A Long overdue goodbye to Summer

Even though I haven’t been motivated to vent my spleen in a while, I’m hammering out this post because we apparently have a new policy at CN where you could lose your blog space if you don’t post periodically or frequently enough or something.

Don’t feel neglected readers, I haven’t been posting on social media much either.   On Facebook, if I post anything too liberal, my right-wing boyfriends come out of their basements to set me straight.   And if I say anything that doesn’t perfectly align with the lefty talking points, my SJW girlfriends put me in check as well.

It. is. Exhausting.

How was your summer?  Mine was meh.  The weather this summer was, to use the technical term, sucky. For every decent weather day, there were two rainy, humid or hot as hell days. There weren’t as many sit on the front porch and enjoy my coffee (or back deck and wine) moments like last year.  Because the weather wasn’t favorable, it wasn’t always possible to let the kids spend time in the backyard burning off energy.

Heard a crash at 3 am and found this!

We spent a considerable amount of money trying to get this house in shape for if when we finally pull the trigger and decide to move.  We love our house and our neighborhood, especially now that Portage Park is starting to become a little more trendy.  But the house has some warts and with two growing kids, the thought of sharing the largest of 2.5 bathrooms with them doesn’t appeal to Nightingale.  And there’s the school thing.  Our neighborhood school is okay but not great.

On the other hand, would God put a Binny’s and a Culvers around the corner from us if she wanted us to move!  Besides, we don’t know where to move.  We don’t have any ties to any particular suburb here and a better school would mean less home than we have now or a much bigger mortgage.  Nightingale’s family is mostly in Memphis and we wouldn’t fit in there.

Gonna need a little more than duct tape to fix

A big change occurred at the office at the start of summer.  By that I mean I no longer work at an office.   One of the other work groups expanded and needed my seat.  The dude in charge of office seating asked if I really, really, really, really needed a seat in the office.  In spite of him being subtle, I was able to discern that he would rather not try to find me a seat.  So rather than wind up in a broom closet, so now I’m 99.9999% WFH.   I’ve gone into the office a total of three times since Memorial Day.

There are ups and downs of working 100% remote.  When you are at the office but not at your desk, people assume you are somewhere nearby.  In the breakroom, bathroom, meeting room, out having a smoke (even though they know you don’t smoke) or just out to lunch.  Kidding; no one takes lunch in Corporate America.

But when you are home, if you don’t respond within one-tenth of a second to an email or Instant Message, you obviously must be in the backyard sipping margaritas and working on your tan.  How absurd is that?  I drink Manhattans, not margaritas.

On the other hand, it is nice not having an hour plus door-to-door commute.  It’s even nicer when my kids aren’t being douche nuggets and I can get drop them off at daycare and get back with a little time before I clock in so I can sneak in a choir like mowing the lawn.

Let me know how your summer in the comments below and thanks for reading.

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Not so fast: Summer Ain’t Over Yet

It’s after Labor Day and my social media feed is filled with first day of school pictures and people saddened by the symbolic end of summer.  Although many people defines Summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the Autumnal Equinox isn’t for another two weeks!  And even after that, the Midwest usually gets its politically incorrect Indian Summer (well we did before climate change — see what I did there, I likely offended conservatives and liberals!)

There’s still plenty of summery things you can do before the cold and snow arrives.  For instance, this weekend in Lincoln Square is German-American Oktoberfest.  If Mayfest signals the start of summer, Oktoberfest ushers in the fall.  This festival is free and is a good place to begin the hunt for that winter body warmer, aka standing date for the holiday parties.

The beach is less crowded and while the water might not be warm enough to swim in, the sun is still good.  You might even get your  friends together for a few sets of beach volleyball.

If this doesn’t scream impromptu Beach Tournament, I don’t know what does

There’s still a few weeks of baseball left.  This year White Sox tickets will be easier and cheaper to come by, but in years past, both teams are usually so out of playoff contention that they might pay you to sit in the stadium.  [I try to write these posts so that they become Everygreen Content.]  And if you are a glutton for punishment with a large bank account, catch a Bears game before the weather and their season gets too ugly.

If you work downtown you can still eat lunch outside.  Brown bag to Millennium Park or maybe even splurge a week’s paycheck to eat lunch on the River Walk.  Or take a day off and hit the museums.  Kids are back in school so they won’t be as crowded.  Combined with the baseball game, you could essentially re-enact Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

All I’m trying to say is that just because the calendar says it’s after Labor Day that does not mean Summer is over.  Not officially and not if you put your mind to it.

Other posts you might like to bookmark for next summer:
This one- Summertime fun for Chicagoans

Or this one-Don’t Let Summer Slip away…

OOOOR this one- 7 ways not to let summer slip away…

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Memorial Day: You celebrate it your way, I’ll celebrate it my way

While scrolling through FB on Monday I saw a post by a former CN blogger asking Chicago-area peeps to share their “Mem day photos, especially if they were going to a memorial and/or parade.  We are looking for some for TV.”  She left the glamorous life of CN blogger to work the more glamorous and paycheck providing life of Social Media Editor at CBS Chicago.

New stations do these things all the time.  Slow news Holiday weekend, let’s do a collage of photos from our audience.  A snapshot of how the city celebrated the holiday.  And then it happened.  Someone posted the following comment: “I think its more appropriate if they showed pics of our fallen HEROS not parties.”

Don’t.  Just stop it.  Stop.  It.

I’m really tired of people telling me what I should and shouldn’t be outraged about (see Lions and gorillas).  But I’m even more tired of people who tell me the precise way I need to do something in order to gain Proper Commemoration Nirvana.

Look, we get it. Memorial Day is supposed to be about so much more than cookouts and picnics and three day weekends.  It should be a valuable reminder of the sacrifices of many brave people so we can all enjoy the freedoms we often take for granted.

Memorial Day should be our annual reminder that the decisions our elected officials make and the knee-jerk reactions among the public have real consequences. The consequence, every time we commit ourselves to go to war, is that people who would otherwise be alive will end up dead. The costs of war are abstract for most of us, but very real for Mitchell Daehling and his loved ones. We hear a lot of florid talk on Memorial Day about honoring and remembering sacrifices. In my view, we honor their sacrifices best by remembering the chain of events and decisions that led to them.

According to the Oracle Wikipedia “many people visit cemeteries and memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries.”

That said, just because you don’t spend every waking second of the Holiday dedicated to the memory of deceased troops, doesn’t mean you don’t care enough.  To be sure, look to the opposite.  How many draft dodging politicians will stand up at a Memorial Day Ceremony on Monday and then cut funding for the VA the next day?  How many will send troops to die in battle without enlisting themselves or their children?

Look, we should make the meaning of Memorial Day more front and center than we do. Maybe we need to think of it more as a Day of the Dead instead of a Day in the Park.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t have our cookouts and picnics and three day weekends.  Those things are baked into the Memorial Day DNA and they aren’t going away any time soon.

One of the things  I did with my extra day off work was get in a much needed weight maintenance run.  I went for a run around my non-Green Zone, blue collar, ethic neighborhood. Here’s what I saw.  There were people working on their gardens.  On their homes.  Other people where spending time with their children.  I happen to think that’s a fine way to spend Memorial Day.  But if you don’t, that’s okay too.  Just don’t tell me how I should spend my holiday the way you spend it.

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Summertime fun advice for Chicagoans

Photo Courtesy of Digital Vision-Photodisc-Getty 2

Even though summer doesn’t officially start for another eleven days, it’s after Memorial Day and the warmer weather is here.  I’ve lived in Chicago my whole life and for as long as I can remember, the transition from spring to summer is usually quick and brutal.  We get a few weeks of spring which is usually either rainy and cold or rainy and muggy.  Then the temperature jumps to the high 80s and 90s and you hear the cliches:

• It’s a dry heat.
• It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
• Hot enough for you?

Summer time in Chicago is synonymous with street festivals. Every weekend there is at least one block party, art fair or street festival, often more.  Street Festivals are 1 of the 5 things I’m too old for:

1. Over Crowded street fests
2. FREE advance screening passes to a movie
3. Waiting in line for a trendy restaurant
4. Sports Venues and Concerts
5. Wrigleyville

This isn’t meant to be an absolute. Once in a while, I might still be willing to put up with drunken sorority hasbeens and navigate Wrigleyville or deal with a crowded fest to see my favorite band like when The Smithereens played Retro on Roscoe that one year.

I’ve sort of amended my thinking on Street Festivals.  Some are free though many charge a suggested donation that can range anywhere from a few dollars to twenty bucks.  I still think it’s extortion to over charge for a festival, especially when there are so many better uses for that money.  But I do recognize that 1) no one is forcing me to go, 2) see my list above, and 3) I’m at a place in life where paying the fee isn’t going to break my bank.

To be certain I don’t want to give away $20 any more than the next person. But it won’t kill me and it probably won’t kill you either.

For someone living on the margins of the economy, $8 or $10 per fest might be a big deal. To anyone else paying that amount might be unpleasant but you’ll live.  My new rule of thumb for evaluating the relative worth of a given amount of money in your life is: If you dropped it in a port-o-potty  toilet full of liquid feces, would you reach in to get it? If the answer is yes, it’s a lot of money. At least to you.

Besides, it’s possible you’ll meet someone for either a summer fling or long term relationship.  Summer in Chicago means you might end up dating someone who is training for the Chicago Marathon

Summer usually brings at least one set of out of tow guests.  Looking for someplace to take them that isn’t the same old tourist attractions?

You also have to feed them so here’s a guide for getting some good produce on the cheap.

If Memorial Day is the Unofficial Start of Summer, then  Labor Day is the natural conclusion and that means summer moves quickly, especially in Chicago.  Do not  let summer slip away.

 

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It’s Officially Summer Chicago, here’s 7 ways to not let slip by

People refer to today as the longest day of the year. The fact is, all days are 24 hours long (okay 23 hours, 56 minutes if you wanna be Sidereal  about it) today just happens to have the maximum amount of daylight in it.

Although many people defines Summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and teachers define it as the whenever the last day the school year lands, summer season officially begins today. The summer solstice takes place on either June 20th, 21st or occasionally 22nd, depending on the year. Note: the next June 22 solstice is in 2203, not sure I will be around to blog about it.

No matter when you start your summer the one constant is that summer moves quickly, especially in Chicago. We typically get a very short spring where we transition from brutal cold to humid hot.  This year is particularly rough because we had the Polar Vortex bringing the funk, bringing the frigid.

Summer for us will seem extremely short because instead of sitting around drinking margaritas on the back deck, we have to get ready for babies to arrive. As I wrote in May, We are having twins — a boy and a girl — and although our official due date is in October, twins travel on their own schedule, usually too early. We have baby showers to plan and we need to get the nursery in order before we getting into their tentative arrival range.

Even if you aren’t expecting your family size to increase, Summer has a tendency to slip away if you don’t pay attention.  But there’s still time to get a lot in before it’s parka time again. So here are seven things you can do so we can live vicariously through you:

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Five Signs of a True Chicagoan

There are tons of articles, columns and posts out there that lists traits and aspects of a True Chicagoan.  Each one its own ridiculous attempt to marginalize someone because they like ketchup on a hotdog, or don’t know it wasn’t always called Willis Tower or (gasp) root for both baseball teams.

I’ve come up with my own criteria.  These are 5 things that are implanted within the DNA of a Chicagoan.  In other words, if you could cut a Chicagoan at the cellular level you would literally see these traits staring back at you from the Genome.  And it doesn’t matter if you have lived here all your life, or have migrated from the burbs or another state last Fall.  Maybe your folks lived in the city but hightailed you out to Bolingbrook, Carpentersville, Downer’s Grove or even Aurora when you were four.  If you have these characteristics, you are a True Chicagoan.

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Chicago Marathon training brings the Labor Day Blues

If you are training for the Chicago Marathon — or most any fall marathon — chances are that by now, you’ve begun to notice something about your training that you might never imagined: you’re sick and tired of it all. The getting up at the wee hours of the morning, the almost religious adherence to a training schedule and the piles of miles you’ve logged by now. And if you have to wash down another gel pack with Gatorade you are going to puke. Literally.

Are we there yet?

No matter what time of year it is, when you are two-thirds through any marathon training program, you start to feel a little worn down. You’re banged up, worn out and you still have a 20 mile training Long Run (LR) on the horizon. But there’s something extra depressing about training for a marathon once Labor Day weekend comes around.

The sun comes up a little later, and it gets dark a little earlier. Kids are back in school and new television shows promise to banish the reruns of summer. And being Chicago, the baseball teams have been out of contention since your first LR and you cannot wait for Opening Day football.

I’ve trained for and run 22 marathons — most of them in Chicago. I’ve also spent many of those years as a Group Leader for CARA, helping other runners train for a marathon and I can tell you first hand that I see it every year. Even if you are just running to finish and check it off the old bucket list, marathon training takes a bit of discipline, dedication and determination. This time of year, it can be hard to channel those first two items.

Even us group leaders whose job it is to help you get ready for Chicago get sick of the whole training thing. This time of year, I want to sleep in, eat Hot Wings instead of pasta and watch football instead of pounding the pavement. I’m ready for the whole worshipping a training schedule thing to be over.

The good news is in just over a month it will be over. That’s like, Super SOON!

Remember that as race day approaches, you’ll start seeing the banners, the commercials and all things marathon. Suddenly all your friend will be envious that you are running the marathon and they sat on their butts this summer — or not.

Some other things to feel good about if you are training for a marathon:

• The day you run the 20, you’ll feel like a rock star.
• Your metabolism is probably in such high gear that you can eat nachos like no ones business.
• There’s still time for at least one more street festival (Taste of Polonia, German-American Fest anyone)
• The LRs are getting shorter which means the weekday mileage decreases as well.

What often helps me gets me back in spirit is going for a run in the evening just as the sun is starting to set. The path is noticeably quieter with the tourists gone and less crowded since the fair weather folks head inside to the gym. When I do encounter another runner, I don’t even have to look for the color-tagged shoes to know he or she is also training for Chicago. We don’t know each other, but we do the Runner’s nod.

And if all else fails, you can always look forward to the little known post-marathon ritual where you toss your running clothes into a bonfire while drinking anything but Gatorade.

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Street Fest Donations: They’re suggested, not expected!

Summer time in Chicago is synonymous with street festivals. Every weekend there is at least one block party, art fair or street festival, often more. Some are free though many charge a suggested donation that can range anywhere from a few dollars to twenty bucks. Frankly, these suggested donations are getting carried away, especially as they go from suggested to expected.

I get that there are costs associated with putting on a street fest, I really do. It probably isn’t cheap and costs can only have gone up over the years. Since no one is forcing me to attend these fests, I don’t mind shelling out a few bucks to help offset those costs. And where I am at today financially speaking, I can certainly afford the entry fee at most street fests.

Which fest is this again? Doesn’t matter dude, as long as we play the same songs in a different order

At the same time, I don’t want to pay a crapload of cash for access to a public city street and the privilege of being crowded into a two-block radius smashed against people, many who haven’t showered in ages, underneath a blazing sun.

For the record, I’m not singling out a specific festival and the smaller festivals that rent out a parking lot can charge whatever they want. But those that use public streets or even a park, those are the ones who really are pushing the envelope with the Expected/Suggested Donation thing.

Over the years I’ve seen this happen at various fests. From the person working the door looking down on you because you are not contributing the full amount to the strong arm rent-a-cop who ever so slightly flexes his muscles if you even question the suggested donation”. It truly makes me wonder if the money really is going to a good cause.

I think the worst is when they don’t even bother using the words donation or suggested. I mean seriously, you’re offering me the opportunity to watch drunk people grind up on pick up each other up while swaying to a cover band that plays the same set at every fest.

Think about this: If someone spends all their money just getting into a street fest, they aren’t gonna have much left over for the overpriced beer and half cooked food, to say nothing of patronizing the non-consumable vendors. That guy with the surf board photo booth or the climbing rock are gonna go home with less money in their pockets if the door people take all of mine.

For the last time, I don’t want to enter your raffle!

And question for the people who work the door and are so adamant about getting the full “suggested” entry fee? Do you get a cut of the pie? Or is it money out of your pocket in some way?

To me it doesn’t seem worth it. In the hot summer it just takes one nutjob who feels the world owes him something and the next guy who wrongs him in any way is gonna pay. So maybe you feel invincible working that booth with the rent-a-cop next to you, or you are the musclehead who can beat up most people in a fair fight without working up a sweat.  The thing is, the nutjob probably isn’t gonna give you much opportunity for a fair fight.  Is an extra couple of dollars really worth it?

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Don’t Let Summer in Chicago Slip Away

Summertime in Chicago is just too short. A typical Chicago Spring is still chilly, rainy and outdoor unfriendly. Around May this changes and natives experiment with taking off the parka and downgrading to a simple pea coat.

Even though the weather might be nice in September and even October, conventional wisdom defines Summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Basically you get June, July and August and then it’s over.

When June arrives you think: I have the whole summer ahead of me. Visions of spending time at baseball games, popular street festivals and hanging out at the beach come to mind. Maybe you’ve always wanted to check out Summer Dance or the Waste Taste of Chicago. Perhaps this is the summer you will finally bike to the Botanic Gardens. Excitement oozes over the new summer blockbusters. In your summer fueled excitement you invite friends from out of town to visit so you have a legitimate excuse to check out Navy Pier.

Trips to Ravina for concerts under the stars get tossed around and plans are penciled in.

Soon it’s July and you’re trying to figure out who’s Fourth of July cookout to attend and where to see the fireworks. [Choose wisely, I met my wife at a 4th of July Party I might otherwise have never attended.] You still have a lot of summer left but you also realize that you have to make those plans a bit more concrete. Spontaneous plans to dine al fresco get formally scheduled for August because July is so overbooked. It really is time to fill up the bicycle tires already. Can we still catch those blockbusters at a matinee? Is my friend arriving at Midway or O’Hare?

Then August arrives and you realize that you just have a few weeks to squeeze everything in! You have to choose between the concert at Ravina or the Best Street Fest of the Summer This Weekend. That bike you never got tuned up sits there hoping you’ll notice it. What do you mean we missed Summerfest?

Before you know it, another summer has set sail and it’s time to get the parka out of storage. Those blockbusters are now available on Blu-ray.

Note: the above was re-blogged/recycled from a post on my personal blog from years ago. Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.

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