Au Revoir (or Adieu?) to Normal

Greg is now a college graduate, and in mid-December we spent what may well be our last weekend in Bloomington-Normal!

We headed down there early Friday afternoon--after several years of starting just a bit too late and getting stuck in afternoon traffic filled with motorists who, like us, were impatient to break the steely bonds of Chicago for the weekend, we finally made in on the road before the great exodus. Smooth sailing, all the way!

Friday night we took Greg out to Kobe, one of those Japanese restaurants where they cook your meal flamboyantly right at your table. The food was tasty and the show was amusing. A good time was had by all.

Saturday was commencement day, and a bit past noon we headed over to Redbird Arena and took our seats for the 1:00 ceremony. Right on time, the procession began: The doctoral candidates, the masters degree candidates, and the baccalaureate candidates, followed by the faculty and administrators. I have to say, every time I watch one of these processionals, I covet the regalia. My undergrad institution, Madison College (now James Madison University), provided hoods to the baccalaureates, albeit modest ones, so I have a black hood lined in purple and gold (the colors of that alma mater) and white (to signify my Bachelor of Arts degree). I didn't attend commencement to receive my Master of Arts degree, so I don't know what the hood for a Syracuse University MA would be. I love the doctoral robes and hoods, though, as well as the puffy hats and luxurious tassels. I really am a magpie, huh?



Anyway, back to the proceedings. It was a very nice, economical ceremony, without long speeches about how this was the first day of the rest of their lives or why it's called "commencement." Just hearty congratulations for attaining this milestone and good wishes for the future.



After the crowd had cleared and the pictures were snapped, we headed back to Greg's apartment to load the bulk of his possessions in his mom's car, and from there we drove to Destihl, a local brewpub with wonderful beer on offer as well as excellent food. The four of us--Greg, his mom, Jeff, and I--celebrated the new grad with toasts of ale, lager, and pilsner brewed on the premises and good wishes for a happy and fulfilling future.



Allow me to get a bit sentimental here: Greg had just turned eight a few days before I met him, and I met him on my very first day in Chicago. He was a bright kid, and a sweet kid, and, as I was soon to learn, a whiz at strategy games. He soon learned that I WASN'T, and he took great pleasure in beating me at Risk, Battleship, and (to my dismay) chess. He had his academic ups and downs during his elementary, middle, and high school career, but I never, ever doubted that he would make it through. And on December 12, he did us all proud... but most of all, he did himself proud. I won't lie, I shed a few proud and wistful tears as he strode across the stage to receive his degree. Congratulations, Greg! Here's to a happy and fulfilling future to the best stepson an evil stepmama could wish for!

Weirdness of Late

So it's been a strange week so far.

On Friday, a work colleague collapsed and died in the company cafeteria. She was a lovely and talented lady who always had a smile and a word or two of encouragement for her fellow editors. Apparently, she suffered a massive heart attack. The EMTs said that she probably died instantly. It was sudden, and she didn't suffer, but of course our entire department is grieving and more than a little unnerved. We all used to joke that the crazy schedule attached to the program we're working on would kill one of us. And now it has. She had just turned 40. Sigh. Namaste, Nichole, wherever your spirit is now.

Late on Friday night, after we had returned from seeing Bill Frisell and his trio at the Old Town School of Folk Music and after I was tucked up snuggly in bed, Mifune got herself tangled up in a pile of plastic bags that had been sitting under the kitchen table, waiting to be tied up and hauled to the recycling bin. Somehow, she got inside one of them, which had a few more bags inside IT, so she really got ensnared except for her little legs and feet! She tore off down the hall, bumping into the walls, and somehow she found her way underneath our bed (her safe place when she was more feral). The bags snared on the bed frame and ripped, allowing her to get free. She cowered under the bed for a couple of hours after that. But the thing was, in her panic she emitted an awful stench. Just horrid. We couldn't find any urine or feces on the floor or in the erstwhile bags, but the odor was just overpowering. So overpowering, in fact, that it triggered a very bad bronchial reaction in me (the gal with the cat allergy!). Thank goodness for Benadryl. It was quite an evening!

On Saturday, we went to Riverside to have lunch with Greg. He was home from college for the Easter weekend. He suggested a new Thai place in La Grange called Thipi, and it was great. We had standard Thai fare: satay, pad thai, and spicy basil, but the dishes were so rich and tasty, with a depth of flavor we didn't expect from such basic offerings. I can highly recommend it.

Sunday, of course, was our usual Easter feast. Jeff, nephew Dan, pal Diana, and I chowed down on the traditional Love Ham, along with steamed veggies, mashed potatoes, etc. For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake. Yum!

So... that's my latest news. I hope to have some new pictures of the kitty to regale you with soon--let's just say that she had decided that Moxy and Ox--the ugly dolls--are her sworn enemies. And you don't want to be her sworn enemy! Stay tuned!

It HAS been a while, huh?

Sorry for the gap in posts... No excuses, just spending a lot of time on other things.

But let me bring you up to date.

First, the kitty.


Isn't she pretty? She's coming right along. She is still skittish--I don't think we quite realized just how close to feral she was. She loves being petted and cuddled, but we still have to wrangle her to do so.


Here's Jeff, giving her a dose of socializing.

She also loves to play. For the first couple of weeks with us, she didn't do much other than hide. In that time, though, she managed to find just about every toy of Shelly's that the late divacat had batted underneath dressers, the buffet, etc., never, we thought, to be seen again. But Mifune found them all, I think! And she would play with them when she thought we weren't looking. Well, we've made great strides!


Now she will play with balls and little things we toss or roll to her, and she will also play like crazy with her favorite toy, the stick with the bell and feathers on it. Jeff has given it a name: the Giant Claw (in honor of the MST3K-caliber film of the same moniker). She goes CRAZY on the Giant Claw, jumping and darting and trying to fake it out--and even ambushing it.

She also has started following us around the place, but she freaks and runs away when we let on that we know she's there. She's like the little kids who go into the haunted house, I think--she's testing her mettle, satisfying her curiosity, and getting a great rush from being scared. What can I say? She's an adolescent.

She came through her spaying just fine--never seemed sore or irritable and had no complications whatsoever with the stitches.


We got her this queenly cat bed in anticipation of her returning a bit under the weather from her surgery, but aside from this photo-op and plenty of catnip strewn in it, she prefers sleeping under our bed amid our overflow of guitars and enough shed white fur to make up twelve Shellys. Needless to say, we haven't yet gotten around to clearing up that part of the house. I mean, the rest of the place is hard enough to keep neat (as if).

So, you may well be thinking that we don't do anything in our free time but attend to Mifune, but you'd be wrong! We spent a lovely but chilly weekend in Normal visiting Greg and shopping (as always when there) in every chain store known to man. The suede duffle coat I bought fifteen years ago in anticipation of my solo trip to the Grand Canyon (it was November; I knew it would be cold...sure enough, it snowed) finally bit the dust--the left sleeve just ripped for no reason that I could see. So, I ended up at Kohls, searching for a new winter casual jacket. Lucky for me that I had a 15% coupon and the coat was already 60% off. What a deal!

But the highlight of the weekend was something far more exciting and disturbing than shopping! It was ULTIMATE FIGHTING. Greg and his flat-mates and other assorted friends invited us to share their reserved table at Bloomington's Hooters-wannabe sports-bar where for $3 a head we could take in the pay-per-view match of the century so far: the reigning heavyweight champ Randy Couture pitted against a behemoth named Brock Lesnar.


That's the back of Greg's head in the foreground, chin on hand. The screen action is the preliminary to a lesser bout, several of which took up time before the big event. By the time we got to the championship match, I was too much in the moment to snap any pictures, alas!

Ultimate Fighting is a hybrid of Greco-Roman wrestling, bare-knuckles boxing, kick-boxing, and any other martial art you can imagine. It's really no-holds-barred and looks a lot like a street fight translated into an arena. Greg and his buddies were firmly in the Couture camp. They were in awe of Couture's strategic advantage and staying power--he is in his mid-40s, which is really old for this type of sport. Lesnar is more a freak of nature--a really muscle-bound dude, which makes his head seem really small in comparison with his body. He has one of those brow ridges that suggest that Neanderthals may just have interbred with Homo Sapiens Sapiens. He is massive. And yet, he is very quick and agile. Quite an opponent. But I wanted the old guy to win, too. You have to stick by your peeps.

The first round appeared to go to Couture. He outmaneuvered the massive Lesnar and controlled just about every move that was made within the octagon (which is the shape of the ring). At one point, Couture punched Lesnar in that massive brow, and the giant began to bleed. I heard myself cheer "He's bleeding! He's bleeding!" Good grief. I'm not proud of that, but I was swept up in the moment! It was looking good for Couture. Brains v. brawn. And some blood. Yes.

But then... oh, but then... early in the second round Couture made a misstep, went down, and Lesnar pounced and pummeled the living crap out of the old dude. It was shocking to see how fast the monster's fist was flying. Lesnar won by knock out--and not a technical one, either. Sigh.

I was all set to hate the big lug. I expected him to be dumb as a post and all braggadocio and bluster when they put the heavyweight title belt around his waist. But he was very humble. He gave a lot of credit to Couture for being a role model and for fighting such a tough match. He was sincere and--dare I say it?--warm. Friendly almost. And fairly well-spoken. Hmmm. That will teach me to judge a guy based on his brow ridge.

Will I be shelling out for additional pay-per-view fixes of Ultimate Fighting? Nah. But if I find myself in Bloomington/Normal when there's another bout scheduled, I might go and share buckets of beer with Greg and his pals.

Oh, and this evening Mifune came up to me and rubbed her head against my hand, asking for petting. And she actually let me pet her on her own terms. A breakthrough!

Rummaging, Visiting Greg, and Various Other Musings

So, here's what's been happening in my life:

On Thursday, my pal Laurie and I made one of our semi-annual rummage sale pilgrimages, this time to the big fall sale at Christ Church in Winnetka. As usual, it was quite crowded. I'm not really sure how much I spent, but not an inordinate amount. I don't think... The most expensive purchase was two yards of really fine upholstery material with fall leaves on it. I hope there is enough to recover the seats of my dining room chairs. We will see. If not, I can always just make a pile of pillows out of it. I also got a pair of Italian leather loafers, a dress with tiny houndstooth checks, a crocheted sweater, a couple of books, a pile of LPs (for the amusing cover art), a huge ceramic platter in a funky 50s shape and painted with stylized pine cones, a couple of heavy vaseline glass candy dishes, a souvenir cup and saucer from Catskill Game Farm (a place my family used to visit on our way up to visit my dad's sister's family, who lived in Scotia, New York), and what I thought was the grand prize--a huge black soft vinyl (quite leather-like) messenger bag from the Gap... for five bucks!

I've been looking for an outsized black leather bag--hobo-style, messenger-style, big-ass-tote-style--to replace my beloved old leather bookbag satchel that has seen better days. I was really chuffed about finding this bag, until I got it home and discovered it smelled as if it had been languishing in someone's basement--someone's very DAMP basement--for a decade or so. Which is probably exactly where it had been. So, after soliciting advice from a message board I frequent, I turned it inside out, sprayed it liberally with Lysol, and set it out on the balcony where it could bake in the unseasonably warm and bright sun predicted for the weekend.

Then Jeff and I started what we expected to be a two-and-a-half hour drive down to Normal to visit Greg.

A little more than FOUR HOURS later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Bloomington-Normal Holiday Inn Express.

It took us two-and-a-half hours just to travel the 60 miles or so from our door to Joliet, where we stopped for gas and some coffee. The rest of the trip was pretty much a breeze, but damn! There was some construction, but not so much that it should have made the Stevenson Expressway a parking lot at 2:30 in the afternoon. We thought we would avoid the rush hour... but I think the rush hour got moved up a bit due to the alleged three-day weekend (alleged, because we sure as hell never get Columbus Day off--but apparently others do). Sheesh!

Once we got to Normal, we had a lovely time. Greg gave us a tour of his frat house, brought us up to date on how his classes are going and his plans for summer school and/or interships, showed us how to play Guitar Hero (which, by the way, is really not much like playing an actual guitar)... we took him out to eat several times, shopped, and generally relaxed. I actually read more than a hundred pages in the Beatles biography, and I'm now up to the beginning of Beatlemania. Maybe I WILL finish it by the end of the year! Greg was a great host; we had a good time hanging out in the unseasonably nice (well, HOT) weather.

Other musings: Now that I'm reading about the Beatles (and this book is thorough--good grief, is it thorough!), I'm really jonesin' to hear some of the songs and tracks that are discussed. I put my Anthology 1 CDs in the listening queue in the car... and the cuts are very cool. But I also want to SEE the Beatles Anthology documentary as well. I hope it is on DVD... (although we tried to start Volver tonight, and for some reason the DVD player isn't talking to the TV. Merde.) AND I can't wait until Help! is finally available on DVD. I know it's kind of corny, but I have a soft spot for it: "Go to the window!" and "I wouldn't touch you with a plastic one" are old catch-phrases of mine.

Also, the black messenger bag seems much less musty now that it has basked in the Rogers Park sun for a while. It still doesn't smell like roses, but at least it is better. There is hope. Or maybe I should just bite the bullet and find a leathersmith who can copy it in nice, durable leather. 'Cause the beatings I give my carry-ons are truly ruthless.

Back to work in the morning--no Columbus Day, observed or otherwise, for us. Which is probably just as well. No offense to my Italian friends, but that guy wasn't a very nice man, all told. Still. If my employer offered me the day off with pay, I would not say no. So much for the strength of my convictions.

Back to Normal (for the Very First Time)

A couple of weekends ago (in fact, the very day that Rachel and Chase tied the knot), Jeff and I headed south to Normal to visit Greg at the Illinois State University. Just for context, here is a picture of Greg:



And here is a picture of the enormous dorm in which he lives:



This is allegedly the largest college dorm in the country. It is a tribute to late-sixties collegiate architecture, in that it isn't really aging all that well. But it IS quite impressive. And bizarrely laid-out. The elevators don't go to each floor. They stop on maybe a third of the 26 or so floors. Each stop serves two "houses," which are comprised of several levels each and which are located on either side of the bank of elevators. There are no long halls... just warren-like passages and stairwells. I'm sure there must be folks my age still wandering about in there, trying to find the rooms assigned them back in 1973. Greg is on one of (if not THE) highest floors, and he has spectacular view over the town of Normal.

I'm not sure they could have found a better name for this town. We stayed at a hotel along the main strip of commerce in the city, where you can find just about every chain restaurant and store known to man. Well, to American man. It was very convenient, I must say.

Only steps from the largest dorm in the nation, though, is the small downtown area of Normal, which is rather charming. It has a guitar shop, a used record store, a comic-book emporium, t-shirt shops (which could clean up by offering t-shirts with the simple name "NORMAL" on the front, but which only seem to carry University-themed apparel), coffeehouses, an Emack and Bolio ice cream parlor (yum!) and such. It is also thoroughly under construction, which may be its normal (heh!) state. Presiding over all this is the splendid Normal Theater (see above and below) with its art-deco facade, marquee, and neon. It has been restored to its former glory and--in an amazing blaze of good sense--the restorers did NOT turn it into a multiplex! It is still a single screen theater and hosts movies and other events frequently. It was one of the greatest things about Normal.

Although I really liked the charming downtown courthouse square in Macomb (where Greg attended Western Illinois University last year), I think Normal has much more to offer in just about every way. Now if they could just work on getting their t-shirt act together.... (I'm telling ya: NORMAL t-shirts would sell like hotcakes, guys!)

Greg has a couple more years there, so I'm sure we'll be back. Maybe we'll even take in a show at the Normal.