How we lost a horse: Part 1

That old Chinese proverb about the frontier man and his horse has been in mind ever since I read badukk's post on it a while back. You see, we had plans for today. But nothing worked out the way we had anticipated it would. I still don't know yet whether this was a curse or a blessing in disguise.

A couple months back, Nuphy and I each bought tickets to the see the live Met broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor today. Since monshu loves opera, but never gets to go because we can't afford weekend tickets, I thought it was a great opportunity to take him out. Unfortunately, the River East was sold out, so we perused alternative venues and settled on the City North in Logan Square. Then a few days ago, innerdoggie proposed brunch at Meinl for this morning. I couldn't think of any better way to fortify myself for four hours of opera, so we made plans to meet at 9:30 or so, which would give monshu and me plenty of time to make it to theatre well in advance in order to secure decent seats.

My one misgiving was the predicted warm-up. You see, some weeks ago, the roof drain froze over. The drainpipe goes right through our portion of the back porch, so whenever there was a thaw, water came pouring down along the outside of it and covered everything in ice. Worse, the meltwater below the porch grew deeper. Eventually, it refroze, blocking the drain down there as well.

So I awoke to the sound of monshu desperately chipping a channel in the ice to redirect the water swelling at the rear door lintel into the drain. This came too late to prevent our hall carpeting from getting soaked, but we hoped by hacking away some of the ice higher up, we'd at least keep the puddle from growing larger. When 9:30 a.m. rolled around, it found me carving ice several inches thick into chunks for monshu and a neighbour to shovel into the rear courtyard. After we'd cleared our section of porch, I went up a storey and hacked away at the truly impressive mass of ice that was dripping onto our heads and then used a snow shovel to toss the pieces down.

Brunch ended up being chorizo and eggs from the local taquería gobbled in the backseat of a cab.

How we lost a horse: Part 2

When we arrived at the theatre for the noon showing of Lucia of Lammermoor, Nuphy was nowhere to be seen. We waited outside for a bit, but I began to get nervous about securing decent seats and rang him. When there was no answer, I left a message and went in--to find him on his way out. He apologised for the miscommunication, but the bastard still hadn't saved us any seats.

So I clambered into the row behind where Don Jaime was sitting and held two places as the Old Man finished his atrocious cinema hotdog. Still rather put out about how things had gone so far, I sat and stewed. Projected on the screen were scenes from the opera accompanied by facts about the performers. After a few minutes, there was a sudden squawk from the speakers and several seconds of alien footage appeared, which I just had time enough to identify as part of an ad for some cleaning product.

Some minutes later, it happened again. And again. I began to get a bad feeling, and--sure enough--a clip of a woman vacuuming intruded on the overture. This happened twice more, and finally the projection switched entirely over to an Oreck infomercial. Lucia hadn't even made her entrance, and people were booing and demanding refunds. Now, perhaps I should explain again that this is a live broadcast. That means that every minute we were subjected to a bald man talking about suction was a minute of the performance we would never see.

A miserable spokesperson tried to explain that the problem was on the Met's end; none of us believed that. After all, Nuphy's been to see at least four of these presentations without any glitches. The difference, though, was that all the others were run by Cinemark; the City North is owned by Kerasotes. Eventually, they got the proper video feed, but with no audio. This led to some tension-reducing moments of found comedy as Lucia sang "regnava nel silenzio" ("silence reigns") and "qual di chi parla muoversi il labbro suo" ("her lips move as if to speak"). But then we had only the Blue Screen of Death.

After twenty minutes of the projectionist dickery, we had had it. The best I can say about the management is that they gave us a full refund. As we were leaving, they were saying that they were negotiating with the Met to broadcast the performance on a time delay so they could start again from the top. But monshu and I had no confidence in their ability to pull this off; I haven't talked to Nuphy yet so, I still don't know whether it actually happened or not.

So this is how we found ourselves on the corner of Western and Schubert on the middle of an absurdly warm Saturday in February with nothing to do.

How we lost a horse: Part 3

So what did we end up doing with ourselves today? We started walking. I knew that the Clybourn Corridor wasn't far away, and it was a lovely sunny day, so we charted a path through the shrunken piles of black snow-grit and pools of brackish meltwater and eventually ended up in Yuppie Central. Scarcely had the Starbucks multiplied when I spotted a pâtisserie and reminded monshu of a previously-voiced interest in pastry. So we squeezed in next to a bridezilla and her party and did Kaffee und Kuchen. The Old Man had flourless chocolate cake topped with chocolate mousse and I had a tropical fruit cream atop a coconut cookie. Marvelous!

We poked into various furniture stores as we trended south, but we failed to find anything worth buying until we hit BB&B and found one of the microwave vegetables steamer our friends have been urging us to invest in. Then came the real destination of our little bout of retail therapy. Ever since monshu bought that wine cooler, I've been anxious to find some bottles to put in it. And the best place in Chicago we know to look for wine is Sam's.

I hope that will be true a year from now. When we found the stock run down on our last trip, we naturally assumed it was the result of holiday binging. But when I asked an employee about it, he reminded me that that never would've happened in the old days. It seems Sam's has been bought up by a nameless, faceless corporation and they don't seem to have the hang of the business yet. We both expressed dismay lest it lose its cachet as your best bet to find the weird stuff you can't get anywhere else in Chicago.

So no sloe gin for me. (No patxaran either, but your man assures me that's a distributor issue.) No high-end albariño for Mr More Money Than Taste in Spanish wine section either. They at least had the Nora, though, which will do. Needless to say, no Arbanta either, but monshu was gratified to find the Cuvée le Bec he'd had recently and loved.

At this point, we found ourselves fading and cabbed it back home to find the carpet still soaked, but the wet spread no further. Dinner was leftovers; I was thrilled to discover a bit of the prepared sauerkraut from last month. And then there was the half-bottle of organic scrumpy left over from our visit to Uncommon Ground when I was at my lowest earlier in the week. (Kudos to niemandsrose for alerting me to the brand.) I added a couple jiggers of Bombay Sapphire to it to make Devon gin, but I daresay it wasn't as satisfying as the plum tea with Calavados I had as an aperitif.

That and a few episodes of Q.I. pirated to YouTube. What else does it really take to make me happy?