Community...

Today I drove three blocks to drop off my car for an oil change.  I love that my mechanic is literally right around the corner.  I jogged ran home.  I'm out of shape.  Running made me feel like maybe I might die.  My throat was all kinds of puling and tight, and I couldn't catch my breath.  It was awesome.

I'm the first to admit that I am, by no means, a runner.

Hell, I'm barely even a walker.

But I walked back to get my car, and I was thinking while I walked, thinking in a way I don't think while I drive.  I started to notice the smells, the sounds, the beauty of my little neighborhood.  I think we lost that, somewhere...or, more accurately, lost our appreciation for that...or our ability to appreciate that...or something. 

We drive everywhere.  Other people are just in our way.  We don't have the time to see and smell and hear while we're guiding our 1500lb. bullet wherever we've overbooked ourselves next.

Yes, this is a "stop and smell the roses" post.

But it's also about community.  

When I got out and walked, I felt like a part of something bigger.  The flowers in that old lady's yard are a part of my neighborhood.  Those three barking dogs are a part of my neighborhood.  The big, lush garden in that guy's backyard.  My neighborhood.  My community.  And just by getting out and walking three blocks, I felt connected.

Take a walk tonight around your neighborhood.  Wave at a neighbor.  See.  Hear.  Smell.  Feel connected.

Out

Celebrity-Adjacent...

So, some of you might know that the town in which I live is the town where a certain supermodel grew up.

My old boss went to high school with her and said she was pretty and smart and athletic...all those things that make you want to grind a person's face in the dirt because they're so friggin' perfect!  Or is that just me?



Anywho...Tuesday's meeting was pretty standard (as if I've ever been to a business meeting...), talking about profits and bonuses and new products, etc. etc. etc.  This woman stands up to receive an award for bringing in a huge customer.  I think to myself, "She looks kind of severe...and orange."

The next day we're talking about the meeting, and the woman who is training me says, "You know that's Cindy Crawford's mother, right?"



No joke!  I totally bashed Cindy Crawford's mother in my head...whoops!

Apparently I work with Cindy Crawford's mother...how about that?

Out

It was the most gorgeous day yesterday.  And today?  It's supposed to be EVEN NICER!  So, as I've been itching to do since fall, I hopped on my bike and cruised through town.  Oh my gosh, it was lovely!  I happened upon some new graffiti on the trail, and it made me wonder if it was put there in the fall or winter or just recently, although it looks like someone tried to paint over it unsuccessfully a while ago, so my money is on fall.  Anywho:



"How many have to die?  STOP THIS WAR"

And about three feet down was this:



"Free Tibet."  Good advice.  I think I'll put it on my to-do list for the day.

And, close to my own heart, someone did this:



A cute little bird...oh, and my shadow.  You can't see it there, but the wind was doing tragic things to my WAY-TOO-LONG hair.  It was a wreck.

But I had this little gem to remind me that it didn't matter:





It says, "Whatever you are, it's beautiful."  I'm just glad they got the punctuation correct.

And then I headed past the old train depot,



And into the college multi-family homes area, the older section of town.  While I was riding I noticed this building that I've never seen before, despite living in this area my whole life:



It looks like an old school or a hospital, but it was completely empty with "No Trespassing" signs all over it.  How strange that it's not in use AND that I'd never seen it before...And here DeKalb is in an uproar about building a new school...they're not even using this one!

But I continued, on a beeline for where the Water Guy works.



I took no photos of his place of employment because I didn't want to seem like a creeper, but mostly because I already have some.  So you get this church steeple and this odd house:



I love that neon lime door.  How cute!

I'd never really been in this area, so I rode around for a while, taking some photos.  This house was all decked out for Spring, and I wondered if it always looked like that:



Cute. 

I was exhausted, though, and I had decided that I needed a hair cut.  Badly.  So, I rode home, past an inadvertently funny sign that's in a neighbor's lawn.  There's a back story here.  The county is discussing building a huge landfill somewhere in the vicinity.  So people are sort of in an uproar over it.  Signs have popped up all over in the lawns of people who oppose it, and this is what they say:



Yeah...it kind of makes me want to take a giant steaming dump in their front lawn.  Not gonna lie.  I snicker every time I see one.  And then I crave chicken and dumplings, because what's the opposite of a mega dump?  A dumpling!  I'll be here all week.

Onto the hair cut.  Here's my truly atrocious before photo:



I look wasted, and sort of stoned.  I was neither.

And after?



Much better!  I got so many compliments on the beard at church last night...it's a little overwhelming.  So...there.  Welcome to my day yesterday.  What you didn't see?  Three hours of Final Fantasy II, and me dancing along to Adam Lambert in my car.  That's about it.

I hope you take some time to get outside and enjoy the weather, if it is, indeed, nice today.  My old college friend Derek (derektb) is coming out here in the afternoon and we're going to drive to our old Alma Mater with the windows down and the music on and then meet some people for dinner later.  It'll be a hoot.

Out

Moment of Being...

I am at work and the snow is falling straight down, soft, graceful. It is making everything seem hazy, like a romantic lens on the world. I am having lunch later today with a friend I have not seen in close to five years. I am not axious, like normal. I do not dread awkward pauses or feel like I won't have anything to say. I am genuinely looking forward to it. As I watch the little Bobcat plow the walks across the snowy lawn between my window at work and the street, I am filled with quiet joy, much like falling in love. Not with my lunch partner, but with winter, with snow, with the way this moment came into focus and will soon pass, all the more beautiful in its transience.

Out

*EDIT*

So, seconds after I posted that, I checked my phone. My lunch date has been snowed out. Funny how the two sort of shorted each other out. Bah. Oh well...it's still pretty, and I'll be happy to go home and eat lunch with the cat under a warm blanket. And there's always tomorrow. Transient, indeed.

Out

Rain All Week...

Yup.  That's the forecast around here.  And do you know what I say to that?  Bring it on!

I went out and rode my bike today, since it doesn't look like I'm going to get the chance to do it later in the week.  It was the usual ride, with the trail through trees and the beautiful houses around campus.  I took a short tour of the frisbee golf field in town, too, and let me tell you.  Apparently shirtless frisbee golf is a popular pastime.  And now, so is riding the path through the frisbee golf field.  Can we say hot?  I even got an eyebrow raise from some cute guy...

Anycreeper, it was a nice, long ride.  About an hour all over town, and I didn't even cruise by Water Works.  So there!

The sky was beautiful.



See?

And all that blockage I talked about the other day?



Gone!  (Apparently it wanted to upload this one today and not when I needed it...)  I even saw two guys kicking their way downstream on what looked to be a makeshift inflatable raft.  Cool!  It must have held up, because I saw them again a bit downstream.

All this riding makes me wish I had a better seat...and a water bottle holder.  And a lock.  And a little pouch to carry my wallet/keys/phone/etc so I don't haave these HUGE pockets.  My ass probably looks like a woodchuck...

Enough about my ass, though.  I'm hoping to ride enough to NOT have a farmer's tan when we go to San Diego.  Although, is a wife-beater tan any better?  I can't win.

And now there's supposedt o be rain all week.  Time to stay in and play Chrono Cross on the Playstation.  I never fninshed that old gem the first time through.  Maybe I'll make it this time.

Out

Getting to Know My Town Via Bike...

Note: This is a port from my other blog...Just so you know.


It's funny how much different a town you've known all your life seems once you get on a bicycle.  I've started paying more attention to sidewalks, how busy an intersection is, and where the trees hang low--things I never really noticed before.  It's a blessing to have a long stoplight instead of a reason to shake my fist at the sky and wish I were home.

Yesterday and the day before I spent a few hours on my bike, just cruising around town.  I thought it might be nice to share it with you.  I know...me, posting photos?  It's unheard of!  I think now would be as good a time as any for a blanket apology in that department.  I apologize for neglecting that part of my blog for quite some time.  I remember when every post had at least a little something from my camera.  It's not like I've stopped taking photos.  I take them all the time.  My camera comes with me everywhere.  It's just a matter of getting them from my computer, where they upload on my camera dock, to Robb's where I connect to the Internet.  And before you try to suggest I upload them to Robb's computer or I get my computer on the Internet, I'm just going to say no.  No.  My computer won't connect wirelessly.  And his computer won't take my photo software.  So.  Blah. 

Anywho...I apologize.  Some days it just doesn't seem worth the effort.  I'll try to pick it up in that regard.

Gosh...I typed all that and my photos SILL haven't finished uploading...

*waits*  *fights with stupid computer in the other room that refuses to write a CD of photos and has told me ten times in the last four minutes that it is running low on memory*

There we go!  And...ummm...it uploaded one photo three times and left one out.  And you all wonder why I don't do this more often...

*shakes fist at Xanga*



This was across town, very near to where Robb used to live.  This was the path on which we decided we really wanted a cat after meeting His Royal Highness, Sir Iok Sllod Oog Oog Murphy Pickles Gunther Chuzzlewitt III.  He was a friendly stray cat.

From there I rode on across a bridge that was ALMOST under water.



I may not look like it, but that water is up to the edge of the bridge.  See?

Now it wont' let me upload more photos...what the hell?  Fine.  I had a photo of all this detritus from trees and junk backed up against the bridge, but you'll just have to trust me that you can see it on the right side of thatl ast photo...all that brown crap has water flowing under it.  Blah.

Moving on.  I rode on over to campus, where there are usually a lot of college guys running and biking and doing whatever they do in various stages of undress...but school is out.  So all I saw were Asians feeding the geese and some hippy guy smokingo n a bridge.  But I headed over to the beautiful old neighborhood behind the school and took some photos I've always wanted to take.



This house is one of my personal favorites.  It's the porch that does it for me.  See?



Xanga must have known this, because they uploaded this one three times.  Stupids.

And this is a house I hadn't actually noticed before, but I kind of liked the random green part on the front of it.



It's cute, except for the metal shutters on the front door...eww.  And then I rode across town, passed by where the Water Guy works (I had no idea it was three blocks from where I work), and headed home.  When I got home, I didn't really feel like I was done, so I decided to ride down the street to the little park where people play baseball on one of their two-ish diamonds.  I never see anyone there, but Robb claims it's almost always full when he comes home.

I took no photos of it, but I did snap this:



That's the top of the tower that protrudes from teh ground next to an AT&T building near our house.  I have no idea what it's for, but it's always been significant in my life.  When I was little, I always looked for it from the car.  It's how I knew we were almost to DeKalb.  And now I live right down the street from it.

Funny how life takes you places you'd never think.  Anywho, then I rode as fast as I could home.  It felt good to get out and get to know my neighborhood a little better.  I'd love to go again today, but I think it's going to rain and be nasty out all day.  Blah.

Out

Not As Bad As That Guy...

I'm not one for using other people as your yardstick, as my mother used to say (and, I suppose, still does), but I think I can make an exception in this case.

Yesterday my boss came in to work, and the first thing she told us was that on Sunday they found a body in the Kishwaukee River near Hopkins Park, the park everyone goes to to jog and ride bikes and swim at the public pool. It was a beautiful day here on Sunday, and everyone was out. Apparently a family walking two dogs and several children found a bloated corpse pressed into the weeds on the riverbank that had been exposed "for several weeks," as the radio kept reminding me all day.

At work we were speculating on who it could be. There have been two prominent missing people (prominently missing, not so much prominent people gone missing) around here in the last few years, a guy last seen at Otto's (palm tree tattoo on ankle and sun on back, last seen at the bar on the fabled gay night--read: homo) whom there is a $50,000 reward for finding, and a guy from Wisconsin who checked in to the Best Western after an automobile accident on the interstate and never checked out (last seen on Christmas Day leaving without his belongings).

The autopsy revealed that the cause of his death was drowning. And they identified him as the guy from Wisconsin. Case closed.

There is a legend here about how if you touch the Kish you never leave DeKalb. Case and point.

So, that's the news from my small corner of the world. And from that news, I can tell you that my situation? Not as bad as that guy's.

Out

Locked In the Car...

A guy came to the bank today to make a deposit, and when he got inside he told us he'd just locked his keys in his car. Drag. He called his buddy to come get him, hoping he wasn't in class. And since he had some time to kill, we had an impromptu story time.

Julie told us that when her boyfriend took her dog with him to go get Buffalo Wild Wings, the dog got so excited when he was coming back that he jumped on the lock button in the car, locking himself in when the car was running. Awesome.

And Nancy told us the story about how the only time she ever locked her keys in her car it was raining. Nice.

I told the story about how my brother locked his keys in his car three times in the Farm & Fleet parking lot. By the end of that particular few weeks, the cops knew him by name.

And then I told about myself.

I once locked my brother's keys in his trunk while we were out swimming at a pond we weren't supposed to be swimming in. And then he stood on the swivel seat in a beached boat and fell, landing on his back on the pointy front of the boat. And...we were stuck there. Luckily, the door were unlocked, so he opened them and tunneled through the insulation to get into the trunk. I was mortified, being that all his friends were there, too.

I also locked my keys in my car in the Wal Mart parking lot. After the cops came to get my keys out, I walked back in and had a copy made.

And the most embarrassing instance of all?

I was at Applebee's meeting my date in person for the first time ever. We'd talked online, emailed, and we were finally going to meet to have dinner. My first date. And I saw him parked in his spot, a cute guy. I was all flustered. I locked my keys in my car--while it was running. What a way to start a first date!

And you'd think that any guy whose date locked his keys in his car while it was running would probably not be in it for a second date, or even the rest of the first date...but that first date was Robb, and we've been together for over three years.

After telling the customer these stories, I looked him in the eye and said, "See? It could be worse." And he smiled, heading back out to his car to wait for his ride.

Out

Monday...

I don't subscribe to the "Monday's Are Bad" school of thought, usually. But today...today is really trying my every last nerve.

Apparently they're tearing down ANOTHER old building in town, and this one also adjoins the parking lot at work. This means that this morning there was a huge demolition company semi parked directly in front of our ATM...blocking the parking lot entirely. Neither Nancy or myself could get in to work. So, we had to go all roundabout to get in. Meanwhile, they're taking up all our available parking spaces. And this will continue for a long time, because the building they're taking down shares a wall with a building they are NOT taking down. Tricky business, I guess.

Add to that the fact that we're short handed today, it's the beginning of the month, and it's a Monday. Shake. Don't stir.

But after one o'clock I'm free. At least until tomorrow at seven in the morning. And the third of the month is when all the crazies come out. Awesome.

So much to look forward to.

Out

Economic Problems Hit Home...

So, apparently EVERYTYING is closing. Good to know.

Yesterday the Baker's Square in town announced that on Wednesday at 2 they were done for good. Apparently Mason, their renters, doubled their rent at lease renegotiations. We (at the bank) all think that they probably have someone else ready to move in there, and our manager has heard a rumor that it might be IHOP. That would be kind of exciting, although I would never go because of the policies of the renters. Assholes.

And on top of that, I just found out that Filo Spinato, the Italian restaurant in town, closed its doors forever last Saturday. Without a peep.

Add to that Italian Express's closing a month or so ago and I'm starting to see that people in this town don't like Italian food...I blame Pizza Hut and their pasta crap.

It makes me worried for who is next...especially when all our business customers keep leaving for another bank or going out of business.

Out