58 posts from 2008

wrote this in 2000, at age 21....

AKA places you are unlikely to find me dining. Please don't send gift cards.

Macaroni Grill: I'm sure they have more than macaroni so why choose such a limiting name? I prefer my macaroni at home where table service is not required.

Beef O Grady's: Well, I guess they serve beef...and they're Irish. So corned beef? Ok, as a veggie I'm not their target market but this name seems so...blah.

Beefaroo: Again with the beef! Brings underoos to mind. And I don't recommend eating dinner in your underoos. Maybe this is a good "my first restaurant" for the kiddie set. "Hey small fry - guess where we're gonna have dinner! Guess! Guess! Beefaroo! Yes - Beefaroo!"

Fuddruckers: Is this supposed to be a faux swearword like "frickin"? Let's name a new restaurant. Think of a naughty piece of vocab and add four additional letters to the middle. Like oh, I don't know "ddru"?

Kisses,
Tofu O'Callaghan

I spent Thanksgiving with my ex-boyfriend (strange, I know) and his family. He's recently become a...I'll call him a mostly vegetarian (on account of the steak sandwich that he couldn't resist on Sunday.) On Thanksgiving Day he stuck to his new diet. I encourage him but I don't push. In fact when we had lunch with my parents on Saturday I told him he should eat the burger he was craving. I know this isn't the easiest of changes. And I'd rather him make baby steps than ditch the whole veg thing altogether. The before dinner entertainment was King Corn, an interesting documentary about two Coasties that move to Iowa to grow corn and share what they learned in the process. We watched them make high fructose corn syrup in their own kitchen. We all marveled at the chemicals that went into it's production. Well, most of us marveled...Richard's 8-yr old niece fell asleep but she was caught up on what she missed by the rest of the fam. On Saturday night when she slept over at her Grandma's she took inventory of the cupboards and let us know which items contained high fructose corn syrup. At first I was worried that Richard was being too much of a know-it-all but everyone seemed to appreciate the info. Some people aren't ready for this information and I've probably slipped to the too-reserved approach when discussing these things. I saw the benefits when this growing girl was not only aware of the things we eat but engaged by it. This was after we returned from having sushi with Richard's 11-yr old nephew. Brave young man! I wouldn't have tried sushi at his age. When I was 11 I finally realized that Chinese food was not just edible but delicious. Seaweed would have been too much for me! He wasn't thrilled but he tried it and I imagine he'll be open to more culinary adventures in the future. May they be healthy!

Introduced the office girls to etsy today when they commented on my new necklace. I'm loving these.

Here's some career paths that he might be in:

Bike Mechanic:  Not sure how secure the bike mechanic biz is but it sure would be nice to get down and dirty and learn some stuff from a bike enthusiast. I am referring to actual bike maintenance there...well, mostly.

Pastry or Vegetarian Chef: It seems unlikely that I'll meet a single, straight pastry or veg chef but a girl can certainly dream. Or a regular chef would be okay if he's open to veg dishes and more agreeable than Gordon Ramsey.

Programmer/Techy sort: Many of the exes that I've had decent relationships with have been in computers in some capacity. A friend of mine has seen excellent programmer-designer matches. It would be nice to have someone around to help me with the heavy coding! ;) I'm not really that interested in the gamer variety but if I found one that actually enjoyed a large proportion real life out in the daylight I might give it a shot. Might.

I saw a tweet from a lady whose husband was sewing curtains. She said he sure knew how to get laid. I would love a man that helped out around the house but not to the "clean freak" degree.

Astrologically, I'm supposed to get along which Aries and such matches have proved successful in my past. My nouveau-ex is an Aquarius, my astrological opposite, considered a bad match and at least currently that certainly seems to be the case. Not sure if I believe that stuff but I would be more hopeful if a guy checked out astrologically

Let me set the stage... The pub at Hyland's Hotel in windblown Ballyvaughan in the West of Ireland. An impromtu trad music session has started. Somebody started singing and others went out to their cars and returned with instruments. I started sketching them and this attracted attention. Once the musicians realized I was American, more specifically a Wisconsinite, they asked if I would treat them to a Wisconsin song. Being my bashful, relatively unmusical self, I refused them but the concept of a Wisconsin song stuck with me. What's a Wisconsin song? Even if I was vocally gifted I wouldn't have known a Wisconsin song. Since then I have determined two songs to be Wisconsin songs. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald & Pinery Boy. In looking for links I discovered that Nick Cave sang a version. Know of any more?

Julie, Ali & I showed up at the Flat Iron building, aka The Coyote, last Saturday morning. A few studios were open but no one was taking tickets. We wandered around and I wondered if we had arrived too early...I mean I know the opening party was the night before but I thought the thing would start before noon. I took a closer look at the Around the Coyote poster and noticed it was at it's new location in the West Loop. I had checked out their website a couple times in the past month and completely missed the part about a new location. I think it should have been more prominent. As Steve Krug puts it in his web usability book "Too-sublte visual cues are actually a very common problem. Designers love subtle cues, because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues. In general, if you're a designer and you think a visual cue is sticking out like a sore thumb, it probably means you need to make it twice as prominent." I fall into both the designer and Web user categories and in this case I was the rushing Web User and could've used a nice big and/or bright "New Location!" cue somewhere. I love to visit Bucktown as much as the next girl but I would have planned my weekend a bit differently had I known about the new location.

My favorite artists this year were Stephan Giannini & Sarah Perez. Stephan's painting of a woman on the train was my absolute favorite piece of the whole show. I'm a sucker for traditional figure painting and loved this wistful looking train commuter. Could've been me taking the train to the Palette & Chisel when I lived in Chicago. Suppose another reason I loved it so much as this is the kind of thing I might paint could I find time between web classes, work & freelance design. There were some great land/cityscape photos at the show but I really respond to photos with people. Sarah's photos had a nouveau-antique feel. See here & here! Love!

The new setting at Plumber's Hall in the West Loop was nice but I missed the nooks & crannies of the Coyote. We heard some artists tallking about this leveling the playing field since some of them were missed/overlooked in the old location. Some of the regular artists weren't there this year. I really missed touring Jo-Jo's Closet, collector of strange stuff. Out of his closet, you lose the context since his stuff wouldn't easily translate to a white-walled booth. Artists with larger works could only fit a small number of pieces on their two walled booths. Julie was happy we stopped by the original location since her favorite painter had her studio open and she was not in the West Loop either. Later that day I read an article about the move that stated the new location was an up and coming art area with many studios. However we who parked about 5 very loooong blocks away (by The Oprah Show studio) did not see any sign of life on that street. However there was parking enough for half of Chicago which was a plus. We had grabbed the first spot we saw since we were conditioned by the Bucktown/Wicker Park parking experience.

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Last Wednesday Christian Lander was in Madison for the Wisconsin Book Festival. I had a critique in my web design class so I had to miss it. However my friend, Kris, went and she picked up a signed copy for me. He spelled my name wrong though but it's okay. Suppose if I were a Spanish male it might be spelled that way. I have an uh...fond memory of my 7th grade Science teacher asking me if my name was pronounced "'Jah-may' or "Jamie like a boy." It was around that time that some of my friends started Spanish so I did get used to responding to "Hi-may." So thanks for bringing back junior high memories, Christian. I won't even get started on high school. And thanks for the Ugly Office Sweater shout-out.

Tuesday night, I went to pick up some web design books on hold for me at the Pinney Library. I had removed SWPL from my online hold list. There were 69 people ahead of me on that list - thank god, I have my own copy now. The librarian, a man in his 30s, asked me if I still wanted "Stuff White People Like." I said no and felt silly since out of context the title sounds kind of weird. But then he asked me if it was based on that blog and when I said yes, preceded to talk about peacoats. As I left he was asking the other librarian is she's heard of the blog. She had....

I had a Lemonheads t-shirt then – the green one with the cow with the ring in it’s nose and petals around it’s head. I remember wearing it to see a band at the UWSP Union and being called a “wannabe.” Well, of course I was a wannabe – I was 15 at the time and figuring out what the hell it was I wanted to be! Bet most of those college students didn't have as good of taste in music at 15. Oh, Evan Dando. How I loved the long-haired men back then. I remember Sassy magazine had a contest for who got to take him to the prom. If I had known my luckiness quotient at the time I might have entered! Um, yeah...I'm totally jinxing my future winnings by being so darn confident about my current 

string of luck! If you're reading this, what were your favorites? 

I also had a Dinosaur Jr. shirt with a photo of a toddler smoking a cigarette. I remember wearing this at my grandparent's house which I'm sure delighted them. Bought it at the t-shirt shop at the end of Steven Point's main street. Probably after a day of hanging at the Mission Coffee House.

Here's one of my fave songs from my early teen years... Maybe why I so doggedly wanted to live abroad from little on? Or at least a fitting soundtrack for a girl of such aspirations. God, the video is so cheesy. I grew up without cable so I only saw this for the first time now! I currently have this song on my ipod. I must reflect on how amazing the ipod is - I used to play this album on my cassette walkman. Those things were huge and then you had to carry your tapes as well.