A reply to Mary's contentions about New Jersey vs. the Midwest, from a fellow East-Coast transplant (although granted, I'm from Delaware, which is a little different.)

• No longer living in the Midwest. ... There is also absolutely nothing outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. If you drive an hour west, you’re already in farm country. Keep going and you won’t go through anything resembling a city until you hit Denver.
  I hear you, sister. The one great thing about Delaware is that it's close to so much -- three hours from New York, two hours from DC, half an hour to Philly... While I do count Minneapolis and St. Louis as cities, you still have to drive five to seven hours to get here from there, which is just silly. No quick day trips around here. (Yes, Madison is cool, but let's face it, it's not New York or DC -- or even Philly.)
  


• Being in a place where everyone has an attitude. I believe I have been falsely categorized as a cold-hearted bitch. These corn-fed Midwesterners are simply too bland to understand the subtle irony that underlies my sardonic wit. It’s easier to label me “scary” and “confrontational” than to peel back my toughened outer personality layers and get to know the shy and vulnerable woman underneath. I feel. I yearn. I cry. Okay, it was a Brit and not a Midwesterner who called me “scary” but you understand my point nonetheless.
  When I first got out here, I was the cold east-coast bitch for a while but it's been supplanted by at least a degree of Midwestern niceness. I gotta say, that's something I like about Chicago -- you ask for directions here, and you'll probably get them. Try that in New York, and you'll get hostility, more often than not.
  


• Going down the shore.... how anyone swims in Lake Michigan is beyond me because it is filthy and smells like dead fish. Just last week, a billion gallons of sewage got dumped into it from the Chicago River as a result of heavy rain. All of which ended up on the beaches and in our drinking water. Blech. Ocean and boardwalks and saltwater taffy and carnival games and big hair here I come.
  OK, here I've got to take issue: I've been to the Jersey shore, I remember the Jersey shore well, and while you can say many things about it -- it's lots of fun, there are actual waves, the boardwalks, etc. are cool, blah blah blah, you really, really cannot hold the Jersey Shore up as a paragon of cleanliness. I mean, come one -- I remember the news stories about medical waste -- used syringes and god knows what else -- washing up in South Jersey on some really great beaches. So, um, try again, that argument won't wash.
  


• Getting my accent back. Say what you will about Jersey speak, but I miss it. When I first moved here, I had to drop the accent quickly because everyone laughed at me. They also found it extremely amusing to repeat whatever I said. It was difficult to learn to say “go with me” instead of “go wit me” and “I’m from Newark” instead of “I’m from Nork.” However, I still say “wauter” rather than “wahter” and “tour-nament” rather than “ter-nament” and “rooof” rather than “ruf.” I don’t think it will take too long to slide back into old habits.
  I've never really kept an east-coast accent of my own (thank God -- the Delaware accent is pretty horrid -- my parents say when I was about 2 years old I used to hide behind the couch and jump out to scare my dad, yelling "Be-eww!" which is apparently the Delaware version of "Boo." I did, however, pick up a Minnesota "O" by mocking my college roommate from Minneapolis, who, by the way, did not talk like that at all. Sigh.

What I miss about the East Coast: hills, the ocean, being close to so much, feeling like you were in the center of everything, the history, my family and friends, fall on the hillsides. What I don't miss: being in a the suburbs (where I grew up was pretty damn suburban), that particular brand of suburban sprawl we get out there, old money snobbery, feeling like I'm still in high school, dealing with New Yorkers. What I love about Chicago: the people for the most part, the attitudes, the neighborhoods, the parks, the lake (still not the ocean, but it'll do), the flexibility, the crazy politics, the restaurants and theaters, my friends here. I'll leave what I miss about Hong Kong for another day.

It's starting to rain here, so I feel I must go look at my ceiling to see if there are any drips. I warned the tenants in the basement that there may still be some leakage, as we haven't fixed the problem yet. I'm thinking we're going to go with the fill-in-the-dip strategy, but I want to check with the city first.

So I went to the gym after work to meet with my new trainer (my old trainer having gone on to more pleasant things, like doing physical therapy with indigent psycopaths) and it went ok, except for the him trying to kill me in the guise of that building upper body strength thing. He doesn't seem as willing to point out the hot guys as Rae Ann was, but you can't have enerything.

When I went to leave, I picked up my gym bag and it was much, much heavier. "What do I have in there, weights?" I think to myself. Well, yeah ... small hand weights that I bought off Mary. Doh. And some festering gym clothes that got soaked in the Great Monsoon of 2001, which I'd forgotten about (ehwwww). Ended up buying a new pair of shorts and t-shirt at the gym just so I didn't smell like Swamp Thing. I will be doing some industrial-strength laundry tonight.

It did not, however, smell as bad as the clothes of those who participated in the World Bog Snorkeling Championship in Wales. Why snorkel in a bog? Because.... right, I can't come up with any sort of reason. Because you're nuts, I imagine.

Oh, and Mary -- I wanna be a minion! Can I be a minion? Pleeeeease? But, um, I don't want to move to New Jersey or New York. Can I be a, I dunno, satellite minion? We'll discuss the details.

Status on the house: Roof -- patched and ok. Huzzah! Basement -- Ooh, boy, this is going to be a problem....

Basically, there's a dip in the walk on the side of our house, where the water pools. There's supposed to be a drain there, but there isn't -- I don't know if there never was, or if someone covered it over with cement (D'oh!). So either we've got to rip up the sidewalk to (a) find the existing drain (oh please, oh please), or (b) discover there is no drain, rip up the rest of the sidewalk and run pipe to the drain at the front of the house, which, incidentally, isn't in great shape to begin with; or fill in the dip in the sidewalk. The only problem with that second option is that the dip is there for a reason -- the windows jut out over the sidewalk, and if we fill it in, we'll have to walk down the side of the house at a Planet-of-the-Apes fighting crouch. I don't know what that means for housing code, but as we do intend to sell this place at some point, doing something that will screw up permits is not a good idea.

So, that's the house trauma for the day. Whimper.

I drove Mary home tonight (I was so late waiting for the roof/basement guy that I felt I had to drive) and pillaged her stuff. Hooray for pillage! Mary is planning to move back to New Jersey (um, had you announced that on your blog? If not, I'm sorry for releasing the information prematurely) and will be getting rid of most everything she owns. So. I took some books (because god knows, i just don't have enough books) (right now everyone who has ever been in my house is smacking their head and saying "You fool! You DO NOT need more books! You have too many books to begin with! Arghh!"), and put dibs on a shelving unit, kitchen canisters, cookie tins (I bake at Christmas), a shredder... probably more.

I got acquisitive. Sigh. More stuff. What am I thinking?

Right now I'm waiting for the contractor to show up, so he can fix the leaking roof and so I can show him where it leaked in the basement. Huzzah. Home ownership is fun. Really.

A mostly accurate conversation I had with Jude yesterday:

Jude: How much do I love Lotti!
Me: Um, a lot?
Jude: So much. Why did we not meet them until right before we left town?
Me: Well, if you had come to my parties, you would have met them a lot sooner....
Jude: Whatever. We were quoting that bit from Showgirls all weekend.
Me: [Whimper]

This disturbs me. They haven't even seen the damn movie, and they're quoting bits of it. It's terrifying.

It should be noted that Lotti and John met, in their star-crossed way, by reciting bits of Showgirls to each other at a barbecue. {Shudder}. I can only take comfort in the fact that, as they are together, this means they will not be inflicting Showgirls on other hapless significant others.

Oooh, speaking Others, it looks like that will be the next Girls' (and Boys') Night Out Official Movie Night. We have a soft spot for any movie that revels in lines with highly flattened (?) vowels -- the first one I went to see was Deep Blue Sea ("As a side effect, the shaahhks got smahhhter") and The Others ("Are you mad? I am your dawhhtahhhr.") promises to follow in that grand tradition.

Yay! Wendy is so cool. She just spent about an hour ironing out the bugs (i.e., doing everything that had to do with code) on my new template. Thank you, Wendy. I owe you one.

This is actually something of a problem. With most of my tech geek friends, I can say "I'll edit something for you some day." Doesn't work with Wendy -- she's a great wrtier and editor in her own right. I will be able to be a reader for her book project, but that seems less like a favor to her than a favor to me. How's the book going, Wendy? When can I have a look, huh? Huh?

Haven't posted for a few days, because I haven't been quite sure what to say. The work situation is hairy as all hell, but I don't really feel I can talk about it, as I'm supposed to be happy happy joy joy superviser for the folks I know there. So, alas, I feel I cannot comment publicly on what's going on. This is anathema to me, as I'm much more prone to just shooting my mouth off. Sigh. Very annoying.

So let's see, innocuous stuff: I went to see a couple of shows in the Fillet of Solo festival at Live Bait Theater, where my friend Lotti works. Jude, Chad and John (Lotti's cabana boy) were all there for the second show, Never the Straight Man. It was ok, but not great. I think we've gotten to the point in our culture that one man's coming out story isn't all that remarkable, so you need to have more of a point than that to make a show compelling. Mark Gagne was funny, but the whole thing fellt sort of anecdotal and unfocused. It was sort of funny story, funny story, sad moment, angry moment, funny story, poignant moment, angry moment, funny story, thank you good night. It covered so much time that he couldn't really focus well on any one aspect, draw out any one theme. It felt more like party conversation than a show.

Now the first performance of the evening, Still, by Susan McLaughlin Karp, was incredible. It told the sotry of her first pregnancy, which ended in a stillbirth. Sounds pretty grim, right? She managed to make it funny and engaging and enraging and poignant and horrifying all at the same time. She also made me realize that I am really, really too much of a wimp to give birth. Oy.

After the shows, Jude and Chad and Lotti and John and I went to Uncommon Ground for dessert and drinks. I am very, very bummed that Jude and Chad will be moving to Boston in Septmeber -- they're so much fun to hang out with, and very difficult to shock. This comes in handy when you're hanging out with Lotti and John. We terrorized the waitress a little, and she was tremendously nice about it. Talked way to much, about things usually better left unsaid (genitalia, the movie Showgirls, etc.) and had a really good time. Jude and Chad, you WILL have to come back into town for Jersild Day. Otherwise, I will send Lotti and John to Boston to hound you with Showgirls recitations until you beg for mercy.