pink suede shoes

I like to think that I am a real Chicagoan. I drove my car through all sorts of snow related madness with nary an incident this week. I waded through shin deep snow drifts. Yet I don't feel like going out today. Friday is my errands day, so I had quite the mental list of things to do today. Frankly, I don't feel like doing anything that requires leaving the house. My plan to sleep in this morning was foiled by my internal clock. I now naturally wake up around 8am. After reading for a while, I threw on a couple of layers to go out and shovel. I really didn't need so many layers, because I worked up quite the sweat moving all of that dense, heavy snow with an old fashioned non-ergonomic shovel. I went inside and threw myself on the bed. The cat, sensing my defenselessness and prone position, came and lay on my chest. All of my will to go out quickly ebbed away. So, I am staying home today to play on the computer aimlessly and whine about my aching back. I might knit a little and watch tv. I've already had a long soak in the tub.

Last night, I soldiered my way through the weather to go pay my bill at Macy's (I know, I know). While there, I had to pay a little visit to Lush. I ended up going home with a dozen Holiday Slices, for many a spicy bubble bath. My plan was to only buy four and try to make them last through the rest of the year, but the other eight were thrown in free. So, if you smell a spicy carnation scent and hand-dyed yarn, odds are it's me. There weren't many other people out and the conditions were slick enough that the bus driver actually dropped people at their destinations instead of regular stops. I have never, ever seen this happen before.

Here's an arbitrary list of things I could be knitting now instead of typing:
* The TOFUtsies Two Tone Baby Cardigan. I'm making a pair of them for Lisa's twins.
* My Gruesa cardigan. I worked on it over the weekend, but am afraid I might run out of yarn before I run out of project.
* The Endpaper Mitts that I'm teaching in my magic loop class.
* A pair of Tracy Ullman house slippers. The soles are done, I just have to knit the uppers and felt them. This is good slipper weather.

The trip to Iowa went well. I had really forgotten what the Midwest is like outside of Chicago. Chicago may be in the Midwest on a map, but it's another animal entirely. People in Iowa drive under the speed limit, for starters. Willie and I went people watching at the mall. I cannot remember the last time that I went to a mall. They're pretty redundant/irrelevant in Chicago. I saw bad hair, questionable sweater choices, and lots of flannel. It was like the 90s.

The trip to the mall wasn't just anthropology; we went to see Sweeney Todd there. A strange place to see it, I know. There was nervous laughter in the theater at all of the gore that I don't think I would have heard in the city, but it's hard to say. I had a few initial misgivings about the film. Helena Bonham Carter? Really? Well, she had a hard time putting Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Lovett performance out of my mind, but she was a good match for Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd. Overall, I loved it. I will admit, I covered my eyes during much of the Grand Guignol. Even though Meghan warned me that it was gory, I was unprepared for the arterial spray in the Judge Turpin scene. Yikes! Alan Rickman was fantastic as the judge, with such an air of studied debauchery and sleeze. His diction while singing was a little hard to understand, but he has a nice voice.

We also went to a casino. Not a riverboat casino, since we were inland. Willie's son works as a chef in one of their restaurants, so we decided to pay him a visit and play the slots. I ate red gravy. That is how the menu described marinara sauce. Red gravy. I mentally blogged while eating it. We managed to find some actual one-armed bandits and played the slots for an hour. I'd like to say that I won a nice chunk of change, but I did leave with a cash out of $0.47.

I can't wait for this weather to end. I have a new pair of shoes that I want to wear, but I don't want to ruin them in all the slush or loose them in a snowdrift. A couple of weeks ago, Kiki and I were discussing our love of Dansko clogs at work when one of our customers chimed in. She bought a suede pair online that turned out to be too narrow, even after being stretched by a cobbler. She brought them in this week and gave them to me for free to have them out of the house. They are pink suede, a sophisticated ashes of roses shade, and fit me like a glove. I wore them for the rest of the day at the store, then sensibly stowed them in a bag to go home.

My car has recovered from the latest bout of old car-itis. The reason that it was acting so poky and unresponsive to my gentle administration of gas? It was firing on two cylinders. That would do it. The car needed a tune-up, new spark plugs and spark plug wires (just like you said, Dad), exhaust pipe, and ignition coil. When I expressed surprise at the last item, the mechanic observed that it's not that hard to turn over two cylinders. As public transportation is scant in my area, I was glad to have the car back before the snow. It's quite tempting to drive all the time in this weather, but I decided to do the responsible thing (fiscally and environmentally) and bought a monthly train ticket.