Tag Archives: relationships

the dirty dozen, american dream edition: food, sports and the internet

{20 February 2008}

okay, i’m taking a page out of lau’s blog and attempting the dirty dozen to make up for my distinct lack of blogging:

1. be mine. i have to say that i’ve never been on the kate spade bandwagon. i’m not on the purses-that-cost-more-than-their-raw-materials bandwagon, really. but, luxury handbag issues aside*, my attention was drawn to the kate spade website on valentine’s day which has a darn cute collection of e-cards one can send to their valentine. what the connection is between handbags and e-valentines? i couldn’t say. but they are cute.

2. things you shouldn’t buy on the internet: Hairsoreal. i swear that this was one of those sidebar ads on facebook the other day. i couldn’t have made this product up if i’d tried. it’s a hair-replacement product that, as near as i can tell, is a can of little tiny hair-shaped fibers, that you shake over your head like you were seasoning your bald patch with hair-shaped pepper. the fibers magically stick to one another and poof! there goes the bald spot. did anyone else go to the children’s science museum when you were a kid and get to play with the magnetic iron filings? i imagine it’s sort of like that. the thing i don’t get, tho, is why men worry so much about baldness. seriously. everyone’s bald! a receding hairline is like the last thing i’d notice on a guy, and it sure wouldn’t be the deciding factor as to whether i’d go out with him or think he’s attractive. balding heads areabout as common as having brown hair, or freckles. weird, the things we worry about.

3. things you maybe should buy on the internet: the under-the-sink urban-enviro-friendly compost system. this seems strange to me, because it doesn’t use enzymes and worms to heat up and chew thru the garbage, but somehow magically heats (via electricity) the garbage into dirt. that sort of sounds…too easy. but there’s a weird part of me that really really wants to try composting, but i also don’t want to make my roommate and neighbors hate me.

4. things you should do on the internet: play scrabulous with me before Big Bad Hasbro shuts them down.

5. winter. the ugliest winter in recent memory plods along in chicago. there has been some sort of snow on the ground continuously since christmas. the temp keeps dipping down into the single digits, which sends the windchill plummeting to 20 or 30 below. the locks on my car doors freeze. i think of myself as a very good, practical winter driver, and yet my car has gotten stuck on patches of ice three times in the past week. it’s also making marathon training (see item 8) particularly challenging. also, if the speed at which i am misplacing/losing mittens and hats continues to accelerate the way it has steadily since christmas, i’m going to die of frostbite long before spring arrives.

6. ultimate snow frisbee is the best sport ever. well, actually, i’d trade it for regular ultimate on a sunny summer day if i had a choice, but it has been a way to make winter bearable, at least for a couple of hours on saturday mornings. no one can run, cut, or handle the frisbee worth a damn, but dive rolls are awesome.

7. indoor ultimate frisbee. this is a historic moment, this new, ultimate-frisbee-playing self, because it’s really the first time i’ve enjoyed and excelled at playing any team sport. anyway, after six months of a pickup game, i got brave and signed up for an indoor winter league. i got totally skooled on my first day, but by the end of the season my playing has improved considerably.

8. stockholm marathon. continuing with the sports-themed news items, the stockholm marathon is breathing down my neck. picking a marathon is sort of like doing airport math. when i schedule a flight, i think to myself, “hmm, mid morning sound good.” and then i book a 10am flight, neglecting, as always, to do the airport math: to get awake, out the door, take public transit to the airport, and check in luggage requires that i am awake a minimum of 4 hours before the flight departs, which means that a reasonable-sounding 10am flight turns into a 6am wake up call. so, marathon math is sort of the same thing. may 31 sounds like a nice time of year to run a marathon, right? except that one neglects to count backwards by 4 or 5 months and realize that means runs in the double digits before the end of february. it’s really really hard to run more than an hour on a treadmill without going kookoo with boredom.

9. marathon pied piper: i’m actually feeling like something of a marathon pied piper. without really meaning to, i find myself suddenly in the position of leading a small group from my dojo in training for this fall’s chicago marathon. i’m the only one who has run a marathon before (and i’ve only done one, mind you), but somehow this makes me the expert. yikes. actually, tho, it’s weird but good. i mean, leading and organizing people and projects is what i do for a living, but i’ve really only ever applied those skills to making theatre happen before. but leading people on non-work-related pursuits (that they are equally if not more passionate about): this…sort of suits me. huh.

10. enough with the sports, let’s talk about food: C sent me the link to this food blog called 101 cookbooks, and it is now my new favorite place for recipes. mostly if not entirely veggie. gets a little out there with the hippy ingredients (where DOES one buy agave nectar?), but usually there are substitutions indicated for those of us still slumming it at the Jewel from time to time.

11. animal, miracle, vegetable: have been reading kingsolver’s book about her family’s year of farming and eating locally and…it has definitely gotten under my skin a bit when it comes to produce shopping. i look longingly at the four-dollar half pint of raspberries and think, those won’t taste like anything, they’ve been shipped halfway around the world. and that’s absurd to spend such money for something that won’t even taste good anyway. i reach for the winter fruits: apples, grapefruit, and think that summer raspberries will taste that much better for the waiting. still, its not like i’ve seen a grapefruit tree hanging around outside in chicago, either. how does one reconcile the luxury of a varied diet with the economic, political, environmental, social arguments for eating locally-produced food? i mean, what would canadians living far north in the tundra do to eat locally? live off reindeer meat for 6sixmonths at a time and risk scurvy? no, they thank their lucky stars that they can truck in grapefruit from florida, of course. it’s tricky, and thanks to this book and others, i’m more aware of the issue, but no more resolved. for about five months of the year, my CSA provides nearly all the fruits and vegetables i need, and they *are* local and organic. it’s just the other half of the year that i’m not sure what to do. what i do know is, the hyde park produce market had ripe avocados on sale for $.50 each today. and i bought one and i felt guilty about it and still it tasted SOOOOO good on my sandwich. thank you, honduras, for sending me your avocados.

12. 101 in 1001: go completely veggie for a month: check, done. i conducted this experiment for the month of january. the play-by-play is linked, but the upshot is: i can get along just fine without meat in terms of what i crave to eat. leaning how to be veggie in a non-veggie world will take a little more practice (particularly with regard to when other people cook for me), but it’s not an insurmountable challenge. the insurmountable challenge is that i think my body needs more protein than i’m capable of giving it from vegetable sources when i’m running/training heavily. while there are a lot of good reasons for being veggie that i can get behind, the primary reason that motivates me is that i think the disconnect between animals and food in our modern world is unnatural and it leads to unhealthful foods, unsound environmental practices, and unspeakable animal cruelty. (i mean, did you read the about last week’s beef recall? the nation’s school cafeterias are feeding our kids beef from cows that were too sick to even stand up. it’s horrific.) so all this brings me to the conclusion that the right path for me, i think, is to continue to be veggie when eating out, and on the occasion that i’m feeling really short on protein, i can cook a piece of chicken or turkey at home. then as a consumer i can at least make some decisions about the source of the meat, buying organic, buying locally. the same goes for eggs and dairy, too, when it comes to buying but…i don’t think i have the willpower to be vegan everywhere that i can’t be assured of the organic status of the ingredients.

13 [baker’s dozen]. the american dream: oh internets: what does the phrase “american dream” mean to you? i ask because, until this week, i’d never really thought much about it, aside from a vaguely negative connotation and association with the idea of manifest destiny. anyway, Next Theatre is producing a show called the American Dream Songbook, and as part of the lobby display, C asked the artistic associates and friends of the theatre to send in photos that represented our notion of the american dream. i couldn’t really figure out where to start for a while. i dug through old photos, and came across a series of self-portraits that A and i took the day we left for chicago. we posed in front of the Uhaul truck, one hand shading our faces, head tipped up, starting into the future like brave explorers. they were goofy photos, but i remember insisting that we take them, because we were setting off on this grand adventure, this next step in our lives, and i wanted to be able to look back and remember how we felt on that day. so i dug up that picture and sent it in with the following caption: “aug, 2003: looking into our bright shiny future the day we left idaho to move to chicago. a few years later, he broke my heart. but i still live in chicago.” some of my friends who saw it thought the caption was tragic, others thought it was hilariously funny. i realized later it was kind of both. it was weird to put up a photo of myself and A, especially in a public theatre lobby where friends of his might very well see it. but, i decided, that *was* my iconic american dream photo. the point (and this is the point of the show at Next as well) is that the american dream is elusive. it always falls short. life doesn’t turn out the way we think it will, but what we find instead sometime surprises us, and it is the hope that sustains us and gets us to surprising endings.

fast forward five years from that day in front of the Uhaul, and now we’re all grown up: A is a parent and a successful actor, he’s teaching classes at the school where, five years ago, we came to chicago so he could study. as far as theatre goes, i’m living the dream: i’m working full time in my field, no day job. i don’t have money to burn, but i can’t complain; i can pay my rent, i never worry about scraping by till the next paycheck or the next gig. i have a lovely apartment, great friends, a good life. but A and i, as a unit, didn’t survive. we found all those things we came to chicago to find, but in the pursuit, we lost the only thing that we brought with us to chicago: the us. and to be honest, i don’t know that we could have gotten to the places we are now together.

so, we end with an essay assignment, comment box: what does the phrase “american dream” evoke in you? go!

*did i blog about the time that my darling cat actually threw up into my purse? when i’m not home for too many hours he sleeps or does whatever it is that cats do all day but neglects to eat, so i get home and he’s starving and wolfs his food down and then sometimes yarfs it right back up. so one night he gulped some food, then sat down on his customary position of the footstool next to my desk. i had dropped my purse under the desk against the footstool. i left the room, and while i was gone, without even getting off the stool, the cat leaned over the side and PUKED INTO MY PURSE. what is it, a kitty barf bag? anyway, suffice to say that running the $25 canvas bag through a hot washing machine was no big deal. i laughed at the grossness of it all, and zeke looked mildly embarrassed. had i been carrying a $500 kate spade leather handbag, the cat-barf episode would have been a lot less funny.

come here/go away to wrap up 2007

{31 December 2007}

so there were a lot of half-finished posts that fell by the wayside, and treading water backwards is not worth the effort. so we’ll summarized the busy past couple of weeks with an installment of come here/go away and then move on to thoughts of 2008.

come here: dr. atomic. H and i caught this at the lyric the week before christmas. i have almost no experience with opera, so the whole process was impressive – the grandiose opera house, the scale on which everything is done. however, sitting still for a three hour anything is not really my specialty, and i found myself getting antsy during the first act (okay, i get it: it’s the night before you test the first a-bomb and you don’t know if you’ve invented something that will ignited the atmosphere and kill us all. an intriguing question but not really three hours’ worth of plot, and i’ve seen the same material treated much better by the excellent Carson Kreitzer). that is, until i reminded myself that plot isn’t the point of opera. the audience is meant to sit back, listen to the music, look at the big pretty stage pictures and just be. as a sometimes-play-goer, full-time-play-maker, i’m used to being very actively engaged in a production. it took me a while to realize that i needed to actually disengage a bit in order to fully appreciate the experience, but once i did, it was lovely. still, it’s sad that my total lack of musical talent/education means that there were probably many levels on which i failed to fully appreciate the work. it did look pretty, tho.

go away: aimee mann holiday spectacular. it pains me to have to give aimee mann a “go away” because i totally dig her, and her band sounded really great live. a “holiday spectacular” however, is not a concert. there was too much standup riffing with guests who are probably people i’d know if i had cable or ever watched tv but who really weren’t that funny, and guest spots for off-beat musician friends who were quirky but totally NOT AIMEE MANN. also: aimee mann fans are OLD. and suburban. when did aimee mann stop being hip? maybe i was just feeling curmudgeonly that night. still, the ticket was free, courtesy of my roommate who works at the concert house, so i should really shut up and stop complaining now.

come here: sweeney todd. i’m pretty emphatically not into musical theatre and so i didn’t know sweeny todd particularly well. the sondheim purists i saw the movie with objected to some of the changes (songs deleted/rearranged, mr. todd’s part transposed from a baritone to a tenor for the tender vocal cords of johnny depp), but i totally dug it. the production design was so excellent, tim burton just keeps getting better.

come here: christmas with the family. it snowed and snowed and snowed, and provided for skiing and snowshoeing in the meadow, and there was a cute baby (my brother’s wife’s sister’s baby, which we decided still makes him my nephew, for simplicity’s sake). i cooked christmas dinner (turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potatoes, salad, and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies – everything from scratch) without any major disasters (with the help of a rotating cadre of sous chefs, it must be noted, some of them more helpful than others).

go away: food poisoning i got from the denver airport. for two days, i wasn’t sure what my own name was. on the upside, by the time i recovered, i’d lost those pesky holiday pounds and started the whole eating-well-in-the-new-year with a fast. food poisoning and breakups are the most effective weight-loss tools i know.

come here: visits with old friends. had the nicest visit with A’s parents when i was in boise last week, the odd circumstances of our relationship notwithstanding. i hadn’t heard news of any of his siblings in more than a year, so catching up with the doings of the family was nice, and they are such gracious, lovely people that we navigated around the obvious social land mines without trouble. why do i bother to keep up with my former in-laws? i’m honestly not sure. i don’t do it out of a desire to maintain any sort of connection between me and my ex. if anything, it’s because in the past year i’ve learned to appreciate the myriad of forms that interpersonal relationships can inhabit, the blurred distinction between family and friends. there’s no substitute for having good people in my life, and cutting people off out of a sense of injured pride brings a hollow sort of satisfaction.

when i got back home a number of college friends passed through the windy city, including the lovely wabes and entourage, also p & j, and db. (ha! nicknames and initials for everyone!). catching up was good.

come here: good jobs & engagements & baby news. lots of friends with news this holiday season. it’s all happening to the right people and i couldn’t be happier for all of them.

go away: cold cold cold! as i write this, the windchill is -6. this is the cold when homeless people freeze and poor people can’t heat drafty apartments. it’s no good. also, where do the wild bunny rabbits of chicago go when it gets this cold? wikipedia informed us that rabbits don’t really hibernate but they sort of hibernate, but it didn’t really answer the question, where do they go in the winter?

come here: chicago smoking ban! hooray! as of jan 1, the smoking ban finally goes into effect for bars. i intend to invest more time holding up a barstool at my local now that i can do it without stinking like an ashtray. i should be more sympathetic to the smokers shivering in their boots out in front of the bar, trying to hold a cigarette in mitten-clad fingers, but i’m really not. now’s the time to quit! then you have more money for the other vices! our own cold turkey wonder woman inspires many.

come here: the ginger people’s ginger chews. my tongue is on fire and i’ve eaten about half the bag while writing this. mmm, ginger candy.

nine days, nine items

{01 March 2007}

1. it’s been a monstrous week. like, on an epic scale. mostly, there was the thing of a personal nature that i won’t detail here. those of you who know me might already know the gossip, those who don’t know may ask (and i may or may not answer, depending on my state of exhaustion), but it’s not fodder for the internets. so, with that cryptic introduction, the remaining of the week’s 9:

2. my new roommate moved in. our compatibility was assured when we sorted out the kitchen tools and discovered that between us we have five cheese graters and several other specialized cheese-slicing instruments. secondly, there’s the added perk that she works for LUSH, which means that our fridge is now full of samples of fancy face products that i used to have to cross international borders to acquire in college. yay for roommates who like cheese and smell good.

3. monday marked my one year anniversary at my job. this won’t seem of great significance to many of you, but for us nomadic theatre folks, this is a Long Time. if it weren’t for the fact that my personal life has been a fucking mess for the past six months, i’d say that this makes me seem pretty stable.

4. chicago marathon training has begun! you can follow our progress over at chicagomarathon2007.blogspot.com, or check out the training log for a more detailed play-by-play (probably only interesting to other runner dorks).

5. i’ve decided to join Team in Training and raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as a part of marathon training. heck, if i’m going to work this hard to run a marathon, why not do some good for other folks while i’m doing something that’s (theoretically) good for me, too? Team in Training uses TNT as their acronym, but it must be noted that a more accurate acronym is TIT. tee hee. maybe if it were a fundraiser for breast cancers instead of blood cancers. or maybe marketing is not in my future. but any rate, more donation info will be up soon, please consider sponsoring me. 100% of your donation goes to helping fund research and improve the quality of treatment for people with blood cancers.

6. also, i had my first marathon anxiety dream, 220 days before the actual race. the usual, i was late getting to the start of the race, i couldn’t find my shoes, had my shirt on backwards, etc.

7. the fact that i purchased a trigger lock for the prop gun in a show last month means that i’ve been subscribed to the giant thick “Cabela’s Shooting” catalog. the waste of paper on an anti-gun person like me is horrifying enough, but it did mean that i learned about the existence of these. why is it hilarious and also alarming that hunters need what is essentially portable picnic table to prop up their arms and asses in comfort (padded seats!) while they wait for some unsuspecting deer to happen by. gun too heavy? poor thing. anyone who claims that hunting is a “sport” had better be dousing themselves in deer urine and climbing through the bushes with a bow and arrow. otherwise, i don’t wanna hear it.

8. got time to waste? not like these guys do. who knew there was a whole movement around the building of food animals?

9. bacon-flavored mints. i couldn’t make this up if i tried. in honor of national pork-eating day, or something like that, my boss ordered a case of them. our shared office reeks of fake-bacon smell at the moment. the website reads, “once you taste it, you’ll see that mint and bacon is a match made in china.” thank you, china, for giving us the compass, acupuncture, and then bacon-flavored mints.

good start to a new year

{04 January 2007}

the big news for the new years weekend was that my older brother, chris, and teresa got married!

the wedding was beautiful, and the reception was about the most fun one i’ve been to. (i was helping plan/coordinate/generally boss people around, so i ended up not taking hardly any pictures, but fortunately the event was well-documented and i’ll have pictures to share before too long).

i want to go to a wedding on new years eve every year. what better way to start out the new year than being filled with love and good will? plus, the occasion provides a perfect theme for the party. teresa’s family and friends are wonderful, and i am thrilled to be getting such an amazing woman for a sister-in-law. also, i was charmed by knoxville.

there was the awkward realization while i was looking at the seating chart that i was basically the only unmarried (and definitely the only single) person at the entire wedding. erg. but in spite of the giant opportunity to be bitter about being single, the whole wedding weekend actually helped renew my faith in love rather than making me more bitter. i don’t yet know how to cope with the idea that andy could just up and walk out on me. i don’t know why this is the third time i’ve had my heart broken, or why i can’t seem to get it right. but seeing chris and teresa together made me believe that they have found a partnership to last forever. and then i saw my parents, and teresa’s parents, and my grandparents, all in turns on the dance floor, dancing cheek to cheek. i don’t know why i can’t seem to find that. but it cheers me to know that it does exist.


on another note, having experienced a decent-sized sample of US airports recently, it’s safe to say that knoxville, TN is by far and away my favorite. empty, even on new year’s day, small, clean, quiet. rows of rocking chairs lined up in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the rolling tennesee hills. and these huge leather lazy-boy recliners! (those are my own feet in the picture). i was so exquisitely comfortable it was hard to get up in time to board my plane.