continuing in the year-end wrap-up, i tried to think of some more liberated-woman things i learned this year, but since i'm still so excited about the new make-up brushes that my blogmate just got me for christmas, i'm not feeling ready to blog about power tools. i have my very own personal drill that i bought myself before mb ever moved here, but that was a few years ago and i've still never actually used it. so instead, how about this?
things i did NOT learn during 2007.
1. "no, thank you; i'm still full from lunch." this seems appropriate since it's christmas morning and i'm still going full-force at the pile of cookies and ham. to be fair, the ham is has a honey-mustard-bourbon glaze on it, and the cookies, well... you know.
2. how to better assert myself on the household netflix queue: why is it that i have suggested lots of movies, yet the only things that show up are beerfest and historical epics about shooting and bleakness? after some whining, the muppets have finally made their way to the top, but overall the year could have been more movie-successful.
3. how to make it past the beginner level of guitar hero 3: to be fair, we don't have a wii or other game system apart from our awesome atari-flashback. and the only time i played was at my brother's place one weekend on his wii system. but upon hearing that my brother- and sister-in-law are enjoying their christmas gift of gh3 - so much so that bill ended up in the er getting a cortisone shot in his shoulder from his battle with slash - i want in on more of the action.
4. how to use a pressure cooker without explosions: see prior post by my blogmate re: me and my kitchen being covered in turkey stock and parsley. i know that i have to try again, but haven't done so yet.
5. how to regain my ability on a mountain bike: seems that i have gotten older and wussier this year. most mountain bike outings have resulted in whining and fear. what happened? bikemyers has been working on me to try out cyclocross, for its off-road biking without the singletrack and bouncing on rocks and such. we shall see.
i'm sure there are more, but your turn first.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
spring cleaning comes early this year
maybe it's not in the holiday spirit to amuse yourself (and hopefully your loyal blog readership) at someone else's expense... but so it goes.
it's not clear to me why we haven't already told you about this - perhaps because it has smoldered along for so many years it just hasn't occurred to us. but in light of the newest chapter, here we go. please bear with the back-story:
my blogmate and i share our office and its three computers with 5 other people. needless to say, the social benefits of working in such close quarters are thwarted by the impossibility of getting anything done. the sad thing is, we actually have another office that was left in a state of abandon and neglect until a few weeks ago when my blogmate, bikemyers, and i decided to take it back.
for years nobody has wanted to work there because it resides next to the facility that breeds lab mice for the entire medical center. mice breading, as it turns out, is an unbearably smelly business. but the mouse factory will soon move to another location and as operations wind down the horrible smell from across the hall is less and less of an issue.
the problem, however, is that we have a squatter. meet the mystery enshrouded e., a german woman famous for her astonishingly pungent body odor, who, despite having comleted her training her almost 4 years ago continues to roam the dark halls of our department working on some kind of "research." we don't think she's on the payroll, and we're pretty sure she doesn't have a functioning ID. but there she is, every afternoon, acting so creepy that none of us want to go anywhere near the office. she's so creepy, in fact, that we can't seem to get anyone up the hierarchical ladder to help us evict her. even when she used to articulate coherent thoughts she was always such a mumbler that no one could really understand her, and back then we were always distracted by the b.o. and the concern that she actually lived in the hospital. in spite of some reassuring signs that she does, in fact, have an apartment with a working shower, the creepy factor is rising - one of our colleagues found her in the ladies room, in the dark, huddled in the dark. another found her in the elevator, rocking back and forth, muttering to herself.
as we began thinking of ways to take back the office the feeding back we got from the higher ups was less than encouraging. something like, "don't do it. you'll be sorry you ever got involved." perhaps we should have heeded the warning, but instead it only fueled our indignance. you might think it's tragic and sad that we have such an obviously unstable lost soul amongst us, but it's not like people haven't tried to help her. and besides, can't she be crazy in someone else's office?
we went straight for the jugular. we marched into the office shoved her coat and bag off into a corner (even more mysterious than what she does in our office is what she's doing when she's somewhere else in the building), and promptly dumped the entire contents of the office into the dumbster we stole from down the hall. judging from 1999 doc films poster on the wall no one had done any major office purging for a long time, and there was dust enough to prove it. after the purge and wipe down we proudly marged out of the office, leaving mounds of trash outside the door, and didn't say a word the the bewildered e. when we passed her in the hall. we weren't there to see her reaction - if you're teetering on the brink of insanity it can't help any to come back from a coffee break to find your workspace entirely gutted. but again, so it goes.
we're hoping the great office purge of 2007 will send the right signal - said signal reading something like, "don't let the door hit you on your way out." but we won't go down without a fight. our boss may not care that we have a maladjusted, stinky squatter in our office, but we're pretty sure campus security will.
bah humbug.
it's not clear to me why we haven't already told you about this - perhaps because it has smoldered along for so many years it just hasn't occurred to us. but in light of the newest chapter, here we go. please bear with the back-story:
my blogmate and i share our office and its three computers with 5 other people. needless to say, the social benefits of working in such close quarters are thwarted by the impossibility of getting anything done. the sad thing is, we actually have another office that was left in a state of abandon and neglect until a few weeks ago when my blogmate, bikemyers, and i decided to take it back.
for years nobody has wanted to work there because it resides next to the facility that breeds lab mice for the entire medical center. mice breading, as it turns out, is an unbearably smelly business. but the mouse factory will soon move to another location and as operations wind down the horrible smell from across the hall is less and less of an issue.
the problem, however, is that we have a squatter. meet the mystery enshrouded e., a german woman famous for her astonishingly pungent body odor, who, despite having comleted her training her almost 4 years ago continues to roam the dark halls of our department working on some kind of "research." we don't think she's on the payroll, and we're pretty sure she doesn't have a functioning ID. but there she is, every afternoon, acting so creepy that none of us want to go anywhere near the office. she's so creepy, in fact, that we can't seem to get anyone up the hierarchical ladder to help us evict her. even when she used to articulate coherent thoughts she was always such a mumbler that no one could really understand her, and back then we were always distracted by the b.o. and the concern that she actually lived in the hospital. in spite of some reassuring signs that she does, in fact, have an apartment with a working shower, the creepy factor is rising - one of our colleagues found her in the ladies room, in the dark, huddled in the dark. another found her in the elevator, rocking back and forth, muttering to herself.
as we began thinking of ways to take back the office the feeding back we got from the higher ups was less than encouraging. something like, "don't do it. you'll be sorry you ever got involved." perhaps we should have heeded the warning, but instead it only fueled our indignance. you might think it's tragic and sad that we have such an obviously unstable lost soul amongst us, but it's not like people haven't tried to help her. and besides, can't she be crazy in someone else's office?
we went straight for the jugular. we marched into the office shoved her coat and bag off into a corner (even more mysterious than what she does in our office is what she's doing when she's somewhere else in the building), and promptly dumped the entire contents of the office into the dumbster we stole from down the hall. judging from 1999 doc films poster on the wall no one had done any major office purging for a long time, and there was dust enough to prove it. after the purge and wipe down we proudly marged out of the office, leaving mounds of trash outside the door, and didn't say a word the the bewildered e. when we passed her in the hall. we weren't there to see her reaction - if you're teetering on the brink of insanity it can't help any to come back from a coffee break to find your workspace entirely gutted. but again, so it goes.
we're hoping the great office purge of 2007 will send the right signal - said signal reading something like, "don't let the door hit you on your way out." but we won't go down without a fight. our boss may not care that we have a maladjusted, stinky squatter in our office, but we're pretty sure campus security will.
bah humbug.
Friday, December 21, 2007
things that changed my life in 2007
time to start the end-of-the-year wrap-up (crazy, isn't it?) -- another year older, another year wiser... here are some things i've learned about this year:
1. pete's fresh market: this place is awesome. cut my grocery bill in half. avocados for 40 cents apiece all year round = fresh guacamole every week. phenomenal.
2. eyelash curler: i had one in grad school, but post-wedding have learned that a little more open-looking eyes makes everything better. it's kind of an extension to my 2003 discovery that adding a little mascara after being up for 24 hours makes you look more awake and alert.
3. bronzer: several times, when counseling frantic friends trying to drop a few pounds before a winter vacation, i have suggested that they stop worrying about what they can't change in 2 weeks and start focusing on what they *can* change, with the help of a tanning bed. a little color is better. until this year, though, i had no idea that the same help can just be brushed on in the morning! evens out the weird blotchy thing that happens to fair skin in winter.
4. good rum: my blogmate and i brought back lots of this in 2005, but until recently i'd only been using it for rum and cokes. not that i would ever say anything bad about rum and coke; it's delicious! but on vacation in curacao this year, we learned from a german hotel manager that venezuela makes delicious rum that can be sipped like a cognac. wow, is that amazing. to be fair, i might have learned this one earlier, but since mb and his friend nick blew through our entire bottle of admiral rodney's barrel-aged rum from st. lucia in one night and i didn't get to have any, that puts this on my 2007-education list.
5. more stores on roosevelt: i am so excited about the north-and-clybourn-esque transformation of the south loop! bring on progress. there are PARKING LOTS where i can take a CAR to get STUFF. compared to my first days in chicago getting lost every time i tried to leave hyde park, this is phenomenal. target, world market, linens n things, panera, dsw (ahhh, shoes...) home depot. errands no longer take a full day.
hmm, more to be continued. so far this is sounding pretty girly. i'm ok with that, but i'll have to think up some power tools or something that also changed my life this year. what about you? learned anything good?
1. pete's fresh market: this place is awesome. cut my grocery bill in half. avocados for 40 cents apiece all year round = fresh guacamole every week. phenomenal.
2. eyelash curler: i had one in grad school, but post-wedding have learned that a little more open-looking eyes makes everything better. it's kind of an extension to my 2003 discovery that adding a little mascara after being up for 24 hours makes you look more awake and alert.
3. bronzer: several times, when counseling frantic friends trying to drop a few pounds before a winter vacation, i have suggested that they stop worrying about what they can't change in 2 weeks and start focusing on what they *can* change, with the help of a tanning bed. a little color is better. until this year, though, i had no idea that the same help can just be brushed on in the morning! evens out the weird blotchy thing that happens to fair skin in winter.
4. good rum: my blogmate and i brought back lots of this in 2005, but until recently i'd only been using it for rum and cokes. not that i would ever say anything bad about rum and coke; it's delicious! but on vacation in curacao this year, we learned from a german hotel manager that venezuela makes delicious rum that can be sipped like a cognac. wow, is that amazing. to be fair, i might have learned this one earlier, but since mb and his friend nick blew through our entire bottle of admiral rodney's barrel-aged rum from st. lucia in one night and i didn't get to have any, that puts this on my 2007-education list.
5. more stores on roosevelt: i am so excited about the north-and-clybourn-esque transformation of the south loop! bring on progress. there are PARKING LOTS where i can take a CAR to get STUFF. compared to my first days in chicago getting lost every time i tried to leave hyde park, this is phenomenal. target, world market, linens n things, panera, dsw (ahhh, shoes...) home depot. errands no longer take a full day.
hmm, more to be continued. so far this is sounding pretty girly. i'm ok with that, but i'll have to think up some power tools or something that also changed my life this year. what about you? learned anything good?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
merry bikemas to all, and to all a good night...
the snow is on the ground here in chicago, the radio stations are a month into their all-christmas-tunes all-the-time routine, and stores are packed. despite the fact that mb and i don't have kids and aren't spending the holiday morning around a grandma's tree, i really feel like we're managing to create a pretty festive atmosphere for ourselves this season... just on our own terms. score one for tradition, and score one for, well, something else?
- we have a little fake tree, gifted from my parents a few years ago, but left it in storage this year in favor of our second annual "bikemas tree" - pine garland and lights strung up on the bike rack in the dining room, base covered in a snowflake tablecloth from tj maxx. two dimensional saves space in our not-huge apartment, plus less decorating.
- we're a little late getting into the holiday special-meals department, but trimmed the bikemas tree with the help of whole foods (the yuppie seal is now officially broken -- mb walked in for the first time and looked at me quizzically: "i'm sorry, why do you object to this place? it's beautiful!") in our defense, did you know you can get a smoked beef brisket sandwich at whole foods for $4?
- i was lucky enough to attend a lovely three-dimensional tree-trimming get-together at ck's house, complete with home-baked bread, the best soup EVER, yummy wine and good company (and a beautiful tree). we reminisced fondly about other holidays in the city, such as attending an easter vigil ceremony chosen for its proximity to an irish pub (which turned out to be a good thing: after 1 1/2 hours when the lights were still off and the candle wax was threatening to burn our hands, we snuck out and celebrated some very special easter pints).
- we don't have holiday music on cd, but we do have yahoo music engine with its 15 different holiday stations; cookies last night were baked to the "scrooge christmas" station, with such festive holiday tunes as the classic "grandma got run over by a reindeer" and new favorite "daddy drank all our christmas money again."
hope your holiday season is festive on your own terms.
- we have a little fake tree, gifted from my parents a few years ago, but left it in storage this year in favor of our second annual "bikemas tree" - pine garland and lights strung up on the bike rack in the dining room, base covered in a snowflake tablecloth from tj maxx. two dimensional saves space in our not-huge apartment, plus less decorating.
- we're a little late getting into the holiday special-meals department, but trimmed the bikemas tree with the help of whole foods (the yuppie seal is now officially broken -- mb walked in for the first time and looked at me quizzically: "i'm sorry, why do you object to this place? it's beautiful!") in our defense, did you know you can get a smoked beef brisket sandwich at whole foods for $4?
- i was lucky enough to attend a lovely three-dimensional tree-trimming get-together at ck's house, complete with home-baked bread, the best soup EVER, yummy wine and good company (and a beautiful tree). we reminisced fondly about other holidays in the city, such as attending an easter vigil ceremony chosen for its proximity to an irish pub (which turned out to be a good thing: after 1 1/2 hours when the lights were still off and the candle wax was threatening to burn our hands, we snuck out and celebrated some very special easter pints).
- we don't have holiday music on cd, but we do have yahoo music engine with its 15 different holiday stations; cookies last night were baked to the "scrooge christmas" station, with such festive holiday tunes as the classic "grandma got run over by a reindeer" and new favorite "daddy drank all our christmas money again."
hope your holiday season is festive on your own terms.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
the fall and rise and fall and rise of women's lib
being a girl is really fun.
tuesday morning i finally worked up the nerve to email to gracious hostess of the all-you-can-dreidel party (see previous post) to inquire about the cute non-neurologist and also fess up about the unfiltered foot-in-the mouth moment i had with another boy at the part whom she may or may not be dating (see previous rants about men and their conflicted emotions).
while i maintain that it wasn't entirely appropriate for this person to give me the unsolicited information that he knew the hostess from match.com, i wish i had kept my cool. instead i blurted out a typically unfiltered, "oh, you're that guy," especially since he wasn't that guy. i don't think i gave too much away, and he seemed pretty amused, but boy do i suck as a wingman.
so i apologized to the lovely hostess for my striking lack of tact and asked what she could dish up about the cute non-neurologist. i also emailed another friend who was at the party who seemed to know incriminating things about the brother of the cute-non-neurologist.
the wave of gossipy emails was followed by a frenzied episode of baking, after which i packed up a loaf zucchini bread and headed out for a boot-shopping date with my good blogmate. sadly there was no boot-luck for the big footed - apparently it's too late in the boot-season to get anything bigger than a size 6.5, but the day wasn't a total loss. we may not have sassy boots, but we did embark on the grate office clean-out of 2007 (i'd explain, but i think that story deserves a post of its own), and headed off to the gym for some fairly robust weight-lifting. i admit that benching the bar isn't exactly manly, but it's way tougher than the eliptical machine or assisted pull-ups.
i left the gym feeling pretty tough and liberated... but i got home to a slew of responses to my various emails, one containing a link to the cute non-neurologists j-date page. it's certainly true that i have all sorts of objections to j-date, but it seems that said objections don't stop me from voyeuristically looking at targeted profiles, or forwarding said profiles to my blogmate for further inspection. i also got separate emails from the girl who knows his brother and her husband, divulging the rest of the dish.
i had already had a pretty nice day of gossip, baking, organizing, and weight-lifting and i still had dinner and the lemonheads concert ahead. i'll admit that the pasta dinner and raspberry martini that preceded the show were pretty girly, and that i did my share of girly shrieking upon the site of the still-beautiful evan dando (stay tuned for another future post about reunion lemonheads concerts and the people who attend them), but there was absolutely nothing girly about my concert date and i quickly jump-starting her car before the show without blowing anything up.
so my muscles are sore, my house is full of baked goods, my friend's car starts and the office is clean. now all i need is a pair of boots and a date.
tuesday morning i finally worked up the nerve to email to gracious hostess of the all-you-can-dreidel party (see previous post) to inquire about the cute non-neurologist and also fess up about the unfiltered foot-in-the mouth moment i had with another boy at the part whom she may or may not be dating (see previous rants about men and their conflicted emotions).
while i maintain that it wasn't entirely appropriate for this person to give me the unsolicited information that he knew the hostess from match.com, i wish i had kept my cool. instead i blurted out a typically unfiltered, "oh, you're that guy," especially since he wasn't that guy. i don't think i gave too much away, and he seemed pretty amused, but boy do i suck as a wingman.
so i apologized to the lovely hostess for my striking lack of tact and asked what she could dish up about the cute non-neurologist. i also emailed another friend who was at the party who seemed to know incriminating things about the brother of the cute-non-neurologist.
the wave of gossipy emails was followed by a frenzied episode of baking, after which i packed up a loaf zucchini bread and headed out for a boot-shopping date with my good blogmate. sadly there was no boot-luck for the big footed - apparently it's too late in the boot-season to get anything bigger than a size 6.5, but the day wasn't a total loss. we may not have sassy boots, but we did embark on the grate office clean-out of 2007 (i'd explain, but i think that story deserves a post of its own), and headed off to the gym for some fairly robust weight-lifting. i admit that benching the bar isn't exactly manly, but it's way tougher than the eliptical machine or assisted pull-ups.
i left the gym feeling pretty tough and liberated... but i got home to a slew of responses to my various emails, one containing a link to the cute non-neurologists j-date page. it's certainly true that i have all sorts of objections to j-date, but it seems that said objections don't stop me from voyeuristically looking at targeted profiles, or forwarding said profiles to my blogmate for further inspection. i also got separate emails from the girl who knows his brother and her husband, divulging the rest of the dish.
i had already had a pretty nice day of gossip, baking, organizing, and weight-lifting and i still had dinner and the lemonheads concert ahead. i'll admit that the pasta dinner and raspberry martini that preceded the show were pretty girly, and that i did my share of girly shrieking upon the site of the still-beautiful evan dando (stay tuned for another future post about reunion lemonheads concerts and the people who attend them), but there was absolutely nothing girly about my concert date and i quickly jump-starting her car before the show without blowing anything up.
so my muscles are sore, my house is full of baked goods, my friend's car starts and the office is clean. now all i need is a pair of boots and a date.
Monday, December 10, 2007
it's all about who you know
this may seem like a no-brainer, but it's really nice having lots of friends. it really takes the edge off of things like working-all-the-time or freezing-ass-cold-outside. my partners in crime come in many flavors, but the unifying theme seems to be that they're all social and fun and up for anything - a lovely combination, if you think about it.
you need good wingpeople for events like the museum of contemporary art's first fridays. after years of talking about it, i finally managed to think about it at the right time and rounded a group of people to check it out. i was a little sad to go without my blogmate and mb (who were off gallivanting around the caribbean), as the standing plan had been for the two of them so serve not so much as wingpeople, but as home base, so that when we got tired of prowling there were friendly faces to whom we could report our findings.
friday night at the MCA is exactly what you think it would be. over-priced mediocre wine in plastic cups, DJ spinning house music, lots of beautiful people in fabulous clothes... and as it turns out lots of not-so-beautiful people whose attempts to dress fabulously fell a little short. after a good deal of initial apprehension, i felt much better after i had noticed the striking amount of non-fabulousness. given how many people showed up (alot, especially if you consider how cold it was friday night), i also got a little bit of a boost from being in the smaller cohort of people who managed to put down our drinks to actually inspect some of the art.
the highlight was most definitely tino sehgal's live-action "kiss," featuring 2 dancers engaged in a performance arty PG-13 makeout session. in and of itself it was pretty interesting, and you could station yourself in a corner such that you also got a pretty good view of all the museum visitors trying to figure out if what they were watching art or drunk people. also topping my list of favorites was the giant multi-media oyster-shell on hinges, guarded by some sort of oyster-shell natzi who would only let you climb in and listen to the waves crashing on the inside if you took your shoes off and looked relaxed enough to appreciate the full effect. finally, there was the room full of rock concert bootleg videos, projected in black and white onto weird slanty screens. it's not that it really broadened my horizons to watch silent, slow motion footage of a non-descript 70s punk rocker in leather pants masturbating on stage, but peoples' reactions were quite varied and very funny.
all in all we called our first dabble at first fridays a success and pinky swore to go back when the weather was warmer and we didn't have to battle it out in the coat check line when it was over.
i finished my weekend on sunday night at a very different kind of function, as my friend j.s. graciously hosted all of her jewish friends for brisket, latkes, and all-you-can-dreidel. i'm sure there's a whole circuit of jewish professional singles functions, but as conscientious objector to such functions i have little experience with what is, at least to me, a pretty strange social phenomenon.
i found myself sandwiched at the end of the kitchen island between a rather slimy neurologist who wanted to talk to me much more than i wanted to talk to him, and an attractive and rather slick non-neurologist who wanted to talk to me much less than i wanted to talk to him. the cute one on the right at least absorbed that it was probably his job to save me from the greasy one on the left, but he couldn't quite commit enough to the conversation and as such things just got incrementally more awkward by the minute. i'm not sure how the other people at the party were faring (they at least seem to know each other better than i knew any of them), but when the hostess plopped the piece-de-resistance "better than sex" cake on the table it was like someone had hit the reset button, and suddenly we were all in the same boat of awkwardness together.
when you take a room full of people who are all tipsy and willing to say slightly inappropriate things about "better than sex" cake strange things are bound to happen. there was alot of thoughtful chewing, i think because the consensus was that "better than sex" appears to be a relative thing. trying to be coy with the boy on the right while specifically not encouraging the boy on the left was really really hard, and in the end i gave up and went to play dreidel with the hostess.
i'm thankful for the many social opportunities i am afforded by virtue to knowing the right people. stay tuned for my next installment, in which i report on my rekindled romance with evan dando of the lemonheads, and the always delicious chocolate buffet at the peninsula hotel. thanks for listening.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
identity
as i continue to enjoy a satisfying, if not silly e-relationship with someone who i hope will became my next conquest in the online dating game (should we ever be able to coordinate schedules and go out on a second date), i continue to ponder the way information is shared and misinterpreted in this day and age.
one of my big gripes with the internet dating scene has always been that seemingly anyone can perpetuate the illusion of being funny, charismatic and well-adjusted, given enough time and help from dictionary.com. that's not entirely true - i'm constantly impressed at how many creepy, inarticulate and/or error-laden messages i receive. but it may well be that even those people have managed to incrementally improve their images by putting their misguided, maladjusted thoughts on paper. the point is, we're all able to up the ante a little while under the protective cloak of digital communication. if you don't believe me come buy me a beer and you'll find out that i'm substantially less articulate in person than i am on this blog.
the pitfalls, i'm sure you all know, are numerous. messages that we thought were funny, coy, or sarcastic are often received as being snide, cryptic, or just plain mean. and then of course there's the whole problem of accidental recipients. a word of advice, my friends: after you stop seeing someone, no matter how amicable the separation, take him off your phone contact list that very minute, before you have a chance to do something stupid or careless, like, say, inadavertently send him a "happy thanksgiving from the alamo" text message. also, no matter how annoying you think cutesy IM symbols are, the occasional, strategically placed smiley face goes a long way.
perhaps the reason that i hold out some hope for the boy-du-jour is that we seem to have similar thresholds for e-cynicism. it's nice when your sarcasm is well received, especially when you're giving up some of your best material.
if this seems contrived and icky to you may i suggest that we're not really doing so much better when we're up close and personal. my blogmate and i look alike to the extent that we are both tall, brown-haired, white girls, but i really think the physical similarities end there. and while we have the same job, so do 5 other people in our office. i understand that to many of our coworkers we really are interchangeable, but you'd think after a year and half we'd at least be recognizable as two separate people. this argument seems to be lost on our secretary, who continues to page one of us looking for the other, puts our mail in the other's box, and today had this conversation with me.
me: hi, it's jo-na.
secretary: hi jo-na. what can i do for you?
me: you paged me, i'm returning your call.
secretary: why did i call you?
me: i think you wanted to talk about the meal vouchers.
secretary: oh, i talked to jo-na already, she told me what you need.
me: but i'm jo-na.
secretary: oh.
me: did you talk to my blogmate?
secretary: probably.
live or across a screen, we're all just data points.
one of my big gripes with the internet dating scene has always been that seemingly anyone can perpetuate the illusion of being funny, charismatic and well-adjusted, given enough time and help from dictionary.com. that's not entirely true - i'm constantly impressed at how many creepy, inarticulate and/or error-laden messages i receive. but it may well be that even those people have managed to incrementally improve their images by putting their misguided, maladjusted thoughts on paper. the point is, we're all able to up the ante a little while under the protective cloak of digital communication. if you don't believe me come buy me a beer and you'll find out that i'm substantially less articulate in person than i am on this blog.
the pitfalls, i'm sure you all know, are numerous. messages that we thought were funny, coy, or sarcastic are often received as being snide, cryptic, or just plain mean. and then of course there's the whole problem of accidental recipients. a word of advice, my friends: after you stop seeing someone, no matter how amicable the separation, take him off your phone contact list that very minute, before you have a chance to do something stupid or careless, like, say, inadavertently send him a "happy thanksgiving from the alamo" text message. also, no matter how annoying you think cutesy IM symbols are, the occasional, strategically placed smiley face goes a long way.
perhaps the reason that i hold out some hope for the boy-du-jour is that we seem to have similar thresholds for e-cynicism. it's nice when your sarcasm is well received, especially when you're giving up some of your best material.
if this seems contrived and icky to you may i suggest that we're not really doing so much better when we're up close and personal. my blogmate and i look alike to the extent that we are both tall, brown-haired, white girls, but i really think the physical similarities end there. and while we have the same job, so do 5 other people in our office. i understand that to many of our coworkers we really are interchangeable, but you'd think after a year and half we'd at least be recognizable as two separate people. this argument seems to be lost on our secretary, who continues to page one of us looking for the other, puts our mail in the other's box, and today had this conversation with me.
me: hi, it's jo-na.
secretary: hi jo-na. what can i do for you?
me: you paged me, i'm returning your call.
secretary: why did i call you?
me: i think you wanted to talk about the meal vouchers.
secretary: oh, i talked to jo-na already, she told me what you need.
me: but i'm jo-na.
secretary: oh.
me: did you talk to my blogmate?
secretary: probably.
live or across a screen, we're all just data points.
happy belated ribs-giving
i hope you all had a nice and food-ful holiday weekend, wherever you were. i celebrated my triumphant first-annual moving-the-holidays-for-my-personal-convenience, as mb and i were successfully able to convince both sets of parents to join us in chicago for thanksgiving rather than embarking on the usual drive all over wisconsin. for the record, there are excellent deals on hotel rooms around thanksgiving, should the need ever arise for you. we gave thanks for our health and safe travels, for brett favre's record-breaking season, for the nightly free happy hour drinks at our parents' hotel, and for thanksgiving dinner held at restaurants (weber grill) that serve both delicious turkey dinners as well as the traditional baby-back ribs that i'm sure our forefathers would have eaten had they had a good dry rub.
over dinners and drinks, our conversation turned to the myriad of excellent but fake stories debunked on snopes.com -- i really think that something about those stories is so compelling that it's really hard for any of us to believe that they're false. mb was patiently explaining to his parents that no, starbucks is not refusing to send coffee to the soldiers in iraq, and no, microsoft is not sending out huge rebate checks for sending around junk email, and to soften the blow, told them that lots of us have fallen prey to myths. but as he opened with "this is not a true story, but it's funny and [my blogmate] was very sad to discover it's a myth:" and proceeded to tell the penguin story. my mother hung on almost every word... except the several parts where he said it wasn't a true story. "wait - which aquarium was this at? how old was the child? how did he get the penguin in his backpack? what did the aquarium do?"
so it turns out that penguins are just so lovable that we can't believe that a precocious little child-of-a-friend-of-a-friend didn't steal one from the shedd. not so with senior citizens... nobody at the dinner table was willing to believe my story about the stds going around the villages retirement community in florida.
over dinners and drinks, our conversation turned to the myriad of excellent but fake stories debunked on snopes.com -- i really think that something about those stories is so compelling that it's really hard for any of us to believe that they're false. mb was patiently explaining to his parents that no, starbucks is not refusing to send coffee to the soldiers in iraq, and no, microsoft is not sending out huge rebate checks for sending around junk email, and to soften the blow, told them that lots of us have fallen prey to myths. but as he opened with "this is not a true story, but it's funny and [my blogmate] was very sad to discover it's a myth:" and proceeded to tell the penguin story. my mother hung on almost every word... except the several parts where he said it wasn't a true story. "wait - which aquarium was this at? how old was the child? how did he get the penguin in his backpack? what did the aquarium do?"
so it turns out that penguins are just so lovable that we can't believe that a precocious little child-of-a-friend-of-a-friend didn't steal one from the shedd. not so with senior citizens... nobody at the dinner table was willing to believe my story about the stds going around the villages retirement community in florida.
Friday, November 16, 2007
good clean fun
i don't usually send out mass junk emails, but as i gleefully sent the sneezing baby panda youtube link to everyone i know this morning it became quite obvious to me that one of two things is going on: 1) i have gone soft in my old age or 2) i'm a sea of contradictions. evidence: the last time i sent out a youtube link to everyone i know it was dick in a box.
don't get me wrong. i think there's a time and place for poor taste... usually concentrated in my daily 30 minute fix of the family guy. that said, i'm growing quite weary of the standard, "family centered" sitcoms which, under a very thin veil of propriety, are chock-full of crass humor not really appropriate for families. it goes like this: our morbidly obese hero siddles up the bar with his shifty friends and through a series of winks and nudges conveys a sentiment to the tune of, "hey, it's my birthday today, and you know what that means... it's the one day of the year that my ordinarily frigid (but disproportionately thin, attractive, and stylish) wife releases her inner porn star."
so i guess it's no wonder that i've started to appreciate things that, while funny, truly are benign. hence my love of the sneezing panda, and of penguin in the backpack story. from the moment i heard it i LOVED the story of the 4 year old smuggling the penguin home from the aquarium, and delightedly repeated it to everyone i knew, never for a moment suspecting that it was urban legend. now i am heartbroken, jaded, and sad. i really enjoyed having such a funny story to tell that was appropriate for all audiences, that offended no one, and always made people laugh. i suppose i could continue telling it, but it's just not the same. this demoralzing event has left me so cynical, in fact, that i even have to question the sneezing panda. is it all just a contrived hoax, slipped into youtube to sucker gullible types like myself?
while i remain indignant about the factitious penguin story, and am tickled pink to have been shown the sneezing panda video, i do feel compelled to announce my steadfast belief that no woman actually named her twin babies lemonjello and orangejello. no fewer than 10 people have told me that they personally encountered these infants. this, my friends, really is urban legend. it's a story told coast to coast, that, if true, would certainly bump lemonjello and orangejello above jacob and emily as the most popular baby names in america. i don't buy it.
don't get me wrong. i think there's a time and place for poor taste... usually concentrated in my daily 30 minute fix of the family guy. that said, i'm growing quite weary of the standard, "family centered" sitcoms which, under a very thin veil of propriety, are chock-full of crass humor not really appropriate for families. it goes like this: our morbidly obese hero siddles up the bar with his shifty friends and through a series of winks and nudges conveys a sentiment to the tune of, "hey, it's my birthday today, and you know what that means... it's the one day of the year that my ordinarily frigid (but disproportionately thin, attractive, and stylish) wife releases her inner porn star."
so i guess it's no wonder that i've started to appreciate things that, while funny, truly are benign. hence my love of the sneezing panda, and of penguin in the backpack story. from the moment i heard it i LOVED the story of the 4 year old smuggling the penguin home from the aquarium, and delightedly repeated it to everyone i knew, never for a moment suspecting that it was urban legend. now i am heartbroken, jaded, and sad. i really enjoyed having such a funny story to tell that was appropriate for all audiences, that offended no one, and always made people laugh. i suppose i could continue telling it, but it's just not the same. this demoralzing event has left me so cynical, in fact, that i even have to question the sneezing panda. is it all just a contrived hoax, slipped into youtube to sucker gullible types like myself?
while i remain indignant about the factitious penguin story, and am tickled pink to have been shown the sneezing panda video, i do feel compelled to announce my steadfast belief that no woman actually named her twin babies lemonjello and orangejello. no fewer than 10 people have told me that they personally encountered these infants. this, my friends, really is urban legend. it's a story told coast to coast, that, if true, would certainly bump lemonjello and orangejello above jacob and emily as the most popular baby names in america. i don't buy it.
Monday, November 12, 2007
out in the open
now that you've all been made aware of the existence of the secret blog, i'll tell you that my anemic blog participation has been largely due to the fact that everything that happens to me is too boring or inappropriate for public blogging. as such you've all been buffered from most of my grad-school related rants, as well the awkward, but ultimately un-interesting play-by-plays of my current round of internet dating. you can thank my good blogmate for that one - she's really taking one for the team.
that said, the harris school of puplic policy really does deserve to be mocked in a public forum. as our sociologist laureat recently put it, "while it's true that medical residency is, in many ways, like high school, harris actually is high school." lucky for me i already have friends and self-esteem (internet dating not withstanding) and as such was not as hurt as some of my classmates upon the discovery of the underground, by-invitation-only party scene... policy students gone wild, if you will. apparently there's a subset of our 120 student cohort that has taken to raucous kickball playing and drinking, but unless you're in the M.P.P 2009 group on facebook you're not actually invited to the "oh my god dude, i got so wasted" festivities held at jimmy's woodlawn tap and other fine hyde park establishments. unfortunately for the cool kids, facebook isn't nearly as anonymous as even the more public filterless blog, and as it turns out, these clandestine get-togethers aren't really much of a secret, as anyone who wants to can find out all about them and even pull up the pictures. don't let on that you know about it though, lest you get chided by the group's alpha girl (known previously to me only as the girl who actually interrupted econ class to ask "what's a widget?") - "oh, those were for our eyes only."
as it turns out, the internet has many functions beyond its use as a not-so-secret slam book and a torture weapon for single 30 year old women. i learned this last week, when a round of pre-blind-date non-sexual foreplay emails in which we dared each other to drink more honestly made me feel much less nervous about the whole thing.
score one for cyberspace.
that said, the harris school of puplic policy really does deserve to be mocked in a public forum. as our sociologist laureat recently put it, "while it's true that medical residency is, in many ways, like high school, harris actually is high school." lucky for me i already have friends and self-esteem (internet dating not withstanding) and as such was not as hurt as some of my classmates upon the discovery of the underground, by-invitation-only party scene... policy students gone wild, if you will. apparently there's a subset of our 120 student cohort that has taken to raucous kickball playing and drinking, but unless you're in the M.P.P 2009 group on facebook you're not actually invited to the "oh my god dude, i got so wasted" festivities held at jimmy's woodlawn tap and other fine hyde park establishments. unfortunately for the cool kids, facebook isn't nearly as anonymous as even the more public filterless blog, and as it turns out, these clandestine get-togethers aren't really much of a secret, as anyone who wants to can find out all about them and even pull up the pictures. don't let on that you know about it though, lest you get chided by the group's alpha girl (known previously to me only as the girl who actually interrupted econ class to ask "what's a widget?") - "oh, those were for our eyes only."
as it turns out, the internet has many functions beyond its use as a not-so-secret slam book and a torture weapon for single 30 year old women. i learned this last week, when a round of pre-blind-date non-sexual foreplay emails in which we dared each other to drink more honestly made me feel much less nervous about the whole thing.
score one for cyberspace.
Friday, November 09, 2007
all in your head?
in the almost three years that my blogmate and i have been writing this blog, we've had periods of being more or less prolific, more or less funny, more or less sarcastic... and probably more or less cryptic. sometimes things happen that, although we've de-identified ourselves to some extent, we just feel like don't have their proper place on the internet. so they pop up in passing references, or in, say, a couple of weeks of blog silence. (apparently we're about to start fixing said blog-silence with a new guest blogger feature... speaking of which, where is our guest blogger, anyway? all this excitement and no material?)
the weird thing is that when you write a blog with someone else, particularly someone that you know well enough to share the stories that don't feature prominently here, it seems like the stories take on a blog-like life of their own. all of the secret stories, no matter how boring or neurotic or inappropriate, start with "so, the secret blog in my head goes like this: 'my usually quiet blogmate was unusually quiet that day...'" it's a weird way of taking a step back from a situation, i suppose. but it sure beats stories that begin "let me tell you about my crazy family THIS time..."
i can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it also has the unintended effect of making everything feel like we're on the wonder years or chasing amy or one of those shows/movies with voice-over internal dialogue. now i want to know where my theme music is. i think art paul schlosser's "pink pants" or maybe "have a peanut butter sandwich" would work great.
the weird thing is that when you write a blog with someone else, particularly someone that you know well enough to share the stories that don't feature prominently here, it seems like the stories take on a blog-like life of their own. all of the secret stories, no matter how boring or neurotic or inappropriate, start with "so, the secret blog in my head goes like this: 'my usually quiet blogmate was unusually quiet that day...'" it's a weird way of taking a step back from a situation, i suppose. but it sure beats stories that begin "let me tell you about my crazy family THIS time..."
i can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it also has the unintended effect of making everything feel like we're on the wonder years or chasing amy or one of those shows/movies with voice-over internal dialogue. now i want to know where my theme music is. i think art paul schlosser's "pink pants" or maybe "have a peanut butter sandwich" would work great.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
the price of being fabulous
one of the costs of prolonged education and training is that eventually, your friends and family all have real jobs and real houses and furniture that doesn't come from a box and a decent wardrobe.
when it comes to clothes, my blogmate and i have both been students or poorly-paid professionals for long enough that we've had several phases of desire for material things, vacillating between "it's time to dress a little better" and, as said in unison the other day, "it's time to dress a little shittier." for the latter, we're both relatively accomplished. i still remember fondly the first time i asked my blogmate if she wanted to spend a little of an afternoon off shopping in our new hometown of chicago, with its magnificent mile and halsted st. and assorted boutiques, and she responded excitedly with "perfect! target! i'll drive." i knew we'd be friends.
but now we're 30. we're still poorly paid. and we're not talking about keeping up with the joneses, just dreaming of a few little upgrades. so two martinis into a conversation last week, we pinky-swore to go on a shopping trip where we bought better clothes. no kohls, no target, no tj maxx. just once, to see what it's like.
you can imagine what happened next -- from the girls who swore that cheap particle-board furniture was out of our lives but then justified my impulse purchase of a super-sale do-it-yourself wine-and-liquor cabinet as "advanced particle board" (and if you saw my rapid transition from "i'm like bob vila's daughter" to "%&$$?!?" you'd call it advanced particle board too)... into banana republic, straight to the sale racks of off-season last-year's-styles. into ann taylor loft, straight to the clearance racks. to be fair, we tried on lots of full-price very nice things; it's just that the things we liked were on the 60% off rack. i had to struggle to come up with one full-priced t-shirt so i could get 30% off of a pair of pants i wanted. and then bee-line to goose island in time for happy hour 1/2 price appetizers.
you can take the girl out of the bargain basement, but you can't take the bargain basement out of the girl.
when it comes to clothes, my blogmate and i have both been students or poorly-paid professionals for long enough that we've had several phases of desire for material things, vacillating between "it's time to dress a little better" and, as said in unison the other day, "it's time to dress a little shittier." for the latter, we're both relatively accomplished. i still remember fondly the first time i asked my blogmate if she wanted to spend a little of an afternoon off shopping in our new hometown of chicago, with its magnificent mile and halsted st. and assorted boutiques, and she responded excitedly with "perfect! target! i'll drive." i knew we'd be friends.
but now we're 30. we're still poorly paid. and we're not talking about keeping up with the joneses, just dreaming of a few little upgrades. so two martinis into a conversation last week, we pinky-swore to go on a shopping trip where we bought better clothes. no kohls, no target, no tj maxx. just once, to see what it's like.
you can imagine what happened next -- from the girls who swore that cheap particle-board furniture was out of our lives but then justified my impulse purchase of a super-sale do-it-yourself wine-and-liquor cabinet as "advanced particle board" (and if you saw my rapid transition from "i'm like bob vila's daughter" to "%&$$?!?" you'd call it advanced particle board too)... into banana republic, straight to the sale racks of off-season last-year's-styles. into ann taylor loft, straight to the clearance racks. to be fair, we tried on lots of full-price very nice things; it's just that the things we liked were on the 60% off rack. i had to struggle to come up with one full-priced t-shirt so i could get 30% off of a pair of pants i wanted. and then bee-line to goose island in time for happy hour 1/2 price appetizers.
you can take the girl out of the bargain basement, but you can't take the bargain basement out of the girl.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
under pressure
on the exact same day last june, my blogmate and i each received a pressure cooker as a gift. hers as a wedding present, purchased on devon, accompanied only by instructions in hindi. mine came in the mail as a 30th birthday gift from good friend b.j., who herself had received a pressure as a wedding gift a few years earlier.
in her various roles as my life coach, my blogmate is by far the superior cook, but we've done a decent among of mutual pep talk since the pressure cookers arrived, mostly to the tune of, "are you sure it's not going to explode?"
so i guess i shouldn't have been that surprised yesterday when my sticky, parsley-covered blogmate called me, in a bit of distress, announcing, "whoever said that pressure cookers couldn't explode was wrong." fortunately the only casualty of the minor explosion was her turkey stock, but i probably should have absorbed her culinary misadventures as the omen they turned out to be.
usually the problem with my cooking is that the food, while tasty, doesn't exactly look appetizing. not so with my beef stew tonight. it was beautiful. but boy did it taste bad. it's been a while since i botched dinner so extravagantly, and even sans explosion my kitchen was a total disaster.
pressure cookers: 2
jo-na: 0
in her various roles as my life coach, my blogmate is by far the superior cook, but we've done a decent among of mutual pep talk since the pressure cookers arrived, mostly to the tune of, "are you sure it's not going to explode?"
so i guess i shouldn't have been that surprised yesterday when my sticky, parsley-covered blogmate called me, in a bit of distress, announcing, "whoever said that pressure cookers couldn't explode was wrong." fortunately the only casualty of the minor explosion was her turkey stock, but i probably should have absorbed her culinary misadventures as the omen they turned out to be.
usually the problem with my cooking is that the food, while tasty, doesn't exactly look appetizing. not so with my beef stew tonight. it was beautiful. but boy did it taste bad. it's been a while since i botched dinner so extravagantly, and even sans explosion my kitchen was a total disaster.
pressure cookers: 2
jo-na: 0
Monday, October 22, 2007
it's getting hot in here
for a city of 9.5 million, chicago sure can feel like a small town.
sometimes that's not so bad. as my blogmate and i headed out for a run in her neighborhood yesterday we stopped to greet her neighbor and her neighbor's cute little toddler son... as we were getting back home we saw the same neighbor and son, this time walking down the street with one of our colleagues from work. confirming, btw, that between us there's really only one functional brain, i completely failed to notice the colleague and only thought to myself, "hey, isn't that the neighbor?" and my blogmate completely failed to notice the neighbor and thought to herself, "hey, isn't that the colleague?"
as another aside, if you're running down the street and a guy who's obviously on his way home from the gym drops his towel on the ground, it's probably wise to resist the urge to pick it up, and scratch your good deed itch some other way. gross.
anyway. part of the reason i was pretty hot to get out of new orleans was honestly that there was just no avoiding ex-boyfriends and the like. embarrassing and hurtful moments couldn't be washed away in the sea of anonymity that we all think characterizes the world of nightlife... you could pretty much count on running into whichever person you most desperately wanted to avoid.
but apparently upsizing your city by a factor of 10 million doesn't help. or else i wouldn't have found myself at a very small party with someone who was obviously the brother of a recent set-up date i went on AND, in the same weekend, taken exactly 30 seconds to land right next to someone i just stopped seeing (under awkward circumstances) at a concert at the metro.
not that i'm a big fish, but dang this pond is small.
sometimes that's not so bad. as my blogmate and i headed out for a run in her neighborhood yesterday we stopped to greet her neighbor and her neighbor's cute little toddler son... as we were getting back home we saw the same neighbor and son, this time walking down the street with one of our colleagues from work. confirming, btw, that between us there's really only one functional brain, i completely failed to notice the colleague and only thought to myself, "hey, isn't that the neighbor?" and my blogmate completely failed to notice the neighbor and thought to herself, "hey, isn't that the colleague?"
as another aside, if you're running down the street and a guy who's obviously on his way home from the gym drops his towel on the ground, it's probably wise to resist the urge to pick it up, and scratch your good deed itch some other way. gross.
anyway. part of the reason i was pretty hot to get out of new orleans was honestly that there was just no avoiding ex-boyfriends and the like. embarrassing and hurtful moments couldn't be washed away in the sea of anonymity that we all think characterizes the world of nightlife... you could pretty much count on running into whichever person you most desperately wanted to avoid.
but apparently upsizing your city by a factor of 10 million doesn't help. or else i wouldn't have found myself at a very small party with someone who was obviously the brother of a recent set-up date i went on AND, in the same weekend, taken exactly 30 seconds to land right next to someone i just stopped seeing (under awkward circumstances) at a concert at the metro.
not that i'm a big fish, but dang this pond is small.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
disjoint
as usual, i emerge from a state of blog dormancy, not with any meaningful or clever insights, but with my usual smattering of reportings that are, i suspect, only amusing to me. neither of the funniest things that i heard about this week actually had anything to do with me, but were in fact left on my voicemail by good friend a.p., obstetrician extraordinaire. a.p. recently left her life of indentured servitude at a large, inner-city public hospital for one catering more to posh washington d.c. suburbanites... or so she thought until she had to fish a cockroach out of a pregnant lady's ear. in more posh, suburbanite fashion, a few days later she took her highly energetic and affectionate dog to the vet, who assessed her faithful companion's fondness for licking everything and everyone as undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder that would perhaps respond well to prozac.
i, for one, have only rare brushes with posh suburbanites, but those i have leave me so traumatized as to come running back to campus where i get to be the stylish one. so i may have lost out to the crazy ladies running around the coach outlet wielding $400 handbags as deadly weapons, but by golly i think i've got a leg up on the girl who parades around school everyday with an old gnarly beanie baby perched on her shoulder.
that said, i seem to have some problems with basic social norms, as i was completely unable to make eye contact with (much less greet) the "distinguished visiting lecturer" who i'd previously known as "the first blind date i ever went on." and i all but ran the other way when i saw one of my former supervising doctors at the swimming pool the other day (yes, old hairy, in swim trunks), lest i be forced to make small talk while standing there dripping wet in my swimsuit.
i can't even try to tie it all together, folks.
i, for one, have only rare brushes with posh suburbanites, but those i have leave me so traumatized as to come running back to campus where i get to be the stylish one. so i may have lost out to the crazy ladies running around the coach outlet wielding $400 handbags as deadly weapons, but by golly i think i've got a leg up on the girl who parades around school everyday with an old gnarly beanie baby perched on her shoulder.
that said, i seem to have some problems with basic social norms, as i was completely unable to make eye contact with (much less greet) the "distinguished visiting lecturer" who i'd previously known as "the first blind date i ever went on." and i all but ran the other way when i saw one of my former supervising doctors at the swimming pool the other day (yes, old hairy, in swim trunks), lest i be forced to make small talk while standing there dripping wet in my swimsuit.
i can't even try to tie it all together, folks.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
and i thought my neighbors were weird
last night i met mb downtown while he studied at his fancy new mba study center and i divided my time between reading and surfing the internet for places that we could get a drink afterward to reward such productivity.
bonus side of mb's new degree program: proximity to new stuff. last night we rewarded ourselves with drinks at the VERY next-to-john-marshall-law-school plymouth bar, which has a rooftop terrace overlooking the back of the library. lots of bonus points for my manhattan in a plastic martini glass (somehow cheaper than their wine??) and view of the gargoyles.
which brings me to a question: if you lived in an apartment downtown, would it be a plus or a minus in your book to have your window directly across from one of the gargoyles? i could totally see greeting it like an attentive pet or nosy neighbor every morning: "hello, mr. gargoyle! how 'bout the weather today? that's a good gargoyle..." but imagine having very creepy dreams at night.
bonus side of mb's new degree program: proximity to new stuff. last night we rewarded ourselves with drinks at the VERY next-to-john-marshall-law-school plymouth bar, which has a rooftop terrace overlooking the back of the library. lots of bonus points for my manhattan in a plastic martini glass (somehow cheaper than their wine??) and view of the gargoyles.
which brings me to a question: if you lived in an apartment downtown, would it be a plus or a minus in your book to have your window directly across from one of the gargoyles? i could totally see greeting it like an attentive pet or nosy neighbor every morning: "hello, mr. gargoyle! how 'bout the weather today? that's a good gargoyle..." but imagine having very creepy dreams at night.
Friday, October 05, 2007
good / better
when hearing the details of our wedding weekend, mb's friend/groomsman nick said, "i don't think i've ever been to a work-out wedding before." while i'm not sure all parts of our wedding qualified as "workout," there were certain sporty elements. but the better-than-sporty elements are what i'll remember most:
sporty: invite guests to bring bikes to wedding, promises of mapped-out bike route for friday.
better-than-sporty: leave own bikes at home to make more room in the car for booze.
sporty: consider swimming and boating upon arrival friday.
better-than-sporty: break out the korbel (brandy - a wisconsin staple) at 4pm.
even-better-than-sporty: replace actual sports with haggling over the over-charged dinner bill, and harrassing passive-aggressive owner-woman until we get our way. judging by the number of willing participants, arguing as sport?
sporty: golf outing saturday morning.
better-than-sporty: everyone gets motorized carts, arranged in teams for scramble. play enjoyable polo-like game of riding as quickly as possible up to the balls to be picked up and trying to scoop them up on the fly.
worse-than-sporty: maid of honor hit in head with fly golf ball from the next runway while trying to locate stray ball in the rough.
better-than-worse-than-sporty: maid of honor's golfing friends include 3 doctors, an emt, a pharmacist, an attorney, and a health insurance professional.
even-better-than-worse-than-sporty: said emt happens to be a rugby player, the only justification we can think of for his kilt and packers hat golf attire. picture large kilted man running across the fairway amid shouts of "someone's down! and she's bleeding!"
relief: she's fine.
better-than-sporty: team that would otherwise have finished last in the scramble tournament now finishes first, because we only played 7 holes and as such have the lowest score. sweet.
sporty: mb and i promise guests that part of the beauty of getting married in such a small town is that you can walk between the ceremony/rehearsal site, the lodging, the restaurants, bars, etc.
better-than-sporty: mb's dad decides that rather than walk to the rehearsal saturday afternoon, guests will be transported via the rented pontoon boat.
sporty: mb and i plan celebratory 5k for saturday afternoon.
better-than-sporty: my brother and butterknife design surprise shirts distributed to our guests via cafe-press, and present us with them on saturday pre-race.
better-than-sporty: the bikemyers family arrives with real race numbers and finishers' medals, all with pretty designs on them.
better-than-sporty: the best man rides the course on his bike and distributes gu packets, water, and jk/kk-supplied coors light to participants at the turn-around.
worse-than-sporty: truck runs over best man's backpack, squishing the gu and coors light together.
sporty(? outdoorsy, anyway): couple plans outdoor wedding ceremony on the lake, during beautiful sunny sunday morning.
worse-than-outdoorsy: grandparents decide they don't want to attend outdoor wedding and prefer to watch from restaurant upstairs.
better-than-outdoorsy: compromise whereby grandparents are summoned outdoors for photos prior to ceremony, then are dismissed back to the restaurant, thereafter referred to as the skybox. bride amuses herself by imagining italian grandfather as paul tagliabue.
sporty: invite guests to bring bikes to wedding, promises of mapped-out bike route for friday.
better-than-sporty: leave own bikes at home to make more room in the car for booze.
sporty: consider swimming and boating upon arrival friday.
better-than-sporty: break out the korbel (brandy - a wisconsin staple) at 4pm.
even-better-than-sporty: replace actual sports with haggling over the over-charged dinner bill, and harrassing passive-aggressive owner-woman until we get our way. judging by the number of willing participants, arguing as sport?
sporty: golf outing saturday morning.
better-than-sporty: everyone gets motorized carts, arranged in teams for scramble. play enjoyable polo-like game of riding as quickly as possible up to the balls to be picked up and trying to scoop them up on the fly.
worse-than-sporty: maid of honor hit in head with fly golf ball from the next runway while trying to locate stray ball in the rough.
better-than-worse-than-sporty: maid of honor's golfing friends include 3 doctors, an emt, a pharmacist, an attorney, and a health insurance professional.
even-better-than-worse-than-sporty: said emt happens to be a rugby player, the only justification we can think of for his kilt and packers hat golf attire. picture large kilted man running across the fairway amid shouts of "someone's down! and she's bleeding!"
relief: she's fine.
better-than-sporty: team that would otherwise have finished last in the scramble tournament now finishes first, because we only played 7 holes and as such have the lowest score. sweet.
sporty: mb and i promise guests that part of the beauty of getting married in such a small town is that you can walk between the ceremony/rehearsal site, the lodging, the restaurants, bars, etc.
better-than-sporty: mb's dad decides that rather than walk to the rehearsal saturday afternoon, guests will be transported via the rented pontoon boat.
sporty: mb and i plan celebratory 5k for saturday afternoon.
better-than-sporty: my brother and butterknife design surprise shirts distributed to our guests via cafe-press, and present us with them on saturday pre-race.
better-than-sporty: the bikemyers family arrives with real race numbers and finishers' medals, all with pretty designs on them.
better-than-sporty: the best man rides the course on his bike and distributes gu packets, water, and jk/kk-supplied coors light to participants at the turn-around.
worse-than-sporty: truck runs over best man's backpack, squishing the gu and coors light together.
sporty(? outdoorsy, anyway): couple plans outdoor wedding ceremony on the lake, during beautiful sunny sunday morning.
worse-than-outdoorsy: grandparents decide they don't want to attend outdoor wedding and prefer to watch from restaurant upstairs.
better-than-outdoorsy: compromise whereby grandparents are summoned outdoors for photos prior to ceremony, then are dismissed back to the restaurant, thereafter referred to as the skybox. bride amuses herself by imagining italian grandfather as paul tagliabue.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
how you get a three-day hangover
well, the wedding was a success, and mb and i did not, as my blogmate feared, die in some tragic fall from a cliff in northern minnesota on our honeymoon. there are too many great things to write about, so this will have to happen in stages. i was thinking not chronologically, but conceptually:
theme #1: booze, and the weakness of late 20s-early 30-somethings despite our collegiate yearnings
by wednesday night prior to the wedding, i had high hopes for our cocktail-drinking abilities, since after the aforementioned wine/cheese/pedicure party we headed for a post-party with the boys (mb and my new sister-in-law's fiance, dr) at junior's for their half-price appetizers and half-price martinis and mojitos... i ended the night really convinced that the answer to feeling better after my passion-fruit and regular mojitos was to rinse it down with jameson on the rocks. no problem. should have taken my blogmate's slightly-earlier retirement for the evening as a wise sign that these things should end earlier (and with less whiskey).
friday morning as mb and i were packing the car, our neighbor michelle woke up and walked outside to double over laughing on the stairs at mb carting an entire plastic crate of hard liquor out to the trunk. apparently this didn't look like classy wedding supplies... pictures were taken. faces changed to protect the innocent.
friday night looked promising, with lots of beer at the local golf course bar (thankfully not much until later, after we could direct mb's brother- and sister-in-law who finally made it into town through the pouring rain). some fun antagonizing of the passive-aggressive owner/manager with bill-haggling, $2.50 tyranena scotch ale pints, making fun of the bartender who poured on-the-rocks drinks into steaming hot glassware. about 2 hours after the bar actually ran out of enough glassware to deal with us, we retired to the b&b. drinking continued with said plastic crate; incriminating picture taken around 2-3 am, involving the best man's 2-month-old son (the best man was the instigator).
saturday tapered off. those of us who went golfing in the morning had a good time with the beer-cart girl (thanks to jamie, who instructed her by hole 3 that she was NOT coming around enough and needed to stick with us). for the record, the beer-cart girl had nothing to do with the final head injury to the maid of honor (more on that later). thanks to jk and kk for being our official keg-fetchers, and for supplying the coors light cans for race refreshments for mb's super-fantastic 5k wedding run! but somehow, even with almost 60 people at the rehearsal picnic, and a ceremonial keg-tapping of the capital amber around 5pm, it took the guys a long time to make even a dent in the keg.
sunday was beautiful. the ceremony was great, so i'm told. but people -- the bartender frankly mocked me for our weak showing. apparently a wedding weekend with kegs and crates of hard liquor results in you all being a very cheap date come sunday. however, after everyone left and the reception had been disassembled, the tapper was still in place. thanks, heidel house! mb and i sat on the porch with leftover beer and cheesecake for another 3 hours. my favorite part was mb pushing me around the lobby on the luggage cart. i really also enjoy evening weddings, but there's something to be said for all of the guests leaving by 2-3 pm...
i promise, the wedding was actually tasteful and quite beautiful and i wouldn't have wanted it any other way. but you don't want to see those pictures first, do you?
theme #1: booze, and the weakness of late 20s-early 30-somethings despite our collegiate yearnings
by wednesday night prior to the wedding, i had high hopes for our cocktail-drinking abilities, since after the aforementioned wine/cheese/pedicure party we headed for a post-party with the boys (mb and my new sister-in-law's fiance, dr) at junior's for their half-price appetizers and half-price martinis and mojitos... i ended the night really convinced that the answer to feeling better after my passion-fruit and regular mojitos was to rinse it down with jameson on the rocks. no problem. should have taken my blogmate's slightly-earlier retirement for the evening as a wise sign that these things should end earlier (and with less whiskey).
friday morning as mb and i were packing the car, our neighbor michelle woke up and walked outside to double over laughing on the stairs at mb carting an entire plastic crate of hard liquor out to the trunk. apparently this didn't look like classy wedding supplies... pictures were taken. faces changed to protect the innocent.
friday night looked promising, with lots of beer at the local golf course bar (thankfully not much until later, after we could direct mb's brother- and sister-in-law who finally made it into town through the pouring rain). some fun antagonizing of the passive-aggressive owner/manager with bill-haggling, $2.50 tyranena scotch ale pints, making fun of the bartender who poured on-the-rocks drinks into steaming hot glassware. about 2 hours after the bar actually ran out of enough glassware to deal with us, we retired to the b&b. drinking continued with said plastic crate; incriminating picture taken around 2-3 am, involving the best man's 2-month-old son (the best man was the instigator).
saturday tapered off. those of us who went golfing in the morning had a good time with the beer-cart girl (thanks to jamie, who instructed her by hole 3 that she was NOT coming around enough and needed to stick with us). for the record, the beer-cart girl had nothing to do with the final head injury to the maid of honor (more on that later). thanks to jk and kk for being our official keg-fetchers, and for supplying the coors light cans for race refreshments for mb's super-fantastic 5k wedding run! but somehow, even with almost 60 people at the rehearsal picnic, and a ceremonial keg-tapping of the capital amber around 5pm, it took the guys a long time to make even a dent in the keg.
sunday was beautiful. the ceremony was great, so i'm told. but people -- the bartender frankly mocked me for our weak showing. apparently a wedding weekend with kegs and crates of hard liquor results in you all being a very cheap date come sunday. however, after everyone left and the reception had been disassembled, the tapper was still in place. thanks, heidel house! mb and i sat on the porch with leftover beer and cheesecake for another 3 hours. my favorite part was mb pushing me around the lobby on the luggage cart. i really also enjoy evening weddings, but there's something to be said for all of the guests leaving by 2-3 pm...
i promise, the wedding was actually tasteful and quite beautiful and i wouldn't have wanted it any other way. but you don't want to see those pictures first, do you?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
what's happening right now in cheese?
i wish i had made up that question.
while running errands yesterday morning, i stopped at the newly opened whole foods market to pick up some snacks for a wine-and-cheese-and-pedicure party that i'm having with my bridesmaids downtown. i heard the above question from the mouth of one of the eighty bajillion south-loop yuppies that have come out of the woodwork since the store's opening.
i was happily browsing the non-happening cheeses, and had selected an apple-and-wood-chip-smoked cheddar, an herb havarti, and a spread-ey cheese from brunkow cheese co-op (my favorite stop at the madison farmer's market), when i heard that question and turned around --- to discover that i had failed to acknowledge a 15-foot-in-diameter cheese EMPIRE presided over by the cheesemaster, who was nodding knowledgeably and telling the yuppies that, apparently, spanish cheeses are very "hip" right now.
my resulting cheese selection, while very happening and quite exciting, might have aimed a little past the cheap asian nail salon and sports bar that are our entertainment this evening. i have, umm, something spanish that is kind of like manchego, whatever manchego is (i of course nodded like i knew what he was talking about), and a cotswold??? all i know is that the white one tastes like butter and the orange one tastes like cheddar with chives in it. and they seem like they'll be yummy, paired with the debut of my TOTALLY NON-SUCKY HOME-MADE PINOT GRIGIO that i just got back from the wine shop and some olives.
mmm. don't you wish you were joining us? we'll raise a glass to you.
while running errands yesterday morning, i stopped at the newly opened whole foods market to pick up some snacks for a wine-and-cheese-and-pedicure party that i'm having with my bridesmaids downtown. i heard the above question from the mouth of one of the eighty bajillion south-loop yuppies that have come out of the woodwork since the store's opening.
i was happily browsing the non-happening cheeses, and had selected an apple-and-wood-chip-smoked cheddar, an herb havarti, and a spread-ey cheese from brunkow cheese co-op (my favorite stop at the madison farmer's market), when i heard that question and turned around --- to discover that i had failed to acknowledge a 15-foot-in-diameter cheese EMPIRE presided over by the cheesemaster, who was nodding knowledgeably and telling the yuppies that, apparently, spanish cheeses are very "hip" right now.
my resulting cheese selection, while very happening and quite exciting, might have aimed a little past the cheap asian nail salon and sports bar that are our entertainment this evening. i have, umm, something spanish that is kind of like manchego, whatever manchego is (i of course nodded like i knew what he was talking about), and a cotswold??? all i know is that the white one tastes like butter and the orange one tastes like cheddar with chives in it. and they seem like they'll be yummy, paired with the debut of my TOTALLY NON-SUCKY HOME-MADE PINOT GRIGIO that i just got back from the wine shop and some olives.
mmm. don't you wish you were joining us? we'll raise a glass to you.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
the proverbial nacho itch
i got an email today, helpfully announcing that there are at least 40 registered sex offenders in my neighborhood. "creepy," i thought to myself, "but what an excellent public service! do they really hunt down everyone's email address?" eventually i figured out that the email was not, in fact, an attempt to keep the public informed, but rather some kind of "keep your children safe" scam, trying to trick me into buying some sort of portfolio detailing all the gory details about the local miscreants.
"sweet," i further thought to myself, "i don't have kids, and as such i don't really care about who the local sex offenders are."
this, my friends, is the story of my life: self-indulgent, irresponsible ignorance.
i feel good about it, actually. but for my relatively care-free existence, and my entourage of relatively care-free friends i wouldn't have the following highlight reel for the week:
saturday: mid morning jog with my lovely friends who let me shower at their house, fed me breakfast, and sent me off to the airport with little baggies of snacks. arrival to pittsburgh to visit one of my new orleans bffs and her husband, who sat me down sequentially in front of carribbean food, a hookah, a bottle of whine, fish tacos, and yuengling on tap. then there was some fairly entertaining tipsy text messaging before we all went to bed drunk and content.
monday: road trip from pittsburgh to falling water (ok, i suppose i can't really hold up love of frank lloyd wright as demonstration of my carefree youthfulness), some cursory exploration of one of the kayak towns where we stood ankle deep in a river feeling pleased with ourselves, and finally, a lovely trip back to the airport, drinking diet mountain dew, eating amish beef jerky, singing along to my friends' new akon cd.
thursday (i know, how could i possibly top diet mountain dew and amish beef jerky?): trip to caesar's on braodway to rekindle my romance with carne asada nachos, about which i've thought non-stop since i tried them a couple of weeks ago with one of my other new orleans bffs and her boyfriend. it turned out that my soon-to-be-wed blogmate also had such hankerings (see the title of this post, an immediately immortalized phrase for which i can take no credit), and also shared my desire for margaritas and gossip. while i think we both looked a bit cuter than usual, i can't really explain the deluge of free stuff that arrived at our table. and while i stand by my belief that it's just the right thing to do to down shots when they appear, unsolicited in front of you, i don't how i thought i could avoid the ensuing drunkenness. then, of course, there was more tipsy text messaging.
if you're not jealous you should be.
"sweet," i further thought to myself, "i don't have kids, and as such i don't really care about who the local sex offenders are."
this, my friends, is the story of my life: self-indulgent, irresponsible ignorance.
i feel good about it, actually. but for my relatively care-free existence, and my entourage of relatively care-free friends i wouldn't have the following highlight reel for the week:
saturday: mid morning jog with my lovely friends who let me shower at their house, fed me breakfast, and sent me off to the airport with little baggies of snacks. arrival to pittsburgh to visit one of my new orleans bffs and her husband, who sat me down sequentially in front of carribbean food, a hookah, a bottle of whine, fish tacos, and yuengling on tap. then there was some fairly entertaining tipsy text messaging before we all went to bed drunk and content.
monday: road trip from pittsburgh to falling water (ok, i suppose i can't really hold up love of frank lloyd wright as demonstration of my carefree youthfulness), some cursory exploration of one of the kayak towns where we stood ankle deep in a river feeling pleased with ourselves, and finally, a lovely trip back to the airport, drinking diet mountain dew, eating amish beef jerky, singing along to my friends' new akon cd.
thursday (i know, how could i possibly top diet mountain dew and amish beef jerky?): trip to caesar's on braodway to rekindle my romance with carne asada nachos, about which i've thought non-stop since i tried them a couple of weeks ago with one of my other new orleans bffs and her boyfriend. it turned out that my soon-to-be-wed blogmate also had such hankerings (see the title of this post, an immediately immortalized phrase for which i can take no credit), and also shared my desire for margaritas and gossip. while i think we both looked a bit cuter than usual, i can't really explain the deluge of free stuff that arrived at our table. and while i stand by my belief that it's just the right thing to do to down shots when they appear, unsolicited in front of you, i don't how i thought i could avoid the ensuing drunkenness. then, of course, there was more tipsy text messaging.
if you're not jealous you should be.
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