today we attempt the impossible, when we cook thanksgiving dinner for my parents – a new step in the adult-child-parent relationship: hosting one’s parents for the holidays. the fridge has never seen as much food as it currently contains and i’ve been the house cleaning nazi for about a week now. plans to have purchased a couch by the time thanksgiving arrived were stymied: the operator at IKEA swore she had 80 couches in stock, but they were sold out by the time we found our way to schaumburg. football will have to be watched middle-eastern style, from floor cushions leaned up against the as-of-yet-undecorated walls.

seeing chicago with my parents is like seeing a whole different chicago: we eat dinner at trendy restaurants, take cabs up and down the festively decorated Michigan avenue, see plays where we actually paid for the tickets…it all feels very glamorous. my parents ask, what’s that building? and that one? and we have no idea. our chicago has been full of early morning train rides, long work days, seeing plays that one of us is in or had free tickets to, making “starving actor dinners” of spaghetti or pad thai with other impoverished friends. there hasn’t been a lot of time for sight-seeing (i work in the basement of the tallest building in chicago and i still haven’t been to the observation deck on top), but our vision of chicago isn’t so bad, either. i am thankful for both versions.

there’s a feral bunny rabbit that has taken up residence in my (very urban) front yard. i’ve seen these rabbits a little further out in the suburbs, but never here. he’s been here for a couple of days, just nibbling on grass and roots and stuff and keeping a wary eye on me when i pass. mouse, the pit bull who lives on the first floor, must be going nuts. any sign of trouble, however, and the bunny wiggles through the fence and disappears into the parking lot next door. i worry that he’s wandered away from the huge yard of the church across the street, and now he can’t figure out how to cross the busy street to get back to his home.

secondly, the portion of the downtown loop around where i work smells distinctly like fresh-baked cookies. not just once, but all the time. there’s about a four or five block area in which there is the unmistakeable sent of chocolate chip cookies on the breeze. i certainly haven’t bumped into any giant cookie-making factories on my lunch breaks, so i’m perplexed as to where the smell is coming from. not that i’m complaining, mind you – there are much worse things a downtown could smell like.

bunny rabbits in my front yard and the smell of cookies on the wind. it’s like something out of charlie and the chocolate factory.

paul talks about jonathan frazen; i follow the amazon link to see what else he’s written besides The Corrections. the list of “customers who bought this book also bought these books ” beneath frazen’s How to be Alone: Essays is as follows:

Strong Motion: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen (Paperback)

You Shall Know Our Velocity: Or, Sacrament by Dave Eggers (Paperback)

Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer (Author) (Paperback)

it’s somehow fitting that the same people who purchased Eggers’ novel about personal inertia also can’t be bothered to do yoga, and yet hope that by purchasing a book, yoga will somehow be done for/to them. kinda like the series i purchased in college called Japanese for Busy People (what could i do? i was in love with a boy who had ditched me for asia). no wonder lauren snickered at them – the books might as well have been called Japanese for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Learn Japanese. never did get past the ordering-soup-buying-train-tickets stage.

the first snowfall in chicago followed the first 20 degree night, so that sunday, walking down a quiet, tree-lined residential street, the snowflakes were bumping elbows with the leaves, which were dropping off the trees seemingly of their own accord: no wind to shake them loose, just an imperceptible snap, fibers weakened by the cold night, and they drifted toward the street, mingling with the fat, dry snowflakes.

yesterday was a day filled with chicago regulars: in the morning i rode the crazy old man train up to evanston, upon my return in the evening i was greeted by the dead meat truck vegans. both of these probably require some explanation:

the crazy old man is this older man, neatly groomed, who rides the last morning express train that runs north to evanston. i don’t normally go to work that late, but when i do, i somehow always manage to get into the same car as this guy. i don’t even have to look up from my book; i can recognize his voice as soon as the train pulls out of the station. in a thick greek accent, he preaches a sermon of old testament-style religion, fallen angels and the like, tossed together with thoughts about space travel, robots, and what technology will do for/to our society. he sits staring out the window, speaking in a loud, gruff voice, with the same pauses and intonations that i recall our catholic priest using during homilies when i was a kid. after 10 minutes or so, he’ll break off mid-sentence. a pregnant pause follows for a minute or two, then he launches back to the sermon without so much as a deep breath. it’s as if he’s been doing this his entire life. and this goes on for the 40 minute train ride.

the dead meat truck vegans are a little more annoying and less fascinating. once a week or so, they set up shop right outside of the el station where i get off to go home. they have a van that has roll-up sides, like a garage door, and behind the door is a television showing bloody videos of how cows are raised and slaughtered. the vegans stand up against the buildings, so that in order to pass, one has to choose avoiding looking at the gory cow video or avoiding looking at the smiling vegans handing out leaflets. i’m somehow caught between wanting them to know that i don’t eat meat for the same reasons – slaughter house horrors, antibiotics wrecking havoc on our bodies and the environment, the social irresponsibility of feeing grain to cows instead of to starving people – and wanting them to stop looking so smug and self-important (because somehow they must intuitively know that i secretly crave and occasionally indulge in (free-range, organtic) bacon, and therefore am not a real vegetarian). later i had the misfortune of returning to that corner and having dinner in at S.I.R. (the Standard India Restaurant – indian food you can call Sir! haha) around the same time that the vegans took a dinner break, and so had to listen to them discuss amongst themselves (in voices loud enough for every diner in the small restaurant to listen) the wonders of their conversion to veganism, and how unenlightened the carnivorous masses are.

post script: new words for MS Word’s spellchecker: “vegan” and “veganism”

the preceding 60-hour work week put something of a damper on halloween plans, but as it turns out, our neighborhood is second only to san francisco’s castro for marti gras style halloween celebrations, so friday night was more about staring at all the other freaks than trying to be freakish ourselves.

10 minutes to devise a costume out of our own closets lead to the following:

andy dressed in hiking gear and stocking cap with donkey ears attached, represented the CTA Fee Hike, and i wore my aikido uniform and went as Every Sport I’ve Ever Quit (it’s a long, long list).

i have a long history of halloween costumes that require explanation (el nino, the seven deadly sins, a rock, to name a few). it reminds me a little of the way paul and i play “20 questions”: on a road trip to idaho once, it became necessary to change the game to “40 questions”, because it was impossible to hone in on some arcane metaphysical subject (the black plague, onomatopoeia, godot…) in 20 guesses.

maybe i should look to our “40 questions” games to find inspiration for halloween costumes…i could be godot, and just never show up at the halloween party.

www.ryantown.com/gayboyfriend

it’s worth the download time.

bon voyage to paul, who departs soon for four weeks of roaming the guatemalan countryside with naught but a notebook, pen, and some malaria pills. viva la earnest young writer, i say. oh, and hide some extra cash inside your sock or something – as my father has often reminded me when i’m setting out for foreign lands, if one finds oneself in a tight spot, $100 american cash will negotiate better than an electronic dictionary and faster than an american consulate. all my good travel karma to you, paul.

chicago is so totally gripped by cubs fever that 1) i’m actually following the games, and 2) the weatherman on the news tonight gave a detailed report on what the weather was like the last time the cubs were in the playoffs – in 1908.

recent reticence should be considered a blessing; i’m saving you all the daily-move in report:

friday: dear blogger, today i unpacked 2 more boxes. i still can’t find the box with the chair covers. ps – discovered too late that there’s no linen closet. searching for solutions in IKEA catalogue.

saturday: dear blogger, still no home for the extra towels. can’t decide: should we buy a papasan chair now, or save our money for a sofa?

i’m short on wit these days. exploring-of-chicago is largely put on hold now that i have two jobs; i just wish i had time to finish unpacking. the apartment has great potential, but it needs lots of stuff, and we have no money, so most of the decorating plans will have to wait. at my day job i learn dental insurance terminology and book-keeping basics, at my real job i’m learning, via trial-by-fire, how to manage projects, budgets and people. commute reading has been limited to total fluff: IKEA catalogues, p.g. wodehouse novels, the onion.

the val and grant wedding was beautiful, classy and a little heart-wrenching, as the first of The Roommates Crossed The Moat (don’t ask), and the weekend with friends made me a little wistful for my college days – not the being 19, or the going to school part, just the part where all my friends lived down the hall from me. now the hipster death squad is scattered across every corner of the country: new york, washington DC, portland, san jose, chicago. we have apartments, credit cards, 10:30 bedtimes and jobs that make us work weekends.

we depart tomorrow for the bay area and for the wedding of valerie and grant – yay! friends and sunshine and every meal includes avocado! what more could i want?

we’ve moved into the apartment, and aside from a few creative repairs that may be required, i have high hopes that life will SOON begin to settle. we have an address, utilities, and a day job, an apartment devoid of furniture, but with plenty of windows and room for the cat to run. hopefully posts will resume with some regularity as soon as i find which box the computer is in.