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I’ve finally learned how to stay warm (and not too warm) during the winter on my bicycle. There are some key pieces: glove liners, an alpaca/polyester balaclava, sheepskin boots, wool socks, and a fleece pullover. With these items, the rest hardly matters. I have a winter bike now. It’s a trek mountain bike with huge tires! Biking on the ice is frightful. I fell off of my 1974 Schwinn last Saturday. I thought, “I can bike on the ice, no problem.” I was proved painfully wrong. That’s ok, though. It’s good that I fell. It reminded me that mother nature is bigger and stronger than I am. Even if I bike everywhere in the harshest conditions, there are still times when I can fail. There are still times when mother nature proves to be more of a bad ass than I am.
I had my job performance evaluation this morning. It went very well. We met for breakfast at a coffee shop in wicker park where I used to peruse the Chicago Reader for jobs. It’s right across the street from a Kinko’s, so I would sit in the cafe and pick out jobs to apply for, and then I would go across the street to Kinko’s and Fax my resume and cover letter to the job listing. The sad part was that I was always in there with a few other people my age doing the exact same thing. Thank God I am gainfully employed and doing something I love.
I got super duper promoted at work. The experience that I will gain from this new position is invaluable and it directly relates to the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my life. I would be a fool to pass on the offer. All of that being said, I feel a little weird about not applying to grad school this Winter. I’ve put so much thought into doing the process right and building my portfolio. And that work isn’t lost, it’s just on hold while I work on sustainable transportation issues in the city.
So, now that I have my sweet promotion and am no longer working 50+ hours a week, I am taking a vacation! Patrick and I are taking the Metra to Harvard and then riding our bikes to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We have a cabin by the lake reserved for the weekend. Glory be.
Just as one exhausting week ends, another begins. I had a super week. Friday I went to a Pedestrian Safety conference with some fierce senior citizens. The group doing the event, Metro Seniors in Action, works on health care and pedestrian issues that affect seniors in the city. They are such a passionate group. It made me think about the elderly living in Florida- If they banded together around an issue it would change everything. Just think about all the people living in retirement homes and villages in Sarasota, Florida. If they were to band together around an issue like improving the bus system, it would be revolutionary. They are such a large block of the voting constituency that it would be simple to get elected officials to listen.
My favorite part of the meeting Friday was that it opened with a black woman reverend leading the group in the best prayer I’ve ever participated in. It was something like, “Dear God, help us to come together with those who disagree with us so that we may overcome our differences. Give us the patience and resolve to proactively change the problems in our communities so that we may build a better world. And the people said AMEN.” All of the prayers I ever heard in church and at our dinner table went something like, “Dear God, help us to get through the day… thank you for this meal and these people to share it with….amen.” Friday was the first time I had ever prayed to make the world a better place. I must say, it felt pretty awesome.
Friday afternoon I did some community outreach around the scene of a recent hit and run crash and then I went to critical mass. I was completely exhausted because I had already biked 20 miles that day and spent the afternoon talking to people who were upset about the crash, and going to crit. mass was like the last thing I wanted to do. But then I saw two people on Milwaukee in fun outfits riding funky bikes and I said to myself, “Damn, they are going to critical mass and I should as well.” So I made the trek down there after dropping some stuff off at the office. Mmmm yeah… nothing like commuting by bike on a Friday at 5:30pm to get in the mood for a critical mass ride. There is significantly more honking during Friday rush hour than at other times. And I’m talking about people just fucking laying on their horns for minutes… oh, how I hate it.
We all know how much I despise plastic bags- they fly all over the place in the city and get stuck in trees. We have one stuck in the tree in our back yard in fact. I found a video on how to melt plastic bags together and sew them into a messenger bag. Yes, my projects are coming full circle.
Our class is having the first critique on Tuesday so I’ve been working on my drawings and paintings. I think some of them are shaping up nicely. We’ll just have to see what the class thinks. Wish me luck.
Today when I was putting my banana peel in the compost container and my sparkling mineral water bottle in the recycling bin, I realized that our office is a pretty “green” place to be. We went through paper at my last job as if we were trying to waste it and that drove me totally nuts. Now I’m lucky to work in a place where people care about the environment and actively make small changes in the workspace to be more energy efficient and less wasteful. Everybody there either bikes to work or takes public transit, so we have the commute to work part down as well. Damn, I love this job. Today we got a grant that will go towards funding my position there for the next year- hooray!
Want to be more green at work? See links below!
Treehugger list on how to be green at work
Wow. First week at the new job. I’ve never been so busy in my life- wait, that’s not true. Ok, so my busy-ness ranks pretty high on the busy scale. Let’s just say that I never run out of things to do and I love it. I finally feel as if I’m doing precisely what I came here (here being Chicago, but also the world) to do. I work on the Northwest side to reduce car crashes. Sounds simple enough, but there is an incredible amount of work to be done to minimize reckless driving and to stigmatize aggressive driving in a neighborhood. I meet with community groups to teach them about sharing the road with cyclists and pedestrians. I also collect data at high crash intersections and look at ways to re-design the streets so that they are safer for cyclists and pedestrians. This is the best job I’ve ever had!
I ended the week very appropriately with an amazing Critical Mass ride. I think that there were more than 1,000 people there. It blew my mind. I had the time of my life at a critical mass after party. Summer in Chicago- too busy having fun to even blog about it.
I had my first day. It seemed to have gone by in 30 minutes, not 8 hours. I’m going to be worked like a dog there. Everyone in the office is so fit and happy because they ride bikes everywhere. Oh, man, this is a good thing.
I captured some of the 17 year Cicadas while on a canoe trip on the Pecatonica river in Northern Illinois. It was hard for me to become “one with nature” because I had just been given the news of my new job. My new job will entail collecting data at intersections with high car-bicycle crashes, compiling and analyzing the data, using the data to train police officers on how to crack down on drivers who are agressive towards cyclists, educating the public about how to drive safely on the roads without killing/injuring cyclists and pedestrians, and on and on and on. In short, I will be a bicycle advocate! Finally, I’ll be doing something that is meaningful to me personally and ties into my future plans. Landscape architecture generally involves the “regional perspective” and urban planning. And what I want to do involves planning communities that are safe for people who are not in cars. Ideally, I would make it so that particular areas were car free.
On this bicycle front, I’ve been riding around the city to become accustomed to riding on busy city streets. I find it easier to ride in the city here than in the Florida suburbs. At least people in the city regularly encounter cyclists and are aware of their presence on the road. I have quite a bit to learn; everytime I ride something new happens to the way I ride in the streets. I’ll be discontinuing my CTA card soon enough and soaking up the summer on my bicycle.
Yesterday I went to Ravinia festival to see Philip Glass. It was lovely. We had a picnic and snuggled in the grass. The Cicadas weren’t very loud in the immediate park area, but we were in the thick of a swarm on our walk to the festival. Friends came to visit from Germany and we went to a Cubs game Monday for the American Experience. They ate hot dogs and nachos and we all sang “Take me out to the ball game….” during the 8th (9th?) inning. Baseball is really something that I just don’t give a damn about. I do, however, love going to Wrigley Field because it’s so old and beautiful. There is something magical about that baseball field, or maybe it’s just the lighting?
Map room tomorrow, BBQ on Saturday, Green Mill and dancing Saturday night. Hopefully I’ll have the energy to see Manu Chao Sunday night. We’ll just have to see.
The interview was fine, but I’m still in the running with 5 other people. It’s amazing to me that I made it through so many cuts and I’m pretty happy to have made it to this point. The final candidates are being sent to the Executive committee for review. Anyway, now all I have to do is wait for the yes or no. Instead of mulling over (read: obsessing over) the interview, I wanted to post about other things going on in my head.
I went to El Cid for breakfast on Memorial day. Patrick loves that place. I am, however, lukewarm about their vegetarian offerings. I had the Heuvos a la Mexicana and Patrick had the Chilaquiles. It was quite tasty. We went to Tastee Freez (yes, that’s a picture of the actual place- it’s so cute) and I got the hugest cheapest mile high chocolate-vanilla twist soft serve ice cream cone I’ve ever had. We ate ice cream and walked to Rinconcito Sudamericano- a Peruvian restaurant at Armitage and Damen. I had some lobster tail with a fried potato, rice, and shrimp. It was mighty tasty, but way too much food. The hot sauce served with the bread was out of this world! It was some kind of pureed jalapenos with cream? rice? I couldn’t really tell. I’ve never had anything like it. Their selection of pescetarian items was exceptional.
In other news, I’m sure you’ve heard about New York’s green taxi fleet. It’s a step in the right direction, but I dislike car-oriented development anyway. Perhaps people in the city will stop owning personal vehicles all together and rely instead on green cabs, car sharing, walking/cycling, and public transit. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I wish every city would get rid of plastic bags like San Francisco did.
I took some plastic bags and re-used them by crocheting them into new bags. You can do this, too.
I bought a suit today. I told myself yesterday to just suck it up and buy a nice suit that fits well. My grandmother bought me a really nice suit as a graduation present as if to say, “Welcome to the real world, you’ll need this if you ever want to get a real job”. She was right. A nice suit makes the right impression. Unfortunately, I have lost a significant amount of weight and the suit given to me by grandmother is much too big and I look shrunken in it. And with a very important job interview on the horizon, I needed a suit. A nice suit. Walking through the store and looking at the price tags and thinking about how the people working there probably don’t even have health insurance, I was oh so very tempted to leave immediately and spend hours looking for a well fitting suit in a thrift store. The problem is that I hate buying new clothes. Buying new clothes is so easy and convenient because you find exactly what you want in any color, length, cut, etc. This convenience comes at the price of others’ hard labor. All of the garments are made in Ecuador, Honduras, etc. After less than a month on the racks, unsold clothes are sold to the overstock stores, clothes usually make it to a thrift store or the landfill, and the thrift stores eventually ship used clothes to third world countries. Then the poor people buy the clothes at an outrageous price. That’s right. They buy back the clothes, in used condition, that they got paid pennies for making. It’s a fucked up world.
The lifecycle of the fashion/clothing industry was racing through my head when I gave a big sigh, grabbed the size 6 regular length pants and blazer, and took them to the dressing room. It looked amazing-perfect cut, fit perfectly in the shoulders, the waist, the butt, the hips, everything. And then I took it to the cash register and bought it. To do so, I had to turn my brain off and I’m still angry with myself about the whole affair. I feel ridiculous. I try so hard to be anti-consumerist. This is one of the reasons I hate buying new clothes. I have a problem buying new clothes from large retail stores in particular. I despise the waste spewing from these places and how unfairly they treat their employees. My little sister has worked at Victoria’s Secret for more than two years and she still doesn’t make a living wage. She doesn’t even get health insurance and she’s a manager. Fuck, that pisses me off so much.
Am I a sell-out for spending so much money on something so cheap, so replaceable, so ephemeral, and so socially unfair? Deep down, I think I am a complete sell-out and the only way that I can justify buying the suit is that I’m hopefully getting a job that will do good things for the world. I’m not just some fashionista who buys a new suit every season (cough, cough, like most of the women in my office). The other thing is that it’s part of playing the game. You want a good job? You have to look the part. You can’t just show up in a dress and flip flops…. like I did that one time. I’ll save that story for another post.
With the summer business casual dress code in my office going full swing, I can’t just walk in there in a new suit. My co-workers will know that something is up- especially because I’ve been complaining a lot about wearing high heels. I’ll have to change into the suit before my interview. Ah, this just gets more ridiculous.
