Tag Archives: weather

catch up, chicago installment

{02 September 2007}

1) mostly for you chicagoans: my new favorite photo blog: ihateclarkstreet.blogspot.com

2) the first of september, and the first hint of fall in the air. some perceptible transition from the humid, languid days of late summer to the warm, golden afternoons of approaching fall. the sky is a darker shade of blue, the sunlight golden instead of hazy, bringing everything sharply into focus. it’s heartbreakingly beautiful, and yet,or perhaps because, there’s an inexplicable melancholy that settles over me about this time of year. maybe it’s the beauty of late summer juxtaposed with the inevitable approach of winter. but i’m not sure it’s anything as concrete as that. fall just makes me sad.

3) as of monday, i’ll have lived in chi-town for four years. that means i’ve spent more consecutive months living here than in any place since i left my parents’ home at age 18. never in a million years did i dream i’d end up living in the midwest, voluntarily, for a significant period of time, and yet, here i am, and it feels like home.

4) i haven’t even blogged about my weekend yet, and it’s nearly the next weekend. i marked the approaching end of summer with an impromptu trip to the bay area (thank you frequent flier miles): zipping down the 280 in my speedy rent car listening to kfog. visiting the expectant vant. seeing my brother and sister-in-law‘s new house (their very own orange trees! how jealous am i?). browsing used bookstores and drinking coffee on the patio of a berkeley coffee house with the good people behind metameat and 13 ways of looking down. on sunday i ran a 30k trail race in the oakland hills, then met H for a very excellent meal at universal cafe before catching a redeye back home. arriving at o’hare at 5am, post-run muscles stiff after having been cooped up in a center coach seat for several hours in lieu of sleeping in a bed, i was so out of it i felt drunk. dragged my sorry sleep-deprived ass home and napped for a few hours before i could face my monday. when i’m in chicago, i’m mostly happy to be here. but whenever i go back to california, i feel the pull of bay area very strongly. i’d really like to live in berkeley. i’d like to have more access to outdoorsy stuff like hiking and trail running. i want a cute little house somewhere near the university where it fogs in sometimes but never really gets too cold in the winter, and to own a chocolate lab i can take on runs with me. the thing is, none of that is out of my reach, if that’s the path i chose. but i don’t want to give up what i have here, is the thing. i very nearly packed my bags, put the cat in the car, and hit the open road when my life came apart last fall. if i’d wanted to make a fresh start, in california or new york or somewhere new, that would have been the time for it. but instead i dug in, invested, and now that window of opportunity seems to have passed. i could still go, but it would be harder now.

5) re: marathon training, last week was a big one for me; it was my 500/30/18 – that is, 500th mile run since the start of the year, the first 30+ mile week, and my first 18+ mile run. we’re honing in on both the fund raising commitment (bless you, all of you, who have made donations) and the actual race; i can count down the weeks and the long workouts remaining: this weekend it’s a 10-miler, then the next week i’m running the half marathon and tacking an extra 7 miles on to make it my 20-mile day, then the following week it’s 120-min run, then a 16-miler, than something easy like 8 or so, and the week after that is the marathon! to be honest, i’ve been training for eight full months now, and i’m starting to approach burn out. enough with the thinking/talking/dreading/planning/working; lets get to it!

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
.

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.

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.

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.

{03 February 2007}

happy groundhog day. now shut the door before we all freeze to death!

i can’t quite seem to get this piece right, but in honor of groundhog day and it being friggin’ cold* this weekend, i’ll post it anyway. maybe some exposure will help me decide what it’s trying to be.

——–
the lake is partially frozen along the shoreline. it’s all shades of white and grey, and when the wind comes up the ice fractures into pieces and the waves move beneath, creating a rocky, undulating surface. the lake and sky blur white at the horizon so that there’s no clear delineation of where one stops and the other begins. snow has been on the ground for several weeks now. it doesn’t melt, just blows around and seems to evaporate, and then another short storm brings a fresh layer. the air is cold and dry and acrid under low-hanging snow skies. and yet, in the midst of all this winter, there is a subtle but perceptible lengthening of days.

each day this week we are gaining two additional minutes of daylight. already our days are nearly an hour longer than they were at our darkest point in december. i wake with the light, and in spite of the cold there are birds singing a morning song in the trees outside my window. when i cross the city on my way home at the end of the day, the light is draining from the sky and lights are flickering to life in the skyscrapers, silhouetted black against the pale western sky. by the time we reach the equinox in march, the days will be lengthening even faster, cresting at nearly 3 minutes per day. then the pace will slow even as the weather mellows and the earth tilts our faces toward the sun, toward a future of long summer evenings and the scent of sun-warmed earth, rising even above the noise and crush of the city.

in june the long days will peak and then daylight will begin to run back out of the hourglass, each season flowing like waves, cresting again in september before plunging back into winter.

the sine waves of temperature are staggered, so that the coldest days peak even as the days are lengthening toward spring; in june the longest days will mark the beginning of the warm season, but it won’t be until august that the sun really beats down, relentless, for that period of a week or two when it’s hard to draw a breath and we all think we might fry like eggs right on the sidewalk. by then, the cooling darkness of evening will arrive two minutes earlier each day, and the approaching fall days will be welcome.

in the past three days, three close friends of mine have lost friends of theirs, all to premature deaths, coincidentally perhaps, all to cancer. tragedy moves in sine waves, too. it crests and then ebbs back. our successes and our misfortunes are stagged, so that we can bear the weight of our sorrows on the backs of the joys. if we could graph our lives, would it help us bear the tragedy? would it temper the joy?

———-
*and by friggin’ cold, we’re talking windchills in the -10 to -20 category. we’ve moved to defcon 3 in the winter-clothing department.