Senseless Updates About Snow, Property, and Running

Snow Day:

I got a snow day off from work so I spent the day with Baby Noisewater. Chicago got around a foot of snow on Friday, and it's still coming down on Saturday. Not much on the agenda on a snow day other than a snow journey, so I bundled the little guy up and outside we went. It's hard for him to walk in boots, which led to him falling face first into snow. He didn't even cry. His freezing face didn't even effect his mood. In fact, he was greeting strangers on the street by saying, "Hi." and then warning them, "coooooold." That's his version of small-talk banter with the neighbors.

"Hi! Coooold!"

Condo

It looks like the Noisewaters will be closing on a condo very soon and staying in the fine city of Chicago. Not only will I be a homeowner for the first time, but I'm pretty excited about some things that often escape me in shitty apartments such as in an unit washer/dryer, a dishwasher, a spare bedroom, and my very own parking space. I know these amenities come standard to a lot of you, but this is some high class baller-ass shit to a guy like me. Scrubbing dishes all these years has made me very humble, and it's time to finally kick back and relax.

I told you all a few posts ago that we have been making an extra effort to save money, and one way we are doing this is to use a Google Docs spreadsheet to log in everything that we spend for a month. I highly recommend trying this out to make yourself more self-conscious of all the junk you buy that you don't need. When you find yourself in the checkout aisle eyeballing that Payday candy bar, you suddenly think, "Do I really want to log that $2.12 into the spreadsheet?" Also, you and your spouse will be keeping each other accountable. It's not uncommon after telling your spouse about an expenditure to hear in return, "Did you put in on the sheet?" It actually works. Try it out for a month and come on back to leave in the comments how it worked out for you.

Marathon:

I also let you guys know a few posts ago that I was signing up for the Chicago Marathon that will take place in October. Actually, it's 238 days, 19 hours, 42 minutes, and 10 seconds away. Well, I got in! No backing out now. This will be my second one, and I'm a hell of a lot older now. I'm sort of training early, helping my buddy Night Train who has his first marathon in the Spring in California. His program calls for a long slow run every Sunday, which is perfect because I'm slower than he is. This Sunday is supposed to be a 12-miler, but with this snow we might go with the treadmills. It's pretty boring on the machines, but you can watch basketball, talk to your partner next to you, and the ones we use have courses with little TV screens showing you running your route in different locations complete with little facts along the way. Last week I chose running up and down the Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii because I sort of did that in Hawaii on my Honeymoon. Some dudes picked us up in a van at like 4AM to drive us up the volcano, we watched the sun come up appearing to be coming up through the mouth of the volcano like it was giving birth to the sun , and then we coasted down on bikes. Then we had the whole day beginning having already done all that awesome shit. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Watching on the little screen at the gym wasn't quite as amazing, but at least it reminded me of a good time.

Hey, that's all I got, friends. Sorry nothing mind-blowing or eye-opening today. Just updates on the little life I lead. Leave a comment if you gave this a read and maybe I'll say something super in return.

This has got to be the longest time I have gone without updating my blog, and I apologize.  Here are some updates . . .

Mrs. Noisewater and I finally moved out of our tiny apartment where our bedroom window faced the alley of decadence and a Chicago life of excess.  Just about every night we would hear a couple getting ready to get it on, some people doing cocaine, a fight breaking out, but usually just people being loud and drunk.  I really knew it was time to go when I saw the aftermath of what I could only assume was a hobo orgy.  This is an actual picture that I took:

Aren't you glad the bums are being safe?

So now I'm back in Lakeview, my favorite neighborhood where I lived for around 7 years before the party-alley-place.  But back then I had 4 roommates.  Now I just have one, and she's the best roommate ever.  Does it bother me that Mrs. Noisewater is more handy than me and is painting, hanging up shelves, and using power tools that I don't know how to operate?  A little.  But I'm in charge of . . . the record player.  And that's important stuff.

Our landlord is a Chicago cop part time, and despite the fact that he looks precisely like Vic Mackey from "The Shield," he is actually a really nice guy.  He doesn't want us grilling on the balcony because he doesn't want us burning the place down, so he lets us use the grill and smoker in the courtyard and even buys and replaces the propane tank for us.  Now that's a hell of a deal.

"Don't beat a confession out of me!  That was me playing Captain and Tennille on my record player last night.  And singing along."

Our downstairs neighbor is an elderly four and a half foot tall Japanese woman who has been living in the building for forty years, and when she moved in her rent was sixty bucks a month.  Very sweet woman, but a bit of a hoarder.  She has filled up the basement with years and years of useless crap.  She was telling me one day when I was doing laundry down there that sometimes she buys two of something because she forgets she already had one.  Probably because it was buried under other stuff.  Landlord Vic Mackey has given her until the 15th of this month to have all that stuff moved out of there.  She will often offer us something, and usually we say no.  But sometimes we will take something just to make her feel that some of those objects have a home.  I fill a thermos of hers up with Gatorade all the time and tried to tell her I was using it, but her English isn't very good.  I have been thinking about taking some things that she offers and just throwing it out for her - a few dumpsters away so that she doesn't see that I tossed it.  That way she's happy and I'm helping her clear the joint out, right?

Hope you're enjoying your summer as much as I am, readers!  

Mrs. Noisewater and I are going to miss some things about this apartment.  Hearing the drunks congregating in our alley having loud conversations filled with "WOOS!" is not one of them.  This often wakes us up out of a dead sleep, and then they hang out by the dumpsters and we can make out every single word they say.  I never could figure out why they would want to smell garbage while they converse, but then the other night we could gather from their conversation that they were doing cocaine.  Lovely!  As I have said in previous posts, rather than telling them to shut the heck up, like some of my neighbors have done, I prefer to just interject, chiming into the middle of their conversation.  They suddenly hear from above, "Is that pretty good coke?"  The problem is that they would probably want to talk about that all night with me, so I would have to add something creepy like "Can I come down there in my pajamas and do a bump?  And then maybe you guys can come upstairs with me and cuddle?"

Anyway, one thing I am going to miss in this hood is the middle aged Black man on the block who takes excessively meticulous care of his sky blue circa 1991 BMW.  The thing is dented all over the closer you look at it, which is no surprise because he parks it on the street in a busy section of Chicago - a great way to get dinged.  He is down there when it's cold out warming up the engine while he fusses over cleaning the interior or checking the oil, but I have never seen him actually go anywhere.  Sometimes I will see it parked in a slightly different spot, suggesting that he has taken it for a spin, but it's always returned to the same side of the street.  It's not so much that I'll miss him, it's that I'll never figure out his story/solve this mystery.

In case I don't get a chance to talk to my favorite OCD neighbor to get an explanation, something I will be doing if I see him again before I go, would any of you like to wager a guess at why he behaves this way with his "beemer?"

A Friend I Will Miss and Another I Avoid

A Friend I Will Miss

I got a really good friend, one of the guys I officiated a wedding for as Reverend Ken, and he suddenly announced he is moving away in three weeks.  It's really sad, and I feel like I wasn't given enough notice.  If you told me a few months, sure, but three weeks?  Sorry, but my man-love heart needs a little time to process these things.  I tried to be happy for him when he told a few of us the other night, but I couldn't.  And then I made him sad by being sad.  Eventually I just gave up trying to feign happiness and I posted this video on his Facebook wall.



I thought the clip would be good for a laugh, but I ended up crying.  Guess it was good for a cry too.  I know.  A man crying over a Star Trek clip might be the nerdiest thing ever, but it happened and I'm better for it.  I needed to get the crying out of my system, and Kirk and Spok helped me out to those ends.  Those devilish, space traveling, pointy eared (one of them), bastards . . .

And Another I Avoid

This other friend of mine I have been playing volleyball with for years, and he makes everyone miserable by telling everyone what to do and how they messed something up.  He has a thick accent and his command of the English language isn't too good either.  He often times ends his description of how he thought you should have returned the last serve with "does that make sense?"  And it never makes sense.  The thing is, he is easily the worst player of all of us, yet he always tells people how to play, which makes it all the more difficult to stomach his lectures.  I always have to do some affirmations on my way to the court like "Okay, he is going to be terrible.  Just nod your head and be positive.  Move on to the next point and don't yell at him."  Sometimes it works, and on rare instances, usually when I'm hungover and emotional, I do end up yelling at him.  And then I'm disappointed in myself because it doesn't do any good.  

He isn't much better in social gatherings either.  His jokes are often as misunderstood as his volleyball analysis, and he will try to make wise cracks about people that never quite work.  This makes it sound like he is a jerk, but that isn't quite it.  He is just a little off.  It's no longer cultural, and he can't use that as an excuse anymore.  He has been in the country a long time now.  He is just kind of weird. 

So some of the volleyball friends are meeting up to watch NCAA games, and I actually asked if this dude is going to be there.  I felt really bad about asking that, but here is the thing: I really value my weekends, and if that dude will be there describing how the little people on the television should have executed that inbounds play and I have to keep taking pees I barely have to take and get beers I don't need just to get away, that will detract from the loveliness of my oh so important Saturday afternoon.  

I just got the word that he will, in fact, be there.  Just like on the way to the court, on the way to the bar I will do my affirmations: "I can do this.  Be nice to him.  He really isn't that bad . . ."

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Anybody have friends like the first one?  How about the second one?  Any tips on how to handle the second one because I'm about out of ideas.