Tuesday?
I uh, well, the weekend sort of kept going.
But backing up for a recap, we had: Lazy day with Nancy and Neha, massive Mass, lazy day recovering from Mass, lazy Sunday morning with confusing weather, surprise visit from new friend, cultural intoxication via Versionfest's NFO XPO. This was sort of like a cross between an art fair, a Scav quads item, a small business expo, and the Uchicago RSO recruitment fairs; except without prizes, people who got drafted into it, boring repetition, or the college republicans. I had the best of times. Then I took an hour break, made me some supper, and went back for the evening activities. There was an art film, which was better than I feared at first, but very much an art film. It was much much longer than, say, "The Truth Wears Sideburns".
After that there was to be some bands. The first one was alright, but too loud and nothing special. By this time I'd had the chance to meet a few new people, very interesting people. I met one of the organizers, who runs the Co-Prosperity Sphere with her husband, who is the son of the owner of Maria's, where J+J+J will be doing a DJ set later tonight (assuming it actually is Tuesday). I met a chef named Claire who knows all the regulars at Maria's, and was there just for the concert, and was at the concert just for the second act, Judson Claiborne, whose lead man I also met and talked to, mostly about healthy eating habits. Claire was quite adamant in her high opinion of this group, and I did, in fact, like them a lot myself. So much, in fact, that I am going to their concert this next Saturday (conveniently located at Bernice's) instead of to the contra.
That last paragraph may have been slightly misleading. There are other reasons I am resolved to go to the Saturday concert. And I didn't really get around to meeting other new people after I met Claire. The implications are exciting.
later Sunday
"If this isn't nice, what is?"
There I was, sitting quietly on the Bridgeport Coffee House patio, when none other than Sam, the guy I met at the Mass, comes out of nowhere with his Tiny Asian Girlfriend. They were trying to find a group from one of his classes that was supposed to tour the stockyards, but instead they found me. So I joined them as we went to the stockyards and back, but never found the tour. Sam determined he would find some culture in the neighborhood while we were there instead. I was skeptical, since the neighborhood is usually pretty quiet on Sundays. We went to the Buddist temple; they were having a service, and Sam's TAG was able to translate just a little for us. Then we went to watch what looked like an alley fight, but it wasn't an alley fight. We stumbled onto a culture bomb.
The ring of people in the vacant lot were pondering a mural-in-progress, which is part of some sort of art and culture festival, of which the concerts I was planning to go to are a part, it seems. Further, there was a show tonight, supposedly a folk show of sorts, and for the same parcel admission fee, an Info Expo. The Info Expo, I should say. It needs the definite article. I cannot even describe it, I am so jumped up on culture right now. There is an hour between the shut-down of the Info Expo and the concert, so I came home and made supper. This space, this amazing space, and the group of people associated with it, is just, like two blocks away. It's almost time to head back over, but oh, I'm so tired, I got up at the usual time. But I can't be stopped.
I have not had a weekend like this in far too long.
Sunday
Sunday! The sun was shining brightly and a gentle rain was falling. I was very confused. Still kinda am.
Saturday
What a day! After getting up at the usual time (four), commuting, and babysitting, I was determined to wait around Hyde Park for a while to meet up for brunch with Nancy and a visiting Neha. I stumbled upon the Outdoor Adventure Club having an Earth Day campout on the quads, and they shared breakfast with me as I told them how back in my day, we slept out on the quads in tents made of tarps and park benches. Also, none of them knew who I was, so I had my first normal conversation about Scav Hunt in five years. Finally, I thanked them, exhorted them to come to the Mass tonight, and went over to the Backstory to fix the feeds. Neha did not make it to brunch, but Nancy and I went around afterwards to collect her, and the three of us just sort of wandered around for hours, enjoying the weather, occaisionally going barefoot, interrupting private events, planning potential road trips, and generally just loitering. By the end of this, I was extremely relaxed, perfectly contented, probably sunburnt, and had a blister on my toe that always gets weird blisters. We said our farewells and I biked home, tired and happy.
The day could have ended there; I gave thought to calling it a night, since I was already tired and blistered, and by the time I got home, it was already seventeen-thirty, the nominal start time of the Mass. But I knew it wouldn't start until six, so I changed into ligher pants, grabbed a waterbottle, a patch kit, and a pump, and rode off towards Daley Plaza. By the time I got there, I was surrounded by all sorts of other cyclists. We rounded the last corner to find Daley plaza absolutely packed with people and bicycles. This did not turn out to be the most impressive ride I've ever been on (don't misunderstand me, it was a definite second), but it was by far the largest. Over a thousand riders, though how many exactly, I have no idea. The route went generally west, then north through Humboldt Park, turned east at Logan Square, and went to the lakefront. The original map had called for either the Lakefront Path or LSD itself north of there, but either our escort of cops would not let us onto LSD, or there were enough South Siders present to veto going so far north. People sort of chilled on the beach for a while after that. I had ended up towards the rear after blocking off an intersection in Humboldt Park, so most people I knew were heading south seemed to have skedadled already by the time I was ready to go. I did make the aquantance of an undergrad named Sam, and when we were good and ready, we began our own little caravan south, with a stop south of North Beach for pictures, and detour to Trader Joe's, where we had a midnight picnic and loitered harder than I've done in years. When the wind began to pick up, Sam decided to call it a night and catch the bus, and continued on home, where I took a much needed shower and almost managed to stay awake long enough for my hair to dry.
So here I sit, still exhausted, still blissful, all the windows open and a pleasant breeze blowing through the living room. The entire palm of each hand is covered in bruises; I had meant to grab my riding gloves, but one always forgets something, yes? I had wrapped the toe-blister in medical tape, and it thankfully didn't get any worse, but after five hours in the saddle, I fear I may have blisters in more sensitive places. I spend the entire day, save those four hours in the morning and ten minutes at home, outside, on my feet or on Terrance's pedals, in the sunshine. What a day.
"If this isn't nice, what is?"
Friday
So I've been putting off dealing with the feeds for quite some time. Today, I finally felt like digging into it, and discovered that:
- Not only had I not updated the feeds to display more than one item at once, but they didn't correspond to the revised site structure.
- Not only the above, but they did not, due to a foolish copy/paste error, actually retrieve anything from the database.
- Even though they had not been pulling things from the database, they were nevertheless creating small but worrisome security holes.
- Aside from all the other things, the items did not even link properly to the corresponding pages. Less of an issue for you read-it-in-the-aggregator types, but I'm a click-through man, myself. Which is why I spent so much more time making a pretty website than making functional feeds. (This is still the case, the feeds, to my surprise, only took me an hour.)
- Once the comment feed was working again, I discovered some more spam comments. I deleted them.
So I fixed them, except that last one; spam is way down from what it was, so I'm content with the current system, as stricter authentication would be annoying. And then found some (very silly) bugs in the log markup as well. Ha! Ha! Also fixed. I even corrected a few typos from old posts. I feel so productive.
Now I just need to update the sitemap and replace that sidebar on the right with actual content. And finish importing poetry and way old posts. And finish editing "Seconds". And a whole slew of actual, real-world things. But for now, I feel accomplished.
Thursday
So if you are like me, and didn't go to the Kid Koala show on Friday night only because you didn't sit down and read the paper until Saturday, when it was the perfect weather to sit out on your deck and, well, read the newspaper, you might be as glad as I am to hear that J+J+J are having a show up in East Village on Monday night. If you are me, then you live in Bridgeport, and are excited further by the fact that they are doing a DJ set at the bar/liquor store one block away from your (my) apartment, and that there is no cover for this. Other exciting things for me, and any errant copies of me that might be reading this: I have a job interview! In theory. That is, it's been postponed until next week. It was going to be tonight, right before the National Address (also exciting -at Mercury Cafe, seven at night, if you're / I'm reading before then and want to czech it out), but it's been moved to Monday... right before the J+J+J show. Sweet, sweet proximity. Critical Mass tomorrow! I may be less enthusiastic when I'm tired and saddlesore after a week of commuting plus the jaunt north tonight for the Address. Then, on Sunday, church! There's no way I'll sleep through it, because I now get up at four every morning! Then, on Monday... well, I skipped ahead on the concerts, because I was that excited. And so are you.
And now I'm going to go try to buy spray paint in Chicago. It can't be that hard.
Sunday
So I was roadtripping with some other old Scav Hunt judges, and we were going through Las Vegas when our car broke down. While it was in the shop, we sort of wandedered around until we came to a convention centre, where we crashed a folkways convention. But these were not established, traditional folkways, they were new ones, still in need of promotion, so there was a lot of energy and music and even more free food, most of it pretty decent. It was winding down as we were there, though, and in the end most of us ended up playing poker off in a corner. Looking out the window, there was a gigantic, lit-up restaurant (/ casino?) called "PIE to the RIBS", where, it was agreed by all present, one should be able to get pie made of ribs; sadly, this did not seem to be the case. Apparently, not even pies made of ribbed-like things (eg. pulled pork) were available. And then I woke up and was terrified I was late for something.
But no. I had, in fact, slept through the alarm to go to the Marauders run tonight, which had sounded so promising - though I'm sure the information is available somewhere online, it's not my place to spread it; I am content to say that both the origin and the terminus are two of my very favorite places in Chicago. But I had woken up at three am already, been chagrined, turned off the alarm, mourned the missed opportunity, and gone back to sleep. And since my sleep schedule is being phased to end at three in the morning, I wake up a few hours later, thinking about meat pies and good times with Scavjudges.
Feeds: