Soup

I can not get enough of the new Campbell's Select Soups! The label is printed with soy ink on recycled paper. There's no MSG or crazy additives. A full serving a veggies in every can and only 200 calories! My favorite is the Tomato Basil.

Mmm...mmm...good....

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

We got our first snowfall last night. I woke up this morning and everything had a 2 inch layer of white resting on top. I pulled my ice scraper out of the trunk of the car, where it retires to during warmer months, and chipped the ice off my windshield.

All the while, my feet were soooo warm in my Ugg boots! These things are amazing!

Can you believe it's December already? I know, I can't! I'm looking forward to the trip to the Bahamas at the end of this month. But I've got a million things to do between now and then...watch all my favorite Christmas movies, holiday baking this coming weekend with Chris' sister Jenn, caroling with my church, and just enjoying the festive season.

:)
'Tis the season, readers.

Economic Crisis

Last Friday my company laid 10% of our workers off. Michi's company also let people go last Friday. And we both know that we were lucky that it wasn't one of us that got laid off. Michi and I are both new to our companies and some companies are letting their newest associates go.

For the first time, this economic crisis is hitting my home...my friends...

I actually started planning for what I would do if I were to lose my job in the coming months. I work in design, in retail...no one's job is safe in my field of work.

Let's all pray that this gets better soon. And let's pray for those people who just lost their job. May they find work soon....

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Friday night, Chris and I saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It was HILARIOUS! Seth Rogan cracks me up and I love Elizabeth Banks' laugh. Afterwards we grabbed a pint at a new pub near Chris' home and while instead enjoying our tasty beverages, some punk egged Chris' car.

On a street packed with cars, a lone egg was thrown at Chris' windshield. It froze almost instantly. Boo....

YMCA

Michi and I joined the local YMCA last night. We joined so we can start swimming laps a few times a week. We did a 30 minute lap swim last night, which felt great! I love the water!
The Y is only 5 blocks from my apartment, so not even a 10 minute walk, which makes it super convenient. The lanes get a bit crowded, but Michi and I just share a lane so it's not too bad.

Twilight

In a span of 2 weeks I had 3 friends recommend this book to me. So I picked it up last weekend and COULD NOT put it down. I read all 500 pages in 3 days. I went ahead and picked up the sequel and started reading it last night.

If you're looking for an easy and fun book to read, I recommend Twilight.

I Made Pink Is The New Blog!

Holy Cow!!

Chicago is a New City

Thanks Michi for sending me this picture. All these signs are up around downtown Chicago.

Yes We Can!!!

Sarah and Paddy's Wedding

My best friend, Sarah, got married this weekend. I was filled with joy the entire day! And I was thankful that not only did I get to witness them exchanging vows but I was asked to be a part of the wedding as well, by being a bridesmaid. I took some photos of the bride getting dressed but ended up putting the camera down early on in order to help actually get the bride ready. :)

So I don't have a full photo of Sarah in her gown. She ended up with a beautiful purple sash tied around her waist and a beautiful necklace that reminded me of a snowflake.

Congratulations Sarah and Paddy. :)

VOTE!

In case you need one more reason to get out and vote tomorrow....if you go into any Starbucks tomorrow and tell them you voted, you get a free tall cup of coffee.

Starbucks

Vote!

Say it Ain't So, Joe!

It seems like people are shocked by the weird shoes that Katie Holmes sported around NYC this past weekend. To me, though, they're all missing the bigger picture.
She's wearing stirrup pants, folks. Sweet Lord, what is she thinking??

Ignore

I've had quite the busy and wonderful weekend but before I get to all of that I thought I would blog about my evening, last Thursday. I spent some of the evening volunteering at the Obama headquarters here in Chicago. Volunteers were asked to bring their own cellphone and we were given a list of names and phone numbers of local Obama supporters. We were to call those supporters and tell them about volunteer opportunities coming up as well as educate them on how and where to vote on November 4th.

No problem. I can carry on a 20 minute conversation with my cat Pua...calling a few strangers shouldn't be that difficult.

Well, about 8 calls into my list I realized that a lot of people were hitting "ignore" on their cell phone and sending me directly to voicemail. And that's fine, they probably just didn't know my phone number or something. So I began leaving voice mails. Lots of voicemails.

After about the 12th call I started to feel a bit annoyed; I mean come on...you don't even know why I'm calling!

Well then finally a lady picked up the phone and I said "Hello, my name is Olivia and I'm calling on behalf of the Obama campaign...." and got to read my whole schpeel to her. And she eagerly told me how she was volunteering over the weekend in Indiana to Get Out the Vote! I said "Fantastic!" and she said "I love that there is a McCain campaigning for Obama!"

And then I realized my last name was coming up on caller ID. And all those ignored phone calls began to make sense. I mean, I was calling a list of Obama supporters! :)

Working the Garden

Just some photos of the boys picking green beans out of my dad's garden, this past summer. :)

WTF on WFTV

Holy cow. This is the worst example of journalism that I've witnessed since the days of Geraldo Rivera.


(Thanks Lance for giving me the heads up on this interview.)

Collections

I was reminded tonight, while watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, of a rock collection I had as a child. And all the other collection my sister and I had growing up. Here's a list and memory of each:

Angie's Collections
Angie had a sticker collection when I was young that I loved to look through her sticker book at all the pages of fun stickers. My favorites were the really shiny, metalic stickers, the fuzzy stickers and most of all the scratch and sniff stickers. She had a scratch and sniff sticker of a dill pickle. That thing never lost it's scent.

She also had a pencil collection which she kept in a special pencil cup. It was an old tin can with the top cut off. She had taken construction paper (red, I believe) and decorated it with bubble letters and taped it around the tin cup, to create her pencil cup. One day I thought I would do something nice for her so I sharpened every last one of her pencils. She was so upset.


Olivia's Collections
My first collection was my rock collection. Our neighbor, Ed Brown, worked at the Science Center of Iowa and was a science teacher at the local high school. He gave me a box of polished rocks of all shapes and sizes and I would show them off proudly to whoever I could. I bought a quartz rock in the Ozarks once to add to the collection.

Starting in high school I began to collect shot glasses. I had one for almost every state. One from France, Italy, Israel, Spain, England and Mexico. The one from Israel was beautiful. It was a special cut of glass from sand type of sand only found in that region. My friend in college went on an archeological dig in Israel and brought it back for me. It was by far my favorite. In the end, I had almost 60 shot glasses.

What things did you collect growing up?

Undecided Voters by David Sedaris

Read Me.

Lost 2009

Thanks Tim for this preview for Lost 2009!

Dignity Diner

Last night Michelle and I volunteered at Dignity Diner. Dignity Diner is a program, operated through my church, that serves a vegetarian meal every Tuesday night to the hungry/homeless folks of Chicago. About 50 people are served. It's not a typical soup kitchen as it's a sit down meal and the diners are served their meals (like in a restaurant). Their motto is "dignity is always on the menu".

I was really looking forward to helping out but walked away a little surprised by how I felt about the experience.

Most of the diners were very nice. We met a man named Wade who walked up and shook our hands. He said he helps set up and tear down after the meal and he also dines there. Wade was really nice and polite and probably the best person I interacted with that evening (besides the volunteers).

Now I understand that mental illness is a leading cause for homelessness and I was expecting to see some mental illness in the group of 50. But there were a couple of men who, I felt, were overstepping my comfort zone. But I didn't know how to handle it and no one was really around to help out in those situations.

One man kept walking up to Anne, Michelle and I and shaking our hands and staring and saying "niiiice". It was very uncomfortable and poor Anne got cornered by one diner who talked to her for at least 15 minutes. But he also kept sort of petting her arm and just doing what I would consider uncomfortable touching. She handled it really well but I know I would have not been ok with that.

This other guy, who had been sort of following Michelle around a bit, came up to me and asked me for some cold water in his glass. I said 'Sure' and went and filled the cup up. I brought it back to him and he took the cup and just sort of stood really, really close to me and then he put his arm around me. I tried to pull away but he leaned in and kissed me on the side of my cheek.

And I feel bad admitting this (like i'm not being very christian or something) but i really didn't like that. not only was the kiss a total invasion of my comfort zone (hell if a guy at a bar did that i would be upset too) but it was wet and gross and he smelled really bad and i felt like there was nothing i could do about it. like i couldn't say 'don't do that!' cause then i would have looked bad. and there were people who lead this volunteer effort and they weren't really doing anything about it either so then i really felt like i couldn't say anything.

while we were cleaning up the man who kissed me was following Michelle around and kept putting his hand on her back. There was just a lot of touching going on. And I don't really care for when any strange man touches me but these were obvious touches in that I knew their intention was to 'get off' on it. Does this make sense? And I don't think I'm being shallow or over dramatic about it...because they weren't touching/following all the volunteers. They were just doing it to Anne, Michelle and I and sometimes Meg. Donnelle didn't get touched (she's a little older and a bit heavy set). None of the male volunteers got hugged or touched. A couple of the older lady volunteers (in their forties-fifties) didn't get touched.

Anyway. I enjoyed serving the people that were respectful and kind. I really enjoyed working with the volunteers. But I don't know if working at Dignity Diner is part of my personal ministry because I left feeling very uncomfortable and towards the end of the meal...I just really wanted to get out of there.

I'm Chuck Bass

This is a mix of two of my guiltiest of pleasures: Britney Spears pop music and Chuck Bass.
xoxo