"Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-can-8217-t-have-it-all/9020/

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What an image: Bloomberg hosing himself off with a Coca Cola!

(Source: wnyc)

"Everyone wants their home to reflect themselves, but how do you do that in a time of globalization?” said Daniella Ohad Smith, a design historian. “How do you create your own taste, if everyone has access to the same goods? Also, not everyone has an aesthetic sense, but everyone wants a beautiful home."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/garden/in-defense-of-the-decorator.html?pagewanted=3

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wnyc:

One of these things is not like the other.

taylorlorenz:

Shooting

goddamn i love good radio →

and by way of this, I found this 

transfixed by the strangeness →

Working on a stupid-large spreadsheet and listening to Miike Snow (why two I’s?)… I’ve never surfed before but it is making me day-dream a little about being in the ocean and it is so lovely to imagine doing that right now (in Hawaii) instead of this spreadsheet.  

Last night listening to a Who Charted podcast, someone was talking about how their brain splits off to do something else, by itself, when the body is working on something not fun (running on a treadmill! working on a spreadsheet!).  It is a way of letting the brain take care of something else so that it doesn’t have to share in the pain of what the body is doing.  Such a productive way of thinking!  

Paul F. Tompkins was pretty hilarious, as always, on this particular podcast, too, if you wanna give a listen.  

(Meanwhile, I go to look for the Miike Snow video for this song, and now have forgotten all about surfing and am transfixed by the strangeness of his production instead.)  Back to cell-surfing and day-dreaming. Le Sigh!

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Cy Twombly. Painting detail of Roses,Gaeta, 2009. Dryprint on cardboard 

(via artpedia)

rent.

Sam and I are going to look at a house in Burlington this evening that is on the market. It is probably a total shithole- based on the combination of a very low price, despite an excellent location, and the fact that it recently went off the market and then went straight back on a month later, we’re betting there’s something seriously wrong with it. (Its probably something with the foundation, says my architect fiance.)

We do not intend on buying this house or any other house any time soon- our first $20K saved in Vermont will go towards our wedding!- but we wanted to see this place simply because it is alarmingly cheap and has a 94 walkability score- both are desirable characteristics in a home, quite simply. 

In honor of this illustrious event, I’ve been thinking a lot about rent and the amount of money I’ve thrown at it over the years.  Here’s a snapshot.  

(I’m just going to preface this by saying I have never ONCE regretted my life-long renting habits- I am the only person in my family who doesn’t own a house and have spared myself a lot of drama, trauma, and being-tied-down-ness by living the way I have: with no broken foundation under me that needs to be fixed. 

I’ve also been reading a lot of this guy and these guys and doing lots of cash flow spreadsheets for Sam and I, to figure out where our money is going and how to make more of it go towards fun stuff.  So I’ve had money on the brain a lot. Which is pretty much the usual. )

August 1998-May 1999: 10 months living in Baltimore during my freshman year at MICA, in a surprisingly prison-like set-up called the Commons. Rent: $600/mo ish. $6000 total.

June 1999-August 1999: 3 months living in my parents’ home while back for summer. Also lived in Finland for 6 weeks, working as an au pair. Rent: $0

August 1999-May 2001: 22 months living with printmaker Allison Olly in a sweet hipster pad (mostly decorated by her) on Park Ave in Bolton Hill, Baltimore. Rent: $300. $6600 total. 

June 2001-January 2004: 32-ish months living downstairs from my best friend in art school, Steph Petagno.  Studio apartment set up like a stage- you opened the door to a set of 5 stairs that led up to the big room. Also attached was a porch, which could be accessed by opening a window and then the door that was inexplicably joined to the window. The porch was sweet though and it looked out onto Super Fresh, the worst grocery store ever. Rent: $425. Total: $13,600.

Mid-January 2004-June 2004: Five months with no real rent, but storage, while I traveled in Central America. Everything I needed was on my back.  Rent for pod: $100? Total $600

July 2004: When I returned from Central America, I sublet for a month while I looked for a place: $400? 

August 2004-October 2005: 15 months. I had found myself a not-terrible job at a wine store with a terrible boss, and I quit the same day as I moved into a new place with my most expensive rent yet - it was a two-bedroom Charles Village apartment that I took on by myself.  I remember sitting on the steps of my new apartment wondering how exactly this was going to work.  I got a much better job the very next day. Rent: $625 (negotiated down from their asking price of $650!). $9375 total. 

October 2005-May 2006: First eight months in New York. Moved into a creepy basement room in a beautiful apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn that I found through friends of friends.  Unfortunately, the great unwashed, lightly-employed and very surly hipster masses of New York were embodied in one foul roommate there who drank my beer on my birthday and was generally a total ass.  Rent: $775.  $6200 total. 

June 2006-July 2007: 13 blissful months in Clinton Hill Brooklyn. Lived upstairs from my landlord and had my own huge bedroom and bathroom, and two very awesome roommates who I still adore to this day.  The best: Neighbor next door would come over every day at 7:30 before I left for work, take Hank to Fort Greene Park, and deliver him back to my roommates an hour or so later.  She was something really special.  Still see her every time I’m in New York, that woman is made of gold.  Rent: $825. $10,725 total. 

August 2007-May 2008: First ten months in San Francisco.  Lived with this awkward weirdo in Noe Valley for a while and was not comfortable one single day of it. Rent: $900. $9000 total.

June 2008-June 2010: Two years in Hayes Valley with a couple wonderful roommates and some that were not so much. Rent: $825. $19800 in sum.  (This is really adding up.)

June 2010-January 2012:  Finally moved in with my beau after many a difficult discussion about it.  Hooray for no more terrible roommates!!!  Rent: $900. 19 months totals $17,100. 

January 2012-June 2012: Moved to Burlington VT!  6 months here at $825, $4,950 total.

July 1 2012 we will officially be in our new apartment where we hope to stay for at least a couple of years.  We’re paying $1350 total - so my share (which has been the formula of this exercise) is $675. Hooray, a decreasing rent trend has begun!

Total money put towards rent in my life: $104,350.00

I probably still wouldn’t own an entire house, even if I’d bought one at age 18! Going to go try not to think about that huge number now.

Obit of the Day: Led Zeppelin II →

George Blackburn felt that he didn’t receive a “Whole Lotta Love” from his wife in 2011 so they divorced. After their marriage dissolved, Blackburn seemed “Dazed and Confused” so he decided he needed a fresh start. He changed his name, officially, to Led Zeppelin II.

(Source: chicagotribune.com, via wnyc)

God Yes!! 

Anthony Michael Simon doesn’t produce his own art, instead he lets spiders do the work for him.

About the work:

Chicago native Anthony Michael Simon first discovered the artistry of the silk-producing arachnids while trekking through a forest in Korea, where he is currently based, looking for a location for his next sculptural art installation. He came across a huge spiderweb and it somehow clicked in his mind that he could catch spiders and have them naturally spin their webs in his studio. Damn.

(via wnyc)