while my blogmate continues to put the best stuff in my arsenal to shame with her witty, insightful banter, i remain stuck in a cycle of blog indecision, perseverating about transient, meaningless events that, though entertaining to me as an amalgam, fail to come together in even an amusing, if not interesting way.
i hang my head in shame...
but continue to laugh on the inside (and sometimes even out loud) about the weird series of things i've heard, seen, done, and said in the last month.
while in france i learned that my seventeen year old french skater punk cousin - along with his entourage of french skater punk friends - actually poured a concrete skate park in the barn, much to the delight of his parents who basque in the transferred glow of youthful spontaneity while also enjoying the peace of mind that accompanies knowing the exact whereabouts of their youngest child.
from french b.f.e. we moved on to italian b.f.e. for a few days of raucous wedding partying and outright euro summer camp. there was lots of drinking and eating and driving around looking for the slovenian border, and of course a story that started, "let me tell you about the most famous transvestite in trieste," and ended, "but then he moved to london... and became a baker... and i don't think he's a transvestite anymore."
i got back from my european adventure and rolled right into my highly anticipated 30th birthday weekend. it's hard to pick what goes on the highlight real, but up there on the list are:
1) zillions of disney princess cupcakes, thoughtfully provided by my blog mate
2) zillions of friends at the village tap on roscoe, along with a decent handful of stragglers and 3 anorexic crashers who stole cupcakes and ran
3) zillions of beers
and of course,
4) the great 30th birthday festival crawl, orchestrated by my blogmate, dh, and kl (in absentia) - you'd think seven festivals in seven hours was too much... but you'd be wrong.
then i went on to new orleans to vist my allegedly convalescing mother who, even with half a lung missing, had the stamina for the zydeco/seafood festival (where i wondered why i had never before tried char-grilled oysters, easily the best food on the planet), the creole tomato festival (where we ate fried-green-tomatoes, easily the second best food on the planet), and a matinee showing of "waitress" (featuring nathan fillion, easily one of the hotest guys on the plant). once i'd finally managed to wear out my mother i went out drinking with my good friend lr, drank a mint julep (i'm sorry, one more time: hands down the best drink on the planet) and found myself happily being driven around new orleans in her convertible, giggling in the passenger seat as she muttered expletives under her breath and made grave announcements along the lines of, "i can't talk to you right now, i'm concentrating on not peeing."
from there i'll skip past the tragic tales of my soul-sucking professional life and move on to the next weekend of binge drinking, this time in honor of my good blogmates upcoming nuptuals... and of course drag queens. so there was a bridal brunch complete with an omelet station (for which i take no credit) and a pretty well stocked bar (for which i take all the credit), and then there was my second annual pride parade party... both welcome excuses for pre-noon drinking, for the acquisition of pressure cookers, and for hanging out with my most awesome friends.
so none of this really comes together very well, except to remind me that while i may not be beating men off with a stick, winning the lottery, or fitting into my skinny jeans, i do have a pretty interesting life... which i am apparently too busy to blog about.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
squish the grapes slowly
keanu reeves i am not. and i hated "a walk in the clouds." but LOVED my adventure with friend jannine to beverly's wine- and beer-making store for a beginners' wine-making class!
picture a talkative william h. macy (not quite the minnesotan accent from fargo, but close) with one hand in a sling pouring glass after glass of homemade brew for 6 of us to sample as we learned about the different kinds of yeast that make different flavors, why you can't make a cabernet with 18% alcohol (apparently you have to start with twice the sugar as desired alcohol content, but if you have 36% sugar, the yeasties sometimes get tired of eating and conk out early like thanksgiving day in front of the big game, leaving you with syrup), that they bottle something called bourbon-honey mead (!!!) but can't sell it at the store because their half of western ave. is actually dry, so they have to sell actual alcohol at the store across the street. we started a batch of pinot grigio - i love red wine but we preferred the immediate drinkability of whites for a first attempt; wouldn't your heart break if you spent weeks waiting patiently to bottle your wine, then 3-6 months for it to age properly, and then it was yucky?
the process has been pretty easy so far. we mixed yeast with grape juice, bobbed a little sugar-and-alcohol-0-meter in the mixture to test the concentration, giggled a lot at the instructor telling us we had to be "sterile," but that our sterile working area was the top of the bucket that the grape juice gets put in (enter much jannine whispering "oops, i breathed into our sterile field. wait, was that your hair entering the air over our sterile field?" we medical types aren't funny, i realize, but there was a lot of wine and we found ourselves quite clever), and sealed up the bucket. next week we get to go back to see if our yeast are eating the sugar or not and switch buckets.
in 6-10 weeks we get to bottle, label and serve. suggestions for names? anyone lining up to be willing to taste? (if it helps, no, my hair did not end up in the wine.)
picture a talkative william h. macy (not quite the minnesotan accent from fargo, but close) with one hand in a sling pouring glass after glass of homemade brew for 6 of us to sample as we learned about the different kinds of yeast that make different flavors, why you can't make a cabernet with 18% alcohol (apparently you have to start with twice the sugar as desired alcohol content, but if you have 36% sugar, the yeasties sometimes get tired of eating and conk out early like thanksgiving day in front of the big game, leaving you with syrup), that they bottle something called bourbon-honey mead (!!!) but can't sell it at the store because their half of western ave. is actually dry, so they have to sell actual alcohol at the store across the street. we started a batch of pinot grigio - i love red wine but we preferred the immediate drinkability of whites for a first attempt; wouldn't your heart break if you spent weeks waiting patiently to bottle your wine, then 3-6 months for it to age properly, and then it was yucky?
the process has been pretty easy so far. we mixed yeast with grape juice, bobbed a little sugar-and-alcohol-0-meter in the mixture to test the concentration, giggled a lot at the instructor telling us we had to be "sterile," but that our sterile working area was the top of the bucket that the grape juice gets put in (enter much jannine whispering "oops, i breathed into our sterile field. wait, was that your hair entering the air over our sterile field?" we medical types aren't funny, i realize, but there was a lot of wine and we found ourselves quite clever), and sealed up the bucket. next week we get to go back to see if our yeast are eating the sugar or not and switch buckets.
in 6-10 weeks we get to bottle, label and serve. suggestions for names? anyone lining up to be willing to taste? (if it helps, no, my hair did not end up in the wine.)
Friday, June 15, 2007
senor bendice mi camino
saw this written as the bug shield of a truck this morning and loved it.
i'm glad someone's blessing someone's automotive journey. i wish we'd had that bug shield last weekend when mb and i drove out to the palos forest preserve to do a little hiking and see the cicadas. perhaps senor could have made me a little more observant, which would have prevented the following exchange:
mb: "i can't wait to see the cicadas!"
me: "me either. where are they? what's that buzzing sound? how come we haven't seen them yet? what's that buzzing sound?"
*relative silence, except for deafening buzzing sound*
mb: "do you think those are the cicadas?"
me: "oh. right. the buzzing."
me: "so if they're so loud, why can't we see them? on a totally unrelated note, what are those weird bugs nose-diving the windshield? anyway, where are the cicadas?"
senor might have been bendiciendo our caminos, but certainly not the caminos of our little friends who arrive in northern illinois every 17 years, who were meeting a rather abrupt end on mike's car.
my stellar observational powers did not end there; i also failed to immediately notice the pock-marked ground in the woods where the young cicadas exited for the sky, the millions of molted skins left by the nymphs as they grew, or the older mother-bugs on the surfaces of all the tree trunks, laying eggs that would eventually hatch into the next cycle of larvae to bury underground and meet us again in 2024 for a new cycle of getting it on.
once i stopped to pay attention, they were everywhere. but once i stopped to pay attention, it was creepy and i wanted to leave. good thing a loud park ranger with a bullhorn was there kicking out all the nature- and fitness-lovers gathered for stair climbing by the toboggan run (apparently closed for remodeling). relieved, i told mb "great, let's skip any more hiking or stair climbing, go for a little run down that nice flat trail over there, and call it an afternoon." and off we went, blissfully unaware that we were running straight into what mb later referred to as "spring break daytona beach for cicadas." flying posses, piled-up threesomes on each branch, loving couples on the ground, loners on our arms.
ew. but fascinating. but ew.
i'm glad someone's blessing someone's automotive journey. i wish we'd had that bug shield last weekend when mb and i drove out to the palos forest preserve to do a little hiking and see the cicadas. perhaps senor could have made me a little more observant, which would have prevented the following exchange:
mb: "i can't wait to see the cicadas!"
me: "me either. where are they? what's that buzzing sound? how come we haven't seen them yet? what's that buzzing sound?"
*relative silence, except for deafening buzzing sound*
mb: "do you think those are the cicadas?"
me: "oh. right. the buzzing."
me: "so if they're so loud, why can't we see them? on a totally unrelated note, what are those weird bugs nose-diving the windshield? anyway, where are the cicadas?"
senor might have been bendiciendo our caminos, but certainly not the caminos of our little friends who arrive in northern illinois every 17 years, who were meeting a rather abrupt end on mike's car.
my stellar observational powers did not end there; i also failed to immediately notice the pock-marked ground in the woods where the young cicadas exited for the sky, the millions of molted skins left by the nymphs as they grew, or the older mother-bugs on the surfaces of all the tree trunks, laying eggs that would eventually hatch into the next cycle of larvae to bury underground and meet us again in 2024 for a new cycle of getting it on.
once i stopped to pay attention, they were everywhere. but once i stopped to pay attention, it was creepy and i wanted to leave. good thing a loud park ranger with a bullhorn was there kicking out all the nature- and fitness-lovers gathered for stair climbing by the toboggan run (apparently closed for remodeling). relieved, i told mb "great, let's skip any more hiking or stair climbing, go for a little run down that nice flat trail over there, and call it an afternoon." and off we went, blissfully unaware that we were running straight into what mb later referred to as "spring break daytona beach for cicadas." flying posses, piled-up threesomes on each branch, loving couples on the ground, loners on our arms.
ew. but fascinating. but ew.
Monday, May 28, 2007
i saw the future, and...
with my friends off playing in europe, and mb off to west virginia for a week of mountain biking with the guys, i am having an uneventful memorial day weekend. it's been very relaxing - shopping with my former roommate for shoes/jewelry/etc for her wedding, biking on the lakeshore path, making plans to grill out with a couple of friends and neighbors. three cheers to my upstairs neighbors for seeing me waddling back from the store, arms loaded with groceries (why were my arms so loaded with groceries when i am by myself this week? this is what happens going to the store hungry), and promptly call out "hey jo-na, can we get you a beer? kids, move the sprinkler for a minute so she can get inside." and four cheers (is that a term?) for said same neighbor, for not waiting for me to finish unloading groceries, but instead knocking on the door to see if i needed my beer *before* coming outside to socialize.
so yes, there are nice neighbors in the city. and yes, these are the same neighbors whose major hobby on first moving to the neighborhood was sitting on their deck watching drug deals. but these blocks have changed a lot in the last few years - many of the nearby projects have been torn down, and plans are underway for a mixed single-family/rental apartment/section 8/townhouse kind of development. in the meantime, we mostly live in the center of empty lots surrounded by security fences. although technically we live in little italy, mb and i have dubbed the neighborhood "Swath Of Destruction." our directions to friends driving in from out of town go like this:
"west on roosevelt thru x lights... when you get to a totally empty stretch with a boarded up check-cashing place and liquor store, with some teenagers loitering on the corner, look for the lonely little condos in the center of a Swath Of Destruction and that's us."
as we await the inevitable progress of housing developments (meanwhile taking advantage of the cheaper rent), in the center of Swath Of Destruction sits 1950. i spent yesterday afternoon drinking beer with the neighbors, watching the kids run through the sprinkler in the front yard. one of the girls is clearly the alpha; she decides when we are playing little mermaid, and when we are playing beauty parlor, and when we are too cold for the sprinkler, and when we are tired and curling up like burritos in our towels on the sidewalk. the other kids mostly accept these instructions. the parents, clearly more used to this than i am, seem completely at peace ignoring the repeated insistence that they please stop the yard work and give back the sprinkler.
it occurs to me that once Swath Of Destruction is re-built, there will be more strangers, more traffic, more coming and going in our admittedly-rented section of urban renewal. it won't be as easy to know all of the neighbors with more dynamic moving in and out. so i'm a little sad to know that Progress is coming. but i'm even more sad to realize that kids' personalities take after their parents -- i commented to alpha's mom that i was that kid growing up. she told me that when grandma picks up the kids from preschool, she looks in the room and gets deja vu because she sees so much of her mother's personality in little alpha.
mb and i are not planning on having children any time immediately, but i am having visions of an imaginative but talkative bossy little girl whose hobbies are the words "why?" and "let's do it my way!" i don't think penance will help, but to my brother, i'm sorry for all the times i made you play house instead of war with your robots. i'll get mine in due time. progress is inevitable.
so yes, there are nice neighbors in the city. and yes, these are the same neighbors whose major hobby on first moving to the neighborhood was sitting on their deck watching drug deals. but these blocks have changed a lot in the last few years - many of the nearby projects have been torn down, and plans are underway for a mixed single-family/rental apartment/section 8/townhouse kind of development. in the meantime, we mostly live in the center of empty lots surrounded by security fences. although technically we live in little italy, mb and i have dubbed the neighborhood "Swath Of Destruction." our directions to friends driving in from out of town go like this:
"west on roosevelt thru x lights... when you get to a totally empty stretch with a boarded up check-cashing place and liquor store, with some teenagers loitering on the corner, look for the lonely little condos in the center of a Swath Of Destruction and that's us."
as we await the inevitable progress of housing developments (meanwhile taking advantage of the cheaper rent), in the center of Swath Of Destruction sits 1950. i spent yesterday afternoon drinking beer with the neighbors, watching the kids run through the sprinkler in the front yard. one of the girls is clearly the alpha; she decides when we are playing little mermaid, and when we are playing beauty parlor, and when we are too cold for the sprinkler, and when we are tired and curling up like burritos in our towels on the sidewalk. the other kids mostly accept these instructions. the parents, clearly more used to this than i am, seem completely at peace ignoring the repeated insistence that they please stop the yard work and give back the sprinkler.
it occurs to me that once Swath Of Destruction is re-built, there will be more strangers, more traffic, more coming and going in our admittedly-rented section of urban renewal. it won't be as easy to know all of the neighbors with more dynamic moving in and out. so i'm a little sad to know that Progress is coming. but i'm even more sad to realize that kids' personalities take after their parents -- i commented to alpha's mom that i was that kid growing up. she told me that when grandma picks up the kids from preschool, she looks in the room and gets deja vu because she sees so much of her mother's personality in little alpha.
mb and i are not planning on having children any time immediately, but i am having visions of an imaginative but talkative bossy little girl whose hobbies are the words "why?" and "let's do it my way!" i don't think penance will help, but to my brother, i'm sorry for all the times i made you play house instead of war with your robots. i'll get mine in due time. progress is inevitable.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
i should have been watching american idol
while my friends are off eating cheese and intestines and mocking gendarmes in france, i am minding the store back here in sunny chicago. things are not super exciting here. thankfully, nobody is stopping me alongside the road to ask about my knowledge of local criminals, although my neighbors do have some funny stories about sitting on their rooftop porch at night watching drug deals go down in the blocks south of us. i thought i would mix things up a bit the other night by driving up to the north side to do a good deed by watering my blogmate's plants, which would conveniently have happened right around 7pm in time for american idol watching, thus fixing my problem of loving that tv show but having no tv with which to watch it. unfortunately, my conscience got the better of me, and i decided that if my choices were get exercise and see mb or drive across town for one tv show, the right thing to do was exercise. but by the time i got ready to embark on any actual exercise, it was getting late and instead of run outside or go to the gym, i put in a new dvd lent to me by mb's sister: "yoga booty ballet." i thought, this seems perfect! yoga sounds relaxing, i've been working a lot lately, i won't have to come up with my own poses or anything and just get to follow along.
let me just say this: when the video starts with two women asking you to start with your hands folded together, they do NOT get to say "namaste" (which i was taught meant something like "the divine in me greets the divine in you") while the cameraman is zooming right in for gratuitous boob shots. the rest of the video was impossible to follow, because the camera work focused exclusively on the leaders' chests and pelvises (pelves?), occasionally panning over to the south-asian hippie on the bongos, and the only instructions were "now you can get a little funky." namaste? is there a yoga word for "the perv in me greets the d-cup in you"?
from this i conclude the following things:
1. it is sometimes the morally acceptable thing to skip exercise in favor of reality tv.
2. maybe this was for the best. had i gone for a run or watched jordyn sparks win this year's title, i would not have nearly this much good work story.
3. blogmate, ck and ss, when are you getting back? i'm bored.
let me just say this: when the video starts with two women asking you to start with your hands folded together, they do NOT get to say "namaste" (which i was taught meant something like "the divine in me greets the divine in you") while the cameraman is zooming right in for gratuitous boob shots. the rest of the video was impossible to follow, because the camera work focused exclusively on the leaders' chests and pelvises (pelves?), occasionally panning over to the south-asian hippie on the bongos, and the only instructions were "now you can get a little funky." namaste? is there a yoga word for "the perv in me greets the d-cup in you"?
from this i conclude the following things:
1. it is sometimes the morally acceptable thing to skip exercise in favor of reality tv.
2. maybe this was for the best. had i gone for a run or watched jordyn sparks win this year's title, i would not have nearly this much good work story.
3. blogmate, ck and ss, when are you getting back? i'm bored.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
lust and despair: contextually correct but outside of my vocabulary (le blog volume 2)
it's not every day you watch a dear friend get served a plate of grilled intestines. and it's not every friend who would manage to keep it together the way ss did when she was served said intestines. after wandering all over town looking for a restaurant that the guide book described as cheap ("pas cher") and friendly ("gentille") which turned out to be more like expensive and smokey we found ourselves at some kind of no-nonsense brasserie along the side of the road which was actually kind of nice except but for the fact that everyone was starring at us... and except of course for the intestines.
aside: is there an obviously american way of parking? how did they figure out that we were foreign before we even got out of the car?
anyway, our choices for lunch (handwritten onto slips of paper in the menu) were chicken, pork, and andouillete, and the exchange between us went something like:
ck: what kind of pork?
jo-na: i don't know. some kind of pork.
ck: but what does this other word mean?
jo-na: i don't know. something about how the pork is prepared.
ck: and the chicken?
jo-na: chicken... prepared in some fashion.
ck: (sigh) i guess i'll have the chicken.
ss: what's an-douil-lete?
jo-na: i don't know, but i think it might be gross.
ss: what does this word mean?
jo-na: grilled. you know, i'm not sure it's gross. isn't that what's in andouille sausage? maybe it isn't so bad. it's some kind of grilled meat that may or may not be gross.
ss: what do you think?
jo-na: go for it.
i can only imagine the laugh the kitchen guys had, but they brought us our plates of chicken, french fries, and what looked like a giant brat with straight faces. ss kept her game face on as she cut into her andouillete, releasing a smell so awful that ck discreetely inched herself down the table and i asked myself without internal sarcasm if there were toxic fumes coming from some nearby industrial facility.
it wasn't only that ss didn't cry, or sulk, or vomit. she dissected it a bit further, looked up, and announced: "i think this is intestines." she picked at it a little more and then tried a little bite. she made a funny face and was quiet for a little while. then she looked up at us again: "it tastes piggy in a way you wouldn't expect."
so ck and i ate our chicken and eventually the waiter came and took everything away and the cheese tray came and everything was back to normal. we had exacted our revenge on the most obvious table of starring people by sitting right down next to them so that they were forced to stop starring (apparently it's possible to silently call out small town europeans when their behavior is so eggregiously poor).
we spent the rest of they day examining various towns and churches, entertaining everyone with our adventures in french cuisine. apparently ss was right on the money, as the quality of andouillete is assessed by its degree of pigginess (as it gets better and more expensive it's less piggy). we continued to learn the lexicon of roman religious architecture, inspecting tympana, crypts, cloisters, and of course the famous capitals depicting important religious themes ("lust and despair", for example).
so i'm very proud of my friends for being such good frenchies, even if they do shriek with delight every time we pass a flock of sheep or someone says "merde."
aside: is there an obviously american way of parking? how did they figure out that we were foreign before we even got out of the car?
anyway, our choices for lunch (handwritten onto slips of paper in the menu) were chicken, pork, and andouillete, and the exchange between us went something like:
ck: what kind of pork?
jo-na: i don't know. some kind of pork.
ck: but what does this other word mean?
jo-na: i don't know. something about how the pork is prepared.
ck: and the chicken?
jo-na: chicken... prepared in some fashion.
ck: (sigh) i guess i'll have the chicken.
ss: what's an-douil-lete?
jo-na: i don't know, but i think it might be gross.
ss: what does this word mean?
jo-na: grilled. you know, i'm not sure it's gross. isn't that what's in andouille sausage? maybe it isn't so bad. it's some kind of grilled meat that may or may not be gross.
ss: what do you think?
jo-na: go for it.
i can only imagine the laugh the kitchen guys had, but they brought us our plates of chicken, french fries, and what looked like a giant brat with straight faces. ss kept her game face on as she cut into her andouillete, releasing a smell so awful that ck discreetely inched herself down the table and i asked myself without internal sarcasm if there were toxic fumes coming from some nearby industrial facility.
it wasn't only that ss didn't cry, or sulk, or vomit. she dissected it a bit further, looked up, and announced: "i think this is intestines." she picked at it a little more and then tried a little bite. she made a funny face and was quiet for a little while. then she looked up at us again: "it tastes piggy in a way you wouldn't expect."
so ck and i ate our chicken and eventually the waiter came and took everything away and the cheese tray came and everything was back to normal. we had exacted our revenge on the most obvious table of starring people by sitting right down next to them so that they were forced to stop starring (apparently it's possible to silently call out small town europeans when their behavior is so eggregiously poor).
we spent the rest of they day examining various towns and churches, entertaining everyone with our adventures in french cuisine. apparently ss was right on the money, as the quality of andouillete is assessed by its degree of pigginess (as it gets better and more expensive it's less piggy). we continued to learn the lexicon of roman religious architecture, inspecting tympana, crypts, cloisters, and of course the famous capitals depicting important religious themes ("lust and despair", for example).
so i'm very proud of my friends for being such good frenchies, even if they do shriek with delight every time we pass a flock of sheep or someone says "merde."
Sunday, May 20, 2007
le blog
even though i've become quite the blog-slacker over the last few months, i find myself overcome, once again, by the urge to blog from afar, this time from le very small town in france.
the advent of cheap, reliable technology continues to make the world smaller - looking out the window from where i'm sitting you might think you're mere inches (or maybe centimeters) from
falling off the planet, but you're just never that isolated in the presence of high speed internet... especially when your american cell phone is completely functional.
that said, there was no way we were going to wander into town without calling attention to ourselves. i am here with s "i love goat cheese" s and c "six seconds to sunburn" k who were gracious enough to join me on my sojourn in bfe, so i'm doing my best to show them the local sights. i thought we should start in the nearby town of la machine, most famous for it's fall from greatness after the coal mines closed. it's only about 4 kilometers from where we're staying, but the uncharacteristic blazing heat resulted in three loud, sweaty americans appearing out of nowhere, banging down the doors of the mining museum. sore thumb doesn't begin to cover it.
it turns out that the mining museum is open only between 2 and 6 pm, only on sundays and bank holidays. not surprising, really, in a town where the grocery store closes for lunch and the church is open for mass every 4th sunday. but a drag nonetheless, since it meant that i couldn,t come through on my promise of hard hats, head lamps, and a guided tour of a mock coal mine.
not that the day was without excitement. there was a brief moment of panic when we thought we'd come across a naked man on the side of the road, fishing in the nearby creek (it turned out he actually did have pants on), and there was our chance to help out with local law inforcement. as we were walking home on the small road (there isn't so much sidewalk as there is ditch) we got, pulled over by a very little car carrying two very attractive policemen (gendarmes, if you will). while i was still trying to figure out how it was possibly illegal to be walking along the side of the road, they pulled out a flyer with a picture of a man and a separate picture of his motorcycle, with a "excuse me but have you seen him?"
even more surprising than being asked to help out with a french rural man hunt was that we were actually helpful, as we had actually seen him going in the opposite direction about a half hour before. we supplied all the details we could (we're not sure they believed us) and watched as a small legion of law enforcement paraded into town. if there was a newspaper it would be on the front page.
maybe it's the jet-lag talking, but i don't think it gets any better than this.
the advent of cheap, reliable technology continues to make the world smaller - looking out the window from where i'm sitting you might think you're mere inches (or maybe centimeters) from
falling off the planet, but you're just never that isolated in the presence of high speed internet... especially when your american cell phone is completely functional.
that said, there was no way we were going to wander into town without calling attention to ourselves. i am here with s "i love goat cheese" s and c "six seconds to sunburn" k who were gracious enough to join me on my sojourn in bfe, so i'm doing my best to show them the local sights. i thought we should start in the nearby town of la machine, most famous for it's fall from greatness after the coal mines closed. it's only about 4 kilometers from where we're staying, but the uncharacteristic blazing heat resulted in three loud, sweaty americans appearing out of nowhere, banging down the doors of the mining museum. sore thumb doesn't begin to cover it.
it turns out that the mining museum is open only between 2 and 6 pm, only on sundays and bank holidays. not surprising, really, in a town where the grocery store closes for lunch and the church is open for mass every 4th sunday. but a drag nonetheless, since it meant that i couldn,t come through on my promise of hard hats, head lamps, and a guided tour of a mock coal mine.
not that the day was without excitement. there was a brief moment of panic when we thought we'd come across a naked man on the side of the road, fishing in the nearby creek (it turned out he actually did have pants on), and there was our chance to help out with local law inforcement. as we were walking home on the small road (there isn't so much sidewalk as there is ditch) we got, pulled over by a very little car carrying two very attractive policemen (gendarmes, if you will). while i was still trying to figure out how it was possibly illegal to be walking along the side of the road, they pulled out a flyer with a picture of a man and a separate picture of his motorcycle, with a "excuse me but have you seen him?"
even more surprising than being asked to help out with a french rural man hunt was that we were actually helpful, as we had actually seen him going in the opposite direction about a half hour before. we supplied all the details we could (we're not sure they believed us) and watched as a small legion of law enforcement paraded into town. if there was a newspaper it would be on the front page.
maybe it's the jet-lag talking, but i don't think it gets any better than this.
Friday, April 27, 2007
sour grapes
go figure: there's a downside to shoddy construction.
since i've been in chicago i've lived in the same 1960's 4+1 in lakeview. well located? yes. off-street parking? yes. thick walls and ceilings? no. and even though my beautiful hard-wood floors had to be covered up with wall-to-wall carpets lest i disturb the "very good tenant" who lived downstairs, no such courtesy was bestowed upon me and i've had to endure a series of loud, inconsiderate, elephant-like upstairs neighbors.
the thing about loud neighbors is that they are often enshrouded in mystery. my building is so big and anonymous that i'm not sure i've even seen these people. given the episodic quiet periods i'm assuming that the turnover for the apartment in question has been pretty high, and i've never really been able to conjure up a good mental image to go with my rage and indignation.
sometimes the offenses are quite obvious in their origin, although that doesn't usually make them less irritating - i mean really, who vacuums at midnight? more often than not, i have absolutely no idea what these people could possibly be doing to generate such a disruptive racket. the booms and clangs and thuds just don't seem to correlate with any routine human activity that i can readily identify.
until i get woken up at 2:30 AM on wednesday to a particularly offensive brand of rhythmic banging that can only be the result of one thing.
for a moment there's confusion. what time is it? why am i awake? dear god, what is that noise? what could they possibly be... oh... eeeew! i find lying in bed alone when you'd like to be sleeping having to listen to strangers have sex a mere eight feet from me to be a pretty distasteful experience. but i fall back asleep, briefly, before being awoken AGAIN, this time to a chorus of such stereotypical moans and "OHMYGOD"s, so ridiculous that i have to ask myself, "who on earth has such raucous circus sex at 2:30 AM on wednesday?" i was tempted to get out the broom and wack it on the ceiling to see if i could at least break the concentration required to fake such a melodramatic orgasm, but was afraid of effecting encourgagement, rather than the mortification and buzz-kill i intended.
as i barrel towards my 30th birthday with alarming speed, i have to ask myself if i've become such a curmudgeon as to actually resent people who have drunken, late-night, weekday sex, or if i'm enough of a prude to be shocked by such behavior... but seriously, have you seen the people who live in my building? i have, and believe me, they just don't look like they have it in them. and besides, given how empty the parking lot is during the day i know they all have day jobs. i just don't believe that anyone who can afford the lakeview rent mark-up and tolerate living in a neighborhood so lacking in edge has any inclincation to be awake at that hour.
so instead of going out and finding my own ways to shock and offend my neighbors with a life of sin and debauchery, i daydream about the job i could have taken in north carolina where the same rent check would get me a house with its very own roof and ceiling, and about the snide notes i'd like to slide under the door of my new arch-nemeses... something along the lines of, "if i wanted porn i'd rent some."
i'm open to suggestions.
since i've been in chicago i've lived in the same 1960's 4+1 in lakeview. well located? yes. off-street parking? yes. thick walls and ceilings? no. and even though my beautiful hard-wood floors had to be covered up with wall-to-wall carpets lest i disturb the "very good tenant" who lived downstairs, no such courtesy was bestowed upon me and i've had to endure a series of loud, inconsiderate, elephant-like upstairs neighbors.
the thing about loud neighbors is that they are often enshrouded in mystery. my building is so big and anonymous that i'm not sure i've even seen these people. given the episodic quiet periods i'm assuming that the turnover for the apartment in question has been pretty high, and i've never really been able to conjure up a good mental image to go with my rage and indignation.
sometimes the offenses are quite obvious in their origin, although that doesn't usually make them less irritating - i mean really, who vacuums at midnight? more often than not, i have absolutely no idea what these people could possibly be doing to generate such a disruptive racket. the booms and clangs and thuds just don't seem to correlate with any routine human activity that i can readily identify.
until i get woken up at 2:30 AM on wednesday to a particularly offensive brand of rhythmic banging that can only be the result of one thing.
for a moment there's confusion. what time is it? why am i awake? dear god, what is that noise? what could they possibly be... oh... eeeew! i find lying in bed alone when you'd like to be sleeping having to listen to strangers have sex a mere eight feet from me to be a pretty distasteful experience. but i fall back asleep, briefly, before being awoken AGAIN, this time to a chorus of such stereotypical moans and "OHMYGOD"s, so ridiculous that i have to ask myself, "who on earth has such raucous circus sex at 2:30 AM on wednesday?" i was tempted to get out the broom and wack it on the ceiling to see if i could at least break the concentration required to fake such a melodramatic orgasm, but was afraid of effecting encourgagement, rather than the mortification and buzz-kill i intended.
as i barrel towards my 30th birthday with alarming speed, i have to ask myself if i've become such a curmudgeon as to actually resent people who have drunken, late-night, weekday sex, or if i'm enough of a prude to be shocked by such behavior... but seriously, have you seen the people who live in my building? i have, and believe me, they just don't look like they have it in them. and besides, given how empty the parking lot is during the day i know they all have day jobs. i just don't believe that anyone who can afford the lakeview rent mark-up and tolerate living in a neighborhood so lacking in edge has any inclincation to be awake at that hour.
so instead of going out and finding my own ways to shock and offend my neighbors with a life of sin and debauchery, i daydream about the job i could have taken in north carolina where the same rent check would get me a house with its very own roof and ceiling, and about the snide notes i'd like to slide under the door of my new arch-nemeses... something along the lines of, "if i wanted porn i'd rent some."
i'm open to suggestions.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
warm fuzzy holiday greetings
not all of us celebrate spring holidays with baskets of pastel eggs and chocolate bunnies. in an effort to integrate the holiday season, and having recently attended both an amazing yummy seder at my blogmate's place and a quirky easter get-together with 98-year-old grandpa, i would like to present the following reasons why it doesn't really matter which holiday you celebrate this season:
seder: matzo ball soup - chicken stock with mysteriously delicious balls of flavored dough.
easter: italian holiday soup - turkey stock with mysteriously delicious balls of flavored beef.
seder: extra table setting and cup of wine for elijah's coming.
easter: extra 1/2 hour of conversation about my father, and why he isn't coming.
seder: while sitting around the table, learn the story of exodus, wait to find out who starts snickering first at the word "bondage."
easter: while sitting around the table, learn that uncle and partner recently attended the international men of leather festival in chicago.
seder: reminisce about last seder's grilled turkey, which tasted suspiciously (deliciously but sacrilegiously?) like the sausage that had been recently cooked on the same grill.
easter: delight to discover that grandpa now makes turkey by stuffing the whole thing with bacon.
seder: drink 4 glasses of wine, become unable to see straight to drive home.
easter: drink 4 cups of coffee, become unable to sit still to drive home.
seder: friend comes in with surprise gift of manischewitz-flavored chocolates for our gracious hostess.
easter: grandpa starts telling stories about friends back in the old country coming to him with surprise gift of 40 chickens.
seder: learn fun facts about your friends, like their new condos and love of existential literature.
easter: learn that grandma's relatives used to be in the mafia. (sorry, but what parallel can you draw for that one?)
seder: wake the next morning a little hungover, vow not to drink so much for a little while.
easter: immediately afterward, buy several 6-packs of beer and vow to not open them at least until getting home.
seder: matzo ball soup - chicken stock with mysteriously delicious balls of flavored dough.
easter: italian holiday soup - turkey stock with mysteriously delicious balls of flavored beef.
seder: extra table setting and cup of wine for elijah's coming.
easter: extra 1/2 hour of conversation about my father, and why he isn't coming.
seder: while sitting around the table, learn the story of exodus, wait to find out who starts snickering first at the word "bondage."
easter: while sitting around the table, learn that uncle and partner recently attended the international men of leather festival in chicago.
seder: reminisce about last seder's grilled turkey, which tasted suspiciously (deliciously but sacrilegiously?) like the sausage that had been recently cooked on the same grill.
easter: delight to discover that grandpa now makes turkey by stuffing the whole thing with bacon.
seder: drink 4 glasses of wine, become unable to see straight to drive home.
easter: drink 4 cups of coffee, become unable to sit still to drive home.
seder: friend comes in with surprise gift of manischewitz-flavored chocolates for our gracious hostess.
easter: grandpa starts telling stories about friends back in the old country coming to him with surprise gift of 40 chickens.
seder: learn fun facts about your friends, like their new condos and love of existential literature.
easter: learn that grandma's relatives used to be in the mafia. (sorry, but what parallel can you draw for that one?)
seder: wake the next morning a little hungover, vow not to drink so much for a little while.
easter: immediately afterward, buy several 6-packs of beer and vow to not open them at least until getting home.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
p.s.
my good blogmate has already told you about our adventures in new york. now that we're back in what suddenly feels like quaint little chicago, i just wanted to reassure our readership that we did more than just drink and shop. we learned things about one of this nation's great cities...
1. in bars on wall street, the line to the mens' room is longer than the womens' - but ladies' night somehow seems creepier in that context.
2. tequila in hot chocolate is delicious.
3. if you do not speak english as your native language, it is apparently acceptable to sing along to bryan adams in the airport.
4. if you are a do-gooder vegan undergraduate at columbia, it is totally acceptable to go on in long strident tones over ethiopian food with your girlfriend and your tragically-new-jersey-accented aunt about what a do-gooder you are, and how much your expensive columbia education will go to bat for you in the lucrative and competitive field of designing programs for disabled adults.
5. if you are the tragically-new-jersey-accented aunt at said ethiopian restaurant, yes, we want to hear you speaking so loudly, and of course we are interested in that time in the 70s when you went on some macrobiotic diet without actually knowing what that meant.
6. if you are riding the m60 bus from la guardia to harlem, not only is it standard for the bus driver to holler at you over the loudspeaker, but it is required that you shout back, in kind of a warped tent revival fashion: "is there room in the back?" "NO!!!" "i SAID, can you give me some roomintheback, people?" "NO!" there might have been dancing and speaking in tongues but it seemed dangerous given the amount of slamming on the brakes.
7. if you are a featured artist at moma, you need to wear high-watered bad pants. incidentally, you know that usual museum commentary on the wall about how the artist develops his work by "listening" to what the inanimate subjects are telling him? not so mystical and artistic, once you know that said artist is schizophrenic.
so a special set of thank-yous to our gracious hosts who showed us around new york!
-sm, for uncomplainingly ushering us around the city, even on a sunday morning after her saturday evening of mainlining wine.
-js, for getting us successfully from point a to point b every time, and for boiling down complicated concepts like arbitrage to little words that us non-business types can understand (when she described someone's business plan as a "bank of a bank of a bank," we knew we'd found the right friend.)
-sm's roommate k, for showing off her new alcoholic popsicles, and insisting that it's really ok to want fries and ice cream right after breakfast. also for agreeing that no, falafel cannot be involved in arbitrage, because it's a low-risk commodity.
-mk, for navigating us through dim sum: "you just sit there until you're full, or until you're peckish, and then you eat some more!" for finding us lots of yummy food and drink, and appreciating my long rambling stories about people she's never met.
and of course, to my blogmate, for one-liners like "sometimes we pass zantac wordlessly back and forth like a bong," for completely forgetting that it was my idea to embark on the crazy let's-give-up-our-plane-seats-for-$400 adventure in the first place and not holding it against me, and for being willing to laugh about this and still tolerate my presence after it's over.
1. in bars on wall street, the line to the mens' room is longer than the womens' - but ladies' night somehow seems creepier in that context.
2. tequila in hot chocolate is delicious.
3. if you do not speak english as your native language, it is apparently acceptable to sing along to bryan adams in the airport.
4. if you are a do-gooder vegan undergraduate at columbia, it is totally acceptable to go on in long strident tones over ethiopian food with your girlfriend and your tragically-new-jersey-accented aunt about what a do-gooder you are, and how much your expensive columbia education will go to bat for you in the lucrative and competitive field of designing programs for disabled adults.
5. if you are the tragically-new-jersey-accented aunt at said ethiopian restaurant, yes, we want to hear you speaking so loudly, and of course we are interested in that time in the 70s when you went on some macrobiotic diet without actually knowing what that meant.
6. if you are riding the m60 bus from la guardia to harlem, not only is it standard for the bus driver to holler at you over the loudspeaker, but it is required that you shout back, in kind of a warped tent revival fashion: "is there room in the back?" "NO!!!" "i SAID, can you give me some roomintheback, people?" "NO!" there might have been dancing and speaking in tongues but it seemed dangerous given the amount of slamming on the brakes.
7. if you are a featured artist at moma, you need to wear high-watered bad pants. incidentally, you know that usual museum commentary on the wall about how the artist develops his work by "listening" to what the inanimate subjects are telling him? not so mystical and artistic, once you know that said artist is schizophrenic.
so a special set of thank-yous to our gracious hosts who showed us around new york!
-sm, for uncomplainingly ushering us around the city, even on a sunday morning after her saturday evening of mainlining wine.
-js, for getting us successfully from point a to point b every time, and for boiling down complicated concepts like arbitrage to little words that us non-business types can understand (when she described someone's business plan as a "bank of a bank of a bank," we knew we'd found the right friend.)
-sm's roommate k, for showing off her new alcoholic popsicles, and insisting that it's really ok to want fries and ice cream right after breakfast. also for agreeing that no, falafel cannot be involved in arbitrage, because it's a low-risk commodity.
-mk, for navigating us through dim sum: "you just sit there until you're full, or until you're peckish, and then you eat some more!" for finding us lots of yummy food and drink, and appreciating my long rambling stories about people she's never met.
and of course, to my blogmate, for one-liners like "sometimes we pass zantac wordlessly back and forth like a bong," for completely forgetting that it was my idea to embark on the crazy let's-give-up-our-plane-seats-for-$400 adventure in the first place and not holding it against me, and for being willing to laugh about this and still tolerate my presence after it's over.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
bloggers in the big apple, reprise
there's something really nice about spending a whole weekend in an unknown city without ever getting out a map or asking for directions. i'm not sure what we did to deserve such red carpet treatment, but with the aid of our gracious hosts we were able to accomplish exactly what we set out to do: gawk shamelessly at high-brow new yorkers, eat a lot, and haggle over knockoff hermes burkin bags in chinatown.
it was awesome.
except for the end. which sucked. but i'll get to that later.
the good parts included beer, mexican food, wine, tequila, bourbon, coffee, dim sum, gelato, coffee, ethiopian food, wine, falafel, coffee, bloody marys, cuban food, pizza, diet coke, hot dogs, bourbon, and new england clam chowder. in that order. there was also sm, her roommate (k), mk, js, kl, dh, ea, kn, ak, his bf (j), lh. and there were also purses, sunglasses, pashminas, and shoes.
we wrapped up our weekend at the MoMA where my blogmate repeatedly made me blow the cover of my feigned hipster persona by whispering her names for the avant-garde photgraphs we were inspecting, each time making me laugh so hard that if i had been drinking something it would have come out of my nose. each one had some kind of abstract name followed by the year that followed, such that the picture of the guys standing outside with all their papers blowing all over the place became, "god damn it, 1972." meanwhile i wondered exactly what kind of privileged up-bringing i must have had if my visceral reaction to the galleries upon galleries of impressionist masterpieces was some kind of "geez, not another picasso" eye rolling. occasionally i managed to stop being blase long enough to wonder why i'd missed the memo that one is only allowed at the MoMA if one is a 28 year old 5ft 5 inch tall male who carries a messenger bag, wears converse and frowns alot.
it's a good thing we had fun. the residual fuzzy feeling of hangover plus self-congratulation made our long and rather miserable return to chicago a bit easier to take. for the record, it isn't worth the $400 of airplane voucher to give up your seat on the 2-hour shuttle from laguardia to midway if it means sitting in the airport for another hour to catch an inevitably delayed flight to boston, even if it means a fabulous room at the hyatt overlooking whatever big body of water it is that boston has while you gaze at your blogmate over a manhattan... because of course you'll have to get up at 4:30 to catch the 6AM flight back to chicago which of course is cancelled, resulting in a nearly wordless standoff with the very unhelpful delta agent, resulting in a move to united airlines for a flight back to the right city but the wrong airport. having made peace with that debaucle of course you'd get pulled out of the security line for some kind of special, thorough searching. but at least you'd finally get back to your car, in an economy parking lot whose office smells so much like urine and feet that you'd wish you were back with the angry delta people. but happy to be home.
it was awesome.
except for the end. which sucked. but i'll get to that later.
the good parts included beer, mexican food, wine, tequila, bourbon, coffee, dim sum, gelato, coffee, ethiopian food, wine, falafel, coffee, bloody marys, cuban food, pizza, diet coke, hot dogs, bourbon, and new england clam chowder. in that order. there was also sm, her roommate (k), mk, js, kl, dh, ea, kn, ak, his bf (j), lh. and there were also purses, sunglasses, pashminas, and shoes.
we wrapped up our weekend at the MoMA where my blogmate repeatedly made me blow the cover of my feigned hipster persona by whispering her names for the avant-garde photgraphs we were inspecting, each time making me laugh so hard that if i had been drinking something it would have come out of my nose. each one had some kind of abstract name followed by the year that followed, such that the picture of the guys standing outside with all their papers blowing all over the place became, "god damn it, 1972." meanwhile i wondered exactly what kind of privileged up-bringing i must have had if my visceral reaction to the galleries upon galleries of impressionist masterpieces was some kind of "geez, not another picasso" eye rolling. occasionally i managed to stop being blase long enough to wonder why i'd missed the memo that one is only allowed at the MoMA if one is a 28 year old 5ft 5 inch tall male who carries a messenger bag, wears converse and frowns alot.
it's a good thing we had fun. the residual fuzzy feeling of hangover plus self-congratulation made our long and rather miserable return to chicago a bit easier to take. for the record, it isn't worth the $400 of airplane voucher to give up your seat on the 2-hour shuttle from laguardia to midway if it means sitting in the airport for another hour to catch an inevitably delayed flight to boston, even if it means a fabulous room at the hyatt overlooking whatever big body of water it is that boston has while you gaze at your blogmate over a manhattan... because of course you'll have to get up at 4:30 to catch the 6AM flight back to chicago which of course is cancelled, resulting in a nearly wordless standoff with the very unhelpful delta agent, resulting in a move to united airlines for a flight back to the right city but the wrong airport. having made peace with that debaucle of course you'd get pulled out of the security line for some kind of special, thorough searching. but at least you'd finally get back to your car, in an economy parking lot whose office smells so much like urine and feet that you'd wish you were back with the angry delta people. but happy to be home.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
chewable jesus, action moses, and the love of my life
i didn't realize that religious icons made such excellent snacks.
i didn't think much of it when shopping for a baby shower gift for some friends recently, and stumbled onto a cute easter book section featuring an eight-page chewable bible. i was mostly impressed that they could condense the word of god into such a brief and delicious format.
but over the weekend i heard a story from bike-m. and his wife that put the whole chewable-religion into a new perspective: bike-m. was looking for an appropriate but sarcastic thank-you gift for a mentor at work who happens to be a self-described right-wing religious crazy surrounded by a workplace of leftist communist hippies (something like that- can all those things go together?). bike-m. ordered online an action-figure moses for said mentor's desk, and it arrived by mail. unfortunately (or fortunately), little-bike-m. found action-figure moses before her father was able to deliver the gift, and she managed to unwrap moses and shove the toy into her mouth. bike-m. was, i think, disappointed that his well-thought-out gift was being eaten, but guessed that perhaps his work mentor would just as much appreciate a photo of his daughter eating a plastic action-figure moses.
now, i have a bad habit of writing vaguely sacrilegious blog posts during lent (though it's been 2 years since writing about my fear of a zit-cross on ash wednesday). but are chewable religious objects such a bad thing? mrs. bike-m, who told me the story about action-figure moses, also tells me that when she and her daughter were the only white people shopping at the biglots in harvey over the weekend (a little bit of a long story about why that happened), she thought that perhaps her daughter's mouthing of action-figure moses might have actually been looked on with approval by the local on-lookers -- making mrs. bike-m. look a little more pious than her actual humanist-agnostic-unitarian-wife-of-mennonite reality. to paraphrase, "i can look religious in harvey, or ironic in wicker park, whichever suits my purposes."
i think that sentiment points out the real issue - i'm sure the babies in this story would have been equally happy to chew on a fabric bible or "our bodies, ourselves," action-figure moses or tickle-me elmo. (as mb and i proceed with wedding planning, i'm now kind of wishing our entire wedding ceremony would be attended by toddlers, because it would make the whole communion issue easier. forget the whole catholic/lutheran thing: little-bike-m., affectionately called "the hoover" by her parents, would eat the communion host right off the ground with no internal debate at all.) this is about our perceptions. anything we think about chewable bibles, pose-able prophets, or breaking bread with people of a vaguely different religious background reflects our own cynicism, one way or the other.
this does not mean that the minister will be officiating our wedding with a chew-bible. but to the bike-m. family, action-figure moses will be formally invited.
i didn't think much of it when shopping for a baby shower gift for some friends recently, and stumbled onto a cute easter book section featuring an eight-page chewable bible. i was mostly impressed that they could condense the word of god into such a brief and delicious format.
but over the weekend i heard a story from bike-m. and his wife that put the whole chewable-religion into a new perspective: bike-m. was looking for an appropriate but sarcastic thank-you gift for a mentor at work who happens to be a self-described right-wing religious crazy surrounded by a workplace of leftist communist hippies (something like that- can all those things go together?). bike-m. ordered online an action-figure moses for said mentor's desk, and it arrived by mail. unfortunately (or fortunately), little-bike-m. found action-figure moses before her father was able to deliver the gift, and she managed to unwrap moses and shove the toy into her mouth. bike-m. was, i think, disappointed that his well-thought-out gift was being eaten, but guessed that perhaps his work mentor would just as much appreciate a photo of his daughter eating a plastic action-figure moses.
now, i have a bad habit of writing vaguely sacrilegious blog posts during lent (though it's been 2 years since writing about my fear of a zit-cross on ash wednesday). but are chewable religious objects such a bad thing? mrs. bike-m, who told me the story about action-figure moses, also tells me that when she and her daughter were the only white people shopping at the biglots in harvey over the weekend (a little bit of a long story about why that happened), she thought that perhaps her daughter's mouthing of action-figure moses might have actually been looked on with approval by the local on-lookers -- making mrs. bike-m. look a little more pious than her actual humanist-agnostic-unitarian-wife-of-mennonite reality. to paraphrase, "i can look religious in harvey, or ironic in wicker park, whichever suits my purposes."
i think that sentiment points out the real issue - i'm sure the babies in this story would have been equally happy to chew on a fabric bible or "our bodies, ourselves," action-figure moses or tickle-me elmo. (as mb and i proceed with wedding planning, i'm now kind of wishing our entire wedding ceremony would be attended by toddlers, because it would make the whole communion issue easier. forget the whole catholic/lutheran thing: little-bike-m., affectionately called "the hoover" by her parents, would eat the communion host right off the ground with no internal debate at all.) this is about our perceptions. anything we think about chewable bibles, pose-able prophets, or breaking bread with people of a vaguely different religious background reflects our own cynicism, one way or the other.
this does not mean that the minister will be officiating our wedding with a chew-bible. but to the bike-m. family, action-figure moses will be formally invited.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
what would you do?
on my usual route home from work there are a few spots where generally i pass men or women in the street asking for spare change or peddling various goods. i've never really found a use for men's tube socks, bears superbowl champion t-shirts (doh), or water bottles, although i appreciate the attempts. i keep a little container of change near the driver's seat in the car that i use for meters, the sunday sun-times on occasion, and sometimes the people on these corners. i don't have any particular well-defined rule on who gets spare change (soft spot for women and children).
so last week i was paused at an off ramp, and a gentleman with a trach was asking for change. i imagined it wasn't super easy to manage the cup and the sign with the bag of possessions plus having to put his finger on his neck any time he wanted to vocalize, so rolled down my window to offer him some change, and he thanked me without any difficulty whatsoever. i didn't recognize that anything was weird until i was driving away, when it occurred to me that there was no scar, no skin opening, no cap over the trach, no little buzz to his voice ---
who on earth begs for change by using a fake trach?!? i've seen dolls wrapped in slings as fake babies, legs pinned behind to look like they're amputated, but never this one. points for creativity, my friend, but that's just obscure.
so last week i was paused at an off ramp, and a gentleman with a trach was asking for change. i imagined it wasn't super easy to manage the cup and the sign with the bag of possessions plus having to put his finger on his neck any time he wanted to vocalize, so rolled down my window to offer him some change, and he thanked me without any difficulty whatsoever. i didn't recognize that anything was weird until i was driving away, when it occurred to me that there was no scar, no skin opening, no cap over the trach, no little buzz to his voice ---
who on earth begs for change by using a fake trach?!? i've seen dolls wrapped in slings as fake babies, legs pinned behind to look like they're amputated, but never this one. points for creativity, my friend, but that's just obscure.
Monday, February 26, 2007
bouncing around the room
i went to a fundraiser on saturday night where a bizarre confluence of events left me staring out into a pool of rather attractive men without the expected contingent of thin, pretty women flanking them. while i choose to remain stymied by my inability to work this situation to my advantage, i actually know exactly what went wrong. for one thing, if i hadn't been so absorbed in making the pseudo-anthropologic obseravations that follow i might have faired a little better. sometimes there's honestly nothing better to do than to assess a situation from a blogger's perspective, entertaining oneself with bitter and witty condescension... but other times the right thing to do is probably to forget about the blog, have another drink, and go flirt with the boy in the northface fleece. if only i knew the difference...
on the other hand, it's really hard to catch someone's eye when everyone's eyes are closed. such is the case when every man in the joint is ensconced in soul-searching, meditative bliss under the mysterious power of the north mississippi allstars.
i have a long standing gripe with phish heads. not that i have any particularly beef with phish or widespread panic or any of the other granola jam bands, but i've always been a bit annoyed at the way the throngs of trust-fund hippies freak out and follow them around in the country in their jeeps, as if it's actually some kind of respectable endeavor. don't get me wrong, i'm sure it's exhausting to obtain and smoke that much weed, but i just don't get it. what is entirely clear however, is that in the absence of phish or widespread panic the jam band cohort will cling for dear life to the next closest thing. suddenly the concerts of your favorite new orleans funk band or the quintessentially preppy dave matthews band are bursting at the seams with the entire under 30 population of colorodo.
as it turns out, this is an aging population, and now these people have jobs and mortgages and are smoking less pot and drinking more blue moon. they ALL wear that black fleece northface jacket with the padded elbows (i should be careful here since i also wear that jacket), but they just don't have the time or energy to be full time fanatics. instead, they show up to see the north mississippi allstars the park west where yet again they become hard-core followers. they know all the words, recognize all the songs by the 2nd chord (you know they do when you see the one fist shoot up into the air as an act of recognition), and they dance, dance, dance, remembering their glory days. the result of this is my finding myself surround on all sides but a group of awfully cute, well-to-do guys, and bopping their heads in unison, way too captivated by the music to notice me.
oh how the mighty have fallen.
on the other hand, it's really hard to catch someone's eye when everyone's eyes are closed. such is the case when every man in the joint is ensconced in soul-searching, meditative bliss under the mysterious power of the north mississippi allstars.
i have a long standing gripe with phish heads. not that i have any particularly beef with phish or widespread panic or any of the other granola jam bands, but i've always been a bit annoyed at the way the throngs of trust-fund hippies freak out and follow them around in the country in their jeeps, as if it's actually some kind of respectable endeavor. don't get me wrong, i'm sure it's exhausting to obtain and smoke that much weed, but i just don't get it. what is entirely clear however, is that in the absence of phish or widespread panic the jam band cohort will cling for dear life to the next closest thing. suddenly the concerts of your favorite new orleans funk band or the quintessentially preppy dave matthews band are bursting at the seams with the entire under 30 population of colorodo.
as it turns out, this is an aging population, and now these people have jobs and mortgages and are smoking less pot and drinking more blue moon. they ALL wear that black fleece northface jacket with the padded elbows (i should be careful here since i also wear that jacket), but they just don't have the time or energy to be full time fanatics. instead, they show up to see the north mississippi allstars the park west where yet again they become hard-core followers. they know all the words, recognize all the songs by the 2nd chord (you know they do when you see the one fist shoot up into the air as an act of recognition), and they dance, dance, dance, remembering their glory days. the result of this is my finding myself surround on all sides but a group of awfully cute, well-to-do guys, and bopping their heads in unison, way too captivated by the music to notice me.
oh how the mighty have fallen.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
zzzzzzzzzzzen
while my good blogmate is living the jet-set lifestyle of drunken debauchery in new orleans followed by more-respectable work-sponsored-conference drunken debauchery in florida, i am leading the slow life back here in chicago, trying to recover from a rather busy work week with a peaceful weekend at home. mb and i have been feeling a little stretched lately, and so planned a relaxing and healthy weekend.
i am learning, though, that a healthy lifestyle has its limits in a type-a-personality household. forget our breakfast-making on saturday - food pyramid was somewhat marred by mb's declaration "you know, i really feel that we are food artistes, and butter is our paintbrush" - or our evening argument about how many extra chocolate chips really need to be added to the top of the tollhouse pre-made chocolate chip cookie dough. it's more that, well, i tend to miss the point of relaxing activities. this morning at yoga class, i kept trying to get mb's attention to mock our mutual lack of ability to balance on one foot after the hip-workout of yesterday's snowshoeing. and when it came time to lie meditatively on the floor in between sitting poses, i was frustrated that mb's mat was just a little too far away for me to kick him so he could see me mouth the words "i'm bored. when's breakfast?" (it wasn't just my boredom... i saw him eyeing the clock every two minutes.) and later, while heading into old st pat's for mass, not only did i spend the hour engaged in the celebrated catholic tradition of spending the entire kneeling time scoping the rest of the room for potential dates for my blogmate (this is such non-novel territory i'll skip), but i picked up every possible piece of reading material at the back of the church. you know, to make every non-prayer second informative... this afternoon i am back at home trying to study a little, all curled up with tea and candle and cookies (ah yes, and book), and i'm checking my phone for messages every ten minutes.
i'm sure there's a place for centering one's mind in the present. i'm sure it would make me more effective and efficient and calm and such. but... wait, what was my concluding point again? i got distracted thinking about cookies.
i am learning, though, that a healthy lifestyle has its limits in a type-a-personality household. forget our breakfast-making on saturday - food pyramid was somewhat marred by mb's declaration "you know, i really feel that we are food artistes, and butter is our paintbrush" - or our evening argument about how many extra chocolate chips really need to be added to the top of the tollhouse pre-made chocolate chip cookie dough. it's more that, well, i tend to miss the point of relaxing activities. this morning at yoga class, i kept trying to get mb's attention to mock our mutual lack of ability to balance on one foot after the hip-workout of yesterday's snowshoeing. and when it came time to lie meditatively on the floor in between sitting poses, i was frustrated that mb's mat was just a little too far away for me to kick him so he could see me mouth the words "i'm bored. when's breakfast?" (it wasn't just my boredom... i saw him eyeing the clock every two minutes.) and later, while heading into old st pat's for mass, not only did i spend the hour engaged in the celebrated catholic tradition of spending the entire kneeling time scoping the rest of the room for potential dates for my blogmate (this is such non-novel territory i'll skip), but i picked up every possible piece of reading material at the back of the church. you know, to make every non-prayer second informative... this afternoon i am back at home trying to study a little, all curled up with tea and candle and cookies (ah yes, and book), and i'm checking my phone for messages every ten minutes.
i'm sure there's a place for centering one's mind in the present. i'm sure it would make me more effective and efficient and calm and such. but... wait, what was my concluding point again? i got distracted thinking about cookies.
Friday, February 16, 2007
remorse is for sissies
the i-love-new-orleans rant that follows is probably wildly inappropriate, in light of the fact that i'm allegedly here to "be with my family" and "honor the one-year anniversary of my grandmother's death..." but to be fair, i'm doing most of the drunken parade watching and frantic po-boy eating flanked by willing-accomplice parents (thus fulfilling the "spending time with my family" requirement), and the ceremony tomorrow will not be presided over by a rabbi or anything remotely resembling a rabbi, so much as by 6 to 10 denim-clad, vaguely solemn family members who are too busy grumbling about the bone chilling 40 degree temperature and supressing their smoldering resentment about various things to think, much less say anything meaningful about my recently departed grandmother. and i definitely pick eating, drinking, and hollering over playing tech guru for my parents. for one thing i don't really know enough about computers to be anyone's guru, and for another, even i can tell that their computer is jacked.
it's been an interesting mardi gras. post-katrina new orleans is more of a shrine to itself than it has ever been, well set up for a suddenly nostalgic ex-pat to the midwest like me. local microbrew is cheaper in any restaurant than a bottle of miller lite is at the avereage chi-town bar, and my parents have been eager to parade me through the various new eating and shopping establishments, where i've had my fill of fried oysters and post-storm satirical t-shirts (i.e. "new orleans, it's not beautiful being easy"...). speaking of parades, within an hour of my arrival i was headed to muses, the all-woman parade, armed with a squeeze bottle full of southern comfort (i misinterpreted my mother's disdainful looks as "why is my daughter an alcoholic?" when in fact she meant, "why can't you just fill your backpack with beer like a normal person?"). there we found my good friend lining up with the other pussyfooters, a crew of 30+ year-old marching dancers, flanked by their, ahem, pussyhandlers, all pissed off and excited because their rival crew, the cameltoe steppers had stolen their trademark colors (i swear i'm not making this up). the beauty of girl parades is that everyone catches lots of stuff without much self-degradation... not the case the next night at hermes, a more standard parade, where my father watched, fascinated, as i successfully sauntered up to the floats, again and again returning with armloads of light-up loot (the quality of mardi gras takings has improved markedly in the last few years - it's not even worth taking if it doesn't blink or have lip gloss or isn't a beer coozy). i'd feel bad about getting so blatantly tanked in front of my dad if he hadn't taken a shot of whiskey before we left the house.
as i was driving around, frantically in search of the krewe of o.a.k.s drunken meandering through uptown (picture a big elaborate pub crawl) so that i could once again march with the pussyfooters, remembering my former tradition of once a year debaucherous hook up (after said pub crawl) with my old middle school crush, it dawned on me that the most interesting aspect of all this year's mardi gras love fest has been recollection of a distinctly different era in my life - a time that was thinner, drunker, and, um, sluttier. i'd be more ashamed if it didn't make for such an impressively nostalgic romp around the city with my old friends, to the tune of, "omg did i ever tell you what i did after that party?"
new orleans: you could feel guilty, but why?
it's been an interesting mardi gras. post-katrina new orleans is more of a shrine to itself than it has ever been, well set up for a suddenly nostalgic ex-pat to the midwest like me. local microbrew is cheaper in any restaurant than a bottle of miller lite is at the avereage chi-town bar, and my parents have been eager to parade me through the various new eating and shopping establishments, where i've had my fill of fried oysters and post-storm satirical t-shirts (i.e. "new orleans, it's not beautiful being easy"...). speaking of parades, within an hour of my arrival i was headed to muses, the all-woman parade, armed with a squeeze bottle full of southern comfort (i misinterpreted my mother's disdainful looks as "why is my daughter an alcoholic?" when in fact she meant, "why can't you just fill your backpack with beer like a normal person?"). there we found my good friend lining up with the other pussyfooters, a crew of 30+ year-old marching dancers, flanked by their, ahem, pussyhandlers, all pissed off and excited because their rival crew, the cameltoe steppers had stolen their trademark colors (i swear i'm not making this up). the beauty of girl parades is that everyone catches lots of stuff without much self-degradation... not the case the next night at hermes, a more standard parade, where my father watched, fascinated, as i successfully sauntered up to the floats, again and again returning with armloads of light-up loot (the quality of mardi gras takings has improved markedly in the last few years - it's not even worth taking if it doesn't blink or have lip gloss or isn't a beer coozy). i'd feel bad about getting so blatantly tanked in front of my dad if he hadn't taken a shot of whiskey before we left the house.
as i was driving around, frantically in search of the krewe of o.a.k.s drunken meandering through uptown (picture a big elaborate pub crawl) so that i could once again march with the pussyfooters, remembering my former tradition of once a year debaucherous hook up (after said pub crawl) with my old middle school crush, it dawned on me that the most interesting aspect of all this year's mardi gras love fest has been recollection of a distinctly different era in my life - a time that was thinner, drunker, and, um, sluttier. i'd be more ashamed if it didn't make for such an impressively nostalgic romp around the city with my old friends, to the tune of, "omg did i ever tell you what i did after that party?"
new orleans: you could feel guilty, but why?
Thursday, February 08, 2007
the freak show continues
when it comes to gym geeks, we've blogged, mocked, complained, pointed and laughed quite extensively over the past few months... and while we may never tire of this most amusing subject, perhaps the rest of you have. so i would like to present a variation on the theme, now that i've discovered that the opposite extreme also exists at the ratner center. in case you were wondering, yes, it's possible to be too hip for our gym.
yesterday i discovered a girl who a appeared to have gotten lost on her way shooting a jay-z video. i say that because only a hip hop (or maybe raggaeton) back up dancer would show her face anywhere in quite such a ridiculous getup, especially with that much pomp and circumstance. i apologize for those of you who don't enjoy fashion play-by-plays...
1) ass tight, ultra-low-rise, black capri-pants with a hot pink stripe down the side.
2) white knee socks, 70's style with the colored stripes at the top
3) black retro saucony running shoes
4) short, tight camouflage baby tee with the bottom and sleeves cut off
5) GIANT faux-tiffany (or perhaps real-tiffany) silver necklace with heart-shaped pendant
6) hair down, perfectly manicured with super blond highlights (brown underneath)
7) gobs of eye make up
8) weight-lifting gloves
as if she wasn't calling enough attention to herself, it seems that between sets she
would come back into the locker room where she would pace back and forth in front of the mirror, staring at herself, no doubt perfecting the VERY scary expression on her face.
i was frankly terrified.
yesterday i discovered a girl who a appeared to have gotten lost on her way shooting a jay-z video. i say that because only a hip hop (or maybe raggaeton) back up dancer would show her face anywhere in quite such a ridiculous getup, especially with that much pomp and circumstance. i apologize for those of you who don't enjoy fashion play-by-plays...
1) ass tight, ultra-low-rise, black capri-pants with a hot pink stripe down the side.
2) white knee socks, 70's style with the colored stripes at the top
3) black retro saucony running shoes
4) short, tight camouflage baby tee with the bottom and sleeves cut off
5) GIANT faux-tiffany (or perhaps real-tiffany) silver necklace with heart-shaped pendant
6) hair down, perfectly manicured with super blond highlights (brown underneath)
7) gobs of eye make up
8) weight-lifting gloves
as if she wasn't calling enough attention to herself, it seems that between sets she
would come back into the locker room where she would pace back and forth in front of the mirror, staring at herself, no doubt perfecting the VERY scary expression on her face.i was frankly terrified.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
priorities
mb and i drove up to wisconsin this weekend for various wedding-planning-related items, the most awesome of which involved a trip to fox valley cheesecake company, located in the booming metropolis of omro. i'll summarize by saying that it pays to get married in the middle of nowhere- holy cheap cheesecake! so yummy. but even better was the excellent customer service - rodney (the owner, who we are sure is younger than we are) assured us that we could come and taste AS MANY TIMES AS WE NEED to make sure we're sure about the details, and was very willing to answer all of our questions. so far:
me: "we can taste as many times as we need?" *drool*
mb: "tell me about that 1950s mannequin in the corner of the room. does she make you uncomfortable?"
so we have signed a cake contract. and we have learned that yes, sometimes the store's decorative mannequin sometimes makes rodney uncomfortable, but that it was worse when she used to live in the back room and scare rodney into thinking she was a real person when the lights were off. this brings our actually-completed wedding tasks to cake, bobblehead animations of wedding party on website, and bridesmaid dresses for $78 apiece from nordstroms. note the conspicuous lack of actual contract for location or date. whatever. it's coming. the important part is that even if the wedding falls through, mb and i have agreed that before departing for the caribbean we will collect our 150 little cheesecake tarts and show up on a friend's doorstep to stuff ourselves silly with raspberry white chocolate and turtle goodness.
me: "we can taste as many times as we need?" *drool*
mb: "tell me about that 1950s mannequin in the corner of the room. does she make you uncomfortable?"
so we have signed a cake contract. and we have learned that yes, sometimes the store's decorative mannequin sometimes makes rodney uncomfortable, but that it was worse when she used to live in the back room and scare rodney into thinking she was a real person when the lights were off. this brings our actually-completed wedding tasks to cake, bobblehead animations of wedding party on website, and bridesmaid dresses for $78 apiece from nordstroms. note the conspicuous lack of actual contract for location or date. whatever. it's coming. the important part is that even if the wedding falls through, mb and i have agreed that before departing for the caribbean we will collect our 150 little cheesecake tarts and show up on a friend's doorstep to stuff ourselves silly with raspberry white chocolate and turtle goodness.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
good evening, sports fans
maybe it's not just the undergrad nerds? mb and i went to check out a new neighborhood gym last night, and after a quick warm-up on the treadmills (during which mb decided he had to lap me on *stationary treadmills* - honestly, who is that competitive???) we headed over to the weights. there was the usual throng of big guys admiring their own arms and preening in the mirrors, which i know is standard. but who was the guy grunting and shouting under the strain of the AB BALL??? now that's just not that hard core. i don't like doing ab workouts, but that's just silly.
on a sports-related note, to some of our favorite male blog readership: what is up with getting the ncaa tickets? jo-na would like to attend with you. especially as one of us lives within walking-ish distance to the united center.
on a sports-related note, to some of our favorite male blog readership: what is up with getting the ncaa tickets? jo-na would like to attend with you. especially as one of us lives within walking-ish distance to the united center.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
hidden treasures
some people might say that it's silly to fly half way around the country to a new city and not leave the hotel. but those people probably wouldn't have a bottle of southern comfort and a giant mardi gras king cake in their room. they might remind me that there must be things do in nashville , and there's definitely nothing going on at the sheraton music city that doesn't happen in any hotel anywhere. those people have not, however, found themselves hanging out at the hotel bar drinking jack daniels (they make it here), discovering that there's a talent scounting conference going on in this very hotel. if they knew that, they'd also know that our seat from the bar afforded us an excellent view of the parade tired, emotionally spent amateur models (or even better their mothersr) sneaking out for a drink and cigarette. they also wouldn't have found that they could just follow one of these people back into the ballroom, where they would just be able to sit inconspicuously in the back, frankly intoxicated watching the runway walk of at least 100 anorexic 15 year olds sauntering around stage, trying desperately to get that bitchy turn on the catwalk down (we practiced in our room later - it's not that hard).
if you'll excuse me, i need to get back to the room so i can eat some king cake, drink some so-co, and figure where in this town one can eat BBQ and watch new orleans spank chicago. geaux saints!
if you'll excuse me, i need to get back to the room so i can eat some king cake, drink some so-co, and figure where in this town one can eat BBQ and watch new orleans spank chicago. geaux saints!
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