So Proud Indeed
The night was winding down, the last guests were sipping at the dregs of their drinks, and the last dance was impending. We were at Todd's friend, Kip's, wedding this past Saturday, and it was 10:55 with the wedding reception coming to a full-stop at 11. Kip was dapper in a white vest and his bride, Meredith, was lovely and serene as ever in her gown. It was at this time that the dj demanded that everyone in the room (everyone!) come out to the dance floor and to please form a circle around the bride and the groom. People obliged but with some hesitation, since the dj had lost the crowd's faith throughout the night. He was kind of bossy: at one point he commanded Kip and Meredith to come out the dance floor to slow dance to...and he played the "Barney" song. He played the whole thing and the gracious bride and groom danced to it, grinning and bearing it.

Anyway, back to the evening's last moment. So we all gathered on the dance floor in wait and dutifully formed a large circle around the couple. It was at this point that the dj breathed into the microphone something to the tune of: "We're all enjoying ourselves right now, but we need to remember that the troops are out there fighting for us and our freedoms." Downer. Then what came over on the speakers but "Proud to be an American" (because at least I know I'm free), and we all swayed along with it as the bride and groom yet again danced to indulge the dj and his whims. The most absurd moment at a wedding yet, and all I can think of it Kip and Meredith who now remember their last dance as a dedication to their country. Isn't the last dance supposed to be all about leerrrrvvvvv?

Beyond that, the wedding was fun though! That previous Friday I caught up with Bonnie and Laura and it reminded me of grad school--the good parts of the grad school experience. Sunday, we were lazy and did some cooking, went for a walk, and that's basically it,

Oh! But I can't forget to tell you about our last supper club, which was last night. This time we went to Lula Cafe in Logan Square, the cutest, hippest little place in the neighborhood. We had specifically picked Monday night to avoid the crowds, but--alas--in the previous week's Reader they had named Lula Cafe's Monday Night Pre-Fixe dinner as one of their 40 Most Favoritest Things About Chicago. And the crowds descended. So we waited for an hour for a table, but the weather was nice outside where we waited so it was okay. And I had the Pre-Fixe meal which is their "Farm Dinner" and it was...mindblowing. My love, it comes forth. So Lula Cafe has got to be on my regular rotation, but I need to go at like Tuesday at 3 p.m. or something.

This makes me laugh till I cry.

What is it about it this time? I think it's the fat baby looking seriously pissed off in addition to having an enormous gourd.

(Thanks to Todd who sent it to me. Also his commentary:
That kid is all "You take this thing off my head, then you check that blood sugar, and you check it fuckin' GOOD, if you have diabeetus."
in reference to that commercial with that old dude with the walrus moustache who used to be in "Our House")

Watch this (if you haven't already, of course)
This past weekend, we watched "Junebug" and it was great. Moving without being in your face, but funny at the same time. Amy Adams was something to behold. I really, really liked this movie.


Beyond that...
It was a lazy weekend. The weather was beautiful, which was nice. I managed to catch up with the erstwhile Megan, Laura, and Katie for a fun dinner party, and Todd and I hit the mall on Saturday. Don't be jealous of my mall experience, you guys.

Todd's wisdom tooth is coming in and is causing him intensive pain, so let's send him our best until he can get it all sorted out.

Fall's Here!
The cooler, crisper has arrived and I am grateful. I am done with summer. It's nice to crack open the sweaters again and pull out the light jackets and smell autumn.

Plus, I'm finally hitting my stride again at work and have my schedule just about worked out and have pretty much seen all of the kids that I need to have by now. I ripped an idea off of another SLP and posted a big tree trunk in my room with branches that reach out. Each of my kids decorates a leaf that sports his/her speech and language goal. which we then stick up on the tree. It's a great opportunity to practice using some spatial concepts (e.g., "Do you want the leaf on the top/bottom, middle/sides, left/right?"). Also, as the seasons change so do their goals, so in the winter we can do new ones (snowflakes this time) as well as budding new green leaves in the spring. Neat idea, huh? Definitely worth ripping off. We've been using glitter and glue and let me tell you: it doesn't take much to entertain second graders. They effing love some glitter and glue.

I've got a kid on my caseload now (he transferred in) who's a selective mute, which basically means what it sounds like. He's a stubborn little bugger too. I met him today and he answered every one of my questions with gestures and facial expressions. Then, when we were playing a copy-me kind of game I tried to slip in some vocalization and he stopped abruptly and gave me a look like "Ah, you have waaaay underestimated me." He's going to be a tough nut to crack, that one. In my opinion selective mutism isn't really an SLP's bailiwick and it seems more of anxiety issue if the kid can talk in other circumstances, but the kid's got goals and I need to work with them.

Jackie's wedding weekend
Congratulations, Jackie and Brian!

We flew out to Denver on Friday afternoon so we could attend Jackie and Brian's wedding that Saturday. We got to the airport in plenty of time so decided to bide our time in the Chilis in the airport, which is seriously the most happenin' of happenin' places in O'Hare. Who knew? We should go and hang out there all the time. When people get off the plane to visit, I'll be all: "Naw, we aren't leaving the airport...we're hanging at CHILIS HERE!" (Too bad if you land at Midway: we're still training it to O'Hare.)

Our flight to Denver ended up being delayed for two hours due to weather reasons. This would have been only mildly annoying if we weren't trying to rush to Jackie and Brian's rehearsal dinner that night in Boulder. If our plane had landed on time, we would have been kind of late as it was. With the additional two hours tacked on, we missed dinner entirely, so we ended up just tumbling into the (very fancy) hotel and crashing like clazy. It was midnight my time, after all, and Grandma likes to be in bed early. We realized afterward that our entire trip took nine hours door to door, and driving would have only taken a few more hours maybe. How did that work?

Jackie and Brian's wedding was lovely. Cozy and perfect and filled with friends and family who love them. They had a bagpiper at their ceremony! And they know the way to my heart, because the food was yummy too. Their ceremony was in the early afternoon and the reception was in the early evening, so in between, Todd and I hung out with his old bandmate, Ryan, and Ryan's date and his parents, who were also attending the wedding. I must mention how great the dj was as well, because he took *every* request! Maybe I was the only one asking for them, but he earned my devotion forever since he played "Bizarre Love Triangle" with no questions asked. I was a dancing fool all night. I even danced to "Achy Breaky Heart." The wedding lasted from 6pm till midnight and I enjoyed every second of it. I hate going to clubs, but I love dancing at weddings. I need to go to more weddings (get married, people!).

Although we didn't get to Denver proper, we did spend a morning in Boulder and were struck by how fresh everything was. This opposed to Chicago, where the streets smell like pee and exhaust. Plus, every place we went to in Colorado, from the airport to the hotel to every restaurant to every place of commerce we passed: it all seemed brand spanking new. Also very different from Chicago. Granted, our scope of exploration was limited to say the least, but still. I had last been to CO to visit my dearest Suzi and her family back in 2000 and was struck by how pretty the mountain line was on the horizon. I was still struck this past weekend: you can't beat those mountains. In Boulder we ate a delicious breakfast place called Foolish Craigs and strolled through Pearl St where we stumbled upon the very tiny Pride festival there. Also, we stopped in a candy store where Todd bought some Necco wafers and inhaled them in about five minutes. I only am reporting this because after looking at the nutritional facts, we discovered that one package contains 55 grams of sugar. That cracks me up a lot.

48 Hours is Too Short.
We got back from Lake of the Ozarks yesterday, and it was...perfect. Purr-fect. We got in late on Friday night after wrassling with some horrendous Chicago-Labor-Day traffic. The weather was sunny, warm, and flawless. We boated both days and ate delicious home-cooked meals each night. Afterwards we gathered around Todd's parents' formidably awesome fire pit. It caused me almost physical pain to leave yesterday morning, but what had to be done had to be done. Two days is better than no days, I suppose.

Now it's back in Chicago, which is steaming haawwwwt.

School officially started today, but my day was slow since kids are getting back into their routine and I've got to get the schedule worked out with the teachers.

Day 2
Second day of work complete! I'm glad to say that I got assigned my old school and also a charter school one day a week. Charter schools are a little of a mystery to me and this one didn't download any of their caseload information onto the school-wide system that we access, so I have no clue what my caseload there looks like. I think I'm just going to show up tomorrow and see what's what. It was good to be at the old school again today, though, see some familiar faces and scrape the cobb webs off of my materials.

Yesterday was an all day meeting for SLPs which was pretty laid back, but sadly was located in the Southside of Chicago (I believe the Bronzeville area, or at least close to it) so I took the main highway, 90/94, to get to it and that experience so blew. It took me over an hour to get there because of congestion and construction and all of that. Blech.

Today I took the main highway again to head south to pick up my shiny new laptop for work. I assumed picking it up would be a breeze since all of the specialized services people (OTs, Psychologists, Social workers and SLPs) were assigned windows within which to show up, check in the old laptop, and then tote off the new one. How much time could it take? Ah, silly me. Three different lines were involved and two hours of waiting all together. The SLP behind me was getting more and more pissed off and was getting ready to maul anyone she suspected of cutting. She was getting ready to blow. It would have been funny if I didn't have to wait in the first line for over an hour. The new laptop is pretty neat, though, so I suppose it was worth it.

Afterwards I had to zoom (or, "zoom," since the highway was crawling with traffic again--at 2:35pm!) all the way to the north to get to my dentist appointment. Seeing as scheduling with my dentist involves a month's notice, I was desperate to get there in time since I needed to get these two cavities taken care of. I got there ten minutes late and ended up having to wait another 20 minutes, but I realized I was so tense from trying to get there in time I had to stretch out, take some deep breaths, and decompress with a couple of quality People Magazines. But, bottom line is that cavities are filled (hurrah!), it didn't cost me hardly anything, and I no longer fear that my teeth are going to fall out from neglect.

Tonight is supper club (Moody's Burgers with the best beer garden ever!) and then tomorrow Todd and I hit the road to head to Lake of the Ozarks to visit his parents at their lakehouse and do some boating and whatnot. It's only for two days, but I'll suck the marrow out of those 48 hours as needed.

Why does this crack me up so much?
So lol-cats tend to be kind of lame, and this is kind of lame too, but I seriously crack up every single time I see this picture. I was trying to figure out what it is, and I think it's the walrus tongue and the walrus expression and the absurdity of it all.

Seriously, every single time I see it, I start laughing.

Betting and Racing
So, I've got two more days till work starts. It's kind of surreal, but as Sarah described in her blog, the first week should be pretty laid back what with meetings and setting up rooms and stuff and it's only three days long! And then next week is only four days long!

This past Saturday I accompanied Todd to his company's party at the horse races. I'd never been and I found it amazingly large with manicured lawns and a huge track. I also learned that jockeys are extraordinarily tiny: besides being of smaller stature they are slender as young beanstalks. We went to look at the horses closeup along with the jockeys and I gawked. Besides the free food, cocktails, and guidebooks, the company also allotted each couple with $20 to gamble. That was good because girlfriend is too cheap to be betting her own money, and good thing too since we ended up losing about $10 of those dollars on $2 bets (and coming out $10 ahead since we got the rest in cash). We did end up winning a couple of times and once we won 10 cents. 10 cents! Others we talked to came out with $40 in winnings and then we talked to someone who had lost $400 of their own money.

The rest of the weekend was fun with a surprise birthday party on Friday night, a Life and Times show on Saturday night, and then the Bucktown Arts Festival on Sunday with a trip to the best bar in the world, The Map Room, afterward. The weather was amazing all weekend, especially after the monsoons that descended this past week.

And that's all I've got!

Fatty!
Neatorama posted about the Michelin Baby Syndrome.
The blog also links to an article about the syndrome of which I was too lazy to muddle, but you can find it here.
The picture came from here originally.

During the closing of a conversation with my mom today:

If you're bored, remember that you should keep calling your parents.

That was so awesome, I had to blog it (with my mom's permission, of course).

Wow.
David Simon, writer of Homicide, the man behind the eponymous tv series, also "The Wire" is a hero of mine, and apparently he's very salty.

There's an interview of Simon by Nick Hornby (TWO of my favorite authors in one enclosed piece) in The Believer Magazine, and here's the first part.

NICK HORNBY: Every time I think, Man, I’d love to write for The Wire, I quickly realize that I wouldn’t know my True dats from my narcos. Did you know all that before you started? Do you get input from those who might be more familiar with the idiom?

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

I found this from this link. And I've never heard of The Believer, but I see that it's a branch of McSweeneys. Now girlfriend needs a subscription (gift idea for those who don't know what to do!)

The Life of Leisure
So it appears that the temping gig that I was set up for to start today fell through. To be specific, the contact person for the company never returned my temping guy's calls, according to him. I found that out yesterday afternoon. The plan now is to go for a week and a half long gig in the week before I start my regular job again.

So my vacation is extended again, which makes me half happy (more free time!) and half sad (dipping into money in the bank that I thought I could leave alone). My last paycheck of deferred pay from my regular job comes Friday: dunh dunh DUNH. Basically, I'm trying not to spend money that I don't need to in the meantime, which means LOTS of reading of books from the library, playing on the Internets, lolling in front of bad TV, and working out.

Oh, and there's ever standing talk of a Chicago Teachers Union strike in case the next contract doesn't get settled. If there's a strike that means no pay for those days, so...yeah, got to be conservative with the monies. [Actually, I'm pretty confident that they'll work it out, since the other unions--like the ones for the janitors, custodians, food service workers--settled with the Board of Education earlier this week. And I doubt that Mayor Daley wants all of these kids running around unoccupied and the bad rap the city might receive when Chicago is vying to be an Olympic host]. We'll see how it turns out.

I just checked out a book from the library called An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned But Probably Didn't. This is important, because while a lot of things were passed onto to me throughout my education, the amount that has actually *stuck* with me is pretty pathetic. I'm going to try to post a new fact that I've learned every day while I have this book, so get ready, people. Because daytime TV is definitely not keeping me sharp.

Speaking of books, we had another book club meeting last night and it was a funny one since NONE of us who attended had read the book (or even looked at a copy). Only four of us attended, and we were all ones who work in the schools and have been home all day. I guess we couldn't find it in us to track down the book, but it was still a good time.

I Have Never Seen So Many Hot Dogs
So, on Saturday Todd and I decided to tag along with Rich when he went on the first official Hot Dog Crawl that was organized by the guy who owns Sick Room Records (which sponsors, or whatever record labels do, Bear Claw). The guy, Ryan, decided that it would be fun to visit hot dog places all around the city and pay homage to the Chicago hot dog by eating a hot dog at each place. He planned an itinerary, he rented a 15-passenger van, he named a starting point and it was all set.

I wanted to go because watching people perform acts of gluttony for kicks cracks me up. Plus, it was a fun little tour of various points of the city since Ryan planned it so each part of the city represented. And this is not something someone sees every day.

We arrived at Hot Doug's at 10:20 (10 minutes before opening time), got into the line that had already formed and met up with the rest of the group. Thus began our day, and it ended around 7pm after visiting nine other places. Curious about the places we stopped by? Here's the list:

1. Hot Doug's: Really, the best. I temporarily departed from the SBD to have a sausage here. Don't worry, I'm back on the wagon.
2. Super Dawg: Todd and I had visited this place before and while it was kitschy with the giant male and female sausages on the roof, it's kind of expensive. Others in the group really seemed to like the hot dogs, though.
3. Wolfies: This place had a giant fork spearing a hot dog outside. You can't miss it.
4. Hueys: This was in Andersonville. I actually ran into Jenny on the street while we were at this stop. Small world, indeed.
5. Byron's: This was a small stand in Irving Park. It was also where I got pooped on by birds TWICE. I couldn't see it since both shots were on my back, but Todd helped me clean it up and since I couldn't see it, I didn't get too caught up in it. Plus, it's supposed to be lucky, right? I did have crusted bird poop on me the rest of the day, though.
6. Weiner Circle: This is a popular place in Lincoln Park where drunken people and a cranky staff come together late in the evening to yell at eachother. There was only mild yelling on this visit since it was about 4pm. Rich picked up someone else's hot dog, though, and was chastised for being rude. People seemed to really like these hot dogs.
7. Jim's Original Hot Dog Stand: This is a huge, cheap stand and I think it was the lone southside representation, close to Univ. of IL-Chicago. There was a another huge hot dog stand right next door, but I think that Jim's was there first. It should be noted that Gold Coast Dogs was supposed to be number seven, but we wandered up and down Clark to realize that the shop that the Internet said was around no longer existed.
8. Duk's: I don't know where this falls in terms of geographic location, but it had character. And by "character," I mean scary painted Donald Ducks on the wall, hot and dark quarters, and ladies working who work hard for their money. Rich said that the hot dogs tasted like they were cooked in dishwater which seriously still makes me want to vomit just a little.
9. Jimmy's Red Hots: This was on the West side of the city. This place also had a lot of "character." The hot dogs and fries were thrown into a big mass of waxed paper. Others in the group reported that the fries offered here are some of the best.
10. Sam's Red Hots: This tiny shack is very close to Todd's place and we have passed by countless times. Apparently, it's a neighborhood favorite. The lady who worked the counter was really nice ("Too bad you didn't come here first because then you didn't need to go to the other places"). Reports on the dogs were so-so.

It should be noted that while others skipped stops or shared dogs, Rich and Ryan had a hot dog at every single stop. They looked like they were struggling a little at stop number 10. I think that Rich stretched out his stomach from all this, though, because he ate ice cream later that evening and then polished off an entire french toast meal at the Bongo Room the next day.

Interestingly, one of the places was serving their food in Burger King bags. This was the same place where this dude with a blue tooth headset was manning a whole store of bootleg dvds on the counter of the place.

The entire trip was a lot of fun, mainly because the other people on the crawl (a slightly changing group of about 8-15) were hilarious and down for a good time. I also want to note that my Chicago screen print poster hero, Jay Ryan, was there for the first three stops and he was super nice and gracious even when I gushed to him about how I have plastered my apartment walls with his works. So, I got to meet one of my Chicago idols. I even heard that he's going to design a t-shirt for next year's crawl.

So, I don't want to be near hot dogs anytime soon, but it was worth it.

I'm Baaack
Briefly, I just got back into Chicago after another uneventful 12 hour drive. This time I listened to this really awful audio book of the crime novel genre. It was terrible, but I was in no room to choose since radio choices were lacking so I faithfully listened to 12 of 14 hours of this crap.

But I had to blog one of the actual lines from the book before I forget. I heard it, and my eyes started rolling uncontrollably so much that the car may have swerved on Rte. 90 East. Are you ready for it? I may paraphrase here, but this is 98% it:

She was like Miss Marple, except with a great set of breasts.

I'm so not even kidding you.

Um, I am stoopid sometimes
Correction:

Happy birthday TODAY, Annie!

Birthdays!

Happy Birthday yesterday, Dad!

Happy Birthday today, Annie!

Visitin'
I road tripped yesterday and it was a fun, little package of a day. First, I drove a couple of hours to the rolling green hills of Charlottesville to visit Madeline. Madeline, having finished up her residency at UVA, is getting ready to pack up and move herself to Chapel Hill. It was great to see her and we spent a couple of hours catching up in person and munching on pumpkin seeds. I also learned a lesson about Yahoo Maps: don't trust them completely. Madeline owns a little townhouse in a relatively new development and while Yahoo Maps purported to recognizing the address, they left out a few relevant details in terms of getting there.

Then I climbed back into my wee Civic and zoomed along 64 to Richmond to visit Emily. Emily is my old roommate, a compadre from my college job at Baskin Robbins (the 3rd busiest in the nation, people!), and one of my dearest and most erstwhile friends. I hadn't seen her in over two and half years and we picked up as if we hadn't seen each other for a few minutes. Except we had a lot more to catch up on. She and her husband bought the sweetest little fixer upper in Richmond's Southside, and from the look of their almost finished kitchen and their totally finished pantry, by the time they get done with everything I'm totally packing my bags and moving in. She even started a little vegetable garden in the backyard complete with her own baby pumpkins and fledgling green peppers. It was great to re-connect and I left feeling sated and with mental resolutions to stay in more regular touch.

I've also managed to see DC-area friends too and it's been wonderful. Dinner and a DC-monuments walk with Annie, brunch with Des and Bryan, and dinner with Anne and Nate (who I finally met, and it every bit as great as I've heard).

I also climbed on the scale at Em's house after eating a big salad for lunch and it read a number down three and half pounds since last Wednesday! Hooray! I needed that reinforcement since I was tempted many times this past week (especially walking into Lost Dog Cafe with Anne and managing not to grab one of their fresh baked pizzas or sandwiches and cramming it into my gaping maw).

The Little Brother Can Cook
So, my baby brother cooked tonight and he made lamb chops served along side a red pepper sauce as well as a fresh mint sauce. In addition, he served fresh stuffed tomatoes overflowing with parmesan cheese and garlic. It was pretty awesome. So good in fact, that it warrants its own blogpost.

This cracks me up
Todd wrote me this today describing a crazy guy that he and his friends met when he ate at a neighborhood place we'd always passed by:

Hey! Oh man, what a story. The crazy dude, whose name is king david, walked up to us saying "I'm gonna go get my .38 and kill all those motherfuckers! Some guy hit my car and i told them (pointing to police station) and they do nothing! Man, it was a hummer, just crashed into me then took off!" So we told him that it was a bad idea to kill all of them with his .38, and he was easily convinced, because jesus wouldn"t do it either. Luckily, all he really needed to get was a "couple of bucks" for the bus so Mark gave him about a buck in change and he was our best friend for a couple minutes before he took off. Here are some things he has on the hopper:

- He can get us guns and knives if we need them.
- He's the head of the latin kings, and if we need any protection, we just need to ask him.
- He's going to start up a new restaurant on Milwaukee and Kedzie that is cheaper than Pancho.
- He can hook our car up with hydraulics if we want
- He can build condos.
- He's going to start up a football team, and on the back of the helmet will be a big JC for Jesus Christ.
- His mom named him King David.

Then he took off, just after asking us again if he should kill them all, and saying "oh yeah, I shouldn't, because of Jesus. Thanks guys!" It was a pretty weird scene, with the backdrop of those neon palm trees outside Pancho and all.