The week in Illinois sort of flew by. Most of it was spent in various conference rooms, scheming to get a few precious seconds with a shared Cat5 cable. If that cable were a prostitute, we would all have a raging case of crabs this week. Between that, a crazy schedule and marginal cell phone reception in most of the suburb and my hotel, I felt a bit isolated and depressed most of the week. Luckily I had thrown some Netflix disks into my satchel, so each night, I watched movies on my pc while lying in bed. If Tom Cruise can bring Dakota Fanning home to her Mommy despite alien attack, for goodness sake, I can get through a week of shoving corporate nonsense into my brain.
It was somewhat gratifying to put my knowledge of statistics to use. While I identify heartily as an English major, as an undergrad, I also majored in Psychology and tend to be a brain dork because of it. One of the requirements for the Psych major is an intensive five-credit Statistics class. Math and I are barely on speaking terms, so I took the class during the summer, figuring that spending twenty hours a week inhaling ANOVAs and standard deviations was the best way to get through it. However, a great teacher (Georgina Wilson-Doenges, there is a positive correlation between you and being a rock star) and my need to graduate with honors has permanently imprinted statistical analysis onto my brain. While my cohorts were groaning over the difference between modes, means and medians, I was excited that we had a program to do the math for us and I wouldn’t have to dust the cobwebs off the algebra section of my brain.
I did make it back out to West Elm, but was really nonplussed by the selection. Perhaps I had given it too much build up in my brain. I wanted to like something, really I did, but the blues were too blue and the greens were lovely but I have nothing green and the whites were, well, like every other white that ever whited. And exactly who is buying those sissal rugs? Do they walk around the house in clogs? They don’t seem very welcoming to bare feet. I am clearly missing something there. I ended up with a few little nothings, certainly not worth two trips out to Oakbrook, and then a very confusing turn onto the highway, in which I realized that I was going the wrong direction when I passed a very well-lit glass building filled with clutter that I decided I had never seen in my life. I was on the phone with Jake, narrating my confusion and decided to turn around, but then found myself at the exact same place I had gotten off the highway the last time I was lost in Chicago’s suburbs. How does that happen, exactly? I think that it was also the exact same building that made me think that I was going the wrong way. Clearly, the universe wants me to go to Aurora and shop the outlet mall. Or there the weirldy cluttered yellow building is inherently evil. And since Jake was in the car with me the first time and on the phone the second, he now believes I have no idea where I am when in the Chicago area. And obviously, this assumption is a sound one.
So with so much to wrap my brain around during the day and then shopping at night, the week flew by very quickly and was capped by a really enjoyable evening with Tobermory and Allie, eating cheesecake and shopping for make up and shoes. I should have warned them that I am somewhat of an enthusiastic shopping partner. Also, I ended up totally copying Allie and buying the exact same pair of Munro shoes. While it wasn’t a cock-block, I probably should have asked if she minded that I wanted to walk in her footsteps, so to speak. We actually closed out Nordstrom and then walked through a darkened mall, glowing with an evening well spent in hedonistic pursuits. Cheesecake and gossip and shoes, how girly is that? We each clearly needed the evening and I was happy that they braved the very confusing streets of Shermer, even though it would mean getting home way after their bedtime. I can’t wait to see them again in three weeks for the GB Minicon. (Poppy’s much better recap is here)
All in all, a very good week.
Back home in the Motherland, the weather has turned cold. Last week in the land of flatness, there was a day where it poured rain, and then I came home to inches of snow. While last week I was walking around in an unlined leather coat (or sans coat some of the time), this week, I am wondering where I left my gloves. While Mopie and I were doing Minicon errands over the weekend, she huddled in her down-filled parka, talking about wind chill, but as the evening went on, I too was cursing the cold. A front has gone through and apparently winter has finally decided to get its act together and stop procrastinating. Maybe it made a Groundhog Day’s resolution. It’s not quite the bone-chilling cold that we’re known for in the tundra, but it’s enough to be a reminder of how lucky we’ve been over the last two or three months. Mopie and I went out to quality check the karaoke for the Minicon and the snow was a pretty backdrop for the karaoke stage. If it had been falling softly on cedars rather than a factory’s receiving dock, it would have been quite picturesque. By the time Esteban showed up to bring us home (forcing the three of us to get very cozy in the cab of his truck, not to mention, poor Esteban putting up with our singing songs from Wicked loudly and with great drunken aplomb), the world was white and beautiful, each street light casting a circle of sparkles on the ground, each tree branch an error struck with Wite-Out.
While the mild winter is nice, I forget how depressing it gets to look at a brown dessicated world. Roadside ditches are anarchy. Clots of leftover snow from months ago turn black as char in the corners of parking lots while streets crust thick with salt, white as skeletons. Fresh snow absolves all sin.
The cold weather does something to the atmosphere. There are sunrises in winter that I never see any other time of the year. This morning, the sun turned the clouds the most beautiful shades of pink and baby blue. I never have my camera when I need it. The river has froze solid and opened up at least eight different times so far this season, sometimes opening and closing in the same week. On Friday, it was wide open, but as I crossed the bridge this morning, it has a perfect fifty foot sheet of glassine along the edges. It only goes shiny when there’s a very quick freeze. If it stays this cold, it should be frozen across very soon.
As much as I sort of hate being cold, I love the snow. Not driving through it and certainly not moving it, but as set dressing, you just can’t beat being swathed in crystalline white. I missed the jawbreaker-sized flakes that started this mess, but I have this weird certainty that there will be a giant fluffy snowfall right before the Minicon. It will snow because it can’t not. There’s really no beating Green Bay hospitality, and even the weather will cooperate. I will accept no alternatives.
Speaking of the GB Minicon, I am stoked with a capital Stoh. Between the drunken carousing at the karaoke place and also strong-arming Esteban into putting together the final bookshelf for the office, Mopie and I did some planning and prep work this weekend. We have a list and it is unbelievably rewarding to cross things off of it. We are so accomplished that we might be getting a little cocky, thinking of more things to make the event so damned cool that everyone’s heads will explode and they will need hats to cover the exploded parts and hey, we should totally make some hats. She is so great at keeping my head from going to the stressing hyperventillating place, though, that I don’t know how I ever did anything without her. I need to think of more ways to keep her in Wisconsin this May.
But the Minicon is only two weeks and a few days away! I may squeal! So excited! If you read about a freak earthquake with the epicenter in Green Bay, you will know it was caused by the hottest people in the universe simulatenously shaking their asses in unison. That’s such a fabulous mental picture that I will leave you to ponder it in your heart.
PS. Even though the registration deadline has passed, there’s still a few spots available on the sleigh ride event. Click on the Pie and Wheat picture below for details.
