Wedding Update

Less than a month now. Woohoo! I am extremely sick of the question, "How's the wedding going?" I understand that people (women) are supposed to ask that, and I guess some of them might even be interested in some kind of answer, but I can never think of anything to say except, "Still getting married." Other than the fact that half of my desk at home is covered with wedding-related crap (went on a massive shopping trip yesterday for flower girl baskets, ring pillow, and similar things which will be landfilled shortly after the ceremony...maybe I can give them to someone else to use?) there really aren't any wedding things "going." It's basically all set.

One of those web sites that I waste my time with at work says that in the month leading up to the ceremony you're supposed to schedule a massage or spa day for yourself once a week, to help relieve stress. That means either a) that's just a scam-ish way for women to get more massages or b) other brides have a seriously worse time of this than I'm having. Other than the shopping trip, all I've done this week is put together the playlist for the reception (listening to it now...I'm impressed with myself.) I would like to be the only bride this year to play Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, Beirut, Andrew Bird, and Gogol Bordello. Yes, I am being pretentious. But it's a really great list, and perhaps the only thing about the wedding (except of course the fantasic groom and the actual date) that I actually like. Oh, and the cake. I best get a piece of that cake.

Things that Are/Are Not Fun

Things that are fun:
Making chili
Listening to Czech Tag Radio on last.fm
Plotting girls' night out

Things that are not fun:
Spending 3 hours last night at a mediocre Italian restaurant in Lincolnwood that Todd correctly likened to a nursing home, feeling self-conscious about my shoes
Watching "fantasy wedding" shows
Thinking about having to meet the CEO of our company tomorrow

Sorry for the delay...

I know, I haven't posted anything in weeks. Between work, wedding, 826, freelancing, and attempting to have a social life, things have been a bit busy. I've become utterly obsessed with podcasts, primarily Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, The Moth, and Grammar Girl. Got any favorites? Comment and let me know.

Advice Update

So, lots of people noticed the similarities between the Ask Amy and Dear Prudence columns that I posted about before. Some people thought it meant they were both fakes, and some people thought it was the same guy asking two different people to try and get two different answers. No one seemed to think that there was anything more nefarious going on, including Prudie herself:

"It is weird -- we've had duplicates before, but never the same question from the other party."

That was her answer to my email asking about the similarities. So apparently it's a non-issue. Damn. And I wanted to be in on some kind of scandal. Ah well. Maybe next time!

Compare and Contrast

Compare this Dear Prudence column from about a month ago with today's Ask Amy column. My question is, are these really two halves of the same couple asking difference advice columnists for their take? Is it one person doing a sociological experiment? ("What if a man asks this? What if a woman asks?") Or is this another incidence of advice-columnist question-poaching?

I'll e-mail Prudie and Amy and see what they have to say.

Ben Lee Mocks My Morning Commute

This morning, while pulling around the curve before Addison, Ben Lee sings to me, "The winter is long in the city, and that's the way I like it."

Shut up Ben Lee. And you too, stupid iPod, for shuffling me that song and making me notice that line when it just snowed for about the 2349187th time this year. I want to rail against the gods. But I will content myself with railing against Ben Lee. More manageable target.

Clarity

It's a really worthwhile thing, if you've never done it, to spend some time looking back, given the benefit of time and space, at where you came from and what you've been through. I spend a lot of time thinking in general, but I spend almost all of it thinking of the future. But I'm finding, while preparing for a massive future full of changes and responsibilities coming on pretty fast now, that it's helping me to think about the past. To figure out how and why it all happened. What parts of it I made happen. What parts of it happened to me. How I can make the good things happen again. How I can make sure the bad shit never happens again.

Eww

First of all, this is disgusting. (That is to say, don't read it if the idea of a mist of hog brains seeping in through your eyes disturbs you.)

Second, it contains one of the greatest quotes I've ever read in a newspaper with a decent reputation: "Let's stop harvesting brains."

Don't Ask How I Found This

But it's fantastic that this exists.

Cursed

The first wedding venue we were going to use is under construction, which was supposed to be done in December 2007 but got delayed until maybe August 2008.

The second venue just closed down.

Two people who were on the original guest list have died.

Wedding-related details have caused the only fight I've ever had with my in-laws and the only adult fight I've had with my mother.

I am trying really hard to have a good sense of humor about all this. But seriously, all we want to do is get married. Why does it have to be so difficult?

Blast from the Past

I grew up not far from lovely Downers Grove (although Omega is actually a small chain, and there are other locations in the Chicagoland area where you can obtain skillets, patty melts, and other grease-bomb atrocities served by people who some might describe as the illiterate cousins of Greek gangsters), and my friends and I were definitely some of the troublemaking youngsters that, at 1 in the morning, would in fact order the Surprise Zombie (fifth one down as of right now). I'm impressed that the damn thing is still around, given that it's absolutely awful and no one in their right mind would ever want to encounter it more than once in a lifetime.

Race Relations

At Metropolis this morning, I listened in on the conversation of three women: an older African American woman, a middle-aged white woman, and a young girl, maybe 12, who was of mixed ethnicity. At a guess, I would have said black, white, and Asian, but who knows? Anyway, here's what was going down.

The middle-aged white woman was, I believe, the girl's mom. The older lady was an acquaintance of theirs. The girl, for a school report (coinciding with MLK Jr. Day), was to compare and constrast the pre- and post-civil rights era. She was supposed to be interviewing the older lady (who had been a Chicago Public Schools teacher during that time) about how housing and education had been affected by the civil rights struggle.

What really happened was this: the lady started talking about something, for example, school segregation. The girl started writing what the lady said. The mom interrupted the lady to ask a more in-depth question (always phrasing it as if the girl was asking it, for example, "Why don't you ask her about busing?"). The lady started to answer that. The mom and the lady would start arguing (well, differing in opinions, but seeing as the lady was a black lady who's lived through the civil rights movement, and the mom was a white lady who had probably been born toward the tail end of said movement, I think we can agree on whose opinion we should probably be listening to here). The girl would stop writing. Then they'd get back on track. Rinse, repeat.

What the lady had to say was pretty interesting (for example, when she was in school, the bus would come to the white kids' houses to pick them up, then drop them off at school, and then the bus would come back and make one stop in the black kids' neighborhood, and they'd all have to go down to the corner and wait). But the mom seemed to think that because she had a mixed-race daughter (and thus, presumably, a husband or partner of a different race, although could be the kid was adopted) that she had some very important points to make about the history of civil rights in this country. The point of the whole exercise, of course, was to talk to someone who had been there and lived through it. But when the lady would say something that contradicted the notions that the mom had (for example, the lady said that the gangs didn't have a lot of sway in her South Side neighborhood back then), the mom said, no, the gangs were very powerful, they helped keep the riots under control in your neighborhood, which is why it didn't get as bad as on the West Side. The lady allowed, for sake of politeness, that maybe the gangs were all working behind the scenes. But really, wouldn't you just take the word of the person who was, I dunno, actually there? And didn't just see it in a documentary on WTTW?

Seriously, I wonder how many of the problems in our country, specifically surrounding race, would be solved if both sides would put aside what they think they already know and learn to actually listen to what the other was saying.

Oww...

This made my brain hurt. Have fun trying to untangle what they're talking about and what it means for reality as you know it.

The Announcer

No matter when I leave for work, I always get stuck on the Announcer's morning Red Line run. This is the train operator who feels it necessary to inform his passengers, at length and sometimes in utterly nonsensical terms, about everything they may need to know about the train's function, the stop, the connections, the weather, safety tips, what-have-you. The Announcer is probably a cousin to the Blessed Train operator.

Some general Announcer announcements include telling us exactly how long we will be standing at a station due to some other delay ("one and a half minutes") to problems with a particular car ("The door closest to the cab in Car 2467 will not open. Please do not stand in front of that door.") to connection times ("Brown Line elevated Loop train will be arriving on the outside track in 10 seconds."). During a run, he will at least once remind you to check for all of your belongings before exiting the train. He occasionally will veer off into Burroughs-like cut-ups, saying things like, "This train will run express to Sheridan. Passengers. Good morning. This is a delayed Red Line train. Thank you. We had door troubles at Thorndale. Your attention." Ending speeches with "Your attention" seems to be a particular verbal tic of his.

But his moment of glory occurs as we pull into Lake each morning.

As soon as we leave Grand, he begins his patter. It takes that long to get it all out. He informs us first that "Lake is next." Perfectly reasonable, although the automated guy tells us the same. Then he elaborates: "Transfer here for city, state, and county government buildings. Also connect to regional transit, Metra Electric and South Shore rail lines. Blue Line passengers, passengers connecting to the Forest Park/O'Hare Blue Line, we want you to transfer at Jackson. Washington is closed. We will not stop at Washington. Forest Park/O'Hare Blue Line riders, please transfer at Jackson."

He can talk about Washington being closed for a good 4, 5 hours, I bet. Every morning. Although it's a commuter train, full of people who ride the same route every day. And Washington's been closed for a good year, year and a half now. Same deal with the government buildings. If you're going to a government building at 7:30 in the morning, it's a safe bet you work there. You probably know where it's at. But just in case, the Announcer is there to let you know.

Thing is, he's got a very rich, lovely voice. Probably could have been in radio. And I suppose I prefer an overinformative CTA employee to the usual garbled, "Thank you for your patience." (Or, as I heard once, "Thank you for your inconvenience.") I just wish he'd come up with some new lines.

A sign?

Lately (by which I mean: all my life, and especially since I graduated college and entered the world of cubicles, and also just since Tuesday, when a friend of mine made a random comment about someone else over lunch that I took to heart, and also since Wednesday evening, when Todd made an offhanded comment meant as a compliment that I took in a totally different light) I have been trying to figure out what I can do to make my life feel a little bit more meaningful, specifically in the creative realm. I haven't actually written in a really long time. The idea of trying to do that again is terrifying.

But this morning, while reading a blog that I enjoy, comes this line from an interview:

You know better than anyone what stories you have to tell, Claire.

The girl doing the interview is being spoken to here, and her name happens to be Claire, so I realize that this is not the interviewee (who I've never heard of before) speaking directly to me. But sometimes, you should just accept signs as you see them.

Although later, there is this:

I think you're fucked, Claire.

Nice.