Pears!

Dear Pears of the World,

Can we talk? I really like you. I do. I LOVE when you’re nice and ripe and juicy – you’re so sweet and succulent. Eating you is just a pleasure. A real delight. And I really appreciate that. Here’s the thing though. I feel like you guys are NEVER ripe. Why is this? Is it something I’m doing wrong? If that’s the case, I’d really like to help. Please. Just let me know what to do. I think you’re so great, but I can’t handle being continually disappointed by you. I try to be really picky about selecting you at the grocery store. And yet, even when you feel sufficiently squishy to the touch, I get you home , take a bite, and blech! It’s like chewing on a cold potato. I just want to feel your juices running down my arm again. Maybe I should order you from Harry and David? That seems awfully expensive, you guys. Would putting you in a brown paper bag on the counter help? Is that a real thing? I feel like I’m grasping at straws here, pears, but I really want it to work out between us. And, you know, if you have any problems with me, let me know.

Much love,
Tristan

Heavy!

Oh, hello blog. It’s been a while. And by while, I mean over a year. Whatever.

Lots has happened. So much so that I think I’ll just pretend it didn’t and carry on as I would if there hadn't been a break. Take that, internet.

This weekend was super-fun. On Friday, Molly, her sister Kelly, Chris and I went to the White Sox game. Molly and Kelly are big White Sox fans – Chris and I like beer and nachos. The Sox lost, but beer, funnel cake, nachos, fries, peanuts, and hot dogs won. Like they always do. AND we got free hats. So, yeah. Basically everyone but the White Sox won.

Saturday was spent anticipating the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, which pH was putting on as a fundraiser. The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, in case you hate excellent movies, is the prom in Back to the Future. So people were to come as characters from the movie, or just in 50’s prom clothes. (Or, in most of the boys’ cases, greasers.) Chris and I found a perfect white dinner jacket and bow tie for his George McFly outfit, and I appropriatized (not a word) a dress I’ve had for years by throwing a crinoline under it. I would like you to know, people, that we were SUPER-CUTE. There was a live band at the dance that did oldies covers, (including, of course, Johnny B. Goode and Earth Angel) and we had a pretty dead-on Marty and Doc. So much fun.

This one weird lady was INFATUATED with Chris. She seemed to think it was okay to hit on him while he was holding my hand. Apparently is was okay, because I just kind of looked at her. It was too weird for me to care. When we were leaving, she was outside on her cell and grabbed his arm and told the person on the phone that there was a 50’s dance, and this guy had a white dinner jacket and he was amazing.

I guess betraying my New England sports roots on Friday wasn’t enough for me, so on Sunday, I accompanied Chris to Durkin’s, a big-time Steelers bar. There were so many people in Steelers jerseys there! I didn’t know that many fans existed in Chicago! Is there a Patriots bar somewhere? Probably not. Or if there is, they probably have to station security outside to protect you from the fans of every other football team ever.

Then we went home and made mushroom soup, as the inaugural entry in our Souper Sunday Fall and Winter Soup-a-thon. (Working title.) It was most excellent, despite not being blended properly due to a food processor accident, which covered Chicago in mushrooms.

Busnap!

There are few things at which I consider myself an authority. Even the fairly substantial aplomb that I am able to demonstrate with several things, (Broadway musicals/Jane Austen novels/playing foosball) is often eclipsed by someone who has more flair/intelligence/wrist strength. One thing at which I am an expert is falling asleep on the bus. Let me share some tips for making your bus ride a productive and restful one.


1) Abandon pride.

- You will never get a decent ride’s sleep if you worry about looking like a tool. I will give you tips to curtail your tooldom as much as possible, but at some point, you must relinquish self-awareness in order to really snag those z’s. Consider this – lots of people fall asleep on the bus. Take comfort in the fact that after reading this, you will probably be better at it that they are. Also, it may help to imagine that people are thinking, “Oooh. What an exciting life they must lead. The only time they have for rest is their 45-minute commute.”


2) Choose your seat well.

- Get a window seat. This is crucial. You have something to lean on, no one will bump you with their bag/knee/crotch in the aisle, and you don’t have to worry about falling out, or getting up for the person that sits next to you if their stop comes before yours.

- Examine the window for greasy face stains from previous sleepers. Even if you do avoid touching the smudge, the thought of it will distract you from your slumber.

- The left side of the bus is ideal. On the left side, the only people outside of the bus that can see you are those that are driving – usually in opposing traffic. They cannot commit time to looking at your gaping maw and half-open eyes. On the right side are people waiting at bus stops. They will have the time to savor looking at your face mushed up against the window like an orphan at a bakery.

- If your bus has it, and you can get it, sit in the seat that is right in front of a partition. Then you will have a place behind you to lean your head, and don’t need to worry about the crazy and painful jerk-backs that falling asleep with an unsupported head can often cause.

- Also, never sit in the sideways seats. The seats parallel to the length of the bus not only lack leaning walls, but there are more people that can see you. They are across from, and perpendicular to your face. Terrible.

- Avoid sitting directly in front of the sideways seats, too. The person behind you will be much closer to you. If your head does flop back, you will whack someone in the face. Plus, if you have long hair, the person will accidentally pull it when they shift in their seat.

- I do not recommend the very back row of the bus. You are shoulder to shoulder with people, and it’s usually weirdly hot back there.


3) Have the right gear.

- Sunglasses are great. They shield the sun, and make your eye-droops less noticeable.

- Hats and hoods help too. I don’t generally recommend putting your head directly against the window, but hats and hoods make a great barrier if you happen to do so.

- Music device. Soothing music is very helpful, but make sure it’s on pretty low. You need to be able to keep semi-aware and hear the stops. Headphones also curb neighbors trying to chat you up.

- I do not recommend a book. If you’re going to sleep, commit to it. Also, when you start falling asleep, you will drop the book and call attention to your sleeping. You will also probably look kind of dumb because it looks like you can’t manage to read a book without passing out.


4) Settle in.

- Make sure your arm is well-looped through your purse if you have one. (A purse, not an arm.) Obviously you are looking at a dangerous situation by allowing yourself to leave a conscious state when in a tube full of strangers. You probably shouldn’t be sleeping on the bus. But if you’re going to, hold on to those belongings.

- Head position depends on location. If you have a seat where you can put your head back against a partition, get on that. With a window, I usually lean my body against it, and prop up my elbow and lean on my hand. If you don’t want to or cannot lean on something, try and keep your head a little forward. If you flail, it won’t be as drastic, and you won’t bump your head on anything.


5) Wake-up in time for your stop.

- This is probably the most challenging. It may take a few tries of getting less-engulfed in sleep than you need so that your body can get used to when it needs to wake up. Stay a little paranoid and let yourself wake up a lot and look around the first few times. In the hundreds of times that I’ve slept on the bus, I have missed my stop once. That’s pretty good. An express route is usually great, because your body will notice the difference when you turn off Lake Shore Drive, or start making regular stops again.


Well, that’s about it, future-napper. I am a big fan of bus napping. Despite the obvious pitfalls, the bus if far-preferable for sleeping than the train. If do you miss your stop, you can just walk back a block or two, instead of having to get back on a train going the other way. Also, there is a driver right there. People probably aren’t as likely to stab you.

Ham!

I learned something at Halloween this year. People don’t care much for literature. But they FRIGGING ADORE cured meats. As previously mentioned, I was Scout Finch when she dressed up like a ham at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. Everywhere I went, people would scream, “Ham! Ham! Hey, Ham!” I felt like the fat kid in an after-school special.

Everyone loved it. For its hamness. In the populace’s defense, it is a smallish part of the book, and most people probably haven’t read it since High School, but I really thought more people would get it. I had the following conversation with a stranger at a party:

GIRL: I love your costume!
ME: Thank you!
GIRL: Can I get my picture taken with you?
ME: Oh! Um, sure! (We pose) So, are you a fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, or do you just like ham a lot?
GIRL: I’m Jewish. I thought it would be funny.

The ham itself was incredibly cumbersome, as one could imagine. There are no armholes, and only a small hole to see out of in the front. I did a pH show in the thing, and had to keep craning my neck and jamming my mouth up into the eyehole so people could hear me talk. I mostly just tottered around while people laughed. I also played a vending machine, R2D2, and a giant poop.

Due to the armlessness of the ham, when I went to iO later, I brought bendy straws. Then Arnie, Sarah, and Cesar took turns feeding me my drinks through my eyehole. I thought people might find it annoying, but all three seemed pretty delighted by the situation.

There is now a human-sized ham in my living room. Molly wants to use it as our Christmas tree.

Costumes!

Well, this weekend was very busy. And very costume-oriented.

On Saturday morning, I had a gig for the Halloween festivities at the Cultural Center. Colleen, Cesar, Sommer and I were to do two performances of a sort of make-your-own fairy tale. The Cultural Center was all decked out and scarified, and stuffed to the gills with tiny children in Halloween costumes. Now, the old Tanner biological clock doesn’t often make its presence known, but the sight of a toddler dressed up as a grizzly bear or a bumble bee kicks it into high gear. Adorable! I theorized that when I have babies, I may have to keep them dressed as ladybugs and peapods year-round so that I will remember to love them.

The four of us just about died when we saw one tiny boy dressed as… Mr. T! He had a little bald/Mohawk wig, drawn-on beard, bling, the works. It was HILARIOUS! Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out how to take a picture without looking like a roving gang of child molesters.

The fairy tale was a sort of choose-your-own-adventure thing, where the kids would choose what was going to happen, and we would improvise around it. To start it off, Colleen asked the kids to decide what character each of us would play. We had been asked to come in costume, so Sommer was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. “What should she be?” asked Colleen. “She could be anything or anyone in the whole world!”
“Little Red Riding Hood!” they called.
“Ok… what about Tristan? What should she be?” (I was dressed as a princess, in a pink ballgown.)
“A hippopotamus!” came the rousing response.
“Great! And Cesar,” Colleen asked, gesturing to him, bedecked in an impressive wolf hat. “What should Cesar be?”
“A wolf!”

All right, kids. Very flattering. Thanks a lot. Jerks.

The kids in the second show were a little more inventive. Sommer was a slab of cement, I was the Eiffel Tower, and Cesar was a kitten. Oh, the adventures we had!

On Sunday, I embarked on the costume that I’ve been planning for months. Finally, the looming deadline of Halloween seemed imminent enough for me to actually begin work. I am going to be Scout Finch dressed as a ham. For those unacquainted with To Kill a Mockingbird, the protagonist has to dress up as a ham for a Halloween school pageant which illustrates the county’s agricultural products. I decided to achieve this, as Scout does, with a chicken wire frame. I think the covering is fabric in the book, but I’ve opted to use papier maché.

Heading out to the hardware store, I started wondering if a store in the city was likely to carry chicken wire. It seems more suited to rural life. They did have it, though it wasn't exactly handy. “Follow me!” the man working at the front counter told me, grabbing a pair of wire-cutters. I followed him all the way to the back of the store, where he unlocked a door. We found ourselves out in the back alley. Strange… Crossing the alley, he unlocked another door to some sort of big shed thing. We entered the ill-lit building, stacked with boards and dowels and the like, and he pointed me to a few rolls of chicken wire. I selected the kind I wanted, and we set about to measuring. “I’ll need it to wrap around me for the costume,” I told him. He tried to measure it on himself, but we kind of figured it would be best if we measured it on me. So we switched places, and there in a dark, scary, alley-shed, I wrapped myself in chicken wire while a stranger wielding a weapon looked on. I should probably point out that the fellow helping me was a scrawny hipster whose own measurements made it impractical for him to measure the wire because he was so much skinnier than I. He was not the least bit frightening. I was pretty grateful for that. I don’t know what I would have done if the person who helped me had been a little shadier. Or properly nourished. “The things I get myself into,” I mumbled as we unfurled me from my cage.

There are tiny scratches on my arms, and drops of petrified flour water on the floor, but I now have a human-sized (not yet painted) ham sitting in the kitchen, behind the baby gate, so that it doesn’t escape. Actually, it’s because Molly’s dog, Lucy, has an insatiable hunger for the taste of papier maché. Or perhaps my ham-construction is just a little too believable.

Ponies!

I know it’s been a while, world. I’ve been uninspired to write. I still sort of am. And though we learned from my childhood diary that I am predisposed to writing down every single thing that I do, I don’t consider that even remotely interesting. I was g-chatting with my roommate, Molly, yesterday, and mentioned that I had received a one-word comment on my previous blog urging me to “UPDATE!!” I told her that I didn’t think I’d done anything lately that anyone cared about. Molly, in her infinite wisdom, told me, “People care about anything if you end it with pictures of ponies with drawn-on mustaches.” Fair enough.

I determined yesterday that I might be obsessed with poker. I was counting out a dozen of something for a mailing at work, and in place of “Eleven,” I said, “Jack”. Yipes! I can't wait until someone asks me what time it is, and I tell them "Jack-thirty," making them think that I'm an alcoholic. "No, no," I'll protest, chuckling. "Not Jack Daniels! A jack! Like, of diamonds? Oh, that's funny... You thought? No, I'm not obsessed with alcohol. I'm obsessed with... gambling. Oh... That's not much better, is it? Er, I'd better go. I have a meeting at Queen. I mean, twelve! Twelve O'clock! Oh, man..."

Speaking of games, I downloaded one from Popcap about a year ago called Peggle. You shoot a ball-bearing through some pegs, and earn points, blah, blah, blah. It’s not all that fun, but I got super-obsessed with it. This is because there’s a challenge mode where they give you a stamp of achievement after you have beat each level. There was one level I just couldn’t beat, and it made me CRAZY. I spent hours on it, having no fun whatsoever in the process. It was like a second job. (Or third, if you count improv.) Last week, I finally beat it. I yelled. Molly yelled. I shut my laptop with a triumphant, but ginger, click. Finally. I don’t have to play that awful game anymore. Then on Tuesday, a postcard came in the mail. “Thanks for ordering Peggle!” it said. “Now introducing our new version, 'Peggle Nights!'" I wonder if it’s a coincidence and it really just came out, or if the program sends a little alert to the people at Popcap to tell them you’ve completed everything you could on the existing game. It’s not online, mind you, it’s a download. Would they be so devious? Who is against me and my productivity? Is it Popcap? Or the world?

I haven’t ordered it, but I also haven’t thrown the postcard away. In fact, I used it to make a note of when High School Musical 3 is being released in theaters.

That’s right.

Speaking of… Cheesy stuff? Embarrassing things that I love? Movies with a cult following that are about love eschewing the social mores of the class system? I’m going to see Dirty Dancing tonight. The live stage musical event. My dress, jacket, and accessories are hanging in my cubicle right now on my basketball hoop. (As a side note, I rarely do it, but when I do set out clothes to wear , I can't just stack them in a neat, folded pile. It has to look like someone melted out of them. Or that I could leap into them in one single, confident bound. Or, perhaps, like I have set them out for someone who is unaccustomed to dressing herself, and must be shown where each item belongs. Clearly, the options are endless, and keep the imagination whirring long into the night. Though, that's probably just because I keep getting startled awake by the fleshless, but meticulously dressed body lurking ominously by my bed. )

And, yes. I do have a basketball hoop in my cubicle.

My buddy Jason bought Molly and me each two tickets to the show for our birthdays. We are bringing him and our friend Cassie as our guests. I anticipate magic. Campy, delicious, dance magic.

Can't wait!

Class!

A lady in my office just stopped in front of my cubicle for a second, and I thought, “Man! Those are some trashy heels!” Then I realized I had glanced at them through my wire mesh inbox.

To be fair, though, when she looked in, she probably misjudged me and thought that I was drinking Pringles crumbs straight from the can. They were more like shards. Much bigger than crumbs.