Inhuman Swill

Laura and I were in San Diego a coupla three weeks ago for the World Fantasy Convention. (Yes, it was awesome to see you there too!) When we arrived, she was immediately captivated by the natural beauty of the area, and by the weather. "Ooooh, do you think they have a good business community here?" she asked. "Maybe we can move here."

You have to understand that neither of us is entirely sold on Chicago, still, though it's hard to pin down a precise source of dissatisfaction. We moved here four years ago from New York City. Laura got a great job right off the bat, and recently she started an even better one. We have a great apartment. And, I host a monthly reading series at a nearby bar, which means I meet a lot of local writers.

True, we've been slow to make close friends here, and our close-friend roster is still weighted heavily with New Yorkers, but that's starting to come along. For a while it was the case that we would make a very close friend here and then they would move out of Chicago, very far away, but that trend seems to be reversing. Now people we know are moving to Chicago, which is an encouraging development. And Worldcon is here next year!

Nevertheless, there's some undefinable thing that still nags at us, so I said to Laura, "You should talk to gregvaneekhout this weekend and see what he thinks of living in San Diego."

It so happened that I ran into Greg first that weekend, at a bar (natch). I said to him, "Hey, Laura's thinking San Diego might be a nice place to live. If you see her, she wants to bend your ear about it."

I thought Greg might say something like Hey, that's great or Awesome, man, but instead he looked a little pained. "I don't know," he said. "It's great here, but I see you on Twitter. You guys are always out doing something cool in Chicago. All the time. I honestly don't think there's enough going on here for you."

My first reaction was, hmm, we're not out doing cool stuff that often. But on Monday this week I was thinking about it. On the preceding Tuesday night, I'd gone to the University of Chicago with some friends to see a panel discussion about the place of the Chicago Manual of Style in the internet era, which included two editors of the manual plus Ben Zimmer and Jason Riggle. (I might have annoyed you with all my tweeting that night.) On Wednesday night, I'd gone to a screening of Jodi Lennon's short film Marc Maron: The Voice of Something, about Maron trying to find a way to do worthwhile standup comedy the week after 9/11. On Thursday night, I'd met with my writing group at a local bar and brainstormed ideas for Holly McDowell's novel. On Friday night, Laura and I had gone to a housewarming party at the apartment of some friends who had finally managed to unload their old condo. On Saturday night, Laura and I had gone to the fifth anniversary party for the Writers Workspace, which is where I do a lot of my writing away from home. And on Sunday night we'd gone to Grant Achatz's Aviary, site of our tenth wedding anniversary outing, for a release party for the new cookbook from Eleven Madison Park (my second favorite restaurant in New York, behind only Kabab Cafe). (Chef Daniel Humm personalized our copy!)

Six nights of cool stuff in a row. Hmm. Maybe Greg was right.

Don't worry, Chicago. No matter what happens, we wouldn't be in a position to leave anytime soon. In the meantime, I should probably learn to accept the fact that this really is my kind of town.

It's been almost three weeks since we moved into our new apartment, but I remember it like it was ... well, twenty days ago.

Things were going great. Three strong men had made short work of our boxes, which were now stacked neatly in the truck. Laura and her mother were ready to follow the truck to the new place in her mother's car and oversee the start of the unloading. The dog and I were going to stick around for a bit to tie up some loose ends, then join up with everyone else at the new place.

Good thing I slipped behind the wheel of our car to take the prime parking space my mother-in-law was about vacate. When I turned the key, nothing happened. Not a click.

I should have known this was coming. For a week or so, the car had been taking longer and longer to turn over, the starter motor hacking like a heavy smoker. This time the battery was obviously completely dead. My mother-in-law had no jumper cables, and neither did the movers. But at least I hadn't discovered this with Ella on my hands after everyone else had left.

Still, we didn't have a lot of options—the movers were on the clock, and our car was already loaded with stuff that I wasn't willing to leave unattended for any significant length of time. We sent the moving truck on ahead, and I sent Ella with Laura and her mother to follow them. I walked a few blocks to an auto-parts store, where I bought a new battery, a socket set (since mine was already packed into the moving truck somewhere), and a portable jumper kit (for future emergencies only—it needed 36 hours of charging before it was usable).

A car battery is a heavy damn thing to carry a quarter mile, even without two other purchases to worry about, but I made it. It took me some time, what with the rusted bolts I had to deal with, but I managed to switch out the batteries and tighten up the leads just fine—or so I thought.

The car started right up with the new battery in place, and I set a course for Dunkin Donuts to pick up a dozen for us and the crew. On the way I reset all the preset stations on our radio, which had vanished along with the battery's juice. At a red light a few blocks from the doughnut shop, though, the engine started to sputter a little and felt like it was going to stall out. I was in a left-turn lane, where stalling would be rather inconvenient, so I put my left foot on the brake and moved my right foot to the accelerator to keep the engine just above idle. I made it to the Dunkin parking lot and turned off the car. When I flipped the switch that works the locks, nothing happened. The electrical system was dead again.

Of course, the mechanical locking system still worked, so I was able to get out of the car. I bought my dozen—priorities!—then came back to the car and raised the hood. The problem was staring me in the face. I hadn't tightened the positive lead well enough and it had jiggled loose somewhere along the way. No problem. I slipped it back onto the post, tightened it up a little more, and closed the hood. Back in business.

I tried to maintain a sedate pace, not wanting to take a chance on knocking the connection loose again. It's about a five-mile drive from the old place to the new, and the fastest route is to take Western Avenue north for most of that distance. Western becomes an overpass for a few blocks to jump over its gnarly intersection with Belmont and Clybourn, though, and there's some awfully rough road at the start of the front slope and the end of the back slope. I tried to take it gingerly, but halfway up the rise all the instruments on the dash board died out for an instant. The lead was off again, though it had likely bounced up and come back to rest touching the post. I couldn't pull over on the overpass. No choice but to maintain my somewhat low speed and try not to let the engine stall again.

That went well enough until I crested the overpass and saw traffic stopped ahead at the red light at the bottom of the slope. I gently pulled to a stop behind the car ahead, and I tried my brake-and-accelerator trick from before, but I still stalled out. Just as I was turning the starter key in vain, the light turned green.

Again, no choice. Good thing I had the window down already, because there is no mechanical handle for it. I stuck my arm out and waved the traffic behind me around. I couldn't put my flashers on, so I just hoped a) that I could be quick, and b) that the drivers coming over crest behind me would be paying attention. I popped the hood, ran around the front of the car, raised the hood, jammed the loose lead back down on the post, slammed the hood, raced back to seat, and started the car.

I turned off Western at the first opportunity and took smaller streets the rest of the way. I kept my speed around 20. My hands were clenched on the wheel. But worst of all, I had lost my reset radio presets again.

I made it to the new place fine, but it took a while for me to unclench everything. I had missed the most exciting part of the move, when the three dudes had to hoist our couch straight up over the railing of our back deck on a rope to get it into our second-floor apartment. But that's okay because, boy, watching that would have reduced me to a bundle of crazy nerves.

I'm happy to report that this was the only remotely ominous occurrence that day, or since. I tightened up the battery lead a whole lot more, and it's been absolutely fine since then. We love our new place, and being here has made all the difference in our outlook on this city. Even Ella likes this place. She and I are sitting on the back deck right now, and squirrels are running back and forth along a power line strung down the alley just above our eye level. And it doesn't look like that power line is going to jiggle loose.

The movers are here. The contents of the apartment are draining into the truck with disconcerting rapidity. There's not much about this neighborhood that we will miss, but one of our great regrets just walked past us up the sidewalk. Our neighbor John Stirratt, bassist for Wilco and before that for Uncle Tupelo, just ambled past pushing a stroller on his morning walk. He glanced at the open front door of our apartment, and at the hustling movers, as he passed by me and my armful of odds and ends, and it was probably just my imagination that he looked a little disappointed. We've said hello to him but never felt comfortable "bothering" him to try to strike up a conversation. We've struck up conversations with plenty of other people in the neighborhood, though none of those conversations ever led to making actual friends. But even given that dismal batting average, why did we shy away from even talking to the most obviously interesting* person on our side of the street? I feel very sad about this failure, and like a giant asshole. Maybe he and his family are lonely here too.

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* I don't mean to imply that no one else on the street could possibly be interesting to talk to, just that Stirratt represents a subject I know already that I'm interested in.

It's amazing what a difference it makes when a city agrees to stash its garbage out back in the alleys instead of out front on the sidewalk.

We have arrived in Chicago safely, we have moved into our mostly refinished apartment, and we have put our things mostly into place. I will post a more detailed chronicle of our adventures at some point, but for now I offer you a pair of amazing magic words:

Central air.

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In the meantime, here is a set of photos from a walk around our new neighborhood with the in-laws on Independence Day.

The never-agains are starting to come thick and fast. I realized already that I may have eaten at our favorite Greek restaurant, Aliada, for the last time. But just now I realized that I will never again buy a 30-day MetroCard.

Bill the Piano Mover was quick and efficient, but it was still a sad morning:



Treat her well, Zach!

It must be a year now since we moved from our old place. Last week we received a whole mess of holiday cards, automatically forwarded from our old address, from folks who apparently didn't get the memo about our change of address.

Today, though, I got word from a friend that a holiday card they had sent to the old address was returned as undeliverable. This means two things:

1. Our 12-month forwarding order has just expired.
   
2. There is no longer a house at 23-33 31st Avenue where the mail carrier can deposit unforwarded letters.

Yes, our old house is gone. Not a brick remains. It's now a giant hole in the ground surrounded by a tall plywood fence (though the Google satellite image, off by a couple hundred feet, still shows the happy house unmolested). We need to go take some pictures.

I hope there's no critical snail mail out there on its way to the wrong address, because it ain't gonna reach us.

And we're back on the air, broadcasting from our new location....

Speaking of which, the basement disaster has made Laura and me feel better about the fact that we have to move before the middle of January. Yes, the landlord managed to sell the house for right around his megabuck target. Bully for him, you know? Twelve days on the market—the realtor only showed the place once, and even then the apparent buyer only looked at the back yard. This is not the action of someone who plans to fix up the house and continue renting it out.

So our landlord is a freshly minted millionaire, and we're moving. C'est la vie.