OK, unlike last time, this blog won’t be 100% Carcassonne related. Just a little bit.
We’ve now had two Presidential and one Vice Presidential debates to watch, which Randi and I have only got through with help from virtual Catherine and real-life Chloe and Amanda as watching partners. They generally leave us somewhere on the spectrum between incredulous and upset, but it’s especially annoying for me since I don’t actually get to vote at the end. So I was very pleased to be able to play my small part for Hillary by joining a virtual phonebank organised by Randi’s friend Debra.
Hello, Ohio
We weren’t calling to persuade voters: these were from a database of likely Hillary supporters, and the aim was to sign up volunteers to help register new voters before the deadline closed in a couple of days. What is really striking is how almost-obsolete phonebanking (and by implication, telephone polling) feels: the vast majority of people simply don’t pick up. I certainly wouldn’t, and simply making contact felt a lot rarer than when I last did this in London in 2008. Nevertheless, I did successfully sign up one woman to volunteer, so I have contributed! On the other hand, I also generated the angriest (and most hilarious) voicemail I’ve ever heard. The man was not having a good day, and curious readers should drop me a message if they want to hear it 😉
Back by the bay
Lori has just started walking
The other big thing to mention is our whirlwind trip to San Francisco last weekend! The first order of business was to see Jamie and Paul and to meet baby Lori for the first time, which was as wonderful as you’d expect. (She’s just turned one, and is magically starting to walk.) With the beautifully sunny weather we were able to just chill out together in their garden, talking and watching their cat unsuccessfully hunt gophers, before getting lunch nearby.
With Jamie, Paul and Lori!
With violent family and her less-violent family
San Francisco City Hall
The primary purpose of the trip was the wedding of Brett and Courtney – Randi’s family friends – which was held inside San Francisco’s magnificent City Hall. Spending time with her family is always great, and (amongst many other things) the wedding itself set a very high standard for the quality of cheese on offer. I don’t mean kitsch, I mean literal cheese. I think this will become my barometer for all future weddings.
Not pictured: shattered dreams
Wait, who’s that? Is it Robert Dietz? Indeed so, back in Chicago two weeks ago for work stuff but thankfully amenable to watching one of the tense Orioles vs. Blue Jays games in Toons with Todd and Carolyn. Later in the week we had drinks with Alex during one of her brief jet-setting interludes, and also ended up in a bizarre bar watching Otis Wilson of the ’85 Superbowl Bears compete to see how many beers he could pour in two minutes. (These details don’t mean much to me, but I dutifully wrote them down because it felt like good Americana for this post.)
Randi and I also had drinks with James and Lauren and saw Sam Hicks star in The Rhode Island Chapter: a play about a community of New England zombies. It was part of a weekend festival of back-to-back sci-fi and fantasy short plays which I would certainly check out again next year. Prior to Sam, we also saw Worrier and the Not about a robot couple struggling with their (optional) human emotions.
Finally, some updates to previous posts:
- Remember my dentist? Well, the ratcheting effect over two subsequent years has now resulted in a Bluetooth-connected toothbrush which partners with my phone to nag me as I brush my teeth. I know, I know.
- Remember Jimmy Savile? Louis Theroux’s 2000 documentary has always stuck in my mind even before the full revelations came out, so it was doubly fascinating to watch his self-questioning follow-up about failing to get to the truth.
- I did promise some more Carcassonne, which has continued to spread through my life. Since last time, Randi and I have played in real-life with Alec, with Emilie (both of whom were frustratingly good, although only Emilie brought delicious French cheese) and with many others over the iOS app. You should join us!
Carcassonne is both a fortified French town (I’ve been!) and a lovely board game which I have become slightly obsessed with in the past few weeks. To be clear: I now own expansion packs. Two of them. That’s a very fulsome level of commitment.
Carcassonne! The game, not the French town. Although both are beautiful.
People with whom I have lured into playing Carcassonne recently: Randi, Randi’s mum, Chloe and Aaron (a couple who also share our love of Indian food).
People with whom I have failed to play Carcassonne with recently, but it was still nice to see: Nolan (he visits!), Karol (he brunches!), Debra and Andrew.
And when I haven’t been playing Carcassonne, I’ve been winning and losing Worms in equal measure against Katie and playing Plants vs. Zombies 2 in solitary loner mode. (I checked this blog, and it’s been a full five years since I went through my addiction to the original game, so it’s been a decent gap before my relapse.)
Don’t worry, I have some travels booked, so this blog won’t be board games forever.
Pretty much every Minnesotan I’ve met for the past two years has urged me to go to the Minnesota State Fair, and this Labour Day weekend I finally experienced it for myself with Randi, Simon and Steve. And it was amazing!
Minnesota (keep reading and we’ll get there)
But first: Simon and Steve arrived in Chicago after some extensive road/plane/train-tripping across the United States already, so we had a couple of days to relax and introduce them to important Chicago institutions such as Kuma’s Corner and the Cubs. (In their game against the Pirates, which we saw with Todd and Carolyn, the Cubs were thoughtful enough to throw in some unnecessary drama at the end where it looked like they might squander the whole game’s lead, but they ultimately triumphed in order that Simon and Steve could hear the victory song.)
For the first time in too long we also saw Improv Shakespeare, who rejected our suggestion of ‘President Trump’ (wise) and performed The Coughing Lumberjack instead: a worthy saga combining the industrious Don Lumberjack and a dastardly French invasion of England.
And then it was roadtrip time! Highlights of our journey included a ferociously weird Spotify playlist (I Feel Like Jeremy Corbyn became the trip’s anthem, which you can Google if you must) and multiple stops at Culver’s. By Friday night we reached our hotel in Madison – a popular town if my friends are anything to go by – and spent Saturday morning exploring the farmers’ market and/or arguing with creationists (Simon and Steve took one for the team here) before moving on.
If you weren’t there, you won’t understand how funny Simon’s slow and laboured air mattress inflation was
The state capitol
One of Todd’s favourite shops provided colouring-in
On Saturday evening we arrived into Minneapolis, ate some non-fried non-American food and shared some beers with Catherine while we prepared ourselves for Sunday. Fair Day. There’s so much I could write about the fair itself because it’s so vast: we arrived at 9.30am and left eleven hours later, and not once did we get bored or run out of things to do. To start with, there is so much food: most notable (for us) were the incredible cheese curds, the famous cookies from Sweet Martha’s Cookies Jar and some delicious corn on the cob. There are fairground rides, political stalls, a host of farm animals (some within the ‘Miracle of Birth’ tent) and an art gallery. We saw the finalists of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way contest carved out of butter, rode the cable car over the fair and and the Ye Old Mill canal boat through pitch black tunnels underneath, cheered on a lumberjack competition and admired many, many tractors.
In short, it was wonderful. Apart from the GOP’s Trump tent. Which was less wonderful.
State Fair!
On the incredibly fun (and incredibly wet) River Raft Ride
On the tractor
Princess Kay butter sculptures
Turns out ‘all you can drink’ milk is a mixed blessing
Prize winning corn
In the Democratic booth
My Hillary badge became a talisman
Almost dropping the cookies
We weren’t the only ones going for the cookies
The Crazy Mouse ride: our final attraction
There were a couple of other pre-fair events back in Chicago which I should mention. I went to a very compelling one-day course from Edward Tufte: nominally on data presentation, but he has the moral authority and professorial gravitas to talk about whatever he wants and make it compelling (plus he’s friends with Randall Munroe from xkcd). I made use of both Jason’s pool and the wonderful, free public pool in Pulaski Park before the summer ends. And we had a three-way dinner date with Robert, Grace, Luis and Marti before seeing The 7th Annual Living Newspaper Festival: a collection of topical short plays inspired by newspaper stories. (The most enjoyable was set in a robotised future classroom in a Trumpian dystopia. Election day draws ever nearer.)
Here is a story about people being nice. Way back in March I saw the first half – but only the first half – of Interrogation. This was very frustrating, as a pretty crucial component of a whodunit is finding out who actually did it. I told this sad story at Grace’s farewell dinner last week at Saujanya’s (whose cooking is incredible, by the way) and it reminded me of my open email thread with the good people at The Artistic Home to clear things up. So I prodded them and, the next day, the full script of Scott Woldman’s Interrogation lay waiting in my inbox. It read beautifully. And now I know who did it! Thank you, kind theatre people.
Only one team had the requisite power and speed
We went back to another Cubs game with Todd and Carolyn – this time against the ‘Los Angeles’ Angels of Anaheim, with scale quotes added for Randi’s benefit and a naming controversy which ended up in court. But I digress. We went back to another Cubs game with Todd and Carolyn, but this time we sat in seats which didn’t fill me with any fear of being hit in the face with a baseball, and I enjoyed it immensely. Presumably the Cubs did too, because they won comfortably.
Held prisoner in my chair as I had my hair cut, I did finally see some of the Olympics through the demented breakfast-news lens of NBC. Sandwiched between advertisements and sponsorship messages came a feature on a sports charity doing great work for schools in Mozambique and the story of a ‘celebrity’ penguin who ‘mysteriously’ returns to the same beach in Rio each year. “THE OLYMPICS! IT’S BEHIND YOU!” I wanted to shout, pantomime fashion.
My favourite view
One direction from my new apartment affords a superb view of Chicago: the full city skyline, lying beyond the Metra tracks and the (less aesthetically pleasing, but representationally accurate) motorway. But it’s not my favourite view. Looking the other way, out from the corner of the window by the landing at the top of the stairs, are the backs of brick houses. This could be North London. This could be Carolyn’s back garden. And this makes me happy.
This morning I wandered downstairs in our new apartment for a morning cup of tea, stuck on the BBC’s Olympics coverage (thanks but no thanks, NBC) and watched Britain beat Canada in a game of women’s rugby sevens. Which was great for three reasons: patriotic fervour, warm memories of London 2012, and the fact that thanks to Jen and my trip to Wellington I now appreciate (and largely understand) rugby sevens.
But to rewind: new apartment! After two great years of living with Billy, last weekend I successfully moved a full 1.3km away into a new place with Randi and our flatmate Amanda. And very nice it is too.
New home!
Our first guests were Jason and Carrie, with whom we played the Would I Lie To You? board game in boys vs. girls teams. You can guess who won from the pictures below.
There was a master strategy. It just didn’t work.
No comment
Last weekend we also saw Star Trek Beyond with Todd and Carolyn, which was great company (obviously) but a disappointing film. There were plenty of enjoyable moments for existing fans, but not enough overall to elevate it from standard action movie sequences if (like Randi) this was your first exposure. My much more successful attempt to indoctrinate Randi into my childhood favourites has been the Robot Wars revival, which we’ve been watching on Sunday nights with great enthusiasm. 3-2-1-ACTIVATE!
It was also great to have lunch with Carolyn’s friend Beric as he reached Chicago on his American road trip, as it was to catch up / argue about market failure with Alex at Oyster Bah. After a bit of a theatre dry spell we also saw This Beautiful City – a musical exploration of mid-2000s evangelicals in Colorado Springs – performed by the ATC’s youth ensemble and produced by the ever-wonderful Grace Cannon. (I write that with some resignation as her Chicago leaving party is next week.) Last but certainly not least, last night Randi and I went out to celebrate her new job… hooray!
The restaurant pretends to be in Santa Monica, but we’re definitely still in Chicago
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
