one of the costs of prolonged education and training is that eventually, your friends and family all have real jobs and real houses and furniture that doesn't come from a box and a decent wardrobe.
when it comes to clothes, my blogmate and i have both been students or poorly-paid professionals for long enough that we've had several phases of desire for material things, vacillating between "it's time to dress a little better" and, as said in unison the other day, "it's time to dress a little shittier." for the latter, we're both relatively accomplished. i still remember fondly the first time i asked my blogmate if she wanted to spend a little of an afternoon off shopping in our new hometown of chicago, with its magnificent mile and halsted st. and assorted boutiques, and she responded excitedly with "perfect! target! i'll drive." i knew we'd be friends.
but now we're 30. we're still poorly paid. and we're not talking about keeping up with the joneses, just dreaming of a few little upgrades. so two martinis into a conversation last week, we pinky-swore to go on a shopping trip where we bought better clothes. no kohls, no target, no tj maxx. just once, to see what it's like.
you can imagine what happened next -- from the girls who swore that cheap particle-board furniture was out of our lives but then justified my impulse purchase of a super-sale do-it-yourself wine-and-liquor cabinet as "advanced particle board" (and if you saw my rapid transition from "i'm like bob vila's daughter" to "%&$$?!?" you'd call it advanced particle board too)... into banana republic, straight to the sale racks of off-season last-year's-styles. into ann taylor loft, straight to the clearance racks. to be fair, we tried on lots of full-price very nice things; it's just that the things we liked were on the 60% off rack. i had to struggle to come up with one full-priced t-shirt so i could get 30% off of a pair of pants i wanted. and then bee-line to goose island in time for happy hour 1/2 price appetizers.
you can take the girl out of the bargain basement, but you can't take the bargain basement out of the girl.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
under pressure
on the exact same day last june, my blogmate and i each received a pressure cooker as a gift. hers as a wedding present, purchased on devon, accompanied only by instructions in hindi. mine came in the mail as a 30th birthday gift from good friend b.j., who herself had received a pressure as a wedding gift a few years earlier.
in her various roles as my life coach, my blogmate is by far the superior cook, but we've done a decent among of mutual pep talk since the pressure cookers arrived, mostly to the tune of, "are you sure it's not going to explode?"
so i guess i shouldn't have been that surprised yesterday when my sticky, parsley-covered blogmate called me, in a bit of distress, announcing, "whoever said that pressure cookers couldn't explode was wrong." fortunately the only casualty of the minor explosion was her turkey stock, but i probably should have absorbed her culinary misadventures as the omen they turned out to be.
usually the problem with my cooking is that the food, while tasty, doesn't exactly look appetizing. not so with my beef stew tonight. it was beautiful. but boy did it taste bad. it's been a while since i botched dinner so extravagantly, and even sans explosion my kitchen was a total disaster.
pressure cookers: 2
jo-na: 0
in her various roles as my life coach, my blogmate is by far the superior cook, but we've done a decent among of mutual pep talk since the pressure cookers arrived, mostly to the tune of, "are you sure it's not going to explode?"
so i guess i shouldn't have been that surprised yesterday when my sticky, parsley-covered blogmate called me, in a bit of distress, announcing, "whoever said that pressure cookers couldn't explode was wrong." fortunately the only casualty of the minor explosion was her turkey stock, but i probably should have absorbed her culinary misadventures as the omen they turned out to be.
usually the problem with my cooking is that the food, while tasty, doesn't exactly look appetizing. not so with my beef stew tonight. it was beautiful. but boy did it taste bad. it's been a while since i botched dinner so extravagantly, and even sans explosion my kitchen was a total disaster.
pressure cookers: 2
jo-na: 0
Monday, October 22, 2007
it's getting hot in here
for a city of 9.5 million, chicago sure can feel like a small town.
sometimes that's not so bad. as my blogmate and i headed out for a run in her neighborhood yesterday we stopped to greet her neighbor and her neighbor's cute little toddler son... as we were getting back home we saw the same neighbor and son, this time walking down the street with one of our colleagues from work. confirming, btw, that between us there's really only one functional brain, i completely failed to notice the colleague and only thought to myself, "hey, isn't that the neighbor?" and my blogmate completely failed to notice the neighbor and thought to herself, "hey, isn't that the colleague?"
as another aside, if you're running down the street and a guy who's obviously on his way home from the gym drops his towel on the ground, it's probably wise to resist the urge to pick it up, and scratch your good deed itch some other way. gross.
anyway. part of the reason i was pretty hot to get out of new orleans was honestly that there was just no avoiding ex-boyfriends and the like. embarrassing and hurtful moments couldn't be washed away in the sea of anonymity that we all think characterizes the world of nightlife... you could pretty much count on running into whichever person you most desperately wanted to avoid.
but apparently upsizing your city by a factor of 10 million doesn't help. or else i wouldn't have found myself at a very small party with someone who was obviously the brother of a recent set-up date i went on AND, in the same weekend, taken exactly 30 seconds to land right next to someone i just stopped seeing (under awkward circumstances) at a concert at the metro.
not that i'm a big fish, but dang this pond is small.
sometimes that's not so bad. as my blogmate and i headed out for a run in her neighborhood yesterday we stopped to greet her neighbor and her neighbor's cute little toddler son... as we were getting back home we saw the same neighbor and son, this time walking down the street with one of our colleagues from work. confirming, btw, that between us there's really only one functional brain, i completely failed to notice the colleague and only thought to myself, "hey, isn't that the neighbor?" and my blogmate completely failed to notice the neighbor and thought to herself, "hey, isn't that the colleague?"
as another aside, if you're running down the street and a guy who's obviously on his way home from the gym drops his towel on the ground, it's probably wise to resist the urge to pick it up, and scratch your good deed itch some other way. gross.
anyway. part of the reason i was pretty hot to get out of new orleans was honestly that there was just no avoiding ex-boyfriends and the like. embarrassing and hurtful moments couldn't be washed away in the sea of anonymity that we all think characterizes the world of nightlife... you could pretty much count on running into whichever person you most desperately wanted to avoid.
but apparently upsizing your city by a factor of 10 million doesn't help. or else i wouldn't have found myself at a very small party with someone who was obviously the brother of a recent set-up date i went on AND, in the same weekend, taken exactly 30 seconds to land right next to someone i just stopped seeing (under awkward circumstances) at a concert at the metro.
not that i'm a big fish, but dang this pond is small.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
disjoint
as usual, i emerge from a state of blog dormancy, not with any meaningful or clever insights, but with my usual smattering of reportings that are, i suspect, only amusing to me. neither of the funniest things that i heard about this week actually had anything to do with me, but were in fact left on my voicemail by good friend a.p., obstetrician extraordinaire. a.p. recently left her life of indentured servitude at a large, inner-city public hospital for one catering more to posh washington d.c. suburbanites... or so she thought until she had to fish a cockroach out of a pregnant lady's ear. in more posh, suburbanite fashion, a few days later she took her highly energetic and affectionate dog to the vet, who assessed her faithful companion's fondness for licking everything and everyone as undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder that would perhaps respond well to prozac.
i, for one, have only rare brushes with posh suburbanites, but those i have leave me so traumatized as to come running back to campus where i get to be the stylish one. so i may have lost out to the crazy ladies running around the coach outlet wielding $400 handbags as deadly weapons, but by golly i think i've got a leg up on the girl who parades around school everyday with an old gnarly beanie baby perched on her shoulder.
that said, i seem to have some problems with basic social norms, as i was completely unable to make eye contact with (much less greet) the "distinguished visiting lecturer" who i'd previously known as "the first blind date i ever went on." and i all but ran the other way when i saw one of my former supervising doctors at the swimming pool the other day (yes, old hairy, in swim trunks), lest i be forced to make small talk while standing there dripping wet in my swimsuit.
i can't even try to tie it all together, folks.
i, for one, have only rare brushes with posh suburbanites, but those i have leave me so traumatized as to come running back to campus where i get to be the stylish one. so i may have lost out to the crazy ladies running around the coach outlet wielding $400 handbags as deadly weapons, but by golly i think i've got a leg up on the girl who parades around school everyday with an old gnarly beanie baby perched on her shoulder.
that said, i seem to have some problems with basic social norms, as i was completely unable to make eye contact with (much less greet) the "distinguished visiting lecturer" who i'd previously known as "the first blind date i ever went on." and i all but ran the other way when i saw one of my former supervising doctors at the swimming pool the other day (yes, old hairy, in swim trunks), lest i be forced to make small talk while standing there dripping wet in my swimsuit.
i can't even try to tie it all together, folks.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
and i thought my neighbors were weird
last night i met mb downtown while he studied at his fancy new mba study center and i divided my time between reading and surfing the internet for places that we could get a drink afterward to reward such productivity.
bonus side of mb's new degree program: proximity to new stuff. last night we rewarded ourselves with drinks at the VERY next-to-john-marshall-law-school plymouth bar, which has a rooftop terrace overlooking the back of the library. lots of bonus points for my manhattan in a plastic martini glass (somehow cheaper than their wine??) and view of the gargoyles.
which brings me to a question: if you lived in an apartment downtown, would it be a plus or a minus in your book to have your window directly across from one of the gargoyles? i could totally see greeting it like an attentive pet or nosy neighbor every morning: "hello, mr. gargoyle! how 'bout the weather today? that's a good gargoyle..." but imagine having very creepy dreams at night.
bonus side of mb's new degree program: proximity to new stuff. last night we rewarded ourselves with drinks at the VERY next-to-john-marshall-law-school plymouth bar, which has a rooftop terrace overlooking the back of the library. lots of bonus points for my manhattan in a plastic martini glass (somehow cheaper than their wine??) and view of the gargoyles.
which brings me to a question: if you lived in an apartment downtown, would it be a plus or a minus in your book to have your window directly across from one of the gargoyles? i could totally see greeting it like an attentive pet or nosy neighbor every morning: "hello, mr. gargoyle! how 'bout the weather today? that's a good gargoyle..." but imagine having very creepy dreams at night.
Friday, October 05, 2007
good / better
when hearing the details of our wedding weekend, mb's friend/groomsman nick said, "i don't think i've ever been to a work-out wedding before." while i'm not sure all parts of our wedding qualified as "workout," there were certain sporty elements. but the better-than-sporty elements are what i'll remember most:
sporty: invite guests to bring bikes to wedding, promises of mapped-out bike route for friday.
better-than-sporty: leave own bikes at home to make more room in the car for booze.
sporty: consider swimming and boating upon arrival friday.
better-than-sporty: break out the korbel (brandy - a wisconsin staple) at 4pm.
even-better-than-sporty: replace actual sports with haggling over the over-charged dinner bill, and harrassing passive-aggressive owner-woman until we get our way. judging by the number of willing participants, arguing as sport?
sporty: golf outing saturday morning.
better-than-sporty: everyone gets motorized carts, arranged in teams for scramble. play enjoyable polo-like game of riding as quickly as possible up to the balls to be picked up and trying to scoop them up on the fly.
worse-than-sporty: maid of honor hit in head with fly golf ball from the next runway while trying to locate stray ball in the rough.
better-than-worse-than-sporty: maid of honor's golfing friends include 3 doctors, an emt, a pharmacist, an attorney, and a health insurance professional.
even-better-than-worse-than-sporty: said emt happens to be a rugby player, the only justification we can think of for his kilt and packers hat golf attire. picture large kilted man running across the fairway amid shouts of "someone's down! and she's bleeding!"
relief: she's fine.
better-than-sporty: team that would otherwise have finished last in the scramble tournament now finishes first, because we only played 7 holes and as such have the lowest score. sweet.
sporty: mb and i promise guests that part of the beauty of getting married in such a small town is that you can walk between the ceremony/rehearsal site, the lodging, the restaurants, bars, etc.
better-than-sporty: mb's dad decides that rather than walk to the rehearsal saturday afternoon, guests will be transported via the rented pontoon boat.
sporty: mb and i plan celebratory 5k for saturday afternoon.
better-than-sporty: my brother and butterknife design surprise shirts distributed to our guests via cafe-press, and present us with them on saturday pre-race.
better-than-sporty: the bikemyers family arrives with real race numbers and finishers' medals, all with pretty designs on them.
better-than-sporty: the best man rides the course on his bike and distributes gu packets, water, and jk/kk-supplied coors light to participants at the turn-around.
worse-than-sporty: truck runs over best man's backpack, squishing the gu and coors light together.
sporty(? outdoorsy, anyway): couple plans outdoor wedding ceremony on the lake, during beautiful sunny sunday morning.
worse-than-outdoorsy: grandparents decide they don't want to attend outdoor wedding and prefer to watch from restaurant upstairs.
better-than-outdoorsy: compromise whereby grandparents are summoned outdoors for photos prior to ceremony, then are dismissed back to the restaurant, thereafter referred to as the skybox. bride amuses herself by imagining italian grandfather as paul tagliabue.
sporty: invite guests to bring bikes to wedding, promises of mapped-out bike route for friday.
better-than-sporty: leave own bikes at home to make more room in the car for booze.
sporty: consider swimming and boating upon arrival friday.
better-than-sporty: break out the korbel (brandy - a wisconsin staple) at 4pm.
even-better-than-sporty: replace actual sports with haggling over the over-charged dinner bill, and harrassing passive-aggressive owner-woman until we get our way. judging by the number of willing participants, arguing as sport?
sporty: golf outing saturday morning.
better-than-sporty: everyone gets motorized carts, arranged in teams for scramble. play enjoyable polo-like game of riding as quickly as possible up to the balls to be picked up and trying to scoop them up on the fly.
worse-than-sporty: maid of honor hit in head with fly golf ball from the next runway while trying to locate stray ball in the rough.
better-than-worse-than-sporty: maid of honor's golfing friends include 3 doctors, an emt, a pharmacist, an attorney, and a health insurance professional.
even-better-than-worse-than-sporty: said emt happens to be a rugby player, the only justification we can think of for his kilt and packers hat golf attire. picture large kilted man running across the fairway amid shouts of "someone's down! and she's bleeding!"
relief: she's fine.
better-than-sporty: team that would otherwise have finished last in the scramble tournament now finishes first, because we only played 7 holes and as such have the lowest score. sweet.
sporty: mb and i promise guests that part of the beauty of getting married in such a small town is that you can walk between the ceremony/rehearsal site, the lodging, the restaurants, bars, etc.
better-than-sporty: mb's dad decides that rather than walk to the rehearsal saturday afternoon, guests will be transported via the rented pontoon boat.
sporty: mb and i plan celebratory 5k for saturday afternoon.
better-than-sporty: my brother and butterknife design surprise shirts distributed to our guests via cafe-press, and present us with them on saturday pre-race.
better-than-sporty: the bikemyers family arrives with real race numbers and finishers' medals, all with pretty designs on them.
better-than-sporty: the best man rides the course on his bike and distributes gu packets, water, and jk/kk-supplied coors light to participants at the turn-around.
worse-than-sporty: truck runs over best man's backpack, squishing the gu and coors light together.
sporty(? outdoorsy, anyway): couple plans outdoor wedding ceremony on the lake, during beautiful sunny sunday morning.
worse-than-outdoorsy: grandparents decide they don't want to attend outdoor wedding and prefer to watch from restaurant upstairs.
better-than-outdoorsy: compromise whereby grandparents are summoned outdoors for photos prior to ceremony, then are dismissed back to the restaurant, thereafter referred to as the skybox. bride amuses herself by imagining italian grandfather as paul tagliabue.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
how you get a three-day hangover
well, the wedding was a success, and mb and i did not, as my blogmate feared, die in some tragic fall from a cliff in northern minnesota on our honeymoon. there are too many great things to write about, so this will have to happen in stages. i was thinking not chronologically, but conceptually:
theme #1: booze, and the weakness of late 20s-early 30-somethings despite our collegiate yearnings
by wednesday night prior to the wedding, i had high hopes for our cocktail-drinking abilities, since after the aforementioned wine/cheese/pedicure party we headed for a post-party with the boys (mb and my new sister-in-law's fiance, dr) at junior's for their half-price appetizers and half-price martinis and mojitos... i ended the night really convinced that the answer to feeling better after my passion-fruit and regular mojitos was to rinse it down with jameson on the rocks. no problem. should have taken my blogmate's slightly-earlier retirement for the evening as a wise sign that these things should end earlier (and with less whiskey).
friday morning as mb and i were packing the car, our neighbor michelle woke up and walked outside to double over laughing on the stairs at mb carting an entire plastic crate of hard liquor out to the trunk. apparently this didn't look like classy wedding supplies... pictures were taken. faces changed to protect the innocent.
friday night looked promising, with lots of beer at the local golf course bar (thankfully not much until later, after we could direct mb's brother- and sister-in-law who finally made it into town through the pouring rain). some fun antagonizing of the passive-aggressive owner/manager with bill-haggling, $2.50 tyranena scotch ale pints, making fun of the bartender who poured on-the-rocks drinks into steaming hot glassware. about 2 hours after the bar actually ran out of enough glassware to deal with us, we retired to the b&b. drinking continued with said plastic crate; incriminating picture taken around 2-3 am, involving the best man's 2-month-old son (the best man was the instigator).
saturday tapered off. those of us who went golfing in the morning had a good time with the beer-cart girl (thanks to jamie, who instructed her by hole 3 that she was NOT coming around enough and needed to stick with us). for the record, the beer-cart girl had nothing to do with the final head injury to the maid of honor (more on that later). thanks to jk and kk for being our official keg-fetchers, and for supplying the coors light cans for race refreshments for mb's super-fantastic 5k wedding run! but somehow, even with almost 60 people at the rehearsal picnic, and a ceremonial keg-tapping of the capital amber around 5pm, it took the guys a long time to make even a dent in the keg.
sunday was beautiful. the ceremony was great, so i'm told. but people -- the bartender frankly mocked me for our weak showing. apparently a wedding weekend with kegs and crates of hard liquor results in you all being a very cheap date come sunday. however, after everyone left and the reception had been disassembled, the tapper was still in place. thanks, heidel house! mb and i sat on the porch with leftover beer and cheesecake for another 3 hours. my favorite part was mb pushing me around the lobby on the luggage cart. i really also enjoy evening weddings, but there's something to be said for all of the guests leaving by 2-3 pm...
i promise, the wedding was actually tasteful and quite beautiful and i wouldn't have wanted it any other way. but you don't want to see those pictures first, do you?
theme #1: booze, and the weakness of late 20s-early 30-somethings despite our collegiate yearnings
by wednesday night prior to the wedding, i had high hopes for our cocktail-drinking abilities, since after the aforementioned wine/cheese/pedicure party we headed for a post-party with the boys (mb and my new sister-in-law's fiance, dr) at junior's for their half-price appetizers and half-price martinis and mojitos... i ended the night really convinced that the answer to feeling better after my passion-fruit and regular mojitos was to rinse it down with jameson on the rocks. no problem. should have taken my blogmate's slightly-earlier retirement for the evening as a wise sign that these things should end earlier (and with less whiskey).
friday morning as mb and i were packing the car, our neighbor michelle woke up and walked outside to double over laughing on the stairs at mb carting an entire plastic crate of hard liquor out to the trunk. apparently this didn't look like classy wedding supplies... pictures were taken. faces changed to protect the innocent.
friday night looked promising, with lots of beer at the local golf course bar (thankfully not much until later, after we could direct mb's brother- and sister-in-law who finally made it into town through the pouring rain). some fun antagonizing of the passive-aggressive owner/manager with bill-haggling, $2.50 tyranena scotch ale pints, making fun of the bartender who poured on-the-rocks drinks into steaming hot glassware. about 2 hours after the bar actually ran out of enough glassware to deal with us, we retired to the b&b. drinking continued with said plastic crate; incriminating picture taken around 2-3 am, involving the best man's 2-month-old son (the best man was the instigator).
saturday tapered off. those of us who went golfing in the morning had a good time with the beer-cart girl (thanks to jamie, who instructed her by hole 3 that she was NOT coming around enough and needed to stick with us). for the record, the beer-cart girl had nothing to do with the final head injury to the maid of honor (more on that later). thanks to jk and kk for being our official keg-fetchers, and for supplying the coors light cans for race refreshments for mb's super-fantastic 5k wedding run! but somehow, even with almost 60 people at the rehearsal picnic, and a ceremonial keg-tapping of the capital amber around 5pm, it took the guys a long time to make even a dent in the keg.
sunday was beautiful. the ceremony was great, so i'm told. but people -- the bartender frankly mocked me for our weak showing. apparently a wedding weekend with kegs and crates of hard liquor results in you all being a very cheap date come sunday. however, after everyone left and the reception had been disassembled, the tapper was still in place. thanks, heidel house! mb and i sat on the porch with leftover beer and cheesecake for another 3 hours. my favorite part was mb pushing me around the lobby on the luggage cart. i really also enjoy evening weddings, but there's something to be said for all of the guests leaving by 2-3 pm...
i promise, the wedding was actually tasteful and quite beautiful and i wouldn't have wanted it any other way. but you don't want to see those pictures first, do you?
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