my life is full of contradictions.
for the last few weeks i've been keeping track of funny things that happen in boystown.
don't get me wrong- i love living in boystown. it's fun, safe, well-landscaped, has plenty of attractive young eye-candy (that can be blatantly stared at because it ain't lookin' at me), and has countless cute little boutiques, restaurants, and candy stores.
but first there was the shiny silver convertible blaring techno-remixed madonna, driven by guy in man-slides all of 20 feet before he parked in front of caribou to buy a latte. then there was the shiny gold jaguar convertible, blasting rick astley, driven by an older version of mr. non-conservation. finally there was the day i had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a veritable gaggle of men (okay, there were 3 of them), all wearing man-capris.
travel 8 blocks south and 8 hours later and you get a totally different view of lakeview. driving home from one of my birthday outings (here's a tip- if you want two parties just plan the first one on a night that you half of your friends are busy) dwtacc decided that she was hungry and that this was the perfect time to introduce me to the time-honored late night tradition that is the wiener circle.
the wiener circle, it turns out, is a shack on clark street where terrifying people sell what i consider to be terrifying meat products (what in god's name is a double red hot?) to drunk, banana-republic clad lincoln park types and all-leather clad kawasaki motorcycle types.
dwtacc and i walked in right as the tiny angry woman behind the window lost her cool at a large angry woman (i'm not sure she wasn't a man) and let out a litany of cuss words that left feeling me a little embarrassed and alot like i needed to get the hell out of there. an equally horrified male customer caught my eye as this was going on and decided that "what the %$*& is going on???" was a good a pick-up line as any other... then i actually had to order something just to break the eye contact.
dwtacc and i decided to make our exit just as the next brawl was erupting between angry behind the counter woman and belligerent customer #2.
so what's weirder- casual drag queens in line at walgreens, or slumming rich kids in line at the wiener circle?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
service with a smile
i met my blogmate in the west loop last night to celebrate her belated birthday and my belated completion of the marathon, and also to exchange the gossip we'd accumulated in *gasp* 4-5 whole days of not talking to each other. i have no clever unifying theme for the following series of events; really, i think everyone working last night was just plain funny.
i stopped at the relatively new chicago chocolate company on randolph to try to find a last-minute gift to accompany the cute green running socks i'd found while in san diego. on being asked "can i help you find something?" by the guy behind the counter, i hesitated while trying to explain my dilemma, then blurted out, "i'm trying to finish a gift for a friend, and all i have for her is socks. they're cute running socks, but that's not an adequate gift. can you suggest a chocolate to accompany socks?" to give the guy credit, he first demanded to see the socks, then asked whether they were the kind with separate toes. on learning that they were not the separate-toe kind, he suggested that i purchase fudge.
socks and fudge in hand, i then walked across the street to meet my blogmate for sushi. i think it says something about my lack of class that i intentionally pick menu items based on their funny names. at the greek restaurant with twinset and her husband it was the saganaki flaming cheese. tonight it was poochi-poochi sparkling sake, served to us with great flourish by the very affected waiter (who, as my blogmate puts it, "must live in [her] neighborhood (boys' town)." is it really necessary to sip and approve a drink with bubbles that has a picture of a dog holding a blanket on it? but give me credit: i exercised some restraint and did not insist on ordering the fuji apple fu for dessert, mostly because another option involved green tea cheesecake on a brownie crust with fresh raspberries. mmm...
after dinner i dragged my blogmate to the south loop to pick up a gift certificate for our boss from the chicago firehouse, which is a beautiful rehabbed building with fancy american food. i walked into the main lobby where a whiny assistant-manager type was berating two bored staff about how they recognize restaurant regulars via their fancy computer system. this must have been riveting, because i stood there for quite awhile before they even looked at me, and even then nobody offered help. eventually i singled out bored staff #1, a tired blond career-waiter-looking guy, and asked him for a gift certificate. he suddenly realized that if he helped me, he would not have to be berated by whiny assistant-manager, and left to procure the certificate. meanwhile, another customer came to the front to ask for a cab home, where he too was promptly ignored for a few minutes. feeling bad for the guy, i whispered in his ear that if he was actually in a hurry he might want to consider interrupting their conversation. eventually he got his cab from them, but not before he decided that he should start a very poor attempt at hitting on me, complete with "so are you new in town?," "i'm in town for a conference... yeah, it's full of nerds," and "i'm actually running this whole circus" followed by a description of the trade show booth this very important man was in charge of. but i have to give the guy credit: his attempts were bad enough that they drew the attention of bored staff woman #2, because when he left she finally stopped her argument with whiny assistant-manager type long enough to laugh and reassure me that he must be tanked, seeing as his dinner partner was passed out on the table.
apparently all the fun happens on wednesday nights. who knew?
i stopped at the relatively new chicago chocolate company on randolph to try to find a last-minute gift to accompany the cute green running socks i'd found while in san diego. on being asked "can i help you find something?" by the guy behind the counter, i hesitated while trying to explain my dilemma, then blurted out, "i'm trying to finish a gift for a friend, and all i have for her is socks. they're cute running socks, but that's not an adequate gift. can you suggest a chocolate to accompany socks?" to give the guy credit, he first demanded to see the socks, then asked whether they were the kind with separate toes. on learning that they were not the separate-toe kind, he suggested that i purchase fudge.
socks and fudge in hand, i then walked across the street to meet my blogmate for sushi. i think it says something about my lack of class that i intentionally pick menu items based on their funny names. at the greek restaurant with twinset and her husband it was the saganaki flaming cheese. tonight it was poochi-poochi sparkling sake, served to us with great flourish by the very affected waiter (who, as my blogmate puts it, "must live in [her] neighborhood (boys' town)." is it really necessary to sip and approve a drink with bubbles that has a picture of a dog holding a blanket on it? but give me credit: i exercised some restraint and did not insist on ordering the fuji apple fu for dessert, mostly because another option involved green tea cheesecake on a brownie crust with fresh raspberries. mmm...
after dinner i dragged my blogmate to the south loop to pick up a gift certificate for our boss from the chicago firehouse, which is a beautiful rehabbed building with fancy american food. i walked into the main lobby where a whiny assistant-manager type was berating two bored staff about how they recognize restaurant regulars via their fancy computer system. this must have been riveting, because i stood there for quite awhile before they even looked at me, and even then nobody offered help. eventually i singled out bored staff #1, a tired blond career-waiter-looking guy, and asked him for a gift certificate. he suddenly realized that if he helped me, he would not have to be berated by whiny assistant-manager, and left to procure the certificate. meanwhile, another customer came to the front to ask for a cab home, where he too was promptly ignored for a few minutes. feeling bad for the guy, i whispered in his ear that if he was actually in a hurry he might want to consider interrupting their conversation. eventually he got his cab from them, but not before he decided that he should start a very poor attempt at hitting on me, complete with "so are you new in town?," "i'm in town for a conference... yeah, it's full of nerds," and "i'm actually running this whole circus" followed by a description of the trade show booth this very important man was in charge of. but i have to give the guy credit: his attempts were bad enough that they drew the attention of bored staff woman #2, because when he left she finally stopped her argument with whiny assistant-manager type long enough to laugh and reassure me that he must be tanked, seeing as his dinner partner was passed out on the table.
apparently all the fun happens on wednesday nights. who knew?
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
bringing grown men to their knees
this weekend i was in san diego with mb and my running partner (who refuses to read this blog despite her love of gossip) running the rock 'n' roll marathon. it was a fun race overall, with local bands every mile for entertainment, and i felt less terrible at mile 22 than i have in the past, plus it was a good excuse to spend the weekend lounging around a hotel pool and eating everything in sight. mb did an amazing job, finishing an hour ahead of my partner and me, but in running faster, he missed the quirks that happen at the back of the pack. so rather than a sporty blow-by-blow description of each mile, i offer the following list of observations:
1. every sport seems to have its own collection of personalities, and distance runners seem to either be 1) young type-a's 2) 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths, or 3) fundamentalist christians running for jesus.
2. it's fun to warn 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths that two type-a running partners naturally have developed a strategy for finishing the race, but that it involves distracting ourselves by telling the girliest gossipiest stories we know. nothing makes a man look humble quite as fast as the prospect of four solid hours spent stuck with "and then he said... and i was like... can you imagine?"
3. don't sell them short: 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths can be fun running partners for young women type-a runners with semi-scandalous stories. in fact, they might even contribute some tame but entertaining stories of their own about their grown children's adventures.
4. but you have to be careful: just because a man is 50 and experiencing a fitness rebirth does not exclude the fact that he might also be a fundamentalist christian running for jesus. in that case, the young type-a runners should specifically avoid any overt discussion of sex while retelling their scandalous boy stories to prevent unwanted discussions regarding the status of their souls.
5. the young type-a's can then resume the best parts of their stories after the 50-year-old man experiencing a fitness rebirth who also might be a fundamentalist christian running for jesus has lost them by stopping in the race to talk on his cell phone to his buddy larry, thus 1) saving the best stories for the end of the race and 2) prompting an additional theory that the 50-year-old man experiencing a fitness rebirth who might also be a fundamentalist christian might also be a closeted homosexual.
6. a finish line located on a military base makes for a very, umm, secure-feeling exit from the festival grounds, complete with men in uniform pointing guns at the weary finishers who are, in all likelihood, much too tired to even contemplate violating national security.
7. exiting the shuttle back to the hotel is a herculean feat, since it involves a line of post-marathoners trying to bend their knees enough to descend the shuttle-bus steps. never have i seen so many grown men whimper on exiting a simple little bus.
and most importantly:
8. a pre-race day that includes three hours spent lounging at an outdoor buffet breakfast, followed by shopping with a quick break for smoothies, followed by napping by the pool with a quick break for dairy queen, followed by a multi-course pasta dinner, is officially my idea of a good day. i would run a marathon again just to have that pre-race day back.
1. every sport seems to have its own collection of personalities, and distance runners seem to either be 1) young type-a's 2) 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths, or 3) fundamentalist christians running for jesus.
2. it's fun to warn 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths that two type-a running partners naturally have developed a strategy for finishing the race, but that it involves distracting ourselves by telling the girliest gossipiest stories we know. nothing makes a man look humble quite as fast as the prospect of four solid hours spent stuck with "and then he said... and i was like... can you imagine?"
3. don't sell them short: 50-year-old men experiencing fitness rebirths can be fun running partners for young women type-a runners with semi-scandalous stories. in fact, they might even contribute some tame but entertaining stories of their own about their grown children's adventures.
4. but you have to be careful: just because a man is 50 and experiencing a fitness rebirth does not exclude the fact that he might also be a fundamentalist christian running for jesus. in that case, the young type-a runners should specifically avoid any overt discussion of sex while retelling their scandalous boy stories to prevent unwanted discussions regarding the status of their souls.
5. the young type-a's can then resume the best parts of their stories after the 50-year-old man experiencing a fitness rebirth who also might be a fundamentalist christian running for jesus has lost them by stopping in the race to talk on his cell phone to his buddy larry, thus 1) saving the best stories for the end of the race and 2) prompting an additional theory that the 50-year-old man experiencing a fitness rebirth who might also be a fundamentalist christian might also be a closeted homosexual.
6. a finish line located on a military base makes for a very, umm, secure-feeling exit from the festival grounds, complete with men in uniform pointing guns at the weary finishers who are, in all likelihood, much too tired to even contemplate violating national security.
7. exiting the shuttle back to the hotel is a herculean feat, since it involves a line of post-marathoners trying to bend their knees enough to descend the shuttle-bus steps. never have i seen so many grown men whimper on exiting a simple little bus.
and most importantly:
8. a pre-race day that includes three hours spent lounging at an outdoor buffet breakfast, followed by shopping with a quick break for smoothies, followed by napping by the pool with a quick break for dairy queen, followed by a multi-course pasta dinner, is officially my idea of a good day. i would run a marathon again just to have that pre-race day back.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
far, far, faaaaaaaar off broadway
a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of pursuing a theater major:
you may remember my previous story about the guys next door filming some likely class project, in which they mostly stood around for three hours giggling at themselves, with ten minutes' worth of taping their climbing through a window dressed as cops, chefs, villains, etc.
over memorial day weekend i was innocently grilling with mb, n and my blogmate when the building on the other side of ours burst into song. turns out my *other* neighbors were hosting a full-on musical in the back courtyard, complete with men singing and speaking in bad british accents, an electric keyboard for accompaniment, and an audience of ten-ish.
now, i have held lame parties before, including iron chef themed dinner parties, entire parties just because i bought a box of cake mix and wanted to share my cake or had a new vhs tape, halloween parties where everyone dressed as members of a swat team from the centers for disease control and went running around downtown pretending to shut down local restaurants. but this tops any of my dorky ideas. during intermission (yes, they had intermission) my blogmate and i did the only reasonable thing two amused girls drinking too many g&ts would do: poured ourselves another drink and walked downstairs to check out their stage. the weirdest thing was that both the audience and cast completely ignored us standing in the middle of their crowd pointing at stuff - they were all too busy with each other re-hashing the previous scenes. nobody seemed to think it was lame. and they weren't even drinking.
the point of my story is not that a theater major will not land you a job, or that you will spend your life waiting tables waiting for your big break unless you decide to can it and go to law school. my point is that you may be at risk of a collective sense of humor which is not normal, and no sense of irony.
you may remember my previous story about the guys next door filming some likely class project, in which they mostly stood around for three hours giggling at themselves, with ten minutes' worth of taping their climbing through a window dressed as cops, chefs, villains, etc.
over memorial day weekend i was innocently grilling with mb, n and my blogmate when the building on the other side of ours burst into song. turns out my *other* neighbors were hosting a full-on musical in the back courtyard, complete with men singing and speaking in bad british accents, an electric keyboard for accompaniment, and an audience of ten-ish.
now, i have held lame parties before, including iron chef themed dinner parties, entire parties just because i bought a box of cake mix and wanted to share my cake or had a new vhs tape, halloween parties where everyone dressed as members of a swat team from the centers for disease control and went running around downtown pretending to shut down local restaurants. but this tops any of my dorky ideas. during intermission (yes, they had intermission) my blogmate and i did the only reasonable thing two amused girls drinking too many g&ts would do: poured ourselves another drink and walked downstairs to check out their stage. the weirdest thing was that both the audience and cast completely ignored us standing in the middle of their crowd pointing at stuff - they were all too busy with each other re-hashing the previous scenes. nobody seemed to think it was lame. and they weren't even drinking.
the point of my story is not that a theater major will not land you a job, or that you will spend your life waiting tables waiting for your big break unless you decide to can it and go to law school. my point is that you may be at risk of a collective sense of humor which is not normal, and no sense of irony.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
"lady and gentlemen, start your engines..."
in mother night, kurt vonnegut writes, "be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be." i'm rarely one to wax philosophical, and even less likely to retain anything i read long enough to quote it back to anyone, but i've always loved that line and after many years of trying to apply it to my own life, i think i've finally got it.
in the hours of deliberation that have followed my flopped date with msfg (i have very patient and supportive girlfriends) i've come to the conclusion that i'm totally justified in 1) remaining steadfast in my opposition to the trend of shishi restaurants and bars with monosyllabic names that has taken chicago by storm and 2) blaming the failure of my planned romance with msfg on his apparent love of such restaurants and bars. while i suspect that i could play the part (of fashionably beat-up jeans with pointy heels and lacy tops), i really don't wanna, for fear that it will stick.
unfortunately, by the same logic, i think i have to be a little careful with some of my more low-brow indulgences, lest i actually turn into a nascar dad. i come to this realization after watching the indy 500 in its entirety today. to be fair, my interest was only sparked after hearing a piece on NPR about danica patrick and all the surrounding semantic controversy, but i have to admit i got totally sucked in and might have picked up a little more knowledge about car racing than i really intended.
the point, i guess, is that if i'm going to claim that i can't do the $10 martini scene because i'm afraid i might actually start to like it, i should probably be drinking a little less PBR.
in the hours of deliberation that have followed my flopped date with msfg (i have very patient and supportive girlfriends) i've come to the conclusion that i'm totally justified in 1) remaining steadfast in my opposition to the trend of shishi restaurants and bars with monosyllabic names that has taken chicago by storm and 2) blaming the failure of my planned romance with msfg on his apparent love of such restaurants and bars. while i suspect that i could play the part (of fashionably beat-up jeans with pointy heels and lacy tops), i really don't wanna, for fear that it will stick.
unfortunately, by the same logic, i think i have to be a little careful with some of my more low-brow indulgences, lest i actually turn into a nascar dad. i come to this realization after watching the indy 500 in its entirety today. to be fair, my interest was only sparked after hearing a piece on NPR about danica patrick and all the surrounding semantic controversy, but i have to admit i got totally sucked in and might have picked up a little more knowledge about car racing than i really intended.
the point, i guess, is that if i'm going to claim that i can't do the $10 martini scene because i'm afraid i might actually start to like it, i should probably be drinking a little less PBR.
porn, breakfast, particle accelerators, and hindus
in reference to my blogmate's addendum to the last blog:
friday mb and i were originally planning on some sort of cultural-sounding evening where i took the bus downtown to meet him for dinner after work, and then we were thinking of grabbing hot tix for some sort of theater or music or something. but on perusing the available tickets online, i couldn't really find anything that grabbed my interest. the best thing i found turned out to be right here in good old hp: doc films with "inside deep throat," a (thank you, dear blogmate, for allowing me to pilot my new favorite word first) porn-u-mentary about the political backlash and financial ruin that befell the good people who filmed a first-of-its-kind adult flick. does it say something about our friends that we actually ran into some of the few people we know in hp at the movie?
so the weekend has been significantly less exciting since then. i'm back to my usual position of waiting for people with more exciting lives to report back to me. blogmate, thank you for the details of le date, although i want more info on the fancy-pants bar you met at, since i'll never find myself there. bro (who wishes to be known on the blog as "anonymous minnesotan sibling" but seems not to actually post anything here), you are killing me by not returning my calls demanding details on the new house. you can't get all growns up in a few short months - graduating from law school, getting married, buying house - without letting me hear good stories! also if you don't start posting soon, i'm going to let your friends pick your blog name, and i'm not sure you want that. finally, henry, we naturally demand details on smut 'n' eggs.
one more wholesome post-script: went trail running yesterday at waterfall glen in darien, which sounds very pastoral but is in fact a 9-mile loop around argonne national lab. fun, great weather, much more tiring than the lakefront path. but i think this marks the third time now that i have tried to run a SINGLE LOOP on a trail and somehow gotten lost. my blogmate and i got lost in busse woods in schaumburg, and out at the sledding hill trail in palos. i thought this one was a no-brainer, since there are NO branching paths. somehow we missed the path entirely and ran a mile out of the way on some other dirt path. as we were wandering down a hill we started to hear some sort of not-quite-identifiable ethnic music in the background, and i started to joke that we'd left illinois and entered a foreign film. i wasn't far off- around the corner was the hindu temple of greater chicago, which is apparently just south of argonne in lemont, il. it made a nice running break to wander around the outside of the temple, which is, for the record, stunning. we felt a little out of place as the two pink-cheeked white people in running shorts milling around with the sari-clad women at the statue of swami vivekananda.
friday mb and i were originally planning on some sort of cultural-sounding evening where i took the bus downtown to meet him for dinner after work, and then we were thinking of grabbing hot tix for some sort of theater or music or something. but on perusing the available tickets online, i couldn't really find anything that grabbed my interest. the best thing i found turned out to be right here in good old hp: doc films with "inside deep throat," a (thank you, dear blogmate, for allowing me to pilot my new favorite word first) porn-u-mentary about the political backlash and financial ruin that befell the good people who filmed a first-of-its-kind adult flick. does it say something about our friends that we actually ran into some of the few people we know in hp at the movie?
so the weekend has been significantly less exciting since then. i'm back to my usual position of waiting for people with more exciting lives to report back to me. blogmate, thank you for the details of le date, although i want more info on the fancy-pants bar you met at, since i'll never find myself there. bro (who wishes to be known on the blog as "anonymous minnesotan sibling" but seems not to actually post anything here), you are killing me by not returning my calls demanding details on the new house. you can't get all growns up in a few short months - graduating from law school, getting married, buying house - without letting me hear good stories! also if you don't start posting soon, i'm going to let your friends pick your blog name, and i'm not sure you want that. finally, henry, we naturally demand details on smut 'n' eggs.
one more wholesome post-script: went trail running yesterday at waterfall glen in darien, which sounds very pastoral but is in fact a 9-mile loop around argonne national lab. fun, great weather, much more tiring than the lakefront path. but i think this marks the third time now that i have tried to run a SINGLE LOOP on a trail and somehow gotten lost. my blogmate and i got lost in busse woods in schaumburg, and out at the sledding hill trail in palos. i thought this one was a no-brainer, since there are NO branching paths. somehow we missed the path entirely and ran a mile out of the way on some other dirt path. as we were wandering down a hill we started to hear some sort of not-quite-identifiable ethnic music in the background, and i started to joke that we'd left illinois and entered a foreign film. i wasn't far off- around the corner was the hindu temple of greater chicago, which is apparently just south of argonne in lemont, il. it made a nice running break to wander around the outside of the temple, which is, for the record, stunning. we felt a little out of place as the two pink-cheeked white people in running shorts milling around with the sari-clad women at the statue of swami vivekananda.
Friday, May 27, 2005
back to le drawing board
after a prolonged blog hiatus it's hard to get back on the horse. i haven't really had much to contribute in the last few weeks. i was sure i could find a clever way to talk about my week of academic conference in washington, but the only question i could really ask myself was "why is everyone else smarter than me?" then i thought i could find something funny to say about the fixing of my giant cavity, but it seemed like repeatedly suggesting that i have sub-optimal oral hygiene might not do much to enhance my image as a sexy, sophisticated professional, and the only other observation i'd made was that the whole experience would be alot easier to take if you didn't have to hear the horrible sound of the drill (i'd even tried to work out a pun about hitting a nerve, but i had to give up). finally, my blogmate has become a tough act to follow, what with the discourse on venereal disease.
sadly, i'm finding my way back to blogging with a topic near and dear to my heart: bad blind dates. tonight was the the long awaited "coffee" with msfg. after a few weeks of increasingly flirty emails we finally managed to make plans. it was such a long wait that i was ridiculously nervous about the whole thing- to the extent that my good blogmate had to invest a few hours in calming me down before i even left. while it wasn't nearly the disaster i had anticipated (a la frank lloyd wrong), it would definitely be a stretch to say that it went well... quite a shame really, since msfg was pretty easy on the eyes. the chemistry was so markedly absent that it abruptly yanked me away from the starry-eyed lala land i had entered upon first seeing him- a land in which i got to marry a sophisticated parisian with dashing good looks, have some adorable french babies, and summer in a villa on the riviera. how can it be that such engaging email banter led way to such a striking lack of things in common? it didn't help that he was uncomfortable when spoke in english and i was really uncomfortable when we spoke in french and it was just a whole lot of uncomfortable. not the either one of us was especially funny or articulate in our native tongue... i'm going to leave that word dangling there at the end, since i don't think it'll come up again in the saga of me and metrosexual french guy.
sadly, i'm finding my way back to blogging with a topic near and dear to my heart: bad blind dates. tonight was the the long awaited "coffee" with msfg. after a few weeks of increasingly flirty emails we finally managed to make plans. it was such a long wait that i was ridiculously nervous about the whole thing- to the extent that my good blogmate had to invest a few hours in calming me down before i even left. while it wasn't nearly the disaster i had anticipated (a la frank lloyd wrong), it would definitely be a stretch to say that it went well... quite a shame really, since msfg was pretty easy on the eyes. the chemistry was so markedly absent that it abruptly yanked me away from the starry-eyed lala land i had entered upon first seeing him- a land in which i got to marry a sophisticated parisian with dashing good looks, have some adorable french babies, and summer in a villa on the riviera. how can it be that such engaging email banter led way to such a striking lack of things in common? it didn't help that he was uncomfortable when spoke in english and i was really uncomfortable when we spoke in french and it was just a whole lot of uncomfortable. not the either one of us was especially funny or articulate in our native tongue... i'm going to leave that word dangling there at the end, since i don't think it'll come up again in the saga of me and metrosexual french guy.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
nature lover
mb must have been a gardener in another life.
this past weekend we took a coworker's suggestion and drove out to sunny beecher, illinois to a huge nursery with reasonable prices on plants, and had fun stocking our porch herb garden. i thought mb was just along for the ride and the ice cream stand outside the nursery, but to my surprise he got into the whole plant ownership idea, picking out a hanging plant for the bedroom and a pretty purple-leaved tropical plant for the porch. (i know, i should call it "handsome" or "manly" or something, not "pretty," since this is a story about men buying plants.)
i shouldn't have been so taken aback by the sequence of events that followed, considering the whole terri schiavo-like drama when he accused me of not taking my parsley's life seriously enough when i wanted to stop watering my already-dead indoor plants this winter and put them on the porch to freeze. but every day after work he goes to the porch and gazes at our little plants, sighing "they grow up so fast..." when i got home from a night shift this week, i walked in to find the purple plant in the living room, because mb didn't think it was strong enough to handle the 40-50 degree cold. last night he announced that he thought mr. purple should sleep in the bedroom. i know he meant at the window next to our hanging plant, but i couldn't help the mental image of mb, plant, and me all curled up in bed.
so this morning i walked out to the porch to find that the rosemary, which was planted in a window box along with the sage and thyme (i know, very scarborough fair, although the parsley is separate), is missing. there's a hole where the rosemary used to live. i can only conclude that the rosemary got tired of mb picking favorites and left for a porch where it can be more appreciated. (i'm sure it has nothing to do with the birds trying to eat the scrawniest plants, like they did last year.) maybe i should try to give all of our plants porn names like mr. purple, although it can't be easy to find a sexually suggestive name for garlic chives.
this past weekend we took a coworker's suggestion and drove out to sunny beecher, illinois to a huge nursery with reasonable prices on plants, and had fun stocking our porch herb garden. i thought mb was just along for the ride and the ice cream stand outside the nursery, but to my surprise he got into the whole plant ownership idea, picking out a hanging plant for the bedroom and a pretty purple-leaved tropical plant for the porch. (i know, i should call it "handsome" or "manly" or something, not "pretty," since this is a story about men buying plants.)
i shouldn't have been so taken aback by the sequence of events that followed, considering the whole terri schiavo-like drama when he accused me of not taking my parsley's life seriously enough when i wanted to stop watering my already-dead indoor plants this winter and put them on the porch to freeze. but every day after work he goes to the porch and gazes at our little plants, sighing "they grow up so fast..." when i got home from a night shift this week, i walked in to find the purple plant in the living room, because mb didn't think it was strong enough to handle the 40-50 degree cold. last night he announced that he thought mr. purple should sleep in the bedroom. i know he meant at the window next to our hanging plant, but i couldn't help the mental image of mb, plant, and me all curled up in bed.
so this morning i walked out to the porch to find that the rosemary, which was planted in a window box along with the sage and thyme (i know, very scarborough fair, although the parsley is separate), is missing. there's a hole where the rosemary used to live. i can only conclude that the rosemary got tired of mb picking favorites and left for a porch where it can be more appreciated. (i'm sure it has nothing to do with the birds trying to eat the scrawniest plants, like they did last year.) maybe i should try to give all of our plants porn names like mr. purple, although it can't be easy to find a sexually suggestive name for garlic chives.
Monday, May 23, 2005
the grass is always greener
this is a little off-color, i'm sorry.
you know how in the past people with tuberculosis were sent to live in sanitoriums where their treatment was basically to hang out in the fresh air and sunshine and eat healthy food? not a bad treatment, really, even if it didn't work... and lepers were sent to live in colonies, which if you believe simpsons episodes (which is where i get much of my historical and medical knowledge) are tropical islands where people relax on the beach? so this weekend mb and i couldn't help but notice all these valtrex commercials where this guy announces that he has herpes but that with the magic of valtrex, he won't let it ruin his life. and there he is with an attractive woman at his side, hiking in the mountains with a gorgeous skyline as the backdrop. therefore, mb and i conclude that only people with socially stigmatizing diseases get to live fun lives. mb further concludes that he might like having herpes. i am trying to explain that he might not actually enjoy herpes, and furthermore, that i might not enjoy his having herpes. but every time i start to make my point about pain and ulcers, the commercial comes on again with the mountains and my case is lost.
you know how in the past people with tuberculosis were sent to live in sanitoriums where their treatment was basically to hang out in the fresh air and sunshine and eat healthy food? not a bad treatment, really, even if it didn't work... and lepers were sent to live in colonies, which if you believe simpsons episodes (which is where i get much of my historical and medical knowledge) are tropical islands where people relax on the beach? so this weekend mb and i couldn't help but notice all these valtrex commercials where this guy announces that he has herpes but that with the magic of valtrex, he won't let it ruin his life. and there he is with an attractive woman at his side, hiking in the mountains with a gorgeous skyline as the backdrop. therefore, mb and i conclude that only people with socially stigmatizing diseases get to live fun lives. mb further concludes that he might like having herpes. i am trying to explain that he might not actually enjoy herpes, and furthermore, that i might not enjoy his having herpes. but every time i start to make my point about pain and ulcers, the commercial comes on again with the mountains and my case is lost.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
grosse pointe blank meets napoleon dynamite
the other day i received a letter inviting me to my next high school class reunion. since the last one was held at a bar 7 miles outside of town in a wood-paneled room usually reserved for remote-control car racing, and featured all-you-can-drink bud light and ham sandwiches, i was guessing anything had to be one step classier. i was not disappointed. this one is being held at the next fanciest meeting space in town: the bowling alley. i have been to many events in the bowling alley including graduations, weddings, funerals (fine, i'm kidding about the funeral in a bowling alley, but you get the idea). at the last reception, i drank free all night because the kid behind the bar apparently recognized me from being a freshman when i was a senior, and we were both in band or some similar extra-curricular for only very popular people like me... and the kid behind the bar, who i cannot remember for the life of me, but with whom i pretended to be very chummy because it got me free g&t. (sad and unethical, i know, especially since the drink cost $1.50 full price.)
so i'm very excited to bowl and drink with my former classmates. but more importantly, my blogmate and i are thinking that somewhere in this lies a great story for a dark indie film about small-town america. enter the somewhat surly but creative n., our shortest-acronymed friend with a film degree. n, how would you spin this? shy, vaguely-awkward-in-high-school guy finishes college and lands solid career in large midwestern city, making him leagues more successful than his llama-farming classmates, who comes home to his reunion with his lovely city girl on his arm, and has some sort of angst about his roots? loud but still awkward girl made briefly popular in high school for winning some obscure competition (for this purpose, maybe the regional pig-roping championships?) who comes home after some similarly moderate amount of success, wondering why nobody will acknowledge said success in favor of reminiscing about her days as the pig princess? naturally there has to be the once-popular girl who slept with everyone who is now fat and drunk somewhere in a corner, and a gaggle of flannel-wearing mullets getting riled up about nascar. for artsy effect, can we add a tall blond lawyer taking in the scene, beer in hand, with some repeated one-liner like "yup..." while staring into the distance like he's thinking something meaningful?
but i'm not the film genius. n, you're on your own. i would employ my more creative blogmate, who dreams of being a film critic in another life, but she went to a high school especially for smart people. her high school memories do not include an in-school garage where you can tinker with your truck and call it education.
so i'm very excited to bowl and drink with my former classmates. but more importantly, my blogmate and i are thinking that somewhere in this lies a great story for a dark indie film about small-town america. enter the somewhat surly but creative n., our shortest-acronymed friend with a film degree. n, how would you spin this? shy, vaguely-awkward-in-high-school guy finishes college and lands solid career in large midwestern city, making him leagues more successful than his llama-farming classmates, who comes home to his reunion with his lovely city girl on his arm, and has some sort of angst about his roots? loud but still awkward girl made briefly popular in high school for winning some obscure competition (for this purpose, maybe the regional pig-roping championships?) who comes home after some similarly moderate amount of success, wondering why nobody will acknowledge said success in favor of reminiscing about her days as the pig princess? naturally there has to be the once-popular girl who slept with everyone who is now fat and drunk somewhere in a corner, and a gaggle of flannel-wearing mullets getting riled up about nascar. for artsy effect, can we add a tall blond lawyer taking in the scene, beer in hand, with some repeated one-liner like "yup..." while staring into the distance like he's thinking something meaningful?
but i'm not the film genius. n, you're on your own. i would employ my more creative blogmate, who dreams of being a film critic in another life, but she went to a high school especially for smart people. her high school memories do not include an in-school garage where you can tinker with your truck and call it education.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
venti-sized vent
as much as i love going to intelligentsia to "read" (by which i mean gaze at all the pretty people), my inner coffee snob is resisting. their coffee tastes like swill. i think it's mostly due to the readily apparent fact that the baristas are chosen more for their eye-candy qualities than for their ability to do things like follow directions or think. my other growing gripe with initelligentsia is their ridiculous coffee sizing scheme. i mean really, what's so bad about small, medium, and large? in any case, if you want an iced-coffee there, you can only have a large or an extra large, and i think that's just dumb.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
tickled pink
had you been a fly on my wall earlier today, you might have seen me let out a shriek of delight before high-fiving mgfwb. you probably would have asked yourself "what could possibly be making her so happy?"
so i'll tell you.
it wasn't that i won the lottery, or that the woman at work with the sticky-sweet veil over her overt bitchiness (i'm told the term for this is "grin-f%#$-ing") suffered some kind of public humiliation, or that i heard from msfg (i did, actually, but that's another story).
nope.
what caused my unfettered euphoria was that i finally managed to make an appointment with the dentist. not only that, but my appointment is tomorrow.
i'm so excited to be getting my teeth cleaned (in spite of the numerous obstacles put up by my dental insurance provider) that i don't even care that i'm such a dork.
so i'll tell you.
it wasn't that i won the lottery, or that the woman at work with the sticky-sweet veil over her overt bitchiness (i'm told the term for this is "grin-f%#$-ing") suffered some kind of public humiliation, or that i heard from msfg (i did, actually, but that's another story).
nope.
what caused my unfettered euphoria was that i finally managed to make an appointment with the dentist. not only that, but my appointment is tomorrow.
i'm so excited to be getting my teeth cleaned (in spite of the numerous obstacles put up by my dental insurance provider) that i don't even care that i'm such a dork.
Monday, May 09, 2005
the world is his supermarket
mb seems to be adapting well to life in chicago. just 3 months into his job downtown, and he's managed to find a new sandwich place that happened to be offering free lunches on the day before opening as training for their staff, a new pretzel place handing out free demo pretzels, a new chocolate place offering samples, a haircut place that offers free "maintenance" (now that he's a customer, when he doesn't need a full haircut but just a sideburn trim or neck clean-up, they'll do it for free without an appointment), a couple of free chicago tribunes from various things... so basically the loop is just one big pick 'n' save (or insert the name of your favorite grocery chain). incidentally, how great is it that liquor stores in chicago on fridays seem to all offer free samples?
more exciting for me was the big shiny box of chocolates that arrived on the day mb visited the chocolate-sampling place. slightly less exciting was the discovery that the chocolate place's new staff managed to give him a sugar-free chocolate box by mistake. it made for an amusing exchange of each of us biting into a piece of chocolate, giving each other that polite "thanks, grandma, for the socks" smile before we realized we weren't eating substandard chocolate but in fact were the luckiest diabetics ever.
more exciting for me was the big shiny box of chocolates that arrived on the day mb visited the chocolate-sampling place. slightly less exciting was the discovery that the chocolate place's new staff managed to give him a sugar-free chocolate box by mistake. it made for an amusing exchange of each of us biting into a piece of chocolate, giving each other that polite "thanks, grandma, for the socks" smile before we realized we weren't eating substandard chocolate but in fact were the luckiest diabetics ever.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
stymied... again
even more shocking than the the apparent union of tom cruise and katie holmes is the fact that i may actually get to meet metrosexual french guy (msfg?).
i guess mgfwba talked me up pretty well, seeing as how msfg sent (with appropriate delay) a delightfully witty email offering a solo coffee date, describing himself as the frenetic banana republic shopper (fbrs? i can't decide).
my glee at this turn of events was almost immediately replaced by a vague sense of dread. i have a mild dislike of coffee dates and an intense hatred of blind dates. as some of you may recall, my last attempt at combined coffee-getting and boy-meeting was the unequivocal disaster that was frank lloyd wrong.
adding to my angst about this is the fact that msfg/fbrs undoubtedly speaks better french than me, and may actually speak better english than me. i also have the distinct impression that he dresses way better than me.
talk about preformance anxiety.
i guess mgfwba talked me up pretty well, seeing as how msfg sent (with appropriate delay) a delightfully witty email offering a solo coffee date, describing himself as the frenetic banana republic shopper (fbrs? i can't decide).
my glee at this turn of events was almost immediately replaced by a vague sense of dread. i have a mild dislike of coffee dates and an intense hatred of blind dates. as some of you may recall, my last attempt at combined coffee-getting and boy-meeting was the unequivocal disaster that was frank lloyd wrong.
adding to my angst about this is the fact that msfg/fbrs undoubtedly speaks better french than me, and may actually speak better english than me. i also have the distinct impression that he dresses way better than me.
talk about preformance anxiety.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
drunken memoirs (or lack thereof)
ok. is all i'm saying is that it's never good when you honestly don't know how many beers you had last night.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
excuses, excuses
in apology to my good blogmate, i really have been trying to post a list of possible mates, and a theoretical personal ad for her to have new dating adventures through which i can continue living vicariously. in my private mental blog, i had envisioned a brief but clever list of suitors. the problem is that they are all described by occupation, and then i got into a moral debate with myself about what kind of person i was making my good blogmate out to be if i thought that a man's job was the most important thing. but i'm more thinking that a list of occupations for potential suitors might just reflect how i envision their personality, you know?
case in point: man number two on the list is a musician. but i don't want him to be a drummer in a rock band, because those guys are a little too full of themselves. and drummer in a jazz band is even worse, because those guys think they're artistes (apologies to my late friend who was a drummer in a jazz band, but i told him this to his face long ago). bass player isn't bad, except that the ones i know are a little greasy. lead singer in boy band is clearly out of the question. mr. honesty offered up one of his alcoholic punk rocker friends, which would be promising if not for the one little snag. i was thinking keyboard player in some regional funk band, because i think of those people as happy-go-lucky and laid-back, although i'm not sure if that's because my true career ambition is to play keyboard on tour with james brown, or because i've always secretly had a thing for the keyboard guy in barenaked ladies which has only increased since i first saw him on vh1 behind the music.
so it's harder than i thought. the mental blog grows heavy with justifications. so far:
1. well-dressed indian neurologists (see prior blogs)
2. musician (see prior angst)
3. architect, but given the whole issue with frank lloyd wrong from some months ago, have switched this position on the list for urban planner, if mb would stop withholding on us
4. neurotic graphic artist of some sort, maybe like the guy i used to work with who left his relatively cush ad job because he described his work as "morally neutral at best" and wanted to put his technical talents to work for good... except that guy ended up taking a job doing environmental canvassing on some college campus and shacking up with the 19-year-old that he met on the internet two months prior... see? it's hard! how do you balance your desire for sense of duty with plain sense?
5. kind nephew of the doting wealthy french couple i can only assume she would meet on finally starting to attend those french language table meetings, who would naturally take her in and feed her wine and cheese in their flat in the gold coast while discreetly inquiring as to her interests so they could introduce her to their lotion-loving relative in chicago on business
6. fallen monk (personal favorite; answer to the question "why would [she] date a 30-year-old virgin?")
feel free to add to my list, my qualifier-unencumbered friends.
case in point: man number two on the list is a musician. but i don't want him to be a drummer in a rock band, because those guys are a little too full of themselves. and drummer in a jazz band is even worse, because those guys think they're artistes (apologies to my late friend who was a drummer in a jazz band, but i told him this to his face long ago). bass player isn't bad, except that the ones i know are a little greasy. lead singer in boy band is clearly out of the question. mr. honesty offered up one of his alcoholic punk rocker friends, which would be promising if not for the one little snag. i was thinking keyboard player in some regional funk band, because i think of those people as happy-go-lucky and laid-back, although i'm not sure if that's because my true career ambition is to play keyboard on tour with james brown, or because i've always secretly had a thing for the keyboard guy in barenaked ladies which has only increased since i first saw him on vh1 behind the music.
so it's harder than i thought. the mental blog grows heavy with justifications. so far:
1. well-dressed indian neurologists (see prior blogs)
2. musician (see prior angst)
3. architect, but given the whole issue with frank lloyd wrong from some months ago, have switched this position on the list for urban planner, if mb would stop withholding on us
4. neurotic graphic artist of some sort, maybe like the guy i used to work with who left his relatively cush ad job because he described his work as "morally neutral at best" and wanted to put his technical talents to work for good... except that guy ended up taking a job doing environmental canvassing on some college campus and shacking up with the 19-year-old that he met on the internet two months prior... see? it's hard! how do you balance your desire for sense of duty with plain sense?
5. kind nephew of the doting wealthy french couple i can only assume she would meet on finally starting to attend those french language table meetings, who would naturally take her in and feed her wine and cheese in their flat in the gold coast while discreetly inquiring as to her interests so they could introduce her to their lotion-loving relative in chicago on business
6. fallen monk (personal favorite; answer to the question "why would [she] date a 30-year-old virgin?")
feel free to add to my list, my qualifier-unencumbered friends.
Monday, May 02, 2005
relative intrusion
in spite of her repeated assertions that she wants to be inappropriately entangled in my love life, i'm a little disappointed in my blogmate's lackluster preformance when it comes to meddling. sure she talks a good game about posting things like my personals ad and a list of potential boyfriends for me on the blog, but apparently these entries haven't made it past her private, mental blog.
aside: i do have to give her credit for directly taking on rcfog, even if it didn't seem to register with him.
in sharp contrast lies my good friend with bad allergies (mgfwba, formerly known as gwcbwdbsbhhwtt, on her way to being known as something better as soon as i think of it), who has taken being a wingman to whole new level (and believe me, she was a pretty good wingman to begin with). the story, i'm told, goes like this: mgfwba was in line at banana republic the other day with a friend of hers with whom we'd both gone out the night before (i find this friend kind of cute, but that's another story, especially since i hear he's bad news when it comes to matters of the heart). she and kocf (kind of cute friend) were talking about my self-perceived boy-repellent factor when, lo and behold, a rather metrosexual french guy (is there any other kind?) inserted himself into their conversation, to the effect that a girl like me sounded pretty good to him. mgfwba stopped short of actually giving him my number, but she did give him her number, should he decide that he was curious enough to meet me.
now that's meddlesomeness... (it's a word- i looked it up)
aside: i do have to give her credit for directly taking on rcfog, even if it didn't seem to register with him.
in sharp contrast lies my good friend with bad allergies (mgfwba, formerly known as gwcbwdbsbhhwtt, on her way to being known as something better as soon as i think of it), who has taken being a wingman to whole new level (and believe me, she was a pretty good wingman to begin with). the story, i'm told, goes like this: mgfwba was in line at banana republic the other day with a friend of hers with whom we'd both gone out the night before (i find this friend kind of cute, but that's another story, especially since i hear he's bad news when it comes to matters of the heart). she and kocf (kind of cute friend) were talking about my self-perceived boy-repellent factor when, lo and behold, a rather metrosexual french guy (is there any other kind?) inserted himself into their conversation, to the effect that a girl like me sounded pretty good to him. mgfwba stopped short of actually giving him my number, but she did give him her number, should he decide that he was curious enough to meet me.
now that's meddlesomeness... (it's a word- i looked it up)
Thursday, April 28, 2005
you're stepping on my storage solution
a few weeks ago i came to the proud realization that i care more about shoes than real estate. this realization stemmed from my irritation with the 6,000 or so people i know (or don't know) compelled to offer the unsolicited advice that only idiots rent, and that if i were at all financially savy i'd buy a condo already. this advice is almost as intolerable to me as the prolific, "you should go on j-date."
so i've been walking around feeling pretty liberated about admitting that i'd rather have stuff than financial security... but i seem to already have enough stuff, and apparently need new ways to divert the disposable income that i'm decidedly not diverting to a buy-a-house savings account.
that diversion, it turns out, is storage solutions.
i have to give my blogmate credit for this one, as she's the one who showed me that people like us are allowed to crazy at target, filling our (rented) homes with stylish, faux-pottery-barn accent pieces which conveniently house the crap that we already have (and are a little bit ashamed of).
what i hadn't anticipated as i embarked on my quest to find the perfect container for my millions of picture frames, is that stylish leather storage solutions took over the market and then crashed out of style so quickly that you can't even find them anymore, except in weird shapes and colors at the discount store. after extensive searching, interrupted by lots of drooling over shoes, i finally found the perfect basket-thing, only to catch my blogmate using it as a footstool to get a closer look at the orange plastic martini glasses with matching dishtowels.
so i've been walking around feeling pretty liberated about admitting that i'd rather have stuff than financial security... but i seem to already have enough stuff, and apparently need new ways to divert the disposable income that i'm decidedly not diverting to a buy-a-house savings account.
that diversion, it turns out, is storage solutions.
i have to give my blogmate credit for this one, as she's the one who showed me that people like us are allowed to crazy at target, filling our (rented) homes with stylish, faux-pottery-barn accent pieces which conveniently house the crap that we already have (and are a little bit ashamed of).
what i hadn't anticipated as i embarked on my quest to find the perfect container for my millions of picture frames, is that stylish leather storage solutions took over the market and then crashed out of style so quickly that you can't even find them anymore, except in weird shapes and colors at the discount store. after extensive searching, interrupted by lots of drooling over shoes, i finally found the perfect basket-thing, only to catch my blogmate using it as a footstool to get a closer look at the orange plastic martini glasses with matching dishtowels.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
vintage reflections
funny how things can snowball.
i spent all day saturday at home cleaning my wreck of an apartment only to find out around 5PM that i had to come in to work on sunday to deal with a crisis. prior to this wrecking of my plans i had specifically front-loaded the weekend with the non-fun stuff so that i could sleep in on sunday and then go out and play (read: shop).
lesson #1: from now on, have fun first, clean later.
so with the new sunday plan (get up early and work all day) i made myself comfortable on the couch with pizza, wine, and the long-awaited sideways DVD. while such a wall-flower evening did nothing to advance my anemic social life, i did manage to learn more lessons...
lesson #2: to hell with vegas... exact revenge on my future throng of bridesmaids by demanding a week-long party in napa (minus the golf, unless i magically know how to play by then)
lesson#3: kick self for not liking the guy who tried to make the 3rd date a weekend in napa
i spent all day saturday at home cleaning my wreck of an apartment only to find out around 5PM that i had to come in to work on sunday to deal with a crisis. prior to this wrecking of my plans i had specifically front-loaded the weekend with the non-fun stuff so that i could sleep in on sunday and then go out and play (read: shop).
lesson #1: from now on, have fun first, clean later.
so with the new sunday plan (get up early and work all day) i made myself comfortable on the couch with pizza, wine, and the long-awaited sideways DVD. while such a wall-flower evening did nothing to advance my anemic social life, i did manage to learn more lessons...
lesson #2: to hell with vegas... exact revenge on my future throng of bridesmaids by demanding a week-long party in napa (minus the golf, unless i magically know how to play by then)
lesson#3: kick self for not liking the guy who tried to make the 3rd date a weekend in napa
Friday, April 22, 2005
midwest state of mind
every now and then i feel compelled to make cultural observations about people and places so un-sophisticated that i'm a little embarassed having opinions about them. but after spending an entire afternoon at ESPN zone (i'm telling you: there really is a time and place for miller lite), i'm in no mood to hold back...
when did rob thomas (of matchbox 20 fame) become ricky martin?
when did rob thomas (of matchbox 20 fame) become ricky martin?
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
existential bandaids
most people probably have the good sense to take a much-awaited day off, especially when that day off comes at the expense of working an overnight shift, as an excuse to catch up on needed errands, clean their apartments, or something relaxing and slower-paced than usual.
we are not those people.
after both working overnight shifts, my blogmate called me to see if i wanted brunch. of course i wanted brunch. but i had planned on picking up a few things at the store this morning. of course she wanted to come along shopping. but she would need coffee first. of course i wanted coffee also. but i had to stop at home first. of course she would stop with me. etcetera. two hours later, brunched and pre-erranded, we headed out - not for something easy, but for the mecca of illinois consumerism, the schaumburg ikea. i had the single goal of buying a closet organizer. somehow, my simple closet organizer turned into an orgy of "oh, actually, i've always been looking for..." and other similar justifications that ended in a mountain of plastic items with umlaut-ed names that i can neither remember nor pronounce. as i looked around, i realized that the only people at ikea on a thursday morning were perfect blonde housewives with their perfect blonde towheaded children in their perfect spring outfits lined up in perfect rows, hands folded across their bodies as they waited patiently for their perfect mothers to buy a perfect pink pillow for their rehabbed bedrooms in their split level ranches in bartlett. contrast that scene with us - two frazzled brunettes in fleet farm hoodies, carts overflowing with orange watering pots and rickety particle board storage solutions, nearly running over the perfect little people as we swerved the stubborn carts toward the checkout, breathless with relief that said storage solutions, larger than expected, actually fit in my 4-door plymouth... with such monumentous effort, one would also think we would count our blessings and head for home, or lunch, or shoes, or at least something small. but no. with the storage solutions properly stowed in my car, my ambitious and sleep-deprived blogmate decided that the best idea was to now buy a new dining table. a few minutes later, the perfect blonde housewives in the loading zone (who naturally drive perfect eddie bauer suvs), their pigtailed little ones buckled safely in their carseats and were about to drive off, except that they were probably frightened by frazzled brunettes cursing and throwing things, realizing that the dining table would never fit into the smaller less perfect plymouth. in the course of trying to make the table fit in my car, we took it out of the box, tried unsuccessfully to maneuver it that way, put it back in the box, and in the process managed to drop the table on the ground, making a satisfying loud crash, smearing it with car grease and scratching the finish a little. we finished boxing it up, and i waited in the car while my blogmate took it back to the store to ask them what to do. i take it they accepted the table, because the next thing i knew she was in the car saying "drive away from here before someone realizes what i've done."
now, we have never been those girls who want the house in the suburbs and to stay home with the kids. but we never meant to actively harm their children and their furniture. i can safely assume that my lack of desire for a perfect blonde life has something to do with my clumsiness (i managed to back my blogmate into a wooden bench resulting in big leg welts for her and skinned knuckles for me) and my overambitiousness (what was i doing at ikea after working a night shift, anyway?), but it sounds better to say that i just dislike it on principle.
we are not those people.
after both working overnight shifts, my blogmate called me to see if i wanted brunch. of course i wanted brunch. but i had planned on picking up a few things at the store this morning. of course she wanted to come along shopping. but she would need coffee first. of course i wanted coffee also. but i had to stop at home first. of course she would stop with me. etcetera. two hours later, brunched and pre-erranded, we headed out - not for something easy, but for the mecca of illinois consumerism, the schaumburg ikea. i had the single goal of buying a closet organizer. somehow, my simple closet organizer turned into an orgy of "oh, actually, i've always been looking for..." and other similar justifications that ended in a mountain of plastic items with umlaut-ed names that i can neither remember nor pronounce. as i looked around, i realized that the only people at ikea on a thursday morning were perfect blonde housewives with their perfect blonde towheaded children in their perfect spring outfits lined up in perfect rows, hands folded across their bodies as they waited patiently for their perfect mothers to buy a perfect pink pillow for their rehabbed bedrooms in their split level ranches in bartlett. contrast that scene with us - two frazzled brunettes in fleet farm hoodies, carts overflowing with orange watering pots and rickety particle board storage solutions, nearly running over the perfect little people as we swerved the stubborn carts toward the checkout, breathless with relief that said storage solutions, larger than expected, actually fit in my 4-door plymouth... with such monumentous effort, one would also think we would count our blessings and head for home, or lunch, or shoes, or at least something small. but no. with the storage solutions properly stowed in my car, my ambitious and sleep-deprived blogmate decided that the best idea was to now buy a new dining table. a few minutes later, the perfect blonde housewives in the loading zone (who naturally drive perfect eddie bauer suvs), their pigtailed little ones buckled safely in their carseats and were about to drive off, except that they were probably frightened by frazzled brunettes cursing and throwing things, realizing that the dining table would never fit into the smaller less perfect plymouth. in the course of trying to make the table fit in my car, we took it out of the box, tried unsuccessfully to maneuver it that way, put it back in the box, and in the process managed to drop the table on the ground, making a satisfying loud crash, smearing it with car grease and scratching the finish a little. we finished boxing it up, and i waited in the car while my blogmate took it back to the store to ask them what to do. i take it they accepted the table, because the next thing i knew she was in the car saying "drive away from here before someone realizes what i've done."
now, we have never been those girls who want the house in the suburbs and to stay home with the kids. but we never meant to actively harm their children and their furniture. i can safely assume that my lack of desire for a perfect blonde life has something to do with my clumsiness (i managed to back my blogmate into a wooden bench resulting in big leg welts for her and skinned knuckles for me) and my overambitiousness (what was i doing at ikea after working a night shift, anyway?), but it sounds better to say that i just dislike it on principle.
Monday, April 18, 2005
gay, straight, or german?
i've spent the last 2 days laid up in bed, dying a slow painful death of what i can only imagine is tuberculosis.
needless to say i've had time to do alot of thinking... and watch alot of movies.
let's get the film-critic portion over with, shall we? movie themes that make me crazy (take 1):
1) long, epic dramas in which cute, good-natured men spend long, tortured lives trying to win the hearts of women who, though beautiful, are horrible and mean.
2) the ominous death cough (much like my own) that starts about half-way through said dramas, heralding the long, tragic death of said bitchy heroines... of some nebulous disease (usually consumption, which, from what i gather, can refer to cancer or tuberculosis).
getting back to the point, i really am sick as a dog... and i think it's because of a boy.
preface: shortly after we met my manic hippie ex-boyfriend (mmheb) in new orleans my blogmate and i were talking about that kind of guy that just loves women (prgm and mmheb being good examples). as the words rolled off my tongue it occurred to me that someone as boy-crazy as myself really has no room to talk. "i'll admit," said my typically insightful blogmate (mtib), "you do have a certain appreciation for men."
last friday afternoon i found myself of the u of c quad with mtib and dwtacc, as we'd stolen away from our dark confines to enjoy cheap thai food from the divinity school. a third of the way through my tofu and ginger noodles i found myself suffering from stabbing chest pain and a rather "disagreeable sense of impending death," much to the amusement of my two friends. they assured me that it was not, in fact, a massive heart attack in progress and that it probably had more to do with the spiciness of my ginger noodles. dwtacc tried to comfort me by complimenting me on my j-lo glasses and pointing out that i seemed to have caught the eye of "that bob dylan looking guy over there." forgetting about my chest pain, i surveyed the landscape, only to discover that "bob dylan looking guy" could describe any number of people in my immediate line of sight, and that she was going to have to be more specific.
so i certainly can confirm that hippies have apparently taken up residence in hyde park.
the next evening i tried to put the chest pain, the bob-dylans, and the allergy attack that had resulted from my afternoon among the tulips behind me as i headed to the green mill for a night of jazz and hippie-stalking. i had pitched the outing to my girlfriends as a chance to see an excellent new orleans jazz ensemble, knowing full well that my real motivation was that the invite had come from none other than mmheb who would be in town for the show. truth be told, the band's phenomenal-ness was more memorable than my encounter with mmheb (although he did look awfully cute), and the smoke in the bar played no small role in my impending 48 hours on the couch with my death-rattle cough and overall miserableness...
i might not have been fawned-upon by mmheb as much as i would have liked, but i did get a surprising amount of attention from his equally cute sidekick... which i enjoyed until we hit a snag (he lives in texas) and then a deal-breaker (he comes to chicago to visit his daughter).
so while i will no doubt continue to to be the boy-crazy one in the group, and seem to enjoy men with a wide variety of attributes (in the age of men so metrosexual that i'm not sure what to make of them), even i have to draw the line somewhere... and i draw that line at potential step-mother-ness.
needless to say i've had time to do alot of thinking... and watch alot of movies.
let's get the film-critic portion over with, shall we? movie themes that make me crazy (take 1):
1) long, epic dramas in which cute, good-natured men spend long, tortured lives trying to win the hearts of women who, though beautiful, are horrible and mean.
2) the ominous death cough (much like my own) that starts about half-way through said dramas, heralding the long, tragic death of said bitchy heroines... of some nebulous disease (usually consumption, which, from what i gather, can refer to cancer or tuberculosis).
getting back to the point, i really am sick as a dog... and i think it's because of a boy.
preface: shortly after we met my manic hippie ex-boyfriend (mmheb) in new orleans my blogmate and i were talking about that kind of guy that just loves women (prgm and mmheb being good examples). as the words rolled off my tongue it occurred to me that someone as boy-crazy as myself really has no room to talk. "i'll admit," said my typically insightful blogmate (mtib), "you do have a certain appreciation for men."
last friday afternoon i found myself of the u of c quad with mtib and dwtacc, as we'd stolen away from our dark confines to enjoy cheap thai food from the divinity school. a third of the way through my tofu and ginger noodles i found myself suffering from stabbing chest pain and a rather "disagreeable sense of impending death," much to the amusement of my two friends. they assured me that it was not, in fact, a massive heart attack in progress and that it probably had more to do with the spiciness of my ginger noodles. dwtacc tried to comfort me by complimenting me on my j-lo glasses and pointing out that i seemed to have caught the eye of "that bob dylan looking guy over there." forgetting about my chest pain, i surveyed the landscape, only to discover that "bob dylan looking guy" could describe any number of people in my immediate line of sight, and that she was going to have to be more specific.
so i certainly can confirm that hippies have apparently taken up residence in hyde park.
the next evening i tried to put the chest pain, the bob-dylans, and the allergy attack that had resulted from my afternoon among the tulips behind me as i headed to the green mill for a night of jazz and hippie-stalking. i had pitched the outing to my girlfriends as a chance to see an excellent new orleans jazz ensemble, knowing full well that my real motivation was that the invite had come from none other than mmheb who would be in town for the show. truth be told, the band's phenomenal-ness was more memorable than my encounter with mmheb (although he did look awfully cute), and the smoke in the bar played no small role in my impending 48 hours on the couch with my death-rattle cough and overall miserableness...
i might not have been fawned-upon by mmheb as much as i would have liked, but i did get a surprising amount of attention from his equally cute sidekick... which i enjoyed until we hit a snag (he lives in texas) and then a deal-breaker (he comes to chicago to visit his daughter).
so while i will no doubt continue to to be the boy-crazy one in the group, and seem to enjoy men with a wide variety of attributes (in the age of men so metrosexual that i'm not sure what to make of them), even i have to draw the line somewhere... and i draw that line at potential step-mother-ness.
hippie 54, where are you?
my weekend made me feel vaguely athletic. it was nice. up to madison with mb to pick up the latest version of his southern wisconsin bike ride book from the printers and deliver it to the local bike shops. i got a little ego boost out of the whole thing, because every shop we stopped in had some clerk who was really excited to get more of the books, saying how they sell out so quickly, and i got to feel a little more like an avid biker than is actually true, just by being the tagalong. on sunday we did our long run for the week, in preparation for the san diego marathon - 15 miles around lake monona and its bay. it would have been wonderful if only the water fountains would have been on. i have never been so excited to see a bottle of warm grape gatorade as i was at the end of that run.
but that's not really the point i wanted to address... on running around lake monona, i couldn't help but notice that madison's hippies seem to be moving. the last time i ran that route, which was a while ago, there were still a few stragglers left on spaight street, which is now all upper-middle-class youngish families with kerry-edwards stickers on the back of their subarus. the shiny new luxury apartment complexes moving in next to the hemp stores and organic bakeries on williamson street are not helping matters any. later on, moving past brittingham park to the south side of monona bay, i found the displaced hippies. they seem to be taking over the southern part of the bay near the formerly infamous bernie's beach of drug dealing and open container infringement fame. the shady lakeside liquor is still there, but now it's flanked by a bahai center, a natural fibers store (not hemp? tell me how), a salon, and purple and orange homes with flowers in the yard.
when i met up with mb at the end of the run (you didn't think we were running this together, one of those romantic "oh, let's stroll along the lake" couples, did you?) i asked him about the moving-hippie phenomenon over breakfast at come back inn. (quick digression - yup, it's still delicious. the swearing waitress who tried my bloody mary when i asked her why it tasted like taco is gone, though.) after the expected urban-development conversation (which my blogmate and i would like to have more of, if mb would introduce us to his urban planning friends), i returned to wondering - really, where are the hippies in chicago? do we have any, or are we doomed to floofy martinis at uber-clean "sports lounges"? bucktown = yuppie. wicker park = still a little gritty and artsy, but as mb points out, in that haight-ashbury kind of way where the punk institutions are still there but flanked by real estate and fancy-pants mono-syllabic restaurants that nobody can afford. ukrainian village = ? punk, but hippies? grand/chicago area = possible, but hard to tell. as dwtacc suggests, hanging out on the quad in hyde park? hp has enough academic weirdness, green space and liberal indignance to support hippies, but it's hard to find them between harold's chicken shack and the complete lack of bars. and don't get me started on the magic-johnson-teaming-up-with-starbucks-to-bring-the-magic-of-megacorporations-to-the-inner-city coffee shops right on campus, where clearly the underprivileged college students are in dire need of another latte option.
i'm still lost on this. dwtacc? mr. honesty with your cool artsy girlfriend? anyone? where are the hippies? i guess i have to wonder at my motivation here... i'm not a hemp jewelry girl, i don't wear patchwork pants, i don't follow around jam bands. i'm not even a vegetarian. but i want to know that there's a place to live where those people can get their free-range whatever for lunch without it being a concept. maybe i selfishly just want to find chicago's version of come back inn and the weary traveler. or find shaggy grad students for my blogmate. or cheap real estate. or redeem myself for the key lime martinis i drank on vacation.
but that's not really the point i wanted to address... on running around lake monona, i couldn't help but notice that madison's hippies seem to be moving. the last time i ran that route, which was a while ago, there were still a few stragglers left on spaight street, which is now all upper-middle-class youngish families with kerry-edwards stickers on the back of their subarus. the shiny new luxury apartment complexes moving in next to the hemp stores and organic bakeries on williamson street are not helping matters any. later on, moving past brittingham park to the south side of monona bay, i found the displaced hippies. they seem to be taking over the southern part of the bay near the formerly infamous bernie's beach of drug dealing and open container infringement fame. the shady lakeside liquor is still there, but now it's flanked by a bahai center, a natural fibers store (not hemp? tell me how), a salon, and purple and orange homes with flowers in the yard.
when i met up with mb at the end of the run (you didn't think we were running this together, one of those romantic "oh, let's stroll along the lake" couples, did you?) i asked him about the moving-hippie phenomenon over breakfast at come back inn. (quick digression - yup, it's still delicious. the swearing waitress who tried my bloody mary when i asked her why it tasted like taco is gone, though.) after the expected urban-development conversation (which my blogmate and i would like to have more of, if mb would introduce us to his urban planning friends), i returned to wondering - really, where are the hippies in chicago? do we have any, or are we doomed to floofy martinis at uber-clean "sports lounges"? bucktown = yuppie. wicker park = still a little gritty and artsy, but as mb points out, in that haight-ashbury kind of way where the punk institutions are still there but flanked by real estate and fancy-pants mono-syllabic restaurants that nobody can afford. ukrainian village = ? punk, but hippies? grand/chicago area = possible, but hard to tell. as dwtacc suggests, hanging out on the quad in hyde park? hp has enough academic weirdness, green space and liberal indignance to support hippies, but it's hard to find them between harold's chicken shack and the complete lack of bars. and don't get me started on the magic-johnson-teaming-up-with-starbucks-to-bring-the-magic-of-megacorporations-to-the-inner-city coffee shops right on campus, where clearly the underprivileged college students are in dire need of another latte option.
i'm still lost on this. dwtacc? mr. honesty with your cool artsy girlfriend? anyone? where are the hippies? i guess i have to wonder at my motivation here... i'm not a hemp jewelry girl, i don't wear patchwork pants, i don't follow around jam bands. i'm not even a vegetarian. but i want to know that there's a place to live where those people can get their free-range whatever for lunch without it being a concept. maybe i selfishly just want to find chicago's version of come back inn and the weary traveler. or find shaggy grad students for my blogmate. or cheap real estate. or redeem myself for the key lime martinis i drank on vacation.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
spicy strawberry meat pies
while i'm rarely one to be at a loss for words, i just don't know where to start.
maybe with the ex-boyfriend brigade. for one thing, i got busted by three different people on friday afternoon while i was wandering around hyde park, clearly not at work where i was supposed to be. one of the run-ins was with an ex-something or other (boyfriend is way too strong of a word) with whom i'd had an extremely unsuccessful summer fling. i was pleased to find that the guilt i've intermittently felt about having not returning his phone calls was substantially alleviated by the discovery that he's moving to california. moving right along... between what i thought were pretty slick dodgings of my real exboyfriend's family and friends i found myself on bourbon street, transiently unable to recall the name of another ex something-or-other, wondering how it was that i'd ever dated such a hippie. i also wondered how someone who was a little bit stinky (in the way that only hippies can be) and alot bit crazy could also seem rather attractive.
fortunately, there was a lot more to the weekend than slightly uncomfortable run-ins with former flings.
there was also gator-on-a-stick (you all know it's coming- tasted like chicken), deep fried strawberries, chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry beer, strawberry wine, strawberry face-paint, and picture of my blogmate standing in front of the ponchatoula seed and feed carrying a flat of strawberries (that's 12 pints). there was mrs. wheat's natchitoches meat pies, the depreciating budweiser in a go-cup (the price started @ $1.25 but dropped to $1 when the barista [selling the beer across his espresso machine] got tired of dealing with quarters), 3.5 pounds of crawfish per person, sadly un-spicy potatoes and corn, splitting a crawfish flavored head of garlic 3 ways... and of course the 25-cent key-lime martinis. i guess i might have warned my blogmate that the whole point of new orleans is eating, occasionally interrupted by drinking and live music.
sadly, there were no spicy strawberry meat pies. to the lay person, such a suggestion may sound rather absurd, but when you've already got a mouth full of deep-fried strawberrry and have spent the last ten minutes at a craft stand dedicated exclusively to the sale of soap bottle aprons (yes, little, tiny, frilly aprons for dish soap), anything is possible. in fact, my good friend tb got ahead of herself when she saw the sign that actually read:
spicy________ strawberry
meat pies _____cheescake
$3 __________$2
so while i learned many valuable lessons last weekend:
-- 3 beers in a hour makes blogmate dance,
-- the more j-lo the sunglasses the better (talk about rose-colored, faux d&g lenses),
-- tired, dirty, pony-tailed, hoodie-wearing chicagoans are very attractive to hippies...
i think my most interesting discovery has been this:
the world just looks better when viewed from a convertible.
maybe with the ex-boyfriend brigade. for one thing, i got busted by three different people on friday afternoon while i was wandering around hyde park, clearly not at work where i was supposed to be. one of the run-ins was with an ex-something or other (boyfriend is way too strong of a word) with whom i'd had an extremely unsuccessful summer fling. i was pleased to find that the guilt i've intermittently felt about having not returning his phone calls was substantially alleviated by the discovery that he's moving to california. moving right along... between what i thought were pretty slick dodgings of my real exboyfriend's family and friends i found myself on bourbon street, transiently unable to recall the name of another ex something-or-other, wondering how it was that i'd ever dated such a hippie. i also wondered how someone who was a little bit stinky (in the way that only hippies can be) and alot bit crazy could also seem rather attractive.
fortunately, there was a lot more to the weekend than slightly uncomfortable run-ins with former flings.
there was also gator-on-a-stick (you all know it's coming- tasted like chicken), deep fried strawberries, chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry beer, strawberry wine, strawberry face-paint, and picture of my blogmate standing in front of the ponchatoula seed and feed carrying a flat of strawberries (that's 12 pints). there was mrs. wheat's natchitoches meat pies, the depreciating budweiser in a go-cup (the price started @ $1.25 but dropped to $1 when the barista [selling the beer across his espresso machine] got tired of dealing with quarters), 3.5 pounds of crawfish per person, sadly un-spicy potatoes and corn, splitting a crawfish flavored head of garlic 3 ways... and of course the 25-cent key-lime martinis. i guess i might have warned my blogmate that the whole point of new orleans is eating, occasionally interrupted by drinking and live music.
sadly, there were no spicy strawberry meat pies. to the lay person, such a suggestion may sound rather absurd, but when you've already got a mouth full of deep-fried strawberrry and have spent the last ten minutes at a craft stand dedicated exclusively to the sale of soap bottle aprons (yes, little, tiny, frilly aprons for dish soap), anything is possible. in fact, my good friend tb got ahead of herself when she saw the sign that actually read:
spicy________ strawberry
meat pies _____cheescake
$3 __________$2
so while i learned many valuable lessons last weekend:
-- 3 beers in a hour makes blogmate dance,
-- the more j-lo the sunglasses the better (talk about rose-colored, faux d&g lenses),
-- tired, dirty, pony-tailed, hoodie-wearing chicagoans are very attractive to hippies...
i think my most interesting discovery has been this:
the world just looks better when viewed from a convertible.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
a parallel but warmer universe
leaving aside some of the concrete details of our new orleans trip, since my southern blogmate is working on them as we speak (taking breaks to wonder how on earth she is a bridesmaid again), i was thinking again about ways i could reciprocate my wonderful tour of louisiana with a less-wonderful tour of wisconsin. this was brought up again by my mother, who asked, "i'm glad you had such a nice time. when are you going to reciprocate?" (seeing as mom is a very smart lady but not one given to words like reciprocate, i can only conclude that she is a mind reader and i'd better not have any ill-willed thoughts, ever.)
she clearly does not need more exposure to hippies, jam bands and little coffee shops, and we've done madison before, so as much as i would like to spend a weekend at mother fool's, weary traveler and the come back, i'll hold off for now. she might need more exposure to microbreweries since there's something like two in the state of louisiana (and i've now toured 50% of them) and sadly i found myself the relative beer expert, by which i mean i'd heard of three floyds when one of the hippies asked me about it. she's done lakefront in milwaukee, the most fun tour - if we stayed in southern wisconsin maybe we could do new glarus, just for the whole swiss-ness and bar that does smelt fry for $4.99? yeah, new orleans might have colorful crawfish, but we batter fry stuff that looks like bait and call it a delicacy in selected church basements. there's really no point in trying to compare to the local art galleries with the blue dogs and distorted french quarter buildings - i could maybe buy her a shirt with a mallard on it from northern reflections in the mall or something. or i could make her play "count the wildlife t-shirts." or we could swing over to paoli for the entire town made up of paoli cheese and two little art galleries. not as cute as ponchatoula (that even sounds southern!) but it's nice. the biking between those two is great, but since the locals are all pissy since the last ironman i'm afraid we'd get lynched. we could go to door county (that's the thumb of the state, for the southern contingent), since if new orleans has narrow streets by the water, locally owned businesses, and boiled fish in a big pot, door county is as close as we can get. plus now that we're from illinois we fit right in! real wisconsinites usually can't afford the nice parts of our state - they're pretty much owned by chicago.
the problem with those ideas is that as kitschy as they sound, that's nice wisconsin, and it would be a lie if i tried to claim to be from there. when mb and i started dating, and i told my family where he was from, their eyes got a little big and they said "oh, he's from the nice part of the state." (nice = a town of 10,000 with a senior citizen dinner theater.) where i'm from just got air conditioning in the wood-paneled bar where drunk men with mullets come to race their remote control cars on wednesdays.
i draw these conclusions:
1) wisconsin might actually have some comparable, though smaller, attractions (omitting the whole architecture problem, unless there are national groups coming to tour the intricacies of the split-level ranch)
2) we will never actually see said attractions, because they're nowhere near each other
3) we will instead end up drowning our sorrows in $1 leinenkugel's at korth's and listening to my dad tell the same stories over and over
3.5) there was a suggestion to drink old milwaukee and laugh at the hicks. i have a question: where is old milwaukee actually sold in wisconsin? i've never seen it except in gas stations in south carolina. blatz, yes. huber, sure. schlitz, proudly. old mil?
4) it will be worse than the time my alternator died in milwaukee and none of my relatives would answer their phones to come help us
5) my blogmate will never speak to me again
she clearly does not need more exposure to hippies, jam bands and little coffee shops, and we've done madison before, so as much as i would like to spend a weekend at mother fool's, weary traveler and the come back, i'll hold off for now. she might need more exposure to microbreweries since there's something like two in the state of louisiana (and i've now toured 50% of them) and sadly i found myself the relative beer expert, by which i mean i'd heard of three floyds when one of the hippies asked me about it. she's done lakefront in milwaukee, the most fun tour - if we stayed in southern wisconsin maybe we could do new glarus, just for the whole swiss-ness and bar that does smelt fry for $4.99? yeah, new orleans might have colorful crawfish, but we batter fry stuff that looks like bait and call it a delicacy in selected church basements. there's really no point in trying to compare to the local art galleries with the blue dogs and distorted french quarter buildings - i could maybe buy her a shirt with a mallard on it from northern reflections in the mall or something. or i could make her play "count the wildlife t-shirts." or we could swing over to paoli for the entire town made up of paoli cheese and two little art galleries. not as cute as ponchatoula (that even sounds southern!) but it's nice. the biking between those two is great, but since the locals are all pissy since the last ironman i'm afraid we'd get lynched. we could go to door county (that's the thumb of the state, for the southern contingent), since if new orleans has narrow streets by the water, locally owned businesses, and boiled fish in a big pot, door county is as close as we can get. plus now that we're from illinois we fit right in! real wisconsinites usually can't afford the nice parts of our state - they're pretty much owned by chicago.
the problem with those ideas is that as kitschy as they sound, that's nice wisconsin, and it would be a lie if i tried to claim to be from there. when mb and i started dating, and i told my family where he was from, their eyes got a little big and they said "oh, he's from the nice part of the state." (nice = a town of 10,000 with a senior citizen dinner theater.) where i'm from just got air conditioning in the wood-paneled bar where drunk men with mullets come to race their remote control cars on wednesdays.
i draw these conclusions:
1) wisconsin might actually have some comparable, though smaller, attractions (omitting the whole architecture problem, unless there are national groups coming to tour the intricacies of the split-level ranch)
2) we will never actually see said attractions, because they're nowhere near each other
3) we will instead end up drowning our sorrows in $1 leinenkugel's at korth's and listening to my dad tell the same stories over and over
3.5) there was a suggestion to drink old milwaukee and laugh at the hicks. i have a question: where is old milwaukee actually sold in wisconsin? i've never seen it except in gas stations in south carolina. blatz, yes. huber, sure. schlitz, proudly. old mil?
4) it will be worse than the time my alternator died in milwaukee and none of my relatives would answer their phones to come help us
5) my blogmate will never speak to me again
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
always a bridesmaid...
this is getting a little ridiculous.
phone call last week from long-lost college friend which i failed to return. i assumed she was just calling to say "hi" (note correct use of quotation marks... blog to come about the heinously offensive misuse of apostrophes, i.e. "can's of coke"), as i'd recently sent her a "hey, remember me? yup, i'm still alive!" email. but really, fool me once. today the meaning in the message was all too clear: "hi it's your college roommate. call me." knowing all too well what was coming i slowly dialed the numbers... for all the talk about the popping of the proverbial question i don't think anyone sees it the way i do: "will you be a bridesmaid?"
in the spirit of my newfound optimism (don't laugh- just go with it) i'm trying to put a positive spin on this:
1) i'm now officially entitled to some well-deserved, "never a bride" self pity (as if my ex-boyfriends' engagements [note the plural] weren't enough)
2) it has to be some kind of compliment that so many people feel the need to stand me up
3) by the time it's actually my turn to do this i'll know a whole lot about weddings (and have a veritable bridal throng to fuss over me and throw me a damn good bachelorette party)
and finally...
4) fodder for my budding career in film... i've always felt that deep down i'm a film-maker, or, at very least, a film critic. the movies i make in my head aren't good, per se, but i think they'd sell. this movie will be a clever romantic comedy about a rather cute, witty girl (who's career as a film critic affords her a stylish, high-ceilinged apartment and an unbelievable fashion sense) who finds herself standing up in weddings over and over again thinking she'll never find love... until the adorable, independently wealthy pastry chef spills chocolate sauce all over her frilly bridesmaid's dress... or something like that... maybe someone with talent can actually direct the movie and i can just give it good reviews...
phone call last week from long-lost college friend which i failed to return. i assumed she was just calling to say "hi" (note correct use of quotation marks... blog to come about the heinously offensive misuse of apostrophes, i.e. "can's of coke"), as i'd recently sent her a "hey, remember me? yup, i'm still alive!" email. but really, fool me once. today the meaning in the message was all too clear: "hi it's your college roommate. call me." knowing all too well what was coming i slowly dialed the numbers... for all the talk about the popping of the proverbial question i don't think anyone sees it the way i do: "will you be a bridesmaid?"
in the spirit of my newfound optimism (don't laugh- just go with it) i'm trying to put a positive spin on this:
1) i'm now officially entitled to some well-deserved, "never a bride" self pity (as if my ex-boyfriends' engagements [note the plural] weren't enough)
2) it has to be some kind of compliment that so many people feel the need to stand me up
3) by the time it's actually my turn to do this i'll know a whole lot about weddings (and have a veritable bridal throng to fuss over me and throw me a damn good bachelorette party)
and finally...
4) fodder for my budding career in film... i've always felt that deep down i'm a film-maker, or, at very least, a film critic. the movies i make in my head aren't good, per se, but i think they'd sell. this movie will be a clever romantic comedy about a rather cute, witty girl (who's career as a film critic affords her a stylish, high-ceilinged apartment and an unbelievable fashion sense) who finds herself standing up in weddings over and over again thinking she'll never find love... until the adorable, independently wealthy pastry chef spills chocolate sauce all over her frilly bridesmaid's dress... or something like that... maybe someone with talent can actually direct the movie and i can just give it good reviews...
the good, the bad and the stinky
we're back from sunny warm new orleans. what a great weekend! my blogmate was, as always, a thoughtful host, filling our time with fun activities, good food and drink, great people. i learned that there are many ways to unhouse little crawfish from their shells at lunchtime, that abita beer distributes to several states but does not bottle their strawberry lager (tragic), that $3 fake dolce and gabbana sunglasses are every bit as glamorous as i'd imagined, and that i am a much better dancer when budweiser is $1.25 a can. hee.
i also learned that new orleans has its share of crazy hippies, whose habits are almost as much fun to catalog as the movements of my creepy neighbor:
- taking the 3rd place award for best hippiewatching was the mild-mannered costa-rica-t-shirt-wearing 40-year-old mullet-hippie who wandered halfway across the audience where papa grows funk was playing at french quarter fest, told us we looked nice, and wandered back. given that we were dirty, drunk, and sitting on a lawn littered with empty plastic beer glasses, i am sure we were faces only a hippie could love.
- in 2nd place for hippiewatch was my blogmate's ex, who we met during my five minutes on bourbon street. when my blogmate was accosted by a hairy bearded manic guy wearing cut-off khakis and a latin-american-fabric-vest, talking a mile a minute about some band who was "the best f*&('in band EVER!", i figured this had to be some crazy she'd dated back in the day... nice guy, who took our ribbing about his man-purse fairly well.
- in a clear first place for hippiewatch came good citizen hippie, a dreadlocked lanky man who passed us on the street in the french quarter. coming the other way was a man pushing his friend in a wheelchair, who was not seen by the minivan driver trying to back out of a narrow driveway. we saw the impending minivan-wheelchair disaster coming, but couldn't react in time to fix it - you know that slow-motion "nooooo-OOOOOOOOOOO...." that happens? that was us. but not good citizen hippie! he sprinted back to the minivan, threw himself between the minivan and wheelchair, shouting until the minivan stopped. at that point, good citizen hippie decided to direct traffic for a little while, allowing the wheelchaired man to pass, as well as a mother with her small daughter in a stroller. i kept looking for old ladies with walkers for the hippie to help across the street.
- related to hippiewatching: honorable mention goes to the guy who sat by us on the plane from new orleans to nashville, who is not really a hippie but works for some advertising group that promotes jazzfest and other hippie music festivals like the one in tennessee where all the hippies come live on the farm together for four days and smoke to dave matthews. note to any man reading this with a music-related occupation: if you name-drop too much while describing your job, women will not believe you, and will think you are full of yourself. it's similar to guys who claim to be djs. they are never really djs, they just have lots of stereo equipment in their car trunks. (i will consider an exception to this for henry at wort in madison, because i don't think the djs there are actually paid anything so it's a little hard to be full of anything, plus it's one of my favorite radio stations besides the diva in new orleans - music for the diva in me? that's great! bring on the rupaul, paula abdul and ryan cabrera techno mixes! who the heck is ryan cabrera, and where did he come from? but now i'm really digressing. back to the hippies.) so the plane hippie organizer. yeah, points to the guy who takes himself seriously describing midwesterners as "good people" when he has never actually been here, and who looks at me funny when i snicker every time he says widespread panic.
hmm... i guess i still haven't said anything about what we did in new orleans. next time: our collective inner turmoil about our stated hatred of chicago's love affair with floofy martinis, standing in unfortunate contrast to our demonstrated fondness for the many many 25-cent key lime martinis we drank at lunch monday. doh.
i also learned that new orleans has its share of crazy hippies, whose habits are almost as much fun to catalog as the movements of my creepy neighbor:
- taking the 3rd place award for best hippiewatching was the mild-mannered costa-rica-t-shirt-wearing 40-year-old mullet-hippie who wandered halfway across the audience where papa grows funk was playing at french quarter fest, told us we looked nice, and wandered back. given that we were dirty, drunk, and sitting on a lawn littered with empty plastic beer glasses, i am sure we were faces only a hippie could love.
- in 2nd place for hippiewatch was my blogmate's ex, who we met during my five minutes on bourbon street. when my blogmate was accosted by a hairy bearded manic guy wearing cut-off khakis and a latin-american-fabric-vest, talking a mile a minute about some band who was "the best f*&('in band EVER!", i figured this had to be some crazy she'd dated back in the day... nice guy, who took our ribbing about his man-purse fairly well.
- in a clear first place for hippiewatch came good citizen hippie, a dreadlocked lanky man who passed us on the street in the french quarter. coming the other way was a man pushing his friend in a wheelchair, who was not seen by the minivan driver trying to back out of a narrow driveway. we saw the impending minivan-wheelchair disaster coming, but couldn't react in time to fix it - you know that slow-motion "nooooo-OOOOOOOOOOO...." that happens? that was us. but not good citizen hippie! he sprinted back to the minivan, threw himself between the minivan and wheelchair, shouting until the minivan stopped. at that point, good citizen hippie decided to direct traffic for a little while, allowing the wheelchaired man to pass, as well as a mother with her small daughter in a stroller. i kept looking for old ladies with walkers for the hippie to help across the street.
- related to hippiewatching: honorable mention goes to the guy who sat by us on the plane from new orleans to nashville, who is not really a hippie but works for some advertising group that promotes jazzfest and other hippie music festivals like the one in tennessee where all the hippies come live on the farm together for four days and smoke to dave matthews. note to any man reading this with a music-related occupation: if you name-drop too much while describing your job, women will not believe you, and will think you are full of yourself. it's similar to guys who claim to be djs. they are never really djs, they just have lots of stereo equipment in their car trunks. (i will consider an exception to this for henry at wort in madison, because i don't think the djs there are actually paid anything so it's a little hard to be full of anything, plus it's one of my favorite radio stations besides the diva in new orleans - music for the diva in me? that's great! bring on the rupaul, paula abdul and ryan cabrera techno mixes! who the heck is ryan cabrera, and where did he come from? but now i'm really digressing. back to the hippies.) so the plane hippie organizer. yeah, points to the guy who takes himself seriously describing midwesterners as "good people" when he has never actually been here, and who looks at me funny when i snicker every time he says widespread panic.
hmm... i guess i still haven't said anything about what we did in new orleans. next time: our collective inner turmoil about our stated hatred of chicago's love affair with floofy martinis, standing in unfortunate contrast to our demonstrated fondness for the many many 25-cent key lime martinis we drank at lunch monday. doh.
Friday, April 08, 2005
road trip muse
i'm so excited! this afternoon i am headed for the good state of louisiana with my blogmate (mb; wait, no, we established that was wrong...). i can't wait to see her hometown of new orleans. apparently we are also heading to the beautiful city of ponchatoula (is that right?). i think the itinerary consists of eating, drinking, live music, eating, drinking, ponchatoula, and maybe if i'm lucky getting to meet some of the people who i've never met that visit our humble blog.
this brings up the issue of reciprocation. i feel like i should offer some similar road trip to visit my hometown. but i just got back from a few days in northern wisconsin, which confirmed my belief that this would be an uneven trade. ah, the northwoods... the farther north you go, the more ridiculous it gets. really, after the jellybelly factory just across the il-wi border and house of cheese in kenosha (where weezer once played) it all goes downhill. adult video store billboards (three of them are all named "superb adult video") flank right-to-life signs announcing that 40 million babies will never pay social security and that fetuses smile at 12 weeks. (apparently truth in advertising doesn't apply in wisconsin. i suppose "tacky adult video" isn't as catchy, and the social security argument is a little weirdly utilitarian or something, but i am reasonably sure that a fetus doesn't smile. i don't know much about embryology, but i looked it up online and at 12 weeks the muscles have just learned how to respond to the brain, so the little fetus can sort of twitch. anyway.) cultural attractions include an art gallery advertising chicken for sale; "proud american" and "support our troops" car decals are offset by mudflaps on teal mercury tracers reading "nasty," and there's a sign welcoming travellers by announcing that this is "as far north as you need to go." too bad that sign was 25 miles south of home.
one of my friend's younger sisters just graduated from college in d.c. and refers to her time back at home as "soul sucking." so what do i have to show off? there's always the road trip to appleton so my good blogmate can see the harry houdini museum she finds so fascinating, the $1 beers at korth's bar, the string of phallic-esque names on main street (pensis chiropractic, bump's bar, photography by the wackers). we could stop at the gas station at mills fleet farm (think farm implement store meets walmart) and get the free popcorn that comes with tanks of gas, trying hard not to be weirded out by the long-haired flannel-wearing-in-summer leering men who seem to just sit in the corner. of course we would commemorate her stay with one of the many charming fleet farm t-shirts like "i am woman / i shop fleet farm" or "if they don't sell it at mills fleet farm, i don't want it."
i know there are wisconsin people who read this blog. help a girl out; what's exciting about our little town? i feel like we have to step up the commentary, on account of the southern contingent is kicking our collective butt. i was also thinking, given the current pattern of people starting to finally comment on the blog once we've started writing about them, that it's time to start a jerry-lewis-telethon-like introduction to our readership. you've met mb, rcfog, tb, dwtacc, twinset, mr. honesty. (does anyone else think mr. honesty sounds a little like a porn name?) butterknife, you're coming up. you know who you are.
this brings up the issue of reciprocation. i feel like i should offer some similar road trip to visit my hometown. but i just got back from a few days in northern wisconsin, which confirmed my belief that this would be an uneven trade. ah, the northwoods... the farther north you go, the more ridiculous it gets. really, after the jellybelly factory just across the il-wi border and house of cheese in kenosha (where weezer once played) it all goes downhill. adult video store billboards (three of them are all named "superb adult video") flank right-to-life signs announcing that 40 million babies will never pay social security and that fetuses smile at 12 weeks. (apparently truth in advertising doesn't apply in wisconsin. i suppose "tacky adult video" isn't as catchy, and the social security argument is a little weirdly utilitarian or something, but i am reasonably sure that a fetus doesn't smile. i don't know much about embryology, but i looked it up online and at 12 weeks the muscles have just learned how to respond to the brain, so the little fetus can sort of twitch. anyway.) cultural attractions include an art gallery advertising chicken for sale; "proud american" and "support our troops" car decals are offset by mudflaps on teal mercury tracers reading "nasty," and there's a sign welcoming travellers by announcing that this is "as far north as you need to go." too bad that sign was 25 miles south of home.
one of my friend's younger sisters just graduated from college in d.c. and refers to her time back at home as "soul sucking." so what do i have to show off? there's always the road trip to appleton so my good blogmate can see the harry houdini museum she finds so fascinating, the $1 beers at korth's bar, the string of phallic-esque names on main street (pensis chiropractic, bump's bar, photography by the wackers). we could stop at the gas station at mills fleet farm (think farm implement store meets walmart) and get the free popcorn that comes with tanks of gas, trying hard not to be weirded out by the long-haired flannel-wearing-in-summer leering men who seem to just sit in the corner. of course we would commemorate her stay with one of the many charming fleet farm t-shirts like "i am woman / i shop fleet farm" or "if they don't sell it at mills fleet farm, i don't want it."
i know there are wisconsin people who read this blog. help a girl out; what's exciting about our little town? i feel like we have to step up the commentary, on account of the southern contingent is kicking our collective butt. i was also thinking, given the current pattern of people starting to finally comment on the blog once we've started writing about them, that it's time to start a jerry-lewis-telethon-like introduction to our readership. you've met mb, rcfog, tb, dwtacc, twinset, mr. honesty. (does anyone else think mr. honesty sounds a little like a porn name?) butterknife, you're coming up. you know who you are.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
who's filterless now?
i almost forgot.
at one of the many basketball-watching marathons last weekend, i found myself seated next to a work acquaintance who had perhaps had a few too many. i don't know this guy particularly well and he's a couple of rungs higher than me on the professional ladder, so i was very entertained by his sudden, overwhelming need to, well, share. with the exception of dwtacc, i think most of us are quite familiar with the acquired filterlessness that accompanies inebriation, and the young man in question decided that the time had come to lay his cards on the table.
he readily admitted that while perhaps not so much of a catch in his youth, over time (and evolving degree of job-having-ness) he became something of a ladies man (that is, until, he settled down with his current girl whom he confesses is way cooler than him). for whatever reason, mr. honesty decided that enumerating his various, um, social exploits as a young professional was of vital importance... but he kept miscounting and having to start over. then i remembered how much fun it can be to be the (relatively) sober one.
and though i am (and will likely remain), stymied by the sudden flood of interest in our humble blog (complete with active participation by our loyal readership), i have to admit that the above tribute's function is as a recruitment tool. it seems that the best way to get people to invest in filterlessness is to unabashedly talk about them.
at one of the many basketball-watching marathons last weekend, i found myself seated next to a work acquaintance who had perhaps had a few too many. i don't know this guy particularly well and he's a couple of rungs higher than me on the professional ladder, so i was very entertained by his sudden, overwhelming need to, well, share. with the exception of dwtacc, i think most of us are quite familiar with the acquired filterlessness that accompanies inebriation, and the young man in question decided that the time had come to lay his cards on the table.
he readily admitted that while perhaps not so much of a catch in his youth, over time (and evolving degree of job-having-ness) he became something of a ladies man (that is, until, he settled down with his current girl whom he confesses is way cooler than him). for whatever reason, mr. honesty decided that enumerating his various, um, social exploits as a young professional was of vital importance... but he kept miscounting and having to start over. then i remembered how much fun it can be to be the (relatively) sober one.
and though i am (and will likely remain), stymied by the sudden flood of interest in our humble blog (complete with active participation by our loyal readership), i have to admit that the above tribute's function is as a recruitment tool. it seems that the best way to get people to invest in filterlessness is to unabashedly talk about them.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
where's the foul?
my blogmate always teases me about my episodic bouts of sports fanatacism. she has a point: for the better part of the year i'm only vaguely interested, but come play-off time suddenly i become some sort of glued-to-the-TV maniac.
the difference between me and the true fan became clear to me as i talked my good friend dwtacc (down with the ACC... she rejected "friend#1" on account of it wasn't personal enough) off a ledge monday after the illini failed to capture the NCAA title. i'll admit, it was a painful game to watch, what with the offense seemingly being played from half-court and passes bouncing off the backs of unsuspecting teammates who were looking the wrong way (in the final minutes of a 3 point game). now, i don't claim to know much about basketball, but you know something's wrong when you ask yourself, "hey, why is he running in the wrong direction?"
in any case, i really was a little worried about dwtacc as she went right through the yelling and swearing phase (surprising coming from the girl who ordinarily isn't much of a potty-mouth... unless she finds herself at a 22,000 person race hoping to serendipitously run into her friends who are holding her race number while said friends are still standing on the el platform like idiots), and directly entered the stern, silent phase. i didn't think she disliked anyone more than her creepy ex-boyfriend who keeps calling her (over and over and over) but it turns out that her new sworn enemy is sean may (oafishly big tarheel who was the clear sweetheart of the game and is the child of an important hoosier, for those of you who don't know... like me before last night).
so i think we should all bow our heads in a moment of silence, mourning the illini's loss of the NCAA title... at least in solidarity with my devastated friend.
the difference between me and the true fan became clear to me as i talked my good friend dwtacc (down with the ACC... she rejected "friend#1" on account of it wasn't personal enough) off a ledge monday after the illini failed to capture the NCAA title. i'll admit, it was a painful game to watch, what with the offense seemingly being played from half-court and passes bouncing off the backs of unsuspecting teammates who were looking the wrong way (in the final minutes of a 3 point game). now, i don't claim to know much about basketball, but you know something's wrong when you ask yourself, "hey, why is he running in the wrong direction?"
in any case, i really was a little worried about dwtacc as she went right through the yelling and swearing phase (surprising coming from the girl who ordinarily isn't much of a potty-mouth... unless she finds herself at a 22,000 person race hoping to serendipitously run into her friends who are holding her race number while said friends are still standing on the el platform like idiots), and directly entered the stern, silent phase. i didn't think she disliked anyone more than her creepy ex-boyfriend who keeps calling her (over and over and over) but it turns out that her new sworn enemy is sean may (oafishly big tarheel who was the clear sweetheart of the game and is the child of an important hoosier, for those of you who don't know... like me before last night).
so i think we should all bow our heads in a moment of silence, mourning the illini's loss of the NCAA title... at least in solidarity with my devastated friend.
Monday, April 04, 2005
introducing the coen brothers' many poor, less talented cousins
i love bad movies and i love spying on my neighbors. so imagine my excitement at finding myself getting both items at once this weekend.
somehow, a lazy saturday filled with browsing bookstores and gorging on so-cheap breakfast at our local dive turned into a conversation between mb and me about spring cleaning. and before i knew it, that conversation about spring cleaning had turned into spring cleaning itself, with lots of throwing away the worst of my hand-me-down furniture to make some room for mb's stuff still in storage. away with the paint-peeling orange-and-green desk (not a small feat, as we live on the top floor of a walk-up). but as we were preparing to take the next load down the back stairs to the trash bin, we noticed some activity next door. gathered around a black saturn in the driveway were two college boys dressed as beat cops, complete with the big hats and beating sticks (what do you call those?), two more dressed like luigi from super mario brothers, a villain and a sort of non-descript overweight guy whose role i could never ascertain. peering out from a bedroom window above the black saturn was another college guy dressed in yellow striped pajamas and a red sleeping cap (the long pointy elf-ey kind). after about thirty minutes of standing in a big circle laughing at themselves, they all lined up and one by one climbed up the saturn and piled through the bedroom window. then they came out, stood around again, sang some songs, and did it again, this time interrupted with a lot of "wait... should my head be here or over here? no, it'll look stupid if my head is over too far..." eventually they moved the car, brought out a ladder (hmm... that would have been helpful first) and a video camera, laughed some more, and dispersed.
i can only assume one of them is taking some kind of film class, because i can't imagine u of c students do this kind of thing for fun. (i would, but that's beside the point.) but they were so pleased with themselves that they didn't notice our side-splitting laughter next door. i almost dropped the old recliner i was holding. (note to the fans of my recliner: yes, it's time for it to go. yes, tears were shed. no, it's not gone yet - it's sitting on the porch where mb is using it as his grillin' chair until it rains. and to my blogmate: no, the orange shag which once covered the chair is not gone. we now have orange shag carpet, to which mb is fastidiously applying rug backing, giddy with excitement that after all these years, his precious orange shag rug is finally on the floor where it was meant to be.) i was a little relieved that i couldn't keep getting rid of furniture for fear of ruining the guys' carefully constructed shots... although a plummeting recliner might not have been completely out of place.
somehow, a lazy saturday filled with browsing bookstores and gorging on so-cheap breakfast at our local dive turned into a conversation between mb and me about spring cleaning. and before i knew it, that conversation about spring cleaning had turned into spring cleaning itself, with lots of throwing away the worst of my hand-me-down furniture to make some room for mb's stuff still in storage. away with the paint-peeling orange-and-green desk (not a small feat, as we live on the top floor of a walk-up). but as we were preparing to take the next load down the back stairs to the trash bin, we noticed some activity next door. gathered around a black saturn in the driveway were two college boys dressed as beat cops, complete with the big hats and beating sticks (what do you call those?), two more dressed like luigi from super mario brothers, a villain and a sort of non-descript overweight guy whose role i could never ascertain. peering out from a bedroom window above the black saturn was another college guy dressed in yellow striped pajamas and a red sleeping cap (the long pointy elf-ey kind). after about thirty minutes of standing in a big circle laughing at themselves, they all lined up and one by one climbed up the saturn and piled through the bedroom window. then they came out, stood around again, sang some songs, and did it again, this time interrupted with a lot of "wait... should my head be here or over here? no, it'll look stupid if my head is over too far..." eventually they moved the car, brought out a ladder (hmm... that would have been helpful first) and a video camera, laughed some more, and dispersed.
i can only assume one of them is taking some kind of film class, because i can't imagine u of c students do this kind of thing for fun. (i would, but that's beside the point.) but they were so pleased with themselves that they didn't notice our side-splitting laughter next door. i almost dropped the old recliner i was holding. (note to the fans of my recliner: yes, it's time for it to go. yes, tears were shed. no, it's not gone yet - it's sitting on the porch where mb is using it as his grillin' chair until it rains. and to my blogmate: no, the orange shag which once covered the chair is not gone. we now have orange shag carpet, to which mb is fastidiously applying rug backing, giddy with excitement that after all these years, his precious orange shag rug is finally on the floor where it was meant to be.) i was a little relieved that i couldn't keep getting rid of furniture for fear of ruining the guys' carefully constructed shots... although a plummeting recliner might not have been completely out of place.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
the world sprang ahead... and i fell back
it was quite a weekend. i took my friend's hair on a date, lost my cool at the patagonia store, and missed a road race... oh yeah, and watched lots of basketball.
just i was getting myself comfortably curled up on the couch on friday night, finally ready to watch the last episodes of sex and the city, ending the crack-TV siege, little miss twin set called to announce that after 2 hours and $200 she wasn't wasting her cute, bouncy haircut at home with her husband- apparently he too was comfortably curled up on the couch. so i did what any self-respecting friend-of-married-girl would do- hopped in the shower, drank a beer, and pulled on my sassygoingout boots. she showed up (2 hours and $200 later) a little punchy having split a bottle of wine with her hair dresser, ready to be shown a good time. i think i was a pretty good date- we drank an excessive number of mojitos and waited an excessively long time for a table at an excessively trendy restaurant. afterwards, being the perfect gentleman that i am, i put my tipsy friend and her hair in a cab and sent them home to her hubby.
i spent the next day out and about with my friend (gwcbwdbsbhhwtt for those of you paying attention) and her brother. he had a gift certificate to spend at the patagonia store, so after wandering around the art supply store wishing i was artistic, i wandered around patagonia wishing i was out-doorsy. perhaps if i actually was out-doorsy i wouldn't have been so snide in supplying mr. everest base camp with the word for which he searching ("technology") but as he rambled on about the high-tech, windproof, fire-proof, NASA-quality fleece i found it harder and harder to keep it together. when he started to pitch the sonically-guided seams i lost all composure and started laughing uncontrollably. i had to sit down in the adirondak chair (supplied so that weary shoppers could watch a movie about banff) just to catch my breath. though none of the patagonia employees seemed particularly appreciative of my amusement, they were fortuitously distracted, moments later, by a dramatic fender-bender in the parking lot. i think somebody rear-ended mr. base camp's jeep.
the next morning i found myself pacing around on the corner of belmont and clark at what i thought was 8AM, waiting for friend#1. when she hadn't appeared 15 minutes later i ran to the el to meet friend#2 in an attempt to keep the whole plan from disintegrating. but i was too late. i raced up the stairs to find friend#2 taking on his cell phone to friend#1 who was the only one of us to have remembered the time change. "hi," he said, "what time do you think it is?" while friend#1 actually made it downtown in time to run in chicago's big spring 8K, we were holding all the race packets. after all that fretting about my lack of preparedness and gimp-footedness we missed it completely! determined to maintain our fragile dignity, we ran our own private 8K race on the lake and went to the post-race party as if nothing had happened. i blame the final four- surely if we hadn't all three been glued to our bar-stools yesterday watching michigan state get clobbered, one of us might have anticipated this.
go illini!
just i was getting myself comfortably curled up on the couch on friday night, finally ready to watch the last episodes of sex and the city, ending the crack-TV siege, little miss twin set called to announce that after 2 hours and $200 she wasn't wasting her cute, bouncy haircut at home with her husband- apparently he too was comfortably curled up on the couch. so i did what any self-respecting friend-of-married-girl would do- hopped in the shower, drank a beer, and pulled on my sassygoingout boots. she showed up (2 hours and $200 later) a little punchy having split a bottle of wine with her hair dresser, ready to be shown a good time. i think i was a pretty good date- we drank an excessive number of mojitos and waited an excessively long time for a table at an excessively trendy restaurant. afterwards, being the perfect gentleman that i am, i put my tipsy friend and her hair in a cab and sent them home to her hubby.
i spent the next day out and about with my friend (gwcbwdbsbhhwtt for those of you paying attention) and her brother. he had a gift certificate to spend at the patagonia store, so after wandering around the art supply store wishing i was artistic, i wandered around patagonia wishing i was out-doorsy. perhaps if i actually was out-doorsy i wouldn't have been so snide in supplying mr. everest base camp with the word for which he searching ("technology") but as he rambled on about the high-tech, windproof, fire-proof, NASA-quality fleece i found it harder and harder to keep it together. when he started to pitch the sonically-guided seams i lost all composure and started laughing uncontrollably. i had to sit down in the adirondak chair (supplied so that weary shoppers could watch a movie about banff) just to catch my breath. though none of the patagonia employees seemed particularly appreciative of my amusement, they were fortuitously distracted, moments later, by a dramatic fender-bender in the parking lot. i think somebody rear-ended mr. base camp's jeep.
the next morning i found myself pacing around on the corner of belmont and clark at what i thought was 8AM, waiting for friend#1. when she hadn't appeared 15 minutes later i ran to the el to meet friend#2 in an attempt to keep the whole plan from disintegrating. but i was too late. i raced up the stairs to find friend#2 taking on his cell phone to friend#1 who was the only one of us to have remembered the time change. "hi," he said, "what time do you think it is?" while friend#1 actually made it downtown in time to run in chicago's big spring 8K, we were holding all the race packets. after all that fretting about my lack of preparedness and gimp-footedness we missed it completely! determined to maintain our fragile dignity, we ran our own private 8K race on the lake and went to the post-race party as if nothing had happened. i blame the final four- surely if we hadn't all three been glued to our bar-stools yesterday watching michigan state get clobbered, one of us might have anticipated this.
go illini!
Saturday, April 02, 2005
acknowledgements and musings
clearly i'm a bad person: yesterday i lied to an ACLU guy on the phone. this morning i didn't listen to NPR because i can't take the guilt of pledge season.
the fundraising did get me to thinking, though. as we enter our 7th month of blogging, i think it's time to thank our loyal readership- we couldn't do it without you (actually, we probably could, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun). not including myself or my blogmate, i think our readers now number in the double digits (provided we haven't scared off rcfog).
in other news, now that i've put my infatuations with the various wedding boys behind me, i'm back to obsessing about the double indian neurologists (in1, in2). in1 continues to render me mute (or a babbling moron) with his dashing good looks and irresistible charisma, though i remain unnerved by his overwhelmingly good fashion sense. in2 has turned out to be a little louder and more obnoxious than i would have expected, but in a good way. there have been some very subtle flurries of activity (if i were smarter i could use some kind of geeky EEG analogy) and i'm hoping that he'll make an appearance at our mutual friend's basketball-watching party (read: psychotic, screaming, go-illini hysteria) this weekend... because clearly what i need is to fuel this ridiculous obsession.
the fundraising did get me to thinking, though. as we enter our 7th month of blogging, i think it's time to thank our loyal readership- we couldn't do it without you (actually, we probably could, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun). not including myself or my blogmate, i think our readers now number in the double digits (provided we haven't scared off rcfog).
in other news, now that i've put my infatuations with the various wedding boys behind me, i'm back to obsessing about the double indian neurologists (in1, in2). in1 continues to render me mute (or a babbling moron) with his dashing good looks and irresistible charisma, though i remain unnerved by his overwhelmingly good fashion sense. in2 has turned out to be a little louder and more obnoxious than i would have expected, but in a good way. there have been some very subtle flurries of activity (if i were smarter i could use some kind of geeky EEG analogy) and i'm hoping that he'll make an appearance at our mutual friend's basketball-watching party (read: psychotic, screaming, go-illini hysteria) this weekend... because clearly what i need is to fuel this ridiculous obsession.
Friday, April 01, 2005
seven degrees of kevin bacon
mb and i realized this morning that ever since we've moved to chicago, we seem to be much closer to celebrities. well, maybe not actual celebrities, but we now know people who know people, which is the best we figure we'll ever do. true, mb knows his share of olympic athletes and ironman winners from being a college swimmer and triathlete. i am a little athletic too, but the olympic marathoners don't run from the 4:30 markers, so no rubbing shoulders with the greats for me (although i did get passed by a rather portly tommy thompson once in a 5k run).
so one of our bosses has a wife who comes from some amount of money, and he tells stories about hanging out with hilary clinton. during my job promotion interview yesterday, i learned all about my bosses' various famousnesses, including being on cnn and featured in time magazine. but best of all, it turns out that one of my blogmate's friends was a debutante! i had only heard of this before in movies, but you know that whole thing where eligible women get to dress up all pretty and get displayed to the society men at their parents' social gatherings? not only do i know someone who knows someone, but i get to ride in that someone's someone's car during my upcoming trip to new orleans. my butt will be sitting on a seat that gets sat on by greatness. job interview or not: i'm really going places now.
so one of our bosses has a wife who comes from some amount of money, and he tells stories about hanging out with hilary clinton. during my job promotion interview yesterday, i learned all about my bosses' various famousnesses, including being on cnn and featured in time magazine. but best of all, it turns out that one of my blogmate's friends was a debutante! i had only heard of this before in movies, but you know that whole thing where eligible women get to dress up all pretty and get displayed to the society men at their parents' social gatherings? not only do i know someone who knows someone, but i get to ride in that someone's someone's car during my upcoming trip to new orleans. my butt will be sitting on a seat that gets sat on by greatness. job interview or not: i'm really going places now.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
guilt by association
over $10 burgers at the "neighborhood bar" the other night, my blogmate called to my attention the list of $10 martinis on the wall. i'll spare you another rant about my lack of understanding of chicagoans and their ritzy martinis, but the final three on this list were pretty funny, especially when read sequentially:
french
dirty
wet
i mean really. are we talking about drinks or porn?
french
dirty
wet
i mean really. are we talking about drinks or porn?
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
meanwhile, back at the ranch...
i'm a little embarrassed.
i lead such a comparatively uninteresting life. my weekend consisted of working, eating and running. and truth be told, that's how i spend most of my time. when my blogmate (who i can't acronymize properly because it makes her "mb," which would really throw me off) got home from her rowdy wedding festivities and said "so how was your weekend?" i only had "it was fine! i learned how to make cornish game hens and pilot my new meat thermometer!" and whereas my good blogmate (ooooohh... mgb?) returned from our sex-and-the-city-like dinner to clever although rather unnecessarily deflating comments about her scandalous behavior, i returned home to my boyfriend (mb; you can see where this gets confusing) serenely sitting on the couch with a book, looking up only to ask "can you give me an example of a paradox?" far from scandalous.
to be fair, the paradox conversation was a little funny. you try to come up with good examples after helping down a bottle of pinot noir. but mostly, i'm very excited that if i can't be the girl who spends her time kissing her gay friends and punk rock acquaintances and staying out until three, at least i get to be friends with that girl, and feel a little cooler by association.
i lead such a comparatively uninteresting life. my weekend consisted of working, eating and running. and truth be told, that's how i spend most of my time. when my blogmate (who i can't acronymize properly because it makes her "mb," which would really throw me off) got home from her rowdy wedding festivities and said "so how was your weekend?" i only had "it was fine! i learned how to make cornish game hens and pilot my new meat thermometer!" and whereas my good blogmate (ooooohh... mgb?) returned from our sex-and-the-city-like dinner to clever although rather unnecessarily deflating comments about her scandalous behavior, i returned home to my boyfriend (mb; you can see where this gets confusing) serenely sitting on the couch with a book, looking up only to ask "can you give me an example of a paradox?" far from scandalous.
to be fair, the paradox conversation was a little funny. you try to come up with good examples after helping down a bottle of pinot noir. but mostly, i'm very excited that if i can't be the girl who spends her time kissing her gay friends and punk rock acquaintances and staying out until three, at least i get to be friends with that girl, and feel a little cooler by association.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
do you want fries with that?
you all know our good connecticut friend who constantly amuses us with her good breeding (and willingness to talk about thongs and cuss like a sailor in public). i mean really- who else leaves messages like, "i was wondering if i could impose on you to borrow your greenday CD" on answering machines? after a sexandthecity-like dinner our little circle of sexandthecity-like girlfriends (to the extent that there are four of us) gave her a good razzing about her choice of restaurant. we'd decided that none of us could stand to shower, much less cook, and after weeks of her raving about her new favorite burger joint we finally gave in. she'd promised us some sort of neighborhood dive where we'd fit right in in our cargo pants and running shoes... not a self-proclaimed bistro that served free-range chicken and escargot (to which she wore a twin set with pearl buttons). as usual, my blogmate and i quickly buckled under the pressure of our impending yuppiness, ordered a bottle of pinot noir, and proceeded to have a perfectly lovely evening with our friends (deliberately mispronouncing things on the menu and mocking the personal habits of our coworkers).
i strolled into my apartment in high-spirits, not at all expecting to find a very funny and gentle rejection on my very own blog. until then i had no idea you could have an awkward silence all by yourself. don't get me wrong- i'm actually quite excited to have enticed a near-stranger to participate in our blogging adventure so actively- in fact i hope rcfog will keep it up...
nonetheless, i think it's about time i gave myself my own acronym. i've never felt like i needed one, as "me" seemed to suffice. but now i think vefob (very embarrassed friend of bride) is perhaps more fitting.
i strolled into my apartment in high-spirits, not at all expecting to find a very funny and gentle rejection on my very own blog. until then i had no idea you could have an awkward silence all by yourself. don't get me wrong- i'm actually quite excited to have enticed a near-stranger to participate in our blogging adventure so actively- in fact i hope rcfog will keep it up...
nonetheless, i think it's about time i gave myself my own acronym. i've never felt like i needed one, as "me" seemed to suffice. but now i think vefob (very embarrassed friend of bride) is perhaps more fitting.
Monday, March 28, 2005
bourbon is a double-edged sword
now that i've returned to my baseline, non-bridesmaid state (i.e. eagerly awaiting the next episode of gilmore girls and watching basketball over PBR) i've got time to extensively ponder my bridesmaid behavior and have come to some unsettling conclusions.
i started to ask myself why the rather cute friend of the groom (rcfog) with whom i spent the better part of an evening engaged in flirty banter wasn't willing to aknowledge said flirty banter. but now that i'm back to my usual state of relative clarity, it's all too clear- or rather, the possibilities are endless:
could it be that i spent the better part of the previous evening engaged in flirty banter with the punk rock groomsman (prgm) IN FRONT of rcfog (and yes, i know he noticed on account of he called me out on it later)? or maybe it was the fact that there were scheduled make-out sessions with not one, but two gay friends of the groom (gfog#1 and gfog#2)- for the record they both said i was a good kisser but who knows what that means? it could also have something to do with my kicking off the conversation with rcfog with a pretty self-incriminating story about the groom busting me doing something that would (to an outsider) make me appear considerably more sketchy than i actually am (i had to tell rcfog something- he wanted dirt on the bachelorette party and i didn't want to cough it up).
whatever the reason that rcfog didn't immediately (or in the face of my amazing persistence) succomb to my adorable charm, i'm sure that i might be in more favorable standing had i not hit the bottle quite so hard. it's hard to know when alcohol switches from social lubricant to enough rope to hang yourself.
i started to ask myself why the rather cute friend of the groom (rcfog) with whom i spent the better part of an evening engaged in flirty banter wasn't willing to aknowledge said flirty banter. but now that i'm back to my usual state of relative clarity, it's all too clear- or rather, the possibilities are endless:
could it be that i spent the better part of the previous evening engaged in flirty banter with the punk rock groomsman (prgm) IN FRONT of rcfog (and yes, i know he noticed on account of he called me out on it later)? or maybe it was the fact that there were scheduled make-out sessions with not one, but two gay friends of the groom (gfog#1 and gfog#2)- for the record they both said i was a good kisser but who knows what that means? it could also have something to do with my kicking off the conversation with rcfog with a pretty self-incriminating story about the groom busting me doing something that would (to an outsider) make me appear considerably more sketchy than i actually am (i had to tell rcfog something- he wanted dirt on the bachelorette party and i didn't want to cough it up).
whatever the reason that rcfog didn't immediately (or in the face of my amazing persistence) succomb to my adorable charm, i'm sure that i might be in more favorable standing had i not hit the bottle quite so hard. it's hard to know when alcohol switches from social lubricant to enough rope to hang yourself.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
blogger hits the road
i never thought i'd hear myself say this, but i don't think i can take another open bar.
staring blankly at the chipper bar tender this morning at the um-teenth garden party in the last two weeks, i declined the bloody mary and oyster shooter, opting instead for orange juice and coffee.
i pondered the events of the last 72 hours, unable to draw any meaningful conclusions.
now that i've recovered from the slack-jawed paralyzed state i entered after, "hey, this is sort of funny since my ex-girlfriend is marrying your ex-boyfriend," and have laid to rest my transient crush on the punk rock groomsman, i have to ask myself: how is that we're still such drunken idiots?
don't get me wrong. i'm all in favor of drunkenness, and, quite frankly, am idiotic enough when i'm sober... but i don't think my body can take the two in combination anymore- i just can't keep up.
i guess i'll have to take comfort in not being the biggest drunken idiot. as i greeted the aforementioned punk rock groomsman who couldn't understand why i didn't want to drink vodka at 11AM on easter sunday i wondered why in the world he was so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. then i noticed that he was very much wearing his tux from last night having clearly spent the night in a hotel room other than his own.
i'm one to talk, i guess, since i woke up with a walloping headache and someone's phone number written on my hand. fortunately for me, the decorum of staying with your parents requires that you come home alone to your own bed.
i feel like there's a lesson in here somewhere, but i think i'm just too hungover to see it. talk about running on empty.
staring blankly at the chipper bar tender this morning at the um-teenth garden party in the last two weeks, i declined the bloody mary and oyster shooter, opting instead for orange juice and coffee.
i pondered the events of the last 72 hours, unable to draw any meaningful conclusions.
now that i've recovered from the slack-jawed paralyzed state i entered after, "hey, this is sort of funny since my ex-girlfriend is marrying your ex-boyfriend," and have laid to rest my transient crush on the punk rock groomsman, i have to ask myself: how is that we're still such drunken idiots?
don't get me wrong. i'm all in favor of drunkenness, and, quite frankly, am idiotic enough when i'm sober... but i don't think my body can take the two in combination anymore- i just can't keep up.
i guess i'll have to take comfort in not being the biggest drunken idiot. as i greeted the aforementioned punk rock groomsman who couldn't understand why i didn't want to drink vodka at 11AM on easter sunday i wondered why in the world he was so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. then i noticed that he was very much wearing his tux from last night having clearly spent the night in a hotel room other than his own.
i'm one to talk, i guess, since i woke up with a walloping headache and someone's phone number written on my hand. fortunately for me, the decorum of staying with your parents requires that you come home alone to your own bed.
i feel like there's a lesson in here somewhere, but i think i'm just too hungover to see it. talk about running on empty.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
maybe i'm a quack, but in my defense...
first of all, a few words on the previously mentioned yuppie afternoon: as much as i love my jeans-and-sweatshirt lifestyle, i thought it was time for a self-esteem afternoon. you know - feeling out of shape? run a little. feeling poor? return an expensive purchase you don't need. feeling unhealthy? have healthy dinner. granted, by "return expensive purchase" i wasn't expecting the subsequent "make replacement expensive purchase," and by "healthy" i didn't have to mean sushi, which helped the feeling unhealthy but exacerbated the feeling poor. but it was fun.
except now my blogmate is off on yet another bridemaid-related trip back home, while i am stuck at work this weekend hoping she has fun and has a drink or two for me. sad, though, because apparently her foot hurts too much to walk on it. parting words to me were that she feels vindicated for my not believing her yesterday when we were running. so, in my defense, she was complaining of knee pain, hip pain and ankle pain. no foot pain. i am not a rocket scientist, and i realize it sounds lame to say i didn't believe her knee, hip and ankle pain but that her foot is an entirely different story. but i swear she couldn't have been running with me if her foot hurt that badly before.
i know everyone has their opinions on health, especially around nutrition and exercise. but maybe i really am in left field. mb has decided that he doesn't know what i stand for anymore, based on my recent disclosure that i have been withholding feedings on my plants, because i believe based on their yellow- and falling-down-ness that their time in my kitchen window is coming to a natural end. mb is trying to force me to reinstate feedings because he believes i have no respect for my parsley's life. i would personally like to do the humane thing (plant-ane thing? plantain?) and put them more quickly out of their misery by sticking them on my porch to freeze, but can't for fear mb might put out a citizen's arrest on me.
except now my blogmate is off on yet another bridemaid-related trip back home, while i am stuck at work this weekend hoping she has fun and has a drink or two for me. sad, though, because apparently her foot hurts too much to walk on it. parting words to me were that she feels vindicated for my not believing her yesterday when we were running. so, in my defense, she was complaining of knee pain, hip pain and ankle pain. no foot pain. i am not a rocket scientist, and i realize it sounds lame to say i didn't believe her knee, hip and ankle pain but that her foot is an entirely different story. but i swear she couldn't have been running with me if her foot hurt that badly before.
i know everyone has their opinions on health, especially around nutrition and exercise. but maybe i really am in left field. mb has decided that he doesn't know what i stand for anymore, based on my recent disclosure that i have been withholding feedings on my plants, because i believe based on their yellow- and falling-down-ness that their time in my kitchen window is coming to a natural end. mb is trying to force me to reinstate feedings because he believes i have no respect for my parsley's life. i would personally like to do the humane thing (plant-ane thing? plantain?) and put them more quickly out of their misery by sticking them on my porch to freeze, but can't for fear mb might put out a citizen's arrest on me.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
the accidental yuppie.
my blogmate and i are self declared low brow types. we like our clothes from tj maxx and our beer in a can, thank you very much.
so after a somewhat successful jog (by which i mean that my perceived imminent heart attack didn't actually take place) we decided to return some of our more extravagant purchases at ann taylor and find a cheap sushi place for dinner...
by which we apparently meant going to buy more clothes at ann taylor and finding ourselves seated at a new, $10 martini, stylish bathroom (what is it with these new restaurants and their designer sinks?), sophisticated lighting scheme place up in lincoln square that was metromix's pick of the week.
not that we didn't love it. the clothes look good. the sushi was delicious. now i have some good conversation material for all my hypothetical dates.
but it seems that we yet again stumbled into yuppieness... and now we have to go find some PBR to drink in our flip flops to redeem ourselves.
so after a somewhat successful jog (by which i mean that my perceived imminent heart attack didn't actually take place) we decided to return some of our more extravagant purchases at ann taylor and find a cheap sushi place for dinner...
by which we apparently meant going to buy more clothes at ann taylor and finding ourselves seated at a new, $10 martini, stylish bathroom (what is it with these new restaurants and their designer sinks?), sophisticated lighting scheme place up in lincoln square that was metromix's pick of the week.
not that we didn't love it. the clothes look good. the sushi was delicious. now i have some good conversation material for all my hypothetical dates.
but it seems that we yet again stumbled into yuppieness... and now we have to go find some PBR to drink in our flip flops to redeem ourselves.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
the jock inside
we've all head of people with drinking problems, gambling problems, drug problems... people who are addicted to shopping, addicted to sex, addicted to chocolate.
i think i'm addicted to basketball.
let me clarify. i'm addicted to march madness.
i can't stop.
for 4 days i've walked around with my bracket in my purse- it's getting rattier by the minute, now all market up with the corrections i've made- who would have known that blindly guessing was a bad way to predict the tourny?
granted i made a few exceptions to the chaos by going for schools that have funny sounding names or that are vaguely close to my heart for historical reasons, but really i just guessed.
the guy at work who's running the pool told me that my bracket was "adorable."
maybe college basketball just enables my sitting around bars drinking beer and getting rowdy (and perhaps i also have a drinking problem), and maybe it engratiates me to my brother (blog to come about how i and all my highschool freinds were plagued by younger, more attractive, better-adjusted siblings)... but there's something about the thrill of it all, especially in those final minutes of the game that leaves me hungry for more...
as a sad postscript, i'll tell you about my discovery at the bucks game that feminists have a long way to go. during half-time they brought out a bunch of middle school basketball teams (boy teams and girl teams) for some kind of race to make baskets from the free-throw line. we were sitting in front of a row of obnoxious 10-year old boys and one of them kindly alerted his friends to his astonishing discovery- "LOOK! they're letting the cheerleaders play!"
i think i'm addicted to basketball.
let me clarify. i'm addicted to march madness.
i can't stop.
for 4 days i've walked around with my bracket in my purse- it's getting rattier by the minute, now all market up with the corrections i've made- who would have known that blindly guessing was a bad way to predict the tourny?
granted i made a few exceptions to the chaos by going for schools that have funny sounding names or that are vaguely close to my heart for historical reasons, but really i just guessed.
the guy at work who's running the pool told me that my bracket was "adorable."
maybe college basketball just enables my sitting around bars drinking beer and getting rowdy (and perhaps i also have a drinking problem), and maybe it engratiates me to my brother (blog to come about how i and all my highschool freinds were plagued by younger, more attractive, better-adjusted siblings)... but there's something about the thrill of it all, especially in those final minutes of the game that leaves me hungry for more...
as a sad postscript, i'll tell you about my discovery at the bucks game that feminists have a long way to go. during half-time they brought out a bunch of middle school basketball teams (boy teams and girl teams) for some kind of race to make baskets from the free-throw line. we were sitting in front of a row of obnoxious 10-year old boys and one of them kindly alerted his friends to his astonishing discovery- "LOOK! they're letting the cheerleaders play!"
Saturday, March 19, 2005
family ties
i called home this morning for the weekly chat with my parents, forgetting the promise i had made to myself to lead off with a profuse apology to my father for leaving him a plastic penis water pistol to discover in his trunk on the way to work. he, of course, refused to let it go, and made sure to remind me that he'd found a plastic penis water pistol in the trunk of his car on the way to work, and also admitted that he felt quite compelled to torture me about it. i begged him to throw it away, but he remained steadfast in his refusal- he apparently prefers to leave it on the mantle in the living room, awaiting my arrival next week (intended recipient of plastic penis water pistol is getting married). in a last-ditch effort i pointed out to my dad that the plastic penis water pistol doesn't even work... although he sounded mildy disappointed, he didn't cave.
i can't quite bring myself to share this story with my younger brother who is in town for the weekend. we're pretty open with each other (i think) to the extent that every now and then the details of his romantic exploits get to be a bit much for me (you have to draw the line somewhere, and i say that line should be drawn way before "she didn't even want to mess around")...
and it's not like we've run out of things to do or talk about. after coaching me through the pounding of 4 beers in a half hour at a microbrewery in milwaukee we bought cheap tickets to a bucks game, during which he raised very complex questions like, "do you think the mascot has a day job?"
maybe i haven't given my family enough credit...
i can't quite bring myself to share this story with my younger brother who is in town for the weekend. we're pretty open with each other (i think) to the extent that every now and then the details of his romantic exploits get to be a bit much for me (you have to draw the line somewhere, and i say that line should be drawn way before "she didn't even want to mess around")...
and it's not like we've run out of things to do or talk about. after coaching me through the pounding of 4 beers in a half hour at a microbrewery in milwaukee we bought cheap tickets to a bucks game, during which he raised very complex questions like, "do you think the mascot has a day job?"
maybe i haven't given my family enough credit...
mycological madman?
more mushroom mysteries. is anyone else as fascinated by this?
yesterday i got home and found a second message on my answering machine, this time from tina, demanding that leon call her back immediately, but at a different number than the one that mike left a few days ago telling leon it was imperative to call immediately. i waited until after 5 and called the numbers both back to see what kind of voice mail they had, looking for clues. unfortunately, both numbers led to a very generic "welcome to academy services." so at least it's just one person who thinks i'm leon. next, i called the number back and hit zero for the operator, figuring at the very least they should tell me who the heck they are and take me off their list, and maybe if they're nice tell me if i should worry for my personal safety.
apparently nickelodeon and food network tv show hosting isn't very lucrative, because i had a lovely conversation with marc summers, who is the academy services telephone operator. marc told me the place was called academy collection services, and that should tell me what they did. he couldn't find my name or number anywhere on leon's account, but said that sometimes they do call neighbors trying to locate people, although he wasn't sure if that was why i was getting calls.
so i don't know if leon took my name off of my mailbox and looked up my phone number to try and avoid the collection people, or if it was just a random neighbor dial that happened twice in a row. marc implied that leon has multiple accounts with them by multiple clients looking to collect, and that maybe one of those clients had my number for some reason... i don't know. if i don't stop getting calls, should i call my landlord? or just cancel my land line altogether? is it sad that this is the biggest drama in my life?
yesterday i got home and found a second message on my answering machine, this time from tina, demanding that leon call her back immediately, but at a different number than the one that mike left a few days ago telling leon it was imperative to call immediately. i waited until after 5 and called the numbers both back to see what kind of voice mail they had, looking for clues. unfortunately, both numbers led to a very generic "welcome to academy services." so at least it's just one person who thinks i'm leon. next, i called the number back and hit zero for the operator, figuring at the very least they should tell me who the heck they are and take me off their list, and maybe if they're nice tell me if i should worry for my personal safety.
apparently nickelodeon and food network tv show hosting isn't very lucrative, because i had a lovely conversation with marc summers, who is the academy services telephone operator. marc told me the place was called academy collection services, and that should tell me what they did. he couldn't find my name or number anywhere on leon's account, but said that sometimes they do call neighbors trying to locate people, although he wasn't sure if that was why i was getting calls.
so i don't know if leon took my name off of my mailbox and looked up my phone number to try and avoid the collection people, or if it was just a random neighbor dial that happened twice in a row. marc implied that leon has multiple accounts with them by multiple clients looking to collect, and that maybe one of those clients had my number for some reason... i don't know. if i don't stop getting calls, should i call my landlord? or just cancel my land line altogether? is it sad that this is the biggest drama in my life?
Friday, March 18, 2005
the journey of a thousand miles begins with one plastic penis
act I:
it's like i always say- you haven't lived until you've traveled 1,000 miles witha suitcase full of plastic penises (peni?). after the orgy of yuppiness at ann taylor, i packed up little garden party dresses, strappy sandals, and collection of trashy bachelorette party materials and flew home for a weekend of polite bridal showers... and plastic penises (peni?).
i stood in line at the airport sweating bullets, wondering if i'd have the misfortune of getting pulled out of the security line to have the good people from the TSA discover my carry-on filled to the brim with scandaolous lingerie and adult party games (pin the macho on the man, anyone?).
i thought i'd made a clean getaway until the email came from my father. "it was good seeing you this weekend. your mother and i are constantly reminded of how proud we are of your accomplishments... even if i did find a penis water pistol in my trunk."
doh!
act 2:
now i've put the penises (peni?) behind me and moved on to more sophisticated endeavors...
march madness. as i obsessed over my bracket (after all, i've got a whole $3 invested) all day yesterday, i was reminded of a few fundamental truths:
#1) anything can become a crack-like addiction if you let it. i really couldn't care less about college basketball until i entered the pool... but i spent yesterday glued to various bar stools, starring in zombie-like fashion at the big screen TV's, pondering deep, meaningful questions like "where is old dominion anyway?" i'm totally hooked.
#2) it's all about the simple pleasures. sure i may work ungodly numbers of hours and have a dismally poor romantic prognosis, but damn it, i found the free pizza in wicker park and watched my brother eat half of a fried chicken surrounded my martini sipping yuppies.
at the end of the day, i think i'm managing to get a little wiser...
always check to make sure your plastic penises (peni?) are properly stowed for take-off and landing.
if the bride's medical career doesn't ever take off she can always be a porn star (she's got the wardrobe).
bars are more fun if you go there for a specific reason: pizza, basketball, chicken. oh yeah, and beer.
it's like i always say- you haven't lived until you've traveled 1,000 miles witha suitcase full of plastic penises (peni?). after the orgy of yuppiness at ann taylor, i packed up little garden party dresses, strappy sandals, and collection of trashy bachelorette party materials and flew home for a weekend of polite bridal showers... and plastic penises (peni?).
i stood in line at the airport sweating bullets, wondering if i'd have the misfortune of getting pulled out of the security line to have the good people from the TSA discover my carry-on filled to the brim with scandaolous lingerie and adult party games (pin the macho on the man, anyone?).
i thought i'd made a clean getaway until the email came from my father. "it was good seeing you this weekend. your mother and i are constantly reminded of how proud we are of your accomplishments... even if i did find a penis water pistol in my trunk."
doh!
act 2:
now i've put the penises (peni?) behind me and moved on to more sophisticated endeavors...
march madness. as i obsessed over my bracket (after all, i've got a whole $3 invested) all day yesterday, i was reminded of a few fundamental truths:
#1) anything can become a crack-like addiction if you let it. i really couldn't care less about college basketball until i entered the pool... but i spent yesterday glued to various bar stools, starring in zombie-like fashion at the big screen TV's, pondering deep, meaningful questions like "where is old dominion anyway?" i'm totally hooked.
#2) it's all about the simple pleasures. sure i may work ungodly numbers of hours and have a dismally poor romantic prognosis, but damn it, i found the free pizza in wicker park and watched my brother eat half of a fried chicken surrounded my martini sipping yuppies.
at the end of the day, i think i'm managing to get a little wiser...
always check to make sure your plastic penises (peni?) are properly stowed for take-off and landing.
if the bride's medical career doesn't ever take off she can always be a porn star (she's got the wardrobe).
bars are more fun if you go there for a specific reason: pizza, basketball, chicken. oh yeah, and beer.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
he said what?
unrelated, but true.
1. in a display of true family-centered-ness, mb told me yesterday that in the future he would like to have two children... because any more than that would get in the way of his plans to own a suit-wearing monkey.
2. this might only make sense to our midwestern blog readers, but during a talk this afternoon i heard the speaker describe one of his clients from fond du lac, wisconsin, as being from "a rough neighborhood north of milwaukee." i'm sorry, fond du lac?!? rough? while speaking on the south side of chicago??? fond du lac has 20,000 people, a main street complete with faux-wrought-iron street lamps, two perfectly good high schools from which people graduate and go to college, proximity to reasonably cultural attractions, and is as middle-america as it gets.
3. one of our favorite late-entry blog readers sent me a link to a ny times article essentially on religious nuts with blogs, suggesting that my entries speculating on my blogmate's leanings toward unitarianism might join the likes of gaycanadianfeministmormons.blogspot.com, or something along those lines. i'm so proud.
1. in a display of true family-centered-ness, mb told me yesterday that in the future he would like to have two children... because any more than that would get in the way of his plans to own a suit-wearing monkey.
2. this might only make sense to our midwestern blog readers, but during a talk this afternoon i heard the speaker describe one of his clients from fond du lac, wisconsin, as being from "a rough neighborhood north of milwaukee." i'm sorry, fond du lac?!? rough? while speaking on the south side of chicago??? fond du lac has 20,000 people, a main street complete with faux-wrought-iron street lamps, two perfectly good high schools from which people graduate and go to college, proximity to reasonably cultural attractions, and is as middle-america as it gets.
3. one of our favorite late-entry blog readers sent me a link to a ny times article essentially on religious nuts with blogs, suggesting that my entries speculating on my blogmate's leanings toward unitarianism might join the likes of gaycanadianfeministmormons.blogspot.com, or something along those lines. i'm so proud.
Monday, March 14, 2005
mycological mystery
our faithful readers will remember leon, my downstairs neighbor who subscribes to all of the mushroom magazines. so this afternoon on checking my answering machine, there was a message from some guy with a new-york-ish accent asking for leon. seems it is imperative that leon call him back immediately regarding a situation in chicago, illinois (that's illi-noise, not illi-noy). out of curiosity, i looked up leon's phone number, thinking maybe we had similar numbers and that this confusion would continue to happen, allowing me to continue spying on this fascinating fungus lover. but alas, it was not meant to be. so that means i only have this phone call to use... i'm trying to figure out how i can call this number back and tell the investigating party that i am not leon, but for some reason desperately need to know what's going on. i'm taking suggestions.
in other notes, i'm having angst about the previously mentioned pink party dress. the rest of the story, briefly, is that my blogmate and i were on a marathon shopping afternoon, one of the only shopping expeditions we've ever had that does not involve hunting clearance racks at t.j. maxx, and we had a blow-out at ann taylor loft on halsted. so many things fit me perfectly. one of them was a size 6 bubble gum pink party dress, complete with tulle in the skirt so it flares out a little. now, as one might gather from my stated interests of power drills and spying on leon, i am not a pink party dress kind of girl. but we were having such a fun yuppie (how do you spell a single yuppie? yuppy?) afternoon, and it was so nice to wander into starbucks with our arms full of purchases, thinking that just for this one day we could hang out with the trixies before going back to the organized-by-color racks at unique thrift... so i bought the dress. but now i'm realizing that the dress costs the same amount as a pair of shoes for work that don't hurt my feet or make my feet smell yucky (yucky? yuckie?), and so i'm torn. it's all well and good to feel girly and pretty in a pink party dress, but it's also hard to feel girly or pretty wearing smelly beat-up sneakers that need to be febrezed every night before i put them back in the closet. what's a girl to do?
in other notes, i'm having angst about the previously mentioned pink party dress. the rest of the story, briefly, is that my blogmate and i were on a marathon shopping afternoon, one of the only shopping expeditions we've ever had that does not involve hunting clearance racks at t.j. maxx, and we had a blow-out at ann taylor loft on halsted. so many things fit me perfectly. one of them was a size 6 bubble gum pink party dress, complete with tulle in the skirt so it flares out a little. now, as one might gather from my stated interests of power drills and spying on leon, i am not a pink party dress kind of girl. but we were having such a fun yuppie (how do you spell a single yuppie? yuppy?) afternoon, and it was so nice to wander into starbucks with our arms full of purchases, thinking that just for this one day we could hang out with the trixies before going back to the organized-by-color racks at unique thrift... so i bought the dress. but now i'm realizing that the dress costs the same amount as a pair of shoes for work that don't hurt my feet or make my feet smell yucky (yucky? yuckie?), and so i'm torn. it's all well and good to feel girly and pretty in a pink party dress, but it's also hard to feel girly or pretty wearing smelly beat-up sneakers that need to be febrezed every night before i put them back in the closet. what's a girl to do?
Friday, March 11, 2005
how the other half lives
i've spent the last few days catsitting.
it's an arrangement that works well for all parties, particularly the cats. my rich married couple friends leave their fancy downtown apartment and their two rather high-maintenance cats under my care. i feed the cats (twice a day), refuel high-tech fountain-like water bowl and deal with the nasty litter box. in return i get to eat their food, use their washing machine, and watch their tivo. i also get to sleep in a bed that's WAY more comfortable than mine, use an internet connection that's WAY faster than mine, and, in general, life a life that is WAY nicer than mine.
except for the feline alarm clock factor.
come 6AM these cats are ready to go. what with the pouncing on me, purring, knocking things over, and overall obnoxious behavior encircling me, there's really no opportunity for the much anticipated snooze (they also live a good 10 minutes closer to my job than i do). this problem is aggravated by the fact that they have a VERY complicated coffee maker.
it's all a nice reminder that i like my low-brow life.
it's an arrangement that works well for all parties, particularly the cats. my rich married couple friends leave their fancy downtown apartment and their two rather high-maintenance cats under my care. i feed the cats (twice a day), refuel high-tech fountain-like water bowl and deal with the nasty litter box. in return i get to eat their food, use their washing machine, and watch their tivo. i also get to sleep in a bed that's WAY more comfortable than mine, use an internet connection that's WAY faster than mine, and, in general, life a life that is WAY nicer than mine.
except for the feline alarm clock factor.
come 6AM these cats are ready to go. what with the pouncing on me, purring, knocking things over, and overall obnoxious behavior encircling me, there's really no opportunity for the much anticipated snooze (they also live a good 10 minutes closer to my job than i do). this problem is aggravated by the fact that they have a VERY complicated coffee maker.
it's all a nice reminder that i like my low-brow life.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
the sweet smell of relief
in accepting the sad reality that nothing exciting is ever going to happen to me, i've decided that it's time to start appreciating the little things...
for example, the apparent fact that drunk dialing takes on a whole new meaning once you're married. the other day i got a late night phone call (by which i mean 10PM, but for us that's late) from one of my more established, married friends (who had obviously thrown back a few) to the tune of, "will you pleeeeeeease come to costa rica with me someday? i really want to go and you know that blankety-blank [husband] won't ever come to costa rica with me. pleeeeeease???" so while i probably shouldn't hold my breath for marriage to a clown or an indian neurologist (side rant: is that really my idea of exciting?), i can at least be comforted by the fact that when my richer and more successful friend gets tanked she fantasizes about backpacking in central america... with me.
then there's the following saga: on the way to work the other day i heard this mysterious squeaking that sounded like it was coming from under the passenger seat of my car. the squeaking didn't line up with the other sounds my car was making and my extremely rodent-phobic self had the fleeting (but panic-stricken) thought of, "dear god please don't let there be a mouse in my car." i managed to get this thought out of my head ("how could a mouse have jumped up into my car") and forgot about it. until... a few days (weeks?) later i was driving to work (again) and was suddenly overwhelmed by an absolutely foul stench. "dear god," i thought, "please don't let there be a dead mouse in my car." i couldn't even bring myself to look, and decided that i'd rather live in denial. "maybe i can just never lose anything ever again and therefore never have to go looking under the seats in my car." come to find out a couple of days later that said foul stench plagued the ENTIRE city of chicago that day and that numerous people had called in with "it smells like something died" complaints. the source of the smell remains a mystery, but i'm fairly confidant that it wasn't emanating from my car.
so while i may not have won the lottery or been chosen to compete on the amazing race (another fantasy of my above-mentioned drunk dialing friend), and while i still can't pull off the pointy- toed-faux-crocodile- shoes-with-designer-jeans-and- slutty-camisole look, i can take pleasure in having convinced my blogmate that she NEEDED the strapless pink party dress... and that i can go back to losing stuff.
for example, the apparent fact that drunk dialing takes on a whole new meaning once you're married. the other day i got a late night phone call (by which i mean 10PM, but for us that's late) from one of my more established, married friends (who had obviously thrown back a few) to the tune of, "will you pleeeeeeease come to costa rica with me someday? i really want to go and you know that blankety-blank [husband] won't ever come to costa rica with me. pleeeeeease???" so while i probably shouldn't hold my breath for marriage to a clown or an indian neurologist (side rant: is that really my idea of exciting?), i can at least be comforted by the fact that when my richer and more successful friend gets tanked she fantasizes about backpacking in central america... with me.
then there's the following saga: on the way to work the other day i heard this mysterious squeaking that sounded like it was coming from under the passenger seat of my car. the squeaking didn't line up with the other sounds my car was making and my extremely rodent-phobic self had the fleeting (but panic-stricken) thought of, "dear god please don't let there be a mouse in my car." i managed to get this thought out of my head ("how could a mouse have jumped up into my car") and forgot about it. until... a few days (weeks?) later i was driving to work (again) and was suddenly overwhelmed by an absolutely foul stench. "dear god," i thought, "please don't let there be a dead mouse in my car." i couldn't even bring myself to look, and decided that i'd rather live in denial. "maybe i can just never lose anything ever again and therefore never have to go looking under the seats in my car." come to find out a couple of days later that said foul stench plagued the ENTIRE city of chicago that day and that numerous people had called in with "it smells like something died" complaints. the source of the smell remains a mystery, but i'm fairly confidant that it wasn't emanating from my car.
so while i may not have won the lottery or been chosen to compete on the amazing race (another fantasy of my above-mentioned drunk dialing friend), and while i still can't pull off the pointy- toed-faux-crocodile- shoes-with-designer-jeans-and- slutty-camisole look, i can take pleasure in having convinced my blogmate that she NEEDED the strapless pink party dress... and that i can go back to losing stuff.
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