Lit List - a DIY post

Why, it seems one whole month has gone by! I do apologize for holding back. I'll catch you up:

The week after Thanksgiving, my mom sent me a chain email about classic literature. I tend to read, be amused by and then forget chain emails, but this particular one sucked me in with its bookish hook.

Completely distracted from whatever I was doing, I spent 15 minutes following the message's instructions. In the end, my personal list is still sitting in my 'drafts' folder, for my reference. I'm happy to pass it on if you're keen.

Read on, and perhaps make your own list.

Here's the message, which lost my edited marks in the copy/paste process:

***
Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!
P.S. - you can underline the ones which you didn't read but saw the movie :-

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings -Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 1984 - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the Durbervilles- Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

1 4 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahamn

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

***

Charity: Water - Ethiopian Fundraiser Dinner

Clean water! We all need it, but many people in developing nations don't get enough of it. Unclean water causes numerous diseases and malnutrition. But we can help!

A friend, Emily, and I recently formed 'Chicago 4 Water,' a campaign to raise money through the well-established fundraising organization, Charity: Water. Charity: Water has build thousands of clean water projects (such as pipe systems and water wells) in 17 developing countries internationally.

Chicago 4 Water's plan is to hold informal fundraising events that give people chances to hang out, enjoy themselves and learn about the importance of clean water for good health. Wednesday marked the night of 'Dine for Water,' our modest first effort at fundraising.

Emily and I'd been talking together about holding a simple fundraising dinner in cooperation with a local Ethiopian restaurant – for a while. But when we finally decided to make it happen, we had to set everything up very quickly.

Just three nights before the dinner, I wrote out our campaign objective for our website, created a dinner invitation and started mentioning it to everyone I saw; and with just 24 hours before we planned the event to happen, Emily's contact at the restaurant finally got in touch with her to confirm that they could work with us so that we would earn a percentage of every diner's food and drink bill. [Phew.]

Happily, after that initial logistical flurry, the dinner was all aromatic coffee, honey wine, pungent bread and delicious savory Ethiopian meats and salads. Sweet and easy. Our event drew a cool 15–17 jovial people. Folks complimented the foods, mingled and smiled, asked us more about Charity: Water. Thanks to Emily working with the restaurant, we earned the cause about $170. For a modest first effort at raising money for clean water, this went down 'well.'


***

What's next? Through Charity: Water's website, we have about three more weeks to raise as much money as we can before our funds will be combined with other campaign funds to build a clean water project somewhere in the developing world.

A few direct website donations by private individuals brought our total funds raised to above our initial $500 goal in just four days. Now, we're raising our goal! With the help of some passionate folks at this first dinner, we hope our next fundraising event is an even greater success.

To read more about our cause, or to donate, visit:
http://mycharitywater.org/Chicago4Water


{Thanks for reading!}

Week of Soup

This is the week of homemade soup. Butternut Squash, Curry, French Onion, Roasted Red Pepper...Check back for more photos of soup bowls – and a few recipes – through Sunday.

Ballet Hispanico!

Bright, glossy red wigs and leather stocking-socks, suggestive caressing and thrusts of all kinds, feather-boas and piled, flashy headdresses.

That's what modern ballet is made of.

Ballet Hispanico gave a one-night performance in Chicago on Friday, and my fine-art-critic-aficionado friend got us two prime seats at the event.

The performance was comprised of three parts: a dramatic, barefooted story of tribal war and mourning; a montage of sultry modern-burlesque-styled numbers; and a more traditional showcase of hispanic club dancing.

The second part, 'Mad'moiselle' – with its campy red-headed night-doll costumes, provocative male-female interaction and eclectic modern-hip-hop-influenced style – was most surprising. Indeed, it turned out that this performance was the debut showing of the number. Chicago got a preview of the show, before it premieres in New York in the coming weeks. Que bueno!

Aside: these dancers' bodies, true to 'forma,' were delights to watch. Throughout the ballet, the company gracefully extended gorgeous legs, twisted trim torsos and flaunted knotty, pliable backs. And I was just as occupied by pondering the strength one should have to assume such controlled, attractive movements, and the wherewithal – constant wherewithal – to keep up a grin. Pretty self-possession. Y que gracioso estaba todo!


{Thanks for reading!}

Back of House at The Weepies

Have you heard The Weepies? http://www.theweepies.com/

Last week, a very cool friend was invited to attend a Weepies show by a music-biz friend of hers, and she asked me to go along. Apparently, the band was coming to Chicago on Halloween weekend for one night of two sold-out shows. We'd be special guests.

Before I saw the indie-pop-folk Weepies play live last weekend, I'd barely listened to their music at all. Honestly, my first impression had the group pegged as whiny, overly pop-ish and somehow melancholy. The mood a person needs to blue-out to that kind of music hadn't yet hit me.

But, the company at the concert would be great, in any case. There was a rumor that Billy Corgan might make an audience cameo. Plus, I'm generally curious. I hoped to observe whatever musically-genius phenomenon in the Weepies sold out these shows.

And, gosh – there's such an appeal to live music. At the very least, music shows offer great energy, fantastic people-watching, often a very proper atmosphere for thinking. I haven't yet had a bad time watching live music. Have you?

***

Turns out the show was a treat. As we arrived, my friend's music biz connection led us to the back rooms, a cavernous, cozy loft-apartment-like setup where the stage manager observed the boards and the band readied for showtime. Each warmly-lit, hardwood-paneled room was bedecked in plush oriental rugs and velvet noise-buffering curtains, livened by rock-n-roll leather couches and zebra-patterned pillows.

In the adjacent green room, members of the Weepies chatted, chuckled and sponged on white makeup, black lipstick and long, streaky wigs in honor of Halloween. On the counter next to their half-moon leather couch were untouched platters of sandwich meats, semi-dry cheeses, wilting veggies and crackly dips.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed gourmet cupcakes my friend had brought, decadent treats ornamented with shards of gummy 'glass' and injected with vampire 'blood' in honor of Halloween. When the venue in the next room filled and the show was about to start, we were offered drinks and food on the house. We were led past hoards of standers to a reserved table with a clear view of the stage. All my senses were on highs. I felt a bit spoiled, I told my friend. She agreed.

The room went dark, but the Weepies came to the stage and received boisterous applause, and as they started to play, the whole venue lit up with energy.

After spending four years off tour so the lead duo could raise their first child, The Weepies' six-person band sounded palpably cheerful, fresh and cohesive. They crooned, told stories, joked and teased each other – all to the packed venue audience's eager delight.

The lead couple switched their folkie wooden guitars nearly every song and gave blood to their music with charming background anecdotes, the bassists amused each other with skillful riffs and string experimentation. The whole group came to the stage in Halloween costumes, and only discarded them when their long-haired wigs made it difficult to see their instruments.

The Weepies' appeal quickly became apparent. Even more impressive than their unique voices, interesting soulful twanging and impressive vocal ranges was the band's collective charisma. They had a good time, and so we had a good time. Contagious amusement, and another positive experience for this spontaneous concert-goer. Woohoo!



What's the last concert you saw? Why'd you go?

Freelance Chalkboarding

Before:

After:


My knees and neck tingle a bit. My arms are heavy. And my jeans are covered in yellow chalk-dust, but that last one is more of a coincidence.

I worked on my first freelance chalkboarding gig for hours today. Two boards for a small music venue: one drink menu, one informational header. This wasn't at all like the writing or design jobs I've done before, but a very cool opportunity. I was commissioned by a music venue, and to do wall-art! Call me Leah-nardo.

Fonts, colors, layout, vibe. It took an hour to computer-design the menu, and about 20 minutes to lay out the second. Setting up a workspace and supplies took 20 minutes. Applying the design by hand took about 4.5 hours.

The whole process put me in good spirits, but there were challenges: technical details like using carbon paper and working with chalk markers, which I've been used to on smaller projects in my regular work, turned into more complicated maneuvers on the much larger boards. Giving the design some hand-drawn warmth, while making it sharp and polished, took close attention.

Overall, the work was enjoyable, hitch-free, instructive. I charged a lot. I worked diligently. Probably, I could have charged more.

It was empowering.

So I look forward to taking on more artistic freelance work. Any ideas?


{Thank you for reading!}

Week of Sunrises

I've been biking to different spots along the lake every morning this week to watch the sun rise. Tune in until Sunday for new photo each day...

Fitzmaurice Voicework

Body tremors.

Pardon?

In a Fitzmaurice Voicework class on Sunday, I participated in voluntarily-induced body tremors.

What?!

Right, and I'm not sure if I can explain. But I'll try.

My friend Sam and I decided to take a class together at Piven Theatre Workshop, a decades-old, somewhat well-known training program for all ages. Sam had taken a Piven class before and quite enjoyed it; she thought I would, too. Interested in something unique, I suggested Fitzmaurice Voicework, a special voice-developing workshop that's on the program just for this Fall session.

This class is certainly unlike any other I've joined.

But we'll get to that; it didn't start out so unexpected. The class lasts six weeks, and the first meeting was spent in socked feet, sitting in a circle and sharing, then playing trust games and moving dramatically with our eyes closed. All that's part of what I imagine when I hear the words 'acting class.' Predictable, amusing!

Of course, the Voicework class was sure to be a bit different, and appeared more and more dynamic as our compact, gray-haired, eloquent-and-cheeky British instructor, Roger Smart, let on to his background in Eastern philosophy and movement, facets of the brain and movement of energy. Still, Roger gave no discernible indication of what was to come later – at least, not what would come physically.


***

Sam and I both missed the second class, so when we arrived at class 3 on a brilliantly sunny fall morning, mats and pillows under arms, we'd not a clue what to expect.

After a slow start (literally, we warmed up with a mindful space-feeling 10-minute walk across a 22-foot room), Roger directed the class to stretch in a few comfortable positions. Then we broke into work. In the middle of a classic dorsal stretch, on our backs, right knee up and torso twisted to allow the left leg over – we were told to look for our 'tremor.'

Perhaps you expected this, even if I didn't: a tremor is a shake in your body. It names what happens to your muscles when they're not quite stretched out completely in an exercise, at an active point just before flexing on the bend/flex scale. Your muscles can't quite hold their place, and they shake a bit (or sometimes a lot).

All my exercising life, I'd been under the impression that such shakes were signs of weakness in body movement, clues to what muscles should or could be strengthened. In gymnastics practice years ago, we young gymnasts sometimes shook while deeply stretching, but really only at the beginning of the season. By the end, we were strong and very flexible.

So, it was not intuitive for me that finding and holding this tremor in a series of positions was our goal for the last two hours of our three-hour class. We got into a series of fairly difficult positions, each suspended somewhere between relaxation and exercise, looked for the tremor and attempted to draw the shake up from each muscle to our chest and breath. We were to relax, allow for chaotic breathing and 'soft and fuzzy sounds' or loud vowel sounds to escape our mouths, and feel free to...feel free.

Eventually, tremoring this way is supposed to allow deep, strained emotions out of your depths, so you feel free to speak with a full voice and to emote sincerely. We were told that signs of breakthrough include, but aren't limited to, sudden sobs, intense laughter, near-involuntary speaking, simple realizations.

Early on, one woman started to wail, then laugh out loud. She did this multiple times during the class, and after the meeting, exclaimed that she'd been looking for this release for some time. Another student burst out into sobs during one exercise.

The rest of the class shook it out, and will continue working, with open minds, toward our own versions of breakthroughs.

Meanwhile, if you happen to look in on our classroom, we might be a practicing crew of closed-eyed 'spazzes,' most shaking without form, some breathing as if in rapture, a few letting out wailed 'O's.

O, my. Three classes, three weeks left. We'll see what happens.

Visiting Chautauqua

Chautauqua, Illinois could keep you out of trouble. The tiny, members-only village-like resort in a shady crevice along the Mississippi River is a version of Utopia that – it seems – is only quietly celebrated.

Walk the length of the picturesque village and back in half an hour. Pass miniature vacation cottages whose screened, wrap-around porches are bigger than their main caverns. Count three hands’-worth of door-flanking bird-feeders and wind chimes, observe cottage names like Weather or Not and Witt’s End and a rusty bicycle-built-for-two, leaning undisturbed against lattice-work.

Hear the peaceful central waterfall spill a fine 14 feet and catch its pool.

Cars don’t drive the streets of Chautauqua; bicycles and golf-carts provide the quickest transportation, and some long-time residents scoff at the latter. There’s a craft building, and an administrative building where residents get their seasonal mail. There’s a chapel, though the community’s religious tradition has relaxed in recent decades.

This place, one of several Chautauquas around the United States that was perhaps formerly held together by faith tradition, maintains many of its ages-old ways because a number of its tenants are life-long members, whose light-washed cottages have lasted generations.

A ladies’ council (membership mandatory) meets to play cards and plan community-building programs. There’s a men-only Roque field, though I’m told few men or women would attempt to play these days. Chautauqua calls in its children from the pool, the road and the hiking trail for lunch and dinner by sounding a bell.

They use that chilly, quiet waterfall to cool watermelons for barbecues.


***

It’s a beautiful, sun-soaked October day, and the bustling late-summering population of Chautauqua has relocated their home bases back to their houses in St. Louis’s metropolis and better-known suburbs. The road is empty, and cottages are locked. There are leaves on the Roque field; the assembly hall is dark. The pool-side snack shop’s refrigerator door hangs lazily open and there are no balls in the foosball table pockets.

If you’re bold, peak in on a wrap-around porch and peruse titles of summer reads sitting in small piles under wicker tables. Find colorfully-patterned throw blankets, cushioned hammocks, pictures of lighthouses, over-sized ropes, watering cans full of flowers.

Chautauqua gets frustrated cell phone coverage–indeed, you might find reception at the place’s river look-out point on its West edge, or at the end of a hike up to the rocky bluff that overlooks the Mississippi.

But that’s if, upon reaching the wide-open bluff some 200 feet above river-level, with a clear view of the Mighty river, you haven’t forgotten all about your phone, and your call, and everything but the shine on the water stretching miles to your left and right.


***

My good friend Audrey hosted me at her home outside of St. Louis for a couple of nights this week. Audrey and her brothers spent many of their childhood summers at Chautauqua with her aunt and uncle, and she suggested we hike through the forest up to the bluff, high on the hill next to the village.

Audrey’s a well of knowledge who imbibes history, knows the words to great classic rock songs and writes postcards from everywhere she goes; she’s up for anything and jokes around with strangers; I like to tell her she’s a renaissance woman with an adventurous soul.

Audrey and I, who only discovered a common zest for life in the last semester of college and have still had little more than a handful of chances to hang out, tend toward endless, easy discussion.

Even so, after we navigated Chautauqua’s forested hillside path, lowered ourselves down a short slope by knotted rope, emerged onto the sandy boulder’d cliff, and set to gazing out at the wide, dark Mississippi, we found our words swept away by the moving water.

We happily looked out. We felt the sun and watched it catch the current. We saw the flow and smiled about it. We lost minutes and unhurriedly found them again.

Eventually, Audrey and I threw our voices around again like pebbles, and finally we rose and wound our way back down the hill into Chautauqua. I was markedly refreshed. Amidst a great couple of days in the St. Louis area, delightful exploration and a bounty of charming characters and livening discussions, Chautauqua and its bluff were my simple peak. Ther is something about water, and the sky – and the two together! Gosh.


Do you find yourself so moved by water, too?

Wall-climbing

Wednesday night, I supported a man. But not like a well-behaved wifey.

At the end of my first formal climbing class, I found myself responsible for the heft of a 6ft2, lanky, broad-shouldered man-boy (we'll call him Charlie), hanging 40+ feet above me. As he efficiently climbed up the four-story wall, I shifted rope, hauled in, anchored all of his 180ish pounds like a kite-line anchors one of those large, topsy dragon-shaped kites.

At 25ish feet, Charlie fell.

But not far, because I've already told you: I was supporting him back on the ground.

Turns out Charlie was testing me. Lucky for Charlie, I was holding down the 'forte.' And you should know that I'm pretty strong. A regular 5'5" wonder gal. Also, happily, I can add 'belay-supporting a wall-climber aided by gravity and friction' to a short list of natural aptitudes I seem to sport. (Phew!)

So I'd been wall-climbing before, just a bit during an Adventure Education class in high school – and I've been looking to get back into it. Wasn't it satisfying to sit on the top of the playground monkey bars at age seven? There's something about using your own strength and reason to reach an acme, and then literally surveying your progress from the top.

During this first class, we brushed up on novice rope-tying and harnessing skills. Everything came back to me quickly, and as soon as they let me, I eagerly (but carefully, with calculation) rainbow-routed my way to the highest point. I got some praise from the instructor, some mini-cheers from my four classmates; sure, I was thrilled!

But, once up top, in all my blushing glory, I realized my hands and wrists had weakened, were limp and sort of pulsing, nearly useless. They were way out of their element, these typing-accustomed pansies. And that won't do. Gratefully, I pushed away from the wall to be lowered down.

During this week's class, we'll get into finger-strength saving technique. It's boot-camp for these hands. Glove...camp.


So what'll I do by the end of this week?

Kundalini Yoga

'Aerobic' yoga at 6am? All right.

This week's major new thing was Kundalini yoga, a variational, meditative and often-aerobic form of yoga that I'd only learned about a few months ago. My friend Lisa had mentioned the class before, and she'd been getting really into it recently – talking about rising early, and kriyas, and feeling great. So when she invited me to join her for Friday's early class, I was enthusiastic.

Actually, I'm an exercise junkie, somewhat addicted to bouts of more intense activity. I think of yoga as something that calms you down, zens you out. Brings out your goofy, chanting side. Shines your light, makes you one with the Oneness, and all that.

Yoga, to me? Good stuff, but something I've always considered a soft supplement to delightful, adrenaline-pumping, wear-you-out action.

Still, I'm open. I've taken a few yoga classes in the past several years, given them hearty thumbs-up. And gosh, for thousands of people worldwide, yoga happens as a matter of course. It has to happen daily, as naturally as taking a gulp of water.

There's a power in yoga that draws all these people, power that I want to tap.

Plus, I'd been told Kundalini could be 'different' from more traditional yoga forms. I'd heard it described as 'a great workout,' 'empowering and unexpected.' 'A mixed bag.' Hey, I love surprises. Bring on the Oneness.

Yep. Even if my sleeping pattern seemed off this week because of early work days, and I was already worn out - even if I was still awake, perusing Google Reader at midnight-30, early on Friday morning, I was intent on making it to 6am yoga.

And I did. I pedaled through the chill, dark morning to the studio, unrolled a yoga mat, breathed in, slowed down. And I dug all 1.25 hours of the class. Kneeling, stretching, squatting, waving, pulsating, strengthening our 'third eyes.'

This Kundalini session wasn't the same kind of active as a 45-minute run, but we were on. We moved, breathed and tested our strength. Two minutes of this move, four minutes of that. There was even a full four minutes of eyes-closed dancing to the Black Eyed Peas, with the small class composed of Lisa and a middle-aged man in white linen pants shaking their hips next to me.

At some point, our yogi mentioned that we were focusing energy on our frontal lobes. Not something you get from every yoga session, I venture. And at the end, we sang along to a ballad-like prayer track and committed to shining our lights on everyone around us.

After all this, I felt limber, silly and happy.

Kundalini was challenging–and invigorating. I'd do it again. Until then, watch out for my light. I'll totally flashbulb you.

Lend me your expertise...(Intro)

Lately, the trend for folks my age has me pondering where to direct my energy, on what to focus.

Wellsir, I've been in love with doing since I can remember. Moving, trying, tasting. Getting into things. Meeting people. Learning!

So, for a while, 'doing' will be my focus. Doing (at least) one new, novel or keen thing each week. My goal will be to expand my mind, step intentionally out of my comfort-sphere, collaborate with other people doing their thing, have lots of fun and write all about it. These are all things I already do, but loosely. This blog, and this week, will be the start of documentation.

I have a few ideas to get started, but I've found that the best ideas for good times come from friends, often out of nowhere. Please throw me your suggestions for cool things to do - say:

swell vegan/vegetarian foods to try
Chicago-area neighborhoods to explore
cerca-urban day-adventures
hobbies you dig
your friendly book club that'd welcome a guest one week
off-the-map music shows to check out
book-signings
mustache-wearing/clothes-swapping/money-raising themed parties
meditation sessions
skyscrapers with great views
teach me how to DJ
show me how to write basic code
throw me your recipe for avocado cake
give me your expert run-down on fixed gear bikes...
let's collaborate on a movie short,
or a comic strip
or write a folk song...

I'm up for almost anything you'd be up for. Why not?


Best,
LL