Goodbye to the Kia

This is my car, the Kia Sephia, known to some as Sophie, known to some as the Fear No Art Mobile, known quite often to me as my $&%@#*%&! car.

It was made in 2000.  I bought it in 2009.  For two and a half years, it drove me to class at Edinboro University, took me to dance rehearsal in Erie, PA, carried me to the airport, and once, all the way to Louisville, Kentucky and back.

It also sometimes refused to start for no discernable reason, and I’d have to call my then-boyfriend to come bail me out of the Wal-Mart parking lot or the sketchy Erie neighborhood or wherever.  The driver’s side sun visor came loose and dangled distractingly until I ripped it off.  In the winter, all the doors froze shut, and even when I managed to get one open, it wouldn’t shut again until the car warmed up.  I’d spend a good ten minutes driving slowly through the ice and snow, leaning all the way over to the passenger side, holding the door shut because it was the only door that would open in the first place.

The best thing?  One time the timing belt snapped when I was waiting at a red light in downtown Erie, and I had to flag all the other cars around me until a tow truck came to rescue me.

Now I’m donating the Kia to charity.  It has sat in my dad’s driveway for four months, and it has failed inspection, and I think it’s time for it to go. 

I guess this is a little bit bittersweet, which is probably the case for most people when they get rid of their first car, because it’s been with me for a while and has seen me through a lot of things, blah blah blah, etc. 

It’s also bittersweet because originally, I kept the car so I’d have a way to get around whenever I visited Pennsylvania. 

And when I finished my degree in Chicago, I reasoned, I’d have a car when I moved to some little place less public transit-friendly than this city.

But things have changed since then.  I don’t plan on leaving Chicago anytime soon.  I have a full-time job.  I have friends.  I’m getting to know the city a little better all the time.

So, donating the Sephia is a little bit like cutting the last of the apron strings.  Even if I wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, not having a car there would make it that much more impractical.

I put my kayak on my car this summer just to prove I was strong enough to do it by myself.  Scratched my car all to heck in the process, but I got it done.

Goodbye, fussy little car!  I don’t have the slightest idea what happens to cars that are donated to charity.  But wherever you end up, I hope they treat you nice.

My Friend Tina

This past weekend, one of my best friends came to visit me in Chicago.

In the spirit of protecting her delicate identity, I will refer to her as Tina Fey. 

(Seriously, she looks so much like Tina Fey.)

It took a while for me to find her on the corner of Washington and LaSalle.  She wandered there from the train station and hung out in the Einstein Bagels, and then when I got there she’d gone across the street, so I spent a few minutes pacing outside Einstein’s and wondering if she’d been kidnapped.

But then she saw me and came back.  We had a tearful reunion.

And we had a great weekend!

We went to Chinatown and bought trinkets.

We saw the holiday train at the Jackson red line stop.  There were lights and a Santa and excitement.

Great shot, right?

We got very cold and stopped at Corner Bakery for coffee and defrosting our fingers.

We got warm again and went to the Bean at Millennium Park.

We saw the Marilyn Monroe statue.  Marilyn had snow on her dress.

We bumped into way too many people on State Street.

We went to Daley Plaza and the Christmas market, which personally I found a little boring except for these birds:

We went to the Sears Tower (NOT Willis Tower, as it would insist to be called these days).  Tina called her mom and was like GUESS WHERE I AM!  NO, NOT CHINATOWN!  GUESS!

Here we are on the skydeck:

Okay, not a great picture, you can't see a thing, it was dark and raining, don't judge.

We went to dinner at Elephant and Castle.

We watched Bridesmaids, and my life became complete.

…And all of that was just Saturday.

Sunday was fun, too.  Tina and I saw The Descendants with George Clooney and I had to bite down hard on my tongue to keep from bursting into tears.  What a sad and beautiful movie.  My god, I can’t even describe.  Also I dropped all my popcorn on the ground.

We also got super lost on our way back to the train station Sunday night and ended up walking something like 16 blocks in the cold and dark, and by the time we reached Union Station we were exhausted and starving and grumpy.  Somehow we were able to avoid getting hit by trucks, stumbled into a sports bar, and ate and drank everything we could ever want.  Tina made me get a cab home.  Ahem.

A word about friends: the ones who ride Amtrak from the smutty old station in Erie, PA to visit you in Chicago, who get up with you at 6 AM because you have to go to work on Friday and don’t want to leave them all alone in your apartment, who wait patiently on a dead college campus while you’re at work, who don’t get mad when you can’t follow directions and end up dragging them all over the more god-forsaken parts of the city, who leave town Sunday night on same smutty train because they have to go to work at 8 AM after a night of fitful, chilly sleep…those are friends worth having.

Tina Fey is one of those friends.

Here we are having fun together.

The End.

Chicago's First Snow

Thursday night, snow fell in Chicago.

I didn’t realize this when I walked out the door at 6:30 Friday morning.  I traipsed down the two flights of outdoor stairs to the alley, on my way to catch the bus, and was met with a sparkly dusting of fresh snow.

Having lived in northeastern Pennsylvania for five years, and Michigan for two years before that, I’m no newcomer to snow.  But the first snowfall is always a surprise and a delight, at least to me.

Did you know I used to be kind of weirdly obsessed with snow?  Senior year of college, I started eating it.  Like, a lot.  And by the way, eating snow is not a good idea for anyone, even aside from that whole “don’t eat the yellow snow” joke.  It does carry a ton of bacteria and nastiness.  It was never a good idea for me to eat snow.

But I did.  I’d eat a whole bowl of it every day.  What can I say?  Emotionally, it got me through February.

I wish you all a happy Sunday.  The end.

How to Take the Town in Chicago

Chicago, like all big cities, has a great blend of intellectual, educational, high-culture attractions and crazy excellent party places.  Okay, admittedly I haven’t really been to the crazy excellent party places.  I’m poor and socially awkward and super nerdy, which means you won’t find me at a club or wherever.

But!  Here, in my opinion, is the best way to spend a rainy Saturday in Chicago, as I had the pleasure of doing last weekend:

1.       Visit the Field Museum, which is your run-of-the-mill natural history/science museum with an excellent array of special exhibits.

2.       Meet one of your best friends at the museum.

3.       Decide that in addition to the run-of-the-mill exhibits of Native American families and polar bears, you also will go to see the new Chocolate exhibit.

4.       Walk through the Chocolate exhibit.  Learn about cacao beans, spicy Mayan hot chocolate, the European combination of chocolate and sugar, and the evolution of candy bars.

5.       Become ravenously hungry.

6.       Buy two extremely expensive chocolate bars.

7.       Have a bite to eat in the museum café because your friend insists that “chocolate is not lunch!”

8.       Go see the Native American families and polar bears.

9.       Get gently kicked out at 5 when the museum closes.

10.   Discover that you should not have worn those cute boots that are making your feet hurt so much now.

11.   Accept when your friend offers to get you two a cab.

12.   Go to TJ Maxx.

13.   Buy way too much, including new cowboy boots to replace the miserable ones you’re wearing.

14.   Go to Filene’s Basement.

15.   Buy a fuchsia minidress that you wouldn’t normally be caught dead in, but your friend says it’s hot and it’s about time you wore something with a little color.  

16.   Go to Quartino, an Italian tapas place, for dinner.

17.   Discover that there is an hour and a half wait.

18.   Put down a reservation and decide to kill time by visiting the Signature Lounge at the top of the John Hancock Tower.

19.   Discover that there’s a 20 minute wait to get into a Chicago bar with a view of Indiana on a Saturday night.

20.   Go to the ladies’ room and take a picture of the view from the enormous window:

21.   Get a cab back to Quartino.

22.   Sit down to dinner at 9:45.

23.   Order your first taste of sangria and love it.

24.   Order delicious Italian tapas.  Eat skate for the first time.  Love it forever.

25.   Devour every bite.

26.   Order limoncello dessert drinks and a tiramisu.

27.   Make a promise to yourself never to eat anything again.  Ever.

28.   Decide to leave when you realize it’s past 11.

29.   Tiptoe through the rain to the train station.

30.   Go home and sleep for 11 hours.

In conclusion,  I love Chicago.  The end.

The Christmas Season on Southport

So awhile ago, I told you guys that I’d tell you more about the neighborhood I live in, and after what happened the other night, it feels like the right time to dish.

I live in Lakeview, on the north side of Chicago, slightly northwest of Wrigley Field, on a street called Southport.  Southport is the kind of place where most people, of my age and financial status, often grow to hate: it’s full of pricey boutiques and upscale coffee shops.  A lot of families live here, and you’ll see the young, fit moms pushing a baby jogger with one hand and holding a specialty coffee in the other.  There are two—TWO—stores where you can buy unique treats and clothes and toys for your dog.  (And the dogs, oh my goodness. They’re all fluffy, well-behaved, purebred, adorable little animals, and I don’t even LIKE dogs.)

A lot of people hate this kind of stuff because it’s pricey and pretentious and whatnot, and it’s not like I have too much excess money to spend, but Southport really is nice as a result. 

So Friday night, I decided to take the long walk home from the Southport stop on the brown line because I felt like I needed the exercise, and this turned out to be a very happy accident.  It was the night of the Southport Holiday Stroll.  Most of the stores had live music and big sales going on.  There were Christmas lights and Christmas carols.  I couldn’t even get inside one of the boutiques because there was a group of old people in there, singing the Hallelujah Chorus.  And did they ever have a screechy soprano.

I stopped in this little clothing and jewelry boutique with a girl in a strapless black dress singing Christmas carols and strumming a guitar, who sounded faintly like Dolly Parton, and I felt like a little kid, exploring all the weird necklaces and hippy dresses and listening to county/western Christmas tunes.  (Actually, I had to leave after two and a half songs because the singer’s voice kind of got to me.)

No, but seriously, the whole street was adorable.  I love my pretentious little boutique neighborhood with all its unaffordable kitsch.  I love the passersby with their North Face coats and their café mochas.  And I love all the restaurants with the dog bowls sitting out for the puppies passing by.  The world may be a miserable place, but you can forget that for a brief moment in my little neighborhood.

On a halfway unrelated note, we decorated our apartment for Christmas.  Our decorations consist of the following:

WOO!  Aren’t we festive???  (That tree, in case you can't tell, is about two feet tall.  Including the stand.)