this week: vegas, paris, chicago & cinci!

this has been a crazy week. glad to be unwinding with a little cab franc and this 60 degree weather in dallas.

so this week was interesting in the way of travel and photos. kinda cool to get the photos i got messaged to me. oh, i love technology!

i was in vegas for a chevy meeting, ROF was in columbus, ohio and naperville, il (hello? i grew up here!) and my sister katie was in cincinnati where my grandma lived and my mom grew up. very very near and dear to my heart. lastly, d, a great friend of ours, is in paris (my ultimate dream location which i’ve never been) and he has been sending me snaps all week.

so, these were the photos i got and took this week.

while i was waiting wednesday morning for a friend to go to a meeting with, i saw this. a dude in his robe and baseball cap holding an elevator and hanging out. what happens in vegas … goes on a blog, dude.

this was our house in naperville. i got this from ROF who was there for a couple of days. i lived in this house from the summer before my sophomore year in high school until i moved downtown chicago when i was 23 years old. my family then moved on to dallas when i was 25. so this house brings back so-many-memories. i can tear up thinking of them. thanks, ROF.

this snap was sent by my sister, katie. she was in cincinnati and this was my grandparents condo on erie avenue in hyde park right across from the hyde park country club where they were founding members. this also brings back so many many memories. i can remember what the condo smelled like – leather and just baked mini bran muffins (my grandma was a stickler about maintaining her weight) i remember the bottom drawer of her dresser in her bedroom (2 twin beds – one for her, one for grandpa) that held plastic bangles of all shapes, sizes and colors. i used to put those on up to my elbow. the other thing i used to do – which is really funny – is when i got a little older, like that awkward middle school age, was read the dirty parts of her “romance” novels. note, they weren’t today’s standard of “dirty” they were super tame but…hello…granny!!

lastly, d really came through for me on texting pictures of paris.

i hope i get to experience this city. i may have it all built up in my head but i’m a very passionate person – about life, love, work, family, art etc… and this (TO ME) is the city that personifies that to me. everything about it is passionate – right down to the food, the sidewalk cafes – everything. thanks d for letting me live vicariously through you for the week!

that’s it for now folks. have a great weekend!

7am saturday sweet brew

the best day and time of the week is 7am on saturday morning.  now that i’m old, i am actually awake to hear the first bird churp the morning song.  it means it’s time soon to stream – via apple tv – chicago’s 93xrt radio station and listen to saturday morning flashback (ROF is uncanningly good at guessing the year before they say it)

this morning i thought about

my love affair with coffee.  it started when i was attending columbia college on michigan avenue in chicago.  my neighbor in naperville actually opened a coffee store on michigan avenue (in chicago place) and i worked there during my sophomore year.  it was quite a venture for her as a non-entrepreneur – opening a coffee shop on arguably one of the best well-known shopping streets in the country. hell0… cha ching…i’m just sayin’.

i didn’t necessarily like to drink coffee – i did – but that’s not why i liked it.  i romanticized it all out of proportion (i stole that line from woody allen’s opening monologue in manhattan.)  i love all the words that go along with coffee like brew, vanilla, steep, chicory, espresso, dark roast, latte, mug, cinnamon, morning, pick-me-up, clutch, auto-timer (ok, i like more what that does vs. the word)

i just liked the idea of it.  of course, i was smoking at the start of my love affair with coffee.  many of you would say ewww gross but truly…sigh… being 23 going to school in downtown chicago, drinking coffee at an outside cafe’ and smoking a marlboro light was just the breakfast of champions (and oh so french).  i could do that because at that age, i was for sure invincible.  going to school and being facinated with advertising and marketing and life.  it was all real good.

back then i was obsessed with paris too. 

so welcome saturday morning.  let’s all brew a great cup of joe and look forward to a great day ahead.

these photos, their credits and more breakfast goodies can be found on my pinterest board here.

j’aime paris

first of all,

i’d like to let you know how much fun i’m having writing this blog.  it has become a hobby, a past-time, a creative outlet.  i am filled with so much passion for so many things, it’s nice to release it somehow, if only to myself.  so what may seem random to you, is not so much to me.  that brings us to today, monday and some random musings on paris.

i’ve never been to paris…

but i’ve always wanted to go.  i blame the urge on my first boss (actually president of the ad agency) who introduced me to the book “a moveable feast” by ernest hemingway.  are you a fan?  it was actually published 2 or 3 years after hemingway died.  it was started by him then compiled by his 4th wife and widow from trunkfuls of his writing when he was in paris.  i heard somewhere that if you read the book aloud to a blind person, they would be able to clearly visualize what paris was like.  i imagine that would be the same for someone who had never been to paris, like moi.  the name from the book came from a friend of his who played a part in the editing.  hemingway told him this about paris:

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man,

then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you,

for Paris is a moveable feast.

“All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife – second class – and the hotel where Verlaine and died where I had a room on the top floor where I worked.”  -Ernest Hemingway, “A Good Cafe on the Place St.-Michel,” A Moveable Feast

“But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.”
-Ernest Hemingway, “People of the Seine,” A Moveable Feast

“But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from the track and to bet on your own life and work, and on the painters that you knew and not try to make your living gambling and call it by some other name.“
-Ernest Hemingway, “The End of an Avocation,” A Moveable Feast

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” -Ernest Hemingway

When I woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there. I put my face away from the moonlight into the shadow but I could not sleep and lay awake thinking about it. We had both wakened twice in the night and my wife slept sweetly now with the moonlight on her face. I had to try to think it out and I was too stupid. Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false spring…But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight”  – Ernest Hemingway, a moveable feast

i guess you could say that this is imaginary appreciation of paris.  at least until i get a chance to go.