Weekender

I find Monday's the best time to recount the weekend, since it's best to do so on company time, versus on home time. Not that there's terribly much to recount. Going backwards in time, let's see...

Sent out some rezzies, as ever. We'll see what happens. We took the boys outside to watch the marathon (where we live, we can catch them at Mile 5 and then can walk up the street to catch Mile 11). That was fun -- I'm a good cheerer, cheered those sorry running bastards on. We managed to hotfoot it to the Mile 11 spot (intersection of Armitage and Sedgewick) and see the elite marathoners shoot by, and waited there awhile (maybe 45 minutes) and watched some of the folks we cheered at Mile 5 make their way sweatily past us. Some of them were looking pretty worn out by then, ready to drop. The humidity took its toll, for sure. Then we went back to our apartment and watched the great finishes for the elite runners. I felt bad for Adriana Prieta, the Romanian who was coasting to a first-time marathon victory, only to have it snatched from her in the last minute by a sprinting Ethiopian champ. That was pretty amazing -- Prieta made a classic blunder: ending the race before crossing the finish line. Live and learn, I guess? She had an amazingly light stride for somebody running so damned far.

Spousette's definitely wanting to run a marathon at some point, but I told her no way am I doing it; I'd happily cheer her from the sidelines, but I only run when chased. The boys and I would cheer her on, but that's her particular mountain to climb, not mine!

We also went out and wore the boys out with some soccer and walking around the neighborhood; the boys enjoyed playing in the fountains in the kiddie part of the Zoo, which was cute. Although B2 was drawn to try to pick up cobbles and throw'em. He loves grabbing rocks and chucking'em. What else? Oh, speaking of soccer, B1's team won again, so they're 3 and 2, which is nice. Once again, B1 is hopeless at soccer, compared to three of his teammates (he's about equivalent to the remaining teammate). But he's young, is still learning.

Athletically, he's certainly capable of playing, but he's not aggressive or competitive enough to get much play time, and kind of loses his focus during play, although he seems to enjoy himself, and that's good. I thought he'd enjoy soccer for all of the running, but he just kind of goes off into his own world, although, as I said, he seems to have fun. The season is an amazingly long 18 games, so there's still a lot of time to learn and develop his skills.

One amusing thing -- as we finished, he said "did my team win?" and I told him they did, and he was happy, wanted to go to the playground nearby (which was all wet from the rain). I didn't really want to, wanted to get the boys back home, but we went over there, and I saw an honest-to-goodness (or badness) clown on a bicycle, riding around in there, like for some kid's birthday party, or something. I said "Hey, there's a clown in there." and B1's like "What?" and he looks, and says "Oooh, I don't want to go to the playground, now." And I said "Are you sure?" and he's like "Yeah. Let's get out of here!" so we went home, after all. For once, I was almost glad to see a goddamned clown.

We Peapodded our groceries on Friday, which left a lot of the weekend, open, thankfully. Spousette's labs started Saturday, so I drove her up there and played Soccer Dad for the game. I'll actually have to do that for the remainder of the fall season, and probably for spring, too. I just put B2 in our baby backpack, carry him the way, keep him out of trouble -- I let him run around and wear himself out while B1's practicing, and then backpack him for the game, so I can watch B1 play.

One thing we got from Peapod is this great full-fat mozzarella cheese. It's soooo good! First time we had it, we didn't realize it was full-fat, and were like "Damn, this cheese is great!" and then we saw it was full-fat. Yummers.

I was disappointed to hear the Cubs blow it on AM radio. They totally imploded.

Mac-n-Cheezus Christ!

We went to Stanley's up the street, a bar and restaurant, kinda mangy on the inside, but good Southern cooking in there, poppets. Anyway, I encountered a new mac-n-cheese delivery system that was fantastic!

Fried mac-n-cheese! That's right! You take mac-n-cheese that's thick enough to be molded and cut it into cubes, and then dredge it in breadcrumbs/batter, and then fry it. They served it with a tasty ranch dressing variant and also a tasty tomato dipping sauce. The delectable mac-n-cheese cubes were finger food, roughly the size of a pair of old-school alphabet blocks side-by-side, to form a rectangle of mac-n-cheesy goodness.

Just when you think nobody could improve on mac-n-cheese, along comes this! I have to experiment, now, try to render this at home. It was really tasty.

I also had a country-style pork tenderloin dinner (with mashed potatoes, biscuit, and yummy gravy), and a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale. All was good!

Cherries Jubilee

I've been gorging on cherries lately. They've been so good! Apparently this year was a great year for cherries, and it shows -- they're so good at the farmer's markets, and I even managed to find some big, good ones at Treasure Island. I love cherries!

I didn't bike in today, took the bus instead, wanted to finish up the editing of the fantasy book; I've got like 20 pages left on it (I still have to input all my editing marks; it never ends!) Still, so glad that the end is in sight.

Part of my brain was like "Dude, you should write some new short stories." But the other part is like "Don't go there, man. Get this scutwork done." I'm being disciplined and sticking to it.

Crabcakes printed out a color picture of a crown that said "Behold the King of Nicknames." She's amused at my ability/compulsion to nickname absolutely anybody. It just happens. I have like my nice nicknames for people that I like, and my snarky nicknames for people I don't (like Baron Von Shitforbrains -- that's not one I've used, but I'm sorely tempted).

Good morning

I biked in this morning; it was idyllic -- the sun over the lake, the lake lightly churning waves, looking like the ocean. The Great Lakes are truly inland seas -- stupid European who named them "Lakes" missed it by a mile. Or else they were being snide or something, or perhaps thought nobody would believe them if they said they were seas. Imagine how full of fish they had to have been, what a wonderland the New World had to have been -- it's like Christians returned to Paradise, but didn't recognize it when they saw it, and turned it to Hell, instead. Certainly, looking at the industrial wasteland that is East Chicago and Gary can only make one long for the dunes and woods that once hugged those shores, and the paucity of life in Lake Michigan pales before what was once there.

So, TB is now gone; I knew I'd be screwed over when they did the office move-around, that she'd get that corner spot, would flee, and then it would be less likely for a piker like me to get that spot. I can just see Tsarina (aka, Cherry) listening to me make my pitch for it and saying "Well, we just made the move a few weeks ago; seems kinda soon to move again, doesn't it?" Mmm, yeah.

Nearly done with the six pounds of sweet Italian sausage I bought last Friday at Costco. If I finish it by tomorrow, I'll have eaten about a pound of meat a day! Woot! Another life experience I can check off my list, I guess! When I told Leona, she was envious.

I saw that Pope Benedict invalidated the other denominations of Christianity, saying that the Catholic Church was the only official one. Yeah, yeah. A little late for the Counter-Counter-Reformation, isn't it, Benny?

Speaking of reformation, isn't it time somebody tried to impeach Bush and Cheney? C'mon, people. Lordy.

200 miles biked by the end of today.

Lunch Bunchin'

Got together with Shallot, Homegirl, and the Plebe at Hackney's. Twas a good time, although people seemed tired, those of us who work for a living, that is!

Hackney's had decent bar food, although the Old Fashioned I'd ordered wasn't as good as the others I've had. Their Manhattans were better, and I had three of them, got a mild buzz; I'd already had a one-drink headstart on everybody else since I'd gotten there about 15 minutes earlier.

The Plebe is apparently getting married in mid-August. That was the big bombshell of the evening, delivered to Shallot and me while Homegirl was in the restroom. Smooth as ever, Plebe! I guess he and the She-Plebe had been engaged for some time, with a dog as the token of their engagement, instead of an engagement ring, by her design. They're getting married in Osh-Kosh, and Shallot and Homegirl laughed about crashing his wedding. It certainly would be surreal, no doubt, given the aura of absurdity that surrounds the Plebe wherever he goes.

Shallot and I rode the train home, which was uneventful, just chit-chatting. I was pretty tired by then. They've been doing movie filming in our neighborhood all week, dunno what movie they're doing it for.

Speaking of movies, B2 broke the DVD player! The little scamp had yanked the door of the player out, and I couldn't get it working again. Fortunately, such players are dirt-cheap these days, so I ordered another one, which should hopefully reach us by next week, fingers crossed.

I think the Lunch Bunch refugees should do a seasonal dinner -- Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. That might be cool, and would be easy to remember. I'm sure the Plebe would fink out on 90% of those, but it would be fun. We just did Summer, so Fall would be next, like sometime during September - November. No muss, no fuss.