LouFest is an unfortunately-named first-year music festival held in St Louis’s crown jewel, Forest Park, where Chris and I got married. The lineup was impressive (She&Him, Broken Social Scene, Lucero, Built to Spill, Jeff Tweedy), but not packed with bands we actively follow and love. Normally, we would have totally been down for going both days, but we ultimately decided not to spend the money on two-day passes for both of us. It seemed like my entire Twitter feed was going, though, and Friday I just decided to go for it and told my boy Mike D. that I was going to join him on Saturday.

I’m glad I did. I’ve been to festivals before, and this one had many small touches that made it truly enjoyable.

• First off, no fees for tickets. At all. I don’t care if they folded whatever fees they had into the costs, I appreciate the fact that if the one-day pass was listed at $38, that’s what it cost me. Fuck Ticketmaster and their “convenience” fee, because anyone who has ever dealt with Ticketmaster in the last ten years knows it is anything but convenient.
• The organizers purposely made the festival grounds larger than the expected attendance so the festival wouldn’t feel crowded. THANK JEEBUS. I hate crowds, and at festivals, I think you should absolutely be able to spread out a blanket on the perimeter and chill out without some dirty hippie hitting you with their devil sticks. My anxiety thanks you.
• Speaking of dirty hippies, this was far and away the cleanest festival I’ve ever been to. Long story, but I had blisters on my feet, so I decided to give it a go barefoot, and it was no big deal, at all. I stepped in beer once. That was it. The port-a-potties were new and clean and there were few, if any, lines. There were copious recycling booths, manned with staff, for both recycling and composting, and I’m pretty sure people actually used them.
• Also speaking of dirty hippies, I witnessed no tomfoolery of the obnoxious kind at all. I didn’t seen obnoxiously drunk people who were harshing others’ mellow. I saw no folks makin’ sexy time in public. There were no devil sticks or hacky sacks or meatheads or creepers. I didn’t see one security person have to swoop in and bust anyone. I don’t know that I noticed one security person, period. People acted like grown folks. In fact, there were many children there and they didn’t even annoy me once, mostly because I wish I was a cool enough seven-year-old to be rockin’ a Wilco shirt and giant noise-muting headphones while playing with dinosaurs at a music festival. Rock the cradle, bitches.
• The vendors were great. Food was from actual restaurants in St Louis, some I frequently patronize like Local Harvest. There were tons of vegetarian options, and much more than just fried monstrosities. Not that I don’t enjoy fried monstrosities, but not on hot days unless I’m at the Iowa State Fair or another place that offers deep-fried cheese curds. There were crepes and tacos and gazpacho and gyros and many other food items. And sushi, which I would never eat at a summertime music festival, but that’s me.  Beer was reasonable, too, at $5 for Schlafly, which is cheaper than the ballpark, for sure.

Basically, the organizers decided to make a music festival that eliminated all the things I hate about festivals. Epic win. The music was boss as hell. Lucero proved how hardcore they are and Broken Social Scene melted my face off. Same old, same old. I saw about a million people I knew, most from the innerwebs. Hey, everybody! I’m glad I saw you. Or, I’m sorry I didn’t see you. Next time!

I probably should have headed up there Sunday, too, but I hadn’t seen Chris in forever, so we, along with our friend Josh, went to the Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park.

We went to the Festival of Nations to eat some food, period. But, holy shit, I could not believe how many people were at the park. It was insane. It was not a situation where you could eat and stroll comfortably. I was totally overwhelmed by the options for food. The various meats on a stick alone were enough to boggle the mind. We consumed plenty of that, as well as fruity beverages otherwise absent in our everyday lives. I won’t opine on the details of our culinary adventure other than to say this: Chris ate some Thai chicken satay (his first Thai ever) and said it was good and he would go eat Thai if he could have that.

DUDE. THIS IS MONUMENTAL. I love my husband and he generally humors my monumentally more-adventurous palate to make me happy. But this is an entire new cuisine he will eat! We can go eat on South Grand! It’s a gateway drug into Vietnamese and then PHO VIETNAMESE COFFEE BANH FUCKING MI. Happy day, indeed.

So, yeah, braving the crowds, along with seeing some old guy in a KU hat scream and berate his wife in front of 10,000 people, was worth it if it means that my husband and I can eat Basil Spice together. And, yes, I almost kicked a dude in the junk when he yelled at his wife, with his finger in her face, “GO GET YOUR FOOD AND MAKE IT SNAPPY”. He actually said that exact thing. Fucking piece of shit asshole. Instead, I kicked myself for not having any of the little Safe Connections cards I have for this very situation to give this lady so she would have a place to get help if she was ready to leave. I had to settle instead for loudly talking about the guy as we stood two feet from him. I doubt it did much good. Any dude that would talk to his lady like that anywhere, let alone in public, is probably pretty oblivious to reality.

Other than that incident, I will say that the Festival of Nations was a fine example of how large, diverse, crowds composed of people of all ages and from all walks of live, can act responsibly and respectfully. I didn’t see any hooliganish behavior, only people eating and smiling and sweating. This weekend was a nice counterpoint to the comments section of any Post-Dispatch article, which is usually made up solely of people like the guy who yelled at his wife. It’s also an example of how food can bring people together. You know, it’s a lot harder to dehumanize and label people as “illegal” or “aliens” or “foreigners” when they openly and happily share their culture with you, particularly if said culture is tasty food. There’s room on the rock for everyone, people, and I, for one, welcome anyone to our particular corner. Except you, Glenn Beck. Please stay in your hole far away from me.

1. The work is straightforward. There is a list of things to do. I do them. While wearing Crocs.
2. I get to be around food and kitchen supplies. It’s hard not to ogle various pieces of Le Creuset and other tools I desperately NEED to achieve culinary greatness in my own home.
3. This is complicated by the fact that I get a nice discount. This is further complicated by the fact that Chris is adamant that I quit accumulating tools in the kitchen until we have more space.
4. I get to eat food. Generally, we get to eat whatever is being cooked in either kitchen classroom. During my first shift, I ate cheddar soup, stuffed peppers, cauliflower, shrimp and crab, apple pie, and four different pastas. I anticipate gaining back all the weight I lost in the last six months. We also get to take home leftovers.
5. We can take classes we’re not working for free. Which, um, AWESOME. Yes, I would like to learn how to butcher a pig.
6. I get to meet awesome chefs. Many chefs in St Louis teach classes here, and I will get to learn from them while helping them, as well as work with my many friends who teach classes here.

Yeah, I KNOW. It’s a pretty sweet deal, until someone my friends and I have offended comes in and uses every dish in both kitchens just to teach me a lesson about destroying businesses by tweeting about subpar food. The only downside is that most classes are on nights and weekends, which means less time with Chris, since he’s got work and school and it feels like he’s never home. I’m working tonight, he’s got his fake football draft all day tomorrow, I work Monday night, he’s got class Tuesday night, etc, etc. We’re like two ships passing in the night. <tear> I’m also waiting to hear back about another gig, so I might just be a working machine.

Anyway, I hope y’all get to enjoy gorgeous weather over the weekend. I’ll be heading to the Festival of Nations to get me some more tasty vittles. Because I love to eat.

In the meantime, Chris started school again this week, so I’m getting into a new routine without him and with these three animals. Neko believes that her role in my life is to supplant my alarm clock, and I awaken each morning to a 55-lb pitt mix sitting on my head, trying to gnaw my White Girl ‘Fro. Luckily, the heat has broken, at least temporarily, so each day starts with a walk. This allows the dogs to run their crazy off so when we come home, they are knocked out and I can get something done while my body absorbs the methane steadily leaking out of sleeping dogs’s asses, which I prefer over incessant barking at phantom menaces like the dishwasher, the television, and sunflowers.

Here’s another question for you wise readers: I’m fairly certain that this blog and my blogging in general is going to come up at some point in this charter school process. The people I work with on our team are already aware of how I roll. I might not be their cup of tea, but they’ve known for a while that I do this, and it hasn’t been an issue, at least that I’m aware of. But I’m not naive, and I know people who are evaluating our plan probably do at least a little Googling.

My opinion is that my writing persona (which is damn close to my regular persona), no matter how opinionated and curse-y I am, shouldn’t influence my ability to kick ass in the professional world. I feel very, very strongly about that, because I know that I am knowledgeable in my field and I am more than capable of contributing to my field in ways that will benefit the community I serve. If people have a problem with the fact that I publicly talk about dog farts in my free time, I argue that they must not care too much about providing quality schools for kids, because I can do that, and do it well. While I recognize the need for relative discretion, I’ve also been in the position of having to delete and entire blog in order to protect my employment and I vowed I would never, ever let someone take my words away from me again. Plus, I’m in too many places to try to cover my tracks at this point. I’m slutty like that.

Then again, I may think I’m edgy, but someone on the charter school side of things told me I was “Stepford-ish” in our mayor’s presentation, so I guess I can’t win.

Your thoughts? If a stakeholder brings up this facet of my “public persona”, how should I deal with that?

ANYWAY, apparently the class at this particular parish is led by a nice married couple who asked the class what were the three ways a couple could avoid conception. According to the people teaching the class on the sexin’, those methods are:

1. Abstinence (no surprise here)
2. Hysterectomy
3. Vasectomy

Whaaaaa?  What about our good friends Oral and Anal? Or Mutual Masturbation? Are those tools of the Devil Gays? I mean, I get that the church is against contraception because they want to keep their legion strong or whatever, but two of the three options are INVASIVE SURGERIES. It’s like they’re trying to scare you into procreating.

My friend claimed the whole time she just wanted to yell “BUTT SEX” but she thought that maybe that might draw attention to the fact that her fiance was slumped over in boredom during the whole class and then they might not be able to get married in the church.

This got me thinking about Catholicism. I am not Catholic. My husband is a “recovering” Catholic. Pretty much almost all my friends, for the most part, were raised Catholic and are in varying stages of current practice, whether that be deeply spiritual or culturally obligated. Because at least half of the weddings we go to are Catholic, I’m fairly familiar with the requirements to get married in the Church as so many of our friends have fulfilled them. And pretty much all of them have either:

1. Agreed that the natural family planning sessions spread misinformation about sexual health.
2. Lied copiously on the questionnaires they must complete, usually regarding premarital sex or cohabitation.
3. Admitted that they were only doing it “for our parents”.

So my question is this: why would rational, non-practicing, sexually-active adults choose to go through all the bullshit? I mean, most of my friends going through these classes never go to church. Ever. And they’re probably admitted secular humanists, truth be told. Then again, people’s spirituality is quite private, and I would never assume that a friend thought one thing or another unless they specifically told me, so maybe I’m completely reading the situation wrong, but I don’t think I’m that far off in regards to many people I know.

I don’t mean this as an affront to anyone’s faith, and I’m truly not judging those who go through this process or any other sacrament. I am genuinely interested in this aspect of Catholicism. I can’t imagine that the priests or lay leaders who conduct these sessions think that no participants engage in premarital sex. If there’s a mutual acknowledgment of lying, but that lying is about rigid church dogma, isn’t the lying just as reprehensible as the act of, say premarital sex, or “butt sex”, or (GASP) PREMARITAL BUTT SEX (traffic, please!)? Are the priests and the participants are participating in a rouse in the name of church tradition, or are priests just that naive about young people today? (hold your jokes, I’m getting to that)

Of course, then I start thinking about the sex scandal surrounding Catholic priests, and how molestation of children by priests was not only an epidemic, but the church itself made a concerted effort to coverup the abuse allegations, allowing priests to continue to remain working in parishes and abusing children. If you haven’t seen Deliver Us From Evil, the documentary about a particular priest’s case, it’s on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I encourage you to watch it.  What struck me about this documentary was the idea of disillusionment. There was an interview with the parents of a child who suffered years of abuse at the hands of a priest who, once the allegations came to light, was simply shuttled from parish to parish, leaving many children in his wake. I had never considered how this type of abuse can emotionally damage all involved, not because the abuse itself is horrific for the families involved (it obviously is) but it damages the fundamental core of these families.

Imagine: you’re a devout Catholic, and your spiritual leader commits a horrific crime against your child. The church, to whom your faith is absolute, to whom you’ve entrusted your entire spiritual destiny, your immortal soul, not only refuses to make things right, but allows the same thing to happen to countless other families without any type of resolution, or explanation, or reparation. This has to completely shatter a person to the very core of what they believe alongside the damage done to a family when a child is abused.

Not all priests are like this. Not by a long shot. And I can’t imagine that parishioners weren’t outraged. So I wonder what kind of dialogue happened between archdioceses, priests, nuns, lay leaders, and parishioners surrounding the sex scandals. Were accountability measures taken? True accountability measures, not just ones to quell dissent? Is there even room in the Catholic church for dissent and subsequent change? And if the answer is no, how and why do devout Catholics continue on as parishioners?

There are still people my age who feel they have to go through the sacraments either because their families insist on it or because they want to save their immortal soul, even if they aren’t really sure they have immortal souls or that Catholicism is the way to save one. When we were planning our wedding, it was never a question whether or not we would be married in the church. I’m not Catholic, and I’m not going to pretend to be one or go through rituals that are meaningless to me for my spouse’s family, and Chris would never ask me to. This was a bone of contention with a (very) few members of Chris’s family. One went so far as to say that she did not view our marriage as valid. But this is just our experience, and I can’t judge others who make different decisions. I just want to know what about Catholicism, with all it’s obvious flaws and faults and hypocrisies, still has a pull on people my age who see through the dogma. As an outsider immersed in a city entrenched in Catholic culture, I can’t help but ask questions about these things.

Is anyone willing to talk about this? I ask that the discussion stay civil in the name of discourse. Of course, kid-touching priests are fair game, but other than those fuckers, let’s keep it respectful.

Life’s really not like that anymore, unless you’re the idiot STILL trying to pick up 16-year olds in chat rooms, in which case, you get what you deserve when you find out that 16-year old tartlet is really a paunchy cop.

Today I saw a commercial for Match.com that said that 1 in 5 couples meet online. Chris asked if I thought that was true, and I do. There’s not the stigma attached to online relationships (dating or otherwise) that there used to be. While Chris and I met the good old-fashioned way (drunk at a friend’s party), I have many, many friends I met via the internet that I regularly hang out with in real life, like most of my food friends. I also have many, many friends whom I have never hung out with in real life, but have epic plans to do so at BlogHer, an annual blogging conference I’ll be attending in August for the second year in a row.

Last year, BlogHer was in Chicago, and I hosted a pre-conference meetup for those in the area who were going so everyone would have a friendly face to turn to at the conference. This year, I’m doing the same. This ain’t nothin’ fancy. Basically, I just named a day and time (Saturday, July 24th at 3PM) and a place (Schlafly Bottleworks) and made an Eventbrite invite. It’s a chance to meet other St Louis ladybloggers whether you are going to BlogHer this year or not.

This will be a casual, friendly, welcoming cocktail hour(s). There will be nametags that you are not obligated to wear. If you’ve never gone to any type of meetup of online acquaintances, this is the perfect event for you because we don’t bite unless you are into that sort of thing, in which case, THINGS CAN BE ARRANGED, if you know what I mean.

Plus, Bottleworks has one of those Dyson hand dryers in the bathroom, the ones that ACTUALLY DRY YOUR HANDS!  It’s been there for a few years and I still get a kick out of it.

You don’t have to RSVP, but please do if you know you are coming so we both can get a sense of who will be there. You know you want to Google stalk first.

ANYWAY, I hope to see you there, then at Art of Food, an event for Slow Food St Louis, later that night

Saturday, May 22nd

Kegs tapped at 6, trivia starts at 7

Teams between 2-8 people

$10/person; includes all the crappy keg beer you can drink

(although we may get one craft keg if we have enough interested)

Cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place teams based on pot

Mulligans: $5 each or 3/$10

Bring your own tables and chairs (what do you think this is, the VFW?)

Dice game AKA CLR. Bring $1 bills

Anticipating record crowds. No, seriously.  SERIOUSLY. RSVP below to ensure room for your team.

RSVP or questions? E-mail kbestoliver (at) yahoo (dot) com

]]> http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/04/06/announcing/feed/ 0 http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/03/29/school-daze/ http://southcityconfidential.com/2010/03/29/school-daze/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:41:47 +0000 KBO http://southcityconfidential.com/?p=329 The charter school is coming along exactly as planned (insert evil mustache-twirling maniacal laughs). A few weeks ago, we had our review for the first of two planning grants. This involved submitting the first incantation of our business plan, as well as an in-person interview where our four founding members defended said proposal in front of a group of people. It also involved me squeezing into “business attire” that I didn’t exactly try on before I bought it and consequently ended up feeling like Joan Holloway.

It was a leetle tight pretty much everywhere and the girls decided they wanted to be part of the interview, too, but luckily I had a modest cardigan to keep things classy. Whether it was my spectacular ability to resemble sausage casing or just the sheer awesomeness of both our plan and interview, we must have done something right, because South City Prep just got its first funding. 30K, y’all.

I’m thinking I should change my kickball at-bat song back to this (NSFW).

I was disappointed to find out that our grants don’t come as giant checks. Would it kill them to make a giant check?

Right now, we are really, really close to finishing the document we’ll submit to the Mayor’s Office, DESE, and for the second planning grant worth a cool $220K. This involves creating a budget, outlining our vision for the school, preliminary curriculum planning, picking methods of assessment, designing a professional development framework, and various other “big picture” ideas. Once that document is submitted, we’ll start putting that plan into action. We’ll spend part of our first grant visiting model urban charter schools in Chicago, Houston, and Boston. We’ll start looking for additional board members and a facility, establish relationships with community members, continue refining our curriculum, and start a marketing campaign to recruit both students and teachers. While we do that, our plan slowly quits being just that and starts being real, meaning we start hammering out the nitty gritty of schooling 200 tweens in a way that guarantees that every single last student graduates on time and heads towards college.

I’m scared fucking shitless.  I mean, thinking about it keeps me up at night, even though we won’t open for over a year. I keep having random, relatively-unimportant-for-where-we-are thoughts, like “Oh, all our kids have to get library cards.  And watches,” or “We need walkie-talkies.” It’s well and good to have a plan, but then we actually have to make it happen. I mean, think of all the things that have to happen to make our dream a successful reality.  We’ve got to find amazing teachers, they have to want to work their asses off, and we have to do everything we can to support them so they want to continue working at our school.. In addition to stuff like, oh, finding a building and getting it to be the environment we need for our kids, we’ve got to create and execute a curriculum that will get all kids on grade level in reading and math by the time they enter high school, plus accommodate special needs students, plus challenge gifted students, plus engaged disengaged students. That’s the bare minimum our curriculum must do. Plus, we’ve got to make it culturally relevant. Plus we have to train teachers to teach in a rigorous, culturally-relevant way. Plus, we have to teach critical thinking skills. And cooperation skills. And academic skills. And media literacy skills. We have to identify and purchase curriculum in the areas where it is appropriate. We have to find a food provider for breakfast and lunch. We have to identify and cultivate relationships with community groups that can help support our mission. We have to reach out to families to forget positive relationships before the school opens. We’ve got to recruit enough students to make the school fiscally viable. We have to figure out what kind of technology we need and how we’ll maintain it. We need to have focus groups with families to determine how our school can serve their children. We need to find a way to bring social service agencies into our school to provide services for our students, like vision testing, hearing testing, basic health care, and translation services for non-English speaking families. We have to expand our board. We have to fundraise. We have to create a long-term development plan.  We have to figure out an information management system. We have to figure out how to get kids to school on time. We have to plan bus routes. We have to plan for inclement weather. We have to figure out how many teachers we can afford and how big classes will be because of that. We have to order furniture. We have to pick uniforms and uniform suppliers. We have to figure out how students who can’t afford them will get uniforms. I mean, THE NEVERENDING LIST GOES ON and it gives me insomnia. Dude.

Guess I better get back to work.

Announcing the 2010 White Russians (Vers. STL Twitter League)

• C–A.J. Pierzynski
• 1B–Kevin Youkilis
• 2B–Brian Roberts *returning to White Russians from 2009 squad
• 3B–Alex Rodriguez
• SS–Jason Bartlett
• OF–Bobby Abreu
• OF–Michael Cuddyer
• OF–Michael Bourn
• Util–Jose Lopez

Bench

• Carlos Quentin
• Juan Rivera
• Adam LaRoche
• Jermaine Dye
• Eugenio Velez

Pitchers

• Chris Carpenter
• Dan Haren * returning to White Russians from 2009 squad; also my MLB mancrush
• Jonathan Broxton * returning to White Russians from 2009 squad
• Chad Qualls
• Matt Garza * returning to White Russians from 2009 squad
• Billy Wagner
• Francisco Liriano
• Ted Lilly

I had third pick of the draft, and I took A.Rod, but I think I need MOAR POWER, and I’ll probably make some trades with my pitching staff once things start to shake out.

So, people of the interwebs, what say you on this incantation of my team? Got another draft in a week; could use some advice.

Recently I joined the new Young Professionals board for Safe Connections. If you aren’t familiar with Safe Connections:

As the oldest and largest locally-founded agency serving abused women and teens in the St. Louis region, Safe Connections is essential core of resources and support for survivors of violence. Safe Connections is the only agency providing integrated services for women who have been victimized by domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and/or childhood sexual abuse. (from Safe Connections’ About Us)

Safe Connections provides vital services for women and teens in the area who are survivors of violence, and their work is an area where the need for help is almost always greater than what they can provide. The Young Professionals is a new group formed by Safe Connections to gain volunteers and supporters in the 21-40 age group who can help Safe Connections expand their mission and services.

We’re hosting a happy hour to raise awareness about and gain membership for Safe Connections and our Young Professionals group.  This event will be held at Pi in the Central West End on Wednesday, March 3, from 5-7. Chris Sommers, who owns Pi, is also a member of the Young Professionals group, and Pi will be offering half-price appetizers and drink specials for those in attendance. You should come.  You need no reason to go to Pi and have a cocktail on a Wednesday, and this gives you free reign to claim it as your good deed for the day or week should you see fit.

Domestic violence is an issue that does not discriminate based on race, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, or religion. I’d love to see you guys come out, particularly my lady-blogger friends.

When I left my job helping unqualified people become underwhelming teachers (I KID, at least five of them were competent. Ashley, you’re one of them), I went to work with a friend, helping her with the small business she owned. When I started working with her, we set a three-month trial period, at the end of which either of us could withdraw from the arrangement, no hard feelings.  Unfortunately, due to a really crappy economy, she really couldn’t afford to keep me after three and a half months, which I expected. Therefore, as of Friday, I have no substantive incoming coming in regularly.

Which kind of sucks.

The Good News:

I have a fallback: I can teach. However, one generally doesn’t find teaching jobs in February, at least not for current employment. If I decide to go back into the classroom, overwhelming odds are it won’t be until August.

I was reading about this new film Lemonade, about advertising professionals out of work due to the shiteous economy, and how many viewed unemployment as an opportunity to pursue real creative projects. And I thought to myself, I’ve many times dreamt about various aspirations that I continually postponed to “when I have time”.

And now I have time. It’s about all the currency I have right now.

I’m still in school; two classes this semester, as well as snail-like inching towards the start of my dissertation process. This will be my Project #1, my main focus. But in the last two months or so, several opportunities have kind of floated my way that are leading to me inevitably taking tangible steps to make some of my  until-now only hypothetical plans come to fruition.

First, my friends introduced me to their neighbor, who is also in education and was in the beginning stages of starting a charter school here in St Louis.  He and I met for coffee, talked shop, and I decided to join his small team of individuals committed to founding a college preparatory middle/high charter school here in South City. We’ve been busy thinking, planning, and writing applications for both grants and various steps of the approval process. In just a few weeks of work, I’ve already learned so much about how the charter school process works and exactly what goes into each aspect of starting an institution.

I have ideological issues with charter schools, namely that they take resources away from public schools and also allow public officials to ignore the desperate need for public school improvement in cities just like St Louis. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight to the problems plaguing the SLPS, not to mention the fact that their elected board has no power, and kids need good schools now, so this is why I decided to become involved in the project. So, yeah, project #2: I’m starting a school.

I was also asked to join a young professionals (snort…see introductory paragraph where I lose main source of income) board for Safe Connections, an amazing, well-established non-profit here in St Louis that provides various programs and services about and for victims of domestic violence.  We’ll be having a few happy hour-type events here in St Louis and I’ll be blogging about those events, as well as the work Safe Connections does, in the near future. Project #3.

Finally, I recently became friends with a couple our age who’ve turned their modest home into a working farmstead, complete with crops, livestock, and bees, all less than three miles from our house. Because of our shared interest, Justin from Yellow Tree Farm and I have been plotting and scheming, and we’re collaborating on a new venture. We will be putting in kitchen gardens at a few restaurants around town. We’ve got a few people we’re already working with, and we’re in the midst of planting and planning. Truth be told, Justin knows so much more than me about growing food, so I’m over the moon about how much I can learn from working with him and being around what he and Danielle have already done. Chris is excited because I won’t try to get him to talk about seeds and garden planning all the time. Win for everyone. Project #4.

And, of course, I’ll still be working on the blogs and Novice Foodie.

So while I’ll be incredibly broke, I’ll be incredibly busy doing things I’m passionate about. I’m feeling pretty lucky.