My slightly weird Long Island rental car experience

Alma and I went to Long Island this week for one of her interviews. Our flight was a late departure, scheduled to get into Islip at 10:50 pm. Since the standard rental brands (like Avis and Hertz) that were located at the airport closed at 11 pm, I had to take a flyer on "E-Z Rent-a-Car," an off-brand and off-terminal company which had the virtue of remaining open until midnight. But then it turned out that the flight was delayed almost an hour and we didn't get to Islip until 11:45. Panicking slightly, I pulled out my phone as soon as we landed and called the number I had for them, hoping to confirm that they would stay open just long enough for me to get a car.

Guy: "Hello?"
Me: "Hi, um, is this E-Z Rent-a-Car?"
Guy: "Yeah, yeah, sure."

He told me to take the shuttle bus to the Holiday Inn and met us in the parking lot with the car a few minutes past midnight, inviting us to put our bags in the trunk before we went inside to the office to do the paperwork. (My immediate thought, which I brushed aside as paranoid nonsense: "His accomplice will come and drive the car away while we're inside!" Alma later told me she had thought the exact same thing.)

The "office" turned out to be a glorified closet off a small corridor just behind and to the right of the Holiday Inn's front desk. The door had a piece of paper taped to it with "E-Z Rent-a-Car" printed on it. The office contained a desk with two chairs in front of it (and one behind it), with a laptop on the desk and a printer on the back shelf. After taking my license and credit card and slowly entering the information by hand into a laptop, the guy spent several minutes trying to print a receipt, but never got the printer working. Eventually he slowly copied all the information from the screen onto a form, by hand, and gave me a copy. He said he would probably run the credit card "tomorrow." When I asked where to drop the car off on Wednesday, he told me I could bring it to a nearby gas station, and the guy there would give us a ride back to the airport. Which is, in fact, what ended up happening Wednesday morning.

All this was vaguely weird and makes for kind of a funny story, but I have to say that it was really no better or worse than any rental car experience I've had, all things considered. I had a car, it was fairly cheap, I got a ride back to the airport... and hey, if we had been talking about a national brand, instead of an obvious off-brand franchise, would the guy have waited after midnight for us? Maybe not.

Iron Chef Flax

I've been cooking a little bit recently. I don't exactly have crazy chef talents, but I can generally follow a recipe, and I wanted to cook for Alma on Valentine's Day. I perhaps ambitiously decided to make chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, not really taking into consideration how long it might take to do so.

First I had to chop up some shallots, which made my eyes sting like crazy. Then I pulled the stems off a bunch of spinach leaves and wilted them in a pan with the shallots. Once that was done I crumbled in the goat cheese and stirred it together to make the filling. Next I had to cut pockets into the raw chicken breasts, which was easier said than done even though I use a nice sharp knife. The chicken breasts weren't huge or anything, and in a couple cases were shaped such that a cut into the side of one end of the chicken would poke through the bottom of the chicken near the other end. This meant, of course, that when the filling was pushed in, it would start to seep out the bottom. Great.

Fortunately I was mostly able to hold the filling in place by completing the next step, which was breading the chicken. I rolled the breasts in flour, dunked them in an egg bath, and then rolled them in bread crumbs. After they sat in the fridge for a few minutes to set up, the breasts were pan-fried for a couple minutes on each side, and then put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

While the chicken was in the oven I worked on making a pasta side. I had decided to make my own sauce, a light lemon-butter-white wine number, but I hadn't read the recipe quite as carefully as I should have; at one point it instructed me to quarter the lemon, then drop all four pieces into the sauce and simmer for 20 minutes until reduced by half. At this point it was already almost 9 pm and I didn't have the time or energy to do that, so I just squeezed the lemon juice into the pot instead and skipped the rest of that step entirely.

In the end it took me around two hours to do everything and we didn't eat until about 9:15, but at least it was all good. The next night I actually made the same thing (this time with some steamed green beans as well, since we hadn't had a vegetable the first night), since I had bought more than I ended up needing the first night; the recipe called for four chicken breasts, but they come in packages of three. So I bought two of them, but decided that opening the last package when I wasn't going to use most of it was dumb and just saved it for the next day. Even without pasta, it still took about an hour and 45 minutes the second night, so I guess this is just a complicated recipe. The really annoying thing was spending over an hour on Sunday afternoon washing all the dishes from the previous night only to dirty most of them up again later that evening (and subsequently having to spend another 30-45 minutes doing dishes on Monday).

This weekend I told Alma I would cook for her again, and I decided to make lamb chops. Deliberately selecting the "quick and easy" filter on epicurious.com, I found this recipe, which seemed simple enough. However, I ran into a couple of issues at the store. Number one, the only ground cardamom they had was a small bottle retailing for 16 dollars, which I could not possibly justify (at that price it would have cost more than the lamb). Number two, the only lamb chops they had - and you could argue this is my fault for going no further than Dominick's for my meat purchasing needs - were loin chops, not rib chops as the recipe called for. I asked after rib chops but was told this was all they had; the guy held up an enormous package of lamb and suggested that I could cut it however I wanted, but needless to say that wasn't going to be happening (I don't know that I could even have identified the rib chops, let alone cut them out, and what would I have done with the rest of the lamb anyway?).

The cardamom was not missed. I threw a pinch of cinnamon into the marinade to make up for the sweetness (apparently you can approximate cardamom with equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg, so I wasn't far off, although we didn't have any nutmeg and I didn't find this out until I got home), but you couldn't really tell anyway. The rest of the marinade was a bunch of chopped garlic and a good deal of lime juice (I was just finishing fully squeezing out the second half of the lime I'd bought when Alma said, "Does it call for the juice of one lime?" Realizing I hadn't really looked, I saw it actually only called for two tablespoons, but I think it was fine; I had been worried that the marinade as called for in the recipe wasn't going to have nearly enough liquid to coat all the lamb, so it worked out), plus salt, pepper, cumin and olive oil. While the lamb marinated for 15 minutes, I started work on the sides, making couscous (from one of those Near East boxes, so as not to overextend myself like I perhaps had with the chicken) and vegetables (a Bird's Eye microwaveable steamer bag). Finally the lamb got cooked about 3 minutes on each side in a frying pan.

I think it turned out quite well; parts of some of the pieces didn't get completely coated in the marinade while in the bag (it was a little tricky because once they were in the bag they had a tendency to bunch up a little, since they were relatively thin pieces of raw meat), and because the lime juice had a slight pre-cooking effect (as it does in Peruvian ceviche), the pieces that didn't get fully coated (which were still red when I put them in the frying pan, as opposed to most of the lamb, which was darkening towards brown) were perhaps a little tougher post-frying. The pieces that were good, however, were really good. Alma and I easily finished off all the lamb between us.

So: cooking. I'm enjoying it. I always like doing nice things for Alma, of course, but it's also pretty fun for me and I'm glad I've been able to turn out edible things thus far (I bought a pizza at the store last night just in case, but fortunately we didn't need to use it). We'll see how much more of this I do in the months and years to come, but interesting developments will probably turn up here.

Oh yeah: how about that lack of posts in February? Man. Good job by me there.

Apocalypse now

We had a pretty ridiculous storm here on Monday night. It had rained in the morning, so I took my umbrella into work (fortunately). When I left the office around 7, it wasn't raining, though things seemed a little ominous. By the time I got off the train, around 8, it had started to pour. I got into the car and started to drive towards Alma's house, thinking she was home, but I called her from the car and left a message saying that it was raining, but wasn't too bad at the moment, if she still needed to drive back down from school (which turned out to be the case).

Then I got about a mile from her house and things went crazy. The rain started coming down so heavily that I couldn't see ten feet in front of the car except for other car and building lights. I managed to get to Alma's driveway, where I called her apartment and told her not to drive back down if she hadn't left. It turns out that up at the school, it was barely doing anything! Meanwhile, lightning was striking within blocks of me; the sky was flashing constantly. I've never seen anything like it. It's what I imagine being in the middle of a military battle would look like. I turned on WGN to see what was happening with the Cubs game and there were tornado sirens going off at Wrigley. I'm not sure I can recall ever seeing a storm of comparable intensity.

Within an hour things had tapered off, but at around 11, it started up again, though by this time I was home in bed, trying to rest up for a doctor's appointment the next morning. Of course it turned out that the office lost power due to the storm, which I didn't find out until I got there at 8:30 am.

Probably not a very exciting post, in retrospect. So here's interesting news: there's a good chance I will be going to the Philippines with Alma and her family in late December/early January. It's not a cheap flight, but (even with a girlfriend of Filipino descent) how often do you get a chance to take a trip like that, especially when you wouldn't have to pay for hotels? Plus Asia is the last continent I've never been to, and with stopovers this would be a chance to add several countries to my list, aside from the fact that two weeks in the Philippines, especially in the middle of winter, would probably be crazy awesome.

San Diego recap

Too many pics and stuff for the blog, so check it out here. If you like being bored.

Soc-cer?

Alma and I went to the Fire game on Saturday. As someone who is on record as saying that he "just can't get into the MLS," I have to say it was a pretty good time, in spite of the rain, the fact that the Fire lost, and the difficulty in locating the car in what seemed like more of an impromptu parking lot. I probably haven't given the MLS enough of a shot, though it's kind of hard to do so when it's basically as easy to see English Premiership games on TV as it is the MLS (it's not like the Fire are on WGN every weekend, for example). For something that's still a pretty niche sport, it draws a solid audience - more than 17,000 were at Toyota Park on Saturday - and I was pleasantly surprised by how into the game most people were (and how boisterous and vocal those in the Firehouse section were - it's not exactly the Kop end, but it's a start). On the other hand, it wasn't even a sellout in spite of the fact that the defending champions (Houston) were in town, and there was a sizable Latino contingent in the crowd that might not have been as strong if not for the presence of Mexican legend Cuauhtemoc Blanco. I liked that there were several names I recognized from the US team - Justin Mapp and Chris Rolfe for Chicago, Brian Ching and Ricardo Clark for Houston - although both Mapp and Rolfe ended up being substituted off and only Clark figured in a goal.

I got us pretty good seats, so we had a nice view of the field, although the Fire scored their only goal at the other end from where we were and proceeded to have pretty much no really good scoring chances in the second half when they were attacking the goal closest to us. But I dare you to sit that close to the field at pretty much any sporting event and not be engrossed. And of course I love soccer - I might call it my #2 overall sport behind baseball, though I'm sure most of you will think that's crazy talk. The difference, of course, is that it's so much harder to be a soccer fan in this country. I can't avoid football if I want to, for example (and during the offseason, I usually do), but you won't even get MLS updates on ESPN 1000's SportsCenter when the Fire have played. I had the 2005 Champions League final result spoiled for me because I was listening to ESPN 1000 in the car, not thinking they would ever bother reporting a soccer result. To this day I think that's the only one they've ever broadcast (aside from something involving David Beckham, perhaps), which makes me think it was just done to fuck with people who were at work and had TiVoed the game, as I had.

Anyway, I suspect we'll make another game sometime this summer (it would be neat to see them face the Galaxy in September, although I think those tickets might actually already be sold out, which should tell you something about how we prioritize things in this country as regards soccer). I'd like to be able to get into the Fire (even though I can't really pull off wearing red), especially with Manchester City on the verge of driving me away thanks to the aggressively manipulative ownership of George Thainbrenner (aka Thaksin Shinawatra), although making Europe will hopefully settle things; it's hard if the only way I can do it is to keep going to Fire games, though. I'm not made of money. We'll see.

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.

Hold music

Sorry to stick another sports post in here, but this'll at least be quick. Back during the 2006 World Cup I had a brief discussion with Nemo about why I considered the hold to be the most worthless statistic in sports. I'm not necessarily going to make that exact same case a second time, but I recently saw a box score that made me question how the hold really makes any sense - or at least how it fits with the way scoring is otherwise calculated in baseball.

March 19, Cubs' split-squad vs. A's split-squad. The Cubs lead 2-0 going into the top of the eighth. The following happens:

Kevin Hart comes in to pitch the eighth. He loads the bases on two hits and a walk, then walks in one run to make it 2-1. He is pulled in favor of Carlos Marmol. Marmol walks the first batter he sees to tie the game, then allows an RBI single. The A's eventually win 5-2.

Now, what do you suppose happened?

If you know anything about baseball scoring, you would say, "Okay, Hart takes the loss - the third and winning run was put on base by Hart, so it would be charged to him."

You're right! Hart took the loss. But guess what? He also got a hold! Because the hold, for some reason, is only concerned with whether or not you gave up the hits that scored the runs. So even though the standard rules of baseball charge Hart with the loss (and, slightly less quirkily, Marmol with a blown save), the hold, a more modern stat, apparently isn't concerned with who "earned" the runs, just on whose watch they literally scored. And thus it's possible to get a hold and yet still take a loss. Wha?

I'm sorry: if you put the winning run on base, and then get yanked because you were too ineffective, as evidenced by the fact that you just put the winning run on base, you should not be getting a hold. A hold should be reserved for pitchers who come into the game with their team in position to win and leave without having hurt those chances. I mean, if you come into the game with your team in position to win and you give up the lead, you don't get a save. You get a blown save. Of course Hart, in a very literal sense, left the game with his team in a "position to win," and if Marmol induces a double play on the next pitch we're not having this discussion. But you know how if you come up with the bases loaded and no outs, and you ground into a double play and the guy on third scores, you don't get an RBI? Same deal here. If you come in with a lead, and you put the go-ahead run on base at any point, you don't get a hold unless you get out of that jam yourself. If Hart had walked in that first run, then struck out the next two guys, great; give that man a hold. I know it's kind of a sticky situation - after all, it's not up to Hart when he gets yanked - but I think that's a better solution than giving a hold to a guy who we're admitting was bad enough at his job to get the loss.

Thoughts? Impossibly snarky rejoinders (Nemo)? Desire for me to confine any and all baseball talk to the Cubs blog from here on out?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

I've been on something of a personal betterment kick lately, brought on by a recent mental breakthrough that I was holding myself back from maturing as a person for no good reason. As a result, I've been doing things like taking the garbage out regularly, beginning the arduous process of cleaning my room (about which more anon), and taking more control of my finances. Somewhat, although not entirely, related to this is the recent realization that I seem to have acid reflux; I'd been having minor chest pains for a while and chalked it up to muscle aches until a trip to the lunch buffet at the Indian restaurant in our building resulted in me eating too much too quickly and getting the same pains as a result. After a consultation with my dad, I decided to cut 99% of carbonation and 100% of caffeine out of my diet - so long, four daily Diet Cokes - and attempt to eat slower (only some success here so far) and in more moderate amounts (more success; I actually took home leftovers when Alma and I went out last Saturday night, which is probably the first time that's happened in ten years). This will probably also assist in the eventual weight loss goal, and probably in money-saving (I'm trying my hand at bringing lunch from home, which I estimate could easily save me 20 bucks every week).

At any rate, the payoff for this is that we happen to be in the midst of the single-busiest two-week stretch of the year at work. Probably not the absolute best time to give up caffeine - I was in the office for 13 hours today, for example - but you know what? I'm sticking to it. There's little doubt in my mind that six months ago - hell, six weeks ago - I would have gotten to Wednesday and then said "Fuck it" and pumped myself full of caffeine. And although part of me feels that way right now, I think it's better for me in the long run to stick to my guns, for a variety of reasons.

Just one more week, and then it gets easier...

We're in for nasty weather

The weather in the Chicago area the last couple days has been nothing short of abominable. Here's the approximate pattern, as seen through my eyes:

9 am: Clear, blue sky; temperature in the high 70s/low 80s. Looks like a gorgeous day.

1 pm: Similar to before, but ten degrees hotter and twice as humid. No longer a terribly pleasant day, but at least a tolerable one.

3 pm: Out the office window, the sky goes totally dark. Rain pours so heavily that nearby buildings cannot even be seen.

7 pm: Rain continues with minimal periods of abatement. Near-constant lightning. Rain runs the gamut between total deluge and normal heavy shower.

10 pm: Rain stops; skies clear in preparation for next morning's bullshit niceness.

I've missed a lot of the absolute worst; Leah describes a pretty crazy situation from this afternoon. I can confirm that it certainly looked as bad as it was; as noted above, the rain was so heavy at times that I couldn't see farther than the next building over, which is completely fucking insane. But I've managed to take lunch early enough to avoid the punctual mid-afternoon storms, and by the time I've left at least the worst of the wind has already died down. I saw a lot of after-effect today, though.




Click on the thumbnail for a larger view. No, that's not my car, thank God, but it is the car that was/is parked on the street pretty much directly in front of my apartment. And when I came home today, at about 8:00, it was pretty well covered by this tree which had been uprooted. Fortunately for the car and its owner, most of what was really on the car was a large branch, and even then some wires had stopped the branch from hitting the car too hard, although frankly I'd be even more worried by the wires at this point.

Still: damn. I know I've only been here seven years and only four summers, but this has to be the worst spell of weather I've seen yet. Usually this sort of stuff happens once a year; this was twice in two days, and according to the forecast we may have more on the way. Maybe tomorrow I'll at least think to take an umbrella rather than letting blue sky in the morning fool me. (Blue sky at morning, sailors take warning, right?)

The San Francisco trick

Alma and I are out in San Francisco for her latest conference. This has got to be the single most expensive city I've ever been to, at least as a self-paying adult. The cab ride from Oakland Airport into the city cost $60. Sixty freaking dollars! (Could we have taken BART? Yes, although you have to catch a connecting bus to the actual train, and I wasn't sure how close it would get us to the hotel. The answer turned out to be "Very close," so the trip back will be made by train. But still, people! It costs 80 cents per mile more than Chicago to ride in a cab, so if you're going 20 miles, that's $16 more to take a cab in SF than Chicago.

I guess apart from that it hasn't been that bad - more expensive than Chicago, to be sure, but not by quite as large a percentage. Still, I can't imagine living in a place like this full time unless I was making an absolute crapton. (There are plenty of other reasons I couldn't live in San Francisco full-time, but that's a good one to start with.)

We're going out to check out Fisherman's Wharf, and/or Chinatown, since today is our more touristy day. So hopefully I have more interesting and/or positive things to say later.

Culinary globetrotting

create your own visited country map

This map, as anyone familiar with my history will know or at least be able to guess, is not a record of countries I've been to. (Asia is far too well-represented, just for a start.) Rather, it is something of a guess at the countries whose cuisines I have sampled. Some are fairly encompassing (India, Mexico), some were a single trip (Vietnam, Ethiopia), some are more on the order of a dish or two in other settings (South Africa, South Korea), and some I've had the more Americanized versions of (China, France, Italy). I left out some where I wasn't sure if I'd ever tried them or not, but in general I think this covers the bulk of my culinary experiences up until this point - not shy, but not incredibly adventurous either.

In lieu of actual globetrotting, however, it recently occurred to me that it might be a fun activity - especially living in a large city like Chicago where such a thing might actually be possible - to travel around the world in food form instead. Alma and I went out for dinner yesterday with this idea in mind; the initial Culinary Globetrotting review appears over at The Frugal Gourmand.

There are just oodles of possibilities out there; a cast through Time Out Chicago's recent reviews alone offers up Morocco, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Algeria, Guatemala, Mexico, Korea, China, Italy, Cuba, India, Pakistan, Japan, Lebanon, Thailand, and Turkey - and that's before you've even gotten out of the Andersonville/Edgewater/Uptown section, the first of 21 geographically-separated pages of reviews. I'm willing to bet one could find nearly every discrete world cuisine if one were willing to criss-cross the city looking for it. I don't know if I'm going to be that gung-ho - or if Alma would let me be, even if I wanted - but a new cuisine every few weeks certainly wouldn't be the least interesting "project" I ever threw myself into. For me, anyway. The rest of you will have to deal with entries like this, although they'll generally be confined to the Frugal Gourmand (which I imagine means no one will see them).

I'll take "Vague Stories" for $200, Alex

Not much going on lately. I went to an audition for Jeopardy! today; I shouldn't say a whole lot beyond that, but there isn't much to tell. I'm sure I did well on the actual question part, but personality is part of it and it's hard to cover up the fact that I'm deathly boring. They don't tell you if you're getting on; you just go into a contestant pool and either they pull you out sometime in the next year or two, or they don't. So now we play the waiting game.

...ah, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!

This lets me transition to my recent film reviews, which include The Simpsons Movie and the Netflix DVD I had for 11 months, Shopgirl, which turned out to be so bad I hate myself for having held onto it so long. Although after having a DVD that long, really, any movie short of Shawshank would have made me kick myself at least a little.

Other movies I've seen recently which form a backlog of reviews I still need to write: Meatballs, Sicko, Junebug, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Departed, Zodiac. I am quite a ways behind.

Pizzeria Zero

On Wednesday night, Alma and I went to this new-ish pizza place on Lincoln, between two of our more standard haunts (Matsu Shita for sushi, Boba Bee for bubble tea). The name of the place was Pizzeria Calzone. It turned out to be possibly the most uncomfortable restaurant experience of my life.

I went in thinking, you know, I might want a calzone tonight. But of all the things on the menu, calzones? Not one of them. That's right: calzone was in the name of the restaurant, yet it was not something you could order there. Maybe this should have been a warning sign, but at the time it was just amusing.

We were the only people in the place, which seems less odd in retrospect. The waitress was a girl who couldn't have been older than about 14 and did the job as if running through a script in her head. Perhaps the regular waitress called in sick and the owners' daughter was pressed into service, I don't know - but if this girl had ever waited a table before in her life, it didn't show. Also, when we asked for water, she brought over two bottles (for which of course we would be charged). That one, I don't know if it was inexperience as much as "thing she had been told to do."

Still, at this point, it was just kind of "eh." And then some guy walked in off the street and started trying to sell the owner some jewelry.

What?

That's right. This guy just walks in and is trying to sell them on this gold something or other. He keeps saying, "It's real gold" and trying to sell it for 50, then 30, then 20 bucks; at some point I heard the owner offer five, at which the guy scoffed. What could possibly be more awkward than listening to some hustler haggle with the owner of the restaurant you're in, not ten feet away?

How about the next part, when I see out of the corner of my eye the waitress nod in our direction and say to the guy, "Ask them?"

Yes, this actually happened. Now you know for a fact that this family had never owned a restaurant in America before. Or at least, if they did, no one like this ever walked into it. Because I can't imagine any restaurant with the reputation of pawning shady jewelry sellers off onto its customers would stay in business any longer than about a week after the first time it happened.

Of course the guy was over shortly thereafter, greeting us with that calling card of guys you don't want to have anything to deal with, "My friends!" Needless to say, we quickly waved him off. But Jesus Christ. The word "unprofessional" seems so imprecise here, since this was clearly a small family business, but how about "completely retarded?" As Alma put it to me a couple minutes later, "We're still in Chicago, right?" (We were.)

I started looking for quick ways out not long after that. The whole place was kind of giving me a weird vibe from minute one, and having to fend off the advances of a total con artist wasn't too appetizing. I ate half the pizza I'd ordered - enough, I figured, where I could then ask for a box and not look like I was trying to flee the premises - and we hit the road.

Ironically, my pizza (fresh from the oven) was actually pretty darn good; I was a particular fan of the crust. Barely seemed worth it, though. I suppose I could order delivery if I ever wanted it again, but then I don't feel compelled to support that kind of operation. Once felt sufficient.