myself. this was originally going to be the drive from portland to san francisco. now i'm looking to not spend that kind of money, so it will probably be something much smaller. but all i need is a great airfare to fort meyers & i'll totally spend a weekend in sanibel.

23. finish the plastic purse. so you know those polybags we deliver your paper in when it's snowy & rainy out? we use a lot of blue ones, sometimes they're clear. anyway, i'm taking those bags & cutting them into 1" rings (approximately. i'm not measuring it at all.) and then looping those rings together & crocheting them into a puse. i'm only using the blue ones, at least for now. i may put a brown stripe in the middle with some wilco bags if i can find brown ones. so if you get your paper in a blue polybag & want to help me reach my goal, save 'em for me. :)

24. files my taxes early. DONE!

25. work on a scrapbook. i may finish the san francisco book i started, honestly, at least 7 years ago. or i may work on one for the california road trip last summer. i'm not a big scrapbooker ... but i like the freedom to design with my photos. some of those california photos should be seen larger than 4"x6" in a photo album.

26. send Christmas cards. no pressure for them to be handmade, but i want to send out cards.

27. homemade Christmas presents. this is just a space filler, really. i know i'll make the Christmas presents. i even have a little bit of an idea of what they'll all be. but there's nothing wrong with setting a goal i KNOW i'll achieve, right? :)

28. secret. this one is fabulously exciting, but i can't tell you about it. yet.

lego tower

this one's for joe. he bought me 99.9% of the blue legos you see in this photo.

i worked with a high school youth group a few years back, and we had a new year's eve lock in at the church. so two groups of us decided to see who could build the taller tower. you can see the competiting tower on the right - ours was clearly the winner. it didn't support itself as well as it could have (it was a little wobbly), but it reached the ceiling in the church foyer. i don't know how tall that is - but i'm 5'10", so you can kinda gauge by that. regardless of the exact measurement, you can tell i was very impressed at the height of our tower. :)

bah

i know i'm overly frustrated when i actually yell, out loud, at my internet connection. it can't hear me.

walking downtown

the chandelier is actually an outdoor piece at proof on main, but i left it out of yesterday's photos. the carter dry goods building is now the science museum, and i think the very top of the building looks like a large-breasted peacock. i bet you could broast those breasts & serve 'em at a truck stop if you wanted. :) and the last one is a garbage can - fancy, eh?

proof on main

proof on main is a restaurant, bar, hotel and 24/7 art gallery. how could we pass that up? the gallery was larger than i was expecting - they had some really interesting works. at the hotel elevators was "text rain". seen in the first two photos, "text rain" is an interactive display where the viewer's image is mirrored on a screen, and letters fall down the screen, landing along the edges of your body. if you get a line across the whole screen & hold still long enough, a full sentence forms. it was great fun. i want one for my house. :)

other exhibits included a large umbrella, puffs of cloud rings, a hairy deer, a refrigerated boat frame, a peacock made of a feather duster & pipe cleaners, mildly disturbing photos of young boys in tree houses and a small army of red penguins. the penguins were quite photogenic, i think.

driving to proof on main

20. eat breakfast at lynn's

if you've never eaten at lynn's paradise cafe, i highly recommend you do so. it's a quirky li'l place with excellent food. you want to try the crunchcakes - well, unless you're allergic to nuts, sorry april - they're fabulous. yummy pancakes with lynn's home made granola mixed in & on top. yumm-o. i had them add blueberries to mine.

horses on a table

i'm heading into work early, but wanted to give you something at which to look. :) more in this series will come in the "breakfast at lynn's" post.

more about the fed ex package tomorrow. it was at my desk by 10am yesterday. yay! it's very exciting, but for now i'm off to work. have a great day!

gold star for fed ex

since i ranted about the annoyance that is the ups tracking system it seems only fair that i share my happiness with fed ex's tracking system. it's up to date. it's informative. and it says my package is less than 45 minutes from my office right now! yay! i don't know if it made it in time to get on a delivery truck for today - but i wouldn't be surprised to see if show up on my desk this afternoon. that's right - it left china yesterday at lunch time & right now it's sitting less than 45 minutes from the point of delivery. fabulous!

driving to lynn's after church

i know - it's been all photos and no talking. so here's the low down. louisville was fabulous, very good for me. as you've seen, mel & dan have a very nice home - and their loving, giving personalities make it very comfortable for visitors. i got there friday evening. mel & i were up until 4am catching up and (i can't believe i'm saying this) poking around on myspace. what has the world come to? :) saturday we spent time at her mom's lake house & then went to zappo's shoe outlet. mel found a pair, i did not. then we met up with dan (who had to work all day), watched a movie & a little of mythbusters and then went to ditto's for dinner. crab quesadillas ... yumm-o. another late night, but for the time we had it was worth it. sunday after church we went to lynn's paradise cafe. but more about that when i post those photos. :)