when friendship and teh interwebz happily collide

sunday morning: i see a post on twitter about a new song and an upcoming album from one of my favorite artists. i retweet it and someone i know points out that meshell will be in chicago this january. i start thinking about how to incorporate this concert into my b-day celebration - maybe it'll be the finale? i dunno.

monday night: i realize that 2 of my girlfriends. who also are meshell fans, aren't on twitter and therefore probably missed my excitement. i make a note to email them on tuesday.

tuesday morning: i send my friends a quick e-mail with 3 links: one for the new song, one for a quick article about the new album, and the concert link posted above.

one of them writes back almost immediately, saying that they'd just been thinking about meshell and wondering if we'd put the concert date on our calendars. before i had a chance to respond in the affirmative, she wrote again, saying that we definitely had to put the date on our calendars b/c she'd just ordered our tickets.

i might have shed a couple of happy tears. here i was, sharing information w/friends who i knew would be interested, and now we're all going to see meshell again. and, of course, i will figure out an "official" way to tie this into my month-long birthday celebration. this is a good problem to have. :-)

things i've learned so far this week

1) watching the video for jill scott's "hear my call" in public isn't a good idea, b/c i will be reduced to tears and no one on the cta wants to see that.

eta: here's the video.

2) nikka costa puts on an amazing live show. that was my concert splurge for the summer and it was totally worth it.

3) dance floor plans also puts on an amazing live show. click the link and give them a listen.

4) the fact that 2 people asked me the same question w/in 36 hours, coupled with the question itself, is seriously making me reconsider all kinds of things that i previously thought/still kinda think are true.

5) the universe is laughing its ass off at me right now. ok, that's not really a new revelation, but it's really come through loud and clear this week.

but how the hell are y'all? :-)

to thank or not to thank...

this note came across a jobs/careers listserv i'm on (yes, listservs are still active in 2011):

Dear (list moderator),

Please don't advise people to send those silly thank you letters after interviews. I hire three or four people a year and I see those things as a pure negative. I'd rather hire someone who didn't send me a thank you letter than someone who did. The letter to me signifies "hire me because I'm polite" instead of focusing on the job requirements. It's my choice whom to hire. Don't try to influence me. That's my two cents.

(letter writer)

i strongly disagree with the letter writer.

let's be honest: a job interview is all about influence. the potential employee is doing their best to convince the interviewer that s/he is the best fit for the position and for the company. in some cases, the interviewer is trying to "sell" the potential employee on the reasons why s/he should join their organization.

i still send handwritten thank-you notes after in-person job interviews. one organization that i'd interviewed with decided not to hire for the position, but my contact there made it a point to thank me for my thank-you note when she told me the news. do i think a thank-you note can make or break my chances of getting to the next round? not necessarily, but i do think that those notes help keep me in the interviewer's mind as they're trying to make their decisions on who to hire.

personally, i'd rather hire someone who sent a thank-you note than someone who didn't. it shows me that this person is interested enough in the job and was appreciative enough of my time to thank me for it. if they're like me, they include something we discussed in the interview in their note, which shows that they were paying attention. and, yeah, they're polite.

thoughts?

and speaking of birthdays...

james would've been 49 today.

that is all.

ode to bff

today is my bff's birthday. i couldn't tell you exactly how we first met in 7th grade, but we've been friends ever since. one of the things that's most amazing to me about our 20+ year friendship is that we have never lived in the same city/suburb. as you can imagine, this made (and still kinda makes) hanging out a bit of a challenge. remember that this was before e-mail and cell phones - we're talking passing notes during class and meeting up at lockers, and even that fell by the wayside once i transferred high schools during our junior year.

during our 20's, there were times when we'd go weeks w/o talking on the phone, just b/c our schedules were insane or whatever. i loved that we could pick up wherever we left off. actually, we still do that now, but at least we're a bit better about keeping in touch.

to say that we've been through a lot is an understatement. we're both daddy's girls who lost our fathers way too early. we've had more than our fair share of family drama, relationship drama, college drama, b-school/law school drama, fallouts with friends (but, thankfully, never with each other) - you name it. an ongoing joke i have with her is that neither of us can run for office and piss the other one off, b/c we both know way too much about each other.

it's not an understatement to say that i wouldn't have gotten through the past year or so w/o her. this is not to say that the rest of y'all weren't supportive and wonderful, b/c you were & i love y'all for it. i have to say, though, that having your oldest & dearest friend in your corner when your life takes yet another unexpected turn makes dealing with it just a bit easier, and for that, i am forever grateful. (awww…)

out of all the people i knew in junior high and high school, bff is the only one i'm still in contact with. i am more than ok with how that turned out.

so…happy birthday, erica. here's to yet another year of friendship and love and support and booze. :-)

were they saying "boourns?"

this new york times article caught my eye yesterday - the author wonders if it's ok to boo at the theater:

You hear it at Bayreuth and at the Met. Some places in Italy are so famous for it you’d be disappointed not to hear it. Booing at the opera may seem like a breach of protocol, but for better or worse it’s a tradition. In some circles, it’s even a sign of good taste.

So I wonder … if we hear booing at the opera, why don’t we hear it at the theater? And — dare I ask — should we?

this intrigues me b/c i've NEVER heard booing at the opera. in the, oh, let's say, dozen or so operas i've attended at the lyric, i have never heard booing. sure, there's been some groans, but that's usually due more to the plot/character than to the actual performance. i was actually unaware of this "tradition" of booing at the opera until i read this piece yesterday.

as for booing at the theater - i can't say i've ever heard it there, either, and i've been to way more plays/readings than i have operas.

booing at concerts? sure, i've done it. for some reason, though, i wouldn't dream of doing it at an opera or at a play. i'll withhold applause, i'll stay seated when ovations break out, but actual booing? not so much.

i should also point out that i've only booed at "popular" music concerts. something seems very wrong about booing at symphony center or ravinia. house of blues, though? i've been that person yelling "get off the stage!"

(although now i'm remembering a "popular" concert i attended at the civic opera house where i might've booed the opening act...)

i say all of that to say that i don't see myself booing at the opera or at the theater anytime soon. i'd love to hear from y'all on this - have you booed at an opera or at a play before? would you? why/why not?

an ode to cityposh

i really should've written & published this weeks ago. why? b/c i'm about to tell y'all why i think cityposh is awesome, and, i swear, it's not b/c i've won prizes from them. allow me to disclose that i have no financial interest in cityposh and i've never met the guys that run the site. and yes, i've won several amazing prizes from their contests, including (and this list is from memory) gift cards from amazon, itunes, shell, and domino's, and free admission to techweek.

now that i've gotten those disclosures out of the way, allow me to say that cityposh is awesome. i was 1st introduced to their site by someone on twitter. back then (and i mean maybe a couple of months ago), cityposh was using an ebay type model. you'd purchase bids to use on an item, say, a gift card from target, and the highest bid at the end of the auction would win. like ebay, the excitement was in the last few seconds of bidding when people would try to outbid each other. and that was cool.

but then cityposh changed its model. instead of purchasing bids, you could play for free. this, of course, appealed to me. and imagine my delight when i saw that there were multiple ways to accumulate points that didn't require the use of facebook! yeah, i know - i'm on twitter all day every day but i continue to avoid facebook like the plague. this isn't new.

see, one of the things that annoys me about marketing via facebook is that i think it makes some companies lazy, like putting up a fb page is all they have to do and bam! customers will magically appear. and then there are companies that i've supported through the years that offer facebook-only deals that, of course, i can't access b/c i'm not on facebook, and damned if i'm gonna sign up just so i can print out a $1 coupon. it's especially annoying when i follow a company on twitter and every link/deal they post doubles back to their facebook page. stop assuming everyone's on facebook! [end mini-rant]

i say all of that to say that while cityposh does offer facebook users a number of ways to compete, it also offers enough non-fb methods for folks like me to get in on the action and, as previously mentioned, win prizes. and this is why i think they're awesome. i don't want to go so far as to say that i'm addicted to playing on cityposh, but i do visit their site several times a day. and by several, i mean a few dozen or so. probably more. depending on the prize, i usually aim for top-10 status. i finished 15th in the most recent game for a apple store gift card.

what can i say? it's fun, it's easy, the prizes are cool (even the ones i'm not as interested in), it's free, i don't need facebook...what's not to like? y'all should check it out if you haven't already. :-)

matilda beer bacon: a review

it's a simple equation, really. bacon + goose island matilda = crazy delicious, and i probably wouldn't have known about its existence if not for twitter.

it all started when the good folks at bacon fest chicago tweeted a link to this article about matilda beer bacon. i was instantly intrigued. goose island matilda is one of my favorite beers, and y'all know i love me some bacon, but putting the two together? my mouth watered.

and then i figured out that provenance, one of the shops that carries this amazing delectableness, is this close to the lincoln square farmers market, which has become my default farmers market this summer.

so i stopped in at provenance and bought a pack. did i mention that provenance is featuring dreymiller & kray products during july for 10% off?

anyway...i bought a pack of matilda beer bacon and actually managed to wait a couple of days before i tried it out. the first time, i just made a few slices (yeah, i'm using "few" loosely) in the oven, on 350° for 15 minutes. turns out 15 minutes is a bit too long - finished product came out a little charred but still edible. and omg was it edible. wait...i almost forgot that you can actually smell the beer when you sniff the bacon before cooking it. yeah, i did a sniff test on this bacon. i was curious. sue me.

next experiment? grilled cheese sandwiches. specifically, grilled sammiches with honey, tomato, cheddar & monterey jack cheeses, and a few (in this case, 3) slices of matilda beer bacon. omfg epic nom. this time i cooked the bacon in the oven at 350° for about 12 minutes, and that worked out better than experiment #1.

i can't, in good conscience, recommend this third experiment to anyone who's even remotely trying to maintain healthy eating habits. this is definitely a "cheat day" entree. i made sauteed spinach to go along with this to ease my guilt at having so much porcine goodness.

that said: matilda beer bacon + bacon burgers from c&d family farms + 5-cheese garlic spread from river valley mushrooms (see my previous post about farmers market finds for links to those last 2) + monterey jack cheese. it happened. it's rare that i'm rendered speechless and even more rare for me to render myself speechless by my cooking. that burger/sandwich/monstrosity/whatever you wanna call it was proof that god wants me to be happy and fat. definitely a "sometimes food." don't consume this on a regular basis, people. i mean it. i want y'all to live long and productive lives. please. moderation is our friend. :-)

needless to say, i went back to provenance last week to pick up another pack of matilda beer bacon. the saleswoman remembered me and admitted to having some matilda beer bacon in her fridge. this package is in my freezer. i make no promises as to how long it'll stay there.

recipe roundup - 7/22 edition

yeah, i know - we're in the middle of a heat wave and here i am writing about cooking. luckily i have a/c at casa de eulalia, so cooking isn't nearly as arduous as it could be given the temperature outside. also, this batch of recipes doesn't require turning on the oven, so that helps. with that said...

sauteed spinach with garlic and red pepper: yes, i actually used crushed red pepper in this dish. it was only 1/4 teaspoon, which, given the sheer amount of spinach (i used a 16oz bag instead of the 2 9oz bags called for in the recipe b/c that's what was available at the store), didn't really amount to much. so yeah, i'd make this again, but i'd probably chop the garlic a little finer, but that's just my preference.

pork tenderloin with red and yellow peppers: i skipped the anchovies b/c i don't like them. the version of the recipe i clipped from the magazine said that olives could be substituted for the anchovies, but i don't like olives, either, so i just left that alone. also, i used dried thyme instead of rosemary b/c that's what i had on hand. this is definitely one of those dishes where the leftovers tasted better 1-2 days later than the initial serving. still nom, though.

green beans with shallots: i added garlic to this (i think 1-2 cloves, minced) b/c it seemed like the thing to do. obviously there's nothing super fancy about this dish, but since i'd bought green beans at the farmers market, it seemed like a good a time as any to try this out.

red wine tomato soup: scroll down a bit on that page to see the recipe. this one's somewhere b/t nom and fail. the flavor was nom, but the texture? meh. i used 1/2 cup of wine and 2 1/4 cups of water, and since dominick's was out of organic tomatoes, i used "regular" fire-roasted diced tomatoes instead. i wound up blending some of the soup and adding it back to the pot in an attempt to smooth things out, but the texture was still "off" to me. not sure if i'd make this one again.

sauteed carrots with sage: i had some leftover carrots from that tomato soup recipe and decided to give this a try. if you follow me on twitter, then you probably saw me raving about this earlier in the week. i used about a teaspoon of dried sage instead of fresh, but i don't think i missed anything, flavor-wise. i am so making this again.

grilled spiced chicken wings: in case you were wondering, yes, you can make chicken wings on a foreman grill. they were delicious and i'll be revisiting this one.

cold scrambled eggs

while washing dishes earlier, i started thinking about what i'm having for dinner tomorrow. my plan is to make smoked sausage & broccoli, which is 1) as easy/simple as you think it is and 2) one of the 1st things i taught myself how to make way back in high school.

[i never bothered writing down a recipe for this - basically you cook a pound of broccoli, fresh or frozen, then add in a pound of smoked sausage that's been sliced, then season to taste. i usually have it over rice. the end.]

daddy was totally ok with letting me experiment in the kitchen, and he never pressured me into cooking more b/c i was a girl or anything silly like that. actually, all of my brothers were/are good cooks. since i primarily only saw daddy on weekends and holidays and other special occasions, and since cooking during the week was handled by debra or her mom or by greg, my food prep access was kinda limited.

a typical sunday morning with daddy involved going to church. he was still a member of the a.m.e. church i'd grown up in, and i'd joined 1st c. in high school, so he'd either drop me off at 1st c. or, if he didn't feel like driving and i couldn't get a ride, i'd have to suck it up and go to mt. olive. regardless of where we went, there was breakfast before service. sometimes we'd stop at mcdonald's. most sunday mornings, though, daddy would start cooking before he woke me up - by the time i'd gotten dressed, breakfast would be ready.

for some reason, we always wound up with more scrambled eggs than we'd actually eat at breakfast. there was usually leftover bacon or sausage, too, but that wasn't as problematic. when we came home, we'd snack on...you guessed it, cold scrambled eggs. ok, technically they were room temperature scrambled eggs, but whatever.

james & carol lived in daddy's basement for a while after they got married, and the whole notion of cold scrambled eggs drove carol up the wall. she didn't understand it, especially since we had a microwave and warming up the eggs wouldn't take that long. daddy & i didn't care, though. we'd just scoop our fingers in and grab a couple of bites. the eggs would be finished before dinner, and that's all that really mattered.

in hindsight, eating cold scrambled eggs probably wasn't my finest food-related moment. then again, this was around the same time that i used to combine doritos & skittles in the same bowl, with a few oreos on the side. clearly this was a sometime food, as cookie monster would say, and there's no way i'd subject myself to that now, but then? omg nom.

i wish i could tell you how many eggs daddy used for sunday breakfast that enabled us to have cold scrambled eggs. leftover scrambled eggs is a foreign concept here at casa de eulalia, unless i've made this sausage & egg scramble or some other casserole-based goodness. and for the record, i have no plans to make scrambled eggs just to have leftovers to eat at room temperature. :-)

a bit of housekeeping

see that list of links on the right side of this page? i'm trying to make sure they're updated and that i haven't inadvertently left anyone out. if you have a blog and/or tumblr that you think i should link to, let me know. i'm sure there's a few sites out there that i should be reading and i just don't know what they are yet. :-)

thanks.

tionda & diamond: 10 years later

this is something i posted on urbantherapy back in november of 2003:

the cover of the tv guide from the sun-times is touting the premiere of the elizabeth smart story. troy needed a refresher on the case and after i filled him in, i noted that we still don't know where tionda and diamond are. just a few minutes ago, i was glancing at my yahoo start page and its tv listings tell me that i'm missing both the elizabeth smart story and saving jessica lynch. i wondered again where the bradley sisters are. it bugs me from time to time -- are they ok? are they being treated well? i'm reminded of them whenever the media decides to blitz us with a kidnapping that they think we'll care deeply about. which is not to say that i didn't/don't care about the hundreds, if not thousands, of people that go missing on a regular basis. but every now and again, i wonder about tionda and diamond. i wonder why i don't hear about them so much.

and then i glance at my yahoo horoscope for today and i gain a little perspective. "If you actually knew the truth of all the things that are going on outside your world, you would be appalled, dear Sagittarius. You should not take things at their face value today. It is important for you to simply go out and see things for yourself. Do not trust other people's word on what is the truth and what is not. Question what you see, and make sure you don't let others pull the wool over your eyes."

i tweeted about tionda & diamond yesterday in response to the casey anthony verdict. we'll probably never find out what exactly happened to caylee, but 10 years later, i'm still hopeful that we'll find out something about tionda & diamond.

for some reason, i thought that the tribune and/or the sun-times would have a story about the bradley girls today, given that this is the 10th anniversary of their disappearance. i was wrong. all i've found so far was this chicago defender article.

10 years. tionda & diamond would be 20 and 13 years old now. think about all the things that have happened in the past 10 years on a global/national/local/personal scale. and then think about the fact that for all we know, the bradley girls have missed out on all of that. or maybe they haven't. maybe they're safe & sound somewhere and it's only a matter of time before they come home.

yeah, i know...this is not the usual realistic/cynical/pessimistic side that you're used to seeing from me. there's a tiny part of me that sometimes still believes in happy endings. here's wishing for one for tionda & diamond.

recipe roundup

if you migrated here from urbantherapy, then you're already familiar with how these recipe posts work. if you're new, though, here's a quick intro - i test out recipes from various sources and let you know what i think of them. assume everything was delicious unless otherwise mentioned. here goes:

pork with buttered apples: if memory serves, i ran out of pork way before i ran out of apples. seriously. i think i had buttered apples for 3 days straight. this isn't a complaint, mind you. if i make this again, i'd let the apples cook a little longer - they were still kinda crunchy and i was hoping for a somewhat softer texture.

sauteed sausages with roasted grapes: this recipe actually comes from this cookbook that i got from the library a while back. my expectations were kinda low for this one, b/c i wasn't quite sure how the grapes would turn out, but they were surprisingly good. i think the grapes i bought were mislabeled, though, b/c there were quite a handful of seeds on the side of my plate once i was done eating.

pasta with garlicky roasted broccoli: this was all about the broccoli. i'd grabbed some broccoli at the store and didn't want to steam it or saute it, and was on the hunt for a different preparation method. this won. really. i was super-excited about making this and will make it again. this is not to say that i'm only going to make broccoli this way - just that it's a nice alternative.

spice-rubbed pork tenderloin : i didn't make the couscous mentioned in this recipe, so i can't comment on that. looking back, this rub is pretty basic, which would explain my overall feelings of "meh" about it. it wasn't bad, but i wasn't blown away by it, either.

braised country-style ribs with black-eyed peas: if you follow me on twitter, then you probably saw my tweets about this within the past day or so. i wanted ribs for the 4th and was originally going to go with my old standby of crockpot ribs, but then i remembered i had this recipe from this cookbook and decided to try it. if i make this again, i'm giving the collards more time - i let mine cook for about 35 minutes and they still didn't have quite the texture i wanted.

to market, to market

it's farmers market season, and while i know we're all excited about fresh fruit & veggies, there's a few items of deliciousness that you might not be acquainted with. unless, of course, you've heard me rave about them previously, in which case you're already in the know.

--cinnamon pound cake from breadman baking company. i bought this on a whim last year and fell in love. it's pretty simple and i'm sure the bakers among us could come up with one that'd be equally delectable, but baking isn't my strong suit (aside from paula deen's symphony brownies, obviously) and sometimes i prefer to leave such things in the hands of experts.

(an aside: that brownie recipe gives a yield of 24 large or 48 brownies. i've made those brownies more times than i can remember and the most i've gotten out of a batch is 18. just sayin'.)

--5 cheese garlic spread from river valley mushrooms. i've put this on mashed potatoes. pasta. bread. steak. fish. quesadillas. burgers. and probably a few things i'm forgetting at the moment. you can buy this glorious spread at farmers markets (check river valley's site for a list) and at chicago's downtown farmstand.

--c & d family farms. they had me at bacon burgers, but then i tried the smoked pork chops. and a couple of steaks. and more bacon burgers. and did i mention bacon burgers? b/c, really, it's all about the bacon burgers. i might be in crystal's (the "c" of c & d) eternal debt for introducing bacon burgers into my life. if you've had them, then you know they're amazing. if you haven't had them and you're a bacon fan, then you need to try them at least once. they're magic. seriously. there's usually at least one pack of bacon burgers in my freezer all summer long...and then i buy 2-3 packs before the season's over to get me through the winter and spring. they're that good, imo.

now, of course, i've made myself hungry and i probably won't make it to a farmers market this week. mmm...fresh cherries. and strawberries. and corn. and broccoli. and...well, you get the point. bon appetit!

hail to alma mater

it's commencement weekend at northwestern, and all the tweets about graduation and purple gowns (seriously, purple gowns? in my day, we had blue gowns and we were thankful!) and colbert's address and webcasts of the ceremony have me feeling a bit nostalgic. yes, i know it's a bit weird to mention tweets and nostalgia in the same sentence.

i have so many purple-tinged memories that it's damn near impossible to pick my all-time absolute favorite one, the one i'm about to tell ranks pretty high for me.

flashback, if you will, to 13 (!) years ago, when i was working on my very last assignment as an undergraduate. i hadn't really thought about graduate school yet, so i was probably going on the assumption that it'd be my last assignment ever.

wanna know what that assignment was? it was an essay for a communications studies seminar. i don't remember the topic of the seminar and it's not listed on my transcript, but it's not really important right now. what's important is what i filled up a blue book writing about...ll cool j. i'm serious. i cited his autobiography and everything. please don't ask me about exact content b/c, well, it was 13 years ago. i got an a-minus in the class, though, so it couldn't have been too horrible.

i just looked at my loyola transcript and i have no idea what my last b-school assignment was. there could've been a group project involved. or a paper. i really don't know. given my decades-long infatuation with ll, though, it should come as little surprise that i'd remember writing about him for class.

the best part about that assignment at the time? i finished it during reading week, which meant i had 2 weeks (finals week and senior week) to do nothing but hang out and pack. good times. :-)

revisited: 25 things

[note: this was originally posted on urbantherapy. i've made a few edits and changed the order of a couple of things, but the bulk of the content is the same, so if you read this previously, feel free to skip it this time around.]

1. i’m a loner by nature. i put a v. high premium on having time to myself. it stems from having v. little time to myself while growing up and just wanting...no, needing time/space for me to do whatever i wanted. as extroverted as i am, there are definitely times when i just want to sit at home and read a book/watch tv/sleep/do nothing. having that kind of time is one of the very few bonuses of being out of work right now.

2. i made a declaration when i was 12 or 13 that i wasn’t going to have kids, and i plan on standing by that declaration. people find it slightly odd when they realize that yes, i really do love children and would probably make a decent mom. i just have no interest whatsoever in having children of my own.

3. i moved in with my brother and his family when i was 9 and didn’t move out until i graduated from high school. during those years, i stayed with my father on weekends and holidays, assuming that my behavior passed muster for the week. it sucked. imagine having to ask to spend a weekend with your father, knowing that the answer v. well could be no.

4. living with and having lots of responsibility for my niece and nephew during those years is the number one reason why i don’t want to have kids. i was the one getting them up and out the door in the mornings, making sure they did homework, making their lunches, getting their outfits together for school...and oh yeah, i still had my chores to do around the house and homework to get done. that sucked, too.

5. my career ambition from 2nd grade until freshman year of college was to become a lawyer. you can imagine how confused my family was when i switched to communication studies. given my current un(der)employment status, you might think i'd have regrets about not going to law school. i don't.

6. speaking of regrets...i have two of them about college: not continuing spanish classes after freshman year, and not finding a way to study abroad. i'd be fluent and i'd have at least one stamp on my passport.

7. i spent the evening of my 17th birthday being v. depressed, v. angry, and damn near suicidal. i wrote a poem/suicide note about missing my mom and wanting to be with her in heaven. obv. i didn’t go through with it. i vaguely remember not being able to find enough pills to pop.

8. i tried out for the pom-pom squad in 8th grade. i didn’t make the cut. i think it was b/c i couldn’t do splits.

9. still can’t do splits. i have a mental block against them. no, seriously.

10. after my mom died when i was 7, i lived with my mom’s best friend and her family for 2 years before moving in with my brother.

11. i was about 8 or so and was practicing splits (fuck if i know why) in the living room at my mom’s friend’s house. a male friend of my mom’s friend was over and decided to be my cheerleading coach. um, let’s just say that some improprieties occurred and then practice was over.

12. i managed to block that memory until i was about 15.

13. on a lighter note...i started reading when i was 2. i was about 2 and a half when my mom took me to the doctor b/c i wasn’t talking yet and she was worried. the doctor told her that i was too busy reading and that i’d talk when i was good and ready. growing up, my brothers liked to joke that i started talking and haven’t shut up since. somewhere there’s a picture of me reading the phone book. apparently everyone laughed until they realized i was holding it right side up and turning pages.

14. i can hold a grudge like nobody’s business. there are whole segments of “family” and at least one "friend" that i haven’t talked to in years b/c of past transgressions.

15. i can’t swim. it’s another mental block — my ex-stepmother decided it'd be a good idea to have one of my cousins throw me in the pool. it didn't work. that's one of the myriad reasons why i have an ex-stepmother in the first place.

16. i look like my mother (and james) but am a daddy’s girl at heart. yes, i'm a grown-ass woman and my father's been dead for 14 years, but i still think of myself as a daddy's girl. so be it.

17. one of my ex-stepbrothers used to be a bodyguard for michael jackson.

18. i once won a poetry contest sponsored by gwendolyn brooks. i think there were 20 winners total. my hair looks a hot mess in the photos. two words: crimping iron.

19. i auditioned for ‘rent’ in 1999. i made it through the first 2 prelim rounds and got cut in the final prelim. i was just proud of myself for making it that far, esp. since i was singing a cappella.

20. i never learned how to ride a bike. no mental block there — it just never happened.

21. i have permanent tan lines on my upper arms. i’ve had them for as long as i can remember.

22. i’m scared of having my genes tested b/c i already know how bad they are. at every checkup, my doctor offers to give me a referral and i pass every time b/c i don’t need to have concrete details on how screwed my health is now/will be in future.

23. i’ve never had a broken bone.

24. or a pet.

25. or allergies. bonus!

26. out of all the people i went to elementary, junior high, and high school with, i only keep in regular contact with one of them. frankly, it’s worked out better that way.

stop reading if you've heard these

james has been on my mind a lot lately. i don't necessarily think that he's trying to communicate with me from heaven or the great beyond or whatever afterlife you may or may not believe in, but there's definitely...something. i can't quite put my finger on it, and i'm not inclined to put forth that much effort into solving the puzzle.

some of the memories popped up late last week when #10confessions popped up as a trending topic on twitter. i started thinking about doing a post about 10 confessions, but then i remembered i'd done that whole "25 things you don't know about me" meme a while back, so i was just going to repost that. so then i started thinking about confessions/memories related to northwestern, b/c it's senior week and it seemed appropriate.

for instance...did you know that james paid for my northwestern class ring? he called me one day senior year, not long after i'd picked the ring out and charged it to my amex card. he asked how things were going, and i mentioned the ring to him. he sounded devastated when i told him i'd paid for it already (ok, not technically paid for, but, y'know) and he damn near demanded to know how much it was. next time i saw him, he gave me a check for the full amount of the ring. i tried to turn him down, but he was pretty adamant about it.

i know that doesn't sound like much, but considering that i almost didn't make it back to northwestern for my senior year, it meant (and still means) a lot to me.

yes, folks, that's another confession. i was *thisclose* to leaving northwestern. after daddy died during junior year, james was the one in charge of handling the estate and taking care of bills. daddy had set up a payment plan for the portion of tuition/room & board that wasn't covered by loans and grants, and luckily that had been taken care of for the year. senior year, though, was up in the air. daddy didn't have life insurance (note: my policy, coincidentially enough, is through northwestern's alumni association), and money was tighter than usual.

when my financial aid package came in, there was a sizable gap between what loans/grants/work-study covered and what i'd be responsible for. well, what james and i would be responsible for. even on the 9-month payment plan, there was no way that amount was feasible. at all. even if i moved back "home" and cut out room/board, there was no way we'd be able to make it work.

thus began my summer of "stalking" the financial aid office. i was working on campus, so it wasn't much of a stretch to walk over and plead my case on a monthly basis. or was it bi-weekly? i don't really remember. what i do remember was me pleading my case to the financial aid officer. i played every card i could think of. the "i'm an orphan" card. the "it'd mean so much to graduate on time" card. the "i've worked so hard and i don't wanna dropout" card. the "do you want me to be another minority statistic?" card. yeah, i went there. i didn't care. i begged for more work-study, more loans, more grants...whatever would lessen the out-of-pocket burden.

and it worked. the details are sketchy at this point, but my expected contribution came down to a slightly more tolerable level. it'd still be a stretch for me and james, but we'd make it work. and we did. and i graduated, and here i am. this story would have a much happier ending if i was employed right now, but oh well.

i have 1 or 2 more northwestern-related confessions, but i'll save those for another post. there's at least one more james-related memory that's been on my mind lately, but, again, another post. and yes, i'll post the 25 things here, probably before the week is out.

an introduction...or something

i just realized that i should start posting here sooner rather than later, since the blog known as urbantherapy is no more. a bit uncanny, actually, that urbantherapy is turned off a few days prior to the 1-year mark of the beginning of the end of the real-life urbantherapy. yeah, that's vague on purpose...i might come back to that in a later post. ask me offline if you have no idea what i'm talking about.

anyway... that description at the top of the page pretty much sums things up. i promise you nothing but whatever i feel like sharing at any given time. if you follow me on twitter, then you already know i'm prone to randomness. and lowercase. and sentence fragments. and run-on sentences. actually, if you read urbantherapy on anything resembling a quasi-regular basis, then you're accustomed to this. if you're new...o hai! :-)

i might copy over some previous urbantherapy posts here w/in the coming weeks. most likely recipes, b/c it'd be nice to have all of those links to refer to when i start doing recipe roundups here. maybe some other stuff. we'll see.

so, yeah. welcome to my blog. more later...