✶✶✶✶ Chicago MMXIV ✶✶✶✶

Anyway the concept of reading in sauna is a bit alien to me b/c I never wear my glasses in (this also makes nudity easier to deal with imo).

Reading a newspaper in a sauna is one of life's great pleasures.

Would not recommend anything that you actually want to keep past the duration of the sauna visit. The Reader fits the occasion perfectly.

king spa has like 12 diff dry saunas, each at diff temps. some i'm sure low enough for kindle use.

there's also the lovely lounge area though

Is anyone else unable to access Gmail? downforeveryoneorjustme.com says it's working, but when I try to go to the site it says:

Temporary Error (500) We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.

It's down per everyone freaking out on Twitter.

I'm sorry our conversation as cut short. We were really making some headway.

Yeah, apparently it's down all over the world. Is this the way the world ends?

Who's drinking at Whole Foods tonight???????

Gmail is working again.

xp

so, not me

Hey Thursday and Friday next week are my vacation between old job and new job, just in case anyone else has days off for some reason and wants to catch a matinee or drink day beers. I'll probably be doing those things with or without you.

i might go see frankie rose at schuba's on monday

If it's not assbuttshitfuck cold I would bring the baby and meet you for a beer somewhere, NA.

it's my first week of classes and i'm not doing anything fun because i need to preserve my sanity

Let's get baby beers.

This winter is the hardest one I've experienced since the early 1980s when I lived way up in northern Minnesota. It feels like all my big talk is coming back to me, e.g., how winter is NBD and my Chicago apartments are always too hot in the winter (there's been a major, unstoppable draft from the screen door for weeks).

I've got to stop talking about having only experienced one flight delay in my life and hoping to see what turbulence is like.

Strangely, Brenda seems to love the draft. Which is nice b/c she blocks it when she stretches out at the bottom of the door.

Brenda useful

I'm watching a Lifetime movie about these asshole teenagers who kill their neighbor when he busts them having a giant party in their parents' house. This is about as good as it gets for a day like today.

It's called Bond of Silence (A woman seeks answers when her husband dies while trying to subdue teenage partygoers). There was a part where a woman was slicing a single stalk of celery with a chef's knife while three other stalks of celery were sitting right by her hand. LOL.

I'm watching a Lifetime movie

As soon as I saw this I knew it had to be you. We should make a Lifetime Original Movie date sometime!

Anybody got a recommendation for a tailor? Last one I tried wasn't a great experience - I got a suit jacket altered at a place on Broadway near Cornelia and the lady relied on me to tell her not only the fit I wanted, but to specify exactly which spots to alter to achieve those results.

I'd like something more like what happened at Macy's when I bought my suit - they told me how they thought it should fit, then measured, tucked, marked, pinned and a few days later I had a suit that fit nicely.

If you find a good one, lmk. I have been to three or four and for anything beyond hems (and even that was not good at the one on LaSalle and Lake) none of them have been worth the money.

I bought a suit at Nordstrom Rack on State St. and the tailor there did an amazing job fitting it to my stupid proportions. Iirc it was like $70 but totally worth it.

p sure i've posted this on ilx before but the tailor at nordstrom rack st street used to be a man named Carlos Zambrano

my roommate knows a great tailor who is kind off off the grid, i'll ask him for deets

Yes please, gr80!

I've been expecting Eazy to come through w/ a good tip. Seems like it would be in his bailiwick.

Incredibly, after six full days MIA outside in freezing temps, our cat came back! We had a feeling today would be the day when we saw some paw prints in the snow this morning, and now he's here. Awesome.

Yay!!!!!!!!

that's great news and i am genuinely happy for you.

how does he look?

Like nothing ever happened! In fact, he asked to go outside again this morning. I told him "no." Not until it warms up, at least.

lol

c'mon man its way fun out there

That's awesome, JiC!

I just read this on FB: Mobile [Alabama] sends folks with sand and shovels, not salt and spreading machines, to cover slick spots on I-10

Stupid schools stupid closed again tomorrow, and I assume Tuesday, too.

not mine!

:(

Glad to hear your cat is back home and warm JIC! Our Alfred is still reacting amazingly well to his medicine and has been in continued good spirits, but he's still noticeably slower.

My son's daycare is closed tomorrow, so glad my wife has a flexible work from home policy.

Yeah, Evie's day care is closed but we have access to back-up day care through Sarah's work, which just involves bringing her downtown on the train with us.

My cat update is that our older cat Pepper had another stroke(?) last weekend and was really having trouble getting around for a few days, but she has once again mostly recovered, though one of her eyes is permanently dilated so I'm guessing she can't see very well.

Our furnace was broken all weekend. Thankful for space heaters right now.

CPS closed again tomorrow :(

i can't wait to meet 15% of my students who show up for their first day of class tomorrow
i've been told "we never close"

Sarah said that people at her work must have been complaining about having to come in today because HR sent out a snippy email reminding staff that they live in Chicago and should own warm clothes and be expected to be able to deal with cold weather.

yeah everyone's getting real pissy this time
i told my coworkers that i am totally ready to flip the bird at this month and move on

Haha, I made the decision to open today (though we are closing early) and I can tell a bunch of people are pissed off at me.

It's not even close to as cold out today as it was on that Monday a couple weeks ago.

No, definitely not, but it's going to get even colder tonight then it was then.

We had half days scheduled later this week for teacher conferences. My friend did the math and our kids will he going to school about 12 out of 36 possible hours this week.

Yes, 12 hours. Of a potential 36. Even the fucking teachers unions must be kicking themselves at all the required institute days which can't be cancelled, thus basically guaranteeing an extra week of school. So far. God help us if we actually get some bad weather to go with our cold weather.

All my CPS teacher fb friends seem to be mad about both these days off.

There's an argument to be made that it's better to have schools open for kids that may not have heat in their homes. Also I mean if you think it's too cold outside for your kid you can keep her home, right? You don't get in trouble for that do you?

Plus I read that before the last 37 years of nonstop record high annual temps, it wasn't that weird for it to be this cold. We're just not used to it.

everyone seems to be mad about everything at this point

Yeah, historically, its not that uncommon to reach these temps, it's just that now the media has fancy new terms to make the cold sound NEW AND SCARY. Also it's just the way this winter, especially since the new year, has seemed to just hammer us with one thing after the other. Beyond maybe the NYE snow, none of thse things have been so terrible in and of themselves - 3 inches of snow here, 4 inches there, cold ass days, etc - but cumulatively it just feels so much worse. Also, yes, I can understand the pissedoffness. Screw this winter already.

Weather is evidence that God hates us and wants us to be angry.

My senior year of HS was the year of the East coast's "Storm of the Century," which dumped 18" of snow on our part of North Carolina, closing school for a week. We'd already gotten several snow days that year, and they had add extra days on at the end of the school year to meet state requirements. The result was a huge crisis b/c the number of extra days would have extended classes beyond graduation day.

I don't remember how that got resolved. Probably I never actually graduated high school.