dom.blog

This is the post that no one will see and no one will read, because it won’t show up in anyone’s Facebook feed. The wheezing, creaking old plugin which transposed posts from my blog to Facebook has finally given out, and all of Facebook’s recent and well-publicised disasters have made it harder and harder to integrate with their API. I may have a solution coming, or I may just cut ties. Still, in the course of salvaging all of my historical Facebook ‘likes’ from previous posts, I did discover that 190 separate people have engaged with this blog (at least, enough to press ‘like’ at least once) since I started cross-posting. Thanks guys.

It is worth noting, actually, what a strange position Facebook is in now. I first encountered it when I visited Cambridge on a shadowing scheme in 2006. It was only available to students with a student email address, and it was cleaner and more grown-up than MySpace. I switched over. Then everyone switched over, aside from Joshua. Then everyone’s families switched over, there was that weird FarmVille phase, and gradually the young people (not me, I mean the actual young people) moved elsewhere. But this year we entered a new era, when suddenly every bus stop in Chicago is plastered in a full-length Facebook advert pointing out how miserable it can be and pledging to do better. It’s an odd turn we’ve taken.

In the sun!

Anyway, I’m writing this from the airport en route to Palo Alto after a few weeks of intermittent Chicago sun. The photo above is from Lincoln Park, courtesy of Randi’s fancy new camera. The weekend before – Memorial Day weekend – I got sunburnt sitting on Catherine and AJ’s deck as we grilled burgers. I know you’re really not supposed to say this, but it was totally worth it. I mean, sure, the sun without the burning would have been preferable. But it was a glorious afternoon.

Randi and I were also honoured to be the first visitors to Francisco and Carolina’s new apartment in Chicago, where they welcomed us with Chilean hot dogs and lots of great suggestions about the many, many places we should visit in the world. We also saw The Terminator at Todd and Carolyn’s on Friday night, ticking off yet another film which everyone is incredulous that I haven’t seen. To be honest, it was not exactly what I expected. Sure, the theme tune is good, and the being-chased-by-a-cyborg-slash-future-Governor-of-California is fun, but it felt like a short story rather than a fleshed-out film. And don’t even get me started on the weirdness of your best friend handing you a photo of their long-dead mother in the middle of a war and “falling in love” with her. That’s a red flag.

Side-note: in the generous spirit of a good host, Todd promised to make “whatever drink I wanted”. Being obnoxious, I asked for a Lilt. And, somehow, I ended up with an alcoholic Lilt. Incredible.

I much prefer climbing with the ropes

Finally, today we went rock climbing with Catherine and AJ. Unlike last time there were ropes involved, which I greatly prefer, and even though I certainly don’t rock climb ‘properly’ (why limit yourself to one colour when there are so many to choose from?) I did feel a great sense of vicarious achievement by watching the others.

As many people reading this will already know – because you were there! – last Saturday was Randi’s surprise 25th birthday party at Carnivale. It had been a stressful two months of constant lying, but everything paid off and it was a completely wonderful evening. There are way too many photos to include here, but obviously a huge thank you to the many, many people who came to celebrate with us or sent videos for my (excessively long) video montage. And special thank yous to:

• Georgelle, who flew in from New York just for the party, and then stayed up chatting on our sofa until 2am before turning around and getting a super-early flight back.
• Randi’s parents, who came from California and hung around Chicago sneakily all Saturday.
• Catherine and AJ, for helping me to organise everything including the venue, food, balloons and emotional support when Randi didn’t understand why we didn’t care about her birthday.
• Todd for running a traditional Todd Trivia session!
• Carnivale for being awesome to organise with. And for including those chocolate cannoli. (Amusing moment: when I first visited, the event organiser apologised for the delay in getting back to me, as “we’ve just been so busy with the NRA in town this week”. I was concerned, before she clarified it was the National Restaurant Association.)
• Jake at Friends First Photography for taking the beautiful photos below. Even though we weren’t a wedding.

Successful surprise!

Catherine, AJ, Randi, Taylor and Billy

Georgelle is a hero and flew in from New York

Side-note: the carrot cake in the background was delicious

Todd adjudicates his trivia

Randi’s parents

“Randi, you’re short enough to just go in front”

Team flatmates!

On Randi’s birthday itself we went to a fundraiser with sloths, and then after the party Randi’s parents stayed in town for the next couple of days, which was lovely. Now I’m largely exhausted and happy to spend an atypical Memorial Day long weekend travelling nowhere and discovering no new states. Last night, however, I did venture out to Todd and Carolyn’s to play Mario Kart with Marte IN WHICH I DID NOT COME LAST (capitalised, bolded, and ready to flag to Amy and Ben) before seeing the new Star Wars film Solo. Which was totally fine, but not very wondrous. And as ever I have some questions about the economics of the Empire which I will spare you all.

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.