our hero rides off into the sunset...

and so our story comes to a close.

last we left off, i think my stella was towed off to midas. on monday morning i explained to them that all her lights came on but the engine didn't even think about turning over. why everyone thinks that sounds like a battery problem is beyond me, and why midas insisted it might be my battery when hamed and the aaa guy had both tried to jump my car is also beyond me. so it came as no big surprise when don from midas called and said "guess what? it's not your battery!!" and also as no big surprise when he ran some fancy-pants diagnostic test which told him exactly what the cab driver from friday night said without ever seeing the car -- bad starter. although unlike what the cab driver said, which was that the mexicans would fix my starter for $130, somehow at midas this same repair was going to cost $489, because also struts and something related to steering needed something or another. i don't know, i stopped listening at $4. i'm a little suspicious that don raised the price of my repair artificially (you think? at midas?) because he conveniently remembered that i was looking to get rid of the car. suddenly his daughter needed a car, and he had $400 to pay me, and that extra $82 diagnostic charge disappeared. so yesterday i took the title over to midas and left with $400 in my pocket. that seems better than a $500 repair. so now i feel that stella has a proper home with exactly what she needs: a young student who doesn't have money for a nicer car but needs to get to work, and has a father who happens to be a mechanic. everything comes to a nice happy ending. and puts me squarely where i belong, making better use of my two bikes.

it does, however, put me in the position of needing to name my bikes, which i haven't done in the few years that i've owned them. taking suggestions, with stella having been retired, and cicciolina in use as the name of my cell phone (i can't think of a better phone name than that of an italian porn star in parliament, can you?) anyone? the two girliest bikes on the road need names -- a mint green giant mountain bike, and a black specialized road bike with anodized purple wheels and matching water bottle cage? just get me a little white plastic basket with flowers for the fronts and i'll be in business.

sttteeeeelllllaaaa.....

so you tell me. what counts as charity here, anyway?

it is now three days later in the never-ending saga of stella's retirement. it turns out that my cab driver's beloved "automex" does not, as far as i can tell, exist. i think la mexicana incognita is a little disappointed (as am i) that she doesn't get to go all latina with the mechanics, but such is life...

also, sadly, stella had not been kidnapped by hamed or the cab driver. i found her parked safely in a lot behind lalo's on lasalle. feeling a few twinges of nostalgia for my sweet car, the only one i've ever owned (and also because i learned that aaa does not tow straight to salvage yards) i called aaa and a pickup truck came to move stella to the midas across the street faster than i could order a margarita for the wait. this wrecks my blogmate's and my streak of waiting for tow trucks while drinking, but i can't complain. this bought me a day and a half of procrastination since midas was closed until this morning.

what to do now? while at work saturday morning i managed to amuse my co-workers with my never-ending internet hunt for salvage yards, car donation charities, etc. i found:

- a salvage yard that would give me $125 if i could get stella there, $60 if they towed
- some charity called kars4kids, which claims to pick up the car, donate to some other charity that gives the money to youth in some fashion, and give me a voucher for 2 nights' hotel stay in some resort-esque locale

i was feeling good about the charity/hotel option (especially since aaa wouldn't tow me straight to the salvage yard) until this morning, when i actually looked up the charities in question on some non-profit evaluation sites. i was initially excited since their links included stuff like gottorah.com, which along with my new-found love for matisyahu, might further my previous designation as honorary jew (for the purposes of holidays, anyway), except that nothing on any web site actually told me my car money would actually go to said causes.

i had a long drawn-out conversation with mb last night where i told him i had known stella's time was coming, but wanted her to pass with more dignity than this. he told me it's like caring for the elderly, where you love them but can't bear the burden anymore and have to ask for help, except that the elderly don't get sold for parts.

so feeling even guiltier, i called another salvage place this morning to see if i could get a better estimate. hooray! bob at the salvage place told me that they just bash cars in, but he knew a lady who was looking for a cheap car to get around town, and once i got an estimate from midas could i call him? so now i'm wondering if i can an estimate for what i think is the starter (~$170 repair, i think), and an ok from salvage-bob saying the lady in question could give me the cost of the starter repair plus ~$100 (maybe total $300?) i could sell her my stella. this makes me feel less like i'm sending stella off to a yucky nursing home or pulling out her feeding tube, and more like she's retiring to be a walmart greeter or something minimally productive.

i think it might be the right thing. but i invite opinions.

to be continued... again...

the day stella lost her groove (some stories need to be told in full detail)

don't ever say something if you can't live with the consequences.

my car insurance payment is due this summer, and i was starting to think that my car (lovingly named stella, so that when i lost her in parking lots i could bellow a la streetcar) was getting a bit old and unreliable, and although she and i have been together since grad school, maybe it was time that she retire. i looked into blue book values for stella, realized she'd be worth $600 in trade-in, which means about $400 on the street or $100 in the salvage yard, and decided that all of that was not worth the $900 i'm paying in insurance.

now shift gears (no pun intended) to my excitement as being asked to be the stand-in date for our friend dwtacc as she attended the wedding of one of our co-workers. as we got ready to go to the ceremony last night, i volunteered to drive, thinking i knew hyde park better to find the chapel... but as we headed afterward toward the downtown reception, one of those creepy inner voices started hinting to me that maybe my unreliable stella was not the best choice for this adventure...

the reception was fabulous. cheers to our usually quiet friend jt for such amazing one-liners as "hey, i think gramps wants a piece of the reverend" and his smooth post-running-man dance moves. but on leaving the reception and attempting to pick up my poor stella, a fairly tipsy but apologetic valet apologized that my car was not starting. i figured he just didn't know the key-jiggle required to get my car going (i suppose the lexus suv's he normally parks there don't have this issue), shrugged, and dwtacc and i laughed as we noted his empty malt liquor bottle and slight waver in his step as he led us down a back alley toward my stella. sure enough, no engine-turnover for my baby. i think the tipsy-valet-guy was a little surprised that i didn't shout or throw a high heel at him (maybe a little more high-maintenance clientele downtown?) and just said, "well, i work in seven hours. where can we put this car so i can come deal with it later?" and he was so relieved that soon a legion of red-vested men were pushing my car into a mysterious back lot to wait for me until after work today.

so feeling a little suspicious that my car and car key rested with a red-vested drunk guy who i only knew as hamed, dwtacc and i hopped into a cab, and i thanked dwtacc for being the next (last?) of my friends in chicago to get stuck in a car adventure with me (twinset and my blogmate already have many stella tales under their belts). when the driver asked if we'd been having a good evening and i answered that the night had been great until my car died, the driver proceeded to interrogate me about the details of my car and its non-working-ness. i figured the best thing that could happen to me was that someone might steal the car so i could file an insurance claim, so i obliged with as many details as i could barring my name and social security number and all that. first he offered to buy the car from me outright (how do you negotiate a price with a cab driver who's driving you because the car he's trying to buy doesn't run???) then he decided i should have the car fixed, then he promptly announced that the only people who should fix my car were the mexicans. dwtacc, who shall hereafter be referred to as la mexicana incognita (lmi?), calmly asked the cabbie why only mexicans could fix my car: "because they're cheaper." and when lmi asked "where are these mexicans?" we were, i think, initially told "everywhere" but then were provided an address for (i can't actually believe this) "automex."

needless to say lmi and i were fascinated. first drunken red-vested hamed, then the mexican-virtue-extolling cab driver... the cab driver spent the whole ride to hyde park so engrossed in a conversation in some unrecognizable language that i was sure my car would be gone from the red-vested parking lot long before i got to automex...

(to be continued...)

the day the music died

one of my favorite ways to kill time at work is to fuel my obsession with matisyahu. i realize it's a little silly that i had to go all the way to the caribbean to discover him, but i swear, he wasn't this famous before i left. when i heard him playing at target yesterday i realized that yet again, my attempts to be edgy had been thwarted.

edgy or not, it turns out that matisyahu is carried by epic records, and the epic records offers high quality, add-free, uninterrupted streaming of the music videos of their artists, allowing me to watch "king without a crown," and "king without a crown (live at stubbs)" over and over and over again. conveniently enough, epic also carries shakira, so i can also watch "hips don't lie" to my heart's content.


when i had finally managed to overdose on matisyahu and shakira i started perusing the other videos that epic promotes, and that's when i stumbled upon teddy geiger, who on first inspection looks like just another garden-variety angsty boy with a guitar. but the longer i watched the video, the more i started to hate him and his heart-on-the-sleeve drivel.

he looks and sounds like a younger, less good john mayer (see pictures), and he has an earnestness that makes me crazy, wailing on about how he's "gonna muster ever ounce of confidence" that he has to get some girl to notice him. but it was seeing the video, and examining the girl in question that put me over the edge.

unless she's his real-life girlfriend, there's just no excuse. the video features our young martyr dejectedly playing his guitar on the street, wistfully watching a very nice, very pretty, very plasticky girl who looks like she stepped right out of an abercrombie & fitch ad, stupid sherpa boots and all (she could also be a contestant on "the bachelor"). she's strolling down the street with her tool-looking boyfriend (who kind of looks like stiffler from "american pie"), giggling, talking on her cell-phone, and just being obnoxious.

it doesn't make any sense. teddy geiger has perfectly mastered the look of the misunderstood hipster: shy, skinny, shaggy-haired, perfectly beat-up jeans and thrift store shirt. he'd be perfect in greenwich village or wicker park and it makes absolutely no sense that he'd be writhing around so miserably for this kind of girl. she's too blond, too perfect. if they'd picked the usually gaunt, dark haired heroin-chic type i'd understand... sort of. but why america's favorite tri-delt?

if this is the best that the post-boy-band pop music era has to offer i think i'll stick with shakira.

what would shakira do?

transient infatuation with uber-trendy pop culture icons is a part of life- i understand this. but why is that suddenly i can't get enough shakira? not that i'm a raging feminist or anything, but i've always taken issue with her blatant self-institution as the world's most sensational sex symbol... and her weird warbly voice.
i guess that even though i reject all women who appear on the cover of maxim on principle, i'm also a big believer in jumping on media bandwagons. life is just easier if you like what's on the radio. for example, road trips aren't nearly is painful when you've learned to tolerate country music (or christian rock, but that's a whole other can of worms).
so after six weeks in st. lucia where "hips don't lie" (shakira featuring wyclef, for those of you who remain un-brainwashed) played like clockwork on the radio (sometimes twice in a row) and on tempo (caribbean MTV for those of you who just tuned in), i got completely sucked to dark and disturbing world of shakira obsession. the girl has got it all- she can sing, she can dance, and she's really hot. AND she gets to flaunt her hotness in a way that's neither subtle nor tasteful. not only is it not fair, but it's just plain raunchy.

and for some reason i love her for it.

priorities

my new work schedule has some built in sitting-around time in the morning... and free breakfast. so it seemed logical to form a little routine, where i finish my coffee, eat my turkey sausage, and peruse the headlines on the internet. it's been a few years since i read the paper regularly (thank you NPR for keeping me the loop all this time) and i'm having trouble adjusting to the internet format. it just seems aesthetically wrong. i'm also unwilling to register (even though it's free) to actually read the articles, so i jump from the new york times, the chicago trib, to cnn.com skimming headlines and looking at pictures.

lest i manage to absorb some real news, i made an amusing, though not very surprising discover today. we could all go on and on about the vapid articles in the paper and on TV, and about how none of us are interested in real current events. i often use that as justification for my non-news-watching and non-paper-reading. but i learned this morning that most of us gravitate away from real news, even when it's offered to us in easily accessible, point-and-click format.

here are the "top stories" as listed by CNN:

- Iran pledges $50 million to Palestinians
- Pentagon fights back over Rumsfeld
- Nepal protesters fired on, 1 dead
- Group: Iran may be expanding nuke plants
- Hussein trial resumes, adjourns again

and here are the "most popular":

- Two sex offenders slain; suspect kills self
- Jolie reportedly to have baby in Namibia
- Suspect blogged about cannibalism
- Crash tests: Toyota Prius, small cars and minivans
- An inside look at Opus Dei

i guess it's not so surprising that the average american is more interested in angelina jolie than they are in donald rumsfeld, but what is surprising is that "Rangers catch bear after deadly attack" didn't feature more prominently on either list.

back to reality...almost

coming home from my six week caribbean adventure was a bit of a jolt. i understand that nothing would really have made it easier, except perhaps some sort of insider tip that my crush-du-jour was waiting impatiently for my return. in reality, crush-du-jour (cdj?) may or may not know my name and has probably found some impossibly skinny, broody asian girl to date by now.
it didn't help that my return to the mainland marked the abrupt end of an extravagant, 3-week drinking binge which transitioned itself rather unpleasantly to a smoldering but miserable hangover on the plane.
it also didn't help to find my apartment still occupied by my now arch-nemesis house-sitter who drank all my liquor and killed all my plants... but that's a story for another day.

as one might have expected, i showed up to work the morning after my return pretty darned tired and cranky. that said, i think i came back with a sense of well-being and optimism that i most certainly did not possess in february. maybe it was the sunshine, or the rum, or the snorkeling... or maybe it's just the tan. my blogmate has been trying to tell me for years that a great tan makes everything better, and now i wholeheartedly agree. for one, it just screams, "ha ha, i went to the st. lucia while you were stuck here festering in the dregs of chicago winter," but it also exudes an ill-defined yet strangely powerful aura of fabulousness.

unfortunately, the new, glam, hi-lighted persona that i've confabulated doesn't integrate very well with the alter-ego i couldn't help but develop (over the last year, really) under the effect of nick hornby novels, the OC soundtracks, john cusack movies, "the time traveler's wife," steven frears movies, and now "sex, drugs and cocoa puffs." somewhere in there i think i failed to recognize that i don't get to be a cool hipster swing-chick, no matter how many movies and books i absorb about punk, sarcastic, witty, drinking, smoking hipsters.

i've almost got it together.

same? different? you decide

directions to madam popo's

head out of st. jude's via the back gate, following the main, paved road into augier

at the first intersection turn left

go straight past blue boy's pub on your left

stay on the left at the next intersection, richard's pub will be on your right

at the next intersection hang a hard left- round the bend pub is on that corner on the right

continue straight down the road, passing the "pigs for sale" sign on your right

continue past the unusually large pothole in the middle of the road

on your left you'll come to a heineken sign, and pass under two power lines that have orange aerial markers- just past that you'll come to a narrow alley

turn right into the alley and head down a ways- on your right you'll see the oven

if there's no one there, continue further down until you come a a house with a cement porch- if the plastic tarps are down you're out of luck. if not, the lady inside is madam popo

local meal

i could start a lot of funny stories with that title: the goat back or sheep back or "turkey" (which we think is actually goat) mystery parts (spinal cord and all), or the fact that every st. lucian stops us to inform us that we are truly eating a "local meal" said with more pride than we would assign to eating vertebrae...

but what i'm actually thinking of is the new delicacy of "st. lucian sandwich," which consists of my blogmate sandwiched between two dancing dreadlocked lucians last night at the gros islet jump-up. there we were, laughing at my silly guidebook that says you need a local guide to take you to this every-friday-night block party if you're a girl, munching our way through barbecue chicken and "bakes" (which are actually fried and delicious) -- we finally had enough piton to start dancing when we realized the actual problem with being a girl at the jump-up: not allowed to dance without someone else's pelvis heading your way. that being said, these pelvises (pelvi?) are fairly benign, as they were located inside the very high-watered pants of a steve-erkel-esque man with his tongue hanging half out of his mouth.

again, we congratulated ourselves on a job well done.