mojosmom

A Chicago cab driver declined a tip. Truly. As I was getting tip money from my purse, he said, "Forget about it." Weird. This was my second interesting cabbie of the day. Earlier, I'd managed to snag a cab as he was depositing an earlier fare. Turns out it was his first day on the job, so we were giving him tips on the best way to get places. Like most Chicago cabbies, he was an immigrant, but I've never had an Uzbekistani cabbie before!

I went to see Luis Alfaro's Oedipus El Rey at Victory Gardens Theatre last Friday, because I know some of the cast members. It got rave reviews, though some friends thought it mediocre. I fall somewhere in between on the play itself (an updating of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, set in South Central L.A.), but my friends absolutely deserved the accolades they got.

I was planning on going to the DuSable Museum's Art Fair on Saturday, but just as I was getting ready to get in the car and go, the heavens opened and it poured. Not enough to vitiate the drought, but enough to stop me. I went the next day instead. The event always falls on or just before my birthday, so if I see something I really want , I can use the "It's my birthday present to myself" excuse. It's usually jewelry, but this year it was a coat:


Before going there, I'd been to the home of a friend whose garden is always part of a neighborhood garden walk. On that weekend, she invites people over for cookies and cold drinks, and it's always nice to see her. She'd recently been on an opera tour of Italy, and so I admired her photos and was jealous (she had tried to get me to go with her, but the timing was bad).

It's ridiculously hot today (100º again), and our forthcoming "relief" will be either mid- to upper 80s or mid-to upper 90s, depending on which forecast you believe. Either is too hot to get my walks in, and I'm getting to the point where I think I'll take the bus to Block 37 or Water Tower Place (vertical shopping malls) and walk there. I miss my exercise. Now there's something I never thought I'd be saying!

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine called and suggested that we start a walking routine together, and I said "yes". We try to get out at least every other day. There's a pedestrian overpass to the lakefront about mid-way between my apartment and hers, so we meet there, go to the lakefront and then walk either north or south. We usually walk for about an hour, three miles or so in toto. It's been excellent for me, though on my own I'd walk faster (Alexis has a bad knee, so we go a bit slowly).

Unfortunately, we missed the last three days. Two of those days it was in the '90s (record heat), and even on the lakefront, where it's generally cooler, it was way too hot. (I really need to convince her to walk in the morning rather than the late afternoon!) Yesterday, I missed her call, and when we did connect it was too late for me.

I knew we'd miss today, because I am due for four and a half hours of Eugene O'Neill tonight, and I am definitely napping this afternoon. So this morning, having woken up early (seriously, I was wide awake at 6:00 a.m.), I fed the cat, had some fruit, and then walked over to the Wooded Island, one of my favorite local spots. I did the circle, and then went in to the Osaka Garden. There's a waterfall there, and around the pond where it begins there is a not-quite circle of stones. So I sat there and meditated for a while. Frankly, I could probably have sat there all day; it's so quiet and peaceful that you'd scarcely realize you were in the middle of the city. But I didn't.

Instead, I left the Island and went home by way of a local coffee shop, Café 57, where the owner, who calls everyone "precious", "darling", "sweetheart", etc., offered to make me the "best latte in Chicago". I declined in favor of Earl Grey tea, and, in an act which negated (calorie-wise, anyway) all the good exercise in which I had just engaged, a chocolate croissant.

And for the couch potato in me:

Awhile back, I subscribed to RAI from my cable company, figuring that watching Italian television would help my studies. I have just gotten totally hooked on a wonderful mini-series about the Titanic, called Titanic: nascita di una leggenda (the English title is Titanic: Blood and Steel, presumably because the literal translation, Titanic: Birth of a Legend, was already taken ). As the title implies, it takes place (at least so far), before her maiden voyage, and is, in large part, about the immigrant experience in Belfast, and class and religious conflicts, workers' rights, with the IRA and women's suffrage thrown in. I'm really enjoying it.