We Hold These Truths to be Self-evident
I’m getting to an age where I’m almost comfortable with the idea of being an adult. I’ve lived a little, gotten some experience under my belt, and though I’m always learning something new, I’ve got enough know-how to get by on a day-to-day basis. There are some miscellaneous tidbits of knowledge that I’m not sure quite where I picked them up along the way, but I figured I’d compile and share them here.
- Never refrigerate tomatoes. Never.
- Always carry a tape measure when you go to a thrift store/vintage store/garage sale.
- Don’t use a metal utensil with a nonstick pan, toaster oven or blender.
- You can’t keep clinging to the oxford comma.
- Your ethnic background won’t prevent you from getting sunburned.
- Buns are an oft-neglected hairstyle.
- Always keep your resumé updated.
- Don’t connect to someone on a social network if you’re not comfortable saying “hello” to them in real life.
- Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.
RedEye Hoods…
Check this out, if you’re into this sort of thing:
http://neighborhoods.redeyechicago.com/lakeview/author/dflores/
The Bloomingdale Trail
As a lover of the High Line in New York, I am, obviously, all about this:
Blog Crush
While I was at NYU I took sketch and improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. I was very into “the scene” there and I thought the people who performed at UCB were the bee’s knees. One of my favorite performers was a woman named Kate Spencer, who I especially adored because she was hilarious, a former Phish fan, and she wrote about pop culture for VH1. She was essentially the me I longed to be after I graduated. She had a personal blog that I really enjoyed reading because it was a lovely mix of clever wit and personal experience, but once I moved back to Chicago I didn’t really keep up with it because things that reminded me of New York made me sad for a while. (Okay, they still do, but we don’t need to talk about that.)
However, one of my old improv teachers made a twitter shout-out to her recently and I found my way back to her blog. Guess what, it’s still epically awesome. Kate Spencer is just as terrific as I remembered her being, PLUS she’s got a gorgeous baby that she posts pictures of on the blog. PLUS she recently hit a guy who manhandled her while she waited for the subway. She’s kind of (totally) my hero.
So read her blog, is pretty much what I’m saying here.
Plant Strong Challenge Wrap-Up
It’s done! The Whole Foods 28-Day plant Strong Challenge is done! The second I finished I took a straight shot of olive oil and bit off a huge chunk of parmiggiano reggiano. Not true. Although I did have a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, which was delicious. This challenge was pretty hardcore, and I have to admit when things got crazy with rehearsals toward the end of it I slacked a bit. Overall though, the challenge was successful in getting me to choose whole grains over refined ones and to cut down on the amount of oils I used. I am still skeeved out by whole wheat pasta though, and would love to know if anybody had any recommendations.
So I’ve done two consecutive vegan challenge/experiments and I’m now left up to my own devices. I think want to try to stay mostly vegan? (Could I sound more ambivalent?) The most important reason for that was that it physically feels great, particularly when I’m planning out my meals and getting all the nutrition I needed. I’ve got more energy, I don’t depend on two cups of coffee to start each morning, my skin is dewy, I sleep well…really, it’s all pretty awesome.
That said, being vegan is damn difficult. Being tempted by meat and dairy is one thing, but sometimes despite my best efforts I’d fall off the vegan wagon. Like when I ate a veggie corn dog only to see egg whites on the ingredient list, or when I bought a tube of chopped basil and later saw that there was whey in it! I intend to keep vegan as best as I can, and I now have a piqued interest in being more conscious of what and how I eat. We’ll see how it goes from here…
An Offering
I don’t have time for a proper blog post, so I’m just going to let you look at these assorted pictures of wax Tom Hanks figurines:
my two weeks notice 