Prairie Landing
Monday, May 30, 2005
Denizens of Raleighwood
This weekend we went to Raleigh for the first time since February 2003, when Colliculus and I got trapped there for 6 days by an East Coast storm and he almost missed his Chicago job interview. That signaled the permanent end to a streak of annual February visits to the Triangle area that began around 1986, when my grandparents moved there, carried on uninterrupted through high school, contributed to my choice of colleges, and continued even after my moves to Baltimore and Providence. But February is a terrible time to drive to NC and an even worse time to fly there. I think May may become the new tradition, because the weather differential is just about perfect. It was warm and sunny there, whereas it's still cool and fall-like here. In fact I'm just about fed up with the pleasant autumn-type weather here.
On this trip we got to see the Militant Nudist's grand house, meet her special friend J and spend many hours drinking in her backyard, which is possibly my favorite activity. We also got to catch up with Lauramander and Morphis and see plenty of TLC (MN and TLC were my roommates pretty much all through college). We also visited my grandparents in Burlington and saw some trailer parks and so on, but nothing really photogenic except this company near MN's house:
The angel looks kind of like a bad-girl Tooth Fairy to me. And I have no idea what angels have to do with mulch.
I didn't know until this trip that shrimp and grits was a traditional Southern dish, but TLC enlightened me to this point. Sooooo good. We're going to have to learn to cook this one.
On this trip we got to see the Militant Nudist's grand house, meet her special friend J and spend many hours drinking in her backyard, which is possibly my favorite activity. We also got to catch up with Lauramander and Morphis and see plenty of TLC (MN and TLC were my roommates pretty much all through college). We also visited my grandparents in Burlington and saw some trailer parks and so on, but nothing really photogenic except this company near MN's house:
The angel looks kind of like a bad-girl Tooth Fairy to me. And I have no idea what angels have to do with mulch.
I didn't know until this trip that shrimp and grits was a traditional Southern dish, but TLC enlightened me to this point. Sooooo good. We're going to have to learn to cook this one.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Our cat received a letter from the vet reminding him that in his aged decrepitude, he should see the vet twice a year instead of once. It pointed out that seeing the vet once a year is comparable to seeing the doctor once every 7 years for his owners.
Colliculus read the letter to me and asked, "Isn't that kind of like throwing good money after bad?"
I told him he should write "Good money after bad!" on the letter and mail it back to the vet.
The reason I have more time to do things like read the cat's mail is that I finally finished my marketing program. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to have my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays back. Night school totally sucks. I don't know how Tim has managed to work on his MBA for all these years without showing any noticeable signs of strain. It was a good program, though, and I used up the money I got for doing AmeriCorps.
I hope I don't make my academic friends paranoid when I say that in class, I reverted to my teenage self and found myself studying the instructors. These are just regular professionals like myself, so it's not really fair, but when you stare at someone for 2 1/2 hours twice a week it becomes like a TV relationship; you know so much more about them than they know about you.
The last instructor I had, in Direct Marketing, was so nice - total "Dad" manner - but so passive-aggressive. Whenever anyone talked during the lecture or didn't settle down after the break you could tell he was about to lose it. He never did, but the tension bothered me enough that I'd choose my seat to avoid sitting next to any of the habitual offenders.
The guy before that was bald and named Dome. He taught integrated marketing communications. His co-instructor was a woman younger than me who used to work with him but had moved on to another agency for reasons she never said. We later caught a glimpse of them together in a picture with his kids.
The class before that, which was internet marketing, I don't have anything remarkable to say about the instructor. He was nice, about our age, and lived down the street from me in Wrigleyville. That was the class where I made a spectacle of myself by carrying the enormous umbrella all the time.
The class before that, branding, was taught by two guys named Alan and Ilan. Alan was client-side, B2B, and from the Midwest. Picture John Cusack with a Powerpoint deck. Ilan had worked for a number of agencies all over the world. His accent was impossible to identify. He wore jeans and taught through videos and stories of past ad campaigns in Africa and Europe. Picture one of those old foreign guys who seduces art school girls.
The class before that convinced me never to go into market research. Our instructor had to miss two meetings to fly to Atlanta to run focus groups in which participants had to sort a giant pile of similar sponges and discuss their feelings about the different kinds.
There was one before that, Principles of Marketing, which involved ancient case studies of products such as a new kind of pile driver and an industrial adhesive that never made it to market. Nobody wanted to get this instructor because he was such a complete, dyed-in-the-wool fuddy-dud who said things like, "If you do that, you'll be on your way to Joliet!" [pause for effect].
Next weekend we're going to NC to visit my grandparents so I have to take some pictures of the house, which I will post. Also going to see TLC and CryingBabyJebus, happiness!
Colliculus read the letter to me and asked, "Isn't that kind of like throwing good money after bad?"
I told him he should write "Good money after bad!" on the letter and mail it back to the vet.
The reason I have more time to do things like read the cat's mail is that I finally finished my marketing program. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to have my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays back. Night school totally sucks. I don't know how Tim has managed to work on his MBA for all these years without showing any noticeable signs of strain. It was a good program, though, and I used up the money I got for doing AmeriCorps.
I hope I don't make my academic friends paranoid when I say that in class, I reverted to my teenage self and found myself studying the instructors. These are just regular professionals like myself, so it's not really fair, but when you stare at someone for 2 1/2 hours twice a week it becomes like a TV relationship; you know so much more about them than they know about you.
The last instructor I had, in Direct Marketing, was so nice - total "Dad" manner - but so passive-aggressive. Whenever anyone talked during the lecture or didn't settle down after the break you could tell he was about to lose it. He never did, but the tension bothered me enough that I'd choose my seat to avoid sitting next to any of the habitual offenders.
The guy before that was bald and named Dome. He taught integrated marketing communications. His co-instructor was a woman younger than me who used to work with him but had moved on to another agency for reasons she never said. We later caught a glimpse of them together in a picture with his kids.
The class before that, which was internet marketing, I don't have anything remarkable to say about the instructor. He was nice, about our age, and lived down the street from me in Wrigleyville. That was the class where I made a spectacle of myself by carrying the enormous umbrella all the time.
The class before that, branding, was taught by two guys named Alan and Ilan. Alan was client-side, B2B, and from the Midwest. Picture John Cusack with a Powerpoint deck. Ilan had worked for a number of agencies all over the world. His accent was impossible to identify. He wore jeans and taught through videos and stories of past ad campaigns in Africa and Europe. Picture one of those old foreign guys who seduces art school girls.
The class before that convinced me never to go into market research. Our instructor had to miss two meetings to fly to Atlanta to run focus groups in which participants had to sort a giant pile of similar sponges and discuss their feelings about the different kinds.
There was one before that, Principles of Marketing, which involved ancient case studies of products such as a new kind of pile driver and an industrial adhesive that never made it to market. Nobody wanted to get this instructor because he was such a complete, dyed-in-the-wool fuddy-dud who said things like, "If you do that, you'll be on your way to Joliet!" [pause for effect].
Next weekend we're going to NC to visit my grandparents so I have to take some pictures of the house, which I will post. Also going to see TLC and CryingBabyJebus, happiness!
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Some things that happened
Yesterday I went to the library and on my way in I passed a pack of guys in suits handing out Christian tracts. Not the lurid Jack Chick kind, just the regular "You're only a heartbeat away!" ones.
The downtown library used to bother me because it seemed so plain and boring compared to the big downtown library in Baltimore. Here's a picture:
On the outside, of course, it's completely insane. I don't know who decided this was a good idea:
Unfortunately no pictures are readily available of the completely over-the-top, gilt-coated Baltimore library. I guess my tastes have changed over the past year and a half, because I now think that baroque public architecture bespeaks urban decay and is therefore kind of sad and tawdry. (I also LOVE bungalows, which I bitched about in my very first entry on this blog, I think.)
Anyway, the librarian wouldn't let me check out any books because I didn't have my library card. I told her it was stolen and she asked three stupid questions:
#1. "Is it at home?" No. I just said my wallet was stolen. (In fact, "stolen" was only one of many possibilities. What actually happened is, one day I forgot to zip my backpack all the way and my wallet just disappeared.)
#2. "Have you registered the stolen card with us?" Um, no. Who calls the library when they're missing their wallet? What, was I supposed to call the video store, too? The grocery store?
#3. "Well, then, do you have a police report?" No, I didn't have a police report, and if I did, I doubt I would've brought it with me to the fricking library.
As punishment for not having followed the rules, I have to pay $1 for a replacement card. But they don't process cards after 6:30 p.m. Instead I had to come back another day and fill out one of the forms behind that lady -- "I mean, that gentleman," she corrected herself -- of which there were none.
I went back outside and a gray-haired, Volvo-hippie looking woman was gesturing to one of the Bible guys, making a rectangle between her index fingers and thumbs. She was saying, "Now where I'm from is right here, over near the Massachusetts border. . . " The guy was riffling through his tracts and clearly trying to figure out an exit strategy.
The downtown library used to bother me because it seemed so plain and boring compared to the big downtown library in Baltimore. Here's a picture:
On the outside, of course, it's completely insane. I don't know who decided this was a good idea:
Unfortunately no pictures are readily available of the completely over-the-top, gilt-coated Baltimore library. I guess my tastes have changed over the past year and a half, because I now think that baroque public architecture bespeaks urban decay and is therefore kind of sad and tawdry. (I also LOVE bungalows, which I bitched about in my very first entry on this blog, I think.)
Anyway, the librarian wouldn't let me check out any books because I didn't have my library card. I told her it was stolen and she asked three stupid questions:
#1. "Is it at home?" No. I just said my wallet was stolen. (In fact, "stolen" was only one of many possibilities. What actually happened is, one day I forgot to zip my backpack all the way and my wallet just disappeared.)
#2. "Have you registered the stolen card with us?" Um, no. Who calls the library when they're missing their wallet? What, was I supposed to call the video store, too? The grocery store?
#3. "Well, then, do you have a police report?" No, I didn't have a police report, and if I did, I doubt I would've brought it with me to the fricking library.
As punishment for not having followed the rules, I have to pay $1 for a replacement card. But they don't process cards after 6:30 p.m. Instead I had to come back another day and fill out one of the forms behind that lady -- "I mean, that gentleman," she corrected herself -- of which there were none.
I went back outside and a gray-haired, Volvo-hippie looking woman was gesturing to one of the Bible guys, making a rectangle between her index fingers and thumbs. She was saying, "Now where I'm from is right here, over near the Massachusetts border. . . " The guy was riffling through his tracts and clearly trying to figure out an exit strategy.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Now, Marci really has a rat problem. Those pics are something else.
I don't know why someone in Baltimore had one of these -- though this building looks suspiciously like my old apartment building -- but when I was in Providence the local liberal activist group had one of these. They paraded it around at all their protests and accused the protestee of the day of being a rat, ratting out the low-income residents/minorities/union workers/fill-in-the-blank, allowing rats to thrive in their substandard housing, etc. It made for great sound bites and never failed to make it into a newspaper photo or B-roll (PR lingo for TV footage).
I don't know why someone in Baltimore had one of these -- though this building looks suspiciously like my old apartment building -- but when I was in Providence the local liberal activist group had one of these. They paraded it around at all their protests and accused the protestee of the day of being a rat, ratting out the low-income residents/minorities/union workers/fill-in-the-blank, allowing rats to thrive in their substandard housing, etc. It made for great sound bites and never failed to make it into a newspaper photo or B-roll (PR lingo for TV footage).
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Ratitos
We have little rats in the alley. Tiny, scurrying little rats the size of the ones you see in pet stores or labs. It makes Colliculus and me think of the rats in Baltimore, which were the size of dachshunds but less sprightly. Those rats were so big, you never saw them full-on. You only saw their asses in retreat, and those asses were slow-moving and rocked side-to-side, jiggling, like miniature hippo-asses.
Except for the rapist in our vestibule, every urban ill in Chicago is just like the rats. It can't hold a candle to anything I saw in Baltimore. The rats are cute and harmless. I don't think I've seen any roaches, and I certainly haven't seen them seething all over the sidewalks like I used to in Fells Point in the summertime. Even our friends from Philly were horrified by that. Philly!
The beggars start in on their stories of needing 22 cents to catch a bus, no doubt thinking I look like a soft-hearted girl from Wisconsin or someplace. They don't know I once joined a pair of security guards to chase a drug addict all over the Rotunda shopping center after she successfully impersonated a teacher at a local school (she even had the cardigan and canvas tote bag), a Johns Hopkins nursing assistant complete with ID badge, and a suburban mother of three with a flat tire.
The beggars here just ask for change. Nobody shouts about the monkeys or throws their keys at me after asking what time it is. Also, shit that happens on the train or bus is annoying and gross, but never really frightening. You've seen my CTA stories (and there are some even better ones at CTA Tattler) but I haven't heard my seatmates talk about how many times they've been shot and featured on TV for it.
So there's not a lot about urban life here that can really get on my nerves. Other than the traffic, since for obvious reasons, that wasn't really an issue in Baltimore.
PS As Ianqui has no doubt noted, "Ratitos" does not mean little rats in Spanish. But what the hell. It's kinda cute.
Except for the rapist in our vestibule, every urban ill in Chicago is just like the rats. It can't hold a candle to anything I saw in Baltimore. The rats are cute and harmless. I don't think I've seen any roaches, and I certainly haven't seen them seething all over the sidewalks like I used to in Fells Point in the summertime. Even our friends from Philly were horrified by that. Philly!
The beggars start in on their stories of needing 22 cents to catch a bus, no doubt thinking I look like a soft-hearted girl from Wisconsin or someplace. They don't know I once joined a pair of security guards to chase a drug addict all over the Rotunda shopping center after she successfully impersonated a teacher at a local school (she even had the cardigan and canvas tote bag), a Johns Hopkins nursing assistant complete with ID badge, and a suburban mother of three with a flat tire.
The beggars here just ask for change. Nobody shouts about the monkeys or throws their keys at me after asking what time it is. Also, shit that happens on the train or bus is annoying and gross, but never really frightening. You've seen my CTA stories (and there are some even better ones at CTA Tattler) but I haven't heard my seatmates talk about how many times they've been shot and featured on TV for it.
So there's not a lot about urban life here that can really get on my nerves. Other than the traffic, since for obvious reasons, that wasn't really an issue in Baltimore.
PS As Ianqui has no doubt noted, "Ratitos" does not mean little rats in Spanish. But what the hell. It's kinda cute.
