the Diva Platform

We’ve been a little stressed out over the past couple of weeks, and I haven’t wanted to talk about it until we made a final decision.

The Boy’s been offered a job outside of Boston.

Yesterday we decided to take it.

It’s not just the fact that he’s been unemployed for 11 months, but this job is a good way for him to switch careers, something he’s been trying to do.  Me?  I can pick up and move anywhere, which is nice.

We’ve spent the last couple of days in the area, checking it out, making sure we could handle living here.  I think we can make it work.  The area is really pretty and charming.  We’d have to get used to driving everywhere–and the roads here are like Ireland’s:  Narrow, lots of stone walls bordering them, and horrible street signage (if the streets are even marked).

Over the next few months we’ll be in transition–even though the Boy starts right away, we get some time to pack up and relocate.  I’ve never done a full-on relocation like this, so it will be interesting, needless to say.

We had to make a quick trip to Pittsburgh this week to attend the funeral of Sir’s dad.  It was a little unexpected, but we were glad we went (and if you need a guy to do a eulogy, I might be able to get one.  Sir’s younger brother did an amazing job and was incredibly cool and collected throughout the speech.  Heck, he even improvised–the priest almost forgot the eulogy, and the brother said he’d hoped divine intervention was playing a role).

I also got to check something off my master “to do” list:  Visit a Giant Eagle.

I’d heard of Giant Eagle grocery stores before, and really, they’re just another grocery chain, with “Giant Eagle” instead of “Jewel” plastered on the Peanuts fruit snacks.  But they’re in Pittsburgh, and I’m not, so visit them, I had to.

I didn’t even think about it until we were on the road, and then I had one of those “a ha moments.”  ”Giant Eagle!  Can we go to Giant Eagle while we’re there.”

The Boy was nice enough to humor me.  ”If we have time and can find one,” he said.

Oh, we found two!

I wandered the aisles, looking at all the East Coast brands that we don’t get in Chicago:  Heluva Good cheese (which apparently is in Illinois–I just don’t buy enough cheese to notice it).  Tastykakes.  Pittsburgh Pretzels.  Herr’s chips.  I loved how the pierogi was enough of a food group to make it on the aisle label, e.g.–Aisle 7: (frozen foods) Entrees, French fries, Pierogies, Pizza, Sweet Goods.  Perhaps they were arranged alphabetically, but I’d like to think that pierogies were a better seller than pizza, therefore getting a better billing on the sign.

I was curious as to why beer wasn’t sold there, and Pennsylvania seems to have some wacky alcohol laws that we didn’t have time to get explained to us.  We wanted to find Three Stooges beer.  We went to a Giant Eagle that advertised “wine and spirits,” thinking that beer was included.  Apparently, to buy beer in Pittsburgh, you need to either go to a bar, or you go to a “beer distributor,” (i.e.–beer store).  We went to the latter and discovered that the distributor only sells cases.  Thank goodness for variety packs!  They didn’t have the Three Stooges, but we did get some microbrew, which we’re looking forward to trying.

Now we have a little bit of Pittsburgh in our house, and it’s kind of nice.  The Tastykakes aren’t horrible, the pretzels are good, and I understand the Giant Eagle just a little bit more.

This Non-Skating Official (NSO) has officially recovered from the Brawl of America!  And what a tournament it was–honestly, everything seemed to go really smoothly, from the venue to the bouts, and it really was a great experience.  This was my first tournament to officiate at, and I hope I haven’t been spoiled.

Our tournament head ref was Windy City’s own Dr. Vroom, and assisting her/wrangling NSO’s was Scorey Feldman, aka Nurse Vroom, who is anal in all the ways you want an organized person to be.  When I worked at McDonald’s in high school, I had a manager who constantly harped on “proper procedure.”  Scorey’s developed his own proper procedure for pretty much everything related to the non-skating officiating side, and dammit, it works pretty well (he’s also open to suggestions though, which does take off some of the anal edge).

A quick explanation for those of you who aren’t schooled in derby speak.  Officiating is made up of two types of referees, skating and non-skating.  Each bout can have up to seven skating referees, so each of the bouts here had a head ref (who also did inside pack reffing), two jammer refs (one for each jammer), an inside pack ref, and three outside pack refs.  The pack refs skate around with the pack and specifically look for penalties there.  For NSO’s there was a scorekeeper, scoreboard op, jam timer, one penalty tracker, one penalty wrangler, one inside whiteboard, two outside whiteboards (used for communicating penalties), one penalty box manager, and two penalty box timers.  We also had two alternate refs.  A lot of people are involved.  Our tourney had three crews to staff it all, and we rotated bouts, each crew officiating five times over the weekend.

I was on Team Legoland, led by the excellent Professor Murder, and my job was operating the scoreboard, which is a pretty harmless position and a good one for someone like me who didn’t have a ton of non-WCR experience and no tournament experience whatsoever (people apply for these jobs months in advance–I got lucky and filled in for a dropout).  Scoreboard’s not as much pressure, as say the scorekeeper, who sat next to me and was responsible for making sure the score was actually correct.  I just had to make sure the tallies were correct, start and stop the scoreboard timer, and keep the jam clock as close to the jam timer’s whistles as possible….which I did fairly well.  I had a glitch we had to take a time out to fix once, and in another game, the teams didn’t sit on the right sides, so the score was reversed for a few minutes.  Still, I did all right, and Steely Danielle, my excellent scorekeeper who hailed from the North Star Roller Girls, and I made Scorey proud.

Yawn….did I say I’d recovered?  Apparently I haven’t, so more tomorrow, including drool, what makes The Roy Wilkins Auditorium legendary, avoiding the mechanical bull, and my very own trading card!

So WFTDA North Central Regionals are over.  Windy City won.  I, to paraphrase referee Ana Bender, operated the shit out of the scoreboard.  And I had a great time.  The odd thing was that for once I went to a conference-type thing, and didn’t feel the need to duck out of the show.  Don’t get me wrong, I did duck out a couple of times when I wasn’t working because I wanted to make sure I saw a teeny bit of St. Paul, even if it was only a few square blocks.  I did so in the same way I’ve had to learn to stop eating when I’m no longer hungry.

At any rate, I’ve got work to finish up for today, some sleep to catch up on, and a tournament to ponder.  I’ll have more tomorrow–including a great candy store, a word about socks, whether or not Minnesota is just for Lutherans, and what it’s like to order a breakfast, only to have about a half-dozen eggs, four pieces of sausage, four pieces of bacon, a huge hunk of hash browns, and a basket of toast set in front of you.  Denny’s Grand Slam had nothing on this.

So while I digest this all, tell me something from your last vacation or business trip, or where we should go next.

Mama sent me this story a while back because this is my kind of guy:  Whenever he travels, he goes to the local grocery store because he likes to be able to get some local foods.  On any given day, I do like going to the grocery.  On vacation, it’s on my “absolutely must do” list for a number of reasons:

1. I like seeing how other people live.  Part of this stems from often wondering, “Am I doing life right?”, but it’s also good to know these things for writing reasons–should I want to set a story in Florida, I’m familiar with Publix.  Germany?  Kaufhof and HL Markt and Aldi.  Austria?  Spar, Billa, and Hofer (which is Aldi).  Japan?  Valor.  You get the picture.  I also like going to the movies for that reason.  It’s fun to suddenly have to find an assigned seat or discover that the popcorn is sweet and not salty.
2. I’ve traveled enough to have picked up some favorite foods that I can’t get at home (or can’t get at home without a lot of effort/cash….honestly, I love a Ritter Sport, but they’re about $3 here.  In Germany–well, when I lived there, they were like 50 cents, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were about a buck now.  I can’t bring myself to pay the massive difference very often unless it’s a major treat).  I like getting to buy them when I’m on the road.
3. I like to acquire new favorite foods.  The scale will confirm that.

And this habit of going to the grocery has allowed me to find some cool things.  When we shopped at the ABC in Hawaii, we got introduced to a number of Japanese products, which we could then shop for in Japan (Mmmm…Pocari Sweat!)

I haven’t really told this to the Boy, but I’d like to travel some places solely to go to the grocery store.  This is thanks to being a researcher for a long time.  A consultant asked to research a product or store, so I became massively interested in it for whatever length of time I was doing the research (Mama, who also did research, had the same thing.  When I saw an Eatzi’s opening up in my neighborhood, it warranted an immediate call to her because we’d both researched the place and were fascinated by the concept.  Pocari Sweat’s actually another example of this because I researched stevia, which at the time wasn’t available in the U.S.  Pocari Sweat’s sweetened with stevia.).

If the place isn’t near me and sounds intriguing, it gets on my list of places to go.  I was bummed that we hit California last year at holiday time because I didn’t get the chance to go to a Fresh & Easy, Tesco’s entry into the U.S. market.  I’m dying to go to a Wawa (a large convenience store), a dream I also feel stupid about because I’m sure people who go to Wawa every day don’t think it’s anything special.  Likewise Wegman’s.  And if I get anywhere near Fairfield, OH, I’m going to need a few hours to peruse the aisles of Jungle Jim’s. Look at that place!  They’ve got an Amish products section (including ostrich eggs, when available).  They have something called the Aisle of Inferno!  Award-winning bathrooms!  It even has its own monorail, for cryin’ out loud!  I think Trader Joe’s is a little slice of heaven; Jungle Jim’s is probably something beyond my wildest dreams.

Maybe it’s a silly way to think, but I honestly think that going to the grocery store is one of the easiest ways to expand your world.  Even in the Jewel I’ll find unusual products that are worth trying.  But since our travel budget isn’t getting us far anytime soon, I think I’ll be spending more time exploring the ethnic grocery stores in our city.  There’s Greek, Mexican, Indian, Polish and all kinds of other Asian places that have so many foods to try.  Flavors to explore.  Cultures to learn.

Yes, it was only an overnight visit, but our visit to Madison warrants a little more exploration than just Wisconsinites knowing how to drink, right?

Because there is more to Wisconsin than beer.  And cheese.  And brats.  And Brett Favre.  Well, maybe not Favre anymore, but my point is that we didn’t leave Chicago just to get our drink and eat on–though maybe you’ll disagree with me after reading this.

The Boy and I hopped a Megabus up on Saturday afternoon.  Megabus is a cheap, slightly cramped (or very cramped if you’re well over 6′ tall) way to go many cities around the Midwest.  I suppose we could’ve rented a car, but I was keen on getting in a couple hours of reading time and not dealing with traffic.

The Boy and I are notorious for not eating meals during normal eating hours.  I swear that one day we’re going to start going to the Blue Plate Specials with all the blue hairs because it will be time for our lunch (while all the seniors eat dinner.  Dinner?  That tends to be somewhere around 10:00.  I don’t like it, but more often than not, it just works out that way).  Our bus left at noon and arrived at 2:30.  When did we eat lunch?  About 3:00, when Astrochick and Eddie Glick took us to Alchemy, a pretty decent, laid-back bar, after we made a pit stop at Gail Ambrosius, a decadent chocolatier (which thankfully is priced in the “once in a while treat” range because even though I’d had a snack on the bus, I could’ve easily inhaled a tray of truffles).

Alchemy’s menu had a few options that Astrochick would call “crunchie granola hippee,” but that was all right.  What was definitely all right was the chunk of fresh mozzarella on my buffalo burger.  Now, I’m not adverse to melted mozzarella, but the fresh stuff was divine!

After we rested our stomachs for a couple of hours, driving around, seeing our pals’ new pad, and watching some deep cable, it was time to hit Capital Square for dinner at The Old Fashioned.  Astrochick had wanted to take us there because they specialize in cocktails (particularly the Old Fashioned, of which the Boy is fond).  After looking at the menu online, I wanted to go because a section of their menu is called “Lazy Susans,” where you get a lazy susan full of appetizers and bread, much like Korean sides or something you’d get at a Chinese place.  But this wasn’t Asian.  This was cheese spread, bean dip, pickled beets, deviled eggs, and more!  Add an appetizer of cheese curds, and I almost didn’t care about my mac and cheese entree.

We rolled out of there and around the square, bar hopping whenever our stomachs could take another beer (you see, I ate a serious amount of cheese.  Even now, I could go for more of their cheese and crackers.  Throw in another dish of dill potato salad too!).  The Paradise, Natt Spill, Great Dane Brewery….we had a beer at all three, which made for some good drinking, though I felt like I didn’t even come close to cracking the beer lists (which means another trip is in the offing).

Sunday meant breakfast at Monty’s Blue Plate Diner, where I couldn’t finsh my 3-egg omelette stuffed with Wisconsin cheddar, bacon, and avocado.  Even tastier was the homemade biscuit, which I slathered with butter, made in Wisconsin–wait a second!  It’s marketed by folks in Texas, of all places!  Still, it was dairy, and dairy is good.

We had a few hours to kill before jamming ourselves back on the bus (which sadly, was pretty packed), Astrochick and I made a trip to Target so I could take advantage of 5.5% sales tax, and then we went ice skating at Tenney Park to work off our breakfast.  Meanwhile, the guys watched more deep cable and ate buffalo sticks purchased especially for us from the weekly farmer’s market, which we sadly had missed.

The funny thing about our weekend is that while I got a taste of what Madison’s like in terms of food and drink, I didn’t get a sense of the people.  Unless you can count:

• The “I’d rather be at a Clay Aiken concert” license plate holder spotted at Target
• The “TRST LRD” vanity license plate that the Boy first read as, “Trust Lard.”  In the land of animal fats, we quickly surmised that we wouldn’t be surprised if the driver had meant to say lard.

And it was interesting to see how quickly our friends had gone from mainly public transportation users to folks who mainly drove everywhere, but when you’re driving over a ridge and see the beautiful capital building down the road, it’s a wonderful site to see in your car.  Preferably if you’re also eating a buffalo stick or a hunk of cheese at the same time.

We spent the weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, visiting Astrochick and Eddie Glick, who moved there a couple of months ago.

Of course, there’s much to say about our time there, but in an homage to the Miller High Life 1 Second Ad, I’ll only say for now:

Wisconsinites can drink!