Small, But Scrappy (and Sometimes Verbose)

Overheard at the Airport

2008-09-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

So, air travel always brings out the brilliance and pleasantness in people. I'm waiting for a flight home from Vegas and have been listening for some time to a guy behind me reading two airlines the riot act because he's on a code share flight and they didn't send him a notarized statement from the CE0 of the booking airline or a notice in 72 point font on flourescent paper alerting him of the fact. Now I'm no airline advocate, nor even fan (they've oversold two of three flights this morning), but REALLY.

1) Obviously this guy doesn't fly very often. Yes, I do have a superiority complex when dealing with amateur travelers or really anyone else who doesn't pay attention to their environment.

2) Hey, moron, look at the screen when you're purchasing and/or the e-mailed itinerary/receipt. It's pretty clearly marked. Don't blame others for your stupidity.

OH! Even better: apparently he checked in to his initial flight with just over thirty minutes until his flight. Obviously it was the airlines' collective fault that he was rushed.

Geez.

Take the Hippies Laundering

2008-07-30T15:32:00.002-05:00

So I've recently discovered two laundry aids that have lead to my eliminating cleaning chemicals from my fabric maintenance altogether. I love this because it makes my inner hippie liquidance for joy, but also because I tend to be sensitive to chemicals and occasionally hive up if I run into something particularly nasty. I figure the fewer harsh chemicals I'm exposed to, the less likely I'll get the itch. At any rate, my new favorite laundry products are:

Soap Nuts - These are a kind of berry from India and Indonesia that contains saponin and does a nice job of basic washing. I found these at Merz Apothecary (AKA my new favorite store) around the corner from me, and the fellow working behind the counter said his mother used to wash his hair and clothes with these (uh, pre-packaging for American consumers). When he saw them at a trade show, he figured he had to bring them in to the store. I agree. Try them.

Dryer Max Dryer Balls - You know that you should never use fabric softener with towels because it makes them less absorbent, right? RIGHT? At any rate, my mother gave me these after trying them herself. They're a little noisy, but they do a great job of softening clothes, especially when combined with the Soap Nuts. While looking for a link to more info just now, I discovered that they're supposed to reduce drying time as well, but I've not necessarily noticed that. If you like the soft clothes and don't like the chemicals, though, now you should really give these a try (especially since they're relatively cheap).

Happy laundering.

Thing One and Thing Two

2008-05-16T09:30:00.006-05:00

Thing One: I spent last weekend in Ohio, visiting friends and family. One of my favorite parts of every visit to my parents' house is a review of recent local papers. Where else can you find a newspaper in which the News section is 6 pages, the Sports section is 8, and the Church section is 4? Also, where else can you find the exciting gems of small town living captured in the Police/Sheriff/Fire Department Logs? I usually bring the best of the best back home to share with friends and this time I'm also sharing with you, my loyal (or occasional or one-time) web readership. Witness:

Thing Two: Kudos to the California Supreme Court. When will people realize that in a legal sense, marriage is akin to a contractual state, enabling people to access certain benefits? It has nothing to do with religion and religious ideals about sanctified unions between people. As it turns out, we still have no state religion. If marriage were a religious institution from a legal perspective, it would (in an ideal world) have no place in our law.

On a related note, since I've not mentioned it before here, constitutions are not the appropriate venue in which to fight out the same-sex marriage or any other allegedly values-based conflicts. Constitutions are meant to lay out the framework of how governments work, not the laws themselves. The beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that it was written in such a way that it could be used in an entirely different world a few hundred years later with hardly any revision, with very few exceptions. If folks who can't leave others well enough alone to live their own lives must fight what they consider to be the good fight, legislation is the appropriate route.

At any rate, I'd say congratulations to those couples who will now be able to marry in California, but that would almost imply that this were something they'd earned rather than something they are (in my reading of the law back when I read the law) absolutely entitled to as a basic human right in the U.S. (see...well, hell, I don't remember which specific case established that principle, but it's out there nonetheless). Instead, I'll say I'm incredibly happy for you and for our country and I'll save the congratulating for individuals who exercise that right.

If that's what you are into...

2008-04-03T07:19:00.004-05:00

Song #1 for the Artesian Mix
(aka the song that's been in my head intermittently since last week):

Guess what opens April 4th...

2008-04-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

...finally.

If you guessed the much anticipated Cinners Cincinnati chili parlor and lounge at Lawrence and Talman, you're correct! After we waited six months for news, the owner posted the opening date on Cinners.net this week.

So, who's joining me for the oddly juxtaposition of joys that will be a Cincy-style three-way and a martini or three?

Oh, and by the way, yes, it is just around the corner from my new place.

Open Memo

2008-03-30T11:17:00.000-05:00

To the majority of Shamrock Shufflers who had the courtesy to thank the volunteers and pay attention to where they were pitching half-full Gatorade cups: You're welcome.

To the two guys who shouted "Where were you in April?" and the handfull of others who threw their half-full Gatorade cups toward the volunteers: You suck at life. Your heightened sense of entitlement is appalling. You're lucky that most of your fellow runners fall into the former category or you'd likely NEVER have VOLUNTEERS willing to get up at the crack of dawn and pay their way downtown to spend hours in any kind of inclement weather setting up the hydration stations on the course so you can have a beverage mid-race. I expect this group of folks doesn't do much by way of volunteering their own time for like events.

At any rate, it was a good experience and I'll likely do it again for future races I'm not running. Congrats to all the finishers!

My kind of town?

2008-03-24T09:16:00.002-05:00

So, it's official. Despite an oath to the contrary, I'm once again a resident of the City of Chicago. Ugly weather notwithstanding, my moving crew (thanks, folks!) did a bang up job of getting me in on Saturday, and except for several cartons of books, I'm unpacked (and yes, I do have a library card, thank you).

I keep noticing things I like about the new place (even beyond obvious things like, oh, a garage) and the new roommate is pretty swell as well (and makes a mean chili/grilled processed cheese food combo). We converted the enclosed sun porch to a guest room/TV room/room of delight that will feature prominently in my weekends when it warms up a bit (as will the patio and little patch of garden).

I feel like I've been half-asleep for the past year and woke up this weekend more myself
than I have been since I moved up here last year.

Redemption

2008-03-07T06:22:00.000-06:00

I had to turn over one of my preconceived notions/prejudices this week. As it turns out, all of Florida does not suck. Except for TAMPA, all of Florida sucks. Though I didn't have much chance to get outside and take advantage of the gorgeous weather, I thoroughly enjoyed my days in the city this week. No tacky neon or pastels, no overabundance of small children clogging up the airports. Warm weather, pretty views, and passable food. The only irritant I recall was the girl next to me on the plane who kept humming to herself (hey, shut up, as the song goes, and she very likely was just a fluke, in from Omaha or Kentucky for vacation).

But it's off to Orlando Sunday. Bah.

When Internet Marketing Fails Miserably

2008-02-27T23:56:00.004-06:00

Uh, what?

"Girls know that image is everything, so why should your credit card be any different? Grab your pink card now for shopping season."

I can't even begin to comprehend how a) any of that makes sense on any level, or b) what profiling of me on the internet brought that up as an appropriate ad. Uh, I'm female? Obviously I love shopping and pink and credit cards and keeping up my image?

I know which financial institution I won't be patronizing.

Bad Movies, Good Reads, and Seasonally Inappropriate Footwear

2008-02-24T17:01:00.003-06:00

I have been completely non-productive this weekend, other than moving the ball forward on some work projects (those don't count, damnit, this is the WEEKEND) while watching some really bad movies on one or another of the 83 HBO stations we get for free here and taking down some particularly disgusting Chinese take-out.

I did manage to walk up to Whole Foods in capris and flip flops, getting in some entertainment while restocking my Mother Hubbardesque mini-kitchen. (Apparently Evanstonians don't consider 36 degrees and sunny to be flip flop weather. Au contraire, my local citizenry).

I also started on Singled Out, one of the new reads I mentioned a week or so ago. It's one of the better sociology of books I've read in years. The author does a spectacular job of deconstructing much of the mythology, bunk science, and socialization surrounding what it does and does not mean to be a single adult living in the U.S. in the early 21st century. I found myself alternately laughing, nodding, and sheepishly acknowledging that I've played right in to the diabolical dual-pronged trap that is made up of "singlism" and "matrimania."

Two paragraphs on the back cover provide a good intro:

"The Dark Aura of Singlehood: You are miserable and lonely and your life is tragic.

"Attention, Single Women: Your work won't love you back and your eggs will dry up. Also, you don't get any, or you're promiscuous."

I did take issue to some degree with DePaulo's narrowly proscribed characterization of what politically motivates single women, and with the fact that (in the third or so of the book that I've read) it's written from a somewhat heterosexist perspective. I still find quite a bit of value in the book, though, given that for the most part it emphasizes that you can't paint singletons with a broad brush in any color.

I'll be trying to push my copy of this on all my single friends and, quite likely, on my coupled friends who seem to think that single folks' lives are inherently inferior. Big kudos to Ms. DePaulo for stating the (apparently not) obvious (enough) is such a coherent manner.

Back to work!

Caution: Relationship Troubles May Lead to Killing Sprees

2008-02-17T11:11:00.003-06:00

I was listening to the news on NPR while driving home the other day and the reporter/anchor/whathaveyou was providing the latest update on the NIU shootings. It was all pretty run-of-the-mill post-school-shooting stuff (and forgive me for sounding callous, but these reports are rather formulaic, no matter how devastating the event was for numerous people), until his parting comment. He said, roughly paraphrased, "No motive for the shootings has yet been established. Police are looking into whether the shooter had recently broken up with a girlfriend."

Seriously? Are you kidding me? Does it really matter what half-baked, sociopathic pseudo-rationalization process the guy went through before he decided to walk into a lecture hall from the front in cold blood and open fire on numerous relatively innocent people?

I say "relatively" because I'm 99.99% certain that every last one of the people sitting in that room at the wrong time had, at one point or another in their lives, been needlessly cruel to another person. The high school shootings have generally been chalked up to the terrible, emotionally damaging treatment that folks had handed out to the shooters. People are fond of saying that children, particularly middle school and high school children, are cruel. Guess what. It doesn't stop at high school. Walk down the street on any college campus and observe interactions and that'll become clear. Hell, walk into just about any workplace or bar or social club or even, yes, church, in the U.S. and you'll see much the same, albeit often more subtle behavior. If it's emotional cruelty causing this type of lashing out, we're all culpable.

That being said, nobody is to blame for any such type of violence except for the actor himself or herself. If everyone is cruel to one another, nearly everyone must have gone through the same emotional upheaval as these shooters to greater or lesser degree. With few exceptions, everyone has dealt with the loss of a relationship or many relationships. A stunning number of us have also been through clinical depression, bipolar, or another mental illness that makes dealing with what life hands us incredibly difficult. The key difference is that the majority of people make the decision not to take our inner pain and/or rage out on others to the point of putting them in danger of death. I guarantee that many, many folks out there have had much tougher lives, from childhood onward, than these shooters, and would never consider such inhuman behavior.

I do, however, have a bit of a theory that this type of violence against relative innocents isn't something that just magically appeared over the past twenty years or so. I expect that the form may have changed and our awareness increased as our instant access to news and other information has exponentially increased. Folks with similar sociopathic expression tendencies have likely always existed, though since violence was more a fact of life throughout much of U.S. history, it likely flew under the radar to a greater extent.

But hey, I wonder if breaking up with a girlfriend caused Hitler to start his eugenic campaigns.

New Entertainment!

2008-02-14T13:57:00.002-06:00

Thanks to my parents and D, I'll be taking delivery of the following in three days or less:

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella DePaulo

I've been looking for this one since I heard about the study several months before it was published. I could probably write it myself, but it will be interesting to see what's proven.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Jay Rubin (Translator)
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell

These were all picks on the "Buy Two, Get One Free" promo. I went a bit overboard, but I still got one free.

Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

This was a suggestion from a friend. I'm looking forward to seeing if said friend has any taste.

Blind Assassin and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

I very much heart Atwood's work and these are among the few I've not yet read.

The Runes of the Earth and Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

I read Donaldson's first two trilogies ten or fifteen years ago and wasn't aware he was currently working on a third. It will be interesting to see how he's changed, if at all, in the twenty years or so since the last book.

Sleep Through the Static -- Jack Johnson
Anodyne (w/Bonus Tracks) -- Uncle Tupelo

These are just because I need new music.

The devil wears potholes.

2008-02-09T13:31:00.000-06:00

My typical response to all the folks who gave me the "but it's so cold in Chicago!" response when I said I was moving here was "On average, it's only three degrees colder than northeastern Ohio, where I've lived the majority of my life." Uh yeah, until this year, that is. Even with the lake effect snow in the NEOH, the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area (GCMA) has had much worse weather this year. For the first six weeks or so of official winter, the subzero temperatures/windchills and heaps of snow were merely an annoyance, a cause for working from home or leaving work early, and a source of a few white-knuckle driving experiences. This week, however, the weather gods (and the Evanston street crews) really pissed me off.

The office closed at 12:30 on Wednesday in anticipation of a particularly horrid bout of snowfall throughout the rest of the day, so I drove one back to Evanston anticipating only delays. After driving around for thirty minutes or so trying to find a spot that a) wasn't on the snow emergency towing side of the street and b) wasn't in a stupid permit parking area (stupid because most of the permit areas around me are on streets that are solely composed of enormous single family homes with driveways and garages, while my street and those parallel and perpendicular are NOT permit, yet are completely made up of apartments, restaurants and stores), I finally found a spot around the corner from my apartment. As I pulled in, I felt my car drop a little, but assumed that that was because I had gone over a partially iced over mound of snow. I bowed out of dodgeball that night because I assumed (rightly, as it turns out) that I wouldn't be able to get my car out, given the additional snow that had come down.

Thursday morning, I started my car, cleaned it off, and settled in to rock, slide or otherwise dislodge myself from the snow and ice. No dice. My tires just spun. I got out and dug at the snow and ice around my tires with my window scraper and tried again. Still nothing. Then I waited for a few minutes, hoping the heat from the car would melt the ice enough for me to get out. Nothing. Finally, I shut the car off, called my boss to let him know I'd be late, and set off towards the Jewel a half mile away in hopes of finding kitty litter, salt and a shovel. In case I've never mentioned it, I hate Jewel. It's not organized in any sensible manner whatsoever and the employees don't know what they stock or where it is. After a half hour or so of walking up and down aisles and asking probably five employees, I finally trudged back to my parking spot with an enormous bag of salt and a slightly smaller bag of kitty litter. Forty-five minutes later, I still hadn't managed to move the damned car, so I called the office again and went back to my apartment to work. The Badass MC, who knows an Evanston cop, did some research for me and learned that the ticket I'd get for being parked on the wrong side of the street for the day would be $100, but that they'd tow my car, clean the street, then put it back. I was frustrated enough at this point that that sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so long as they got it out.

Yesterday morning, I came back to my car. The first sign of bad news was that the kitty litter and salt marks from my prior day's efforts were still exactly as I'd left them: on top of the snow and ice that still encased my tires. My car wasn't going anywhere. Fat lot of good the Evanston street crew did.

BMC, bless her soul, drove all the way from Deerfield to pick me up, then brought me back
last night, after some stops for delicious food and Home Despot shopping and coveting (some day I'll own all stainless [full-sized] appliances). Armed with shovels, two welcome mat-sized rugs, more salt, brute strength and probably another thirty or forty-five minutes, we finally got the old boy free of the ice. At around midnight. Ha. "What was the problem?" you ask? Why, I'd managed to position one front tire smack dab in the middle of a pot hole, which then filled with snow, melted snow, and ice, and froze around the tire. Fantastic. At any rate, I'm now free, thanks very much to the help of a friend, and no longer have to worry about mooching rides from friends or taking a million years on public transit to get anywhere not directly north or south of E-town.

Happy birthday to me, indeed.

Oh, and Mother Nature? You're a b!tch.

The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly

2008-02-05T21:20:00.000-06:00

So, I was thinking this weekend about things that I find utterly unappealing in members of the opposite sex, and it brought to mind one of the group fun exercises my mod-mates and I went through my freshman year of college. I seem to recall our having a thing for posting top/bottom ten lists on the mod walls, and this particular top/bottom ten list called out the things we look/don't look for in the fellows or ladies, depending on preference. Being the web-obsessed personage that I was at the time, that of course morphed into an online application process of sorts that yielded some pretty entertaining results over the years. So as I was working around to saying, this weekend I was struck by how much my perspectives have changed and remained the same in various ways. I went to pull it down today and it would appear that I've let my domain name registration and/or site hosting expire, but fortunately, I have a saved copy with which to entertain.

List Circa 1998 (roughly paraphrased, with commentary in italics)

Bad:

Phobias - Eh. We all have phobias, but I think this was intended to mean ethnocentrism, racism, homophobia and misogyny, which I'm still not so big on.
Straightforwardness and communication skills - Dear sweet Aphrokrishnaweh, what the Hades was I thinking? The thrill of the chase really wasn't that thrilling. Today, I'd be more inclined to say that straightforwardness and good communication skills are key, but something about the person (intelligence, passion for something specific, whatever) needs to be engaging enough to keep me interested.
Fugly shoes - Ha. Rich, if you're reading this, I was a Yahoo! prototype. This one is just stupid. At any rate, replace this one with "use of an abundance of styling product and/or spending more time than I staring in the mirror or choosing clothing and/or just generally being metro." I don't like pretty boys or even those that are too well-groomed. Dudes, get a hobby.
Bad/stupid/ugly tattoos - See above. I certainly have at least one bad/stupid/ugly tattoo and far be it for me to judge others' taste in body art.
Excessive body hair - I'm still not terribly attracted to hairiness (Burt Reynolds = ew) but I can get past it for the right person.
Drug addictions - Yeah, holding firm on this one, excepting cigarettes. Addictions in general don't leave room for people.
Stinginess - Holding firm on this one, too. You can't take it with you, so why be all Scrooge today?
Dislike or disrespect for animals and/or my friends - This definitely still holds true, especially since my friends can sometimes be animals. Add to this that if my friends don't dig someone, it's probably not going to work out. They have better red flag detectors than I.
Ex-wives, childrens and/or the desire for children in the next few years - Divorcees are my demographic, more and more these days. I'm still not really a fan of the idea of spawnlings, though.
A common name (or a name that begins with M, J, or R) - Huh? No that's just random.
Watching of action movies or sports for more than two hours per week (wrestling, hockey and Chow Yun-Fat excluded) - These days, I'd be excluding myself, even. Down with this one.
Perkiness - Modify this to read "incessant over-perkiness"
Lack of ambition or direction in life - True, true, true. Always true. Direction doesn't necessarily have to mean a high-power job or the like, but it has to mean working towards SOMETHING, for crying out loud. The status quo is NOT good enough, damn it.
Residence or planned residence in LA, NYC, Vegas, or Chicago - I'm not sure how I thought I was going to have an acting career outside of those cities, but whatever. Uh, and I live in Chicago or thereabouts now. Strike this.
Dislike of camping, backpacking or hiking - Still true. The great out-of-doors has been too much of my life for me to have a partner who's not into it. If you don't like cooking and eating outside and if you're afraid of insects, it's just not going to work. I've tried.
Playing with or following a band - This one isn't a 100% run-for-the-hills issue, but I'm not really down with endless after hours parties, tours, and having to be nice to hoors who want to bang someone in a band. Oh, and the ego that often comes with it (though I did once upon a time date a perfectly awesome fellow who happened to be in a band).
Serious aversion to or inability to dance - We can't have everything. Uh, be willing to try?
Multiple emotional/psychological issues - Amend this to read "multiple untreated emotional/psychological issues" and see "Addictions" above. I've got my own baggage, thanks. I don't need to cart around someone else's as well.

Good:

Appreciation of culture and cultures - Oooh! See the snobby theatre major come out! Okay, so the idea is fundamentally the same, but I like my people (friends, Romans, countrymen, everyone surrounding me) to have a fairly broad experience of the world. This is more an issue of provincialism (Ha! See the snobby marketer/lawyer emerge!) than anything else. A colleague referred to someone we know who fits the mold of the person I'm trying to describe as the embodiment of opposite of this concept as a bumpkin. I should probably stop digging.
Sense of humor - Yes, yes, yes!
Ability to read and deal with my moods - Ha, yeah, I'd like to see the person who fits this one, but it still applies.
Sense of adventure/willingness to try new things - This goes back to the "good enough is not good enough" and world-perspective concepts. A person who can't navigate an airport and/or who won't try new foods and/or who doesn't want to see everything possible to see in the world isn't going to work for me.
Personality that I can't figure out - See "Communication and Straightforwardness" above.
Random acts of kindness, romance and chivalry (distinguished from a controlling nature) - Random acts of kindness and common courtesy, yes. Outmoded forms of chivalry and over-the-top stalker-style "romance," no. Opening doors is polite in any case, but frankly, I'm a relatively successful businessperson with a great career and it doesn't make sense for some guy to buy all my drinks or meals or whathaveyou, unless he happens to be quite a bit more wealthy than I. It's not like someone needs to prove to me that he can be a good provider. I'm quite able to provide for myself, thank you. Of course, this attitude is probably why I'm a magnet for deadbeats.
Confidence ("what makes you somebody -- or somebody's foo'") - Yes, please. I'm perfectly willing to be a cheerleader, but not a crutch.
Ability to use the telephone - For texting, yes. Communication should be strictly in-person or electronic, unless it's urgent and can't be expressed quickly enough by text. I HATE the phone.
At least one attractive feature - Sure, but a good-looking brain counts.
Belief in something irrational (magic, mind over matter, astrology, wishing on stars, de ja vu, etc.) - I don't particularly care about this one, though I do think perspective and attitude are 90% of any situation.
Above average intelligence - Absolutely still true. I'm still a snob in this regard.

Did you get all that? At any rate, I found this little exercise to be incredibly amusing, and I look forward to repeating it in ten years to see how much my personality and expectations of others have changed in my thirties. I wish I could connect with all the old mod-mates and have them compare (as if any of them still have their lists) past with present as well. I've had the pleasure of watching at least two of them evolve over the past ten years (Whoohoo! Happy Friendiversary, JWray and Clauds!) and I know their lists have changed to some degree. Someone remind me to bring this up at JennyWraytion's pre-wedding festivities.

Continuing the Grand Tradition

2008-02-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

Yes, that's it folks: another blog!

Why (other than the fact that I like to change it up periodically)?

My livejournal has been mostly dormant since I moved. I think it's time to retire the old boy.

I'm contemplating myspacecide, since I don't care for the politics of what it's becoming, and since I generally just use it for blogging and commenting of people I can blog to and comment elsewhere anyway. Oh yes, and for surveys, which I should stop doing anyway. Who wants to read that crap? Oh yes, and because myspace doesn't have RSS feed capabilities attached to its blogs so far as I know, so only myspaceites can read my rambles, anyway...and you know everyone wants and/or needs to read my rambles.

The other blogger/blogspot blog remains dedicated to my dual obsessions with food and movement only.

So, it looks like this is kk-blog v.6 or so. Ish. I think. We'll see.

On with the show...