Ghost-riding the bull

For Alma's birthday, I got her tickets to a PBR event at Allstate Arena (the former Rosemont Horizon), because she's a fan of the sport - that stands for Professional Bull Riders, for those of you were wondering how Pabst Blue Ribbon could sell out an arena. The event in question was last night, and I have to say it was pretty entertaining.

Bull riding sort of toes the line between ironic enjoyment and unironic enjoyment for me, but I have to say I lean towards the latter camp, as silly as that will probably seem to most of you. You've got these bulls that are trained to buck and spin, and guys trying to stay on them for eight seconds - which is really an eternity in bull riding, and only about a quarter of the 45-man field was able to complete a ride while we were there. The current points leader, in fact, failed to stay on his bull for eight seconds, and he had ridden 80% of all the bulls he'd gotten on this year prior to that point, a mammoth percentage. As the points leader, he was riding last, making it kind of an anticlimactic end to the night.

It was certainly a different kind of sporting event, reflecting, I think, the nature of its audience. In particular - have you ever been to a sporting event that started with a communal prayer? Because I hadn't. Also, because the flow of the action tends to be "three to eight second ride, nothing for 2-3 minutes," the head rodeo clown had to run around working the crowd the whole time. And I was surprised at how small Allstate Arena was, though this meant that despite being on the opposite side of the arena from the chutes, we could still get a pretty good look at the rides (or, technically, the outs - it's not called a ride unless you stay on the full eight seconds).

At any rate, we had a good time. Alma likes cheering on the riders and I like seeing what the bulls do - of course if a guy can ride a bull that's really hard to handle, that makes the whole thing even better. It's a fun niche sport because I can kind of just put it on whenever I feel like it and not worry so much about who the best riders are or what have you; I just like watching a guy try to handle a wild bull. Fun times.

Though obviously baseball is my favorite sport ever and the Cubs my favorite team, and Wrigley the closest venue to me even up in Evanston, I got kind of interested in checking out some of the more "minor" sporting events - there's definitely something to be said for the intimacy of Allstate as a venue (not that Wrigley is cavernous or anything), and it could be fun to see a Rush game or something. We're also probably going to try and see a Fire game or two during the summer; Alma's point was that she feels like if the MLS doesn't get support, it's going to go away like the NASL did (okay, she didn't reference the NASL). While I've had a hard time getting interested in the MLS, she's certainly right about that, and a thriving domestic league can only help the national team which of course I do care about, quite a bit. And Toyota Park only seats 20,000, about the same as Allstate, so it should have that same feel of being close to the action - my only previous soccer experience was at Soldier Field (post-spaceship), which is obviously quite a bit larger. Hopefully there are also a lot fewer drunk people there than there are at Wrigley.

Embarrassing injury of the year

Well, not "injury" per se. I woke up Monday morning with an ugly deep-red bruise on the uppermost part of my right thigh. I moved most of my things up to Evanston on Sunday with assistance from Drew (assistance for which I can't possibly thank him enough, since the mere idea that I might be able to complete the move on my own, which had crossed my mind in advance, seems so ludicrous in retrospect that I might actually have died trying), and at first I thought that the bruise might be related to that, although I couldn't recall any blow I had taken to that area. A little while later, it occurred to me.

Saturday night, Alma and I went out with her best friend Dana, Dana's husband Tom, and a handful of their friends as part of a birthday celebration. We went to a place in Niles that does shabu shabu, an interesting Japanese cooking method (of Mongolian descent) in which each guest gets their own individual hotpot on the table, in which vegetables and pieces of meat can be cooked. It was a fun novelty, at any rate. Afterwards we went back to Dana and Tom's condo, where Dana, Alma and I played the video game "Rock Band" (if you're not familiar, think "Guitar Hero," plus "Drum Hero" and "Singing Hero"). For most of the songs, I was the singer since I knew more of them (when you're the singer, knowing the song is pretty much a must; for any of the instruments, it probably helps not to, so that you can focus on hitting the right buttons). At any rate, the singer is also the tambourine and cowbell player, which is accomplished by hitting the microphone against something. Most people would probably use their hand, but - in case you hadn't guessed this by now - I was hitting it against my upper thigh, clearly (in hindsight) with a bit too much gusto.

The upshot of this story is that I gave myself a bruise while (effectively) singing karaoke. Maybe not as embarrassing as breaking a tooth while eating a donut (and certainly not as problematic), but kind of stupid, no?

You deserve a break in June

We're well over four years into the relationship now, so it's about time that Alma and I finally took our first true vacation together. We're heading out to San Diego in the first week of June, and I could not be more excited. For one thing, we're going from Sunday to Friday, so I'm actually taking an entire week off of work, something I really could not have done at any point prior to now. For another, we're going while the Cubs are there (okay, this wasn't a coincidence) and seeing them twice. For a third, San Diego seems like a pretty cool place to visit. For a fourth, it's me and Alma with four full days (and bits of two more) all to ourselves.

Of course we've been on trips before - Austin and New Orleans in 2006, San Francisco in 2007, a couple trips out to DC, etc - but they've always been in service of something else, like quiz bowl or psychology conferences, and they've never been this long or really by ourselves. If I'm not totally overlooking something, the last true vacation I went on - i.e. the last trip with absolutely no other purpose than to travel somewhere and do things there (not seeing family, no quiz bowl, no conference, no student ambassadorship), and that lasted longer than like one day - was the Flaxman family trip to England and Scotland in August of 1994, so long ago that I was still retardedly writing first sentences (and no more) of great unfinished novels in otherwise blank notebooks. I had not yet turned 12. We are rapidly approaching this having been fifteen years ago. Of course I gerrymandered those qualifications pretty severely, but you get what I'm saying.

Possible items on the itinerary aside from the two Cubs games: harbor cruise, trip to the botanic gardens, trip to Torrey Pines State Reserve, exploration of various architecturally interesting city neighborhoods, etc. (If, by some chance, someone who's been to San Diego or has spent any time there is reading this, feel free to suggest something.) It should be a pretty full four days, or at least I'd like it to be, but hopefully we'll time it so it'll be full in a fun way and not in any kind of exhausting way. I suppose it's always tough to walk that line between "vacation = relaxation" and "we should be out seeing stuff," but I'll feel like an asshole if I'm sleeping all day like I did one of the days in New Orleans. The two-hour time difference might help me get up early (although it probably means I'll be totally wiped by 10 pm every night).

I have to be wary of looking too far ahead, though. In between now and June 1, I still have to move everything I own up to Evanston and finish my first semester of classes at Roosevelt. We're not out of the woods yet.

I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide

The Flax Changes Apartments sweepstakes are over. And the winner is...

*drum roll*

...Evanston!

That's right, after more than three and a half years of being four blocks from Wrigley Field, I'm moving back up the shore to the town that started it all. Why Evanston? Well, for one thing, it's cheaper - not a ton, perhaps, but cheaper nonetheless. It's like a good Chicago neighborhood at bad Chicago neighborhood prices! (Not quite that low. But it is cheaper, I assure you. Not having to pay for a city sticker come July: priceless.) The commute to work will be longer, but not by a ton - I can catch the Purple Line Express in the morning and cruise to Belmont. Nights after class might suck a little, but that's already true. It's a nice area and one I'm already very familiar with. And, perhaps most importantly, it moves me moderately closer to Alma, both at home and at school. That's always a good thing.

So the moving process will take place sometime in the next three weeks, primarily. That'll be kind of annoying; I don't have too much to move, and this will be a good excuse to throw some stuff out, but I do have a couple large things that will make a Uhaul pretty much necessary. I'm also going to have to buy some stuff, since almost none of the stuff outside the bedroom right now is mine. It'll take some work, but maybe this time I can actually make it look like an adult lives there.