Listen to the Rain

The new pope is from Chicago.

...but is he a Cubs pope, or a Sox pope?

Back in Japan I used to go view the cherryblossoms every year, multiple times a year. I remember sitting by the banks of the Motoyasugawa with friends, tons of people all around us on blankets at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, and drinking sake and eating kushiyaki while we chatted for hours at a time. One time we all went up to Shōbara and had a picnic in Ueno Sakura Park, where a bunch of us rented rowboats and went out on the pond. Halcyon days.

Well, we can't get that experience in Chicago but we do have cherryblossoms here, planted down in Jackson Park. The last couple of years the weather has been cold enough that they didn't bloom, and this year the weather was also pretty changeable but the blossoms were out, so on Saturday morning after sashagee and I woke up late and ate breakfast, her parents brought Laila back from her grandparents stay, and then we all drove down to the Garden of the Phoenix to look at the blossoms. What blossoms there were--Chicago weather being what it was, a couple days prior it had been 26°, it was now 10° with chill winds. What's more, the day before there had been a strong rainstorm that had washed a bunch of blossoms off the trees, and they were on the ground and in the lake when we got there. Some trees were almost devoid of blossoms entirely! Despite that, there were still some trees to be seen:


The most interesting trees were right near the parking lot as we entered. We walked around the lake, where there were some trees but only a couple with enough blossoms to bother looking at, and then when sashagee asked me about the festival that was supposed to take place that day I said it wasn't until 1:30 p.m. (it was 10:15 a.m.), so sashagee's parents drove us all back home and after hanging out with Laila for a bit, they left.

We put Laila down for a nap but she did not take one, and she had enough energy later in the day that she kept demanding we go for a walk, so we went. The temperature had gotten a bit warmer, helped mostly by the sun finally coming out, but that meant when we went to the park there were a bunch of people there and Laila asked to leave after only ten minutes. She still wanted to go for a walk, though, so I kept walking down to Broadway and we went down to the other park further south, and Laila ran around for a while. She told me she wanted to leave once and then changed her mind, and it turned out to be fortuitous because after we had been there for twenty minutes, some of Laila's classmates from gymnastics showed up! I actually got to see Laila play together with some other kids. The cutest part was when two of them were on either end of the seesaw, and the second-cutest part was when Laila was beneath the playground equipment and two of her classmates were up top, and they were all looking for each other. When a bubble-shooting gun came out, they all got distracted and Laila eventually got tired and we went home.

The next day was a lazy day most of the day, but in the evening I had an invite to worldbshiny. I was also invited to go to see The Sinners in the afternoon, but I already wrote about why I didn't go. Since I handled most of that, I took the evening off and walked down to the bar where the party was being held, arriving a bit later, but it turned out that it wasn't too late because poor worldbshiny had her car towed while she was in the movie and had to move the time back. But once I did get there, it was lovely--I spent a while talking to lisekatevans's housemate about sightseeing in London, we all (except me) discussed The Sinners, I had a couple drinks and listened in, and after two hours I called it a night and went home. It's how I used to spend multiple nights a week that way.

I listened to Gorgeous on the way home, just like I used to on summer nights, all those years ago.

A few days ago I posted about this tree outside our window. Well, it's the same situation now, with a video of rain white noise playing on the TV, but the tree outside is this:


That's Chicago for you!

Not a ton to report, but I'm still haunted by how little I wrote here with I lived in Japan and how much I wish I had written more so I'd have an insight into my mind at the time. Memory is too fallible.

Autumn has finally come to Chicago. What's more, it's the end of autumn, since we seem to have completely skipped the fun part of autumn. It was warm enough on Halloween night that when Laila told us she wanted to see the decorations, we went out without coats and no one had to do the "put a coat on over their costume" thing I remember doing when I was younger. And now it's 10°C and was colder when I left this morning. Yesterday the wind bit enough that my autumn coat was almost not enough and it was only the exertion of carrying the CSA box that let me power through it. The weather report shows that it won't be warmer than 16°C for the next week, and it'll be cloudy and rainy the entire time. No good time to go look at the leaves, though I'll see if I can get at least one good picture soon.

My diet is slowly getting more and more vegetarian as I lean into keeping more kosher. The best way to prevent mixing milk and meat is to just not eat meat (plus, meat that hasn't been sheḥted isn't kosher anyway), so I'll often go weeks without eating any. I don't order meat from restaurants because I can't trust that there won't be any dairy in the surrounding ingredients--at least if I order a salad and there's bacon bits on it I can see the bacon. So, most of what I get now if we're eating out is fish or salads. I try not to eat too much fake meat because, unlike something like tofu, we don't have any idea what the long-term effects of eating a lot of it are. Plus, it's probably not that healthy--the same reason I don't eat tons of falafel, because sure it's vegetarian, but it's deep-fried so I shouldn't be eating it at every meal. So if I really want a hamburger I get a black bean or impossible patty and real cheese, but mostly I get fish.

I have not noticed any particular effects from this, either positive or negative. Now, I was already in good health before I did this and I still get tons of moderate exercise in--at least 75 minutes of tracked, dedicated walking per day, not counting the incidental walking I also do--so I don't know that I'm the best test case. But going 98% vegetarian has been pretty nice. It's actually quite easy to find tasty food...though not quite so easy when going out to eat.

Walking to get my CSA box yesterday, I ran into one half of 2hotcookieschicago on her way home and slowed down to talk with her. She hadn't realized that I lived nearby, though it turns out that a lot of people from Mishkan live in the neighborhood, including the director of programming, the music directory, and one of the people on the board of directors, and there's probably even more people that I don't recognize but would recognize me if they stopped to talk to me. We only had a few minutes to chat but I told her about the CSA that I get and how I go to pick it up every week, and she's probably going to look into it. I used to get another CSA back when True Nature was still a store before the Whole Foods moved in--this is how you know I've lived in the same place for a while--but the owner of that farm died and I guess there was no one to take it over. It's nice that we have another CSA and it's also nice that it stops for part of the year and the contents obviously changes--you can get it in January and February, but they said it's basically just root vegetables then.

We used to have local restaurants come to work occasionally to offer lunch, but after the Plague Years they stopped because there simply weren't enough people still in the office to make it worth their while. Well, they started offering it in the building restaurant down on the 16th floor, one restaurant on Tuesday and sushi (always sushi for some reason) on Wednesday, and just a few weeks ago they decided to expand it to separate restaurants each day. I decided that it might be nice to get food out once a week, since most of the meals were $10-$13, which is pretty good, and so far I've had mixed results. Last week I got vegetarian biryani from Taste of Assyria and it was tasteless--it was like they fried up some rice in olive oil for thirty seconds and then sprinkled on spices after it was already done frying. They didn't even have any hummus! On the other hand, I got a vegetarian paisa bowl from Arepa George today (rice, cabbage, beans, plaintain, avocado) and it was delicious. Tuesday is a soul food restaurant called Cook It Mama I'm probably going to skip--"soul food" and "kosher" generally don't exist in the same room--and the Wednesday restaurant isn't available yet, so we'll see what it is. A nice change of pace from the salads I bring to work and also usually eat at home on workdays for lunch.

Meeting Laila and sashagee after work for dinner, and after work is now.

Last year most of the Jewish holidays were on weekends, so I already had them off. That's not true this year, but the bonus is that many of the High Holy Days are on Thursdays and Fridays, so in October I only have one full work week and three four-day weekends. Not bad.

Wednesday night was Erev Rosh Hashanah and Mishkan did a livestream, but since Laila was awake I missed most of it and by the time she was asleep there were only thirty minutes left, so I skipped it. The next day, though, we woke up bright and early thanks to Laila, ate breakfast and got dressed, and took the bus out to the Copernicus Center for Rosh Hashanah services. While the last time we all went, we were able to go into actual services because Laila was small enough we could hold on to her and she could enjoy the singing, that was never going to work this time. We went for the Rise and Shine service (for kids 0-4), and then went over to the "Museum of Awe" where Laila immediately ran over to Toddler Town and started trying to grab all of the stamps. She was full of energy, so we didn't stay very long, but we did say yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 with their new baby! They were heading in to services with a very asleep baby, just like we had been a couple years ago, but we chattered with them a bit and then headed out to lunch at a drive-in diner that also had Korean food (I got a teriyaki chicken pita. It was delicious) before heading home.

The next day sashagee wasn't feeling well, so while we originally all planned to go to the second day picnic, it was just Laila and I who went. I packed up a lunch for her and we got on the bus to go to Welles Park. We arrived just in time for the Shema, and while she initially squirmed a bit she calmed down once the singing started. Once it ended and the rabbi started talking, though, she immediately lost all interest, so we left the main area and went over to the part of the park where the kids activities were. She really went in on the activity sand, and while she still doesn't quite know how to interact with other kids, she waited her turn until she could get close and played very nicely with them. She even took a turn at blowing the shofar! When we got back home, sashagee was asleep, and while Laila woke her up when we ate lunch, she went right back to sleep when Laila laid down for a nap. She was really wiped out, so I took Laila to the park for a bit and let her rest of the day, and when Laila went to bed so did she.

There is one other thing we did, though. We didn't get to stay long enough at Welles park for the ritual of Tashliḥ, the symbolic casting away of our sins, as it is written:

Who is a G-d like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
-Micah 7:18-19

So we went to the lake to do it. Laila loved the actual throwing of the bread on the water, but she wasn't interested in anything else. She didn't want to run around on the grass, she didn't want to look out over the water, she didn't do anything. She did smile briefly for a picture, but that was it:



And then we went home.

Saturday we had two things scheduled but neither of them was until later in the day, so we had a nice slow morning where we all got to eat breakfast and sit around watching Kiki's Delivery Service until closer to 11, where we walked to the bus and went to Lincoln Square for Applefest. I went to it back in 2019, and then in 2020 and 2021 there was no Applefest, and in 2022 and 2023 we were out in the suburbs on both weekends, but this time we could go and a bunch of our friends were there too! The festival was twice as big as the last I was there, from Lawrence all the way down to Sunnyside on Lincoln, and the weather was beautiful but that meant it was a sunny day and I was carrying Laila for blocks up and down while we looked at the shops and got a bit of apple pie, some breakfast sandwiches--sashagee wanted a smashburger, but we were warned that it was a thirty-minute wait time so she got a breakfast sandwich too--and ate them while Laila ate her apple waffles. We got apple cookies and looked at the artisans, and chatted with our friends--Laila was obsessed with spacedragon's dyed hair and kept asking her to hold her--until 2 p.m. came and we needed to get home to rest for a bit. It was already too late for Laila's nap, but we could still go home and rest.

Around 4:30 p.m. we left again for our second event, thosesocks's housewarming, with apple pie and Laila in tow. We went out to the bus and the tracker said "no scheduled arrival times," so we had to walk all the way there--it was only a mile or so but it was a long way after all our earlier walking and while carrying Laila. When we got there, sashagee talked to thosesocks while I chased after Laila, which proved to be the theme of the evening--at one point Laila went out on the balcony and ran up and down, since it was laid out lengthwise along the entire building. She did that a couple dozen times, full of way more energy than I expected, except for some brief interludes to dip a cookie in ranch dressing and eat it and trying to steal chocolate-covered pretzels. After an hour or so, right when thosesocks was concerned about Laila being so energetic, it was time for us to go (Laila needed an early bedtime since she skipped her name), so we said our goodbyes and went home. We didn't get a slice of that apple pie but the chocolate-covered pretzels were delicious.

Sunday morning was a fast day, Tzom Gedaliah, so I woke up before anyone else to eat breakfast before the sun came up. When I was done, I opened the door so Laila could escape her room, we all got ready, and I took Laila out to Hebrew school. This time went better than the first time, where she was overwhelmed by all the people. She still wasn't very interested in the songs, but she was much more focused on the crafts. There was a craft to make a "Bug Sukkah" and that was what Laila focused all her energy on:


Sadly, it did not survive the trip home on the bus. While Laila wasn't interested in the songs, she did stay at the craft tables for much longer than many of the other kids did, who got bored and wandered off to sit with their parents and read books or something. She really loved those bugs, and we stayed through the closing songs and then left to go home...except the bus wasn't coming for 35 minutes so I walked most of the way home, carrying Laila the entire way, and then spent much of the rest of the day sitting down because she's heavy. She's a big girl now!

This coming weekend is Yom Kippur, so even more holidays ahead.

It is extremely hot in Chicago. There's no wind and blazing sun and the weather app tells me that the effective temperature is 41°C and it's supposed to get even hotter before all's said and done. I'm still inside but it looks like the hottest temperature is going to be right when I have to leave and go home, and sashagee has tasked me with going to the grocery store and pick up an order of groceries and then haul them all the way home.

At least I'll have peach cake waiting for me.

Last week Wednesday, I suddenly received a Facebook event invite for that night, at 4:15 p.m. for an event at 5, that fang.the.tall would be at Portillo's for one night before he went back to his homeland (Malaysia). Before I texted sashagee that I wouldn't be home for dinner, someone else said "Is this tonight?" and fang.the.tall posted that Facebook had messed it up and it was next week (aka yesterday). So I told sashagee about it, and we made plans.

Yesterday I finished work and wandered around the nearby Nordstrom and attached stores--the mall on Michigan Ave is obviously not doing well, being kept alive by that Nordstrom and maybe a couple other stores there--until sashagee and Laila arrived on the L. We needed to keep Laila occupied, so we went to Eataly to pick up these particular candied fruit sauce in porcelain jars that sashagee likes, had some dessert before dinner (fruit tart and tiramisu), and then went back to Nordstrom so Laila would have an open space to walk around in. We spent most of our time in the perfume floor, where Laila charmed the saleswomen by taking all the testing strips that sashagee used and stuffing them in her shirt. When it was all done, we headed over to Portillo's.

I haven't seen fang.the.tall in eight years, but we follow each other's lives on Facebook--I've seen him arguing about asshole Malaysian politicians, he's freaked out that I got to see Sun-mi in concert, we've argued about hanzi vs kanji--and so he knew about sashagee and Laila. justpearlstuff and bradford.bensontaylor were there too! I haven't seen them in four years either, since before the Plague Years. I introduced my family, we all caught up, and we ate Chicago's finest Italian beef for an hour before Laila got too restless and we had to go home to get her to bed. Apparently the party went on for hours after we left, but that's the life of a parent--you show up when you can.

Yesterday, aaronhparker and I went to Michelin-starred restaurant Mango Pickle to as part of Chicago Restaurant Week, and because after Sunday it will be closed forever.\

The menu was:

Amuse
Ragi roti, smoked aubergine "baingan bharta", chutneys

Appetiser
Nihari rasam as spiced, warm and rich beef broth
or
Roots vegetable rasam, tangy, spicy, herby and warmy

Main
Pork vindaloo like in Goa, artisanal polenta
or
Slagel Farm short ribs masala fry, crispy potato sautées
or
Oven-roasted vegetable vindaloo, artisanal polenta

Dessert
Carrot halwa, kulfi ice cream, warm chocolate sauce

Optional +$14
Indian cheesy bites
Bombay toast, dry fruits and paneer samosa, chutneys and greens

I got the vegetable dishes, aaronhparker got the nihari rasam and the pork vindaloo, and we got the optional cheese plate, as well as one drink each. The drink menu isn't online, but mine had Calvados, apple cider, and cinnamon in it, as well as a seared apple for a garnish. The waiter--a Frenchman who when aaronhparker and I were talking about the anime Solo Leveling was like, "Solo Leveling has an anime now?"--said that it was a very French drink with all the apples in it.

The appetizer wasn't super memorable, but the soup was delicious, albeit spicy. It was exactly the combination I love and sashagee does not--vinegar and spicy. Extremely spicy, actually, much more so than the main dish, which was like a polenta with a very rich, dark sauce--despite being called a "vindaloo" on the menu it was not spicy at all. The real winner was the cheese, though. I don't know anything about Indian cheeses, but the cheeses here were on top of puff pastries and came with a spicy sauce and a chutney. We only got one plate at the waiter's recommendation, but honestly I would have been satisfied with my own plate (other than that it would have meant I would have left the restaurant overstuffed) and could easily have eaten the entire thing. Especially that spicy sauce. We finished with that creamy desert and then walked out into the cold after two hours of meals.

It was a great way to send off a great restaurant, especially since the last time I went there was the last date I went on with schoolpsychnerd. And it was great to see how it changed from a relatively standard restaurant that offered a little dish of pickled mangos with every meal back when I used to go to the Michelin starred prix fixe meal place it is now. Or will have been now, come Sunday.

It'd tell you to go, but if you're reading this it's too late.

Yesterday, while Laila and I were out on a walk, someone got out of the car and said hello to me, and it took me a moment to realize it was one of our downstairs neighbors. His wife also got out of the car, and they said hi to Laila--Laila immediately wanted to be held by the wife and wouldn't even give the time of day to the husband--and we walked back to the condo building and chatted. When we got to the top floor, Laila said "kitty!" so they invited her in to say hi to their cat and sashagee heard us talking and came down to see what the commotion was. Our neighbors made us tea and we talked while Laila ran the wife around asking to read books, look for the cat, and otherwise make the husband feel ignored. He got his high five in the end though, after we finished our tea! This is the kind of thing that makes my parents feel better about their granddaughter living in the big city.

Then today, I got a text message about the new kitchen appliances that I ordered and I read through the checklist and noticed the glaring:

"Verify there are less than (3) flights of stairs to get to the install location (not applicable if elevator is available)"

We live on the fourth floor, but our address has a three in it because the floors are addressed like a European building (Ground, 1, 2, 3). So the person who helped us make the order might have seen a 3 in the address and been like, oh, no problem, they'll be fine. Well, I called in to check and it was not fine. The person on the phone was very clear that it's third floor or lower, no exceptions, so I cancelled the order after writing down what all the models of everything we ordered were. A little weird they don't account for higher floors in the city, but there will surely be another place that does.

Went out to the L this morning and the sign said it would be there in eight minutes, which was unusual--it would have meant I had just missed one and I hadn't seen one go by on the walk to the station. It ended up being more like twelve minutes, by which point the platform was very crowded, and then when the train arrived it was also very crowded. The driver apologized, saying that she had had a mechanical problem, and then we went on our way. And after only a few stops, we stopped again, and waited, and the driver came into the car I was in and messed with something while being on the phone with someone else, and then we were told that we all had to get off because the mechanical problem was too big to solve in just a few moments. So then I was standing on a platform with a hundred other people, and the train still wasn't moving, and after consulting my phone I dashed down the platform and down the street and got on the first 148 bus that came and arrived at work an hour late and more than halfway into the section meeting.

When the bus driver pulled up and saw fifty people waiting at the bus stop he was like "What the hell happened??"

A while ago I put on Facebook "Does anyone sell a dark green dress shirt in my size?" and melliott415 suggested Suit Supply and linked a dark green dress shirt. She also said that they do custom fitting, so yesterday I went into my appointment. It only took about ten minutes--the guy assigned to me brought in a slim-fit shirt and it was too big, so he brought in an extra slim-fit shirt and other than a bit of billow in the back it fit wonderfully. I picked out the green Egyptian cotton, and said I'd like it custom-made, paid for it, and went on my way. It'll be ready in three weeks.

New wardrobe alignment commenced.

Brütal.

A few months ago sashagee got really into Babymetal. She was playing their songs all the time in the house, having little dance parties with Laila, and then she learned that they were coming to Chicago along with Dethklok. I bought her tickets as a Mothers' Day present and last night was the concert.

The opening act was Jason Richardson, who I had never heard of before (I'm out of the loop) but is apparently a famous metal guitarist? And his guitar work was extremely good! He came out with no introduction, playing guitar over some recorded backing drums and bass, and it was fantastic--the kind of thing that once would have been a hard mode Guitar Hero track. Sparrow was sashagee's favorite song--that's Richardson in the red coat there playing guitar--and is a good summary of how his music sounded. He was wearing the same red coat on stage last night.

Unfortunately, his stage presence was terrible. At a metal concert, you expect the performers to have an attitude and get in your face (metaphorically), but Richardson was more like a new act at a comedy club. He made some self-deprecating jokes, trailed off a couple times, and then launched into more excellent guitar work. Well, there's a reason he's a guitarist and not a singer.

Also, Dethklok was there.

When Dethklok was done, the stagehands took almost thirty minutes to set up the stage, all while the temperature got warmer and warmer and the crowd got dense and denser. At the end, the logo flashed on screen, the announcer said the pitch, and Babymetal appeared:


I absolutely was not expecting a heavy metal cover of "Sōran Bushi," the traditional Japanese folk song. I even found a comment on a reddit people where people were like "Dokkoisho? What are they saying? Is that like Ganbare?" ( "Dokkoisho" means basically "heave-ho!"--"Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty).

I knew very little about Babymetal going in, other than the memes and that one picture of them with Rob Zombie. Being metal lyrics, even when sashagee played them repeatedly I couldn't understand anything they were saying. That wasn't any different this time, but a lot of the metal I listen to is symphonic metal so I was used to the lone female voice floating above a sea of electric guitars and drums. But I was not expecting all the movement--I only listened to the songs that sashagee played, I didn't look up any Youtube info, I didn't read about their performances, nothing, so I had no idea that they had routines to fit the songs.

On the Metali Youtube video, there's a comment that reads:

日本の祭りの息を揃える掛け声や踊り、独特な歌舞伎の発声、言い回しなどの日化を取り入れて、ここまでのメタルエンターテイメントに仕上げるのはBABYMETALだけであり、唯一無二のオリジナリティーだと言える。最高傑作と言っても良いのではと思う。
"Babymetal is the only one in the world of metal music who includes these expressions so characteristic of Japanese culture, the sounds of encouragement and common calls at festivals and the uniqueness of kabuki. You could definitely say that they're totally original and their work is a masterpiece."

They're right. I never would have thought "You know what heavy metal needs? Jpop dance routines!" but Babymetal did and that's why people love them so much.

They performed for about an hour and then left the stage, and there was no encore. sashagee wasn't feeling that well with the heat and the standing, so we went straight home and she went straight to bed. But she got her Babymetal t-shirt with the fox masks on it--the same masks that the guitarists and drummer were wearing--which is what she really wanted.

According to wikipedia, "Before the formation of this club, none of the three members [of Babymetal] knew what heavy metal was." Well, they figured it out.

It's currently 35° degrees outside and still climbing. The listed high today is 38°--the farmer's market is cancelled and honestly coming in to the office was probably a mistake. I should have taken a half day and then worked from home the rest of the day, which is what my boss was hinting at yesterday when she said she was going to do the exact same thing today.

At least I get to work from home tomorrow, when the listed high is 39°. At least after that the temperature rapidly drops: 29° on Friday, then 26° and 25° over the weekend.

sashagee's mother and grandmother are here visiting, having arrived unexpectedly on Monday. I say unexpectedly, but it's more that sashagee forgot about it and didn't put it on the calendar. It's not impacting me too much because I've been at the office today and tomorrow, and both have mobility issues so I'm not missing any exciting excursions, just cute Laila time. Which is sad to miss, but I miss that anyway on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I'll go home tonight and get to see more Laila having a great time with grandma and great-grandma.

Alright, time to prep to head out into the Great Erg. G-d made Arrakis to train the faithful.