Sunday, January 26, 2020
Puberty in Pictures
I was looking for something in storage today, and as so often happens, I ended up getting distracted by the many ridiculous and wonderful things I have saved for no apparent reason, and only emerged hours later, having wholly forgotten the reason I started looking in storage in the first place. I did find these amazing pictures from my teenage theatrical career, however.
This is from one of our high school musicals, Anything Goes. If you're thinking to yourself that you don't remember the cross dressing scene from Anything Goes, you're a terrible person and should probably die in a fire.
Also Anything Goes. Can I pull of a sailor cap or what? Please also know that I am not responsible for my hair -- there was a predominant view that period pieces required greasing your hair down with Brylcreem. That's really how it's spelled.
This is from The Grapes of Wrath. That's why we look so sad. Wrath! There's so much wrath in the world!
Yup, we thought it was okay for white kids to play the Siamese children in The King & I. The hats were made out of margarine tubs, which I think is 100% culturally appropriate.
I played Charlie Brown in Snoopy!, the justly lesser-known sequel to You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. To this day sweatsuits remain my ideal costume.
I was looking for something in storage today, and as so often happens, I ended up getting distracted by the many ridiculous and wonderful things I have saved for no apparent reason, and only emerged hours later, having wholly forgotten the reason I started looking in storage in the first place. I did find these amazing pictures from my teenage theatrical career, however.
This is from one of our high school musicals, Anything Goes. If you're thinking to yourself that you don't remember the cross dressing scene from Anything Goes, you're a terrible person and should probably die in a fire.
Also Anything Goes. Can I pull of a sailor cap or what? Please also know that I am not responsible for my hair -- there was a predominant view that period pieces required greasing your hair down with Brylcreem. That's really how it's spelled.
This is from The Grapes of Wrath. That's why we look so sad. Wrath! There's so much wrath in the world!
Yup, we thought it was okay for white kids to play the Siamese children in The King & I. The hats were made out of margarine tubs, which I think is 100% culturally appropriate.
Monday, January 20, 2020
Three-Day Weekend!
I'm not sure I can claim that it's what Dr. King would have wanted, but I did have a pretty fantastic weekend. Friday night I hid from the snow and ate Hamburger Helper for the first time in like ten years, which was every bit as epic as one might imagine. Saturday we went out to the suburbs to visit my sister and her family at their new house, which they don't live in yet, but have stocked with a lot of toilet paper. My niece and nephew demonstrated how pathetic city kids are by being amazed at having a small lawn from which they could gather tiny snowballs to fitfully toss at one another. And of course we went to Chili's, where we had a fifteen minute wait to get seated at 4:30 PM. (It is indeed a brave new world.) Then yesterday we binge watched all day and ate chicken bacon ranch pizza. (Disturbing that so many of my highlights are food-related, I know.) Today I did some light work from home while watching the SVU marathon and now I'm headed out for drinks with a friend. This is why all weekends should be three-day weekends. Of course, billable hours and work from home capabilities make days off relatively meaningless, but I take whatever crumbs I can get.
I'm not sure I can claim that it's what Dr. King would have wanted, but I did have a pretty fantastic weekend. Friday night I hid from the snow and ate Hamburger Helper for the first time in like ten years, which was every bit as epic as one might imagine. Saturday we went out to the suburbs to visit my sister and her family at their new house, which they don't live in yet, but have stocked with a lot of toilet paper. My niece and nephew demonstrated how pathetic city kids are by being amazed at having a small lawn from which they could gather tiny snowballs to fitfully toss at one another. And of course we went to Chili's, where we had a fifteen minute wait to get seated at 4:30 PM. (It is indeed a brave new world.) Then yesterday we binge watched all day and ate chicken bacon ranch pizza. (Disturbing that so many of my highlights are food-related, I know.) Today I did some light work from home while watching the SVU marathon and now I'm headed out for drinks with a friend. This is why all weekends should be three-day weekends. Of course, billable hours and work from home capabilities make days off relatively meaningless, but I take whatever crumbs I can get.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
The Rural Juror
I had jury duty this week. Because I am an attorney, it is always highly unlikely that I will actually serve on a jury; they prefer to make us sit around all day, ask us mildly insulting questions, and then dismiss us with a check for $17.20 instead. But I do still have to go, especially when, as here, I've already called in to defer it once. So I headed out to the good old criminal courts building early in the morning, where I was greeted by what can only be deemed an insanely chatty man:
MAN: Can I see your summons and ID?
ME: Of course.
MAN: Oh, you live in Old Town, huh? I like to go to that Second City.
ME: Yes, it's great.
MAN: I think Kevin Hart started out there.
ME: Oh.
MAN: You a US citizen?
ME: Yes.
MAN: Oh, I thought so. We just have to ask. Some of the people we get, you wouldn't believe. Had a guy arrested two years ago.
ME: Oh.
MAN: You speak English?
ME: Yes.
MAN: I guess we are speaking English, huh? I speak Polish and a little bit of Spanish, too. Helps with the cleaning staff.
ME: Okay.
MAN: You have a cell phone with you?
ME: Yes.
MAN: That's okay, you're allowed. I ask because sometimes people get bored, so it's good if you have a cell phone or laptop or something.
ME: I do.
MAN: Okay, well you are on jury panel 2, that is the big black number there on your card. Ignore the other number, that's just for internal purposes. Number 2, that's the number you listen for.
ME: Okay, thanks.
MAN: Can't promise you it will be a lucky number. This isn't the lottery, here!
ME: Ha.
MAN: Wish it was, though, I'd love to be a millionaire.
And because I'm an idiot, I sat near the front, where I got to hear him chatting up another fifty people over the course of the next hour. There are no headphones strong enough to block it out, I fear.
The jury video was pretty amazing, though. It was so old that it featured Lester Holt from when he was a local news anchor with jet black hair and a mustache. And they ended up not needing jurors at all that day, as it turned out, so we all got dismissed a little bit early. Not before I had to eat alleged cajun food from the pop up restaurant that serves as their cafeteria, but still. It makes that sweet jury duty paycheck go all that much further.
I had jury duty this week. Because I am an attorney, it is always highly unlikely that I will actually serve on a jury; they prefer to make us sit around all day, ask us mildly insulting questions, and then dismiss us with a check for $17.20 instead. But I do still have to go, especially when, as here, I've already called in to defer it once. So I headed out to the good old criminal courts building early in the morning, where I was greeted by what can only be deemed an insanely chatty man:
MAN: Can I see your summons and ID?
ME: Of course.
MAN: Oh, you live in Old Town, huh? I like to go to that Second City.
ME: Yes, it's great.
MAN: I think Kevin Hart started out there.
ME: Oh.
MAN: You a US citizen?
ME: Yes.
MAN: Oh, I thought so. We just have to ask. Some of the people we get, you wouldn't believe. Had a guy arrested two years ago.
ME: Oh.
MAN: You speak English?
ME: Yes.
MAN: I guess we are speaking English, huh? I speak Polish and a little bit of Spanish, too. Helps with the cleaning staff.
ME: Okay.
MAN: You have a cell phone with you?
ME: Yes.
MAN: That's okay, you're allowed. I ask because sometimes people get bored, so it's good if you have a cell phone or laptop or something.
ME: I do.
MAN: Okay, well you are on jury panel 2, that is the big black number there on your card. Ignore the other number, that's just for internal purposes. Number 2, that's the number you listen for.
ME: Okay, thanks.
MAN: Can't promise you it will be a lucky number. This isn't the lottery, here!
ME: Ha.
MAN: Wish it was, though, I'd love to be a millionaire.
And because I'm an idiot, I sat near the front, where I got to hear him chatting up another fifty people over the course of the next hour. There are no headphones strong enough to block it out, I fear.
The jury video was pretty amazing, though. It was so old that it featured Lester Holt from when he was a local news anchor with jet black hair and a mustache. And they ended up not needing jurors at all that day, as it turned out, so we all got dismissed a little bit early. Not before I had to eat alleged cajun food from the pop up restaurant that serves as their cafeteria, but still. It makes that sweet jury duty paycheck go all that much further.
Saturday, January 04, 2020
New Year, New You
The beginning of the year is always a super weird time for me, and not just because I keep writing the wrong date on my checks! Because checks are still totally a thing! No, it's just hard to get back into the swing of things after weeks of making wassailing (oh yes, wassailing) and chestnut roasting my top priority. I'm tired all the time because of that Chicago thing where there is no sunlight for like six straight months of winter, and my feet always seem to be cold, like a woman named Linda who works in accounting. Nobody from work is making any serious demands on me because they all pretty much want to be with their families or mistresses, and I've got a break between amateur theatricals, leaving me without lines or hand choreography to learn. Plus it's that strange time where Christmas is over but Hallmark is still leaning into the movies pretty hard, so I don't even have nighttime Murder, She Wrotes to lull me to sleep. These are indeed tragic times.
The solution, probably, is to come up with some positive things that I can look forward to doing, but the only one I've come up with so far is eating, and I can only do so much of that before I'm in serious stretch mark territory. Maybe I need to start a blog or something. Oh wait.
