Chicago

Doored

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Friday morning seemed like it was going to be great.

Most Fridays, after I drop Evie off at school I have a bunch of errands to do, especially now that we’re down to only one car. Grocery store, post office, what have you. But on this particular Friday, I had nothing to do. I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing morning with Oliver at home.

Fate, as it so often does, had other plans.

I was driving Southbound in two-way traffic on a busy street just a few blocks from the school, when one of the cars parked on the side of the street suddenly opened the driver’s side door. The door opened literally maybe 2 feet in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, but there was no chance at all to avoid it. ::boom:: Goodbye driver’s side door!

After I skid to a stop and I sat there for a minute thinking, “What the heck just happened?” I pulled over to the curb and ran back to see if the guy was okay. It happened so fast I really didn’t know if the guy was stepping out of the car when I hit the door, or if the door swung back and crushed him, or if a piece came off and impaled him to his seat, or what. He was fine and he was like, “How’s your car?” and that’s when I realized I hadn’t even looked at my car.

It wasn’t too bad. Cracked bumper, dented fender and I was missing my rear-view mirror on the passenger side. Certainly drivable. The same couldn’t be said for his car. The guy was actually really cool and we joked about things a little. His was a company car (he’s an exterminator), so he radioed back to base and they said they wanted to file a police report. However, the company was not local, so I called the police and we waited for someone to show up.

Oliver was due for a nap and he fell asleep in my arms pretty quickly, so he slept for the whole ordeal. I was really glad I didn’t have Evie with me. First off, that girl is built out of empathy. She would have wept and wept for our broken bumper. Second off, even though Oliver was heavy, it was a much more pleasant wait than it would have been answering question after question about what was happening and accidents in general.

When the police arrived, they informed us that they would not fill out the accident report because both of our cars were (technically) drivable, so we would need to go down to the station to fill out our report.

Guy: “How can I drive the car, I can’t shut my door?”
Cop: “Can’t you tie it shut or something?”
Guy: “Uh…I don’t have any rope with me.”

Ultimately though, his complaints fell on deaf ears, and the officer wouldn’t fill it out.  The other interesting thing I learned was that there is a law in Chicago that says anyone opening their door and causing an accident is always at fault. This makes sense of course, but it made me feel hopeful this would actually not be listed as my fault, which it totally wasn’t. At this point, I just don’t expect legal things to go my way, you know?

This leaves me with a conundrum though. The insurance company says they don’t care about getting an accident report. In fact, if the guy’s company hadn’t pressed for it, I wouldn’t have called the police at all. I certainly don’t want to drive to the police station and fill out an accident report and all that entails. However, in my experience with insurance companies, they will do whatever they can do to not have to pay for something, up to and including stabbing me in the face. So, when this inevitably happens, do I want to have to say, “No sir, I didn’t get an accident report.” I can’t control much about the process, but I’d hate to have to admit that I didn’t do everything in my limited power to ensure this goes my way.

One more funny thing I wanted to mention was the training of the insurance people. This lady deserved a SAG card! As I’m describing the accident, she was gasping and consoling like I just told her my family was wiped out in an act of genocide. I had a fender-bender, lady! Nobody was hurt!

Don’t think I’m complaining though! I loved it. Although I didn’t need to be consoled, I sure appreciated the effort. In this day and age, with the terrible customer service that we have, and they took the time to pretend to be interested? Well, there are a few companies around here that could take some notes.

Cafecito

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I had one of the best sandwiches I have ever had in my life.

This is not a statement I make lightly. I am a big sandwich fan (and a former sandwich artist), and I have had my share of tasty sandwiches.

However, we hit up Cuban coffee house Cafecito the other day and one of the sandwiches really spoke to me; the Chivito. At the time I thought it was a specialty of Cafecito, but I’ve since learned that it is the national dish of Uraguay. Cafecito’s version consists of Steak, Ham, Bacon, Fried Egg, Mozzarella, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Shoestring Potatoes, and Citrus Mayo. In short, what’s not to love?

I found this picture of the Chivito on yelp:

Despite the ingredients list, this is NOT a breakfast sandwich. I don’t know why exactly, but the sum is different than the individual parts somehow. I was a little nervous about the citrus mayo at first, but it was surprisingly good and really meshed with the whole sandwich. It was a welcome addition.

All of the food was good, though the service was a little slow (we took it to go and had to wait for a while). There were lots of good looking things on the menu. However, I would be hard pressed to order anything else with the Chivito staring me in the eye. It is not to be missed.

The City of Chicago is Training Cyborg Coyotes

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Here from the Chicago Coyote Update Desk, we have new news: there is a reason Chicago is being overrun with coyotes…the city is doing it on purpose.

That picture is taken from a surreal video of this coyote running around downtown. Remember when I said coyotes were taking over Chicago, and you should send help?

So the city is training coyotes to keep down the rat and rodent population. They’re also outfitting them with GPS units, so they can track them as they move around. What’s next Chicago? Coyotes with fricken lasers on their heads? Coyotes collecting a pension? A coyote mayor??

Well I, for one, welcome our new coyote overlords.

Link via Sara.

Weekend Wrap-up

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We had a weekend at home, and it felt like we got so much done! We’ve been away from home so much for the past few months, that it feels like we are always doing catchup whenever we are home. So it was nice to get some time just to sort of kick around the house for once.

Evie and I had a little baking project. We made “candy chestnuts” (a.k.a. buckeyes to everyone else). I had a stroke of brilliance combining her love of the peanut butter cups she got when trick-or-treating with the chestnuts she collected all over Paris. This ended up being the perfect recipe since A) you have to mix all the dough by hand, B) you then have to make little balls out of the dough, Play-Doh style, and C) she had fun dipping them in chocolate as well. Oh, and eating them of course. The only problem is, she figured the entire batch was for her, since she made it.

On Saturday we went to a Family Jam at music class, which is always fun because the entire family can go (usually they go when I’m at work, unless I take them for a make-up). We had a good time, as usual, but this time they were doing something different – encouraging people to bring their instruments. They started a beginner guitar class, so I figured all of those folks would go, and the Family Jam would be a pretty easy thing to do. They would probably select easy songs for the beginners, and they’d probably sound terrible, two things that would work in my favor! 🙂

However,  none of them showed up. So somehow I ended up being the main guitar person (besides the teacher of course). I’ve been playing for about 8 years or so, but I very rarely play for anyone except Sara, Evie and Oliver. Also, I usually like to play songs a time or two to get everything down, especially if anybody else is going to hear me play. Of course at home I usually play the same songs all the time, so those ones I’ve got down. So anyway, I winged it and it worked out okay. I sounded good when it counted and only messed up when it was too loud for anybody to notice anyway! It was fun. Eventually though it was a little too crazy with all the kids and stuff, so I was needed to kid-wrangle instead of play guitar.

Finally, on Sunday we went to pick up the meat order from the farm. We’re in a little buying group that buys organic meat and eggs from a farm downstate. You put in your order once a month and pick it up at someone’s house. As part of being in the group, you agree to go pick up the shipment, maybe once a year or so. This happened to be our turn.

We planned it so that we could pick it up at the farm, so that Evie could see the animals. During farmer’s market season, they’ll drop it off at the market in Chicago, although not the one by our house. Still, it’s a little closer than going to the actual farm. But someone has to take the trips during the winter, and that someone might as well be us. They had chickens, turkeys, sheep and lambs, calves, and pigs and piglets. I have to say, it was amazing the amount of room the chickens had to run around in. In chicken-selling standards, it was ridiculous! Made me feel a lot better about getting food there.

Evie liked to see the animals, but she was disappointed because she was under the impression that they would be killing the animals for our order right then and there. (Maybe she was hoping to see a guillotine in action?) She was really grilling the people who worked there on how they killed the animals, and they were obviously very reluctant to tell her. I got the impression they didn’t feel like they should tell her, either because we wouldn’t want them to, or because they just didn’t think a little girl aught to know.

This got me thinking. Obviously back in the day, when everybody was in charge of their own food, (as opposed to getting it from the grocery store) kids were around animals that they later ate, and it wasn’t weird. (Yes, my friends that live in the country, maybe you’re STILL around animals that you later eat for food (Lisa), but Evie’s not, and neither are the majority of kids). Kids are sort of a blank slate about it, until we TEACH them it’s weird to kill the animals and eat them. We’ve discussed with Evie how the sausage patties we got used to be pigs on that farm, and she couldn’t have cared less. If anything, she was MORE excited to eat the sausage.

So I guess I’ll try to do my best not to instill this disgust in her. I myself throw my hands up and shriek like a little girl when presented with any evidence that my chicken was ever anything other than a tasteless, boneless, marinated 7 pound monster-breast. So wouldn’t it be great if Evie never learned that from me? Yeah, yeah, things were better in the old days. My curmudgeony is starting to be a major theme around here.

Normalized

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Every generation has it a little bit better than the previous generation, or at least that’s the dream. At the very least, they have it different. Now that I have kids, I’m really starting to notice a lot of these things. Certainly, growing up in Chicago is worlds different than growing up in Anytown, Midwest, U.S.A. like Sara and I did.

But the funny thing about kids is, they don’t have any life experience. At all. Anything that happens has, for all intents and purposes, always happened that way. They don’t know enough to be amazed at things, or happy for opportunities that they have that are actually quite extraordinary. They don’t appreciate that everybody doesn’t go through the same things they do.

The President of the United States lives across the street from where Evie goes to school. You and I know that this is a somewhat unusual, if not unique, circumstance. However, all Evie knows is that, every day of her life that she has gone to school, we have to pass through a sort of (not really) security checkpoint. There are always men in dark suits lurking around, with strange cords running to their ears. Sometimes they use the bathroom in her school. Normal.

I never flew in a plane until I was a senior in college. Evie has flown more than once a year since she was born. Not little flights either; Seattle, Phoenix, Philadelphia. So why shouldn’t she go to Paris? Doesn’t every 3 year old have the opportunity to go to Pairs? That’s normal, right?

There’s little things too about growing up in Chicago. Everybody lives next to a huge museum they can drop by at any time, right? And parks and activities all the time that you can walk to? Farmer’s markets and community gardens down the street, and art fairs and book fairs, and people all around all the time? Riding trains downtown just for the fun of it? Normal.

And that’s to say nothing of computers and smart phones. Evie will routinely say things like, “Can you look that up on the computer?” or “Put that on your e-blog, daddy!” She thinks nothing of looking through thousands of pictures and videos of herself or other people she knows, who, by the way, don’t even live in the state with us (thanks Facebook!). She loves typing letters on the keyboard, to the point where we had to ban it to get her to stop obsessing about it. After all, everybody has a computer, right? Always have and always will?

I should specify, that none of these things bother me. And I’m certainly proud that I can give my daughter opportunities that are extraordinary (even if they don’t seem that way to her). It just makes me laugh at how blasé she is about all of this stuff. After all, she’s never known any different. And hey, maybe everybody SHOULD be able to fly to Paris and walk two blocks and see the President.

(Okay, 30 is not that old, right? Because, between this post and the one on materialism, I’m really starting to sound like an old fogie, waxing nostalgic about the good old days. Get off my lawn!)