the preceding 60-hour work week put something of a damper on halloween plans, but as it turns out, our neighborhood is second only to san francisco’s castro for marti gras style halloween celebrations, so friday night was more about staring at all the other freaks than trying to be freakish ourselves.

10 minutes to devise a costume out of our own closets lead to the following:

andy dressed in hiking gear and stocking cap with donkey ears attached, represented the CTA Fee Hike, and i wore my aikido uniform and went as Every Sport I’ve Ever Quit (it’s a long, long list).

i have a long history of halloween costumes that require explanation (el nino, the seven deadly sins, a rock, to name a few). it reminds me a little of the way paul and i play “20 questions”: on a road trip to idaho once, it became necessary to change the game to “40 questions”, because it was impossible to hone in on some arcane metaphysical subject (the black plague, onomatopoeia, godot…) in 20 guesses.

maybe i should look to our “40 questions” games to find inspiration for halloween costumes…i could be godot, and just never show up at the halloween party.

www.ryantown.com/gayboyfriend

it’s worth the download time.

bon voyage to paul, who departs soon for four weeks of roaming the guatemalan countryside with naught but a notebook, pen, and some malaria pills. viva la earnest young writer, i say. oh, and hide some extra cash inside your sock or something – as my father has often reminded me when i’m setting out for foreign lands, if one finds oneself in a tight spot, $100 american cash will negotiate better than an electronic dictionary and faster than an american consulate. all my good travel karma to you, paul.

chicago is so totally gripped by cubs fever that 1) i’m actually following the games, and 2) the weatherman on the news tonight gave a detailed report on what the weather was like the last time the cubs were in the playoffs – in 1908.

recent reticence should be considered a blessing; i’m saving you all the daily-move in report:

friday: dear blogger, today i unpacked 2 more boxes. i still can’t find the box with the chair covers. ps – discovered too late that there’s no linen closet. searching for solutions in IKEA catalogue.

saturday: dear blogger, still no home for the extra towels. can’t decide: should we buy a papasan chair now, or save our money for a sofa?

i’m short on wit these days. exploring-of-chicago is largely put on hold now that i have two jobs; i just wish i had time to finish unpacking. the apartment has great potential, but it needs lots of stuff, and we have no money, so most of the decorating plans will have to wait. at my day job i learn dental insurance terminology and book-keeping basics, at my real job i’m learning, via trial-by-fire, how to manage projects, budgets and people. commute reading has been limited to total fluff: IKEA catalogues, p.g. wodehouse novels, the onion.

the val and grant wedding was beautiful, classy and a little heart-wrenching, as the first of The Roommates Crossed The Moat (don’t ask), and the weekend with friends made me a little wistful for my college days – not the being 19, or the going to school part, just the part where all my friends lived down the hall from me. now the hipster death squad is scattered across every corner of the country: new york, washington DC, portland, san jose, chicago. we have apartments, credit cards, 10:30 bedtimes and jobs that make us work weekends.

we depart tomorrow for the bay area and for the wedding of valerie and grant – yay! friends and sunshine and every meal includes avocado! what more could i want?

we’ve moved into the apartment, and aside from a few creative repairs that may be required, i have high hopes that life will SOON begin to settle. we have an address, utilities, and a day job, an apartment devoid of furniture, but with plenty of windows and room for the cat to run. hopefully posts will resume with some regularity as soon as i find which box the computer is in.

i write posts at home on my desert island (no internet access) of a computer, then forget to bring them into work with me.

you all know what life in a new city is like anyway: frantically emailing out resumes to every part-time job and employment agency listed, spending quality time with the chicago public transit system as i zip south to job interviews in the loop, and north to my theatre in evanston, coming home at night to the teeny tiny studio apartment that we’re not really supposed to be living in (and so can’t complain to the manager about the neighbor upstairs who karate chops her furniture at 3am). zeke paces and skitters about the room, trying to stay out from under our feet in a teeny tiny space.

i’m in a rush to be settled, even tho i know these things take time. you have to find the apartment first – after that you can unpack your stuff, connect utilities, open bank accounts, find a job, learn your way around town, meet people, join in things, start to feel like you LIVE in the city. it all comes back to having a home. since we’re living in hiding in our friend’s apartment, we don’t have an address. or any utilities. without a phone number or an address, it’s hard to receive mail. or apply for jobs. or wear any of the clothes that are in storage that you need for said job interviews, or check email, or open a bank account, apply for health insurance, discover local cafes to hang out at, meet people, or really do anything besides take the damn train back and forth across town. they let you ride the train without a legitimate address, but that’s about it. these are petty concerns, in the long run, of course. it makes me realize what it must feel like not to have a legitimate social security number in this country.

we’re supposed to move in a week, and i’m waiting with bated breath to hear about a job interview. if these things work out, life will start to feel normal. i hope. or at least i’ll worry less about being broke and homeless.

blogger wants to print the date twice on some of my posts- who am i to say no? too much work to fix the format, at least for now. the walls of the studio apartment grow closer: no internet access, no furniture, no simpsons (the black and white TV somehow misplaced of Fox last week). we want to go out and play and shake off the cabin fever, but poverty inhibits. we settle for $1.50 coffees in exchange for the privilege of sitting in the roomy living room of the starbucks on the corner, reading books, and schedule our evenings around various free/cheap industry night performances at local theatres.

there’s something about city living that awakens survival instincts. things that matter to me, living in a small town, become so inconsequential in the face of more basic challenges of city living. today’s petty example: normally i make a point to buy earth-friendly bio-degradable laundry soap; here, my pressing concerns are whether will someone nick my clothes if i leave them alone in the dryer or the fact that laundry soap at the yuppie market down the street costs 3 times what it should.

when you consider that most of the world lives in urban areas (i have no stats to back this up, but go with me here), no wonder it’s hard to get people to do anything extra. life in a small town is so convenient that it’s easier to inconvenience one’s self in small ways like buying earth-friendly soap or separating your garbage for a special trip past the recycling center. here, i just want to survive: personally, professionally, financially.

craig’s list chicago, wonderful bizarre beast that it is, produced this list of “et cetera” employment for me today:

Lawn Foreman Needed Immediately

Looking for Women with longer Toenails

30 Beer Promo Models needed for events in Chicago

Migraine and Eating Habits Study for Females 18-55 yrs old

I’LL BE THE BEST BABYSITTER!!!!

Need someone to teach me to rollerblade

Sell Someone Else’s Car for $200

Attractive Caucasian Male models wanted for foot fetish video

if a temp agency doesn’t call me back soon, i’m gonna have to start growing out my toenails.

a near total lack of internet access means that readers of this spotted and inconstant blog have been saved the daily agonies of the first week in a new city: apartment and job hunting, apartment and job applying, apartment and job interviewing, the wiles of public transit. i start each day energized by the city; by 5 or 7 o’clock i’m exhausted by the sheer volume of the city, all the sidewalks and trains and people.

there’s little to say about driving a u-haul cross country that isn’t a cliché: self-portrait of us, bleary-eyed but eager, on the driveway of my parents’ house, u-haul in the background. the companion photo was to be taken upon arriving three days later but we were too tired to take it. the truck started to smoke on the second day; we checked the oil and coolant levels and concluded that we’d done all we were contractually bound to do, and so kept driving. nothing blew up. The cab of a Ford F350 is a small place, even for two people and a cat who really like one another, and two12+ hour days found us in iowa city, iowa after midnight, our teeth still rattling from the motion of the truck.

we’ve found an apartment, and i’m never moving again. not because of the apartment (tho it’s quite nice) but because the effort of combing through listings and calling agents and wandering neighborhoods, paying the first-last-and-in-between months’ rent and filling out all those crappy financial applications (two 25-year-old kids just arrived in the city, suitcases in hand, one part-time theatre job between the two of us looks pretty shaky on paper) is too much for me to keep doing on a semi-annual basis.

a brick building, vintage walkup-style, a large, lovely kitchen painted hideous shades of salmon and sea foam, high ceilings, claw-foot bathtub, wide window sills for the cat to sit on, hardwood floors, decorative fireplace and built-in book shelves. the vintage gold velvet sofa we had to leave behind would have looked great in there. location is key: it’s two blocks to the train, take-out thai, groceries, and funky consignment shops.

until october, we live in a studio apartment the size of a postage stamp that has no phone; zeke is surly and eats a lot; andy and i cook one-pot pasta dishes on the tiny stove and climb over one another with great care. everything is a matter of inches.

i’m not much interested in architecture (looking at it or understanding it), but what everyone says is true: this city is fucking beautiful. the gothic-spired stone buildings rub elbows with dark, shiny new sky-scrapers, and the 1970’s boxy monstrocities are kept to a minimum. lake michigan is so huge that it’s hard to believe i’m not standing before an ocean; only the lack of salt-smell and the stunningly flat horizon remind me how far i am from mountains or sea. the dark blue lake meets the paler blue sky; white sailboats sparkle and i strain to see to the other side but can see nothing but water and sky.