dom.blog

Celebrating Randi (finally!) being done with uni

• Following-up my introduction to Indiana Jones with Temple of Doom (truly awful: like some sort of misogyny vs. racism face-off) and then Last Crusade (somewhat redeeming)

• Saying goodbye to Kevin (off to the West Coast), Nolan (off to the West Coast) and Alex (thankfully not off to the West Coast). Too many goodbyes, really.

• A wonderful Indian dinner at Ellen’s (who better not ever leave us for the West Coast or I might cry)

• Eating Ethiopian food for the first time courtesy of Carrie and her mysterious alias. Turns out Ethiopian food is delicious.

• Seeing Robert and Julie again! This one gets an exclamation mark because I had to wait six months, but it was worth it.

Sharing my extensive baseball expertise with overseas visitors

Sadly, these are just things you’ll have to go without hearing about, because I urgently need to pack for my flight to the UK tomorrow. So you’ll never know, for example, that at the Sox game I managed three hot dogs to Neil’s paltry two. Sorry!

Five years ago: Here’s a top tip for Eurovision: always try and watch it with an American who’s never seen it before, and there will be an extra layer of enjoyment simply in beholding the bewilderment.

Five years later: many Americans!

Last night was Eurovision night, and in preparation for hosting a North American outreach party I did far more Eurovision homework than I’d ever done before. In addition to watching both semi-finals with Randi to get a feel for the songs this year (and disagree strongly about the merits of Belarus),  I also borrowed a bunch of European flags and put together my own hybrid team-based drinking game to introduce all of the Eurovision staples. And the investment paid off – the most fun at Eurovision I’ve ever had!

Only smiling because they don’t realise how long the voting is going to take

I did have one European ally, Emilie, who came dressed in the colours of the tricolore and brought a baguette and delicious French cheese. She also helped to explain to the crowd what on earth was going on during the voting, because it’s far too easy for a naive newcomer to assume that the best songs are about to get the most votes. Oh heavens no. (For the record, the room was mostly pro-Australia.)

The moment Poland’s entry inexplicably comes third in the public vote, and Europe is left with a Russia-Ukraine standoff

Of course, thanks to timezones and such, it wasn’t very late at all once Ukraine were eventually crowned the winner. But I’d already had some of the dangerous Moldovan vodka which Alex donated to the Eurovision cause, and so nothing else at all was accomplished that day.

If I were sorry, it would be a different story. But I’m not sorry.

OK, so it took me nearly two years to make it to a Cubs game. In my defence, I picked a good time to go see them. As Carolyn excitedly explained to me, the Cubs are on a bit of a roll right now, and indeed they beat the Nationals handily on Thursday night. Once the batting practice was over (because I don’t like a volley of baseballs heading in my general direction) it was lots of fun, and not just because of the adorable song bit in the seventh inning. (Since the Cubs won, there was a bonus adorable song at the end too.)

Not pictured below is ‘Grand Slam BBQ Twist’ (pulled pork together with mac and cheese) which I ate because I slavishly follow Todd’s lead in such things.

Baseball!

Pictured after batting practice had ended. Because we aren’t ducking.

Team Cubs

Sport done, back to theatre: Randi and I both really enjoyed Even Longer and Farther Away on Saturday night. The play takes place inside a (semi-magical) resort on the Appalachian mountain trail while the audience sits scattered among the tables on the set itself, which creates the highly immersive illusion that you just happened to be there one night to have a drink and eavesdrop on the storytelling. (And from a purely logistical standpoint, it certainly seems easier than actually hiking the Appalachian mountain trail.) Cheaper to drink at the theatre than a baseball game, too!

Do you want more ability for complex thought? Would it be nice to be able to express feelings through talking? How about a stronger sense of right and wrong?

If any of the above appeals to you, you might want to consider turning twelve, as this blog did yesterday. Happy birthday blog! And thank you to those who came to its low-key pizza-and-wine birthday party last night 😉

I don’t have a photo of my non-corporeal blog celebrating, so have my twelfth birthday instead

The future is not all plain sailing, however. Expect ‘more moodiness’, ‘less affection towards parents’ and even ‘sadness and depression’. So if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning, you might want to sit out the next couple of years until it comes out the other side of adolescence.

When I first started working, our company was expanding so rapidly that we were constantly being reshuffled around the London office more quickly than they could knock down the many walls in the way. One day, during my team’s spell in a particularly featureless back room otherwise untroubled by fellow humans, a cheerful young man named Sam knocked on the door and introduced himself. He was a new starter in a different department, but he just thought it would be nice to say hello and meet us in person. So I always liked Sam, and was particularly excited when he finally visited Chicago last weekend. Our initial plan was for Chicago-style pizza, but Randi made a face, so we upgraded to the legendary burgers from Kuma’s instead, and everyone was very happy indeed.

Excited to eat

Spacey McSpaceface

Later in the week, Randi and I made a return trip to the Adler Planetarium’s ‘After Dark’ nights, and this time it was Beatles themed! (Indeed, at the end of the night I had to disappoint one drunken man that I was not, in fact, the drummer from the tribute Beatles band who played. Although I was somewhat flattered, since the drummer looked about 12.)

Together with James, our biggest achievement that night was the construction of Spacey McSpaceface: an inspirational craft capable of protecting the integrity of a marshmallow astronaut in the depths of a vacuum box. More or less. (Dear Mr. Kanj: I’m sorry that we had to ask the helpers whether we should be fearing explosion or implosion.)

(I got a little paranoid the flag was upside down, but it wasn’t)

Finally: Randi and I kicked off this weekend with delicious southern-style chicken (plus punch… punch is usually welcomed) with Saujanya and Nolan. Apparently this didn’t exhaust Nolan’s tolerance for us, because the next day he joined us at Todd and Carolyn’s to watch me watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the very first time. For years I’ve been going around telling people I’d never seen Indiana Jones in the hope that they would show it to me, and Todd finally took the bait, for which I’m very grateful. Now, onto the next one soon…?