Ready to Show Our Faces Again

Thanks again for all your well wishes. I'm doing much better, although I still have a cough that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my lungs. Where the heck does all that gook come from?!

The big news around these here parts is that the band Ted drums in, the Tim Lowly Ensemble, got to open up for Rosie Thomas at North Park University. Rosie just happens to be one of my favorite singer-songwriters. Her latest album called These Friends of Mine is a collection of songs recorded pretty informally, mainly with her good friends Denison Witmer and Sufjan Stevens. It's probably my favorite album of hers to date.

Tim was missing his pianist, Maestro Matthew Ganong, and his violinist Ethan Adelsman (who's too busy playing for a gazillion other bands), but Danny Bracken from Anathallo joined in on mandolin, and Rebecca Miller added another guitar. I missed most of the set, as I was playing in the hallway with Cadence, who decided that it was a great time to pretend she was a barking dog while we were in the show.

Rosie's shows are always a mix of her beautiful and often serious and sad songs with her hilarious comedic antics and stories thrown in throughout the set. If you only listen to her CDs, you wouldn't think her shows would be this fun. It would kinda be like if Adam Sandler were performing an all Nick Drake concert, I suppose.

Rosie even performed what almost seemed like her own version of a burlesque show, except it was more like calisthenics and consisted of things like sit-ups, leg-lifts and the like. Only at a Rosie Thomas show will you witness something like that...

Cadence was actually in a good mood all throughout soundcheck (which started at 6:30p) pretty much until we went home close to 11pm. She didn't run amok as much as usual, and she actually did try to be quiet because she had told us she wanted to go to the show, and we'd told her she would have to be quiet. I think she spent so much time being quiet during soundcheck that when it was actually time for the show at 8pm, she was all quieted out and needed to do little kid things like crawl on all fours and bark. Totally understandable. Ted and Dave took Cadence outside to play during most of Rosie's set so I could enjoy the show without being self-conscious about my squirming-crawling-barking 3 year old.

Anyhoo, good times, good times...

Best Shot(s) Monday--Too Sick to Show My Face

Actually, Cadence is doing much better, but I've been sick as a dog this weekend. I've been coughing up so much gook and so often and with such force that I gave myself a migraine this weekend from just coughing. I coughed so hard this morning I threw up. Oh, wait. Was that Too Much Information? Sorry.

Seriously, though, it's gotten to the point where I don't go anywhere without a spittoon. Cuz swallowing that stuff back again just prolongs the sickness, ya know? Oh, wait. Was that Too Much Information? Sorry.

Hope I didn't totally gross out your Monday. If you want to recover, go visit other folks' Best Shot Mondays over on Tracey's Picture This.

Mama's Got a New Lens...

...and it's mighty fine! That's right. I broke down and got me the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. Some of you may know that the lens I shoot with 95% of the time is my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, and I truly, truly love that lens. For a hundred bucks, you're not going to get a better lens. The only downside is that because it's 50mm (which on my digital SLR equates to 75mm on a 35mm SLR), I'm always having to back way, way up to get the shot I want. That means arms-length self-portraits (like the one above) are out of the question.

With the 30mm, however, I can now get shots so much closer to the subject, like this one of Cadence who's doing her little "Mama, I'm tired" thing while holding onto my shirt. This is another shot I never could've taken w/ my 50mm.

Plus, I've been wanting to get more nursing photos before Cadence weans, and now I can take that myself no problemo.

I can't wait to try out this lens at a show. Now I'll be able to get the whole band in one shot without too much difficulty.

I'm The Luckiest Girl On the Upper North Side

And why am I so lucky, you ask? Cuz I got to spend an evening out. At Uncommon Ground. With just girls. And not just any girls, mind you. I had the special treat of an evening with the inimitable Bella of Beyond the Map and Leigh of Mere Mortal. Although we had never met before last night, these two women have been a source of inspiration and hope for me in so many ways, through their words, their courage, their struggles, their honesty...

We talked and talked and laughed and laughed. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt, being the one who borders on social anxiety disorder. I mean, I really, REALLY had fun! Hopefully, we'll get to do this again, although Leigh was only visiting from Arizona. But Bella lives in Chicago. In fact, we're practically neighbors! Hopefully, we'll be grabbing lattes together at Metropolis often.

A Random Meme

Kim over at Diapers, Budgets and Paint has tagged me for the Eight Random Things About Me-Meme. I'm not sure I can claim that these things I will post are random from a statistical standpoint, but I'll try to keep it not too deliberately random.

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Rules:
Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they've been tagged.

1. Our family immigrated from Seoul 3 days before my 6th birthday. Before we moved, I got to be part of a big birthday party for all the May birthdays at the kindergarten that my grandpa was the director of. The teacher asked each of us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I don't think I had ever thought about this before, and said the first thing that came to my mind, "A nurse." Because at that time, I thought the only professions available to women were teaching and becoming a nurse. How sad...

2. I grew up in a fundamentalist quasi-evangelical cult named University Bible Fellowship. It sucked. ASS. Bigtime.

3. When I was in the 8th grade, I had a crush on a perpetually stoned heavy metal drummer in my class named Mario Kuehn. For about a month, I covered my red Trapper Keeper with names of heavy metal bands written in Liquid Paper. Back in 1986, 103.1 FM was a little suburban station that played hispanic programming by day and heavy metal by night, and I would listen in on my headphones secretly in my bedroom while doing my homework. If my parents knew I was listening to the devil's music, they would've totally taken me somewhere to get the demons out of me. To this day, I get a little nostalgic when I hear Motley Crue. Or Wilco's song Heavy Metal Drummer.

4. When I was in school, I had a talent for multiple-choice questions. Every year, we'd have these standardized tests that lasted a couple days. The entire student body would spend hours filling in endless little bubbles with their #2 pencils. I remember looking over questions I had absolutely no answer for, and concentrating really hard, trying to plug in to the collective knowledge of the universe, and I would feel for the right answer. I did so well on these tests that I really believed that I actually had access to all the right answers in the Universe. Ha ha. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. At least I learned a thing or two about intuition.

5. I attended Chicago Public Schools from 1st grade through graduating from high school, EXCEPT for my freshman year of high school when my dad moved us out to WHEATON, ILLINOIS, the Evangelical capital of the midwest. Oh. My. Lord. Wheaton Central High School was full of girls who sported the same haircut (curled bangs and triangular poofy bob), carried Gucci purses (the real thing, not like the knockoffs from Korea my relatives sent me) and wore Guess jeans. Plus, I was one of maybe 7 Asians in the entire school. I escaped to the city every weekend, and was relieved when my dad sold the house to move back to Chicago after a serious lawnmower accident almost severed his 3 main fingers on his right hand.

6. I was married once before. I was a little spring chicken, one semester away from graduating college, only 22 years old, when I married my first husband. I went straight from the dorms to married life. I had a serious identity crisis in my latter 20's, and by 30 I was divorced. I'm still friends with my ex and with his new wife, and I'm glad about that.

7. I like my bananas a little green. Ripe bananas make me want to gag for some reason. All the more reason for Ted to make his famous banana bread!

8. I believe in Narnia. Shut up. I really do.

Okay. This is where I tag people. I'm sure most people have already done this meme, but I'll tag Mamazilla and Miss Mia and my sis Orange Loren.