Whenever anyone compliments my interior design abilities, I tell them my secret: if you just buy everything in the same color your decor will always match. OK, so there's probably a line that you can cross in going from just enough of a single color...
I moved into my apartment last March, and have been living alone, happily, in this one bedroom place for a year. The fact that it's been an entire twelve months is crazy to think about. In a lot of ways it doesn't feel like I've...
Sometimes, I wish I was an artist. February reminded me of that. Between an afternoon at the Van Gogh bedroom exhibit at the Art Institute and coming across this gorgeous painted travel journal/blog/store, I just kept thinking, "I wish I was better at art." I've always...
It's hard to ever really declare something as "done." Usually things come to a point where you've "done enough" or where anything else you do is really just nitpicking or when you're just so over it you can't do any more. It was like that...
I didn't particularly love Koh Samui the first time around. Nothing against it, it just wasn't the most memorable place. But that's where I ended up for my last few days of vacation in Thailand. I was having a terrible time deciding on where to...
If you walk about a block from my hostel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and then turn right and walk another two blocks, past the woman selling fried chicken and meat on a stick from a cart, you'll find the closest 7-Eleven. If you turn left at...
I have a buy-once philosophy: I don't like spending my money on things that I know will only be temporary, that I know I'll want to replace eventually or upgrade. Sure, things wear out, things break, things go terribly out of style, not much lasts...
I'm single. Very very single. Truth is, I've been single for a long time: I broke up with my last actual boyfriend in 2003. No, I didn't misplace a one there. I said 2003. He's now married and lives in the suburbs with a kid and I'm...
There's a smell to Asia. A mix of lemongrass and coriander and durian and mango. A mix of incense and sweat and fermented meat. Something like that. It's a scent that's enhanced with the sticky humidity. Intensified. It's a scent that's just there, saturating the...
Valentine's Day is next week. So there's still time to profess your love for me and make reservations at White Castle. Not that I even like White Castle. But it would still be one of the most romantic dates I've ever had. I'm low maintenance....