Tag Archives: chicago

catch up installment of come here, go away

{03 August 2007}

1. come here, vacation in idaho
the schedule was thus: wake up with the sun, 7 or whenever. go for a run on forest trails or logging roads. see some deer or other wildlife. come back, shower, breakfast. spend the morning reading or doing chores around the cabin, or sitting on the back porch with my ibook and wireless internet. forest, meet internet. internet, meet forest. maybe nap. late lunch, then bike into town. swim in the lake, then go to the grocery store and plan the evening’s meal. cook dinner with family and friends. spend the evening throwing a frisbee on the golf course, walking the dog in the meadow, watching movies, playing speed scrabble with my brother and sister-in-law.

2. go away, coming back from idaho
my boss is off getting married so that means that i get to be the boss for a while. it turns out his work suits me. what doesn’t suit me is doing his job and mine. where’d my summer go?

3. come here, veronica mars
season one has hijacked all of the time i would have otherwise spent reading books/sleeping in the past couple of weeks. curse lau for loaning me the complete first season! i finished it last night, but it turns out she sent me home with season two, also, so i’m not out of the woods yet. the fact that i know the series was abruptly canceled at the end of season three, however, makes me sad even as i invest in the first season. WB dramas, i love you.

4. come here, pandora
how did i not know about www.pandora.com until now? i’d vaguely heard of it before, but never really bothered to try it out till this week. i heart it.

5. come here, ultimate frisbee
i have a new love. take that, track workout! i’ve begun counting ultimate frisbee as speedwork for marathon training. we play saturday mornings, which means that i have to do my long run alone on sundays, but i don’t care.

6. go away, stinky hot weather.
i get home from running at 7am and i literally can’t stop sweating for the first 15 minutes or so. my body has become a sieve.

7. come here, 400 mile merit badge!
last week i ran my 400th mile since marathon training started. this is peak mileage month; if all goes well and i stay healthy/uninjured, i should hit 500 by the 25th or so.

8. go away, repetitive stress injuries
tendonitis and soft tissue strains and stress fractures are circling one another warily, growling low in their throats. on the upside, i got to see an x-ray of my foot (and no stress fracture after all!). there’s something fascinating about seeing a picture of one’s own bones. like, that isn’t just a black and white picture of foot bones on the screen, a theoretical image of what feet look like, those are mine. that’s me.

9. come here, awesome car-free weekend:
date with a cute boy on friday (i beat him at darts! turns out drinking beer actually IMPROVES my aim). ultimate frisbee on saturday followed by a double at ye olde corporate theatre gig. pick up organic veggie farm share with the first sweet corn of the season. sunday morning an easy 10-miler, followed by brunch at Over Easy with an old college friend. afternoon margaritas and chips and salsa with A and J, then 500 clowns‘ 365 project. finished the evening watching poi fire dancing at foster street beach – take out sushi and smuggled-in PBRs and crazy hippy drum circle, while the full moon rose over the still black lake. kept the car parked and rode my bike all over all weekend, and as a karmic reward, enjoyed excellent public transit timing every time i looked for a bus/train.

10. come here, popularity dialer
.

five by five

{05 July 2007}

1: was spell checking an email on gmail this morning. “Islamist” was not in the dictionary. google suggested “slimiest” instead. hmm. google should perhaps work on their cultural sensitivity.

2: my cat loves to lick ice. weird, huh? my physical therapist has me making these ice pops, if you will, to treat the tendinitis in my achilles tendon. you fill a paper cup up with water, freeze it, then tear the top half of the cup off so you have what is a large ice cube with a paper handle on half of it for rubbing down the injured tendon. anyway, i set the ice pop down on a towel on the floor last night, meaning to go throw it away in a moment, and the cat came over, sniffed, and spent the next 20 minutes unable to stop licking it. he’d look at me, meow, get up and walk around it, and then go right back to licking it. i know it’s hot in the apartment, but it’s not like i’ve been denying him fresh water or anything. weird cat.

3: marathon milestones: last week i ran my 300th mile of the year, and also passed the 100-days-till-the-marathon date. the training is going well (much of my blogging energy is being spent on the training log lately, hence the large gaps between regular posts on this page), aside from the achilles tendinitis, and the occasional attack of boredom/lack of motivation. fundraising is on track (donate! it’s good karma!). it’s a little alarming that my thighs are visibly bigger (at least, to me) than they were when i started this project (no one runs a marathon to get BIGGER around), but overall i’m feeling very fit and healthy, so the increase in muscle mass is just something that comes with the territory i guess.

4: sandbox theatre project takes on suzan-lori park’s 365 plays/365 days project this weekend. it’s the guerrilla theatre my performance and politics prof in college always talked about! there’ll be an actor in a dumpster! the audience meets on a street corner and follows the performers around to the alley behind JP’s apartment! the neighbors just might call the cops on us at any moment! for anyone actually in chicago who reads this blog (is there anyone? perhaps), meet at the corner of wolcott and montrose at 8pm friday or saturday night. it’s 20 minutes long, free, and there will be beer afterwards.

5: last week i discovered the wonder that is mitsuwa, the best japanese market i’ve been in since leaving japan. shopping at mitsuwa is possibly reason enough to venture out of the comforting verticality of chicago’s urban landscape and into the flat wild prairies of the burbs. but just barely. throw in a trip to the nearby IKEA and i’ll take the plunge. city snob that i am.

summer cocktail recipe

{01 July 2007}

+ up at 6am, run 12 miles with my marathon training group
+ bike home, stopping for a bagel, to be eaten with the rest of my indulgent post-run breakfast, on the sun porch, coffee and new york times at hand
+ shower, ice my achilles tendonitis, do some paperwork for the play we are rehearsing today
+ rehearse said play all afternoon. it’s sunny out, 75 degrees, we are rehearsing on the back alley/porches of JP’s apartment building. it’s not exactly spending the afternoon in the park, but we are at least outside in the fresh air, and doing interesting work with awesome, creative people.
+ bike home through leafy, tree-lined ravenswood, stopping to pick up my organic vegetable share from a neighbor’s yard. bountiful lettuce and huge leafy stalks of kale, courgettes and cucumbers the diameter of baseball bats, spring onions streaked green and purple, fragrant tarragon, radishes, turnips, and beets still caked with mud from the field, crowns of broccoli and cauliflower wrapped in their own leaves.
+ put away the veggies, make a sandwich, then head right back out for a show call at BMG.
+ after the show, bike home through the madness that is wrigleyville on a saturday night, in summer, cubs game just letting out. feel smart about being on a bike, sailing thru stopped traffic and past buses inching thru the crowds.
+ when i get home, the last of the evenings fireflies are still hovering about the yard. the moon is full. my roommate is making french fries. we watch west wing.

following those ingredients, mix together:

+ 1 part gin
+ 1 part 100% cranberry juice
+ 2 parts ginger ale
+ 1/3 cup frozen berries (in place of ice)
+ squeeze of fresh lime

life is good here.
this is why i am not moving to utah.

jesus save us from the 80’s

{15 June 2007}

i’m being snide, but actually, this 80’s cover band was pretty fun and their lead singer was pretty ridiculously cute. i couldn’t resist framing the shot of the bass player around the Jesus Saves sign on Clark st. at 10 o’clock on sunday night, the Midsommer Fest crowd was pretty good and drunk, and the 80’s pop hits meant that it was a “i love everybody!” sort of drunk. the “i could kick your ass if i wanted to” drunks were at the other stage where the 80’s hairband was holding court.

i heart summer in chicago.

three items:

{25 May 2007}

1. the most expensive gas in the nation is in our own chicago. snapped this morning while i was forking over most of my paycheck for gas:

less driving, more biking!

2. maxim rates lilo as the hottest woman in the world. seriously. seriously? seriously.

3. http://www.randomkittengenerator.com i knew the internet was capable of great things.

first day of spring, 2007

{22 March 2007}

you can’t fool me, sparkling jewel-green lake michigan. this time last year, i had just started commuting to work along lake shore drive, and i was blown away with how beautiful the lake was – sparkling turquoise, the color that makes you think of shallow, sandy shores in the sun-drenched caribbean. as i later found out, that color, peculiar to lake michigan in late march, is because on st. patrick’s day, the city of chicago dumps a vat of green dye into the chicago river. even though the river has been engineered to run backwards (away from the lake), when there are heavy rainstorms the river sort of burps back into the lake, and so over a stormy week in march the dye can leech slowly back into the lake. kind of disgusting, but it sure is pretty when matched with bluey-grey storm clouds on the horizon and a rain-swept sky.

i watch daily for signs of spring. on sunday night i spotted some orangey-yellow crocuses pushing up through the soggy dead grass of my neighbor’s lawn. the willows in lincoln park have that fuzzy red orange haze around them. this morning i noticed patches of grass in the lakefront park that were distinctly greener than they were yesterday. i study the stark outline of trees against the spring sky, looking for some indication of the first buds and emerging leaves, but so far, nothing. it’s been the longest, darkest, coldest of winters. will spring bring more than mild, forgiving air and shades of green? and if not, is the metaphor enough?

{16 March 2007}

earlier this week chicago teased us with two beautiful, spring-like days. typical chicago weather, however; in a 48 hour period, the high temperature halved – from 70 back down to 35. ouch. this seems like a good time to share my favorite chicago quote – well known, i think, but new to me:

loving chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.
(nelson algren)

hee.

what to do when it’s friday night and 3 degrees out

{19 February 2007}

at big joe’s on friday nights, $2.50 will get you a bud light and 3 raffle tickets. if you’re very lucky, or if you buy a lot of beers, your raffle ticket will get you into a round of turtle racing in the back room. the sponsor of the winning turtle goes on to a championship round at the end of the night, the sponsor of the slowest turtle wins a free drink. it’s back-room cock fighting for the yuppie crowd! the key to winning seemed to be drawing the right turtle; without fail, turtle number 3 always made a beeline for the darkest corner of the table (which happened to be the finish line), turtle 2 worked on the “if i don’t move, they won’t see me” principle of self defense, thereby assuring his sponsor a consolation prize. personally, i was captivated by the fact that the announcer makes his living belowing the phrase “give it up for sally, she’s a TURTLE VIRGIN!” into his microphone nightly. by comparison, making faking blood and dousing men in blue paint doesn’t seem quite as weird a career choice as it usually does.

survivor: north pole

{07 February 2007}

as punishment for us winter-tough chicagoans belittling the woes of our new york-based pals when manhattan hit 18 degrees last week, chicago has been in the throes of a deep freeze for four days now. and by deep freeze we mean highs in the single digits, wind chills of -20, dead car batteries, pipes at my favorite coffee place frozen, emergency warming centers for the homeless, take a cab you’ll die waiting for the bus, boogers in your nose freeze on the first breath, what-the-fuck i don’t live in fargo for a reason-cold.

to add insult to injury, it started snowing this morning, apparently to the surprise of whomever schedules the snowplow drivers. about four inches hit the ground before the sanding trucks made it out, consequently it took me, oh, 90 minutes to travel 16 miles to work today. on the upside, chicago is really really pretty with a fresh coating of snow.

the first day or two of really extreme weather are kinda fun, it’s something to talk about with everyone you meet, like we’re all in a game of Survivor: North Pole together or something. after that it stops being so much fun.

whenever i complain about the cold JUST a little too much, someone points out, “wait, aren’t you from idaho? don’t they have winter there?” true, they do. but, two items in my defense: 1) i lived in the bay area for five years, and that made me weak, once i learned that people don’t have to live like this, and 2)winter in idaho is fun. they have mountains, and outdoor sports. and garages to park one’s car in. anyway, i’m taking a long weekend and going out to idaho for 4 days of skiing, snow-shoeing, and generally loafing around the cabin eating/cooking/knitting/reading/napping. the weather man promises chicago will back to livable temperatures by the time i return, and i hopefully will have reconnected with the sporty fun side of winter.