connoisseur?

yesterday, friday noticed, for the very first time, this framed piece of wallpaper that has been sitting on the floor in our kitchen for months now.  it's actually wallpaper that was hanging at the place we got married in 2003.



i don't know what was going on in that little pea brain of hers, but she howled at it for a few seconds.



then, moved in closer for a good look.



then, even closer for a good smell.

:(

was anyone else as saddened by this as i was?

clooney tour

because 80% of the movie was shot here, st. louis is "up in the air"- crazy and obssessed with all things clooney.

for those of you interested, here's the st. louis post-dispatch's clooney tour of stl.

trivia night

last night, we played our first trivia night in ages at a coffeehouse just a few short blocks from our house. we dubbed our team "pie lovers," in honor of our old boston cohorts. (holla!)

the rules were the same ones with which we are familiar. each round has five questions. a bet from one to five must be placed on each answer to determine point value. team with the highest number of points wins the night. no smartphones allowed.

the questions had primarily to do with pop culture, a specialty of dabney's and mine (or at least that's what we thought until last night). instead, we realized we were sitting amongst of group of youthful twenty-somethings who knew stuff like "who was the star of young guns II?" and "what was the sequel to leprechauns in the 'hood?"

dabney and i felt we had a chance to contribute to our team score by naming four of the six #1 songs that justin timberlake recorded. "rock your body!" "sexy back!" "cry me a river!" um, that other one!! "dick in a box?!" alas, we fell short with three. by the end of the evening, the only answer we could wholeheartedly take credit for was "victor hugo."

lucky for us, we had joe g., undoubtedly the team mvp, whose young nimble mind came up with answers like "sister act 2: back in the habit" and "nickelback." if it wasn't for him, we would have come in dead last. instead, we ended up in the middle of the pack - a respectful result.

arcade fire on acl

i don't usually care to watch concert footage, but i watched an encore presentation of arcade fire on austin city limits the other night and was BLOWN AWAY. did anyone else see this?!

lucky for you, it's online.

readability

from david pogue, ny times...

The single best tech idea of 2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be Readability. It’s a free button for your Web browser’s toolbar (get it at lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability). When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.

You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business.

You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.

to read the rest of the article, go here. i installed this last week and love it. now, go forth and download...

dining room table - CHECK.

it has been a challenge finding just the right dining table for our long narrow space.  for the past six months, we've been using two mogo folding tables lined up end to end as a substitute while we searched for the perfect thing. everything looks passable under a clean tablecloth, no?

though a little wide, i was convinced that this table would have worked perfectly, until i saw the price.  i still love its industrial look.  in fact, it reminds me of this find. 

the other day, dabney came across THE table on craigslist - long, narrow, rustic, with clean lines.  perfect.  the only issue was that dabney wasn't searching st. louis craigslist.  no, she had to be looking at a table that was located in the middle of tennessee!  so off we went down i-55, way down past new madrid (pronounced mad-rid, emphasis on the "mad" - not like the city in spain), past hayti (pronounced "hay-tie," not like the caribbean country), through eastern tennessee, until we got to milan (pronounced "my lan", not like the italian city).

four plus hours goes awfully slowly when you've got a eight and a half foot farm table strapped to the top of your station wagon.  i forgot to snap a picture.  dammit.



in the end, the table was just the thing we needed. now, i am off to figure out how to create a firewall to keep dabney off other areas' craigslists.

happy new year sold to the highest bidder

it's the first day of the new year and how do we spend it? at an estate auction, of course!

here i am, lucky number forty-one.


i was coveting this purple paul mccobb sofa. instead, i had to be satisfied with just sitting on the thing while the price went up and up.



the real highlight of the auction was this lot of 3' tall knee-hugging elves that i so wanted to buy for mr. christmas.  i can just see the christmas card now.




i was also in lurve with a matching pair of brass light fixtures. (one is pictured below.) they would be so amazing mounted on each side of our bed.



alas, the auction was so poorly organized that the whole process was akin to getting my teeth drilled at the dentist office. impatience won out, and dabney and i split before it even went on the block.

in the end, we might have left empty-handed, but it was educational nonetheless.  here's hoping that 2010 will be filled with more auction opportunities. 

christmas morning

we were the only ones in the family that chose to put up a tree, so we got the dubious honor of hosting a holiday once again. considering thanksgiving was not so long ago, i am afraid we are setting a precedent here.


most of us stayed in our pjs all day - the way christmas was meant to be.


knowing that dabney has a thing for stuff with history (i.e. old stuff), my parents decided to pass off my dad's very first camera to her. she was thrilled.

we ate a lot, napped a bit, and played a ton of wii games.




this was the match of the evening: my mom versus my aunt. it was close, but mom took it.

merry christmas from our gay disco to yours

hint, hint

it's the hap-happiest season of all

it has been a weekend of merry-making here at superette...

...starting with a friday night holiday cocktail party with complete with salsa dancing and a bonus introduction to urban chicken raising 101 (gotta love missourians).










we even got to take these fresh eggs home with us. now, that's a party favor!

saturday night was an evening of game playing and giggling. we indulged in some ultimate outburst, the game of things, and capped off with some speed uno (accompanied with thai food).

on sunday, we played some wii with the sis and bro-in-law. i must say it stings a little to get one's ass kicked by a pregnant lady.






later that night, we sang at the top of our lungs at a yuletide sing-a-long courtesy of celia and her yuletide express. nothing like a little holiday caroling. i was so sad to have forgotten my camera, but just imagine a lot of people swaying and singing in unison (with the aid of lyrics and jingle bells).  never before have i ever been more moved by singing this song.

update: today, they're yellow.

four trees forward, four barriers back

friday can't figure out where the hell these trees came from suddenly.

but little does she know - our tree lawn was the recipient of four tiny trees last week - courtesy of the city's forestry department. we think they're maples, or at least that's what we were told we were slated for months ago, but it's hard to tell at this point they're so naked and all. it's probably going to take years for these little guys to start to resemble real trees, but you gotta love the fact they're free.

i had requested them when we first moved in early in the summer on a tip from a neighbor, and the forestry department snuck 'em in just under the gun. we've been consistently in 20s for the last five days. any longer and the ground might have been impossible to dig into.



maples look so gorgeous in the fall. hopefully, it'll be like a taste of vermont in our front yard.

speaking of things the city does...



yesterday, the street department decided to plop these ugly ass barriers at our intersection. for some reason, the city loves these things and have even dotted our main thoroughfare with them in recent months to slow down traffic.

i guess the idea is to prevent drivers from running the stop sign, which i wasn't aware of as a problem, but what do i know?



dabney and i spent much of the morning discussing how one actually navigates said intersection. i swear i've seen two different methods in use (problem #1). in the end we both agree that while said intersection resembles a mini-rotary, one does not actually go around the temporary-looking permanent barriers to turn left. they have been plopped there just to remind one to stop. for me, they're more of a reminder that for every step forward to beautify the city (free trees), there are two steps (or in this case, four temporary-looking permanent barriers) back .

man, i almost forgot

with the help of our splendid texan houseguests, we put up our christmas tree this past weekend.



unlike years past of prohibitive low-ceilinged basement living, we chose a tree that, even i couldn't reach the top of. yeah, this year's tree is over eight feet tall.  luckily, one of our texans is over six feet tall - very helpful with such matters.

dynamite!

between saint louis and chicago, there are a handful of ginormous antique/flea markets that i get a glimpse of each time i head back and forth down i-55. i've always wanted to stop and take a look around. last week on my way to the renegade holiday show, i had a few hours to kill, so i hit two.

the two i had chosen were indeed worthy of the stop. treasures abounded - however, most were cost prohibitive. there was the giant gas station banner that read "last chance", lots of military paraphernalia that means nothing to me but is obviously valued among many, and tons of mismatched pyrex.

i walked away with exactly one vintage wooden crate with an old advertisement for explosives and dynamite.


perfect for holding wood by the stove.

one more up

we finally made a commitment and hung up another work of art on our walls recently. as you can see, this always seems to be a pressure-packed decision around here. i don't know why. it's not like a picture can't be moved or anything.





to be fair, this painting above is one of our most treasured possessions - a painting by boston artist kate sullivan. it depicts the main drag of our old neighborhood. we purchased the painting as a wedding gift to ourselves in 2003. we have since sworn to make similar purchases to commemorate big events in our lives. the next one will probably be the year we both turn forty (in, like, ten years *ahem*).

we hung the picture one evening and i awoke the next day startled when i looked out the window.



it really does echo the view from our living room in the most unexpected way.

i don't know what it is about saint louis, or maybe it's us. no, most definitely, it's us. but everytime folks come to visit, all we do is a lot of eating and drinking. this past weekend was no exception when two of our favorite people came to town. the edible/quaffable highlights of which where hand-rolled pretzels, dark delicious beer, and some single malt scotch.







we sure had a good time though. this girl cracks me up, and i miss her so.

we make ourselves giggle

remember that poster we picked up ages ago?

we finally found a place for it.

recent pics

sometimes, pictures speak louder than words.


renegade holiday show, chicago (photo via Renee Rendler-Kaplan)


renegade holiday show, chicago









dabney and tracy at the craftland opening party


"alvin, simon, and theodore"



will's tree


boston digs


chicago dream digs (a.k.a. the robie house by frank lloyd wright)