Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

As Vincent said to Jules, “It’s the little differences.” Notes from a yank’s first trip to England…

• The UK is certainly trusting of their vistors: the immigration form requires only name, nationality, passport info, and local address–a far cry from the more paranoid forms presented by the US and Australia. And the ‘nothing to declare’ lane off the baggage claim area didn’t even have any personnel making cursory checks of arriving passengers!
• I came all this way to see a billboard for the Dixie Chicks? At least the next one was of a stern-looking cricketer.
• Yards and miles on the roadsigns, square feet on the ‘Office space for rent’ signs. I guess the U.S. isn’t quite so backward as I thought.
• Even after midnight, with no traffic, the narrow and windy streets made it obvious why some measure was needed to reduce congestion. Good thing they don’t get Chicago-style winter snowstorms here, they’d never be able to get the snowplows through!
• The similarities between the old parts of Sydney and central London are striking. If it were just the layout and street names it would be one thing, but even the road signage and transportation logos are nearly identical!
• Streets that continually change direction slightly are one thing, and the lack of a standard numbering grid is another, but by far the most perplexing thing about navigating the City is that the name of a street seems to change every block or two. The Pulaski-Crawford discontintuities are trivial in comparison!
• The Sun is noticeably lower in the sky at midday, but at least the Moon wasn’t upside down. Odd to be in bright twilight at 9:45pm.
• In response to a track problem, a sign in Liverpool St. Station indicates that railroad engineers are said to be ‘in attendance’. Wouldn’t it be better if they were fixing it instead?
• Certainly, city planning was a concept far in the future when most of the streets of central London attained their present configurations, but the seemingly haphazard arrangement of streets and architectural styles is truly jarring for a Chicago native.

Finally…pictures are here.

It’s about time I came out of my moving-induced hiatus. My too-long list of starred items on Google Reader, along with more Delicious bookmarks, attest that I wasn’t offline but simply not struck by the muse. I’ll start with something easy, poring over those items to see which of the more eclectic ones still strike me as notable (a clip-show entry, if you will)…

• On eBay, an Atheist Puts His Own Soul On the Auction Block
  Interesting tactic in the pursuit of religious understanding. Nice to see not everyone that uses an eBay gimmick does so purely for publicity.
• Shaving technology: The Cutting Edge
  I’ve long been amused by the breathless advertising for the astounding technology in the latest razor, but finally the Economist shows us that blade tech is outpacing Moore’s Law for microprocessors. Brilliant.
• World’s Greatest Tool: Duct tape?
  Is there any question? I had no idea that ‘duck tape’ was the original name, I thought it was just a cute brand name.
• Galaxy-chasing nebula caught on camera
  I’d just link to the image–it’s fascinating on its own–but the humor is lost without the surrounding article.
• Pouring ketchup: The full technical explanation
  I…can’t improve on this. The title and diagrams say it all.
• Barenboim hits out at Musak - Hell is Other People’s Music - A Sour Note on Modern Times
  Three different angles on a common theme: cut the commericialized crap already!
• Coffee makes us say ‘yes’
  And here I thought it just helped make the transition from saying ‘mmgrph’ to something more intelligible…
• Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974
  Uh…wow. It wasn’t just the clothes, but the food too. How did America survive the ’70s??
• 4178°- Chicago Architecture
  Nifty little ‘fly-around’ some of the downtown buildings
• The best accidental discoveries
  Hooray for serendipity!
• Middle-class peeves cost more money than exists
  Snarky deconstruction of the cost-of-X meme.

Okay, moving in kinda sucks too, but at least it’s a different kind of suckage, one consisting more of intermittent annoyances–What box is that damned vitally important widget in?!? How could we have missed that problem with this hellhole money pit?!?–interspersed with longer stretches of the sense of new possibilties–At long last we’ll set up the office (living room, entertainment-system connections, network wiring, etc.) properly–rather than several days (weeks?) of physically deconstructing your life, room by room and box by box.

But we’re here, so far nothing seems to be broken, and apart from some surmountable plumbing issues all seems as well as could be expected two days after a move. I wonder what it says about me that the things I’ve set up first have been

1. Stereo system
2. Bed
3. Couch
4. Cabinet with wine glasses
5. Desks and computer network
6. Pantry shelves
7. TV
8. Coffee-mug hooks and pilsner glasses

It didn’t take long to start noticing the differences between Norwood Park and Lakeview…I mean, the movers hadn’t even finished before the next-door neighbor started chatting with us; after another ten-minute conversation on Monday, I had thus spoken to my neighbor more in two days than I did in our apartment over five years. On Sunday, a stroll around the neighborhood to preview my route to the train station revealed that we didn’t just relocate to an area dominated by single-family homes, but one with really nice houses; some of them are even amazingly large–this is still The City, after all!–but fortunately none appear to be McMansions but instead just older, well-kept homes.

The commute downtown was also interesting. I think the last time I rode Metra was either late high school or early college–my most recent analogue with a similar vehicular experience was in fact half a world away on the Sydney CityRail system last September. Anyway, during my morning and evening commutes today I mused on the differences between Metra and the El. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even as far down the line Norwood Park is, I was easily able to find a seat–and they are much comfier than anything the CTA has to offer; perhaps that’s a decent tradeoff for having to pay attention to a schedule rather than simply walking to the station and knowing a train will be by in a few minutes. Yet Metra vs. El also reminded me of the difference between Interstate and U.S. highways: in both, the former is quick and smooth but provides an almost deathly boring view–okay, the ass-ends of three-flats aren’t the most equisite view of the city, but they’re more interesting than a hundred yards of gravel and railroad track–as well as a sense of separation from the landscape. I suppose once I settle into a commuting routine I’ll just end up buried in a magazine or my PDA and won’t even notice any more.

Well, according to Chicago Bloggers, at least I’m blazing a trail as the first online commentator in Norwood Park!

Moving sucks. Actually, I think I’ve decided it’s that moving out sucks: you must rip apart your life, stuff it in boxes and bags, and get it done on a deadline. Once the moving truck has moved away, the pizza is ordered, and the cat has decided to start making tentative steps into the new place, then there’s no more pressure to do anything except ‘Where did I put X?’ and ‘Ooh, Y would look perfect over there!’–but that can be done over weeks or months.

At least the Cubs smacked around the Cardinals to end our tenure in the Wrigley environs in proper style.

More once the office is back to some semblance of order and Comcast has actually restored our broadband service…

We are rapidly learning firsthand what other homeowners have described: nothing’s ever done, there are merely brief pauses between projects. We’ve searched, found, bid, applied, and closed, so now of course we need to decorate. Or, rather, Liz needs to decorate while I ratify and implement her vision…

• What is the point of all the cutesy names given to the various colors of paint and stain? If there were a standard palette of names it would be one thing, but each manufacturer has a different set–it’s not like someone can say “Oh, we decided upon Blissful Blue for the living room and Mauve Finery for the downstairs bathroom” and expect the listener to know instantly what those shades look like. The assigned names barely imprint upon the mind for the time it takes to go back to the store and request the clerk to look up the proper mixture–listed by alphanumeric code, usually! Are the names just an excuse to make some work for summer interns in the design and marketing departments?
• The Schaumburg IKEA was noticably less zoolike. Perhaps it was just an off weekend, but I suspect the opening of the Bolingbrook location last fall has helped significantly. But I think they need to restrict the self-service checkout lanes to ‘express’ customers: it’s handy when you’ve got two or three items, but when the person in front of you is struggling through two full carts of stuff it slows the line down enormously.
• I think Woodfield needs some traffic lights on its main drive. Seriously, it took me longer to turn right out of one of the parking areas than it did later for me to wait for traffic to clear on Devon to turn left off of Natoma.
• Upon realizing too late that I needed to cross two lanes of Golf Rd in maybe 300 yards in Saturday-afternoon traffic to reach one of our destinations, I had the urge to hunt down and pummel the responsible traffic engineers. What’s so frustrating is how widespread the problem is: Schaumburg, north Prospect Ave in Champaign, 159th St & Lagrange Rd in the south suburbs, numerous spots in Indianapolis, the list goes on. Are traffic engineers ever going to clue in on the fact that adding more lanes to a congested commercial street does almost nothing to reduce the congestion?
• I recognize that a well-made rug requires much labor and will last for many years. I also recognize that Marshall Field’s is not aiming at the bargain end of the market. Yet I was still flabbergasted to see listed prices for some of the larger oriental rugs that exceeded the current value of our cars…combined. Who buys these things? Liz commented that it would be stressfull to allow pets or children near such an expensive piece of decor. I suppose it would fit well in a room along with china that is never used and chairs that are never sat upon.

All this, yet all we really need to do is some touch-up work, replace some older furniture, and add some new pieces to fill out the bigger space. We’d better go about this methodically and stick to our prioritization list–the savings in sanity alone will do us good.

After a couple weeks of relative calm, consternation regarding a vital question—had anyone actually bothered to schedule our closing?–sent the whole house saga into another tizzy. Everyone from our realtor to other homeowners chuckled at our naivite: of course, they said, there’s always something at the last minute. I suppose it’s inevitable–there are so many people and items involved in a real-estate transaction that even a single miscommunication or delayed phone call can precipitate an apparent crisis–but it’s still surprising given the frequency of such deals; they happen every day, people devote their lives to the industry, isn’t there some sort of collective wisdom by now to keep things running smoothly?

So after an impromptou late-night walkthrough at the house (kudos to our agent for that!), we found ourselves downtown for the closing (ironically just couple blocks from where I’d usually be on a Wednesay morning). I’d heard stories of writers’ cramp, two-inch tall stacks of paper, squabbles between attorneys, unhelpful bank tellers, etc., so I figured that although our deal was fairly simple and straightforward, still it would end up being a ‘character-building’ exercise.

We were effectively done in about 45 minutes, I counted only 20 signatures. Both attorneys and the closing agent commented how quick and simple it was. It took about the same amount of time for clerks to complete the various bits of data entry and faxing while we idly chatted about unscrupulous lenders and the current state of the real estate market (and our attorney had the opportunity to cope with a last-minute cancellation of another closing). Even getting ComEd and People’s Energy to switch the accounts to my name was trivial. I think we spent more time, later in the day, reviewing which precise shade of blue looked better against beige.

And now it’s done, we own a house. Whee.

Although we did treat ourselves later, it seems like the event should have felt more momentous, but it was oddly anticlimactic as we stolled through downtown streets carrying papers saying we owned property and a large liability. Was it the short time between offer and closing? The fact that we won’t actually move in for a few weeks? Perhaps it won’t really register until that first morning back to Real Life after the move–or the first time something important needs immediate fixing. Ah well, I suppose we should enjoy the dual life of quasi-suburban homesteader and swank-neighborhood apartment yuppie while it lasts (i.e. before the first real mortgage payment is due).

I find the continued dustup over the Danish editorial cartoons attacking Muhammad to be distressing on two very separate counts

• To take offense when someone takes potshots at your culture and religion is certainly understandable. Yet the proper responses would seem to be denunciation, responses in kind, shunning, or simply ignoring the things altogether (especially when they are a juvenile and ham-fisted as these particular cartoons seemed to be). To honestly believe that the appropriate response is to riot, to threaten violence and death–in short, to proclaim that that your beliefs are so inviolate that no one should be able to even think about considering doing or saying something that offends your particular sensibilities–is pathetic. That others will take the oppoutunity to to manipulate events to advance their own agendas is despicable. Funny (in the gallows-humor sort of way) how a number of the protestors decided to add ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ into the mix despite that neither country had anything to do with the cartoons’ publication.
• Yet the direction the debate has gone on this side of the Atlantic has been even more inexplicable to me. When I saw that the Daily Illini decided to publish the cartoons, I had to shake my head, and while I don’t think that the suspension of the editors was the required response, I can’t say I was surprised.

  Regarding the publication decision, my question is: Why? What will be accomplished? The usual, knee-jerk answer has been along the lines of ‘To prove a point’ or ‘To support free speech’. However, to my mind these are extremely unsatisfactory…

• Freedom of the press is not seriously under attack in the U.S. The current administration is playing dangerous games in the arenas of separation of powers and civil liberties (particularly privacy and probable cause), and PC zealots continue to cause problems on various college campuses, yet I can’t see that First Amendment rights are really threatened. For an editor in Tunis or Baghdad or Islamabad to order publication would have been a bold stand for principle, but it’s not as dramatic for someone safely ensconced in the halls of an elite American university.
• The contribution to debate and understanding is minimal. In an environment well-qualified to promote sociopolitical discussion and turn it into usable action, the publication of these cartoons may have been useful to find ways to bridge the gaps; however, as someone who spent many years on the Urbana campus, and even read the DI occasionally, the UofI and the DI fail to measure up. Moreover, these cartoons in particular aren’t very enlightening about any new insight on Western views of Islam, so their publication–especially now, given recent events–is merely provocative. The small Muslim communities here are most likely to see the publications as not only offensive but gratuitous attempts by already-privileged people to play at being the Principled Reporter, while the more dangerous throngs overseas are unlikely to know or care.
• The virtue of press freedom is being misconstrued.Freedom of the press is a limitation on the state, designed to prevent criminal sanctions against a person for the mere fact of saying or publishing something. I’ve noticed segments of the punditry trying to extend this to mean that it allows–nay, demands–that any idea be put out there, unfettered and without consquences. Perhapps canning the DI editor was an overreaction, a pandering to interests who can’t handle public controversy…but he’ll be able to move on with his life, and the incident may actually make his services more attractive to some publications. Yet I find the hand-wringing that such events will pressure people into ’self-censorship’ to be disingenuous. Indeed, in some ways such pressure was the rationale behind removing the government from the editorial process: let any idea be available, and in so doing let the public decide which ones should thrive and which ones should be pushed to the margins as being undesirable or offensive or just plain wrong.

Faced with such incalcitrance in the thinking of so many people on all sides of debates like these, it’s sometimes a wonder that any sort of detente is possible, no matter how uneasy. The only hope is that those who not only hold more extreme views but who are willing to take provocative actions appear to represent a small minority.

For the masses who probably don’t check my del.icio.us links with regularity…

• Giant Telescope Will Peek at Past
  I happen to know from seeing things in grad school that DARPA and individual military branches fund research all the time with essentially no strings attached. I suppose some trepidation over the source of funding isn’t completely unjustified, but might it come from a more general public misunderstanding of the value of pure research–investigations that aren’t targeted at any particular goal other than knowledge? Yes, I firmly believe that even the DoD sometimes acts without ulterior motives.
• How to fold a fitted sheet
  This has been an issue in Bartonia for years. And people say the Web is useless!
• ‘Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions
• Little-known feline ailments
  Surprising that these are considered ‘little-known’, since any cat owner will have seen several of them after only a short while.
• Chicago Restaurants, Chicago Menus, Ratings, Reviews, IL Restaurants Guide
• Restaurant Place: The Restaurant Menu Directory (Chicago)
  Really, unless your restaurant (1) doesn’t a website (nowadays??) and/or (2) is always changing the menu, I think there’s no excuse for not having the menu available in a format like this. Ooh, how about RSS feeds for those spots with frequently changing menus? Knowing that restaurant X just got a fresh shipment of Y for tonight’s specials would help drive business from people like us who often find themselves indecisive on a Saturday night.
• The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005
• Illinoize
  Especially being an election year, this site provides some interesting reading for Illinoisans who are either political junkies or who just want a view of what’s going on that’s less parochial than the local news outlets. Posts come from all corners of the political-cultural map, which can be a bit jarring or head-scratching but is probably a good thing overall.

The presence of a play-by-play commentator for a televised sporting event has long seemed a silly affectation, but some of the better color commentators do, from time to time, actually improve the experience through explanations of some nuance that may not have been immediately apparent in real time. Still, as a long-time viewer I’ve learned to tune out most of the yakkery and selectively listen only to thost bits that might prove interesting.

I don’t have such well-developed mental filters for the winter Olympics, so I’ve paid more attention to the announcers’ commentary…and it’s really struck me how inane much of it is. Three items stand out from the past week:

• The lingo and delivery of the snowboarding commentators conveys a sort of ‘Duuude’ cachet. Perhaps it’s just unfamilarity with these relatively new events, or maybe pure elitist disdain for a sport still enveloped in a slacker-surfer-ganja-free-spirit mentality, but hearing what sound like Bill & Ted talking about the righteous moves so-and-so did at last week’s Winter X-Games simply doesn’t project the grandiosity the IOC tries to weave around the Games.
• Is Scott Hamilton a commentator or a cheerleader? His cries of ‘whoa!’ evoke Hawk Harrelson and are likewise distracting. Is it really adding anything to mention that skaters are required to do a number of mandatory elements? Or that a triple axel/double toe loop combo is difficult, requiring talent, skill, and practice?
• I didn’t catch the name of the Canadian commentator during the ice-dancing short program, but I did notice that she repeated, essentially verbatim, the same description of how the focus is different for each member of the pair three times in a span of about five or six minutes.

It almost doesn’t seem possible, but the house hunt appears to be over. As if my day hadn’t already started busily enough, what with people from Singapore to London to Sydney pleading for answers on important topics, in the late morning Liz called to tell me that something happened with the bidders who trumped our offer from last Sunday and the owners came back to us with a counteroffer. And so it began again…

• Call to mom to look up some extra property info. All tax and deed issues seem to be clean, which good. Boy did the place appreciate since it’s last deed transfer in 1997. It’s up for reassessment this year, so the property taxes will go up, oh well.
• Call Liz back, let’s decide whether to counteroffer after lunch. Can’t delay too long, another showing is scheduled this afternoon. A couple people point out that we’ve got nothing to lose by counteroffering, so we choose the midpoint between our original and the counter.
• They say they won’t go below X, but we figure we have to stay put. Their floor is at the top of our comfort range, and if we hit that we want a little more–just something else that makes us think we can’t lose this house. Okay, looks like we’re moving on.
• 30 minutes pass, then the amazing happens: if we go up by just $2k and close in early March, they’ll say yes. Stunning
• Agony…should we do this? Is it too much? It comes down to this: if we pass on this, then what are we looking for? Was our original offer itself too much? Do we need to reevaluate the whole thing: our priorities, budget, etc.? My spreadsheets say we can afford it and still have a cushion for planning future life changes. Interest rates and prices will probably be going up in the next few months, so combined with possible fees for month-to-month our our apartment, holding out for something less expensive may end up being a wash anyway. If we wait for everything to be perfect without any uncertainty, we’ll never do anything. (As some of this back-and-forth occurred while Eric and I were wandering the floors trying to scrounge up a KVM, props to him for the insightful comment that figuring out our process and priorities for making the decision was more important here than the numbers.)
• Our agent calls at this point: gotta know, what do you want to do? Yes, go for it. Fear and excitement now churn anxious stomachs in the Loop and Lakeview.
• Five minutes pass, Angela calls back: OK! Let’s arrange to update the contract. I’m so glad that I work with a team who essentially kick me out the door to take care of this rather than finishing what remains of the workday.

We met at the house to initial the paperwork changes, and within two minutes of being inside again we realized that it was the Right Thing. Maybe it was a little more than we expected to pay, maybe it’s a bit farther from the El and shops and restaurants than we had hoped, but it’s a fantastic place–which is the point, isn’t it? I didn’t particularly enjoy the frantic pace and pressure to make life-altering decisions on short notice (especially without my carefully crafted budgeting spreadsheets in front of me). Nor did I enjoy the negotiation process, although I did find it ironic that the contracted sale price was between the ‘final’ offers from both sides.

The sellers have officially signed off, so now it’s time for papework. Lawyers. Bankers. Government clerks. Movers. And of course the new adventure of actually owning a house…

How does anyone buy a house without going insane? (Well, I was actually warned, but still…) I thought I had a pretty good handle on the house-buying process, but nothing I’d heard from friends or family was full preparation for the insanity of actually making an offer. Finding a place that made us say ‘yes!’ on a Saturday afternoon after two months of looking was enough, but then the madness began:

• 7pm Saturday: Agent calls to say offers have already been made and rejected. No dawdling!
• House dominates talk over martinis and Buca di Beppo. Do we really like house? Yep, but let’s sleep on it to be sure then take one last check to see if there’s a reason not to bid
• Sunday morning: drive around neighborhood again, still like house and environs. Norwood Park ain’t Lakeview, but no matter, let’s do it!
• Sunday afternoon: call agent to say we want to offer. Hurrah!
• What, there’s more right now? We have to meet? And sign stuff?
• Early evening at agent’s office. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff to initial.
• We need a big check? Right now?
• And a lawyer? By Friday?
• Drive back home, realize huge financial commitment to dominate our lives for a while. What have we done??
• Dinnertime: maybe this is it! Great place, the timing of everything will be perfect, the search process is over…
• 10pm: Outbid! Game over, after all that rushing about. Can’t decide yet whether it’s an opportunity missed…or a bullet dodged

At last the holidays have finished and it was time for the decorations to come down…and remove the tree before it becomes nothing but kindling. Good thing that Christmas trees are so light (especially when dry weather has made them thinner) when one must navigate a narrow winding stairwell to the alley; that I no longer cared if branches were crushed or broken also helped. What didn’t help was spending ten minutes lashing the tree to the car roof only to discover that my handywork resulted in my tying all four car doors shut! Brilliant, eh? Fortunately no one was around to document my stupidity as I climbed into the car through the driver’s side window.

Kudos to the city for adjusting the assortment of tree-recycling locations, as I was happy to avoid a repeat of last year. After a traffic snarl on Roscoe at Lincoln, it was amazingly quick and easy, as the new location in the DeVry Institute parking lot resulted in no line of cars and no backups onto a busy street. And of course, being Chicago, the Streets and San people handing out the blue bags were some political minions reminding everyone that this service was brought to us in part by Ald. Gene Shulter. Ah, well.

(Okay, with the holidays complete and things officially back to normal, it’s about time I tackled that big list of links I’ve meant to expound upon…)