Uprooted

This picture of my nephew Jesse is outdated - he's way bigger than this now - but it cracks me up and must be shared.

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One problem with having friends in other countries who speak other languages (no offense, Anne Sue!) is that details can get lost in translation. They they can sometimes misunderstand time words or verb tenses from emails and Facebook status updates. One of my friends and one of my former co-teachers from Taiwan met each other last week and were apparently talking about me and how I had moved to Phoenix. They both sent me emails asking about how I liked my new home and when they could come visit.

Not yet, people.

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Chicago has all of these awesome, kinda strange laws. One is that if your restaurant, cafe, or coffee shop provides sidewalk dining opportunities, you have to maintain flower boxes and live plants in a certain proportion to the amount of seating available. It sounds weird, but it makes everything look much, much nicer. Sometimes it is an invitation to mischief though.

Walking to work Monday morning, I passed by a stem of tulip that had been uprooted from a restaurant window box, bulb and all, and left to die of exposure on the cold, desolate concrete sidewalk. There was still a bit of dirt clinging to the tiny rootules spreading from the bottom of the bulb. The green of the stem was still fresh.

It felt a bit like one of those horrible news stories where person after person walks by a dying woman on an urban sidewalk, and it is all caught on surveillance camera footage. Like the callous rabbi passing by the beaten, suffering man in the story of the Good Samaritan.

I kept walking.

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If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked to have been assigned to work at our bank's main office two years ago when I started this job. Yesterday I got tickets, really great seats, to a Cubs game. Just for being there at the right time and saying "Yes, I would like two free tickets to tonight's game." My bank has a bunch of season tickets which they generally give to those hefty, important business or loan customers that they need to keep happy. I guess no one wanted them yesterday, so I got to mark "Baseball Game at Wrigley Field" off of my Chicago Bucket List.

And then there's the neighborhood connections. I have met so many of the owners, operators, and managers of some of Chicago's biggest and best gay bars over the last month. Scarlett, Circuit, Roscoe's, Bobby Love's, Charlie's, North End, MiniBar... I could have been drinking for free for the last two years, people. Not to mention the Boystown restaurants, salons, shops... Shame.

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I have nothing to say about Arizona's new state law concerning illegal immigrants.

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On Sunday I finally cashed in my Entenmann's outlet punch card. Two years of bakery thrift store shopping for two free loaves of bread. And two boxes of donuts - those I paid for. I was able to walk to this palace of refined flour and carbo-laden breakfast treats for a few months after I moved back to Chicago in 2008. Since I've lived in Lakeview my visits have been limited to occasions when Sofia and I happen to be driving by on our way to...wherever.

I really wanted to ask that quirky checkout lady if I could take a picture with her since it was certain to be my last visit. I'll always remember her: her rambling, borderline-nonsensical cash register conversation, the way that she loved me for bringing my own bags, and that uniquely sloppy way in which she pins up her hair. Kind of the art of misdirection, actually. 'Cause she's beautiful.

Currently Listening to:

"Borderline/Open Your Heart" by those talented kids from that Glee show