ravinia

a word to the wise. it's just not worth going to sold out ravinia shows. even if it is robert plant and allison krauss. maybe it was the ravinia performance of the decade, but what difference does that make to you if you're sitting so far back on the lawn that you're nowhere near any of the speakers and you can't hear anything?
don't get me wrong, there's always something to be said for good food and good company... and it helps if your good blogmate brings out from reserve two bottles of last year's homemade white wine. and if she also brings an assortment of yummy cheeses. and if there is the promise that next time there will be home s'mores maker (read: tabletop fire).
but you'll still have to be one of the morons with a folding chair sardined into the metra train, inhale the clouds of desperate tobacco smoke emitted by hundreds of post-sardined, stressed out zeppelin fans, witness really awkward middle-aged festival freak-outs ("i just can't handle all these folding chairs touching me!"), get through the will-call bottle neck, and fight your way home through the one open lane of the inbound Edens.
not that i didn't have a lovely time... but can someone find me a less popular band next time?

addendum:

things i learned at the robert plant show: if you think you're alone in not actually being a zeppelin fan so much as you remember chasing a boy who loved zeppelin when you were in high school, you're wrong. apparently we all went through that.

and

things i learned after the robert plant show: even if your boyfriend was one of those boys in high school, and has more zeppelin knowledge than anyone else around the picnic blanket, don't assume that his assumptions are correct just because they sound plausible. so it's a nice story that robert plant used to sing the high part of "battle of evermore " but handed it off to allison krauss in his scratchy-voiced old age, but that's not actually what happened. robert plant never sang the high part.

you won't know unless you try

there aren't very many foods that i'm afraid of. for the most part, my experience has been that if you can get over the fear and dig in you'll be pleasantly surprised... or at least not totally disgusted. there are obvious exceptions, most of them in the organ meat family.

then there are the foods that you can't bring yourself to enjoy, even if everyone else can. in my case, these almost all fall into the stinky cheese variety. as it turns out, this impairment is a bit crippling socially. if you don't eat goat, blue, or feta cheese some menus can be pretty limited. plus everyone assumes that everyone else loves goat, blue, or feta cheese and as such tends to incorporate one of them into foods that i otherwise love as some kind of special treat. i've tried, i really have. it's not that want to turn down the delicious looking pork chop or salad. but i can't do it. at least my friends all know me well enough to anticipate my unpopular hangup.

aside from smelly cheese and a few other things i'm willing to try almost anything, especially if it's dessert. so imagine my excitement when nb's brother mailed him a bottle of what looked like some caramel version of hershey's syrup along with a yummy sounding recipe that involved roasted plaintains and nuts, all to be topped with this new discovery.

for the last few weeks we've been tearing through a few pints a week of haagen dazs dulce de leche frozen yogurt (for those of you who don't know, it's low enough in fat and calories that you can eat half the container in a sitting without hating yourself that much and it's quite tasty - i can only imagine what the full fat version tastes like). it seemed to us like cajeta would be right up our alley.

maybe anybody who is anybody knows that cajeta is basically caramelized goat milk and sugar. i had never heard of it before, and was a little surprised about the goat milk part, but once i examined the bottle and figured that if it was marketed in the united states by hershey's it was probably pasteurized i felt better about it. plus, if nb's brother loved the stuff so much that he had bothered to mail it across the country to us it was probably pretty good.

the dessert was beautiful. pretty roasted plantains with bits of walnuts sprinkled on top, capped off with pretty swirls of gooey, delicious looking caramel stuff. i dove in without restraint, uber pleased nb for presenting me with something so marvelous. but the warm sweetness was almost instantly washed away by the distinct vomity flavor that makes me hate all those stinky cheeses so very much.

i tried. i really did. it was so pretty and promisingly exotic... but so very disgusting. even with a good forkful of plantains and walnuts i couldn't get around the barfy back flavor. nb managed to put down a good bit of it, but in the end conceded that it was at very least a bit off-putting.

the experience wasn't a total loss. we laughed about it for a good long time, and, with the help of wikipedia i've since learned some rather amusing things about cajeta. i won't repeat them here. you'll have to see for yourself.

the return of jo-na

there's no way around it. when it comes to the blog i've been woefully neglectful over the last few months. and while i can assure you that i hang my head in shame every time i think about it, i really can't come up with a compelling explanation.

i'd blame nb (who has shown enough staying power to drop the n and just be b, except that it's weird like that), but he's actually given me plenty of stuff to blog about. and i'd say i've been busy, which is true, but no busier than usual, actually. and it's not like i haven't found myself in any amusing or otherwise blog-worthy situations. so i guess it's just blog-block.

so it goes.

anyway, it seems fitting to come back to the old theme that my blogmate and i rehash again and again - that of being fancy but not.

i was feeling especially cranky leaving work post-call the other morning and was happy to find my good blogmate still at home in her pajamas, seemingly willing to pour me a cup of coffee (or three) and listen to what had to have been a long, rambling monologue of things i'd been saving up to tell her over the last couple of days. by the time i was done with my rant we were both ready for food and shopping... although if you know us at all you'll realize that we're almost always up for food and shopping.

we made our way over to the big new ritzy whole foods market that just opened up down the street and over organic salads and sparkling water we marveled over what yuppies we have become. it seems like we've resisted long enough. we've rolled our eyes about the way "sustainable" has insidiously made its way into the popular lexicon and groaned about free-range chicken, but deep down we know we've given in... enough so that after we'd finished our salads and sparkling water we went across the street to home depot to stock up on herbs, flowers, and potting soil to get our spring gardens going.

i'll admit it; i love occupying the space between loving and hating that sort of thing. what's not to love? i can run up $150 worth of tofu, vegetables and granola at trader jo's and still get offended when the check-out lady insinuates that i shouldn't be buying bacon (she argued that it has no nutritional value which, in my opinion is completely beside the point). and while i ruthlessly mock nb for his love of whole wheat pasta and flax it, i actually find his hippy tendencies to be pretty endearing. apparently i've met my match, as the guy who reads me the riot act for not buying organic milk also makes biscuits and gravy for breakfast and suggested that we blow off lollapalooza this year to go a poison concert.

basking in your own contradictions is really fun - you should try it sometime.

best study night EVER.

ok, people. if you're going to try to have a productive evening of getting work done or studying for classes, take a friend and work in a place where nice people will bring you tea and burritos. and even if you're not having a productive evening, get yourself to a cafe that makes homemade chocolate cake and tops it NOT with frosting, but with FLAN. amazing. ck and i will take you there any time you want.

post card from pico

my blogmate is in france, mb is stuck in cleveland, my family is all out of state, ck is writing a paper... i'm actually not bored (right now) or jealous (especially of cleveland). i have a fridge full of homemade salsa, the dixie chicks and alison krauss are on austin city limits, and i'm making a ridiculous mess in the kitchen, only stopping to write this on my BRAND NEW LAPTOP.

such deliciousness is happening -- too bad nobody's here to eat it with me! chipotle orange barbecue chicken, baked green rice (made with the last of nb's famous green salsa and a little cheddar cheese), mango salsa, lemon cupcakes frosted with cream cheese frosting and topped with strawberries. i'd call nb to join me, especially seeing as it's his salsa (and i've already stretched his pico de gallo into tilapia with salsa-flavored black beans and rice, and gemelli pasta with the salsa, artichokes, chicken and parmesan -- the pico de gallo is nice and garlicky so i can pretend it's a base for an italian sauce)... but nb is visiting his dad in hawaii.

so hello, world travellers, from here in cold-but-cozy chicago. the salsas miss you. so there.

groupies

there are plenty of benefits to going to see live music in bars. for one thing it buys you a little street cred, or at least gives you something to talk about. plus it's fun and tends to enhance any drinking experience, and since chicago now has its very own smoking ban you don't even have to smell bad at the end (that's not to say that you can't smell bad, but i'm getting ahead of myself).

and then there's the people-watching.

it all started last weekend when nb and i went off to ballydoyle in downer's grove to see american english, the local beatles tribute band. i am way more beatles-neutral than nb is, but a night of watching a bunch of grown men in silly outfits singing songs that i actually know seemed like a totally reasonable way to spend an evening, and that was before i knew about the groupies. as it turns out, beatles geeks are a few rungs below salsa geeks on on the early-twenties social ladder - such bad fashion choices, such earnest dedication. it's really not clear to me if these girls dream of the actual john lennon or of young hines, who i must say does a pretty good impression (as an aside, who names their son young?) - but boy do they swoon.

it turns out that nb is much more motivated than i am when it comes to live music, so a few days later i again found myself in a bar past my bedtime, this time at martyr's to see cornmeal. it turns out that quietly mocking dreadlocked microbrew drinking hippies, while fun, isn't quite as novel or entertaining, mostly because even at their most ridiculous they tend to be a bit more bar-savvy... although it's hard to be less bar-savvy than a beatles fanatic who honestly thinks they she can leave for the set break and then come back to angrily reclaim the exact place that she was standing before.

as though what i really needed was more blog material and less sleep, i went for round three this week, this time at sonotheque for bonobo. nb and i were a little surprised to discover that bonobo really was the "kid with the mac" that jk, the evening's orchestrator had described, and my good blogmate and i were even more surprised to discover that what really separated us from the crowd at the uber-hipster west town lounge wasn't our lack of appropriately hip accoutrements but was, in fact, about ten years and, well, good sense. for a club that was pretty dark there sure were alot of sunglasses, and for a scene that should have been pretty aloof there sure was alot drunken groping tongue kissing. on the plus side, i decided that mobs of people in a bar with monochromatic grey decor all gathered around a dork with headphones and laptop enables non-ironic, appropriate use of the term "post-modern." on the down side, crowded rooms full of frenetic, dancing college kids smell alot like dorm rooms.

as a side note, full credit to jk for telling my good blogmate and mb who in turn told me and nb that we should all be listening to bonobo, and who was able to pull off "NWA's 'straight outta compton' is like our abbey road," seemingly without ever having thought about that before, and clearly not knowing about my recent discovery that lots of people still care about the beatles.

i draw from these experiences a few conclusions:

- though i uniformly start turning into a pumpkin at exactly 12:15, i really should get out to live shows more often.

- it's easier to make fun of people dancing in bars when they bring props like glow sticks or glass orbs.

- people should spend more time in frat parties during their formative years, so that they learn the apparently lost art of gracefully moving people out of the way when navigating across crowded rooms. it seems no one does the discreet hand on the back or the arm sort of thing anymore - now we just shove each other out of the way.

- i've noted this before - it's really nice to have friends... especially friends who rally you to go out on frigid february nights, know what's musically good for you (even if you don't), and feed you homemade guacamole and salsa before you hit the town.

bring me two pina coladas...

mb's friends are coming into town this friday to see a bonobo dj set at sonotheque. it should be a good time! in preparation for their arrival, this weekend we stopped to pick up a bottle of captain morgan. for the last several years, every time jk visits mb, it just so happens that mb has bought a new bottle of captain morgan. so now the cycle is self-propelling -- we know jk is coming; therefore, buy captain.

maybe it was time to let go. on settling the captain into our little home bar (which, for the record, is STILL STANDING despite having been assembled by yours truly, and was actually confused for a real piece of furniture by one of mb's fancy contemporary-furniture-loving left-our-wedding-early-just-to-shop-at-dania co-workers), i suggested that maybe, just out of curiosity, we should COUNT the bottles of rum in our possession.

twelve.

2 bottles of light bacardi (one from our summer mojito stash, one leftover from the wedding booze), one bacardi select, two fancy venezuelan sippin' rums, two regular venezuelan rum-and-coke rums, one clear venezuelan rum (for this summer's anticipated mojito upgrade), some fun orange-flavored rum, some leftover coconut rum from st. lucia, a little bit of leftover chairman's reserve medium-good rum from st. lucia... and now the captain. granted, some of those are special from our honeymoon, and we're not looking to chug them in one night, but still.

twelve.

we have officially declared a rum-a-torium on household purchases for the next several months. but obviously that's difficult for us... so consider yourselves invited. n, if you still read this blog, you and m should come over and help us try out the new juicer. fresh fruit mixers with exotic rum? mmm. i'll be so content, i won't even give you a hard time for not posting on your blog since september.

the grass, if it were not buried by snow and ice and mud, would most certainly be greener...

mb and i both grew up in small midwestern towns. i know that there are many redeeming qualities about country life, but we were teenagers, and wanted nothing more but to leave.

several years later, here we are in chicago. we live 2 miles from downtown; mb rides his bike or takes the train to work and evening mba classes; i drive a few miles down the interstate to work primarily with poor underserved children. it's everything we've been working toward, and we're lucky enough to have an amazing circle of friends both in the city and around the midwest.

we're the urban dinks that we've always aspired to be.

so why, you might ask, was mb driving out to see the monster truck rally at the allstate arena in rosemont, armed with a personally-mixed 2-volume set of "redneck country" music?

(robosaurus wasn't there, but for the uninitiated:)



naturally, we can't just embrace chicago for having been good to us. we have to turn our noses up at the million upscale italian restaurants, the martini lists available at every sports bar, the $20/plate breakfasts. in their place, we are substituting country music (which we NEVER listened to when living in actual country) and monster truck rallies (which we never attended when everyone we knew drove trucks... although i did attend a well-timed tractor pull or three.)

mb sums it up best: he calls us "rednecks with benefits." it's a perfect analogy: "friends with benefits" don't really exist either. they're just two people who can't admit they're in a relationship. we can't be actual rednecks if we're listening to our country playlist and discussing our desired redneck status while sipping on fancy venezuelan rum that we brought back from our honeymoon. and thank you to my good blogmate and nb for accommodating mb's desire to see monster jam last weekend - he has appointed you both "honorary rednecks" - but since, upon learning that the rally was in fact SOLD OUT, i don't know what it means that your plan b was to spend the evening with tropical drinks at a nearby tiki bar.

well, if we're going to have big trucks and a musical genre stand in for actual rebellion, this is better than the early '90s reveling-in-my-own-personal-and-unique-pain-grunge-rock phase. it's much easier to get through the day bouncing along to "redneck yacht club."

(hee hee. if you clicked on that link, now you're stuck with that song too. come on down to our level.)

self-righteousness: a full circle

florida snowbirds have a charming way of letting more permanent northerners know how they feel about cold and snow.

"OH. MY. GOD. you're going back to chicago TODAY? have you HEARD how cold it is up there???"
"well, guys, it's going to get cold here too this week... tomorrow's high is only 75."
"are you SURE you don't want to stay another night? we heard it's cold up there."
etc.

it *was* cold. but mb and i got back to our apartment and settled in pretty quickly, curling up on the couch under blankets with homemade soup on the stove, furry slippers on our feet, laundry in the dryer, glasses of wine in our hands, and movie on tv. these are the moments you can't enjoy as much when it's 80 degrees outside. we were feeling pretty good about our temperate-climate lifestyle...

i could take this story two ways:

a) don't point fingers about other people's self-righteousness because it goes both ways.

but that's boring and a little annoying.

b) everyone should be proud of their decisions. thanks to mb's new fancy mba training, we're taking this to a new level: we present to you the household awesomeness index (HAI?) , kind of like the s&p, that tracks different areas of awesomeness and provides us with a numerical assessment of just how self-righteous we should feel for a given day. for example:

coziness: 5 pts
productivity: 5 pts
goodness of external events: 5 pts
yumminess: 5 pts
adaptation to above: 20 pts

so, for example, being in florida probably scores pretty high in coziness, yumminess, and goodness of external events: after walking barefoot in the sand (cozy=4), i had the most amazing blackened scallops and sweet potato fries (yummy=5), accompanied by a rum-tastic tropical drink that came for free thanks to the fact that my almost-brother-in-law was working at the bar that night (goodness of external events=5).

but returning to chicago has its merits. getting household errands done while drinking and curling up on the couch scores points for yummy, cozy AND productive, plus scores points for adaptation: extra credit for good things that happen as a result of less desirable things (such as wind chill). our friends who traveled with us scored low on coziness and productivity in their return to the midwest, seeing as they had to drive back to wisconsin that afternoon but first needed to jump-start their car in the remote parking lot at midway, and then had a long drive home since the direct route to their hometown was closed for the third time in three weeks (this time from a fuel tank overturned on a highway ice slick). so that scores low on goodness of external events. but they score big in yummy and adaptation, by taking the opportunity to grab dinner at a favorite restaurant/microbrewery along the longer way home.

you'll notice that the household awesomeness index is heavily weighted toward adaptation. essentially, as long as you don't sulk, you're having an awesome day and should feel good about yourself.

how's your awesomeness today?

2008: the learning curve

i realize it's only february. but already i've learned some things, remembered some things, and had a few things reaffirmed.

lesson 1 (the shoe on the other foot): being the traveling blog-half is way more fun than being the one left behind. that goes double when it's really cold and snowy out and your blogmate is someplace warm and sunny (see lesson 2). it goes triple when you're the one left holding down the fort at work while said blogmate is (one would hope) drinking margaritas, sunning herself on the beach, and drinking more margaritas. not there's anything new about one us having fun while the other toils away on call, but 57 out of 72 hours spent at the hospital just seems like way too many.

lesson 2 (it was bound to happen sooner or later): chicago winter sucks ass. i agree wholeheartedly with my good blogmate that snow is lots of fun, but with only 11 minutes of sunshine for the entire first week of february, i'd trade a good bit of that snow for better weather. i feel particularly strongly now that the one sort-of day off i get this week (see lesson 1) promises a high temperature of 4 degrees.

lesson 3 (benefit from other peoples' misfortune): slow down for enormous pot holes. lucky for me, i haven't had to learn this the hard way, as i'm pertty sure that i only theoretically know how to change a flat tire, and i'm quite sure that i don't want to be one of those people pulled over on the side of lake shore drive at 7AM in the freezing cold (see lesson 2).

lesson 4 (timing is everything): avoid starting to date someone right before his birthday, or even worse, right before valentine's day (or even worse, right before both his birthday AND valentine's day). can anyone tell me how to play this?!

lesson 5 (know your limits): don't think for a minute that it's possible to coexist with a tub of homemade chocolate frosting. it can't be done. you will inevitably attack it with a spoon in a moment of weakness, and there's no way around the self-loathing that comes with catching yourself in the act. if you know what's good for you (and for your rapidly expanding middle section) you'll throw it away before you get into trouble.

martha's anatomy?

everyone is blessed with certain gifts. mine, however, do not include sewing.

yesterday i had a day off to run errands, and decided it was time to do something about the buttons falling off my new winter coat, and the ripped seams in the lining of one of my favorite coats of my mom's from the '70s. really, any excuse to march off to the jo-ann fabric superstore for arts-and-crafts dreaming is good for me. armed with new needles and thread (and somehow another $40 of items for which i have no specific use yet, but i swear they'll be good for something) i called up a bunch of indie rock that i don't actually listen to, plopped down my pile of vintage coat and was feeling pretty faux-urban-hippie... except that i cannot sew a button to save myself.

seriously, is there a trick i don't know about? my coat fixing was a 2-hour ordeal. this seems unfair, since i, you know, have sewed at work on occasion, and that seems like it must be harder than a button. one major difference between my winter coat and people: stitching-manufacturers for people make the suture in a CONTRASTING COLOR from the, umm, sutur-ees. how am i supposed to find black thread between black coat and black button? that's a first disadvantage. second, wool coats are FATTER than people-skin. much harder to figure out where to put the needle. third, no tools. next time i'm at work i'm bringing home spare hemostats and needle drivers that we don't use, because i think i can use them to mend my pants. (also, curved needles. for seams? don't you think? better?) my mom taught me how to tie knots in thread once for a 4-h project but i was a dismal failure; at least i can instrument-tie. and fourth, i swear that buttons are just inherently evil. i totally got the multi-directionally-torn shoulder hem repaired in less time than 2 buttons took; it's just like running suture through a long laceration just under the outer layer of skin.

this is a little shop-talk for this blog, i realize, but help me: is there a people-equivalent of button? that would have really helped me yesterday. (it wouldn't have prevented my subsequently managing to briefly super-glue myself to the kitchen drawer, but that's another story. let's just say it's a good thing errand-day is done and i'm going back to work.)

winter sports 2007-08: a mid-season review

in an attempt to stay active year-round (and thereby avoid both of us being so fidgety inside our small apartment that we drive each other crazy), mb and i try to find physical activities that aren't blocked by chicago's unpredictable winter weather.

1. snowshoeing: it's hard to find time for this, with two more-than-full-time jobs in the city and two part-time grad school programs. but thankfully, mother nature has cooperated this year by providing a few weekends with snowfall, so we can hit the suburban forest preserves. i'm continually impressed by how much workout can be had by just walking! even better, this weekend my good blogmate and nb met us afterward and brought sleds: although it turns out that 30-somethings do not fit easily on little plastic sleds, and in fact spend more time rolling off the sled into snowbanks than actually cruising downhill, still - good time had by all.

2. running outside (aka falling all over sidewalks): while ignoring the superbowl at a local sports bar yesterday, we argued with friends about how much fun it can be to run outside in winter. personally, winter is my favorite running season. a) more workout for stabilizer muscles that you'd never get plodding forward on a non-slippery non-puddle-y sidewalk b) better fashion statements - there's something special about proudly piling on mismatched decades-old raggedy clothes and flaunting them in public c) forget post-run water: how 'bout post-run cocoa with bailey's?

3. stair climbing: last weekend we did a stair climb up 80 floors to the top of the old standard oil (now aon center) building. this one is a benefit for children's memorial hospital. we picked it because after trying out all the stair climbs in the city, we found this one smaller and friendlier than the sears tower or hustle up the hancock races. and also, the step up for kids was sponsored by qdoba, which meant awesome burrito and cookie treats for finishers. it's not a bad workout, and actually doesn't take all that long (mb runs, but i walked and was done in under 30 minutes), but the race has gotten much more popular since last time. and lost their best sponsorship! as mb said angrily after the race was over, "it's all about the kids? kids? why isn't it all about the burritos? doesn't anyone think of the burritos?"

4. dreaming of guitar hero 3: we entered a raffle at the bar yesterday for a wii system. alas, not our big day. i know area bars have gh3 contest nights, but i don't think i can compete, with my entire experience limited to one glorious hair-band-filled weekend. sigh. although if we take a cue from mb's brother, we should remember that gh3 has the most injury potential of all winter sports... we just hope his strumming shoulder is better and hasn't needed more cortisone shots.

5. umm, beach bocce and tropical-drink arm curls? mmm... best winter sports activity: leaving winter behind for a long weekend in florida! sunshine, here we come.

if you don't have something nice to say...

i have left most of the blogging this month to my good blogmate, who for this january has led a much more interesting life than i, what with thailand and such. meanwhile, work has been such a ridiculous *%$&-storm that i haven't had many funny stories to tell... the month was, however, made much better by an excellent work-partner: bikemyers, who listened encouragingly to my new year's quest for a more zen 2008. what better place to try out a resolution for a more zen 2008 than in a chaotic work environment? so far, so good - although, as i told bikemyers at one point, sometimes apathy masquerades as zen. (and as bikemyers told me, sometimes powerlessness manifests as apathy, which masquerades as zen. but as bikemyers's wife told me, sometimes restrained belligerence is not nearly the same thing as zen but is close enough to get you through the day.)

so despite a pretty busy last few weeks, i've successfully managed to hold onto my new year's resolution. i only broke a little to raise my voice to my boss in the following exchange:

boss: *telling animated story in public setting about his colleague's super-efficiency* it's a good thing she's hindu, because she has so many hands!
me: you did not just say that.
boss: you can tell her i said that!
me: but she's sikh!
boss: oh. maybe you shouldn't tell her i said that.

you can imagine, then, that if my only excitement this month has been trying not to get too excited, that it must have been a big victory for living vicariously when my blogmate finally returned from thailand with not just travel stories, but someone new for me to meet. and even better when i got to meet nb in person! from this reviewer, nb gets two thumbs up: first of all, i got to meet him first (of the friends). second of all, he seems funny and smart and makes my blogmate happy. third of all, he mixes a good bloody mary (who knew that liquid smoke and worcestershire sauce aren't the same thing?)

clearly my priorities are in order here.

integration

bringing a new boy around is a delicate thing.

you don't want to jinx things, or rush him into the circle before he's ready- let's face it, even the most fun, laid-back, non-judgemental group of girlfriends can send a man unprepared for that sort of thing sprinting off in the opposite direction.

but if you're practically the last single girl standing, surrounded by a group of loyal and supportive women who have spent months if not years patiently deconstructing all of you date stories, picking out your outfits, and themselves getting dragged through the emotional wringer of repeated, failed relationships, you owe it to your friends to let them, "examine the merchandise" as my israeli colleagued so eloquently put it.

and let's be honest, by the time it's the tiniest bit appropriate to start introducing the new guy, you're so wrapped up in the glee of "ohmygod-i-have-a-boyfriend," that you're dying to muzzle the little voice in your head that's telling you to take it slow.

but even those prone to excessive analysis of these interactions can find themselves surprised by how things are unfolding.

i wouldn't have predicted, for example, that the first suggestion of meeting the friends would come from him, and that said meeting would be "like ripping off a bandaid," since it would occur at his 30th birthday, to be attended by, as far as i could gather, everyone he had ever met. lucky for me, i got permission to bring my own entourage. open bar also tends to be a helpful backdrop in such a setting - when the somewhat inebriated friend of a friend backs you into a corner, sloshing her martini at you, demanding to know where you are in the 10 steps of love it's helpful to also be a bit under the influence.

to be fair, my fear of this event turned out to be way out of proportion to its scariness. 10 steps of love notwithstanding, i had a great time, and on some level it had to have been easier than having to show up at my friends' brunch the next day, wretchedly hung over, knowing full well that no one was buying the the rumpled shirt and sport coat as a calculated sunday morning fashion statement. it turned out that he was almost as nervous as i had been about the inevitable scrutiny of protective friends. i suppose you'd have to already know my blogmate to realize that you can only score more points by looking that rough and still managing to put down two bloody mary's.

as usual, the moral of the story appears to be that we're nothing without our friends, and that there's always a story to tell.

compare and contrast

there's a very special kind of jet lag that comes with the return home from a country 13 hours ahead of central standard time. since my return from thailand i've spent lots of time lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing i was asleep. in that time i've thought about all sorts of things, but none more commonly than those comparing life in southeast asia to life in chicago. to mark the first time i've actually given up, turned the light on, and logged into the computer, i thought i'd share with you some of the contrast.

pro-chicago: hot water

pro-thailand: lack of need for hot water

pro-chicago: getting to hang out with people i actually know, who may or may not share their deepest secrets with me, but probably know most of mine

pro-thailand: getting to hang out with total strangers who share all of ttheir deepest darkest secrets with me, but know none of mine

pro-chicago: good coffee

pro-thailand: cheap coffee

pro-chicago: having access to my entire wardrobe, enough clothes to obviate frequent use of washing machines

pro-thailand: only needing about 6 items in wardrobe, as next-day laundry servie is available on every street corner for 30 to 90 cents per kilo

pro-chicago: "massage" not a euphemism for destigmatized prostitution... but very expensive

pro-thailand: massage inexpensive, occasionally interchangeable with destigmatized prostitution

pro-chicago: absence of swelteringly hot january weather

pro-thailand: absence of sub-glacial january weather

of course, some realities are universal:

thailand for 2 weeks on holiday: insomnia

chicago after 2 weeks in thailand: insomnia

road chicken revisited

as much as i love street food and adventurous eating in general, i have to give credit where it's due and admit that i didn't get here by myself. but for my fearless and inspiring blogmate (and our adventures on st. lucia) i doubt i'd have this kind of palate.

having said that, i'm feeling pretty good about my recent culinary adventures, and am starting to piece together a theory that when it comes to eating in thailand, the answer might be to go for the thing that sounds the most disgusting. i took baby steps at first. it wasn't immediately obvious to me that spicy papaya salad would be so delicious, but now it's one of my daily staples. i then moved on to the fruit-ginger-beet milkshake, another good choice. until today, the reigning favorite was the fish sausage at the sunday walking street in chiang mai, and victory made sweeter by the fact that i successfully got my initially horrfied and disbelieving guest-house neighbors to concede to its wonderfullness.

now i'm on ko samui, where upscale seafood joints are a dime a dozen. i was worried that sticking with my $2/meal and pointedly low-brow standards would relegate me to a week of ho-hum pad thai, but when i stumbled upon the hat lamai nightly market i saw my dining prospects brighten considerably. after warming up with some BBQ chicken (and yes, more papaya salad) and took a deep breath and ordered the fried mussels. i understand that you have to be of a certain disposition to even think such a thing sounds tasty... but imagine my delight when i watch her scramble an egg in and serve the whole thing up with a side of bean sprouts, green onions, and little baggies of bright red sauce. hands down the current front-runner in the best dinner in thailand race.

if this trend continues i may have to reconsider my staunchly anti- pork-ball stance.

unsolved mysteries

as i wander through the streets and markets of bangkok i ask myself many questions.

aside: the more time i spend alone, the more i hear myself asking these questions out loud. mental note: make friends at guest house in chiang mai to stave off insanity.

few of these questions are substantive, past the occasional, "so what's the deal with buddhism, anyway?" more like, "dear god, is that a bin of deep fried bugs?" and, "who knew entire alleys could be dedicated to sale of dried squid and industrial quantities of fried pork skin?"

but at the front of my mind is this looming quesion, thus far unanswered: in a country whose entire culinary custom revolves around street vendors (blog to come on how i will never eat $8 pad thai in the states ever again), WHY ARE THERE NO BLOODY RUBBISH BINS ANYWHERE?

blogger in nowhere

ah, the by-now familiar blog pattern... my trusty blogmate is off having international adventures and eating mystery fish balls and setting off for points unknown and unpronounce-able. meanwhile, yours truly is back at home, doing nothing exotic, albeit pondering the important points of life with friends. (you'd probably rather hear about bangkok. last night over burgers, mb, ck and i debated which was more offensive: asking a non-christian to pray to baby jesus over christmas breakfast just to see what she'd say, or making fun of a man's inadequate grill. we're still not sure. but it's hard to gather lots of opinions on this one... as bikemyers said today in an unrelated but weirdly applicable conversation, "not many people have a good sense of humor about john the baptist.")

except that although i have gone absolutely nowhere special, i still have harrowing travel stories. last weekend mb and i drove to madison to snowshoe with friends before the last of the awesome piles of snow in southern wisconsin melted in record 60-degree-in-january heat. we had a fabulous time, and i can safely say that any exercise that involves romping around at midnight drinking jim beam in a plastic squirt bottle is not something that should be so easily dismissed by our many snowshoe nay-sayers. had a great time until sunday, when we were about to head back to chicago, the car wouldn't start. we called triple a: now enter lots of small-town retired men all conveniently taking the dogs out for walks around the neighborhood so they could eavesdrop on the musings of the towing guy, and there we were stuck with our car at mb's parents' place in the country outside of madison, with no repairs possible until monday morning.

we were both sad about missing a day of work, and even sadder about being foisted upon mb's parents for that sunday evening, which happened to be their 40th wedding anniversary... until mb's brother called us later that evening to report that at the very time we would have been headed back to chicago there was a huge 100-car pile-up just south of madison and the interstate was closed for hours. had the car started, we would have - at best - been stranded along i-90 with a totalled car waiting for the red cross to come find us a hotel and a wrecking crew. never have i been so overjoyed about a broken-down car! instead, we spent a comfortable evening with mb's gracious parents, an uneventful monday morning watching food network waiting for new spark plugs, and were back by monday afternoon in time for me to try out the new recipe inspired by my food-network morning (oooh, roasted poblano peppers with sweet-potato-and-black-bean stuffing!)

i'll take uneventful non-travel for a bit. but looking forward to the next installment from across the globe... living vicariously is good.

breakfast in bangkok

so screwed up from time change and travel, i was wide awake at 3 this morning, up and out by 6:45. perfect timing for the first batch of the thai version of friend breakfast dough (is it universally true that all cultures have some donut equivalent?) and iced coffee. also good timing to catch the dregs of the banglamphu party scene - so far i've abstained from the beer (singha) and nightclub circuit, perhaps for good reason given the legions of still drunk frat boys staggering around the street with skanky thai women on their arms. ew, but good for me, as the companionless drunk boys apparently feel compelled to make idle conversation with bright eyed bushy tailed sober people like me.

not as weighty as carbon footprinting, perhaps, but who wants to leave memories of such poor taste and judgement in his wake?

blogger in bangkok

it's not that i don't have anything better to do in thailand than tell you all about it... OK maybe it is... or maybe internet access is just so cheap and easy to come by that i can't help but rub it in a little. here goes: ha ha! i'm in thailand.

the stories started compiling before i even left chicago.

not everyone manages to wear their elite frequent flier status gracefully. in line at the security checkpoint at 5AM on sunday i watched the struggles of what was obviously some kind of retired, "now we drive our RV around the country" couple nearly get mauled by popular rebellion. they apparently mistook the employee line for the delta platinum line and just weren't willing to accept the fact they were going to have to slum it with the masses if they wanted to get to their gate. after going a couple of unsuccessful rounds with the increasingly impatient TSA lady they finally decided that the next best strategy to avoid waiting in line was to simply shove their way in between people at the front of the queue. go figure the non-platinum regular folk weren't having it, and no amount of insistence, "but we're platinum" made any difference. it wasn't a total loss - as the loud, indignant couple angrily worked their way to the back of the line the rest of us had a really good time laughing about it. anything to take the edge of a 6AM departure...

also, anything to take the edge off a 14 hour flight from atlanta to seoul. like the unbelievably nice and helpful flight attendants who helpfully provided printed instructions on how to assemble and eat bibimbop and actually wandered up and down the aisle over and over again with their little trays just in case anyone should need anything. i also made taking back the arm rest from the unpleasant little man sitting next to me a sport - especially after he had decided that the best way to optimize his movie viewing was to put the headphones around his neck and turn the volume way up.

so now i'm in bangkok. it's amazingly easy to get acclimated here, especially if you're not picky. it seems if you just walk up to the soup lady on the street and nod she sits you down in front of spicy delicious soup. another nod gets you a little bottle of mixed fruit juice, and a third brings the news that this cost of this feast is about a buck twenty five. i'm a little worried that negotiating the river taxi tomorrow will be a little more complex, but so far the lonely planet is batting 1000 and i'm going to continue to blindy do what it tells me to do.

i think the moral of the story so far is that when you're traveling alone in southeast asia anything you don't royally screw up is a triumph. score one for me and stomach of steel.

2008: a preview

i suppose it's kind of trite to post about new year's resolutions, but i needed an excuse to make some...

1. further explore the world of top-shelf bourbon
2. get eyebrows waxed more regularly, thus avoiding disapproving scowls of eyebrow waxing lady
3. settle screen-writer's strike... want pushing daisies back on the air... desperately
4. resist urge to buy brittany spears' new album
5. befriend person who owns a wii
6. befriend person who owns a boat
7. rehang poster that has been half hidden by bookshelf since july
8. acquire snow boots
8a. play in snow
9. find and root for sports team that doesn't totally suck

your turn.