Added to the usual joys of working for a Giant Corporation is the fact that mine is prone to using meaningless titles for all of it's employees, making it very difficult to discern the pecking order. It's not that I find terms like Vice President or General Manager particularly meaningful, mind you, but calling employees "Team Members" and "Team Leaders" and ""Coordinators" is annoying in some cases and borderline patronizing (not to mention disingenuous) in others.
Hilariously, I have been thinking for the past couple of months that one guy that I report to is the assistant of another woman I report to, when in fact it turns out that he is her boss. Fortunately I didn't completely embarrass myself, but I have certainly included him on e-mails that I never, ever would have bothered him with had I been aware.
My enthusiasm for the job waxes and wanes, and I can already tell that this holiday season is probably going to kill it completely. The great thing is that I am racking up (literally) a whole lot of free wine. I have several stored in the basement, and the makeshift rack I made in the dining room is overflowing. When I know I won't finish something I've opened, I leave it in the back hall for the neighbors, who also happen to be our landlords. They appreciate it very much.
I went to a fabulous wine dinner the other night at Gr@ham Elli0t Bistr0, courtesy of a winemaker from Oregon. The woman that I buy his wine from is one of my favorite reps, and I can't remember having more fun with strangers in a long time. The other buyers all begged off at the last minute, which was so rude that I was embarrassed about it even though I didn't know any of them. When we arrived, the sommelier asked me what I wanted to start with and I told him to surprise me with any white he would like, so long as it wasn't an oaky California Chardonnay. He was pleased at that answer and poured me a very generous glass of something French that I had never heard of and therefore can't remember. When we sat down, The Winemaker ordered a bottle of white Burgundy for the table. I asked A, my sales rep, to help me out with my first glass since I had to drive. She gulped half of it obligingly. We giggled. The Burgundy was outstanding. I left myself in their hands for ordering, asking only that they get a few vegetarian options so I could soak up enough wine to stay sober. The food was remarkable, conversation flowed easily, and I kept wishing that there was somewhere I could dump my car legally so I could stay late, drink lots, and take a cab home. Instead I skipped the oaked Burgundy after just a sip, brushed off the Pinot Noir (which I have tasted plenty of times and already carry in my store), and focused on the Pinot Blanc, which was not only delicious but also conveniently low in alcohol. After dinner the others all had aperitifs. I tasted each of them while judiciously opting for water. I slept like a corpse and went back to work hating my job slightly less on Tuesday.

I cannot fathom why I am awake right now, unless there is a full (or nearly full) moon out there above the thick rain clouds. I was nearly asleep on my feet at work, came home and had a fabulous glass of Vaqueyras while reading the day's news, then took a hot shower and turned in. The b.h. Is sound asleep, which is a good thing since he will be getting up for work on three hours, and I have been laying here listening to Derek Jacoby read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for hours.
I've made plays on all of my Scranble games, caught up on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs (yes, I'm still reading despite near total radio silence on my end), and I just can't fall asleep. If we didn't live above our landlords, I would be sweeping and mopping the whole house right now, since that was my plan for the morning that I will most likely sleep through now. This is so dumb.

More evidence of the healing power of rock and roll and old friends as the b.h. and I stayed up way past our bedtime last night and I still feel remarkably refreshed. Patterson Hood brought his Downtown Ramblers to a fancy new winery here in the Windy Shitty. The service was appalling and the food mediocre, and I couldn't have cared less. We saw old friends and great music and even met some nice folks along the way.
I'm still not comfortable with the passage of time. I find it nearly impossible to believe how long I've been seeing the Truckers in their various incarnations, and how many friends I have made thanks to my musical fanaticism. Not even shit traffic and a commute through the West Side this morning could dampen my spirits.

Next up: Will Johnson and Anders Parker on Friday at Schubas. It's gonna be a sleepless week in between, too. Can't wait.

Today we toured the home garden of Rick Bayless. The tour was led by his gardener- one of four, actually, who tend the thousand square foot paradise.
Absolutely stunning, needless to say. Also somewhat inspiring. Now we're on the couch watching the new season of Dexter.

I got to see my old friend A today for a few hours. She was so hungover that she was green when I picked her up at her mom's house. We laughed about it of course, but I knew she wished she would die. We stopped for sandwiches on our way to running errands and shopping, and after she vomited copiously in the ladies she perked up considerably. I tried on twelve pairs of pants today and bought one. I also tried on many, many shoes, but since my current job is keeping me from wearing any of the great shoes I already have, it was easy to deny myself.
Mostly it was nice just to spend time with her and catch up and bullshit around. I dropped het at the airport this afternoon knowing full well that i wont see her again for months, but also taking comfort in the fact that when I do we will pick up right where we left off.
Tonight the b.h. And I took the dogs and went to my sister's for dinner. Other Sister was there as well. The weather was lovely and we drank and ate and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I just love the fall. It is so good to be home.

I believe my phone has killed this blog. On the bright side, my photo blog is getting very regular posts, because the camera is so easy to use that I can take and post a picture while doing almost anything- including driving. But this tiny keyboard is not so eAsy to navigate.
We saw Springsteen last weekend at Wrigley Field. It was cold and we got rained on for over an hour, but it was absolutely transcendent- everything I hoped it would be, and more, thanks to the surprise appearance of Tom Morello and Eddie Vedder.

Work is getting progressively better. I will likely never be completely content working for a giant international corporation, but I am having more success at the day to day, and I am finding some enjoyment in the job.

Today we're going down to Lincoln Park to see J. Roddy Walston and the Business, after which I will head to work for the evening. Later, I might go see my friend Wes Hollywood's new band, and tomorrow I will visit my parents and an old friend who is in town for the weekend from California. So I guess you could say that I am doing everything I came home to do.

Now I just have to get my shit together and write about it more.

It probably says something about me that I would rather spend my lunch hour in a closet (storage room) full of wine, seated on a hard piece of plastic and leaning against a cardboard box, than sit with my co-workers on a leather couch in the break room, or worse, out with The Public in our "cafe" (which consists of a counter at a window facing the street).
Things have been better. Work is at least leveling off to a general stupid rather than a constant and grating horrible. The b.h. and I are having a great time. We saw The Afghan Whigs last weekend at The Metro, a club in which I spent many of my formative years as a live music fanatic. The band is one of his favorites. I have always enjoyed some of their stuff but remained relatively ambivalent about them in general. I even felt bad about not giving the ticket away to somebody who cares more than I do, as the show was sold out. Luckily I got over that. It happened about ten seconds into the first song, which you can experience yourself on the yew toob should you so choose. They are normally a four piece standard rock outfit, but since they've just reunited after many years, and they were in town for that silly Palooza thing, they had all kinds of extras. Three backup singers, three horns, and extra guitar. There were twelve people on stage and holy cow they blew my mind. Stupendous. We will be seeing them again in October.
There are other shows on the calendar as well. Lyle Lovett is next week at Ravinia, Wes Hollywood the following Tuesday, and upcoming fabulousness from Patterson Hood, The Whigs (no relation), Will Johnson and Anders Parker, Leonard Cohen, Springsteen... I'm like a kid in a candy store.
Been seeing plenty of family and old friends as well, which is good for the soul. Three visits from out of Townes already, each providing a good excuse to eat fantastically well.

Honestly, the ignorance that most people display on the subject of fresh food is beginning to make me wonder.

A woman in her twenties came up to me at work and asked
"Do you have, like, ears of corn? Like, corn on the cob?"
 "Yes, I'm sure we do. It's in season so it's probably local, too."
"Where would that be?"
 
Seriously. She said it as if it were so foreign to her that she couldn't even imagine where one might look for, you know, fresh corn. Quite exotic, especially here in the Midwest. I'd like to tell people to look in the rest room sometime, or perhaps with the feminine hygiene products. But I need to keep this job, at least for now.

Apparently I narrowly missed Lady G@g@ the other night. She came in after I had left already, and when I came in the next morning people were still talking about it. The funniest part is that she had this huge entourage with her, bodyguards and whatnot. If she had just walked in on her own, nobody would have recognized her. We have both strip clubs and modeling agencies within blocks of the store, so she wouldn't even have gotten a second look. But I suppose that's not the point, is it?

A well-dressed man of about fifty is walking through the cheese and wine department, obviously looking for something and obviously agitated. I approach cautiously, smiling and bracing myself.
"Is there something I can help you find?"
"Where would I find grapes?"
I paused momentarily, letting the question sink in. "Those are in the produce department, sir."
"All the way on the other side of the store?" he asked, incredulously.
"Yes sir. Back where you came in. Where all of the other fresh fruit and veg are."

The bi-annual B.H. Family Reunion/Torture Fest is over. This year we spent it down on the coast in North Carolina. It was ridiculous for the b.h. and I to go, since I had just started a new job and he hadn't found one yet, but it was the first time the whole family had been together, every cousin and aunt and uncle, in over ten years, and we didn't want to disappoint his mom.
We left On Sunday morning, our flight having been delayed before we even got out of bed. Much confusion and a long wait at the airport (further delays), and then we finally arrived in Virginia to find that the bag we had checked had been left behind. Great. SO we spent an entire day traveling, basically, and finally arrived at the house in the late evening. We greeted everyone and had a couple beers before retiring to our room, which had two small beds, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo style. Ours was the floor with all of the boys ages four to twelve on it, which we only discovered the next morning at 6:20 am (5:20 our time) when they all got up.

Our car had been parked in by several others, so we walked to the grocery store about half a mile down the road and picked up fruit and beer and sandwich ingredients. It was about a million degrees outside, and there was no sidewalk anywhere along the curvy and crowded road, a fact which did not seem to bother the drivers in the least as they sped past. I spent the rest of that day in the pool or the air conditioning. There was, at one point, a group photo arranged on the beach. All thirty-six of us squinted into the sun while the photographer uncle admonished us not to wear hats or sunglasses from behind the camera.Evening meals were large productions with duties shared by a few. Cleanup took a lot longer, and that's where I usually managed to hide and avoid the awkwardness that is conversation between virtual strangers trying to seem familiar. I am genuinely fond of some of them, mind you, and I do make an effort to sit and chat. But the cousin's husband who seems like he's probably got his own militia? Not so much. Mostly it was short and sweet and we got through it without too much weirdness.

Work, on the other hand, is all kinds of weird. I haven't worked for a large corporation in many years, and the familiar bullshit is already starting to wear on me. We are required to wear no-slip safety shoes, which must be ordered from a catalog. No one, no matter what their job, is allowed to work without some kind of safety shoes on. While we wait for our shoes to arrive, we are given a standard-issue pair of what I can only call galoshes. The first day i worked they did not have a pair of galoshes that were small enough for my feet. No problem, said the Orientation Guy, you just wear your own shoes until your new ones arrive. we don't have what you need and that's our fault.
Less than an hour later I was approached by a very large and intimidating woman who told me that under no circumstances was I to work without the proper footwear.
"C.Y.A.", she smirked at another employee. "Imma cover my ass."
  "But the small ones are too big for my shoes. I need an extra small pair, and there are none. She reached into a bin and pulled out a pair of used shoes.
"What size are you?"
  "I usually wear a seven."
 "Try these." She gave me a pair of Cr0cs in size six.
  "They don't fit."
"Can you wear them just for now?"
  "I guess I could try," I said, trying to be cooperative.
I walked away and started to load up wine boxes onto a cart, every step I took bringing my heel down on the back of the shoe. I went back to the office.
  "These aren't going to work. They're too small."
She rolled her eyes at me and I took the galoshes back. I put them on and there was a quarter inch of material sticking past my toes. I'm not sure how wearing shoes that are too large is safer than wearing my own perfectly good tennis shoes, but I was clearly not hired to think. Sigh.

I have since been through four other pairs of shoes, and none of them fit. There is not a store anywhere where I can go try the shoes on before I buy them, so The Company is paying for these things to get shipped back and forth. The Shoe Lady  has no ideas for which shoes I should try, but would very much like it if I would just take another employees old shoes to wear so she could stop dealing with me. After suggesting that I choose at least three different pairs of shoes to try, she then told the GM that she didn't know what to do with me since I was refusing all of the shoes. His response was that "This is not Macy's. We're not a shoe store. Just pick something and let's quit fooling around." I have started showing up in my old Dansk0 kitchen shoes from a previous job which look remarkably like many of the safety shoes. They have a bit of a heel and are terrible to wear all day on a cement floor, but at least the Shoe Lady is off my back.

The good news is it shouldn't be over a hundred degrees at any point this week. The bad news is that Corporate Fuckwittery is making me a very angry person this week. At some point I will chronicle it all here on this blog with humor blended into the venom in a way that is more palatable for casual reading.
Soon.

Ah, internet service.
Have jumped straight into new job and life with both feet. So far I like it pretty well, though the whole "Giant Corporation" thing will require some getting used to. Have quickly relearned to navigate my city, and overall feel good about the move. We have a small garden on our large balcony/porch thingie on the front of the house. There are more windows and cabinets than in our last two houses combined, which is marvelous. I am rediscovering art and dishes and photos that I had comepletely forgotten about.
The dogs seem pretty happy. They finally got their summer haircuts, and they have cousins to play with here. We have yet to find a place for them to swim locally. There is a dog beach on the lake, but it's a long ride into the city and will require a full day off with good weather and no other obligations.
At present I am sitting on a beach in South Carolina, escaping the chaos that is the bh's biannual family reunion. We'll be home on Wednesday and then it's back to the grind, and hopefully more writing discipline.

So, the eagle has landed and all that. We don't have an Internet connection yet, so I'm way behind on reading and writing, but I will catch up when I can. I do seem to manage to keep up the photo blog, so at least I might remember the sequence of events by the time I get around to updating.

It took three full days, but we've managed to pack our belongings, send them ahead, and clean the whole house. We did a walk through this morning with the landlord, had the last two items of furniture picked up, stopped at Birch Grove Bakery for the standard road treats (which were generously given to us by our neighbors and friends the bakers), and finally hit the road. Now we're aboard a ferry crossing Lake Champlain to upstate New York, where we will star the eight hour drive to Erie.

There is a moving truck in the driveway. Slightly guilty pangs as I sit typing while two Eagle Scouts load our entire house into a thirteen foot square space.
We leave on Wednesday, drive to Erie, and then in to Chicago on Thursday. We will see our house for the first time when we arrive. Hilariously, there are two shows we want to see Saturday night. Already got tickets for Kelly Hogan, so we are decided. It's like the universe telling us we are doing the right thing. I promise to be back more regularly when things calm down.

The last few days have been the idyllic sort that make me live this state. Warm to hot days, walking the dogs in the woods and then going to the river to swim. Freezing cold water that feels refreshing for the minute it takes for your body to start going numb, then standing up to get warm and skipping stones, wallowing in the joy of nature (and of dog joy).
Evenings are cool, nights are chilly, and sleep is heavy.
Drove to New Hampshire to pick my sister up from the airport today. We went to Portsmouth for a late lunch and walked around for an hour or so before heading home. Tomorrow I work early and Wednesday we're off to Montreal for a final visit. Very excited. I can already taste the date nut bar I will be buying first thing at the pastry shop in the Jean Talon market. Mmmm.
On that note, off to bed.

The rest of my Chicago trip was also fairly hectic. Did I mention that we're moving back? Oh, yeah- so we're moving back. In three weeks. I just gave my notice at work, so now I can officially talk about it without fear that I may have mentioned this sill blog to some random co-worker a year ago and they are out there, lurking, waiting for me to admit that I have been interviewing for jobs back home since January and that oh yeah- I'm out of here.
So there's that. I will be working at a Large Natural Foods Chain, also as Wine Buyer. The money is not great, but the benefits are, and there is no Oddfellows Local 151 and therefore room for growth and an opportunity for merit pay and some bleeding advancement, for the love of gods. Mostly there will be live music and ethnic food and non white people and friends and family. We are scrambling to find housing at present. It is not fun.
Kilgore has apparently lost his mind. He has broken through three window screens in the past month, the last one being the one in our 2nd floor bedroom. The b.h. got a call from our landlord while he was at work. The message said that the dog was on the roof of our porch. The b.h. ran home to find Kilgore lounging on the roof in the shade or our maple tree, without a care in the world. This does not bode well for our move. It's one thing if the five neighbors that we have known for three years have to deal with him, and entirely another when we're the new kids on the block. *Shudder*

The conference I attended vacillated between mildly interesting and wildly annoying. My roommate was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties (going on a hundred, I'd say). When she walked into our hotel room, I was sitting on the bed sending text messages. I couldn't see the door from there, so when she said loudly
"Oh, she's here now," I was not aware that she was alone.
When she came around the corner, I stood up and stuck my hand out to shake hers.
"Hi, I'm Heybartender."
She looked at it as if I had offered her a wet turd and said
"Yeah, I put that together."
She ambled over to her side of the room, plopped into the chair, and asked what time I had gotten in.
"I got in last night at about one in the morning."
"Then where have you been all day?" she demanded. I wondered if I was about to be grounded. It seemed as if she hadn't noticed that I had dropped my suitcase off at noon before I went out with my tour group, and for some reason it made her suspicious. I answered her very curtly, and then her phone rang. I texted my sister saying I was going to need a place to stay and left the room without another word.

There were seminars and a dinner, and after everyone was going to one of three get-togethers, all of which promised expensive drinks and terrible company. At the end of dinner, I sprinted up to the room, packed a small bag of overnight essentials, and headed directly to the parking lot. I left my suitcase on the bed, hoping The Roommate would sleep fitfully without the chain lock on the door.
My sister hadn't answered my texts, so I got in touch with my friend T, and headed down into the city to crash with him. He made me some pizza rolls and other various frozen veggie fare (another lovely aspect of the Airport Hotel is the fact that there were exactly two places to eat, one very expensive sit down place and a sort of grab-and-go sandwich counter area that was also incredibly expensive, as well as having almost no vegetarian food and always, always a line thirty-odd people long) and we talked for an hour or so before I finally had to go to sleep. I was up very early the next morning, bright of eye and bushy of tail as I often am when I wake up in a city. I dressed and washed up quickly and tip-toed out so as not to wake T. I went to a bakery right near my old apartment and got a huge cup of delicious coffee, an egg and spinach and feta sandwich on a croissant, and a dessert pastry, all for the same price that I had paid for a small cup of coffee and a shitty bagel at the hotel. It was glorious. I drove back out to the airport feeling fabulous. The day went fairly quickly, and the seminars were interesting. The Roommate was in my second one, and slept through the bulk of it, at one point waking herself up when she started snoring too loudly. At the lunch break I left again and drove a couple miles down the road to an Italian place, where I bought a big bag of fries and Ravioli with marinara from a guy who looked like an extra from Goodfellas. I caught a couple people eying my greasy fry bag hungrily during the next seminar, and ate them slowly and smugly at the next break in front of a long line of people waiting for their seven dollar pizza slices. Saturday night I pulled the same trick with The Roommate, leaving for my sister's without a word and my suitcase still on the bed. I slept soundly again, and again woke up feeling refreshed. Sunday was a short day, with only one seminar and a longer presentation on the Global Economic Shitshow.

My flight was cancelled, and for some reason no one bothered to announce that fact an passengers were not alerted until we approached the desk at the gate fifteen minutes after we were supposed to begin boarding. I walked up just as the young lady in front of me was simultaneously bitching at the woman behind the counter and the person on the other end of her cell phone.
She was probably nineteen or twenty, and acting like a complete asshat. I went downstairs to the other desk and got in line. After several minutes, I got to the front of the line and the man behind the desk put me on a flight to D.C., where I would then hop another flight to Chicago. I would be landing four hours later than originally planned. Fine.
I killed forty-five minutes, then boarded without incident.
On the flight to DC, the nineteen-year-old sat behind me next to a British guy. She proceeded to talk at him for most of the flight, which is how I learned that she had been sent to Ohio, where her parents would drive five hours each way to pick her up.

So I'm at the airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago. There is a conference there that I am attending as a member of Oddfellows Local 151.
I have other irons in other fires there as well, but more on that later. For the time being, I am focusing on beer and food and family waiting on the other side of this flight.
Work has been a bit trying lately. The weather has been mostly shit, too, so I haven't had much to say lately. Hopefully there will be fun stuff to report this weekend.