Go Tribe!
Hey, William and Mary gets its due: it's listed as Newsweek's "hottest small state school."

(thanks to Adam for the head's up)

One more thing
Brendan had suggested to me the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer. I randomly picked it up at the library when I was scanning titles and didn't realize that was the same one that Brendan had mentioned until after I checked it out.

This book was nothing less than great. I devoured it in a couple of days and it would switch from making me laugh out loud and then making me weep. Seriously, tears rolled down my face yesterday when I finished it up in the car ride back. I highly recommend it, especially for those who love New York (vroom vroom, I'm looking at you).

Here's an article about Jonathan Safron Foer. He's my age: 28. Unbelievable.

Floatin' and Boatin'
We got back yesterday from Lake of the Ozarks where we went and visited Todd's parents at their most beautiful house on the lake there. I was excited because:
a.) vacation!
b.) I had never been in the state of Missouri before
c.) I had never even heard of the Lake of the Ozarks before I came to Chicago.

The Lake of the Ozarks used to be part of a river before it was dammed up, so it's all wind-y and with tons of little fingers and coves. Todd's parents lakehouse is right next the water and you walk down (or take the cool little tram) down to the dock. We arrived too late on Wednesday night to go out and do anything, but we went boating on Thursday and Friday. I confessed that I had never been officially boating before, so didn't know what was involved. What's involved is: going out in the boat, anchoring in some little cove, sitting around on the boat eating and drinking and then going into the water to cool off when you feel like it. Todd's aunt, uncle, and cousins were there as well, so it was always a little party. His parents have two big beautiful boats to choose from as well. It was all quite luxurious and fancy and a nice change from my hot humid, stubbornly un-ACed apartment.

I realized that I hadn't been swimming in at least a year (this is amazingingly pathetic, I know), and it was *so* great to jump into the warm water and paddle away. On Friday, we took a trip to a national park (an area called Hahatonka(?)) and spent all day there while Todd's dad grilled burgers. Yeah, it was *that* awesome.

During the nights we would eat awesome food (ribs galore on Saturday night) and then crash early so I slept a lot. Fresh air, gaw-geous views, and good food = one happy Kristin.

We drove back yesterday and stopped by St Louis for lunch. We went to the little area by the water filled with the requisite cobblestones and little taverns and restaurants and walked down to the water where I took some pictures of the water.

Speaking of pictures, I have a few to post. I'm still muddling through how to download them properly though. Emails have been sent out so hopefully I can figure this out tonight so I can have fresh memory for my family's upcoming visit. I took tons of crappy pictures of the St Louis arch and the Capitol building in Jefferson City, so I want to share them in their all of their crappy-quality-glory.

A few things of interest:
1.) We toyed with the idea of going to one of the subtly-named resort town bars (The Horny Toad, Peckers, Big Dick's Halfway Inn) to see one of the awesome bands that play at resort town bars. We missed "National Act 'Loverboy'" by three days, sadly. And we were too early to go and see the band that really caught my eye. What was the name? 4 Fried Chickens and a Coke.
2. ) A bumper sticker that I saw plastered on the back of a station wagon when we went to the outlets on Saturday: "If Mary had had an abortion, there would be no Christmas." Remember that one.
3.) Last night Todd and I watched "Cheaters," my world's favorite show. The best host ever, Joey Greco, regularly shows the poor cuckolded dude footage of his girlfriend getting it on behind his back. Joey G. is the most hilarious because he's so grave when he makes the cheated-on watch the footage and tries to off-the-cuff narrarate in a very serious, serious tone (eg, "here you can see that she is...servicing him in the morning...in your own bed"). He speaks with lots and lots of ellipses.

The piece de resistance is when they showed one poor sap footage of his girlfriend and her lovah partying it up on her balcony, hooting, whooping, and waving beers while they watched some fireman unloading some gear in the parking lot down below. While he was showing that particular footage, Joey G. was like: "As you can see here, here they are on your balcony...with no regard for your property....or for those risking their lives down below."

I love "Cheaters." I know that I've said it before, but I totally need to say it again.

I'm off!
Last daycare session done. All the reports handed in. Veggies, hummus and pita packed for the ride. Handy YLT cds along for listening pleasure.

I'll be back on Sunday, so will check in then. Hopefully I'll manage to take and figure out how to upload pictures (for some reason I can't use the contraption that my dad had given me that I used with the stolen computer...probably missing some installation disk. whatever).

xoxo 4evah

Almost done
One more day left to the quarter! I'm still getting through all of my last reports and making sure that everything is turned in before I take off tomorrow to the Ozarks with Todd. I still have to pack too, come to think of it.

Tonight his band, All Limbs Intact, is playing at the Beat Kitchen, so that cuts down the available time a little bit.

I'll be out of the loop for a little while, so hope that everyone has a great weekend.

I was sad to hear that Peter Jennings passed away yesterday. He was my favorite of the anchors and it feels like he had just announced that he had lung cancer.

On a complete change of topic, I want to mention that we went to the Northalsted Market Days with Katja and Tom yesterday. It's a street festival that spans six blocks of Halsted, the whole of Boystown, half a block away from me. It's been touted as Chicago's busiest street festival and I would have to say that there might be some truth in that because that sucker was crowded. Todd and I entered on Roscoe and Halsted and were readying ourselves to walk the four blocks down to Halsted and Belmont to meet Katja and Tom. It took us like 20 minutes to work our way through the crowds. There were billions of booths and three stages of music.

It was a good, crowded time, but I was ready to leave once we walked up and down the length of it. I do love a good street festival though, with the smell of grilled food and funnel cakes and music playing and people celebrating and drinking (ice cold!) beer in the streets. We also ran into Kevin, Jessica, and Aimee, which was cool.

Lazy Weekend
Man, I'm so close to the end of the quarter, I can taste it. It's like my mouth glands salivate at the thought. On Wednesday I finish up my last stint with daycare, and then we're off to the Ozarks for a long, long weekend. Hooray for long, long weekends!

So far it's been a pretty nice weekend capping off a nice week. On Thursday night I caught up with Melissa, an old work friend. We had whole wheat vegetables burritos at Las Mananitas. Hooray for whole wheat vegetable burritos!

There's not much else of interest to report except that we went to a wedding last night (strong gin and tonics; I feared this morning that I had lost my glasses, but they were actually left in the seat of Todd's car. Thank God). Hooray for finding misplaced glasses!

Other things to note:
1. Yesterday I wandered around Bucktown/Wicker Park enjoying the stunning warm weather, and I wandered into the Aldi on Milwaukee. I had heard rumblings over the grocery deals to be found at the Aldi, and the rumors are true, I'll have you know. Their produce was like half the price of the produce at the Jewel by me! I ended up buying some cut-rate raisin bran because I couldn't leave without purchasing something. Aldi, where have you been all my life?

2. On Friday I went and worked out at the gym on campus and stumbled upon a cheerleading/dance camp that was going on in the gym. There were at least a hundred stomach-baring high school girls cavorting in one concentrated area. It was hilarious to watch the various dudes who worked at the gym or who happened to be working out slowly emerge and do slow rounds on the indoor track which looks down on the gym area. The guys who worked there even had the pretense of walking around with their clipboards.

The Aftermath
Since Kevin is dying to know, here's what happened with Project Defrost. It was long and harrowing. To unplug the entire fridge itself required climbing onto the sink and reaching behind the fridge to work the plug from the socket. I was all proud of myself because I thought ahead and taped the plug onto the wall so I would have easy access to it when it came time to replug the fridge back in. Genius, right?

So a couple of hours into the defrosting as I was switching out pans of water and monitoring the drippage from the glacier that had formed inside I hear a sudden ripping sound. My stomach fell as that was the sound of tape freeing the plug from the wall...to let it fall behind the fridge out of my reach.
My first thought? "Who can I call?!"
My second thought: "Noone."

So I MacGyvered my way out of it. I reached my arm around the side of the entire fridge, found the root of the plug and pulled it out on the other side of the fridge. Then I had access to the plug at least even if I wouldn't be able to get behind and plug it in from that particular side. I then taped the head of the plug to the head of the swiffer mop, pushed the swiffer behind the fridge and knocked it to the side. Voila: the head of the swiffer fell against the sink so I had access to the plug again. If things were ideal I would be able to draw a little diagram for you so you can understand exactly how this all went down.

With that solved, I was able to get back to the business of defrosting. Which took several more hours. When I was finally done, at 8:10 in the evening, I received a call from Lauren. She, Bonnie, and Soraya were heading to have dinner on Southport and was I interested? Perfect timing, perfect offer. Lauren picked me up and we had some awesome Thai food at Banana Leaf, and I went home a happy lady.

Popsicles and humidity
Tomorrow we're defrosting our freezer, which should be quite an adventure since: a.) I've never defrosted a freezer before, and 2.) I don't know if and when it's been done on this freezer. Let's just say that it's gotten woeful. I'm home all afternoon so I'm dedicating my time to monitoring the progress and making sure that things don't get too ugly.

In other news, it's the second to last week of school and things are humming as they do on the second to last week of school. Reports drafts are turned in tomorrow, final meetings with parents are going on all this week and next and many, many meetings are made with one's supervisors. I don't mind it too terribly, though, since, well, it's the second to last week of school. And then, my friends, over five weeks of blessed vacation.

I'm going to try to request to keep on my beloved three (soon to be four!) year old client but my fellow students clued me into the fact that she's the perfect 397 client, so I'll probably lose her. 397 is the name of the class where you have your first client, and it's what I took last quarter. Normally they handpick 397 clients since they're relatively straight forward and generally well-behaved. Because my (my!) three year old is so cooperative and engaged and so goddamn awesome, she's perfect 397 fodder. I only got her this summer since there is no 397 offered this quarter. *sigh*. I also watched Laura's client today during her parent meeting. This particularly girl is the Prize Winner of 397 clients. Hillary had her last quarter, I would froth at the mouth over her descriptions of her. She's 10 and spectacularly pleasant and amiable and likes doing articulation therapy. We played Pictionary Junior today and she kicked some ass.

Producto Robot
I've been rather impressed with myself this weekend. A list of what I managed to accomplish so far, and it's only 2pm on Sunday:

1.) Vacuum and clean the living room.
2.) Do three loads of laundry and change the sheets. I even washed a towel.
3.) Have an awesome dinner with Katja and Tom. After a day of helping a friend move, Katja still managed to cook a big dinner for four that included artichoke as an appetizer. I'd never had artichoke whole before: it was a fun process of peeling and dipping and tossing.
4.) Meet up with Laura and Hillary to take the Addison bus to Hot Doug's for lunch and then to Target to purchase some crafty supplies for a project due on Monday. Proceeded to wander around the mammoth two-floor Target for an hour. That place is overwhelming, dude. We needed to buy velcro and it took us the entire time to find it.
5.) Order more checks from my bank.
6.) Pay a couple of bills.
7.) Take a long leisurely jog along the lake front to North Avenue Beach.
8.) Work on aforementioned project and finish it before the end of the day.
9.) Meet up with Carol, my old boss, for dinner. She's in town for work so took me out to dinner. We had tuna steak BLTs which are nothing short of splendid.
10.) Watch "Pulp Fiction" on Bravo; I was mostly curious to see what they would do to it. It was a very brave thing of them to try to tackle that movie to make it TV-friendly. I would guess that entire portions were removed. There's no gimp in it, even. Now, why take out the gimp? If you're going to excise him from the story then you might as well scrap trying to show the movie.
11.) Buy toilet paper.
12.) Ready lessons for tomorrow morning, and put together data from last week's sessions.
13.) Walk over to Trader Joes, battling the Cubs game crowds in the meantime. I waded through them at about 12 or so, and people were already wheeling and spinning with drunkenness. Impressive.
14.) Purchase much needed wheat bread and milk from TJs and also some pine nuts and hummus. I know that I've said it before, but again, I fricking love the crap out of that store. The pinenuts at the Jewel down the street are $7.50 a bag and at TJs they're $3.50. A four dollar savings, my friends, makes for a happy Kristin.
15.) Start reading Reading Lolita in Tehran. It's pretty good so far, and I feel like I'm learning more about interpreting Nabakov than Iranian life for women.
16.) Chat with my parents, Anne, Des, and Robin.

...and there's still more that will be done! Todd's coming back from his trip to the lake tonight so I'll get to catch up with his sun-burnished self.

Time to make a big old salad for lunch. I'll be eating it with a self-satisfied expression on my face, I'm sure.

An article in The New Yorker about Roald Dahl, why kids love his stories, "and many adults don't."

I hope the day never comes when I would be disheartened by Roald Dahl's children's books. They're some of the greatest things on the planet.

I kiss you!

Not sure if this is for real or not, but it's still my favorite thing of the day.

(via kottke.org)

Righteous
The weather, starting yesterday, has been nothing short of amazing. It's cool and sunny and sharp and feels like the first the first day of autumn.

So on Tuesday night I had a late dinner with one of my former students from Beijing who's now in Chicago with her husband and has been for the past few months. I haven't seen her since January 2001, so it's been about four and a half years now. Through Suzi, correspondence sparked up again, resulting in the reunion on Tuesday evening. Ting (formerly Alice) and her husband live a 20 minute walk away from me in a sweet little apartment and she cooked up a huge Chinese feast. Pretty amazing.

Last night I went with Hillary, Lauren, Laura and Megan to Ravinia to go and see Elvis Costello and Emmy Lou Harris perform. Ravinia is one of those places like Wolf Trap in DC where most of the people who attend concerts buy lawn seats where you spread out a blanket, crack open a bottle of wine and put together a superb feast. The concert was sold out and the enormous span of grass was covered with groups of friends on blankets. Amazingly, Ting and Brad were three blankets away from me. (Also amazingly, one of our clinic supervisors happened to be sitting at the blanket right next to us; I felt kind of bad for her since I'm sure the last thing she wanted to do was to see the mugs of the students that she sees day in and out). We commented to eachother that if you were an underage drinker, Ravinia would be the place to go. You just buy tickets to a concert that chances are no groups of roving teenagers would attend, come loaded down with wine, and you would just blend in with the masses. Noone was checking.

The concert itself was perfect experience. Ravinia is a well-run machine where buses run constantly between the parking lots and the festivals, and if concerts happen to not be sold out, you get in free with a student ID. Last night the weather was cool and the night was clear. Elvis Costello and Emmy Lou Harris sounded great (Emmy Lou Harris did a cover of my favorite Willie Nelson song as well, "Pancho and Lefty!"). We had the most amazing spread of cheeses, dips and wines. We found an excellent spot under a tree, close to the pathway and relatively close to the bathrooms. Everything went flawlessly, and it tasted like freedom.

Ah, that taste was fleeting, though. This morning it's back to the grindstone. I woke up this morning feeling pretty well-rested, though, and relatively ready to attack the day.

Happy Birthday, Annie!
Hope that you celebrate with some delicious Carvel ice cream (in cake form, preferably).

Rain!
Hurray, the rain has come and with it...the cooler weather. There is actually a cool breeze coming through our windows. I am absolutely ecstatic.

Happy Birthday, Dad!
He's on vacation right now. Lucky!

Happy One Year Anniversary to Bryan and Des!
They married a year ago this past weekend. I can't believe that a year has passed so quickly, but I can believe what an awesome couple you are. So congratulations from both me and Anne (who was not able to get enough time on a computer to send separate congrats)!

Another weekend...
...passed! How did that happen, pray tell? Regardless, it was a nice laid back weekend. And the upcoming week won't be terribly difficult, but I've lost my momentum for work and am eager to tackle the summer and its lack of responsibility. Yay! Three more weeks left to the quarter.

Anyway, on Friday we went to go and see Holy Roman Empire play at the Mutiny, everyone's favorite dive bar. They have these enormous mini pitchers for the low, low price of $5. Best deal in town. However, Todd tried to buy a bottle of beer (something fancier than your standard Budweiser) and it also cost $5. So you need to choose carefully at the Mutiny apparently.

Saturday after another excellent lunch at Hot Doug's (which we've both decided is our most favoritest place in town if not the world) I tagged along with Todd as he did his first round of car-shopping. We stopped at three different places, which offered the whole spectrum of salesmanship. It's like in "The Little Prince" where you go and visit different little planets, each dealership offering its own experience.

At the tail end of one of the visits, the relatively reasonable salesguy insisted on bringing his manager over. The manager proceeded to give an extremely condescending lecture complete with graphs on why Todd would be stoopid to consider any other kind of car. Todd listened politely, but it was obvious that he wasn't buying what the guy was selling. I don't know if the guy couldn't read body language, or if he thought that Todd was young and/or naive and/or dumb, but it was a bad call on his part because that pretty much forced the decision that no car would be bought from this dealership. My question is: does this work ever? Who does it work with and why?

Today it was over 100 in Chicago, which means that nothing was to be accomplished. I hear that the heat wave will be cracking soon, which I hope is to be the truth.

Best thing that I've read all day
The types of stories my mother tells.

There are no words
I went with Laura, Lauren, Hillary and Trisha to see "March of the Penguins" tonight. Oh lordy.

First of all, I will preface this to say that both Annie and my dad called me up urging me to run, not walk, to see this movie. And they were so right.

Let's just say that I need a baby penguin in my arms five minutes ago. I was almost in physical pain watching the scenes when they finally ducked out from under their various parental belly folds to waddle and feed and tumble and get fat.