This is the part of the day where I make you think about Joni Mitchell and California and the fact that something is always beautiful somewhere.
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Fantasy Apartment Trifecta
If you looked at my browser history for the past week, you’ll see that I am locked into a deep, powerful game of Fantasy Apartment.
Beware. If you click repeatedly between these three sites, you may never make it out of your pajamas this morning. I share with you now the Fantasy Apartment Trifecta (FAT).
Small Cool Contest on Apartment Therapy :: Is your house Teeny Tiny? Tiny? Or just Little? Enter this contest so I can drool over your masterful floor plan and tasteful pops of color, all in a space less than 1000 sq. feet.
Design Seeds by Jessica Colaluca :: Ever want to match the tones of your bedroom to those of molting love birds? Or an ice cream sundae? Now you CAAAAAAN.
Padmapper :: Google Maps meets Craigslist Apartments for Rent. Visualize your new neighborhood while you search for that perfect 1 bedroom with a bonus room. Or 2 bedroom if it’s cheap.
Posted in Today
Conference Survival Guide: Part 2
I regularly go to conferences as part of my work at a certain art school. Although they take place in hotels, conferences are devoid of the usual good time antics of a family vacation or post-prom party. Here’s how to survive.
When there is someone on the conference staff under the age of 39 with a smartphone, you’ll be encouraged via a friendly poster or pre-conference ‘email blast’ to tweet about the conference using a special conference hashtag. If you use this hashtag (unless you’re at a conference that is about social networking or marketing), you’ll be one of five smartasses who secretly tweet about what the presenters are saying–quietly stabbing or affirming them inside the solitude of the internet. In that way, tweeting during a conference provides entertainment and is one way to prove to yourself that you were paying attention and not just biding your time in between snack breaks.
The major problem with these conference-based tweets is that the people who follow you who are not at the conference will think that you have gone balmy. “Who says open learning is just for high schools? #edfest2012″ will come right after a tweet like: “Aside from everything else, there’s no way that I can live in a country where our president is named Rick.” Your followers will be so confused. You’re a funny-ish person with a Twitter voice they’ve grown to love when they see it every day and a half or so when something funny actually happens or you just feel like complaining. Can you afford twitterconfusion amongst your tiny cadre of 101 followers, give or take a spambot?
Posted in Part of My Job
Conference Survival Guide: Part 1
I regularly go to conferences as part of my work at a certain art school. Although they take place in hotels, conferences are devoid of the usual good time antics of a family vacation or post-prom party. Here’s how to survive.
On the first full day of the conference, you will have this thought: “I am the sexiest person here.” Enjoy the next three and a half days of your potent hotness because after the conference, you’ll go back to being just attractive enough to get a biweekly complement from a coworker. For now, roam the conference halls in your last season, on sale dress from Macy’s like you’re Gwyneth in Tom Ford at the Oscars. This is your moment. Werk.
However, if you don’t want to be the tall poppy at the conference, here’s some advice on how to fit in: Buy business casual wear from Kohls, or, if you’re flush, Chicos. Make sure to wear nylons under your business sandals. Definitely use the neck-fanny-pack that you got at the conference registration table. Use both a backpack and a smart, leather wallet-on-a-strap in addition to the neck-fanny-pack. Don’t use the backpack for the many papers you accumulate. Carry them. For sure, brew coffee in your hotel room and carry the cup until the first coffee break. This way, you will have both of your hands occupied and will have to wait for other people to push elevator buttons for you. Forget about smiling.
Posted in Part of My Job
Sleep No More
This past weekend, I went to New York to see a play, Sleep No More. (Now I’m one of those people.) But this interactive, multi-story, designed-the-hilt installation went way beyond your average flipper-seat yawner. The audience is encouraged to touch things, open drawers, and examine papers and props around the fictional McKittrick Hotel, which serves as the set for this Macbeth-ish play. There are also many elements of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, including a very convincing Mrs. Danvers-type character. (Creepers.) The audience wears masks to create a sense of anonymity, and no talking is allowed. You can follow around whichever characters you choose and take in snatches of the story as you wander through the rooms and landscapes of Sleep No More‘s secret world. Surprises, both welcome and unsettling, await…
I was happy to discover that two members of the cast are CalArts dance alums, Nicholas Bruder and Jordan Morley. Nicholas played Macbeth on the night that I attended. He was incredible! I couldn’t take pictures, but the New York Times has several slideshows.
Don’t you want to be one of those people now?
Posted in Secret Worlds
My Mother, the Squirrel
Each December throughout my childhood, my grandmother, Verna Schroeder, would bake about a dozen different kinds of Christmas cookies, and she would mail a tin to my family. After its journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, the tin would be unsealed and out would waft a mix of cinnamon, chocolate, almond, and lemon. Bright cornflake holly cookies sat atop moon-like almond crescents and pecan dreams. My parents happily took the rock-hard honigkuchen, while my brother Josh and I raced to eat the acorns: small nut-shaped, spritz cookies, half-dipped in chocolate. Our mother had to ration them, like a squirrel…hiding acorns…from her children?
After my grandmother grew old and then passed away, my dad took on the duty of making Schroeder Christmas cookies. Starting in 1995, he blanched the almonds, double boiled the chocolate, and zested the lemons himself. Some years I would help; this year, my two-year old nephew Kenji assisted by repetitively sticking his little finger in the sugar, licking it, and saying, “Little bit,” before putting it back into the bowl.
Family tradition somehow justifies the resultant wild excess of cookies around my parents’ house. There are always at least six or eight tins of cookies at Casa Schroeder during December. To spare my brother, me, and our spouses (adults, all) from endless cookie-eating, my mother still rations the cookies by attempting to hide the tins. At least one tin of acorns ends up in the laundry room on the dryer or on a table by the back door or in the fridge outside. (Outside!) But we always find them, Squirrel Mom. And we always eat way too many acorns.
Crocheting is my Angry Birds
Crocheting relaxes my brain. All I have to do is “yarn over, pull through” in various combinations, and then at some point, there’s a headband or a scarf in my lap. It’s magical!
The video for Seventeen Evergreen’s “Polarity Song” brings together three of my favorite things: crocheting, thrift stores, and secret worlds. Just relax, YarnFace, and dance for me.
Posted in Crochet, Secret Worlds