(no subject)
this weekend was one of those olde tyme weekends, a whirl of unceasing social activity as i passed from one dance partner to another. after work friday, mesler and i embarked on our traditional comic-shopping and taco-eating spree, joined by our old pal virginia. from there, i met up with cortney at small bar, and stevie then joined us at whirlaway. it was a delight to see so many friends, and also to do so in all my old logan square haunts. and interesting to observe the changes--virginia with a baby, stevie doing webcam porn... a few weeks ago i saw the third installment of spanish apartment, which seems appropriate for where i'm at in life: we met all the characters when they were happy go lucky exchange students, and now they're all malaisey 40 year olds.
anyhoo, i jaunted up to enrique's, and in the morning jaunted off to meet meredith. we were the only two in the movie theatre that morning, allowing us to chat and be generally obnoxious. we strolled into hoffbrau haus, accidentally but perfectly timed to be there during germany's world cup game. oompa bands played when germany scored, meredith cheered alot ("i just cheer for whoever's winning, that way i'm never sad!") from there, i was back toward enrique's for his birthday dinner. nicely timed for inca new year, the dinner was at a peruvian restaurant. fortunately, no llamas were sacrificed. although a basket of bread did catch fire...
it's pretty nice dating enrique. the other day before bed, he was musing about his liking me, observing "i don't really get it. i mean, you're pretty weird. like, really weird. and kinda gross." at work, as i was explaining a clog in my sink, my boss observed "you can not talk about such personal things this early in the day." i retorted "oh c'mon, it's not like i took off my shirt to show you all the bite marks from my makeouts this week!" my nurse sue just put her face in her hands and sighed "oh, eric."
work is pretty fun. the new girl has zero interest in our work, but is a ball of fun. an intellectual new to chicago, she is doing as i once did and trying to foster a love of sports. which she discusses in a hilariously self-mocking way. needless to say, we goaded one another into buying soccer jerseys and even matching scarves. we were so tickled with our dumb purchases that we had to roll up to sarah's office to show them off. mike has taken, whenever we're discussing depressed clients, to exclaiming with misplaced bragadoccio "I'M the most depressed person!"
oh, where was i? i just had a lengthy chat with a man about how the police and the busdrivers are teaming up against him... i have found some of my favourite wayward people recently. ed warned us not to go to the west side, as it is full of dragon fly people. "you get all kinds of people...mice people, ant people...they're not one or the other, they just go back and forth." a fellow named eric made me drive him 50 blocks cos he left a fire burning. come to find out, it was actually "the world furnace," without which the whole earth would freeze. which begs the question, wouldn't we want him to leave that burning? he couldn't remember my name at all, so i said "this can be real easy for you--my name is eric, same as yours." he responded by smiling and playing air guitar. for an awkwardly long time. another client turned to michele and explained "when you go to hell i'll still try to help you out. i mean, we'll never be friends, but i'll still be civil and say hello. i haven't disowned you or anything." the other night at the big shelter, a man had stripped nude and was running about urinating on everything. the ambulance came with 6 police squad cars (must've been a slow night in the west side). the police all stood around socializing outside as all the paramedics and fireman worked with the guy. my german timo and i just exchanged smirks across all the surly EMTs. in the end, though, i like to think everyone had a pretty good time.
what else has been going on? cheyenne and i had our monthly date night at medici, kimberly had a merry birthday that involved pinatas, smores, and giant dogs running around. the dogs' owner made a comment through the fence about how we probably thought he was too white trash to hang out with, prompting everyone to invite him over.
bridgeport has been lovely...there have been quite a few evenings of all of us loitering on the porch with our downstairs neighbors and nextdoor neighbor ibrahim. one night we managed to make two best friends, as passers by would stop and offer to trade beers for cigarettes, then stay to chat. even sarah was downstairs that night. we all joked about the horrendous water damage caused by an exploding water heater in the attic. as we bandied about weird dramatic ways to approach the landlord, sarah suggested calling the landlord to blame him for her becoming pregnant when he forced her to sex up the hot plumber he sent over. ibrahim doubled up and stumbled in a circle snickering, given his being a fairly prudish moslem man. when cortney came to pick up her stuff the other day, holly and i took her to the backyard for some cigaroos and beer. neighbor casey appeared, and we were all up til midnight chatting. another evening, i made friends with a 54 year old mechanic named fast eddy, and hung out with him and our older basement neighbor rene. both were carrying about a bunch of beer and wanting to barter beers for cigarettes and company. it's a big thing down in bridgeport, apparently.
in general, summer is off to a lovely start.
anyhoo, i jaunted up to enrique's, and in the morning jaunted off to meet meredith. we were the only two in the movie theatre that morning, allowing us to chat and be generally obnoxious. we strolled into hoffbrau haus, accidentally but perfectly timed to be there during germany's world cup game. oompa bands played when germany scored, meredith cheered alot ("i just cheer for whoever's winning, that way i'm never sad!") from there, i was back toward enrique's for his birthday dinner. nicely timed for inca new year, the dinner was at a peruvian restaurant. fortunately, no llamas were sacrificed. although a basket of bread did catch fire...
it's pretty nice dating enrique. the other day before bed, he was musing about his liking me, observing "i don't really get it. i mean, you're pretty weird. like, really weird. and kinda gross." at work, as i was explaining a clog in my sink, my boss observed "you can not talk about such personal things this early in the day." i retorted "oh c'mon, it's not like i took off my shirt to show you all the bite marks from my makeouts this week!" my nurse sue just put her face in her hands and sighed "oh, eric."
work is pretty fun. the new girl has zero interest in our work, but is a ball of fun. an intellectual new to chicago, she is doing as i once did and trying to foster a love of sports. which she discusses in a hilariously self-mocking way. needless to say, we goaded one another into buying soccer jerseys and even matching scarves. we were so tickled with our dumb purchases that we had to roll up to sarah's office to show them off. mike has taken, whenever we're discussing depressed clients, to exclaiming with misplaced bragadoccio "I'M the most depressed person!"
oh, where was i? i just had a lengthy chat with a man about how the police and the busdrivers are teaming up against him... i have found some of my favourite wayward people recently. ed warned us not to go to the west side, as it is full of dragon fly people. "you get all kinds of people...mice people, ant people...they're not one or the other, they just go back and forth." a fellow named eric made me drive him 50 blocks cos he left a fire burning. come to find out, it was actually "the world furnace," without which the whole earth would freeze. which begs the question, wouldn't we want him to leave that burning? he couldn't remember my name at all, so i said "this can be real easy for you--my name is eric, same as yours." he responded by smiling and playing air guitar. for an awkwardly long time. another client turned to michele and explained "when you go to hell i'll still try to help you out. i mean, we'll never be friends, but i'll still be civil and say hello. i haven't disowned you or anything." the other night at the big shelter, a man had stripped nude and was running about urinating on everything. the ambulance came with 6 police squad cars (must've been a slow night in the west side). the police all stood around socializing outside as all the paramedics and fireman worked with the guy. my german timo and i just exchanged smirks across all the surly EMTs. in the end, though, i like to think everyone had a pretty good time.
what else has been going on? cheyenne and i had our monthly date night at medici, kimberly had a merry birthday that involved pinatas, smores, and giant dogs running around. the dogs' owner made a comment through the fence about how we probably thought he was too white trash to hang out with, prompting everyone to invite him over.
bridgeport has been lovely...there have been quite a few evenings of all of us loitering on the porch with our downstairs neighbors and nextdoor neighbor ibrahim. one night we managed to make two best friends, as passers by would stop and offer to trade beers for cigarettes, then stay to chat. even sarah was downstairs that night. we all joked about the horrendous water damage caused by an exploding water heater in the attic. as we bandied about weird dramatic ways to approach the landlord, sarah suggested calling the landlord to blame him for her becoming pregnant when he forced her to sex up the hot plumber he sent over. ibrahim doubled up and stumbled in a circle snickering, given his being a fairly prudish moslem man. when cortney came to pick up her stuff the other day, holly and i took her to the backyard for some cigaroos and beer. neighbor casey appeared, and we were all up til midnight chatting. another evening, i made friends with a 54 year old mechanic named fast eddy, and hung out with him and our older basement neighbor rene. both were carrying about a bunch of beer and wanting to barter beers for cigarettes and company. it's a big thing down in bridgeport, apparently.
in general, summer is off to a lovely start.