A wonderful, busy life

We've been very busy lately -- with work, school, applications to school and other such busy-activities -- but life has maintained its wonderful-ness nonetheless.

How? You ask and I'll tell. No matter how busy we get, we eat together. Just to give a rundown of the last week:

• Monday -- B put together some seriously simple, but scrumptious pasta. We had leftovers for his lunch the next day, too.
  
• Tuesday -- I worked late as an Election Judge and felt completely wiped out. B used some pizza dough that we made a while back, tossed in the freezer and defrosted. His pizza is a favorite of ours -- prosciutto, sausage, cheese and topped with arugula (a delicious, spinach-type green that goes with pizza like a dream) -- it's just amazing.
• Wednesday -- We made stir-fry after long days at work for both of us. We tossed carrot, garlic, ginger, snow pea pods, peas and some Trader Joe's wontons with sesame oil, soy sauce and spices.
  
• Thursday -- I went to class in the morning and spent the afternoon relaxing, studying and finishing up my application to DePaul. For dinner though, I put together Shepard's pie (for my Irish husband, you know) -- it turned out a little soupy, but delicious. A wonderful meat-veggie stew with a creamy layer of mashed potato goodness baked on top. And really good the next day as leftovers, too.
  
• Friday -- We put together a spicy mac-n-cheese from scratch while sipping cocktails and catching up on our financial life. It was easy, but not uncomplicated.

The food is really besides the point (I might just enjoy bragging about our week of successful eating) -- the point is that we build-in this together time. Sometimes it's just the time it takes to eat, sometimes it's all the prep-time too. We talk about what's happening, our plans, work, life, politics, science, silly stuff and food (of course). Tonight (Saturday) we ate salad with some crusty bread and Dominick's chili-lime crusted tilapia. It's one of the few prepped foods we adore - but we figure the fact that we're eating fish makes up for the processed bit (and it's not too processed). Tomorrow I'm making pear granola breakfast crisp which is mostly an outstanding excuse to use pears. Pears are so yummy, but not so pretty so I'm hopeful that this will make me a better pear-friend. There's a magic in putting together a meal at the end of the day -- it's an accomplishment. And eating together means we're talking, smiling, listening and stopping whatever other crap that's going on. And that's pretty nice.

Pictured is a rainbow of beautiful Fiestaware -- we love our peacock, shamrock and colbalt pieces. I hear white place-settings are most flattering for food, but I'm certain our food prefers these gorgeous shades.

If we don't stick together we're nothin' (Newsies quote!)

I'm a union gal. OK, so I'm not in a union, but I'm the sort who supports unions, including teacher's unions and unions like AFSCME which support civil servants.

As a little girl I had union stickers on my Little People Schoolhouse. My dad struck (striked?) as part of a teacher union. I worked at the Dept. of Labor preschool and union friends helped all us teachers through a crazy transition between companies, making sure we had exceptional benefits and generous pay increases.

These life experiences cement my view as the type who supports workers, and not everyone agrees with me. I'm rather opinionated about the union issues happening in Wisconsin of late, and in the U.S. in general. And, because I spent more than 9 hours today with 2-year-olds I hope you'll forgive me for listing my points:

• If you don't want teachers to be treated well I suggest teaching for a day or two. I'm a part-time teacher, but in my 9.5 hours of work today I changed about 12 diapers, cleaned one bloody nose, sang five songs, switched shoes to the correct feet on three kids, rubbed one child's back to help him fall asleep, asked 18 questions about the weather, filled out 10 daily forms explaining everything that happened to each child I was with for their parents, and cleaned up 7 milk spills. I love my job and I'm glad I have it. But I deserve to be treated well.
• Balance is everything. My job comes with all the silliness listed above, but it also comes with a lot of fun, a free membership to the Y and a schedule that works impeccably with my school-life. People who chose to teach (or plow snow, patrol streets as cops, etc...) do so understanding the balance between their interest in teacher/public works/safety, the downsides and upsides. Everyone does this -- the argument for public employee's benefits and wages is a public one.
• Is it extreme for teachers to demonstrate their power with sick-in protests? Yes, it is. But it's a mighty powerful way to make a point. And to quote B: As for the teachers, I can’t think of a better lesson to teach our children than to exercise your constitutional rights stand up for what you believe, especially since we don’t have civics classes anymore. While you may view this as teachers simply wanting to preserve their “cushy” benefits, as I said before many union members believe their right to organize is a fundamental one, and a sick-out is a very small sin in the larger scheme of things. Certainly the labor leaders of generations ago, who were beaten, intimidated and killed, would have found it relatively minor.
  
• Give a little, take a little, right? That's what negotiating is. If a union (or an individual for that matter, private sector employees) can't come to the table and discuss giving and taking -- there's a problem. I believe in compromise and I believe in giving with you take, or taking while you give.
• If we want to spend money on anything - anything at all - please let's agree it's on children and learning. Consider the remarkable teachers you've had (Mrs. Sker!) and the moments of your childhood that made you who you are. If anything is worth every penny it's education. I believe that. I don't think I'm alone. Education and other public services are being (and have been, for years) shorted in favor of less-worthy things. Let's put our money where our mouths are, or where our kids our, or where we were as kids - whatever. It's worth it.
  

I'm certainly rambling here. I'm a little stir-crazy from a day inside with 2 year olds, a nursing school info session this evening and preparing for Election Judging tomorrow. But I'm a proud friend of unions and children. I hope you are too.

Giant Raccoon!

Last night I dashed out for some beer while we watched The Social Network.

I jogged over to our bodega - a lovely convenience store that has almost everything you'd ever need in a pinch (pudding? yes! chips? yes! Middle Eastern rice-a-roni? yes!) at a reasonable markup.

As I passed the Senior Center a few doors down Montrose I saw an animal barreling about. The Giant Raccoon - with it's striped tail and enormous middle - limbered across Montrose Avenue behind a car!

We've seen Giant Raccoon before - when I accidentally left some aromatic garbage outside our backdoor. We also saw Giant Raccoon (or one of its relations) in a tree walking home from Truman College one night.

Giant Raccoon - and the hilarious troupe of men who work at the bodega - are things I love about my neighborhood. Giant raccoon, the bakery, the nice man who works at the El station, the new bar and the funny kids who we can watch from our window chasing each other with shovels in the snow. All those things make up for driving around for a parking space, the gastropub we can't stand and the silly vegan restaurant.

We are the champions

My friends, parents and I won first prize at the city-wide trivia tournament today! To be fair, we won first prize at one of two trivia tournaments today, but first prize is a championship - no two ways about it. Our victory was a perfect example of team work, proper communication and good juju (special thanks to the Lou Gehrig sign on the wall next to our table, which sealed the deal for the MLB record-holder for most career grand slams). Here I'll share a few questions and how our fabulous team answered them. To allow you to play trivia yourself the answers are posted at the bottom of this post.

1. What two actors won best actor and actress at both the 2010 Golden Globes and Oscars?
2. What is currently the top-visited airline website?
3. Are the main islands of Hawaii north or south of the Tropic of Cancer?
4. Who married Marc Mezvinsky on July 31, 2010?
5. What temperature is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit?
6. How many original articles are contained in the US Constitution?
7. St. Apollonia is the patron saint of what medical profession?
8. What Texas Instruments product does E.T. use to phone home?

Final question: Place these cities in order by distance in air miles from Chicago:

• Charlotte, North Carolina
  
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Buffalo, New York
• Birmingham, Alabama

There were plenty more question, too, including a far-too easy To Kill a Mockingbird question (who the hell doesn't' know Atticus Finch's profession?!? C'mon!). The answers are listed below, along with a little play-by-play about how we came to them.

1. Sandra Bullock & Jeff Bridges. We'd not have come up with Jeff Bridges if B didn't say "Oh, it's that dude," which prompted my dad to think of The Dude, played by Jeff Bridges. We remembered Sandra Bullock from a previous trivia question about which women in Hollywood made the most money in 2010.
2. Southwest. After much debate we decided it was either Delta or Southwest. As I dashed the answer to the front I erased Delta in favor of Southwest for reasons I cannot explain.
3. South. We drew a picture of the globe, included the equator and tropics, then started talking about Hawaii's distance, sunshine and what sort of things the pilot points out as you fly there.
   
4. Chelsea Clinton! We all shrugged our shoulders for a few minutes. Despite my getting married one week ahead of Chelsea I was drawing a blank. My mom jumped in with the answer. Of course!
5. -40. My dad knew this one right away. J did the math and confirmed. As we discussed the differences between the two measurements of temp we were careful not to give away our answer.
   
6. Seven. B thought and thought - he carries a constitution around with him, but gave an unsure five for his answer. Both J and E came up with seven -- it's almost always a sign to listen to if two players just "know" something like this.
7. Dentistry. We totally bombed this question -- one of the two non-bonus questions we missed. Who knew?
8. Speak-n-Spell. Weird!
   

There were two bonus rounds - one where we chose which of two brands (Oreos or Chips Ahoy, for example) made the most money in 2009. We correctly guessed - seriously guessing is all we could do - seven of twelve. (Seriously, who eats Chips Ahoy? How can they sell more than Oreo? This is unreasonable!)

The second bonus round involved airport codes. We correctly guessed all but one airport. Here are some of the codes - guess the city they belong to:

• FRA
• CDG
• LHR
• AMD
• MAD
• PEK
• HKG
• HND

Airport answers:

• Frankfort
• Paris
• London
• Amsterdam
• Madrid
• Beijing
• Hong Kong
• Tokyo

Final question - a complete clusterfuck of ideas, opinions and dissent. These cities are REALLY close together. We guessed and held our collective breath. We got the final answer right and held on to our first place position. Amazing! The answer - which isn't something any non-cartographer should know - is:

• Kansas City (closest)
• Buffalo
• Birmingham
• Charlotte (farthest)

Our team was pretty phenomenal. I don't think I've ever seen my dad as excited as he was when we won. It was a wonderful afternoon of us all putting our knowledge, experiences and ideas together. Even though trivia is pretty ridiculous and random, our team left feeling like champions. And that's pretty nice.

Winter roundup

B and I have lived together for almost four years now -- and like any roommate situation one between people (even married types) can be sticky.

We've learned to give each other space, appreciation and our own moments to shine. This is more important than it sounds in a house with two competitive people who both enjoy cooking during a blizzard.

You see, I've been the cook around here lately and B's been without the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with cooking.

As delicious as my meals are (and they're delicious!) we don't agree on the details of everything: My pizzas are funny-shaped, B's are round.

So, during the blizzard it was settled: B makes his round pies as our head pizza chef.

I, on the other hand, bake the muffins (blueberry, lemon poppyseed or pumpkin spice) even though baking is more B's forte. He just finished a heavenly batch of peanut butter cookies, in fact.

Exciting news in our neck of the woods...

• Our car is officially buried - we'll hope for some warm days in the weeks ahead, but hop the bus/train until then. We drive probably once a week anyway, so it's not debilitating to be car-less, but it's annoying.
  
• My new job at the Y is really fun. I work Mondays and Wednesdays. I've signed up for the Y's Lazyman Triathlon so I'll be doing a lot of swimming, running and biking (much of it indoors) between now and March 27. Yay!
• Trivia championships are coming up next weekend -- we'd better get studying Canadian geography.
• I'm participating in another medical research study -- this one involves riding an exercise bike for 16 minutes. Wacky science!
• We're watching Ken Burn's Baseball documentary - it's rather amazing. While I can't always concentrate 100 percent on it, I've definitely learned a lot.
• Our mayoral (and aldermen) election is coming right up - February 22. I'm a pretty solid fan of Rahm and I'm working as an election judge again. Hooray for voting!
  

Let it snow

Chicago is rarely knocked over by weather.

In my 3.5 years in this darling city I've seen Chicago handle rain, wind, cold, heat, snow and storms gracefully. Even a sinkhole a block from our place wasn't anything to hoot about.

But this storm - Snowtorious BIG, as some are calling it - is occasion to pause. I mean it - pause! Stay home, don't go to work, don't even consider driving (why would you even consider that?!?), drink hot chocolate, watch movies, and relax.

The city is handling this quite admirably so far as I can see from my fourth floor view. We've seen plows chug by, watched plenty of buses cautiously run their routes and heard sirens too.

Last night we took a walk to pick up a prescription and some groceries. It was delightful and treacherous. A bar we passed offered us a free second drink if we came in - we declined. Along Lincoln Avenue we ran into a woman who works at our grocery store and helped her walk the few blocks she couldn't handle in the wind.

We got home safely (and with ingredients to make stew today) and we're planning another walk for today once it calms down a little bit. (Is this Lake Effect? Who knows.)

Happy Snow Day!