Monday, February 27, 2006


FROM CHAPTER FOUR...

The man stared at Nando’s chest, then opened his mouth and let out a soft sigh of recognition as he nodded heavily. “Yes,” he said. He was missing a few teeth. “I remember now. Your name, hijo. What is it?” He held out his hand for Nando to shake.
“Reyes. Nando Reyes.”
“Nando,” he said. “Strong name. I had an uncle Nando one time, long ago.”
Nando was light with the handshake, but the man’s hand was oddly firm and tight like a thick knot of rope. “What are you doing these days, old man?”
“Not a lot. I come here to talk with my friend Javi,” he said, nodding at the bartender, who looked up briefly, then went back to reading the Progress Times. “Other than that I don’t do much business no more. Old huesos. Old bones, you know?”


That's a teeny tiny excerpt from the long piece I'm working on. It's been shelved (in my computer) for nearly a year, and I finally dusted it off to work on it. I'm kind of excited and wanted to share it with you all!

We're also anxiously awaiting our tile delivery. We had breakfast with our friends Jeremy and Jenn this weekend--they're the ones who are going to help us install our tile. So everyone's on the tile truck! It's a very exciting truck to be on.

The weekend was nice and relaxing. We watched a terribly depressing, but oddly intriguing moving called The Weather Man, starring Nicholas Cage. Trevor described it perfectly as a movie without a climax, which reminded him of the movie Cage's character in Adaptation wanted to make. The narration in TWM also reminded T. of Adaptation. It was odd. Likeable and horribly awkward at the same time. I don't know if I could recommend it. But maybe I could. Or not. You be the judge.

We also filled up on some Arrested Development, Season One, which made us laugh quite a lot. I made some pancakes (for breakfast) and we ate our Hawaiian pineapple, and we went to the dog park, and we got a fabulous new RECORD CABINET! For all of our vinyl and our turntable; we found it at a store where the owners had found it at an estate sale. And we got it for under $50! What a steal! And now our records are neatly alphabetized (and alphabatized within their musical genre; sorry, I can't control myself.).

Hope we'll have enough action later for a mid-week post. So far, it's been a spaghetti dinner, listening to the new Two Gallants record (marvelous!) eating Girl Scout cookies ('carmel delights, a.k.a. samoas). I can't ask for more out of a Monday night!

Monday, February 20, 2006


HAPPY BELATED VALENTINE'S DAY, EVERYONE!

That's right, it was almost a week ago today that Trevor gave me chocolates in a heart-shaped box, something I wanted for Valentine's day, because what says "I love you, Bean," more than candy? NOTHING!! Although, much has happened since the candy giving, so I'll try to catch you up on all of it!

Trevor found a great neighborhood bar; he fell across it (not literally) while walking Henry one day, and suggested meeting our friends, the Sturdy Voogds and the Segars there for a drink on Wednesday night. It's called the Chip Inn (which reminded me of the Come Back Inn of Madison fame...), and it's the perfect Wednesday night corner bar: pool table in the back and Yatzee on the shelf, Goose Island on tap, and a very friendly bartender slinging suds. Jessica schooled Simana in billiards (or was it the other way around?), the boys talked about computers, art, and politics, and I relaxed and drank it all in. And Dan and Simana, fresh from Hawaii visiting Dan's sister, brought us a pineapple and chocolates! More chocolates! It was heavenly! Other than that, however, the week didn't hold much for us, other than some really crummy weather.

Later, though, Trevor and I had a quiet and cozy weekend. Even though it was freezing cold outside, we braved the weather on Saturday afternoon to meet John Sturdy at Uncle Mike's for lunch. Although Trevor, John, and I all have actual Uncle Mikes in our respective families, the Uncle Mike's we went to is a little restaurant on Grand and Paulina, where I had a B.L.T., Trevor had a tuna salad sandwich, John had a breaded perch sandwich, and we all drank some coffee. It was very pleasant. After lunch, Trevor and I went back home to be warm again, and John had to, unfortunately, ride home on his bike in the -1 degree weather. Back at the homestead, I finished my physics book, Trevor took a nap, I took a nap, then we ate dinner. A huge success, really, and plenty of napping does a good Saturday afternoon make! Although it was too cold to take Henry to the dog park, Trevor took him to the studio late Saturday afternoon so he could run around and chase Trevor and John on scooters. While they were getting their exercise, I was watching a horror movie my friend Jasen lent me called High Tension. Eww, and what a gooey and scary, and GROSS movie it was! It was so much fun, and that makes two really enjoyable horror movies this month (read the Hostel post for the other...), so I feel truly lucky in the genre in 2006. Let's hope we only go up from here.

Sunday, Trevor and I did little more than nothing. Although we had breakfast at the Breakfast Club, then went back home for more napping, then puttered out to the suburbs to see the Bork parents for dinner at La Tasca, everyone's favorite tapas restaurant. It was delicious and we all filled up on olives and scallops and potatoes and sangria and caramel flan. It doesn't get much better. Mom and Dad Bork were both very excited because they're leaving for vacation tomorrow, and are terribly happy about the warm weather they're going to encounter in Arizona. We'll brave the below zero weather here while they're living it up in the sun, hanging out at the Grand Canyon, and doing whatever it is you do when it's warm and you don't have to go to work (i.e. having a wonderful time.)

And, that was our weekend! Try to control yourself from getting TOO excited, I know, it's a lot of stuff to wrap yourself around: napping, eating, napping some more. Where do we get our energy? Why, napping, of course!

I also persuaded a friend of mine to give J.D. Salinger a second try. Ryan, a work pal, had only read The Catcher in the Rye, a favorite among young, rebellious adolescent boys, but it didn't do much for him when he read it as a twenty-something. He kind of thought Holden was a punk. And, let's face it, he is. But I told him to give Franny and Zooey a shot (it's my favorite ever), which he read in record time and thought was fabulous! He's back on the Salinger train and will read his Nine Stories and the R.H.T.R.B.C. and S.A.I., which is terribly exciting, and I can't wait to hear his thoughts on them all! Myself, I just started 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I was spurred on by Trevor, who's reading the newest book by Jonathan Ames, and the Verne novel is referenced. It's been in my collection for a number of years now (I dug the slightly cracked copy out of the giveaway box at my old job working at after-words) but hadn't yet read it. So, needing something new to read after finishing my book, and being torn among the HUGE stack of Wodehouse that Trevor's grandpa sent me last month, the new Lemony Snicket, and two new short story collections, I had a muse. And his name was Trevor. So far the book is great (big surprise there...), and I'll let you all know how it turns out as Nemo travels to the ocean's depths to find the scariest creature known to man. Seriously.

Until next time, friends, have a fabulous last week of February, and, time-permitting, take lots of naps!

Sunday, February 12, 2006


TREVOR MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE RABIES...

But we'll get to that in a minute. First up, Friday night was a lovely cap to a busy week. Trevor met the Sturdy Voogds out for a drink and I got frustrated trying to track down his Valentine's Day present. The silly employees at Borders (it's okay, he already knows it's a book of some kind...) seem to have liked the product I put on hold Wednesday night SO much that they replaced it with a decidedly sub-par book on the hold shelf, perhaps hoping I was a blind, nerve ending-less child, and wouldn't notice the difference in size, texture, and quality. But alas! I am NOT such a child, and noticed the difference right away! (well, as soon as I paid for the phony book and walked away from the register. But I did NOT exit the store! Ah-hA Borders!) But to my chagrin, and to some lucky employee's, well, luck, the one copy the store still had in their computer couldn't be located by the lovely girl helping me out (it had probably been stuck in the paperback romance section under some Nora Roberts new releases by the same sneaky employee that now has it on his shelf). So, Saturday afternoon, I located the book at yet another Borders (one that didn't screw me over) and picked it up after work.

But before that, at work, I had a library appointment with a woman named Kate, who came in with her husband from Albany, New York: he had to attend a lawyerly conference all weekend, so she took advantage of our theater and watched both shows (Much Ado on Thursday night, and Macbeth on Saturday morning). She teaches 11th and 12th grade Brit. Lit., so visited our library to get some good class activities to take back with her. And thinking about her now, I wonder if she and her husband made it back to NY all right; Trevor's friend Daniel in Brooklyn told us they've got about 2 feet of snow out there! Lucky East coast. All we've got is cold.

While I was at work Saturday, Trevor and Henry went out to the dog park, got dirty (well, Henry did), and picked up a Valentine's Day gift for me. All I want is candy in a heart-shaped box; anything else is just gravy. And hopefully, it's chocolatey gravy!

We had the Sturdy Voogds over for dinner last night, and it was a successful second dinner with friends. We pulled out the table leaves, Jessica got to see our "new" furniture (last time she was here, we'd just moved in, so neither the couch nor my rocker were here yet), and we ate some pretty tasty pasta shells, which I stuffed myself (with riccotta, basil, onions, and love). After dinner, we went out to Pressure, a billiard cafe in Roger's Park, to see the S.V.'s friend Mike do stand-up comedy. And he was damn funny! His bit involved tigers at a Vegas magic show, so how could it NOT be funny? Although we can't say the same thing for the guy following Mike (the "headliner"), who stunk like a fish decomposing in a field in August. Pee-eww. But Mike made us laugh for twenty minutes, so it was worth it. And we walked past an "Authorized Lego Dealer" (no joke) on the way back to the car, had a beer at the Ten Cat, then went home to bed (well, Trevor fell asleep and I stayed up eating Ritz cracker sandwiches and watching A Fish Called Wanda.).

Today was a relaxed, food-focused day. We went to breakfast at a place called Jane's. It looked like the North Shore burped up a restaurant in Bucktown: the food was great, but we were certainly out of place among all of the rich-looking, thirty-somethings and their impeccably dressed toddlers. It was a terrific space, though, with lofted ceilings and exposed rafters, like an old barn. Even the ladies' room was decorated with Laura Ashley-like floral wallpaper and white painted paneling. Someone should have been churning butter in the kitchen. But the stereo system was playing some sort of new age techno that didn't fit at all. Just like us! But, I ate apricot apple pancakes, Trevor ate banana bread French toast, and we agreed that both meals were delicious. We'll never go back, but the eats were great.

Now, on to RABIES!

After breakfast, we stopped by the house to get Henry, then meandered up to Wiggly Field, our favorite dog park. We'd been there for about half-an-hour, had met some nice people with some swell dogs, and Henry was having a blast: chasing, being chased, tumbling around. It was great. Until a woman showed up with her undercover hell-hound. The dog was quite fine for the first ten or fifteen minutes he was there. He was a muppet-looking terrier of some sort, and he was getting on well with all of the other guys in the park. Until a sweet, chubby Weimaraner apparently looked at the terrier sideways and caught the brunt of his temper. And of course, our good natured Henry popped in the fray to see what all the fuss was about, and that was when the terrier went Cujo. Seriously. Henry yelped horribly as he ran backwards from the terrier, and the dog wasn't letting up. Trevor tried to grab our guy out of the way, but of course Henry was excited and struggling, and before he got Henry off the ground, Trevor was bit by the terrier. The woman finally got a hold of her Cujo and removed him from the park. Apparently the dog had also ripped through the jacket of the Weimaraner's owner, in addition to poor Trevor's hand. A helpful Huskie owner got a bottle of water for Trevor to wash out his wounds, and a pen and paper for me to write down the terrier woman's information. Trevor's hand is sore, but his cuts stopped bleeding, and we think he's okay. But we'll give him some homemade rabies shots anyway. Just kidding. When we got home, he took a much deserved nap with Henry and Martin, I baked some shortbread cookies and did some laundry, and all was right with our world again.

And that's all of our exciting news. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! And wish me luck that Trevor likes his Valentine (it's the two year anniversary of our first romantic contact, Trevor's "anonymous boy" Valentine stuck between my two volumes of Sherlock Holmes' mysteries! Well, first romantic contact if you're not counting a conversation about the Thai vampire movie Aswang as romantic. And I guess I'm not.)

Saturday, February 11, 2006


The week flew by--as usual--and the weekend is upon us. Again! I'm off to work this morning and Trevor and Henry are going to hang around and do guy things, like go to the dog park, watch t.v., take a nap, read a book (we're teaching Henry to read. It's a process)... Wait, I like those things, too. I'm going to have to SERIOUSLY reevaluate this whole working on Saturday thing.

I would like to dedicate this blog entry to my friend, Lisa, who braved one of the bloodiest horror movies made in the past few years like a trooper. Lisa, her boyfriend Josh, their friend Ben and I saw Hostel on Thursday night. And my GOD it was fabulous! It's the second film from Eli Roth, a young writer/director who is so obviously smitten with the horror genre that you can't help but love what he's doing (even if some of the post-collegiate male banter referencing homosexuals [insert offensive slang term here] and "railing" ladies should have been cut from the script). It was truly the most original horror film I've seen in years--terrific character development and a great story. And Lisa sat through the whole thing like a trooper! Only jumping into Josh's lap a couple of times, and watching the bloodiest scenes through her fingers (probably thanking god all the while that she still had fingers to look through, unlike some of the poor saps in the film...).

We're going to have dinner tonight with our friends, the Sturdy Voogds (John Sturdy, Jessica Voogd) before heading up to Rogers Park to watch some stand-up comedy--their friend has a show and apparently the Onion and the Reader are reviewing, so we'll want to laugh a lot, and avoiding booing and hissing at all costs (remember that awful red-haired woman on Seinfeld who booed Jerry on stage, then, after Jerry returned the favor at her workplace, got upset, ran into the street, and a taxi [or was it a city bus?] drove over and severed her pinkie toe? Talk about horror!) So we'll be sure to stick to laughing, as long as they're funny.

Until next time, True Believers! I'll try to explain thermodynamics based on my physics book. Yeah, right. Wish me luck with that. HA!

Monday, February 6, 2006

They’re Engaged! They’re Engaged!

The Borkster popped the question, and he and Paula are getting MARRIED! It’s such great news, and Trevor and I are actually a part of the story!

It happened after they left us on Friday night: we went home to sleep while they went out to—honestly—play Connect Four (!) have another drink, then eat pizza and get engaged back at Greg’s house! They woke up all of the parents that night to tell them, and apparently Mr. Nichols had spent two sleepless nights wondering when it would happen! (Greg had asked for his blessing on Wednesday night, but waited 48 hours to actually ask…) So, the wedding’s on, and I couldn’t be happier to have Paula as my sister-in-law! I’ve never had a sister, and it will be very exciting to make it official (since Paula’s already been like a sister for the past three years.) But guys, is too soon to ask you to have some kids so I can guy baby toys? Yes, it probably is. I’ll wait until next year to start asking…But the wedding has been tentatively set for September 30th of this year, so we've all got to get into super wedding mode!

Other than this EXITING news, the weekend was pretty low key. Trevor and I spent our Saturday morning at Chicago Shakespeare Theater watching Macbeth, which was a bloody fun-fest. Roger Ebert was in the audience, and during the Q&A with the cast after the show, he eked in the last question about the curse of Macbeth. Pretty dull question, really, especially since the legend is explained in the program. But he got his question in, and Trevor (with a MUCH better question about the fate/free will aspect of Macbeth’s encounters with the Weird Sisters, didn’t get to ask his. Ebert, you stink!)

Well, that's all of the news on the Bork Power front! Until next time...

Sunday, February 5, 2006


THE PARTY'S OFF!
Last night Trevor and I had quite a pleasantly surprising night. We took a journey to my cousin Michael's birthday party in Lincoln Park. But we got there and noticed a suspicious lack of young Italian American guys hanging around; actually, there was a lack of everyone. Except Borks. There was me, obviously, and there was the Borkster, sitting at the end of the bar, as if he was waiting for us. The three of us ordered a round of drinks while trying to figure out where the party was hiding. Eventually (it didn't take us long) we called my Aunt Carol (Michael's mom) to figure out what the heck was going on. The party was cancelled. Apparently, Michael and his girlfriend Karen broke up, and since she was the one planning the party, they'd cancelled it. Well, we didn't quite know what to do except wait for Greg's girlfriend Paula to meet us there, order another round of drinks, and get the hell out of there!
Next stop, the BIG ROCK SHOW. The four of us got to Davenport's, the site of my friends Tim and Scotty's mock-rock concert. We had to walk through a karoke piano bar to get to the back room, where the show had already started. But we caught up quickly. Because it ROCKED. CLTV was filming it for a piece on Tim and Scotty, which was pretty exciting, so the four of us made lots of noise, clapped really loud, and laughed and Tim and Scotty's bizarre shenanigans. By the end of the show, Scotty was in red leather pants, proudly sporting a lightening bolt painted across his sad little sunken chest, and I was laughing so hard, tears were forming in the corners of my eyes. Greg and Paula had a good time, too,
So, the four of us finished our drinks at the bar before Trevor and I left. Greg and Paula were off to the Beechwood Tap, a good choice to grab a low-key drink and play a game of Connect Four, and we went home to fall asleep. It was great to hang out with the two of them, and even though the night wasn't quite according to plans, it exceeded our expectations.
Until next time!

Friday, February 3, 2006


Hello, all! We've had a whirlwind of activity the past week, and we're not about to stop. It's been mostly work-related: the theater started student shows yesterday (of Macbeth), which means 1,000 kids come in and out over a five hour period, and I'm trying to smile and say hi to all of them. No wonder my cheeks hurt. It's a little crazy and I have another 3 months of it to look forward to! Trevor is getting ready to head back down to Atlanta after the weekend to show the Home Depot folks what a REAL photography studio can do. And tonight we're going to my cousin Michael's birthday party, then on to my friend Tim's rock show. A BIG rock show.
Then, the show has its public opening tomorrow, so Trevor and I are going to that. I have to greet some students before the show, so he can see me in action before we hunker down for some serious blood and guts in the Scottish Play.
And Henry is still Henry-ing it up! I'm telling him all about the science I'm learning in my new book, The Physics of Superheroes. It's a pretty awesome book, although when I excitedly told Trevor that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, he already knew it. So, I didn't WOW him as much as I would have liked. Also, he already knows cool information about superheroes, so the stuff I'm trying to tell him about The Flash, he's not impressed by, either. I'm going to have to find something he doesn't know about to wow him with. I wonder if he knows anything about underwater basket weaving...more on that later.
Well, folks, that's all for now. We'll be back with some new news soon!