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Saturday afternoon was Eurovision night, and our apartment was packed to the brim with friends who came to watch it with us. Thank you to everyone who turned up to express strong opinions about Estonian opera, inadequate Norwegian instructions for songwriting and the Dutch man singing country music with a suspiciously southern American accent.

Since American residents are disenfranchised during the actual voting I conducted a little straw poll of my own. Israel won comfortably, with the Czech Republic coming a strong second, so we were obviously in tune with European opinion. I also thought that Israel was a worthy winner, although once again I found myself with a strong affection for Moldova’s entry. What is it with me and Moldova? At this point I’m taking it as a strong hint that I should plan a trip.

Oh, and I can add some empirical backing to the claim that SuRie ‘coped brilliantly’ with the stage invasion: I was distracted for a few seconds and completely missed it.

Eurovision 2018!

We lost some of the flags over time

On a slightly different musical note, we saw Haim at the Aragon Ballroom on Friday night. My musical listening is pretty limited (and getting worse, with an overflowing podcast app which eats up almost all of my walking-and-listening time) so it is a real joy to go to a gig where I legitimately know every single song. Otherwise I get much grumpier at having to stand up, for example during the not-so-great on-stage banter which Haim also do. But the music was awesome and more than made up for it.

Seriously though, I can’t be alone for the standing thing. There must be plenty of other people in the photo below who secretly wish they could be sitting on chairs, even if they’re not allowed to admit it:

(They were asked to add more light, things aren’t that bad with crowds and phones.)

Anyway. It was years ago, and I can’t be absolutely sure, but I am 90% certain that it was Clark who introduced me to Haim in the first place. If so, thanks! In the course of writing this post, I’ve discovered that they also have a cover of That Don’t Impress Me Much on Spotify…

We’ve moved house! But only very slightly. Roughly a metre, in fact, to the flat next door in our building with just a little more space and light.

A fresh living / dining / Dominion room

The sun was in the way of a good photo here, but then so was the mattress

Obviously we did not hire movers to take us across the hallway, so the following achievements and/or failures were ours alone:

• Somehow twisting a king-sized mattress down a steep and narrow staircase. Thank goodness for memory foam.

• Discovering, while moving the sofa, one small, plastic, light-blue cowboy hat and one Race for the Galaxy token hiding inside.

• Closing our new bedroom door at night, realising our new bedroom door is not capable of opening again from the inside, and finally throwing my set of keys down to the street below so that our neighbour Julie could pick them up and rescue us. Thanks Julie!

In other news, this blog turned 14 years old a week and a half ago. But it’s a moody teenager, and so is pretending not to care about this belated recognition. (Even though deep down it cares a lot, obviously.)

And that is pretty much it to report, other than a product management-y evening with Lauri, the conclusion of Cunk on Britain and my extensive email correspondence and follow-up phone call with Jewel Osco. It all started with a frustrated tweet while standing in a long checkout queue which stretched back down the cereal aisle, and before you know it I was getting a call on a Sunday afternoon from the store manager to talk about average basket sizes and remodelling plans and new inventory systems. Which, I admit, is pretty impressive in its responsiveness. And, dare I say it, pretty American too.

Hell yes, it’s Ed Miliband

This week we met the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ed Miliband, at a low-key event at the University of Chicago.

With all of the political turmoil in the US and elsewhere, it’s easy to forget about Britain’s relatively boring experience since the 2015 general election, when Miliband’s Labour Party won a small but durable majority over the Conservatives. Ed was fortunate, of course, in that his opposition was immediately distracted by a protracted and bitter fight over who would succeed David Cameron as leader. After the mutual back-stabbing of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and the embarrassing revelations of Theresa May’s past convictions for trespassing over wheat fields, it was perhaps inevitable that Jacob Rees-Mogg would end up as the new Tory leader. Popular with the membership base, and with the shadowy campaigning group Inertia, he has never been fully accepted by his parliamentary colleagues and has failed to win over the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, Ed’s popularity has waxed and waned with the normal political tides. How much money does the NHS need? How much tax should Google pay? What kind of sandwiches should the newly-renationalised railway serve? (“Anything but bacon”, joked Ed.) In times of trouble, he likes to remind audiences that, had he not beaten David Cameron in 2015, the whole of politics could have been subsumed by fights about leaving the European Union for decades and decades. But it doesn’t win him much credit, since – like Obama’s handling of the financial crisis – most people can’t visualise a disaster which didn’t happen.

It was nice, and oddly relaxing, to see him in person. He’s not a charismatic icon, but a reassuring presence, and that is much appreciated right now.

Aside from this, and in addition to brunch with Jason and Carrie where I discovered that “eggs in a hole” is a thing, we saw two films last weekend. The Lobster was recommended to me years ago, and is the sort of film which some people call “absurdist” and others call “weird”. I think I genuinely enjoyed the first half, after which it dragged a bit. We also saw The Other Side of Everything at the Davis Theatre, which was fantastic. The film is a documentary by Mila Turajlić, a filmmaker whose mother (and star of the film) is Srbijanka Turajlić, a democratic activist who campaigned against the Milošević regime in Serbia in the 1990s. The whole thing is filmed from inside their apartment in Belgrade, which was partitioned by the Communists after the Second World War and, when the film begins, still has someone living in one of their old rooms as a protected tenant. Srbijanka is such a thoughtful and inspiring figure, so it was a happy surprise to see her standing up in person at the post-film Q&A with her daughter. I wished I had brushed up a little on the history of Yugoslavia before seeing the film, but even if you don’t remember anything this is highly recommended.

My own experience of long-distance Amtrak trains is that they attract two main groups of people: the elderly and the British. So it was not altogether surprising that Grace and Charlotte arrived from San Francisco after a scheduled 51-hour journey by rail, nor was it very shocking that it actually took quite a bit longer than 51 hours to get here, throwing off our Saturday night plans. But we made up for it later with dinners at Kuma’s and Little Goat Diner (two Chicago staples!), a little light Scientology brainwashing and some “welcome to the Midwest!” tea served in a QPCS mug. Still flying the flag, Queens Park.

Charlotte and Grace in Kuma’s (and not on a train)

Last week we also went back to Geja’s for Catherine’s birthday, where (like last year) we (a) dipped a lot of food in cheese fondue, (b) moved on to cooking more food in bubbling oil, before (c) returning to the fondue dipping routine with melted chocolate. I wanted to break out these steps because last year I apparently claimed to have regretted overeating in the initial cheese phase. This didn’t sound like something I would say, so – for the record, and for next year – I want to fully endorse all of the cheese. Randi and I also popped up to Evanston on Saturday for brunch with Rudy and Melissa, before getting back to Chicago for “game night” with Chloe and Aaron. Sometimes it seems that we forget to actually play games on a large portion of these nights. But we did witness how they have successfully trained their cat to respond to the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song as a signal for food.

Randi, Rudy and Melissa in Evanston

Finally, on Sunday it was Easter and/or Passover! I was very happy that Randi’s proper Cadbury Easter Egg arrived in time, and equally happy to help eat it. We also ate a large variety of eggs in various forms over brunch with Joe and Julie, before watching Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This was not the style of film I had expected from the description, but I very much appreciated the dark humour to accompany the plot, and I now feel marginally more informed if people have belated conversations with me about the Oscars.

Mostly eggs

Here are just a few of the things I lost when my laptop was stolen from our apartment:

• Audio recordings of my dad making up stories for me when I was a child, which I originally captured on audio cassette with my very own portable recorder
• Silly videos from the very last day of secondary school
• All of those history essays I wrote in university
• About 28 years of photos
• My first ever conversation with Randi

I didn’t lose any of these things for very long, of course, because my next step was to download everything exactly as it was from a CrashPlan backup. A week later, I’m typing this on a swanky, self-indulgent new laptop purchase with my digital life all restored. So I can get on with feeling nerdishly excited over this slim new computer which recognises my face, or shame-faced that we hadn’t got around to buying renters insurance yet, or philosophical that the forensics officer from the Chicago police who came round “mostly handles homicides” so our Friday night drama was just some light relief by comparison, or confused that whoever broke into our apartment decided not to take my laptop’s power cord or the actual cash sitting on the coffee table. That’s all fine, I can cope with all of these feelings very easily.

But – public service announcement – backups are good. Would recommend. Now all I have to worry about is the @ sign in the wrong place on the keyboard 😉

If you’ve recently picked up this laptop from a Chicago pawn shop, I have a power cord to sell you

Aside from being victims of minor crime we’ve had a relaxed few weeks, venturing outside for select activities such as a lovely catch-up night with Chloe and Aaron at Kingston Mines. Oh, and my first “proper” Super Bowl party on Sunday. I thought I’d already ticked this one off back in 2015 but apparently that didn’t count because (a) there was no chili cheese dip (b) we all fell asleep. Anyway, this time around I can rest easy thanks to our amazing hosts Ashley and Erik, who I last saw during our phone-banking on the Clinton campaign. (Remember that? Seems like a good idea now, doesn’t it?) The food was amazing – I’m still a little full of queso – the crowd was pleasantly moderate on the “caring about sport” spectrum, and the underdogs won by doing lots of running and less stopping than usual. Huzzah.