Name of the day

Barthold Jacob Lintelo, Baron de Geer van Jutphaas

Nobody loves her like I do

Last night, following a pattern that has become familiar almost to the point of routine, I got home from work and immediately spent a couple hours painting. (Which is to say, I spent an hour painting and an hour cleaning up from painting. One of these days, someone is going to create good quality disposable brushes and I will love them forever--if I'm not so obscenely rich by then that I no longer deign to do myself what God gave us tradespeople for.) When I got hungry on Sunday, my plan was to walk as deep into North Chinatown as I could before the rain caught me. Today, I was so dead on my feet that I made it no further than Big Chicks--the closest place to my apartment that serves food.

Two good things happened as a consequence. One was that I ran into the foot fetishist regular who lives next door to a building we're looking at and he gave me a fairly glowing report of their condo org. What with e. and bunj slagging one of our finalists, this may be enough to put this alternate choice into the top three. The other good thing was that a tall, handsome, friendly Minnesotan sat next to me and all but invited me to strike up a conversation with him. He's a consultant who's often here on business so he's looking to buy or rent a pied à terre in the area. When I heard how much he loved vintage buildings, I suggested he come have a look at mine.

My place is in a state, so I hadn't intended to show him more than the exterior, lobby, and courtyard. Besides, how does it look, a married man like me bringing strange men home? Still, I'm glad I did because his enthusiasm at seeing the original parquet floors, hardware, and Art Deco styling was a much-needed boost. I've been obsessing about market times lately now that our schedule is suddenly so hectic and his comments reminded me that there are people out there who will love my place as much as I do.

(We exchanged info, but I seriously doubt anything will come of it; soon as he discovers there's only a common parking lot with a two-year waiting list for free spaces, I suspect he'll lose interest.)

(no subject)

Incidentally, I seem to have rubbed off my fingerprints last night while washing off the sanding sponges. (At first, I thought the mysterious smoothness when I pressed the tips together was some viscous gunk on them.) So if anyone needs some crimes done, let me know soon before they start to grow back.

A ripoff at half the price

Many many years ago, my friend Destiny and I vowed that we needed to be wrong about things more often. Ever since That Mexican Cafe moved into monshu's neighbourhood, I've desperately wanted to be wrong in my judgment of it. But it's fruitless: Everything about it screams "terrible Yuppified Mexican" so loudly that a visit is completely superfluous. (The flagship restaurant is in Evanston; 'nuff said right there.) We tried so hard to be game when one got foisted upon us, but it was predictably in vain.

I got the duck fajitas. They were burnt--not pleasantly charred, burnt. I blame the frazzled state of my nerves that I rudely blurted this out in front of the friend who treated us. "You can send it back," she said. I could--and then wait another half hour for a second order; no thank you. At least I could cut off the burnt skin and be left with a reasonably palatable piece of meat, which left me far better off than poor monshu. He was doing his best to conceal how often he was removing from his mouth inedible stringy bits of whatever vegetable was stuffed inside his bland, mushy mockery of chiles rellenos.

Once we were safely out of earshot, he pronounced it "the worst dinner I've had in some time". The one compensation was that weren't paying--and we did offer to! It's too soon to tell how the place is faring, but I'm amazed it has custom at all given that there are two perfectly good taquerías a mere block away. (Is having a mediocre mojito with your meal that important?) At least in Evanston, there's the excuse that all likely competition is every bit as bad. Seriously, the best Mexican restaurant in that town is Chipotle. (I wish that were pure snark, but it's the sad honest truth.)