Cupcakes

The joy of letting them decorate their own cupcakes...

OkGo

okgo show

The other evening I had the pleasure of receiving some free tickets to see OKGO from my pal Neysa. It was an outdoor event for Columbia College's big art festival, Manifest but I was *special*.

We weren't supposed to have cameras so I couldn't go crazy with the photos but here is what I did manage to snap that was noteworthy.

I won't race unless I'm Chased

Last Thursday I participated in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge (race thingy). I had convinced my entire pod (for laymen that means the 4 cubicles of people that all sit together at my office) to participate. I am no runner so I determined ahead of time that this would be a purely walking endeavor.

After the 1/2 mile walk down there, standing around, listening to all the runners going for 15 minutes, we finally began to scramble up to the starting line. At about the 1/2 mile point we got right alongside the runners who were nearing the end of the run. :( 3 miles to go...

And then, at about 2.5 miles we just all got bored. I felt like jogging...which clearly means I'm losing my mind...and we all ran out of things to talk about except how bored we were. I came up with the idea of strapping a laptop around my neck next year so I could at least email or maybe even do a real-time blogging event! But we persevered and headed to the finish. At the last few moments I decided to sprint and took off like a mad woman toward the finish. I made the photographer laugh.

All in all, I think it was close to a 5 mile walking day. I was proud of my pod for participating and proud of myself for sticking to it.

Happy Memorial Day!

Nothing like a giant hot dog balloon to wish you a Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Lou's Birthday

Here are some images from Heidi Lou's birthday soirée earlier this month. We had a great time with tons and tons of great food from Brenna, some homemade burgers and quite a few cupcakes. I had made the pink ones which tumbled inside the carrier on the way over to the party so the little white ones were a photo substitute but heck, I still took photos of the pink messes anyway. And please note the sad clown, Brenna. She was cutting onions.

Maybe Brenna will be so kind as to send over some of our group pictures? We were posing for a photoshoot for Brenna all huddling over Heidi, and Otis (Brenna's doggie) was licking his chops each time we leaned him in...then his party hat would slip to the side and Heids and I would cry with laughter.

It was one of the funniest evenings I have had in a long long time.

Happy Birthday, Lou! Love you real much!

Me? Career Day? Huh.

Earlier this month the super boss of the whole office got an email asking if he could send a photographer or at least a researcher to talk at Career Day at Rosario Castellanos Elementary School on the southwest side. The request was then filtered down until it got a yes from me (the reigning "employee of the quarter", i might add).

I arrived at the school right around lunch time and I was greeted by some kids who were told to carry all my stuff for me...pretty sweet. So my lackeys and I went off into the library where there were pans and pans of what looked like the best Mexican food I had seen in weeks (Hah! Sorry, I eat a lot of Mexican food). I fixed a small plate and headed for a seat when I immediately recognized our local NBC morning weatherman, Andy Avalos. I smiled, he smiled and said hi and then I shuffled to the table behind him because I felt silly.

After lunch (where we were even offered homemade flan but I had no room to eat a bite) I was led to my classroom. There were three sessions of kids, so three presentations I was supposed to do, each lasting 30 minutes. I had no idea what my angle was going to be. I figured, "I'm a talker, I'll come up with it on the fly."

So there I am in the middle of talking about my basic stuff like what I do, where I grew up, blah blah, and I'm thinking, "I'm supposed to advise these kids on what it's like to be a photo researcher? I'm supposed to be a model of a career path when I tend to meander through school touching on 4 different majors and being forced to finally just pick something due to a lack of time, a career largely based on meeting a hilarious guy at my Kinko's who's parents happened to own a photo researching business...this is all supposed to inspire kids?"

Huh.

And then I realized my angle...it was so clear to me. I spoke, "You know, some of you will just know what you want to do in life. Someone here might really want to be a doctor, someone here might really want to open their own restaurant, or be a basketball player. My best friend knew in college she wanted to be a photographer and that's exactly what she did. I've never been that person. As a kid I loved art, I loved music, theatre, cooking...and that's pretty much what I still love today. I've never found it easy to decide which of those things I've wanted to concentrate on. I know there will be some of you out there who will feel that way too...that you're interested in a lot of things and you're good at them. I think the best advice I can give you is that it's ok. It's ok to not know what you want to do. You don't necessarily have to choose one career that you're going to be in for the next 50 years. Keep your eyes and ears open, keep yourself learning along the way, and try to keep learning about the things you love. It's ok to figure it out as you go."

And there we had it, that was my angle, the girl who, to them, looked like she had this awesome career working with photographers in this cool company downtown but who really made a lot of detours (especially in college...sorry Mom) but still ended up doing pretty well for herself.

The funny part is I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

P.S.

I looked for a contraband video from our show last night and couldn't find one but here's an ok video from an earlier performance. This is one of their new songs which was pretty cute. At our show Jemaine messed up the lyrics and they had to restart which was amusing...and we didn't have the sing along...and Bret's hair is shorter now...so many subtle yet important differences to note...I'll quit boring you with the details. On with the show!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aT-gyVrwYI

And, not to support the people who were blatantly taking photos at the show although we were told not to, here is someone else's photo from the show just for posterity.

Flight of the Conchords

Yes, that's right, we were two of the 3,600 people lucky enough to get tickets for the Flight of the Conchords show tonight! This is all due to Ryan's smart move of getting in line at 9:30am the day the tickets went on sale. We got 4th row slightly to the left...probably 25-30 feet away from Bret and Jemaine for their brilliantly funny show at the Chicago Theatre.

They played a bunch of their stuff from the show and the album as well as four new songs. It was sad that Ryan was still pretty sick or else he would have been laughing much harder. :( Poor Mr. Ryan.

If the guards at the theatre wouldn't have been so threatening I could have tried to take more photos besides these sneaky ones!

Smile!

Ok, everybody, put on your best fake smile for the camera! Lookie here! Greeaat! Thank you!

The Sublets at Lilly's

Last week I saw a raucous show out at Lilly's in Lincoln Park. It was this new band called "The Sublets". The lead singer/guitarist looked amazingly like my very own fiancé. They sounded great, looked pretty cute too and had what was the best merch I've ever seen for a new band! They have a bunch of shows booked for the summer already so I'll be taking more photos...hopefully in a place that's more photogenic than this one!