You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

It's Christmas. The season for thinking kind thoughts about those we know, love and read daily.

In case you for one split second thought, "my, that Colleen seems so normal and well adjusted. I bet her family is sweet, calm and lovably vanilla." I offer you the below as evidence to the contrary.


This was a self-timer family photo (plus my sister's beau, George) that we took before Christmas Eve mass last night. Are we normal, slightly strange or really, really off-center?

And, how does the poor reindeer feel to be used like this?

Would little Ralphie be mortified or proud of us?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good 'jazz hands' photo!!

To Stress My Point

I was saddened today to hear on the news that Chicago has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the #1 Most Stressful City in America.

They based the rankings on many variables, including: unemployment rate, cost of living, number of days of sunshine, the cost of gasoline and the air quality. They called many of the top 10 (or losing 10?) urban monsters, and my favorite: "human bee hives."

My defenses went up. If you've read more than one of my posts, you know that I love this city and really reach out and enjoy many corners of it. I love the diversity of the people, the neighborhoods, the architecture, the nightlife, the sporting events, the cultural activities and the sheer feel of it. I love it.

And, that doesn't stress me out at all.

In order to defend her, I looked up a few facts about Chicago that you may not know. We boast the:

World’s largest commercial office building (Merchandise Mart)
World’s busiest airport (O'Hare)
World’s largest public library (Harold Washington)
World’s largest Tiffany dome (Chicago Cultural Center)
World’s largest free-admission food festival (Taste of Chicago)
World’s largest illuminated fountain (Buckingham Fountain)
World’s largest convention facility (McCormick Place)
World’s largest parochial school system (Archdiocese of Chicago)
World's largest outdoor block party (Old St. Pat's)

I could go on, but no one wants to read a list of measly items like that. Those aren't the things that truly make this My Kind of Town.

I love this city, and will defend her, for so many reasons that make life LESS stressful. Not the least of these are the fact that this is a beautifully planned, organized, gridded city. It makes sense. It is logical. Eight blocks is a mile. Everything starts at 0 at State and Madison in the heart of the Loop. Addresses on the north and west side of the street are even, the others are odd. It just is easy.

The highways are a tad bit more confusing, and of course they're filled with traffic, but eventually you get used to the fact that they refer to them in names, not numbers, here. After some time you realize that the Kennedy is 90 to O'Hare, and that the Edens is 94 up to the north shore. It eventually dawns on you that the highways going north and south, while sporting the same number, don't always have the same name. I consider it a tourist-check. Just seeing if they're paying attention.

As you clearly know from my many posts about the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), this city is also home to a fairly big and easy-to-conquer system of public transportation. It's not perfect, and it's not as good as other cities I've visited, but it gets me to and from work for under $4 and under 30 minutes door-to-door each way, so I can't complain.

People, including myself, complain about the weather, the traffic and the lack of free parking (available or non-paid). Gas is almost $4.50 a gallon and despite any denials to the contrary, the snow is coming. But...

It also doesn't stress me out that much. It provides great fodder for this blog, and for a storyteller like me, that actually is decreasing the stress of finding something to write about each day.

Back to the facts, ma'am, you ask? Okay. This city is also the global headquarters to some seriously famous and large companies, including, but obviously not limited to:

Boeing
Sears
Walgreens
Caterpillar
Motorola
Allstate
Kraft Foods
Abbott Laboratories
McDonald’s
Sara Lee
Exelon
CNA Financial
OfficeMax
CDW
Wrigley

So, in summary, in one fell swoop in this city, you can get an airplane, a dishwasher, shampoo, a tractor, a cell phone, insurance, macaroni 'n cheese, pharmaceuticals, a cheeseburger, natural gas, investments, a ream of paper, a computer and a pack of gum.

You can also visit a building with its own zip code, catch an international flight, check out a book, see stained glass, eat more than you can handle, see a fountain that was a gift from a husband to his wife, go to the sales conference, visit a nun, and drink outside at a street festival where you're likely to meet the love of your life (or so they claim).

Not bad! Kindof, well, de-stresses you to have all those things taken care of, no?

That's what I thought.

In case you're still not sold, or you're too ADD to read all of this, you can simply look at the visual aids below (although I guess if you've gotten this far, you must've read something).

In the borrowed words of Stevie Wonder, isn't she lovely?



























































*special thanks to Spudart for some of the gorgeous photos above!*

Forbes, take a hike. Go back to New York. What do you know?

A Picture Speaks

Let's have fun with flickr, and see what a "Colleen mosaic" would look like. Thanks to Grits in the City, I know how to make this happen.

How does this whole thing work?

First, I typed the answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. Using only the first page, I picked an image. Then, I copied and pasted each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. And the questions were...

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. Your favorite hobby?
11. Your sibling's name?
12. A pet you have or wish you had?
13. What are you most proud of?
14. The place you call home?
15. What do you love most in life?
16. One word to describe you?

My mosaic looks like this:


Isn't it beautfiul?

My answers, and the link to credit the photorapher, are below. Did you guess correctly what the image I chose represented?

1. Colleen
2. Beef tenderloin
3. Norcross
4. Red
5. Bono
6. Vodka tonic
7. Santorini, Greece
8. Caramel turtle cheesecake
9. A mother
10. Writing
11. Lauren
12. Golden Retriever
13. Buying my condo
14. Lakeview, Chicago
15. Laughter
16. Storyteller

There you have it. Thanks to all of the super photographers I borrowed from...aren't they amazing?

By the way, this process made me:

a) want to eat fatty desserts dripping with sauces
b) long to travel
c) wish it was happy hour already
d) crave a good puppy cuddle
e) envy the talented photographers out there

Hope you enjoyed the view.

Will be Burning the Outtakes

I survived. And, will have a host of photos to prove it.

We are in the midst of redesigning and restructuring our website at work and it will include a full update of the section that features all of our friendly faces, in a section cleverly called "The Lunatics"—in what I think is a reference to Clockwork Orange about how the lunatics run the asylum. Or something like that.

The bulk of the current employees are not on there now, and some of the faces that ARE on there date back to the 90s. That doesn't sound like that long ago, but frankly, I was still in high school, so I think these people have long since moved on.

So, this means videos have been recorded with some key people talking about business branding issues, and I had to suffer through that unbearably strange situation back in the fall. They are live now, so if you're really curious what I have to say, feel free to wander over there. Trust me, the work isn't worth it. Except for you, Mom. You'll probably like them. I'll decode the marketing jargon later.

My one main thought during that shoot was that I had no idea how hot it was to sit under those lights. This isn't surprising seeing as my experience to date at photo shoots has been the "client manager" role. This roughly translates to "keep the client as far from the ditsy and artistic photographer as possible while he captures the image" and "schmooze the client as much as you have to to keep them happy and forgetting the exorbitant day rate everyone around you is making."

Today, however, was the still photo shoot, and it was equally as uncomfortable. My mom tells me I'm photogenic, and by and large I feel pretty comfortable in photos taken on the weekends, but this type of setup is hard. Two huge lights, a big white screen, loud funky music to try to relax you, and four people, including the photographer, telling you that "you're doing great." Hand me a vodka tonic, and then I'll be doing great. Trust me.

Beads of sweat on the forehead aside, it didn't help that the rain came this morning, making the ladies' straightened hair a total mess. Even the stylist we hired didn't quite know what to do, and we don't have the time/budget to really fix the major issues.

Wrinkly Shirt? Check. Frizzy Hair? Check. Pale Winter Skin? Check.

Ignoring all of this, we shoot.

I smiled, tilted, angled, leaned, crossed my arms, hands on my hips, laughed my fake laugh, tossed a prop tennis ball back and forth off-screen, rolled my eyes, peered over my shoulder and leaned on my knees while one foot propped up on a stepstool ladder. The whole thing felt just shy of Glamour Shots from the mall, and trust me, I didn't go for those even when they WERE semi-cool.

Coworkers kept sliding the door open to peek, and trust me, THAT didn't help either. Dancing around—trying desperately to be casual—only resulted in eyes closed, lips pursed "dancing face" shots, and those don't exactly convey "business branding professional."

In one of the frames, towards the end, I fiddled with my hair, closed my eyes, hands in hair, inadvertently pouted my lips, and POOF! Porn shot. Bad 1983 porn, but still.

I have no immediate plans to give Kate Moss a run for her money. Modeling isn't really my thing. I like cheeseburgers and beer too much, and I am not a big fan of narcotics.

Bad dance videos or cheesy hair commercials, however? I'm in.

No. It's not me.