Traffic Out the Window

Surreal and beautiful.

Up in the Air

On my path to the north end of the park, I spied a cluster of people
who climbed into the trees to get a better look at the mega screens.
People stood in a big fan in front of them and sat in rows along the
curb at street level. Families, including a surprising number of kids
under ten, are starting to find seats on the lawn. Here in the "B-
list" rally, we were allowed to bring in bags and blankets, so we have
that over our 78,000 friends. Food is not permitted... to bring in,
though Connie's Pizza thankfully bridges the gap for the hungry. Lines
for pizza and sodas are as long or longer than the people camped out
in front of the CNN displays.

In my quadrant, police took the unusual step of forming a double line
of modular fences to split the field in two. For the life of me, I
cannot fathom the reason for this, except perhaps to give them a place
to hang out and scan the crowd. Not far from here, super bright arc
lights create a pool of daylight no doubt attractive and useful to the
numerous camerapeople wandering the rally. I briefly considered
hanging out for camera bait, but mischief is far from my mind tonight.

Red states are starting to go for McCain, pushing him over 135. In
spite of the jump, CNN explains that his path to the White House is
increasingly perilous. People cheered when CNN brought up the Senate
race in Minnesota, Al Franken versus the Republican incumbent, what's-
his-face. I like those people. I read at dinner that Hillary Clinton
made her 75th appearance in favor of Obama while promoting Franken and
trying to push a 60 Democrat filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
Good on her.

CNN is showing Star Wars-level 3D graphics that lead me to suspect
that after this race they are going to assault the Death Star.
Meanwhile, the third person has tripped over my feet while I sit here
writing this. For the umpteenth time, I wish I had packed sneakers to
go with my black leather dress shoes, all-but invisible in the pool of
darkness formed by my body.

I was stopped on my way here for directions to Monroe, a challenge
since there is one way in or out of this rally and it does not cross
Monroe.

A Land Rover commercial just came on, voiced over by the actor who
plays Mohindet Suresh on Heroes. Just one problem with the soothing
British tones emanating from the tube: the actor is American
(surprise!). What a pity for that actor to achieve fame unrelated to
him as a person. I guess he has to settle for diving into his vault of
money a la Scrooge McDuck. Poor soul.

Live from Chicago's Election Rally B in Millennium Park

I walked from work over to the Millennium Park election rally. I'm
kicking myself now knowing that I could have had tickets to the 78,000-
attended "A-list" rally through Brandi, but it's time to make lemonade
from lemons.

A number of enormous, 150" televisions around the park make it feel
like an enormous sports bar, minus the liquor and crappy food. On the
way in, I watched a couple students take a pull from a hip flask, and
my heart opened to envy. After running the Chicago marathon last year
and the year before, it's nice to spend time in this place feeling
something other than exhaustion. Or at least, exhaustion of a
different kind.

Entrepreneurs make their way through the crowd selling Obama t-shirts,
buttons, photographs. A silver-painted man is posing for photographs
with some out-of-towners. Also on the way in, a number of fringe
groups earnestly handed out pro-whatever literature: Communism,
Socialism, Darwinianism (I think). Greedy.

The lines aren't too bad at the port-a-potties, which are themselves
showing above-average decorum. Around construction sites, you see them
with funny names like "Lepre-CAN" and "Honey Bucket." Here, we see a
simple sticker reading "National." Way to go, toilets!

Every time CNN calls a state for Obama, the crowd raises a cheer, and
a boo for McCain. A lot of the talking points echo meaninglessly from
competing monster stereos near the televisions, unless you're huddled
closely enough. Obama is over 200. It's time to move out.

Failure as Artwork

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a shiny toy while Brandi was out of town: an eeePC netbook, 8.9" of screen almost enough to squint at while writing the great American novel.

Almost immediately, my attention was drawn to it, especially after I realized I wasn't going to make it through my Java programming class in one piece. So I dropped the class and picked up the mini computer.

After a day's worth of tinkering with it, I realized I had completely hosed the system and had to wipe it, reinstalling from the DVD Asus kindly included. This happened shortly thereafter when I installed the wrong system, very deliberately as it turned out.

Eventually, I figured out a less ambitious vision of what the computer could accomplish and put that together. The final system could compose documents in OpenOffice's Writer, race lightcycles in Armagetron, and play text-based adventure game Dungeon Crawl, a game so addictive that it advanced ahead of the twenty-years-more-contemporary Wii to become my favorite computer addiction.

Eventually, I got curious again and started adding things to the system. I went a bridge too far on that one. Turns out, the package manager for the Basic desktop is not compatible with the Synaptic Package Manager, and the security update I thought myself so clever for downloading hosed my system to the point where, to update any programs, Synaptic told me I had to uninstall absolutely everything. Xandros, and probably Linux in general, is one of the few environments where you can actually dig so vigorously that you will open a hole underneath you into which you will promptly fall. And so I did.

I lost a few things: the ability to compile Java, a few weeks' worth of diaries that mostly recorded my angst at dropping the class (and yet still receiving email updates from the teacher) and trying to write more stories to fill the gap of creation, a desktop I thought pretty cool. I wish for the life of me I could recall how I ever got the Java compiler to work on this computer, but it may call for the blood of a goat, and we ate the last of him two weeks ago.

Also hammering home the lessons of failure for me this week, my agent sent me on two auditions, with a third one tomorrow. I don't think I did well. Today, I spent an hour and a half waiting to perform four lines of a monologue about the great, low prices offered by a local flooring/carpeting company with a famously low-rent theme song. Ninety minutes to memorize the four lines, and when they asked me to go off script ("Okay, now we'll drop the crutch...") I just stared blankly. Off... what? I'm terrible at memorizing. The first two went all right, delivered in a spokesman tone, but the last two, a testimonial, I'm pretty sure I whiffed. And here I'd hoped I'd finally made it (locally) to be played ad nauseum in local commercial spots. Damn my Absent-Minded Professor attitude!

At least there's always tomorrow.

Blue Sky Day

Today, I:
- Drew a picture.
- Submitted a short (98 words) story.
- Folded laundry.
- Worked.
- Programmed Java.
- Blogged.
- Told my wife she was the best thing that happened to me.

Tonight I will:
- Work out.
- Clean.
- Pet my cats.
- Eat dinner.
- Sleep.

I am:
- Very happy.

Invader from an Alternate Dimension

I got tired of shaving my whole face this week, so the evil look is
starting to take shape.

Funny thing is, I carved out the shape of the Van Dyke (goatees are
chin only; no mustache) Tuesday. Thursday morning, as Brandi and I got
ready for work, she turned to me and said, "When did you start growing
THAT?" We'd been hanging out for a day and a half already. I think my
baby needs new glasses.

New Term Friday

It's Friday, and, not necessarily apropros to the day, I would like to coin a new term I'm finding a lot more in my job: a Vystery. This is the error that happens in Windows Vista that happens once, or perhaps over and over, and which has no obvious or search-friendly reason or solution. It just happens. It's happening to me, now, on a new tablet, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why this particular Fujitsu freaked out on me when I went into tablet mode, then refused to give me the Task Manager when I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL.

"Logon process has failed to create the security options dialog," is about as friendly as it got, which wasn't very.

Yet after restarting the little beast, everything was nearly hunky-dory, as though, in the locked room Agatha Christie mystery, the lights went out and the body just disappeared. Still, as your faithful computer Poirot, it's my job to see where that body went and who did it. And I'm looking at you, Captain Fellswarth. Your sordid history with Windows DLLs means it's entirely likely you kidnapped C:\Windows\system32\dbgeng.dll and stashed her in your secret cove, only to have her washed away with the reboot tide. Your days are numbered, Fellswarth.

Get Curious!

The weekend before last, Brandi and I gleefully took a few days off and headed out west to Portland, Oregon, to see Bob and Stacey. A bit of backstory on those two: Bob and I started working together years ago... a number perhaps measuring as high as a decade... when we both took classes at the Annoyance Theatre. Bob later joined the cast of my children's show, "Kid Mystery," which alarmed director Fred Mowery and I due to the fact that after we had cast him as the insatiable eater Tad Huff, he revealed he was a diabetic and shot up insulin three times a day. He also said it was okay, and that he wouldn't eat before a show, which in retrospect should have shown me just how dedicated Bob was to the art of performance.

Later on, I would have the pleasure of performing with Bob on iO's longform improv team, "Space Mountain," in ComedySportz, and forcing him to both sing and dance in my other children's show, "The Paper Spaceship," during which time he took his first tentative steps towards a relationship with his now-fiancée, Stacey.

Much to my regret, I would not have a chance to hang out with Stacey much until the formation of the movie making group, Monday Pictures. Time wasted! Stacey has a rich history in theatre, improvisation, animation, film making, production, and, oddly, credit history. She gave me good advice on everything. Stacey also performed with Bob's Playground improv group, International Stinger, and with the all-ladies group Firecracker. A woman of talent, Stacey had an extraordinary dream:

TO BUILD A THEATRE

So when Brandi and I went off to Portland, we felt a bit of trepidation as to what we would find. Would we have to "ooh" and "ah" after some two-bit shopfront operation, knowing that our amazing friends would some day turn it into a viable operation? Or would it be some seedy establishment, the burned out husk of a former porno theatre, abandoned after a developer's halfhearted stab at condo renovation? Or would there be nothing at all, an abandoned hobo's hat on the ground next to a cloth where seven wannabes performed their interpretation of Julius Caesar via an hour-long game of Freeze Tag?

I'm happy to say we saw none of those things. Curious Productions is going to be amazing.

The theatre space is enormous, as you cannot tell from this picture of Brandi with Bob, exposed steel studs behind them forming what will eventually be the coat room and part of the bar. With seating for 120 people, perhaps more with the balcony, the buildout has so far taken months and the time and efforts of many talented volunteers, all coordinated by Bob and Stacey, and all of which you can watch from the safety of the web, here. When we saw it, everything was wood studs and exposed drywall, but Stacey, who somehow holds all of this more or less in her head, hauled the architectural renderings out for us to show us how the footprint of the finished product would look. At the time when we first looked at it, we hadn't seen the space, so the stage looked a bit small to us, so we just nodded and smiled. Then we saw the space. The stage is normal sized, with a few steps up and a foldout handicapped ramp to accomodate wheeled humans and heavy sets. There's a classroom on the second story, a restaurant space, Men's and Women's handicapped bathrooms, a coat room, and additional bathrooms and showers in the back to accomodate bicyclists, of which there are many in Portland. In front, a water flows across a peaceful rock garden. It's THAT classy.

All of this would be meaningless without productions to put inside of it, which, to Bob and Stacey's credit, are numerous. There will be a sketch show, a musical, improvisation, and much, much more. Bob and Stacey are nearly tearing their hair out getting everything done, and yet they flattered us with not just their presence, but their company and conversation. It was one of those trips where I felt slightly guilty relaxing with (and occasionally without, as when Brandi and I took a short trip to the Portland zoo) my friends because I could tell there was always something MORE to do.

(By the way, the photos above are from a fancy restaurant Stacey took us to that, true to most fancy-schmancy restaurants, served amazing food with portions large enough to please a small cat. Brandi and Stacey had the tortellini with flavored foam. FOAM! I ordered and then gulped down glorified spaghetti with meat sauce, and Bob had the monkfish, which you can recognize because they shave their heads and live in oceanic cloisters. Afterwards, we went out to Ground Kontrol to play video games and try to talk amidst the general chaos of a Rock Band party, then over to Hobos, where we met friends and more or less ate dinner again. It was an amazing time.)

I can't wait to see what Bob and Stacey put together, because if it's half as good as what we saw in the pictures, it will be a million times better than anything we could have anticipated. We look forward to helping with that, as much as we can, stuck in this podunk Chicago neighborhood. It's going to be awesome.

If you would like to donate to the theatre, and I suggest you do, click here.

All-You-Can-Think

It's been my shame over the last four years to have worked for a university and not taken advantage of the free tuition they offer as part of my job benefits. In recent months, as chances of any significant pay raise changed from "slim" to "none," it became a kind of mission for me to squeeze the brain juice out of this State-run behemoth. And, yes, when I'm tired, I use big words. Litigate me.

Being a state-run institution, the University of Illinois runs atop an enormous bureaucracy that, if given the chance, would grind you underneath a mountain of its paperwork wheels. I should know. Two and a half years ago, I switched with a co-worker to the Alumni office, noticing as I did a small pile of equipment to surplus. The University requires us to follow certain procedures before we get rid of computer parts, so it took me a few months to determine the proper forms, their recipients, machine labeling and Babylonian deity and its preferred sacrificial meat. Still, the equipment sat. I stacked everything into a small wall atop the filing cabinets that for some reason took up a wall in the tech office and contacted my bosses in Urbana to let them know that their lackey in Chicago awaited their word on surplus. Nothing. They took away the filing cabinets shortly before we replaced more equipment. I re-stacked the equipment and waited. And waited. To this day: nothing. The air grows close in the confines of this office. Tell my wife I love her...

...at any rate, I had low expectations for any answers I had about taking classes, but it turns out that if you determine you want to do something here that does not involve a lot of heavy lifting and cross-campus coordination, and you go about it like an Agatha Christie inspector unraveling a locked room mystery ("SOMEONE here has the proper forms for a Graduate Student, Non-Degree Seeking, and none of us are leaving until I get it!"), you can shoehorn yourself into classes. Unfortunately, by the time I had lined up all my scholastic ducks, the easy class I wanted to take, Spanish, was irredeemably filled. I settled for something I knew would complement my job: CS 102, Introduction to Programming.

I like the class and writing Java input with things like the Scanner method (import java.util.Scanner; Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in); userInput = keyboard.nextInt();) really rocks my world. Seriously, I'm courting obsession here. Studying has become something like a videogame, especially since the intructor uses a homework-tracking and programming site called CodeLab. There, you complete assignments, and if you've done it wrong, it marks it in red and gives you a chance to correct it. Once done properly, you get a little green box and move on. In class, someone asked a question several assignments ahead. I'm about a week behind in the reading and a week ahead in CodeLab because I WANT TO WIN.

It is funny to sit in class with people almost twenty years younger than me and compare our experiences. We took programming in middle school, writing BASIC or LOGO on Commodore 64s. Rich people owned computers with tape drives, or 5.25" floppies. My freshman year of college, my dad bought me a Mac with no hard drive, just two 3.5" floppies, and it was great. Yeah, and I walked six miles to class, uphill, both ways. These people grew up with the Internet. They take Open Source for granted. They think A-ha is retro. (They're wrong. Analogue came out in 2005.)

I also find myself going through all of the same anxieties that going to school used to bring out in me. Can I get to class on time? Will the teacher notice? Am I even in the right classroom? Laugh if you will, but I've already attended the wrong lab for the ENTIRE LAB. I also went to what I thought was the right lecture hall and started to get out my books when I realized that all the students around me HAD THE WRONG BOOK. Lucky me, I figured that one out in time.

I spent half of Monday morning running back and forth to the professor's office trying to log in to the University UNIX system, something I had not done because I'd foolishly taken two vacation days after Labor Day (for an awesome trip to Portland and my awesomer friends Bob and Stacey, and another trip-within-a-trip to Seattle to see equally-awesome friends Darrah and Jason; it was so awesome, I'm probably going to need a new adjective soon).

Sweat poured off of me as people approached me in the office, for my job, saying innocent things like, "Can you take a look at something weird that happened to my computer?"

"NO! I mean... can I come back? I've got another issue to attend to at the moment."

In the end, I find I sympathize more with those who juggle education with jobs, family, taxes and all of the 1,001 distractions of modern life. I hope I pass this class and, if not, at least acquit myself with dignity as I debug my dodgy code.

Where am I not? Work.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Washington, on a train ride as easy as Sunday
morning, on Sunday morning. The only sad thing about the trip was
having to temporarily say farewell to friends Bob and Stacey after
they kindly drove us to the train station. But we'll be back, taking
the same train south in two days. Good times ahead.

The Shirt I Did Not Purchase

In Toronto's Kensington Market

Toronto Dispatch: Rainbow Photomontage

You could not beat the weather on the drive up with a stick. The sun came out, dramatic clouds filled the horizon, and we were in Indiana for a blessedly short period of time. It was so nice, I said to Kathy, one of my car mates, "Man, I hope we get some rain on the way back. It would be a shame to have to drive through the SAME weather all the time."

Later, when it rained cats and dogs and we were stuck in a construction-related traffic snarl for forty-five excruciating minutes while we watched lightning play havoc in the sky, arcing horizontally from cloud to cloud over the horizon, Kathy said, "Wish granted."

So, like any city next to a Great Lake, the weather changes on a dime here. Before the start of my my long run yesterday, I made sure to give my teammates a dry t-shirt so I would have something to change into when we got to the theatre. Unfortunately, they forgot it. Later, they realized I could have worn one of Ben's shirts. O fickle fate! At any rate, I was never too uncomfortable, having grown if not accustomed at least resigned to the elements during my marathon training.

On the way to the theatre last night, the skies opened up again with big, fat drops that felt much colder than should be legal during the summer. At the same time, we were treated with golden hour sunset. I told my mates to look around for a rainbow, since low solar angle + heavy rain = rainbow. It turns out that warning was unnecessary. Plastered over the sky, in the direction of the theatre after we parked, was a complete rainbow. It was beautiful, and a good sign for the show to come (zombie infestation at a wedding in the middle of a dramatic love triangle; I was an inadvertantly stoned fifteen year old who knew jujitsu but could only pick up a piece of drywall and say "BAM!" because I'd accidentally eaten a joint). Pity my iPhone has no zoom. Enjoy the crudely-assembled photo montage!

By the way, it's sunny and completely cloud-free right now. Later, though, weather calls for a 20% chance of precipitation. Judging by yesterday's drenching over a 30% chance, I would say there is a 100% chance that is bullshit. Time will of course tell.

Toronto Dispatch: Boozing

Edison, part one of two of my roommates, likes to wake up at six o'clock Chicago time (seven Toronto) and was up for two hours at least before I got up yesterday. We still beat Chris, the final chapter in my roommate saga, by another two hours, so we got up and wandered around the block, settling on a little bar/coffee shop next door called Croissant Tree. This place was super cute, very like a shop back home except for fact that they also served beer. We took note of this, but did not drink, observing the "before noon, and you're an alcoholic" vacation rule that I just made up in my head.

Still, this did not stop us from returning later in the day, when the rest of the group needed a place to go to and I noted that Croissant Tree also had free wifi (with purchase). The gang headed over, laptops in tow, to get lunch, compute, hang out, and, for me, do some random work stuff that always seems to hit me on vacation. At some point, Chris, who had eaten already, wandered in and, pressured by the French Canadian (Quebecois?) coffee house owner, ordered a soda for himself and a beer for me. Oh! How kind! Well, we can hardly allow this beer to go to waste, right? So I drank it while the heavens first threatened us and ultimately poured down their mighty wet wrath upon us. I had omitted bringing a bag for my laptop, so I dallied a little longer, enjoying my teammates' company, eating my soup and a work webpage with the latest applicant PDFs, just like I would have at home, except that I was drinking beer.

Of course, this would bite me in the butt later.

After the coffee place, we planned on visiting the Bad Dog Theatre, one of the two places we at which are performing for the Toronto Improv Fest, to pick up whatever they use for passes, check in, and hand out fliers for our second show, Open Court, which relies on audience participation to build instant long form teams, and would kind of miss the point if it was just us, again. Not that I would be sad to perform two festival shows with this group, but we sold ourselves on the fact that we integrate seasoned improvisers with those more new to the fold, and we surely hate to renege on that promise. My Google Maps showed the theatre was only 3.3 km away, which is meaningless to me, since the English system has poisoned my brain, but others assured me was about two miles, an easy run for me. I programmed the route into my phone, handed a clean t-shirt over to the driving crew, and headed out.

A vital note: when getting directions for a trip, make sure the first few streets on the actual route agree with the virtual map. Otherwise, there is a very real chance you're headed in the wrong, and perhaps opposite, direction.

As I was running from urban to suburban Toronto, this exact thought failed to occur to me.

It was not until I saw that I had been running for twenty minutes--plenty of time to reach the place, even at a my slow pace--that I thought to re-map my route. Instantly, or perhaps not, my route changed from two miles-and-change to four miles. I phoned the group, who had also gotten lost en route, and turned around, this time checking and actually finding Bloor Street, which was vital since both theatres were on it, separated by a distance of four miles. After dodging downtown foot traffic for four miles, I made it, noting with dismay that the theatre was dark. Nobody would stir until shortly before the improv fest began and, what was worse, my team had gone AWOL. Ben, ever the gentleman, called me to let me know that they had been waiting patiently but, like Bishop waiting for Ripley at the end of James Cameron's Aliens, had been forced to move the ship/car because emissions from the nuclear meltdown made it too unstable to hover nearby/signs said they couldn't park on the street during rush hour.

Chris and Ben offered me the chance to ride in the car to the other theatre, but, having just run six miles, I only wanted to go back to the hotel and get cleaned up. Also, with five improvisers in their car already, I would not fit and while their plan to displace two teammates to ride the subway to the other destination was clever and very kind, I knew I still had another two miles in me. So I ran back, on the way pausing to snap a couple of shots on the bridge leading out of the city.

All this is to say: at first on the run, the alcohol held me back, made me sluggish and kind of bummed me out. Later, I was grateful for the carbs keeping me going for eight Canadian miles, which is equivalent to a bazillion kilometers, according to my fake English-Metric conversion system.

Toronto Dispatch: Lifesavers

International Stinger is taking the Toronto Improv Fest by storm... or
at least performing there. This is the first of hopefully many posts
describing the experience. And since it's Saturday morning and I'm
grumpy after a restless sleep last night, I've decided my first post
will be a picture of my ears and blue earplugs.

Like safety glass and airbags, these things save lives. I took mine
along to wear in the car, during naptime on the ten hour drive, but
then I drove all the way here. When we got in late, late, late
Thursday, I was not long for consciousness, and, bidding goodnight to
my roommates, stuck them, turned over and slept like the dead. Good
thing, too, since one of my roommates shores like a chainsaw breaking
up with a woodchipper. Without these, I suspect the relative fun of
our trip would have been marred in short order by a murder-suicide.

Time Warp

Addiction is a terrible thing, really. My productivity has suffered massively lately due to Hedgehog Launch, an hilarious game in which you are given a little bit of in-game money, a store, and an infinite supply of hedgehogs, with the goal of launching them heavenward to either earn more money to fund the next launch, or for the ultimate and noble goal of helping them transcend the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere, and escape this fragile blue ball to the endless frontier that is space. It's addicting as hell. First, it's a very simple action game. You can buy fuel for thrusters that can maneuver you right/left in the air, or upgrade those thrusters to give you more "oomph." You can buy longer poles for your launcher or a stretchier rubber band. With lots of money, you can buy booster rockets, or parachutes, although the latter are a waste of time for the spacebound hedgehog, since the goal is only to reach space, not to fall back to the ground unharmed. The cartoonish graphics do not allow anything grotesque to happen to your furry friend, but you can fill in the gaps with your imagination. In the air, you'll find little dots that represent money, along with platforms which do the same as well as launch your hedgehog avatar upwards. With enough maneuvering fuel, radar and luck, you can exploit these platforms to increase your height. The amount of money you make for any one stage is your found money times your highest altitude, multiplied by the time you managed to stay airborn. For some, I'm sure it's as exciting as tax time, but for me, as with any game with economic differentials, it's a candidate for a new twelve step program.

Thanks to the iPhone, I've also been watching a lot of Heroes. I'm incredibly behind the curve on this one, so if you see me, please don't even tell me how it begins, much less ends. I'm still on season one, probably episode thirteen or fourteen by now, and finding the connections and play with powers to be a lot of fun. I'd also recognized the actor who plays Sylar--Zachary Quinto--from the show So NoTORIous, where I found him to be hilarious and not creepy in the slightest. I guess it's how they light you. I am excited to see how he portrays Mr. Spock in the upcoming Star Trek movie, but J.J. Abrams has let me down often enough that I don't exactly have high hopes for it.

As an aside about So NoTORIous, I caught an ad for it last year while I was running on the treadmill and immediately thought, "Wow, that is a great Tori Spelling impersonator. She can sing really well. I'll bet the REAL Tori is pretty pissed that someone is cashing in on her reputation." And it was only later that, also while running, I found out it was her, and that she's funny. Dammit, Hollywood, just when I was ready to cynically dismiss all of your second-generation wannabes as talentless hacks raised up by their producer fathers, they actually show talent, and more-than-average at that. Is nothing sacred?

So, anyway, the above are my excuses for not posting so often, although I reserve my apologies for times when dramatic things are ACTUALLY happening.

Honey Baby

My cousins came up from Cincinnati for the weekend to take a nice post-wedding-anniversary vacation in Chicago and, as a happy byproduct, see Brandi and me. Oh, and they also brought their youngest, Lilly, who as you can see here, is rapidly growing into a beautiful fair-haired chunky monkey. Sigh. I hope when the time comes, Brandi and I make kids as pretty and well-behaved as she is.

Not that life is all roses with her. Around feeding time, she would get very cranky, but in that respect she's exactly like Brandi and me. Also, when we went to Turquoise, our favorite restaurant in the neighborhood we had to give up when we started looking around for a place to buy because it was too expensive, her diaper started leaking onto her outfit, so her mom had to excuse them both to the bathroom to clean what amounted to baby sewage off her daughter while we pretended to be okay with that. But, again, who hasn't been in that position?

We settled on some fun, quick sightseeing, unfortunately skipping the architectural boat tour because Saturday's weather didn't know what the hell it wanted to do, and by the time the rain tucked away, the 60-minute cruise was sold out. We did make it to Navy Pier, though, touring the stained glass museum there while Kristie walked and fed Lilly. That's talent. Brett, who is older than me by two-point-five weeks, but who outranks me in the dad department by one daughter, two boys and a dog, agreed with the rest of us to go up on the Ferris wheel despite a mild fear of heights. His wife made fun of his clammy palms, but I applaud his pluck. Meanwhile, we got some nice shots of the Chicago skyline, and Brandi got to spend a little time with her littlest cousin, a match made in that part of heaven that Ferris wheels touch. (The bottom part.)

Bike the Drive pics I am too cheap to pay for

I get emails from the Chicagoland Bicycling Federation with offers to buy pictures they took of me from Bike the Drive, the Memorial Day event where they close off Lakeshore Drive for five delicious hours and allow bicyclists to turn it into their personal pedal-powered paradise, a description that is almost too illiterative to allow to live but which I am leaving in because it's exactly that annoying to receive these emails. They're a kind of betrayal. First, although they strongly encourage you to sign up for Bike the Drive and pay your $40+ fee for the privilege of not choking on petrol fumes, and even deliver a t-shirt and number to stick on your helmet, they hardly enforce the helmet sticker on the road. (I'm told you need one for rest stops, which I took advantage of when I got to the southern end of the course, at the Museum of Science and Industry at 57th Street, so perhaps they're at least good for two bananas, a fig newton and lemonade, especially if you didn't think ahead and bring water or sustenance.) The sticker is there, I must then surmise, so they can photograph and identify the bicyclists, photos which they then turn around and sell to said cyclists. I apologize for the second round of alliteration. That stuff gets in your blood something fierce. That leads me to second: I didn't ask to be photographed, and it's not like I could have opted out when they had at least four photographers at different ends of the course. Do I look like the poster boy for Chicacoland cycling here, with my wraparound sunglasses, uncool helmet and fold up bike at six o'clock on a Sunday morning? No? Well, safety demands my picture be taken just in case of... well, JUST IN CASE.

Third, these photographs aren't cheap, and the Chicagoland Bicycling Federation already have my money, which they took from me in order to charge me more money for photographs I didn't ask them for. Sounds like capitalism at work. The only way it could get better is if at rest stops they only sold me bananas with pictures of me on them eating other bananas. On second thought, perhaps it's best not to give them ideas.

I really do like the idea of photographs, even if I think I look like I've been photoshopped onto the bike I'm riding. It would just be so much cooler if they included the photos in the price of the event. Afterwards, instead of them pushing emails out to all participants with offers to sell them photographs, they send out gentle reminders that, hey, we all had fun, didn't we? And, by the by, you can download pictures of yourselves from our website... look for them by your helmet number, which we've handily catalogued using the same OCR that turns your scans into an editable Word document.

Like so many things technological, this is so much easier in my mind than in actual practice. Still worth doing, though.

Bran Sammich

As part of what feels like their neverending kindness to us, my Aunt
Ellen and Uncle Dave offered us their basement to sleep in after the
day's festivities on the Fourth. We like their basement. For one, it's
verboten to the dogs, so we don't have to worry about one of us
getting up to use the bathroom only to find the other smothered under
doggy paws and kisses. For two, it is almost completely dark, which of
course satisfies the part of me that looks for places to hide when the
zombie apocalypse strikes. The undead would never think to look for me
here! Now as long as I train myself never to need food or water, I can
outlast the dead and repopulate the earth with my wife. Taxes? Never
again!*

Dave and Ellen even went so far as to buy a new air mattress when they
pulled their old ones out of storage and found out both of them
leaked. Dave was off walking Charlie and Wylie, the dogs, so Ellen,
Brandi and I dragged everything out of the box to see how it fit
together. The mattress was straightforward, albeit a little tight in
the space. The inflating agent, as Ellen explained, was a little
nonstandard: a vacuum cleaner from the 1950s that reversed flow by
detaching the hose from one end of the fire extinguisher-like cylinder
and attaching it to the other end. This was completely baffling to us,
so we waited for Dave et al to return. The final setup also involved
jamming the hose into a funnel, itself stuck into the valve of the
mattress. It worked surprisingly well. Inflation took just a few
moments.

And then we knew we had a problem.

Dave insisted it happened when he twisted the now-full mattress away
from the entertainment center, gouging a hole in the side. I worried
it was my fault, unfurling it so close to the entertainment center in
the first place. Either would do cause the wave of air we felt washing
over our faces. Thinking quickly, Dave found a roll of duct tape and
slapped a pair of patches over the tear. "Air is like water," he
explained. "It finds places to go." The tape, he hoped, would be
secure enough to hold the mattress until morning. Just to be kind, he
filled the mattress again. We went upstairs to spend some family time
and put the matter out of our minds.

When we came back, the mattress was already partially-deflated. Brandi
sat back on it and bravely decided to sleep on it. A quick test showed
that both of us would probably suffocate if we tried to sleep side by
side; the curvature of the mattress took us both in the center,
leading to collission and probable tragedy. I took the couch.
Surprisingly comfortable, I slept through the night, waking only once
because it was so dark I couldn't figure out where the hell I was. In
the morning, though, Brandi's mattress was flat as a pancake. Somehow,
my wife slept through the whole thing. Nice work, dear!

That day, and without explanation, Dave took the mattress back for a
full refund.

* Except a death tax that would only apply if you were dead, still
working and had a social security number. And in this case, by "tax" I
mean "bullet to the brain pan."

Fourth of Julawesome

Brandi and I drove down to Columbus the morning of July 4th so we
could Represent (and, not coincidentally, Keep It Real) at the family
picnic hosted by my cousin Sandy. This is the branch of the family
that looks the most fractal: my grandmother and her sister each had
boatloads of kids, although Gabby Hefner stopped at six, Patty Eckel
went on to have twice that many. Now, so many years later, not only
have those kids had kids, but those grandkids--my generation,
approximately--are also having kids. Sandy does a great job
controlling what would otherwise be mass chaos. Parking is on the
lawn. Kids play on the driveway with hand-me-downs or toys Sandy buys
from garage sales, and everyone brings a dish, most often homemade. We
punted, preferring to bring two of Jewel Osco's enormous frosting-
covered chocolate chip cookies (actually, three, but it appears there
was some snacking on the drive down), but nobody seemed to mind.

It was nice to see the family again. Last December, we lost my
grandfather to pancreatic cancer, and, while that was a sad and trying
time for some--my mom, aunt and grandmother particularly--what they
say about weddings and funerals is nearly as inevitable as death and
taxes. They brought us together. I looked forward to the rematch. Of
course, trying to remember names stretched my limited brain pan to the
limit, as it always has, but my Uncle Dave clued me in to a trick that
part of the family uses to at least pretend familiarity: call everyone
"buddy." It works, too!

At least, nobody felt like calling me out on it.

At the end of the night, all the firefighters (there are four) trudge
off to the middle of Sandy's DEEEEP backyard and light off fireworks
like you would not believe. The kids get glow necklaces to add to
their glow-in-the-dark temporary tattoos and everybody "ooh"s and
"ah"s for the next twenty minutes.

Here, Brandi and my nephews Hogan and Nolan look at pictures of the
fireworks on Brandi's phone. The day was simply so fabulous, we could
not possibly cram in more fun.

So the next day we drove back to Chicago. AND finished off the big
cookie.

More Geekery

Today, I:

• Installed the iPhone 2.0 software on my phone, one day early, using the direct download link and following instructions carefully.
• Downloaded and tried out many new, free iPhone applications. Man, when just the freeware for a phone rocks this hard, I cannot even imagine what the applications are going to look like going forward.
• Loaded my fourth OS onto my MacBook. Following the installation of the new hard drive and the extra 160 GB capacity it gave me, I added Ubuntu and, now, Vista to my collection of emulated operating systems. Soon enough, I'll hopefully install software as well. This, more than anything else, is what I think the future will look like.
• Ordered DSL for my mom, hopefully setting in motion a crazy, half-baked plan to free her from the MSN dialup to which she's been chained (at my behest, originally) for the last seven years.
• Had several writing idea I think are worth pursuing. I can't wait to wade through the ideal-muck, as it were, to see what comes up. For now, consider this a teaser for cool things to come.

Today was a good day, a geeky day.

In prase of Torx

Brandi's four-plus-year-old computer bummed her out. It crashed all the time. It ran out of memory: 512 MB RAM might look great in 2004, but in 2008 it feels a little like a corset: quaint and painfully tight. Every time she used Photoshop she would get an error indicating the hard drive was full. The page file (the bit of the hard drive Photoshop uses to store all of your previous versions, so you can go backwards through 20 or more changes) took up all the remaining space. Brandi would get upset; I would get upset that I didn't have time to deal with the crisis, hard words would be exchanged and, inevitably, the feelings of a 6 lb lump of plastic would get hurt.

Well, the week before last, I took matters in my own hands with her iBook, stripping down the machine into its motherboard, plastic casing, aluminum inner casing, and about 50 screws, all of which I carefully labeled and most of which I returned to their proper positions. (There are always parts left over.) Eventually, I replaced the 40 GB hard drive with a much newer 160 GB hard drive that I DARE my wife to fill up before the computer dies. And the one mystery screw? No worries. If the remaining 49 don't hold the machine together, natural laws are meaningless and we all have moments to live anyhow. Luckily for us all, so far they have.

Well, this little daylong project (about 3 hours of screws plus another 2 of hard drive copying), gave me confidence for my Macbook. In the intervening two years between the sale of Brandi's computer and the advent of mine, Apple took it upon itself to reinvent the way users accessed the guts of its machines. So all it took to get to the hard drive of mine was the removal of the battery and a small cover inside the battery slot, about fifteen fewer steps. I had done it before, for fun. (I'm insane.) All I needed to do it yesterday was the proper hard drive.

This was my first great big, "Aha!" in a while. Last Christmas, I got a tiny portable external hard drive from Brandi's father. It looked a lot like a 2.5" hard drive in a plastic enclosure, but how best to tell? Brandi's computer taught me that sometimes equipment manufacturers just use plastic clips to tie everything together, and that the proper torque might pop them open without breaking them. It was a risk, though, so I practiced at work with another version of the drive I'd asked for from my supervisors. (I love these drives. I'm also insane.) I got it open with a minimum of breakage, and, what was more, the guts of the drive were a 2.5" SATA hard drive, exactly the same kind of drive as inside of my laptop.

So it was with great excitement that I fired up "SuperDuper," a cool program for cloning an Apple machine to another drive, set it running, and, three hours later, performed my second Apple brain transplant. It worked! I'm typing on the new/old computer at this very moment!

Only a few questions remain at this point:

• Does the new drive use more power or less? Will I take a hit on battery life because of it?
• I used to edit video off the external drive, and I assume connecting it more directly to the motherboard will increase throughput, but will access time beat the old drive?
• What to do with all that space? I used to liken hard drive space to that of a warehouse, but with warehouses, you can calculate space at a glance. Empty hard drives are like digital clocks versus analog clocks: harder to quantify. Very likely some of that space will be virtualization software. I've been dying to load Ubuntu on the Macbook for a while, and my job sometimes takes me into Vista territory, so now might be my chance.
• Do I get any geek cred for this? Probably not for hard drive replacement, but for guessing that Western Digital packed a standard SATA inside a plastic enclosure, then ripping everything open? Come on, don't I deserve at least a little?

Oh, and the Torx? A couple of years ago when I wanted to build my picture frame computer, I bought a pair of Torx screwdrivers to disassemble the lid of my old PowerBook. At the time, I thought, "That's $15 wasted. When the hell will I ever need to use these again?"

Now I've used them again, in the last 24 hours, not once but TWICE. Thank you, Torx.

Last night's dinner pic at Being Brandi

Orange at Orange

Fresnel Cyclops

Brandi took this picture of me in Walgreens, waiting in line for the pharmacy. I'm wearing my end-of-the-weekend stubble, which sometimes inexplicably lands on my face in mid-week, depending on how busy I am or how little I care.

I've spent a lot of the last several weeks preparing for a sketch comedy show at Second City, part of the final project for my talented friend Ric Walker, who is completing the director's program. Our show, which may or may not be typographically correct, is currently titled, "Im-polite Company," and will feature a lot of scenes (and two songs) about what happens when people just stop caring about what other people think. I've been absolutely in love with the ridiculously talented cast, Frankie Benavides, Kate Duffy, Sherman Edwards, Elana Elyce, JW Kuebler and myself (I love myself, a little, and hug myself every day just for trying), and that's perhaps a good thing because we've been meeting twice a week or more in order to put the show together. Sketch comedy takes WORK. We go up July 5th, at 10:30 PM, at Donny's Skybox Theatre at Piper's Alley at North and Wells, running six weeks until August 9th. And I'm psyched.

In the meanwhile, Myopic Cowboy nears completion, which is good, because summer is well past here and all the good vibes and great lighting means I'm itching to get a few more videos under my belt. On the other hand, the comic book convention is in town this weekend, and I'm also really excited to spend some time with my awesome friend Zander in and among the nerd giants of comic-dom. Time management should be a course they make you take in college.

The Penguin in the Mann Movie

I've spent a couple of sleepless nights this week playing extra on a
movie shooting in Hollywood. I took notes and will post them later,
but in the meanwhile, please enjoy this very regal pose I struck in
the Extras Holding Area I spent approximately fifteen seconds in
Tuesday and Thursday nights. The majority of the time I spent HURRYING
into wardrobe, HURRYING to get hair done, HURRYING to the set and then
waiting for the shot to get set up, waiting to get assigned a path
through all the other seated extras, and, finally, pretending to wait
tables. The shoes they gave me aspired to an extremely low level of
comfort, and I spent the first night in a great deal of back pain
because, at least for movie extras, waiters don't sit down. Last
night, it was because I would wrinkle my apron, but I found ways
around that, such as taking it off during extended breaks.

More later. Lots of drama ahead.

Brandi's Fantasy Bookcase

Two levels of books. We talked about becoming extremely wealthy,
buying out our upstairs neighbor, then converting the condo into a
duplex. It was just the "becoming extremely wealthy" part we couldn't
figure out without selling an organ or resorting to crime.

We took this at IKEA, which is a fantastic homeowners' fantasy world
for the fact that they build whole rooms and even apartments using
just their furniture, so you know how much it would cost you and just
how much flat pack furniture you can squeeze into a Manhattan-size
studio apartment (answer: quite a lot, actually). It's generally very
frugal, but occasionally they must tell the designers to go nuts,
because this because a library this size legally can only be owned by
an English lord, a mad scientist, or a vampire, depending on regional
laws, local taxes, etc. Because Brandi's reflection is clearly visible
in the mirror, I think we can safely rule out the last.

The Science-Hero Haircut

I recently got the call to work as an extra, but since I'm
contractually obliged not to blog about the movie (and have nothing to
write in any case; extras are the bottom of the barrel, Hollywood-
wise), I'll treat you to a photo I snapped of the groovy haircut I got
free of charge on Friday. My stylist worked very hard to give me
something appropriate to the 1930's, and in addition to succeeding
admirably, turned in a little extra credit in the form of my science
hero 'do.

Now, I've always kind of loathed my sideburns, but despite my best
efforts, they creep down my face as my hair grows between haircuts.
Shaving too far up makes me afraid for no good reason, so every time I
shear my little Eurobeard off (I go a while between shaves, mostly
because my job lets me get away with it), the razor goes a few
millimeters shy of the line. So the sideburns grow. I guess they look
natural enough that the stylists I usually go to don't even think to
cut them off, and of course I forget, but it's nice to be reminded
what I could look like with a little effort. The result was nice
enough that one of the extras playing a prostitute remarked, "Wow, you
rock that."

I thanked her and went inside for my wardrobe fitting.

The only thing I can think of better than science hero is science
villain. And the more I look at my head under dramatic lighting, the
more I see the pre-transformation Joker from Alan Moore/Brian
Bolland's "The Killing Joke."

So don't cross me.

How is a cat like an iceberg?

90% of her is below the surface.

Rio's new trick is to lay on the hole in the cat tree in just the
right position to leave her belly sticking out. She apparently thinks
this is a perfectly rational cat thing to do and I am not one to argue
with her. We've had fierce enough conflicts in the last few days, from
her jumping into the refrigerator to the catfight she picked with her
brother under our bed, what this cat wants this cat gets.

Which, come to think about it, would be a good catchphrase for when
I'm dressed in a suit wearing mirror shades.

Heart Model Recall

Since I'm supposed to be finishing a short story right now, I thought I would procrastinate by posting some of the notes I made about a month ago, during my brief stint as a heart model. My other incentive is Karen Maxwell, who reminded me during her visit last weekend that it looked like I was welshing on my promise to write about it. So, here it is, largely unedited bullet points from my halcyon days of cardiologists, ultrasound, and grainy images of my aorta:

• We've got a total of six models for three scanning beds. The SOP is two hours on, two hours off.
• The scanning techs don't mind if you fall asleep, although yesterday my tech Mark woke me up when it looked like some important people were wandering by. It took about ten minutes, but when they finally walked up, the grayest-headed among them said, "Aha! A model who is actually awake!" Score one for Mark and me.
• Lying on a bed while people scan your heart would seem like the easiest job in the world, except for a few things. Laying on your side without moving very much can be a challenge. Also, spending any amount of time in a cold convention center can give you the sniffles. Now take your shirt off and cover half your chest with ultrasound goo. It gets cold. Sometimes they give you a blanket to keep yourself warm, but I didn't know that at first and toughed it out my first two hours. Consequently, my first two hours kind of sucked.
• I spotted a couple of friends on the way in this morning, wearing red and white jumpsuits that read "bad" and "good," respectively. They were, apparently, cholesterol. Another heart model explained to me that they and their cohorts stood on escalators, sometimes getting in the conventioneers' way, sometimes helping them out. That's what cholesterol does! See how much your heart is like a bunch of medical professionals checking their Blackberries at a Chicago convention center?
• Our booth has more square footage than our condo, and probably cost the company as much to rent for three days. They have several TVs (like our condo), a MacBook Pro (very like our condo) which is connected to a $50,000 base station used to process the imaging from ultrasound paddles attached to it (not at all like our condo). Because I was curious about other machines, I offered to rotate with other heart models, but I was met with apathy and in one case resistance because the guy said he'd bonded with his scanner. All right.
• While hanging out waiting for direction today, another demonstrator started talking to me and another heart model about the necessity of getting female heart models in, since having topless women demonstrating machines would be a significantly bigger draw. We chuckled politely. Even though it was the first time I'd heard it, it didn't feel like a very original joke, and since I'm a couple decades past adolescence, it's lost a lot of its titillation. Then the guy started talking about how great it would be to get the female models lubed up with ultrasound goo, at which point I said, "Um, awkward." The other model left. The guy who made the comment started a new conversation, the "my machine is better than your machine" tack, with which I could not argue, since I didn't design my machine, I just sat under it.
  
• One of the booth presenters this morning walked in with a cheese and ham croissant that she wasn't going to eat and offered it to us. Another heart model, Spike, whom I had helped yesterday by looking up CTA routes to McCormick Convention Center, had not eaten breakfast and took her up on the offer. He went back to the area they designated for us to stow our stuff and returned about three minutes later. "Did you eat that already?" I asked. "I was starving," he explained. We made jokes about their scanning his chest and discovering it, completely whole, lodged in his heart. That's what passes for humor in this place.
  
• Convention food costs, as Spike observed, are "minibar prices." Other, smarter models brought their food. I am not smart, not in that way.
  
• Yesterday, I made the mistake of buying a Starbucks "Skinny Vanilla Latte" in "Venti," which would mean "Large" if "Large" weren't the smallest Starbucks size. This drink, which was skim milk, sugar-free vanilla, and I guess espresso, messed me up almost the entire day. My stomach hurt a couple hours after drinking it. By the end of the day, it hurt to move my eyes. Even being allowed to lay back and sleep on the table kind of sucked when the pounding behind my eyes would not stop. When Brandi picked me up afterwards to go grocery shopping, I leaned heavily on my cart like someone four decades older. I can see how old people really love those walkers with wheels and seats, because my kludged version worked great.

The Tale of the Fish

Our dear friends the Maxwells visited this weekend, and we traipsed all around the city Saturday, showing them the Bean, the lions of the Art Institute, the Lego store, American Girl Place, and our Nintendo Wii, as dictated by the laws of hospitality. They left Sunday, hopefully as triumphantly exhausted as we felt, although they, too, had a full day ahead of them.

As dictated by Maxwell tradition, we all gathered on the sofa for the final group photo. I offered my tripod. Karen said that would be perfect, so I went inside the office to retrieve it. It was tangled up with my camera bag, per usual, so I freed it and hopped back to the chaos in the living room. Unbeknownst to me, the door to the office lay slightly ajar. We all scrunched together, dramatic Evelyn, squirmy Henry, Karen and me, with a hole for Dave who was setting up the timer. Dave finished up, squeezed in at the end of the sofa, and we all put on our best smiles.

Something splashed in the office. Distracted, I blinked, and saw the flash through the red of my eyelids. I realized two things simultaneously:
1) we would have to take the photo again
2) Margaret, the Betta fish Brandi took home from Publications International, was in mortal peril from avid fishercat Patrick.
Already, we could hear more splashing. We needed to act, and quickly. Brandi and I jumped up and ran into the office. Both cats had availed themselves of the forbidden space, Rio strolling underneath the desk, Patrick standing over... Margaret, out of her tank and clearly punctured behind her left gill. She lay very still.

Behind us, Evelyn started to cry. She didn't know exactly what happened, but sometimes feels overwhelmed when grownup display heightened emotions. Karen ushered her back into the living room. Brandi and I swept the cats out of the office, ignoring the body of the fish for the moment while we dealt with the photo op. Evelyn continued to cry, and we asked her why. She said she was afraid that Patrick was hurt because he had been bitten by a fish. Brandi assured her our cat was fine and un-bitten, delicately omitting the part of the story where Patrick did the reverse. Brandi smiled tightly and said, "Well, you were right," referring to our longstanding and slowly-simmering argument about whether or not one should take care to close the office doors. After all, what could happen? I asked her not to joke. The thought of playing accomplice to murder, even of something as small and flushable as a fish, made me feel guilty as sin. Dave set up the camera again, and we smiled, some of us falling back on our acting training. This time, everything came out fine, and the Maxwells prepared to head out to Cedar Point on what was turning out to be a decidedly crummy, rainy day. Wait, though, a new wrinkle: Karen still needed the weather report for Sandusky, Ohio. Would the roller coasters still run? Might the sun shine yet on the largest wooden roller coaster in the world? Brandi hinted that we needed to use a computer not in the office. Luckily, my laptop lay on the floor of our bedroom where I'd dropped it the night before, hoping for and, in the end, sleeping through the chance to get some homework done on a sketch writing show. We looked up the weather (lousy) and I helped take the last of the bags to the car, holding the big blue and yellow IKEA umbrella to keep raindrops the size of mothballs off the kids and Karen. Dave did the same with the second umbrella. Finally, waving in the archway of our building, I saw them off and went inside.

Brandi was in the process of cleaning up the office when I saw down heavily on our overstuffed living room couch. She had a paper towel which she was carrying to the bathroom for the traditional fish burial. Suddenly, she stopped. "I felt it twitch," she said. "What do I do?" I didn't know. She opened up the paper towel and saw that Margaret's gills were still moving. "How long can a fish live out of water?" Omce again, I had no idea, although later it would occur to me that Bettas, which in the wild inhabit tiny mud puddles they occasionally hop out of, might have evolved the ability to survive considerably longer than, say, a tuna. "I just don't want her to suffer."

"Well," I said, "Did you keep the tank? Can we put her back in it?"

"I threw it away."

"I'll get a glass. Meet me in the kitchen."

I filled a glass and Brandi dropped Margaret in. We watched for a few seconds as she drifted somewhat lifelessly in the water, the puncture wound all-too clear. But then her gills started moving and her fins got in the act as well. While not exactly speeding through the water, she was clearly hanging on, and I decided it was worthwhile to see how long we could extend her tiny fish life. I pulled her bowl out of the garbage and filled it, and together we poured her from the glass into her old home. Again, she drifted for a few seconds, but this time we could see clearly that she wasn't bleeding into the water, and therefore might not be mortally wounded. So, once again, we set her up on the desk in the office and crossed our fingers. Brandi submitted a question to an online fish expert about where to go from here, and later that afternoon got the answer: droplets to dechlorinate the water and help Margaret restore her natural, fishy slime. Directions call for one teaspoon per ten gallons of water. We put two drops into her softball-sized bowl and called it a day.

Two days later, Margaret is still not floating on the top of the tank, and my guilt is starting to rest, even if my paranoia over open office doors is strong as ever.

Evil in the Friendly Confines

So, we're at the Cubs vs. San Diego whatevers (San Diegans? I don't
know; sports are complicated) and our team is just creaming those West
Coast softies. The score is 12 to 3 in the seventh inning, and I've
seen more home runs in the last hour than your average episode of Red
Shoe Diaries (what ho!). The Cubs finished two innings with five runs
per, and held the other team to just one run. So it's exciting as heck
in Wrigleyville tonight.

Adding to our excitement, we're not paying for any of this. Brandi's
work has a lounge at Wrigley Field, so we parked for free in the Brown
lot, walked a block and a half to the field, then enjoyed kosher dogs,
Caesar salad on a pita, chips, nuts, quesadillas and alcoholic
beverages. There was even a dessert cart just loaded up with carrot
cake, chocolate cake, Snickers pie, ice cream, gummy bears, M&Ms,
liqueurs in chocolate cups, chocolate-covered strawberries, cheesecake
and cookies of both the chocolate chip and Reeses Peanut Butter Cup
variety. My worst heartbreak this evening was thinking I would have to
choose just one. The nice cart lady let me have four (Snickers pie,
vanilla ice cream, raspberry syrup, and a chocolate cup filled with
Grand Marnier... Which, by the way, tastes like Deep Woods Off
mosquito repellant... in chocolate). My diet is toast.

You can tell from this blurry picture, because I seem to have gained a
lot of weight in my chin. I now have a passing resemblance to Tim
Curry in Ridley Scott's "Legend."

I'll trap your earth in snow forever unless Tom Cruise puts on some
pants. Now.

Wrigley Field at Run 12

Brandi and a very swarthy me at Wrigley Field, courtesy of Brandi's
work.

Is your marathon half full or half empty?

I chose half full.

Unfortunately, my sister had prior obligations, including shuttling my nephews around to no less than three sporting events, as well as seeing my brother in law off to the airport, and could not spare the time to do the full marathon. So this is where we diverged in our running choices. I still think she did a great job and can't wait to see what her running future brings. Her friend Janis apparently finished just before me (how dare she?), so congratulations are in order all around.

Funny thing is, I remember coming to this point one year ago, when I did the Flying Pig half marathon, and wondering what it would feel like to take the other option, the Road Less Traveled. Now that I've taken it, I have zero regrets. The weather was as perfect this year as last, and I had only a few major twinges, like my left knee sending shooting pains through my body as though promising to secede from the rest of me and form its own Confederacy. Easing back on the throttle helped that a lot, and while I still feel it two days later, I don't think it's a permanent condition.

My other photo, for this post at least, comes from early in the run when we turned back into downtown Cincinnati after briefly foraying into Lexington, KY. I noticed last year and this that one of the bridges bounces a bit alarmingly as you run across it. For a few moments, it felt like gravity wanted to play tricks on me, as the ground fell away from me and then rushed up to greet my not-yet-sore legs. Then lessons from twelfth grade Calculus-Physics class came back to me, specifically the image of the Tacoma Narrows bridge as winds tore it to shreds, and I just prayed the bridge would hold together long enough to get all of us runners across it. The bridge held.

I have a different view of this shot than when I first took it. I blame my sunglasses for making me think I could shoot into the sun and get decent photos. Now, I think the photo looks like Postapocalyptic Zombie Run, a competition where the first undead runner to cross the finish line gets the first bite of the only remaining human. Sure, the race planners hold stops along the way, but they just serve parts of the carcass. It's better when they beg.

I should probably have never seen "28 Days Later."

View from the Flying Pig

I finished a marathon yesterday, my fourth one and fastest (by nine
minutes, at a still-slow 4:40). The weather was positively glorious,
starting off in the forties and rising to just shy of the sixties, but
without a breeze or a cloud in the sky. 22,000 people ran, all told,
including half marathoners and relay racers, who raced in quarter-
segments and whom I cursed for their freshness as my fatigue started
to set in. I sneaked my iPhone onto the course, despite the ban on
electronics on the raceway, as well as a bag of steroids for those
really steep hills. I kid.

I took what shots I could as I ran and will be posting those later.
The quality ranges from poor to atrocious, probably thanks to my shaky
hands, sunglasses, and my bad idea to always shoot into the sun. What
can I say? My brain was on marathon. I'm happy I could even slur my
words when my mom called me to tell me where she was waiting along the
course. (She played support crew for me, my sister and my sister's
friend, gathering jackets at the six mile mark and cheering us on.
She's great and I love her.)

More pics and commentary to follow.

In case you forgot...

Chicago after a rainstorm can be just heartbreaking in its beauty.
Sunset under the clouds reminds you that sometimes, and very, very
rarely, God doesn't need a goat sacrifice to smile down on Wrigleyville.

Missives from Mexico, Part the Third: Silly Fun at the Temple of the Warriors in Chichen Itza

There's a lot of conjecture about the functions of the various structures in Chichen Itza, home to the Castillo, the great step pyramid of the Mayans and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. We don't know a lot about it because Mayan culture went through a cycle of growth and dieback probably related to their use/misuse of land and maize production (although this, too, is conjectural), and the site was only lightly occupied by the time the Spanish arrived to conquer the crap out of everyone. When you visit it today, you see labels everywhere describing the sacred symbols and what they might mean with, unfortunately, a lot less critical thought than I would have hoped for.

Case in point: the ball court, which has stone hoops about twenty feet off the ground through which the Mayan ball court players would shoot their natural latex balls by bouncing them off their abdomens. We've since revised this estimate because physics says it ain't going to happen. You just can't get the height. So the stone hoops' function remains a mystery, although archaeologists still claim the game had a religious function. Maybe. The Coliseum in Rome had a religious function, too, AFTER the Christians took it over. Before that, it was mostly theatre with real blood effects. My point is that it drives people crazy to say, "I don't know," but you've got to bite the bullet before you put out a common sense solution that isn't very sensible.

At any rate, Brandi and I had a lot of fun clowning around in the Temple of the Warriors, and given that we're not entirely sure what went on in the Temple of the Warriors, or even if it had a secular function, we hope to spare the wrath of Kukulkan (Mayan Quetzcoatl) for another day. Who knows, really? Maybe hamming it up for the camera and tripod was EXACTLY why the Mayans built the temple.

Please don't eat my heart, feathered snake god.

Missives from Mexico, Part the Second: Cozumel

We took the ferry to Cozumel, Mexico, during our vacation to Mexico, during which time we did... approximately nothing, and not constructively, either. It was my fault. Even though I had every intention of getting up early to swim, I slept in. Then I finally ran. By the time we got out the door, it was 12:30, and by the time we arrived at the dock, the guide book said the next ferry to Cozumel from Playa del Carmen left at 3:00. I apologized profusely.

Brandi, starting to catch on to this Mexican guidebook nonsense, suggested we try the ferry anyway, since the worst that could happen was that the guidebook was right. She was right; it was wrong. The next ferry left at 2:00, getting us onto the island at 2:00 PM. Plenty of time for sightseeing and even a spot of lunch, right?

Wrong-o, mister. Cozumel is a lot bigger than it looks like in a guidebook (where it looks to be about the size of my palm; how crazy would that be? Each new visitor would have to knock an earlier visitor off). So popping down to the lighthouse was out of the question. Nor could we visit Mayan ruins, since they closed at 4:00. Time drew tight. We finally hired a cab from the port to the ecological preserve, with its cool lighthouse, and he was very nice and somewhat skeptical that we could fit it in, to the point that he called ahead for reassurance that it would be open. He got it, and off we went. Only... by "open" they meant, "open if you got there at 2:00, since after that they kick people out." So we had a 500 peso ride from downtown to the southern end of the island for nothing. Still, our cabbie took pity on us, and offered to drive us on a long loop around the island for 400 pesos. To this day, I'm not sure why he was so determined to make lemonade of our lemons, but I appreciated it. He took us around and I got lots of shots of the island, which, outside port, was exceptionally barren but for a few restaurants clinging to its rocky shores.

Here comes the panorama:

We took lots of photos, and at the end of the day (which came all too quickly), my only complaint was the strange force of gravity that made me look fat in almost every single photo taken of me that day. Blame it on wearing a t-shirt with English on it, an excess of burritos, or the eerie pull of the Bermuda Triangle about 1,000 miles away, but somehow I walked away with a face full of bloat. See it here? My tummy is clearly trying to escape from my clothes, and has conscripted Brandi's forearm in its efforts. Also, the horizon is tilted, but our cab driver can't be great at EVERYTHING. Can he?