he's growing on me

I like Barack, or at least his speech writer

Again, too busy living to write about it

I think I've spoken to most people about my life at this point, and what-all i've been doing with myself, but I'll do the quick rundown:

I've got 50 days left in Chicago, and a BIG list of things to do.

I've been doing a lot of things, but not the things on my list. The only check-mark is that I finally made it to the Ba'hai temple in Wilmette, which is an ENORMOUS domed building with lots of cool cool carvings and a lot of religious propaganda inside. Well worth the visit, though.

I went to the Chiditarod , Chicago's urban shopping cart race/costume party/can drive/drunken good time. i wound up getting a date out of it, too ... go here and pick the video for "No Bull," the 8th team along the bottom, and watch for the guy with glasses, Pat Coleman. 35, carpenter/sculptor, South Side Irisher, and sometime Matador. the Chiditarod was not the first appearance for that particular costume.
He took me out to a very pricey dinner at a wonderful Belgian bar. I had rabbit legs and drank 4 or 5 pints, my favorite being Brian Boru - i don't remember which brewery that was from, but it is a delicious red beer.

I spent a few days sick sick sick, one day home from work, when i slept most of the day and then read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, at Bridget's suggestion, as it is available (right now) for free to read online. A wonderful book. very trippy.

This past weekend, i spent a while knitting, and went to a pre-show for the South by Southwest Festival, which is a crazy hippie time in Austin TX every year. Chicago always sends a big contingent, and has a pre-show where all of the Chi-town bands play as a fundraiser to get themselves down there. Then on Sunday i missed out on the South Side St. Pat's parade, but i did have a lovely time at my Nevin's session and then went to dinner at the home of my favorite banjo player, Gary, who is also the father of my best friend Rachel's new boyfriend ... a complex line right there, but a triumph for me - it marks my first-ever set-up. I introduced Rachel and Jason, because Gary was trying to find a nice lady for Jason but i wasn't about to date him (he is quite a bit shorter than me, and yes, i *am* that shallow), but Rachel and Jason seem to work well together, and are, in fact, disgustingly cute as a pair. Their friendship works out well for me, though, because they are both 'do-ers,' meaning that they like to go out on the town and experience Chicago culture. They are both native to the area and really love this city.

Tonight, I'm heading down to my friend Zack's house with Rachel, and we are making dinner and planning our backpacking trip for the end of the month - less than 2 weeks, as we're going on the 22nd!! Yikes! Lots to do before then! I think i'm driving ... i think i need to get my oil changed ...
yowza.

Anyway. You can tell it's a slow day at work, as it's 11 and i am writing this. Although, it *is* technically break time. Maybe i'll take a little walk, too ... it's supposed to be up to 50 degrees today! AND it's SUNNY! i hardly know what to do with myself ...

too busy living again

I've been doing too many things to remember to tell people about them. Not quite sure what-all I've been doing ...
last Friday I went to a drag party at this fun co-op down in Hyde Park. I got to wear my Carhartts, so i was happy. Danielle was here, as her grandmother had passed on and she came to town for the funeral and to help her parents clean out her grandmother's apartment. I inherited a bunch of awesome stuff that they had not the space nor inclination to ship to Florida or wherever. The crown jewel of my 'inheritance' (which seems a fitting term, as her grandmother was Brenda Kelly before she became Wedral) is a 1946 Singer Featherweight 221 portable sewing machine ... a real beauty, in its lovely carrying case, with a variety of different presser-feet and several bobbins and replacement needles ... and it works! an incredible windfall, to be sure. i haven't started using it as of yet, because i want to get some oil and grease it up, because who knows how long since it was last used? and also because i am trying to finish the scarf i've been knitting for the past month, as it goes with my new jacket and my other scarves do not.
so, Danielle came and promptly got a horrendous cold, and was only here long enough to pass the disease on to me. ugh. this week has passed in a haze of sore throat, chest pain, and overwhelming tiredness.
fortunately for me, i could watch Wednesday's eclipse from my bed. it was pretty amazing. eclipses never get old for me.
now i am at work, plumb out of things to do - i did them all, and am waiting for feedback from the head honcho ... trying not to twiddle my thumbs, but i am actually leaving early because of lack of things to do (at work - many errands to run!), rather than waste any more time looking for make-work. i'm hoping for a big pile of revisions on Monday morning!
i am also currently listening to Pride and Prejudice on a book-on-tape, copied to my iPod, only i somehow skipped Disc 8 in the copying process, and i am terribly distraught at being left hanging - Elizabeth's sister Lydia has just run off with Wyckham, and Darcy is about to console her! Oh, the drama ...
this is my first foray into Jane Austen, and I am rather enjoying it - especially on CD, read by a woman with a droll quasi-English accent.
Happy Friday! i'm planning a wild night knitting while watching a movie, and early early to bed.

outdoor adventures

i decided that i needed to buy myself a tent, both for backpacking this spring before i leave Illinois, and perhaps for living in this summer. i found an awesome 2-person Marmot tent on big sale online and bought it last weekend - it got to me on Friday, and i promptly set it up in my room and took a nap in it. these two people have to like each other a lot, and can't be fat.

on Friday, i went to a big sale at REI with two coworkers, and i ended up buying a new down jacket and rain jacket - both made by Isis, a high-end women's clothing maker, and both the same bright green, and both $60 when they were originally $200.
i just field-tested the down jacket - today, it is -4 degrees with a -28 wind chill, although it is sunny. i went to the grocery store, and i wore my down jacket (650-fill) and my big down vest over the top (800-fill). i got so hot on the way that i had to stop and take off the vest. i was still hot on the walk home, in just the down jacket! i was walking fast, and it was sunny, but still, there were 20mph gusts of -4 degree wind, and i felt great, except for the exposed bits of my face. snug as a bug in a rug, so to speak. so i am pleased as punch with my neat sales-rack purchase. and i look so classy, too! according to the label (made by a company named Isis, keep in mind), i am a goddess. nothing i didn't already know...

the epic of the Red Line at 1 am

This week went fast. no idea where it went or what i was doing ... all i know is, i got an email while at work from my friend Zack saying he had ordered a pound of sushi tuna and what was i (and Rachel) doing for dinner. well, Rachel had an appointment, but i was quick to take up the offer of fresh fish and avocados. i made it there by 6:30, and Zack, his roommate Roman, and I set to work slicing and dicing. in short order we had delicious, nutritious sashimi. oooh, it makes me happy. dinner devolved into conversation, and i kept saying, oh, i should go soon, and then suddenly it was midnight.

oops. the last Metra train northbound departs Zack's station at 11:35. i wasn't getting home quickly and easily.

so i set off for the El, for the Red Line. Zack lives south of the Zero line in Chicago, on the south side of the loop, so i had a long ride ahead of me.

I made it to the platform just fine, quickly made friends with a friendly man who, for once, was not obviously insane, and worked on the crossword puzzle. I thought it was taking an exceptionally long time for a train to come, and then one came ... southbound on the northbound track. then another one came ... southbound on the northbound track. after half an hour, a northbound train finally came. then life started getting surreal.

I sat and knit, since i didn't want the deep distraction of reading when there were so many crazies around, so all i had to do was listen to the people around me. Behind me, a crowd of about 5 extremely drunk twentysomething boys were calling each other "vagina" and "pussy" for being so drunk. I got really offended, and if i hadn't been boxed in, i probably would have gone up to them to say that they were all clearly homosexuals or they wouldn't speak of female genitalia in such a derogatory way, and that they also had to be gay because no women would want them. but i just sat there and listened. Then a dozen Spanish-speaking, hip young people got on, and eventually they made friends with some dumb Americans and explained that no, it wasn't really Spanish but Catalan, which is a dialect, and that they weren't from Spain but Andorra ... i always forget that Andorra exists. Then the enormous angry black man comes through - i don't know if one of the drunk vaginas actually did something bad to him or if he just thought so, but this guy told the boy that he wasn't interested in that shit, you faggot, mumble mumble ... REPUBLICAN!! that was my favorite moment, that beautiful chain of logic that said "you are so gay you must be republican."

They all (the drunk boys and the Andorrans) all got off at Addison, leaving me with some new neighbors - three young, very urban black girls, one of whom had squeezed in next to an extremely scrawny pasty boy who looked twelve. The girls looked late teens at least. It turned out that all four of them were college students, he at Loyola and they at community college, and then they had a disarmingly adult conversation about the value of the dollar and the current political climate ... who talks about that at 1:30 in the morning after being out at clubs??? after the boy got off at Loyola, the girls switched over to talking about their night, which they had spent at a lesbian dance club - they talked about how arousing it is when a girl has good freestyle hiphop skills and about the different girls who were good and not so good.

So, 1:35, i get off the red line at Howard. I think i'm safe, that the last purple line runs at 2. it's me, a small knot of Northwestern students, and the obligatory homeless red-line riders, waiting for the next train south. then the CTA man shows up and tells us the last purple line ran at 1:30 and we need to get off his platform. so began the next chapter of my epic, the mile walk home from Howard. a mile didn't seem that far to my sleep-deprived brain. so i set out. i almost ran into a woman sobbing so hard she could hardly stand, had a dreamy interlude of walking and then a sharp awakening when i found myself in the Irish Catholic cemetery at 1:50 am. i made it home safely, took a shower, and went to bed at 2:30. when i got up at 5 my hair was still wet.
but right now i feel great! i'm sure i'll crash in a bit, but until then, i'm still having fun. hearing phantom bagpipes now and again, though ...

most recent explorations

On Friday night, i had the great pleasure of making samosas for the first time. Aside from a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome resulting from rolling out the dough, it was a wonderful experience - delicious! especially with mint chutney, mmmm.
Saturday morning found me on the good ol' Red Line, heading down to Irving Park to a farmer's market. i went nuts and bought as much as i could carry home (not a huge amount because the getting home wasn't easy - a mile walk to the train through slushy, foot-deep snowy sidewalks, then an hour on the train, transferring twice - but it was worth it!) i walked out with honey, maple syrup, cheese, potatoes, soap in both bar and liquid form, lotion (all the body products made of goat's milk!), and everything produced within 100 miles.
I spent my afternoon snowshoeing - i trekked over to the lake, walking on the space between the sidewalk and the street where all the snow gets chucked, and then walking on the huge drifts of snow all along the beach. it was awesome. everyone i passed on the way to the beach looked at me like i was endearingly insane. my legs were tired by the time i got home, since i am *not* a bow-legged walker naturally.
i am trying to convince myself to go snowshoe again, but somewhere else, but i am also thinking i need to clean ...
do i care enough about the superbowl to find a place to watch it?

happy as a pig in compost

just finished baking bread and making hummus ... 8:30 is far too late to eat that robust a snack, but i could not resist, with both still warm and the bread so crusty ...
plus it is now frigid outside, snowing hard and blowing harder, and i managed to fog up all my windows so i can't see it. mmm.

hail!

Man, the weather here is being downright bizarre ... it was 45 when i got up this morning, and i glanced at the weather, which said it would drop throughout the day to around freezing and there would be sleet tonight. so, i'm sitting at my desk, and the day goes from being overcast to being black, and it begins to rain, then pour, then HAIL! it hailed for about 5 minutes, and now it's almost sunny again, and much much colder. and apparently, the temperature is going to drop to 0 tonight, so that we'll have had an almost 50 degree drop in 24 hours. yikes! this isn't winter, this is crazy.

history and culture on the eastern seaboard

I had a lovely visit to the fair city of Philadelphia, Thursday night through Sunday evening. My friend Peter is an excellent host, and lives in an awesome part of town. He lives in Old Town, which is a neighborhood of the Old City neighborhood, right near the river, and chock-full of historic homes and minuscule streets. As we're driving into Old City on the way back from the airport, driving down the main drag, Market Street, we drive past an alley between 1st and 2nd street. The alley is labeled Bank St., and Pete says, "that's my street." I say, "you live in the alley?" and he says yes. Pete is known for telling jokes, so i assume that this is a joke and move on. We park the car a few blocks away and walk ... back to this 'alley.' He wasn't joking, his street is just so old that it's too skinny for cars. He lives in an old barrel factory, with all brick walls and high ceilings with exposed pipes. Very urban, very chic. Definitely a yuppie bachelor pad - a black velour couch, a big-screen TV that's actually the monitor for his souped-up computer, a massive collection of good alcohol, and a fridge full of condiments and no food (that last is a quote from Fight Club, but in this case is totally true - the shelves in his refrigerator were totally empty except a Brita pitcher and assorted barbecue sauces).
The weather was beautiful for us, and we spent Friday wandering around the city - we walked the 20 blocks to the Mutter museum of medical oddities, which is in a medical school. It was horrendously creepy - lots of deformed fetuses in jars and wax recreations of horrible diseases. I was glad i went, but when we left i genuinely felt nauseous. We also visited the Green Market in the middle of the city, which is an indoor market with all kinds of vendors - lots of prepared foods, but also fruit and vegetable vendors and lots of cute Mennonite and Amish ladies selling honey and pickled things. We went out to dinner at a Korean restaurant, where our meals were served in steaming-hot stone bowls - delicious, and a little thrill of danger while you eat ... will i burn myself horribly, or will i be okay?!
then our friends Paul and Ben arrived from Washington, D.C., and we had a fun night out on the town. Saturday was a day with much hanging out and catching up about life as young urban professionals, and wandering the city to see the Liberty Bell (about 5 blocks from Pete's house) and Ben Franklin's house (1 block away) and various other cool old things and neat newer things. Ben and Paul left on Sunday morning, and Pete and I spent a day in Center City and driving around the area.
All in all, i'd say it was a successful weekend - i didn't have to pay for a thing, as i bought my plane tickets. i got to spend many hours with some of my favorite people. i got to see a city i'd never been to before. i'd like to go back to Philadelphia someday - it really seems like a nice city.
Now i'm back to good ol' Chicago, where it's dreary and rainy, which is not making me feel any more energetic or excited at being back to work.

the US is depressing once again

On NPR this morning i heard a story about advances in elevator technology so that people can safely use the elevators in case of a fire ... ostensibly, this is to compensate for making buildings so tall that it takes forever to walk down the stairs, and so that handicapped people who take the elevator in can take the elevator out. All of this makes sense to me, but then the story goes on to say that they're also doing this because Americans are getting so fat and so much slower at going down stairs than we were formerly.
Seems like once again we are treating a symptom rather than the disease. Oh, Americans ... if only we could learn to love the experience of eating, and the taste of eating good food, rather than being devoted to quantities ...

knitting!!

I finished my first hat ever! Pictures to come ... it's a bit rough here and there. This morning i started my next trick, which will be a series of recycled-cotton dishcloths so i can learn and practice different stitches. i'm horribly proud of myself because i successfully remembered how to cast-on.
i wonder if there's enough left of the hat-yarn to make another one ...
i think a scarf is next, because that seems fun and not hard.

books

I just finished reading Oryx and Crake - what a good book! how creepy and awesome. i highly recommend it.
now i'm on to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ... also good!
by 'reading' here i mean 'listening' ... i've got them on cd, downloaded on my ipod, so i can listen at work. it sure makes the time go faster!

many things

So, Empanada Saturday went smashingly. On Saturday morning, i headed down to Rachel's house and we went to a farmer's market in a Catholic church. they had very little on offer, as apparently winter markets are a new enough phenomenon in Chicago that the local farmers don't have a handle on how much to produce. so, no produce (verb the first time, noun the second ...). but i did get some MEAT from a family-run, free-range, antibiotic-free farm in NW IL. bacon and breakfast sausage!!
then, back to Rachel's house, where we mixed up the dough. i got the recipe from epicurious.com, where all of the reviewers said this was the best recipe ever. it did turn out pretty darn well, despite me misreading the recipe and using it to make twice as many empanadas as it was supposed to - the dough still held up to being that thin! we filled the empanadas with eggplant-almond filling, the recipe from Mom for enchiladas. i was so fat and happy by the end of that meal that i went home and went to bed while my friends went out on the town.
on Sunday, Rachel and our friend Zack came up to Evanston for my session. it was a grand old time. when 6:00 rolled around, the usual quitting time, we headed back to my house and made hippie pancakes (meaning, cornmeal and whole-wheat flour, with yogurt, the ones that Adam wouldn't eat) and bacon and stuffed ourselves silly. my apartment still has a little ... aura of bacon to it. what a treat! it had been a while since i'd had that, and it's *good* bacon.
i am now on my third week of baking pumpernickel bread, and i keep betting better. i think i might be a convert. it's just so satisfying (to eat, i mean - making it doesn't feel any different than other bread).
oh, also on Saturday, Rachel took me to her neighborhood knitting store and i bought some more supplies, including a Stitch Dictionary so i can learn fun tricks! so now i'm trying to finish this hat before i move on to anything else - no Drawer of Unfinished Projects for me! i think i'll be done by bedtime tomorrow. (fingers crossed - i mean fingers knitting furiously!)

recent food endeavors

At the end of last year, my friend Rachel and I decided that January would be the month of food wrapped in bread. We would make a new crusty delight at least once a week. We inaugurated this by making Calzones last weekend ... mm, delicious!! Mom's pizza crust recipe (in lieu of my usual hippie whole-wheat, non-stretchable creation), homemade mozzarella (I made it by myself!) ... here's the recipe for the mozzarella, homemade (by Rachel) sauce with lots of onions and garlic, and a filling of leftovers consisting of roasted butternut squash, onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes, etc. A winter melange, if you will.

I can't remember if i ever reported on my first mozzarella venture - again, with Rachel, and our friend Zack. I ordered all of the necessary supplies (just 2 really, rennet and citric acid) from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, bought a thermometer and a gallon of milk, and went to town. It was awesome! a gallon of milk yields about a pound of mozzarella (and 3/4 gallon of whey, but that's another story ... apparently you can use whey to water plants? i just drink it and use it instead of water in my oatmeal) and fresh mozzarella has a texture that is difficult to describe and produces a joy that is impossible to recreate.

Tonight, we are heading down to Zack's house to make sushi ... for once, a cheese-free endeavor. I just learned (albeit from Wikipedia) that most Wasabi that you can buy is not 'true' wasabi, but is made from a different variety of the wasabi horseradish. I wouldn't have thought to research this, but the checkout man at Whole Foods brought it to my attention.

omnivory

i just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I want everyone to read it. Some parts are scary, about our industrial food system and how bad it is for us, the animals, and the ecosystem, and some parts are incredibly thought-provoking, exploring the nature of the relationship between an organism and its food. there is a good deal of discussion of ignorance versus enlightenment (not with a capital E, just in terms of where your food comes from and its true cost). i think it's worth everyone's time to read it, since everyone eats.
now i'm starting Deep Economy, on mom and dad's recommendation. i think i'll love this one too.
i spent a while yesterday trolling the Slow Foods websites, trying to find a job opportunity ... unfortunately it's still too small to be hiring unskilled, inexperienced folks like me ... but i want to help!!!

last night i helped my friend Rachel cook some chicken. We made an *awesome* dinner of chicken roasted in the pan with butternut squash, fingerling potatoes, sweet potato, onions, and garlic. the winner of this meal was Adam's Christmas Italian rub - i'd never rubbed meat before, but it did a wonderful job. the chicken was wonderfully juicy and imbued everything else with a lovely herby, salty butteriness. And i felt okay about the chicken, my first in ... at least a year, probably more, as it was pasture-raised, organic, and hormone-free. while i have no guarantee that this chicken had a high-quality, happy life, it sure tasted like it. chicken is the one meat that never tempts me to break vegetarianism, as i'm much more of a red-meat girl (and bacon, ooh, bacon) but this was certainly an enjoyable chicken.
It bears mentioning that Rachel shares many of my views on animals and the consumption thereof, and was vegetarian for a long while (vegan, for a small bit), but has since given up vegetarianism in the interest of her own health - her body has dictated her omnivory in no uncertain terms. she, like Michael Pollan is urging us to (both in Omnivore's Dilemma and in his latest, In Defense of Food), tries to consider where her meat is coming from and make very deliberate decisions based on maximizing the nutritional value of what she consumes while minimizing the environmental and societal degradation of that food's production. i find it easier to stick to vegetables. although, as people occasionally point out, vegetarians are contributing to animal death as well, if you count all of the small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and ground-nesting birds that meet their doom in the teeth of crop harvesters, not to mention the loss of life from "pest-control" regimes, not to mention the habitat loss from conversion of woods, prairies, wetlands, whatever, to croplands.
everything's a tradeoff. but i prefer to know these things and think about these things and then decide to keep eating, rather than live in ignorance while the carpet is pulled out from under me.