henry "big mama" henry - or - why i want to marry a park ranger

even though my blogmate just outed my inability to tie together my vaguely amusing observations and experiences...

it seems that other people are managing to make the hurricane funny. like me, my uncle decided to drop everything and run to d.c. to visit my ailing grandmother, who, by then, was not so much circling the drain as she was slugging down egg nog and very much enjoying the company of her entire extended family... and i do mean ENTIRE family, including my ex-aunt, ex-uncle, and ex-step-cousins... holy dysfunction batman!

getting back to the story, my uncle showed up with a new orleans newspaper (and enough beer to inebriate an elephant) which had an entire section dedicated to funny (if not quite sad) pictures of objects displaced into bizarre configurations by the ferocious winds of katrina, complete with avant-guard captions like, "fridge on roof," and "door on telephone pole." my uncle seems to have made a sport of reading the "death notices" (apparently there's some technical reason why they can't be obituaries) and trying to read between the lines about how and when they actually died. henry "big mama" henry was actually viola "big mama" henry, but my uncle's slip of the tongue made me giggle for a good 20 minutes (probably had something to do with my helping him drink his case of yuengling).

after visiting my grandmother and boozing it up with my aunts and uncles, i hopped on a (tiny) plane and made my way to hot springs village arkansas (touted as the world's largest gated community... home to cheap rental condos) to booze it up with my parents.
when i was younger i couldn't understand my parents' need to hide away in BFE for the holidays, but now i really look forward to the annual antisocial fest. one of the highlights of my sojourn in the ouchita national forrest was the bald eagle watching boat trip out on lake ouchita, complete with loaner binoculars and charming (and quite knowledgeable) park ranger. i came to the conclusion that dating a national park ranger would be almost as useful as dating a computer geek- someone who could help convert me from wannabe out-doorsy to actually out-doorsy. plus, i'd finally have a suitable other half to go on double dates and weekend hiking trips with my blogmate and mb.

other highlights were visiting the bill clinton gift shop in little rock and eating beef jerky with my dad (at my vegetarian mother's complete revulsion). not only was the beef jerky quite tasty, but i made the rather exciting discover that one serving has only 80 calories but 13 grams of protein. less fun activities included slaving over the 1000 piece puzzle of an the palais de ville in paris (which we'd bought at my insistence at walmart, along with the beef jerky) and having to gulp down mediocre chicken fried stake at petit jean national park on christmas day.

it's a good thing my standards are low.

merry x-box

my always-astute blogmate mentioned today that one reason that it's sometimes hard to post on our blog is that she thinks of one funny thing that she wants to share, but wants to share it in some larger context instead of what it actually is, which is "this one tidbit of this one thing was funny." with that, let me share a few highlights of a very merry midwestern christmas devoid of any context...

-friday night fish fry with mb's family at "daytona north," a nascar-themed bar in which 2 pints of new glarus, one pint of various-alcohols-mixed drink, one miller and a soda cost $11
-my realization that jeans and a brown gap cable-knit sweater are not festive enough 12/23 wear, compared with mb's sister's hot pink cargo pants, sequined tank top, black velour hoodie and enough cubic zirconium to stop traffic
-mb's brother's excitement at receiving low-profile athletic socks: "wow! now i can have the look of miami in the weather of wisconsin!"
-six hours with butterknife and new-husband-of-butterknife (phob? p-hob? you really need an acronym) playing "apples to apples," a game involving matching the most appropriate (or least appropriate) noun cards to an adjective card, which sounds very nerdy, and is in fact very nerdy, but made more fun by p-hob's insistence on matching "sultry" with "anne frank" and "sensual" with "helen keller"
-the fact that 2000 years past its prime, my father still considers rome to be the center of the universe
-my dad's timeless aphorisms: "some things are like grandma and grandpa... you just leave them alone."

all in all, a very fun- and cookie-filled few days. now my blogmate and i are both back at work, both back on, again, a relatively soul-sucking project, made better by the fact that we're in it together. already we're competing for the "who was the biggest idiot today?" award. more to follow.

when life hands you lemons...

while my blogmate and i occasionally tell each other stuff over the blog, more often we engage in avid pre-blogging, either because we just can't wait for the other to find out just how witty we are (as if we don't both check the blog every 45 seconds), or because we're considering writing about something that seems a little too delicate to be blog-appropriate. over and over again, for example, we came to the conclusion that blogging about the hurricane was probably wrong.

with that, it's time to introduce you to our our good friend ck. my blogmate and i have both grown quite fond of ck this year. we openly envy her irish-ness, her extensive knowledge of north-side pubs, and the fact that she often has good work gossip. while there's abosultely nothing funny about the fact that ck just lost her aged grandmother, i did find it a little humurous that my blogmate and i clung to her every word as she described going back to ireland for the funeral, where her huge family rented out a b&b for the week and had a designated bar that served as a rendez-vous between family functions. "is it wrong to want to go to irish funeral?" i asked my blogmate.

now it's a couple of weeks later and my own aged grandmother as rapidly dwindling, throwing a major wrinkle into my holiday plans. again, nothing funny about it, except for the ridiculous packing dilemma that has ensued. ironically, it all seems to come back to the hurricane. this was supposed to be a fun week, with evenings spent at fire-place-containing wine bars (who knew there were so many?), and careful prepartion for my annual weekend in the boonies with my parents. with a suitcase full of fleece, wool socks, chocolate and bourbon i was supposed to head out to arkansas to meet my folks at an abandoned golf resort to join them in their yearly binge of anti-socialism (that the festivities were slated to take place in arkansas and not the usual northern alabama is actually also a hurricane by-product).

but now my grandmother has fallen quite ill, and i have to zip off to washington dc to see her. a lifelong new orleans resident, she's now resettled in maryland post-hurricane. hence the packing dilemma. i might be going to dc where i have to look respectable enough to talk to doctors at a nursing home. i might be going to arkansas to go hiking and have christmas dinner at the state park lodge. i might be going to a funeral in new orleans (packing challenge #1), in which case i might as well go to my high school reunion in new orleans (which justifiably would merit three weeks of wardrobe planning), and will be certainly be going to my favorite new orleans dive bars with all my friends who happen to be in town (and at high risk of running into several ex-boyfriends requiring a degree of cuteness that takes alot of effort for me). so not only the weather, but also the circumstance will be completley different in all of these potential locations. how's in the world does one pack for such a trip?

one of our research gurus at work once said, "don't ever be sad about your data- you can always find something to say about it." maybe the same thing is true about blogging. that or the filterlessness is getting out of hand.

like fine wine

i hope i get funnier with age. you'll all be rolling on your high-tech floors-of-the-future at my incredibly sharpened blog-wit, if only i age like the relatives mb and i saw this weekend.

we spent the weekend in sunny milwaukee being very good people by visiting our grandparents that we won't see over the holiday. i don't know which visit was more entertaining: mb's grandmother's tirade about how she can't stand playing cards with the others in her building anymore because they keep falling asleep mid-hand, coupled with a misguided attempt to change the cable-tv-music-station away from classic country in favor of something the kids were into nowadays (resulting in a very awkward five minutes of listening to megadeth with grandma)? or my grandfather's proud stories of getting the good gimbel's suits for $15 by befriending the german-immigrant buyer and, in a stylish holiday first, introducing mb into the family tradition of bestowing upon unwitting visitors the results of said bargain shopping? i especially loved the size-up mb got once grandpa realized there was another male to become a recipient of his stores and stores of tj maxx bargain hunting. "what size? no, i know. wait." slow pan up, slow down, then disappearing into the closet. if mb were female i think he could sue for harrassment for that ogling.

our older relatives all get to have their quirks, and we all smile and laugh about it. i can't wait. when i'm older, i want the following eccentricities:

1) long rambling pointless stories
2) a wordless single-eyebrow raise when i think people are full of it and am unable to suppress my sarcasm
3) undying love for the same sweater or pants over and over again regardless of how repetitive or how style-less
4) insistence on buying loads of cheap stuff at marshall's and tj maxx, then wondering why i have such a full closet and still nothing to wear

hmm. guess i don't have to wait for my aarp card, then.

consumer rambling

in the blissful hysteria that characterized my frenetic dash around lakeview this afternoon, having survived yet another marathon of standardized testing, i found another opportunity to basque in consumerism and draw meaning from the meaningless.

first stop: $1.99 dry cleaner where i dropped a pile of sweaters that were, let's just say it, disgusting.

then on to the bank where they seem to have gotten rid of drive-through tellers altogether, resulting in alot of fumbling with envelopes and such as i deposited off the annual hanukkah check from my parents (which, in theory, is to be spent on new laptop, but in fact, is getting spent on piecemeal on various other more impulsive purchases like mascara

mad dash through the housewares store in search only of cheese cloth (yes, i really do have use for such an item), nonetheless walking out with arms full of other kitchen items that i suddenly couldn't live without (am i really going to use a rolling pin?).

moving on to marshall's to get the socks that i abandoned this weekend when faced with the grim prospect of waiting in the pre-christmas saturday afternoon line. there i acquired a pair of sparkly j-lo brand sunglasses to replace my sadly defunct pink faux dolce & gabanna (purchased at the sadly defunct french market in new orleans) and engaged in a bizarre silent war in the purse isle with a fabulous little asian girl who seemed convinced that i was after the dooney and burke purse that she had her eye on. it was particularly silly since #1) dooney and burke purses are way out of my price range, even at marshall's, and #2) they're ugly and #3) scary girl didn't actually know which purse she wanted but was gripped by the overwhelming fear of my finding it first.

last stop: liquor store, to assemble the accoutrements needed for spiced wine (i told you i had a use for cheese cloth). i blame my blogmate (with whom i was chatting on the phone) for the frenzy of christmas beer buying that ensued- suddenly i had to find out if honey-apple beer is really yummy or really disgusting. $100 later, after shamelessly flirting with a nice looking guy in scrubs (who sadly turned out to be a med student- no surgeon for me), i walked out of binny's ready to go on a good old fashioned drinking binge.

back home, i unloaded the car and asked myself, "does lugging a big-ass box of booze up the stairs count as exercise?"

virtual blogmate

here's the other of us!

slim's nephews

i'm working my way through slim's table, a narrative written by a u of c sociologist in the '90s about time he spent with a group of men who congregated regularly at valois see-your-food cafeteria here on 53rd st. (good book, although it seems to be less about my favorite breakfast joint and more about interpersonal relationships between retired black men. really, is this author the first person to notice that black men care about each other's health and happiness, and have self-respect? also, i sincerely want to know how the middle of a college neighborhood can be repeatedly described as "the fringe of the ghetto.") anyway, recently my blogmate and i been trying to get some studying done, and remembering that we were never very good at sitting at home engrossed in book-learnin', have been trying out local coffee shops as places to read. i would like to invite the slim's table author to come study with us, because times have changed since the musty dusty 1990's.

first stop: borders hyde park at 53rd and lake park, right across the street from the infamous cafeteria, est. 2003, curious to former hyde parkers who remember the neighborhood as only jimmy's woodlawn tap and the co-op, now looking *gasp* yuppie? borders does a booming business in its coffee shop, and i got the only table left in the house. sadly, not much studying got done, as i was sandwiched between a throng of black men in their daily rotation around a chess board and a patchouli-scented circle talking about police brutality and drawing analogies between the self-actualization of black men and sperm swimming to meet the, umm, embryo. (a for effort, but i didn't have it in me to correct the birds and bees...) it was honestly like being in slim's table 2, but the repeat themes of daily gathering place as identity formation and (surprise!) self-development was even funnier in a typically white-bread location.

feeling like perhaps hyde park had gotten too cool for me to study here, i spent the weekend up in lakeview alternating book-learning with christmas shopping (and naturally demanding that my blogmate do the same). slim might have enjoyed meeting his fat white star-trek-watching brothers all gathered at the borders in lakeview engrossed in a loud conversation about their escapades with women in college... except that here the themes were bad flannel as identity formation, and apparent lack of self-respect, because the "escapades" described clearly all involved women who refused to sleep with these guys. (who tells that as bragging rights???)

we learned a lot about our neighbors this weekend. at the belmont library nobody knows how to use inside voices ("i'm LOOKing for a BOOK on alTERnative CHInese GARdening??? no, GARdening??? GGGGGAAARRdening?"), at the coffee shop someone thinks we're law students and wants us to petition for something or another, at duke of perth someone thinks we're accounting students.

i draw the following conclusions:
1) if i want a neighborhood within ten years to overflow with new luxury condo developments featuring granite countertop and hardwood flooring, i should hire someone to write about how ghetto the neighborhood is.
2) we must look young and cute if strangers think we're law or accounting students, which would make us several years younger than we actually are.
3) if i were a sociologist, it would be much easier to get work done.

yet another way to waste time...

just what i need. a website linked to my email that lets me make little pictures of a skinny, fabulous me with hip clothes and trendy backdrops.

looks can be deceiving

my blogmate convinced me to blow off my responsibilities this morning in favor of serving as moral support for the pick-up of her injured car from the body shop. in exchange, i used the trip to the north side and time off work to get a much-needed haircut.

wandering down broadway perusing my options (quickly avoiding anything with "salon" or "coiffeur" and mulling over "cost-cuttery" and "supercuts") i stepped into the cheapest one i could find with the largest array of product in the window (supercuts). as i waited my turn, i assessed that my choices of hairstylist would be either the pierced tattooed guy with the man-pixie 'do, or the cute woman with the head full of beautiful curls. since i have, well, less beautiful curls than that, i quietly kept my fingers crossed for the curly-haired woman to be ready when it was my turn.

fifteen minutes later, i was sitting happily in the chair of the man-pixie having my layers fixed amid a discussion of which was a worse drunken college activity: drunk-dialing your ex, making a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on, or drunk-dialing your ex in order to play for them a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on. our conversation hit a natural pause, and only then did i notice another customer, clearly in awkward agony, sitting in the chair of the beautiful curly-haired woman as she expounded upon the various ways in which her virus had caused her to have warts in her private area, and how she could have had it for years, and how it could affect her cervix. as i desperately tried to come up with a new conversation subject to not overhear any more about genital warts, the man-pixie muttered to me, "this is getting old. i've heard this topic several times already."

i win.

at least i have netflix

ok, it's not that i mean to talk about boys all the time, but as long as these things keep happening i feel obliged to report them.

the other night i assembled a small army of wingmen and women and headed off to another night of south asian theater destined to elude me. you might wonder why i'd choose to drop an entire evening struggling to keep my eyes open through a staged reading of indian political drama. my purpose: stalking my newest crush- yet a another theater guy (this one, at least, is an actor, and a darn good one at that). arguably if i had known that we'd be ambushed into staying for the post-reading discussion i would have dedided that no boy was worth it. additionally, had i known that survival would only earn me ten of the most painfully awkward minutes of my life i would have realized that this particular boy was definitely not worth it.

from this rather painful experience i conclude:

that i'm 100% in agreement with my blogmate: the only function of post-theater/film discussions is for the snotty participants to basque in the sound of their own voices,

and

that i can't shoulder the burden of awkwardness when cute bengali actor actually concludes an already uncomfortable conversation with, "hey, a bunch of people are going across the street for, um, libations... but i'm not going... i'm going home."

seriously. three hours i could have spent watching buffy the vampire slayer.

it's a small world after all

yet another reason to hate blind dates.
i came home the other day to a rather surprising message on my answering machine. a colleague/friend had called to tell me that a friend of a friend was a single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c. if you calculate the odds, i'll bet there's more than one single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c, but i had a hunch that this might be the same single, jewish sociology grad-student at u of c to whom my blogmate introduced me a couple of years ago. and i was right.
the last time i check there were 9 million people living in chicagoland. how did this happen?