Other Blog Recs!

Hi!

Recently in conversation I've found myself quoting other people's blogs occasionally. And while I used to think this made me a total nebbish (I used to actually make a gagging sound when I said the word 'blog,' not unlike that noise Ramsey the Cat used to make when he was threatening to vomm on the floor) I'm starting to accept it. So I thought, why not put together a few links to blogs I find inspirational, or the blogs of my friends, or blogs I read with some regularity? Why NOT, I ask you? These aren't blogs I read every day (there ARE no blogs I read every day), but these are some that I sometimes peruse when I'm out for new ideas or killing some time. So here it be.

The Blogs of My Friends and People I Actually Know.
Lollygag Blog. The blog of my pal Keely, who is a hilarious actress, writer, nanny, and all around cool chick. Recent post topics include her journey from Cape Cod to Wisconsin to fulfill her dreams of Classic Rock fandom, with a few stops along the way. Good readin'.
TlalocNYC. Posts from dear friend Tlaloc, who directs plays and runs marathons in NYC. Which of those things is more exhausting? YOU be the judge.
Live The Questions. My hyper-intelligent, hyper-aware, extremely articulate high school friend Marisa writes this one. She is also in NYC. Her blog focuses on questions of religion, politics, morality, and the questions that come up when you teach in the New York City schools. She's a great writer and always finishes with a thought-provoking question for discussion and debate.
Miss Single USA. My very very fun friend Shannon Rose writes this one. Her most recent post addresses a conundrum lots of folks face in their twenties and thirties: the holy trinity of work, friendship, and love: is it true that only two can ever be fulfilled at one time?
Terroristic Optimism. Written by Chicago theatre director and soon-to-be Mom Rebecca Zellar. Rebecca directed me in The Skriker this past spring, and she's smart and funny and cool. Her blog is all of these things as well. Lots of entries about how to make good art, how to watch good -- or not so good -- art, and how to mesh the artistic with the personal. Good stuff.
Damn Lefties. My Commie friend Shane in Colorado and his friend talk politics and rant from a lefty perspective. Often hilarious and thoughtful. (Shane isn't really a communist. That I know of).
Messy Cookin'. My sweet and sexy friend Dani, who is a personal chef, talks food. Yum. And shares recipes. Double Yum.
The Steppenwolf Blog. What goes on behind the scenes at my little local neighborhood playhouse.
Theater for the Future. A theatre networking discussion board-style site that works like a community of like-minded folks tossing ideas around. Stimulating reading even if I don't necessarily make my presence known.

Blogs of People I Respect But Don't Actually Know.
Get Rich Slowly. I really can't say enough about this one. It's just great and extremely readable. Topics involve getting out of debt, not overspending during the holidays, budgeting so you can still have a life, etc. etc. Awesome awesome.
Money Changes Things. In its own words: "Socially responsible investing, savvy consuming, sustainable living, philanthropy, frugal yet generous affluence, children's financial education, and general whimsy."
Wise Bread. Ideas for having a cool life on a small budget.
Rewiring Neuroscience. This is my token nerd blog. It's totally fascinating.
Green Clean Review and Apartment Therapy (for NYC, SF, LA, and Chicago) are both great for anyone who lives anywhere. Which I do now.
On Simplicity. Tips for finding more time (reading fewer blogs, maybe?), decluttering your office, and living a more simple life.
The Art of Nonconformity. This guy seems to always be writing from a different country, and he's got tons of theories, tips, etc. for getting the most out of life without being a millionaire or a jackass.
Lush Blog. Employee blog from one of my favorite Chicago wine shops. Great wine recs, thoughts on how people see wine and deal with it societally, and info about store happenings.
Chocolate and Zucchini. Recipes and lifestyle tips from Clotilde Dusoulier, a totally fun-seeming Parisienne my age who appears to eat -- and cook -- great food and have a pretty fabulous life without ever sounding pretentious. She also writes books & her site is up in French and English.
Catavino. A blogs about Spanish and Portuguese wine, food, and general awesomeness.
Free Shit. The Chicago Reader's weekly post about what's free this week in the city.

An Actual Thesaurasaurus!!

Thanks to watchful reader Tlaloc for the awesome image! Science-obsessed dinosaurs was what I always wanted this blog to really be about. Truthfully!

The Big Read Challenge!

Hi folks,

Stole this from my friend Meghann. I'd be curious to hear what my highly literate friends have and haven't tapped, what they love, and what they find incredibly overrated. Here goes but please take, copy, and make it your own. Also, in Comments, please recommend books that aren't on the list but you think should be. I need some new material.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ [or just put them in the comments, whatever] so we can try and track down these people who've read only 6 and force books upon them
**NOTE: I (kat) put asterisks next to books I loved because I can't figure out how to underline (or un-underline) on this dad-blammed thing.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
4 Harry Potter series- JK Rowling*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights
8 Nineteen Eighty Four- George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman [I've only read the first book but I intend to read the rest.]
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22- Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky*
28 Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden *
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne*
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code- Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White- Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon*
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding*
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett*
74 Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery*
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks*
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Huzzah!

The Great Move of Aught Eight is complete! I'm now officially a resident of Ravenswood, which is just east and a little bit south of where I lived before in Lincoln Square (for you non-Chicagoites). The move went smoothly, thanks to my lovely pals at Starving Artist Movers (bravo!) and a day of good weather. I even managed to sell my bed the night before my move to a guy named Vladimir who came by and picked it up. Huzzah!

The new place is coming together nicely. I did end up converting my largest closet into a sleeping/dressing/boudoir sort of space, and I think that's going to work out well 90% of the time. For the remaining 10% of the time I intend to put a small futon in the living room that can fold out to a full-size bed. Someday I will have a camera, and someday I will post pictures, because I feel very accomplished that I've constructed a 3'x8' sleeping area where before there was none.

And the new neighborhood is awesome. For those of you that don't know, I'm a little bit in love with Glenn's Diner. I guess I would say Glenn's and I have been on a few dates and it looks really promising. It's at the end of my block and they have amazing breakfast as well as fresh seafood every day. It's casual, affordable, the people who work there are nice, and the food is damn good! I haven't acheived regular status yet, but that's because I've only lived on the block for 2 days. That day is coming.

More to come! Huzzah!

Holy crapping week!

This is one of those weeks that I love, where it's so incredibly busy that I can feel things actually progressing and I don't have time to sit around and have massive amounts of psychotic coursing anxiety because I don't have anything to do. I need more weeks and weekends like this.

An overview.

Starting at week's beginning, which for me is Tuesday. Worked in the morning, had a trade with another MT, went to meet an enigmatic mystery gentleman for drinks. Went well. Hm.

Wednesday (yesterday). Did 9 (count 'em) NINE massages. For the past two weeks I've done double duty on Wednesdays because someone at the Ravenswood office is taking my Wednesday evening shift but she can't start til next week. But I didn't want to keep Chiro #2 waiting, so I told him I could start at the beginning of July. Fortunately yesterday was the last time I had to do that, and in retrospect I impressed myself. I used to, when I was a kid, constantly look back at something I'd just done and ask myself, "If I had to start right now and consciously do that again in the exact same way, with the exact same effort expenditure, would I choose to?" and the answer was usually crushing exhaustion met with disbelief at whatever it was I'd just done. That's how I feel after doing 9 hours of massage. Also I felt proud of myself because three weeks ago I never could have puled that off.

Today, Thursday, is pretty much a day off. My very good friend J is coming to visit for the weekend and I'm off in a bit to pick him up from Midway. I haven't seen him since we were 14 or 15 and still living in Dallas. We've known each other since kindergarten and I can't wait to see him and show him Chicago. Good times in store.

Then Monday is the big move. Artists with a truck show up at 9am and we should get on the road shortly thereafter. I am so delighted with the new place, with trying my hand at living alone, and with all the new things in store.

Probably won't write much for the next little bit as I'll have very full hands with all this. But never fear -- I'll be back in the nextish!

Texan Summer Tips

Hiyas,

This website (as far as I know) wasn't written by a Texan, but it might have been written by my mother. While I do have air-conditioning (central in my soon-to-be old house and a window unit in my new house) it's always good to come up with some strategies for living without it. That being said, I usually turn the thing on while I sleep because it's physiologically harder for humans to relax when their body temperature rises above a certain level. This is why our blood pressure and body temp decrease when we lie still for a while (ie. a lot of my patients on the massage table frequently request a blanket after 10-15 minutes, even when they were perfectly comfortable before).

Anyway, here's a good list of tips I found in my blog-reading. Enjoy!

kat

Indestructible

To all my friends and dear sweet-smelling readers,

Ben Byer passed away this past Thursday, July 3rd. For those of you that don't know, Ben was a Chicago actor and filmmaker that was diagnosed with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's disease) a few years ago and turned his ultimately devastating fight against the disease into a film, Indestructible. Ben fought really hard for a very long time, and his death is a blow to Chicago and theatre and everyone who knew him.

Indestructible will be screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center here in Chicago at the following times. I'll be there and would be thrilled to see you there too.

Friday 7/18 8pm
Monday 7/21 7:45pm
Tuesday 7/22 8:30pm

For more information about Ben, about the film, and about ALS, please visit the film's website.

Take care.