sometimes a strange notion

Turns Out My Sister Really Is a Superhuman

2009-12-06T18:40:00.001-06:00

In the 2+ years since her brain surgery, she has apparently developed heightened senses of smell and hearing. I'm not joking. She can hear the train approaching before anyone else. She smells the coffee blocks away from the coffeeshop. She sings along with music the neighbor is playing, which is barely perceptible to the normal ear. And my other sister, M, has warned me never to fart in AL's presence, because she will smell it, and she will call you out.

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that AL's brain is compensating for her loss of peripheral vision and slower language processing abilities in part by giving her superhero smell and hearing capabilities. Not exactly on par with flying or reading minds. But shoot, I'm impressed.

Travelers

2009-11-24T21:41:00.000-06:00

My family is on their way to Chicago as I type this. Two parents, two sisters, one brother and a brother's girlfriend packed into a minivan, barreling west along highway 90, making a beeline for the cold, drizzly city I now call home. Six reasons to live this life. (Amen.) How's that for a strange notion?

I am very excited to see them. It is bound to do me good. And, as far as holidays go, Thanksgiving seems to be almost custom-made for my family. A weekend of food, drink, relaxation, card games, televised sporting events and neighborhood exploration? With no expectations of gift-giving, decorations or dressing up? Yeah (enthusiastically), we can do that!

Oh, and did I mention that I have rented them an apartment? A nice three-bedroom about half a mile from my place is just the thing to ensure a concordant celebration. No packing all eight of us into my tiny apartment. And if that's not something to be thankful for, then I don't know what is. Now if we can just find a turkey... Trader Joe's has run out. I know where I can find a rooster, but something tells me that would be wrong.

This is not the first time K and I have hosted my family for Thanksgiving, but it will be the first time we have hosted them in Chicago. So I'll let you know how it goes, and will also try to post soon about some of the things I've been up to throughout my two-week silence.

Resist the Urge to Steal Small Children

2009-11-09T13:06:00.003-06:00

Last month I made plans to tag along with a speech therapist for a day, to get a sense of what her daily work routine is like. Those plans fell through when she mistook my 315 phone number for a 312 number - an honest mistake, of course, and an understandable one - 312 is local to Chicago. She came to my apartment to pick me up, but dialed the wrong number and figured that something must have come up for me. Meanwhile, I was upstairs putting the finishing touches on all the questions I was going to ask her.

Well, we finally had a chance to reschedule, and I spent a full day with A on Wednesday. We drove from home to home (and to one day care), seeing eight clients in total. A's specialty is early intervention speech therapy, so her clients are between 1 and 3 years old. It was fun to see how much she clearly loves her job. "I get paid to play with kids all day!" she said. Which is true, sort of, but there is obviously much more to it than that...

So how does one administer speech therapy to children so young? Well, one aspect of it is exercising and toning the muscles necessary for speech. Many of the children we visited have already faced serious health challenges (like heart surgery or liver transplant, or in the case of one little boy, down syndrome) in their short lives, and as a result their physical development lags behind what is considered normal for their age. Part of A's job is to get them to strengthen their chest, core, neck and face muscles, as these are all necessary to support speech.

Another key is improving the kids' ability to focus. For example, when A reads a book with one of the children, she gets them involved with pointing to and trying to name things in the book and turning pages. If the child starts to get distracted, A brings their focus back and tells them, "We have to finish the book first." She is strict about keeping the child on track, and she doesn't back down. Some of the kids were pretty irritated with her at times, but they always came back around to smiling at her. Tickling was occasionally necessary.

There is something very appealing about working with young children. For one thing, their little brains and bodies have such an astounding ability to overcome early challenges. A's expectation is that all of her Wednesday clients - except the boy with down syndrome - will fully overcome their difficulties and catch up with 'normal' developmental milestones within several years.

The case that sticks with me the most is that of a 35-month-old girl, L, who has apraxia and extremely low energy. Speech apraxia is when a person has trouble saying what she wants to say correctly and consistently. It is due not to weakness of the speech muscles, but to the muscles not receiving the correct messages from the brain. So L has difficulty putting sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words. When asked to say "pretty, pretty, pretty," she might say something like, "tehpee, petty, beepee." She seems to understand everything being said to her, but it is very difficult for her to communicate.

Imagine being one month shy of three years old and so totally stuck in your own head like that! I am sure it is immensely frustrating. As a result, L is a very quiet child. It took A a while to warm her up to even trying to talk. Finally, it was the talking toy refrigerator that did the trick. (A brings bags and bags of her own toys and books with her to every home.) L had to say the name of each piece of food in order to play with it. I think I heard a tiny improvement in L's articulation just in the hour that we spent with her. I bet that if her family tried to engage with her and get her to talk every day, her progress would be remarkable. Sadly, that does not seem likely to happen. L's long, dirty fingernails (clip them!), really dry skin (lotion, please!) and blank stare do not paint a very pretty picture.

When I got home on Wednesday, I told K all about my interesting day. I described L and her dirty house and how her parents were home but didn't show any interest in her speech therapy. Sigh. "Should we go steal her and bring her here to live with us?" asked K. Well... that sort of sounded good, but needless to say, "No dear, we really can't do that." Nice of him to ask, though.

Urban Roosters

2009-11-04T18:33:00.001-06:00

My boss' neighbor keeps a rooster in his yard. In a busy Chicago neighborhood. I had considered this a freak occurrence - who does that? - until I visited a friend's home in an even more densely populated San Francisco neighborhood and found that her neighbor has a rooster too! Is this a new 'thing' people do? Nothing against roosters, really, but if you can throw a stone from your yard to another person's yard (this is all assuming that both you and they are lucky enough to have a yard), a rooster is an inappropriate pet choice for you. Take my word for it. And lest you be disappointed about having to opt out of getting a rooster, just think of all the nasty neighborly plots you've saved yourself from.

Cruz into November

2009-10-31T15:21:00.003-05:00

Happy Halloween from San Francisco! Today I am having a 'homework afternoon' in which I hang out at a cafe and do homework with my friend A who is a full-time graduate student. She has way more homework than I do. Hence the blogging.

Like A, I work much more efficiently in libraries and coffee shops than I do at home. If I decide to go to graduate school myself, the first order of business will be to procure a laptop so that I can take my work on the road. For the class I am currently taking, I have had to write my papers on the desktop and, in so doing, have proven that I am still miserably unproductive at home.

So today we work hard and tomorrow we reward ourselves with a road trip to Santa Cruz! That will be an all-new destination for me. I'll tell you all about it next week, but right now I guess I should get back to my assignment.

Frozen Corn

2009-10-21T21:24:00.011-05:00

Yesterday evening, as I sat down to the delicious dinner K had made of lasagna, corn and warm bread, I asked him, "Is this frozen corn?"

"Canned," he replied. "So no, you may not start a wild rumpus." (In the movie Where the Wild Things Are, frustration over frozen corn is what pushes Max over the edge, sending him into a rowdy frenzy in which he yells at his mother, bites her, and then runs away from home. He eventually finds a little boat and sails off to a rocky shore where he finds the Wild Things, becomes their king and decrees, "Let the wild rumpus start!")

K is really good like that. He always gets my barely-there movie references. This time, granted, we had seen the film only three days earlier. But still - any other person would have assumed I was asking a simple meal-related question.

I'm afraid I cannot claim to be equally proficient in picking up on K's movie references. His memory for quotes, scenes and plot points far outstrips my own. Also, he seems to have watched every American movie made since 1975. I have literally watched him flip through a tv that had several dozen movie channels and call out the names of all the films. Alien! Over the Top! Black Sheep! Chasing Amy! (These are not the actual titles. I wouldn't be able to recall them now, but I do remember thinking, Who are you and when did you have time to watch all of these movies?)

So if you ever find yourself tortured by the need to know some obscure piece of movie trivia (and you have a phone but no internet access), or if you are in the Cash Cab and need the names of the children from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, I recommend you call K. Please do not call me, because you will be disappointed.

But I digress. We saw Where the Wild Things Are, and it was terrific. I went in expecting a movie that tried too hard to be profound in a kids-flick way. (Inside all of us is... hope. Inside all of us is... fear. Etc.) As it turned out, the sappiness was minimal and the script didn't even seem to have been written for a child audience. To me, one of the best things about the movie is that it is so unexpected. You definitely will not go see it and say, "Well, that's exactly what I had in mind, no surprises there."

Apparently Spike Jonze agrees with me - Tzippy/KW is a girl!

Even if you cannot get on board with the story, with all of its character background material (perhaps necessary to extend the 10-sentence book to a full length feature), there is no denying that this film is an arresting visual spectacle - it will knock your socks off. That being said, I don't really want to give anything away. I'll just leave you with one of Judith's snarky comments: "Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy." Does that go for humans too, or just Wild Things?

Wild Things: New Movie, New Names

2009-10-15T14:50:00.012-05:00

K and I have not had a weekend at home in Chicago together in over a month. Now I'm looking at my calendar and see that we're booked solid for the next three weekends too. I kid you not. Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining, exactly. All of these engagements have been/will be fun.

It's certainly tiring after a while though, this self-imposed no-weekends-at-home policy of ours. All the normal life things - laundry, dishes, workouts, homework, etc. - must be packed into the weekdays. (They have nowhere else to go.) Many of the precious extras - long strolls, afternoon movies, sleeping in, going out for brunch, etc. - get pushed out completely.

At the end of the month I'll be in San Francisco for work and then stay through the weekend of All Hallow's Eve to visit a close friend whom I've missed tremendously. (Anyone have ideas for a good two-person costume?) But then. Then! K and I have no weekend obligations for the entire month of November!

No, no, don't say it. Don't say "Yet." K and I have already discussed how we are going to keep our November weekends as free as humanly possible. Sure, Thanksgiving might turn into a big hoo-ha (already there are rumors of my family coming in from New York), but those other weekends... those other weekends are ours, baby. I can't wait.

In the meantime, in light of how busy I have been, my blobjective (blog-objective) this week will be an easy one: to see the new movie Where the Wild Things Are, opening tomorrow and based on the classic children's book by Maurice Sendak. K and I are driving up to our hometown in Michigan this weekend to celebrate his dad's birthday, and the birthday man has already slated WtWTA to be part of the festivities.

K and I both grew up in WtWTA households, and we've had our own copy of the book for several years. If we ever have children, K and I will probably fight over who gets to read this story aloud to them. Simple plot, gorgeous illustrations and monsters that are scary but not scary - what more could you want?

The book doesn't give names to the individual Wild Things, but as a child I identified with this one. For some reason, I always thought she was a 'girl' - the only female Wild Thing. Maybe it was the hair. Or maybe it was the kindness in her eyes.

Several years ago for Christmas, K's mom gave him a set of WtWTA toys. Check it out:

Right away, I noticed the character names on the boxes. (Wikipedia says that these names were chosen by Sendak himself.) So for the last few years, I've known my favorite Wild Thing by her proper name - Tzippy.

Excited about the new movie release, I did a little reading about it online this morning. I came across these beautiful banners and realized that they're changing the creatures' names for the movie! So now instead of Moishe, Tzippy, Aaron, Bernard, Emil and Goat Boy, we have Carol, KW, Judith, The Bull, Douglas and Alexander. What gives?

Chasing Shadows

2009-10-09T22:26:00.009-05:00

On Wednesday I was supposed to shadow A, a speech pathologist I met through a friend of a friend. I looked forward to it all day on Tuesday, even taking the time that evening to mentally prepare a list of questions to ask her between client appointments. I was excited to see first hand how speech therapy is administered to infants. Seriously, what does that even mean, really?

So, Wednesday rolls around... 6:30am: I'm up! It's a miracle! How was it this easy for me to get out of bed when I normally struggle to get up at 7:30? I must really be pumped!... 7:00am: I'm showered and dressed with packed lunch ready to go. Just listening to NPR, eating my breakfast of champions and drinking my coffee... 7:30am: She'll be here any minute and I'm literally on the edge of my seat - as soon as she gets here and calls up for me I'll hurry down. If we're late to her first appointment, it will not be on account of me... 7:40am: I'm getting a little antsy. I check the weather channel... 7:50am: I send her an email - "Hey A, just checking in. Schedule change this morning?" Why didn't I get her phone number? Oh well, she'll get my message on her crackberry... 8:45am: Still no word from A. I send another email - "Hey there, I think I'm going to head in to work so I can save the day for future vacation. I'm not sure what happened this morning - I hope that everything is ok!"

I figured I would hear from A within a couple of hours after getting to work. She probably just zombied out and forgot to pick me up. Maybe she's not a morning person - I can relate! But then 11 o'clock rolls around: Still not a peep. Strange how she sent me a message at 8:30pm on Tuesday re-confirming our plan and then less than 12 hours later I've fallen so totally off her radar... Noon: I'll head to our free Wednesday lunch and lecture series. Surely by the time I get back I'll have a message from her... 1:30pm: Nope, no message... 5:30pm: I leave a voicemail for one of our mutual friends since I don't have A's number - "Hello, just wondering if you have heard from A today. Give me a call." I'm getting concerned...

8:30pm: Just when I thought there must be more to the story - bazinga! - A emails me and says, "I actually was down there and called up. I hope I didn't leave a message on some random person's voicemail! I guess I didn't call the right number. Looking back now, I actually think I dialed the wrong area code. I am SO SORRY!" Then she reveals this clarifying gem to me in a follow-up email - "My beloved blackberry pearl committed suicide in the toilet. It was a very sad day."

It really couldn't be more anticlimactic.

Baby Talk

2009-10-06T20:56:00.003-05:00

I am just over a month into my community college course in 'Human Growth and Development' (see here and here) and it has been a splendid experience so far. I lucked out with a very capable instructor who aptly breaks up our three hour and forty-five minute evening class periods into smaller, easier to swallow sections of lectures, small group discussions and videos. (Even so, I don't know what I would do without the Dunkin Donuts across the street.)

I have been finding the subject matter fascinating. Here's a tiny sampling:

- A newly fertilized egg survives without any nourishment from the mother for up to two weeks as it makes its way through the fallopian tube to the uterus and implants itself.
- Following childbirth, the uterus continues to contract for several weeks. (This is how it 'shrinks.') A few women report more pain from these contractions than from those accompanying childbirth. (!) Breastfeeding helps stimulate the secretion of oxytocin, which encourages the uterus to contract back to (approximately) its pre-pregnancy size.
- Infants literally grow overnight. Researchers have measured growth of up to a full inch in less than 24 hours in infants up to 21 months.
- Hopi infants spend the first year of their lives strapped to a board yet begin to walk at about the same time as children in other societies.
- Researchers who re-wired the brains of baby ferrets so that visual input was sent to the auditory cortex instead of the visual cortex found that the ferrets actually learned to see pretty well.

In last night's class, we started getting into the ways in which infants begin to develop language skills, and how their brains lay the groundwork for the tremendous burst of language development that will take place over the next several years. I perked right up, because one of my main reasons for taking the class is to explore my interest in speech therapy.

As part of my efforts to figure out whether I would enjoy studying speech therapy, this foundational course is all well and good. Actually doing speech therapy, however, is a pretty different animal. For that reason, I knew I would have to seek out opportunities to learn more about what it is really like to work in the field and whether the practicalities of being a speech therapist would be a fit for me.

With that in mind, I am going to spend all day tomorrow with a real live speech pathologist. Although A is not working in an area that I am particularly interested in - she works exclusively with 0 to 3 year-olds - I think it will be beneficial to pick her brain about the different types of work that are out there, her likes/dislikes, etc. Plus she is really cool.

So tomorrow I will shadow A as she visits her clients. I will have to get up a whole hour earlier than usual, but I'm thinking the adorability factor will make up for it. My co-workers are pretty cute, but who can compete with a bunch of toddlers? Speaking of adorable, here's a photo of the Amazing J, who I will have a chance to hang out with this weekend.

Look at that arm! It's like someone put a really tight rubber band around her wrist. So cute!

Last time I saw Amazing J, I wasn't sure what the correct term was for our relationship (she is my cousin's daughter). According to the Internet, she is my 'first cousin once removed,' but that sounds cumbersome and formal so I'm just going to stick to calling her Amazing J. 252 days old and counting... If any of the children tomorrow are as cute as she is, I may just have to steal one to bring home to live with me.

Back Up, Back At 'Em

2009-10-02T18:22:00.001-05:00

After three days home sick, I'm finally back in the game. Back at work and off the meds, I'd say I'm about 95%. That's not bad considering how terrible I felt on Tuesday morning - achey, sweaty, cold, congested, the skin around my nose so dry that it hurt to sneeze. We didn't have any tissues in the apartment, so I was stuck with toilet paper - owie.

After calling in sick and writing a quick self-pitying blog post, I spent the rest of Tuesday sticking diligently to K's Plan: stay warm, stay hydrated, stay medicated and don't exert any unnecessary energy. My adversaries - boredom and an endless internet, that pile of laundry in the corner and the paper that isn't going to write itself. Allies - my snuggly blue robe, Dristan Cold medicine, season one of Dexter and, most of all, K.

K doesn't work on Tuesdays, so he was available to bring me hot chocolate, a scone, soup, a sandwich and a quesadilla. (As you can see, I didn't lose my appetite.) He even went to the store and got some moisturizing lotion-infused Kleenex, which are amazing, by the way. We saw on tv later that same day that some environmental groups are currently campaigning against this type of super-soft face and toilet tissue, saying that the ultra plush varieties are made from the pulp of really old trees (decades or even centuries). Is it not possible to make über fluffy tissue out of recycled paper products? If not, we definitely need to work on it.

Anyway, I spent all of Tuesday reading, sleeping and watching Dexter. And more of the same on Wednesday, except K was at work so I had to refill my own water glass and make my own food. Later, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum. I had previously purchased a ticket to see Audrey Niffenegger read from her new book in Andersonville. I convinced myself that it was reasonable for me to go: I'll bundle up and sit in the way back and if it goes long, I'll just leave early... And so, after 45 hours of Sticking To The Plan, I finally broke step.

I woke up this morning feeling much better and so, so happy for it. I might have burst into song but K was still sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake him. We'd both been woken up a few times in the wee hours of the night by our new neighbors' six-month-old baby. Well, we weren't woken by the baby actually - more like the baby daddy. When the baby woke up, the dad would start singing really loudly. It was muffled like the adults in the Peanuts movies, but really exaggerated, sort of like - dare I say it? - Barney the purple dinosaur. This would keep us awake for fifteen minutes or so at a stretch. Then we'd fall back asleep for a while until the next performance.

Despite the relatively poor night's sleep, I am having a wonderful day. Being sick even for a few days is a humbling experience and makes me so thankful to be healthy and alive. Leaving work at 5, I felt so good that I decided to go to my regular yoga class, but halfway there, I remembered that my gym was hosting some sort of art event in the studio. So neighborhoody, which normally I love, but sometimes I just want my gym to be more gym and less community center. Oh well, I suppose I can make room in my heart for local artists. I can always just curl up on the couch and watch Dexter. I may be getting a little too good at Plan K.

This Doesn't Bode Well

2009-09-29T09:37:00.005-05:00

Today I am sick. I feel miserable. I got quite a bit of sleep last night because of all the meds I took in a concentrated effort to Knock Myself Out, but woke up sporadically with cold sweats. From really weird dreams, to boot. Yick.

K's tried-and-true plan for getting well as soon as humanly possible consists of staying under blankets, drinking tons of liquids, and not leaving the bed or couch except to go to the other one (or the bathroom). In the past, I haven't been very good at adhering to the plan, deciding at some point mid-day that it would be a good idea for me to go to the library or throw in a load of laundry.

Today I vow to diligently stick to Plan K. Even though by sitting here at the desk typing a blog post I have already diverted. Ok, ok, starting NOW.

Lemondrops and Gumdrops

2009-09-24T20:17:00.006-05:00

As a child, my sister M was a huge Barney fan. Huge. Yes, I'm talking about the big purple dinosaur. And until you have lived with a huge Barney fan, you cannot know the toll it takes on the entire household.

At first, it was actually kind of cute. M would carry around her stuffed Barney, which was almost half her size, and sing the 'I Love You' song. Don't worry, I'll spare you the lyrics. She would patiently look forward to PBS' daily airing of Barney, filling the rest of her time with more wholesome (and by that I mean less annoying) things like coloring and playing on the swingset.

Then one day, someone bought her a Barney video. And things quickly spiralled out of control. In addition to the half-hour tv show, we were now subjected to a daily screening of the half-hour video. My brother and I - we would have been about eight and thirteen at the time - were constantly shocked and dismayed at how M would always want to see her video at the exact moment when it would be least convenient for us.

Say, for example, that I had come home from school and eagerly finished my homework in order to watch the new Punky Brewster with a clear conscience. Well, it was pretty much guaranteed that M would step up to the plate and request Barney. Ah yes, the same video with the same dinosaur, the same peppy kids and the same catchy songs. Again. I would plead with my dad, but he was always a sucker for an adorable toddler. "She hasn't watched it yet today," he would explain. "You're the oldest, don't you think you could just be nice and let her watch it?"

I usually did. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything, but I still to this day can bust out a handful of songs from that video. One of M's favorites - and also one of the most irritating - was called 'Lemondrops and Gumdrops.' Fear not, I will again spare you Barney's lyrical genius.

Fast forward to the present. M is a newly minted college freshman and I vowed last week to send her a care package - the first care package I have ever sent. For a moment, I thought it would be clever and funny (and slightly mortifying for her - all the better, mwahaha!) to go with a Barney video theme for the package. I could include all the goodies mentioned in the Barney songs I know, starting with lemondrops and gumdrops of course, and maybe throw in a mini Barney.

Then I realized that this would take much too much planning, and I can be pretty lazy sometimes. Plus, I knew that Swedish Fish would remind her of home and I really wanted to include them but couldn't see a way to make them fit with the Barney theme.

So today I mailed a perfectly swell non-themed care package to M. Snacky contents: Swedish Fish, trail mix, a single microwave popcarn packet, and a big ol' package of Nerds.

Non-snacky contents: yellow nail polish and a new file, a couple of little Burt's Bees products (because M's hands get very dry), a journal, two funky erasers shaped like a lobster dinner and piece of strawberry cake, bacon-flavored toothpicks (what?), mints, gum, and monkey head covers for keys to make them funnier and also easier to tell apart.

I also threw in a card and a random picture I found the other day. It is of M and our other sister AL, about eight years ago, and they have stuffed their shirts with croquet balls. My, how quickly they grow up - and sprout real breasts of their own!

Anyway, I hope M likes the package and that it makes her feel important and loved. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you... Ooops, there they are. Sorry, I just cannot seem to banish those lyrics from my head.

Lederhosen, with a Side of Hate

2009-09-19T21:58:00.037-05:00

This is what the annual German Day Festival in Lincoln Square is supposed to look like:

Lederhosen, smiling faces, encased meat, folk music, dancing and steins - steins! - of beer. Unfortunately, one attendee has tainted the entire Festival for me. Here's what happened:

K, our friend B and I walked over to Lincoln Square to see a movie. We were standing outside the theater discussing show times and our pre-movie drink options when a man and a woman, both in their 40s or early 50s, approached from the direction of the Festival. When they were almost past the theater, we heard the woman say very loudly, "Hmm, it looks like they're showing that anti-German movie here." Suddenly, she turned around and marched right up to the movie poster for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and shouted several sentences in German. Next - and this is where it really gets crazy - she raised her right arm in the Hitler salute and declared "Sieg Heil!" Then her companion linked his arm through hers and they continued on their way.

Shocked, the three of us stood there with our mouths open for a moment, looking at each other like umm, did that just happen? Did that woman just pronounce her Nazism to a near-life-size image of Brad Pitt? Yes indeed. Next question: what is the proper response on our part? Our natural reaction was simply to stand there in astonishment. Before we knew it, the outburst was over and the woman had gone on her way. In hindsight, I'm not sure that there is anything else we should have / could have done, but nevertheless I felt yucky about just standing there.

It brings to mind an experience K and I had several years ago during one of our visits to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. As we were making our way through the permanent exhibition, we encountered a group of four or five young men with shaved heads and clothing littered with swastikas. They tromped through the museum without pause, occasionally pointing and laughing. Laughing. In that case too, they were there and gone before I was even able to comprehend their presence in that space. Did they think they were being brave? Were we cowards for not confronting their hate?

Girl Meets World: A Care Package

2009-09-16T16:52:00.005-05:00

I've been feeling sort of dazed and ungrounded these last few days. Zoned out. I hate it when that happens. It's like a non-feeling. I'm not sure how I stumbled into it, but I guess I allowed myself to get caught up in the details of an annoying project at work, my first paper for the class I'm taking, and the GRE test looming in my near future.

So yesterday I was in full glazed-eyes computer robot mode when I came across this picture. That's my sister M, doing her special wild-arm lunge version of the running man. Isn't it great? And yes, I share much of the same genetic material.

As I was contemplating how funny and awesome M is (and good at dancing!) it dawned on me that I have not spoken to her in the last several weeks, since before she moved into her freshman dorm four hours away from home. Come to think of it, I haven't spoken to any of my family members for at least a couple of weeks.

That speaks to the larger picture of why I have been wandering around dazed and confused lately. Caught up in the stress-inducing tasks ahead of me, I neglected my normal sanity-preserving activities like staying connected with my family and working out. The result is I feel like a zombie.

No more. I'm going to the gym right now. And then I'm going to do the running man. A little later this week, I am going to send M a care package. Hard to believe, but this will be the first real care package I've ever sent. M deserves it, and I think it will do us both some good. Suggestions for what to include, anyone?

Like a Big Pizza Pie

2009-09-09T16:42:00.005-05:00

Last Thursday night, there was a full moon and a clear sky. And at the Foster Beach Fire and Drum Jam, there were dozens of people spinning, throwing, juggling, eating, breathing and dancing with fire. They didn't even seem crazy - I guess that's just what they like to do for fun.

There were hundreds of onlookers (mostly humans, but also several dogs and at least one cat), and a bunch of percussion instruments (drums of all sorts, upside-down buckets, tambourines, maracas, castanets and - of course - a cowbell).

There were lawn chairs and glow sticks and hula hoops and joints being smoked. People danced, people drank. They yukked it up. Also in attendance were some police officers, or as K says, "It's the fuzz!"

I quickly gave up on taking photos in the dark with our little digital point-and-shoot, but K managed to get some decent ones. The camera's nighttime setting extended the shutter speed enough to get some cool fire trailing images.

I like this one where the camera was unsteady. You can kind of tell how bright the full moon was.

In this one, the flashes of other cameras combined to light up the scene.

Let's face it, though: it would be pretty impossible to capture the experience on film even with a professional grade camera. Which is why you should check this event out for yourself. If you're not into fire, come for the drums; and if you're not into drums, the Jam makes a great excuse to meet other free humans and drink in the park.

Happy 090909!

Fire and Drum Jam

2009-09-03T16:50:00.002-05:00

Apparently there is something called the Foster Beach Fire and Drum Jam that happens in conjunction with every full moon during Chicago's livable months (April to November).

Huh. I spent all of those months in 2008 living one block off of Foster, about a mile from the beach, and never have I heard of such a thing. It goes to show just how much is happening all the time in the city.

Anyway, according to this website, the next full moon is - fire and drum roll... - tonight! And with photos like these posted on Flickr (thank you, california cowgirl1, whoever you are), who could honestly say that they aren't even the least bit intrigued by the Fire and Drum Jam?

Not I. Plus, I gotta get my hippie fix somehow, right? The fire jammer above doesn't look very hippie (twirling fire with long hair and flowing clothing is probably ill-advised), but I bet the drum circle will make up for that.

Danny vs. The Fearless Three

2009-09-02T21:56:00.001-05:00

K and I had about 48 hours to spend in Rhode Island with M, and we planned them to correspond perfectly with the wind and torrential rain of Hurricane Danny.

We arrived on Friday evening, delayed by an hour but in two pieces. (Me - one piece, K - one piece.) Danny then proceeded to drench New England continuously through the night and well into Saturday.

K, M and I toddled out of bed, well-rested, at about 10am. We breakfasted at Frank's, which was already suffering from some flooding. One staff member got an electric shock from the water vacuum he was using and made a loud squealy sound like "Kkkiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee." A furious handshaking and several lively swears later, I am certain he was ok.

Not one to be easily deterred, M proposed that we drive down towards the coast and see what we could see because in all likelihood, "by the time we get there, it will have let up a bit."
"Sounds great," said K.
"Mwahaha!" said Danny.

We drove south for about an hour in minimal visibility, only to find that many of the roads leading to the ocean were blocked off due to flooding. But then - lo! - Danny slowed to a drizzle long enough for us to spot signs for Greenvale Vineyards, follow the signs all the way there, and hurry into the tasting room. This is us in hurry mode:

Once inside, we paid $15 each for a tasting of six different wines and a (bonus!) souvenir wine glass. It seemed to us like a pretty good deal, especially since there was a really fun and soulful jazz trio playing in the tasting room. Surely the goal is to entice tasters to buy more wine...

So we obliged, buying two bottles of our favorites from the tasting and settling in to enjoy more jazz and our own pleasant company. The scene around us was very relaxed - none of the snootiness I had feared. The rain could only have helped in that regard; for some reason, very few people with fogged-up glasses, running make-up, wet clothes and frizzed-out hair have the gall to be snotty.

The three hours we passed at Greenvale made for a terrific afternoon. We emerged to find that the storm had abated, so we were able to visit the seaside after all. K and I intend to return someday soon to visit Rhode Island's other wineries, hopefully in better weather. We'll let you know, M - keep your wine-o hat on!

Rhode Trip

2009-08-27T21:04:00.005-05:00

Rhode Island. It's such a funny little state. K and I will be there this weekend to visit the wonderful M, my former roommate and (more privately) interpretive dance partner.

I've visited her before, including once this February when I combined a work trip to Boston with a two-day stay at M's parents' home in Providence. A couple of weeks later, M lost her mother to complications from a surgery that was not expected to be life-threatening.

So this visit will be different. The goal is to show M a good time, though knowing her she will already have grand plans laid out for us by the time we arrive. Heaven forbid that she just relax and not worry about it.

On Saturday K and I are going to pull for a visit to a winery for a tasting. That would be a first for me. I still associate wine tastings with old, rich, fancy white people. By those criteria, I score only 1 out of 4. But I can go to a tasting too, darn it. I think we would all enjoy that. Let's just hope that one of us doesn't get really drunk, have an emotional outburst and go storming through the vineyards, like Miles in Sideways.

The wine tasting, therefore, will be my formal newbie of the week. Less officially, I've never had the chance to talk to such a close friend my own age about losing a parent before. This is the first time for that type of loss. I really want to ask M what it is like and how she is dealing or not dealing with it. I want to know if the ground still feels solid under her feet, or more like the shifting rubble of a bombed-out building.

Time Well Spent

2009-08-26T14:11:00.006-05:00

For Learning to Love You More assignment #35, I asked my family to describe what I do with my time. Three of my favorite people ever rose to the challenge, and they did an excellent job - gold stars all around. I found it hilarious how each of them expressed worry that they would either not do it right ("Do I have to write this in third person?"), or that they did not have enough information to produce a very accurate description. It is strange how little we sometimes know about the mundane, day-in-day-out activities of our important ones. I think we tend to see them in terms of how they impact our own lives and as who they are to us as whole people, not necessarily defined by the details of what they typically choose to do with their free time or what do you actually do at work, anyway? Especially when you live, as I do, far away from your family, they really only know whatever you choose (consciously or unconsciously) to tell them.

This assignment certainly fit into the category of something I'd never done before, and it was fun to read the responses I got. It is admittedly a bit of a narcissistic exercise, but I would recommend it! Here are my responses, in the order I received them:

My Dad
Hi A,
This is what I think you do with your time. (I'm kind of embarrassed that I don't know better)

Your work days probably start at about 7am, with a shower, a cup of coffee, and a quick breakfast, like a bagel or a bowl of cereal. By about 8am, you're out the door and walking/riding the bus downtown, unless you got your bike replaced. You arrive at your office just before 9am, probably get yourself another cup of coffee, and settle in at your desk. You spend your day answering calls from clients, and researching whatever the current projects are. (I'm rather clueless here). You go out for lunch with a co-worker or two, and then it's back to more of the same at the office until 5pm. The bus takes you back to your neighborhood, and you go to the gym to work out for about an hour. It's about seven when you walk in the door and smell K's dinner. A pleasant little hug and kiss from your mate, and you sit down to eat. After dinner, you take care of the dishes, then sit down to check your e-mail, blog, whatever on the PC. I would think you check the day's news headlines also. Next, you settle down on the couch with the K and watch a movie, that is if there's no football on the television. On football nights you probably retire to the room farthest away from the TV room, and get some studying done. I really have not talked to you about the going back to school thing, so I don't know how and where you fit the classes and studies into your day. When K goes to bed early to go to work in the middle of the night, you probably do some homework while he sleeps. You would go to bed about midnight.

On weekends I suspect you guys stay in bed until 10 or 11, unless you have something special planned. Then you get up, have breakfast, and get your laundry started. In the afternoon I expect you would go for a walk or a bike ride. Possibly a little shopping, and then dinner out. You probably walk to a cozy place close to home, so you don't have to worry about having a drink or two. I'm sure you do some reading for pleasure, and you're pretty good about staying in touch with your siblings. I can't come up with much more A, I better call you so you can tell me more about your life. Love you lots!

My Brother
Disclaimer : We don't talk enough, I don't know much about your job, but your awesome and I love you so I'm doing the "assignment" anyways.

In general A is a very happy person; trying to enjoy the simple things in life she often finds herself smiling during her daily routine. Waking up next to a man she loves and working a job she finds at least somewhat rewarding help her stay positive. She spends time commuting to and from work everyday which she does not particularly like, but understands this is simply the price she must pay in order to live in a big city (which she must enjoy... DC-NYC-Chicago). After work A likes to exercise, which she does in a number of ways; riding her bike (until it was stolen), going to the gym, and playing kickball are some of her favorites. I would guess she wants to exercise 5 times a week, but only manages an average of 3. A also spends a large portion of her time at home. Some of her favorite and most time consuming activities include reading and watching movies. Since she subscribes to netflix she probably watches 2-3 movies a week and spends more time on that than reading. A also enjoys home cooked dinners, usually prepared by her boyfriend K, on average 5 times a week. On the off nights they either order in (some sort of asian cuisine or pizza) or go out together for a dinner at a "sit-down" restuarant. Some of A's less time consuming interests include video games (wii), watching tv (daily show), shopping at the local stores (within walking distance), and browsing the internet. A also spends some time every week doing household chores such as buying groceries, taking out the trash, sweeping, and cleaning. Overall A tries to keep herself relatively busy, but always manages to make time for her boyfriend K, who in turn helps keep A the smiling, happy-go-lucky, energetic person she is today.

My Cousin M
(click the image to bring up a bigger, more legible version)

LTLYM #35: Ask your family to describe what you do

2009-08-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

It's about time for another LTLYM assignment! Next up is #35: Ask your family to describe what you do. The instructions are:

Ask three family members to write down a description of what it is they think you do with your time. Ask them to try to think about how you live your life and what are your main activites and interests. They could give a particular example of something you are doing, like "at the moment Susie is building a car, and it is taking up most of her evenings and weekends...," but they should not focus on examples of things you have done in the past. Also you are not asking them to say what they think of what you are doing, but only to describe it in as much detail as they know. Don't let the members of your family compare notes (until the the assignment is complete), and similarly try not to put words into their mouth or tell them what they should write. This can be of any length.
Assignment given by Emma Hedditch

I think this assignment could be very interesting. How will my family members respond to the request? Will they be enthusiastic or will it seem like a chore? How will what they write compare to how I see myself?

Three Letters, or Today's Self-Indulgence

2009-08-20T09:30:00.003-05:00

Dear Brett Favre,
Please play well this season and help the Vikings win a lot of games. If you do, K's joy will spread through our apartment, taking hold of all who enter there, and lead him to do nice things such as rub my feet and bring me breakfast in bed.
In spite of your long, dark years as a rival Packer, you have always secretly been one of K's favorite players. Now that you are a Viking, I implore you not to let him down. To that end, please stop chatting it up with the media and start focusing on training with the team.
Good luck and take care of that rotator cuff. Go Vikes!
-Lovemonger

Dear Face-Slapping Bus Rider,
Please treat your fellow public transportation patrons with a basic level of respect and decency. I was riding the northbound 22 Clark bus to the gym on Sunday, and I witnessed your incredible display of discourtesy. After you boarded, you walked up to a teen-aged boy sitting in the 'priority seating' section and slapped him on the face. When he looked up at you with surprise, you pointed at the wall behind him and shouted, "What does that say?" (For those of you at home, the placard said 'Please stand up for seniors and people with disabilities.') Then, as the boy started to get up to give you the seat, you took out your disability ID card and shoved it inches from his face.
Your behavior was too appalling for words, and I hope it is not typical of your daily interactions with other human beings. Have you read the other placard - the one that says assault and abuse of other passengers are punishable by law?
-Lovemonger

Dear Citizen Attendees of Town Hall Meetings,
Please stop yelling, screaming, hissing, cheering and booing at town hall meetings. These are not appropriate behaviors at community gatherings that are meant to garner rational discussion about policy and the needs of local constituents.
If you are called on to ask a question, ask a question. A thoughtful question would be even better. Try to remain calm. On some level, I understand your rage and passion - health care is an important issue for all of us. But it is hard to take you even remotely seriously when, as K says, you look like you are "spitting venom with your face."
Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.
-Lovemonger

Let's Remember to Pack Our Lunches

2009-08-19T11:24:00.015-05:00

In my last post, I laid out my desire to sit down with K and work out a household budget, version 1.0. What I didn't mention was how nervous I was about the whole thing. You see, K has been pretty touchy about money for as long as I can remember. He detests talking or even thinking about money matters.

Part of it is that K made some very stupid financial mistakes when he was younger, and these still occasionally come back to haunt him (us) in a variety of ways, including his still not-so-hot credit score. Just a couple of weeks ago, a collector contacted him regarding cellphone debt he had racked up almost a decade ago.

This has happened a few times with very old debts, and I do not understand what the creditors are thinking when they have let years and years go by without contacting K to ask him to pay his bill and then suddenly come slithering out of the woodwork to present us with this mystery debt. This makes no sense and it shouldn't be allowed to happen this way. Seriously, get real.

So K has made some mistakes, and now, all these years later, I think he is embarrassed by them. When money issues come up, I think he feels guilty and insecure. But instead of saying that to me, his tendency is to get agitated, as if his putting on a bad attitude will make it all just go away. It's all right, K, no one is perfect.

K has gotten slowly but steadily better about being mindful about his (our) finances, especially over the last few years. As I mentioned, he is generally not a frivolous spender, though from time to time he'll still ask a perplexing question like, "Can we get that flat screen tv?"

This week, he was mercifully open to discussing a budget with me, and retained his cool throughout. We used pen and paper to tabulate our expenses and came up with target amounts for each item.

We agree that the stand-out area where we should be able to cut back our spending is food. He loves to cook and we both enjoy eating tasty tasties, but we've let ourselves go in terms of expensive ingredients (that might only be used once), eating out too frequently due to our shared enthusiasm for trying new restaurants, and making too many meals at home so that sometimes we end up having to throw away uneaten leftovers. Up to now, we haven't held ourselves accountable for this unnecessary spending and waste.

For the next two months, we are going to plan our meals and track all the money we spend on food items. Combine this with our other strategies to cut spending (shop around for car insurance, switch cable companies, cancel a couple of subscriptions, etc.), and we hope to have an additional $200/month to pay down our debt. That's nothing to shake a lunchbox at.

Parlez Vous Finance?

2009-08-15T17:56:00.003-05:00

Times are tough, and a lot of people seem to be focusing on saving money. The word on the street is that many people even have a - I hope I'm pronouncing this right - 'budget.'

Now, K and I are no high rollers. Far from. Neither are we what I would call frivolous spenders. But we have never actually taken the time to work out a budget. Communication about money matters in our household basically consists of the occasional "We need to be a little thriftier this month" or "Do we really need this?"

This system - or, more accurately, total lack of system - has worked out all right for us so far. We watch our cash flow and try not to spend too much on items that are wants rather than needs, especially when money is tight. But I think we can do better. And it's time to take a long hard look at our money-in, money-out situation for a couple reasons.

First of all, we racked up some debt last year following our move to Chicago. I was unemployed for the first few months, which meant a significant decrease in income no matter how you slice it. We made a few large purchases, most notably a new mattress and a trip to Ireland. Then K's appendix decided to act a fool and he ended up undergoing major surgery topped off by a six-day hospital stay. These things are extremely expensive even for those of us who are lucky enough to have health insurance!

We have been doing a pretty good job paying down our debt, and at this rate should be free of it by early next year. I am looking forward to the day when we can stop worrying about interest and start thinking about building some real savings. That day will probably arrive sooner if we take time now to devise a budget and a plan. So that is the goal for this week. One day, if we decide to participate in any of the crazy expensive activities that so many people get sucked into, like buying a place or having babies, I'm sure we will look back and thank ourselves.

Atlas

2009-08-14T16:02:00.007-05:00

UK Adventure Post #2: K and J's Wedding

The reason for my recent trip to Britain (and by recent I mean holy cow over a month has already passed!) was the wedding of my friend K. I hadn't seen her since we were roommates in Singapore eight years ago. We have done a pretty good job staying in touch through email and (mostly) snail mail, but obviously we were way overdue for a visit, and her wedding provided a perfect excuse.

A brief detour down memory lane:
In Singapore, K and I sometimes walked down the road to the HDBs (public housing) to buy cheap fried rice and drink Tiger beer. We would talk about our friends and teachers, upcoming school breaks and where we hoped to travel. We would commiserate about the difficulties of being so far away from home and family. Sometimes our conversations would last late into the night. I'd lie in the dark in my bed, teeth brushed and contact lenses removed, and talk to her across the room. If there was a long pause K would ask, "Is this the final silence?" and that always made me laugh.

She was a close friend throughout a very formative two-year period of my life. That is why I was so excited to meet her family and friends, and witness the wonderful changes she was going through. As K herself said, "So many big things are happening that I can't even process them really, and I know I'm not processing, so I'm just trying to hold on to everything to process later when I have the time." (These may not have been her exact words, but you get the gist.)

And it was true - in the week leading up to her wedding, there was hardly a spare moment for K to pause and take it all in. Her soon-to-be-husband J ended his job in Glasgow and they were in the process of moving his belongings to her place in London. Their wedding guest list had somehow, in the hands of his parents, ballooned to over 180, and many of these were calling K with various logistical questions. Guests were traveling from across the United Kingdom and 16 other countries to attend her wedding, and some, like me, had been selfish enough to accept her offer to arrange a place to stay (at her place, in my case). Meanwhile, she had to finalize arrangements for a three-week honeymoon, which they would spend bicycling from Kathmandu to Lhasa.

On the day before the wedding, K graduated from King's College Medical School in London, and then went straight to Kent for the wedding rehearsal and dinner. Amidst all this chaos, she took the time to specially thank me for coming: "Just a visit from you, taken by itself, would be like a very huge thing." (These were her exact words. I remember because I was touched.) The wedding itself was the event of the season, or maybe the year. It was held at the stunning farm home of the groom's parents. Here is the tent where they held the ceremony:

Once the vows had been spoken, rings exchanged and kisses cheered, we wiped our eyes and drank of the celebratory champagne. We made our way downfield to the other tent for the reception. A Zimbabwean buffet awaited - yum! The Singapore contingent was seated at the Norway Maple table in recognition of the two and a half Norwegians among us. (I was the half.)

The eighteen tables were each named for one of the eighteen types of trees K and J had planted around the farm at a pre-wedding tree party. The tree plantings were part of the couple's plan to green their big event. Mother nature repaid them with gorgeous weather. Clear skies over the reception tent:

J's maternal aunts and uncles brought personalized paper cut-out flags all the way from Chile. They looked gorgeous!

V and I had a second cup of coffee as the sun went down. We knew we had a full night of dancing ahead of us, to the sounds of an amazing Zimbabwean band called Harare.

A field away from the reception tent, someone lit the largest bonfire I have ever seen. Stand back, dude with camera!

Meanwhile, family members lit sky lanterns like the one pictured below and released them into the sky. They are really beautiful and on a night like this, if you have had a few drinks, maybe even enough to make you cry.

I had never seen sky lanterns before, and a part of me wondered, 'Is it okay to do that?' Apparently, the wax fuel cells inside are designed to burn for about ten minutes. Then, when they extinguish themselves, the lanterns parachute back to earth. The sky lanterns are made entirely of recycled paper and reclaimed bamboo and are fully biodegradable.

Long after the last lantern had been released onto the wind, the band stopped playing and it was time to say good-night. It had been a fantastic day of celebration, union and reunion. I would travel ten times as far to do it all over again.

It's Official

2009-08-13T13:08:00.001-05:00

I am a college student (again). There won't be any streaking in the quad, though. Not this time around.

I signed up for the Monday evening course in Human Growth and Development at Truman College. When I went to register, the place was packed, but the staff was very efficient so it still only took me about 45 minutes to go through the necessary steps of receiving my student ID number, meeting with a new student advisor, registering for the class, and making my payment.

The advisor was kind but seemed to regard me with a fair amount of skepticism. "So you already have a B.S., but you want to take CD 101 because... why?" I told him I am considering a Master's degree but need to do some exploration first, and that answer seemed to (barely) satisfy him. Maybe I just should have given him the other, equally true and relevant response, which is simply that I am interested in the subject matter and want to learn about it.

And that's really what this comes down to anyway. I feel stagnant and dissatisfied with the daily grind. And frustrated that, with the daily grind always looming, it can be hard to find the time and motivation to keep learning. So I'm taking this course largely for the sake of fresh, delicious knowledge. And also as an excuse to get a Trapper Keeper.

Once registered for the class, I had to make a payment to secure my spot. I winced (hopefully it wasn't too obvious) and handed over my visa card. "Just charge it in full, please," I sighed. Better to let go the $391 all at once. And it's as they say: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. (I think the elusive 'they' in this case might be Derek Bok.)

Developments

2009-08-06T07:41:00.003-05:00

For several months now, I have been talking a little and thinking a lot about going back to school. From where I sit, almost five years removed from full-time studenthood, I can enthusiastically say that I love school. And I am absolutely not too cool. When it comes to deciding where and how to go back, the first major hurdle is figuring out what I want to study. I'm sure that I am not alone in feeling that having a shallow depth of knowledge across a wide range of interests makes it difficult to set a course. But at least I have an idea:

In the last year and a half or so (and not totally unrelated to this experience), I've started to read up on and become more interested in how people learn language, the ways in which those processes might be different for different people, and how we can teach the brain to recover lost language skills and knowledge after a traumatic injury. So it sounds like maybe I should learn about speech pathology. The only problem is that I don't have any training in teaching, therapy or speech. So how to know if they are really for me? I need an affordable introductory course to test the waters.

I've looked into a couple of options, and I think the best one for me is to sign up for a class at Truman College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. They offer fall courses in 'Language Development ' and 'Human Growth and Development' at the very attractive price of $79 per credit hour for Chicago residents. Good sign: I emailed one of the instructors in their Social Sciences Department to ask for guidance, and she responded within an hour with useful advice.

I've done my info-gathering and paid a visit to Truman. Now it's time to take the plunge. My mission for this week is to sign up for a fall class. I get a few butterflies in my stomach when I think about the fact that the first day of term is in just two and a half weeks, but then I remember that this is school we're talking about. And I love school.

Chalk it Up

2009-08-05T11:40:00.002-05:00

August is here! And so far, it's been a doozy (not a doozer). I had to work all weekend. I carried a too-big box too far and got a painful bruise on my arm. My co-worker (and friend)'s purse was stolen. My toilet overflowed.

What better to break a streak of bad luck than playing outside with toys? Yesterday after work I grabbed K and my 3D sidewalk chalk and headed out into the warm Chicago evening. K drew this, which I think is a good illustration of exactly how I felt as I witnessed the toilet disaster:

When I put on the 3D glasses and looked at K's Scream, the yellow looked a little bit 3D, the purple a little more, and the pink was like POP, way off the sidewalk. I was truly surprised at how well it worked. We were inspired to keep doodling.

The trick, of course, is in the glasses. When you're wearing them, it isn't just the pink chalk that pops out at you, but anything pink. Or red or orange. The flowerbeds outside our apartment made me dizzy.

At one point, four neighborhood kids walked by and were excited to see that sometimes old people play with sidewalk chalk too. At our behest, they put on the glasses and were even more impressed than I had been - Woah... Woah! Cool! Then they were shuffled off by two women, probably their mothers, who thanked us but looked annoyed that we would speak to their children and why were we playing with sidewalk chalk anyway. A man walked by later and said, "Aren't you a little old for this?" And that is why I often don't care for adults.

I wrote '3D CHALK' in big letters and left the sidewalk chalk and glasses in the 'D' in case any more children came by. When I left for work this morning, someone had taken the glasses. The only new drawing was 'K + A' inside a big red heart.

Where the 2D Sidewalk Ends

2009-07-27T19:23:00.007-05:00

Have you heard of this 3D sidewalk chalk stuff? I wanted to try it out, so I went to Target to procure my very own set. Seven dollars seems a little steep for five little double-sided chalk sticks and a child-size pair of 3D glasses, Crayola, but dang it, now I'm so curious about the whole thing. And here I am in freaking Target. So I'll bite.

Now I'm ready for some serious sidewalk fun. Aside from being double-sided and sharpened at each end (fancy!), the chalk looks just like regular ol' chalk, so the magic must be in the glasses. Crayola's website says that warm colors like red will appear high while cool colors like blue will appear low. Sounds good - I'm off to flex my sidewalk art muscles... as soon as the sidewalk dries from that little gust of rain we just had.

Soft Times in Cardiff, or Pint of Brains

2009-07-25T10:01:00.003-05:00

It has already been two and a half weeks since my return from Britain, and I still haven't gotten around to posting any pictures. So here we finally go. UK Adventure Post #1: Cardiff.

My friend V is from Cardiff, so I traveled there by bus from London to meet up with her. She had spent the previous days arduously packing all of her belongings for shipment to her new home in Bangladesh, and stressing out about the many annoying but necessary tasks that come along with a move of that magnitude. She was ready for a break.

We spent two laid-back days together eating, drinking, doing tourism, and - most of all - catching up. For me, the highlight of Cardiff was hanging out with V. And that's not to knock Cardiff! It's just that when you see a dear friend for the first time in eight years, the joy of that overshadows the other things you might see or do.

Cardiff is a lovely town, and a welcome change for the cost-conscious tourist arriving from London. Here, for example, you can buy a full day's bus pass for just three pounds. In London, you must pay three pounds for an Oyster card which then entitles you to the privilege of paying two additional pounds for each tube or bus ride.

So, now that I'm here, - what to see in Wales? The answer: Castles! In the heart of Cardiff stands Cardiff Castle, a blend of Roman, Norman and Victorian design. A little further away is Caerphilly Castle (pictured below), whose plaque declares it the largest in Wales.

V said that many people prefer their castles renovated, but I quite like the crumbling and decrepit look of Caerphilly:

There were many interesting plaques explaining how the various people who occupied this castle would have gone about trying to defend it. Defenders would lob boulders with huge catapult contraptions (think Lord of the Rings) and shoot large spears with this menacing-looking thing:

There is one recorded instance of six men being speared together in one shot! Perygl!

The third and final castle we visited was Castle Coch, quite near to V's house and referred to by her as the 'fairy tale castle.'

Castle Coch, I was told, is not a real castle but rather a 19th-century reproduction of the genuine 13th-century castle that once stood here. Still quite impressive though, especially to someone who hails from a land where any building over 100 years is 'old.'

Aside from the castles, I would highly recommend that on your next visit to Cardiff you go to St. Fagans. It's a (free!) open-air museum where you can walk through Welsh history "from Celtic times to the present day." Fantastic.

V and I rounded out our tourism with a visit to Cardiff Bay, which featured a pretty boardwalk with several sculptures in addition to its many bars and restaurants.

A view of the Bay from the Norwegian Church

Merchant Seafarer's War Memorial, sculpted by Brian Fell using the hull of a beached ship.

Ceiling of the National Assembly for Wales

In general, Cardiffians may not be as friendly as their counterparts in London, but you have to give them credit for having a very cool local beer name: Brains. (I would recommend the extra cold smooth.)

V: Thanks for everything, and happy moving!

Happy 175th Day, J

2009-07-21T21:32:00.009-05:00

I had a new mission this week: to find my list from sixth grade of things I hoped to accomplish in my lifetime. And I failed. Having arrived in Utica late Thursday evening, K and I spent Friday helping with preparations for my sister's graduation party and all day Saturday at the party itself. That left me with a couple of hours on Sunday morning to potter around my parents' basement storage room looking for my list.

I tried, but the only thing I achieved was the (inevitable) frustration of unpacking various boxes only to find that I was unable to fit the contents back into the very same receptacles. I emerged from the basement a list-less and sweaty mess, took a shower and resumed travel to Chicago, feeling thwarted the whole way home.

I know it's there somewhere, and next time I visit my parents, I shall try again. I wonder if one of the goals on the list was to be able to find the list.

Other than the list fiasco, the weekend was a grand success. I got to hang out with baby J, the newest member of my extended family. She is so cute and fun and inspiring that I just have to post a picture of her:

All right, two pictures:

I can't help it - she's 175 days old today, and I'm just such a proud great-second-cousin-aunt! What the heck am I to my first cousin's baby anyway?

And while I'm at it, here's one of me with my sisters. That's youngest sis AL on the left, me in the middle and the graduate M on the right. I should mention that I also have a brother of whom I'm extremely proud, but for some reason he was not present for this photo shoot.

When I eventually find my list, I think I can check off having a blast with my family and taking super cute pictures to prove it.

Apollo, Apollo

2009-07-17T19:06:00.003-05:00

On the too-rare occasion that I find myself watching an episode of a little show called 30 Rock, I usually laugh so hard I puke. Ok, not really, but I do miss a lot of hilarious jokes because I'm still laughing at previous ones.

Not long ago, I caught an episode in which Jack is turning 50 years old and he's just come across a list that he wrote in fifth grade of goals he hoped to accomplish by his fiftieth birthday. They include "go to Disneyland, ride in an airplane, kiss Peggy Fleming, live in a house with stairs, beat up a Russian," and that old stand-by, "hit mom with a car." Oh Jack, you are terrible.

If I am not mistaken, I too made a list - in sixth grade, I think it was - of things I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime. Wouldn't it be fun to find it and see if I've actually made any headway? I'm spending this weekend at my parents' house in Utica, so I will have the chance to try to dig up that list.

Jack has accomplished all but one of the childhood goals on his list by age 50. (He has not yet managed to befriend Batman.) But despite his many accomplishments, Jack realizes that he is not really that happy. Isn't it nice to know that the realization of happiness is a complex and ever-evolving personal process? So I will be sure not to take it too hard if I have not completed many of the items on my own list. Still, it would be fun to check off at least one or two...

Puppets and Washboards in Welles Park

2009-07-14T21:33:00.009-05:00

Saturday afternoon saw K, his folks and I making our way to the Chicago Folk & Roots Festival in Lincoln Square's Welles Park. We were greeted by a beer tent and several market stalls specializing in stuff like hemp and handmade jewelry. The for-sale folk art pieces, like those pictured at left, made for an interesting walk through. A few artists were painting big music-inspired murals.

Also present was the Puppet Bike, an Andersonville summertime classic. I mean, here we're talking about puppets that dance - no, rock out - under a disco ball, pop out of surprising little doors below their stage and interact with their audience. Umm, how could you not love a Puppet Bike?

As we made our way over to the main stage, the man with the mic said, "The first one to fall in the mud loses." The previous night's rain had apparently wreaked a little havoc in the park, but we found some nice dry grass and settled down. What a gorgeous day!

Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole played a dance-able set, sung mostly in French.

K's mom has been to New Orleans numerous times and told me that this washboard player was nowhere near as good as others she'd heard. Nevertheless, coming as I do from a long line of non-washboard players, I was quite impressed. Dude makes a living playing a washboard!

I may not be too picky about my music or my festivals, but I will definitely plan to go back to Folk & Roots. It was a marvelous chance to get out with all my neighbors and enjoy that friendly neighborhoody vibe that makes me adore living in this part of the city. Up here, we make mud fun.

Folk & Roots

2009-07-10T12:25:00.006-05:00

Well, I'm back from the land of tea, civility and Marks and Spencer. Among the valuable lessons I've learned are that many Brits pronounce the word 'scone' like "scawn" (as in rhymes with dawn), and they sometimes refer to bedspreads as "counterpanes." Weirdos.

I returned from my travels feeling grounded and refreshed. I've even managed to almost make peace with my recent bike heist. I know I owe this blog a couple of posts about my trip, but first let's talk about my new adventure for this week.

K's parents will be in town this weekend and we are planning to take them to the Chicago Folk & Roots Festival in Lincoln Square's Welles Park, just west of our Ravenswood 'hood. The festival promises diverse grooves on multiple stages, lively dancing, and beer. And as if that wasn't enough, it offers up the Annual Midwest Fiddle Championship. Tell me that isn't pure gold.

This guy was at the festival last year, and I sure hope he comes back. My great-grandmother played the accordion until the day she died, and I'll always have a special place in my heart for the instrument and its devotees.

If the online pictures from past years' festivals are any indication, the place is going to be crawling with adorable children. This would normally be a good thing, but with K's mom in tow, it is sure to elicit several remarks about how desperately she needs a grandchild of her own. So to counteract the effects of that, I may just have to get drunk. Or get her drunk. Ideally both, and then get down with our bad selves in the dance tent.

London Lucky and Lakefront Thievery

2009-06-26T16:09:00.004-05:00

It is a beautiful day in Chicago - finally, some relief from the stifling heat of the last several days - and I have much to be thankful for. This evening I'll enjoy a Brandi Carlile / Indigo Girls concert under the moon and stars, complete with picnic by K. Tomorrow I leave for nine days of vacationing in the United Kingdom. I'll fly into London and stay for a few days with a friend who is getting married on the 4th of July. I have not seen her since 2001, when we shared a room in Singapore. I expect to find her shining just as brightly as always and am looking forward to catching up and helping with the wedding preparations. Mid-week I'll travel to Cardiff, Wales, to stay with another dear long-lost friend. We'll go east to Kent together at week's end to meet up with still more chums from our Singapore days, and then spend all day next Saturday celebrating love, life, fun and drunkenness.

Life is good. But despite all of that, my heart is broken. I've just learned that my bike has been stolen. I rode her to work and parked her in a bike rack right at the entrance of Northwestern Law School, in a beautiful neighborhood with much foot traffic. She was locked with a cable lock. I thought this would be ok, but it was not. If you are a bike rider, please let this be a lesson to you. Use a kryptonite U-lock, preferably two of them, and don't trust your low-crime neighborhood to be bike-thief free.

I can't believe I'll never see her again! I did love her so. Not sure when I'll be able to scrounge up the money for another (undoubtedly less expensive) bike, but even when that day comes, I'll never forget her. RIP, Insight. Thanks for the lifts.

Almost No-Work Whole Grain Bread: Take One

2009-06-25T20:27:00.013-05:00

"Almost No-Work." I like the sound of that. So I decided to give this recipe from Mark Bittman a go.

1) Combine 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast, 2 teaspoons salt and 3 cups whole wheat flour in a large bowl. I got fancy and used 2 cups whole wheat flour plus one cup dark rye flour.

2) Add 1 and 1/2 cups water and stir until blended; the dough should be quite wet and sticky but not liquid. At this point, I fretted over whether my dough was in fact wet and sticky enough. K advised me to "just go with it," so I did.

3) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest in a warm place for at least 12 and up to 24 hours. Well, my non-air-conditioned apartment should be warm enough. It's been in the mid-90's in Chicago the last few days. The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Rising time will be shorter at warmer temperatures, or a bit longer if your kitchen is chilly. It was 9:30pm on Tuesday when I started the rise. As I left for work 11 hours later, the dough looked ready, but I wasn't. I had to hurry to the office, so the rise continued for 9 more hours, like it or not.

4) Measure about 2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil. Use some of the oil to grease the loaf pan. If you like, add 1 cup chopped nuts, seeds, dried fruit or proofed whole grains. Transfer the dough to the loaf pan, and use a rubber spatula gently to settle it in evenly. Brush the top with the remaining oil and sprinkle with cornmeal if you like. The surface of my dough was no longer dotted with bubbles when I got home from work on Wednesday. I quickly prepped it for the second rise, without adding any extras.

5) Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled, an hour or two depending on the warmth of your kitchen. When it's almost ready, heat the oven to 350F.

6) Bake the bread until deep golden and hollow-sounding when tapped, about 45 minutes. I tapped it and it actually sounded hollow! Almost cavernous - hooray! Immediately turn out of the pan onto a rack and let it cool before slicing.

Here's a picture of my finished product.

A sight for sore eyes. K and I let it cool and then dug in. It tasted not bad at all. Dense and full-flavored, thanks at least in part to the dark rye. The recipe had warned that it would not make a very high loaf, but personally I prefer half-sandwiches, so that suits me just fine.

Here's a picture of K and I after enjoying the first few slices of my very first home-baked loaf of bread. We're pleased, as you can see. Delighted. Downright chummed.

How 'Bout That Blood Sugar

2009-06-22T21:24:00.011-05:00

Back in April, I finally made a doctor's appointment, the easiest task I've ever managed to neglect for nearly a decade. Come mid-May, it was time to go in for my physical, and I actually found myself looking forward to it. I was eager to get my official nod and a clean bill of health. After the visit, I felt marvelous - like I had done myself a real solid. And this in spite of nearly fainting during a blood draw attempt.

A few weeks after my appointment, I received via snail mail a print-out with all my blood test results. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the line for glucose was circled with a note reading "slightly + blood sugar." In her cover letter, my new doctor oh-so-helpfully recommended that I "work on eating healthy and exercising regularly to prevent the development of diabetes in the future." Well, here's the thing, doc: I already work out an average of four times a week (and that's not counting my beach volleyball league on Wednesdays), which is about as much as my schedule will allow. I already try to make healthy choices when it comes to food, and my personal chef - er, I mean, K - prepares quite nutritious meals. Moreover, perhaps you shouldn't send vague cover letters casually dropping the names of potentially serious diseases, completely devoid of meaningful context, to individuals who expected you to tell them that they are in perfect health. Perhaps some of those individuals may be prone to freaking out... Really though, ya couldn't have called?

It was time to bring out my big guns. So I called my mom (duh). She said that given the family history, I probably have a genetic tendency towards elevated blood sugar, which made me feel simultaneously a little better (It's not my fault!) and a little worse (There's nothing I can do!) To keep it in check, I should try to make a few easy adjustments to my diet, and it's "so much better to make some small changes now than to have to make some big changes later on." So substitute any white rice with brown rice, and any pasta should be whole wheat. (Done!) Cut down on bagels and eat only whole grain bread. (Life sans bagels could be tough, but I'll survive.) Fewer sweets whenever possible, (I don't think I consume many as is, but ok.) and... try to drink less beer. (Sob!)

Let's ignore the beer thing for now and focus on something slightly less painful and wholly more manageable. Bread! According to Mark Bittman, New York Times foodie and author of Food Matters, "whole wheat" and "whole grain" breads that are typically available at the grocery store are phonies, usually containing only 20 percent whole wheat flour and 80 percent white flour. Even whole wheat bread bought from a less shamelessly commercial outlet, like one's local bakery, is likely to contain mostly white flour unless otherwise marked. Outrageous! To solve this problem, I've purchased my very own whole wheat and dark rye flours, and this week I am going to bake some bread. Experienced baker I am not, but if I can make this work for me, it holds grand potential for both my blood sugar and my pocketbook. Ain't that a kick in the butt?

A Boat Ride to Remember

2009-06-17T19:57:00.008-05:00

K and I embarked on a three-hour maritime exploration of Chicago on Sunday, via the Chicago History Museum's 'A History of Beer' tour. And it was good. I mean real good.

Beautiful weather? Check. Couldn't have asked for better.

Unlimited beer on tap? Check. I was hoping for a little more variety (it was a tour for beer enthusiasts after all), but we made do with the two quality offerings: Goose Island 312 wheat ale and Goose Island's Summertime brew.

Friendly bartender? Yes indeed. And she encouraged the reuse of the plastic cups rather than wasting one for every beverage poured - good stuff.

Cooky lecturer? Check. Dude wrote a book called The Great Chicago Beer Cans that was published in 1979! He is obviously passionate about history, his city and his suds. The first thing he taught us was that there aren't any breweries along the Chicago River. Huh. And here I was thinking that we would pass by a couple on a history of beer tour - - ah well. After the lecture, he made his way through the group, stopping to chat with each person. As we passed the LaSalle and Clark Street bridges, K and I got a private little lesson on the Eastland Boat Disaster of 1915. "Over 800 people died right here." Geez.

Life jackets? Phew.

K shook his fist at the Lake Shore Drive bridge as we passed under it, in remembrance of how it made us late for the Harry Potter exhibition.

All boats going from the Chicago River to Lake Michigan or vice versa must pass through the Chicago Lock. Boats on their way out to the lake enter the lock and secure themselves to the wall. Then the gate opens, allowing for water to flow into the lock until it reaches lake level. Once that has been accomplished, boats in the lock and those on the lake waiting to come in can switch places. Close gate. Return water level in lock to river level. Open gate. Repeat. Simple, I know, but I found it interesting. Also, there's this whole separate etiquette and set of rules for boating, and it fascinates me.

All in all, it was a fantastic boat ride. There's something inspiring about being out on the water, whether it's in a one-person kayak in the wilderness or cruising down the Chicago River on the Ft. Dearborn with sixty other ruckus-raising beer drinkers.

Hops, Malt and Barley on the Big Lake

2009-06-13T16:19:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow evening, K and I will be cruising the Chicago River and Lake Michigan on a Chicago History Museum boat tour, 'Exploring Chicago's Yeast Side: A History of Beer.' Here's the description:

Back by popular demand! Before Milwaukee claimed the title of beer capital of the Midwest, there was Chicago! Discover the city’s golden age of beer and brewing on this sunset tour. Ticket price includes beer, provided by Goose Island Brewery.

Sounds fun, right? I hope Goose Island brings their full lineup. So far, I've only tried their 312 wheat ale, the first beer I ordered at a restaurant in Chicago after we moved here last year. Intrigued by the telephone tap handle, I asked for a "three-twelve," oblivious to the fact that 312 ("three-one-two") is named for downtown Chicago's area code.

I learned about the tour when I visited the Chicago History Museum in April to see their Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit, which by the way, is ongoing until August 16. If you're a Lincoln fan like me, it's pretty cool to see the bed he died in and a copy of the Gettysburg address handwritten by the man himself. (He had fantastic penmanship!)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: I thought the boat tour would be a good opportunity for us to max it and relax it while supporting a fine local institution. K and I have not yet done a boat tour here in our new city, but I've heard from tourists and locals alike that it is one of the best ways to see Chicago. We'll feel right at home out on the big lake. Here's a photo of it from Heritage Landing in our hometown of Muskegon, Michigan.

Let's hope the weather is that nice tomorrow, and that the beer doesn't go down too easy.

Just Me, But with Pretty Feet

2009-06-11T17:56:00.003-05:00

From the ankle down, I don't even recognize myself. My feet are so beautiful! I had my first pedicure on Tuesday (here's the before post), and I must say, I totally get it now - I understand the allure. The foot massage and massage chair were my favorite parts. So relaxed was I that I managed to doze off while a lively Bollywood dance number played on TV and a bouncy young child demanded to know why his mother was getting her eyebrows threaded.

In fact, several women came into Sonia Salon to get their eyebrows done. Threading seems to be their specialty. I have unruly eyebrows too, I thought to myself. And I'm way too lazy to pluck them... maybe I should try threading. I asked one of the other customers if the process was painful and she said it wasn't as bad as waxing. Then the woman doing the threading explained that it is easier on the skin because it doesn't traumatize or stretch it like waxing does. Threading is also cheaper (at least at Sonia Salon) and doesn't involve any products which could be harmful to me or the environment. Thus, I was convinced. It seemed like a great idea. And I proceeded to pay someone to use a twisted cotton thread to yank out lines of tiny hairs. By the follicles. On my face. And for the record, it hurt waaay more than waxing. I would without a doubt rather have unruly eyebrows. The woman next to me was getting her whole face done - are you kidding me?! Word to the wise: if you for some reason decide to do threading, have it done before, not after, another service at the salon. That way you can leave refreshed and not as I did, with red skin and eyes watering.

When I got home, K took one look at my purple polish and said, "You have Vikings [Minnesota's NFL franchise] toenails! I love 'em!" Well, not exactly what I was going for, but I do think the purple is fun. I'm also enjoying the excuse to post a picture of my sanuk flip flops, which I love. They are made out of yoga mat = pure genius. Oooh, and speaking of yoga mat and showing off - shortly after I started practicing yoga last year, K bought me my very own mat from yogamatic. Check it out:

It is a great quality, eco-friendly mat and part of the proceeds from this particular design benefit ongoing recovery efforts in New Orleans after Katrina. I've used it so much that "Cocktails To Go" is already fading. That must be where I put my hands for downward-dog! If you are ever in the market for a yoga mat, I would highly recommend yogamatic. They even offer free return shipping and recycling when you are ready to get a new mat. Ohm.

I Can't Afford a Massage

2009-06-09T16:50:00.005-05:00

After surviving a mentally grueling ("grew-elle-ing") Week Without Coffee, I have decided to treat myself this week. What I would really adore is a full hour massage, but I do not want to spend that much money. So, inspired by a friend over at The Martha Initiative, I've decided on a bottom-up approach (wah-wah). In lieu of whole body relaxation, I'm going to focus on refreshing my feet. Today, I am going to get my first-ever pedicure.

I'll be entrusting my feet to the beautiful people at Sonia Salon, a spa I chose because of its reasonable price tag and relatively convenient location on North Clark. I am a little bit nervous about the part where the pedicurist removes the dry skin. My colleague C said that they sometimes use a shaver tool that she likened to a cheese slicer - yikes! She also told me that Oprah said that when she gets a pedicure they take off so much dry skin that she actually goes down a full shoe size. So, ok - first of all, yuck, and secondly, doesn't that hurt?

I guess even if it is a little uncomfortable, that's all right. I still want to have the pedicure experience. From now on, if I'm with a group of women and they start discussing beauty services, I won't have to confess that in all my years on this earth I haven't had a pedicure. I will still be wholly unqualified to converse about many of the topics that tend to come up in all-female groups, but pedicures will no longer be one of them.

Before I go, I would like to take this opportunity to declare that just because a woman is generally uninterested in 'girly' things or activities, this does not mean that she should not be taken seriously in the event that she decides to pursue a feminine interest every once in a while. I certainly reserve the right to be 'girly' (whatever that word means) in any way and at any time I choose. So K, I'm not sure if you thought I was joking when I told you about my appointment to have a pedicure this evening, but this is the real deal, buddy. No watermelon nails for me, though - I think I'll just stick to pink or peach.

Prolonged Absence of Buzz

2009-06-08T12:11:00.007-05:00

I'm proud to say that I've successfully completed my WWC (Week Without Coffee). By far the biggest payoff was the see, I told you I could do it feeling. I even did it without being ridiculously irritable or mean to anyone (I think). The first couple of days were relatively easy, but then it got tough as my cravings intensified. I correctly predicted that I would not suffer headaches or any other physical withdrawal symptoms, but my mental battles with myself could get pretty brutal.

I was especially tempted after lunch on Tuesday (5-day mark), but no, I told myself, I can and will hold myself accountable. After that, I seemed to be over the hump, and it got easier again. It was a bell curve, if you will (sorry, my inner nerd is always rambunctious and occasionally irrepressible) - here's a visual:

On Thursday morning, I checked my previous WWC post to see exactly when my week would be up - 1:58pm. I decided that I would break my coffee fast the first time I had a real urge; I wouldn't drink it right at 1:58pm just because I could. So I ended up going without until Friday after lunch. A whole extra day! I broke my fast at Dunkin' Donuts because Friday was National Doughnut Day, and I never pass up a chance to get a free doughnut!

Within moments of drinking the first half of my small DD coffee, I could feel the caffeine coursing through my veins. And I must say, I didn't miss that sensation. Based on my WWC, I seem to crave coffee not for the caffeine buzz but more for its taste and familiar comfort. What I hope to take away from the experience is a greater tendency to ask myself, Do I really want another cup or would I be drinking it 'just because'? I think this will lead me to drink a little less coffee from now on and maybe, just maybe, even reach for the decaf every once in a while.

Except for the prolonged absence of buzz, I didn't notice any differences in the way my body was feeling without coffee. I suppose I would have to take on the challenge for much longer than one week to track any possible changes. But that was never, and isn't now, my intention. I know my overall health is affected by a vast and varied compendium of factors, some of which are far beyond my control. Surely coffee alone is not a deal maker or breaker. So drink up, fiends, and mark your calendar with my new favorite day: National Doughnut Day is always the first Friday in June.

K's Welcome Home Party, Year 2000

2009-06-03T09:55:00.004-05:00

Ok, Miranda, here's my first completed Learning to Love You More assignment - #28: Edit a photo album page. I call it "K's Welcome Home Party, Year 2000."

Details, from top: gas meter, baseball cap, bowl with salad, plastic cups and plates, lamppost, yard statue, back of folding chair.

I was supposed to complete the assignment with one of K's mom's photo albums, but we ended up being so busy throughout Memorial Day weekend that I couldn't find the time. Upon our return to Chicago, I started looking through an album of K's and came across a few pages of photos from his visit to our hometown of Muskegon, Michigan in the summer of 2000. The particular page I chose documents a welcome home party his parents had for him in their backyard. At that time, he was in the army, stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia, and I was living in Singapore. We had broken up a year before (out of what I thought was necessity), and hadn't seen each other since, but our visits home overlapped for about a week and we re-connected fast. And so officially began our two and a half year long-distance relationship (followed, of course, by six and a half more recent years of domestic bliss). But that is a story for another day. Suffice it to say that I am very grateful we both had the opportunity to visit Muskegon in 2000. Thanks for the project, LTLYM!

A Week Without Coffee

2009-05-28T13:58:00.001-05:00

If you know me (which, if you're reading this, you almost certainly do), you know that I love me some coffee. There's something about a nice, hot cup in the morning or after a meal that just hits the spot like nothing else can. I also enjoy the process of making coffee - the simple, sequential, familiar steps that lead up to the pressing of the 'brew' button, the comforting noise of the coffeemaker and finally, the wonderful smell and taste of fresh coffee. Normally, I just sip mine straight-up, no cream or sugar, but occasionally a nice mocha or cappuccino is divine.

This week I'm going to do something sort of crazy, something almost bordering on insane... This week I'm off coffee. Just to do it, to prove to myself that I can. And also as a sort of experiment to find out if I feel different without coffee. I've heard conflicting reports about how coffee affects your health; one week it's good for cognitive function and a fantastic source of antioxidants, and the next it's bad for your blood sugar levels and overall cardiovascular health. So to cut through all the hype, I just want to know how my body will respond to a Week Without Coffee (WWC).

My WWC begins right now. And just to clarify, the no coffee rule includes decaf. I've never thought of decaf as 'real' or 'actual' coffee, but if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this - you know? Do I expect it to be easy? No, not really. Especially this weekend when I'm sitting at home doing my normal coffee-drinking activities like sitting on the porch, eating breakfast, reading or catching up on email. But I'm not such a coffee hound that I expect to have any tangible symptoms of withdrawal other than the uncontrollable urge to stare longingly at my coffeemaker. Time will tell.

Vegetable Sculptures and Recipe for Texas Caviar

2009-05-24T12:40:00.001-05:00

Odds are that right now someone somewhere is making a vegetable sculpture. What a glorious world we live in!

I happened upon this picture of a veggie lion yesterday (on urban75.org - visit them to see the rest of the pictures) and was sufficiently moved to keep browsing the internet's wide array of vegetable sculptures. Some very impressive and un-boring veggie creatures can be seen here on i-am-bored.com. Apparently, the Lambeth Country Show, an annual event in South London, features an Alternative Vegetable Sculpture Competition. Fabulous photos of some of the 2008 entries are posted here on Flickr. The big winner in 2008 was a veggie bust of Amy Winehouse.

But if you don't feel like turning your vegetables into a sculpture, you can put them to another good use by making Texas Caviar. Here's the recipe I made for my book club, courtesy of my colleague J:

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 can pinto beans - drained and rinsed
1 can black eyed peas - drained and rinsed
2 cans shoepeg corn - drained
8 ounces diced pimento - drained
1 medium red onion - diced
1 cup celery - diced
1 cup green pepper - diced
1 or 2 jalapeño peppers (depending on your taste) - diced

Directions

1. Boil the sugar, vinegar, vegetable oil, water, salt and pepper; then allow to cool.
2. Combine all of the remaining ingredients.
3. Once the liquid has cooled, pour it over the mixture and refrigerate for a few hours (or overnight, which is even better).
4. Drain most of the liquid and serve with Fritos scoops or tortilla chips.

Yum!

LTLYM #28: Edit a photo album page

2009-05-22T12:09:00.002-05:00

Learning To Love You More (LTLYM) is a web-based project comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. This week, I am going to tackle my first assignment, #28: Edit a photo album page. Here are the instructions:

Look through a friend or relative's photo album. Choose a single page that includes details that you find interesting. Take a piece of solid-colored paper that fits over the entire album page and cut one to ten holes in the paper that reveal details of the pictures. These details can be parts of people's bodies, their pets, a cake, a poster, anything you find visually intriguing. These holes should be small, just isolating the details, with holes that are the shape of the thing you are isolating (cake-shaped hole, tiny hole isolating just someone's head, etc.) Give your page a title that includes the name of the person who's photo album you have used. For instance "Erika's trip to Florida," or "Dave and his dog Walter at the Beach."

K and I will be visiting his parents for Memorial Day weekend, so I plan to complete this assignment using one of his mom's family photo albums. The LTLYM website is no longer accepting submissions, so I will just post my results here on my blog.

You might be wondering what drew me to LTLYM in the first place. Well, I've been loosely following the work of Miranda July ever since I saw her feature-length directorial debut, "Me and You and Everyone We Know." With its motley cast of characters (pictured above), each struggling for some sense of connectedness to the world and each other, this film made me laugh, cry and squirm. And it left me hooked on Miranda.

If you have not seen any of Miranda July's short films, I would recommend "How to Make a Button" and "Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?" They will make you think and make you smile. And if you like those, you should check out her website and keep your eyes open for a new feature-length film coming soon (in production right now under the working title "Satisfaction").

I have been meaning to do a LTLYM assignment for a while. Some challenge the participant to connect in some way with friends/family/strangers, while others are more focused on creating something tangible. All seem to be about having new and individual experiences - which ties in perfectly with sometimes a strange notion.

For My Sister, the Superhuman

2009-05-21T10:20:00.001-05:00

On October 4, 2007, my sister AL suffered a stroke due to a ruptured and bleeding cerebral AVM . Several months later, I sat down and wrote about the experience. My main intention was self-therapy through writing, but I also wanted to record some of the details that I thought (correctly) would fade from my memory over time.

Recently, AL and I had a conversation about how little she remembers from the weeks after the stroke (click here for a little more fore/background). I told her about my AVM journal and she was keen, so today I'm going to mail her a copy of it in its entirety. Please read on for a couple of excerpts.

In this first one, I had just learned from my dad that AL had both an active bleed and a large clot in her brain. When I first got off the phone with him, I was confused and on the verge of hyperventilating, but then my colleague, C (well, former colleague - I worked in NYC at the time) talked me down, and together we decided that I should leave work that very minute to begin the five-hour drive to my sister in Syracuse.

I was scheduled to go to China for work in three days. I took everything I would need for the trip with me (except, I realized later, my airplane ticket), because I was hopeful; a lot could change in three days. Maybe my sister would be fine in three days. C walked me to the bus terminal carrying more than her fair share and proclaiming herself my Sherpa. I was on the 2:50 bus and K left work early to meet me at the park & ride. We were on our way up to Syracuse. The ride was long and I hated it. It sort of reminded me of the time when, shortly after graduation from college, when I was working as a waitress and uninsured, I had a cyst on my head the size of a golf ball (and growing!) and K drove me from Washington, DC all the way up to Utica to see the only doctor who would remove the cyst for free - my mother. The pain had gotten to the point where I was rotating doses of Vicodin with three Advils, taking one of the other every two to three hours and I was still in a world of hurt. The present drive to Syracuse was throbbing painfully in a completely different way.

We finally arrived after about five hours in the car and were instructed by my dad to go to the fourth floor Pediatric ICU. She was stable. We walked into the PICU, and hers was the bed straight ahead and just to the left. I went to her and she looked just as she had last time I saw her. I gave her a hug and that's when she said "I love you" and I felt an immense rush of relief. She was fine! But then I noticed she wasn't really talking at all, or hardly at all. Everyone was talking to each other around her, but her participation consisted only of non-verbal communication: facial expressions, gestures, hand squeezes. A resident came over to give her a little test. He pointed to his watch and asked her if she knew what it was. She shrugged and laughed at herself and shrugged. Next, he asked her to name the object he had in his hand - a pen. She said "sand," in a rising tone, like it was a question and you could see in her eyes that she knew she was totally wrong. It was just this look of 'What am I saying?!' The resident asked her if she knew what the object was for / what people do with it, and she answered by making a writing motion with her right hand.

There were more questions, but I didn't hear them - I felt like I was going to lose it. This was bad. First, I turned around and took a few steps away from the bed because I didn't want AL to see me. Then I involuntarily sunk down to my knees. K was on me like a flash, squatting in front of me - "are you ok?" - and I was trying not to cry because I didn't want others to hear me. The situation was bad enough for AL, my parents, my brother and my other sister. Maybe because I wasn't allowing myself to cry, I was having trouble breathing. A split-second later, over K's shoulder, I saw a nurse coming towards me with a needle and asking if I was all right. I stood up, grabbed K's arm, and walked - almost ran - out of the PICU. Safely in the hallway, I let out my tears and my shock and my disbelief. That initial moment of realization - sometimes it takes seeing with your own eyes to grasp the gravity of a situation - passed, and soon I was able to pull myself together. The next two weeks were a complete roller coaster for my entire family - we dared to hope; we let the doctors' bleak assessments get to us; we knew she would be ok; we were faced with the fact that she would need long, hard, dangerous brain surgery; we saw the other brave kids in the PICU fighting their own battles with death or near-death; we watched AL laugh hysterically one day and fall into depression the next; we prayed (very rare, at least for me); we were insomniacs; we wondered when they would ever operate on her...

And here's an excerpt about AL's surgery, which finally took place on October 18. The two weeks leading up to it were hectic in the way that hospital life is. The doctors kept pushing the surgery back because they wanted all the blood to have a chance to settle down, dissolve, whatever.

When they wheeled her into surgery, my mom went with her in a crazy blue suit - half astronaut, half Pillsbury doughboy. AL went to sleep and mom joined all of us in the waiting room for what we expected to be a five or six-hour wait. We took turns going down to the cafeteria, getting coffee, walking around. Books and TV (mostly nothing on, but I do remember watching Ellen) to pass the time. There was a Mickey Mouse phone in the waiting room, and we were told we would get a call when the surgery was over or almost over. So, at the six-hour mark, every time the phone would ring, we would be all excited. But it was for other parents, other families... and the hours dragged on. About ten hours after she had been put under, we finally got our call. AL was being stitched up - the head neurosurgeon came in and told us that it had gone well, though longer than expected. There were literally thousands of vessels attached to the AVM, which they had needed to remove. So, for each of those tiny vessels, they had to cut, tie off, burn - very time consuming. We were all glad to know it was over and she was safe. They wheeled her through the hall and back up to the PICU. As we caught a glimpse of her, we could see that her eyes were both under the bandage that was holding her head together. She looked like hell, but she was alive.

The next day I got to really appreciate the shape she was in. She looked (and, I'm sure, felt) like she had gone a few rounds with a heavyweight and not been allowed to fight back and then been hit by a bus. The incision went from the center of the top of her forehead to the back of her head and then curved around and up behind her left ear. The skin and muscle had been pulled back and a piece of skull literally sawed out before the surgeons could even start working on her brain. Her left eye was huge, purple and swollen shut; her right eye was a slit. They had to increase her self-dosed morphine, which was the only medication they had found to effectively control her pre-surgery pain, to one full gram per push of the button. She was allowed one push every seven minutes. On top of all the pain, she was still having immense trouble communicating, and the morphine made her foggy and out-of-it. She was extremely irritable. She would want something described as "that" and would get frustrated when we didn't know what she meant. It was hard to bear and yet, the absurdity of the situation got the better of me at one point, and I just had to laugh. I brushed past the curtain surrounding her bed and laughed softly but hysterically next to the nurses' station. One of the nurses came up behind me - she must have assumed I was crying, which was fair enough, because there was a fair bit of that going on - and she asked if I was ok. I turned, smiled and said, "My sister is being such a bitch!" The nurse giggled and we agreed that the bitchiness was a good sign. Later, my sister would share that she really thought she wanted to die then. To just let go would have been such a welcome release. But she was feisty, and she fought on.

Don't worry, reader - it ends happily! And it makes me so proud to go back and think about all that AL's been through and how we handled it together as a family. She is an amazing girl and I am in awe of her. AL was fourteen years old at the time of her stroke. The only phrase she was able to articulate on that day - "I love you" - is indicative of her personality. She has faced mortality and depression in ways someone her age shouldn't have to. And almost the whole time, she's been able to laugh at herself.

Blood Draw Adventures and AVM Journal

2009-05-17T11:13:00.006-05:00

Doctor's appointment update: I survived! After procrastinating for literally years (read about it here and here), I found a doctor and had myself checked out. My visit was uneventful until I went to the lab to have my blood drawn. The tech asked me if I've ever fainted during a blood draw and I said no, I haven't had this done in a loooong time, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Her first try was painful. I wasn't looking at the site, but it felt like she was digging a ditch with that needle. I felt a sudden rush of heat and said, "Woah, I don't feel so good." Apparently I was having what is referred to in medical jargon as a vasovagal response - what a terrible feeling! I was given an ice pack and told to lay my head down. Several minutes later, the tech asked if I wanted to go ahead with the blood draw. "Absolutely," I replied. "I don't want to have to fast again!" So we went to find an exam room where I could lie down. She tried again, in my other arm this time, and everything went smoothly.

At the end of the visit, I felt fantastic. As I skipped along to my office, I texted my little sister AL: "Just had my blood drawn and almost fainted. Guess I'm not as tough as you." AL suffered a stroke in October of 2007 due to a cerebral arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - this picture at right gives an idea of what an AVM might look like. In the months that followed, she had to undergo invasive brain surgery and countless medical tests and procedures. After all that, I figured that a blood draw would be a piece of cake for her.

AL texted me back: "Oh but you are! I would probably faint too." Hmmm. Later that day, she called me. She said that she doesn't really remember having her blood drawn in the hospital, even though it was done several times. The combination of intense pain, heavy and sustained medication, and brain bleeding have left her with huge gaps in her memory of the time she spent in the hospital.

AL said that it's weird to have these long stretches of time that she doesn't remember. Or she'll remember one random thing that happened, but not know exactly when it happened or what came before and after. This made me think of the time I sat down and wrote a journal about her (our) ordeal. I thought she might like to see it. Maybe it would help fill in one or two of the gaps. AL seemed excited about this. Thus, my assignment for the week became digging up the journal and sending her a copy. I'm looking forward to a re-read (writing the journal was so therapeutic at the time), and hope my sister finds something in there worth knowing, too.

When in Doubt, Quiche

2009-05-15T09:56:00.001-05:00

This week I endeavored to host the Shoeless Book Club at my apartment (click here to read my slightly anxiety-riddled 'before' post). It was a first for me in the sense that I had several guests over for dinner without K there to do all the work.

I was a little bit stressed-out about the menu. I never cook, so I knew I had to pick easy dishes that would be near-impossible to mess up. For snacks, I settled on texas caviar and slices of french bread with goat cheese and honey. The texas caviar was a huge hit! The recipe was provided courtesy of my colleague, J, and I'm happy to pass it along upon request. Consider making it next time you host a gathering or find yourself scrambling for something to bring to a potluck - you won't be sorry! It's only downfall is that it makes your kitchen reek of vinegar, but I made it the night before, opened some windows, and was good to go by the time book club commenced.

For the main course, my friend M suggested quiche, which was perfect - I made one with mushrooms, onion and ham, and a meatless version with mushrooms, onion, asparagus, spinach, and broccoli. I served the quiches with a big chopped salad because, as I always say, everybody loves a chopped salad. We topped the meal off with red wine and cake from Trader Joe's.

Luckily, I had tidied up the apartment so there was room for all my guests. I even moved some furniture around in the dining room to make it easier for people to move around the space. As host, I had to select a few book options for all Shoeless members to vote on. The big winner was Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga - a novel I have been wanting to re-read for the last several years.

In the end, I think everyone went home with full tummies and the book club meeting was a success. One would think that the experience would have improved my hosting abilities (and confidence therein), but more than that, it just made me even more appreciative of all that K does whenever we have guests over. Just one of many reasons I'm so lucky to have him in my corner.

Exhibition: Accomplished

2009-05-13T12:01:00.016-05:00

At long last, Saturday arrives. K and I are a little hungover, but eager to join the throngs of fans from across the Midwest flocking to the Museum of Science and Industry for Harry Potter: The Exhibition. We're on track to make it on time until - wouldn't you know it? - the Link Bridge starts rising and there we are, stuck on Lake Shore Drive. Tourists get out of their cars to take pictures while I mutter (and occasionally shout) obscenities.

By the time the bridge is lowered and we drive the rest of the way to the museum, park the car and find the entrance to The Exhibition, we're a good fifteen minutes late for our timed entry. K says, "I have this really bad feeling they aren't going to let us in."

"Oh, we'll get in," I answer. "There's no way they actually turn away late-comers; they wouldn't really be that mean." Then the cordon is lifted - we're in! Phew. I did not want to have to settle for the Fairy Castle (no offense, Fairy Castle fans).

The Exhibition itself is staged largely in temporary museum space, big white tents that will be relatively easy to pack up and move come September (next stop on the world tour is still TBA). Upon entrance, several visitors have the opportunity to be 'sorted' by the sorting hat. To my dismay, neither K nor I are selected for this ritual - K because he's too old (obviously), and I because... well, I don't know why.

After a brief film of movie highlights (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens July 15), doors open onto the main exhibit area. The overall feeling is movie set meets museum meets kiddie amusement park. We see a huge number of costumes and props, from Harry's wand and the Marauder's map to the flying Ford Anglia and the Goblet of Fire. We get to pull a mandrake from its pot, sit in Hagrid's chair and practice shooting quaffles through quidditch hoops.

By the quidditch hoops there is a museum staff person talking with an adorable little boy. She's rattling off wizarding trivia questions and he knows all the answers! It is soon apparent that all staff are speaking with British accents, some more obviously fake than others. K thinks the accents are overly corny; I find them entertaining.

Several magical creatures are on display: Buckbeak the hippogriff, two centaurs, and even a dragon! K would have missed Dobby the house-elf had I not pointed him out hiding behind Dumbledore's robes. Sadly, there is no information about the movies' special effects. I guess I will have to watch some DVD special features.

All in all, the exhibit is fantastic and sure to be a hit with Harry Potter movie fans of all ages. Enjoy!

Shoeless and Without a Plan

2009-05-10T14:30:00.006-05:00

Back in December, I had the good fortune of being invited to join a fabulous book club. Our next meeting is tomorrow, and it is my first turn to host. Hosting a meeting of the Shoeless Book Club is quite an endeavor, entailing preparation of a full dinner for 7 to 10 people (depending on attendance), with drinks and dessert.

Now, K and I have been known to throw a dinner party from time to time. But he always takes the lead on everything from planning the menu and cooking the meal to setting the table and mixing the drinks. My duties are generally restricted to opening beer bottles, making conversation and sometimes doing the dishes. But tomorrow K is unavailable (and anyway, he's not in the book club), which means that I will have to take on a few things that I've long been fully dependent on him for.

Right now I'm feeling a little overwhelmed because I don't have a plan. A good first step might be to make a list of what needs to be done today. So here we go:

1. Plan a menu. (Since I never cook, I should probably stick with simple dishes. And I should plan to make most of the food tonight because after I get home from work tomorrow I'll have less than an hour before my guests start to arrive.)

2. Go grocery shopping.

3. Clean my apartment. (The clutter will have to go if I'm going to have ample room for up to 10 people in my tiny place.)

4. Finish reading this month's book. (Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - not loving it, but I'm curious about how it will end.)

5. Choose two or three options for the next book. (The host presents a few possibilities to the group and then the rest of the members vote.)

6. Cook the meal!

Wow, that's daunting... I better go get started.

Whimsy and Wands meet Science and Industry

2009-05-05T15:55:00.005-05:00

On Thursday, April 30, Chicago's own Museum of Science and Industry premiered Harry Potter: The Exhibition. Comprised of authentic costumes and props, the exhibition promises a first-hand look inside the magical world of Harry Potter. Sounds good, right? Well, for $28.60 per person, it better be! (That's $26.00 for general museum admission and timed entrance into Harry Potter, plus a $2.60 'convenience' fee.) K and I will enter the exhibit on Saturday in search of enchantment and whimsy. Promptly at 1:15pm (no refunds or late entry, of course).

Assuming we manage to get ourselves there on time, it really will be exciting to see this first-of-its-kind exhibit for one of the most iconic book and movie series of the past decade. I am particularly interested to learn more about all the magical creatures and what processes are used to make them look so realistic in the movies. I hope the exhibit at least makes mention of my favorite creatures, thestrals, the horse-dragon beasts that pull Hogwarts students around in carriages and are only visible to those who have witnessed death. And what about Dobby and Kreacher the house-elves, and Buckbeak, Hagrid's hippogriff - are there any puppets involved, or are they purely CG?

With any luck, the answers to all my magical creatures-related questions and more will be revealed to me on Saturday. Hold on to your wands and get out of the way, kids.

Free Comic Book Day!

2009-05-04T21:52:00.004-05:00

Saturday marked three weeks since I embarked on my self-prescribed comic book challenge. Even though my initial goals turned out to be too ambitious for the allotted one-week time frame, I am definitely glad that I put myself up to them, and I count the project a big success.

I read my first comic book, Hack/Slash #1, on April 13. Since then, I have finished the entire Hack/Slash series to date of 21 books, and I've read the first three issues of Spawn (which by the way, is awesome so far).

It's been a brief but fairly intense introduction. I've gained both a sense of how special comic books are as a medium and an appreciation for why comic book nerds are so drawn to them.

As a comic book nerd himself, I think K has been expecting my interest to be only fleeting. But then I surprised him on Saturday. By suggesting that we go to the Comic Vault in celebration of Free Comic Book Day.

Free Comic Book Day happens every year on the first Saturday in May. Local comic book stores across North America give away certain comic books for free in order to get people into the stores and, hopefully, get them hooked on some comic books. The Comic Vault had a few artists on-site giving away and signing their books. The place was packed with people and good, nerdy vibes!

My Free Comic Book Day loot is displayed above. The IGNATZ book features previews of several international indy comics that look pretty interesting. And I felt it was my generational duty to pick up a copy of the free issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For the moment, though, I'm going to stick mostly to Spawn. I think it's best I take it one step at a time.

The Mixteco Initiative

2009-05-02T15:17:00.005-05:00

On Wednesday, I vowed to eat at the most popular restaurant in my neighborhood, Mixteco Grill, by the end of this week. Long lines be damned. Here's a summary of my efforts:

Wednesday: I called Mixteco at 4:30 - no answer. Their answering machine explains that weekday hours are 5:00 to 10:00pm (except Mondays, when they are closed). I try calling again around 5:30 - still no answer. I don't think this is going to be easy.

Thursday: Today I called at 5:00 and again at 5:15, but got the same message each time. Seriously? You guys are open; your answering machine even says so; I know you're in there, and if I didn't have plans to go to spinning at 6:00, I'd walk down there right now and demand a reservation.

At 5:30 I tried one more time. And lo! - a person answered my call! I told him I'd like to make a reservation for two people at 8 o'clock, please. 'Sorry,' he said, 'we're all booked up tonight and tomorrow. But you should try to come in as a walk-in tonight. We have a few tables of two booked for 6:00/6:30, so they should be about to leave by 8:00.'

Haha, you're not going to fool me with that one! I mentioned in my last post that K tried once before to get a reservation at Mixteco. They told him the same thing: just come by later, the wait probably won't be long. So we did, but when we got there, they said it would be at least an hour. If it comes down to it and that's just the way it has to be, I'm willing to wait an hour in order to fulfill my mission. But today is only Thursday, and I'm not yet ready to resign myself to it.

Friday: In search of advice, I read some reviews of Mixteco on yelp.com today, and I think I've gleaned some useful insight. According to yelp ("Real People. Real Reviews."), Saturday and Sunday brunch are my best bets for getting a table without a wait, particularly if I arrive shortly after they open at 10am. Okay, Real People, I'll trust you on this one.

Saturday: woke K at 9:45am and we arrived at Mixteco by 10:15. There were loads of available tables and we were seated right away - thanks yelp! We started with orange juice, which was freshly squeezed and delicious (no pulp, just like K likes it), and were treated to chips and salsa verde. Our guacamole arrived with big pieces of cucumber and radish in it for dipping - yum!

We ordered the steak tacos and chicken enchiladas brunch entrees. Both were delectable and very nicely plated. The meats were not at all tough, and the various flavors involved blended together beautifully. I saved room for dessert so I could order the famous pastel de tres leches ('almond cake soaked in three milks'). It was amazingly moist and perfectly complimented by the topping of strawberry and pineapple chunks - possibly the highlight of the meal, especially because it went so well with the distinct taste of the house coffee (is that cinnamon and citrus in there?).

I brought my camera along to take pictures of the food, but once we started eating I became way too distracted to play photographer. Only after the meal was over and I was laying on the table in a food coma did I remember the camera.

As I am the furthest thing from an expert on Mexican cuisine, it would be a little presumptuous for me to go into much more detail about Mixteco's food, but suffice it to say this: it lived up to its reputation, and that alone is quite a feat. On top of that, the service was great: fast and friendly. So if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood at 10:00am on the weekend, I highly recommend you pop in for brunch. For dinner, make your reservation a week in advance, and don't forget to BYOB.

Mixteco Mission and Reverse Parallel Lives

2009-04-29T16:29:00.009-05:00

Upon moving into our current apartment two months ago, K and I soon noticed that there are a couple of restaurants within a one-block radius of us that are constantly jam-packed with people. One of them is Glenn's Diner, a fun and quirky place (they have a cereal wall!) specializing in seafood. K, our friend J and I stopped in for a delicious late lunch on moving day - they just happened to have three empty stools at the bar - but we have not had a chance to try their dinner menu because every time we've tried to go there has been a line out the door. K and I are generally not reservation-making people, but we will have to make an exception for Glenn's, the only "diner" I've ever been to that necessitates reservations for a party of two!

The other staggeringly popular restaurant on our block is Mixteco Grill. Time Out Chicago says, "Mixteco doubled its dining room capacity recently, but that's done nothing to quell the crowds it gets, even on otherwise sleepy Wednesday nights. Summertime is only bound to make the crowds (and thus the waits) worse..." Oh no! K and I have popped in two or three times to see if they could seat us for dinner, but the wait was always upwards of an hour, so we never saw it through. Once K even called several hours in advance but was unable to get a reservation. I think Time Out is right: as the weather warms up, Chicagoans will be more willing to traverse the city for good food, and it will become increasingly difficult to get into Mixteco. So I hereby resolve to secure a table by the end of this week. The plan: do whatever it takes. I really hope the guac and mole live up to their reputation.

In other, unrelated news, I watched "The Big Bang Theory" again this week - I'm very impressed with this show and it is growing on me. In the new episode, Leonard and Kuthrapali attempt to take Howard's mind off of his broken heart by convincing him to go with them on a weekend trip to Las Vegas, where they remain for the majority of the half-hour show. So in the few weeks since I started this blog, "The Big Bang Theory" has addressed the topics of comic books and Vegas - and so have I, albeit in reverse order. It makes me think that my favorite sitcom characters and I may be leading parallel lives. Well, reverse parallel lives, anyway. Is this some sort of cosmic connection? I guess I'll just have to keep watching.

Procrastination Fever

2009-04-27T15:48:00.013-05:00

I took a big step today. I successfully made a doctor's appointment. I answered several questions about my current health, insurance plan, and reasons for making the appointment. The whole thing took about ten minutes. I feel great.

Is it sad yet sort of hilarious that it's taken me so long to take this leap? Absolutely. What is my deal? I have no idea. I gave myself the assignment of scheduling a doctor's appointment last Monday. Last Monday. My goal is to blog about doing something new every week, writing a before post and an after post. And this week, with pretty much the quickest, most tedious task possible, it took me the entire seven days. Except last Monday to today is actually a week plus a day, so make that eight. And if it weren't for me knowing that the few people who read my blog were going to hold me accountable for my doctor's appointment promise, I'm sure it would have taken me even longer still.

In my defense (if I dare), I did spend a chunk of my week in Florida on business. God forbid that I place my phone call to Northwestern Memorial Hospital from Orlando instead of Chicago, though I'm not sure what difference it actually makes. No, I think I should stop making excuses and go ahead and acknowledge my general tendency for extreme procrastination when it comes to unpleasant, seemingly non-urgent tasks. Certain things simply need to be done, so I should just put my head down and go through with it.

Experiences like the one I had today are encouraging. The person I was dealing with was very kind and helpful - the process was painless. Perhaps I should use this momentum to tackle one of the many other tasks I've been putting off for way too long, but I'd rather just lay back and enjoy the small victory.

Dr. Strangelove

2009-04-20T09:40:00.006-05:00

This is just embarrassing, but here it goes: I have never made a doctor's appointment. Dentist and optometrist appointments, yes, but regular-doctor go-get-a-physical, hit-my-knee-with-the-little-hammer-thingy, no.

It's weird. I mean, I think of myself as a pretty responsible person, and on top of that, taking care of myself is very important to me. And I do it fairly well when it comes to diet, exercise, etc. I know that regular visits with a doctor would be beneficial, but they just haven't been part of my routine. There must be some sort of elusive mental block keeping me from scheduling a check-up.

I don't think I am afraid of doctors. Sure, they've been known to be the bearers of bad news at times, but on the other hand, there could be some disease slowly taking hold of me right now and I wouldn't know because I've been too lazy to go and get some basic blood-work done. Modern medicine is not infallible, but theoretically I'm a big fan.

What's really awful is how hypocritical I've been about this. Last summer, K had abdominal pain so severe that he asked me to take him to the emergency room. As he was getting checked out, I called my mom (also a doctor) and complained that K doesn't take care of himself properly - doesn't go to the doctor, never exercises, doesn't really watch what he eats - and now the poop might be hitting the fan. Well, as it turned out, K's appendix was about to burst; so his choices were not a contributing factor, and I felt like a big ass.

Since then, I've been all over K to schedule regular doctor's appointments, first to check in on the status of the massive incision from his surgery, and later just to make sure he is healthy all-around. I need him to keep ticking for quite a while longer. Meanwhile, I've been toddling along without any serious thought to the fact that I haven't gotten the green light from a physician since the last millennium, when I was still on my parents' insurance.

It is a strange love that has allowed me to stay oblivious to my own hypocrisy. So K, if you read this, I'm sorry. This week I will make a doctor's appointment. It will be a small achievement but a significant one. I can't wait to get an officially clean bill of health. I'll be brand new.

Comic Book Challenge: An Update

2009-04-17T19:33:00.003-05:00

This week I'm endeavoring to introduce myself to the world of comic books (read about it here). So far, it's been an entertaining and eye-opening experience. Here's a break-down of my week in comic books:

Monday: Today I read Hack/Slash issues #1-3. The series opens (literally, the first page) with the main character getting her little toe cut off by a psycho slasher - woah! Yeah, it's a little gruesome, as you probably guessed from the title.

One thing that's caught me slightly off-guard is the length of time it takes to read a single comic book - in my case about 25-30 minutes. To the uninitiated me of just a couple of days ago, a comic book looked super-thin and my thought was 'It's all pictures - how long can it take?' Turns out it takes a while! I am still 100% committed to reading all 21 issues of Hack/Slash and the first 16 of Spawn, but I may have overextended myself in thinking I could do it in just one week...

Tuesday: Between working late, my taxes and my volleyball game, I hardly had any time to read comic books today, but managed to squeeze in one - Hack/Slash issue #4.

I also took it upon myself to kick back with a glass of wine and queue up yesterday's episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on my DVR. Oddly - or not so oddly, considering the fact that the show follows the lives of four supernerds - comic book banter was a cornerstone of this week's episode.

At one point in the show, Penny, the show's only non-geeky main character, asks the four aforementioned nerds to pick up some "comics" from the comic book store for her nephew's birthday. Her neighbor, Sheldon, is obviously irked and responds with a quick lecture: "I think you mean comic books. Comics are feeble attempts at humor..., found traditionally in the optimistically named 'funny pages.'"

And that's why I've always felt that it is too risky to try to talk to comic book readers about comic books. You never know what you might say to offend them. Another Big Bang case in point:
Penny: "What about this one for my nephew?”
Sheldon: "A superb choice..."
Penny: "Great."
Sheldon: "... provided he has already read Infinite Crisis and 52 and is familiar with the re-establishment of the DC multiverse.”
Penny: "What's a multiverse?"
Sheldon: (to Leonard) "Get her out of here."

Wednesday: Today I read Hack/Slash issues #5-8. It was fun to sit at the dining room table with K and read comic books together. He said he could get used to this.

I find myself slowly getting attached to the characters of Cassie and her partner/sidekick Vlad. Yes, Cassie is a sexually confused, smoking-hot virgin, no doubt contrived to appeal to the 13 to 20-year-old boy-man demographic, but she is also portrayed as a powerful but sensitive woman who has meaningful relationships. And I like that.

Thursday: Well, I've finished Hack/Slash issue #9 and I'm still going strong. One thing I really like about the series is that it leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the characters and their back-stories. I think I might be - dare I say it? - a real follower now.

Clearly, this Intro to Comic Books project that I assigned myself was too ambitious for only one week. But I'll keep plugging away at it and hopefully finish by the end of next week. And in case you're wondering, a multiverse basically consists of a bunch of alternate universes and story lines, and allows writers the freedom to explore what-if? questions and alternate versions of their characters. I think.

Staring Down the Comic Bookshelf

2009-04-11T12:04:00.005-05:00

In the apartment I share with K, there is an entire bookshelf filled with comic books. Not just one shelf of the bookshelf, but all three, and the collection continues to grow. K loves comic books, but it is not a shared hobby. To be honest, I think I've been a little intimidated by the whole scene. When K bumps into other readers of comics, they ask each other "What books do you read?" and use buzz words like '90's-style comics' and 'underground comics' and I cannot participate because I have no knowledge of comics and do not know what these terms refer to.

This week, I've decided to take a step towards changing that. My assignment: to read 38 comic books - the first 16 of the Spawn series and all 21 issues of Hack/Slash.

Why these two particular titles? you might ask. Well, first I wanted to choose something I already have on hand. And looking through K's comic books, I selected Spawn primarily because of its interesting artwork. Also, it's a name I already know, so maybe that signifies that it is representative of popular, semi-mainstream comics (I will have to discuss this further with K). According to wikipedia, Spawn is now published by Image Comics, founded by seven artists including Spawn creator Todd McFarlane; but the issues I'll be reading were released by Marvel in the early 90's.

Unlike Spawn, which is currently on issue 191, the Hack/Slash series has only been around for a couple years, with 21 books out so far. And there is a woman on the cover - her name is Cassie, I've learned - who is clearly one tough chick. Following her lead, I will refuse to be intimidated; I will forge on until I have read all 21 issues of her book; I will not be bullied by comic book geekdom into thinking that I can't read comics because I don't know what a splash page is.

I also happen to think it's cool that Devil's Due Publishing is located just a half-mile away from our apartment in Ravenswood. So Cassie is a local bad-ass (created by Tim Seeley).

Cashing Out

2009-04-09T13:00:00.002-05:00

Overall impression of Las Vegas:
sensory overload.
But fun!

I arrived late on Friday night and my mom and I walked over to Denny's for a 10pm breakfast - the best! With full tummies, we moved on to the casinos. It didn't take us long to figure out that there were no blackjack tables to be played for less than $5 a hand on the strip, so we bit the bullet and took a bus downtown. Downtown turned out to be the part of Vegas I'd come to see - a little less glam, a little more old school kitsch.

We worked our way down and then back up Fremont Street, stopping briefly to admire the "light show" (which is a really misleading name for a huge, tunnel-shaped TV screen) and periodically to play a few dollars at the slot machines whenever we felt like acquiring another free drink. Then finally, we came upon the poor blackjack player's mecca - the $2 table at Fitzgerald's. I plopped myself down between a friendly frat boy and a drunk Texan and got in on the game. Our dealer, Jorge (referred to affectionately by the rest of the table as "George"), was good to me, and before I knew it I'd turned my $20 into $45. "Weenah, weenah, cheeken deenah," said Jorge.

Being in Las Vegas with my mom made me realize just how hard-core she really is. As we walked to the bus stop to catch a ride back to the strip, I noticed the time: 6am (that's 8am in Chicago!) I hadn't been up that late in ages and I was exhausted, but I couldn't let my mom outlast me on my first night in Vegas! Once back on the strip, we were making our way to our hotel when my mom said, "Oooh, let's just pop in here a minute - I think we might get lucky on the Wizard of Oz slots." And the nice thing about the casinos at 6:30am is that you can actually play the popular Wizard of Oz slots because most people (reasonably) are in bed.

Well, I put in $20 and a few pushes of the button later Glinda the Good came along and granted me five wilds and a BIG WIN of $515! Pure joy. "What does that mean? Did I break it?" I asked, like the smart ass that I am, and my mom just smiled and told me, "You - are - cash - ing - out." There's no arguing with a mother who only wants the best for you, so I let her hit the cash out button and the Wizard machine printed my beautiful receipt. Thanks, mom!

Las Vegas in 24!

2009-04-02T13:01:00.002-05:00

In 24 hours, I will bust out of my cubicle and head to the airport for a weekend trip to Las Vegas. I have never been to Las Vegas before, so - perfect timing! - this trip will be my first blogged-about new experience.

My plan is to spend much of the time just walking around, soaking in the sights, sounds, people and sunshine. If weather.com is right, I'll be enjoying daytime temperatures in the 60's to low 70's, which will be a nice break from the last few dreary days in overcast Chicago.

I didn't pick Vegas - Vegas picked me:
About three and a half weeks ago, my mom called me at work and asked me if I would like to go to Las Vegas if she bought a ticket for me. Ummm, no brainer. She goes every year to attend a big conference where she can get a good chunk of the continuing medical education credits she needs for the year. When it turned out that the friend she usually brings along couldn't go this year, I got the call!

It will be great to see my mom, and I think she will be in her element as she shows me around Vegas. I believe she has tickets to at least one show, and I'm sure that she will want to set aside some time for gambling. So I think I should decide before I leave how much money I'm willing to lose at the casino(s). For a person who is already in debt, how much is too much?