Oh, I Think So

https://nyti.ms/2DMT70v We don't need polar bears as much as we need insects.

I want to get a hat that says "Make America Great Again," because American was once great, as recently as two years ago, but is now a laughingstock, a joke, a punchline on the comedy stage here and abroad.  Our president admires authoritarians like V. Putin, Kim Jung Un, Xi Jinping, and Dr. Assad of Syria ("Dr." as he is a trained ophthalmologist).  (When Putin said, "Donald is right," about withdrawing the American troops from Syria, you know that Donald is wrong.  I wonder this:  When Vlad takes Donald up the ass, does DJT ask for lube or hang onto a chair or just brace himself and take it like the little bitch he is?)  He thinks everyone else is below him.  He doesn't seem to mind Macron of France as Mme. Macron is beautiful.  He looks down on Angela Merkel, probably because she is not what he considers attractive.  I don't want to wear his MAGA hat because people will think I am pro-Trump.  In fact, I want one because he is doing his best...

We all have weather we hate or love or can deal with.  I hate snow.  I can deal with extreme cold as long as it's dry.  I cannot bear hot, hot heat.  I can work with rain as long as I have a hat or my Ikea rain poncho (even if it's in my purse and I am getting a little wet). I love fog. I live up high on the 20th floor looking at Lake Michigan.  The sun in the east is intense and is good for many of my plants but bleaches out the fabric on my chairs.  It isn't bleaching my couch or the chair in my bedroom as I decided from the day each arrived in my home that I would keep them covered when there is no company.  I get to see some spectacular sunrises and weather systems off over the lake that look like mountain ranges.  I also get fog. The past two mornings I've woken up at dawn and the fog went about 10 stories up but above that it was clear.  It looked like mystery, magic, a movie, a half-kept secret. I ain't scared of no fog

So let's say you go to the library regularly.  So let's say you have a friend or a relative who also goes to the library regularly.  So let's say you want to have fun; everyone likes fun!  Let's also say that you live in Chicago where you can order books and you go to a particular library and fetch them when they come in.  Let's finally say that you see your friend or relative has books waiting to be picked up. Write 'em a note and stick it into the book. I saw that my sister had a book and I left her a note, jamming it into the pages of the cookbook she'd ordered.  She didn't mention it so I asked if she saw it.  Honestly, she seemed only slightly amused if at all. On the Southwest Corner Oh-You-Amuse-Me Scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a side-splitting delight and 1 being "yeah fine but really?", the leaving of the note seemed to be about a 2.  I thought it was uproarious, maybe swinging into the territory of the unscalable, like a 17 or 53. ...

I need to give my brain and those of my very few readers a rest!  See you in two weeks!

Years ago, years and years, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law played Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson respectively in a Sherlock Holmes remake.  The tie-in?  Taquitos at 7-11.  My sister and I still split a gut over that one. The first time I went to Tokyo, I had a day trip to Mt. Fuji.  Nothing says a holy mountain like "Star Wars" and Darth Vader. Today there was shopping for Thanksgiving and I found another terrible tie in because nothing says "Winter Is Coming" like Johnny Walker Distilleries and the product is named White Walker.  Look, look!  Mr. Johnnie Walker decked out in his finest white and blue, ready to invade the world of the the living or celebrate Hanukah.  Is that an icicle in his sinister mitt or a lit candle? What the fuck? Dear Johnnie Walker,  How are you?  Fine, I hope.  Dude, White Walkers aren't real. You know that, right? Winter IS here.  It comes at this time every year.  Love, EMN

There was another mass shooting this week where young adults were forced to do things like jump through broken windows and run for their lives with lacerations to escape the bullets of the murder. Really. Do not become desensitized to this.  Every single time you hear this, you need to be filled with disgust, horror, and rage.  As a human being, this should sicken you, horrify you, enrage you.  You should never think, "Ho hum, again?" You need to keep your personal guard up and be sick because this is not right.  Not in a million years is this sort of thing acceptable. I am not going to tackle the NRA or pose my opinions even though my one or two readers might agree.  The NRA apparently thinks going to a bar to do country line dancing and getting shot and/or killed by a weapon is acceptable behavior.  If someone came into an NRA convention and shot up those in attendance, their survivors would no doubt be disgusted, horrified, and enraged.  They'...

This evening, 60 Minutes featured a story on AR-15 assault rifles and the damage they can do which is a lot.  It is proving to be the murder weapon of choice for most of the horrific crimes against humanity committed of late -- the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Las Vegas shooting, and Sandy Hook Elementary School to name just three.  Things have gotten so bad that experts believe every single American needs to training on how to deal with the sort of injuries caused by any gunshot wound but the especially the AR-15 assault rifle. It is disgusting that we have to have things like this inside our heads, info that has to be summoned forth if yet another moron with a gun has decided he wants to be a maximum racist or anti-semite or just a psychopath.  They want us to take a short class covering the preliminaries -- it is just 60 minutes long -- and they want everyone in our land to learn from it. I am going to try.  I think there is one I can ta...

Watch The Bullet Inside My Body on The New York Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005945263/bullets-mass-shootings.html?playlistId=100000003958241

Mine was not and continues to not be a family that sings along.  We'd be in a German restaurant, eating some schnitzel or sauerbraten and suddenly, an oompah band would set up, the waitress would pass out song lyrics, and the musicians would launch into "Roll Out the Barrel."  My parents would start eating faster, as would my sister and brother-in-law.  Meanwhile, in my seat, I was joining along with the crowd in a mostly off-key (not me!) and just-about-drunk (also not me!) polka-tastic tune. My family looked so annoyed and pissed off but I went along with it because, hey, singing is fun and sometimes even I go with the flow as I used to have a very good singing voice. Under the heading of "Use It or Lose It" is me and my singing voice.  I went through a period where I was simply too mortified to get up and toss off a tune to anyone who'd listen, I had to work to pay the bills as it's just me, and my singing voice sort of bottomed out. The high note...

I drive out to Elk Grove Village every three-to-four weeks to get a new dip, which is your fingernails treated with a substance and then dipped into pulverized acrylic powder and then both of these are repeated four times.  I have nothing more profound than that.  I thought I might be able to wax poetic about my dips but, honestly, it's just a very good long lasting nail treatment that looks good for weeks and does not chip.  It's hard to find a place that does dips in a big city with many nail salons.  The few dips are expensive or inconvenient or both.  What makes them look less good?  Nails grow and there bottom part is bare.  I used to get dips frequently and once I moved, it was difficult to get out there and I found no city location that was for me.  I finally said, "Ah, screw it," and make the drive. Colors?  I first started with a very neutral beige, then went to a true deep red, and now am sporting a Tiffany blue and yes, thanks, i...

And it is, once again, Lady Gaga.  That Bradley Cooper, whom my friend described as her current Hollywood crush, looks tasty, sounds great, and has a new career as a movie director with a good eye and a light touch.  This movie could have been totally heavy-handed and it's not.  Go!  Cry!  But you'll also laugh.  And that one guy who looks so familiar but who is that?  It's Andrew Dice Clay, also very good. You can read all the Bradley Cooper interviews you want but it won't matter which one you read as they are all the same.  He's consistent in every interview so, honestly, if you read one and read the next, the interviewer is different but Mr. Cooper shares the same information. Lady Gaga is downright serious in all her interviews and she's down with it.  So am I.

I went to the post office and was going to go to the library but decided I needed nothing at the library and where I wanted to go was work so I could save my hour of personal time for another day.  But before I decided I'd do that, I went into Federal Plaza and here was Young Love having a picture taken by a pro.  I joined in, of course. They're in love and hired a guy to document it PLUS reflection of Flamingo It's become a habit of mine to dash down to the library on a Sunday when I've no plans or wind things up earlier in the day.  Since my lovely vacation in Tokyo, I've been wanting to learn to do origami.  The first book I got was for too complicated except for the tiny drinking cup I mastered.  I could not get past the rhombus part of crane.  Today I went up to the 8th floor and got a book called Easy Origami  which may do the trick.  Even better was the modele of Chicago's fabulous landmark in Millennium Park called "Cloud Gate," by B...

I went to Asakusa, in eastern Tokyo, across the Sumida River from Tokyo Skytree, to see Senso-ji, the ancient and enormous Buddhist temple.  It is huge and hugely popular. When I got out of the station at Asakusa, all the way at the end of the Ginza line, I exited the station and saw many, many young men, well muscled, wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts that had the legs rolled up, in the traditional Japanese style, to allow them freedom of movement as they peddled rickshaws around Asakusa, showing tourists Geisha Town, the temple, and the shopping arcades where the locals shop.  I stopped by one of them to ask directions to the temple and he showed me on a map everywhere he would take me adding, "This is where the Sumo shop."  I asked if he could guarantee me we'd see Sumo and he could not, so I asked him if he could please give me directions to the temple.  "About five minutes in that direction.  Look right and you will see it." Thirty seconds later, I c...

I vacationed in Tokyo and walked a lot (at least a third of it underground, changing trains) and ate some very tasty noodles, some pretty tasty noodles, noodles that were not that great, and some excellent sushi from a grocery store -- not a food hall in a fabulous department store but a grocery store a mile from my hotel. I walked into a pet store and saw breeds of cats that I've only otherwise seen in magazines, all of them in kitten form.  Some of them were asleep but a few were paying attention.  The Bengal was one of the especially lively ktitens and that little asshole was ripping his little cardboard cat hut slowly apart.  He would claw it and bite it and rip off a piece and play the hell with it until it was played out.  Then I got his eye.  What a charming little fucker and we played hide and seek.  I told the young woman who worked there that I was seeing most of these breeds in person for the first time and the only one I was missing was a Sing...

I am having a vacation in two weeks.  I am visiting another land where I don't speak the language and I am not going to speak the language except for maybe a few words.  But off I go and it will be great and I am mentally prepping and so ... four weeks off for me. When I get back?  Photographic evidence! Don't cry 'cause you miss me; cry because you're a crier (but, at your age, why you cryin' all the time?).

There's a lot of grafitti in this town.  Some of it is unintentionally hysterical, some is scary, some is just a "Kilroy Was Here" of some gang member or other, it always mars a surface and makes us look. At times it's just some misspelled what-the-fuckery that make one go, "Huh?" And so some what-the-fuckery came in the form of a Sharpie on an illuminated plexiglass surface. ??? It's a sign that give the web address for 250 locations in town where one can use a computer for free. What the person wrote has nothing to do with that or, really, anything else. "Don't wake up ty [ sic ] Sleeping GOD "Bom Bom "Murders Pschopeisis [ sic ] Menstruill [ sic ] Rpase [ sic ] Childmolestos [ sic ] Insanity "Real or not" This was done in the middle of the night in a bus shelter by someone carrying a red Sharpie. Something was going on in that person's head whether he/she was drunk, drugged up, or simply, w...

I am hating the hot, hot heat.   The sinus infection has backed off but sinus flushing and Mucinex will be part of my life forever because they do the job. Alas, that's how it is. The hot, hot heat makes me feel oppressed.  I am not a fan of oppression of any kind but I can't much do a thing about this, can I?  As they say, "Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it." Eventually it will be done and it will be autumn and then winter.  Then there will be some major complaints because snowfall makes me not at all pleased.

Salmonella is finally gone.  Now I've got a sinus infection.  The Fates want to make my summer stinky.  I don't like the hot, hot heat but I like being sick less.  Thanks, Fates.

The Salmonella, that is.  Saturday and today I actually had no stomach aches, like what was wrong was finally done with, like I would be okay. And now I can devote myself to my next vacation.

And they've seen three different breeds of whale thus far but THEY SENT ME THIS AND IT IS AWESOME! Where the Costco Tire Center is EXOTIC!!

There was a work dinner and several of us attended.  The service was so terrible that the restaurant picked up the tab for everything but the drinks.  All the food was exactly the same and really not very good except for this one dish of hummus with pomegranate seeds and ground lamb but the next day I was as sick as a dog and everyone else felt fine.  I felt worse and worse as the day went on and the next day it was no better.  The third day was worse still and then the action started.  Lots of action.  Lots of stomach pain.  I called my doctor who was on call that weekend and he said to lay off fruits, veggies, and dairy and to drink a lot of Gatorade and water. The next day things were worse yet with a low-grade fever.  I called my doc again and when he called me back he asked what the temperature was.  I said I didn't know as we have no thermometer at work.  I said, "But, oh, look, here comes my Boo.  He will tell me."  Bo...

Those flowers lasted over a week!  They were so pretty and looking at them made me happy.  But today they were lookin' pretty rangy and I sent them to live in The Land of Garbage Bags.  So long, old friends, be compost in a landfill. I hope to have some of your kind in my home soon.

Often when I go to my sister's house, they have purchased roses at Costco and have put together attractive arrangements of said roses in cool vessels like old creamers or small vases.  I've never done that because I've never lived anywhere tidy enough to merit flowers, but I moved about a year and a half ago and now I do and so it does. I started small, with a bouquet of a spray of small roses.  I looked at each and every one of the sale bouquets and chose the one with the most closed-up flowers.  I took them home and put them in a vase and realized I had neither greenery nor baby's breath to goose up the arrangement so I tilted them to one side and decided they're lovely, which they are. Flowers do have a habit of dying and/or looking like crap pretty damn fast but while they're alive and still with me, I look at them and smile.  Someone liked me enough to give me flowers!  I am not upset that it was me.

Thing 1.  I helped out a client last weekend by going into work and taking care of something that would not otherwise have been done.  The managerial response?  Two of three people thanked me and three of three people (same three) told me I am barred from coming to work on non-work days because it's a safety issue.  I have advised the client that I am barred from helping her on weekends.  I am not displeased with this. Thing 2.  Trump and his new BFF, KJU, met in Singapore and it was apparent love for Trump who gave KJU everything KJU asked for and KJU gave Trump exactly nothing.  We are ending our joint military exercises with South Korea.  Watch as we tiptoe into destablizing the region and KJU dances all the way to one of his nuclear facilities to whip up something nice and fission-laden.  Thanks, Trump.  You're a world class yutz. And now I am going to Naf Naf to score a gift card for my friend's 50th birthday.  Happy birthd...

It's back on, folks, that little thing the White House is calling the Singapore Summit on June 12.  So anxious is the Donald Trump administration for this to happen, they've agreed to pick up the hotel bill for the North Korean delegation even though their choice of hotel is the Fullerton, a five-star hotel where none of the many ultra fussy clients I have has ever asked for, not ever in all the years I've been booking Singapore, but to each his own.  What a nightmare to guard that joint! It's on a river!  The  cost of a suite can be upwards of $6,000 per night and you know the US isn't going to say, "room and taxes only" to them.  There's gonna be room service.  There's gonna be Pay-Per-View movies.  They may leave it a little trashed and don't care that the USA will probably have to pay extra for cleaning because they probably all smoke like fiends. This is not, however, the long con.  This is something I heard on the television this mornin...

I have the whole week off and thinking about it makes me wild.

The flower on the cactus from last week?  It doesn't just open and stay open.  When the sun is striking it, the flower is open.  Later in the day, it closes up.  The escargot begonia and the cactus are still alive.  Also doing well:  Sansevieria (to be specific, the bamboo shoots snake plant), orchid, two succulents, staghorn fern, Christmas cactus, aloe, and air plant.  Questionable survival:  fiddle leaf fig, the plant that convinced me I could again have plants.  What's my fave?  I am digging that little cactus and the staghorn fern but I want there to be no more death throes of plants chez moi.  Let those whose green has crossed my threshold remain green and larger and with me forever.  Amen. Yes, I watched the Royal Wedding. What was Oprah thinking when she got that dress for the ceremony.  You have all the money in the world, my friend; can't you get something that doesn't make you looking like Last Year's Senior C...

Yesterday, there was a lovely trip to the a greenhouse way out on the edge of the prairie in Grant Park, Illinois. This year I was very restrained in my purchases, acquiring an escargot begonia and a little cactus.  This morning, I looked at the cactus and a tiny flower on it had bloomed.  Lovely! Tiny cactus, tiny flower

For the past two and a half weeks I've been having such fun with a runny nose -- no significant congestion in either chest or head, just plenty of nasal racing.  On Wednesday, I thought I had turned the corner and it was getting better.  On Thursday, I woke up with some laryngitis and some less-than-attractive phlegm and made an appointment with my ENT.  On Friday, it was full-blown laryngitis and things on the hawking up front were grostesque.  People kept asking, "You sound terrible!  Why don't you go home?" I'd answer, "I feel fine.  Why waste a personal day when I don't feel sick?"  On Saturday, it was significantly still laryngitis and, yes, that other stuff was gross.  I visited my ENT who gave me not just antibiotics but told me I had to take Musinex Maximum Strength and a particular nasal spray. He also told me I had to drink eight glasses of water a day. I got the prescription filled and decided to go home and rest up.  I hacked the ...

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown to shop and fetch a book at the library.  When I was arrived, the library was in the throes of Poetry Fest.  Poets were sitting at typewriters, clacking away, creating a poem, free of charge, that they wrote on the spot on the topic of your choice, part of something called "Poems While You Wait."  Write down your name and topic, go away for almost a half hour, and when you come back, the poem has been completed.  You have the name of the author who has also initialed it. I figured I could kill time at a library and put my name on the list.  What topic?  What topic?  Others had requested a poem about love, about hope, and the little girl in front of me asked for something about ducks.  My mind went fucking blank and what sprang out of the pen?  "Expository writing."  When the gentleman who was in charge of this table of six poets -- there were three more in the lower level -- saw my request, he said, ...

Waiting for Godot?  Not comin', man! There is a grocery store a block and a half from my house and I usually go there when I get off the bus when I come home from work, the library, or shopping downtown.  This particular night, I'd had dinner in Pilsen with sister, brother-in-law, and niece and stopped at the store close to their closing time to get some bananas, parking on the roof.  Who is waiting at the back door?  This guy or perhaps gal. Geese can be ferocious, feisty, determined, and strong and just in case he/she was in a mood, I didn't want to be on the business end of that beak.  Turns out he/she was not interested in the skanky likes of me as when the electric eye saw me and let me in, he/she didn't budge. He/she may have looked at me through the door but I didn't stop to ask.

I am not going anywhere near this mess until they come up with more sand and bulldoze the water back into the lake. There was a lot of wind and there was a lot of rain and Foster Beach is flooded!  There is a second lake at Montrose Beach.

I waited for you to come to my house and do my taxes and you never showed so I did them myself.  Thanks for nothing.

I said please.

On Election Night 2016, friends were texting me from all over the country as the polls closed and asking, "What the hell is happening?"  We were all Hillary supporters and we expected her to win easily. And in the perfect world of the popular vote, she won!  In the imperfect world of the Electoral College, she lost and we all know the rest. In the ensuing months, Trump has been ruling in such a way that friends still text me and ask, "What the hell is happening?"  Texts like this have been happening less and less because no one knows what the hell is happening, especially not Trump.   And now we have John Bolton, a dangerous, never-been-in-the military chicken hawk of a man, who will be National Security Advisor.  It's like having the devil on both your shoulders and neither one is Peter Dinklage as the devil in the Super Bowl Doritos commercial, they're both John Bolton and he likes power and he likes talking and he knows how to pander to Trump's...

So last week, I was concentrating so hard on doing the exercises my physical therapist gave me to do that I plum forgot. This week, I have just this.  Why does Jimmy Kimmel need to include humans in his Oscar show?  Of course, by humans I mean non-celebrities.  Last year he trekked a group of tourists through who were on a Hollywood tour.  This week, Kimmel and celebs stopped a preview of "A Wrinkle in Time," so the celebs could make the hoipolloi think they cared.  Personally, DO NOT interrupt a movie I am watching for something as stupid as celebrities.  And while we're at it, don't talk in the movie and, if you can avoid it, do not eat.  My friends who are eat-at-the-cinema types are tidy and quiet chewers.  They know if I say no thanks, I mean no, thanks, no.  And if you're Jimmy Kimmel, wait until the movie is over before you bombard me with humor. Jimmy, I like you very much, you're a good man, very smart, well spoken, and you appre...

I don't know why I still care but I am watching!! See you next week!

The view as you enter Garfield Park Conservatory A war in miniature could break out at any moment!!! Orchids, palms, cacti, elephant ears, living baseballs ready to be appreciated by us This is as good as taking a picture of someone taking a picture. After the conservatory we went to a plant shop and met this fine fellow. We met this fine fellow, too, who enjoyed being carried around by my sister.

When I was a child growing up in Detroit, Lincoln's birthday was a holiday and George Washington's birthday was another holiday and since they were born in the same month, Congress finally decided that everyone was enjoying themselves too much and they combined the two and tossed in every other president and, ta da, Presidents Day. We have had some very good presidents and a few real stinkers and a few who were SOBs and a few who were womanizers or bigots or noble or power hungry or just plain crazy (I'm looking at you Donald "Fake News" Trump).  This weekend we celebrate them all! The best way I can think of to celebrate is by taking advantage of some mighty good sales but I am trying to be frugal so unless I buy a new mattress, there will be no sales being taken advantage of by moi.  I have my annual wellness exam, a/k/a my yearly lube and oil, and a few hours later, I have my eyeball wellness visit where they dilate my pupils and I walk out with those shif...

It snowed.  A lot.  Long story short, this is what it looked like out the window at about five p.m. this evening. I could tell you about my crazy Friday or other crazies but, hey, this is much better.

A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to accompany family to the Women's March to the Polls and from there our personal march to the Art Institute of Chicago.  We saw things and I threw my attention to paintings of food. As long as it's not going bad and getting fuzzy and rancid while you're painting it, food is as good a model as a landscape, probably better.  It rains outside, some cow insists on moving in and bringing her gal pals, that tree decides to just rot and fall over.  Food just sits there like it's waiting for you to bring a fork and tuck in, or pluck some feathers, fire up the oven, cook it up, and voila, it's Sunday dinner.  So the feast for my eyes was food, glorious food.

I can't follow a recipe.  It's not that it's too difficult to follow or that I can't read or anything like that. I simply don't have the patience to follow a recipe, especially if there are many steps, there is the involvement of a lot of time, and there's a long list of ingredients.  I make a very good turkey at Thanksgiving because there is just one ingredient which is the turkey itself.  I baste but that's turkey juices.  I make a very good veggie stew that I actually made up which can be converted into a fancier veggie meal which actually preceded the veggie stew.  The stew is made up of maybe five ingredients. My late mom made the most delicious cottage cheese pancakes ever in the world.  They were light but filling and were served with a dot of grape jelly on each one.  I never had the patience to learn how to make them which made me a feel a little regret but then it perhaps was not meant to be.  I've never known anyone who made pancakes ...

On the first anniversary of Donald Trump's unfortunate inauguration and the Women's March came the Women's March to the Polls.  Last year 250,000 women and appreciators of women marched from Grant Park to Federal Plaza. This year, 300,000 women and appreciators turned out and it was a beautiful day!  It was a mid-winter day that had temperatures in the upper 40s.  I couldn't attend last year -- I'd just moved -- so I was glad to have a voice in the proceedings. People do NOT appreciate Donald Trump and neither do I and people were very happy to express themselves.  Yeah, I took pictures. This lady apologized for the misspelling in the sign but said she decided to just go with it.  You go, girl!

The present governor of Illinois is a billionaire.  On the Dem side, the seeming-frontrunner or the guy who has spent the most on commercials is a billionaire.  The millionaire (maybe billionaire) member of a stinking wealthy family with lots of political ties and family political experience wants to be governor.  Why? The present governor of Illinois doesn't know how to make a deal with anyone.  He just wants to be the man in charge who when he says jump, everyone does so.  It just doesn't happen that way in politics, especially in Illinois.  He thinks every one should jump for him is because he is a billionaire whose campaign was funded in part by the wealthiest man in Illinois who is, guess what, a billionaire.  Now he can spend his money however he wants and has done some good, giving a lot of money to his alma mater and giving the City of Chicago money to improve its bike trail.  The present governor of Illinois still doesn't have a clue an...

See this here lake?  This picture was one week ago.  The lake is frozen near the shore.  I looked out the window to see if it was windy because waves tell me yay or nay.  Of course there were no waves as there was ice.  When I got out there it was sunny but windy and damp so it felt much colder than it had yesterday when it was really cold.  Mid-January thaw will be here by next weekend and then it will be over and will get cold again.  We don't live in Chicago because of the weather, now, do we? No, we do not. The sun was setting, the lake was not yet freezing.