The Best Thing Ever: #7

This weekend I had to go home to Kentucky very suddenly.  The reason was sad: my sweet Uncle Jack (who was actually a great-uncle) had died, and his funeral was Saturday. 

My family is huge, and even though I never got to know Uncle Jack very well, I knew he always meant a lot to my cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.  It was important for me to take off work and be with them.

And because Jack was a beloved man who lived a long, successful life, the event was more of one of those “celebration of life” funerals than a somber affair.  There was singing, and dancing, and remembering, and laughing.  No one wore all black.  I wore a fuschia dress, for heaven’s sakes.  It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to.

Coming from Chicago, and with only a few hours to prepare for a trip home, I had to think quickly.  And that’s when the Megabus and I became friends.

Megabus is the best thing ever.

Here’s the secret of Megabus: it’s better than Greyhound. 

It’s a giant blue double-decker bus.

It doesn’t have “stations,” per se.  It just has stops, which consist of little blue signs in cities and towns throughout the East and Midwest.

That allows it to be monster cheap.  When I say monster cheap, I mean that I got a round-trip ticket from Chicago to Cincinnati, day of travel, for $82.50.

And the best part comes when you get on the bus, and maybe you have to cut in front of a person or two, but then you can sit on the top level in the very front.  Then you can take dorky pictures like this one:

You’re welcome.

And bless you, Uncle Jack, for a life well-lived and a family who knew that a fun, rollicking funeral was the kind you’d like the best.

The Best Thing Ever: #45

I have not blogged in a while because I have been busy.

Busy using this:

(Yes, I know the bit is crooked.  It's not like I tried to use it that way.  Sheesh.)

To hang a curtain rod, so that I could hang these:

Which I made myself, with like, thread and everything.

My temporary job becomes permanent next week, which means I get a full hour for lunch every day along with benefits, so a power drill seemed like a wise present to myself.

A power drill is the best thing ever.  It makes holes, and loud noises, and it looks like a narwhal.

And when you've been trying to drill holes in drywall using a battery-operated screwdriver because you thought THAT was what a power drill was, a power drill suddenly seems like the answer to every prayer.

Look out, because I have a weapon and I sort of know how to use it. 

Hint: that toggle switch that power drills have?  That’s so you can switch between drilling and pulling the drill bit out of the wall.  You know, forward and then reverse.

It is NOT a handy-dandy switch you can throw depending on whether you’re left-handed or right-handed.

Only a leftie would ever think that.  Oh well.

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.

The Best Thing Ever: #19 Continued

Remember when I said that the best thing ever is baking soda?

That fact became even more true today, when I found this:

And it was on sale for a dollar, too.

Baking soda wins forever.

The Best Thing Ever: #27

Here is what I saw last night:

A restaurant with live music.

The live music was an old man.

The old man was dressed in a business casual grandfather sort of way, in pressed khaki slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt.

The old man was playing the marimba.

By “playing the marimba,” I mean hitting it sporadically, not necessarily creating any sort of melody or rhythm.

The old man was also singing what I can only describe as a “sailor song,” meaning that it had kind of that yo-ho-ho quality to it.

The man’s voice was rather high and warbled.

The restaurant patrons did not look like they were loving the music.

And that is why this was the best thing ever: it made my day.

The Best Thing Ever: #78

SUNGLASSES are the best thing ever.

I am notoriously bad with sunglasses.  Every pair I have ever owned has either been lost, broken, or horribly mangled and melted in the dryer.  (That really is true.)

This is why I have never owned a pair that’s cost more than $12—and even that is pushing it.  My average price limit is $5.  Because I just know that within a month or two, I’ll have to buy new ones.

I spent the last five years in northwestern Pennsylvania, where the sun is insanely bright in the winter, so you have to wear sunglasses pretty much year-round.  I don’t know how different that might be in Chicago.  Looking forward to finding out, and to discovering where I can still buy $5 pairs in this big city.

Anyway!  Why are sunglasses the best thing ever?

1.  Obviously, they play an important role in protecting your eyes from sun and wind.  These ones especially.  See how big the frames are?  You can’t even see my eyebrows in these, and with my eyebrows, that’s saying something.

2.  Even the cheap ones can be pretty cute and stylish.  I found this particular pair in a consignment shop in Lexington, Kentucky.  They were $10.  I don’t know what brand they are or why they were consigned, but they’re awfully cute. 

Check out the sophisticated gold detail here:

And the fabulous pinkness here:

3.  Sunglasses can help you avoid awkward moments with strangers.  (This is very important in my life.)

In addition to never being able to hold onto my sunglasses, I am also pretty awkward socially.  Not in a debilitating, I-have-a-diagnosed-social-condition way, but just in the fact that I’m shy and never really mastered the art of Successful Interaction With People You Don’t Know Well.

I go running outside a lot in the summer, and now that I’ve moved here, I walk around my neighborhood pretty frequently, too (more on my cozy, sweet neighborhood in a later post).  Downtown you don’t have to look at anyone because there are too many people and no one cares, but when the street is pretty empty and there are only two or so people coming toward me, I feel panicky.

You know what I mean: Should I smile?  Should I say hi?  Should I even make eye contact?  Uuuuugggghhhh.

Sunglasses solve that problem.  You can stare at the person coming toward you and size them up, wait for them to make eye contact if they wish, and respond appropriately. 

And no one will ever know you’re doing this, because your sunglasses hide your eyes completely.  Otherwise, you have to do the awkward dance of pretending to concentrate very hard on anything but the person, and then just as they're about to pass, you pretend you just realized they're there and give them a pleasant smile. 

This is why I try never to leave home without my sunglasses, and this is why they are the best thing ever.