This Could Only Happen to Me...

Wacky Words of Wisdom

2011-03-02T23:01:00.005-06:00

On this day was born
A man they called Seuss.
And the stories he told
Rivaled old Mother Goose!

Though skeptics might ask
What his legacy was:
Fantastical creatures?
Words ending in "uzz"?

The lasting impression
Of the books we hold dear,
Is that each of the morals
Are profound, yet so clear!

His great use of cadence
Of iambs and rhyme,
Made the yarns that he spun
Ring true every time.

While children relate
To Foo Foo the Snoo,
We could all learn a lot
From Thing One or Thing Two!

"A person's a person,
No matter how small"
We heard from a Horton,
not a human at all!

With Yertle we mused
That all turtles roam free,
"As turtles and, maybe,
All creatures should be."

The Grinch's epiphany
Isn't hard to remember,
For that book-turned-cartoon
We watch every December!

"Maybe Christmas," thought Grinch,
"Doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas... perhaps...
Means a little bit more."

And then there's the Lorax
Who speaks for the trees;
And the Once-ler who warned
Of the forest's unease:

"Unless someone like you
Cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to
Get better. It's not."

But not all of Doc's stars
Need names like Jibboo...
In The Places You'll Go
The main character's YOU!

"You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any
Direction you choose."

And with that, Dr. Seuss,
Happy birthday to you, sir!
"There is no one alive
Who is you-er than you (were)!"

Signs, Signs...

2011-02-17T14:02:00.006-06:00

In the restaurant business, good servers learn to "read" their tables; they manage to anticipate a customer's needs without needlessly interrupting their dining experience. The key to providing just the right amount of service-- without appearing overly attentive or neglectful-- is to pick up on the non-verbal cues. And during the course of a meal, a typical diner provides dozens of clues.

If I approach a new table and see that the menus that the host passed out are stacked at the end of the table, I know they're ready to order right away. But if their noses are still stuck in the menu when I return to drop off their drinks, I know not to push for a food order. An empty glass is one of the easiest clues to spot; there's really no excuse notto keep the glasses full or the beer flowing.

A patron who is on the edge of their chair and/or leaning forward is deep in conversation and doesn't want to be disturbed; a patron who is leaning back and/or pushed their chair away from the table is full. If a half-eaten meal is neatly organized or compartmentalized on the plate, I'll show up with a to-go box, while a wadded up napkin on the plate is the universal white flag of surrender, signaling that-- despite the diner's most valiant efforts-- the behemoth-sized portions won out in the end. I will always offer to bus these plates, regardless of how much food may be left underneath the crumpled napkin.

When I drop the check, I'll stand the booklet up on the table; when I see that the book is lying down, I know that my guests are likely ready to cash out. Some savvy guests go the extra mile and leave a portion of their cash or credit card visibly poking out of the closed book, which saves me from having to use my powers of x-ray vision (which comes standard issue... along with the apron and the thick skin.)

It's common knowledge among restaurant workers that some tables are needier than others. With a little practice, good servers can determine whether a table expects them to: hang out and make small talk, remain silent but visible, or-- once the food is served-- to stay away until someone at the table calls them over. By the time I take their orders, I almost always know how high maintenance or low key a table will be, and I will prioritize my tasks accordingly.

That being said, I do have a shameful confession to make: However good a server may be at reading people's body language, they have yet to master the art of reading people's minds. So the next time you're hoping to have a quick dinner before a 7:00 show or spend a leisurely evening catching up with an old friend, or if you have a severe aversion to red onions or soup spoons, consider biting the bullet and talking to the hired help. For a successful server, the only thing better than anticipating a customer's needs is knowing what the customer needs. Most are quite accomodating of special requests, as long as they know what those needs are.

*Please disregard the grammatical error in the sign pictured above*

What Say Ye Now, Groundhog?

2011-02-02T12:21:00.001-06:00

Here in Chicago, outlandish weather forecasts are not at all uncommon among the local news stations. In fact, a rush-hour flurry or a sudden downpour is usually all it takes for meteorologists to cut in to the evening's top stories with "breaking news" of the (usually obvious) precipitation affecting portions of the viewing area, and to dispatch rookie reporters to the lake front and expressway overpasses to confirm that-- "live, from outside"-- the white stuff that's hitting my window is, in fact, snow.

So when forecasters began making their catastrophic storm predictions last week, I tuned in to Chicago's Very Own, WGN, to see what my buddy Tom Skilling had to say. He is by far the most level-headed, non-alarmist meteorologist in the tri-state area, so as soon as I heard him calmly describe the impending blizzard as a "storm of historic proportions", I took notice. And as it turns out, he was right on the money.

In this (delightfully snarky for NPR) article posted yesterday, an Atlanta meteorologist said (in response to the "monstrous monikers" that have been attached to the megastorms of recent winters):"Just in passing, I've overheard conversations about the intensity and danger of impending storms. People refer to the storm systems by their TV names, which lets me know that being creative gets people's attention."

But since terms such as "Snowmageddon" and "Snowpocalypse" are so East Coast 2010, I'd like to present to you a medley of the Chicago versions, coined specifically for the Blizzard of 2011. Here goes!

Snowly cow! Snowtorious B.I.G. himself has descended upon the Windy City. We've learned that Mother Nature's first name is, in fact, Snowprah, and that no one was excluded from her first "Favorite Things" episode of February. In a shrieking voice, loud enough to be heard over the howling winds, she has declared that, "you get a blizzard... and "you get a blizzard... everyone gets a BLIZZZZARRRRD!" Only this time, it's not just a room full of hysterical middle-aged women in brightly colored tops who are squealing "SNOW-M-G!"; school children everywhere are overcome with joy to learn that, what started as a snowrnado last night has closed even the Chicago Public schools today. And since this blizzaster has all but crippled transportation in the city, tomorrow's not looking good, either.

It warms my heart (but not my hands) to know that residents are banding together in the wake of this snowtastrophy; in this magical time-- after the snowfall has ended but before the lawn chairs appear (to claim "dibs" on their owners' dug-out parking spaces)-- neighbors are helping neighbors clear drifts from their front doors, shovel narrow pathways for brave commuters and dog walkers, and they're also responding to all-too-literal questions of, "Dude! Where's my car?!?"

On my quiet little side street (that probably won't see a snow plow or a back hoe until sometime this weekend), the only modes of transportation I saw in the two hours I was out unearthing my car were el trains, skis, and snowshoes. Plenty of people ventured out of their homes to marvel at the mess, though, snapping pictures like tourists while trying not to lose their dogs or kids in the waist-high drifts.

I know that 48 hours from now, we'll likely be back to business as usual, cursing the city's never-fast-enough response to snow removal, screaming "oh SNOW you didn't!" at drivers who cut us off or park in a way that is considered stupid-- even for blizzard standards-- but for today, I'm going to do my best to enjoy Blizzardpalooza 2011.

And as for the groundhog... I saw Punxsutawney Phil on the news, smugly predicting an early spring for those out east. Closer to home, our resident rodent in Woodstock, Illinois, wouldn't even come out. Groundhog's day was cancelled. What's that supposed to mean? My guess is that it doesn't bode well for any of us Chicagoans... well, except for maybe the meteorologists.

That's the Ticket!

2011-01-24T14:02:00.003-06:00

It seems that the days of raising children to be "seen and not heard" are long gone. When parents take their kids out in public these days, many of the considerate and courteous gestures of yore-- such as removing a screaming infant from a crowded room, requiring older children to use their "indoor voices", or keeping youngsters of all ages within arm's reach and out of harm's way-- are now a rarity. In this uber-PC age where the threat of a parental reprimand being misconstrued by an overly sensitive (and nosy) onlooker as abuse is an unfortunate (albeit unlikely) reality. And in their quest not to come across as being too strict, some parents fail to discipline their children at all, at least not where others can see.

Since the restaurant where I work prides itself on being especially family friendly, we see countless examples of lax parenting each and every day. While the offenses range from the merely annoying to the downright appalling, the restaurant's owners have long warned us not to speak up unless the child's actions or behaviors have crossed that not-so-fine line between impolite to unsafe. Apparently, the only thing more taboo than being a too-strict parent is being the person to call out the irresponsible ones.

In my experience, even the most polite request to keep a child seated puts parents immediately on the offensive; say something reprimanding to the errant kid directly, and the parental reaction is even worse. When I can't immediately locate or identify a parent of the child who dumped an entire basket of suckers on the floor or who is crawling under the tables of some none-too-pleased guests on the other side of the restaurant, my favorite response is to crouch down and say-- as cheerfully yet loudly as possible-- "Hi! Where are your parents?" That's usually enough to make a red-faced mom or dad to get up and retrieve their child. The bartender gets a similar effect by staring down the oblivious parents from across the restaurant, but I can't make myself look as intimidating as he does.

The thing is, unrestrained children cause more than just a mildly annoying disruption in a busy restaurant. The waitstaff wants to keep all of their tables happy, and the kid problem has gotten to the point where many repeat customers will stay away from the restaurant altogether at certain times of day, or they'll cut their visit short when their desire for a second drink or dessert is trumped by their desire to get away from the screaming child at the next table. That hurts our bottom line, and it was somehow determined that it takes roughly 4 children to replace the revenue generated by one adult patron. We don't want to lose those customers; they tend to have larger tabs and are usually better behaved.

And the safety issue should go without saying... yet it remains an issue. The waitstaff has to move quickly, and often with an armload of heavy plates or trays of glasses, which makes it hard (if not impossible) to see what's directly underfoot. Kids that are running unaccompanied through the restaurant are in danger of getting stepped on, and if the collision is hard enough to make the server trip, fall, or drop what they're carrying, the kid is in danger of getting crushed, scalded, cut, or worse. Were that worst-case scenario ever to materialize, what was previously just parental irresponsibility instantly becomes restaurant liability. That's never a good thing.

So what's a people-pleasing business like ours to do? With our "New Year's Resolution" to keep all of our customers "safe and happy", we may have found just the thing... the Golden Ticket! The idea is so simple, yet (so far) so effective that, to quote our esteemed former governor, we've "got this thing... and it's bleeping golden!"

Here's the premise: the families that embody what we feel "family dining" is all about are eligible to receive a Golden Ticket (a la Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) for a percentage off their next meal. We cited actions such as staying seated, not running, and using "indoor voices" as some of the ways families could earn this ticket. The ticket itself is incentive enough for the little ones (I've never heard so many unprompted "pleases" and "thank yous" from the under-12 crowd!), while the discount compels parents to actively enforce these rules and encourage good manners. The kids learn how to behave in a restaurant, the parents save money, the other patrons can dine in relative peace, and we're off the hook for many avoidable catastrophes: in short, everybody wins!

This program is, by far, the best and most effective solution to this problem that I've ever encountered. What do you think? Will the good behavior last? Is there a better model out there? If so, I'd love to hear it... just be sure to tell me about it in your "inside voice"!

The Moth: SCARS

2011-01-11T13:42:00.010-06:00

Memory is a funny thing, and early childhood memories in particular. I vividly remember falling out of a moving car at age four, but if my parents and relatives hadn't later recountedto me what they remember most from that fateful day, I wouldn't be able to give you a firsthand account of one of the most monumental events of my pre-school years. Even though the grownups in my life helped flesh out and give shape to my own spotty memories from that time, I can tell my version of the story in a way no one else can because, after all, I'm the one with the (mainly emotional) scars to prove it.

I was in my pajamas and on my way to the gas station with my dad. Mom was home bathing my little sister and making last-minute preparations for our flight to California later that evening. The gas station was just up the road, so Dad let me sit in the front seat of our forest-green two-door Chevy Impala. This was a Very Big Deal. Naturally, I had to check out all of the fun Front Seat Things that I could not access from my little brown booster seat with the reddish-orange harness in back where I was usually confined (which, as it turns out, was for good reason). Fun things like air vents, the glove compartment, and the door handle.

So many moving parts... I let my imagination run wild! I was moving the door handle back and forth, pretending to ring a bell, and I remember thinking that, since it was such a big handle, it was probably for a really big bell. So I grabbed it with both hands and pulled, and the heavy passenger side door swung open, and for the briefest of moments, I was flying.

And then I fell.

I tumbled out of the car onto the gravelly cinders on the shoulder of the frontage road just as my dad had slowed to make a left turn into the gas station. I later learned that he jumped out of the car so fast that he almost forgot to put it in park. I don't remember being scooped up off the side of the road or being presented (bloodied and crying) to my hysterical mother back home, but apparently I was given my second bath of the evening as mom took stock of my wounds. They must have looked pretty superficial, as my parents decided it best to bandage up my knee (so I wouldn't bloody my fresh pair of PJs, as it might alarm the stewardesses) and off we went on the red-eye to California.

The next thing I remember is the smell of bleach and tongue depressors as we entered the hospital in Berkley. My uncle had driven me and my mom there so I could get my knee checked out, because it was stiff from the flight and it was hard for me to walk. I guess the doctors were confused as to how a toddler who fell out a car in Illinois had wound up in a California hospital the next day, so mom tried to explain our unusual predicament. But you know how, sometimes, the more you try to explain something, the worse it winds up sounding? That must have been what happened, because the doctors went from confused to suspicious and started asking more questions, which prompted my uncle to emphatically interject "I'm not the father!" into the conversation every few minutes or so, which likely didn't help.

Eventually, though, the doctors were satisfied with her explanation of my injuries (which turned out not to be serious) and we were allowed to leave. After he finished wrapping my knee in an Ace bandage, the doctor-- in what I'm sure was meant to be an attempt to cheer me up-- offered me a ride out to the car in an actual wheelchair! Instead, I got scared by mention of the wheelchair-- I had seen one on the way in. The man who was sitting in it was glumly eating greyish-green peas from a tray of food that had been set before him. Of course, I took this to mean that eating yucky peas was a prerequisite for riding in a wheelchair, and instead opted to have my uncle (who is not my father) carry me out to the car.

Thankfully, children are reslilient by design. During this tenuous time of learning right from wrong and discovering the consequences of certain actions, maybe it's best that kids are quick to forget. After all, if we remembered every bad choice and stupid mistake we ever made, in full detail, we'd likely all be scarred for life!

The Moth: StorySLAM!

2010-12-28T21:20:00.004-06:00

As a long-time fan of The Moth podcast, I was beyond geeked to find out that The Moth hosts live Story Slams in Chicago on the last Tuesday of each month, at Martyr's, which is just down the street from me! Live story telling doesn't strike me as being hugely popular in this day and age, so I assumed my friends and I would be in the company of a few socially awkward guys with bad skin playing chess or D & D at a corner table. Boy was I wrong! As verified by the people waiting in the line that stretched out the door, the hipster crowd has latched onto anything and everything NPR, which makes these Story Slams a very cool and incredibly trendy way to spend a Tuesday night.

Each month, The Moth people choose a theme, which has to somehow figure into every story told. Anyone can sign up to tell a story, and of those volunteers, ten people are chosen at random. Every story is recorded and audience members can volunteer to judge, rating the stories on a scale from 1-10. The winner goes on to participate in regional (and possibly even national!) competitions. So as not to extend the event into the wee hours of the morning, a time limit is set for each story teller, replete with 60- and 30-second warning tones, giving the performer ample time to wrap up their yarn.

The topic that evening was SCARS, and the stories ran the gamut: physical, emotional, metaphorical. Aside from one last-minute sign-up, every story teller was well rehearsed, well prepared, and remarkably polished. Some tales were sad, some were hysterical, and one was even kind of raunchy, but they all tied in to the given topic. As I listened, laughed, gasped, and applauded wildly, I realized how much story telling was like writing. The strongest stories had a powerful introduction and a hook that drew listeners in right away. They were well structured, concise, dynamic, and had a concrete ending. The best story tellers were able to bring the tale full circle, and used facial expressions and vocal inflections (two perks not found in printed stories) to their undeniable benefit.

At my friends' urging, I toyed with the idea of signing up to tell a story. Having not known the theme beforehand, though, I decided against it. As the night went along, I became more and more convinced that I can tell my stories better in writing than I could in front of a microphone. Most of humanity can be divided into one of two camps: the Thinkers or the Doers. I identify more with the former. As a musician, this division is referred to as the Classically Trained and the Improvisers. I'm a Classical gal through and through. Put a piece of music on my stand, and with a little practice, I can play just about anything. Ask me to make something up on the spot, and I crumble. Other people I know are brilliant improvisers, but struggle to breathe life into a page full of notes. For me, story telling is a lot like music making; I need the ink on the page, to see the structure before me, and to practice the more difficult passages.

In short, you probably won't hear me on The Moth or at a jazz band concert, or any other improvised event. Although I have plenty of stories to tell, they won't be in that format. But if you're interested in my take on the scars theme, read on-- I'll be posting my (written) version very soon!

Photo Credit: Danielle Deschaine

Say WHAT?

2010-12-15T13:55:00.004-06:00

I've never been one to have an instant comeback for a snarky or incendiary comment... I usually think of the perfect retort just as the other person is walking away. Since I began waiting tables, though, I've found it's even harder to further a conversation with a patron who says something so outlandish, off-the-wall, or just plain nasty that I don't know what to say... I just know that they're expecting a response. If I say nothing, it's usually interpreted as rudeness on my part, even though I'm often left feeling more bewildered than anything else.

After years of experience, I've gotten much better at coming up with generic, unoffensive answers on the spot. But every once in a while, a customer will say something so far out, that I'm left nearly speechless. I can usually worm my way out of the most impossible of conversations either by parroting back a portion of what they just said, or by laughing nervously and cheerfully telling them I'll be right back with their drinks/silverware/whatever as I'm backing away.

Aside from the occasional cantankerous old man who winds up in my section, one table in particular fills me with dread every time they walk in the door. An innocuous-looking couple in their mid-forties, they seem perfectly benign... until the husband places his drink order:

"Is your water filtered, or do you just get it from that spigot over there?" he once asked, nodding to the hose attachment a few feet away from their table on the patio.

"It is filtered, but I'd be happy to get you some tap water if you would prefer!" I told him cheerfully.

And on another occasion, he said, "I'd like a chilled glass with my beer. Do you think you can manage to bring me a clean one?"

"That's... that's always the goal!" I chirped, hoping my smile didn't look too forced.

His wife, as mousy as he is arrogant, has perfected the nervous laugh/apologetic smile combination, and giggles shrilly every time I have to bring them something. They don't frequent the establishment often enough to be considered regulars, but I've waited on them enough to know that they like their (filtered) water without ice, and their salad dressings on the side. When he's not in the mood for a salad, however, the conversation quickly devolves:

"What brand of Veggie Burgers do you serve?" he once queried. When I told him, he gave a disgusted sigh and said, "never mind. I'll just eat meat."

"Excellent choice, sir!" I beamed.

Then, during a rare morning shift, I was met with: "If I get toast, will it be toasted evenly on each side?"

Almost relieved, I quickly tailored a generic answer from the standard collection of server catch phrases: "Our chefs are quite adept, but if your 9-grain isn't toasted to your liking, I'd be happy to get you something else!"

Judging from his demeanor during these confrontations-- I mean, conversations-- it's pretty clear that he thinks he's being funny; it's a pity I don't subscribe to his brand of humor. His wife is quick to laugh at all the right times, though-- her tittering has become a near-involuntary response.

Once, the salad she ordered came out wrong-- it had onions even though she had asked for none. When I went to check on them, I saw the error and-- following standard server protocol-- I apologized and offered to get it fixed. She politely refused, opting to pick them off herself. Which was fine, until her husband chimed in with some disparaging remark about how she was the one who was always such a difficult customer.

"Women," he scoffed, shaking his head then looking to me for validation as his wife's laugh track started up again.

I balked momentarily, then smiled apologetically at the wife as I repeated, "Women!" I mirrored his head shake, and with a helpless shrug I joined in with his wife's shrill laughter. Content with my response, he turned his attention back to his non-veggie burger. And before he could say anything else, I gave his wife one more sympathetic look and scurried away.

The Cubby Blues

2010-12-10T22:54:00.002-06:00

It was with a mixture of sadness and morbid curiosity that I tuned in to Ron Santo's televised funeral service this morning. The icky, voyeuristic feeling I had quickly dissipated, though, when I saw that the ceremony inside Holy Name Cathedral was not a solemn act of mourning, but rather a joyous celebration of life.

Santo was the Cubs' third baseman during the 60s and early 70s, then returned to Wrigley as a color commentator for WGN radio back in the early 90s, a position he held until his passing last week. Ronny wasn't just revered for being a great player or a good teammate or a member of one of the most beloved teams in Cubs' history, and he wasn't just adored for his passionate and entertaining broadcasts with Pat Hughes. Ron Santo was an incredible person. Although his athletic abilities, broadcasting outbursts, and remarkable fundraising efforts for juvenile diabetes research were what made him nationally renowned, it was his eternal optimism and ebullient spirit that endeared him to millions.

Ron faced more adversity in his life than most, and he had the added burden of tackling these challenges in the public eye. His admission that he had type-1 diabetes (a then-debilitating disease that eventually cost him both his legs) back in the early 70s stunned the baseball world, and the disappointment that stemmed from his many failed attempts at getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame were made all too public in the 2003 documentary, This Old Cub. But despite these setbacks, Ronny always had a minute to sign an autograph for a fan, give advice or words of encouragement to kids with diabetes, and to keep in touch with the people who were important to him.

If I've gathered anything from the stories, memories, and tributes that have been pouring in to WGN and the other local news stations since word broke about his passing, it's that he made a lasting impact on everyone with whom he came into contact. It's amazing to me how much of an effect a kind word or gesture can have on someone yet how, more often than not, that impact isn't fully realized or acknowledged until after that person has passed. From the stories shared by friends, family and colleagues, to memories from people who only met him once, to fans (like me) who never met him but feel like they knew him anyway, it sounds like Ronny was more of an exception than most, but I'll bet he never knew just how many lives he touched during his 70 years on Earth.

Which got me to wondering: why do so many of us wait until someone has died to express just how much they meant to us in life? Wouldn't it be better and more meaningful to share these sentiments with a loved one or mentor while they are still living? For whatever reason, this is easier said than done, but I think that if everyone made the effort to thank just one person who helped to shape the direction of their life or aided them in a time of need, the world would be a better place.

It was this thought that prompted me to email a professor I had for a month during my freshman year of college (who probably has no memory of me whatsoever) to congratulate her on the release of her new documentary and to compliment the superb essay she had published in our latest alumni magazine. I thanked her for sharing her story and told her that it was her class that prompted me to continue learning about her research (and related areas of study). I'm not expecting a reply, but at least she knows that she got through to at least one of us back in 1997.

And as for Ronny, we Cubs fans continue to hold out hope that the MLB will honor his legacy with a posthumous induction into Cooperstown, but today, I rest assured knowing that he has entered the Great Hall of Fame in the sky, and that he's in very good company. Rest in peace, Ron Santo, for your work here is done.

Menus

2010-11-29T20:58:00.001-06:00

Menus are great. They're glossy and visually appealing, and they pack a wealth of concise information into neatly organized columns. Menus tell whether a restaurant serves Coke or Pepsi products, give prices and ingredients for most entrees, and they also list side options as well as any related costs of substitutions or extras. The hours of operation, contact information, and restaurant policies (such as adding an automatic gratuity to large parties or charging to split an entree) are almost always listed somewhere on the menu. And although it may not be a fascinating read, it certainly is worth the while.

It's a wonder then, that more people don't take the time they're given to read the menu. I get it, though. Sometimes the restaurant can be dark. The print is too small for some, while others can't focus when they're hungry. And most people are distracted by something: their kids, their phones, or the game on TV. That's where I come in. I am paid to know the menu, inside and out. I have memorized ingredient lists and been thoroughly tested on my menu knowledge, and I can rattle off side options like a pro. I know the soups of the day, and which items are (or can be prepared) vegetarian or dairy-free. I can usually predict how long it will take for the kitchen to cook a well-done steak or a salmon fillet on a busy Friday night. And if there's a question that I don't know the answer to (like whether the breading on the chicken has an ingredient that could trigger some obscure allergy), I am happy to find out.

For the most part, I don't mind reciting burrito or salad ingredients to a table. I use the time to establish a rapport with my customers; it's like making small talk about the weather, only with food. When I am knowledgeable about the menu and can answer people's questions quickly and definitively, it reflects positively on my work ethic and overall intelligence. The only time I am not willing to list every ingredient in the kitchen is for a take-out order; people who don't know what they want then they call inevitably end up getting put on hold, because there are other people calling who do know what they'd like to eat.

I ask only two things of dine-in patrons: First, if someone at your table has a question (like what types of cheese are offered) that you would also like to know the answer to, please pay attention the first time. My willingness to rattle off sandwich toppings decreases exponentially every time I have to repeat them to the same table. And second, please don't get snippy with me when I ask follow-up questions about your order (such as how well to cook a steak). Some menu items have more options than others, and I am just trying to get your order right the first time. There's no need to be condescending, and besides-- if you're going to act like you're smarter than I am, you should at least be able to read.

Please Wait to be (Con)ceited

2010-11-06T22:40:00.003-05:00

It's high time I get the ball rolling on one of my "bucket list" projects; I'm not getting any younger, you know! Since most of my ultimate goals involve spending a great deal of money or amassing a wealth of knowledge (to travel to far-away places or to save the planet), I've decided to start small. I've always wanted to write a book, and since I don't have the vivid imagination of a fiction writer or a novelist's patience for outlining plots and developing characters, I need to write about what I know. And right now, what I know (and have known-- off and on-- since high school) is what it's like to work in the service industry.

I know how it feels to be judged for wearing an apron, stocking shelves, and preparing food. I know what it's like to be the source of people's (usually misdirected) anger, and I've been trained to accept criticism, insults, and ridicule with a smile. I know the torment of being overqualified for the part-time positions I have held. And I know the agony of not being able to tell those who assume I'm unintelligent, that I've chosen this less-than-desirable employment because its part-time hours and ever-changing schedules are what has given me the freedom and flexibility to put myself through school and to pursue my true passions.

I believe I can provide readers with a (more or less) objective view of life as a service-industry worker. I hope to share my experiences and present my insights in a collection of essays/short stories/vignettes, and my ultimate goal would be to publish these works in book form (see [copyrighted!] working title, above). And until Congress mandates that every American citizen hold at least one job serving the public, I'd like the revelations in my book to be the next-best thing! If my stories can get even one person to think twice about the way they speak to a cashier or a waiter-- to wait to be conceited-- I will consider this endeavor to be "mission accomplished."

So in an attempt to make at least one of my dreams become a reality, many of my blog posts from here on forward will be restaurant (or retail) related. All I ask of you, my dear readers, is to tell me what works and what doesn't. Tell me what you'd like to know as well as the topics I should avoid. Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings; I've worked retail. I've waited tables. I've been trained to take even the harshest criticisms with a smile. With that said, let the food fight begin!

Random Acts of Kindness

2010-10-27T22:01:00.003-05:00

I was standing in a dank subway stop just north of downtown and feeling a little downtrodden. I was wet and out of breath, having gotten caught in a sudden downpour. My hair was frizzing and my wool coat (a clearance-rack, TJ Maxx special) had begun to smell not unlike a wet dog. A guy with a boom box was sneaking sideways looks at me, and it seemed like the train would never come.

Suddenly, out of the crowd of bedraggled commuters, burst this impeccably dressed gay guy with a piping hot latte in one hand and his smart phone in the other. Unlike most people on public transit, he looked at me (not through me) and slowed his stride long enough to gush, "Ohmigod I love your coat! And your scarf matches it perfectly! You look fabulous!" And just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone. He disappeared into (what was, by that time) a very crowded platform of commuters.

All it took was one unexpected compliment from a complete stranger to turn my day around. The train came-- I managed to snag a seat while boom box guy stayed on the platform-- and I no longer felt so frizzy or smelly. I'd always heard about the impact that random acts of kindness can have, and I've even tried to do some on occasion. But in the everyday drudgery of life, it's easy to forget how much a kind word or gesture can affect others. So, flattered and a little bewildered, I vowed to pay it forward before the warm, fuzzy feeling went away.

On my way home, I saw a neighbor toiling outside of the corner restaurant, replacing the fall flowers in the planters with evergreens, in anticipation of winter. "Looking good!" I chirped, smiling as I walked past. When she looked up and pushed her frizzy hair out of her eyes, her brows un-furrowed and a genuine smile spread across her face. I didn't stop to chat, but I did smile back. Then I pulled up the collar of my (fabulous) coat as I turned into the wind to block the rain, and I headed home.

With a Little Help...

2010-10-04T19:57:00.002-05:00

While changing the sheets is a chore for most, in my home it's become a major undertaking. Not only is my queen-sized bed wedged in the corner of my tiny bedroom, I have two little helpers who love nothing more than fresh linens. In what can only be described as a near-Pavlovian response to the unremarkable sound of unfolding fabric, my two enormous tom cats come running into the bedroom and leap on top of a partially unfolded fitted sheet.

So I'll pick one up and dump him on the floor, but by the time I go to pick up the other, the first cat is right back up on the bed. This continues (with alternating cats) until one wanders off of the sheet and onto the mattress pad. I quickly pull the corner of the sheet with the other cat still on top of it, but the sudden movement causes him to pounce on the part that I am trying to stretch around a corner of the mattress, pawing furiously at the folds of fabric.

Once I have two corners secured, I steer my furry helpers toward the already-smoothed out part of the sheet. This allows me to finish attaching the bottom sheet, and puts them in perfect position for what comes next: the top-sheet application. By far their favorite part of the bed-making process, they crouch expectantly as I shake out the flat sheet. As soon as I snap it in the air and let it fall neatly over the mattress, they bound to the center of the bed and wait for the clean-smelling cloth to settle over them. It usually takes me a few tries to align the top sheet with the mattress, and the kitties think this is great fun.

Once the sheet is as even as it can be (with two moving blobs underneath, that is), I'll tuck the excess under the mattress at the foot of the bed, folding the sides into loose hospital corners. The unexplained movement of the mattress tends to spook Iggy, the larger of the two cats, and he'll shoot out from under the sheet and watch the corner-tucking from the doorway a safe distance away. It almost never fails, though, that he is distracted by a moving white blob in the middle of the bed. With a waggle of his haunches, he springs back onto the bed and pounces on the blob (a.k.a. Jack) and a tussle ensues, until the sheet is twisted enough to reveal one cat to the other. If I haven't completely tucked the sheet in before the blob attack, I have to repeat part two of my bed-making process, much to the delight of my fuzzies.

At this point, I usually walk away and do something else for a bit; the sheets aren't nearly as enticing when they're not moving. So once the cats lose interest, I'll sneak back in to straighten out the top sheet and put on the comforter. Since the pillows don't intrigue them, I usually have to add those finishing touches myself.

Without the ritual, without the fanfare, and without the help I get when changing the sheets, I could most likely accomplish this task in two minutes instead of twenty. And although it would be much easier without help, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

TEA PARTY!

2010-09-26T16:52:00.006-05:00

No, I'm not referring to the patriotic East Coast revolutionaries of the 18th century, or the right-wing nut jobs claiming to be their 21st-century counterparts. I'm talking about tea. Loose-leaf tea: black, green, rooibos, oolong, you name it.

I've always been a fan of tea, but having grown up on the iced, unsweetened, Lipton variety, the demonstration and info session I attended during a food tour this summer literally blew my mind. The tour, which started in Chicago's Gold Coast and wound its way through Old Town up to Lincoln Park, took us into a small tea shop just north of the Viagra Triangle.

We each received a 20-ounce cup of an iced cranberry and mango green tea to sip while we listened to the tea guy's spiel. The tea was tasty and the guy was quite knowledgeable... long story short, I fell for his sales pitch... hook, line, and sinker.

First he showed us the contents of a typical tea bag, which is often just tea dust, the disintegrated remnants of crumbled-up tea leaves. Boo! Then he showed us a loose-leaf tea bag, and then loose-leaf tea that had been brewed in a metal tea ball. Which was better than tea dust, but (as I soon learned) still left much to be desired. Then he whipped out a contraption that looked like infomercial fare but sounded divine.

Loose-leaf tea is hard core, and only die-hards are willing to make the effort, right? Not anymore! This little doo-dad demystified loose-leaf tea for me and my fellow foodies-for-a-day. The tea leaves are measured into the plastic pitcher, and the hot water is poured in on top of that. Once brewed to the desired strength, the pitcher is set on top of a tea cup or mug, and the ball bearings on the bottom of the whatsit allow the steeped water to filter down through a sieve and into the cup, while all of the leaves remain inside of the thingie. Cool!

A side-by-side comparison of the tea leaves from the mesh ball and the tea leaves in the nifty pitcher was astounding; the leaves in the pitcher were free to rehydrate to their former size, which was nearly three times the size of the leaves in the ball and the bag. And according to tea guy, these vessels acted as tea "prisons" and wouldn't allow the tea to reach its full brewing potential. This antiquated and barbaric method of brewing loose-leaf teas also prohibited it from achieving its full flavor potential, too.

It wasn't long before I joined in the chants of "free the tea!" and, once the tour was over and we were free to shop, we returned to the Gold Coast and each bought the requisite amount of tea that allowed us to use our 75% off coupon on a thing-a-ma-jig of our very own. I am confident that this was money well spent; I have brewed more loose-leaf tea this summer since, well, EVER. I guess I am officially a card-carrying member of the loose-leaf tea party!

Lost in Translation

2010-09-13T15:39:00.003-05:00

I was sorting through a box of miscellaneous photos this afternoon, and stumbled upon a slip of paper upon which I had written two words: Pharmacy Buddha. Pharmacy Buddha? Eventually I remembered the context in which I originally thought I had heard the phrase; from our personal Chinese tour guide as we were walking through a museum of sorts within either the Lama Temple or The Temple of Heaven in Beijing last fall.

Overly knowledgeable but not-quite fluent, our guide's rapid-fire delivery of historic tidbits, Mandarin pronouns, and trivia information had sent my brain into fact overload on more than one occasion. Adding to my confusion was the utter foreignness of his accent to my Western ear; his pronunciation of some English words sounded quite like other words in our language, albeit with altogether different meanings. I scurried through the Forbidden City on the first day of our trip with a mental note to check his story about the Dragon Lady and her husband's mistress who she fed to a whale, as it sounded eerily familiar to the fate of Jonah (of Biblical fame), until he showed us what he was talking about. Dragon Lady stuffed her husband's mistress down a well, which was still unfortunate, but made a lot more sense.

Even though I don't remember doing so, I must have jotted down "Pharmacy Buddha" as we were peering through the glass at the menagerie of fat, happy, squinty-eyed religious icons on display. He kept referencing the "Pharmacy Buddha", so there must have been some significance to that particular incarnation of the famous deity, but try as I might, I couldn't find any connection between what I was hearing and what I was seeing. None of the figurines was holding a pill bottle or a mortar and pestle or anything, so then I began to wonder whether the ancient Chinese made Buddhas the same way we make Barbies. Barbie-- who, according to Mattel, has had 125 careers and counting-- is a Jane of all trades. So if there is a Pharmacy Buddha, is there not also a Park Ranger Buddha, a Helicopter Pilot Buddha, a Veterinarian Buddha?

A Google search of the phrase turned up quite a few interesting results, but none that even came close to corroborating our guide's story. So what was the significance of the Pharmacy Buddha? Unless one of my religiously diverse friends (with an ear for loosely related cognates) cares to venture a guess, I suppose I'll never know.

To Space or Not to Space?

2010-09-07T20:59:00.002-05:00

It's amazing what a difference a space makes! This Redbox kiosk stopped me in my tracks early this morning. I stopped by Walgreen's on my way to work, and in my defense, I wasn't fully awake, but it took me the better part of a minute to figure out what the instructions were telling me. Had this vending machine of DVD rentals suddenly become multi-functional? Is there even a demand to rent the other item they were suddenly offering? I couldn't imagine that there was... I know first-hand that renting has its perks, but some items are just more practical to own. And, call me crazy, but sunscreen is one of those things I prefer to outright own.

If your neurons haven't already made the same faulty connection that mine did, I've zoomed in on the instructions that had me so confused. It wasn't until after my logical side rejected my too-literal initial thought that I figured out they had labeled the sun screen, the mini-shade that protected the computer screen below from the damaging rays of the sun. Phew. That's apparently too much for this grammarian to process on a Tuesday morning!

Where Have all the Blue Crayons Gone?

2010-08-22T20:57:00.001-05:00

As I near the end of my fifth summer waiting tables at a family-friendly (perhaps overly kid-friendly) neighborhood restaurant, I find myself pondering the crayon situation. Like many restaurants, we provide paper place mats and a four-pack of Crayolas to the under-twelve crowd, a feeble attempt to keep the kids entertained and in their seats in an age where fewer and fewer parents feel responsible for doing this themselves. In recent years, we've made an effort to reuse the crayons we hand out, tossing the unbroken colored wax sticks into little pails, which we loan out and then recollect at the end of each table's meal.

Despite these Crayola conservation efforts, we still lose a fair amount of crayons to the everyday wear and tear of restaurant life. Crayons that have been broken, chewed on, ground into the carpet, or melted under a hot plate or an extended stay on the patio are removed from the rotation and tossed out.

What baffles me, though, is how we always seem to have a shortage of blue crayons. No matter how many times we stock the little pails with fresh crayons, filling each with an equal number of colors, the blue crayons are always the first to disappear. Are blue crayons more susceptible to breaking? Are they used more often than the other colors? Is there a demand for blue crayons on the juvenile black market?

Whatever the reason, all I know is that once the blue crayons are gone, the red and the green aren't far behind. Which leaves us with-- you guessed it-- pails full of yellow crayons. And no kid wants a bucket full of yellow crayons. This is why I've taken it upon myself to oversee the regular stocking of the crayon pails, because there's nothing worse than having a section full of children and a wait list half a page deep and being taken to task by a four-year old because they don't want to color the sky yellow. Not that I blame them, but still.

So in the interest of crayon equality, I encourage children everywhere to use all of the colors equally. Their world will be brighter because of it, and not so blue.

Potato Mashing FAIL

2010-08-14T18:58:00.004-05:00

I don't know what it is about mashing potatoes that is so difficult for me, but I've managed to fail at yet another attempt to recreate this creamy, buttery, All-American comfort food. My troubles with mashed potatoes began back in grad school. Potatoes were cheap, so I ate them frequently. Feeling adventurous, I attempted a basic variation of this dietary staple, using the only tool I had available at the time; an old-fashioned hand mixer. I stuck it in the pot of freshly boiled potatoes, watery milk, and oily margarine, and turned the hand crank. With a "ca-CHUNK", I managed to shoot potato bits all over my gloomy afterthought of a kitchen, leaving little but a milky, buttery gruel in my garage-sale sauce pan.

Fast forward ten years. I have a bright, spacious kitchen, decent culinary skills, full-sized appliances, brand-name pots and pans, and more kitchen gadgets than I know what to do with. Among those gadgets is a bonafide potato masher. It is made by a reputable American company, and this specialized utensil's only purpose is to-- as the name implies-- mash potatoes. So I boiled up a pot of locally grown, farm share potatoes, added fresh cream and pure, unsalted butter, and began to mash.

As I mashed, I noticed with horror that the potatoes weren't blending at all, but rather, aerating--squeezing up through the holes of the specialized gadget in an oddly disturbing shape. Was I making potato worms? No... it was more like... aerated potato turds.

A true Midwestern girl, I like my potatoes any way you slice 'em. Except for, apparently, in turd form. So I quickly abandoned the masher and-- before I had a chance to dwell too much on the sight and gross myself out-- took a fork to the mess. I'll be sticking to baked potatoes from now on, so if any of you are looking for a handy-dandy potato aerator, stay tuned, as it will be available soon in a central-Illinois garage sale near you!

Flakes on a Train

2010-08-05T22:13:00.003-05:00

Having lived in Chicago for the better part of a decade, my view of the city's bright lights and gleaming skyscrapers has dimmed and dulled. Instead of shopping and sightseeing, I spend the better part of most days working and sitting in traffic or on transit. So I couldn't help but smile when I overheard snippets of phone conversations on the Amtrak this morning. I was heading to St. Louis, surrounded by a group of teenage girls from nowheresville, Missouri. They thoroughly enjoyed their trip and were eager to share the highlights with their friends and relatives back home. To the people on the other end of their wireless connection, they gushed:

"The restaurant we went to was so fancy, they actually took reservations!"
"I'm gonna save up my money so that, when I come back, I can rent a Segway!"
"They put an awful lot of stuff on their hot dogs!"
"Cirque Shanghai was more like a show than a circus, cuz it didn't have any animals."
"That car I saw from the Sky Deck was a Transformers car! They're filming the actual movie right in the middle of downtown, and I saw the set!"
"The Macy's stores have multiple floors here! Like, more than two!"
"Did you know that you can see Michigan and Indiana from Navy Pier?"

Ah, how I long to be wide-eyed and wondrous again, to be able to see this city through the eyes of a teenage tourist.

Are YOU Smarter than a 5th Grader?

2010-07-31T21:49:00.003-05:00

Homophone Quiz

Homophone: One of two or more words (such as bear and bare), that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and spelling.

Circle the correct word choice in each of the following sentences:

Warm ups

1. The Cubs one/won their game today!

2. I wish the Sox had been victorious, to/too/two.

3. Will you come here/hear for a minute? I can't here/hear you!

4. No fair/fare! I want to come!

5. Witch/Which way did he go?

Commonly Mistaken Homophones

6. You're/your going to regret wasting time on you're/your day off!

7. There/they're/their meeting on the platform over there/they're/their.

8. Who's/Whose list is this? I want to know who's/whose coming to the party!

9. I stopped by/buy the store to by/buy groceries.

10. Bear/bare in mind that this speaker will probably bear/bare his soul.

These don't even sound the same!

11. I should tighten that lose/loose rope, but I don't want to lose/loose my place in line.

12. I went/when to the store to buy a loaf of bread.

13. Were/Where is the remote?

14. Who/How told you that?

Extra Credit

15. The capital/capitol building is located in Springfield, our state's capital/capitol.

Answers: 1. won 2. too 3. here...hear 4. fair 5. which 6. you're...your 7. they're...there 8. whose...who's 9. by...buy 10. bear...bare 11. loose...lose 12. went 13. where 14. who 15. capitol...capital

Grading: 14-15= A

13= B

12= C

11= D

10 or below= F!

Phonics 101

2010-07-25T21:21:00.005-05:00

I know that, for most of us, grade school was a long time ago. It's hard sometimes to remember basic facts and concepts learned back in the 3rd and 4th grade, like what is the capital of Vermont or how to find the quotient (or the remainder) in long division. The brain rot we experience in these subject areas is largely due to lack of use; when people don't have to apply this knowledge, they are more likely to forget. And with devices like calculators and sites like Google Earth, the answers to the above questions are literally at our fingertips.

What I don't understand, though, is how people can forget the basic concepts of a subject that we use all day, every day? I'm talking about language, people: grammar, phonics, and spelling. It's astounding to me just how often the English language is abused, misused, and bastardized. Just this week, I heard a news story about how the editors of Webster's Dictionary had to add a definition for the word nonplussed, because it is misused with such alarming frequency. The term is basically a fancy word for confused, but most people think it's synonymous with the word unimpressed. So many, in fact, that the dictionary people caved to public pressure.

Also this week, former Alaska governor and current pain in the ass, Sarah Palin, attempted to defend herself against the ridicule she received for using words like "refudiate" and "misunderestimate" in a speech she gave... She did this by comparing herself to Shakespeare... because he liked to coin new words too, you know.

That politicians make up fancy-sounding words in an attempt to sound smarter than they are is nothing new. The latter President Bush made up so many words (like "suiciders" and "strategery") and used them so convincingly, some people started to wonder if it was they who were uninformed, and former Vice President Quayle never did live down his highly publicized misspelling of the word tomato.

So as a service to the general public, I will be posting a worksheet on homophones, and possibly one on punctuation marks as well. Although I'm sure that you, my dear readers, will all pass with flying colors, feel free to pass the upcoming posts on to anyone who demonstrates a need for a refresher course. Like the annoying guy who comments on all your friends' Facebook posts: "I love movie's! There filming one outside my office bldg rite now!" Or a colleague's sister who texts: "The Cubs one today"... get my drift?

So sharpen your #2 pencils, kids-- one phonics quiz, coming right up!

Dear Cilantro

2010-07-19T22:16:00.005-05:00

Please don’t die on me now. You have been so flavorful and delicious in my guacamole, soups, and taco dishes so far this summer, and now that the tomatoes and Serrano peppers are nearly ready to harvest, I can assure you that you have much to live for; the best is yet to come!

I know it’s been unusually warm this week, but if your cousin Parsley can take the heat, you should be able to, too. You’re an herb, for crying out loud, not a pansy! The way you’re wilting and shriveling up, like a fragile little flower, is downright pathetic.

So if you won’t perk up for me, the one who planted you from seed, watered and cultivated you to grow up big and strong, then mixed your rinsed and finely chopped leaves into my favorite Mexican dishes, then do it for Tomato and Pepper; just think of all the beautiful salsas you will make together come August.

The shame you likely feel from the close-cropped pruning job I did is only temporary, I promise. Please know I did it out of love and that, if you’re willing to make the effort, you’ll be sprouting new shoots in no time. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in my neighbor’s compost pile. And don’t tell the others, but you’re the favorite of all my herbs, so I do hope you’ll hang on just a little bit longer. I’m “rooting” for you!

Love,
Allison

My Doppleganger

2010-07-14T22:15:00.015-05:00

I once again shed my everyday image as freelance musician and struggling artist, and emerged from my secret phone booth (a.k.a. the employee bathroom) as Super Server, my not-so-cool alter ego. Like most of the overqualified, creative types posing as wait staff in restaurants all over this city, I can hang with the best of the professional servers in the industry; committing long and modified orders to memory, anticipating a table’s every need without being overly attentive, and keeping my inner monologue a secret to everyone but myself so I never tell a rude or condescending customer what I really think of them.

Every once in a while, though, life will throw me a curve ball that will test the strength of my mental filter, the one that keeps my thoughts from touching my tongue and escaping through my open mouth as a quick retort or hurled insult or any variety of guttural sounds that could potentially get me fired from my menial day job.

About halfway through my shift, I had an older couple from the neighborhood seat themselves at table three. I smiled and waved at them from behind the bar, as I had waited on them before and they have always been quite courteous. I got them drinks and appetizers without incident, and when I set their entrees before them, I cheerily asked if there was anything else they needed. Suddenly, the husband snapped his fingers in a “Eureka!” sort of way, and I looked at him quizzically.

“I’ve been trying all night to figure out who you remind me of,” he started, “and I’ve finally got it!”

I kept smiling, eyebrows raised, waiting to see who I would be compared to this time. A young Sigourney Weaver? Julia Louis Dreyfus from her Seinfeld days?

“You look like a Cocker Spaniel!” the old guy exclaimed triumphantly.

I could feel a flush creeping across my face as his wife hastily backpedaled in his defense, “He means that in a good way, dear! With their curly hair and their big ears, they’re just the cutest little things!”

My teeth were clenched (so I wouldn’t tell him that he looked like a Sharpei), but I kept my smile firmly in place.

“Yes!” he agreed, “I just mean that you’re a very pretty girl."

So I did the only thing that Super Server could do in this situation: I laughed and thanked him -- for telling me that I looked like a dog -- then I walked away.

photo by sweetron1982

The Great Immigration Debate

2010-05-24T22:51:00.003-05:00

It's been a little more than a month now that Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, introduced sb1070, the state law that would give local authorities the power to prosecute and deport offenders that are determined to be illegal immigrants, and the debate over its Constitutionality has only gotten more heated. Everyone in the country seems to have an opinion about Arizona's decision to even propose such a law, and proponents and opponents alike are hardening their stance on the issue, making the likelihood of the two sides coming together for a logical, practical discussion on the matter dwindle with each passing day.

In my humble opinion, however, I don't think either side has a viable solution to the problem that is illegal immigration. And as long as the focus remains on the rights afforded to each individual and not to the problem as a whole, we'll be no closer to a solution five years from now than we were five years ago. The main talking points have all been debated ad nauseum, so I won't bother to rehash tired issues. Instead, I'd like to look back at how immigration issues were resolved in the past. And they were resolved; how often do you hear people complaining about Irish immigrants these days? Or the Chinese?

Common sense and a little historical perspective indicate to me that the solution is twofold: Make it easier for immigrants to come into this country through legal channels and harder for them to come through illegal channels, and help to stabilize the economy and government of the countries from which they emigrate. In almost every case of "problem immigrants", once their home countries were no longer in financial or political turmoil, the mass exodus slowed. I'm not well versed in international affairs, so aside from educating the young (which will theoretically cause a paradigm shift in values over the course of a generation), I'm not sure how to help countries like Mexico help itself. With all the corruption within their government and law-enforcement agencies, and the raging violence spurred by the drug cartels, the situation seems hopeless.

On this side of the border, though, I think we would be better served to go after the businesses and organizations the openly cater to the undocumented residents in our communities. Everyone is looking to the government to change this law or that regulation, but our elected officials are squabbling over every word uttered by the enemy party at the moment, meaning, that they're not making any progress on anything. So what if states did take matters into their own hands? What if, instead of targeting individuals, police officers conducted stings at the car dealerships who sell cars to people who don't have driver's licenses? Or to the Photo I.D. storefronts that openly advertise that they'll make whatever kind of documentation you want, for a fee? Or the employers who don't check Social Security Numbers against the national database? Or who blatantly leave workers off their taxable payroll altogether? Or the landlords who rent three-bedroom apartments to a "family" of 15, despite zoning laws and housing ordinances? You get my drift.

It's not hard to spot the businesses in this city that cater to undocumented residents. A short drive down Western Avenue takes me past half a dozen car dealerships who boldly state: "No licensia? No problema!" Now, Spanish is not a secret language, and even people who don't speak any Espanol should have a pretty good idea of what that means. If a law-abiding citizen like myself were to try and buy a car without a licensia (or seguros-- that's insurance), I can pretty much guarantee you that it would be a big problema!

I'm not trying to take sides, here. In fact, I think both sides make some valid points. All I'm saying is, we already have laws in place on the issues I cited above. If we spent more time enforcing those laws, maybe we'd have less need for new and controversial ones. Enforcement of existing laws would make it infinitely more difficult for someone who is in the country illegally to get a job, rent an apartment, buy a car, and (most of all!) apply for government aid. And without a source of income, mode of transportation, or a place to live, life in the U.S. suddenly doesn't look so appealing.

But until we stop hiring undocumented workers to do the jobs no one else wants to do, start checking the paperwork of each and every person in the welfare line, and cracking down on under-the-table transactions at car dealerships and the like, we-- as a nation-- will continue to support the cause of the illegal immigrant, now matter how inadvertently we may do so. I'm not saying that we need mass deportations or blanket amnesty, I'm just saying that, in order to make any progress, we need to shift the focus away from individuals, and that this is as good a starting point as any. That is all.

Are you listening, Arizona?

The Wright Stuff!

2010-05-17T22:45:00.034-05:00

Not to brag or anything, but I had just about the coolest birthday weekend EVER! My family came up and we crammed a week's worth of activities into a few short days. My favorite event, hands down, was the Wright Plus Tour in Oak Park. Once a year, the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust opens up a number of private residences for a day, and allows architecturally voyeuristic types (like myself) to see the insides of these historically significant residences.

Although some of the homes (like the two Thatcher houses, above) were not built by Wright, they were important for other reasons. All the other architects were either contemporaries or predecessors, and the homes showed either Wright's inspirations for his early works or his influence in later styles.

This Wright home, which was down the street from the second Thatcher house, was not available for viewing, but is significant because it shows how Wright gave his client windows on three sides of every room, which the client believed would help improve the air circulation and decrease the chances of his family catching tuberculosis. I found the TB house to be quite innovative and lovely.

The next Wright home we entered was small, but completely worth the wait. The E. Arthur Davenport house was undergoing a complete gut rehab in the process of being restored to its original glory. The original light fixtures and built-in furniture was stunning, and the highlight of the tour was the information provided by the previous owner, a little old lady who seemed a bit sad to see her and her late husband's improvements being dismantled in the name of preservation.

One of my favorite homes on the tour was in the newly refurbished River Forest Women's Club (William Drummond, 1913) building. This structure was an some architectural endangered species list as recently as 2005, but the people who purchased it not only turned it into a private home, they used LEED designs and energy efficient renovations every step of the way. The transformation is so impressive that the home appeared in yet another magazine last year, because of its eco-friendly renovations. Very cool!

After lunch, we made a brief pass through Wright's home and studio. Although it's cool to see, if pales in comparison to many of the homes he made for other people. His shifting octagonal studio is, by far, the most impressive design in this entire structure.

From there we trekked over to see the Rollin Furbeck House (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1897, pictured below, left) and the Charles F. Lorenzen House (E. E. Roberts, 1908 pictured below, right). Both were stunning and impeccable in both design and decoration.

Because of the lines at some of the homes, and because some of the locations were in River Forest (just west of Oak Park), we missed one of the Frank Lloyd Wright homes on the tour. Our last stop of the day, however, took us to the Frank W. Thomas House (Wright, 1901), which was one of Wright's earliest and most significant Prairie-style homes, and which apparently hadn't been opened to the public in more than 21 years!

Later that weekend, we ventured down to Hyde Park to see the Robie House, (below), which is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Although the architecture was stunning, because of the ongoing renovations at the site, the interior decorations left much to be desired. I would love to revisit this home once the renovations are complete.

Also included in the price of our ticket was admission to Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park. We didn't have time to see the temple this weekend, but the tickets are good for a year, and having been inside the temple once before, I can assure you that it is well worth the return trip!

So if you have even the slightest interest in turn-of-the-century midwestern architecture, I would encourage you to check out the Wright Plus Tour! Tickets for the 2011 event go on sale this October. Be sure to get yours while the getting is good!

Distracted Driving

2010-05-05T22:42:00.002-05:00

It was late Thursday morning, and like most Thursday mornings, I was heading west on I-90, just past the River Road Toll Plaza. I don’t normally do much in the way of people watching on this stretch of my commute, as traffic usually becomes less congested after everyone passes the tollbooth and merges into the appropriate lanes. When I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock on the Kennedy, sure, I’ll look around me and see people doing all sorts of things behind the wheel, but once we’re moving, I return my focus to making sure these distracted drivers don’t crash into me. At times, this can be quite the feat.

However, since I was in a lane that was ending in a quarter mile, I put my turn signal on and glanced to the right. Whizzing by me, at about 70 miles an hour, was a guy in a fancy white Buick who was eating his lunch. Out of a Chinese take-out box… with chopsticks. I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or impressed by this guy, hurtling down the expressway in what may as well have been a projectile missile.

He wasn’t anything like the run-of-the-mill morons I see, who send texts, read the paper, or attempt to apply makeup while they drive. He took the art of distracted driving to a whole new level. The activity that was taking his eyes off the road actually required some talent and a fair amount of manual dexterity! Because if he’s as cool as he seems, surely he’s too cool to drop leftover fried rice onto his tan leather seats.

Meanwhile, I remained uncool yet alert in my ugly maroon Sentra, making sure to steer way clear of the Ultimate Distracted Driver.

The Audition

2010-04-28T22:41:00.004-05:00

In honor of the two-year anniversary of the most unprofessionally run audition of the twenty-first century (thus far), I thought I'd share yet another writing exercise in which I was to describe an event I had been looking forward to, but that didn't turn out as I had expected. Names and locations have been deliberately omitted to protect the innocent.

Of the eight applicants vying for the two open positions in my hometown orchestra, my chances looked good. I was a little upset that I was asked to choose which position I wanted to pursue, as I was planning to audition on both instruments. Assuming that everyone had faced the same dilemma, I chose English horn, as I had been asked to sub on the orchestra's masterworks concert the same weekend, a last-minute call for an extremely difficult piece. I was also thinking that most people would choose to audition on oboe instead of an auxiliary instrument. As it turns out, I was the only one who was asked to audition on one instrument or the other; everyone else (save the college student who didn't have an English horn) was auditioning on both instruments.

Since no one else had to choose between instruments, I tried to get my name back on the oboe audition list that morning, but was told that it was too late, which didn't seem fair. Then the committee decided to separate the auditions instead of having every applicant start on oboe (which is what usually happens), and those they wanted to hear again would return with the English horn in the final rounds. So I sulked in the harshly lit warm-up room I had been assigned and waited for the other seven applicants to finish their oboe auditions. An hour passed. Then another. I started asking questions two-and-a-half hours in, but at that point, they were just moving onto the final round. The screen that separates the candidates from the judging panel is removed during the final round, and musicians are allowed to interact with the committee.

After another 45 minutes of deliberation, the announcement was made that no one played well enough for the Maestra’s liking (I find that hard to believe; there were some great players there!), but that the position would be given by default to the woman who had been awarded the one-year position the season before. After all, she had performed better than all of the other candidates that morning.

Finally, numbers were drawn for the English horn audition. The way rooms were assigned was this: Candidate #1 was placed in warm-up room #1, Candidate #2 (that was me) went into warm-up room #2, and so forth. As I was running over the excerpts that I had been trying not to over practice in the hours before, I heard a knock at the door. The Maestra opened the door and stuck her head in the room.

“Who’s in here?” she asked. I balked, as the first cardinal rule of any legit audition is not to let the committee see any of the applicants before they play.

“Oh,” she said, deflated. “I just needed to use the bathroom. Never mind.” Having practically grown up in that auditorium, I know for a fact there was a bathroom about 20 feet behind where she had been sitting in the auditorium, but I said nothing.

Then I heard a knock at the practice room door next to mine. Through the thin walls, I heard her ask to use the bathroom and she entered the room. Instead of voiding her bladder, however, she proceeded to coach Candidate #1 (who was a finalist from the previous audition, not to mention a great English horn player) on her sound and her playing style. As I listened, thunderstruck, on the other side of the drywall divide, I heard the Maestra tell Candidate #1 that, “this is what I’m listening for. This is how I want this to be played. Do you think you can do that?” Then she left the room and assumed her spot behind the curtain.

Seething, but hoping to remain more professional than the Maestra, I waited until after my audition to approach the personnel manager. I played well, but my focus was shot, as a good portion of my brain was still trying to process what had just happened. I may as well have just left because – lo and behold – Candidate #1 won the gig. Imagine that.

But I still had a concert to play that night. Under the Maestra's woefully unprepared baton. And I couldn't no-show; the orchestra and the soloist would have been just as affected (possibly more so) by my absence as the Maestra. So I stayed and played. I'd like to think I played well enough to make her regret her decision (not that I wanted to play for her again... EVER... in fact, I told the personnel manager to forget my name and lose my number before I left the audition that afternoon). Although I took the high road that night, I also took great satisfaction in reporting her to the Union the following week.

Fortunately, the universe has a way of righting wrongs. I won't go into the specifics of what has happened since, except to tell the Maestra that karma is a bitch, what goes around comes around, etc. etc. etc.

Rocky on Rockwell?

2010-04-23T22:39:00.003-05:00

I live close to an el stop – as in, if I fell out my living room window, I would be on the el tracks, close – and can see the station from my kitchen window. I like to people watch when I'm cooking or washing dishes, and more than once (okay, quite a bit), I’ve spied a well-dressed guy at the station, whose faded navy Jansport backpack doesn’t quite go with his creased slacks and colorful ties. He catches the 2:48 train toward the Loop, arriving shortly before it arrives. In fact, he has his departure timed so well, that he strides confidently onto the platform, walks directly past the recycling box, the pay phone, and the other commuters, and drops his old Jansport onto a bench about halfway down the platform.

He then drops and does exactly 15 pushups – the manly kind, with an extra-macho clap of his hands between each one – as the train approaches. He somehow always manages to complete all fifteen just as the train rolls to a stop. He leaps up, assumes a very Rocky-esque stance, throwing his clenched fists into the air victoriously as he grunts, “YEAH!” Then he slings that dirty blue backpack over his freshly pressed shirt and boards the fourth car of the Brown Line train.

The Pee Party

2010-04-12T21:34:00.007-05:00

I thought about calling this the Tale of Two Toddlers, but this time, it's not the wee ones who have me steamed, it's their parents. I got to work this morning and was handed a wet booster seat. A little girl at one of my tables had wet her pants. It was gross, but she was crying and her mother was horrified, and hey-- it happens. I carried the soiled booster off to the side, hosed it down, doused it with bathroom cleaner, and left it to dry. What bugged me, though, was that the family decided to stay and finish their lunch, even though the little girl was wet and still crying. She sat in her own filth for another half an hour or so! This seemed cruel to me, but I'm not a parent, so what do I know?

The rest of the morning shift went off without a hitch. I took a break and ate a late lunch, and no sooner did I clock back in and walk out onto the patio do I see another little girl trying to get her parents' attention. She was out of her high chair doing the pee-pee dance, tugging on her mother's sleeve and saying "mommymommymommymommymommymommymommy". Mommy was ignoring her, and before I could cross the sidewalk to alert this negligent parent to her child's urgent need, the little girl squats and pees all over the patio. The parents were still oblivious.

Since it was no longer an emergency, I said nothing, because I didn't know how to nicely tell someone that, because they weren't tending to the needs of their child, the child had just gone number one all over the patio. I couldn't help but smirk, though, when the dad absently picked up the little girl (in order to shut her up) and put her on his knee. His pant leg got soaked, and he paid attention then! So he told his wife, and then they laughed! They, too, decided not to leave right away, but let their child stand in her wet, soiled clothes as they finished their drinks. These parents, unlike the ones from lunch, made no attempt to clean up after their child, and when they left, they giggled as they carefully skirted the puddle next to their table. I made a point of shooting them a nasty look as I hosed off the patio seconds after they had gotten up.

So to all the bad parents out there, let me say this: Public urination is not cute, and it's not funny; it's a misdemeanor. And, when done at a restaurant, it's also a health code violation. So if your child is potty training, if you're not willing to be extra vigilant about their not-so-subtle hints about needing to go when you're out in public, then put a diaper on them until you get home. If you want, you can let them pee on your kitchen or dining room floor instead. But it's not my fault that you procreated, so it shouldn't be my responsibility to clean up after your offspring. At least not in that capacity. That is all.

Floor 2.5

2010-04-09T21:36:00.006-05:00

Did you know that Millennium Park is one of the largest rooftop gardens in the country? Below this stage, the Pritzker Pavillion, the building and its adjacent parking garages extend another 7 floors below the Earth. In addition to parking, you'll find offices, practice and rehearsal rooms, auditoriums, public restrooms, and even a pedestrian walkway to the red line/blue line subway under Millennium Park! But first, you'll have to figure out how to get into this architectural freak of nature. And be warned: the floor plan of this building is just as convoluted as its rooftop is spectacular.

Having been inside the belly of the Pritzker Pavillion for auditions numerous times before, I wisely left myself some extra time to find the Harris Theater. I stepped off the train more than a half hour before rehearsal was slated to start and checked the info sheet that the personnel manager had emailed me just days before. All it said was:

Friday Rehearsal 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Harris Theater

201 E. Randolph Street

I went to the main entrance of the Harris Theater of Dance only to find it locked. The next door I found led to an underground parking garage, so I trotted around to the back of the building and tried the entrance I had used to get to my auditions. It was also locked. I walked the entire perimeter of the building, and could not find a way in. So I walked back around to the park side and found a janitor sweeping in front of the restrooms. He told me to enter through the parking garage, which seemed weird. So I retraced my steps, and along the way, I asked a maintenance guy, a random French hornist (who I hoped was going to the same rehearsal-- he wasn't), and a cop on a Segway how on earth I was supposed to get into the building.

Segway cop finally told me to take the parking garage elevators to floor 2.5 (I really hoped he wasn't joking, since, by this time, rehearsal was starting in 10 minutes) and to ask the first person I encountered in the concrete maze below how to get to the Theater from there. So I stepped off the elevator and followed the stark cinder block hallways around three sudden corners before I stumbled on a security desk.

Overcome with relief, I told the woman behind the desk what I was there for, and asked her to direct me to the rehearsal. She told me to follow the wide concrete hallway around two more corners and down a half flight of stairs, where I would find the Harris Theater.

I opened a heavy set of double doors and stepped on stage, but instead of hearing the familiar sounds of an orchestra warming up, I heard a power saw. Rehearsal was starting in two minutes, and it certainly wasn't in here. Power saw guy spotted me at the edge of the orchestra pit, looking bewildered, and asked me where I was trying to go. When I told him, he nodded knowingly, as if I wasn't the first person who had wandered into a dark theater looking for something that wasn't there.

So I followed his instructions and passed through the heavy velour stage curtains, stepping gingerly over a river of cables and wires, and opened the steel door he had described to find... a mess of rope pulleys for the curtains through which I had just passed. I was just about to retrace my steps to ask him again when I spied it; another steel door, barely visible behind some metal scaffolding. I carefully made my way over there, trying to avoid the sandbags that were holding the curtain ropes in place.

This door opened up into another nondescript hallway and, thankfully, not a closet. So as I crossed the threshold from backstage, the sounds of my own footsteps were quickly replaced by what was at that time (10:03 to be exact) the most glorious noise I'd ever heard; the cacophony of string players warming up their instruments with freshly rosined bows.

Running now, I bolted toward the sound and threw open yet another set of double doors at the end of the hallway and found the errant orchestra. I arrived frazzled and out of breath, but I beat the conductor to the room, so I hastily assembled my oboe and was prepared to give the tuning note with about 3 seconds to spare.

Once rehearsal was over, I packed up quickly and followed the regulars out a side door, which led to a green room and a set of elevators. Although it had taken me nearly 35 minutes to get into the building, it took me only a minute and a half to get out. If I'm ever called to sub with this group again, I'll be sure to request a map next time.

Bad Names for Street Gangs

2010-03-23T21:35:00.002-05:00

Okay, so this started out as a writing exercise, too, but it makes me giggle, so I thought I'd share some of my favorites.

Bad Names for Street Gangs
*The Snitches
*The Honor Rollers
*The Peter Pansies (We don't wanna grow up!)
*The Baby Daddies
*The Missed Opportunities
*The Convicts in Training
*The Pontificating Punks
*The Vernacular Verse-ologists
*The Bad Apples
*The Sick Puppies
*The Mug Shots

There were plenty of others, but weeding out the offensive, the uncreative, and the downright awful was all part of the process. I'm not sure how useful or relevant this was to me personally, but it was still kind of fun. Feel free to tell me your favorite or to add your own!

Excuses, Excuses!

2010-03-16T21:34:00.002-05:00

These are some of my favorite "reasons" students have given me as to why they missed/can't come to their lessons and couldn't possibly have cancelled in advance (and yes, I still charged them. Every last one of them):

... I didn't know today was Wednesday (or Thursday, or whatever day is lesson day)
... I forgot my oboe/reed/music/money. To which I respond by loaning them mine (except, of course, the money. That I keep.) Nothing like risking an aneurysm on a reed that is way too hard or carpal tunnel holding oboe that is way too heavy to remind a kid to bring their own the next time!
... I went to McDonald's with my friends for lunch.
... I have to finish eating my orange!
... I had a doctor's appointment/badminton game/field trip. Didn't my friend/the band director/other random person tell you? [Nope! It's not their responsibility to do so!]
... I had to watch my brother jump a car battery in the parking lot. [me: Why? Did you help? them: Uh, no. me:*shaking head sadly*]
... I didn't practice so I figured I shouldn't come. Thanks for not wanting to waste my time, but to actually not waste my time, you should cancel your lesson!
... I was totally going to tell you, but my Internet has been down, and I like, lost your number, and my mom forgot to call your other number, and...

The list could go on and on. It would be funny if it weren't so sad... ah, how I long for the day when I no longer have to rely on high school students for my primary source of income!

The Toast (Writing Prompt #17)

2010-03-04T21:29:00.011-06:00

Photo by nlmAdestiny

"No, I'm not jealous; no, I'm not bitter; and no, I don't wish it was me."

I had only meant to set the record straight, delivering a confident, one-sentence response to those well-intentioned folks who had been coming up to me all weekend, giving me apologetic looks and shaking their heads sadly as they murmured such meant-to-be-encouraging phrases as: "there, there" and "your day will come."

Instead-- and much to my mother's horror-- that misplaced self-affirmation became the opening line of my maid-of-honor toast.

It was my sister's wedding-- my younger sister, who married young. Apparently, that made me look bad. But I wasn't about to accept my perceived role as her spiteful older sibling, well on the way toward spinsterhood-- I was 27, for crying out loud!

Informed less than 48 hours before the ceremony that I was expected to speak, I frantically began brainstorming toast ideas that weren't entirely cliché. I had a vague idea that I wanted to speak from an older sister's point of view, highlighting how she-- and our relationship-- had grown and changed over the years.

Instead, as I stood in front of more than 200 friends and relatives and catering workers in a strapless cinnamon dress with ruching on the side, I began citing example after socially crippling example of the familial injustices I faced growing up, and how my sacrifice is a big part of the reason her childhood went as well as it did.

I suppose I should preface the contents of my speech by saying that my sister is the pretty one, the popular one. She's always been well-liked, by teachers, friends, boys, you name it, and-- like most babies of the family-- she had coasted through the early years of her life with relative ease.
I guess, by default, that makes me the smart one, or maybe the funny one. Growing up, my job as the oldest sibling was to break our parents in for each new life stage or milestone we reached as we got older. I was their test run; if I played by the rules and managed not to screw things up too badly, it automatically earned my little sister the right to do the same thing I had just begged, cajoled, and pleaded to be able to do. Only, because of the age difference, she got to do it three years sooner, and without tribulation. Apparently, I was still a bit jealous of this fact.

I think, at one point, I even uttered the words "Mom and Dad like you best!" Yes, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I did.

As I recounted the whole pierced ears debacle (I would never have been allowed to get my ears pierced in kindergarten!), the day I was finally allowed to shave my legs (with a friend, under close supervision, and only up to the knee... I was in 7th grade!), and how I adhered to a 9:00 p.m. curfew until almost my senior year in high school, only to witness my sister burst onto the scene and be allowed to stay out late and go to school dances-- with dates!-- I realized that this speech was quickly going the way of the Cain and Abel analogies offered up by the groom's younger brother in his Best Man toast.

Even though I had a captive audience and I was getting some laughs (probably at my expense), and even heard a smattering of applause here and there, I knew I had to right the ship, and quick. So I tried to mention some of the battles she fought once I went off to college, like bringing the boys to family functions, which is something that scares me to this day. I also had to give her some major credit for choreographing the big, traditional wedding with the flowers, the froofy dresses, and the floating-candle-and-cranberry centerpiece things, because that's a battle I simply wouldn't have won.

In closing, I told her and my new brother-in-law that, if they could scrounge up a grandkid or two in the next few years, we'd call it even.

Although I'm told that my impromptu speech was memorable, if I had to do it all over again, I think that, next time, maybe I should use some notes.

The Banker Behind the Curtain

2010-02-28T21:28:00.002-06:00

An unintended casualty of a failed bank, I opened an envelope from the national bank that had usurped the assets of the local financial institution where I opened a checking account upon moving to Chicago nearly seven years before. I had to read the letter within twice, because I simply couldn't believe what I was reading. It claimed that the deposit of cash and local checks I made on a Thursday still wasn't available for withdrawal the following Wednesday, which is when I had scheduled a number of payments to be made. And unlike my old bank, which never charged for withdrawals made from an account which had sufficient (but not yet available) funds, my new bank socked me with $35 per transaction, and charged interest for every day I didn't rectify the problem. They started charging interest on Thursday, the letter came Saturday afternoon. By the time I got to the bank Monday morning, I was on my fifth day of interest and fuming.

Deciding to give my new bank the benefit of the doubt, I sat down to speak with a banker, prepared to chalk the entire incident up to one big misunderstanding. I asked why my money wouldn't have been available an entire week after I made the deposit, explained that I would have taken care of the misunderstanding sooner had I known, and asked if there was anything that they could do. She tried to tell me it took local checks 2-3 days to clear, when the sign on her desk clearly read 1-2 business days. Then she told me she didn't know, then she told me that I had overdrawn my account. None of these things were true.

I argued that, if Takeover Bank was going to handle fees differently than Failed Bank, account holders should have been notified of these changes. Furthermore, if Takeover Bank was going to charge interest on overdrawn accounts, they should notify customers instantaneously by phone or email. Even the teller who made my deposit the day before I received the overdraft letter could have mentioned that my deposit was not enough to cover all the money that the bank had pulled out of my account.

The Deceptive Banker said she would talk to her boss for me. She disappeared, then came back a few minutes later, saying that they would reverse the charges for all but one NSF fee and one day of interest. I updated my check register, but still wasn't getting the same total that she was. I asked two or three times if I had forgotten to record a withdrawal or if there were other charges on my account that I didn't know about. She assured me there was nothing missing from my records and convinced me that I just needed a calculator. I would have preferred them to have reversed all the charges, but decided that was fair, thanked Deceptive Banker for her time, and left.

The next day, another envelope from Takeover Bank appeared in my mailbox. With a combined sense of foreboding and deja vu, I open the letter to discover that I had in fact been socked with twice as many fees as Deceptive Banker had claimed, fees which had been posted to my account days before my meeting with her. She was aware of the charges, even though I was not, and failed to disclose these charges to me even when I asked her directly.

I spent the next couple of weeks calling the bank, trying to speak with the branch manager, but to no avail. I kept getting transferred back to Deceptive Banker, who told me that she'd tell her boss that I "didn't understand" what she had told me, and if he "felt like" reversing more fees, he would. And if he didn't "feel like it", then I was out of luck.

After another week of calling and getting the run around from the branch manager-- the Banker Behind the Curtain-- who flat out refused to speak with me, an exasperated receptionist finally patched me through to the teller manager. She was very kind and took the time to look up my deposit and answer my questions, but when I asked her to honor the amount that Deceptive Banker told me I had been charged, she went right back to the root of my problems.

Not surprisingly, Deceptive Banker changed her story, and the kind teller manager relayed the Banker Behind the Curtain's decision to refund one more day of interest to placate me. I was not placated, and asked once more to speak to the Great Oz directly, because what they were doing was dishonest. She told me (albeit apologetically) that the Wizard's decision was final, and there was nothing more she could do.

At this point, I'm far more steamed about the way Takeover Bank has handled this entire debacle than I am about the charges themselves. And as for the Banker Behind the Curtain-- if he can't make the time to talk to little old me, maybe he'll be able to clear some time in his busy day of cheating, then hiding from, customers to talk to a representative from the OCC, which received my formal complaint against Takeover Bank this morning.

Uncle Al (Writing Prompt #13)

2010-02-17T16:03:00.009-06:00

If you were to be the main character of a fairy tale, nursery rhyme, or a myth, who would you be? How would the story character be the same of different than what you know?

"Uncle Al, the kitties' pal," my dad used to say to the young, precocious child I used to be, who continually tried to rescue worms from a mud puddle, baby birds from the flower bed, not to mention -- of course -- the more domesticated menagerie of strays I longed to take under my little wing.

"What a great title for a nursery rhyme!" I used to think, imagining a tale of a benevolent, kindhearted soul -- not a prince, because they have princesses and not kitties -- but maybe a duke or an earl, who had a house and yard full of loving and grateful furry charges. Surely his good deeds were known throughout the land, and some clever use of anthropomorphism would bring his fuzzy and winged friends to life.

And his name was Al -- my name is Al!

I never knew the rest of the rhyme, but I longed to hear how Uncle Al and his kitties all lived happily ever after! As I outgrew the allure of fairy-tale references, though, my urge to find the rest of the story waned.

But it never disappeared entirely. I finally figured out who Uncle Al was, and as it turns out, his fairy-tale image was anything but. Uncle Al was not a duke, he was a clown, which frankly, is about the creepiest profession an uncle could have. And he wasn't the kitties' pal, he was the kiddies' pal (which is something else entirely) on some 70s T.V. show that I'm not quite old enough to remember.

Well, Mother Goose, you really dropped the ball on this one! So as not to let a title with such a nice cadence (and connotations) go to waste, allow me to offer up a verse or two on this magnanimous character about whom you neglected to write.

Uncle Al, the kitties' pal

Was known throughout the land.

While his felines purred,

to injured birds

He lent a helping hand.

Or how about...

Uncle Al, the kitties' pal

Was good and kind and nice.

The cats were content

but not the mice;

they paid a heavy price.

Or something like that. I'm a writer, but I never claimed to be a poet!

The Easter Egg Hunt (Writing Prompt #5)

2010-02-08T14:42:00.004-06:00

Take a holiday and write about that gathering from the point of view of you as a small child.

I see a pink one! There, in the grass! And there's a yellow one in the wood pile! Ooh, the green one under the bush was hard to see, but I found it before the big kids did!

Easter is my favorite day to be at Grandma and Grandpa's house, because my cousins and I get to have an Easter egg hunt. I'm old enough to know that it's not the Easter Bunny who hides those eggs, it's my dad and my aunts and uncles, but they hide zillions of plastic eggs all over the yard; by the creek, in the barn, throughout the garden, and even in the trees. I don't like having to wait in the kitchen with my cousins, but Grandma says that it's cheating to look out the windows in the other rooms to try and see where the eggs are being hidden before the hunt begins.

We each get an egg carrier, a pink, yellow, or blue Styrofoam carton made especially to hold eggs, and when we fill it up we have to come back to the house to get a new one. The little eggs have candy in them, but there's a big blue egg out there for each of us cousins. The best thing about the big eggs is that they have our names on them. The worst thing is that they don't have candy in them, just money. Those big eggs could hold a lot of candy, but I guess money is okay, too.

Some of the eggs are easy to find. They're just lying on the ground in a tall bit of grass. Some are a little harder; we have to open the mailbox or look up high in the tree branches or kneel down to look under the cars. And some are so hard to find that even the grown ups don't remember where they hid them. Those eggs we usually find in the summer when we're out looking for snakes instead.

Once we find all but the very hardest eggs, we open all of our eggs and dump the candy into a big Ziploc bag that we get to take home. We can't keep the eggs, though, because then there would be none left for the next time. We eat some of our candy right away, and mom puts the money from the big blue egg in her purse. I wish we could have an Easter egg hunt every time we go out to Grandma and Grandpa's house, because it's my favorite thing to do.

I've Got a Crush...

2010-02-06T15:36:00.016-06:00

... on Bobby! This handsome devil (who you may recognize as the gorgeous cover boy of Tree House's Fall/Winter newsletter) has been at the shelter for going on three years now, and I can't for the life of me figure out why no one has snatched him up yet. He's spunky, playful, and energetic. He's always the first in line for treats, and he delights staff and visitors alike with his clever playtime tricks. He loves attention, and-- for the most part-- gets along well with other cats. And have I mentioned that he's gorgeous? His sleek black coat complements his big green eyes, eyes that are round and inquisitive, and that give him a perpetual look of feigned innocence. That very look has gotten him out of trouble on countless occasions-- he just fixes that imploring gaze on anyone who is less than delighted by his antics, as if to say, "who, me?"-- and all is promptly forgiven.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that, when it comes to Bobby, I may be a wee bit biased-- I am one smitten kitten, after all-- and I've always had a thing for "bad boys". Not that Bobby is bad-- he's great! But his exuberant personality and rambunctious nature quickly earned him the reputation of being "overstimulated" (a term given to cats who don't always show their excitement in ways that we humans like or understand), and some went so far as to call him a "jerk". I couldn't disagree more! I suspect that the people who think he doesn't play nice are objecting to his claws, and not his personality. Those long, thin, carefully filed talons are his pride and joy, and he won't let just anyone trim his nails. He doesn't use them maliciously, but they sometimes get in the way; people whose hands are too close to the toy with which he is playing may inadvertently get scratched. He loves toys on a string that fly through the air, or balls that hop and skitter across the floor; for those who like to keep their paws just as manicured as he does, these toys are a safe bet.

Bobby was barely a year old when I first met him, a full-grown cat who was still a kitten at heart. When he rough-housed, he was merely testing his limits, and he now knows how far others are willing to go when they play with him. If he wants to play rough, he lets his playmates know by swiftly flicking his tail, giving them time to decide whether they want the play session to continue. He's done a lot of growing up since then (he is nearly four years old!) and he's also watched a lot of roommates come and go. So if at first glance Bobby seems aloof or indifferent, don't let his too-cool-for-school demeanor fool you-- it's just a facade. He's like the stereotypical "bad boy" in those romantic dramas for teens: the handsome, brooding type who wears a leather jacket and drives a motorcycle and smokes cigarettes under the bleachers. The teachers may not like him, and he looks like a troublemaker from a distance, but as soon as people get to know him, they discover he has a heart of gold. That's Bobby!

I'm admitting my kitty crush here in hopes of alerting more people to this absolute gem of a cat, this diamond in the rough. If there was any way I could afford to have another cat, I would have taken Bobby home years ago, but Bobby deserves to have a home long before I'll be able to provide one for him. He's waiting to meet someone who can see just how charming he really is, someone who isn't afraid to cut his nails, and someone who, like me, loves him because of-- and not in spite of-- that mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Will that lucky someone be you?

When Bobby is finally adopted (and I know he will be!), I will miss him terribly. I look forward to seeing him every week, but not nearly as much as I look forward to seeing his name on the colorful dry-erase board that lists recent adoptions. While every adoption is special, I suspect that Bobby's name will be surrounded by the hearts and exclamation points and smiley faces reserved for the extra-special adoptions of long-time, senior, or special-needs cats. In fact, I will likely put many of the hearts up there myself.

*Written as a contribution to The Scratching Post*

Writing Prompts: Attempt #2

2010-01-29T13:31:00.009-06:00

I'm really geeked about the essay writing class I'm taking-- an eight-week course that started on Monday. In addition to reading published essays, learning more about the form and structure of the genre, and critiquing our classmates' compositions, I found out that we will be given multiple writing prompts-- one in-class and one take-home prompt per week-- brief exercises meant to provide ideas, trigger memories, and create fodder for future essays. I'm not usually good at writing on command or working against the clock, but I was pretty impressed by what I was able to hammer out in 10 minutes, and on just my second attempt!

The prompt was to write about a treasured childhood object, and to describe why it was important and whether I still have it in my possession. The first thing that came to mind was a giant stuffed husky dog that I named King (after my neighbor's vicious German Shepherd, who I wanted-- more than anything-- to be able to pet). I apologize in advance if my memories are a little bit fuzzy, on account that half of the essay took place back when I was a toddler, but I'm excited that I was able to structure the essay as well as I did, in such a short amount of time. It's not a bad story, either, so here you go!

When I first got King, he stood almost as tall as I did. He wasn't the real dog I wanted, but he was the next-best thing, and as soon as I saw the life size, gray-and-white husky tucked behind the Christmas tree, I was in love. I dragged him around by his fluffy curved tail the way some kids tote a security blanket; when not in tow, he sat faithfully by my bedside, pink felt tongue lolling out of his furry, toothless mouth. I loved that dog to pieces. Literally. When I finally split his seams (from sitting on him like he was a pony) my mom promised to sew him back up for me. He was added to the sewing pile in the back of the closet-- a pile which, sadly, grew as I grew.

I had all but forgotten about my faithful stuffed companion until years later, when I was home on break from college. I noticed an ad in the paper announcing that the "Teddy Bear's Clinic" was coming to the local zoo, stitching up the seams and reattaching the limbs of the well-loved, stuffed animals of children everywhere. I practically leaped out of my chair and set my alarm to get up early the next morning; I was taking King to the "vet". My mother, horrified, kept protesting that I couldn't go-- I was 22!-- but I didn't care.

When I woke up the next morning, however, I couldn't believe my eyes. King was sitting in the dining room-- glass eyes cloudy with age and his coat grimy with dust, and he leaned a little to the left-- but he was intact. As it turns out, my mother rescued him from the sewing projects pile in the closet and stayed up the better part of the night to make good on her decades-old promise to me, and to avoid the embarrassment of having her grown child go stand in line with a bunch of six-year-olds, waiting to be reunited with a lifelong friend.

I think this prompt-writing exercise will be kind of fun, although I'm having a much harder time with my take-home prompt, which is to describe a dinner conversation between myself and a (deceased) celebrity. What would we talk about and what would each of us order? Huh. I'd love to have dinner with Leonard Bernstein, but aside from wanting him to be alive, 60 years younger, unmarried, and straight (so I could go on a date with him!) I don't really know what else I should say! Stay tuned, though... I just might figure it out... and if any of these future prompt-writing exercises turn out well, I just might post them, too.

ICE STORM: 2010

2010-01-20T13:30:00.000-06:00

Or should the title of this post be: "The Meteorologists who Cried Wolf"? That's certainly a more fitting description of the apocalyptic forecasts that cut into regular broadcasts as "breaking news" and "developing stories"; when will these local news stations come to the realization that weather forecasts are usually not that interesting, and to sensationalize things like precipitation as much as they do really only does more harm than good?

I'm not sure when this edgy, hardcore style of weather forecasting came into vogue exactly, but I'm guessing it started around the same time those 24-hour news and weather channels began appearing on cable. I know there are people out there who can watch the Weather Channel for hours; they're absolutely mesmerized by the 10-minute loop of local, regional, and national forecasts. I, for one, am not one of them. In fact, meteorologists, the less you have to report, the more I tend to like you!

The study of weather is generally not that exciting, and for the life of me, I can't imagine why newscasters are trying to make it exciting. Here in Chicago, for example, snowfall should not be breaking news. Unless we're about to be blanketed in two feet of the stuff-- during rush hour, coupled with 45-mile-per-hour winds-- then save it. There is no need to trump the real news of the day by reporting-- live, from outside the studio-- that it is in fact snowing, or send some rookie reporter to go stand on an overpass so they can confirm that-- live, from the suburbs-- it's snowing there, too. I can look out my window and figure that out!

I know some of the national news agencies like to send meteorologists to the beach to report from the eye of a hurricane or to a corn field in the path of an oncoming tornado to spice up the weather reports and increase ratings. That is also stupid. It is not cutting-edge journalism, it is foolhardy and dangerous, because even the best meteorologist is wrong a fair amount of the time... If only my job(s) allowed even half as much room for error... But back to the latest forecast, which ranged from copious amounts of freezing rain, dangerous ice accumulations, and nightmarish commutes... none of you Chicagoland meteorologists were even close! Maybe that was true in IOWA, but if you wanted to milk your on-air time like that, you should have gone and filled in on an affiliate station over there!

That's why Tom Skilling is my guy; he doesn't get all doomsday over every little upper-air disturbance. He tells it like it is, gets it right more than any of the rest of you, and we can all get on with our day. My only beef with him is that he gets so involved with tracking jet streams and explaining the composition of cumulo-nimbus clouds that-- by the time he gets to the actual forecast-- I've tuned out and have to wait around for another 20 minutes to catch the 7-day at the end of the news broadcast.

So the next time you all decide to forecast the "storm of the century", you had better be able to justify your radical predictions. You're losing your credibility with viewers (like me!), and I'll kindly thank you to quit freaking me out, especially on the days when I have to drive all over the suburbs. And if you aren't already familiar with the children's story about the boy who cried "wolf", I suggest you pick up a copy. I think you'll find it a fascinating read. Oh, and while you're at it, try to see if you can figure out a way to apply the moral of the story to your professional lives... it'll give you something to do on the days (like today!) when there's not much to report from the weather center.

GET OUTTA MY WAY!

2010-01-13T22:35:00.004-06:00

That's how my turbo-kick class started; its theme song, if you will. Yes, you read that correctly. After about 6 months of watching from afar (a.k.a. the elliptical), I decided to bite the bullet and try the cardio-kickboxing class offered by my neighborhood gym. It looked intense, but seemed to require slightly less coordination than the confounding zumba classes I attended with a friend in the fall. And besides, with all the resolutioners clogging up the gyms this time of year, this would be as good a time as any to start, because surely there'd be other first-timers there. And with so many newbies, they'd have to explain some of the moves, right?

Wrong. I listened to the Pilates instructor give the class before mine a five-minute lecture on how to properly stretch out your hamstring, but as soon as the mats were rolled up and we took our places on the over-crowded floor, the music started blasting and away we went. In a matter of seconds, I found myself frantically trying to mimic the seriously buff (and overly aggressive) instructor; kicking, punching, and weaving my way through one seriously high-energy workout.

She was calling out instructions: "Hook! Jab, cut!" and "Kick it back! Knee it up!" and I had no idea what any of it meant. I was all: monkey-see, monkey-do. When the percussive song "Get outta my way" (with lyrics along the same vein) came on, she roared, "Windmill!", and began flailing her arms and legs, kicking and punching and hitting whatever imaginary obstacle was in her way. While she looked formidable, I looked like a damn fool.

I came home and immediately looked up the different punches. I'm doing my homework on this because I plan on going back tomorrow (and because I don't want to hurt myself). The workout was hard but fun; I can see how people swear it's addicting, but I can also see how the numbers of participants will thin out dramatically in the next few weeks. I'm in pretty good shape (even though I don't look it right now) and was able to hang; I didn't get all of the moves, but I was able to keep moving. I can't say the same for the gaggle of wheezing, middle-aged Hispanic ladies behind me; one was halfheartedly punching the air while trying to talk on her cell phone, and another disappeared into the locker room after about 10 minutes.

Is this something new and different for me? Most definitely. Was I sore the next day? You betcha. Will I stick with it? Schedule permitting, yes! And next time, all you insincere resolutioners, you had better GET OUTTA MY WAY, cuz I'm kicking butts and taking names!

My New-Found Resolve

2010-01-04T21:45:00.002-06:00

As people around the country are making their 2010 resolutions (and making every effort not to break them in the first week of this shiny new decade), I've decided to broaden my scope. Sure, I'd love to lose weight and make more money and find love and get out of debt; that's nothing new. And to place so many expectations on something as arbitrary as the dawn of a new year seems a little ludicrous-- I think I'd only be setting myself up for failure. So I've instead resolved to change my circumstances, by making smaller changes that will (hopefully) have a larger impact, in hopes of striking a better balance in my life. The plan is simple enough, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, once this balance is achieved, all my hopes and dreams will just fall into place behind it, like ducks in a row.

For starters, I hope to strike a better balance between work and play. I won't beat myself up for not managing to cross off everything on my ambitious to-do lists at the end of each day, because all work and no play makes... well, you know. Once I know all my commitments for spring semester, I plan to schedule one day of rest, and quit trying to work around the clock-- even God took a day off now and then! Some of the specific things I plan to strive for in my quest for this balance include:

Practicing and/or working out six days a week. There aren't always enough hours in the day to do both, and that's not my fault! See above for my plans for day seven.
Make more time for social activities. That one will be easy and fun! I've already got a number of things planned for this month, so I'm off to a good start.
Write more. I want to update my blogs once a week (at least) and submit more articles for possible publication. You can help me on this one-- keep reading, and I'll keep writing!
Read one book a month. I used to read voraciously, and got out of the habit in grad school (a.k.a. when I started trying to build Rome in a day)... I miss it, and think one book a month is a completely reasonable goal.
Continue with my recipe-a-week resolution from 2009. Not all of the recipes I tried were winners, but I enjoyed it enough that I'd like to continue filling my recipe box!

The other area of my life that needs reconciling is the way I interact with others, or (more specifically) the experiences and encounters I have with (and because of) the people around me. I need to get better at holding my ground without backing down or losing my temper, and to rid my life of the people and relationships that are weighing me down (literally and figuratively). To accomplish this, I plan to surround myself with more positive people and experiences by:

Reconnecting with good friends who I've lost touch with over the years.
Letting go of past hurts and old grudges.
Distancing myself from people who drag me down.
Stop investing time and effort into one-sided friendships.
Learning to say "no" more often. (I've already gotten a good jump on this one, too!)

So there you have it. My new-found resolve. Is it an ambitious list? Of course! Can I accomplish everything I'm setting out to do? Only time will tell. But for now, I'm leaving the messes of 2009 in the past where they belong, and looking ahead to a bright new year, where the misadventures of my life are yet to be written. Happy new year one and all!

The Mutant Santa Brigade

2009-12-29T19:17:00.011-06:00

I enjoy Christmas decorations, I really do. I'm not wild about the decorating part, but once they're up, I find the decor to be quite enjoyable. However, while I was in high school, I began to notice a disturbing trend among the Santa Claus ornaments and figurines that adorned our house. These aren't just your run-of-the-mill Santas... many of them are missing appendages, and some are in compromising positions. Some of them creep me out, while others just cause me to scratch my head. The collection has grown considerably over the years, and I am amazed that there is actually a market for mutant Santa Clauses out there. I'd like to introduce you to a few of these St. Nicks, and let you form your own opinions about them. Above we have the cheer leading (nutcracker?) Santas, and pictured below, from left to right, we have:

1. Leprechaun Claus ... he's clearly got his holidays mixed up ... what do you suppose he's packing in that shamrock bag of his?

2.Two-faced Santa ... It's no wonder the guy's omniscient-- he's got more than just eyes in the back of his head, he's got a whole other face!

3. Crossing-Guard, Dunce-Cap Santa (a.k.a. Jingle Crotch the Second. Alas, the original Jingle Crotch now resides in Kansas City, so he's not pictured here...)

4. The Willy Wonka-fied Santa ... Somebody turned the poor sap into a conglomerate of peppermints! And where are his arms?!?
5. No-Neck, Windmill-Arms, Astrology Santa ... This is one of those head scratchers ... I'm just not sure what to make of him! Ho-Ho-Huh?
6. And I don't really know what to call this guy ... Nazi Claus seems a bit too harsh. But it looks like he escaped a from craft fair and immediately joined the North Korean Army. Weird.

7. En-pointe, Peg-Leg Santa ... maybe it's easier for him to get down the chimney that way?
8. Red Riding Hood Santa and his Mini-me. And those toes-- gross! Why toes?!? Can't these guys have some arms or something instead? And forget about being pear shaped ... these two are square shaped!
9. Not sure if this is a Santa or not, or just a twisted, frosty icicle with a moustache and a fuzzy red hat (and two eyes made out of coal ...)

And last, but not least, we have the newest member of this macabre menagerie... the Go-Go-Gadget-Legs Albino Claus! (Scroll down to see where those gams finally end.) This one's got all of his appendages, though, so at least he's got that going for him...

So there you have it, folks. The mutant Santa brigade. What do you think ... are these guys cool or creepy? If you do like them for some reason, just don't come asking me where to find a mutant Santa of your own-- I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for something like this, nor would I want to!

Merry belated Christmas!

Do You See What I See?

2009-12-22T17:03:00.007-06:00

When it comes to those oft-overlooked, longtime Tree House residents, I've often wondered: If everyone could "see what I see" in them, would all of these great cats have been snatched up long ago? Well, I was inspired by a carol I recently performed (the title of which poses the same question), and in the spirit of the season I have decided to share some of my insider's knowledge in verse form. I hope that by setting this information to the lyrics of a familiar and catchy tune, people will remember some of the great qualities these cats possess the next (or first!) time they meet. Should you be lucky enough to cross paths with any of these felines, I would love to know:

Do you see what I see?

Says the counselor, "It's a holiday miracle!"

Do you see what I see?

Big King Friday is no longer a feral!

Do you see what I see?

Suddenly, on our attention he insists,

"Pet me Please!" he says, and how can we resist?

To catch him up on all the cuddling he's missed!

Says the volunteer who knows why Wanda squeaks,

Do you hear what I hear?

That patch tabby who chirps instead of speaks,

Do you hear what I hear?

Yes, I know, she is awkward and quirky,

Although even when she shies away from me,

She's still craving attention, desperately.

Says one gal who helped to socialize Mookey,

Do you know what I know?

The sweet old girl curled up in a cat tree,

Do you know what I know?

She was quite shy, and still is not real bold,

But she loves pets (and brushing, so I'm told!)

Scratch her head and watch her sweet nature unfold.

Then says Janus to adopters everywhere,

Listen to what I say!

I'm a great big tom with energy to spare,

Listen to what I say!

I love people, though I don't realize my might,

But my purr is much stronger than my bite...

Take me home and everything will be alright!

However, these brief verses barely scratch the surface (no pun intended!) of the wealth of information that my fellow volunteers and Tree House staff members have about these cats. I didn't want to rattle on too long (though it would be easy to do!) about all the great cats I know, but I invite you to pass this info along to anyone who's looking for a feline companion, and feel free to add a verse or two of your own. Happy holidays!

*Written as a contribution to The Scratching Post*

The Three Tenors

2009-12-08T22:07:00.002-06:00

I play in a number of holiday concerts this time of year, and for the past three or four years, my holiday gigs have included two sing-a-long Messiah concerts at two different churches. Even though these performances only happen once a year, there are familiar faces and memorable personalities at each locale. I am most impressed with the tenors that I've encountered at these concerts, which is surprising to me, because I'm generally not a tenor kind of girl. I don't have anything against them, but they tend to come across to me as being guy sopranos, or the divas of the male vocal world. It's just not my thing.

That said, the first stop in my holiday concert cycle is at a beautiful old church down by Soldier Field. The fact that the Bears are always in town the week that we perform there makes the parking situation nightmarish, to say the least, but the atmosphere inside the church is much warmer. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with sing-a-long Messiahs, they are performances for churches and organizations on a shoestring budget. They hire a bare-bones orchestra and vocal soloists. The audience assumes the part of the choir.

I'm not sure whose bright idea this was, as the four-part harmonies in the choruses are hard-- I'm a musician and I struggle with the vocal parts; I couldn't imagine trying to sing it as a non-musician! People seem to have a blast doing it, but soprano (melody) parts always seem to outweigh the lower (harmony) parts. Not at this church, though; these two little old ladies--dressed to the nines and cute as can be-- sit in the front row of the tenor section and whale. They know those parts by heart, every last note. And since the rest of the tenor section has a strong lead to follow, they're usually able to keep up better than most of the other audience choruses I've heard in these do-it-yourself numbers. I look forward to seeing them every year; just thinking about them bellowing "King of Kings..." makes me smile!

The following week I play an identical performance at a gorgeous, historical church in the near west suburbs. The format of this concert differs slightly, though, in that there is an "intermission" of sorts as the pastor talks about the many services the church provides for the homeless, and a free-will offering is taken. Instead of doing this offering during the Pastoral Symphony (the instrumental interlude mid-way through the performance) like most churches do, they instead have the tenor soloist sing a hymn with organ accompaniment. And let me tell you, this guy is good. He's sung "O, Holy Night" for the past two years, and when he first opened his mouth, I didn't know whether I was going to wet myself, cry, or both. Thankfully, I did neither. I did turn to my stand partner, though, and mouthed, "Oh, holy CRAP!" It was all I could muster at the time.

I remember looking the tenor up on Facebook after the concert last year and being amazed that he was just a graduate student; it's extremely rare to hear a voice so rich come from a performer so young. The clarity, resonance, and emotion he infuses into each and every phrase is astounding. This year, as he gave a repeat performance (for which he got a standing ovation-- in the middle of the service-- might I add), I turned to my stand partner once again, and asked, "can I keep him?" "Go introduce yourself this time!" she hissed. "I can't!" I lamented, "we still have to play Part the Second!" Since we didn't do any of the tenor arias on the second half of the concert, he slipped out after his offertory solo. Drats.

If we're both back for a repeat performance next December, though, I think I will introduce myself. I'm not looking to rob the cradle or anything, but it's so rare to hear such impressive musicality in such an unlikely place. It's a real treat, in fact. I don't want to turn the guy into a male diva or anything, but I would like to tell him that his voice is the highlight of my Christmas-gigging season! Hopefully, I won't be starstruck, or get all flustered and tongue-tied, or start giggling like a school girl... but I won't know unless I try!

Patty O' Catt

2009-11-16T22:03:00.007-06:00

Yet another encounter with yet another crazy person has caused what I intended to be a good deed to go terribly, terribly wrong! How do these people continue to find me, and why am I always the last to realize just how crazy they are!?!

I spent the summer waiting tables on the patio of the small neighborhood restaurant where I work, and began noticing a small, rail-thin tortie cat who would show up at closing time each evening-- like clockwork-- scavenging for crumbs and any morsels of food that messy customers may have left behind. Being the animal lover that I am, I began saving little bits of chicken or steak for the tiny visitor, when it became apparent that she wasn't going to be leaving any time soon. She was quite skittish so I wasn't able to touch her, which is when I decided that I would rent a trap from the shelter where I volunteer to have her spayed and-- if it turns out she wasn't feral-- possibly admitted to the shelter.

I happened to mention my plans to a regular who lives in the neighborhood who told me she had also seen the cat and had the same idea. She told me not to rent a trap, that she could borrow one from her friend. Next thing I know, she has trapped the cat and taken her into the spay/neuter clinic. Turns out she wasn't feral at all; she had already been spayed and was likely an abandoned house cat. With the weather turning colder and patio season ending, she couldn't continue fending for herself outdoors. She asked me if I could keep the cat for a day or two, as she was planning to house the cat in her garage until she could be admitted into a shelter, but was having a garage sale that weekend. Of course I agrees, setting "patio cat" up in the bathroom of my 350 square-foot apartment. Well, days turned into weeks, and I still had this tiny, terrified cat in my bathroom while the lady who trapped her keeps changing her story as to why she can't take her, despite the fact that she has a house with locations such as the "guest room" and the "upstairs bathroom".

When it came time for me to leave for China, a spot still hadn't opened up in either of the shelters we were working with, so I told the lady that she had to take her. She said she'd be by the night before I left to pick her up, which turned out to be about an hour after I had planned to leave on the day of my trip; I had to cab it to the airport. Along with the cat, the trap, and the supplies, I handed this woman an envelope of money I had collected from my coworkers to cover the admission fee into one of the shelters, should she be placed before I got back.

To make a long, weird story as brief as possible, a spot finally opened up for Patty O' Catt the day after I returned. I called crazy lady to tell her that, which is when she told me that she already had an appointment to admit her to the other shelter and to cancel the appointment I had made. Also, she said she had $450 worth of extensive dental work done on the cat while I was gone, and anything more I was able to pitch in would be great. I freaked out at this point, because: a) because I had never agreed to pay for dental work, which I had told her (on multiple occasions) that b) my shelter friends would have done upon her admission.

The next day I get a call from my shelter, saying that they had gotten a nasty phone call from this lady ("I was really nasty", she later boasted to me, to which I could only respond, "why!?!"), saying that I should have never cancelled her admission appointment and that she had to get rid of Patty O'Catt right away. So my shelter friends rearranged their plans once again, and admitted the cat. When I came in to volunteer the next week, I was met with furious gazes from the admissions counselors. Turns out that a third person-- the lady who loaned us the trap-- had come forward, saying the cat was hers all along and that we had no right to admit it (um, nice try, but no). Then she says Patty O. was a feral cat that she was helping to socialize (not true), then she says that she has already found people to adopt her (also not true). At any rate, she had helped the other lady pay for the dental surgery and because she had vet records, they had to relinquish Patty O'Catt to this woman, who turned around and begged the shelter where she volunteers (who the other lady was also "really nasty" to over the phone) to admit the cat. I was horrified-- I thought the goal was to get the cat off the street before winter... wasn't the mission already accomplished?

I'm not sure what happened to Patty O'Catt, but I do hope she's better off now than she was on the patio. On the bright side, my shelter was then able to admit another deserving cat-- a pitiful creature found living in back of a strip club-- who has since been named Tassels. What I can't bring myself to ask is whether the shelter ever got the money I gave crazy lady for Patty O' Catt's admission... Once, she told me that she gave it to my shelter, but then she told me that she and her middle-aged frenemy (the one with the trap who was so insulting to my shelter friends) put it toward the cost of the dental surgery. I suspect the latter is true, but I don't have the heart to ask... She has since avoided coming into the restaurant on the nights I'm working. Will I live and learn? Maybe. If another stray cat needs my help getting off the street, I'm sure I will help, but next time, I hope I have enough sense to go it alone!

... Prosperity and Longevity

2009-11-09T21:53:00.008-06:00

Beijing provided all the history, contrast and grandeur that I was expecting from one of the largest (and oldest!) cities in the world. A contact in Hong Kong helped to book us on an English-speaking tour of Beijing-- which, considering it included hotel, airfare, and food, was dirt cheap by American standards-- and I was relieved that I wasn't going to have to self-navigate my way through a sprawling city of 17+ million people. I've made my way through a number of foreign cities, but having no knowledge of Mandarin combined with the fact that, unlike Hong Kong, very few people speak English, Beijing was a little too foreign for me. And considering the traffic in Beijing makes even the most congested expressways in Chicago look desirable, I was thrilled to be chauffeured around the city. I was fully prepared to be on a bus full of old people, and was shocked to discover that we had been booked a private tour, and instead of geriatric travel companions, a tour bus, and brightly colored hats, we had a guide, a driver, and a black sedan.

Our guide, however, failed to meet us at the airport, so with the help of another guide we took a death-defying and interminable taxi ride to one of the nicest hotels I had ever seen, comparable only to the hotel where we stayed in Hong Kong-- stunning! My only complaint was that (like our Hong Kong hotel) the bathroom had glass walls. And unlike our Hong Kong hotel, the privacy shade was not opaque. Oy. Mom and I got closer in ways that we never intended. But it was at the hotel that we met our guide and our driver (a gruff, intimidating fellow who was quite possibly affiliated with the Chinese mafia), and they whisked us away to dinner, where we were served an absolute feast of Szechuan-style cuisine.

Our whirlwind tour began in earnest the next morning. We adhered to a very strict schedule, and were closely supervised. Even when our guide not with us, he was either at a table across the room or passed the responsibility of keeping tabs on us to another guide or a store clerk. I got the feeling that we saw exactly what they wanted us to see, and little else. Which was strange... what we saw was incredible, but it seemed that the poorer, urban, and less glitzy parts of the city were carefully hidden just out of our view. We shopped where they wanted us to shop, ate what they wanted us to eat (turns out that Chinese food is just called "food" over there), and did what they wanted us to do. Our only glimpses into what life was like for the majority of those who live in Beijing was when our guide and our driver pointed out where they lived... which, by comparison to what we saw and where we stayed, was pretty grim. Guess that's communism for ya!

We started our tour in the (infamous) Tiannamen Square, which is much more massive in person than anything I've ever seen in pictures. The big draw there is Chairman Mao; the guy who turned China into a communist country. I had never heard of him, as he died before I was born, but his body has been preserved and has been lying in state in one of the buildings on the square for more than thirty years. The Chinese love Chairman Mao, and many make a pilgrimage from the farthest reaches of China to see his carefully preserved corpse; it was all our guide could do to keep from slapping himself in the forehead when I (astutely) commented that he was the same guy that was on their currency. I spent most of that day (most of the trip, actually) listening as best I could to the volumes of information our guide recited to us, pausing to snap a few pictures, then dashing through the crowds to catch up to him and start the process all over again. I learned that, in addition to numbers, colors hold great significance to the Chinese. The color red, for example, is a symbol of prosperity and good fortune, which is why so many things in China boast this color. It turns out that the color was a significant part of Chinese culture for thousands of years before the birth of Karl Marx; the fact that it also symbolizes communism is just a happy coincidence. And the number 9 is tops in mainland China; it's the closest mortals can get to a perfect 10, which is reserved for the gods. Not even the emperors have things in multiples of 10!

From Tiannamen Square we ran through the Forbidden City and Prince Gong's Palace. I learned more than I'll ever be able to remember about Chinese culture; but mainly that the emperors had their own bridges and concubines and walkways and whatnot, and that every yin has a yang: male and female, circle and square, etc. etc. After a lunch at a government-approved restaurant (where they looped one Chinese Opera aria through the speakers, over and over... and over, thinking we tourists wouldn't notice) we took a pedicab ride (that's a rickshaw attached to a bike) through the Ho-Tung district to see how the "locals" live. We felt bad for the poor little pedicab guy for having to pedal the two "fat Americans" around the village... he was tipped handsomely afterwards.

The next day took us to the Great Wall, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was quite impressive, but not easy to climb. The ancient stairs were wildly uneven, and the railings (when there were any) were quite low. We climbed as high as we could in the time we were given, but didn't make it to the top of the mountain, which might have given us a better idea of its grandeur. From there we visited the Summer Palace, which was probably my favorite stop on the tour. An idyllic property built on a prime lake shore location, the sprawling buildings had a lovely backdrop of waterfront and willow trees. Because many of the buildings are still in use, one of the only places we were able to enter was the "four-star" bathroom, which turned out to be anything but.

Our final day was as cold, miserable, and snowy as the previous day had been sunny, warm, and beautiful. We visited both the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple. After learning more about the inner workings of the feudal system, with the emperors, castes, and human sacrifices and whatnot, I can almost see how Communism would be a welcome change for the Chinese-- yikes! Our guide had some terse, yet carefully worded comments about the Dalai Lama, too, and why Tibet shouldn't be autonomous.... I completely disagreed with him, but it was interesting to get such a different view on the matter.

All in all, I enjoyed my brief time in Beijing. I appreciated the efforts made by the people we encountered to speak our language and make us feel welcome. Just as I can't pronounce some of the phonemes in the Mandarin language, many of the people we encountered had trouble pronouncing some of the syllables commonly used in the English language; it took me the better part of the day to figure out that when our guide was saying "prorry", he meant "probably". Like I said, though, their English is much better than my Mandarin will ever be. Yet in the too-literally translated words of a store clerk from Beijing, I would like to say to the hospitable and welcoming people of China, "I hope we can keep touching!"

Happiness Good Fortune...

2009-11-08T13:37:00.008-06:00

My second trip to Asia (in as many years) landed me in Hong Kong, the former British colony located at the southeast corner of this massive continent. A modern, somewhat westernized oasis surrounded by the foreign and exotic sights, sounds, and smells of a vibrant and fascinating culture that is (both literally and figuratively) half a world away from my own. In hindsight, I'm glad that our trip started in Hong Kong; it's a good, tourist-friendly starter city for first-time visitors to the Orient: Think of it as China: 101. Nearly everyone I encountered spoke English, and all the signs and announcements were trilingual, meaning that all pertinent information was listed in Cantonese (the primary language spoken by Hong Kongians), English (phew!), and Mandarin (the official language of "mainland" China).

The public transportation system is clean, efficient, and easy to navigate (not to mention dirt cheap!) and I was able to make my way from the airport to the hotel without any problems. My only beef with the MTR was with the commuters' customs; there's an entirely different standard of "personal space" over there. At 5'4", I was a giant amidst this mass of humanity... my fellow metro riders may have been small, but man were they pushy!

The stunning skyline and futuristic-looking architecture were interspersed with more traditional, Eastern style buildings. The friend (Hong Kong native and impromptu tour guide) who invited us to come to her hometown was continually pointing out signs of "East meets West" which, if you looked closely enough, were everywhere!

There aren't many historical sights in Hong Kong, as it is (comparatively speaking) a relatively new city. The British began developing the barren, volcanic islands less than 150 years ago, so compared to the rest of China, it's still shiny and new. That said, there are plenty of other things to do in the city: mainly, shopping. Oh, the shopping! Considered by many to be a shopper's paradise, stores line nearly every street in the city, selling everything from the latest electronics to the trendiest new fashions. I gravitated toward the jewelry shops, as this area of the world is known for jade and freshwater pearls. I also enjoyed the open-air, outdoor markets; I marveled at the bird and flower markets, and got most of my souvenirs at the massive Stanley Market, a huge bazaar where haggling is accepted. I gawked at the fish market; many restaurants shared its waterfront location, and those patrons who were so inclined were able to pick their next meal from the strange, myriad assortment of sea creatures (that the Chinese consider to be cuisine) that were crammed into rows of tiered aquariums. The unlucky creatures were then plucked from their cramped glass quarters, killed, cooked, then served up on a platter-- tentacles, scaly fins, googly eyes and all!

Thankfully, I wasn't scared of all the food in Hong Kong; dim sum, the Cantonese delicacy known best for its many varieties of steamed dumplings and meat-filled buns, is considered to be the local cuisine, and offers many non-oceanic options. After decades of trying and failing, I learned how to use chopsticks in a hurry while I was in Hong Kong, out of sheer necessity. I spent my downtime in the hotel room practicing with peanuts and candy corn; by the end of our stay, the candy corn was easy to do (probably because the humidity made it sticky), but the peanuts, not so much. I'm still not very good at it, and I can't eat very fast this way, but at least I didn't have to stab my dumplings, eating them as food on a (chop)stick, a la Taste of Chicago. My favorite foods, though, came from the many bakeries located throughout the city. These rich and tasty treats were flavorful and not too sweet; it would have been very easy to try one of everything they offered!

And have I mentioned that Hong Kong is equal parts urban, modern city and tropical paradise? Located just north of the Equator, late October brought us ample sunshine and temperatures in the 30s (Celsius, that is-- that's 80s and 90s for us Americans). The palm trees, large tropical flowers, and exotic species of bird were all highlights of my trip.

I found it curious, though, just how superstitious the Cantonese are. Numbers carry a particularly heavy significance; the hotel I stayed in was missing a number of floors; apparently any number ending in 4 is bad, but 8 is a sign of good fortune. One hotel we saw was designed with a big hole in the middle, so the evil spirits could pass through! They also share the Chinese affinity for the "three happiness" symbols (pictured above), characters that translate as Happiness/Good Fortune, Longevity, and Prosperity. We just happened to be in Hong Kong during the holiday of the "double nines" according to the Chinese calendar (which changes with the cycle of the moon... confusing!)-- I forget what the number 9 signifies, but the holiday is similar to "El Dia de los Muertos" in Mexico-- it's a day to honor those who have passed, and many go up into the mountains or to the cemeteries (which are usually mountainside locations as well); apparently the higher you go, the better it is. We just so happened to take the tram up to Victoria's Peak that day to admire stunning views of Hong Kong's skyline... but nearly half the population had the same idea.

We only had a few days to explore Hong Kong, and without the help and hospitality of our family friend, we wouldn't have seen nearly as much as we did. As is the case in all my travels, I boarded the plane to Beijing wishing I could have stayed longer. I always tell myself that it gives me a reason to go back someday, but in a place so far away from home, that's easier said than done!

Blind / Not Blind

2009-10-18T21:53:00.002-05:00

The Red Line has no shortage of strange characters, homeless people, and solicitors riding up and down the el tracks that span the length of the city, and some of these folks frequent the rail cars so often that -- for better or for worse -- they become familiar sights. I was actually excited to see one such character during my ride downtown today, it was the guy I call Blind/Not Blind. B/NB guy carries a red plastic Solo cup, and passes from car to car as the train hurtles through the subways.

The spiel he gives to riders in each car is something along the lines of: "Don't be afraid of me because I'm different. I'm just blind. I won't hurt you, but I sure would appreciate it if you could help me out", etc. The thing that gives his act away is, when some poor sap of a commuter (come to think of it, most of his donors are probably tourists) reinforces his bad behavior by dropping some change into his cup (which is essentially rewarding him for soliciting) he replies "Thank you, sir" or "Thank you, ma'am". However, I've never seen anybody actually speak to him; if he really was blind, I don't think his gender-specific "thank yous" would be so accurate.

The worst part about the beggars in this city is that many of them aren't really homeless; I've seen guys touching up their "Will work for food" signs with a brand new package of Sharpies as they're comfortably riding the Metra into the city. There's a guy with a suitcase who sits outside the Old Navy on State Street who is "stranded" and has been trying to get "home for the holidays" for about six years now ... And the guy with a bunch of loose change in the tuba who stands in front of Orchestra Hall didn't really get that instrument from the orchestra -- trust me. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't feed the pigeons and don't pay the beggars. If you really want to help the homeless, donate to charities like the Salvation Army, where your money will really be "doing the most good".

But back to B/NB ... I heard his spiel before I actually saw him, but the best part about it was that he wasn't blind today; he was just hungry -- seriously! "Don't be afraid of me because I'm different. I'm just hungry. I won't hurt you, but I sure would appreciate it if you could help me out ... Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma'am." Then, thinking we commuters were none the wiser, he opened the door that's supposed to remain closed while the train is moving, and disappeared into the next rail car to start his spiel all over again.

Lions and Olympians and Bears, Oh My!

2009-10-05T18:57:00.003-05:00

I'm sure the whole world knows by now that Chicago will not be hosting the 2016 Olympics. It's all anybody in this city has been able to talk about this weekend, and every time someone voices their opinion on this topic, it seems like they're striving to take an even stronger stance than the person interviewed before them. While I agree with those who say they're more upset about they way things went down (with Chicago being eliminated in the first round of voting) than they are about the fact that we lost the bid, I feel like I'm in the minority by admitting that I'm rather ambivalent about the whole thing. I don't feel the need to point fingers at the president or Mayor Daley (well, maybe a little bit at the mayor) or even Oprah on why the decision turned out the way it did; it's been decided, the decision is final, and there's nothing more we can do about it.

Don't get me wrong -- I think it would have been cool to bring a world-class event like the Summer Olympics to the windy city, but it's even cooler that the Olympics will be held in Rio; it would be hard for even the finest American city (which Chicago is!) to compete with the historic bid of an idyllic South American paradise. I'm not at all bothered by the traffic nightmares that I won't be dealing with seven years from now, although I hope some of the mass transit improvements they proposed as part of the bid will still be implemented ... I'm not holding my breath, though.

I woke up this morning to yet another reporter trying to put a new spin on (what is, by now) an old story. He was reporting live from the Belmont el stop, asking commuters if the Bears' "big win" yesterday helped them feel better about having been snubbed by the International Olympic Committee. I listened groggily as people got all philosophical and waxed poetic on the topic, then it slowly dawned on me: the Bears played the Detroit Lions yesterday ... now, I don't really follow football, but ... doesn't everybody beat the Lions? Why is that a big deal, and why would that make me (or anyone) feel better?!?

If I felt strongly about either topic -- one way or the other -- I might have felt worse if the Bears had lost to the Lions, but the win isn't really all that newsworthy. They were supposed to beat the Lions. I decided that the reporter was just looking for an excuse to play the Bears' catchy theme song, and turned off the radio. I still don't know what football has to do with the Olympics, but I did enjoy the fight song, which even I will admit is a fun and lighthearted way to start a Monday!

The Crazy Lady (10/10/06)

2009-09-22T15:45:00.005-05:00

While I'm on the topic of my old landlords (who, despite my previous post, were very good to me), I thought I'd share excerpts from the harrowing correspondence we had about the crazy lady who lived downstairs. They took our complaints seriously, working with me and the other tenants every step of the way. And when the crazy lady got worse instead of better, they served her with eviction papers. She was gone within the month. I know crazy people find me irresistible for some reason, but this lady was a doozy. How bad was she, you ask? Read on and find out!

9/5/06 I am frightened and very concerned by the violent outbursts and unprovoked verbal attacks I have heard and witnessed since moving to this building, all of which have come from the woman who lives downstairs ... the excessive noise and obscene rants continue all day and well into most nights. She screams and shouts some of the most vulgar words in the English language, and repeats the most offensive insults until she feels satisfied that she has gotten her point across, which often takes hours. I have never heard anyone yell back ... When she gets tired of talking to herself, she’ll lean out the front window and hurl threatening insults at passers by– it’s horrifying.

I did report her to the police earlier this summer– after seeing her try to pick a fight with a parked car then fumble with her keys for quite a while ... I probably should have called them on other occasions, like when she tried to throw the neighbor's grill away. It's chained to the deck, and she was so angry that she couldn't move it, she screamed "I’ll just burn it up then!", turned the propane on high, and left. The police have been called to the building two other times that I know of ... I was stopped and questioned by them once as I was coming home well after midnight ... this fact has only made her madder. She is very angry, violent, and seems quite altered; something needs to be done.

I have never in my life called 911 more than I did in that month and a half, and unlike the police who yelled at me when I found the dead guy, these officers were very courteous and tried on numerous occasions to reason with this woman. I felt bad that they had to call her ma'am! Her response (when she responded at all) was similar to the cat lady on The Simpsons-- she would wander out, scream incoherent gibberish, then wander away. Once she actually threw her cat out the window. I kid you not. She must have been remorseful the next day, as there was a pile of Meow Mix on the front walk. The cat came back, but (for its sake) I'm not sure that was a good thing.

9/30/06 I just wanted to send you a quick update on the situation with the woman downstairs. For a week or so around the time we last spoke, all was quiet down there. However, the shouting and crashing noises have started up again, but they do not occur as often, and have not reached the point where police intervention would be appropriate.

I, along with every other tenant on the Mozart side of the building, did receive a note of apology for her disturbing us, assuring us the problem "has been taken care of". I was touched by the gesture, but was jolted awake at 4:30 the very next morning by her ranting, and have been awakened in the middle of the night 3 or 4 times since then. I also believe she has cursed at me personally– once through her back door as I was taking out the trash, and another time out the front window as I was coming into the building– which I do not appreciate in the least. I just wanted to let you know that ... although some improvements have been made, the problem has definitely not "been taken care of".

I had met several of the other tenants by this time; we were united in our fear of the crazy lady. Once, when I was outside talking to the police, the guy from the top apartment on the other side of the building leaned out his window and yelled to the cop, "She's crazy, man!" in a show of solidarity. It was great.

10/10/06 I need to recant the optimistic assessment I made at the beginning of the month about the continuing saga with the woman downstairs. I was in my apartment on Sunday morning, quietly reading the paper when I heard her start cursing– she sounded closer and louder than usual. I quickly realized she was right outside my front door, calling me a "f***ing bitch, c*nt, and whore", saying that she’d "show me...", and concluded with "do you understand? GOOD!", slapped my door once, and left.

I heard her shouting again outside later in the day, and when it didn’t let up, I went to my window to see what was going on– she was standing on the sidewalk staring right up at my living room window, both middle fingers raised, and voicing her opinion of me for the whole block to hear. I have done nothing to provoke this woman, and have never even spoken to her directly. I did find a note on my door telling me to control my pets. There was something else written on the bottom of the paper, but it had been ripped off, as if she had thought twice about leaving anything so vile in writing. I do have a cat, but I can’t for the life of me imagine what type of complaint she would have against a four-pound kitten!

I later learned that she had been served eviction papers earlier that week. I began locking my kitten in my bedroom when I wasn't home because I seriously thought she was going to try and poison him, and tip-toed up and down the back steps for about a week. The night she moved out was the scariest of all; she wanted to leave us something to remember her by. By the time we called the police, she was practically foaming at the mouth. But once she had left, and I managed to catch up on all the sleep I had lost over the previous months, I actually began feeling sorry for the woman-- it must be hard to be so angry all the time. I just pray I don't run into her on the street someday; there's no telling what she would do!

Security Deposit Snafu

2009-09-06T15:41:00.006-05:00

According to the City of Chicago's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance Summary, "A landlord must return all security deposit and required interest, if any ... within 45 days from the date the tenant vacates the unit." Well, folks, I moved Memorial Day weekend ... here we are coming up on Labor day, and I just deposited the sizable check I had been waiting on all summer, or for 93 days to be exact. That's more than double the time frame imposed by the city, but I waited to play the "I'll report you to the city" card until I got desperate, which was about mid-August. A brief account of the (increasingly weird) correspondence between me and my former landlords went something like this:

Starting in early July...

me: Um, hi. I've been waiting on my security deposit for quite a while now and was wondering if you could tell me when I can expect to receive it?
them: That's weird. We mailed your check a couple of weeks ago. We'll put a stop payment on it and issue a new one right away.
me: Great, thanks!

A week passed, then another...

me: It's me again. I'm still waiting to get my deposit back.
them: Yeah, about that. Your first check was returned to us because of an invalid address. We need to verify your new address.
me: And you didn't call me why?
them: We figured you'd call us eventually.
me: [sighing] Nice.

The address gets verified, and the second check goes in the mail. Within days, an envelope arrives.

me: Woo hoo! [Then upon closer inspection] What the...? You've GOT to be kidding me! [Calling the landlords back] Um, hi. Me here. I got a check from you guys today...
them: Great!
me: but I can't cash it because it's a) not signed, and b) post-dated for September 2nd (it was the second week of August)
them: [stammering] Uhh ... the date must be a computer glitch, and I guess I just assumed that the landlord had signed all of the checks ... I didn't actually look before I sent them. Oops! Just shred that one and we'll send you another.
me: And when can I expect to receive that check?
them: Soon. Very soon.

Another 10 days pass...

me: This is getting ridiculous, folks. Can't I just swing by your office sometime and have the landlord sign this check? If it was valid, I'd be able to cash it in a few more days
them: Uh, well, we want to send you a new check.
me: No. I want to pick this up in person. Just tell me where your office is, and I'll come pick it up tomorrow.
them: [stammering again] I'm sorry, but I can't tell you that.
me: What!?! [Then, pulling out the big guns ... ] You guys have been good to me up until now, and I've been a model tenant for the past six years ... I'd hate to have to report you to the City ...
them: [nervously] I'll tell you what, why don't you meet one of our guys on the street corner tomorrow. It's outside one of our properties near you. He'll give you your check.
me: Um, okay... [then to myself] I'm starting to suspect that you guys might be affiliated with the mob or something.... Am I going to get whacked?

So I drive to the designated street corner the next day, mace in hand, not knowing what to expect. Thankfully, I recognize the guy who pulls up in a Mountain Dew-colored Mustang. He's a nice guy; a little greasy looking, but relatively harmless. I step tentatively out of my car when he approaches. He doesn't whack me; he waves instead. What a relief! I make him wait while I check the date and validity of the check, we make some small talk, and get back into our cars and drive away.

I don't know why the simplest tasks always wind up being such an ordeal for me, but at least this story has a happy ending. It was a long time coming, though!

B-I-N-G...Oh!

2009-08-17T15:38:00.003-05:00

Although it wasn't my first Bingo night experience at this hipster hangout in Humboldt Park (that masquerades as a seedy dive bar), it was my first win. The Monday night Bingo racket draws an unusually large number of clean-cut Chicago Public School teachers (including the friend who invited me) in addition to the usual hipsters that frequent the joint (a moody, oddly dressed bunch, identifiable largely by their distinct [albeit androgynous] hair and clothing styles); it's a strange mix.

There's no cover charge, and no fee for the Bingo cards. The callers share a name (it's something common, like Dave or Jim) and infuse some improvisation and off-color jokes into their Bingo calling shtick, turning an activity that is traditionally geared toward a more geriatric crowd into something of a sketch comedy routine. Gone are the ink-filled daubers of old, and instead of troll dolls, PBR cans line the tables above players' Bingo cards.

Because no money changes hands, there is no monetary prize for the winners. To compensate, the Daves (or whoever) have gotten a little more ... umm ... creative with their prize packages. My friend proudly displays a coloring book page on his fridge that he won earlier in the year--it's some Disney prince with a generously sized phallus added to his person in an otherwise G-rated scene-- and the page is autographed by one of the Daves. Other prizes I've seen include: little plastic army guys, a half-completed Sunday crossword, noise makers, and other random junk. I'm not a hipster myself, so maybe I just don't get the humor, but it was all in good fun, or so it seemed.

It was the last game of the night, a round of "Hippie Bingo" (the only spaces in play were "B" and "O") and I found myself caught up in the middle of a three-way win. As is customary for all their winners, I had to come up on "stage" and answer a few random questions. Since there were three of us, they thought it would be a great idea to subject us to a "dance off" a la Soul Train, to determine who would get their "grand prize" for the evening. Feeling like an idiot, but agreeing to play along, I shimmied my way across the stage. They must have liked my impromptu dance moves, because they deemed me the winner!

What did I win, you ask? Well, it's pictured above. They gave me a bourbon-soaked copy of Alcoholic's Anonymous. Again, I don't quite get hipsters, but I really think it crossed that fine line between offbeat humor and plain old bad taste. I smiled wanly as they continued their little show, and returned to sit with my friend at the bar, who was beaming about the attention the Daves had lavished upon me. I left that night scratching my head; why would anyone find that funny? Ironic, sure, but inappropriate nonetheless. It went directly into the Goodwill pile.

So hipsters, I've decided that you can keep your Bingo-calling Daves and your phallic coloring-book pages and your cheap, nasty beer in a can. If and when I do play Bingo, I'll take the troll dolls and superstitious blue-haired ladies over tasteless humor any day. And should I have to drink PBR again, I'd prefer it in a bottle, thank you very much.

Grammar Mulligans

2009-08-05T16:24:00.007-05:00

I can't stop thinking about a segment that my radio crush, WGN's John Williams, did a couple of weeks ago on his (now 9:00-12:00) show. He was talking about grammar, which caught my attention right away. Williams was arguing that, while most people should know more grammar rules than they do, everyone should be able to have just one mulligan (that's a golf term... it basically means a "do-over" or a free pass) when it comes to a certain word use or sentence structure that they just can't seem to grasp, no matter how hard they try.

Williams and some of the other on-air personalities went on to deliberate whether anybody should be allowed to waste their mulligan on the grammatical difference between words like to/too/two or there/their/they're, because everyone should know that. I think it was decided that, if that's your one big hang-up, then it's admissible. When he opened up the phone lines, he posed two questions to listeners (and I paraphrase): "what other grammar faux pas doyou think should not be allowed, even with a mulligan?", and, "what is your mulligan?". I immediately began trying to call in. As I continued to hit redial, he explained that his mulligan would be (understandably) used on affect vs. effect, arguing that he can never remember which word to use in which situation, and not to bother calling in to correct him on this, because he still wouldn't get it. [For all intensive purposes, King John, affect is a verb, and effect is a noun, but I promise not to tell you that!]

I finally got through, and was placed on hold. For me, the grammatical error that shouldn't be covered under any mulligan, one of my personal pet peeves, is the plural vs. possessive rule. And for anyone who doesn't know what that means, it means that adding an "s" to a word does not automatically require an apostrophe be added as well. The apostrophe is used to show possession, and not a number greater than one: "Taco's car had three wheels" is grammatically correct; "Three taco's for $1.00" is not. I had a whole slew of others, such as ending sentences with a preposition (at), but didn't want my radio crush to think I was a total word nerd (even though I am)!

But what would my mulligan be? Although I know more grammar than the average listener, I was impressed by the mulligan ideas that other callers had come up with. John Williams' listeners (and yes, I meant that to be possessive!) are an intelligent bunch; apparently, I'm in good company! I can't remember the exact examples, but I agreed wholeheartedly with the listeners who wanted a pass on things like capital vs. capitol, principal vs. principle, and compliment vs. complement. I grimaced on the toward vs. towards (as towards isn't a word), but because it's misused so often, I can see how that would be confusing. I don't have enough problems with these words to warrant a mulligan, though, so I kept thinking.

Suddenly, it dawned on me: I would use my mulligan on nauseous vs. nauseated! I can't for the life of me remember which word to use when, but I do know that the word nauseous is misused with astounding frequency! I was so pleased with myself, thinking my radio crush would find me witty and clever, and that a lively banter would ensue.

I was listening so actively to the witty, clever, and lively banter between Williams and the caller before me-- who admitted that she used an online dating service and couldn't bring herself to reply to men who had typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors in their profiles (that would be a deal breaker for me, too!)-- that I lost track of time. So I was crestfallen when I got disconnected right after she hung up; they were running late for the news.

Hopefully, I'll have better luck the next time I feel compelled to weigh in on some funny and irreverent conversation between Williams and his loyal listeners... but in the mean time, what's your mulligan? Is there a word, a spelling, or a phrase that baffles you? I'd be curious to hear it, and-- as long as it's not on the plural vs. possessive-- I promise I won't judge!

p.s. I would personally like to thank one of the SCHOOLS where I teach for the sign pictured above.

Worst. Parking Lot. EVER.

2009-07-27T16:30:00.001-05:00

How many engineers does it take to design a parking lot? No, seriously-- how many? Whatever the number, the end result leads me to believe that whoever designs and/or constructs these lots must be short an engineer more often than not. I'm sure everyone can think of at least one lot where the lines were drawn so close together that, even though they can get the car into an empty space, they can't open the door if there's a vehicle in either one of the adjacent spaces. Or those big, complex lots with lots of blind spots and no signs helping to direct traffic. It's a parking free-for-all; enter at your own risk!

Honestly, people-- how hard can it be? I'm no engineer, but I think I could tell from the get-go whether or not a parking setup is going to work. And yet, I continually find myself trying to navigate through a lot with a severely bottle-necked entrance/exit or with a one-way arrow painted on the asphalt pointing drivers in the wrong direction.

For me, though, the lot that takes the cake would have to be the one outside a popular grocery store on Lincoln Avenue. Those who live in the city know that Lincoln is one of those rare diagonal streets amidst the grid of north-south and east-west thoroughfares. The store is part of a miniature strip mall, and design mistake #1 was that the building's foundation was poured to align with the aforementioned grid, and not the diagonal street out front.

So the parking lot engineers came in and turned the lot along Lincoln Avenue into an isosceles triangle. This placed the smallest angle of the triangle directly in front of the entrance to this immensely popular grocery store. This is a prime example of a parking lot fail. The pathway to the spots on either side of this parking nook gets narrower and narrower until it finally ends in a point. When it's busy, people are forever gunning their vehicles in reverse (into oncoming traffic, mind you) because somebody's gotten stuck in the parking equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Yet, incredibly, people still try to park there; it makes for some great people watching, and would be an amazing observational experiment for some psychologist's research.

Then, to make matters even worse, they stuck a huge island in the larger part of the lot. Perhaps this was meant to maximize parking, but really it just leads to countless traffic tie-ups. The only normal spaces in this lot are at the far corner; even so, I tend to park on the street just to avoid all the chaos! I've long said that, if this whole music thing doesn't pan out, I should go into business designing parking lots. Well, I guess my common sense is needed in this field more urgently than I previously realized!

Do you have a parking lot that you avoid because of some blatant design flaw? Where is it? I think motorists everywhere should band together and call them out; now's the time!

Park It

2009-07-20T18:26:00.003-05:00

Mayor Daley has single-handedly taken away one of the little joys in the lives of us Chicagoans-- finding a meter with time left on it. Thanks to his poorly planned lease of the parking meter system, which has quadrupled the cost of street parking in my neighborhood, the meters are gradually being replaced with parking pay boxes. These new pay boxes take coins and credit cards (because parking in this city is now that expensive) and spit out a little paper receipt, which motorists must display on their dash. No more pulling into a space and finding that there's just enough time left on the meter to run into the bank or to pick up carry-out, and our random acts of kindness can no longer include popping a quarter into an expired meter to spare another driver a ticket from the cop making his way up the block.

I know it sounds pretty trivial, but I was really bummed about this, at least until I saw a transaction today that warmed my heart. A baffled motorist was standing on the sidewalk, trying to decipher the directions on a pay box when another motorist walked up and handed them a little slip of paper. It was a paid receipt, one that wasn't set to expire for another 40 minutes. An act of kindness, no longer random, no longer anonymous, but a brilliant idea nonetheless... I only wish I had thought of it first!

So kudos to my fellow windy-city dwellers for adapting to this new type of adversity. In true Chicago style, we've yet again found a way to cheat the system (at least a little). Take that, Mayor Daley! So if you pay to park, and finish your errands/lunch/whatever sooner than planned, take that slip of paper off your dashboard and pass it on-- not only will you make someone's day, you'll likely inspire them to do the same. It's just one more way to pay it forward (and stick it to the man!).

Oh, Bloody El!

2009-07-08T14:45:00.004-05:00

Since my move a couple of months ago, I've had this recurring dream that startles me awake in the middle of the night. I can't remember the details of this dream, and don't know whether it's even the same dream each time or if it's a bunch of different dreams with the same end result. In these forays into my subconscious, I invariably wind up in the path of an oncoming train; my fleeting sense of panic, coupled with the disorientation that comes from being jarred out of a deep sleep, hurtles me from unconsciousness to full attention so quickly that all I can do is blink groggily while I try to figure out where I am.

Thankfully, I'm safe in my bed, but unfortunately, the roar of the oncoming train is all too real. I live right next to an el station -- as in, if I were to fall out of my living room window, I would land on the tracks -- and for some reason, the first trains of the morning are always the loudest. Most of the time, I don't even notice all the transit activity that goes on outside my window; it's like static, or background noise, to me. When the trains come to a stop, their momentum stops as well, and the noise is usually pretty minimal. But when the trains start up again in those dark, silent hours before dawn, a few of them bypass my station and don't start picking up passengers until they're further down the line. While they are supposed to adhere to the speed limit sign that is nailed to my apartment building, with nothing (and nobody) stopping them, these trains literally go careening down the track, uninhibited by the monotony of transporting commuters that bogs down the process any other time of day.

And the noise they leave in their wake is considerable: the window panes rattle, my dishes move around in the cupboards, and I am instantly wide awake. My fear isn't entirely unfounded, though; the only thing stopping the train from careening into my apartment building (should it ever derail) is a flimsy chain-link fence. This is of little comfort to me as I'm lying awake in bed. By the time my heart stops pounding, the birds start singing outside, beckoning in the break of day. As I lay staring at the ceiling at that ungodly hour, I can't help but mutter, "oh, bloody el!" ... pun fully intended.

Baby Buggy Bumpers

2009-06-30T11:36:00.003-05:00

I would like to write a "Rules of the Road" of sorts for all the oblivious pushers of SUV-sized strollers out there who think that common courtesy ends once parenthood begins. Let me hasten to say that most parents do not need this tutorial, including many of the parents who pilot these monstrosities. This is for those parents out there (and yes, we all know who you are) who use these pimped-out carriages as a status symbol rather than out of necessity.

Some of the issues I would like to address in this common-sense parenting manual include:

Parents whose strollers take up more than 1/2 of the sidewalk must yield to pedestrians.
Do not take these ridiculous contraptions onto a crowded bus or train, especially during rush hour.
The same applies to busy restaurants, cluttered stores, and packed festivals. They make smaller strollers for a reason!
If it is absolutely necessary to steer one of these stupid things into a small space full of people, fold it up or chain it to a bike rack outside once the children have been removed.
Those three-wheeler buggies were designed for joggers, and are not to be used to wedge one's way into a long line of any sort.
Nor are strollers to be used to "nudge" the person in front of you when the line isn't moving as quickly as you would like.
Use of a "super" stroller for any reason other than the transportation of children is strictly prohibited.
A stroller is not the same thing as a grocery cart (although I have a singular aversion to both!), a laundry hamper, or a carry-all. Please do not treat it as such. (see above)
Monster strollers are not to be used at anything less than full capacity. For example: when running errands with only one child, it is not acceptable to wheel that child around in a carriage for three.
If the child is more than old enough to walk (like most six-year-olds are), they are to walk alongside the parent or the legitimate stroller passenger. They are not to be coddled with a ride in a double-wide.

Perhaps the most egregious error of all is to be wheeling one of these strollers down the street while the children are roaming free. The only thing worse than leaping out of the way of an oncoming stroller that is roughly the size of my car is if that stroller is empty and the little ankle biters are running amok.

If (and that's a very big 'if') and when I ever have any children of my own, I will have a modest fold-up umbrella stroller for one-- and only one-- child, because I plan to do what my parents did. They would choose which child they liked the best that day (now that I think of it, it was almost always my little sister), and the favorite child would get a free ride, while the other (usually me) would walk across the city of Chicago, or to the top of the Statue of Liberty, or wherever else my parents told me we had to go. It built character, and today, I'm much better off than I would have been if I had grown up thinking I was entitled to shocks and struts, cushioned seats, and cup holders at age two!

Don't be like the mom on the left .... Be like this one on the right!

French Vanilla... Heart It or Hate It?

2009-06-25T21:27:00.001-05:00

What is it about the olfactory preferences of pre-teen to teenage girls that draws them to the fake, too-sweet pungency of French Vanilla? The scent, which I reluctantly admit, was enticing to me too at one time, now just turns my stomach. And it seems to be infused into just about everything. It is the ubiquitous fragrance of the girls' bathrooms at every school where I teach, often masking a less pleasant-- underlying, yet still present-- odor. Female students slather themselves with this stench using either lotions, body sprays, or perfumes, and the smell lingers in the hallways. They even stick pot pourri satchels in their lockers so their books and belongings will smell like a bakery!

Worst of all, the go-to gift among girls of this age seems to be ANYTHING French Vanilla. My students have brought me gifts of lotions, car fresheners, soy candles, and the like; different objects, same smell. While I'm grateful for the gesture, and appreciate the fact that they thought to include me in their holiday gift giving, I have a hard time not retching. I have even tried to use some of the gifts I have been given, but to no avail.

The candles wind up in the next garage sale, and the toiletries are saved for desperate times only. I carry the small bottle of lotion with me to lessons during the winter, and only use it when my dry hands are about to crack. Even if I put it on in a well-ventilated area, the smell seeps into my pores and clings to my skin and overpowers the practice rooms where I teach-- I now know what it must be like to be trapped in a gingerbread house. And as for the shower gel... I was expecting to smell clean, but instead smelled like a cookie-- a hot, runny sugar cookie-- I had to take another shower just to get the stink off!

Clearly, a woman's sense of smell changes as she ages, but I don't know what it is about this particular scent that now repulses me so much. I like the taste (and even the smell) of real vanilla-- whether in pure extract form or from the vanilla bean itself-- but the fake, imitation varieties turn my stomach. The sense of smell can be very powerful, and a certain scent can evoke vivid memories... maybe I have some bad or repressed memory that I associate with that smell? Who knows. But if you're looking to get me something smelly, please know that I'd prefer a light, clean scent-- or better yet, something with no stink at all!

The Cheese Stands Alone...

2009-06-19T10:01:00.003-05:00

I've been to two weddings in as many weeks so far this month. Both weddings were for good college friends of mine, and both they and their husbands are professional musicians. Both insisted on small weddings, both had incredible music, and both ceremonies were memorable and beautiful. I went stag to both of these weddings, and had a blast each time.

During the first wedding, however, as I was standing with about thirty other guests in front of a picturesque gazebo that was tucked inside a stunning botanical garden, I had an awful realization. As I looked around at the small crowd congregated there, I did the math and groaned inwardly-- I was the ONLY single female of the bunch. I could just picture myself standing up in front of everyone at the reception, waiting stupidly to catch the bridal bouquet. Alone. Would the bride toss the bouquet over her shoulder and directly at me, or try to make things more interesting by hiking it to me from between her legs? Would she make me scramble for it, or would she take pity on me and just hand it over? Oh, the horror!

I mentioned my dilemma to some married friends who were also in attendance; one offered to go up there with me and fight for the bouquet. In a way, though, I almost think that would be worse-- to be the only single woman at a wedding and lose the bouquet to a married lady! For some reason, though, I couldn't picture the bride subjecting me to anything of the sort. I wasn't able to shake my feeling of dread entirely, but once I got to the reception, I quickly realized there would be nothing cheesy or cliche about it. No dollar dance, no long-winded toasts, no Electric Slide, no garter removal, and no bouquet toss. What a relief!

I confessed my moment of panic to the bride later that evening, and she just laughed; the bouquet was too pretty to toss, she said (she's right-- it was), and as for wedding traditions, she wanted nothing to do with any of it. Both friends adopted this philosophy, and I think their nuptials were even more special because of it; they did what worked for them and ditched the rest. I couldn't agree more with their thinking-- if and when I ever get married, there will be nothing traditional about it. But until I find my guy, I'll raise my glass and make a toast-- to good friends and individuality!

Travel Guide: Albany Park

2009-05-01T10:59:00.009-05:00

I was thumbing through some Chicago travel guides at the used bookstore the other day, and was annoyed by the fact that even the books claiming to be "not for tourists" and the "off the beaten path" stuck to the most predictable areas of the city. Granted, they listed some restaurants and clubs and such that people might not otherwise find, but there's more to this city than just the neighborhoods along the lake front!

For those who want to experience-- I mean, really experience-- the non-touristy side of Chicago, they should venture inland, to neighborhoods like the one just west of me. Albany Park, home of the $5 haircut, is exploding with diversity. The Ellis Island of Chicago, the melting pot of Albany Park is where seemingly clashing cultures coexist in the most wonderful conglomeration.

The residential areas are the classic Chicago mix of stucco and brownstone buildings, and it has its share of liquor stores, taquerias, and currency exchanges, which one would expect in an area so heavily populated by immigrants. However, unlike most immigrant neighborhoods, there is no predominant nationality that inhabits Albany Park. Not even on the northwest side of the neighborhood, along Lawrence Avenue (a.k.a. Seoul Drive), where the neighborhood's border mingles with that of Koreatown's, is there a definite difference.

It is not at all unusual to see signs in English, Polish, Korean, Arabic, and of course Spanish (the Hispanic population has infiltrated every neighborhood in Chicago) in the same stretch of store fronts. Visitors will find restaurants of every cuisine; there is something to satisfy even the most adventurous eater. The stores themselves are practical yet multi-functional; they offer the consumer much more than the average store. My personal favorites are the shoe store that also sells Avon and motor oil; the convenience store that sells live fowl and boasts a sign reading "we also speak English here"; and the restaurant that "specializes" in Italian, Mexican, and American food.

My itinerary suggestion would begin with lunch at the Sushi bar/nail salon, followed by spa treatments in the same building. Visitors could grab a mid-afternoon snack from one of the Lebanese bakeries or Mexican street vendors, then cap off the evening with a game or two at the pool hall, where the sign suggests that a good time will be had by all. So, Chicago, what are you waiting for? Travel to the end of the brown line and explore Albany Park today!

Chicago in the Spring...

2009-04-16T20:02:00.005-05:00

A few years back, I heard a radio segment about the sure-fire signs of spring in Chicago, one that still makes me smile. Listeners were urged to call in and complete the sentence, "You know it's springtime in Chicago when..." Answers ranged from the generic, such as the slew of new road construction projects and the return of street cleaning, to the uniquely Chicago, such as the increased speed limit on Lake Shore Drive and the sailboats' return to the marinas, to the downright creative, such as the new rat extermination signs posted in the neighborhood alleys.

I only caught a small sampling of the call-in answers, but I'm sure some others included the explosion of tulips on North Michigan Avenue and the explosion of color in the huge planters just a few blocks south, the baseball fans that pack themselves onto the red line el on both the north and south sides of the city, and the city sticker renewal forms that arrive in the mail.

What signals springtime in Chicago to you? I didn't call in, but for me, my sure-fire sign of spring is when the mariachi music, blaring from the open windows of the cars passing by, wafts up and into my apartment through my just opened window. Although the noise quickly becomes a nuisance, on the first few warm days after a seemingly interminable winter, it's a welcome sign of spring and the warm weather that will eventually follow... and I heard it today, for the first time this year!

Surround-Sound Salah (5/30/08)

2009-04-14T21:10:00.009-05:00

Istanbul is a beautiful, sprawling metropolis, with a population of roughly 13 million-- more than four times that of Chicago. The ornate architecture, exotic sights and smells from the open-air markets and doner stands, and-- perhaps most of all-- the dozens of minarets that dot the skyline make Istanbul one of the most distinctive and recognizable cities in the world. But for me, the sounds that came from the loudspeakers perched high atop each mosque's minarets were just as memorable as the mosques themselves!

In Islam, a salah is an obligatory call to prayer. Five times a day, every day, each mosque broadcasts a chant or incantation over the loudspeakers, and practicing Muslims either make their way to the nearest place of worship or take time out of their day to pray. I believe adhan is the term for the actual call, but since I'm more assured in my alliteration abilities than I am in my accurate Arabic, salah will have to suffice.

I stayed primarily in the Sultanahmet district during my visit; most of the tourist attractions are located there, as well as an unusually high concentration of mosques. Because the mosques are so close together, it's not unusual to hear two, three, or four nearly simultaneous calls to prayer. While this was a little jarring at dawn, the other four caused me to stop dead in my tracks every time.

The chants were basically the same, but each started within seconds of the others, and not all the muezzin (the guys who recite the adhan) began on the same pitch. The scales used in Eastern music are already foreign to my classically trained Western ears; the intervals (or distance) between pitches are often smaller than ours, and they are hardly even-tempered. And when they overlapped in a cacophonous canon, coming from every corner of the city, the chords that were created gave me chills.

Was it dissonance? Harmony? Something else? I honestly don't know; it was unlike anything I've ever heard before, and it shorted the musical circuits in my brain that are hardwired to think in half steps and major thirds and dominant sevenths. I felt like a musical illiterate, but was so moved by the unintentional chorus created by the centuries-old religious practice that I too, was compelled to stop what I was doing and to reflect. I didn't ponder the teachings of the Quran, because I don't know them, but I appreciated the daily reminders nonetheless.

Equally fascinating to me, once the salah stopped and I could function again, was that this incredible aural treat was little more than background noise to millions of Istanbul's residents. I am grateful that I was able to take home an extra sensory perception (not to be confused with an extra-sensory perception, aka ESP) as a souvenir from my trip. In addition to the sights, tastes, and smells of Istanbul, the sounds of Turkey, which I'll never be able to sufficiently describe or accurately recreate, have nonetheless etched themselves into my permanent memory.

Ode to the Sycamore

2009-03-25T12:32:00.004-05:00

Normally, the bare and dormant trees that dot the landscape this time of year are depressing to me. Although it's technically spring, it will be a few more weeks before we start to see more than a few timid signs of plant life up here in Chicago. The brave little crocuses that bloomed last week are now smothered by a blanket of wet, heavy, and unwelcome snowfall. The buds that tentatively started to form on some bushes and shrubs have shriveled up and are falling off, thanks to the late-season freeze; even the hedges are back to square one. Aside from the evergreens, there is one type of tree at cheers me up during these cold, dreary months; the American Sycamore.

Distinctive even in winter, the mottled, paint-by-number bark of these majestic shade trees stands out in almost defiant contrast to the hibernating maples, oaks, and elms. Caused by an inability to expand as the tree grows, the bark cracks and separates before it eventually sloughs off, revealing layered shades of browns, tans, yellows, whites, ecrus, and even pale greens. Rivaled only by the flaky white trunks of the delicate birch, the sycamore is one of those rare trees that commands attention and admiration year round. While the leaves of the sycamore aren't as pretty as maple leaves in the fall or as recognizable as the leaves on most varieties of oak trees, they are distinctive because of their size. On a mature sycamore, the broad, flat leaves can grow to be as big as a human head!

So until the weather turns for good, the flowers are in full bloom and the trees have regained their complete summer foliage, I will continue to rely on the many shades and textures of bark that make up the sycamore's earthy palette to provide some cheery color to an otherwise gray, late-winter landscape.

Disclaimer Dates

2009-03-21T22:29:00.016-05:00

I've been in a bit of a dating "dry spell "as of late, which seems to make some people uncomfortable, or at least it bothers them more than it does me. I've been busy with other things, and ever since I came to the conclusion that I'm no longer willing to suffer through dates with guys who don't really interest me, I haven't actively given dating much thought. However, this hasn't stopped some well-intentioned friends and acquaintances from offering to introduce me to a still-single guy friend or relative of theirs, the numbers of whom seem to be dwindling by the day. While normally this wouldn't bug me, I've begun to notice a trend in their approach, one that disturbs me quite a bit.

The suggestion starts innocently enough-- they want to introduce me to their co-worker/husband's friend/brother-in-law who is both attractive and available. Unfortunately, the next sentence that comes out of their mouth is some variation of, "He's such a great guy, but... " It's the word "but" that makes me cut them off-- guys shouldn't come with warning labels! And besides, the last time I let someone finish that sentence, I very nearly went on a date with a great guy... but, he still lived with his dad-- because he was evading creditors-- and his stunning inability to pass the random drug tests at work had earned him the nickname "Dirty".

Well... sign me up?!? Score.

Other recent date suggestions have included dinner with a guy who forces his dates to pick the wine, just so he can subsequently spend the next three hours mocking their choice (I know next to nothing about wines, so said guy would have had a heyday... at my expense), and a trip to the zoo with a guy named "Buddha"-- as in 'looks like the'-- to see the walruses. I'm not even touching that one!

Seriously, people-- I can do better!

I find it odd that that some of the people who know me best want to set me up with guys who have such glaring, deal-breaking flaws. Then, I had an even more disturbing thought... am I... a disclaimer date?!? I can't think of any reason why I would be, and the friends I've cornered about the matter have insisted that I am not. And although I'd like to think they'd tell me if I was, I'm suddenly not so sure. Are they approaching their single guy friends, saying, "You should really meet my friend Allison! She's such a great gal, but..."

I simply refuse to believe that all the good guys out there have been taken, and I'm just not willing to settle for a disclaimer date. Not at this time. So friends, if you know an eligible guy you'd like me to meet, as long as you can tell me about him without grimacing, I'm all ears! And to the eligible guys, if you don't need a green card, and you have a similar aversion to the thought of disclaimer dating, let's talk. I'd like know more about you, and let you know more about me-- no 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts' about it.

The Break-in

2009-03-05T21:41:00.007-06:00

Her worst fears were realized last night; the large males who had been lurking outside her room for weeks finally managed to break in. They burst through the door in the dead of night, ransacked the room, rifled through her belongings, and destroyed her property. Terrified, she cowered under the bed for hours, long after the culprits were apprehended.

Prancy, the tiny calico foster cat, had spent the past three weeks in my bedroom, where she stayed while getting up to date on her vaccinations. She had been quite content to lounge in the windows and on the bed, and was slated to return to the shelter the following morning. In the meantime, my resident cats, Jack and Iggy, were desperate to find out what it was that I was keeping from them. Jack had spent the past few weeks howling and flinging himself against the door. I assumed that he would either be bored or concussed after a few days of these antics, but my refusal to let him in the room only seemed to strenghten his resolve. He HAD TO KNOW what was on the other side of that door!

While I was asleep on the couch, Jack somehow managed to get the door open, and he and Iggy dashed in. Like proverbial bulls in a China shop, they overturned my papasan chair, slid the rug into an accordion-folded pile of fabric in the corner, snagged the duvet cover, and knocked off (and proceeded to chew through) a bag of food and a bag of treats that were up on the dresser. I somehow failed to wake up until they had completely decimated the bag of treats.

Let me hasten to say that no foster cats were harmed during the break-in. In fact, I don't think the boys bothered her at all. They were in it for the treats, which they got. Rest assured that the intruders were quickly apprehended, and spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, despite their howls of protest.

"Call Me Back if He's Dead" (2/15/04)

2009-02-16T11:40:00.004-06:00

There was never any noise coming from Mr. Heckles' apartment; no television blaring, no radio playing, no phone ringing, no vacuum cleaner running. Ever. He never even turned any lights on after dark, which is why I immediately knew the alarm going off in his apartment that morning wasn't one that could be turned off by a snooze button. Had he fallen and couldn't get up? Whatever the alarm was for, it had been going off for a while; it sounded as if the batteries were almost out of juice. Even more disturbing was the running water-- a LOT of water-- I heard when I knocked on the door to see if everything was okay. I wasn't expecting an answer, considering he had chased away the nephew who showed up to check on him the week before, but I found the persistent, blaring noise disturbing enough to warrant a call to the police.

A pair of cops sauntered up to the third floor about 1/2 an hour later, joking as they ascended the stairs that there was indeed a strange noise coming from the upstairs apartment. My roommate and I invited them in, explaining that we were worried by the noise and that we wanted them to check on Mr. Heckles because he was old and lived by himself. When they asked us how old we thought he was, we just looked at each other, then back at the cops, chiming "old" in near-perfect unison. The cops shook their heads at us, then knocked on the door and, getting no answer, chastised us for calling them instead of our landlords... I thought an old man might be hurt, and they wanted me to call my landlord!?! Incredible.

So they wandered through our place while we rummaged through our files, raising their eyebrows at the empty wine glasses left over from a dinner party we had hosted the night before. I found our landlord's cell number and reluctantly made the call. I apologized profusely for calling before 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday, then explained that the police were there to check on the old man across the hall, but they didn't seem concerned enough to break in, and instead wanted the landlords to come over and let them in. At this point, the male officer took the phone from me, and once he learned that my landlords were still 20 minutes out, he ordered his partner to stay in the apartment with us while he went out for coffee. He made it clear that we had interrupted their breakfast, and that they weren't even supposed to be responding to our call; their beat was south of Montrose and we lived one block north. As he left our apartment, the officer sarcastically said to his partner, "call me back if he's dead!" His name was Sarge.

The officer who remained seemed quite nervous, saying she didn't have a good feeling about the situation. She then excused herself to take a giant dump in our bathroom. It was awful; we were gagging and our eyes were watering, but we had no discreet way to light a match or a candle, and couldn't very well open the window, because it was FEBRUARY! Thankfully, our landlord showed up a few minutes later, but explained that he couldn't get into the apartment either; apparently Mr. Heckles had been holed up in that third-floor apartment for decades, and that he had come with the building; letting him be was one of the conditions of sale when my landlords purchased the property the year before.

The lonely, eccentric man who lived across the hall was not really named Mr. Heckles, but we called him that because of his eerie resemblance to the disheveled, bath-robed character who lived downstairs from Monica and Rachel on Friends. Turns out he was more paranoid than we realized; we knew the "Beware of Dog" sign and the security alarm sticker on the back door were fake, and quickly learned our landlord's key was insufficient because there were floor-to-ceiling locks on both of his doors. Miraculously, though, the back window was not latched, and the landlord used one of our screwdrivers to jimmy the window open.

Just as he was poised to climb through the open window, the rookie cop sprang into action, saying that, since she was the police officer, she should go first. Before she disappeared into the apartment, she turned to my landlord and asked him to hold her belt, passing him her entire holster, with the gun still inside. My roommate and I stood in our doorway, shivering and gaping at our landlord-- who is a very nice man but, to those who don't know him, could easily pass as an Eastern European mobster-- adorned in hefty gold rings and chains, smoking a cigarette, and holding a gun on our back porch. Something tells me that Sarge would not have approved.

Once they were both inside Mr. Heckles' apartment, we closed the back door, only to hear a knock at our front door a moment later. It was our landlord, ashen but (thankfully) unarmed, and he told us that Mr. Heckles was dead.

The next few hours were a blur of activity; detectives, police, paramedics, and medical examiners descended upon our quiet street corner. Sarge came back and praised us for being good neighbors, telling us we did the right thing by calling 911, and never to hesitate to call the police, because after all, it was their job to serve and protect. Funny, but his words rang a little hollow. Since they couldn't get all the door locks open right away, people were trudging through our apartment to gain entry next door. I was not about to let them carry a dead guy through our place and was fully prepared to tell them as much, but thankfully, they managed to get Mr. Heckles' other door unlocked before it came to that.

Once all the activity was contained to the apartment next door, we were shaken, but thought it best to try and carry out our plans for the day. We had been looking forward to trying a new recipe for sformato, which is a mashed-potato pie. We came up a little short on the onion puree, but figured it wouldn't matter much, and neither of us wanted to run to the store at that moment. It was well past 1:00 p.m. by the time it was finished, and as we sat down to eat, we heard a commotion in the hallway. They were removing the body.

Unfortunately, the recipe proportions were a little more crucial than we realized, and the sformato was a little dense, a little dry. As I tried to masticate that first bite, I had a horrible thought, and one look at my roommate told me she was thinking the same thing-- it was just so... fleshy. We dashed to the garbage can, spit out two wet, colorless lumps of food, and tried not to retch as we dumped the entire dish into the trash. We hid in the kitchen until we heard the detectives leave and the corpse-mobile drive away, then we sprinted out the back door and went out for pizza.

Before the police left, the rookie cop came over to update us on the situation. The death had been ruled "natural", and our landlord had confirmed that Mr. Heckles was a "very sick man"; we suspect he had end-stage cancer of some sort. He was found in the bathroom, naked, as if he was getting ready to take a shower and start his day, which explains the running water I heard. The alarm was not a medic alert, but the smoke detector, which, oddly enough was sitting on the table. Perhaps he needed to change the battery? Perhaps he knew he would need to get our attention?!?

Then she told us that they knew he was alive as of 12:08 the day before, because he kept a little book by the front window and recorded peoples' comings and goings (anyone else see the Friends reference here? "9:42-- Noisy girls across the hall made too much noise again..." Yikes!) and the mail had been delivered at 12:08 on Saturday. It turns out that the mailman was his only friend; he left his most treasured belongings to the mailman in the makeshift will he had scribbled into his notebook. I feel bad that I never got to know Mr. Heckles, but am almost certain that he did not want to be known, that he preferred to keep to himself. Still, I find it sad that the brief, fleeting glimpse we got into the window of his life happened after his death, a view that was abruptly cut off the moment his apartment was sealed, orders of the Cook County Medical Examiner.

Diary of an Instru-mental-case, Part 4

2009-02-13T13:42:00.001-06:00

3/16/04
I have some serious ethical problems with this company. A photographer was going to sell us a picture at a discounted rate for use in an upcoming issue until he remembered that he had sent a picture to one of the other magazines in the building nearly five years earlier. He received a written contract and the picture was printed. But when he called several months later because he hadn’t been paid, the Old Guy laughed at him saying that the editor should have never agreed to pay for one lousy picture and that he had no intention of paying any fee. What did he plan to do, fly halfway across the country to sue him for $150?

He almost did sue out of principle, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He also thought about calling our regular advertisers to encourage them to take their business elsewhere, but didn’t want to stoop to his level. I thought his description of the Old Guy– a lawyer who thinks he’s above the law– was quite fitting. We apologized profusely on the Old Guy’s behalf but, needless to say, we didn’t get the picture. If this random photographer knows and hates us, how many others feel the same? It’s hard to produce a magazine this way; it makes me wonder if he’s deliberately trying to sabotage the company, cut his losses and retire. I know he’d rather die than relinquish control, but there are better ways to close a company.

3/27/04
My entire body aches. Yesterday we all worked to package, label, and ship the products the magazine sells every spring. The boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, filling several rooms and hallways. We worked for nearly nine hours straight with only a short break for lunch, lifting and stacking heavy boxes, and lugging completed orders to the shipping area.

I was furious to find out that the Old Guy pockets all the income. He makes millions from these sales, and keeps it all. We have to handle all incoming calls and process, package, and ship each order on a daily basis in addition to all of our regular duties, and we don’t get so much as a penny, let alone a bonus. The money doesn’t go toward updating company technology, bringing employee salaries up to par, or even hiring temp works to cover the deluge of orders; instead it further pads a number of already cushy trust funds and real estate ventures.

I feel like we’re all slaves, and the Old Guy is the seemingly benevolent plantation owner. He tells us to "go forth" and toil in the field and– we’ll never see the fruits of our labors but the onslaught of riches leaves him feeling generous enough to spring for pizza. I am convinced that he is partially responsible for the nation’s economy troubles. I would like to see a bill passed to cap company profits and raise the standard wages of the employees who make it all happen, but since the politicians are in on this scheme as well, the working class will remain forever oppressed.

4/6/04
I got a postcard from one of the contributing editors congratulating me on my first published article. Her compliments were so genuine and unexpected that I stood there, card in hand, for several minutes. Even though I don’t believe a word the Old Guy says, I guess being told that I’m wrong, stupid, and lazy has affected me more than I realized. The first nice thing to be said about my work came from a relative stranger–I wanted to cry.

I took the postcard home with me and hung it on the fridge. That little card was what made me realize that the constant negativity has made me meaner and more cynical. I don’t really like the person I’ve become, so when I picked up a paper on my way to work this morning, I turned straight to the classifieds and set out to make things right.

Diary of an Instru-mental-case, Part 3

2009-02-10T18:23:00.002-06:00

12/11/03
On a whim, I wrote a short article about my daily two-hour, 24-mile-commute, taking great care to write within the stringent limitations of our house style. We were told to start soliciting more one-page columns on lighter subjects, and I thought this would fit the bill. I was thrilled to receive a back-handed compliment from the Old Guy– I couldn’t believe he liked it!

I don’t know why I was expecting him to edit my article more lightly than the others, but I was dismayed to get draft after draft back with corrections scribbled between each line. It was good, but he can write about my life better than I ever could. I read over the final edit to make sure my ideas were still intact, but I couldn’t bear to point out that I never used the words"render" or "misgivings" in casual conversation for fear the article would be changed again. I now refer to it as "Allison’s Commute, by the Old Guy."

12/19/03
I worked the company booth at an international music conference this week. I met several authors and contributing editors and attended some lectures in hopes of soliciting an article or two. The annual meeting of the Old Man’s Club also convenes at this conference; I’ve never seen the Old Guy in such good spirits– he was schmoozing and name-dropping with the best of them!

The company is predominately female (because the Old Guy feels less threatened by women), but on more than one occasion, an author walked up, shook hands with my male co-workers, then asked if I answered phones– it was infuriating. Upon learning I was one of the editors, a particularly sexist author sneered and asked if I even had a music degree– I retorted that I had three. It was the most gratifying thing I had done all week.

1/2/04
I laughed aloud as I read the two memos on my desk this morning. The first one read "Please turn the enclosed digital image into a 35-mm slide." Smirking, I imagined how the memo must sound to its recipients– "Please reverse technology so we can make production more laborious and time-consuming." The second said: "We will discontinue any reference to the internet as a proper noun. We do no such thing with a copy machine or an automobile or a telephone" and ended with "Jargon in all forms should be suspect." I’ll tell you what’s suspect– people who classify the Internet as a tangible object, and trade-specific magazines that print only jargon-free articles.

1/5/04
We lost three employees last week. One girl had actually been fired a couple of months earlier, but continued working until she found another job because the Old Guy refused to pay unemployment. Another walked out, and the third was fired for taking an approved vacation day.

One of our editors moved to advertising, and we’re now short handed across the board with production week looming. The tension in this place is almost unbearable; it’s hard to work for someone so emotionally volatile. I’m just trying to stay under the radar to prevent triggering any additional outbursts.

1/22/04
Sighing, I re-edited my latest assignment, changing several sentences into passive voice because I had started each with the "wrong" subject. Then I had to look over the old guy’s shoulder as he reworked the first page. He read my version aloud in that robotic monotone I’ve grown to loathe; his corrections were recited with a melodious lilt. I refrained from pointing out that everything sounds ridiculous in that voice; only on a good day am I able to interject a sentence or two before being shut down by his lawyerish doublespeak.

Aside from the nautical theme and the lack of a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, his office is no different from an interrogation room. Every conversation is a hostile cross-examination; my ideas are squelched before they’re even voiced and the only acceptable answers I’m allowed to give are yes and no. I often wonder how miserable people have to be to feel empowered by belittling others. Sadly, I think the Old Guy feels entitled to do so. Well, I don’t care who his daddy was or how much money he has, nothing gives him the right to treat others so poorly. But until I can find another source of income, I have little choice but to submit to the verbal abuse.

Diary of an Instru-mental-case, part 2

2009-02-06T13:49:00.003-06:00

10/22/03
I witnessed "soup time"today. English lessons begin early for this fourth generation of future writers over a bowl of alphabet soup, the leftovers of which are stored in the fridge still in the open can and covered only by a thin film of congealed broth.

The youngest grandchild is very articulate, but more interested in eating the slimy lettered noodles than learning pretentious words that start with the letter of the day. The letter today was O. The word of the day– obstreperous. I would rather potty train kids that age than try to expand their vocabulary before they can pronounce all the phonemes in the English language.

11/12/03
The Old Guy has been making me work late for no apparent reason. I have no problem putting in extra time if necessary, but enlarging photographs for another magazine doesn’t count. Another time I had to read the first chapter of "The Birth of the Republic" by Edmund P. Morgan before I could leave, but mostly I just have to sit and listen to stories about how stupid the French are or how a former president took a crap in some rose garden.

I put in my full eight hours and sometimes more– how dare he make me feel guilty for not staying late or coming in early? I have other interests, such as music. By the time I get home and fix dinner, I am so mentally drained that it’s hard to make myself practice, and when I get home late, it’s even harder.

11/18/03
The Old Guy canned the article I was working on and gave me a short piece by a member of the Old Man’s Club instead. The Club is filled with cantankerous loyalists who think very highly of themselves and continue to regard each other as the only distinguished leaders in the field long after their glory days have passed. I suspect that this author is, sadly, in the final stages of alcoholism– he spelled "flexibility" with two semicolons and a fraction!

I looked through musty back issues to find three articles the author had published in the 1960s and 70s, which were nearly identical to the mess he sent in this time. I was able to piece together enough coherent ideas to create a fourth edition, but the Old Guy insisted I call to clarify some "vagueries", which proved useless. All I learned was that the author was Irish and he thought I was "terrific".

We later compiled a list of his made-up words (which was nearly as long as the one I made during the President’s most recent State of the Union address) and tried to use each in a sentence– it was mildly entertaining.

11/27/03
I came in early yesterday because I was leaving town for the holiday, despite the memo that denounced both Thanksgiving and Christmas for falling near the end of the production cycle. The Old Guy gave me an article to re-edit right before I left because I had the nerve to take Friday off and spend the weekend with my family. Had I gotten the article back earlier in the afternoon, I could have easily finished it before I was scheduled to leave, but my protests fell on deaf ears.

By the time I finished, nearly everyone else was gone. My eyes brimmed with tears as I sat in city traffic for nearly two hours; I had no cash for dinner. I was so tired and hungry by the time I finally got home that I wanted to quit. I just don’t understand how someone can be so heartless and cruel.

Hepatitis A, Dorian Gray? (5/9/08)

2009-02-03T10:52:00.005-06:00

I found out just last week that I would need a Hepatitis A vaccine to legally enter Turkey, which has left me scrambling, as I fly out in two weeks! I spent the better part of an afternoon scouring the city for a doctor that even offered the vaccine; many places don't, and the majority that do also want to conduct a new-patient physical; read, several hundreds of dollars out of my pocket. So I turned instead to Chicago's Public Health system, and finally found a place that would vaccinate me for a $15 donation-- the HIV and STD clinic in Boys' Town.

I got there within minutes of their opening, but 16 other people had already checked in. I told the receptionist that I wasn't there for testing, that I had called the day before about getting a vaccine. She cut me off, telling me to fill out the form on the clipboard and have a seat. It became apparent that I was going to be there for a while, so I ran across the street and got some breakfast, then returned to the waiting room. After about an hour, my number was finally called. I went into a small room just off the lobby and a very matter-of-fact nurse told me to have a seat. Without even looking up, she started reading a list of questions off her clipboard.

Completely dead-pan, she began asking me about my sexual orientation and quickly moved on to more probing questions such as, "How many times in the last six months have you traded sex for drugs or money?" Most of what she asked me I don't even want to repeat, and my answers ranged from, "What? No! Never! Who does that!?!", the last of which prompted her to pause, look down her nose at me, and nod toward the waiting room. I mouthed a silent "oh" before I tried once again to explain what I needed. All I managed to get out was, "I don't think you guys understand why I'm here...." before she interrupted me, saying that she was the one asking the questions, and without missing a beat, made her way through the rest of the list.

Then she told me to roll up my sleeve and picked up a needle with which to draw my blood. I told her I didn't need to have any blood drawn, that all I needed was... and before I could finish the sentence, she slammed the needle down and exclaimed, exasperated, "Girl, you ain't had no crazy sex! Go sit back down!" I was mortified, yet all too happy to comply. And when I went back out to the waiting room, I tried asking the receptionist again if I really needed to go through this whole process if I wasn't here for STD testing or treatment. She told me that clinic services were first-come, first-serve, and to please have a seat.

By that point, the 20 or so people milling about the waiting room had started becoming somewhat familiar with each other. Aside from the guy who tried (unsucessfully) to get #14's phone number, it was more a sense of comaraderie between patients, that hey-- we're all in this together. Another hour and a half went by before someone came out and called me by my birthdate instead of the number I had been assigned, which prompted the jilted Romeo to wish me a happy birthday. Amid murmurs of congratulations, someone else chimed in about it being the big 3-0 for me; I smiled wanly and walked into the back of the clinic.

The clinic director herself met me back there and apologized profusely for the three hours I had now wasted at this awful place; apparently I should have been given a different number entirely, which would have gotten me in and out within minutes. She called me by my birthdate instead of calling my number out of order, so as not to cause a stir among the people who were still waiting. Moments later, I was in an exam room. I could barely contain my frustration as the doctor asked me the same humiliating questions as the nurse did. After what seemed like an eternity, she pulled my sleeve up and sunk a needleful of vaccine into my arm.

Once that was over, I sprinted out of the clinic and hopped on the train to take care of my other major errand that day; the renewal of my driver's license. I arrived downtown absolutely famished, but decided to get in line at the DMV before the loop workers showed up during their lunch hour. For the second time that day, I sat in a waiting room full of people, but thankfully, the process here was extremely speedy; I waited only 10 minutes before my number was called!
The old guy behind the counter took my money and updated my information; he commented on how nice the picture was on the license I was there to replace. I agreed, saying that I really liked the picture and that I almost wished I could keep it! He laughed and looked at me over the rim of his bifocals, and said, "you can't stay young forever, Dorian Gray." I had no idea who that was, but I was pretty sure I should be offended, so I snatched my license back from him and, with a huff, went off to get my new picture taken.

The photographer guy was so quick, that my old license was shredded before I even had the chance to ask if I could hang onto my old photo. My new picture isn't bad, but I still felt a little dejected as I left. It was amazing, the way a couple of colorful state and city workers had managed to make me feel old and prudish, and all before lunch! Guess my day can't go anywhere but up...

[I looked up the name Dorian Gray when I got home-- apparently the old guy referenced an old horror movie where some narcissistic gay guy sold his soul to the devil to stay young forever, and instead of aging, a portrait he had painted aged instead. Thanks for the hedonistic, Faustian put-down, DMV guy!]

Diary of an Instru-mental-case, Part 1

2009-02-01T20:24:00.005-06:00

9/30/03
I couldn’t believe my luck. I opened the Sunday classifieds to find an ad for an editorial position where the only requirement was that applicants have a music degree. I called first thing Monday morning and lined up an interview for the following day. Upon arrival, a mousy woman with frizzy hair led me to a vacant office and handed me the first of several miniature exams.

The testing took several hours– I understood the reasoning behind the grammar, punctuation, and spelling tests, and the editing portion was to be expected. I suppose the math test was somewhat relevant as well, but the science and geography exams seemed strange and almost insulting. I failed the typing test, which had to be done on a typewriter. All I know about these machines are that my parents have one buried deep in a closet somewhere and my grandfather used to sell them for the Royal company decades ago. My frantic attempts at working the delete button were unsuccessful.

By the time the publisher finally agreed to see me, I had a splitting headache from missing lunch. He spoke in a low, gravelly voice– I had to strain to listen. After a while, I gave up and stared at his long bushy eyebrows instead, fascinated by the way they wiggled like caterpillars under his thick scholarly glasses.

The following day was more of the same. I took note of all the feedback, used the few editing guidelines I had been given, and I was hired. We settled on a salary and, figuring that the paperwork would follow, I left smiling and called my family on the way home.

10/8/03
Aside from the standard tax forms, the paperwork never came. The publisher (a.k.a. the Old Guy) studied neither music nor writing, but was an attorney before taking over the family business– the lack of paperwork was intentional. We get six holidays off and 10 days paid vacation a year; sick days, personal days, and even jury duty is all docked from our vacation time. We’re supposed to be paid on the first of every month, but the checks are handed out as early as the 29th or as late as the 3rd depending on the Old Guy’s mood. Direct deposit is not an option.

10/10/03
We stayed late to finish the magazine last night; each article is printed on glossy paper, run through a Waxcote machine, and mounted onto a board. It seems odd to be straightening page numbers, pictures, and titles with a compass, ruler, and paper edge. We have (primitive) versions of all the necessary software– it would be much quicker to make the pages on the computer, especially since the Old Guy is such a perfectionist– we had to redo each board 6-10 times before he was finally satisfied. I also find it strange that we don’t have internet access–if we need to get online, we either have to work from home or the library down the road.

10/13/03
The offices face a beautifully landscaped courtyard, but mine is directly in the Old Guy’s line of vision; every time he looks up from his desk he sees a row of shrubs, and me. If I’m leaning back in my chair or out of the room for more than a couple of minutes, I’ll get an accusatory phone call for not working. I’m sure it’s just because I’m new, but it makes me paranoid nonetheless.

10/16/03
The future heirs of the publishing empire run rampant around the office building. They know they’re superior to the hired help and have no qualms about disrupting the workplace. Even though I don't have the paperwork to prove it, changing diapers and babysitting are so not a part of my job description. Ever since my stint as a costume character in high school, I have little tolerance for other people’s bratty offspring. The piercing shrieks that interrupt meetings and editing sessions and resound through this office-turned-daycare make me want to hurt people. Little people.

The Disco-Ball Messiah (12/5/04)

2009-01-30T08:59:00.018-06:00

I just don't see the appeal of a do-it-yourself Messiah concert. I seem to play more than my share of these this time of year, and while I'm grateful for the work, the performances themselves tend to be pretty awful. Do ordinary people really enjoy the challenge of trying to sing rapid mellismas? In four-part harmony?! Do they prefer just to listen to the orchestral accompaniment of the choruses, sans vocalists? Or are these concerts just an excuse for them to wear their finest holiday sweaters out on the town? It all seems a bit masochistic to me, yet these concerts have become time-honored traditions at many area churches, and people turn out in droves year after year.

Don't get me wrong-- I like the idea of audience participation, especially during holiday concerts-- there's nothing like a rousing sing-a-long to get people in the Christmas spirit! But there's a big difference between a sing-a-long Messiah concert and the do-it-yourself numbers I usually wind up playing for.... namely, the budget. Sing-a-longs hire a choir or, at the very least, place professional ringers in the audience to help carry ticket holders through the lesser-known choruses. Many people bring their own scores to the performance, which suggests to me that they're at least familiar with the oratorio, while most do-it-yourself-ers take a score from a box on the back pew as they enter the church and hope for the best. I've participated in a sing-a-long Messiah before as an audience member, and it was great fun, but make no mistake--those choir parts are definitely not meant to be sung by the average church congregation. I think they're hard-- and I'm a musician! So, if you ever find yourself debating which of these concerts to attend, ALWAYS go for the sing-a-long-- it's worth the price of admission, people! And this is why....

The gig I played in the uppity North Shore today should, for all intensive purposes, have been fantastic. I was playing with some of the most prolific freelancers in the area, and the soloists were all professional opera singers. The school auditorium wasn't packed, but there were a respectable number of people in attendance. I found it odd that the program advertised the concert as a "rendering" of Handel's Messiah; I didn't know what that meant, and it never occured to me to ask. The only trepidation I had was that we were performing the entire oratorio, and not just the Christmas portion, which makes for a looooong afternoon.

The overture was lush and beautiful, and the tenor's opening recitative and aria were superb... then things slowly began to go downhill. Once "Ev'ry Valley" had been "Exalted", the ad-hoc chorus rose to sing "And the Glory of the Lord". The lights weren't up in the auditorium, and the audience wasn't seated according to voice type, so people were sight reading in the dark and without the safety of being surrounded by unison voices. While it wasn't terrible, it certainly wasn't good. The next chorus, "And He Shall Purify", has a very difficult bass part that continues through much of the piece. The audience was all but silent. It was so bad that the soloists began singing along, which they felt compelled to do throughout much of the next three hours.

"For Unto Us a Child is Born", the second most familiar chorus in the piece, offered the soloists a brief reprieve. As we trudged on toward Part the Second, I became increasingly distracted by a squeaking, creaking noise behind me. It sounded like the brass players were really fidgety (not that I blamed them-- they don't play much at all), and the risers upon which they were sitting were groaning in protest. I turned around during an aria in which I was tacet and, to my horror, saw an interpretive painter at the back of the stage. Dressed in a pair of white, paint-splattered overalls and standing on some rickety-looking scaffolding, this artist was theatrically offering his "rendering" of the afternoon's festivities. With a flourish, he scrawled "King of Kings" and "Prince of Peace" and the like onto a large canvas sheet, which served as a makeshift backdrop to the orchestra, using a large, pretentious calligraphy.

The audience (thankfully) managed not to giggle during "All We Like Sheep", and continued to dutifully muddle through the increasingly obscure choruses. I really think that the only reason they came back after intermission was because the "Hallelujah Chorus" had been moved to the end of the concert-- that's the only reason most people come to these things, anyway! By the time we reached Part the Third, the chorus was practically nonexistent.

Fifty-two numbers and nearly three hours later, we finally get to the "Hallelujah Chorus". The audience suddenly came back to life and, for the first time all day, I heard people singing en masse. Just as I was thinking that this would be a nice ending to an otherwise long and painful performance, the stage crew turned a spotlight toward the ceiling and activated the dusty disco ball that dangled down from the ceiling. It was, well, garish. I was so stunned that I stopped playing altogether, gaping instead at the little squares of light reflecting off the audience and the auditorium walls. It was unprecedented, and frankly, a little sacrilegious. I've never seen anything like it before, and never hope to again. We got a rousing (albeit obligatory) standing ovation, though (that's why the "Hallelujah Chorus" is usually performed last) and amazingly, people were still willing to mill around afterward and enjoy a reception held out in the lobby. I for one couldn't get out of there soon enough-- let's hope next week's Messiah concert goes better than this; I don't think it could be any worse!

Nightmares of a Dream Job (2/12/05)

2009-01-29T22:30:00.006-06:00

I lived in constant fear of being promoted. I immediately knew that something was strange about the small publishing company, but I ignored my instincts in favor of landing a salaried job that combined my two main interests– music and journalism. I’m a classically trained musician with a knack for writing, but the fact that I was grossly under qualified to work as a magazine editor was irrelevant; it didn’t take long to figure out why.

While I don’t know as much about grammar as I probably should, my on-the-job training only made matters worse. The publisher was very particular and his editing criteria were peculiar, to say the least. Pronouns were all but forbidden, which made interviews especially difficult. The awkward sentences in the finished drafts were so different from the original transcriptions, I was shocked that the interviewees ever consented to publication. Starting a sentence with a gerund was grounds for termination, and the commas I mistakenly placed after prepositional phrases had a mysterious way of vanishing in the final edits.

I overcame an annoying habit of using topic sentences. Introducing a new topic was "needlessly stupid"; instead we used run-on sentences to segue from one idea to the next. Other errors included hyphenating compound adjectives, while failing to place a hyphen between an adverb and the word it modified (one twelve page article was heavily-laden with these.) When I challenged this assertion and told the publisher that compound adjectives should be hyphenated, he cited example after unhyphenated example (of adverbial clauses) from Strunk and White to prove his point.

I spent two frustrating production cycles re-editing every article I was assigned, because I had started several sentences with the "wrong" subject. When I finally figured out that the publisher was rejecting the use of past and present participles, not subject order, I cringed, realizing the only option I had left was to write in passive voice.

Articles frequently came back with circles around "forbidden words". I kept a list of words the publisher arbitrarily decided to abhor, with "achieve", "help", and "goal" being the most common offenders. "Reveal" once prompted him to scrawl the words SPARE ME FOREVER nastily in the margin. It’s funny, really, this forbidden word list. "Good" was listed seven times as the suggested replacement for words from "adequate" to "ingenious", and "because of" always replaced "due to," regardless of grammatical implication.

I wouldn’t have minded adhering to such bizarre editorial guidelines if I hadn’t been blamed for the dull prose that inevitably resulted. I know how to write in a conversational style-- I just wasn't allowed to do so. I wasn't even allowed to use the word "allow"-- it was on the list.

The constant criticism and lengthy commute quickly became unbearable; as soon as I saved up enough money to live off of while I found another job, I fled. It’ll take some time to fully recover from this experience; although my writing style is still on the mend, I thankfully managed to escape with my grammatical integrity intact.

[This is for all you fellow word nerds out there....]

Save a Stray (7/30/08)

2009-01-27T09:06:00.008-06:00

Something about the way she was lying on the sidewalk made me hit the brakes and throw my car into reverse. The petite long-haired tabby was lying in the residuals of a puddle from an early morning rain shower, and when I approached she lifted her head, looked at up at me with big, plaintive green eyes and mouthed a silent hello. I could immediately see that she was rail-thin and too weak to stand, so I ran across the street to my grandfather's downstate residence (which I had just been visiting), borrowed some towels from the old people, scooped up the small cat and put her in my car.

I didn't have the money to take her to a vet, which it was becoming increasingly clear that she needed, so I called my mom's work and the receptionist gave me directions to the nearest animal shelter. As I was driving, I rubbed her whiskers and scratched her chin, which she seemed to enjoy. She tried to chat, but because she was so weak, all she could muster were silent meows. At that point, I noticed that her gums, her nose, and even the little pads on her feet were completely white, which is often a sign of malnutrition, sometimes worse. I knew she was in pretty bad shape, but I've heard countless stories about the injured, abused, and neglected cats that come through the doors of the no-kill shelter in Chicago where I volunteer, many of whom were on the brink of death, that make a full recovery and go on to lead happy and healthy lives. So I was worried but hopeful when I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the shelter's veterinary clinic.

The vet was outside walking a dog, and I asked him if he could help. As he walked with me inside the building, he first asked if the cat was mine, then he asked if I had hit it with the car. Both answers were of course no; I told him that she seemed sick. He pulled the towel back, took one look at her, and-- before she was even out of my arms-- stabbed a syringe full of euthasol into her abdomen.

I must have looked as horrified as I felt, because one of the veterinary assistants came over and gave me a big hug as soon as I set the poor little tabby down on the table, saying the world needed more good samaritans like me. The vet looked at her, then at me, and smiled sadly as he told me the cat was dead before I had brought it in, and went to go finish walking the dog. But she wasn't dead. That was the worst part.

Upon hearing the clinic door slam, the cat gasped loudly. Terrified, she tried to leap to her feet, but was too weak to do so. Her heart, instead of stopping, beat wildly. With every bit of remaining strength she had left, she began howling, her terror showing in in the whites of her eyes. I looked helplessly at the assistant, who took her pulse and told me that her white nose and gums must be from very poor circulation and not just malnutrition; feline leukemia was the likely suspect. She then told me that the vet must not have injected the lethal cocktail directly into her heart, and at this rate, it was going to take a while for her to die.

At that moment, I felt directly responsible for the hell in which this little tabby suddenly found herself; I had single-handedly handed her over to her executioner. Fighting back tears, I stroked her head to try and calm her. The assistants spoke over her as she lay there dying, commenting on how clean her white belly was, and shaking their heads when they suspected that she wasn't completely feral. Then they started debating where they should go for lunch.

I couldn't stand to stay and watch her die, so as soon as she quieted down and stopped struggling, I apologized under my breath, collected the old peoples' towels (the vet picked her up by her feet so I could grab the towels-- like a roped calf at a rodeo-- and told me they would properly dispose of her), washed my hands and left. I looked back once more before the door closed behind me-- the poor little tabby was still breathing, looking up at the disinterested vet with imploring green eyes.

Even though I was horrified and completely unprepared to witness the tabby's euthanization, I do not blame the vet or the clinic workers for the tabby's death. I'm sure that the vet instantly realized how sick the tabby was and acted as quickly as he could to end her suffering, and that their seemingly detached and calloused reactions were out of necessity-- a coping mechanism of sorts, to get them through the day. Kill-shelter workers in particular, who euthanize thousands of dogs and cats each year (many of whom are younger and healthier than the little tabby was) have to become a little detached from their job, which would otherwise be too overwhelming for most people. I, for one, don't think I could ever get used to seeing animals die needlessly-- it's heartbreaking.

It's a sad, sad reality, though, for millions of homeless cats and dogs every year who aren't lucky enough to get adopted. Whatever reasons people have for not spaying and neutering their pets, I can attest now that the grim alternative facing many of their unwanted offspring is much, much worse. Shelters love to share adoption stories, and trumpet the happy endings, but I think more people would be compelled to get involved with and support shelters if they knew exactly what happened to the animals who get passed over by potential adopters. While most people would rather not hear about the unlucky ones who ultimately wind up in the dumpster out back, these animals still deserve to have their stories told; their misfortune could spur someone to change the fate of another helpless animal.

I challenge every shelter in America to tell their communities about at least one of the beautiful, trusting, and bright-eyed creatures who didn't get to leave the shelter through the front door, a victim of an overwhelmed and underfunded system, whose only crime was not finding a home quickly enough. Shelters work tirelessly to save homeless pets and end animal cruelty, but despite their best efforts, they continue to fight an uphill battle. Perhaps a heart-wrenching story (like the little tabby's, above) will be the impetus that spurs someone to donate, adopt a pet, spay or neuter their own pet, save a stray, or even relinquish an animal they are unable/unwilling to properly care for.

That awful experience made me even more grateful to be involved with the no-kill shelter where I volunteer; I wanted to write them a big check, but had to settle for donating a few extra hours to caring for it's many residents. This shelter would have named the tabby upon admission and taken the time to examine her; even if the outcome was the same (this shelter only euthanizes when it would be inhumane not to), I'd like to think that they would have been able to administer the injection in a way that wouldn't have caused further suffering. I cursed myself for not recognizing just how sick the poor tabby was, thinking in hindsight that it might have been better to have carried her to a nice spot in the woods instead; somewhere soft and dry, unlike the wet sidewalk where I had found her, or the cold, sterile table where I ultimately left her.

The Oprah Show (8/31/05)

2009-01-26T08:07:00.002-06:00

After nearly two years of trying, my old roommate finally got tickets to a taping of the Oprah show. The day of the taping, we took the green line el to the station closest to Harpo studios, which turned out not to be all that close. Our carefully applied makeup had all but melted off by the time we finally met up with my roommate's other guests, about 9:30 that morning. We waited in line outside the studio for more than an hour, and when they finally let us inside, they promptly raided our purses of cell phones, pens, and mascara, but in turn fed us lunch (which turned out to be the highlight of the day!). We were corralled into a large waiting room full of crazed middle-aged women in brightly colored tops, and were held there for the next 2 1/2 hours, listening to and watching a video montage of her first twenty years, which looped indefinitely.

Oprah's infinitely helpful staff got on the intercom every 10 minutes or so and told us that if we didn't pee that instant, then we wouldn't be able to use the bathroom again until after the taping. They were very convincing in giving people a false sense of urgency on the matter-- I think I made eight trips to the bathroom in a couple hours' time. The staff also worked the already crazed ladies up into an absolute frenzy, by telling us that this was the first day of taping on Oprah's brand-new twentieth-anniversary stage set, and that we were especially lucky because we had the good fortune of sitting in on TWO tapings! Women were crying, fainting, throwing up in the bathroom and refusing to eat their lunch because they were so nervous/excited/delusional about getting to see Oprah! Even my roommate and I thought that it greatly improved our chances of being at least one fun show-- maybe two! My roommate was hoping for some free stuff, while I would have liked to see Oprah's cute designer guy or a crazy makeover show, or something of the sort.

We snagged pretty good seats once we finally got into the studio, and while we waited for the queen of day-time television to grace us with her presence, the staff made us rehearse our reactions to her syndicated highness. For example: "I'm Oprah.... I'm walking...."; we cheered wildly. "I'm Oprah.... I just said something funny...."; we laughed maniacally. "I'm Oprah... I just said something shocking...." we gasped loudly, feigning wide-eyed horror. It went on and on; people were into it, though! You know how the show opens with a shot of the audience flipping out the moment Oprah enters the room? Yeah, that's real. One lady even asked if she would have the chance to show Oprah her lovely jean jacket, which had an Oprah acrostic (where each letter of a person's name is used as the first letter of another word) hand appliqued on the back. The staff member remained surprisingly straight-faced, and suggested she wait until the "After the Show" taping, which thankfully, never happened.

The first show we saw was a follow-up on post-partum depression. Brooke Shields was the special guest, and while I suppose it was exciting to see a celebrity, the show itself was kind of a downer. Oprah actually seemed a little accusatory of Brooke's criticism of Tom Crazy (I mean Cruise), despite his criticism of her decision to take anti-depressants for her illness. I was a little uncomfortable with the whole situation, but we had really high hopes for the second taping, which turned out to be about.... Pedophiles, and other sexual predators. It was horrible. One section of the audience had been molested as children, and another section fantasized about putting their babies in the dryer.

People were bawling, Oprah was crabby and yelling at her stage crew; they switched couches probably a half-dozen times before they settled on a furniture set that was suitable to use. The only free stuff we got was Kleenex. It was still cool to see a live taping, but by the time we finally got out of there (after 4:00), all I wanted to do was to curl up in a ball somewhere and never leave the house again. We got stuck in the rush-hour commute on the way back as well, and by the time we finally got home, we were exhausted.

The only upside to the day is that Oprah often chooses her "Favorite Things" audience from guests who attended one of the first tapings each season. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I'm fully expecting a phone call from one of Oprah's people this fall, saying "we realized that those tapings we made you sit through in August were really tough to watch, and we'd like to invite you back to see a show that's a little more fun. Oh, and by the way-- if you have to pee, you'd better go now, because you won't be able to once you're in the studio!"

[I did not get invited to the "Favorite Things" show, and to this day, I can't watch Oprah without making a trip to the bathroom. I'm sure she'd be thrilled to know that her show has such a powerful (or is it Pavlovian?) effect on me....]

OBAMARAMA 2008 (11/05/08--abridged)

2009-01-24T11:09:00.003-06:00

I'm not normally one to seek out a crowd. In fact, when I see a rowdy mob forming, I'm more apt to walk away than I am to enter the fray. That said, something was different about election night 2008. When I became one of the lucky few to snag a ticket to this historic event, I knew I couldn't stay away. Despite the worriers and the pessimists who warned me of the possibility of riots, assasination attempts, and worse, I was drawn to downtown Chicago and wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by the like-minded folks converging in the streets in and around Grant Park.

I could feel the energy in the air as soon as I stepped onto the el platform-- the city was practically humming. Impromptu street vendors lined the sidewalks, selling T-shirts, buttons, posters and the like to the people streaming by. We followed the crowd to the Congress Plaza; the semi-circular street should have been packed with rush-hour traffic but was instead packed with people. We arrived more than an hour and a half before the gates were scheduled to open, and already thousands were waiting to enter the rally site. We were shuffled through three security checkpoints, showing picture identification and printed e-tickets, opening our purses for police and secret service agents, (one threw away an apple I had brought to eat on the train ride home-- apparently it can be used as a projectile) and passing through metal detectors. The line, despite its size, moved quite well. They released people in stages, which prevented any bottlenecking or backups.

When we finally entered Hutchinson Field, the gated area where Obama was soon to speak, we looked out over a sea of people to the stage beyond, lined with American flags against a blazing blue backdrop. The media were EVERYWHERE, and with less than half of the field filled, we were able to move about quite freely for the next few minutes. We made a quick trip to the porta-johns so we wouldn't have to try and go once the park was full, then jockeyed for a space on the field behind some other short people. We had no chance of getting close enough to see the actual stage, so we settled for a nice view of the Jumbotron, where we watched a slew of CNN analysts make projections. We were shoulder to shoulder with people young and old, of every color and from all walks of life, and everyone willingly let down their guard and welcomed complete strangers into their personal space, partly out of necessity, but mostly because we were all united by a sense hope, inspiration, and our desire for change.

While we waited, we cheered each projection that turned another state blue, booed the states that filled in red, and filled in our own print-out map with pink and blue highlighters while we did the math on the electoral votes. We tried to stretch our legs and relieve the pressure on our throbbing feet, as we'd been standing for hours, but there was little room to move. We listened to an upbeat playlist during the commercial breaks and the crowed was momentarily entertained by the appearance of an "Obama" beach ball, which was promptly forgotten when the clock struck 10:00 and the Jumbotron lit up with Obama's photo and a graphic that simply read "BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT".

At that moment, nearly a quarter of a million people cheered as one. It was an almost indescribable feeling; the closest I’ve come to experiencing that kind of electricity is while playing a triumphant tutti passage in a bombastic orchestral piece. Surrounded by strings, brass and percussion, I can't hear myself playing, but it doesn't matter. At that point, instinct takes over; it trumps all of my senses. Once I've locked into the music, however, the recognition is instant and I know that I’ve become a part of something larger than myself, which is exactly what happened that night.

When the yelling and screaming subsided, I was stunned to hear the jubilant din replaced with sobs. People wept openly, so overcome with emotion, that strangers were compelled to hug and comfort each other and affirm that, yes, this was really happening. Before that night, I hadn't really given much thought to the impact this election would have on people of color. This is partly because the campaign went to great lengths to shift the focus away from race, but mostly because I have never experienced, first hand, the kind of prejudice and oppression endured by the thousands who fought for their civil rights in the 1950s and 60s.

I am not a person of color. In fact, if I was any paler, I would be translucent. While I can empathize with the oppressed, condemn the actions of the oppressors, learn from the mistakes that were made and vow not to let history repeat itself, I cannot fully relate to this contentious and turbulent time, because I did not experience it. But the enormity of the Civil Rights victory realized by Obama's election, a triumph more than forty years in the making, hit me square in the chest the moment the beautiful and articulate black woman behind me lost it, bawling and hugging everyone within reach and proclaiming that "we did this together! You and I, together! WE did this!" How liberating for her, and humbling for me, to be able to share in this victorious celebration.

Much of what followed was also witnessed in living rooms across America. We watched John McCain's gracious and magnanimous concession speech, and he was applauded by the crowd, a stirring show of respect for the years of service given by an American hero. The playlist reloaded while the crowd grew restless. Suddenly the mood shifted, and the crowd pressed forward, with near-crushing proximity. We prayed with the bishop, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, accompanied the singer of the national anthem when she stumbled over the lyrics, then erupted in cheers when the Obamas finally walked onto the stage.

Barack Obama delivered a concise and stirring speech, filled with more than enough eloquent quotes to satisfy the medias' soundbyte requirements for years to come, and spoke of a dream realized. He was surprisingly somber, perhaps fully realizing the enormity of the responsibility he is soon to assume. His warnings of a long road ahead, and the hard work yet to be done did little to subdue the boisterous crowd. I'd like to think that it's because people are finally ready for the challenge and are willing to come together to fix what's broken and to restore America's tarnished reputation.

We watched the Bidens join the Obamas onstage after his speech, then began making our way out of the park. Even though there was only one exit, the crowd moved steadily out into the street and once outside the park, peoples' enthusiasm erupted. Mounted police and officers in full riot gear lined the streets, but although people were giddy, no one was unruly. The team of officers outside the Congress Hotel reminded many people of an ugly scene there that marred the Democratic National Convention of 1968, when riots erupted outside. Forty years later, though, the hotel became a backdrop for an enormous but peaceful celebration, and instead of beating protestors with billy clubs, the Chicago Police posed for pictures and joked with the celebratory public.

My friend and I walked arm in arm, so as not to lose each other in the crowd, which elicited an "awww" from a lesbian couple in plaid miniskirts who passed us. We walked an extra couple of blocks to a more remote el station, and got right on a train-- we even got a seat! The trains ran on a rush-hour schedule and at full capacity. It felt so good to sit, but we were really thirsty. We passed the time on the train with a crossword puzzle, and guzzled multiple glasses of water once we were back home and the threat (of being in a porta potty while history was unfolding) had passed. I learned on the news this morning what I already sensed-- that the huge rally went off without a hitch-- no riots, no fights, no arrests. So if the world is asking whether Chicago can handle the 2016 Olympics, I would have to say "YES WE CAN!"

Regardless of whether people voted for Obama or not, I believe this was one of those moments that has etched itself into everyone's memories. People will forever remember where they were on the night America elected its first black president, a moment that will undoubtedly change a nation. I am-- and will always be-- proud to tell people-- now and for generations to come-- that I was a part of it, that I was there.

Why I Hate the Montrose Bus (1/13/09)

2009-01-23T13:27:00.001-06:00

It's no secret that I detest the #78 bus, and my excursion today is a perfect example of how this bus route represents the Chicago Transit System at it's worst. I was determined not to wait 20-30 minutes at the bus stop like I normally seem to do (which is strange, since the signs claim that buses run every 7-15 minutes during the day, and I rarely just miss the bus) especially not in single-digit temperatures, so I went online and used the CTA's bus tracker application. I left my home 10 minutes before the next bus was estimated to arrive, which gave me more than enough time to trudge through the snow to the bus stop one block away.

I arrived at the stop with minutes to spare, and watched a westbound bus go by. Ten minutes pass. My snot freezes as I watch a second westbound bus go by. After another ten minutes I start bouncing around, trying to keep the blood circulating in my feet, which got me little more than an appreciative honk from some guys in a delivery truck. Still no eastbound bus. Five minutes later, some guy pushing a shopping cart through the sludge in the street walks past and tells me that the bus is coming. Hallelujah! The eastbound bus finally rolls up and wheezes to a stop. The doors open, but along with the rush of warm air comes a tinny recording of Kenny G's latest holiday CD. I've been waiting all this time for THE CHRISTMAS EXPRESS.

Either this bus was running REALLY late, or I somehow wound up back in December 2008! The handrails were striped with red and white tape and made to look like candy canes, stacks of fake presents cluttered the space where people normally put their bags, wrapping paper covered all the ad posters, and the garland hanging from the windows was replete with blinking multi-colored lights. What might have seemed like a fun and even festive ride a month ago was just a garish and awful experience. I mean, the twelfth day of Christmas came and went last week-- LAST WEEK, people! But looking at the other passengers, you'd never know anything was out of the ordinary-- they just maintained the glazed stare that public transit riders have perfected so well-- no one watches anything in particular, they just make sure not to look at or acknowledge each other. Santa himself could have been sleeping in the back of the bus, and people would still be calmly looking through each other with that empty, unfocused gaze.

The bus ride couldn't end soon enough. I sprinted off the nightmarish bus of Christmas past and hopped onto the blissfully unfestive red line train (almost welcoming the familiar scent of stale urine), which I took to the Argyle stop. The worst part of my trip was when I came face to face with three pig carcasses while I was waiting at the crosswalk-- their bulging eyes foggy with death and their mouths frozen open, no doubt from the screams they uttered just before they were slaughtered. Some delivery guy was carrying them into a restaurant where I had eaten just days before-- I scrambled out of his way and into a deep snowbank, narrowly missing a snout to the forehead. While I realize that really has nothing to do with the CTA, I'm still choosing to blame that near miss on Santa's (very belated) express, because if it had come a half hour earlier (like it was supposed to) I wouldn't have been anywhere near Broadway and Argyle when that delivery guy was unloading Noah's Ark of Death. And THAT is why I hate the Montrose bus.