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on taking notes.

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Keeping and making sense of notes is an exercise in and of itself. Especially with all the different ways to capture the things we want to think about a little longer, or maybe even write about later on. My pile is always growing and seems to be everywhere: in my email, on my phone notes, and on countless pieces of paper. Reading through them is always nice, even transportive. When I find a torn piece of paper scribbled with words I want to hold on to, it takes me back to the time and place I wrote it. These notes are snapshots of our lives, a chronology. Last week, I heard more about this subject during an interview between Terry Gross and American novelist, Richard Ford. Here’s what he said on the subject of note-taking:
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la principal.

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In Evanston — a town where you learn about most all things by word-of-mouth — my discovery of this new spot came at the end of a text string. While choosing a restaurant for a night out with friends, the conversation ended like this: … there’s also the new place La Principal but no idea what their atmosphere is like. Wait, what? A quick look revealed photos of a glowing corner on Main street and a simple menu of Mexican small dishes. We took the kids and went for a family dinner that night. Days later, on an unusually warm and grey afternoon, I sat down with Eric Young, its chef and managing partner.
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anniversary trip: nyc.

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For our anniversary this year,  Tim and I decided to go away without the kids for the first time. Taking a vacation was something kind of new to me when we were just married. I grew up in Michigan and stayed there through college. I always traveled with my family and, mostly, by car. After moving to Chicago post-college for a job in advertising, I worked so much that when I did take time away I loved to bike around town, discovering each of the different Chicago neighborhoods.
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a beautiful documentary about iris apfel.

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Iris Apfel, the fashion icon, is known for wearing large round glasses. They sit, like an elegant punctuation mark, on her face. When you see her in magazines, on beauty blogs, even as a tattoo! the glasses are her most characteristic feature. Perhaps because she’s a chameleon when it comes to her sense of fashion, the glasses, I think, are what people tend to hold on to when featuring or honoring her.
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