I spent this weekend in a haze of paint fumes.

This color sort of freaks me out.

The boy and I finished approximately half of our painterly adventures. For the bathroom, we applied three coats of this wacky dreamsicle orange. For the accent pillars in the kitchen, main room, and bedroom we went with a deep rich blue.

The deep blue we'd planned on; the dreamsicle orange just sort of happened on the spot in Home Depot. We were down to between a woodsy green and seafoam/minty color. We assigned 1 to the green and 2 to the seafoam and said on the count of three to throw out the color that we liked. I threw 1; he threw 2. So we went back to the drawing board and within five minutes had picked out this color, "Marmalade" and hence forth there was no going back. We wanted crazy for the bathroom, we got crazy for the bathroom.

To be fair, the blue wasn't exactly a conservative choice either. I knew I wanted something a little stormy that would compliment a light grey. I also wanted a really vibrant, solid hue that would stand out and attract the eye. Despite having some initial reservations ("oh my god, it's so... blue"), I'm really delighted with how it turned out.

The rest of the kitchen will be in the medium blue that's swatched on the wall.

Bedroom

Here you can see both pillars in the living room and kitchen.
More importantly, you can also see some of the awesome huge cactus that we purchased on impulse.

Lessons learned thus far in painting:

• Unless you are really really set on a specific color, it's a good idea to get samples and throw them up on your walls/contemplate them. We changed our mind a couple of times after seeing the colors actually on the walls.
• Don't skimp on the paint, both in quality and quantity. We went with Behr's ultra premium for the blue and Behr's erm, not ultra premium for the orange. Ultra was $6 extra/gallon and required barely even two coats; the other needed three thick ones, which warranted another hour of work. I think that when it comes to paint, you end up getting what you pay for.
• If you're using a brand new foam roller, run a lint roller over it a few times to remove fuzz that would otherwise end up in your paint.
• Use tape. I'm not really sure why the guy at Home Depot told us we wouldn't need any...perhaps he thought we were modern-day Michelangelos. Even if we are able to craft perfectly straight lines....tape still just makes everything faster and less nerve wracking.
• Use the blue kind, not the masking tape. Neither is perfect but the blue one's better.
• Peel off the tape approximately 15 minutes after applying your last coat. When pulling it off, try to aim for a 45 degree angle.
• Take breaks early and often. Give your brain and arms sometime to recover between layers. We motivated/rewarded ourselves with Italian ice, Breaking Bad (aside: this season is bat shit crazy), and Thai food.
• If person A is handling edges with a brush and person B is using a roller to get most of the color on the wall, have person B follow person A's "path" across the room. Don't let A's paint get to a semi-dry state where B's work will create weird textures, or vice versa.
• Remember to have fun. Life's too short to be fretting over the right color or shade forever and ever. Unless you're living in the home that you plan to be in for a very long time... then I guess it's ok to fret forever. But really, the worst that could happen is that you just go buy some more paint and do it all again. 

Next weekend will be the kitchen (medium blue) and all the rest of the walls (light grey). More paint-fume-induced wisdom to come.

On Michaela Cross' "India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear"

In the past few weeks, you may have come across an article entitled "India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear" by an undergraduate named Michaela Cross.

If you haven't, here's a link to it: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023053

I first saw this article circulating across social outlets among my University of Chicago network, and then later came across it posted on Reddit. A few days ago, I went to cnn.com and was surprised to see the article and a picture of Michaela staring back at me, front and center. Since then I've had several conversations with friends and co-workers about it.

I had a pretty strong reaction to Michaela's article because she and I had several things in common going into our India experiences. She is a woman in her early twenties, and so am I. She spent three months in India about a year ago; so did I (and two years before that, I spent 6 weeks in India right after graduating college). We even share the same alma mater, so I'd argue that our surroundings and student life before we went to India were comparable. To sum it up: we were both privileged young non-Indian women who jumped at our respective opportunities to go to India.

I do acknowledge that we differ in our appearance. She has fair skin and red hair; I do not. I probably did not stand out as foreign or exotic as she did to the locals. But despite looking less like a foreigner, I still was one, including by my appearance. I also spent a significant amount of time traveling with white women; women who stood out just as starkly against the backdrop of an overwhelmingly-Indian population as Michaela did throughout our travels within Delhi, Agra, Goa, Bangalore, Mysore, Hampi, and Pondicherry.

So with all that in mind, I wanted to share my experience and reaction to hers.

In the 18 weeks I spent between my two trips to India, I was never grabbed at. I was never masturbated at. I danced around and wasn't filmed. And I certainly never found myself in the situation she did of locking herself into a hotel room as a hotel staff member who allegedly attempted to rape her roommate called her again and again. Nothing I encountered came close to the horrible experiences that she went through.

Yet other parts of her account resonated more closely with my experience. I did find that I attracted stares. I did have street hagglers chase me. And a few times, strangers did take pictures of me without my permission (I should add that plenty of others did ask for permission). Those experiences left me feeling unsettled, but not unsafe.

The staring can be hard to quantify. What's appropriate and what's inappropriate? What's the intent of the staring? It's natural for people to look at each other and people everywhere do it - perhaps here in the US we do it more covertly and with a quicker tendency to look away when caught - but we still do it. When I've traveled to other countries where the staring culture/etiquette is not as conservative, I felt that I received a similar number and duration of stares from Italian and Peruvian men as I did in India. I also received plenty of stares from women and children. It can be uncomfortable at times, yes. But I attributed it to people's natural propensity/curiosity to look at things that they aren't used to seeing. Never did I interpret the stares as a threat to my safety.

I had street hagglers follow me, yes. Sometimes briefly, other times at length. I saw street hagglers follow foreign men too, and Indian women, and Indian men, and basically anyone else who expressed interest in their wares, just as frequently and with the same gusto. Again, to me those experiences certainly were an annoyance, but they never escalated to the point where I felt unsafe. My interpretation was that they were persistent because I looked like a sucker who would overpay for their goods.

And yes, I had pictures taken of me, sometimes without permission. Of the three behaviors discussed thus far, this is arguably the most severe. But again, I've heard of and witnessed this happening in countries all over the world; and every time with no harm or harassment, sexual or otherwise. In her article Michaela laments, "who knows how many strangers have used my image as pornography?" - a question that never crossed my mind and that frankly I was shocked to see as a conclusion that she had jumped to. I never had reason to believe the photos that people were taking of me were to be used as pornography. I recall a time when a white male I was traveling with was asked by an Indian man to pose for a picture with the Indian man's son, a toddler. I highly doubt that photo was used as pornography. Rather, I believed these pictures were captured to proof to friends and families that they saw someone interesting or different in their day. Was it right or permissible for them to take pictures of me without permission? I'd argue probably not, because it seems disrespectful based on the values and culture I'm used to. But was it a threat to my safety? Did I feel that the photographs made me into a sexual object? No, no.

All of this comes down to interpretation, which by nature is subjective. I don't think it's valuable to argue that my interpretations are more correct than Michaela's, or vice versa. I also don't think they are necessarily equal; if I had encountered some of the more aggressive behavior that Michaela did, perhaps they would have cast a shadow on these milder acts. If I'd been filmed dancing, maybe the picture taking wouldn't have been so easy to brush off. Or if I'd been groped, any more stares may have appeared as a menacing preamble to inappropriate touching. I don't know, because those things didn't happen to me or to any women I was with during my travels.

What I did experience during my travels were immense displays of kindness and hospitality by the Indian people I met. I spent time at an orphanage where I was offered cola. I was invited to spend holidays with my co-worker's family in lieu of not being near my own. I was offered a sari to wear, sweets to eat, walks to my apartment at night, suggestions of places to go, and help just about every time I asked it. I feel that I was left India with an overwhelmingly positive imprint of its people, which is why it saddened and surprised me to read Michaela's account and the subsequent effects that her trip had on her.

I could go on and on about the good things I experienced - but the point I want to make is that I felt safe the whole time I was in India. Much safer than when I lived in a neighborhood in the south side of Chicago. And before we are so quick to blast foreign places like India for putting up with such horrible treatment of women, we should look at our own numbers; in 2010, for every 100,000 people, 1.8 incidents of rape were reported. In the United States, for the same year, that number was 27.3 (source). If India was a "woman's hell" to Michaela, what do these numbers say about our home country?

Above all, I do not condemn, dismiss, or question the experiences that Michaela had on her trip to India or the way she interpreted them. I also do not condemn raising awareness of the rape culture in India. Those are important issues that need to be shared, to have attention drawn to, and to be fixed. I believe her account has helped to bring light to those issues in some ways.

Where I am concerned is that the picture that Michaela paints does not capture anything about Indian individuals other than the dirty actions of the men she had the misfortune to encounter. I fear that through the choice of words and experiences that Michaela used in her report, which she qualifies as "the story you need", readers will believe that India is a country that tolerates or celebrates a culture where depraved men exploit and sexualize all foreign women who enter their lands. And I fear that they will vow to not go to India as a result of their fear, or to look at all Indian men (and women) with disgust, or slander the country.

I know that as a young woman, had I never gone to India, or perhaps if I did not interact frequently with people of Indian descent, I would have been fearful of traveling to India after reading her report. I would've looked at the blurred-out anonymous Indian man in the background of Michaela's picture and shuddered.

So I offer my own account, one where Michaela's conclusion of "India [as] an extremely unsafe place for women" was not one that I or the other women I was with had reason to believe.

There are places that can be situationally dangerous for women (and every other subculture or subgroup of humans) everywhere in this world. In India, in the US, in every country. The danger posed is brought on by ignorance and inhumanity and hate that are not limited to one place or one group of people. As Michaela's article reaches an increasingly wide audience, I implore its readers to remember that it is one woman's report, one that focuses exclusively on the negative experiences that she had. Do not judge the whole nation, its culture and its people by her account alone. 

100 Mile Challenge! + The Girl and the Goat

I completed the 100 mile challenge!

My first day of the challenge was July 23rd, which made the ending/31st day August 24th. In those 31 days, I ran a total of 100.8 miles.

Here's a graph summing up my weekly runs. It does not completely reflect the 31-day window because the graph's weeks start before the first day and extend after the last day of my running "month." But it's close enough. Huzzah!

I know some (crazy-ass) runners easily get up to 100 miles in a week, but for me, 100 in 31 was sufficiently challenging. Even though my runs took only 30 minutes on average, it took some planning to find that time and to make sure I also had ample time to warm up, cool down, stretch, and shower each day. About once a week I gave myself a break day and would compensate for those lost miles through longer runs on subsequent days.

The results of the 31 days of running? My pace overall became faster, easier, and more enjoyable. My face stopped resembling a beet after every run. My sexy feet blisters metamorphosed into sexier feet callouses. And after everything, I felt pretty darn good about how my legs looked when I put on a dress for my 100-in-31 dinner with the boy, heh.

As I'd mentioned a few posts ago, the celebration dinner took place at The Girl and the Goat. TG&TG is somewhat of a rising star in the Chicago food scene - mention you're going there and chances are some foodie in the vicinity will light up and gasp, "You have to try the pig face!"

It is also our city's most Yelped-about restaurant - and as such, notoriously difficult to get into. The boy made our reservations two and a half months ago. Two and a half months of talking to others who'd been, of poring over the menu, and of dreaming of this evening with vast quantities of drool gathering about us. It was with great trepidation and very high expectations that I stepped into the restaurant, my legs wobbly from a combination of soreness, excitement, and being in high heels (a rarity these days).

For being such a raved-about place, TG&TG was surprisingly down to earth. I immediately felt comfortable, like I had walked into a close friend's home (well, a close friend with really good taste). Wooden table tops, charred walls, high ceilings, solid utensils, and simple decor made it easy to focus on the food and the company. The waitstaff were all incredibly on point. Our waitress was a total badass/sweetheart who had no problem answering our questions about the menu or providing her opinions about the dishes. All with a genuine smile, as if she was truly happy to be engaging in conversation with us restaurant-goers.

She suggested a total of four small plates for us - but we couldn't pick (#firstworldproblem), so we loosened the notches in our belts and set about with five.

First came the grilled baby octopus with guanciale in a lemon-pistachio vinaigrette. The octopus was delightfully chewy, the veggies just the right amount of sour, and the bacon added a surprise salty element that worked with the combination.

Next came pan-fried shishito peppers with a generous heaping of parmesan. Actually, the whole thing was quite a large portion - we found ourselves munching on the soft peppers our entire meal whereas everything else was consumed in linear succession. Despite being perfectly delicious, this was perhaps my least favorite item on the menu, which really speaks to how much I loved everything else.

Our third dish and my and the boy's favorite was the fried goat belly served with buttery lobster, crab, and fennel. With ingredients like that, how could it taste anything but absolutely delicious? I think we scarfed this down in record time. I didn't even stop to take a picture of it on my plate, it was so damn good.

Fourth came my second favorite, the kalbi beef ribs. While the ribs were perfectly sumptuous, it was the corn on the cob that left me at a loss for words. I have never eaten such perfectly cooked corn. And I likely never shall again. Every kernel was an intense, magical mouthgasm of juicy, buttery goodness. I know I'm starting to sound like a crazy corn lady. But truly, there are no other words for how good it was. This dish has forever set the corn bar at now unachievable levels.

And last but not least, the grand finale of pig face. PIG FACE!!! So far all the dishes had surprised us, and this was no exception. I'm not really sure what I expected - a flat piggy face oinking back at me, maybe. What we received was an artfully composed tower of what looked like meat patty, hash browns, and an egg fried to perfection nestled delicately on top.

This dish was about as decadent as it got. With every bite, I could practically feel my body undoing all its hard work and melting into an oozing blob of fatty fat fat. It was a glorious and outrageous journey - I think I came out of it a changed person.

By the time we'd managed our last bite of pig face (let's just take a second and reflect on how this sentence began) I wanted nothing more than to keel over and face plant into a nice, long snooze. But instead we got up and walked around to lighten up a bit.

All in all, 'twas a startlingly satisfying meal and a delightful way to celebrate achieving a personal goal. And in the grand scheme of things, it was not incredibly expensive either - our bill came to just under $100 before tip. We'd each ordered a drink as well.

I think my favorite part was how pleasantly surprised I was by each dish. The composition of flavors and presentation were just plain fun. For being one of the hottest restaurants in town, it wasn't pretentious, it wasn't overpriced, and it didn't take itself too seriously. I mean - how could they? Their piece de resistance is a pig face. I definitely would come back to try the other items on the menu - though I'd definitely be tempted to order the goat belly and the ribs again (that CORN!)

If you're saving up for a nice meal in the city or if you have a friend/family coming to town in a few months who you'd like to impress in a fun, laid-back-but-still-trendy atmosphere, take them to The Girl and the Goat. Just remember to wear stretchy bottoms, take deep breaths between mouthfuls, and enjoy the hell out of it.