Nov. 3rd, 2007 09:46 pm
Slow Saturday
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muckefuckI saw the best disclaimer just now on a Cottonelle advert featuring a puppy walking across a suspended strip of toilet paper: "Puppy fantasy. Not a demo." PUPPY FANTASY! How many ways can I use this today? "Hey, hon, you look like a giant wiener." "WTF?" "Oh, sorry, that's not a compliment it's a PUPPY FANTASY!"
Giulio Cesare (which, we all decided, should really be called Cleopatra) had me up to all hours last night, so I cleared my schedule for today for sleeping in and took a cab home. My cabbie last night was a Tehrani who's been in Chicago for 37 years, but still had a pronounced foreign accent (thought not one immediately placeable as Iranian). He started off talking about how we just don't really have winter here any more and telling me stories about the ferocious winter of '84 when he very nearly lost some extremities to frostbite. He also picked up some doofus from O'Hare who'd been in Vegas and was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt on a night when it was 30 below without factoring in wind-chill. I asked him what winter was like back home and he regaled me with stories of nearly being devoured by wolves during his military service in northwest Iran.
The next morning, I popped out of bed at ten and did...nothing in particular for four hours until hunger kicked in and I needed my Vietnamese glutton platter. Then I walked out to Montrose Point and looked around. I thought I'd be out for just a little while due to the cold, but I was hardly halfway there before I took off my fleecy overshirt, then my jacket. In the middle of the meadow, where there was almost no breeze to speak of and plenty of bright sun, it was too warm for it. So I ended up whiling away a couple of hours. Some of the hawthorns have their leaves, but many are already bare--completely bare, as if the itinerant bird flocks have stripped them of their haws as well. The sumacs are looking very pretty, however, and there are still some sugar maples just reaching their peak. At one point, sitting on the stoop, I noticed a piece of fluff stuck to a burr and backtracked upwind until I found several toppled-over milkweek plants. A number of people spent some time watching as I ripped open dried out pods and scattered the seeds. Several of the fresher pods were infested with insects, mostly some sort of black-orange bugs that seemed content to quietly suck away the milky fluid.
I also did some people-watching of my own when a trolley car deposited a wedding party near the shuttered concessions stands. At first, I thought they were hoping to take some photos against the rather shabby foliage, but the bride headed to the beach and tried in vain to get a volleyball game started. She and a bridesmaid batted the ball quite expertly between them while everyone else looked on and the photographer ran around trying to capture it. There were much fewer people out than I expected: A handful of runners and bikers, a few very sad-looking cruisers, some crunchy couples out for hand-holding walks. Oh, and the dogs. One of them decided the milkweed pod I was bringing back for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu was far more interesting than a soggy tennis ball and would've kept snapping at it if his owner hadn't reeled him in. (Note: Actual incident. Not a puppy fantasy.)
Giulio Cesare (which, we all decided, should really be called Cleopatra) had me up to all hours last night, so I cleared my schedule for today for sleeping in and took a cab home. My cabbie last night was a Tehrani who's been in Chicago for 37 years, but still had a pronounced foreign accent (thought not one immediately placeable as Iranian). He started off talking about how we just don't really have winter here any more and telling me stories about the ferocious winter of '84 when he very nearly lost some extremities to frostbite. He also picked up some doofus from O'Hare who'd been in Vegas and was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt on a night when it was 30 below without factoring in wind-chill. I asked him what winter was like back home and he regaled me with stories of nearly being devoured by wolves during his military service in northwest Iran.
The next morning, I popped out of bed at ten and did...nothing in particular for four hours until hunger kicked in and I needed my Vietnamese glutton platter. Then I walked out to Montrose Point and looked around. I thought I'd be out for just a little while due to the cold, but I was hardly halfway there before I took off my fleecy overshirt, then my jacket. In the middle of the meadow, where there was almost no breeze to speak of and plenty of bright sun, it was too warm for it. So I ended up whiling away a couple of hours. Some of the hawthorns have their leaves, but many are already bare--completely bare, as if the itinerant bird flocks have stripped them of their haws as well. The sumacs are looking very pretty, however, and there are still some sugar maples just reaching their peak. At one point, sitting on the stoop, I noticed a piece of fluff stuck to a burr and backtracked upwind until I found several toppled-over milkweek plants. A number of people spent some time watching as I ripped open dried out pods and scattered the seeds. Several of the fresher pods were infested with insects, mostly some sort of black-orange bugs that seemed content to quietly suck away the milky fluid.
I also did some people-watching of my own when a trolley car deposited a wedding party near the shuttered concessions stands. At first, I thought they were hoping to take some photos against the rather shabby foliage, but the bride headed to the beach and tried in vain to get a volleyball game started. She and a bridesmaid batted the ball quite expertly between them while everyone else looked on and the photographer ran around trying to capture it. There were much fewer people out than I expected: A handful of runners and bikers, a few very sad-looking cruisers, some crunchy couples out for hand-holding walks. Oh, and the dogs. One of them decided the milkweed pod I was bringing back for
monshu was far more interesting than a soggy tennis ball and would've kept snapping at it if his owner hadn't reeled him in. (Note: Actual incident. Not a puppy fantasy.)