simplycep

a new day

2008-11-05T08:00:00.002-06:00

I'm not even sure what to say. Watching the 100,000 people in Grant Park last night was pretty impressive. I didn't feel like I needed to be there, but it was still amazing. Obama said it perfectly, now is our time. To be this age, to have our president (elect) sound like a world leader and say that anything is possible. To be adults, and have this moment stand as a shining star in our lifetimes. Everything is new again today, the future starts now.

Vote Early, Vote Often

2008-10-28T11:49:00.003-05:00

So, we went down and early voted today. I have such mixed feelings about this, about how much it really matters. And also some very strong frustrations about the lack of transparency and voter education that goes into this. Sure, we've all heard about two of the seven people running for president. But beyond that? At least here in Illinois, not only was information not shared, it was downright hard to find.

I did actually look too, I thought I'd found names of judges who weren't qualified to stay in their positions. However none of those names were on my ballot. I went to a forum discussing the constitutional convention we're supposed to vote on, and left feeling just as confused as when I went in. I had assumed that everything would be paper ballots, with touch screen voting only for people who needed it. Where we went today, every voting box was electronic.

If I'm finding it this complicated, what does that say about the state of voting here in Chicago? Is this common to cities, voting in general, or just here where corruption is rampant and expected?

As someone who grew up with neighbors and teachers who were in the state legislature, I knew everyone running before I was old enough to vote. Occasionally candidates would stop by our house to chat in the evening about their positions. Candidate comparisons seemed common and easy to find. I even heard that in Portland, people received position statements in the mail, all in one easy to browse pamphlet. It's very disengaging to feel that not only does my vote not matter on a federal level, but my vote even doesn't matter on a local level to those that are running for it.

And yet even feeling that way, I still had a sense of obligation to go and check all the little boxes. By the time I got to the end of was it twelve electronic pages? I'd pretty much checked out myself.

waking up

2008-10-27T11:17:00.003-05:00

My favorite version of me is the one that gets up at 6am, exercises, showers, eats a big breakfast, practices my Spanish, and gets a good productive start on the day. It's been very difficult to come up with that version lately.

I've been dreaming a lot, which I like. But I'm in a phase that occasionally happens, where I actually feel held hostage by my dreams. They're so detailed and complex, I really want to find out how the story ends. I end up making myself go back to sleep instead of getting up and being productive, just so I can see what happens in the dream. Once I have been in this phase for a couple of days or a week, it starts to really frighten me. What I'm basically letting my brain say to me is that my dreams are more interesting than my real life, and I'd rather stay there. I remember times in high school where my dreams were so vivid that sometimes I'd be actually participating in real life but under the assumption that it was also part of my dream. I began to have a hard time figuring out what the line between the two was. I think I'm always a little bit scared that I might go back to that, if the dreams get so out of hand.

And I don't agree with my brain. My life is interesting and wonderful. My dreams are a fascinating magical story, but even when I'm in them I realize it's just a story. I have been lucky to have resolution dreams, where I'm visited by someone who has died or is no longer in my life and we're able to say goodbye to each other. And I'm thankful for those, but I still would choose my actual life over my dreams.

It's just hard to make that choice when you're cozy under the blankets in a wonderful bed, and the option is to put your bare feet on a cold floor and wake up. But do you hear me brain? I'm ready to wake up again!

weekend widow

2008-10-25T09:21:00.003-05:00

I got called a weekend widow yesterday, and this weekend it's even more true. ehs has been out of town for every Saturday except one starting September 20th (I did go for one of those weekends. He'll be gone again next weekend, and then we'll both be gone for two weekends. yikes!). He's enjoying what he's doing, but we've definitely put some things on hold because we know that the time just isn't there right now.

This time he's gone the whole weekend, he left right after work on Friday to fly to Boston for my brother's bachelor party, and he'll be back at the end of the day on Sunday. Yesterday I saw a friend during the day, then I went out with friends to one of my favorite bars in the city. It's a Scottish bar with great beer, amazing fish and chips, and a real pub feel. Also you can order half-pints, which is a wonderful concept. For an after-dinner drink, the waitress suggested port lemonade. I had never heard of this concept, and was not expecting it to contain ice cubes, but it was great and I would definitely get it again. Basically a version of sangria.

Today I'm having just a quiet me day. I'm intending to take myself to a movie this morning (box of popcorn and Javier Bardem, here I come!). Then my goal is to lose myself in some deep organization. We do a pretty good job of stuffing things in closets and closing the doors, but I've decided I want the closet back. We'll see who wins at the end of the day.

Tomorrow I'm going to a friend's house for what was described as "expirimental cooking." Apparently this will be the third attempt at making homemade pizza rolls. Plus some guitar hero, which I fully expect to be terrible at. It's nice to have your expectations low going in, that way it won't be a surprise.

birthdays

2008-10-20T20:36:00.002-05:00

so, I have many friends who are going to be turning 30 in the next year or so. And that seems like a pretty big deal. I really can't predict how I'm going to react to that event for myself. I never had a list of things that needed to be accomplished by that time, so I don't feel like I'm running out of time to make something of myself.

However, I also have a friend who's turning 50 next year. That's a bigger deal. She's planning to host a party of 50 women, what she's calling a "Slumber Party/Suicide Watch." (Which I believe is more panic than real danger). And she's already panicking about turning 49, which she wasn't expecting. I think she'd thought everything would be chill until the night before turning 50, when suddenly the realization of the age would hit her. Turns out to not be the case.

So there are a lot of questions this creates for me. Can someone who's not yet 30 really sympathize and support someone who's turning 50? I can be caring and concerned, but really have no way to create the life experiences and the actual fear of that time. I have anticipation of that fear, but I'm not sure it can really sink in until then.

And then the questions become, what will I want to do for my 50th birthday? What would I be scared of then, and if I can figure out what it would be, can I change it? And is this all just naive pondering that continues to show my inability to grasp the full significance of that birthday?

forgot to put a title on

2008-10-17T13:45:00.004-05:00

Last night we went to Navy Pier to see Amadeus at Chicago Shakespeare. It's pretty strange to sit in the audience there, five years after having worked there as a freelance electrician. It feels like some other lifetime that I was climbing ladders, lifting lights, and living that lifestyle. And yet five years is not really all that long of a time.

The show was very good, more humorous than I remembered it being (is it scary that I tried to spell "humorous" as in funny as "humerus" as in "the arm bone"?) . The acting was very good, and it brought up a lot more to think about than I had expected. Much more discussion of good and evil, and the role of God in human lives.

In other news, ehs has gotten trapped in two different labyrinth/journey books at once. He was reading "House of Leaves," but decided to start "Kafka on the Shore" before we saw it at Steppenwolf. Well, we saw it on Tuesday, so now he's partway through both of them. It's an interesting juxtaposition to make with those two, but what I mostly notice is that even still I can't discuss "House of Leaves" before bedtime without getting a cold shiver down my spine.

Finishing the Small Cat Story

2008-10-16T10:08:00.002-05:00

So I realized that in my hiatus from posting I never finished the cat acne story. We left off with the part where I was going to try to give Benedryl to the Small Cat. Now this guy is squirmy and hard to pill anyway, we've had major problems in the past. For some reason I decided to attempt it by myself anyway. I got the pill in his mouth, but he immediately spit it out and began foaming at the mouth. Apparently he didn't like the taste of it and was trying to create as much saliva as possible to clear it out. I didn't at first realize what was going on, so I let him walk away. Then I realized he was dripping on the floor. Blech. I grabbed him and threw him in the bathroom (wiping down the floors of course), and then sat in there with him. I figured since I had him in there anyway, I might as well try the pill a second time. Bad idea. This time he got even more of a taste of it, and some of the pink coating came off in his mouth. Now he's foaming serious amounts of pink froth out of his mouth, and I have a deeper-than-it-looks gash in my finger from an escape attempt. We sat in the bathroom glaring at each other while I put pressure on my wound and he dripped pink drops. Eventually we both dried up a little and I let him go.

When ehs came home that night, we tried again, only to create a spectacular repetition of the previous performance. Twice actually. The three of us sat in the bathroom for a while, Small Cat banished to the tub while he frothed.

The next day I tried grinding up a Benedryl and putting it on a treat. He got within smelling range of the treat and began to foam. We've created a Pavlovian foaming effect.

So, we're currently ignoring the allergies. We're going to see how much of a problem it really is, possibly try switching the food. We can also pay to have a topical antihistamine created. We noticed some chin acne on the Monster Cat as well, so now they both get to have their faces washed (although as you may guess, I don't lock myself in the bathroom with the Monster Cat and attempt to wash his face. I let ehs take that job).

And the final note (for the moment) is that one night I decided to take a Benedryl for my potential allergies. I don't know what's wrong with those pills, but Small Cat was right. Those are some of the worst tasting pills I have ever had to ingest.

Cat Acne

2008-09-30T10:00:00.003-05:00

Today is feel sorry for Small Cat day. First of all, he was forced to go to the vet, which he didn't expect at all and was very disgruntled about. Then it turns out he's actually GAINED weight since the last visit, a solid 16lbs at the moment. Even though he's eating out of the yogurt containers, and some of what he's eating is diet food. Oops.

And most tragic of all, the cat has been diagnosed with chin acne. Very embarrassing, I would imagine. The big pustule kind too. Maybe we should change his name to "Pizza Face." Also, he has allergies. Our house is not as bright as the vet's office, and it wasn't until we were there that I realized he's pretty much pink. His ears, nose, eyes all have a bright pink color to them, but additionally the back of one leg and his tummy are noticeably pink. So he's allergic to something. The dust kicked up on the outside of the building from all this work? The diet food? Fleas we could have gotten from other people's dogs? Who knows? He's got a dose of Frontline on him now, and he does not yet know this but we now own something called a "Pill Gun" which we will hopefully be using to successfully feed him Benedryl. Also, I have to go to the drugstore and buy him some acne cream to wash his face. Seriously.

I also have a dose of Frontline to put on the Monster, but I'm not sure that's a job I'm willing to tackle by myself.

jury duty

2008-09-29T18:21:00.004-05:00

Today I went to criminal court, to serve jury duty. I had never been before, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I kept trying to convince myself it would just be some traffic violation, or breaking and entering of some sort. But the case I got called to was a murder case, the defendant was charged with two counts of 1st degree murder and one case of 1st degree attempted murder, I think. I don't know exactly, as soon as she started talking about a medical examiner being a potential witness I knew I was in trouble, and had a hard time listening closely after that.

I was one of 28 people pulled to sit in the jury box and answer questions about whether or not we knew people in law enforcement, or had been victims of crimes. I realized I've been really lucky, there's a lot of terrible things people can go through. And they also asked if anyone had been charged with a crime, which a surprising number of people said yes to. Then they all had to say what it was and how long ago, which has to feel strange to do in front of so many people. There was quite a variety listed: a DUI, possession of controlled substances, someone was charged with assault when they were 11, hitting a police officer 35 years ago, passing a bad check, handgun possession. Nothing major, but still a number of secrets aired out among strangers.

Obviously I wouldn't be able to talk about this if I had been chosen. They sent us on break, and when we came back they read a list of names of people who were dismissed, and thankfully I was one of them. I do think being on a jury could be interesting in the future, but I will still keep hoping for a basic traffic violation. If the defendant really didn't do it, then I hope that's what the jury finds. I'm glad I don't have to spend the rest of the week listening to people trying to convince me that he did.

inspirations

2008-09-22T09:38:00.002-05:00

Look, it's Ian, on the front page of Edge Magazine!!

And then there's Alec, a fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies, self-publishing, teaching, working on his graphic novel.

Kristen and Joe with beautiful baby Maddie, who laughs and smiles and is a joy.

Lindsey's at grad school studying bats. Living in New Jersey for pete's sake!

My parents are busier than ever in their retirements. They are doing things for themselves and volunteering to help others.

All these things help me stay focused and moving forward. Look at the great things all these great people are doing. I have to keep motivated so I can be on this list too!

5 years

2008-09-17T09:45:00.004-05:00

Tonight we're going to Tsunami, the sushi restaurant where we had our first official date. We go every year to celebrate the day we actually met in person. Unlike our new anniversary (the first wedding date), I think that we hold onto this one for nostalgia rather than celebration. When we first went there, ehs didn't eat sushi. He knew I liked it, so he wanted to take me to a really good sushi restaurant, where he proceeded to order the chicken teriyaki. Now that he has learned to love sushi, we get to order things to share. And a sake flight. ^_^

I don't know that we have to keep this anniversary tradition, but I think that we would both miss it. Our new anniversary is a celebration of the commitment we've made to each other and how that relationship is growing. But our first anniversary reminds us that there was a time when we each felt our hearts racing just to see the other one. When everything was a surprise, when he would drive to the airport to pick me up, and when doing his laundry for him seemed like a gift instead of a given. Those moments still have their place in our relationship, but it's nice to have a specific event to remember and honor them. Plus there's sushi!

lazy sunday

2008-09-15T07:42:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was the perfect lazy rainy Sunday. We lounged around in our pajamas until about 2, managed to watch three different movies, had a great dinner. And yet still accomplished some of the tasks on our to do lists.

Now if only I didn't have a sneezy cat, I could say that it's going to be a great cool fall Monday as well...

hippie comfort food

2008-09-11T08:26:00.002-05:00

Last night I snacked on leftovers (braised celery, balsamic vinegar braised carrots, baba ganoush), but I finally decided I wanted something a little more substantial. I heated up leftover brown rice on the stove in a little olive oil, threw in our peppercorn dressing spice mix, some crushed red pepper flakes, and some nutritional yeast. Then I melted cheddar cheese over the whole thing. And I have to say, it was amazing. Very comforting, and simple.

ehs travels

2008-09-10T09:44:00.004-05:00

It's amazing how many things you can think of to blog about in a day, until you actually sit down at the computer to do it.

ehs is down in Champaign/Urbana to do recruitment for his company. He's doing a lot of that this month, going to St. Louis for a night, and then back to Montreal to be at McGill, the silly guy. Never been to Montreal in his life, and manages to make two trips in September. He'll have a great time. We walked through the McGill campus while we were there. It's very pretty, although quite uphill.

I wish the work outside our windows would finish. It's been going on for a long time now. It's very disconcerting to see men outside your window when you live on the 7th floor... Plus it makes the cats REALLY freaked out.

exactly

2008-09-06T08:45:00.000-05:00

http://dieselsweeties.com/archive/2097

mail

2008-09-05T07:54:00.000-05:00

I always wish for exciting mail. Yesterday was exciting in a disappointing way: a credit card bill and a jury summons. I might stop wishing for it to be exciting...

fall at home

2008-09-04T08:54:00.004-05:00

Montreal was great. The weather was amazing. It has basically rained all summer there, and the 10 days I was there were sunny and warm every day. We wore ourselves out with walking, but we also did a good job of sitting down and taking breaks to rest and recharge. We had some amazing food, most notably a Thai place that was entirely vegetarian and known for its fake meat dishes. We spent 4 hours at the Botanic Garden and managed to explore exactly three gardens in that time (plus lunch). We had a great time at the Biodome, it's just like I had remembered from being there as a kid. The last day we went to Old Montreal, toured the Notre-Dame Cathedral, ate lunch at a great Polish restaurant. I'm looking forward to visiting some of the same places next time we go (the Botanic Garden, the bagels, some of the shopping and food we found, the Mont-Royal park), but hopefully also doing some new things too: taking in a hockey or soccer game, visiting the little island in the river.

We went from sunny days in the 80s and even 90s to fall in Chicago. Today's high is 66 or 68, and rainy. It was a great last hurrah for the summer.

Montreal 1st Day

2008-08-24T16:40:00.003-05:00

So, it only takes an hour and a half to fly from Chicago to Montreal, which is nothing at all. We got up at 4 this morning so I could make it to the airport (ehs drove me, since we still own the car). I landed around 11am here and grabbed a taxi. I was interested in taking public transit to the apartment, but it looked like it was going to take an hour and a half or two hours, with 30 minutes of walking, a bus, and two trains. Taxi it was.

I rented an apartment, since I'm here for 10 days. It's about a 10 or 15 minute walk to the place where my class is. I had lunch, then spent the next 3 1/2 hours walking. It turns out Ste. Laurent, the major botiquey shopping district is having a street sale, either this weekend or the whole week, I'm not sure. I wandered through there, managed to blow my intended shopping budget in the first store I went to. I had a blackberry popsicle though, which was exciting.

Then I found the Park Mont-Royal. It was full of people playing frisbee, soccer, and listening to drumming. From there I walked to the grocery store. By then I was so tired I didn't do the world's greatest job of grocery shopping. I got a lot of fruit, some veggies, proteins, and only a few carbs. If it still seems terrible tomorrow I can try again.

I have made good use so far of my one strong phrase in French: "I do not speak French." People have been very friendly, the weather's beautiful, and I'm already exhausted! I'm still excited about class starting tomorrow though!

grey

2008-08-21T16:21:00.002-05:00

I have found I think my first official grey hairs. I'm pretty impressed I've lasted this long. I haven't figured out how I feel about them. Somehow I'm a little bit proud, but also have the impulse to go schedule a hair appointment right away.

I guess I don't mind my hair getting old, I just don't like to think of it as a precursor for my joints getting old...

weekend

2008-08-18T08:23:00.003-05:00

So, this was a busy weekend. We think we've found buyers for our car, Saturday was spent learning what you need to do when you find a buyer for your car. We turned out to be very unprepared for the part where they said, "OK, we want it, and we'll give you a great offer for it."

Sunday we went to the Field Museum to see the Mythic Creatures exhibit, which was really interesting. It wasn't necessarily a lot of new information for me, but I really liked seeing how myths are still present in a lot of cultures, even though we may not rely on ours as much anymore. There's a Japanese creature called a kappa, they used to be thought to lure children and travelers close to water and then pull them in and eat them. Like the Grimm's fairy tales the stories have gotten less scary, and now they're sort of silly critters who love cucumbers. They get their power out of water from a depression in their skulls that holds water. All you have to do is bow to them, and they feel obliged to bow back, dumping their water and then having to scurry back to the pond. There was a list of common Japanese phrases still used today. The only one I can remember is "kappa no he," which was "no more than a kappa fart," to say that something turned out to be not a very big deal. We do still use a lot of cliches in our language, but I can't think of very many that come directly from fairy tales.

schedule

2008-08-14T09:27:00.003-05:00

I've been having a hard time getting going the last couple of days, sleeping in after all the travel. It's great to feel like I'm finally back on track, some days I'm hardly even out of bed by now. Today I've already had breakfast, exercised, showered, practiced my Spanish, and done three loads of laundry. Much more accomplishful!

home again home again, jiggity jig

2008-08-13T10:54:00.005-05:00

It was great to see so much family in Georgia this past weekend: our new niece, an aunt and uncle we hadn't seen since our wedding (!), and all the other wonderful family down there. The weather wasn't as stifling as we had expected either, which was a welcome surprise.

Last night we managed to see The Dark Knight. I missed all the commercials and all but two of the previews (stupid 151 bus), but I made it. It was good, definitely scary, and somehow knowing that Heath Ledger is dead made his performance even creepier. It's really neat to see all the Chicago places in the movie. A lot of the action was on a street very close to where ehs works, and it was exciting to see those familiar buildings and streets.

ehs has borrowed a bike to see if he likes biking to work, which it turns out he does. The bike itself is not the right one for him, but he's enjoying the exercise and the breeze I guess. It's fun to send him out on errands, although the first night I told him I felt like I was sending a toddler to play in traffic. Which he reassuringly responded, "You are." But he's fine, wears his helmet and is cautious.

We've talked in the past about Working Bikes, which is an organization that refurbishes bikes and also uses the proceeds of selling bikes to bring bikes to other places in the world. So maybe we'll try to check them out at some point. We're still in the process of selling our car, and he may be taking it around for people to test drive this weekend.

Meanwhile, this will be my only Sunday at home in the month of August, so I intend to spend it thoroughly. We'll be going to the Mythical Creatures exhibit at the Field Museum, and then ehs's first annual work picnic.

You always remember your first

2008-08-10T08:56:00.002-05:00

ehs held his first baby this weekend. And he didn't drop her.

It was fun the first day to say that we had both failed baby. Madeline was hungry when I held her, and cried until I gave her a bottle. She was hungry when ehs held her too, so we both got to hold fussy baby. But the next day he held her after she woke up, and she smiled and laughed at him. Briefly. Until she realized she needed to spend the next 8 minutes trying to poop. When we figured out what her goal was, her dad was happy to take her back.

She's cute, and we love having a niece! Even if she's not always happy for us to hold her yet... That's ok, we'll be around forever!

If you can't say anything nice, use the Internet...

2008-08-09T08:48:00.003-05:00

ehs says that the Internet killed the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule. Particularly when it comes to the comments sections of things like youtube, cuteoverload, and anything at all. For some reason instead of commenting on the item at hand, people get sort of off track, and begin to comment on themselves.

For example, I just got sent a link to a great youtube video of the Pilobus dance company performing on Conan O'Brien. For some reason the comments started out actually about the video, but then degenerated. I didn't need them all to be positive critiques, but saying "How is this different from what people do in kindergarten?" isn't exactly relevant, and even less so is a comment which says, "I'm FUNNIER."

Sadly, instead of using comments forums as a way to intelligently discuss items on the internet, the online community seems to be using them to show their own desperate and pathetic need for attention.

As I finish this post, I realize that the comments that may arrive here could be interesting.... good luck!

today happened

2008-08-07T20:31:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure even what to say about today. It was accomplished. I got the car washed, did laundry. We're finishing packing to fly to Georgia, which is tomorrow. I'm very happy that we're flying out of Midway, they have yummy things like Ben and Jerry's and greek-style yogurt. In addition to not taking an hour and a half to get to.