A Minor Adjustment

Now that we've all weighed in on the good riddance of Karl Rove, let's talk about me for a moment.

First of all, it appears the commute issue is going to be ok. I have figured out a very nifty route and, if the first business day of this nonsense is any indication, so has just about everyone else. Which also means that I just bought myself an extra 30 minutes in the morning.

People heeded warnings, planned ahead, stuffed what few commuter trains we have and generally managed without major tie-ups of any sort. Frankly, I'm surprised. And I couldn't help but wonder if maybe when all this is over some of those folks mght not stay on the trains instead of climbing into their cars again.

Although, before I start waxing to Al Gorian, please note that I was driving my car and not using public transportation, nor would I use public transportation to get to this particular job because "public transportation" in Seattle doesn't approach meaning what it means in a place like Chicago which has trains that run, all the time, in varoius directions, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, I'm quite sure that you in Chicago and NY and SF and London and Paris and other sensible cities with some sort of subway/elevated/tram/train system would regaled me with a ton of stories about how your system isn't all that great/convenient/etc. And all I would say in answer to that is, "You have no idea what you're talking about".

But instead of boring you with the paucities of our "mass transit" (and oh, those are some air quotes just dripping with sticky sarcasm so watch your shoes) I would like to celebrate a mass transit system that I am very fond of. Today we celebrate the trains of Chicago.










Funny you-had-to-be-there story: after we left the dinner party we, Buck and the Iwanski-party-of-four took the train back downtown. This was very, very civilized and cosmopolitan. Late night, a bit more wine indulged than would be reasonable if one were driving a car, but no matter. We walked a very civilized number of blocks to the nearest train station and waited for very little time before the train arrived. A train which deposited us another very civilized number of blocks from home. This is how it is supposed to work. Anyhoo, I was quite full of joie de vie and "Chicago is the coolest city evah" and still flushed with the general excitement of being in the presence of greatness and I said, as we waited for the train, "Hey, everybody! Act like you're waiting for the train so I can take a picture!"





See? Casual.

On another note: working is hard.

(I said that with a really whiny baby voice, in case you couldn't tell).

I realize that there will be little sympathy coming from this hard-working crowd. And I don't want any. Chasing after a kid/keeping a house/volunteering/blahblahblahblahblahblah is certainly work and all that hooha. Balancing that and persuing avocations while actually engaged however briefly in a vocation: not easy. You knew that. I knew it, intellectually. Now the reality is kicking my arse.


Part of the challenge quite frankly has nothing to do with balancing things and everything to do with the fact that I have a tremendous amount to accomplish in a mere 3 weeks. And atop the organizing I am, by title, the Assistant to the Interim Director, which means admin-y stuff like letters and answering phones and all that sort of office-y stuff. And I find myself trying to walk a very thin line between learning enough to do an effective job without immersing myself in the work because I'm outie at the end of the month. Which is all to say that my brain hurt yesterday. Not a headache, a head hurt.

Also, and I know this sounds like whining but really I'm not, afternoon has never been my optimal time of day. I get home during the lowest bit of my energy cycle, or whatever you kids are calling it these days. For the next few weeks I must figure out how to regard the work I need to do for my real life (writing content for a website, updating the food blog, tending to family matters that require actual brain cells, etc.) without thumb-sucking and drooling.

Here's a picture of a man on the train in Chicago:


Hee.

I was thankful to come home to a very clean kitchen, courtesy of The Child, who took it upon herself to hand wash all the dishes that were not cleaned by the less than stellar performance of the dishwasher (again), and a clean Dog, again courtesy of The Child. She seems to be owning this latchkey kid thing with a fair amount of apblomb at the moment. I expect she'll be bored out of her mind by the end of the month but for now she's managing beautifully and I'm very proud of her.