Dispatch from Chicago

1. This morning, in the Barnes and Noble (where I was wasting time while my parents watched football, that's right I just don't care about the Bears anymore DISOWN ME NOW HOME CITY I JUST DON'T CARE), the four people in line before me all wanted help finding something with Barack Obama on the cover. Three people were looking for the Sun-Times; they were all sold out. The people all had clearly disappointed children with them, who were told, "Don't worry. We'll keep looking!". The fourth person, a man without children, was looking for The Economist. It was also sold out. When I got up to the counter, I asked why The Economist was sold out. The clerk said, "It had Barack on the cover. I sold the last one last night. We're also sold out of the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, and Us Weekly. They all had Barack on the cover too."
2. Everyone here calls him Barack. Not Barack Obama, or Obama, like I hear in Seattle. Barack.
3. Monday and Tuesday it was in the 70's here. Today it started snowing at Soldier Field.
4. Yesterday was my sister's baby shower. She got so much stuff (admittedly much of it from my mom and me) her Subaru wagon deal couldn't fit it all. Babies apparently need a mind-numbing amount of things.
5. I have eaten cookies at least twice a day every day since I got here. Paul, Liz, I blame you. It's super easy for my jeans to magically get tighter when I'm home, but you guys are absolute experts at compounding that danger.

President Obama.

President Barack Obama. About goddamn time.

Watching, Waiting

I'm home, listening (of course) to NPR's coverage of the election results and (of course!) drinking a split shot Americano. Earlier I took my dog for a walk. He was wearing his little orange fleece (OF COURSE). So far NPR (and CNN, which the NYT is blogging) is calling Vermont for Obama and Kentucky for McCain. This isn't super surprising. Also, our hardly-ever-used land line has been ringing like crazy the past few days with robo-calls and volunteer calls. Which, I appreciate the effort, but I am not the person you need to talk to here! My mind is so made up.

Voting today was actually pretty fun. It's the last time I'll be able to go to an actual polling place in my county; next election, we're switching entirely to mail-in ballots, like much of the rest of the state. My polling place was a grade school, and I got there just as school let out. Bouncy, shrieky children were everywhere - I remember that energy of finally being done with the school day and NOT HAVING TO SIT IN A DESK ANYMORE. I was surrounded by that elated energy as I went to vote, which felt pretty neat and celebratory. There was a bake sale in the hallway on the way into the voting booths. You had to walk past the yummy baked goods TWICE, on your way in and on your way out. Diabolically clever. I totally bought a cookie.

Dude, Elizabeth Dole might lose her Senate seat? Wow.

OK! Going to our friend W's house. More later. I have champagne. Which I will be drinking no matter what.

Zack's Revenge

And with good reason. Two years ago, we made him dress up like a lobster. This year, we decided to do it again.



He managed to let us know in no unequivocal terms how displeased he was at this. Aa and I turned our backs for about three seconds. And in that time, Zack chewed off one of the lobster arms. I turned around and he was simultaneously trying to rip the costume off his body and eat the lobster leg he'd chewed off his costume. See how bad he wants to eat that lobster leg?

Lessons I Apparently Haven't Learned Yet

• Eating a bunch of candy right before bed is a stupid thing to do, especially if I expect to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.
• If, while running, part of my body begins to hurt and then continues to hurt, with ever-increasing intensity of pain, I NEED TO STOP RUNNING.
  
• The house will be clean, and the house will be dirty. And when the house is dirty, it is possible to change that by action. It is not possible to change that by freaking out about how fucking dirty the house is.
  
• I don't always need to know what I'm doing.

Not much.

There hasn't been much for me to say this past week or so. I feel like both Aa and I have been just ridiculously busy lately. I'm getting a little stressed about how to deal with Christmas, but this is nothing unusual. Aa made some beautiful homemade pizza for dinner tonight. I am concerned about all the things I need to get done this week.

Currently, we're watching a deeply stupid movie called The Contract. It's the second John Cusack vehicle we've tried to watch tonight - the first was War, Inc. I want to know what the eff happened to John Cusack actually. Say Anything? Grosse Pointe Blank? These were awesome movies. He was awesome in them. I don't think he's done anything good since Grosse Pointe Blank. Wait, I guess High Fidelity was in there, which seemed to be a well-liked movie. But that film just made me uncomfortable. The arc of "man-child pulls his head out of his ass a teeny, tiny bit" was just not interesting. It was both interesting and weird to see many of my old stomping grounds in Chicago featured in the movie. And now I can appreciate some things about it, but overall? There are still moments in that movie that make me feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. Oh John Cusack, you have broken my heart.

Alright. Time to go to bed.

Zack And Pillows: Three Compositions

Six entirely unrelated things

1. I need more sleep. Right now I'm watching the end of Victor, Victoria, a movie I've seen approximately 15 bajillion times, and I'm tearing up.

2. Our friend Lynn told me this great story about the post-wedding ceremony dinner. The food was coming out, and all of the different salad dressings were in plastic containers. One was white and had a B on the cover. Lynn was standing near my Uncle Jim and said, "oh, that must be blue cheese". And my Uncle Jim, totally deadpan, said, "no, B is for bacteria". This has made me laugh every time I think about it.

3. I pretty much destroyed my kitchen making a ton of stir-fried carrot and cabbage salad and roasted veggies for an enchilada sauce. There's just a bunch of stuff I need to clean up. All my stupid dog is doing is sleeping next to me on the couch, looking all cute. I have tried time and time again to train him to at least load the effing dishwasher. All he does is stare at me.

3a. All the veggies in the carrot salad and roasted veggie sauce came either from our farmer's market or our backyard. Except the garlic - that came from Garrick's farm.

4. I can eat way more donuts in a week than I thought I could, especially if I tell myself that because they're vegan they're somehow good for me.

5. I had a crazy dream about Omar from the wire and the Catholic church / school I went to as a kid. I'll get into that later.

6. I am tired, tired, tired.

More wedding photos

You can view the full set here. Michael, our friend and photographer, did a fantastic job. Yay!

Visual Aid

Shock

I just found out that a friend of mine from college was killed in Afghanistan Monday. It was, I think, his third tour over there. I just heard from him like two weeks ago. He wrote to congratulate me on the wedding and asked me to post pictures he could look at afterward. I asked him to send me a mailing address. I was so glad to hear from him I wanted to make sure we stayed in touch. And I really wanted to bake him some cookies and send them to him. Wanting to bake cookies and then send them to Afghanistan seems incredibly naive right now. Like he was in summer camp in Michigan or something.

I remember when my friend Gina told me he'd joined the army in the first place. He'd just been divorced. And when I saw him, he told me the army was a great place to channel his anger over the breakup. But he also discovered he was good at being a soldier. He liked the structure and the challenge. He knew he could become an officer too. When I last saw him, we were at Gina's mom's wake. He was dressed in his formal uniform. He looked wonderful, and I was so glad to see him. He was still pretty much the same guy I knew in college - funny, sarcastic, sharp as hell, but really sweet and generous. I still felt like I'd achieved something notable when I made him laugh hard, which was probably one of my favorite feelings in college too. I say all this because I remember not being able to understand the commitment he'd made to the army in the first place. It seemed like a thoroughly alien decision to me. I remember thinking he must just be going through a phase of some kind, not a career or lifestyle choice. But this was years ago. Clearly the army was not a phase.

Over the past few years, I have read a lot about the US involvement in Afghanistan, and talked to countless reporters and policy wonks about it. Definitely a lot of that was for work. But it was also in some ways because of him. I was both terrified for him and grateful to him - that this awesome guy I remember from college was one of the people in Afghanistan. He was not fucking that country up. He was making it better. I know that sounds super naive too. But he was a good, reasonable guy. Even when he sometimes made crazy arguments when we talked politics, I thought he was a reasonable guy. He always thought about things. He rarely just reacted.

I'll never understand why he joined the army. But the army must have done something for him. It must have been good for him. And for that, I'm glad. I want to believe in what he was doing because he clearly believed in it. But I'm awfully angry that he's gone. I'm so pissed I never got to send him those stupid cookies. I'm so pissed I won't ever get to try and make him laugh again. I just feel really heavy and foggy. But I am also really happy I got to know him at all. He was funny and weird and a good person to argue with. And I missed him before and I miss him now.


Fallen GI loved life in military

Soldier from Highland killed by blast in Afghanistan

Officially Weddinged

Here's one of the many pictures our amazing friend / photographer Michael took the day of the wedding. It all turned out to be really, really fun...more fun and way less stress than I'd expected. The ceremony felt exactly right (not too fussy, really authentic, and short!). My Aunt Lois called to tell me my Grandma Yandel keeps talking about how much fun she had, which was HUGE for me. I was so nervous that traveling to central IL from Chicago and being carried up and down stairs in her wheelchair would just be too much for her, and she wouldn't enjoy herself. I loved the whole thing. I only wish time travel had been invented so Post Wedding Jeannie could have visited Pre Wedding Jeannie to tell her to calm the eff down because everything was going to be awesome.

The Chicago party was also fantastic - I kind of don't have words to describe how truly touching and excellent it was to have so many people from so many parts of our lives come together on Saturday night. Everywhere I turned, there was someone I wanted to hug and talk to. And I could look across the room and see Aa doing the same thing - hugging people, laughing, catching up. Friends from Seattle made a point of meeting my family, which I particularly loved. Paul and Liz brought amazing cookies that basically fueled me the whole night. I know both my sister and my Uncle Terry took a bunch of cookies home. I think Amanda (the amazing, generous friend who made my wedding dress) did too.

Aa and I decided to get weddinged in the first place so we could see and spend time with the people we love. It's why we chose to have the wedding and party in Illinois. And looking around on Thursday night after the wedding and Saturday night mid-party, I realized we got exactly what we wanted. We spent days surrounded by people we love and don't ever get to spend enough time with - that definitely includes our Seattle friends. Everything was perfect. I've never felt so lucky in my life.

Vote for Jeannie!

Jeannie is in the running for the King5 best local radio personality...make the dream a reality!

go here to vote:
http://best.king5.com/contests/best-of-western-washington/2336/people/local-radio-personality

she did not ask me to post this...but how could i not?!

*Update from Jeannie: No, I did not ask him to post this. Weird.

DFW

yet another David Foster Wallace post...

In the late 90's I took one class with him at ISU. I talked my way into the class as i already had my undergrad and was spending a year taking only classes that i was really interested in...and he was teaching a class on the postmodern novel...he was kind enough to listen to my appeal and let me into a grad level english class that i had no business being in at that time.

But what a class! We read gaddis, delillo, cormac mccarthy, etc. To be honest, i just couldn't read through all of the gaddis, i love the delillo stuff, and mccarthy was kinda depressing. But that said, it was the most engaging class! The discussions transcended the conventional borders of any English classes i had previously experienced. Deep discussions that circled in and around math, science, history, rhetoric, and more. Truly educational.

On my final paper he drew the "style faerie"....and throughout my paper the "SF" pointed out every stupid grammatical mistake that i made...and believe me..i made a LOT of them.

I dug that paper up last night to read his comments...I can't believe that i handed in something as poorly written as i did to someone like him..someone that was that good at what they did. Someone that insightful. Someone in such deep and fantastic control of language and ideas. In the end i did fine on the paper and the class but i always felt bad about not proofing that paper. It was disrespectful to his craft.

P.S. He was also the first person i'd ever seen chew tobacco.

Well, that went well.

I just had a cup of coffee. I had to. I hated everybody. Now I love everyone again.

In response to the vampire anxiety dream

I'm gonna try to go off coffee till after the wedding. Nothing but tea for princess here. Today is Day 1, and I'm exactly as grumpy as you'd expect. I'm taking it one day at a time - we'll see how long I last.

Anxiety Dreams

Last night I had my first anxiety dream about the wedding. I don't remember much about the beginning of the dream except for an overall sense of nervousness. I was with a large group of people. We were all on the roof of a hotel, having a party that I know had to do with the wedding. Then the vampires showed up. They were dressed like gothy pirates (thank you, Anne Rice / Milli Vanilli!) And they started eating my guests. Very awkward. Now, I've chronicled my obsession w/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer here before. I know how to handle vampires. So I grabbed what I thought was a wooden stake and drove it into Vanilli's heart. Guess what? The stake wasn't wooden. It was plastic with some kind of veneer. So I headed out to the hallways of the hotel. Suddenly my sister appeared and we started dismantling / unscrewing furniture for wood. (I actually remember unscrewing a chair leg and throwing a washer over my shoulder thinking, "that won't help me kill vampires".) Then we headed back in to the party. I started stabbing vampires in the chest with my wooden stakes, many of which had long metal screws on top from being chair legs. This meant I had to drive the stakes even *further* into the hearts of the gothy pirate vampires. It was not going well. I was really just angering the vampires. It was quickly turning into an awful party.

Then I woke up, and my first thought upon waking was, "why the hell weren't those wooden stakes working?" I felt anxious. That feeling of anxiety stayed with me most of the day. In fact Aa even noticed it and asked me what I was so tense about. I couldn't really tell him it was the vampires. I'd sound crazy, right? So instead, I'm writing this post for you, Interwebs.

Now I feel better.

Neighborhood! Coffee! Shop! Or, The Minutiae Of A Totally First-World Problem

So, Aa and I looooove the Minty and we really like living so close to downtown Ballard. But one of the things we've desperately missed is a neighborhood coffee shop. See, in our last apartment we lived right across the street from this miraculous place called Lighthouse Coffee. It's a great coffee shop, sure, but the place also roasts their own beans. RIGHT. IN. THE. STORE. OK? So my neighborhood smelled like fresh-roasted coffee, and the espresso is holy shit delicious, arguably the best in Seattle. (yes, yes, I know: Vivace. Unclench. I said "arguably", alright?)

Anyway. So, upon moving away from the warm embrace of Lighthouse, Aa and I have longed for a right-down-the-street place to get a good Americano. On weekends, we'll take the Zacker and walk up to Bambino, which I will always heart because they allow dogs inside and have dog treats available. This is niiiiice, but it's not a weekday kind of niiiiice.

So it's been with much anticipation that Aa and I have watched the transformation of a little storefront less than a block from our house. I even changed my walking-home-from-the-bus route so I could stop and peer inside to gauge progress. We heard many rumors about the place, including, at one point, that it would serve waffles. Which, you know, OK. But I could never get the answer to the important question: WOULD THEY SERVE GOOD COFFEE, meaning WOULD THEY HAVE A DECENT ESPRESSO MACHINE AND COULD THEIR BARISTAS PULL A DECENT SHOT? (I cringe as I type this, I want you to know. I am aware that I sound like a supreme asshole, and the cap letters don't help. But I'm not gonna lie - this shit is important.)

Yesterday, when I got off the bus, I noticed the little mystery cafe had an open door and, more importantly, an 'OPEN' sign. And, perhaps most importantly, they had an espresso machine and were giving away free coffee. I went in, chatted up the barista, and she kindly made me a decaf Americano. As I drank it, a term from a sport I do not watch at all popped into my head.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a gooooooood Americano. Praise Jeebus, it was a really good Americano.

It is with much happiness that Aa and I welcome the Sun Cafe into our neighborhood!! And, might I add, it's about gee dee time. I fear once Veraci finally opens across the street from the Sun, I might just explode with joy. I'm not into the dumb, ugly "townhomes" being built pretty much right in my backyard (at 7:30 on a Saturday morning, thanks douchebags). But I am so into these two new lil' businesses parking right down the street from me. This is development I am 100000% behind. Yes, that's right, five whole zeroes. That's how much I'm behind it.

Reason 5,973 Why I'm Lucky

I have ridiculously awesome friends. This past weekend, my friends Liz, Renee, Laurie, and Wendy organized a weekend away at Renee and Laurie's in-laws' family cabin on Vashon Island. I got picked up by Liz on Friday afternoon and then whisked away to a place where I didn't have to do or plan anything, except whether I wanted another glass of wine. Or some more cookies. For the record, I wanted both.

We also got to bring dogs, so the Zacker came with me and Wendy brought her guy Jackson.He's waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to throw something in the water so he can fetch it. Swear to God, Wendy threw rocks for him to fetch out of the water on Saturday afternoon - and he stuck his head underwater and fetched them.

Zack spent a lot of his time on the island either lying in the sun, as usual, or sitting on my lap. Here we are hanging out around the bonfire Saturday night, working on our Myspace profile picture.


And here is a weird grassy path-y place Liz, Zack and I stumbled on during one of our long walks. I am 85% certain there is some sort of religious cult living there.


Saturday night, special guest stars Rebecca and Patricia dropped by to have dinner. Look at how excited Rebecca is! Or perhaps she's saying, "We gotta get the fuck off this island! Now!"

Transit Stories, Parts 1 & 2

Yesterday morning, I ran to the bus stop because I saw my bus sitting at the intersection. Once I got to the stop, I realized that bus wasn't going anywhere -- all the lights were off save the hazards, and there were reflective-vest wearing techs standing around nearby. So I got my magazine out to wait. That's when I heard this terrible coughing, retching sound from behind the bus shelter. I turned around and saw someone bent over, coughing away. He came out from behind the shelter - he was a youngish looking guy in a baseball cap and sweats. I felt bad for him. I walked over to the bus schedule to see what time the next bus was. Baseball Cap said "I think we just missed our bus. I got off the 28 a minute ago to connect, but there wasn't anyone else at the stop." I replied that maybe the stalled bus was the one we wanted, and we'd be waiting for a while. Then I walked a few paces to get back into my magazine.

That's when I heard a just totally hair-raisingly nasty retching / belching sound coming from Baseball Cap's direction. Then the smell hit me. Then he retched and belched again. I walked towards the garbage can to throw something away, only to realize Baseball Cap puked all over it. I turned around to see where he was and realized he puked all over the bus schedule and bus stop signpost, too. He must've done that right after we chatted about "our" bus. At this point, three people came to the stop, saw / heard / smelled Baseball Cap getting sick, started mumbling, and quickly walked away.

That's when Weepy Drunk Lady appeared. She came out of the gas station near the bus stop, talking about the lateness of the bus. Then, she headed towards me and started crying. She brushed right past me, crying and talking to herself. Baseball Cap belched behind me and something wet hit the ground. Two more people who'd come to the bus stop looked at each other, shook their heads, and walked away.

At this point, I did something I've never done in my whole transit-riding life. I called Aa and asked for a ride to work. As I did this, Weepy Drunk Lady suddenly stopped crying. She looked at me on my phone and her eyes narrowed. "What?! You're gonna be late for work?! You ignore a homeless person?! You're calling your boss?! With your fancy backpack?!" I wasn't worried about being late for work, I wasn't calling my boss, and my backpack is old, ratty, and thoroughly un-fancy. But she was right about one thing. I was trying very hard to ignore her, as well as Baseball Cap, who must've just been puking up bile or dry heaving at that point. Aa agreed to give me a lift, and I headed home. Weepy Drunk Lady followed me for about 100 feet, yelling questions at me the whole time. I didn't answer any of them.

This morning, I again saw the bus waiting to cross the intersection to my stop. This time, the bus was running and all the lights were on. I again ran to the stop and got on. As I headed back to find a seat, I heard "This song was way ahead of its time! It's really trance-y!" I turned to see who was talking - nobody talks on the AM buses here. A middle-aged man, developmentally disabled, was listening to an iPod through headphones. He had a huge grin on his face. "This song was groundbreaking! Yeah! Hey, that house is boarded up!" He looked up at me and grinned even wider. I grinned right back.