Chicago MMXII

^^Neil Michael Haggerty side project

My in-laws live a couple of miles from Lincolnshire -- don't know much about it otherwise.

downstairs neighbor died
RIP

(btw she was v old and v sick, i am sure she is in a happier place now)

RFI: Trader Joe's

So R and I got a TJ's gift card for Xmas but we're not sure what to spend it on. Being that I've only set foot inside one of their stores like twice, what have they got? We were kind of thinking of using it to stock up on staples. I know they have a lot of prepared/semi-prepared stuff but we cook pretty much all our own food. Can you go there and just buy a shitload of pasta or other similar things?

BTW I still kind of hate the public ethos of the place but who cares? Free food!

stop sweating it and just get a ton of beer

or wine
or cheese to freeze

Hummus and triple ginger snaps

This is the kind of stuff I get at Trader Joe's:

bread
soy milk
cereal
orange juice
frozen pizza
wine
dry pasta
applesauce
peanut butter
Lara Bars
tortilla chips
salsa
hummus
cheese
paper towels/T.P.
laundry detergent
frozen fish
veggie burgers

TJ's is admittedly not great for produce, but I will buy stuff like bananas or mushrooms or tomatoes there if I'm running low and I don't feel like stopping at HarvesTime.

Also...

olive oil
canned beans

yeah they have good oo for decent price

in sum:

olive oil
wine
beer
cheese

I am the poster child for Trader Joe's ethos. I'll buy the gift card from you for 75 cents on the dollar and you can use the cash to join a CSA.

lol

we got a huge basket of stuff from there in addition to the card, R's aunt is a convert as well

Things I buy most often at TJ

tube o' polenta
frozen fruits and vegetables
OO
frozen chicken breasts
frozen tri-color bell pepper strips
hummus
packets of heat and serve Indian food, and tuna w/ curry (usually unavailable)

CHILI SPICED MANGO STRIPS
CHILI SPICED PINEAPPLE
FUCK YEH

I get those flaxseed vegetable chips.

So, right before Christmas they installed this giant, touch-screen, interactive advertisement in the Clark and Lake station. If you go through the turnstiles on the JRTC side and look to your right, it’s there at the bottom of the escalators that go up to the Purple/Green/Orange/Pink platform.

Anyway, the first ad was one for Ford and you could paw at this giant (taller than most people) screen to customize a Mustang. I never saw anybody touching this. Now it’s some kind of a “game” with a “time to beat” of 27 seconds. I’ve never seen anybody using this iteration of it, and the “time to beat” has remained 27 seconds since I first noticed the change.

The thing is, did it occur to anybody that they are sticking this ad in the middle of a major, moving pedestrian traffic area? The vast majority of people passing by that touch screen are either going to or from work, or to or from the airport, and nobody in that situation is going to stop and fart around with an advertisement. It’s like, nobody realized that touch screens are not particularly enticing now that so many people roll with little touch screens in their pockets. At least not enticing enough to get people to pause on their daily commute or in the middle of the stress of traveling to or from the airport and subject themselves to a commercial.

I think this would work in the actual airport, or maybe even in Block 37, somewhere that you have a lot of foot traffic but you also have people who are not passing by on the way somewhere else.

tl:dr - the giant touch-screen billboard in the Clark & Lake CTA station may have edged out the Miracle Whip Addison stop for first place in my personal list of "tone deaf CTA advertising."

sometimes i marvel at how downtown focused some of your working days are -- i never go down there, and when i do i feel like a total tourist. i didn't used to when i worked there, but now i totally do. we went to the planetarium the other day and it felt like i might as well have been in barcelona.

btw jenny i read that and thought it was interesting precisely because you included ott detail

also i am reading DROOD right now

Rupert Holmes did the musical adaptation:

http://assets.sheetmusicplus.com/product/Look-Inside/covers/5406105.jpg

yeah i never went downtown when i was working in evanston/at home/in elgin. i like working downtown though.

not dickens drood, simmons drood

http://lavieenroutedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/drood_cover.jpg

I never got around to reading that. I checked it out a while ago but aimed too high with my other book selections and it came unrenewably due before I could read it.

Funny you should mention it bc I was thinking of The Terror whilst lying in bed after my alarm went off this morning.

i read a ton of it right before bed and it gave me the craaaaziest dreams! i'm only about 100 pgs in but so far it's entertaining and surprisingly funny. Hasn't gotten v lurid yet, but i expect it will.

you should read it and then we can dish about it over a meal and 2-3 servings of the beverage of our choice!

i ran out of stuff to read after reading three fun/trashy books after vacation (a book about the 1908 baseball season, a werewolf book, and a true crime book about "clark rockefeller"), and i feel like i need to read something more high-brow so i downloaded three beckett novels this morning but don't know how far i'll actually get with them (read the first one a few years ago but never the other two).

I got Our Band Could be Your Life as a gift and have been reading a band-chapter a night the past few days. Consequently I've fallen into a hole with music listening too, been on a strict diet of basically Black Flag/Husker Du/Replacements/Minutemen/Butthole Surfers/Mission of Burma, although not in that order.

good book!

deliberate noise by the real tough boys, what else have we got?
(ECU on facial sweat, that's what)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra6S69yGlKQ

Nick what is the werewolf book?

I just checked out my first ebook from the library. The future is now. (btw you can now select 7, 14, or 21 days as the duration of your check out.)

Amanda, once I figured out ebooks via the CPL I put approx 1,000 things on hold but once I get that under control, I will read Drood!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IkZ30WaOsdg/Tt0fu4MkTkI/AAAAAAAAA-U/82cDOa3kjoM/s640/TATR.JPG

the best thing about it is that you don't really realize it's a werewolf book until about halfway through, but i just ruined that for you so ha ha.

Oh lord, Charlaine Harris blurbed it. Do the werewolves take an inordinate number of showers?

ha i didn't know about the harris blurb when i read it. the tone is kind of hard-boiled, i guess? it was not an amazing book but was fun for vacay, some effectively creepy parts but fell apart in the end.

omg i just cut the everloving crap out of my tender thumb on a metal file folder and yelled obscenities and people in the library heard me :-/

i spent literally the first two hours of the day yesterday trying to make copies with two different copiers continually jamming up on me and i was doing some office swearing

Office swearing totally appropriate in both situations IMO.

When our current Big Boss first started, I ran into him twice before we officially met. Once I was struggling w/ unlocking the door to our office and dropping f-bombs like a champ. The second I was wrangling the copy machine and letting fly with a string of curses not unlike the fabled "mother fucking titty sucking two ball bitch." Meanwhile he was on the other side of a cube partition getting water and listening.

It's not as good as the time I got stuck in my coat in front of our old Big Boss but still. I surely know how to make an impression.

Maybe I should just settle in for the long haul at this job. I may not deserve any better.

don't be ridiculous
http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/2600000/Balki-Larry-perfect-strangers-2659324-459-586.jpg

"mother fucking titty sucking two ball bitch." reminds me that I've been wanting to vex an annoyingly Christmas-obsessed* FB friend by posting "God fuck us, one and all" as my status, but that's just a little too much, probably. So I share it with you all.

* It was carols and religious Xmas music all season, and he continues posting multiple updates on each of the 12 days of Xmas until Epiphany.

i like how cousin larry is holding an invisible (something) in that photo

pineapple?
baby?
5 lb handweight?
plate of chips and dip?

his balls

he is holding ACTING

His holy balls

seriously, just look at that picture and imagine that he's holding his own huge, distended ball sac

he is holding his dream of opening a junk shop with balki in chicago

and also one of his balls

the big one

I've probably mentioned this before, but Mark Linn-Baker was considered one of the preeminent interpreters of Chekhov to come out of Yale Drama School.

now he is simply cozzen larry

sorry i've been away from the computer and so am responding to earlier this week

Note: I only said I would do it if n/a did it because I knew he wouldn't do it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Nancy_Reagan.jpg/230px-Nancy_Reagan.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/31/hangover-clinic-chicagos-_n_2388820.html

I can think of multiple hangover instances where I would happily spend my last $99 at this clinic.

man her forehead is so weird

Whose?

Oh - Nancy's?

yeah
it leads directly into her nose

hope u have a safe & happy new year, ppl

(w/ or w/o shrooms)

Same to you! Happy new year, everybody!

Happy new year! It is almost 2 am here which is quite impressive for me. I also cannot fuckng wait to get back to Chicago.

Chicago MMXIII: Walk Don't Run