that new radiohead song

forget about the fact that it looks like thom yorke has tourette's syndrome. i'm obsessed with this video right now.

book art

the genius behind this is isaac salazar. by folding the pages of these books, he's come up with a twist on the old pop-up book. 

pretty amazing, right?

a confession

i sometimes have a dirty mouth. in my defense, i usually only swear, cuss, curse (whatever you call it) out loud when i’m around my fiance or very close friends. and, also in my defense, the foul words don’t carelessly fly out of my mouth-- they are often deliberate and befitting in most circumstances.

still, i don’t like it. years ago, a great friend of mine told me that she doesn’t swear because she thinks that curse words don’t help her express herself any better than non-curse words. so, why start? she has a good point. but swearing, if the situation permits, can be so right. allow me to elaborate:

exhibit a: the wrong:
“oh, f--k, i totally forgot to get my clothes out of the washer!”
“that mailroom guy has been such a d--k lately.”

exhibit b: the right:
“wow, that 12 course thai meal at arun’s was f------ fabulous.”
“love, some ass---- totally stole your parking space.”

exhibit c: the understandable:
“s---, i stubbed my toe in the bathtub!”

right, wrong, or understandable, i still feel a little awkward admitting this bad habit of mine. so, i think i’ll stop swearing soon, one step at a time. starting with the exhibit a category, of course.

valentine’s day plans?

yes, please! some call it a “commercial holiday”, others call it a “hallmark holiday”, but for the past few years, andre and i have called it “another excuse to celebrate.” :) he finds the prettiest, glitziest valentine’s day cards for me (he knows i love those!) and writes the sweetest messages on them. i try do the same-- only i get him funny cards, not glittery ones. we might also decide to go out for a nice dinner downtown or stay in and order a heart-shaped pizza from our favorite pizzeria.

this year, we’ve decided to go out for thai, but not at just any thai restaurant. the thai restaurant... the thai restaurant on the 1,000-places-to-see-before-you-die list! the thai restaurant that wolfgang puck called “the best thai restaurant in the country”! wolfgang puck! 

maybe i’m a little too excited about this high-end twelve course meal that we’ve scheduled for sunday night (we’re celebrating a day early). but, really, if wolfgang puck thinks it’s amazing, it must be pretty good, right?

do you have any fun plans for valentine’s day?

brain game

a coworker shared this with me today, and i thought it was so fun!

"the trick is to find the man in the coffee beans:

doctors have concluded that if you find the man in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, the right half of your brain is better developed than most people. if you find the man between 3 seconds and 1 minute, the right half of the brain is developed normally. if you find the man between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein. if you have not found the man after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger!!"

i'll admit that the paragraph above is a little ridiculous, but i love games like these. i spotted the man in the coffee beans in under 3 seconds, but that's because i've played a lot of "find mii" on wii, so this was a cinch. :)

happy friday!

snowcation

we are so amazingly snowed in that i was excused from work yesterday and today! here is a photo of the view outside my apartment building door-- the cars are still totally covered in mounds of snow like this:

thanks to the mini snowcation, my favorite person and i got to enjoy this:

champagne and a little childhood favorite called the grilled cheese sandwich.

some cleaning and shoveling-- side note: isn’t that graffiti art so cool?

movies. finally watched “the red ballon” and liked it a lot.
if you’re at all into french cinema,
and have a short attention span like me (only 30+ minutes long!),
you might like it too.

board games like scattergories, chess, and even a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of klimt’s, the kiss.
a couple of hours into the puzzle,
we realized that we lacked puzzle-piecing ambition and gave up. :)

and, last but not least, skinny cow ice cream sandwiches!
why hadn’t i tried these sooner?
they are fantastic.

strangeness on “snow-mageddon”

it’s supposed to be the worst snowstorm that will hit chicago in twenty years. and, starting in just a few hours, the snow will accumulate to up to twenty inches. that’s a whole lot of snow, but is it so much to be concerned over? doubt it. what does concern me a bit, though, are a few strange things that i’ve come across in the past 24 hours, which must totally be connected to this impending snow-mageddon:

1. the mysterious wrench on my bathroom floor mat

i don’t know how it got there, and it’s unsettling to know that somebody was in my apartment while i was at work, without my permission. maybe it has something to do with our landlord taking precautions so that our water pipes don’t freeze during the snowstorm? who knows, but the wrench is still sitting on my bathroom floor mat.

2. grocery shopping craze

have you seen any news images/videos of grocery shoppers (prayers go out to them) in cairo? well, it’s not so different here in chicago right now. andre had to appear in court today for a minor car accident he was involved in (long story short: he hit a car after his car tires slipped on the road a few weeks ago, and so he got a ticket, which was dismissed today). i went to court with him this morning, and he took me grocery shopping afterward. the store was so packed that we had to wait 15 minutes for an available grocery cart.

even the traffic lady took a break from work to go grocery shopping. i love that she had a STOP sign in her cart! :)

3. a judge’s lecture on safe driving

 the “i-don’t-bite” judge that dismissed andre’s ticket gave us all a lecture on speeding, driving without seat belts on, drunk driving, driving while angry, and texting while driving. he seemed like a nice guy, and it was an interesting lecture... the only thing is that i was a little perplexed about whether a lecture like that is standard before court hearings.

eyebrow raisers aside, i’m so excited to wake up tomorrow morning to the sight of almost two feet of white snow covering our city.