Happy Friday, my friends! I’d like to celebrate the impending weekend with some end-of-fall photos—a perfect segue into winter, I guess, as we Chicagoans celebrated our first snowflakes of the season yesterday.

But the story behind these photos, I think, is even nicer than the results themselves. A few weeks back, I met up with the extremely talented Jacqui of Happy Jack Eats; we wanted to capture Morton Arboretum, in all its autumnal glory, on film. I took the train out to meet her, through new-to-me villages with sweet storefronts, and ended up having a blast. (I sincerely believe that the best part of moving to a new place has to do with the new relationships that follow. Between meeting lovely people like Jacqui and Maggie in person, hanging out with my hilarious coworkers, and reconnecting with high school and college friends, my heart has been quite full lately. So has my social calendar, but that’s something I can learn to live with.) We talked about photography and our futures, got ourselves just a little bit lost, ran into a troupe of zombie-actors, and had an extremely satisfying meal at Honey Cafe. Basically, there was no room for improvement.

So enjoy these snapshots (Portra 400 for the win!), then call up a friend. You know, just to chat. They make the transition from autumn into winter just a little bit less bittersweet.

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The one downside of dispatching with all your student loans? When you emerge debt-free on the other side, you have to figure out a new set of motivations for your financial life. Not that I have much money to throw around, even now, but I’m a very intention-driven person: with one goal gone, another must follow.

With a huge chunk of my paycheck back in my pocket, safe again from the grubby fingers of Sallie Mae, I started to mull over what I wanted my money to do for me. And I wasn’t content to consider the question as a false dichotomy (splurge on luxuries with the excess, or hoard it for a rainy day?). After much thought, I came up with a mission statement for my money: I was going to invest in myself.

One aspect of investing in yourself is pretty stodgy-sounding, albeit important: socking away money in emergency and retirement savings. Those two things are the first things I do with my paycheck every month. And I’ll definitely sit you down here at some point, hand you a stiff drink, and talk to you about the intricacies of both of them.

But honestly, I think the other kind of investment in yourself—the kind where you figure out what you’re passionate about and educate the hell out of yourself to make yourself proficient in it—that’s the hard one. That’s harder than determining a proper 401(k) investment allocation, or setting up automatic deposits to your savings account. It requires you to dig down deep in yourself, ask some difficult and painful questions about why you’re here on this earth, and then believe in the answers—even, or especially, if they scare you. Most importantly, it then requires you to become the first investor in an (unproven) venture based on that dream.

But if you do it right, I think you could be the safest investment you ever made.

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In a beauty contest pitting Chicago’s neighborhoods against each other, Goose Island wouldn’t exactly make the top ten. She might have some great insights to share during the interview competition—about the amazing beer brewed on her shores, or the fact that she’s the only island on the Chicago River—but even an evening gown couldn’t hide her homely features.

Nevertheless, I found myself walking around there the other week, around those streets flagged with banners proudly reading “Chicago’s Industrial Corridor,” in order to find Calumet Photo. It was there that a bespectacled guy named Fred taught me how to use my new Yashica Mat 124, loaded it up with a roll of Tri-X, and sent me out to capture the world on medium format film.

Unable to contain my excitement, I shot my test roll there without the guidance of a light meter. Somehow, the gritty black-and-white film, the striking square frames, and the eerie emptiness of the neighborhood made for some pretty cool shots. I can’t wait to see what else this thing can do!

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A few weeks ago, I visited a tiny but beautiful exhibit of Uta Barth’s photography at the Art Institute. Uta Barth, as I learned, is a homebody, and she’s fascinated by the panes of light that move across her house. She stays inside for long periods of time, painstakingly tracking the progress of light on film; it seems that her sense of time is just different from most other people’s. Below, you can see the kinds of subtle, lovely things that catch her eye.

In shooting my first roll of film in four years, Uta Barth’s obsession with light served as my guiding inspiration. I pulled out my trusty Canon Rebel G whenever I noticed a flash of summer sun lolling around inside my house or just along its outside perimeter. Since light, it seems, reads especially well on film, I was especially grateful for Uta’s influence this week. A few shots from inside my little world:

An overgrown backyard as the sun sinks…

The salvaged piece of stained glass that hangs in our living room window…

The remaining half of a plum torte, lit by the morning sun…

The light in the hallway just as I left for work…

And a family portrait, of course (which showcases the other kind of light—love!—that brightens our household on a daily basis). I bet you’ve got all kinds of sunlight lighting up your home, too. So this week, try to notice it, record it, swim in it. It’s never going to fall in exactly the same way again.

I haven’t been writing for awhile, because to my mind, there hasn’t been much to write about. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in suburban Illinois, broke off for six, and now here I am, back in that familiar land of childhood. Not much has changed about Wilmette; some shops close where new ones open, but the rhythms are always the same, and probably always will be.

But living at home after a period of independence is a slightly different animal than a pure regression to childhood. I live my life somewhere between the North Shore ‘burbs and downtown Chicago: I sleep on an air mattress in my old bedroom, but I earn my own salary (even if it’s smaller than I’d like). And, damnit, I make plans with my downtown friends to dine at Penny’s Noodles after work, because it keeps me sane. Once my loving roommates find gainful employment too, we’ll join those city-dwelling friends. Till then, I’m finding ways to bridge the gap between my babyhood and my future.

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In a recent act of reverence, I visited a synagogue. It was still Hanukkah, and I’d definitely say it was a spiritual event: Andrew Bird was playing at the 6th and I downtown. I’ve always loved the lush, layered qualities of his songs (and, of course, that whistling!) but wasn’t quite sure how he’d be able to recreate them live.

He was completely sans backing band, looking lonely up on stage amidst a sea of instruments and blue light. But apparently that didn’t matter, because he became his own band in a feat of musical and technological wizardry: by recording himself onstage, then looping the track as he layered piece upon piece of percussion, melody and harmony. He only started singing after a few minutes of this strategic work, once he’d created a backing track from his own musical building blocks (see the method for yourself here).

It was humbling, to say the least.

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We all cook for different reasons: to experiment with something new, to perform a political act, or simply to alleviate the growling of our stomachs. Lately, I’ve been cooking for the feeling that I’ve created something: for the tactile pleasure of working with my hands, and for the tangible results. When you follow a recipe from start to finish, you can rest assured that something real and material will be borne of your labors. (And it doesn’t even matter if the resulting food is any good!)

Here’s the thing: I sit in a swivel chair all day, staring at a computer. Behind the computer is a white wall. I enter data into Excel spreadsheets, I scan and file documents, and I sift through legal bills, but I don’t encounter natural light and I don’t ever finish the day having created something. Nowadays, cooking is how I stretch my boundaries, and how I exalt in my own ability to do something worth writing home about. Someday, I’ll make a living out of my creative powers. For now, I have my kitchen.

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Nowadays, home is a word with an increasingly flexible definition. It means Wilmette, whose geography is etched into my nervous system, and Chicago, where I’ve always loved getting lost. It means Los Angeles, where a gaggle of family (and might-as-well-be-family) members have settled. And home now means Virginia, whether we’re talking about my current town (Falls Church, where I’ve learned the best place to get pho), or Richmond, where Ted hails from. When he and his sisters are lucky enough to return, Richmond is where they all settle in comfortably for family dinners and board games. And when I’m lucky enough to visit, it’s lovely to settle into their routine for a few days too.

Last weekend found me in Richmond, breathing in some particularly humid summer air. To start our trip on the right foot, we visited a pick-your-own blueberry patch, spent an hour under the face-melting Southern sun plunking berries into our pails, and left with twelve pounds of them. Somewhere in process, another few pounds made their way into our bellies.

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Am I the only one who imagines her life set to a soundtrack? Sometimes, I catch myself pressing the “play” button in my head as I walk down the street. If my steps are determined and purposeful, I choose a track with a driving beat. When I’m overcome with some sort of angsty emotion (heartache comes to mind), something soulful rings through my ears. I’d be far too bashful to be the object of so many moviegoers’ gazes, but I’ll admit this: I love imagining that my feelings are so epic as to deserve their own 3-minute, cinematic scenes (set to to my favorite songs, of course).

Earbuds and my trusty little iPod make those daydreams portable, but my nostalgic side prefers the old-school romance of vinyl records. As I mentioned last week, Saturday was Record Store Day, when music nerds like me came out of the woodwork to celebrate with special vinyl-only releases and nifty deals at our favorite record shops. That day, Ted and I added six albums to our collection; his contributions were a Brazilian samba album by Jorge Ben, Loudon Wainwright’s Album III, and something by his favorite mandolinist David Grisman.

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