A small piece of shiny-Dallas in the horizon, and Robin gazing upon it pensively. As you do.

The grassy knoll.
The barely seen "x" on the road.
A tiny gaggle of tourists across the street.

So lies the Dallas tourist experience.

On Spring break now!
I'm heading off to Dallas this afternoon to visit Robin and will be back next week.

wooo! I plan to eat a lot of dumplings.

All Moved In!
I'm in the new place, finally. It is great. I am currently Internet-less since my Internet doesn't transfer over till the beginning of April, but the good news is that the library is a block away and free wi-fi there! That's where I am right now.

So, the move. It was okay. Todd and Rich helped me, and Rich allowed us to use the Bear Claw van, which was very awesome of him. We moved the big stuff in about four hours and two van trips. The weather was brisk, but sunny, although a few snowy flakes came down. But, the worst planning aspect of it all was that I opted to move in St Patrick's Day. And my old place is in Party Central #2 and a couple of blocks away from Party Central #1. My little side street is usually busy, but people were skulking for spots and double parking as early as 9 a.m. that morning! Because people were getting their drink on at around 8. Fun!

The most hilarious thing was that I got residential moving posters from the alderman's office. They threaten towing in big red letters, but apparently, the only way to have any real towing pull is to get your signs put up by city hall. I decided that I wouldn't really get any car towed anyway, but might as well try to clear a spot for the van. So, I dutifully put up the signs two days beforehand and hoped that people would heed them and clear out on Saturday morning from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. No, they didn't. Not only did they flagrantly ignore the signs, but they were double parking. Lee's boyfriend walked by at 9 a.m., when someone was pulling in to the spot. Needless to say, finding a space for the van was a pain. We did manage to carve out one little corner, but had to pull forward and block a busy driveway whenever we loaded a piece of furniture.

But, the stuff is mostly in the new place now. I love the new place. It's strewn with books and papers at the moment, but slowly everything is being put away. It's light and cozy and my first night there was peaceful, although I'm getting used to the wheezing of the steam heaters. My toilet was running when I moved in and I called the maintenance guy last night. He fixed it today, so I'm pleased with the efficiency of it all.

I'm going to go home and cook dinner right now.

Moving blows.
Saturday is the big move! In the meantime, I've been loading up my car with odds and ends that I don't need help with in the hopes that Saturday's move will be made easier and easier. But, my room has magical abilities to hold large amounts of crap. I haul it out, and it regenerates. Now I'm hugely pooped and it's time for bed.

But, hey, it was 70 degrees in Chicago today! It was, as the newscasters described it, "the best weather in Chicago in 2007 so far." So true. It was sunny and breezy and outrageously lovely. But, tomorrow it's supposed to drop to 30 and there is talk of snow on Thursday.

Happy Birthday, Charles!

31.

We are definitely grown-ups now.

Touting
I found a new hair salon that I love. It's called Twisted Scissors. It is a block from Todd's place, so easy commute, and it's a start up by some renegade hair stylists that used to work at Roscoe Village's Big Hair. Big Hair is always packed and involves a wait, and their hours are short and strict (I think that they stop letting people in at 4). I liked it because it was funky and cheap. But they recently raised their prices. However, Twisted Scissors is funky, the stylists are super nice because they own the place and want regulars, it's roomy and light-filled and more laid back, and lots cheaper than Big Hair. I got a great cut and a blow dry for $20!

Run, don't walk, to Twisted Scissors. I have their number if you need it.

onBeing
Jenn Crandall, who was in Robin's class in Pakistan and who was in Beijing at the same time as me as well, is a photojournalist for Washingtonpost.com. She has started this onBeing project that is hands down great. Really, they're awesome and I'm proud to know their creator.

Check them out here!

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day!
Don't know who he is? I didn't either until this year. He's a Polish war hero who fought in the revolutionary war. It's a holiday here in Chicago, and all of the schools have it off. Ladies and gentlemen, that will make this my fourth Monday off since I started my job almost two months ago. I lerv the school schedule. A little about Pulaski for your edification from the website I've attached:

In 1779, Pulaski was ordered to join General Lincoln in the South to help recapture Savannah. After French General D'Estaing, leader in the attack on the southern capital, fell wounded, Pulaski is reported to have rushed forward to assume command and raise the soldiers' spirits by his example and courage, only to be mortally wounded himself. Pulaski was named the "Father of the American Cavalry", and remains one of the well known figures of the American Revolutionary War.

Are you dying to know what I've been doing with my day? Well, I began the slow move of my things over to my NEW PLACE. My great new place is in Lincoln Square and it's perfect and I love it. It makes packing shite into my car and carrying my millions of text books and papers everywhere a lot less painful.

Three day weekends are awesome. This weekend, I caught up with Northwestern ladies for some tapas at Cafe Iberico (my first time there--cheap tapas!), ventured to make some roast lamb with Todd, saw Russian Circles and Del Ray play at Schubas (thanks for the ticket, Todd), and had dim sum with Lauren at Furama in Uptown. I also showed Todd the new apartment and recruited his help to help me schlep up some bags of aforementioned text books that I had been slowly loading into my trunk.

I also had an adventure with selling things with Craigs list. This apartment came with a giant china cabinet that neither Lee nor I wanted to carry with us once we move out. I figured that I would sell it on Craigs list for some cheapie price and that was the right thing to do because I got like six or seven responses within six hours of posting. Since it was Jenny's old roommate who had left it with her, and she didn't want the cabinet, I'm taking the earnings and taking us out one night. We also have a giant blue rug that we need to get rid of and I'm going to try the same thing.

Congratulations...
to my little brother who got into his first choice school: UT-Austin. We doubted you a bit along the way because, while very smart, you also tended to be a bit lazy with the school work. But you proved us wrong, and I'm super excited for you. I also can't wait to come and visit Austin again.

Dumplings on the Run
Robin's new dumpling take out place, Kuai, is featured in D Magazine this month (D Magazine is the Dallas Magazine). The title of this blog post is the same as the name of their little feature. They took a pretty picture of the dumplings, and they also provided a nice background of the place. I booked tickets today to visit him at the end of March (during my spring break!), and I can't wait to stuff myself silly with pork and vegetable dumplings.

Note: you might have to actually go to the D Magazine web site and search for Kuai since I'm not sure if my own link will hold up.

Blech.
I think that I've decided that the red line is the g-damn drrrtiest el line. I can't speak for all of them (I have yet to ride the green or the pink), but the red line travels the length of Chicago, and it is always crowded and is smelly about 85% of the time. I'm usually not a germophobe, but I was feeling it today. I traveled via el back home after a work training which was in the Loop, and the train was full at like 3pm. What's up with that, first of all? Then I pincer grasped the super greezy hand rails. I guess that the extra grease does make them more shiny (silver lining!).

But, the best was when I watched a loud teenager sneeze into his hand, inspect what came out onto him palm, and then proceed to *smear it on the hand rail beside him*. Let me repeat, he smeared his snot on the hand rail beside him. The grody teenager was with a gaggle of his friends and when they exited the train, they were hooting and hollering. One of them approached the doors as they were closing and cursed out a hapless and impassive woman who was standing on the other side (e.g., "You bitch!" with motions to punch). It was ultimately harmless but really obnoxious. Some old dude who was most likely chemically imbalanced was sitting behind me, and very loudly announced "Thank GOD, those fucking morons are off the train." I was cranky from sitting in a training all day, so I seconded that thought in my head. You go on, chemically imbalanced man!

Happy Chinese New Year, Happy President's Day
I had today off for President's Day, so I was seriously productive. Cleaned out my bills, vacuumed, worked out, shoveled out my car (with a dustpan...must make do), cooked lunch for the rest of the week, and traveled to Northwestern for a three minute meeting. Now it's getting close to bed time, though, so hooray for that.

Yesterday, Chinese New Year, Todd and I met up with Clarence and Jonathan. We had Chicago style pizza for lunch and hopped on the el to Chinatown in hopes of catching the New Year parade. When we got off the train, we were wading through crowds heading back to the el so that was our first clue that we missed it. It was still good, though, since we got to watch the dragons and drummers visiting the stores along Archer and wandered in and out of shops. We ended up spending about an hour and a half relaxing over milk teas and fried tako balls at St. Alps tea shop. The evening ended with hanging out at Holiday Inn with Jonathan and Claro and watching lots of tv shows about autism.

Tomorrow, it's back to work. Gah.

Okay, now I see why people don't move to Chicago.
Or at least rent parking spaces.
This snow blows. Actually, it really blew a few days ago, and now it's melting a little and you can see the streets and the sidewalks again, but there's talk of more snow tonight. And boo to that! My car is still buried and I think it might stay like that for a while since even if I managed to dig it out, there is no spot to come back to because everyone else is leaving their cars nestled in their snow igloos as well. Ain't no way I'm digging it out again if it's going to snow again tonight!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day! The good news on Valentine's Day is that I think I found my new apartment/non-living Valentine. I am totally, wholly, absurdly smitten. It's a sweet, sunny, corner apartment in a lovely quiet building in Logan Square. The building is owned by a meditation group/new-agey place and they occupy the bottom floor (the woman who was showing me around told me, "Don't worry, we don't proselytize"). And besides being a nice size, it includes utilities plus recycling and has a shower with good water pressure (a must). It's about three or four blocks from the el, the same from Logan Square and its assorted restaurants, and has a grocery store and pharmacy within walking distance. All of the tenants have access to an expansive roof top deck complete with tables with umbrellas. It was $50 more than I was budgeting for, but on the bus ride home I scribbled out my monthly budget and calculated that I can work it, and after all of my monthly payments, I'll still have a little to put in savings. I called and accepted right away. Cross your fingers for me that I get it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board. I can't wait to have you over for a little home-cooked meal eaten on the deck when spring and summer roll around.

Unfortunately, though, since I chose to be carless this week, my Valentine's day commute included seven busses in total to get back and forth to everything and finally to Todd's place to cook up a Valentine's meal. Since the first bus took 40 minutes to arrive and the second bus took over 20 minutes to arrive, and my boots and socks were still cold and wet from all of my walking around, I was in an outrageously horrid mood by the time I arrived at his place. Sorry, Todd, because I know that I behaved horribly. He was a good boyfriend and provided the requisite sympathy and foot rubs for my suffering.

As Sarah reported on her blog, the school day was rife with Valentine's Day celebrations. I happened to have treatment time with two of my favorite second graders when they had their Valentine's Day party, so I opted to spend part of the session in their class so they wouldn't miss out. I totally made out like a bandit too, because all of their classmates gathered round, each presenting a single chocolate to me. That adds up to like 30 chocolate kisses and hearts. I even got my own personal bag to pack all of my goodies in. It's a bilingual classroom, and it fortified my intent to learn some Spanish because these kids...I want to put them all in my pocket.

The good news about this weekend is that Clarence and Jonathan are coming to town (I'm sure they're thrilled about the weather). And that Monday is another day off! I love working in schools.

Mmmm.

Dave and Sabrina, enjoying their flatbread.

Jenny and me.

Deep snow and chicken tibi
The snow has officially come down on Chicago. It's been snowing about about a day now and my little street is caked in snow. My car ain't going to be dug up anytime soon, so I'm bussing it every where. I'm lucky with my new commute, though, since it's hopping on and off one bus. However, the last few days I've been apartment hunting, and to keep up these appointments I have to transfer busses often. That is no fun. It would be much easier to have driven when the streets were still drivable. However, I've been watching countless cars spin their wheels, especially on the side streets.

I see on the news that there is a winter storm warning in effect. Hooray!

It's exhausting to even walk around. I walked over the gym today and as the wind buffeted my hood off my head I stopped several times to wonder what I was thinking.

But a bright spot in the snow is the start of the monthly supper club Jenny and I have started in order to explore new-to-us restaurants. Tonight we had our first gathering at the Ethiopian Diamond in Granville. It was my first time eating Ethiopian and I can say that I see what all of the fuss about. Yum. Four of us gathered there tonight. I took the bus up there with Dave and it ended up being a kind of crappy snow wonderland adventure.

About the aforementioned apartment hunting: it's been okay. I've seen a couple of places...one a total shithole in a good location and one a beautiful cozy and sunny nest in a safe, residential, but very unhappening neighborhood. I've got a couple more viewings scheduled for this week and I'm feeling hopeful. I may just go for the sweet, cozy nest in the unhappening neighborhood because let's be honest, I never go out to the bars in my neighborhoods. I do, however, love the ample selection of cafes and shops (and two grocery stores) within two blocks. Too many decisions.

Down Memory Lane
Anne lent me Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. I had read and heard a lot about it as a coming of age story of a bright girl feeling slightly out of place in a ritzy New England boarding school. It's swimming in accolades. I spent the last two nights huddled under the covers (brrr) gobbling it up and I'm about halfway through it. I like the writing and it's a good, laid back read. It also throws me into a major memory time warp of my own experience at a ritzy boarding school in New England. I flipped to the author's bio and check to see if she attended one, but there's no mention of it. She hits the target a lot of the time: discussing the fancy-dancy campus, the tiny classes, the assortment of the students, the casual privilege...even the names she gets right. I am impressed.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I attended such a school. My parents asked me afterward if it was a good experience, and I think that it was. The education was pretty incomparable. I also was plopped there in the Fall of 1990 when I was 13.5 years old and pretty stoopid. I didn't know what had hit me until the first evening there when I realized that my mom had pulled away and that was *it*. What the hell had happened. But I adjusted. I quickly realized that while I was well-traveled, I was not worldly in comparison to my classmates. Cigarettes, booze and boys: what are those? By the time I graduated, I was still pretty green compared to everyone else, but in my four years there I managed to make some good friends. I kind of wish that I had the opportunity to attend the school with the wherewithal that I have *now* because then I would really suck the marrow out of the chance to work with cool professors, attend every speaker that came to campus, and genuinely take advantage of the whole experience. Hindsight is 20/20, though.

After forcing myself to put down the book last night, I tossed around for a while thinking back on some of the sweeter memories. A few that I would like to share:

- My senior year I lucked out and managed to use the rooming lottery to score a seven-person house on campus with close friends. Rather than a rambling dorm, we had a little living room and a little kitchen and it was homey as hell. I somehow managed to secure the position of "house counselor" which meant basically nothing when you're in a tiny house with your friends, but I did get to put that on the old college applications.

-I loved, loved, loved our senior prom. See, since it was all high class, we didn't call it a prom, though. It was called the Last Hurrah (the winter formal was the First Hurrah). Seniors were the only ones allowed to attend and we were all required to take four weeks of ballroom dance lessons. My date was a tall, sweetly dorky crew dude named Dan who was my dancing partner during one of those lessons. We struggled through awkward reinditions of the foxtrot and the cha cha. I was not the grace monkey that I'm sure you all thought I would be. I didn't see the point of the dance lessons until the day of the dance. We walked into the candle lit, regally wooden dining hall and discovered that a big brass band that had driven in from New York had set up. They proceeded to rock our socks off. Dan and I danced the entire three hours. I only knew two basic steps, but it is hands down the best time I've ever had a dance.

-The campus was gorgeous. Des can attest to this since as it happens she spent her summers at the same school since her dad taught physics there to science scholars. Two buildings designed by I.M. Pei. The arts building was one of his, and it was walled with glass. Senior year I took a life drawing class there complete with a nude model. That was pretty great and I wish that I still had some of those charcoal drawings because, let's face it, the female body is pretty awesome to draw.

-One particular tradition I enjoyed was something called Garden Party that was held in the last week of school. During this, each senior girl invited one favored teacher and one favored junior girl to attend a tea party kind of thing that was held on one of the lawns. You exchanged bouquets with your invitees and dressed in your summer dress best. I took my favorite teacher (Mrs. Temple from calculus) and a sweet junior named Maeve who I did a community arts program with. It was lovely. (Maeve is a great name, now that I think about it, by the way).

-The spring of my senior year several of my friends in my house went off for a two-month long exchange to a Navajo reservation (See? If I were smart, I would have done that too). I was able to form some friendships with the Navajo students who came over, lived in the house I was in, and were in class with me. They invited me and a couple of others over to a feast of traditional Navajo food in our dorm advisor's house and then we all watched "The X-Files. " Navajo flat bread: you had me at hello. During that time, someone from the New York Times did an article about the exchange. Through one of my extracurriculars, they hooked the reporter up to me to represent the boarding school voice since my peers were off on their exchange. My dad was overseas when one of his colleagues showed the article to him with a "Isn't this your kid?" I sounded like an asshole and the article was on the front page (slow news day, I guess). But another lesson learned.

-My all time favorite adviser was a young English teacher named Ms. P from my junior year. She lived in a absurdly small apartment on my dorm floor and allowed some of us to watch SNL on her mini TV on her kitchen counter on Saturday nights. One night she drove four of us to New Haven to eat delicious veggie food at Claire's and then go and see the Nutcracker. Ms. P probably was younger than I am now, and I still have a warm place in my heart for her. Since she was new she didn't develop the crustiness that more seasoned boarding school teachers held. At one point she was going running with two other youngish teachers on campus and left a couple of us in her apartment to watch skating on her TV. I still remember the looks those other teachers had ("what the hell are you having these students in your place for?"). But I still love her for trusting us and letting us share a little piece of *someone's* home on a Sunday morning. I think she might have been a little lonesome being young and far away from her family, but that lonesomeness allowed her some openness to connect. I believe that if we were the same age we would have had a grand friendship.

Okay, that is a lot of pontificating for one post. But it's all to say that despite the struggles of high school, I emerged with an overall positive experience. And that Prep is good.

DIZZAMN!
It's cold here. It's supposed to drop into the single digits this weekend, which means that I am totally going to be inside and cozy constantly.

Superbowl fever is officially here! Not that I really know anything about it. But, Chicago Public Schools is officially asking students and staff to wear Bears gear tomorrow in support of the team. This slays me. Did you all picture me rushing to the corner store to buy a jersey? I know that you did. I'm just going to have to dig up something blue and orange and call it a day. I ran across a bulletin board of little poems that some of the younger students wrote for the Bears and they were priceless. I was tempted to copy some of them down for your enjoyment, but better to respect their art and leave them be.