Thursday, June 28, 2007

Passive Aggressive Jerkiness
I love this new-ish web site: passiveaggressivenotes. com
There is so, so much awesome passive aggressiveness to be read.

(side note: charles emailed me about this site too. My friends know me well).
Gluttony
I went to the library today and found three books that I've been scrounging around for for the past few months as well as five others. I have EIGHT books to read. I feel that glowing feeling one gets after one has a good workout or if one finally completed a coveted purchase.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Notes:
Supper club rocks
In our attempt to hit all of the ethnic backgrounds from everyone in the club, we went to Lao Sze Chuan tonight and it was delicious and fun. Next month: bbq!

Half Birthdays rock
Todd treated me to a sumptuous meal at Nacional 27 for my half birthday (which is officially today, actually). Yummy.

Movies rock
We saw "Knocked Up" and it was hands-down great. I was saying beforehand that I was afraid of being disappointed because I had read so many gleaming reviews. But it was really, really funny and really, really sweet. But, it was a little hard to believe that the leading female character ever got with the Seth Rogan character in the first place. But still: great. Go and see it.

Street festivals rock
We went on Sunday evening to the Belmont Music and Arts festival to see Say Hi to Your Mom and the Wrens play. It was lovely and cool last night and perfect music-viewing weather. It felt like vacation.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Swamped.
Things are busy this week. Mainly I'm sad right now because I'm studying/cramming for my geology final for tomorrow (my online course that was meant to be *easy* but has taken me over nine awful months to get through). Enough of that, though. 24 hours from now it will be done.

But lots to catch up on. The family zoomed into town last weekend to attend my belated graduation from grad school. My parents, brothers, and uncles descended upon Chicago and our brood ate our way through the city. Truly, we were a sight to behold. I counted on Monday evening, and it looks like I ate at 12 different eating places with them in the four days they were here, and they hit like 14. I won't bore you with details, but let me just say: on Sunday morning we started with dim sum in Argyle and then walked directly across the street to wolf down some pho. My uncle wanted to taste the Chinese/Vietnamese offerings in Chicago and let me just say that he and my mom loved the hell out of Furama. They both said that their dim sum was better than anything in Maryland and Virginia. Furama gets an enthusiastic thumbsup from the family, which is an honor indeed. Go to Furama, people. Sunday was far from done, since the rest of the day held promises of bao from Wow Bao, drinks at the John Hancock and then an enormous prime rib dinner from Lawrys from fathers day.

Their visit was fun and graduation was all right, but a little underwhelming and a tad bit disorganized. It was actually kind of funny what a clusterfuck it turned into behind the scenes: they actually forgot to announce me! Skipped over my name entirely, so that someone had to rush quietly to the announcer and tell him to announce me before they started with the undergrads. It was okay, though, since I ended up sitting with the end of the alphabet and they were fun.

My school year officially ended but I've started doing extended school year for four weeks. I've been assigned four schools which are located in areas I've never ever been to, so I'm discovering just how large Chicago is. I liken my experience as an itinerant SLP split among four schools to the classic, The Little Prince and how the prince visits all of these different little planets in his travels. Each planet offers its own cultures and experiences and personalities. I will say this: I like two of my schools very much, am relatively okay with one of my schools, and the remaining school is less than impressive. That particular school is where I encountered the rudest classroom teacher I've yet to meet (granted, I haven't met that many). She was pissed off that I was there, and when I told her that one of her kids was on my caseload, she sighed dramatically and loudly and exclaimed: "Well, that's counter-productive!" I kind of wanted to sock her, especially since the kid was sitting there at a table doing NOTHING when I walked in. No paper in front of her...nada. I was gracious though, swallowed my annoyance, and calmly informed the charming instructor of the times that she could expect me every week. After encountering her I realized for real how lucky I've been with my teachers at my present school--the majority of them like having an extra set of hands in the classroom.

Summer school is pretty awesome, though, since it's 3.5 hours a day and four days a week. My kind of schedule!

Friday, June 08, 2007

Creepy.
I love two-year olds the most, but not this scary giant robot they created in Japan to emulate a 2-year old. It would have helped if they had made it short and fat and prone to toddling rather than grown-man sized. To capture how truly chilling it is, make sure you watch the YouTube video. Yikes.
(via neatorama)

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Aww
15 reasons that Mr. Rogers was the best neighbor ever

My favorite is the one about Koko.

(via neatorama)
Families and their meals
Two of my favorite things. TIME has this cool photo essay on families around the world, their meals for a week, and the costs. I couldn't decide which one was my favorite. Can you?

Mayfest report
So we did go to Mayfest this past Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Jenny, Todd and I met up first and after getting our giant steins of beer, we hit the fair games. Todd and Jenny shot darts at little balloons and won some klassy pictures. I'm including a shot of our bounty.
Impromptu Joy
I got off the phone tonight with Anne and I noticed that music was reverberating through my courtyard. Sounding like it was a band playing in the park across the street, I slipped on a sweatshirt and my flip flops and wandered outside. Turns out there was a live band, and they were played lively and catchy Irish drinking song type songs. In fact, as I checked out a single flyer posted by the gazebo where the band played, Welles Park has a regular Tuesday night outside concert. Kind of like Wolf Trap/Ravinia for free and right across the street. Not too well advertised, though, because there were like four families scattered on the lawn, but they did come prepared with blankets, snacks, and drinks.

Everyone else there was kind of like me, they stumbled upon it and stuck around. It was lovely and cool out and the sun was setting and the music was upbeat and fun, so I stood there for about forty minutes watching them. And that was great, but not the "impromptu joy" that was first referred to in the blog title. By that, I was referring to one of the other viewers of the band. There was a dad and his teenage son who walked up to watch the same time as I did. The dad stood back and observed with reserve, and the son was the one who displayed tried and true blessed joy. I would guess that he had a more severe form of autism, but more importantly he fricking loved the music and was not afraid to show it. He hopped. He did jumping jacks. He swung his arms. He clapped with outstretched arms. He raised his arms to the sky. During the slower numbers, he stood up close and swayed slowly. I understood where he was coming from because the music made me want to dance too, and it was cool that he could so readily display his enthusiasm.