(no subject)

I have gone out! I have done things! I have shopped.

I don't really do the whole shopping thing. It's not that I dislike it, when I do it, it's just that I'm pretty goal-oriented and Chicago is not really a "mall" town -- there are a few near work but they're rather small and mostly aimed at people who make a lot more money than I do. So I really only go shopping when I know what I want. But there's this new mall open downtown, Block 37, and it's like...one floor of food and one floor of shops and then a second floor of shops and then the stairs up to the rest of the mall are BLOCKED OFF because the cinema and restaurant haven't been installed yet. There's a comic book store that is probably going to die FAST, and a two-story Anthropologie, and a Puma store that reeks of vinyl, and a lot of other stuff that I mostly just kind of stared at in perplexity, because I am so far removed from malls that a lot of the time I don't grasp their basic function anymore.

I got briefly lost in DOWNTOWN, which is ridiculous, but sometimes the map in my head doesn't correspond as closely as it should to the reality of Chicago, and whose fucking bright idea was it to put the JACKSON STREET EL STOP on VAN BUREN STREET anyway?

And also I went to the big art store, which used to have regular non-patterned origami paper but which now only has freaky neon colours. I priced out clear acrylic, because I'm thinking of preserving my sushi origami (what the god damn else am I going to do with it) but that will have to wait until I'm slightly more solvent, and anyway I prefer to drop my cash on

GREEK FOOD

SO MUCH GREEK FOOD

I met up with a good friend in Greektown and we talked about lots of stuff and did a tiny bit of gossipping and had avogolemono soup with some kind of amazing dumpling-noodle thing in it, and I also got this sort of lasagne-like dish only with tube noodles instead of flat, which was possibly the most complicated pasta dish I've ever eaten, but it was REALLY GOOD and now I am ready for a food coma. It was an awesome afternoon.

Reading back over that last paragraph, I do sound like a five-year-old recounting his day. Which in some respects is not untrue, as I did make a huge mess at lunch. I'm thirty-one years old and I have an MA, but I'm still working on mastering forks.

(no subject)

The thing about Roomba ownership is, it's a bit like having one of those tamagotchi things. You think you can just put it in a corner and let it alone except when you need it to clean the floors, but if you do that, as I have discovered, it gets sullen and unhappy and the battery dies.

So I thought, as long as I'm replacing my Roomba's battery, I'll give it a really thorough cleaning. I took it to pieces, as many as I could, and wiped it down and cleaned out the lint and then discovered that perhaps the reason my Roomba was a bit anemic was that it has a lint trap.

I did not know my Roomba had a lint trap. A lint trap that's supposed to be cleaned every few sweepings. I'm a terrible pet owner.

But now I've polished it up and pulled the lint out and cleaned the brushes, and installed a shiny new blue battery in the Roomba, so this evening I set him to cleaning the kitchen, which he has not done in a while.

And the thing is, it's also a little like having a brain-damaged puppy.

The Roomba is supposed to be a time-and-labour saving device. You set it to clean and off it goes and you go off and do something else while it cleans the floors for you. But you find yourself standing there, watching it, because not only is it really satisfying to watch it sweep up the dirt and bits of food and such, it also bumbles along into walls constantly and it's kind of adorable and hilarious. And sometimes it eats things it's not supposed to, like the mardi gras beads that somehow found their way behind the baker's rack (don't ask) and then you have to go pull the beads out of its little brush and set it off again.

He really does love my trash can. Every time he comes near it a little blue light flicks on atop his console. (My trash can is also automated; if you wave a hand over the lid it opens for you. I live in THE FUTURE.)

He's a good little Roomba. He's in there right now, rolling around the kitchen, making clumsy love to the trash can and pushing the floor mat around.