[Update: The guest list has been posted. Ping!]
We had a nice gathering right in my 'hood (at El Cid, a fine taqueria) this evening with Chicagobloggers. The term doesn't really fit me these days, given how infrequently I've been writing, but that's okay.
The idea came up for one of the previous get-togethers to make mix CDs and trade them. I made one, but it was kind of crappy indie and I didn't have any art or track lists to go with it. So, to make up for my lack of posts and lack of track listing in one fell swoop, I bring you my annotated track list. If this looks enticing, and you want a copy, let me know.
Most of the people who read this probably know about Lisa's zine, On A Whim. If you try to go to whimzine.org now, you'll find it is no more.
I wanted to mention that everything is still there. You can still catch up on all those things you didn't read, didn't look at, because you didn't have the time.
There's one piece in the most recent issue that I want to point out. This is easily the longest piece in the zine, and probably hasn't been read as much for that reason. Take a look; it really is worth it. As a public service, I'll be posting print-friendly versions of it once I get the author's permission.
UPDATE 5/17/3. I got permission, and just posted two printer-friendly versions of the story: one long HTML document, and one PDF. The PDF is nicer, but is a bigger download (500 KB vs. 120 KB). Both are very good.
Writing is hard for a variety of reasons. I've talked about this before. All I want to add to it now is this: I hope you stick with it. You're really good.
Unfortunately, because we're married and all, I look biased. Can you believe that?
This has been a busy week.
We got our first corporate web design contract (a small, highly non-evil corporation as far as we can tell), which is good. But the timeline is less than a month, which is bad. Don't ask us about our honeymoon, please.
Then the dog got sick. With hookworm and diarrhea. So we paid our first visit to the vet today, which was good. But it cost a lot of money because of all the medications we had to get (mostly preventatives for worms, ticks, and so forth), which was bad.
Being busy, these days, is largely a good thing. But it means we have to do work, which is sometimes a bad thing.
In music news, I'm playing with Stolie at the Heartland Cafe this Tuesday at 9pm ($5 cover), and with Duenow on Friday at Cubby Bear. These are both good things.
For the impatient who would rather just see the stupid pictures than wait for me to get motivated and write about the wedding, I offer the following low-fi presentation of photos taken by my dad, Lisa's dad, and me. I hope to have something nicer to read before long, but for now, enjoy.
Update 5/11: I removed the low-fi and took the extra few minutes it requires to put the photos into the photo gallery where they belong. Now they can be enjoyed in a more reasonable format.
Wedding pictures and stories are forthcoming once we get some work stuff out of the way. First, a dog story.
As everyone who has seen her knows, Carly is a sweet dog. She's very well behaved with people, doesn't beg, doesn't sleep on the bed when she isn't supposed to, is friendly (jumps too much, but we have a decent handle on that) without slobbering all over everyone, and so on.
However, she's not good with dogs, cats, or other animals. If a dog barks at her, or makes any other threatening gesture (staring, getting close and looking right at her face, etc), she barks, snarls, and is generally menacing. She has socialization issues that we're working to resolve.
Because of this, we use The Gentle Leader every time we walk Carly. We're also going to be getting a muzzle, but we're having a hard time finding one in her size. The GL does a great job of keeping her from pulling too hard on the leash, and gives us more control over where she walks. It looks like a muzzle, but lets her breathe, eat, and bark.
Chicago law says you must keep your dog on leash at all times. Needless to say, there are lots of people who don't follow this. I suppose they figure their dogs are just fine, and its other people's fault if they run into trouble.
There's a park about half a mile from our apartment, and it is frequented by people (and their dogs) from all over the neighborhood. There's dog shit everywhere because the people are too lazy or obstinate to pick up after them. The dogs are more often than not off-leash. When I try to go to the park, it's always a gamble, because if someone's friendly (or, god forbid, unfriendly) dog comes charging up to Carly, trouble is likely to result. It doesn't matter if I'm walking in the opposite direction (which I invariably am), the dogs will get interested and come running. I always tell people to put their dogs on-leash when this happens.
I always get a respectful, understanding response to this reasonable and legally-mandated request. Meanwhile I'm trying to keep my dog from snarling, biting, or otherwise agitating their dog, and vice versa. Usually the owner is about 300 yards away, looking indignantly at me through binoculars, wondering why I don't have better control over my dog (my dog who can't get more than 6 feet from me, and whose head I control almost completely with the GL on).
Respectful responses like these three:
"Fuck off!"
(His dog, who's bigger than Carly, ran up, took me by surprise, and started sniffing her. This went quite well for about 20 seconds until his dog stared Carly in the face from one centimeter away. She barked, it barked, she freaked. I told the blessed owner to leash his dog, whereupon he stopped talking on his cell phone, threw it on the ground, leashed his dog, and I thanked him honestly for doing it—and I meant it. Most people just look at me funny. Then he tells me to fuck off. Thanks!)
"My dog's too small for a leash."
(After his chihuahua came running up to Carly, not barking thankfully. I never thought I'd hear that excuse.)
"PREEEEEEEEEEEEEECIOUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!"
(Preceding question: "Is your dog friendly?" This as Precious, labrador of some sort, is running down the street right at us. Our answer: no. It took a few more seconds to register.)
It's bad enough trying to get Carly trained so she listens to us (it's working, but it takes much time). The problem here isn't the dogs, who are just doing what they will do naturally. It's the people who don't understand that they live in a city where you have to make sacrifices to coexist peacefully with the other people and animals.
Today is cake-baking day. We got in to Kalamazoo yesterday, and I made the raspberry sauce/puree (sugar-free) to be added to the frosting. Yummy. Thirty-six ounces of raspberries reduced to about six ounces of sauce.
We're picking up a few people today, and I'm being taken to some undisclosed location tonight for gender-segregated fun. Whee!
It's starting to feel real.