i have white sox tickets for tonight’s game.
naturally, the weather forecast calls for 50-some degree temperatures, and thunderstorms at game time.
*sigh*
that when you walk 12 or 13 miles or so, and you’re really really not interested in doing anything else that involves being on your feet for a while, that’s a good time to go through and post some pictures.
We started at Howard Street at 8:15 AM, and reached Cermak Road at 1:57 PM exactly—including a pause for lunch at North Avenue, from 11:20 AM until 12:15 PM.
So that’s 12 miles in 4.75 hours. Not too shabby!
We took tons of photos. My camera had 164 on it, and Sean and Steph both had cameras of their own with plenty of photos. We’re going to create a Flickr pool with them.
But for now? I really, really, really, really, really want to drink about a gallon of water, and put my feet up on a cushion!
See more progress on: Walk the length of Clark Street in Chicago
this is a terribly pessimistic summation of the white sox possibilities that face us: DFA pods and erstad; shop mack, dye, crede, and another starter; assign some sort of unspecified doom to cintron. on the bright side, he does suggest signing buehrle to a long-term contract to reassure fans that the fire sale doesn’t mean … it’s a fire sale.
i have to admit i’m terribly worried that some of my favorite players might have to be traded away to other clubs just to restock our bench with people who suck and/or are injury-prone less than what we have now. this has been a bad year for the sox DL (although perhaps that’s just because we were spoiled by last year; i think jose went on the 15-day DL like, once, and i don’t recall anything else although surely there was something). and i really like jermaine dye and joe crede; i don’t want to see them go. (although dye does seem to be perhaps slowing down a bit, i’m still fond of him, and not just because he often seems cheerful, which i like. and i like joe a lot because he is so very good, not just because we are the same age — hey, ’78 was obviously a good year to be born: look how awesome we both turned out!) i like jon garland a lot; i wouldn’t mind vasquez getting shopped but only if we got something halfway guaranteed. we have enough crap in our bullpen right now, thank you very much. (do you think we could get a single effective reliever if we tied up Matt Thornton, Mike MacDougal, Boone Logan, and Nick Massett as a package and foisted them off on someone? none of them is truly awful, i suppose, but as a package, jesus, it’s like having a lead sinker tied to your leg, isn’t it?) danks i’m not really impressed with, but he’s young, so i’m not prepared to throw him overboard this early. and aardsma, he’s made me happy a couple of times and it’s not like we really have any other worthwhile closers other than Fat Bob so i’d say hang on to him for the mo’.
i dunno. idle speculation, and prejudicial doom. but, things are not going so well now, and there’s clearly got to be some changes, even if they’re only of the ‘fire don cooper and greg walker’ sort (which: seriously, wtf with the coaching this year? did you guys forget to put on your “be effective!” hats?) like is being advocated in some camps.
i’ll be pissed if they get rid of paulie or a.j., though. and not just because those are the two guys i wear their numbers!
i had time to kill between 5 and 6:30, so i decided to go to the homely despot and scope out window air conditioner units, since i had been thinking of getting one for home. (i have two portable units, of i think 10,000 btus apiece, but they had trouble coping some times last summer when it got very hot out, so i thought if i added a third, i would be sitting pretty all summer long.) since the bedroom had been very hot (as the portable units were in the kitchen and the living room) and sometimes i had trouble sleeping as a result, and also because obviously the electric circuits in the living room and the kitchen were already spoken for, i decided to put a new unit in the bedroom window if i got one.
so i went to the despot just south of roosevelt on clinton — thinking that all the apartments in that area would have central air, and therefore there would be a good, un-picked-over selection of window units — and wound up buying an LG LWHD1006R, a 10,000 btu unit for about $200. i lugged it out to the car, loaded it up, and … found it to be only 5:25. what to do, with an hour yet to kill, an air-conditioner in the car, and nothing to do? i decided to drive the a/c home and unload it, and then return downtown for my 6:30 spinning class at Loopy Yarns.
this plan was perfect, except for the part where i got stuck in traffic.
it took me twenty-five minutes to traverse jefferson st. north from roosevelt to madison. that is ONE MILE, y’all.
i decided at some point that if i hadn’t made it to milwaukee ave. by 1800, i was going to turn around and just go back to the yarn store.
fortunately, i diverted west to halsted and then jogged west on chicago, thus arriving at chicago and milwaukee at exactly 1800. i decided to continue on home. i made it home about 1810, and unloaded the a/c and then …
well, let’s just say that you haven’t lived until you’ve hauled an awkward 150 pound box up two flights of curved stairs, by yourself, in 90°F temps.
at that point, i decided to heck with the spinning class, i was going to (a) call for a pizza, (b) try to figure out how to install the a/c unit, and then (c) collapse. so i unpacked the a/c unit, and promptly got lost for 45 minutes by the terribly vague instructions. but then the pizza guy arrived…
and he brought the wrong pizza. i had ordered “cheese, sausage, pineapple, and mushrooms.” i got “cheese, sausage, pineapple, and shrimp.”
i ask you. who the hell puts SHRIMP on PIZZA???
i like to think of myself as reasonably culinarily adventurous, and besides it would be another 45 minutes if i called to demand a replacement pizza that did not involve tiny pink seafood, so i gave it a shot. — friends, while i am willing to entertain the possibility that that combination of pizza toppings offers some merits, not among those merits is “delicious.”
further complicating the pizza debacle is the fact that, since i very rarely order pizza, when i do, i order a large pizza with the intention of putting most of it in the fridge to enjoy later. however, this time, i have one tupperware thing full of pizza in the fridge, and rather than taking care to wrap up the bits that didn’t fit in the tupperware, i just pitched several pieces. it’s just plain not very good pizza. it’s sort of desperation pizza. even picking the shrimp off didn’t help, because they infected the cheese with shrimp flavor.
i am forced again to ask — who the hell puts SHRIMP on PIZZA???
also, i miss my mushrooms. i always get mushrooms on pizza! dammit.
so i retired to irc to go help solve someone’s mysql woes so i could feel at least somewhat accomplished. during that time, i had an epiphany about some of the bad a/c assembly instructions, went back to work on that some more, solved the problems, got the cabinet basically ready to be mounted… and then i noticed that the instructions expect me to drill into my window. my nice newish vinyl double-paned windows that are not at all wooden and crappy. so i gave up on the a/c for the evening. i was not sure what i would do to solve this problem, but i was certain that i wouldn’t be doing it today.
and it was about then that i realized that in my haste to get home after being stuck in traffic, in order to unload the a/c in a hurry so i could run back downtown to go to the spinning class that i wound up blowing off because, frankly, hauling that much weight up those twisty stairs by yourself is a pain in the ass and you wind up with sore hands, i had completely forgotten to go by the laundromat and pick up my clean clothes. so now i have to get in the car and run over there real fast before work in the morning, or else, like, wear a skirt to work. which is obviously not going to happen.
…
anybody got a saw and want to make your pal niqui a nice plywood frame for her bedroom window so she can mount her shiny new a/c unit and not have it fall three stories to the ground? i’ll bake you cupcakes…
