Thanksgiving
Here's the Rice family's cat barn on their property somewhere near Lansing, Michigan. (home of Fluffy, Cuddles Jr., Squish, Wiblet the lesser, and Cuddles Sr.)
Borrowed Uncle: So what do they eat for Thanksgiving dinner in California? Tofu?
Company: (hahaha)
Me: Actually...yah.
Company: (embarrassed silence)
My sister just
had to pick this year to go vegan.
Thanksgiving was grand and I got to see
The Twelfth Night performed by an all-male troupe from Russia before we headed east to land o' Sufjan. The Shakespeare racket in this town is intense. They have an insanely ritzy theatre modeled on the Globe out at Navy Pier, though the people in the front get to sit down, and sadly refrain from snarfing hazelnuts or heckling the actors.
I didn't manage to learn how to play Euchre by the end of the tournament, but I tried my damndest. I just don't get along with card games. Anyone who's seen the stash of aces of hearts in my desk drawers knows that. Where did I find all of those? I don't even know. They just turn up.
Labels: travel
It's a magical world out there
If you think life isn't exciting then you CLEARLY haven't been to the
science surplus store and found such treasures as a rubber chicken small enough that you could fit six of them up your nose.
Thanksgiving's biting at our heels so it's time to drag some friends kicking and screaming to the ice rink under the Bean (I am not going to let up about this until it happens. I swear to gawd.) and stare at the Marshall Fields windows.
And Christmas cards. I am too tickled by an excuse to do calligraphy.
In conclusion: I have to run to a movie.
Labels: Chicago
Now where am I going to keep the damn thing?
I figured I should look over the lease since I've been living here for a month and all. Now I think I have a crush on it.
Rules and Regulations
4. Carriages, velocipedes, bicycles, sleds and the like shall not be allowed in the lobbies, public halls, passageways, courts or elevators of the Building and are to be stored only in places designated for their storage by the lessor.
I guess the surrey will have to stay out in the yard from now on.
Boots away!
I really don't know why everyone's asking but yes, yes, I got a pair.
They aren't red, and strangely, lack kitten heels. But I can assure you that those are my actual feet in there.
And no, I'm not gonna ride a tauntaun.
Stormy Weather
I'm sitting in my living room with only the dimmest lamps on, watching the front windows as if they were a TV. I wouldn't know how to explain to a local why it's thrilling to me just to watch the purple panes of sky framed by the nearly-bare tree branches as the remaining leaves pulse in the whispering rain. Could someone from the actual world understand the beauty of the whole sky strobing with lightning, then tearing itself apart in a crash of thunder, and best of all, that magic moment of anticipation in between?
I think only a Californian could fully appreciate it. Only someone trapped in that odd, dusty frontier where everyone forgets the outside world, turning inward to focus on their own glamour, real or illusory. If there were seasons there as there are here, would they remember that they are on earth, after all? How claustrophobic to think that the world out there never changes, but gets staler by the year until the tension's built up, and a few times in a generation, an earthquake wipes their slate clean.
Better to have rain to perform that function right. Better to crunch through the piles of yellow leaves. I could continue writing like a deranged Robert Frost but I'll stop now with the thought that whether or not a person's been told by too many writing professors that the world is a text, people are most definitely products of their environments, and I feel so much better off now that I'm here.
Labels: Chicago, memoir
It is time.
Introducing...my new flat!
I know a few people requested photos a long time ago, but I had to take the necessary time to paint, install curtains, buy/build some furniture and cozies, and then forget about photos entirely for about a week and a half. So, here they are. Relish the old-fashioned keyhole-peepin' fixtures, the overwhelming opulence, and people making vain attempts to look spooky on Halloween. (Rorshach the cat has sadly moved to a farm as of yesterday.) And come visit. Besides the sprawling abundance you see here (I'm sorry, what's the strange appliance in the kitchen? My god, is that a...dishwasher?!) we also have a finished basement (that's where the zombie lives) and enough bedding to basically fill it.
Fireside slumber party, anybody? (No way Leah don't even tell me you have a fireplace, too).
