Weddings

I should be coming back from Pierogi Fest right now, damn it, but I was feeling under the weather this morning and afternoon and had to skip it. So instead, I'll write about weddings. Kate and Graham got married yesterday! Hooray for Kate and Graham! I wish I could have been there to see it, but the wake and funeral ate up any July vacation leeway I might have had left. I'll have to live vicariously through other people's photos.

Something else happened yesterday in my own family - my sister's boyfriend asked her to marry him. He proposed at the top of the Navy Pier ferris wheel, on their one-year anniversary. I'm happy for them. Sean isn't exactly my cup of tea (he's kind of immature, he tends to take too much for granted in terms of hospitality at other people's houses, and he's also - shudder - a Republican ... a Jewish Republican at that, which is a relatively rare breed) but then again he's not a pushy asshole when he drinks, like my sister's first husband. He's also into a lot more family type stuff, and I give him credit for taking on responsibility for his future stepson and stepdaughter. Plus, well, they seem to love each other. So good for them.

I'm not sure what kind of a wedding they'll have. For one thing, I'm not sure how the Jewish/Catholic thing works in terms of weddings. Do churches and synagogues get snotty about that? Because it seems like it wouldn't take much for the Catholic Church, at least, to get snotty. Also, this will be my sister's second marriage, but Sean's first. And he'll be the first child in his family to be married. (Did I mention he's only three years older than I am? It kind of wigs me out. My sister is 35.) So I'm not sure what size wedding they'll be shooting for. Also, I wonder if my sister and Sean will want more kids? If so I'm going to make them have a girl. Yes. Make them.

I finally succumb to a survey

I did this last night and then forgot about it. I'm sorry in advance. But at least it's one I haven't seen everywhere. Yet.

1. When you look in the mirror, what’s the first thing you look at?
My eyes
2. how much money do you have on you?
Literally, on me? I’m wearing pajamas. It’s 12:50 a.m. Nothing. In my wallet? Counting … $104 and some change. Dang. None of you are going to come rob me, right? Because I’ll totally spend it now. Don’t make me do it.
3. What’s a word that rhymes with TEST?
Breast
4. What’s your favorite plant?
Garnet penstemons. We had them in the courtyard last year and hummingbirds loved them.
5. Who’s the fourth person on your cell phone’s missed calls list?
Sam
6. What’s your main ringtone?
Sesame Street theme song
7. What shirt are you wearing?
nightshirt
8. Do you label yourself?
...female?
9. What name brand of shoes are you currently wearing?
Bare feet
10. Are you in a bright or dark room?
Bright room
11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
She’s a bitch and I hate her. Ha! Just kidding! Laura’s cool.
12. Ever “spilled the beans”?
I’m sure I have at some point.
13. What were you doing last night at midnight?
Talking on the phone?
14. What did the last text message you received on your cell phone say?
“yes. hope not too late…”
15. Do you ever click on “pop-ups” or “banners”?
Yeah, I constantly click on pop-ups and banners. Nothing better. I often seek out websites that show up on google searches like “NOW FREE MP3 HOT TUNES CLICK CHICKEN WING VIAGRA ALL-EXPENSES PAID CRUISE RUSSIAN MAID PORCH SWING PUPPY FARTS SNAG-DOODLE ZIPPIDY DOO DA YAY!” just to find new ones to click when I’m bored.
16. What’s a saying that you say a lot?
“Mmmm … whole fruit popsicle”
17. Who told you they loved you last?
My mom, I believe
18. What was the last furry thing you touched?
My stuffed soccer ball. Shut up.
19. How many hours do you work per week?
About 42-43
20. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed?
None
21. Favorite age you have been so far?
Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure 4 kicked a lot of ass.
22. Who is your worst enemy?
As in a person? Without getting too meta? I don’t think I have one. Unless someone knows differently…
23. What is your current desktop picture?
The Summer Palace marble boat in Beijing
24. What’s the last thing you said to someone?
“I don’t think so” when invited to go out to the Essen Haus at 11:00 tonight. (Because clearly, I needed to be in bed early.)
25. If you had to choose between a million bucks and going back in time to fix all your mistakes, which would you pick?
Oooh, that’s hard. On one hand, mistakes can be valuable experiences. On the other hand, they tend to eat away at me for a long time when I make them. But I think the potential for irrevocably screwing the time-space continuum would be too high, so I’ll take the million bucks.

The all GIF entry

It's a symphony of jerky animation:







And, easily the most hypnotic:

Best of Yahoo! News headlines

The Yahoo! homepage is one of my favorite places to look for breaking news. I use Yahoo! for email, so I'm there pretty often. They always have five or six top stories lumped together on the right side of the page. Yahoo! tends to stray a bit toward stupid entertainment headlines masquerading as news, but it mostly keeps up a valiant respectable news front. Which makes quality headlines, when they come along, all the more amusing. In the past couple of weeks I've noticed some particularly good ones. Here are a few:

Giant mice on south Atlantic island eating seabird chicks alive

Malibu attempts to tame excessive filming (I think it's mostly the use of "tame" that gets me here ... and the impression of people helplessly breaking into bouts of filming)

And my favorite:

Experts: Latest London Blasts 'Amateurish'

That one just slays me. Way to taunt the terrorists, guys! "Try to be a little more impressive next time, boys, won't you?"

The rise and fall of a road trip

Longtime readers may remember my unbridled joy back in March or so, when Gina and I decided that we were absolutely for sure going on a Route 66 road trip in August. I love road trips, and I've only recently gotten acquainted with a few parts of the great Southwest. This was such a perfect idea. I could not wait for August.

So, we were absolutely for sure going on a Route 66 road trip ... until some nagging doubts made us check the price of a rental car, picked up in Madison and dropped off in Los Angeles. (We didn't have enough time to drive both ways on the road trip - we were already hard pressed to find enough time for one direction.) The prices returned made me laugh out loud. Without even taking into account that Gina is under 25, so if she was going to help me drive at all we'd need to pay an extra fee and buy insurance for her, the base rate was enough to fly to and from Rio de Janeiro. HA. Not bloody likely.

And so, the dream was dead. Or at least dormant for the time being. But within minutes, another plan emerged. Take a slightly shorter trip (a week), fly into Oakland, and fly out of L.A. In the meantime? San Francisco, Uyen and the McCormicks, side trips, wine country, Pacific Coast Highway, a room with a rock waterfall shower in San Luís Obispo, beaches, Amoeba Records, Friday night at Largo. I still vow to drive Route 66 someday when I have a month of free time (something tells me I'll have to time that to coincide with quitting my job) but in the meantime - I am so freaking excited for this vacation.

Ahead of their time

This bolt of insight struck as I was falling asleep a few nights ago...

Most people have heard the so-cute-and-glib-you-want-to-puke name combos that entertainment reporters have been inventing lately - Bennifer, Brangelina, TomKat (I think the last one makes me want to vomit the most), etc. Well, you know who came first? Scarnella! It had honestly never occurred to me before that the musical duo of Nels Cline and Carla Bozulich probably chose the name Scarnella for the project because it's a clever combo of their first names. Now, of course, it seems like the most obvious thing ever. Everyone else probably figured this out a long time ago. I just wanted to share.

Overheard at work

P1: "How many times have you quit this year?"

P2: "...my job, or just in general?"

This was a few minutes after P2 ran up and down the aisles here in his socks singing the "I'm Quitting" song. (He really is. Sadly. Fuckin' grad school.)

On photo albums and mortality

A few weeks ago, my parents received an influx of old photo albums and miscellaneous pictures that had belonged to my grandpa. The nostalgia sparked by these photos prompted my mom to unearth the old photos that had belonged to her parents as well. As you'd expect, there were many I'd never seen before. (There were also many I had seen - as a child I was very much obsessed with family history and the past in general. Come to think of it, I still am.)

I love seeing people I know now at impossibly young ages, and it's fascinating to look at candid photos of relatives who died long before I was born. It also gave me an uncomfortable feeling, though - one that was more pronounced now than it ever was when I was a little girl. In a way, it's hard to reconcile all the fun everyone is having in those old pictures with the fact that they're all dead now. It's hard to articulate exactly why, but it seemed like the people in the photos were somehow duped. Like, "Oh, look at you laughing and having a great time at this party ... but now it's seventy years later, and you're dead. So what did that matter, really?" Of course, it's pretty much impossible to have such musings without extrapolating. It's not as if death is something that just happened to them, after all. So what of all the happy family pictures we take now, and pictures of myself and my friends? Is it inevitable that someday they'll lose the meaning they have now - the actual meaning of each photo - and just serve as bittersweet and sobering reminders of mortality to future generations? I mean that in the least morbid way possible (which, um, is still pretty morbid) but be honest - can you truly look at any photo from a long time ago and see it simply for what it is? Don't you always imbue it with a little extra meaning; some extra significance it was never meant to have? And is it somehow selfish not to want that for myself?

"Oh, look at you laughing and having a great time at this party ... but now it's seventy years later, and you're dead. So what did that matter, really?"

Looking at all of those pictures, I thought it over. And it does matter. Every little thing that's happening in those photos is important. If the inevitable end were all that mattered, then nothing would ever matter at all. In an odd way, the fact that life is fleeting, the fact that we get so little time in the grand scheme of things, blah blah, etc., means that those little things - the happy and annoying and momentous and humdrum moments captured in those snapshots - are the only things that matter. I guess it's human nature to attach extra meaning to many things that should be simple. We're mostly powerless to avoid it. I can accept that, as long as we can also take a step back and realize what we're doing. As for my pictures, I feel like writing on the back of some of them. "This is a party. Yeah, we'll all die someday. So what? It's a party."

Bacon & Cheese Crick-Ettes, anyone?

Another box of candy has arrived! It's from HotLix. And wow, I think they win. My box of candy includes, according to each little box inside:

• Candy Ant with Real Chocolate (Farm Ants flavored)
  
• Amber InsectNside Candy - scorpion
  
• Amber InsectNside Candy - cricket n larva
  
• Ant Candy with Real Farm Ants (x2)
  
• Chocolate Covered Insects (on the ingredient list is "insect larva or cricket")
  
• Bacon & Cheese Crick-Ettes**
  
• Larvets Original Worm Snax (Mexican Spice)**
  
• Scorpion sucker - banana flavor
  
• Cricket sucker - grape flavor
  
• Cricket sucker - orange flavor
  
• Worm sucker - apple flavor
  
• Worm sucker - tequila flavor
  
• Edible Flower Butterfly Candy (not a real butterfly, but some insect larva and strategically placed flower petals)
  

**you cannot imagine how creepy these are ... the rest of the insects are at least encased in some sort of chocolate or hard candy. These are just ... lightly dusted with yummy insect spices.

Unless someone wants to claim one or more of these, I'm taking them to work tomorrow. I'll give HotLix some more advertising, and maybe I'll have the fun of watching someone eat a worm or a cricket. Actually, I'll probably save the suckers and some of the hard candy. Any friends with birthdays coming up should be excited!

Intonation photos

Click on the thumbnails for (very) big versions. For extra fun, hover over the thumbnails first - some have secret messages!

Sunday, July 17 2005
Intonation Festival
Union Park, Chicago

Andrew Bird









The Wrens





The Crowd




The Decemberists

July, July

Sunday was the second day of Pitchfork's Intonation Festival, and the only day I decided to attend. I drove Gina down and we met some Chicago peeps, and we saw Andrew Bird, the Wrens, and the Decemberists. They were all good, even though the weather was hot, sticky, and gross. Combined with the dust and sand blowing around Union Park by the time the Decemberists came on, we were incredibly disgusting by the time we left.

Andrew Bird played for a little under an hour (that was the standard festival set). It's hard to compare his performance to the one I saw in Madison. On one hand, he of course didn't get to play as many songs yesterday. He also didn't seem quite as intense as he had in Madison (though that's not exactly a complaint.) On the other hand, his longtime collaborator Kevin O'Donnell was there playing drums, which added a whole new cool dynamic to the show. And he didn't have nearly as many false starts and screw-ups as there were in Madison. All told, I enjoyed the performances about equally (though I could actually see well this time.) But someday I shall see Andrew Bird in a setting where I'm not in danger of melting from the heat.

I don't have as much to say about the Wrens - they put on a really good show. I haven't listened to the Meadowlands very much, but they really performed the hell out of everything. During one song they invited some fans up onto the stage to play percussion with them. I enjoyed that very much.

The Decemberists were the last act of the festival, and played for about an hour and 20 minutes. A really fun, upbeat set. This was the third time I'd seen them (fourth including Colin solo) and there were two songs I'd never heard live before but always wanted to - Song for Myla Goldberg, and The Legionnaire's Lament. We got both last night. Plus a lovely solo version of Red Right Ankle. I'd probably have rather heard some other songs (or The Tain) instead of the Mariner's Revenge Song, but I can't really complain. My favorite Decemberists show was still the first time I saw them, at Luthers (R.I.P) ... but this was probably second. The crowd was very enthusiastic.

I should have some pictures later, if all goes well.

It's mine!

I'm on page 57. Mwahahahahaaa. I'm such a dork.

Wilco concert pix

Sam recently organized her concert photos and provided a link to them. Being a big copycat, I thought that sounded like a good idea. Of course, it also requires effort, so I figured I'd start with some photos I already had uploaded. The following are pictures I took at Wilco shows in 2004:

Dekalb 5/20/04
jeff guitar
nels jeff
nels
jeff
angry? john
singing john
jeff
concentrating jeff
jeff
jeff
jeff singing
glenn and cymbal
glenn
sweaty glenn
more glenn

Toronto, 10/8/04
nels jeff pat
massey hall 1
massey hall 2

Ann Arbor, 10/9/04
make out!
jesus, etc.
scary toy

Chicago, 10/31/04
spooky

As you can see, I like black and white film.

Southtown and Southdale are not the same

Lindsey and I must have gone the wrong way about five times trying to get to our chosen dinner restaurant tonight. It was truly a comedy of errors. We got there eventually, though, and then returned afterward to the Ladies' Wing to hang out. Naked. That's how we do things here in the Ladies' Wing.

Being in Minneapolis on business is fun - Tuesday night I had dinner with Gena, whom I hadn't seen since last October. The work side of things has been going well, if a little slow. Slow is good in general, though. It means no major problems. And I will now end this most boring entry ever, and go to sleep.

Naked pillow fight!

I'm in Minneapolis on business. When we checked into our hotel last night, a few female coworkers and I found out that we're in ... the Ladies' Wing.

No shit. The Ladies' Wing.

It's designed for "the woman business traveler." We thought the check-in guy was bullshitting us, until we arrived at our secure hallway and had to use our keys to get in. Our hall has complimentary magazines and newspapers artfully arranged on wooden tables amongst bowls of potpourri. It also has a snack nook with various bagged snacks (and Pop-Tarts) and a big refrigerator/freezer containing complimentary soda, water, iced tea, milk, orange juice, and fruit. The freezer has free ice cream bars.

When I got to my room, I found free slippers, linen spray, a "sleep soundly" CD, ear plugs, and an eye mask. There was also a truffle on my pillow.

The Ladies' Wing kicks ass.

Even though we figure they're probably filming us.

I'm all smart in dreams

Last week I saw Sloan in Chicago. After the show, Kristina asked me where they were from. "Halifax? I think?" I replied. "Nova Scotia?"

"Is that Pacific Northwest?" she asked. I'd have changed names to protect the innocent here, but my response isn't going to win me any prizes either - "Ummm, yeah? Maybe?" I replied. That sounded reasonable enough to me. Really, my brain was just like, "Mmmmm. Somewhere in Canada. North."

And that was that. Until I went to sleep Saturday night, and dreamed about taking a trip. In my dream, I was trying to get a flight from Montreal to an East Coast city (gee, where would that have come from?) but when I looked at the airline's flight maps I saw that there were no direct flights. According to the map, I would have to make a stop in Halifax.

My dreaming brain registered that this was a funny place for a layover, especially since I'd just been talking about Halifax. Here's the weird part: it also noted, with some surprise, that according to the map, Nova Scotia wasn't in the Pacific Northwest at all! In fact, it was pretty damn far east. And Halifax wasn't even very northern - it appeared to be at a roughly similar latitude to Montreal.

I remembered this dream when I woke up. (Obviously.) I was ready to dismiss my kooky little dream map of North America, until a little voice in my head said, "Hey. Wait a sec." All of you who aren't retarded about Canadian geography know where this is going, but bear with me. My first thought that this might actually be close to the truth was based on the teachings of L.M. Montgomery. I do know where Prince Edward Island is located, and I remembered that Anne of Green Gables had taken a jaunt or two over to Nova Scotia in her time. Which would imply...

I checked a real, non-dream map. And yeah. Halifax is, oddly enough, right where my dreaming brain evidently knew it was. I can accept subconsciously knowing where Nova Scotia is located, but Halifax? Specifically? Dude.

Relished with Fear

That's a phrase from a really awesomely horrid album review article from last year. It read like it had been awkwardly translated from another language, but the web-based magazine was definitely American. Also mentioned were a "southern rock squirmish" and "stream of conscience writing." Never has one article given me so many potential band names. (I have a list of band names that I update along with Gina. I'd love to show them off to you, because they are incredibly awesome. You would look at them and be so jealous, and then you'd want to go see each band in concert ASAP. But what if you stole them and formed your own fake bands? I can't take that risk.)

I decided to check and see if the author had done any more writing in the past year, because I've been wanting to expand my vocabulary. I looked at the Defy Magazine website, and there was one other short piece there - but oddly, it lacked the weird, stilted, crazy grammar and phrasing of last year's review. That was puzzling and somewhat disappointing. However, the original article still stands, in all its glory. Let's take a trip back in time and revisit a few more of the classic turns of phrase:

"fans were left with in dazed wonder"

"couldn’t help but be relished with fear"

"the band exemplarities their wisdom in not trying to change something that is not broken"

"the savage blend of dizzy, sporadic fits of deconstruction that trickles down into the realm of neo-pshychedicism"

"this album will allow them to never again be bearers of fright"

"If you are looking for flaws, spare your time"

"they taught us the invaluable lesson of not letting fear work as a detour ant"

It's a tough call, but my favorite fake word in here is probably "neo-pshychedicism". Yeah, this was actually published.

Mmmurphy licked a mmmic stand

And Sam captured a photo, which I haven't had time to steal yet. So you can see it on samorama.com. (Update - actually, now I have had time to steal it. Here it is!) Sloan played a really rocking, upbeat show. I found Murph's posturing and flourishes charming and entertaining rather than off-putting, and Patrick Pentland is pretty awesome himself. I haven't purchased their greatest hits album yet, but I need to get on that. Kristina thought it was the best pure rock show she's seen in two years. I don't know if I'd say the same, but I definitely understand. I tried my best to call Canadian Judy during the show, though I'm not sure if it went through. After the show we talked to Murph for a few minutes. Sam confessed that this was her fifth time seeing Sloan, and he said that was the perfect number. "Not like some of these people who have seen us like 40 times!" he continued. He elaborated on such fans a little, in an entertainingly disparaging manner, while we all tried to control our chortles of laughter. I was like, "Oh my God, SERIOUSLY?"

Before Sloan was the funeral, which was ... funeral-y. I'm kind of tired of talking about this all by now. But it all went fine. One creepy detail though - you know those horror movies where, like, someone gets into a cab and then they notice that their cabbie is the murderer who's been stalking them around the city? Well that totally happened to me yesterday! Okay, no. But when I arrived for the wake on Wednesday, the man who opened the door and directed me inside was the former dean of students at my junior high school. That was weird enough, but then yesterday morning as we arrived at the funeral home, the guy who greeted us and told us how to arrange our cars (I don't know his title ... funeral wrangler?) was a former sixth grade teacher! He was my math team coach, for crying out loud. The hell? I honestly thought I might be slipping into some weird school-themed alternate reality for a few moments.

SLOOOOOOOAN!

Thursday I attended my grandpa's funeral, and also saw Sloan at the Double Door. Sloan was WAY more fun. Details once I've slept.

What would we do baby, without us? Sha la la la

Ah yes, family. My grandpa's wake was this evening, followed by dinner at his/our house. I apparently timed my arrival at the wake just right - the funeral director was just finishing the family service. Literally, I walked in as he stopped talking. So everyone in my family (except my dad, thank God) was actually crying when I came in. But they were all in the process of stopping. Of course, I haven't escaped the cryfest that will be tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I can handle it.

One silver lining for this whole experience is the default family reunion that results. My aunts and uncles have pretty diverse personalities, and I don't exactly click with every one of them - though they're all good people. But for all that, I have an amazingly cool group of cousins. We don't see each other very often, especially all together. My sisters and I grew up in the family flagship hometown, and we saw a whole lot of my cousin Chelle (a few of you may know her from such tales as "Chelle and the Bull") since she grew up about 20 minutes away. But my cousins Tracy and John live in California, and my cousins Josh and Jordan have military parents and grew up in Amsterdam, West Germany, and Rekjavik before settling in Wyoming.

When we were younger, there were three sort of cousin strata. John, Tracy, and my sisters were all around the same age. Chelle and I were around the same age. And Josh and Jordan were the youngest. It's kind of odd (and cool) getting together now, because we've all somehow gelled into the same "adult" age group. Ain't time a crazy thing? We are now 40, 36, 34, 34, 25, 23, 20, and 18. (It's kind of funny that Chelle and I always thought of Josh and Jordan as so much younger than we were.) Anyway, we all sat around talking tonight. If you know me you won't be too surprised by this, but we laughed. A lot. Grandpa would have approved.

Silence

I got to work early today. Very early. I don't know if it's worth dragging myself out of bed at an obscene hour for, but whenever I do this I'm struck by how much I enjoy being in the office when I'm pretty much the only one here. Well, the only one in my wing of the building at least. Everything is very peaceful, I think I concentrate better (why, just look at me concentrate on this entry!), etc. Plus, during the summer, the weather is lovely at 6:00 a.m. And I got the best parking spot in the lot.

God, I'm already tired.

Tonight is my grandfather's wake in Kenosha. I'm not looking forward to it, or the funeral tomorrow. (Does anyone look forward to wakes and funerals? Besides Harold and Maude?) Interestingly, the part I'm looking forward to the least is everyone crying. I'm fine with crying when it's not being done by my close relations. But for some reason, when it is my family, I hate it. I'm trying to probe my motives on this one, and I can't come up with anything satisfactory. It's not that I hate to see my family in pain (though obviously I don't love to see my family in pain), or that I have some kind of super hero image of any of them. I don't even mind the idea of them crying. I just mind having to be there when it happens. Is this as weird as it sounds to me? I guess we've never been an extremely emotionally demonstrative family (though my parents were never cold or distant or anything), so stuff like this just gives me the willies. I mean, I could have a big sobfest with my friends and not mind a bit. Ah well, nothing about this is going to be fun. So I guess I'll just deal with it, won't I?

Revenge of the Candy

I had almost forgotten about giving my information to a few of the companies at the expo. That is, until I received a big box of candy in the mail from one of them today. Ha! You have to understand, I've barely made a dent in the candy I got there in the first place. I apparently like the idea of candy more than I like candy itself. Anyway, if anyone wants a million pieces of licorice, mints, or gum, do let me know. (I just checked it out in more detail, and they included a pack of chocolate gum. Natural chocolate gum.)

Side note - do you ever supply your very own internal monologue? If you don't, then you should stop reading right now. In fact, go away. We don't need your "normal" sort around here. If you do, has your brain ever given you a sort of sarcastic nickname? Just in passing? Like, say, you knock some papers to the floor and your brain says, "Nice one, champ!" Well I was at the grocery store today. I had picked up crackers and ice cream and was heading to the checkout when I realized I still had nothing to actually eat for dinner. Without missing a beat, my brain produced the following: "You might want to take two more minutes and actually grab something to eat for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, there, Gigglebritches." I swear. No shit. Gigglebritches. The hell?

Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise

That's the title of the Baby-Sitters Club book I just finished rereading. It came from my parents' Basement o' Wonders in Kenosha - I rescued a bunch of old Baby-Sitters Club books a couple of months ago, and have been reading them whenever I need a break from reading things that require more brain power. I used to love those books, and I remember waiting impatiently for the new volumes to come out around the middle of every month. I'd forgotten just how long ago that was, though, until I looked at the back of one book and saw the upcoming books listed, along with their release dates. June '89, July '89, August '89. I was freaking nine years old. It's kind of amazing that something that held my interest at the age of nine (and probably 8, judging from how far along that was in the series) can also amuse me at the age of 25. Well, amazing or sad. You make the call.

This also means that if the series had followed any sort of linear time (instead of existing in the land where everyone is perpetually in 8th grade) they would be ... let's see. They were in 8th grade by 1987, and therefore already living a lie by 1989. They should be 30. Here's what I think is going on in their lives:

Claudia: flunked out of college, living in a crappy little apartment in New York City selling her artwork on the street
Stacey: has some sort of math degree. Works at a university in a big city, lives with rich boyfriend.
Jessi: married, lives in suburbia, successful and happy
Mallory: became a single mom at a young age. Experimented with drugs in an attempt to fit in.
Dawn: living in California. Teaches yoga.
Mary Anne: married, has 7 cats, no kids
Kristy: totally a lesbian

αντίο και ευχαριστίες

The holiday weekend has been a little different than I had originally anticipated so far. Early on Saturday morning, my grandpa died. He was my dad's father, Jack - the source of my Greek heritage. I have to add that it was not a surprise ... he had been sick for awhile, and for the last month or so was on dialysis a few times a week, having trouble breathing due to congestive heart failure, and his cancer of the bladder had spread. But it's still something of a shock when it finally happens. He was 88 years old.

I was probably closer to my mom's parents growing up, but we lived in the same town as both sets of grandparents and I saw them all frequently. I like to think I got my sense of sarcasm equally from both grandfathers - they were friends, having gone to school together. Jack married my grandma, Margaret, in 1939, and they had six children. My dad was the second. Jack worked for over 40 years at the American Brass, raised his kids, hung out at Tosca's on Friday evenings with his work buddies, went to the Catholic church every Sunday. It wasn't an incredibly exciting life, but it was a good life. And as the phone keeps ringing, I'm starting to understand just how many lives a guy who lived a good, non-exciting life managed to touch.


Margaret and Jack on their wedding day, May 6, 1939

Home sweet home

I had a layover in Baltimore over lunch yesterday, so I took the opportunity to stop at Phillips. I also bought my mom (who loves Baltimore) a birthday present. In Louisville, Paul and I met up with Sam, Sooz, Mark, Mark's mom, Dick and Sandy. We visited Ear X-tacy (greatest music store ever), and had dinner at fun cafe. Then we headed to the theater ... where ticket confusion reigned for about 40 minutes due to some mix-ups with the box office (and the fire marshall.) Eventually it was sorted out, though, and we had fun dancing and watching the show from a platform of seats next to Stan and the soundboard. Partying afterward, I (and more importantly Sam) met Jim James. I also found out Nels was on the Warped tour with Mike Watt when Eminem played his first major gigs. Paul was hitting the sake pretty hard.

Today I drove back to Chicago with Sam. It was a delightful little road trip, with pit stops for KFC Buffet lunch (down south they have fried chicken livers! and catfish!), shopping at Stuckey's, tracking down a Wilco Gutter Supply warehouse I spotted from the highway (you laugh, but we totally got free stuff), a rest stop where Sam bought a $5 CD from a vending machine and we hung out in the picnic area for awhile, and a store in Indiana where we bought fireworks - most of which we lit off with Gina tonight. Well, we let Gina light them while we hovered a safe distance away. Chinese bees are fucking scary, y'all.

(I'd say something profound about the end of Wilco's A Ghost Is Born tour, except they've already announced more dates for September.)