Category Archives: Today

What today was like.

Big Red Snow Beast

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big-red-snow-beast

Last night’s snow (or as I originally typo-ed, slow), dumped only about 4 inches on suburban streets in the area, but the traffic was horrendous and there were enough minor accidents to put corks in all the bottlenecks. And due to the way the east-west arterials around here are blocked by large tracts of parkland or shopping malls, there’s only a few ways to get between work and home. If there’s bad weather, or traffic, everything gets choked off at one of two places.

I started out pissed, as I had a late “hit” call where someone needed an exchange ticket issued by the end of the day, and there were technical problems getting it done. I call down curses and imprecations on high-mileage status travelers who upgrade themselves before the new ticket issues! But I was able to get through to an airline res agent (miraculously; it’s an airline that outsources a lot of calls to India)
and downgrade the traveler. Heh, that’ll teach them not to mess with their records… I felt very unsympathetic.

As I headed west towards home, I puttered along at about 5 miles an hour. It took about 30 minutes just to get to where I could turn off my “bottleneck” route to an alternate street that avoided the worst of the traffic. Then I had to navigate around some other obstacles, cut through a high-school parking lot to an outlet to residential streets that I knew of, and finally got back to a more direct route home. It turned out that my zig-zagging didn’t really save me much time, but it did give me a sense of accomplishment since I was moving rather than sitting in a jam-up.

David texted his location a couple of times… he started an hour before I did because he’s farther away, and it took him all of 3 hours to get home. I beat him home by about half an hour and had started using the Big Red Snow Beast on the driveway. It was still snowing pretty heavily and I had all my snow
gear on; boots, gloves, long down coat, muffler around my ears and face, fleece jingle hat with ear flaps, and had the faux-fur trimmed hood up as well. I was seriously rocking the Arctic look.

Of course, David had to take a picture. Fear the Beast!

(It is left up to the discretion of the reader to decide which is meant, the machine or the operator.)

I’ve recently gotten sucked into the time warp that is Twitter and was monitoring a few locals who complained of 3 and 4-hour commutes. It was particularly bad in the north suburbs, where there was more snow, no plows, no salting, and nothing but side streets and minor arterials that were all completely backed up.

I’m currently writing this at work in Wordpad while waiting for a call with my “ears” on, with the plan of sending the text to myself and updating at home. This is my first full week sitting with my new team, and I’m comfortably settled in with my new work-mates. I kept much more to myself on my former team,
partly because I’d formerly held a position that was between line agents and the previous team leader, and I was not popular because I was responsible for quality control at one time and was gathering data about error rates for each agent. That was years ago, but I sensed there was still some lingering… not resentment, but reserve. I wasn’t entirely to be trusted, I guess, and I didn’t bother to try to overcompensate by bringing in a lot of treats or being very social with everyone else. I don’t have this
baggage with the new team, and as it happens I work with a former team leader who stepped back to agent level whose company I enjoy. And I work with people who make me laugh and enjoy being here. It’s a pleasant change from my previous “anti-social” stance to actually chat with my neighbors.
There are minor drawbacks to the move, of course – there always are. But the compensations are: great coffee (they bring in their own bags of it and keep it in a thermos at one of the desks) and great cameraderie. It’s nice. Also, I’m closer to a window now that I don’t have to be hopping up and down
printing and faxing forms to hotels, and I have a view that looks along a tollway towards Chicago.

Currently, traffic is flowing. But don’t ask me to do constant updates. I will say that there’s snow on all the rooftops and the sky is a solid grey. Visibility is probably only a mile or two, and I don’t think we’re
on the flight path today because I don’t hear planes overhead. This may or may not be a good thing.

It’s kind of slow today. I haven’t taken that many calls. One of my mates from my former team and I send IMs to each other with questions and comments now and then, as we back each other up and she’s not physically located in the office. Now and then she sends funny emoticons and animated
GIFs.

I call this one “ZOMG! I’m In Crazy Town!”

crazy-town

It’s animated in the original format so that the background wobbles up and down, but I didn’t save it that way. My office mate sends me a lot of wacky crap like this. Most of them involve animals or weird cartoons expressing extreme agitation. I think there’s an underlying theme…

It helps to pass the time chatting, of course, but sending IMs is also dead useful when you can’t reach someone by phone, but they’re logged in to the messaging network. To ask questions like “WTF can’t these people put in the right format???” Both of us are crabby, perfectionists when it comes to formats, and unsociable; this makes us ideal IM partners.

Later, after lunch….

I continue to see more and more small signs of the bad economy. There are empty “big-box” stores on my way home, there are empty offices in my building at work, and just now I got waylaid by my hairdresser lady who said that they’re closing the hair salon downstairs. They needed to increase their visibility, and had lost a lot of regular clients because so many companies here pulled out and went away. It’s not a ghost building, but the trend is not an upward one. Anyway, she stopped me to give me a business card with the new address and phone number. They merged with another salon in the area and there are a couple of locations, but the closer one is farther to the east of me.

It may be that once they’re moved, I’ll get my hair done on choir nights, as I have about 90 minutes
to kill between the end of the day and choir, and this new location is not far out of the way to Holy Moly. So it could work out that I could keep going to Evelyn, because I like her and she’s willing to give me a simple, unfussy cut. And she likes long hair, which is a plus: some hair stylists are always on about “this long hair drags your face down.”

Dudette, I come from a long line of horse-faced people; there’s only so much you can do with a chin-length pageboy or an unnecessary (and damaging) body wave perm. Evelyn is happy to keep my hair long.  Done.

Actually, with short hair, I look a lot like Mr Crazy Town, especially without makeup. Let’s not go there.

Today’s weather has gradually cleared – the clouds that were overhead this morning are gone, replaced by mostly blue sky and fairly bright sun. It makes for some pretty shadows and contrast where the light is coming across the trees from the forest preserve across the way. By the time I leave, though, it’ll be dark. And I’ll be on my way to choir practice, so I won’t be home tonight until after 8pm.

For music this year at Holy Moly, we’re doing a modified “Lessons and Carols” format for Christmas Eve – for the later service at 9pm, that is. I’m not part of the earlier Family Service, thank GOD. It conflicts with work, anyway, as I’m scheduled to work until 5pm on the 24th. Bleh.

Anyway, the music will be good and lovely and I hope it puts people in the right headspace. One is especially good, as it’s not one of those standards you always hear: it’s called “What Sweeter Music” by John Rutter. It’s gorgeous, with floating harmonies that shimmer. Even with our few, poor voices, it sounds good. We’ll have some “ringers” on the night, though, so it’ll be even better.

Some of the other pieces will be effective – some are kind of required favorites, but a few are nice arrangements that aren’t just the plain vanilla versions sung from the choir book. One of the traditions at St Nicholas is for people to bring little bells to ring, so there’s something for that as well. We’ll have something for every taste, high class singin,’ low-class ringin,’ everybody join in on the chor-e-us.

On my mind in the news: the sheer gobsmackery of Rod Blagojevich’s hair, and the special hairbrush called “the football” that was carried by an aide, ready for any photo or video opportunity. It’s going to be what used to be called a “mare’s nest” of countercharges, questions about members of the impeachment committee’s own “favors and perks” for friends and family, and will turn out to be a giant waste of everybody’s time. Blago reportedly is defiant and claims he’s done nothing wrong; impeachment proceedings were being floated around the General Assembly months ago because he was seen as incompetent and an obstacle to the legislative process, not because of any of Fitzgerald’s charges. Still, they add spice, all those recordings of Blago (and his wife) dropping the F-bomb. I keep an eye on the news via the iPhone while waiting for calls.

Nearing the end of the day here, finally; the number of calls picked up and the afternoon went faster than the morning. Time is weird that way.

I’ll get grumped at at choir, because I was sick last Wednesday and still not feeling great Sunday, so I’ve missed 2 practices AND a Sunday, le horreur! but it’s never a good idea to run around in sub-freezing weather with a cold. In my experience, it just leads to the cold going into a sinus infection or bronchitis, so I’ll take the dirty looks in my direction, because I got over the cold without further ado (or catarrh).

UPDATE: Made it home safely after choir practice. We sounded awful, not sure why. I think it was because Mary decided to rearrange us and we were “upside-down” musically (or more likely, sideways) and hearing a different blend. Also, it was time for Mary’s annual Christmas Hissy… the stress of the season gets to her, especially when we’re not sounding good after months of work (and after sounding much better in our previous configuration).

Also, my friend Kevin reminded me via Facebook of the very funny “conversation between Rahm and Blago” that was posted at dKos the other day. Heh. This is the best part of this CLEVERLY SATIRICAL PARODY.

BLAGO: What if I appoint Valerie, what if she takes it?

EMANUEL: What do you want me to say? We’d appreciate it, I’m not gonna fucking kiss your ring over it.

BLAGO: “Appreciate it”? Come on, this is a Senate seat we’re talking about. It’s worth a fuck of a lot more than appreciation.

EMANUEL: You asked us for a list, we gave you a fucking list, you want to make your own list then make your own fucking list. [Raising voice] But if you’re asking for anything else from me, or Barack, or Valerie, then you can fucking stop talking right now Rod.

BLAGO: Wait a sec there Rahm. Wait just a fucking minute. Who are you to talk to me like that? I fucking made you.

EMANUEL: You made me? You made me? Tell me you’re fucking joking.

BLAGO: No no no, you listen to me shit-face. You see this list I got, the names motherfucking Obama fucking wants for the Senate. I just ripped it in two. How you like that? Oops, Harris just dropped it in the shredder. Harris?

HARRIS (muffled): Yes sir?

BLAGO: Did you just drop that list in the shredder?

[Whirring, shredder noise]

HARRIS (muffled): I did.

EMANUEL: Do you have me on fucking speakerphone?

BLAGO: It’s in the shredder, Rahm. The list is bye bye.

EMANUEL: Hold on a sec — you got me on fucking speakerphone? Who the fuck do you think I am?

BLAGO: Who are you Rahm? Who are you? You’re shit, you hear me? Don’t come back to Chicago Rahm, it’s not your town any more.

EMANUEL: Pick up the phone Rod.

Also also, more holiday-themed “heh.”

funny pictures of cats with captions

Meson Sabika: Flamenco Holiday Party

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We went to the holiday party last night for David’s office. In recent years, it’s been an enjoyable enough affair, especially after they stopped booking the DJ nobody liked… but the experience we had was somewhat beyond our wildest expectations of a nice evening.

Meson Sabika was the setting, a large mansion in Naperville, which is one of the few Chicago suburbs with a sense of its own history. First settled in 1811, it’s set in gently rolling country, with a vibrant and architecturally appealing downtown, with public space and art everywhere. We drove down after work, and I was in my typically grumpy “I HATE GETTING DRESSED UP” frame of mind on the way. All that changed as soon as we walked in the door.

The Willoway Mansion was built in 1847 and sits on a pristine four-acre estate near downtown Naperville. After a meticulous renovation that brought back the mansion’s original charm as well as added modern conveniences to the restaurant, Meson Sabika opened it’s doors in 1990.

It goes without question, that the restaurant offers an unmatched dining experience. Guests can dine indoors and enjoy the grace and charm reminiscent of a European Villa or can choose to sit outdoors on the terrace while enjoying the ultimate alfresco experience underneath 150-year-old oak trees which cover the estate.

Guests will find that each item on the menu offers a taste of Spain. Whether it’s enjoying hot and cold tapas, sangria, an entrée or a vintage wine – there’s always a pleasant combination of exceptional food, friendly service, and unique atmosphere where family and friendship can live life in celebration.

The entrance is the original foyer of the mansion, with a sense of rooms and people and festive celebration taking place in rooms all over the house. The hall was gorgeously decorated, with a beautiful old wooden staircase leading to the second floor. We checked in with the staff and they took our coats away. We were ushered through lace curtains separating the former front parlor from the hall, where familar faces told us we’d found the right room. We were a few minutes late, and the drinks service had just started. Handsome waiters moved smoothly through the room, distributing glasses of wine and cocktails (open bar). It was a lovely old room, with 4 long dining tables set for dinner, in two rows with a central aisle. We filled it, with each department tending to keep to itself. So at our table, we were the Dev people, and the Sales people (always a boisterous bunch) were the next table down.

The first appetizers came out, a couple of variations on potato salad; each table got two big platters to pass down each side, serving ourselves family-style. The hot appetizers, same drill.

And then a guitarist began to play, another set of lace curtains separating the parlor from the big bar area were opened, and the flamenco dancer began to stamp out her passionate rhythms. The old wood floor was perfect for her snapping, gunshot-loud steps.

It was an extra-special evening, with a wonderful holiday mood set by the beautiful old home, the decor, and the family-style seating. I’d definitely like to return.

The food was amazing – also, they had Spanish beers and wines. My husband David’s co-conspirator had been to Spain and was really pleased to find Spanish beer on the bar list. It seemed like conversation flowed more easily at this party than at previous years’ shindigs; something about the antique-y, homelike setting put us all at ease. Even those of us spouses (or spices) who only see these people once a year.

David even won a gift card, well done. If you check the link, you’ll see the holiday menu choices for groups. We had the third option, which was plenty of food (although rather heavy on the dairy, and light on vegan choices).

I was stupid not to bring my iPhone. I thought I would be tempted to play with it “when I got bored.” That would not have been the case, and I could have gotten some decent shots of the hall and the dining room.

David took the picture of the dancer. The lighting was not optimal but this pose came out pretty well.

Via Meson Sabika’s Holiday Menu

At the End of the Day

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My life doesn’t really run to a narrative. There’s the basic “get up, go to work, come home, eat something, do something, go to bed” framework, but there’s no grand sweeping Story of my Life. It’s just a collection of random moments.

That being said, some days are a little out of the ordinary in minor ways. Today started out normal, got different, then got normal.

It was very slow at work – as in, frighteningly, “when are they going to start training us on other accounts” slow. Not terrifyingly “when are they going to start to pull in the last-hired people into a conference room” slow, though. I had left a number of messages for a bunch of different hotels in Atlanta, trying to find some block space for a group, but didn’t expect to hear back from all of them until after the Thanksgiving holiday. This event isn’t for about 5 months so it’s not a huge rush, but it’s during the time of a major convention and a large meeting-planning organization had sucked up all the available properties behind a kind of “paywall” arrangement. The person asking me to arrange the block wasn’t willing to give up a credit card number for a guarantee just to find out IF her first through sixth choices were available, at some unknown price. So I was trying to find someplace that wasn’t contractually obligated through the convention’s housing bureau. I’ve worked with the particular meeting-planning outfit running the housing desk before and frankly, wasn’t looking forward to it as they were hard to work with and this is the largest size group I handle.

At least I’m no longer covering for my co-worker, the air groups person. In addition to taking normal travel arranger-type calls, we both specialize slightly in aspects of group travel, and backing her up is not difficult, but occasionally there’s a huge spike in workload. It was mostly a caretaker job this time, though, while she was out for 3 weeks. Handled it all and got it done.

So, all that time I couldn’t avail myself of downtime when it was offered, because I didn’t feel it was right to take it when something might come up and no one else was really up lined up to back groups up.

I was just thinking “Man, TOO SLOW. Lunch in 5 minutes, seems like 5 hours.” And then a team leader came up and offered immediate downtime on the spot. Normally, it’s much more formal – there’s a sign up list, they don’t decide until after lunch, and it’s not a snap decision like that. No, today the call volume was low enough in the morning that they needed to get some people off as soon as possible.

Nobody on my team looked all that interested, amazingly enough. Perhaps no one wanted that much unpaid time. I raised my hand and said, “Well, I could go; I’m waiting for callbacks that probably won’t come in today, I don’t have anything pending, and this project is really low priority. “I can authorize you to go right now, if you like. Log out and change your schedule and it’ll be approved,” said the team leader.

Okay then, I’m out of there at noon. What to do? With the T-day holiday looming, I decided to go to Meijer’s and stock up on staples, since we’re low on a few things, and also get some of the baking supplies I’ll need for making dilly bread. And off I went, and started loading up on mostly normal staples, plus a few seasonal things texted to me by David or remembered, more or less, by me.

I had the most interesting conversation in the tea-coffee-cocoa aisle. I had a taste for hot chocolate the other night, so I was comparing ingredients on various “instant cocoa” products. I was trying to find one that didn’t have a lot of milk product in it, in case David wanted some, but then decided “what the heck, he doesn’t even LIKE chocolate, it’s all about ME and what I like here!” A woman standing there doing the same thing laughed and said “What is it about women and chocolate?” and proceeded to tell me a story about how she went to downtown Chicago and was in a very upscale chocolate place – like maybe Godiva or some other boutique chocolatier – and seeing an extremely well-dressed, posh woman with 4 or 5 little girls there.

All the girls were also extremely well turned out, and this woman was “introducing” them to fine chocolate, very deliberately. According to the lady in the cocoa aisle, they were all sitting around dressed in their finery, with freshly lacquered nails, and they had wee cups of fine cocoa and were being schooled in the niceties of properly sipping one’s drinking chocolate. She said there was something disturbing about how these kids couldn’t simply be handed an ordinary candy bar, they had to make it into some kind of special event (it was probably a birthday party). But we both pondered how one of a certain income bracket might have one’s children and one’s friends’ children properly introduced to chocolate.

“Imagine that… they couldn’t just hand the girls a Hershey bar, or even a good quality chocolate bar, and add the usual warnings about not eating too much at one time,” I said. “In an economic crisis, it’s kind of offensive to me that someone would want to ‘introduce’ young kids to such… elitist consumerism. There are people who’ll have trouble feeding their own kids and staying employed and housed.” I added something about it not being a good idea to bring up kids that take such stuff for granted. The grocery lady agreed and we chatted on for a few more minutes in that vein.

In the end, though, she and I both picked the “organic” chocolate, although it was the house brand. The “name brand” stuff was more expensive, and it was full of crap like xanthan gum. How terrible for the poor Xanthans! How do they manage to eat?

Anyway, after loading up on more stuff, yet having the nagging suspicion that I was forgetting something critical for either tonight’s dinner or Thursday’s breads, I proceeded to the checkout area. I was kind of wishing I hadn’t gone to Meier and gotten so much stuff, because I thought there would be a long line for the “live” checkout lanes, and it would take forever to scan all that stuff myself and have to stuff bags in the “loading” area one at a time. But lo! they’d installed some high-volume self-check lanes! So you can scan something, send it down a conveyor to a holding area, and immediately scan something else rather than to have to stop and bag each item. Whee!

I fancy myself as a pretty good scanner now. I bet if I had to, I could get a part time job in a grocery store. Yep. That’d last about two days until my back, knees, and wrists gave out.

So then it was Off Toward Home. But first, there was a nasty accident to pass along the way. Which begs the question… how the heck do you overturn a large SUV on a major suburban arterial, where the speed never gets above about 40-45 mph? There must have been some involvement with the central median to get some tipping action, but there it was, on its side, with a bunch of cops and fire trucks all around. And then I saw a fireman hustling himself through the opened/broken sunroof, and I realized “Holy God, there’s still someone in there.” And crossed myself as I passed by, marveling at the large number of cop cars. I mean, there were at least 5 or 6, plus two or three fire trucks. Most of the cop cars were behind the SUV in the opposite lanes… had there been a chase? Don’t know, hasn’t made the local news outlets.

Once home, what to do? Cleaned out the refrigerator a little and wiped it down. Put the food away. Had hot chocolate, played with the cat, surfed the Internets tubes.

For about an hour or so, I had an extremely bad day as I screwed up the transfer of music from my iPhone to this computer after downloading and installing iTunes on it. Thus, my pretty good day went horribly borked as I basically had to restore the phone to factory defaults… that is, wipe it clean and start over. Thank GOD, I had recently synched it to my normal iTunes install on the laptop. So, geeky angsty yadda yadda, it remembered everything and who I am and all my music and all my apps and games and I didn’t have to re-enter all my contacts from scratch or remember how to do it via Outlook. Whew.

Once David got home, it became a more “normal” day. Watched Chuck. Eventually made dinner out of the beef I originally bought to make stroganoff, because I forgot to get egg noodles. We ended up finding a kind of “easy casserole” recipe that we adapted that turned out to be… really very good. Served it over cracked Yukon Gold potatoes – next time, either smaller potatoes, or cut in smaller cubes. I’d stilll cook them separately in the same skillet I browned the beef in before we put it in the casserole, though. Beef had a really good flavor, and so did the potatoes. We’ll try that again, maybe with big sliced portobello mushrooms in the “easy casserole” mixture.

Pretty much a normal/not normal/normal day, though. Oh, and Chuck was teh awsum.

Oh, and sometime between now and Thursday morning, I need to pick up some yeast cakes. Because, yes, forgot them too. And the cottage cheese. And need to see if we already have all the other spices and herbs, too, because usually I just buy another little jar or bottle of ginger or dill weed and then get home to find that I have 2 or 3 jars or bottles already.

Yeah. That’s how I roll!

So goodnight. Maybe I’ll go shopping tomorrow.

Second Life: Just Barely Scraping Along The Bottom

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There’s been another upgrade to Second Life, and I haven’t been online consistently in a couple of months. So I went online today to check in, pay rent, sort inventory; boring stuff to some, but for some reason the purposelessness is relaxing to me. While doing this I like to hang out somewhere with a good music stream.

I’m currently located at the Gardens of Apollo[SLUrl link], and found that the nicely detailed gardens are now a bit too detailed for my “big” computer if I set the graphics display to “high,” and woefully undetailed if I set it at “Recommended.” Translation: “What your poor slob of a processor and graphics card can handle.”

Which is kind of annoying, because David had upgraded this computer a few months ago with a better graphics card.

Here are the current specs. This is probably why I’ll never be serious about online virtual worlds (World of Warcraft whaaaaaat? Lich King whoooooo?). Because I’ll never bother to shell out the ducats for a truly high end system, as I’m not constantly “inworld.”

Second Life | System Requirements

Cable or DSL
Operating System: 2000, XP, or Vista XP or Vista
Computer Processor: 800 MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better 1.5 GHz (XP), 2-GHz (Vista) 32-bit (x86) or better
Computer Memory: 512 MB or more 1 GB or more
Screen Resolution: 1024×768 pixels 1024×768 pixels or higher
Graphics Card for XP/2000**:

* NVIDIA GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX or better
* OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250 or better
* OR Intel 945 chipset

NVIDIA Graphics cards
6000 Series:

* 6600, 6700, 6800

7000 Series:

* 7600, 7800, 7900

8000 Series:

* 8500, 8600, 8800

GeForce Go Series:

* 7600, 7800, 7900

ATI Graphics Cards

* X800, X900, X1600, X1700, X1800, X1900
* x2600, x2900
* x3650, x3850

Graphics Card for Vista (requires latest drivers)**:

* NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better
* OR ATI Radeon 9500 or better
* OR Intel 945 chipset

NVIDIA Graphics cards
7000 Series:

* 7600, 7800, 7900

8000 Series:

* 8500, 8600, 8800

GeForce Go Series:

* 7600, 7800, 7900

ATI Graphics Cards

* X1600, X1700, X1800, X1900
* x2600, x2900
* x3650, x3850

Also, it’s abundantly clear even to me, a non-creative, non-builder, non-landowner, that something is terribly wrong in AV-ville. Sure, there was a wacky story this week about the couple that married in real life, married in Second Life, and then the wife found her husband in an online affair.

No, this is about the little things; friends and groups of friends pulling back from the amount of virtual “land” they own, an increasing number of group messages offering land for rent, homes for rent, anything at all for sale. Sad announcements about open space being let go, because the price recently shot up. Notecards of online chats with the “Lindens” posted in public places with protest flags and “Save Open Sims” signs. And really small, little things, like the Gardens of Apollo. The sim owner may have changed the music stream from a rather expensive one run as a subscription by Artists4Mercy so something less expensive. It sounds totally different today, but I can’t confirm that it’s actually been changed.

I’ll have to talk to some friends and see what’s been going on.

The Old Folkie’s Home

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Today being the third Saturday of the month, I managed to make it to Asbury Court in Des Plaines for Holy Moly’s monthly ecumenical service. It was pretty lightly attended, probably because of a competing holiday craft fair event, but it was a nice time and those that were there were our “frequent flyers.”

Father Paul and Mary did a reprise of their duet from last Sunday’s service of “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream” with Paul on banjo, but as the words were printed, I joined in anyhow.

Some of the other old folkies that were there today were Richard, who was delighted to deputize a young St Nick’s member name Molly who was in attendance, very shyly, with her mother. Molly was very proud of her deputy sticker; Richard is a retired cop who writes children’s stories and always tools around in a souped-up electric scooter festooned with flags and patriotic cop stuff. He actually administered an authentic sounding oath when he gave Molly the sticker – something about “deputize you under the laws of the State of Illinois to uphold the Constitution” or whatnot. She was very taken with it as she silently clutched her pink stuffed kitten.

I mentioned that Paul had brought his banjo with him, which reminded Richard of the time he was playing the drums in a police marching band unit. Apparently, they got downtown for a parade on Michigan Avenue a couple of hours early, and one of the guys spotted a nearby bar. So they all trooped in (literally) and started playing, and the more they played, the more the patrons bought them drinks. So by the time they were rousted out by their sargeant to get to their position for the parade, they were already “half-smashed” by Richard’s estimation.

After the parade was over, they were chided by somebody back at the station house that had watched them on TV who said “Well, you guys sound like you were playing pretty good, but your (marching) lines were a ragged mess!”

Someone else that’s always there is Anna, a Jamaican lady with an emphatically black wig, a warm Islands accent, and a huge personality. She was sporting an Obama button, pinned next to a mess of chestal jewelry and a cross necklace. The button looked kind of home-made, with a photo of Obama and a flag graphic, not like one of the slicker buttons available from the campaign website. So during the Peace, I went up to her to greet her, pointed at the button and said “I like that button.” Her face lit up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “I just LOVE HIM.” She got the same reaction from Mary, who also liked the button, and when I left she was just beaming about it.

We’re pondering what we’ll do for the December one, and Mary and I are plotting a “pulling out all the stops” program with favorite Christmas hymns, and maybe inveigling enough choir members to come for a kind of “dress rehearsal” performance of one of the fancy anthems we’re working on for Advent or Christmas Eve. We’re doing a Lessons and Carols service for the first time since I’ve been at St Nick’s, with all the prep and rehearsal that entails. And so we might pull out one of the special pieces for performance at Asbury, and hope to enlist the social director’s help in getting it publicised in their monthly newsletter.

As I left, the sound system in the main gathering room was playing 50’s oldies, and I realized that even though that music is 50 years old, I still associate it with images of teenagers. It seemed incongruous for a retirement home, but it’s not that far off the mark; some of the residents were young enough to be bobby soxers, although the oldest were probably in their late 20’s and early 30’s when the music I heard was new.

Which made me consider; in 30 years or so, will retirement homes play punk rock anthems on their sound systems? Elvis Costello? KISS? Hillary Duff? This continued to be on my mind as I drove home listening to WBEZ’s Sound Opinions, which featured “bubblegum” or pop music from the 50’s right through to today, and how some of it was able to transcend its own genre of “rock and roll.”

But as nobody at all sang along with us when Paul and Mary and I sang the old classic “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” I guess they don’t play old folkie music much at the old folkies home.

Tonight: The Race Is O’er

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Tonight we’re not heading to Grant Park with the throngs, we’re headed to Oak Park with thongs. Okay, it’s an unseasonably warm, clear day, and we’re taking O-themed, or Hawaiian themed, snacks to Jill’s house.

She’ll have Jon Stewart on downstairs and the radio on upstairs and we’ll feast on pot roast and nail trimmings until the results are in.

Dear God, I hope the results are in.

I’m taking my laptop and may checkin with my Second Life chums (who’ve been neglected of late), but I’ll also be watching races at the election tracker CNN.com has. You can set up 35 nationally significant races (plus selected stuff like Prop. 8) and watch the returns come in.

Yeah, downtown would be interesting. Also a big hassle. So off to Oak Park we go.

Floor Project From Hell IV: Welcome To Purgatory

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Here’s a quick update on the Floor Project From Hell:

We’re almost done! Except we’ve had scope creep! We started laying out the floor after it acclimated on Friday. It’s now Monday; yes, we’re slow, but we hit a minor snag and we’re now setting up for a big finish. Which involves totally repainting the room in a slightly darker color. I’d gone through hell patching about a zillion screw-anchor holes in that room 5 years ago – but there were a couple of dings and places I hadn’t done a very good job.

First of all, we knew we needed some “approved glue product” for one board we had had to rip in half in the doorway, and for the eventual gluing of the last row of ripped boards. This was not carried by Lowe’s but they offered to order it for us. We went across the street to Home Despot to see if they carried the glue. Nope, but a very helpful woman named Chris called Bruce Flooring to find out exactly what the “approved glue product” was (actually, it’s “Bruce Everseal Adhesive“) and determined that they could get it for us… in a week. Or, we could take our chances with another brand, but our warranty might be voided if something went wrong and it ruined the floor along the one edge.

AUGH!!

So while on our way to Menard’s to check to see if they had the glue (and also buy something else unrelated to the project), I called iFloors up in Palatine. Remember the weird storefront? I’d seen some glue in bottles near the door and wondered, since they carried the Bruce Foldamp;Lock, if they also carried the glue. I spoke to a very helpful guy named Larry, who regretfully informed me that they didn’t have any Bruce Everseal Adhesive in stock, and wouldn’t be able to get it delivered until Monday. However, if I could get to his wholesaler in Elk Grove Village within an hour, we could order it from Larry over the phone, and pick it up ourselves with a reference number.

HUZZAH!! WIN!

So I gave Larry a credit card number, and he emailed me back the reference number, which I got on my iPhone will sitting in the parking lot of Menard’s… where David was picking up something or other for the project.

As it turned out, I ended up driving to Elk Grove to get the glue while David went home to get more done. I found my way to a huge, huge warehouse with a little tiny “Customer Pickup” lobby, gave the reference number, and presently a teenage guy in a black Goth T-Shirt brought me my one 16 oz. bottle of glue. I drove away exulting. After farting around for a while, we got the one short, ripped board in place; all that was necessary was to shave down part of the locking edge, run a bead of glue, and slip it into place with the 1/2″ of clearance from the wall that it required. It’ll be much the same when we get the very last row ripped, shaved, and glued.

So we continued, off and on, laying floor Saturday and Sunday. It went into place pretty well and didn’t take that much effort to install; “tapping” really was just tapping with the block and rubber mallet. I didn’t go to church in the morning, feeling 1) tired and 2) like I didn’t want to burn half the day. So since I wasn’t going, David and I went to Walker Brothers for a really solid breakfast before starting in again.

There was one bit where I thought I’d put in boards fairly tightly, but there was a huge gap at the ends of two boards. No problem, though! The floor came back up easily, I kept the rows in order, and I relaid the 4 rows or so back to the place where the gap was. It was somewhere around Saturday afternoon that we realized that the final row of boards was “short.” In more ways than one.

The last two rows were from a box that had mostly shorter pieces and only 1 long piece; the product comes in “random lengths” which means you don’t have to make as many cuts and can break up the “line” a little so the joints don’t line up too closely. It was with some gnashing of teeth and not a little wailing that we found that not only was the very last row all short, choppy boards and requiring a rip-cut to fit in the space, the last row was short by just TWO LONGISH BOARDS. The waste material from the ripped boards would have fit in the space remaining… we just estimated it a little too closely. It turns out that if we’d chosen the 3″ width instead of the 5″ width, we might not have had to rip the last row, and wouldn’t have needed the 6th box.

Oooooo, burn!

So it was back to Lowe’s we went on Sunday afternoon for one more box of Bruce Fold;ampLock Gunstock flooring. While there, we also bought matching quarter-round (reasoning that at this point, we don’t want to mess with staining pine to match) and also some MDF shoe moulding with a nice detailed edge, because some of the 1/2″ expansion gaps we had to leave around the edges of the floating floor were more like 3/4″ gaps. The shoe moulding was pre-primed; we also bought white trim paint in a satin finish, and two gallons of a kind of deep salmony color for the walls. Yes, I had previously painted in there with a friend. But the shade was a little bit too pink, and there were some places where the walls had gotten gouged in the ensuing years, and in the course of laying the floor there were a couple of places around the closet door that got messed up, so we decided to paint again.

So last night I set up the shoe moulding on a couple of sawhorses that we bought, and put the first coat of paint on it.

Hurrah for scope creep!

Today being Monday, we farted around for a while. I put a second coat of white paint on the shoe moulding, and a first coat on the one piece that was somehow still up in the room (I thought David had brought it all down, he thought I brought all of it down). Then it was two trips to Menard’s to get painting supplies that we either knew we had on hand, or in the case of the second trip, thought we had on hand. We also got a countersink and previously bought finishing nails the other day at Lowe’s.

Yes, we’re a little… disorganized… in the way we approach home repair.

There has been a little snarling while setting up to do the paint job; we’d considered painting first so we don’t have to worry about getting stuff on the new floor and finick around with tape-down drop sheets and cloths to keep the step ladder from denting the floor. David’s dealing with some issues in the closet, which had never been painted and needed a lot of Kilz and spackle to bring it up to paintable. I’m recovering from a hissy I was about to have over putting the self-taping plastic drop cloth stuff on the walls where I’m going to start cutting in and painting. I’m hoping to be able to reuse the short bits of pre-tape stuff, about 18″ wide, as I go along the walls. I found pretty quickly that ripping off an arms’-length strip of the stuff resulted in a twisted, stuck-together mess.

Afternoon is not a good time for either of us to be frustrated – this at least we both recognize and sometimes we just have to down tools and walk away for a bit. However, once the fiddly prep stage is over with, the “color going on the walls” stage will go well enough.

Tomorrow after a second coat, we can finally lay the final two rows of boards (which need 48 hours in the room to acclimate), install the moulding, re-install the closet doors, and call it done.

Then I’ll find an inexpensive Persian-style rug, get Mom’s recliner up there, and David will install some shelves (or we’ll find some bookcases). I’ve got some lamps (a floor lamp plus a matching table lamp) and it’ll become a little library/reading room. But whatever goes in there, it’ll finally be a room again.

In the course of this project, we’ve made numerous trips to home improvement centers. We’ve bought and returned and re-bought an entire flooring system and a compound mitre saw. The first flooring system was the bamboo stuff, already described as undocumented and dicey. The first compound mitre saw was a Craftsman 10″ but David decided he could make do with a kind of complicated clamp setup so he could use a circular saw he borrowed from his dad. It was workable, but time-consuming and the cuts weren’t that good, so he went back and got a Craftsman 10″ sliding compound mitre saw. He was originally going to get a 7″, but it wasn’t in stock and he texted me that he was getting the bigger saw after all. “Oh well, ruh ruh ruh!” I texted back, and it really has made the latter part of the floor cuts go like a dream, and of course he worked out the mitred cuts for the shoe moulding and got it dry-fitted. The saw is in the garage, so he worked out several cuts at a time, carefully. It’s overkill, of course, but we’ve talked about redoing the floors in the other two bedrooms, and there are other projects we’ve talked about, too.

Later: David did the cutting-in in the closet, and then felt the need to escape to the health club. So I took over and finished painting in there, not without some angsty moments and strangled howls. The doors have been sitting in the garage for years… I originally took them out so it was easier to paint the first time. It was rather horrible painting in the closet, because of the angles and having a lot of corners and sides to paint, and my hand kept cramping up. I just painted the walls with one coat, and I may not go in and put in a second coat. I don’t care, I kept saying, because it’s in the closet.

The ceiling? I don’t care if my dearest love cut in onto the ceiling. I’m not painting the ceiling.

It’s In. The. Closet.

And I don’t care if you can see brushstrokes and patchiness and the occasional fibre from my big paintbrush, because It’s. In. The. Closet.

It looks like we finish painting tomorrow – once we get over the wittering period when we lay out the tape-on drop cloths and then the larger canvas drop cloth and cut in, the rolling part actually goes pretty fast. Once the moulding and closet doors are back in place, it’ll be a room again.

We’ll be heading out to see about dinner; I had put some chicken David was defrosting in a marinade with wine and honey mustard, but David now says he has a taste for Italian food. What the hey! We’re on staycation! Chicken can marinate overnight, it’ll be yummy tomorrow.

I may marinate myself a little, too. Mmmm, wiiiiiine.

Lazy Saturday Snooze

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Purrrrrrrrrr…

UPDATE: GRRR! Uploading a photo direct from my iPhone via the WP plugin strips out some but not all angle brackets, breaking the img tags. Sending a photo to Flickr via email, which re-directs to the blog with pre-formatted div tags, also strips angle brackets. Thirdly, using a Firefox plugin called ScribeFire to blog from my desktop computer also strips angle brackets. Only posting from the HTML editor screen within the main WP installation results in SUCCEED. The other third-party applications for sending posts with photos results in various flavors of FAIL.

NPR Moments: Happy Friday

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Remembering ‘The Heart Of NPR,’ Gary Smith : NPR

Longtime NPR Greeter and Client Services Coordinator Gary Smith passed away this week. For years, he sat at the reception desk at NPR’s Washington headquarters. Smith was a force field of good cheer; he was a big man who became the heart of NPR.

As I drove home, listening to Michele Norris talk about Gary Smith, I was moved by her description of a man who made greeting the often jetlagged or on-deadline visitors to the NPR building his number-one job. It seems that every week, Mr Smith always began his end-of-week greetings with “Happy Friday.”

Of course, at the end of the piece, Michele wished all of us, the listeners who’d never heard of Gary before, a very. happy. Friday. Her voice got husky, as clearly she had liked the man and wanted to pay tribute to his dedication to the art of making people feel welcome.

I’ll try to wish everyone a happy Friday every week, from now on. It seems like a good tradition to start.

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Rainy Sunday Redux: Staying Out of the Weather

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Chicago weather from the Chicago Tribune. Including Tom Skilling 7 day local weather forecast. WGN-TV and the Chicago Tribune — chicagotribune.com

Weather
Severe Thunderstorm Watch in IL: Cook , DeKalb , DuPage , Grundy , Kane , Kankakee , Kendall , Lee , Ogle , Will , Winnebago
Severe Thunderstorm Warning in IL: Cook , DuPage , Will
Flood Warning in IL: Henry , Jo Daviess , Kane , Lake , McHenry , Mercer , Ogle , Rock Island , Stephenson , Whiteside , Winnebago
Flash Flood Watch in IL: Mercer , Rock Island

A few moments ago lightning struck somewhere nearby; the resulting thunder was so loud (and came very shortly after the flash) that it shook the house. Then the radio announcer said “Severe thunderstorm watch in the Chicago area…”