This week I saw some of the best people Chicago has to offer and celebrated the births of three awesome friends. In addition, the Wii Fit told Z and I that we each have lost 5 lbs. since we started the first week in January. A grand week it was.

Rhymes with Twee - Tilda and Maude

My go-to card and gift buying place in Chicago is Paper Doll. Owner Stacy’s house pug Maude is my favorite store animal of all time. She has gone blind and is mostly deaf, but she still knows it’s me when I go in. She’s the only dog that Tilda is sometimes okay with. Tilda was kind of a jerk to Maude on this day, so this shot was the result of many treats and much coaxing. Speaking of shops I love: I am sad to say goodbye to my other go-to shop, Renegade Handmade, which is closing this week. They were the first Chicago store to stock Rhymes with Twee goods and always gave me that proverbial pat on the back when I went in. Such lovely shop ladies (and the occasional dude) that I will miss seeing so often. Now I’ll have to settle for seeing them briefly at RCFs or randomly around the ‘hood.

Since I’ve been doing well with most of my resolutions, I finally felt ready to tackle my craft room, which has remained incomplete since we moved in last April. Most of today was spent pulling it apart and moving things around, organizing papers and thinking up a game plan for completing it. Once it’s actually in order, I feel like I’ll be able to get back to a creative state.

This was a slow week for media consumption for me, but I finally finished my second book of the year, You Had Me At Woof, which LCB recommended to me and I loved. I started reading Hack and so far, so good.

Films watched 4th week of the year:

Funky Forest: The First Contact
Eames: The Architect & The Painter*
Hereafter
Norwegian Wood

*documentary

Three of these are worth watching, but Hereafter mostly felt like a waste of time. If you enjoy absurdity, then you should see Funky Forest, which I’d rank pretty high up there. I was let down a bit by Norwegian Wood. I enjoyed watching it, but it had been years since I had read the novel. Murakami is one of my all-time favorite authors, but that novel was not one of my favorites. I believe I’ll have to re-read it to see how different it was from the film. I felt it was pretty different, but my pal Kirstie said it remained true. The score was great though (cough, cough, jonnygreenwood).