Friday I'm in Love

Aaaaaand.... exhale. What a long week this has been. I hope each one of you finds yourself breathing contentedly this weekend - I sure plan on it. Here are my picks for the week, each one something that gets my mental wheels turning in different ways. See you on the other side! 

People's District

My new favorite DC blog is People's District, which spotlights regular folks who live in the District, doing their regular everyday activities. As someone who often passes people on the street and wonders, "Just what does that person do for a living?" or "I wonder what that person's life is like?," this blog is insanely rewarding. I love the story of the blog's creation, too - one DC resident deciding that rather than continuing not to know the strangers he saw every day, he's ask them about their lives, instead. Swoon. I truly believe projects like this one could make us all a little nicer toward one another, a little more gracious when we pass in the street, and a little more humble. For that and more, complete respect.

Writing Sheds

Since the whole primary home-purchasing thing isn't exactly going well, perhaps I'll spend the weekend dreaming not about my usual fall-back (beach houses), but about writing sheds instead. Staying small but dreaming big over here. Take a look at re-nest's inspiring line-up of famous authors' writing sheds, and I dare you not to dream about all the fantastic things you could create in one of them. I'm a Roald Dahl countryside shed kind of a person myself, but Michael Pollan's rustic-but-definitely-not-Unabomberish perch in the woods might be more your style. Other choices: Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas and Mark Twain. You're intrigued now, aren't you? Out to the sheds you go!

Grant Achatz on 'Fresh Air'

 Chef Grant Achatz has long been on my inspirational-as-all-getout list, and this interview with Terry Gross absolutely seals the deal for me. (Terry Gross is one of my huge NPR crushes, by the way - years ago I waited in line to see her speak like a total fangirl.) We can't even imagine his journey, truly: being as celebrated for your culinary genius as he was, then losing your sense of taste due to tongue cancer, then continuing to cook with your other senses, then fighting the cancer and slooooooowly regaining your sense of taste, then finally emerging healthy and more creative than ever on the other side. Mind: blown. I'm looking forward to reading Achatz's memoir, excerpts of which you can read at the NPR link.