Caroling at the Bean!

I guess I should have said "Caroling at Cloud Gate," but nobody would know what the hell that was. I've been taking ukulele classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music for the past few months, and the school got the opportunity to perform in Millennium Park as part of the city's Friday night caroling program.

That night, it was the warmest it had been in quite a while -- which is to say, flirting with freezing. We were all fine until we realized we were stuck on those risers for a full hour. That's a long time to stand in one spot, not moving one's blood around. But it was fun, and we got to sing Christmas songs, and how many people can say they've done this?

Thanks to my manager/photographer Chris for the below documentation.

Overheard on the train

"I know Helen Keller had her sense of smell -- but in my family, I'm considered the Helen Keller of noses."

Funundrum Recommends

You know those big tins of cheese, caramel, and butter popcorn that appear like magic in office breakrooms right about this time of year? And how the cheese and caramel always get finished way before the regular kind?

First of all, why even bother with the regular kind? How come you never see half and half cheese and caramel?

Anyway, there was quite a lot of cheese/caramel detritus in the bottom of the tin. These pieces, for reference, were about the size of Nerds candy. I took a big scoop back to my desk and emptied it into my mouth via a paper towel funnel.

It was the greatest thing I have ever tasted. I hallucinated unicorns. I am alerting the Michelin people and recommending an immediate application of at least two stars.

Dork Alert

People's message board handles (translation for parents: "handle" = the user name you call yourself instead of your real name) often make me laugh due to their cleverosity. Sometimes, they reveal a geeky sensibility that I proudly share, and their little inside joke makes me feel like part of a greater Internet whole.

Other times, a message board handle overwhelms me with its dorky intelligence, and I'm almost ashamed at the inner glee I feel upon seeing it. That happened today.

The name? "Yclept." Say what? Well, you pronounce it "ee-klept," and in Middle English, it means "named." Comes up a lot in The Canterbury Tales.

***End dork alert***

Halloween costumes -- as promised.

We both went with hoodie-based costumes this year, because they are warm, easy to make into other stuff, and cheap. Good times. I had my sights set on being an octopus this year, just because my inner five-year-old wanted "something with tentacles." That is a direct quote. I am really proud of Chris' costume -- I saw this blue hoodie at Old Navy, and realized it was furry on the entire inside. Inside-out hoodie + ping pong balls = casual-but-fun Cookie Monster! I am slowly molding Chris into the Halloween-loving citizen he should have been long ago. Yay!



I am sorry that I didn't get better pictures of the hundreds of tiny felt suckers I glued to the tentacles. I assure you it was awesome.

Next year: Luke, Leia, and Yoda.

Oh hey, BTW I'm having a baby or something.

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's a baby. I've seen a bunch of pictures of what is allegedly my uterus, which contains a moving thing that is either a baby or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

This post is pretty much for whichever of my two readers didn't already know. As of today, I'm a little over halfway there, and due in mid-to-late March. It should be a pretty cool kid. I'm trying really hard not to be an obsessed mommy type person, because I mock those people and that would be really awkward.

Anyway, I was searching my library's database today for some books on natural childbirth, on account of my need to know too much about every hobby* I get myself into. You can see why I found the results hilarious.
* Uh, yeah, having a baby totally counts as a hobby. It adheres to all the major tenents of Hobbydom:

1. Costs money
2. Requires specialized gear
3. You do it on purpose
4. People spend a lot of time on irritating message boards devoted solely to the subject/activity
5. When talking about the subject/activity, you quickly bore the hell out of people who aren't directly participating in said activity

Bad copy of the day award -- CNN edition

This is not a post about how terrible CNN’s online editors have become. That’s been old news for at least five years. Instead, I’d like to gleefully point out one of the more confusing and egregious word choices to appear in recent memory.

Tyler Perry is attempting to become a more serious filmmaker by putting out a movie called “For Colored Women,” based on a play with a similar (but longer) name. The news story is about Perry’s struggle to get people besides “colored women” to come see it – he’s afraid that everyone else will assume they won’t relate to the movie. The story paraphrases a local man on the street’s view of the potential problem:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach nonwomen of color with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

“Nonwomen”? That little gem doesn’t even make it past my spell check program, let alone pass any logic tests. I can understand people having a hard time pluralizing “courts martial” or getting confused by “yes we have no bananas today,” but this brand of lazy and wrong just hurts. CNN, this isn’t your first offense by far, but I’ll still try to help you out a little bit:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach _______ with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

• “other demographics”
• "a broader audience"
• "a wider array of viewers"
• “the eponymous group of ladies, as well as, but not limited to, men of color, men of less color, women and men with not much pigment at all, people who blush easily, albinos (but not the freaky kind who walk around with no sunglasses on so you can see their weird red eyes), and kids between the ages of 16 and 24 who aren’t caught up with either Twilight or pretentious art flicks.”

Happy Halloween!

This year, I wanted to go with a ki'i (that's fancy Hawaiian for "tiki god," more or less) on account of our upcoming trip to the Big Island this January. My choices of pumpkin were limited -- a taller, skinnier one would have been ideal, but this one did just fine. We are planning on seeing the real version of this ki'i at Puuhonau o Honaunau National Park.

A story about Chris

Our friends Sarah Marie and Stuart visited us a couple of weekends ago. Much like myself, Sarah Marie was raised Protestant and went and married a Catholic guy. She was giving him a hard time because of his "sad childhood," defined mostly as an upbringing devoid of songs such as "Jesus Loves Me." "It's true," he said, "I don't even know the words."

I was equally amused and appalled, and instantly turned to Chris to find out if this bizarre method of childrearing had been foisted upon him as well. "Chris -- do YOU know the words to 'Jesus Loves Me'?"

Chris was confident. "Sure thing. It's like,

Jesus loves me, this I know

Because the Bible says it's so

If he hollers let him go

E-I-E-I-O

I legally died laughing. I was out for a good ten minutes, and spent some quality time with my grandparents, Abe Lincoln, and a pet rat named Chloe before I came back to this dimension.

Things That Probably Make Me A Bad Person

Since it's coming around on Halloween time once again, I've started to see a lot of related articles and such on the internet. More than once, I've read the inevitable stories of people who grew up on the same block as the neighborhood dentist. Because dentists often suck at having fun (that's science fact -- look it up), trick-or-treating at their house often resulted in a toothbrush, or maybe some floss.

See, here's where I'm different. If I was a dentist, I'd be handing out big ol' handfuls of taffy, Jolly Ranchers, and caramel corn. Anything that tends to get stuck in tiny little teeth.

This concludes today's edition of "Things That Probably Make Me A Bad Person."

Good Copy of the Day Award, Unexpected Applicant Division

While riding home on the Red Line, I saw some graffiti on the side of a building. That alone wouldn't be remarkable, but 1) it was the large-format type, where someone had taken the trouble to fill in each letter with multiple colors, and 2) it said this:

"My crew's doper"

I found myself refreshingly pleased at the correctly used apostrophe. I'd love for this guy, and his dope crew, to assemble some punctuation education materials and distribute them throughout the land. If this thug can do it, so can you, America.

Adventures in Southeast Asia

...more commonly referred to as "shopping on Argyle Street." I was baking a coconut cake for a dinner with some friends, mostly because I had some leftover coconut milk and coconut flakes from two unrelated projects. The difficulty was that I also needed coconut flavoring, yet had none. I struck out at both Pakistani corner stores, then realized I should just go talk to the Asians, who have more experience with coconut-related food items than pretty much anyone else on earth.

I managed to find the flavoring display without any help, but to my dismay most of the small bottles contained flavors with which I was not familiar. I went to Foreign Food Plan B and started looking at the little pictures on the bottles, zeroing in on one labeled "Buco Pandan" that seemed to feature a green coconut and another plant. The liquid inside was virulent green. The cash register lady was pleased to answer my question of "Is this coconut?" "Yes, yes. And pandan."

"What is pandan, please?" At this point I was more than ready to make coconut pandan cake, but I wanted to be able to explain the exotic cake to my guests. "Pandan... pandan..." She was mentally searching for the words to explain the flavor of a fruit that this gringo had never even seen. (Have you ever had to explain what a pineapple or a peach tastes like? It's not easy.) She brightened up a little. "Pandan... it tastes green!"

I looked down at the bottle of green, looked up at the lady, looked back at the bottle, and figured I'd go for it.

The cake did have a bit of a green flavor to accompany the green cast given it by the flavoring. Nobody seemed to mind.

Downstairs Kids Update

Someone just farted, according to a recent high-pitched allegation.

This is not a repeat from 2005.

Bad Copy of the Day Award

Yay! It's been a long time, but I've finally been given the gift of a whole pile of terrible, terrible copy. This is from a marketing piece, created by another office, that my boss wants me to recreate for our clients.

"We look forward to sharing with you in this meeting our proprietary analytical tools developed by us for our clients perusal."

There's much more, but this was so tantalizingly clausealicious.

Greedy Genius

We saw this while we were walking to the new Target in our neighborhood. This gentleman is a self-proclaimed "Greedy Geniu$." "Show me da money," his jacket continues. "I am the king of sneakers." It's his kingdom, we're just living in it. He was, after all, wearing a fairly dope pair of Air Jordans.

Attention Insurance Professionals:

(specifically the ones that sit near me at my insurance job) Please stop saying "oh-nine oh-ten" when referring to the current policy year. You are making my brain bleed. I understand that it was a likely slip-up for a while, when you first had to make the mental switch from saying "oh-seven oh-eight" and "oh-eight oh-nine."

But still blithely rattling off "oh-nine oh-ten," with nary an embarrassed chuckle and correction? Now you just sound ignorant.

None of this would have happened if the world had adopted the elegant solution presented by me and my friends back at the turn of the century. We thought to replace the "20-" bit with "diggety," as in "the year of our Lord diggety-three." We would have sounded so smooth for the last ten years, and nobody would have had to struggle with the (apparently monumental) decision of whether to go with "two thousand three," "two thousand and three," or the teeth-grinding "twenty oh three."

Also, it's a tribute to Grampa Simpson, who gave us the idea to begin with. From "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish":

(talking to kids at school) "My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say 'dickety' because the Kaiser had stolen our word 'twenty.' I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles." (laughter) "What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem! Now, I'd like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet..."

I am watching a woman with two-inch-long nails attempt to eat cheese corn from a paper bag. It's okay right up to the finger licking, then I get grossed out.

City Stories

The faceless hordes I pass on my way to and from work don't always stay that way. I try to notice people wherever I go, and sometimes a face will become familiar because the body it belongs to is on the same clockwork schedule that I am. There's Briefcase Guy, Good Morning Guy, and Hair Girl. I haven't seen Sad Shannon in a while.

My newest Jackson Street acquaintance is a guy who has an artificial arm, attached to his right elbow, that ends in a hook. The other arm is underformed, which means he's been putting up with "I'd give my right arm" jokes all his life. I do hope he's done Captain Hook at least once for Halloween, you know?

He seems like a nice guy, from what I can tell by passing him in the street. He's always pleasant-looking. But here's the thing. In his scrawny left arm, the one that I don't think has enough fingers, he's always holding one or two things. Things like books, or notepads, or... I don't know, really, I'm always just dumbfounded that this guy doesn't have a bag.

Just get a bag. You are making me worry that you're going to drop your book(s) on the street and have to pick them up with your hook and kind-of-arm. Just get a bag.

Ambassadog

And now, for no particular reason, I present a highly unscientific breakdown of what people first ask me about my dog Maggie.

Affirmation

Seen on the third-floor balcony of the building across the street:

I understand that the photo would have been sharper were my windows cleaner. Until the weak, watery light streaming through them can be best described as "Dickensian," I most heartily do not intend on cleaning them.

It's gotten worse

It's as bad as it always was, but Erica, my Portland Correspondent and author of sheseescolor, has brought the level of terrible to my immediate attention. That level turns out to be very high.

I'm not sharing this with you because I like you and want to bring you wonderful things -- on the contrary, I'm sharing this with you because I can't be the only one who has to live with the burden of the existence of this... thing.

Remember the fishperson? Of course you do, it's the next post down. Go ahead and scroll down there, or click on the link. Have you got that inscrutable image burned firmly into your retina? No you don't. Go look again, and now take care to seek out its "raging tiny boner," as Art Major Erica points out in such a scholastic fashion.

*shakes fist heavenward* WHY, GOD??? WHYYYYYYY??

Like I said before, the fishperson is located in the waiting room of my doctor's office, so now I'm faced with the inevitability of being drawn towards this thing every time I go in there.

What the hell is this

1. It's life-size (and by that I mean like, large toddler-sized, I guess?)
2. It appears to be made of wood
3. It's in the waiting room of my lady doctor
4. It appears to be wearing pajamas
5. Its head is a fish, it is holding a fish, and there are fish coming out of a gaping jagged hole in its chest.

Other than that, I can't even begin to surmise what this is supposed to be, let alone the ever-more-prized question of WHY.

Why do webinars bring out the worst in people?

I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with being forced to read and use the word "webinar." If I have my way, the guy who coined that one will be among the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

But aside from that atrocity, there's something about a webinar that makes people do terrible things, like un-mute their phone and put the webinar on hold. For them, this is an easy solution to the brain-melting alternative of actually listening to a man named Dave describe how to save email to a folder.

For the rest of us, that action results in Dave describing how to save email, accompanied by the uplifting strains of hold music. Right now it sounds like Enya, though I'm pretty sure Bette Midler had a say a few minutes back about how Dave was the wind beneath her wings.

Happy 4th, y'all!

We had a wonderful four-day weekend, which we kicked off by watching the Cubs lose 0-12 to the first-place Reds. *sigh* It's always nice to be out at Wrigley Field, anyway. Keeping in mind that Wrigley represents most of what's right with baseball, I'd like to present a reminder of what's wrong with baseball: groupon.com (recommended by Funundrum, by the way) was offering $7 tickets to a minor league game being played at Wrigley, and they had to accompany their offer with the following disclaimer.

Note on Cubs.com fees: Fees and tax are not included, so customers will have to pay a per-ticket convenience fee ($2.73), per-order processing fee ($3.75), and an optional print-at-home fee ($6.25) on top of the Groupon price. Free ticket pickup is available at will call.

That means that MLB is charging fees that effectively double the cost of two people wanting to go watch baseball that's low on big salaries and probably higher in sincerity and skill than that afforded by your standard Cubs game. Lame. Now back to your previously scheduled holiday weekend wrapup.

Saturday saw a great day at the beach with our friends, followed by a BBQ at Ed's place. Once there, we organized an impromptu BBQ for the next day at our house. It was attended by some long-standing friends and a couple of new ones, including a German guy named Marcus who happened into our little mess of a group by way of renting out Ed's spare room for the summer. Two days in and he'd already attended a couple of cookouts, a beach thing, and fireworks. We're going out with him on Sunday for the World Cup final -- Marcus is our Designated Exotic Foreign Friend for the summer. Pictured above: Designated British Friend Justin, apparently willing to set aside centuries of unrest between his country and that of Designated Exotic Foreign Friend Marcus. We are also not yet sure how many soccer jerseys Marcus owns. So far he's two for two.

The city of Chicago canceled the downtown fireworks this year, instead holding slightly smaller shows at three locations along the lakefront. The northernmost barge was moored directly to the west of our place, which is immediately next to the park bordering the lake. Our fortuitous placement influenced the impromptu BBQ -- once we were all stuffed with teriyaki burgers and coconut cake, we simply walked east with our adult beverages until we couldn't go no mo. Getting back home was just as easy and pretty much cemented our house as Independence Day party central from now on. I might have to give up the idea of our annual Christmas parties, but this should be good enough. I'm just happy to know enough people that we can have anyone over to begin with. This year it was just four others, but Chris is betting on closer to 30 next year. We'll be able to look back on this post and see, won't we?

These are actually very large pictures, which I'm posting 1) for my two readers' benefit and 2) so I can grab them at work and use them as desktop pictures.

Seen on a bus ad for Wisconsin: "If Ferris had the week off, he'd come to Milwaukee."

Best football (global kind, not ours) coach name ever

Nigeria's coach is named Lars Lagerback.

Yeah, I know. So awesome.

Awesome hats I've made... and lost.

One time*, I made this really awesome hat, and I wore it around Chicago, smug with my warm head. Then I left it in a cab. So I had to make a replacement one. I am still bitter about losing the old hat, as evidenced by my terse sentences. However, the new one kicks at least 3 kinds of ass, and will pick up a further 7 types of ass-kicking once I sew a fleece liner into it. Boo yah.

*early last winter

Here's the first awesome hat, as modeled by me. That's Chris, as you may know by now (wearing another hat I made, what do you know?) and Sarah Marie, who visited us pretty much for the opportunity to eat at Hot Doug's, which Funundrum highly recommends. This was somewhere in the middle of our 1.5 hour wait for encased meats. Mmmm. I am sad to note that the large button on my awesome hat is only partially visible. I assure you, it was a really neat button.

And the new awesome hat, modeled by Shannon at our mid-May Cubs game. Why is it always so damn cold when I get to go to a Cubs game?

I haven't yet lost this new hat, nor am I planning to, but I figured now was the time to immortalize it on the internet. Just in case.

Wow, yeah, how does that work?

Who wouldn't want a massage fort?

Vince Vaughn's "Cheaters" filming on my street!

Our neighborhood blog, aka the "Busybody Blog," tipped us off that Vince Vaughn would be filming a movie on our street today. Sure enough, on our way to work, we saw some traffic cones, yellow tape, and a security guard in front of a restaurant that has been closed since we got here. We peeked inside, and saw the whole place done up all tacky 70s style. I took this picture from the El station when I got home. Sadly, the action had long ended -- I hear they've moved down a couple of miles to the infamous Wiener's Circle hot dog joint for filming overnight. All this picture really shows is the yellow and green "Chi Thao Massage" sign they put up in front of the filming location. Get it? "Chi-town?" I thought it was pretty clever. We'll probably have to see the movie just to see how seedy they make our hood look.

Anyway, movie stars aren't that impressive -- especially not Vince Vaughn, who is a card-carrying walrus now -- but what is awesome is stuff happening in my neighborhood.

I'm a-runnin'.

Remember when I said I had started training for a 5k? Of course you do, because you're one of my two readers. Congratulations on having excellent taste and good short-term memory!

It's two months later, and my "race" is tomorrow. It's a 3.5 mile charity run benefiting a food drive, and I put race in quotes to indicate that the likelihood of me being able to gear up to cruising speed in a crowd of a brazillion people is, well, unlikely. The important part is that I get a t-shirt, and an official number with a little timing chip in it, and Chris' company (with whom I am participating) is feeding and beering me afterwards. Yay!

Even if I don't get to run the whole way due to other meatbags being in the way, I am happy knowing that I can actually run 3.5 miles and have been doing so for a couple of weeks now. The awesome podcasts I've been using to train also has programs for 8k and 10k, which is kind of tempting. Kind of. Running sounded a lot more fun when temperatures were in the 60s, which was right up until three days ago. So I don't think it will become a new hobby, but we'll see.

Photos of me with my official timing chip number thing will be uploaded as soon as possible.

Attention parents: click on the map and it will open bigger, allowing you to better see my race route.

Update: I ran! I managed to keep up a jog the entire time, though the massive crowd of 20,000 people did slow me down a little. It was really cool running through Grant Park, past Buckingham Fountain and the Art Institute. The President even flew by in his helicopter and backup auxiliary helicopter! He was coming home for the weekend. How is this not the greatest city ever?

Ephemera

We made these awesome bowls out of some old "learn Spanish" records that belonged to my Grandpa Gil. My dog destroyed them less than two days later. I'm starting to think that carpe diem is Latin for "this is why we can't have nice things."

Ms. Payton's Lion

Months and months ago, our good friends Andy and Jennie "Carpet Angels" Paulsen decided they were going to have a baby. I, being a good friend and a good knitter, naturally wanted to make a Birth Day gift for the little one. I heard that Jennie wanted a lion. Cool, right? But of course! One lion, coming up! I bet I'd even have my choice of a very natural, lifelike pose, or more of a fun cartoony option, right? Patterns galore for something as awesome as a lion!

Aw, hells no. There are no lion patterns on all of the intarwebs. Okay, there was one vintage one, but it had the all-too-common disease of Ugly Vintage Knitting Pattern. I don't know what they were thinking back then, other than that knitted clothes may have been more of a necessity than now, so toys were low on the priority list.

At any rate, I found an adorable pattern for a kitty, and decided it couldn't be all that hard to make a kitty into a lion. It even came with a dress pattern! Which in the interest of Gender Equality and Better Gift Giving, I decided to do regardless of the eventual boy/girl situation.

The Paulsen's baby girl, Payton, was born while we were in Ecuador, and when we got back, I finished up the lion and his dress (yeah, a boy lion, and his dress -- grow up and let him be) and sent him off to the verdant fields of Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Jennie reports that Payton loves little Lionel (named by Andy) and his beautiful blue tunic (also named by Andy). Huzzah for every baby getting one toy that's life-size at birth!

Easter chicks

I made these for my niece and nephew for Easter, and am mighty pleased with how the showcase photos came out. I wonder how long these tiny eggs lasted before being lost forever under my sister-in-law's refrigerator.

Happy 5th Birthday, Funundrum!

Five years ago today, I was wedged into a tiny couch in TinyHouse(tm) by the beach in San Diego. I thought it would be fun to have a blog to write all the ridiculous things that popped into my head during my day job, which was to write ridiculous websites for plastic surgeons and lawyers. It was fun. It was fun all the way through:

5 adventures in Latin America

2 interstate moves

2 new jobs

1 engagement

1 wedding

some guy's entire MBA program

2 wedding anniversaries

at least 4 new hobbies, 2 of which have stuck

1 crazy HypnoDog

1 evil squirrel

more bad copy than you can shake a stick at

And it's still fun. I may go through periods where it feels like a chore, but all I really want is to write something that makes me giggle when I read it back. I hope I've made you giggle a couple times too, because I'm going to keep doing it the best I can. Five years is a long time in Internet Years. I'm kind of proud of that.

Funundrum -- the circus gets on the crazy train.

Wow, so five years (!) down the line, the world is finally starting to sit up and take notice of the finest non-word ever created. I was googling "funundrum" one day (who doesn't?), and...

...this came up. What. The hell. Here's what I get for not copyrighting the Finest Non-Word Ever Created (tm). <-- Maybe it's not too late to start. So, yeah. The biggest circus in America, not counting Congress, has up and usurped my blog name for the purposes of shilling their little dog-and-pony-and-sweaty-clown show*. My favorite part is how my browser shows two tabs, both alike in dignity, with the same name but incredibly different outcomes.

I'm putting this out there, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Wait, no. First of all, you win today's Bad Copy of the Day award. Who gets off using "and" and "&" in the same name? Shame on you. Okay, so now I'm putting this out there. I loved the circus as a kid. I loved just about all of it, including the motorcycle guy inside the big steel cage, which doesn't make much sense, looking back on it. I'd still like to love the circus. I'm just finding it a little hard, on account of y'all taking off with the Funundrum thing without so much as a howd'yedo. So maybe someone in marketing is reading this, as they undoubtedly first did when they did the initial search on Funundrum. If you are, marketing people, the circus is coming to Chicago in November. I'd love to be there if you could arrange it. I'd review it for the blog and everything. I bet, if you've got a decent PR guy, you could even get some sort of media exposure out of it. Just putting it out there, with this link: Funundrum does Funundrum.

Update upon re-reading this post: Holy crap, that tiger is actually riding the crazy train.

*Let me tell you my Sweaty Clown story. When I was about four, my parents took me to the circus, which I always loved, so thanks mom and dad. But that time, they decided it would be fun and cool and a great childhood memory if they volunteered me to go out there and sit on the clown fire truck as it drove around under those hot lights in the third ring. I was pretty excited until I actually got up there. Once I was squinting up into the face of the clown sitting next to me, I realized he was sweaty from jumping over barrels in the cowboy clown skit, further overheated inside his polyester costume due to the clown car incident, and probably already well looking forward to his first post-show beer of the evening. I'm not saying that I wasn't treated with kindness and respect, because I was, but I just want to go on record that Sweaty Clown Fire Truck is by far the best method for terrifying an otherwise laid-back four-year-old.

Mystery Envelope Thrilling Conclusion! AAAAHHH REALLY THIS TIME

But first, the thrilling conclusion of my butter-intensive German chocolate cake.

Now, on to the letter:

Hello Elizabeth! Thank you so much for returning the notecard you found in Knitting without Tears. I checked the book out a few months ago (January maybe?). The card was a thank you note to my aunt for the Christmas gift she sent to my young son. And you're right...at the time I was racking my brain trying to remember where I put that card. After about a week of searching high and low, I just wrote another one. Still don't remember, but I think I must have put it in the book intending to look up my aunt's address while I was at work.

Mystery solved! And what a great story to tell.

BTW - I am a knitter, still consider myself a beginner. I love Elizabeth Zimmerman's writing. I think she is so funny and has been so helpful with little tips here and there. I'm on Ravelry (do you know about this website?) and have a couple of finished projects posted if you are interested in looking. [username]. If you don't know about Ravelry.com, you should check it out. It's an online knitting community, very addictive and so inspiring to see others' work.

Thank you again.

Best,
[awesome mystery knitter's name that starts with G]

So, yeah! Very, very cool. And oh my god! I just looked her up on Ravelry (of which I am, of course, already a devoted member), and her favorite color is green and she seems cool. But then again, all knitters are cool. Have you ever met a mean knitter? I mean, aside from people who are mean because they're old which really means that they've been mean all their lives but feel like they can show it more now that they're old. They probably didn't knit when they were younger anyway, they probably learned just to spite someone.

What do I do? I haven't written her back or anything, because it seems weird. Yay for the city!

Seen in the city

We were downtown yesterday, outside the historical and ridiculously sumptuous Palmer House hotel, when we stumbled upon a group of musicians setting the scene for this resplendent groom, waiting to ride up to the front on his horse. In my mind, he took that thing right into the main lobby. Not sure how a horse gets through revolving doors, but they can train them pretty well these days.

There's a fire-gutted building on my street that's (finally) getting rebuilt. I guess the Chicago Iron Workers Local 1 got burned somehow in the process, because they're out picketing today. Complete with a huge inflated rat rearing out of a pickup truck. Where did they get such a thing? Union supply shop, or a regular inflated-stuff store? If the latter, who else might need a huge rat? It's not exactly gonna sell a lot of used cars, you know? Maybe an exterminator. . . My point is this: that's a damn robust union you've got there, with some good organization to boot. Good luck lads, I hope you're able to squeeze triple time out of the general contractor, or whatever it is you're angry about.

I was on the train this morning, watching a woman learn the hard way not to read the end of "The Great Gatsby" in public.

Mystery Envelope Thrilling Conclusion! AAAAHHH

Oh my god oh my god oh my god! My mystery envelope owner WROTE ME BACK! This is quite possibly the most Only Happens In A Movie thing that has ever happened to me. Now if I find out that this person is living in the past, or in another dimension, or whatever the setup was in that shitty Sandra Bullock movie, I'll be equal parts amazed and disappointed in the pedestrian nature of the cosmos. I mean, come on, email from the past? Stay out of it, Keanu Reeves.*

As I am in the middle of making a labor-intensive butter sauce for a German chocolate cake, I will tell you what it said in another post.

*If you watch The Soup (on E! at 9pm Fridays), you just got done saying, "Stay out of it, Nick Lachey!" If you don't watch The Soup, you should.

Mystery envelope update

I've just packaged up the card I found at the library last Saturday. I included the unopened envelope, as well as a hand-written letter:

Dear G.,

I was in the downtown branch of the public library this weekend browsing the knitting books, and this card fell out of "Knitting Without Tears." I don't know how long it's been in there, but if you're anything like me (and you must be a little like me, if you're a knitter), it drove you crazy that you lost that card to Mary before you got to mail it. Now you know where it went! Thanks for letting me carry around a little bit of a mystery for a few days.

[my name and email address]
(in case you want to let me know what was in there... or not. Just in case.)

That last bit felt so much like writing to a pen-pal for the first time, all sweaty palms and "please write me back, I'll be ever so glad! Please tell me about where you live and whether you have any pets!" Kind of goobery. Can't help it. This is fun. Updates as they come. If they ever do. This may very well be the last I see of my mystery card.

Today on the train: how is it that I was home sick all day yesterday, and it's only just now, on a massively crowded train, that I have an eye-watering urge to cough? Doesn't this cold know that the key to getting spread around is flying under the radar, rather than alerting all the meatbags around me what's up?

I might be a stalker!

On Saturday, Chris and I went to the massive main library in Chicago, downtown in the Loop. We had to pay some fines give back to our community, then found ourselves browsing for more books to take home. Chris was lost somewhere in the music section, which is conveniently on the same floor as the knitting books. As I was leafing through "Knitting Without Tears," a small sealed envelope fell out.

*DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!* <-- That there is supposed to be thrilling denouement music. MYSTERY ENVELOPE!

It's got a full return address on it, along with the name "G. Van Moer," and is addressed to a "Mary Chesebro." It's a small card, perhaps of the thank-you variety, and I can't tell much through the envelope other than it's got an illustration of some leaves on the front. Clearly, Ms. G. (I think it's a woman based on the writing) wrote the card and put it in this book, intending to carry it with her until she got Mary's address. Unfortunately for both G. and Mary, due dates are a bitch.

I will find far more enjoyment in sending it back to G. Van Moer than in opening it, so I'm going to mail it in a larger envelope, along with the story of how I found it. I think I'll even include my email address, in case G. has anything interesting to communicate back to me.

Stay tuned, 1.5 readers.

Horto in Urbs (in Horto)

Chicago's official motto, in Latin, is Urbs in Horto, or "City in a Garden." One of its unofficial mottoes, of course, is Daniel Burnham's "Make No Little Plans." I would further like to submit for consideration "Don't Make Any Plans If You're Waiting for an El Train Outside of Rush Hour" and "Make Plans Only if You've Paid Mayor Daley's Plan-Making Tax of 12%."

Anyway, we started our own little city garden here in the Sky Palace today. We planted bell peppers, roma tomatoes, chives, cilantro, and sweet basil -- all from seeds. I'd really like to do hops, as well, but I don't think they're suited for our enclosed deck because 1) I think they need deep soil, rather than containers and 2) they kind of grow really really tall. But I can dream, can't I?

Against better judgement,

I've signed up for a 5k. I know, I was surprised too. I haven't run since high school, and I did so sullenly even back then. But I found an awesome podcast training regimen online that trains you up gradually over several weeks, so I have hope.

I'm still not sure what I've gotten myself into. I know it's just over 3 miles, but still. I think it's something they put into the water here in Chicago. This is the most runningest city I've ever seen. Every spring, right about early March, the signs go up all over for 5k's, 10k's, and half and full marathons. And here I am, being part of the problem.

I'm told there's beer at the end, so there's that.

Bad Copy of the Day Award: Verbal Edition

I generally hate "businessisms" such as "I'll ping you later on that" or "at the end of the day." I hate them a lot. Just use normal words, and stop talking like an asshat. Usually, the same tired phrases are recycled for years, mostly because salespeople have very little imagination. So my ears always perk up when I hear a new one. In this situation, a business deal had stagnated, and my coworker was discussing the need to allay her client's anxiety regarding lack of progress:

"We just want to show him some movement in the water."

Why "in the water"? Why do you need that metaphor at all? If she had been talking directly to me, which she wasn't, I would have been terribly distracted by imagining all the things that might create movement in water -- a boat wake? The Loch Ness Monster? Underwater volcano? Corpse floating downstream?

I'm just not cut out for Corporate America, I guess.

Just use smaller words, m'kay?

There is a person, in just about every large office in America, whose sole purpose in life is to make Funundrum's eyes bleed. I haven't met them all yet, and I hope never to get close to doing so, but I know they're there nonetheless. The person I'm talking about is generally female and either doesn't have a college degree or went to one of those progressive schools that encourages you to discuss your feelings, perform an interpretive dance, or go on a peyote-influenced vision quest rather than sit a written math final. Yo, I got news for you -- your glowing coyote spirit guide is not going to help you solve for x.

I'm going to step back a moment here and tell a little story about the Best Teacher Ever, my high school English teacher, Mr. Kopacki. When it came time to teach us how to use "who" vs. "whom," he made us all swear that we would abide by the very simple First Rule of "whom," which is as follows:

If you're not absolutely sure you can use it correctly, don't.

American English has developed in a very democratic, somewhat sloppy, but mostly useful fashion. It's the Snap-On Tools of the linguistic world. It's evolved to not really need the word "whom," to the point that its usage is generally an indication that someone's using it to look smart... which they then fail to do.

Which brings me back to the peyote-using underachievers. At my last job, it was my boss. At this job, it's the head of operations. It may be someone different where you work. But their modus operandi is always the same: they have to send out emails to the whole office, which freaks them out and challenges their self-worth, so they do everything possible to underscore the gravity of their authority on the subject at hand. You will know them by the way they mark every email "urgent." You will know them by their use of animated GIFs in the body text. Most of all, you will know them by the gratuitous and patently incorrect infestation of "whoms."

I've written all this and I don't even have a good example of the ridiculous things this woman sends out. I suppose I'll have to edit in the next couple of days to put something in here. But I thought I'd like to share with you, my two readers, the nearly unshoulderable burden it is being me.

For reals.

I lie awake nights wracked with guilt over not writing on this blog. So, there's that.

Welcome to the inside of my head.

How come, in Star Trek, Data never just plugged into the ship directly so he could do his job way more efficiently? I could see him wanting to do the human thing as much as possible, but for as often as the Enterprise was 3.6 seconds away from losing life support/getting sucked into another dimension/exploding, seems like it would be a prudent course of action.

It just seemed to work so well for R2-D2. Just saying.