Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

  • Travelling while alone (or, TWIL: Leave the men behind)

    First day, first thing, I went to the Driehaus Museum to get a glimpse of how to decorate a Gilded Age house after your original house burns up in The Chicago Fire.

    (Answer: Lots of marble, lots of this new-fangled linoleum stuff on the walls, all walls made with a core of brick then a layer of cement then clad in inch-thick quartersawn oak.)

    Linoleum

    Different linoleum

    Thick oak painted black to resemble ebony. Tsk. Tacky.

    At the end of the tour I said how glad I was to finally see it, given that I’d wanted to see it for the last ten years but the husband vetoed it every time. I added, “But he couldn’t make it this time. He’s not well.”

    I shut down the required outpourings of sympathy with, “Oh he’s not dying. He’s really just old and grouchy.”

    “That’s why we’re here together and our husbands aren’t,” confessed one of the two English ladies.

    ‘You did the right thing,” said a lady on her own.

    After we began to make our own ways out a woman who had been with her husband earlier sought me out and said, “I’m glad you shared that. After a certain age, they change, and it’s just never the same after that. And what you have to do is mourn the loss and move forward.”

    The next day I took the water taxi to Chinatown.

    I called Gary from the middle of the Chinatown plaza and was dumb enough to share that anecdote with him, thinking I was alleviating his guilt. Serious midjudgment on my part. The squabble only led to tears, which of course led to a bit of emotional peeing, Botox or not, and of course there are no public restrooms in Chinatown or Chicago except for the one in the Magnificent Mile’s three-story Starbucks. So I did just want to go back to my hotel the straightest way possible, and that was the EL.

    After an hour of searching for the EL station, lost, sniffling, dribbling, I found it directly across the street from where I’d started. A low point.

    So when I got on the train and I saw an open seat, then saw it was damp, I thought what better seat to take in my current state? And really, that EL ride did make me feel better. I hit for the cycle on all the modes of transport: water taxi, walking tour, EL, and I really should have taken an Uber the from the EL to the hotel, but I did not know I was walking on the street where someone had recently been shot.

    So, a bobble, but after some quiet time Gary and I began communicating again. Not before he went so radio silent that I had to call a neighbor who confirmed she had seen him four hours earlier and he was alive and seemed really happy.

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  • Too Much: the two big events in Chicago

    The Chicago trip was bookended by two big nights out. My first full day ended with Operation Mincemeat and my last full day ended with the three-Michelin-star meal at Smyth.

    Operation Mincemeat – It was obviously great. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have because I reserved an Uber and it seemed impossible the show would be over before the Uber arrived. That distraction was one of the reasons I felt like I didn’t sufficiently enjoy this clearly enjoyable experience.

    Another was that I didn’t do my “homework,” as the older man seated to my right said. “With fast-paced shows like this you have to read up on the lyrics.” I told him I had done some homework; I had seen the Colin Firth movie, of which he was unaware. He asked, “Was it a comedy?” No, it was not. Not as comic as the musical, which was a Romp. I had all the experiences everyone has:

    [SPOILERS]

    • The sudden realization there are only five people playing all the parts in the cast. Truly, I think at one point Johnny Bevan walks behind a blackboard, does not break stride, and in comes out a different character: different clothes, hair, accent, mannerisms.
    • The uncontrollable sobbing at the song about the letter to Bill. The young man sitting to my left shifted so uncomfortably at his emotions that I was concerned he would someday take to drink to stifle his feelings.
    • The exhaustion while witnessing a musical that (minus rhe exception noted above) delivers unrelenting fast-paced lyric-dense high-energy mapcap song after song after song.

    [/END SPOILERS]

    It was so much, so fast, madcapmadcapmadcap for hours with really no chance to digest what was happening.

    I’m sure you see where I’m headed next …

    The three-Michelin-star meal at Smyth

    I’ve been to a tasting menu before, at Acero, where I had 12 courses of relatively familiar Italian food. This was 20 courses of utterly unfamiliar foods. Exhausting. Again, so much, so fast, so new. A new course every five to ten minutes, each presented by its own waiter.

    I mean, I wanted branch out, to try new things, but in a very short few hours I tried raw venison, Masa, sea lettuce, Uni, ponzu, abalone, sweetbread, and squab, and any familiar food was paired with something inventive, like lobster with cashews. It wasn’t a case of my stomach being overly full, it was overly stimulated.

    And to be fair, I tucked in to everything. Every time a waiter materialized with mushroom slivers or malted milk bread or quail eggs I could smell it and good god, it all smelled heavenly. And then I’d eat it and my Tongue would say, Jesus, what’s this then, pass it off to my belly, Belly would say, I can’t drop this grape in here, not on top of the lobster and the aguachile.

    The bite that broke me was the chocolate mousse enclosed in tuilles topped by caviar. Sweet and salty, I get it, but that did me in. I told one of the many waitresses I had hit my neural overload, my tongue was too tired, and she was very kind and still sent me off with some pre-boxed extra dessert treats.

    For that experience I really should have done some homework. I could have tried sweetbreads and raw deer ahead of time. I could have packed it in like Joey Chestnut.

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  • Crime and the avoidance of it

    These last two sorties out to Kansas City and to Chicago have been solo. They are cities, and cities are not always safe after dark.

    Kansas City was easy. I had only one night where I had any business being out of my hotel, and my niece and her husband were kind enough to shuttle me there and back.

    Chicago, however, has seen an uptick in crime even in the well-lit tourist area of the Loop. I’ve never stayed anywhere else, because Gary only feels safe on Michigan Ave. One block west to see the famous Chicago Theater sign? Flat No.

    Travelocity assured me that the area around my hotel in Streeterville (per the map) or in the Magnificent Mile (per the travel sites) would be safe.

    First night I was there I had to be out on the streets in the Loop to watch Operation Mincemeat. I didn’t feel great about it, but I did it. I had to walk half a block in the dark, but it was a busy block.

    I had no idea that while I was in my hotel, fixing my hair to go to the theater, two blocks away someone was mugged and shot in a parking garage at 6:30 p.m..

    Did I know this? Nope. Neither did I know this the next afternoon when the hotel advised me the shortest route to the closest Walgreens was through the parking garage.

    A few days later when two people had mentioned “That shooting in Streeterville” I decided the reason they kept mentioning it was because it was a rare occurrence.

    That calmed me down enough that I still lounged in bed a few nights later while some horn-honking-metal-scraping drama happened on the nearest corner. But when the bang-bang-bang started, I thought I should get up and look. All I saw was a car at a diagonal across the street, another car racing away, and almost immediately an ambulance arrived and loaded someone up. I checked the news more than once the next day and nothing matched up.

    I have to confess, I cancelled the evening cruise on the Lake I had scheduled for the next night. And I was a little apprehensive going out to dinner the last night, but I wasn’t on any street longer than it took to scale my way into whatever SUV behemoth Uber saw fit to send me. And at least this Uber driver didn’t say, “Oh that shooting in Streeterville happened just two blocks away from your hotel.”

    That’s the price you pay for a big city, though.

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  • Chicago: the best part

    I love boutique hotels, and of all the boutique hotels I have frequented, this, by far, was the boutiquiest.

    Sometimes boutique just means small. That’s fine with me. I don’t like paying extra for air. But this hotel had a theme and it doubled down on that theme, which was art and science.

    There were little theme details everywhere that would catch me by surprise. For example, on the last day while packing up I noticed the top of the washcloth holder was designed to look like a bubbling glass test tube.

    And there are fun secrets all through the room like Easter eggs in a video game: the secret nightlight isn’t where you’d expect (Cheat code: it stretches across the top edge of the headboard), the hangers are in a secret spot (Cheat code: behind the blue privacy curtain between the shower and the wall), and you saw earlier how those secret drawers swung open on a secret hinge.

    And of course the robots steal your heart with the way they warble and trundle down the halls. I really wish I’d ordered some basic item so they have some job security.

    The front desk never tired of my questions about the robots, or the best way to get to the nearest pharmacy. Housekeeping was very accommodating when I slept late. There were two days I didn’t leave the room until three.

    I just wish other boutique hotels would put this much thought into the details. There could have been a Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in Chicago, decorated in Prairie Style, with low doorways per Big Dot, and you could dodge hatchets after you check out.

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  • The commitment

    This is one stall out of many in the basement bathroom at my hotel in Chicago. Every one of the stalls had a point. Perhaps this is where the point skills are practiced; or where sloppy pointers are disciplined.

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  • Some festivities

    I hoped to see the lions outside the Art Institute dressed in Chicago gear after the Sox won the Wild Card but evidently Chicago has been burned before. (Sick Chicago joke.)

    I will have to settle for this.

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  • Robots

    So, this hotel has two robots (Leo and Cleo) who respond to guest requests for select room service items: snacks, salads, or towels or soap.

    I arrived day one at 8:30 p.m., which, I know this now, is prime robot time, while the restaurant is open. I walked past them in their home positions in the lobby. “Just robots,” I thought. “Don’t be old. Be cool … Don’t stare at the robots. Huh, the floor selection panel is outside the elevator — oh, it tells me which specific elevator to take when I press 9 –”

    And then I was set upon by robots. They’d both been activated while I was adapting to the panel and they were now warbling at me and spinning like confused but delightful Roombas. I got on the elevator and only one followed me.

    I was headed to nine, but the robot got off at six, warbled some more, trundled off the elevator and rolled down the hall to the room that summoned it. I don’t know if the warbling is there to humanize it or if it communicates with the elevator through electronic tones like Captain Crunch. That would explain why only one followed: if the warbling is to communicate with the elevator and tell it what floor it wants, then you can’t have two competing signals in one elevator.

    All week I’ve tried to think of something I could have it carry to me in the box in its head, but I didn’t need more soap or towels or snacks or salads. Gary wanted video and I pointed him to YouTube where he could type “EMC2 robots” and see lots of videos of robots arriving at the door.

    Then I realized the journey is more important than the destination, so I went downstairs and spoke to the lovely lobby staff. They sent a robot to my room loaded with nothing so I could follow it.

    It’s 3:59 minutes long, but you get to see me interact awkwardly with both robots and humans. (If the embed below doesn’t work it’s on YouTube here.)

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  • TWIL: Frank Lloyd Wright was really picky

    Look at this brickwork on the fireplace in the Robie House.

    Look how wide those bricks are. Now look in the bottom left corner between the yellow stucco column and the plain cement mantelpiece, below the mantel but above the rust colored cushion. Do you see the vertical bit of mortar that shows where two bricks are cemented together?

    You aren’t supposed to. Almost all the other joints like that have been tinted to match the brick so you can’t see them.

    I am certain Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t like that the vertical piece was not tinted, nor the one above it in the top left across from the other cement detail.

    I can only imagine the hell he would summon if his toilet paper point was in the state mine was in last night.

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  • Not disappointing

    Yesterday, the universe made me smile. I’d had a bad day. The water taxi was good, but I got very lost in Chinatown trying to find the EL after a squabbling phone call with Gary.

    Evidently, the universe sensed that I was having a bad day. The hotel has upped their toilet paper point game.

    I don’t even know how they embossed that point on there.

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  • Puzzle challenge in the room

    Looked around the room; couldn’t find the drawers.

    Found them five minutes later.

    I checked that footstool. No hidden secrets.

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