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I don’t know what they serve, but I know I’d like it. The Happy Food Spot is actually an unusual convenience store on Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Square.
I hope that isn’t Lake Michigan perch. Well, what the heck, everyone knows that deep frying kills PCBs and high mercury levels. The Fish Keg is on Howard Street in Evanston.
It just sounds good, doesn’t it? Get yer Ham on the Bone at Jeri’s Grill, on Western in Ravenswood.
I’m up to my ears in homework, but still out and about in Chicago. Here are some highlights in pictures.
Visiting DePaul University with First Born, who will transfer there in the fall.
Shopping at The Dill Pickle food coop with my lovely friend Talea.
Attending the Old Town Art Fair and Garden Walk. We saw Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel there, and he is much shorter than I expected. I guess the camera adds 10 inches.
Seeing the Jellyfish exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium.
Thrift shopping in Lincoln Square with my daughters.
A little intelligence test:
You get on a train. The conductor comes into the car and calls out, “Tickets please!” He walks over and stands in front of you.
Question: What does he want from you?
It’s surprising how often train riders fail this little test.
Ever since they killed Osama bin Laden, the security is abounding at the Chicago train stations. The high terrorist alert level is now equal to my everyday, personal paranoia level, and suddenly I’m taking more seriously the recorded message I hear EVERY TIME I take a train: “We are asking you, our passengers, to add your eyes and ears to those of our own. If you SEE something, SAY something.”
So.
The other day I was coming home from school and my train was late coming in, so I personally inspected of all my fellow passengers. One of the younger guys seemed kind of…twitchy…nervous. He was talking a lot on his phone and weaving through the pillars of the platforms while he paced. It was that squirrelly behavior that made me start watching him.
He was wearing these dark sunglasses and a purple shirt that looked like it had just been taken out of a package. It was all stiff and still had the fold marks on it. He was skinny and the shirt was way to big for him. Then once, when he turned his back to me, I saw something hard under his shirt, sticking out of the back of his waistband. It could be a newspaper in his back pocket, or…a gun.
If you SEE something, SAY something. I had a lot of time to think about this while the train was backing into the station. If I said something, I was going to be a fool; he would turn out to be either a U.S. Marshal or Homeland Security dude, or just a guy with a magazine. On the other hand, if he held up the train with a gun and then activated a bomb that exploded our train and left a giant bloody hole in the middle of the city, my last thought was going to be, “I was the only one who could stop this, and I didn’t say anything.”
I got on a different car than Purple Shirt Man and apologized to the conductor about thirty times while explaining my concerns. He called over another conductor and I described the man’s suspicious behavior. They seemed to take me seriously, said they would check it out, and went about their business, armed only with paper ticket stampers and Chicago bravado.
I totally felt like John Lithgow in that old “Twilight Zone” movie, screaming “There’s a man on the wing of the plane!” while people are trying to sedate me and tie me to the seat.
But those Metra guys, I love them. I watched them throughout my entire trip home, and no bombs or holdups occurred, and neither of them came back to tell me I was a silly paranoid woman who should stop thinking terrorists are trying to kill her.
Something about public transportation makes a little devil appear on my shoulder who tempts me terribly. So far, the angel that appears right afterward steers my course, but I’m still thinking of devilish little things I could do.
Like on the 5pm commuter train today. A white-collar type guy sits next to me, and those seats aren’t so large, especially when he gets out his laptop and TWO iPhones. And starts making calls. Long, loud phone calls in which he is talking about peoples’ personal financial information. And his breath was really, really bad.
I get it that people have to work, but I’m telling you the guy was much louder than appropriate. After two or three phone calls, I looked over, tempted to ask him, “Who are we going to call next?”
Then the little devil in my head suggested that I, too, make loud phone calls. I was thinking about calling up Joe and loudly talking about that horrible, painful rash I had that was terribly infectious, especially to the male groin area, and that the doctor said it was actually caused by a virus that spreads easily through coughing.
Then I would cough.
When I got out my phone, the angel intervened and drained my cell phone battery.
Unfortunately, the guy’s phone was still working. The devil suggested that I ask to borrow his because I have an urgent medical issue to discuss with my husband.
