What a sight!

Kosh and I were walking around downtown yesterday evening, and decided to take advantage of one of the free things to do in Chicago: checking out the series of Chinese sculptures recently installed at Millennium Park.

This is the sight that greeted us. ... this piece is supposed to symbolise greed... well, what with the overly-endowed sow, and the glitzy gold, and bright red... it certainly shouts EXCESS to me!

You can see more photos of this and the other sculptures in my flickr photostream.

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We're going to be housebound for a few days...

... because it's going to be C.O.L.D.


(screenshot from the National Weather Service)

Chicago is buckling down for a blizzard that's expected to hit during the evening and last through the night. It's only going to dump 2 - 4 inches of snow, which by itself wouldn't be too bad, except that the snow is of the light powdery kind... pair that up with 30 mph winds, then the fun starts - WHITEOUT! This might not impact me too much, since we don't have wide open spaces here in the city itself, but based on how things went the last time something like this happened, I think we'll just not go out unless utterly necessary.

... especially when on the heels of this blizzard comes mega-cold temperatures. Look at the forecast above. Thursday we're expected to have a HIGH of 2F (-17C) , Friday of 5F (-15C). That's not factoring in the wind chill. No. I ain't going out for nothing!! We'll make do with bread and water if we have to, I ain't going out no way no how!

Not 'till Saturday, anyway. By then, it'll be starting to warm up.

You know it's sad when you consider temperatures barely hitting 20F (-6C) as "warming up".

a little aside: back when we moved to Chicago in '06, I was cautioned by many people that the winters here were brutal. Winter '06/'07 was fine, there was the one week of real cold. Same with the following winter - nothing too bad, maybe a week or so of nasty weather. So I was thinking, wow, if this is what y'all call brutal, well, I suppose I can handle it! Yeahhhh..... then came this winter of '08/'09. Okay, okay, *now* I've experienced a real Chicago winter! Brutal? Yeah, that word fits! :p

... on another aside: Solid details are difficult to find, but it seems that today is (Inter-)National De-lurking Day! Whether this happens on January 12th every year, or on the 2nd Monday in January, or requires knowledge of the phase of the moon, I have no idea. In addition, it might also be (Inter-)National De-lurking Week. Who knows. What's important is, this frees you from all that's holding you back from commenting!

So please, do drop by and say "Hey", k?

C'mon, you know you want to! :)

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does your car freeze on the inside?

Okay so technically winter doesn't start till 22nd December.

But if it's not yet winter, explain why it's been snowing steadily all day today?

If it's not yet winter, explain why it was so cold yesterday that ice formed on the inside of the car?

Yeah, this is the picture I snapped yesterday while waiting for the poor car to warm up in the sub-zero (Celcius) temperature. All that "fog" is ice, on the inside.

The lines you see were made by me trying in vain to use the ice scrapers: they didn't do diddly.

So, ummm, does your car get ice on the inside too?

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, and checking out my other blog: a malaysian abroad

while we were in line at the grocery store the other day ...

... this woman comes up to the line and asks "You got 15 dollars?"

I look at Kosh, Kosh looks at me, both of us wondering if this is for real.
This goes beyond panhandling!

"Okay, how about 10 dollars? That's a 5 dollar savings, not bad!"

Ummm... yeaahhhh....

... mashed potato pizza, or how I can now create a new blogroll ...

For the longest time I've wanted to have a separate blogroll for "people I know / have met" but also for the longest time all I'd have on that list were fewer than 5 people, most of them being my schoolmates whom I've known since, well, school, who got bit by the blogging bug within the past 2 years or so.

But last night, that all changed.

I attended Davecago!

... and I managed to get Kosh to come along too!

The plan was to get there at 5pm, but we ran a little late, and were of course subject to the vagaries of the public transport system, arriving right at 5:30pm instead, and everyone was already there (well, one latecomer after us, but still)..

... now, I tend to exhibit the social properties of wallpaper than that of a butterfly, so arriving next-to-last made the meeting-new-people aspect of the gathering a bit daunting, especially since everyone else seemed to know each other. Thankfully in total we were about 14, so while daunting, it certainly wasn't overwhelming! :)

A few came up and greeted us immediately - Gary and RW, if I remember correctly - that was nice :) And of course Dave, who equipped us with our tags, and a deck of cards each; we also got to choose flair (see Office Space if you don't know what this is) for the lanyards, cool! (I was very amused, Kosh chose meditative dave, while I chose try evil, LoL!).

You can see them here, taking their place among the other "hanging stuff" - in case you were wondering, that thing that looks like a leather stomach is a boda bladder thingy, a souvenir from the AXSigma Barndance of '94. I have a similar (less dusty) one somewhere in my boxes in Malaysia.

... looking for the tangent, and sliding back down, back to the topic ... where were we? Ah yes, meeting people: I immediately recognised Kevin, and made it a point to greet him, and so got to meet his wife, but our circles didn't overlap much after that. Of the others present, there were one or two who seemed slightly familiar, but they most probably were channeling people I know rather than me actually recognising them, because, well, as far as I know I haven't blogrolled too many Chicago bloggers. One totally stole all our hearts, tho, as Radioactive Girl doled out bags of some radioactively delicious brownies to everyone present, yummy yum yum!

Who else was there? Jen, Mocha Momma, Leah, Mrs RW, Robin, and professional lurker Suzanne. (will be adding to / making a new blogroll... soon ... after the template revamp!!)

We started at Piece Pizza, where one of their toppings offered is actually mashed potatoes. On pizza. And believe it or not, it was actually quite good ("so says the carb fiend," chortles Kosh). The white pizza was like liquid garlic, mmMMmmmMMmmmm! After a short stop at the ice cream place across the street, we were led to Violethour: and being led certainly was required - in the spirit (haha) of the Prohibition era, its entrance is just a nondescript door in what looks like a boarded-up place; upon entering, there are these heavy velvet drapes and dim lighting, all pointing towards a pricey and pretentious establishment - wasn't too far off the mark - well at least we know it's there and we can say we've been there :) After that, we established ourselves at Salud and proceeded to down a few before Kosh and I excused ourselves - it was only 10pm but it felt really late - then again, with the outing starting at 5-ish, that was about 5 hours of socialising, no wonder we were tired!!

I'll post or point you to other bloggers' write-ups of the night. We brought a camera but the battery died after two pix, LoL, hence the attempt to include related-yet-not-of-the-event-itself images :) Like this one: me once we got back.


Keen eyes will notice I've got Davewear on :) And that I'm still clinging valiantly to shreds of anonymity by not posting full frontals / immediately recognisable pix of me. *grin!*

Blogger write-ups (will update until about a week from now):

• Mashed Potato Pizza, Velvet Drapes & Absinthe, Plus A Professional Lurker Revealed (RW) (you can see me in one corner of a pic)


• Nerdurday... or How I spent my Saturday (Leah)


• Bullet Sunday 93, Live from Chicago (Dave)


• Bloggers, Beers, Brownies (Mocha Momma)


• Bogging Down (Robin) (just a little blurb at the end)


• Radioactive Brownies (or something) (Radioactive Girl aka Tori)


• R.I.F. (Jen)


• Get Down Tonight ... (Kevin)


• Piece Pizza & Davecago3 & The Velvet Hour (Gary)

walkability

... so Kosh and I have been trying to be good about increasing the level of our physical activity.

Among other things, we've been walking around the neighbourhood a lot, either in the evenings for a post-dinner walk (anywhere between 10 - 40 mins, depending on our route), or sometime during the day for errands, or for "earning" breakfast :)

Dropping by Elisette's today, found some support for our efforts: "my" neighbourhood has a Walk Score rating of 85. Explore this site, it's got lots of interesting stuff about this whole concept of *gasp!* walking!! I've gotta say, I really do like this little neck o' the woods where we live - lots of things nearby, and an "el" station also nearby for trips I need to make elsewhere.

Here's the "reward" from one of our "breakfast walks":

Venue: Hashbrown's @ S Halsted & W Maxwell

Their specialty is hashbrowns made from sweet potatoes: them yams are not so much hashed as vermicellied, then sauteed; it's a side that accompanies almost every dish. My verdict? "Meh." You've got to try that at least once, but me, not a fan. Too sweet :p

So this most recent visit, Kosh and I both opted to pay the extra (not stated on the menu!! FAIL!) to sub in some of their other hash options.


(above) Kosh had the Killer Hashbrowns (idaho potatoes, cheddar cheese , onions & sour cream topped with crushed corn flakes baked 'til bubbly)

(below) I had the Combo Hashbrowns (idaho & sweet potatoes sauteed with sliced garlic and topped with Romano cheese)



You may note I didn't bother including the egg aspect of the meal: they paled in comparison to the hash, LMAO!

What you see are probably half the amount of hash that arrived - had to make it a point to snap pix before we snarfed it all down our gullets :) :)

[in the end we were good, we still took back some of each of our hash and omelet, made for a good breakfast the following day)

So, in case you hadn't figured why I'm writing about this: both hashes were incredibly yummy. The killer was essentially a potatoes au gratin, while the combo diluted the sweetness of the sweet taters PLUS it had garlic yummy yum yum!!

I certainly know what to *sub* next time I go there, LoL!

a tongue tale

A week ago, running last minute errands before heading off for the weekend getaway, I hopped into the local "L" station for a quick trip downtown. Well, I hopped into the carriage, and almost backpedaled outta there... it was so... "aromatic" ...

There was someone who had
a. really really really bad body odor
or
b. drenched himself in axe body spray
or
c. drenched himself in axe body spray to cover-up really really really bad body odor

With my eyes threatening to start watering, and my nose buckling under the abuse, I start breathing through my mouth instead.

Then... I got this really weird taste in my mouth ... and all I could think of was that the molecules bringing the offensive smell to my nose were now alighting on my tongue and activating the taste buds there... ugh!!

on another note... here's a funny I found a while back, especially for those sudoku-impaired folks :-)

help!

... so much for winter being gone. It's in its death throes, certainly, but not gone. The weather turned crappy yesterday, lots of rain with a chance of snow mixed-in, blah! And today, it's only 37F. At least it's sunny.


as if that wasn't bad enough, the *^#@^&%#(&&^ apartment we live in, the administration is so crap.... so they send out a notice to everyone about impending maintenance work that will involve lots of jackhammering and noise, starting tomorrow.

Which is NICE, you say?

But they say NOTHING about work that's going on in the APARTMENT ABOVE ME, today, starting from 8:30am! Sounds like some sort of heavy-duty drilling going on.

Non-stop.

If nothing else at least Kosh happened to call & wake/drag me out of bed already before it started, otherwise I'd have been even MORE pissed off to be woken up by this din.

I've put up with it for an hour, but not for very much longer can I stand it.

Y'know, if the weather were normal outside, I wouldn't hesitate to grab a blanket and a book, and just go outside and read for an hour or three.

But like I said, it's friggin cold out.

So what to do???

Helllpppp!!!!

(going to shower, take some advil, and by that time perhaps I'll have an idea of where to go / what to do to escape!)

(note - took me another hour to play around with inserting the photos [don't ask!], and the noises seem to have stopped a minute ago - phew!)

(note #2 - it's 12:30 n ... and while the major drilling has stopped, they are now hammering like there's no tomorrow. aarrrggghhhhh! I escaped for an hour by going to the gym, btw. But I'm going to go nuts really soon...)

earthquake?

So I'm in the laundry room and the tv is on, and they are talking about an earthquake that rocked Chicago? wtf? So I looked it up online - yeaaah, well an aftershock rattled some skyscrapers here, at like 4am - I was fast asleep, LoL!

The main event was in Central Illinois.

Some pix here.

A news article here.

Okay, gotta go transfer clothes from washers to dryers... ciao!

... putting the onus on... the *answering machine*??!!

So I get back from pottery class to see the answering machine light flashing - ooh, two new messages, wonder who they might be.... turns out they were BOTH from debt collection agencies (they use a more euphemistic term, I forget what..).

On this blog, I refer to my hubby as Kosh Naranek, which is of course a pseudonym. Let's just say that in real life, "Naranek" corresponds to a relatively common family name: just look at its distribution in the graph below!

(image taken from HERE, previously featured in this post)

When we first moved to Chicago, we'd get the occasional call from a human debt collector, looking for either a wrong Kosh Naranek (not the same Social Security #, race, etc), or looking for "K. Naranek", i.e. "Ken", "Kevin", etc etc. Rather annoying, but at least with a person on the line you can just say "Look, this ain't the person you're looking for. Move along, move along."

But now, it looks like these debt collection agencies have switched to automated voice recordings, which put the onus not just on us innocent non-owing folk, but on our answering machines!!

Here's how the message goes, more or less:

"Hello, I am calling for [insert new voice] Kal-El Naranek [end new voice]*.

If you are NOT [insert new voice] Kal-El Naranek [end new voice] please hang up now.

By allowing this message to continue, you are acknowledging that you ARE [insert new voice] Kal-El Naranek [end new voice].

There will be a 3-second pause for you to hang up if this is not the case.

[3-second pause].

[insert new voice] Kal-El Naranek [end new voice], please contact Ms Whoever immediately at the Blah Blah Debt Collection Agency to discuss an important business matter. Please call 1-888-EAT-SHIT extension 666. Thank you.

*W*T*F*? Are they willfully forgetting the existence of answering machines??? Because no thanks to this ridiculous "if the message plays all the way then we've got him/her!!" stance, our phone # is now supposedly the place to locate THREE different in-debt Naraneks, all of whom are neither Kosh nor me.

... and even better - if I were to call back the name/number provided to TELL them they're on the wrong track, would I technically be in trouble for having listened to a message that was specifically NOT for me/Kosh??

How the #*&@Q*&*^%@#@(*^@$ to fix this?

Who the #*&@Q*&*^%@#@(*^@$ to complain to?????

. . . I took pictures of my most recent pottery products, but am now so NOT in the mood to share. Maybe next post, k?

* NOTE: Totally reminds me of how the Lucy Liubot inserted "Philip J Fry" into her sentences... if you've seen that episode of Futurama, you'd know what I mean... and if you don't, this might give you an idea.

... because I didn't grow up in it?

What better way to start the day than to walk through FIVE INCHES of pristine freshly fallen (and still falling!) snow?
> Walking through said snow to get to the snow-covered car, and clearing said car of said snow.
> At 5 am.

Kosh is always amazed that I would get up and out of the apartment to "process the car" at ungodly hours of the morning, in cold weather, for him. Apart form the whole lovey-dovey thing, another explanation is that because I didn't grow up with winter, I don't mind putting up with some of the duties/necessities that come with this season, that can get old really fast. Like having to brave the elements to clean off the car in order to have a relatively functional vehicle to do even more battle with the elements, road conditions and, of course, idiot drivers! My drive to and from the hospital went without incident, but the bottom of my jeans up to my lower shins were crusted with snow just from the walk back.

I think I'm staying indoors today :-)

... I'll reminisce more about snow and winter in another post, if the weather continues...

"de man, streaker?"

A while ago, back when the weather was nice and warm, and I had my weekly tennis sessions with my Russian French classmate (who I hereby dub "Meg"), there was this rather harried woman who approached my side of the court, so I went to the fence to see what was up:

"De man! De man streaker?", she asked.

I did a double take: "I'm sorry, what?" I asked.

"De man! Streaker! De man streaker?" she asked again, rather agitated.

All I could think of was gee, I certainly didn't notice any naked man running past here, so I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders and said "Sorry, I didn't see nothing", apologetically walking away...

... to see my tennis partner at the net, with a puzzled look on her face, as if trying to figure out the direction of something.

As I approached, Meg said to me "I never remember which street is where, but maybe Damen is over there? Oh, she's gone now, I hope she finds it."

I'm looking at her stunned, I just started laughing so hard.

Note for the future: The next time a Russian-accented lady asks about a streaking man, she might just be asking for directions to Damen Street.

= = = = = =
and here's a bit of whining: dunno what I'm battling, but this morning my temperature was "a hair's breadth away from triple digits", and pretty much all afternoon my gastro-intestinal system has been rather unhappy. Fun.

So come join me on Facebook and let me battle you on scrabulous (while it still exists) to keep me occupied! :)