Trevor and I celebrated Valentine's Day in style: with a heart-shaped pizza from Lou Malnati's, candy in a heart-shaped box (compliments of the Blommer's Chocolate Factory), a Benjamin Bird t-shirt for me, starring Batman and some of the Law & Order crew, and some fancy beer and gin for Trevor. Don't worry, he didn't drink it all at once (and I didn't eat all of the chocolate at once, although it was tempting).

Henry enjoys new art at home



the artwork of:
Jen Davis

Martha Williams (I'm not sure if this is really her website, but she works for TimeOut Chicago)

Gary Engle

Irena Knezevic (She has a show coming up at the MCA)

I believe the painting on the brick was painted by my great grandfather, Joe Madel. He does not have a website, but I did link him to the first image that came up when I Googled his name.

Where have all the intelligent employees gone?

Since I do have good customer service experiences every now and then, I don't think that ALL of the intelligent workers of the world have disappeared; however, recent events have led me to the conclusion that their population might be in dire straits.

If you read our previous entry, you're aware of the predicament I was responsible for getting us into with the car/scooter/wall debacle. Well, because of the flat-tire (which also occurred on Thursday, though for this I can't really claim responsibility--it was a screw, not me!), and an upcoming check-up, I dropped our car off for service first thing Saturday morning. I'd have preferred to drop it off on Friday, but they said that they couldn't change the tire until Saturday. Okay. So I dropped it off, went home, and, among other low-key activities, awaited a call to tell me that the car was ready.

Well, four o'clock in the p.m. rolls around, and no call from the dealership. So I called to check up, and lo-and-behold, the car's not ready. You'd think that if the dealership was closing within the hour, and they knew they had a customer expecting to pick up the car, they'd have called to let said customer know. And you'd have thought wrong, apparently. They hadn't thought to call, but Ken the service consultant told me that it'd get priority Monday morning and go in first thing. He gave me the name of their preferred car rental agency when I told him that I'd need to rent a car for Monday (no loaners available, though Trevor and I suspect that the Mercedes and Audi customers do have that option [sorry, mom and dad, we're not dissing the Benz (since hopefully someday that will be us!), we're just pragmatic]).

So, I picked up my Ford Focus at 7:28 this morning (Enterprise kindly let me in two minutes before they're officially open since it was a brisk 1 degree outside) and came back home to await the contractor working on our neighbor's wall. He called to let me know he was running late because of car trouble, and showed up three hours later than anticipated. Though, car trouble is something we obviously understand, so no worries.

But by the time he got there and started removing the drywall, he realized he hadn't gotten insulation for the wall, so he left for the day and will be back in the morning. My question is: since on Saturday you stuck your hand through the hole and investigated the crack and hole from all points of view, how did you NOT know to get insulation? So, he was here for less than an hour and has done little to no work. Which doesn't pose a problem directly for us, but my neighbor now has a slightly larger hole in her wall. Great.

On my way home from Crystal Lake, it started to snow. I'm still in the Ford Focus, and I quickly and unhappily realize that its windshield-wipers are gar-baahhhge. It's rolling up past four o'clock on Monday, and I've yet to hear from the car dealership. I check in with Trevor, but he hasn't heard from them, either. So I give old Ken a call. Well, given that it's after 4 p.m. and they're closing in less than an hour, you'd have thought old Ken would have given me a call to let me know that the car is STILL NOT READY. That's right. His assurance that our car would get priority-first-thing-service today, was a.....LIE. There was still another car ahead of ours and it certainly wouldn't be ready in the next forty-five minutes. So, "sometime tomorrow." Like, you're kidding me, right, Ken?

No, Ken is not kidding. "It's been very busy," he tells me. And apparently the busy-ness has prevented him from calling his customers to let them know that their cars aren't ready and they'll have to rent their cars for the second day in a row. Needless to say, since I'd been under the impression that the car would be ready same-day, I left our garage door opener, I-Pass, and CLC faculty parking pass in the car. So tomorrow I'll have to dig the rental out of its spot on the street and I'll have to again stop for tolls and pay twice as much, and I'll have to write the security patrol a note explaining my rental situation, and hope that they don't give me a CLC parking violation. Now, of course, these are really petty problems, but they're currently my problems, so I'll whine about them anyway.

I express to old Ken my disappointment and frustration with this situation, and I ask him the reason for not telephoning me to warn me about the car's un-readiness situation. Ken really has no answer; he simply tells me that they've been very busy. "Hmm," I say. "Even though I brought the car in two days ago and had an appointment?" Yes, according to Ken. "And even though you told me it'd go in first thing this morning?" Yes, says Ken. "Golly, well that's just shite!" I didn't actually say this, but I was pretty close to doing so. What I'd have loved is a simple apology from Ken--an apology for misleading me about when the car would be ready, and an apology for having my car two days longer than they'd let on. But Ken simply does not apologize. Guess I'm not even worth that.

When Trevor found out about this situation, he called good old Ken right back up and asked for his supervisor. He got "Andy," who was less than helpful. Andy, also, did not apologize for anything, and simply claimed "busy-ness." Guess the customer's never right, huh? And I guess they haven't taught customer service at Fletcher Jones Volkswagen. So, tomorrow I'll drive through the snow in an old Ford Focus, and hopefully get the car when I'm done with class, since, according to Andy, "It'll be done around noon, I guess?" Well, Andy, is that a question, an estimation, or just another fib?

Now, these problems and frustrations are trite compared to the frustrations my neighbor currently has in her condo. But they just reinforce this overwhelming dread I get every time I go to Starbucks and they sleepily, and with nearly closed eyes, take my order, then give me the wrong muffin (after I ask them, "Isn't that blueberry?" when I spy the obviously blueberry muffin in the bag they're handing over. I asked for cranberry. But I guess they know better.) or anywhere else that I run into poorly trained (or just plain lazy) employees. It kind of drives me crazy, and when it's bigger than a muffin (let's say, when it's car-sized), it does get to be more of a bother.

I guess for the time being, I'll focus on the young movie theater employee who blesses me when I sneeze while on line, then hands me my ticket and change and tells me to "feel better!" Or the smiling toll booth operator who wishes me a good day (although that one only reminds me why I'm going to a toll booth operator in the first place...). And, for the future, we'll never bring our car back to Fletcher Jones.

Antics? Whose antics?

Soooooo, we've had an eventful few days. Wednesday morning was awful outside, weather-wise, and my classes were cancelled at MCC because of the iciness, so I hunkered down with Henry to grade papers and such while it snowed-snowed-snowed.

Thursday I drove over some ridiculously unplowed and unsalted roads in Lake County on my way to school (according to the news, the streets and sanitation department didn't have enough salt for the whole county), and apparently on the way through the icy muck, I ran over a screw. By the time I got out of class at noon, my tire was flat. I got a pretty quick tow and headed back home. The streets were a little better by that time. However, as I was pulling into our garage at home, I got stuck on some ice on my way in, accelerated like a banshee to get over it, and ended up flying into Trevor's scooter, which then flew into the garage wall. Well, this hole didn't look too bad and I figured it could be easily patched up.



Until I got a call from our neighbor (whose unit is on the other side of the garage wall) to tell me that her wall seemed to be buckling. Ah-HA! Seems the scooter handle hit some studs and caused more damage than met the immediate eye.


Paula, wonder-sister-in-law, gave me the name of a couple of contractors she uses, and one of them came out this morning. He's able to start first thing Monday morning, so we're relieved. Luckily, our fabulous neighbor Sarah (whose wall I destroyed) is just about the most understanding person around. She said that she's "driven her share of scooters through walls," (figuratively, of course) and understood. She's pretty awesome.

This morning I drove the car over to the dealership to get a new tire and have our 30K mile check up (whew, that's a lot of driving...) , then let in the contractor to take a look at the wall. Trevor has decided to keep me on as a wife, even with these recent, costly shennanigans. I baked him an Apology Cake, which I think helped. A little bit.



That's all we've got going on so far. We'll keep you up-to-date with any developments. And hopefully none of those developments will include me crashing into walls!

Poooooooowwwwwwwer!

Super Duper Tuesday

abominable snowdog

Day 6

Day six of our trip was the last real touristy day and the last real day for photos. Trevor had started to come down with a cold Sunday night, and by the end of day six, both of us were pretty sick. But this was Christmas Eve, it was sunny and 60 degrees, (perfect!) so we packed it full of lots of good site-seeing!

We made our way first to Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi cathedral. It was really one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. It's very organic looking and feeling; it seems as though there was a tremendous hunk of stone in the middle of the city, and Gaudi just carved this out of it. It rises into the air in an almost gravity-defying way. The inside was unfinished (it's scheduled, I think, for another forty years of construction), but the columns were all complete, as was some of the stained glass.







Carved into the outside of the cathedral were Biblical stories (seemingly all of them, moving upwards chronologically), which was fabulous.






We left the cathedral and walked to an apartment building Gaudi had also designed. We only saw the outside--there was a block-long line to get in--but it was really interesting.



Our final Gaudi stop was to his Parc Guell, a public park he designed, much in his well known mosaic tile style. It was just perfect there, though awfully high (Trevor cajoled me to climb every stair and hill all the way to the top. I was about to collapse, but it was absolutely worth it.). There was a group of young people having a picnic at the top, which was really pleasant, and there were dogs running all over the place (both Madrid and Barcelona were dog-heavy towns. Henry would have had a ball). On our way back from Parc Guell, we stopped to pick up sandwiches, sodas, and cookies, and ate them on a bench before we took the Metro home. Quite a lovely day.







Our last day in Spain was Christmas day, and although we don't have photos, we had a nice mini-celebration. In the late morning we took sandwiches and cashews to the beach for a picnic, and were pleased to find that the beautiful weather had brought out lots of Spaniards to the beach-front. There were families and couples--just about everyone. It was great. We were going to see 'I am Legend' ('Soy Legundo'!) that evening and meet up with Trevor's cousin again for a Christmas dinner, but I was a fluish, aching mess, so we decided to hang out in the hotel. Trevor went out and picked up some dinner and deeeelicous pastries for dessert (I'm never too sick for sweets. Ever.) topped with little Santas. Fabulous.

The next morning we headed to the airport and home. It was an excellent trip, and I'm already dreaming of where we'll go next!

Day 5

Today was the futbol game day, so we decided to take it relatively easy to rest up for the big match. We went back up to La Rambla and another neighborhood, Raval. It was Sunday, so a lot of shops and galleries were closed, but we found a plaza that was setting up an artist's market, and--needless to say--I was very excited about it. We got a pair of volcanic rock earrings for Trevor's boss, Susan, and I got a shawl-ish/cape-ish jacket (it's adorable, really). There was a huge "gato" in the middle of the plaza, and after I gave it a smooch for this photo, some young Spanish boys asked me (excitedly and in Spanish [Trevor had to tell me what on earth they were asking me to do...] to take a photo with one of them. I felt sort of famous and dorky--it was fun.




We took a siesta, geared up for the game in our Barcelona togs (Trevor in his new Eto'o jersey, me in our new Barcelona scarf and my team socks) and took the Metro up to Camp Nou. We couldn't sit together, but Trevor was just behind me in the next row, so it was all just fine. The weather was perfect: a bit chilly towards the later evening, but clear skies and no wind. Trevor explained to me that whistling is a "boo" instead of a "yahoo!" noise, which I was glad about since I'm an excited whistler. We did a lot of cheering, we held up a colored sheet of paper and tried to sing along with the rest of the stadium while they sang the team song, and we had a wonderful time. Barcelona lost to Real Madrid (boooooooooo!), but it was so exciting to be there, and the game was great.







We did not take this video, but it shows the "mosaic" cheer that we were able to participate in.



And this is a video of the sad yet beautiful goal that won the game for Real Madrid.

Day 4

Day four was our "Barcelona-wandering-and-shopping" day. The weather was just great: about 10 degrees warmer than it had been in Madrid, and it was no longer raining. We returned to the neighborhood we'd gone to for dinner and visited, among other things, the really lovely plaza of a cathedral, the Barcelona Futbol Club's official store (to get gear for the game), and an excellent toy shop, El Ingenio, that had shelves and shelves of these fabulous masks, heads, and puppets.









We stopped for lunch at La Palma, a great place we found on a little side street. We sampled our first glasses of 'cava,' which is Spanish champagne. The food was great, and there were huge kegs of wine that weren't just for show (the waiter opened one up to fill a pitcher for the table next to us).




After lunch we walked up La Rambla, a huge boulevard in a busy part of town. There were "living statues" all over the place, and one of our favorites was a Ronaldinho look-alike. There were also a number of pet stands selling fish, lizards, and birds. These little guys were very excited to pose for Trevor.





We briefly visited the Museum of Chocolate, where everything under the glass cases was made/carved out of chocolate. It was tremendously exciting, and we got to see our second Ronaldinho of the day. This guy was most likely tastier than the first. Needless to say, we were getting very excited about our game!



After the siesta, we met up with Trevor's cousin Vanessa, who's been living in Barcelona for about three months. Unfortunately we didn't take any photos with her (I have no idea why!?), but we had a great time at dinner, and then we took her to the Ginger for a drink. Vanessa works as a location scout for a television commercial production company, which is pretty neat. It was really fun to meet her (she and Trevor hadn't seen each other since they were little) and hang out. She also lives right up the street from Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi cathedral we planned to visit on Christmas Eve.