Walking Distance

Dearest Rachel –

I’m pretty sure that Kirsten started the conversation this weekend about what we might do together, which will eventually become somewhat ironic at some point in this story. To be fair, she started it sometime in the middle of Friday, when I was staying home (although not exactly staying home the whole time, as you’ll recall), waiting for the plumbers, so she wasn’t talking about Sunday, in particular. But that’s usually where these discussions go; whether I mean for it to be or not, Daniel and I are as likely as not to steer the conversation towards getting together after Sunday services, just like our family used to do back in the day. Basically, we’re trying to build a new family from the family of friends we already have; whether that’s a good or bad idea remains to be seen.

Anyway…

Now, there was an added layer of irony to these plans, since he and I decided to hit the Saturday service instead, thereby leaving ourselves completely free Sunday morning for everybody else. Not that anybody else gets up that early on Sunday for anything other than going to church, but we made ourselves available, for whatever reason. I really don’t know why we did it; maybe just because we could? After all, I don’t get all that many Sundays when I’m not working the booth; there’s something to be said about making my ‘day off’ a whole day off.

Anyway (again)…

Here’s the thing – and I forget if I bothered to tell you about the place when we were first here, so you’ll forgive me if I go over something I’ve said in the past (On the other hand, if you were to “stop me if you’d heard this,” as the saying goes, you wouldn’t believe how happy I would be to do so). A month or so ago, near the height of the World Cup, I had a similar day off, and I was reminded that I’d been told of a great bar and grill in our neighborhood by one of my colleagues in the booth. This is a place within walking distance of home that we never bothered to check out – mostly because it seems more like a bar than a grill on the outside, but also since it presumably catered to the horse track crowd, being located as it was catty-corner from Arlington Park. But I talked Daniel into trying the place out.

I’m not going to lie; the place is something of a hidden gem when it comes to a menu. And while they apologized for not having it available at the time, they did supposedly have a Sunday brunch most weekends. So with that under our belts, Daniel was eager to convince the rest of the gang to join us there. And yesterday turned out to be that opportunity.

Ironically, Kerstin wasn’t able to join us, as she was visiting a farmers’ market somewhere downstate. Meanwhile, even though Erin had agreed to work with her aunt at a booth at a local fair at her parish, she agreed to meet us for a quick bite herself, although she admitted she would have to take off once she was done eating. Hey, part-time Erin is better than no Erin at all; and because of the rapid-fire schedule, she would be driving to and from the place rather than running.

Once we got inside and poked our heads in past what appeared to be the buffet table (I’ll get to that in a moment), Ellen waved us in. She’d arrived first, and as you might expect of her, taken the most unobtrusive and quietest corner, away from what she perceived to be where the “action” was. We soon discovered what we had gotten ourselves into; things had quieter when we’d visited before during the World Cup, but this was the opening game of the NFL season, and the place was crowded with Bears fans (as befitting a place sporting the team’s logo). The place was packed and noisy; I could only imagine what this place might be in another ten years if the Bears were to reconsider and build here rather than in Indiana.

I’m forced to admit that, between the volume of the place and the distraction of the televisions showing the game, it was hard for me to follow the conversation – and while I think Erin was trying to be helpful, I don’t understand Amslan well enough to follow what she was trying to say at one point about her college friends who still get together online to game with each other. I think she mentioned what games they place, at which point she and Logan took up a discussion of possibilities that she and they might be interested in.

Speaking of Logan, there was a point where the Bears scored a touchdown, and the entire place broke into the team’s fight song, leading him to comment that “I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Bear Down, Chicago Bears’ in its entirety before.”

He would hear it twice more before we paid the check and left. Which is not to say that the team was rolling over the other; by the time we left, it was getting close to halftime, and the score was knotted. However, if we’d stayed for the entire game, it seems he would have heard it often enough to have the words down, as they delivered their hosts a crushing defeat of 59-37. Thirty-seven points is usually quite sufficient to win a game, too; evidently, either both teams’ offences were fantastic, or both teams’ defenses were having their worst day in a long time.

Once at the house, there was a little more time (and volume level) for talking. While she worked on a cross stitch pattern for some friends of hers – a baby gift for a son who’s not really a baby anymore – she talked about having gotten her landlord’s… license? certification? I wasn’t quite clear about it, but she owns both her old condo and the one she moved into to better live with her mother, and she’s now gone through all the legal hoops to rent out the former. Logan warned her not to be a ‘bad landlord’ as chronicled by a certain Reddit subgroup that I guess he frequents (which should probably worry me, given who I am to him – from my understanding, there are people on Reddit who believe that the only good landlord is a dead landlord, or at least a bereft one).

The thing is, Logan was brought up, I believe, with the philosophy of tikkun olam (which I think approximates to “make the world a better place” or “repairing the world”). It’s a great sentiment, but it seems to cause its adherents to reflexively side with the underdog whether or not he’s right. There are those who go up against ‘The Man’ who are not in the right; the Three Stooges, as you’ll recall, struck a populist cord by poking two fingers in the eyes of the stuffed shirts of the day, but you wouldn’t want them as neighbors; they would bring property values down, if not their whole house.

Anyway…

All these legal niceties aside, she’s torn about whether she wants to stay where she is, or move back to her old home. It’s a nicer place, she agrees, but much pricier than the old one (which she still owns and has to keep up). I don’t know that I can advise her about this, or even if she wants advice at this point, as she’s clearly going to be in this situation for the better part of the next year, now that she’s officially renting her old place out. Contracts are contracts, after all. Then again, it isn’t a long-term agreement; maybe by the time it runs out, and her own dust settles, she can make all the moves she’s considering.

And with that being said, it would seem that any luck to be wished out to go to her, honey, so I won’t begrudge your eye on her. Still, if you could remember us as well, that would be appreciated, too. Until next time,