Last chance!

The last workday before Labor Day is also the traditional last day of the season to wear nurse shoes:

Funny story about these shoes: I was in Montreal four years ago. (That’s not the funny part; I’m still getting to it.) When I travel, I tend to eschew knickknacks in favor of souvenirs like articles of clothing. Or soaps and shampoos. Or hookers. You know: things I can actually use.

So I was in Montreal and I passed this trendy shoe store called Aldo. I’d never heard of Aldo (I’d heard of Aldi, but they have a terrible shoe selection) so I decided to buy some unique, not-available-in-Chicago shoes there to remember my trip. With the exchange rate, these puppies were $110, but they were totally worth it because I’d be the only person in Chicago—hell, maybe even in the whole United States—to have clunky white sport shoes confidently detailed in stripes of navy blue.

Of course, I wore them on my first day back at work. And I was totally at the vanguard of international fashion. And that night, I noticed for the first time that right behind the bus stop where I’d waited for my bus for the last couple years is a shoe store. An Aldo shoe store. An Aldo shoe store with a window display of clunky white sport shoes confidently detailed in stripes of navy blue. For $70.

Dramatis Personae

So I've been working out with my trainer for two months now. And I'm starting to notice some results. More importantly, so is the domestic partner. Rowr!

But that's not the point of this post. The point is that we just saw Tropic Thunder, and the domestic partner is no longer in danger of being dumped for Ben Stiller. Don't get me wrong; Ben Stiller is still pretty goofy-handsome (my favorite kind of handsome) and his arms look totally jacked in this movie, but for some reason he's just not carbonating my coin purse like he used to.

Actually, that's not the point of this post either. I just wanted to say "carbonating my coin purse."

The point of this post was supposed to be a listing of the regulars I recently noticed I've been seeing every Tuesday and Thursday morning on either side of my 7:00 workouts. But now that I've said "carbonating my coin purse," I think I may have lost some of you. But for those of you who don't get distracted by unseemly metaphor, I'll go ahead and list the supporting players in the award-winning reality series of my life:

Bus Driver Guy. Unlike the normal rush-hour time that I catch the bus for a normal workday, the buses—and, apparently, the drivers—all run like clockwork at 6:15 am in Chicago. I see this driver without fail every workout morning. And he's always smiley and good-morningy and his passengers are always quiet and respectful (or maybe they're just groggy and disoriented) and we zip downtown in a mere handful of traffic-free minutes, and I really like the experience.

Panhandler Guy. He's ensconced at the same Loop corner a block away from my gym every morning. At 6:40 am. Before anyone who could give him money has even started venturing out into the streets. Seriously—at that hour, it's just me and like three other people scuttling along the sidewalk on our way to pre-work appointments. And while you may question this dude's timing, you really have to respect his work ethic.

Holy Shit Guy. This dude works out at my gym. And he's distractingly hawt: Smokin' body. Handsome face. Perfect V-taper. Total lack of interest in acknowledging my friendly nods hello. I told my hopelessly straight trainer that I want to look like this guy. And for a straight guy, my trainer is alarmingly good at picking up subtext. So now he uses this information to mock me: "You have to get these last two reps or your hawt guy will never notice you." And it totally works. (The finishing-the-last-two reps part, not the hawt-guy-noticing-me part. At least not yet.)

Milk Crate Guy. After my workout, I leave the gym and walk five blocks to my office amid the hundreds of people who just got off of the train. And this dude is always on the same corner, squatting on an upside-down milk crate with a couple newspapers at his feet. But he's not begging for money. Or bothering anyone. In fact, he's just sitting there watching everyone walking by. It's as if he just wanted a good seat for the rush-hour show.

Crazy Conversation Guy. This one stands on a corner two blocks later. And he's what we will euphemistically call "a character." He will say anything crazy to engage any passer-by in conversation. But he's not threatening-crazy or disruptive-crazy; he's wacky-sitcom-next-door-neighbor-crazy. And every morning I see someone stop to chat back with him. Crazy!

So that's my list. Come back next week when I list every president in my coin purse.

Too ... tired ... to ... blog ...

Saturday morning: 20-mile run. Which was actually a 13-mile run for me. The heat felled lots of us.

Saturday afternoon: memorial service. It's the one-year anniversary of the domestic partner's brother's father-in-law's death.

Saturday evening: Dance for Life. It's an evening of pieces by every major dance company in Chicago, staged to raise money for AIDS service organizations. And it's the one fabulous Chicago event we splurge on every summer. Here's a picture of us at the foo-foo gay VIP reception before the performance:

Sunday morning: brunch with the ex-boyfriend. And his boyfriend. And the friend they're staying with in Chicago. And my domestic partner. Gay families can be so fabulous.

Sunday afternoon: 90-minute sports massage. I scheduled it to celebrate my 20-mile run. But I still went anyway. The massage therapist tried to kill me. With his bare hands.

Sunday evening: Huge barbecue with friends. I ate carbs. And ice cream.

Well, I didn't suck

Cabaret for Life went extremely well tonight. There was some amazing talent on the stage. I was up there too. And while I think I did a pretty good job, I very conspicuously squeaked on my money notes at the end of "Maybe This Time." Maybe next time I'll do better.

And I'm pretty sure people politely averted their eyes when I went back to my seat. But I didn't forget my words, and my topical humor went over well. And the two powerhouse singers went after me, which is far more preferable to me following them. And one of the waiters was totally hot. Which always counts for something.

The domestic partner even snapped a picture of me with his trusty (albeit flash-devoid) camera phone. He captured me mid-gesture (no doubt one of my gestures about watching football or driving tractors) but for some reason the gesture ended up making me look kind of gay:
Oh, yeah. The event was an AIDS Marathon fundraiser. The final numbers aren't in yet, but the early returns were $1,000 at the door and at least $500 in individual donations. Which is a pretty good haul.

And my friend Jeff—the brains (and the talent) behind tonight's adventure–has asked me to sing with him again. In a cabaret show featuring me and ... me. I'm not sure I have enough confidence in myself to seriously believe I could be my own headliner. But I'd certainly share the bill with someone else. I'll keep you posted. :-)

What good is sitting alone in your room?

My old neighbor Jeffrey Roscoe is running the AIDS Marathon with me this year. To participate, runners have to raise at least $1,400 (don’t worry — I’ve already hit my mark so I’m not hitting you up for a donation ... well, not exactly).

Jeff is an immensely talented musician and promoter who’s pretty big on the cabaret circuit in Chicago. So to raise his money, he’s staging a one-night show with with all his professional cabaret friends ... and he’s asked me to sing as well. In a big-name cabaret show. All by myself. Like I'm a real cabaret singer too. OHMYGOD!

Here’s all the info:
Thursday, August 21
7-9 pm
3160 N. Clark Street
$10 suggested donation at the door

We’re each singing two songs, and Jeff asked us to pick stuff that was upbeat or funny or just plain big and belty. So if you come, you won’t have to sit through any heartfelt renditions of “Hopelessly Devoted” or “You Light Up My Life.” At least not from me.

With all these big names (and one little name) sharing the same stage, the evening promises to deliver a fabulous (and rare) combo platter of extra-spicy Chicago talent. So if you're up for some Thursday night fundraising set to soaring melodies and the piano stylings of the inimitable Jeffrey Roscoe, come join us!

There's nothin' to it but to do it

After my little fake heart attack/ambulance ride/ER adventure last April—where the ER doctor determined that the excruciating pain radiating up my neck and down my left arm was probably temporary nerve damage from a microscopic rib crack—my regular doctor recommended that I get a stress test so we could 1) rule out some kind of cardiac event with more certainty and 2) put me through even more excruciating pain.

Thanks to my last false cardio alarm, I knew what a miserable experience a stress test is. So I told myself I should get some marathon training under my belt before I scheduled this test. So I waited. For four months. And a week. And one day. But I finally went yesterday after work. So I get some props (whatever the hell “props” are) for my conscientiousness.

Once I got checked in—after sitting in a waiting room that uses those carry-around restaurant buzzers that buzz and vibrate so loudly that they ironically get your heart kind of racing—a very cool technician who laughed at my jokes got my chest all dolled up with stickers and tape and wires that ran through a little Jetsons fanny pack secured at my hip. And I was kind of excited that I'd be going through the childbirth-like pain of a stress test with someone fun in the room. But then she introduced me to the other technician. The one who ran the ultrasound machine. And he gave me nothing but cardiotude. Or maybe it was heartitude. (Which is funnier?)

Anyway, when I gave him my ER adventure backstory, he arched his brow and stabbed me with the question “In April?” THREE TIMES. Yes, I know I took a long time to schedule my stress test, Mr. Sarcasm Pants. But the more you ask me to clarify what month I rode in the ambulance, the more it sounds like you have comprehension disabilities. Then when he started looking at my heart with the ultrasound wand, he didn’t even crack a smile when I asked him if I was having a boy or a girl. The man’s sense of humor is clearly not as evolved as mine.

But I got to watch my heart beating on the monitor. Hell, I got visual proof that I do indeed have a heart. So I can safely skip track 8 on my Damn Yankees Broadway revival CD going forward.

And the two technicians told me that it was actually not a good idea to have a stress test so late in my marathon training. Since my resting heart rate is so low, it would take longer to get my heart rate up to where they needed it (meaning more time on the treadmill for me). And since my heart was conditioned to recover quickly from exertion, they’d have to move extra fast to get ultrasound readings before my heart rate fell once they got it up. But even though my procrastination kind of screwed things up, I felt like a total stud hearing what a specimen of physical perfection I’d become. Or something to that effect.

And after all my dreading, the stress test was far easier than I remember it being. It took 18 minutes to get my heart rate up to 177, but getting there was no worse than the hill sprints I do every Wednesday to get to 177, and those take 24 minutes. And my heart rate did indeed plummet quickly once I got on the table. Which was a very nice reward for all those 6:00 am runs. (For those of you who’ve never experienced the carefree magic of a stress test, here’s what happens: They put you on a treadmill to get your heart rate up to levels of gasping-for-breath exhaustion. Then they put you on a table and tell you to stop breathing so they can get a clear ultrasound picture of your heart. Which is kind of a bitch. But when your heart rate drops fast, the stop-breathing part is suddenly pretty easy.)

And when the doctor came in to read my results, he informed me that there was nothing wrong with me. Except for my sense of humor. But I think the second technician put something on my charts to make him say that.

The pièce de résistance!

(literally: "piece of crap I just hung on my wall")

My whole door adventure over the weekend transpired without the aid of my handy cordless drill/screwdriver, which the domestic partner had lent to his lesbian friend. I know! A lesbian without a cordless drill/screwdriver! It's like ... a gay man on a second date.

But as happy as I was with the door, it still needed a little something-something. Like a foo-foo filigreed shelf-shelf. Which I hung the moment I got my precious cordless drill/screwdriver back from the insufficiently tooled lesbian. And then I took a picture of it. And then I posted it here. Because my life is filled with the excitement of a thousand Love Boat episodes.

And now we begin our quest. Our quest for the perfect knickknack. To put on our shelf. So I have something more to blog about.

This is our front door

Or rather, this was our front door ... before I took Friday off and spent most of the weekend making it look less like something out of the Martha Stewart Tenement™ Collection. Notice the 27 shades and finishes of brown that various condo association handypersons have used to touch it up over the last 80 years. Notice the three colors of metal on it. Notice how that sad little door knocker looks vulgar in a dog-penis kind of way.

Here is a closeup of our cool art-deco-meets-prairie-style escutcheon plate, which had been painted and varnished and horribly disrespected over the years. Notice how well it goes with the shiny gold lock, doorknob (which photographed kind of silver on my Verizon® Technology For The Colorblind™ camera phone) and deadbolt. And seriously, who actually likes shiny gold hardware? Besides Donald Trump, I mean.

This is what we've been looking at from the inside for a year and a half. I especially love how nobody in the last 80 years has made any attempt to hide the mounting hardware for the dog-penis door knocker. If you have lots of time on your hands, you can study the picture and choose your favorite paint sample color for the door. And then you can notice in the bottom left of the picture the tiny John Hancock Center statue I bought myself to celebrate moving to Chicago eight years ago. Also, take a moment to express your jealousy over the creepy reproduction graveyard angel that hangs menacingly over our door as though to smite you for thinking "dog penis" every time you cross our threshold.

The escutcheon plate on the inside was so caked in paint that it required lots of swearing before I could even pry it from the door. But when it's offset by the shiny gold doorknob, it looks extra-fancy, as though it came from the Donald Trump Country Farmhouse™ Collection.

As I fixed up our door this weekend I also wanted to restore our cool old escutcheon plates, but I had no idea how to strip them. I googled around and found out that it's easiest to boil them like a bunny on your married lover's stove. I found about 10 sites that recommend dumping all your crapped-up door hardware in an old pan or crock pot with a bunch of water, a bit of baking soda and a dash of dish soap and letting them cook all day on low heat. (The sites I read actually recommended simmering instead of boiling but boiling gave me a bigger wow factor in that earlier sentence. So I followed my journalistic instincts and went for the high-impact lead.)

If you wonder what kind of society would paint over totally cool art-deco-meets-prairie-style escutcheon plates, look no further than this ’70s-era orangy-brown wheat-themed fancy-fonted crock pot. Seriously, what were you people thinking back then? (In all seriousness, if you try this at home, the sites I read all stressed that once you use your cookware to strip paint you should never use it to prepare food again. Especially if it's ugly.)

After a day of simmering, you still have to do some scrubbing, but the majority of the paint pulls off like a facelift. To help the process along, I also used some Bar Keepers Friend® (which keeps our stainless steel sink looking shiny and fabulous) and some Brasso® metal polish. And the cheapo store-brand toothbrush I originally bought to help us scrub the grout in our shower.

The results are pretty cool, though 12 hours of simmering and scrubbing still didn't remove all the old paint. Unfortunately, I failed in my quest to find locks and doorknobs that match the gracefully aged (or, technically, recently boiled) patina of the escutcheon plates. Apparently they have to be special ordered from the same place that supplies John Edwards and John McCain with their respect for the institution of marriage. So for now our doors are still barricaded in Trumpian Gold®, which you can see here also comes with splashes of brown from clumsy condo association handypersons. But notice how the alligatory outside of the door is now all one uniform color and sheen. I pried loose an already-loose piece of quarter round and had the color expertly matched at my friendly neighborhood paint store (who, unfortunately, was actually not so friendly—my journalistic instincts here told me to forgo facts in favor of the easiest cliché for my lead—so even though they did a fabulous job using their spectrophotometer, the bitches don't get a shout-out by name).

The Trumpian Gold® knob on the inside of the door is so shiny you can kind of see I wore a black tank top when I took this picture. And while the trim is all now one uniform shade of white (which photographed pink on my Verizon® Technology For The Colorblind™ camera phone), it emphasizes how chewed up the door frame is. As though a dog exacted some kind of vengeance on the door in bitter retribution for an unnamed indignity.

Remember all those color samples that had been taped to our door? Did you pick a favorite? Too bad! I decided just to use the outside door color on the inside. Which is not only cheaper but it requires less thinking. But I didn't put the high-gloss polyurethane coating on the inside in an effort to mix things up and keep everything phresh, as the kids say. You can't see them here, but I also added quarter-inch rubber gaskets to the top and bottom of the door since it was way too freakin' small for the door frame. We also intend to find a way to upholster the recessed part of the door in tufted chocolate leather. Which we hope (along with the gaskets) will drown out the alarmingly loud noises in our hallway. And also hide the dog-penis mounting hardware. Which will soon be something-other-than-dog-penis mounting hardware; we just haven't found a replacement door knocker we like yet.

I also ran 18 miles on Saturday. For once, the weather was perfect, and I had a kick-ass run. Unfortunately, Matthew and his camera didn't run with us because they ran the Chicago Distance Classic half marathon instead this morning. So there are no pictures. Of me, at least.

While I was already sweaty and my nails were already caked with paint, I also installed a funky new ceiling fan in our living room on Sunday. The old fan was one of those all-white cheapies you can get by saving box tops, and it had all the style and elegance of a ’70s-era orangy-brown wheat-themed fancy-fonted crock pot. Plus, it had a horrible light fixture attachment that did little to elevate itself above being three bare lightbulbs. But that's all behind us! We now have a visually interesting ceiling fan with hidden light bulbs! And paint-free art-deco-meets-prairie-style escutcheon plates! And a one-shade-of-brown door! With a temporary gold-plated dog penis!

How to start your day off bad

Step 1: STAB A CLIENT WITH YOUR PENCIL

One of my favorite clients is in the office today. I ran into him first thing this morning as I was leaving our daily staff meeting. My hands were full. The client reached out to shake hands with me, and in the few seconds between his initiated gesture and our hand-to-hand contact, I got everything transferred to my non-shaking hand … except my pencil.

We made contact. I heard a slight snap. His eyes got big. He pulled his hand back as though I’d just wiped it on my moobs. I looked down and noticed my lead was missing.

And then: Awkwardness.

Apparently there was some kind of storm last night

I was busy watching a really disappointing Law & Order (the one where that guy got shot and everyone they interviewed gave conflicting stories and Angie Harmon looked really angular) and the louder the storm got, the more I just turned up the volume on my TV. Too bad there isn’t a button on my remote for turning up the interesting.

But I had a string of texts going back and forth with friends in Chicago who were thoroughly freaked out about the weather. And the brother-in-law who lives with us was hunkered down in his room with WWE on his TV and some weather-alert channel on his radio, and every five minutes (seriously … every. five. minutes.) he came running breathlessly into the front room with news about tornado threats, which I just casually dismissed so I could keep my attention span available in case Law & Order suddenly got interesting. The poor guy was probably just looking for someone to be freaked out with and I guess I’m too jaded to get worked up over a storm that to me didn’t seem so terribly bad.

I went to bed at 10:00 so I could be up at 5:45 this morning to meet my trainer. I guess the storm came back for a thunderous curtain call before midnight, but among my many magical powers is the ability to sleep through anything so I missed all the fun.

The storm was bad enough that it ripped the roof off a suburban high school and halted a friend’s enjoyment of The Dark Knight mid-movie and even sent 40,000 Cubs fans out into the streets to fight for cabs and trains and buses as the world threatened to crash down around them. But I didn’t care. I was safe at home with the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. Unfortunately, the guy who got shot and the suspects who lied to the cops weren’t that compelling, so I just wasn’t interested in their stories. Because in the consumer justice system, Jake’s interests are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the TV shows that exist solely for his entertainment and the remote for turning them off when they fail to be more interesting than a thunderstorm.

Uff da

I'm back from showing off the domestic partner this weekend at the every-other-summer reunion on the family farm in northeast Iowa. The farm was first settled by my Norwegian immigrant ancestors during the Civil War, and legend has it that they arrived too late in the summer that first year to get any kind of house built, so they dug a cave and lived there–even going so far as to give birth to my great grandfather in that cave in the middle of their first Iowa winter in their effort to set the Norwegian-martyr-card bar impossibly high from the get-go. Ever since I first heard that story, whenever I feel like the world is out to get me I remind myself that I'm not giving birth in a freaking cave in the middle of nowhere in a harsh Iowa winter. And then I feel a little better about myself. But just a little.

I thought I had a lock on minority show-and-tell this year by bringing my gay used-to-be-Catholic domestic partner to our hetero-Norwegian-Lutheran family reunion, but my jealous cousin had to trump me by bringing a black foster child. My domestic partner is pretty cute, but he just can't compete with an adorable black kid. Though the kid was only a few months old, so the domestic partner totally beat him in the math competition. Babies are stupid.

But we just drove six hours home on nothing but Diet Pepsi and Taco Bell, and I need my recovery sleep. I have only two years to think of a way to trump my cousin, so I have to get to planning and scheming bright and early tomorrow.

Random things

Just after I got on my bus yesterday morning, it sideswiped a parked car. The sideswiping happened on my side of the bus, too. But I was on my way to only my fourth personal training session, so I’m pretty sure the bus wasn’t off-kilter because of my massive musculature. Though you never can tell. I was worried I’d be late for my trainer (OK, I was worried about the poor owner of the car too … but to be brutally honest I was more worried about being late for my trainer) but I’d left the house with a 15-minute cushion so I figured we’d be OK as the driver waited for whatever CTA officials are dispatched to deal with sideswiped cars at 6:00 am on a Tuesday. Fortunately, the officials came quickly, and they instructed the driver to get right on Lake Shore Drive (four blocks early!) and get all of us passengers to our downtown destinations. So I was at the gym in plenty of time for a brutal attack on my chest and back.

Because I’m done with my trainer by 8:00 and I have a very short walk to my office, I’m usually the first one to get to work on my training days. One unanticipated benefit: I’m the first to use our bathrooms. Which means I get to pee in the blue water the cleaning staff leaves in the urinals overnight. The early bird really does get the worm!

Speaking of our work urinals, some mouth-breathing cretin has penned a crude drawing of what I assume is supposed to be male genitalia (or else it’s a very disfigured hand) on one of the tiles over our leftmost urinal. Our company shares the bathroom with three other companies on our floor, and the bathroom gets lots of traffic—except, of course, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings when I get to make some frothy “blue + yellow = green” magic in blissful solitude—so I don’t know when anyone would have found the privacy to actually write on the walls without being noticed. (It’s not as though the building management had the basic humanity to install partitions between our urinals or anything.) More disturbing still is the fact that some adult male in an adult office building in big-city Chicago would feel compelled to draw a penis on a bathroom wall. As though he were in a truck stop. Or a grade school. Or a Ted Haggard tent revival.

In other big-disfigured-penis news, Alaska Senator Ted “Bridge to Homophobia” Stevens has been charged with seven counts of felony corruption. And Dubya is leaving what’s left of our country with the highest dollar deficit ever recorded. And Scrabulous has been forcibly removed from Facebook, along with all records of my 30 wins and 20 losses and my 90-something-point score for actinium. Which is so devastating to me, I can’t even find the strength to bring this post full-circle and close it on a pee joke.

Divisible by eight

One hundred and twenty
The surprise refund I got (or, technically, have been promised will be deposited in my checking account) from the IRS last week. As you may recall, in April I got a letter from the IRS informing me I owed them almost $5,000 in unpaid taxes, fees and interest on the more than two-year-old rollover of some underperforming mutual funds into an IRA account. Three weeks, 100+ pages of cost-basis documentation and $600 in tax attorney fees later, I sent a check to the IRS for $1,100—along with a couple pages of detailed tax-attorney math—instead. And last week—FINALLY—the speed demons at the IRS sent me a letter informing me that I'd in fact overpaid and I should be expecting a $120 deposit in my checking account sometime in the next century. Which, if you're going to get a delinquency letter from the IRS, is the best kind to get.

Sixteen
The number of miles we ran Saturday morning. And by "ran" I mean "staggered pathetically through." As always, I blame the heat. But not as always, I wasn't the only one who choked.

Here is my pace group before the run, filled with confidence and innocence and hope:

Here we are around mile 7, when I'd started falling back so much that people felt compelled to run back and get me:


Here's Matthew coming out of the bathroom near our turnaround. I'm including the picture here because Matthew thinks he looks good in it. And because Matthew totally went potty!

And here's a picture of our finishers. Notice who's not among them. I mean besides Dick Cheney:

At our turnaround, I decided to run at a pace I could handle and wait for a slower pace group to catch up with me so I could join them. Unfortunately, I discovered I couldn't keep up with three successively slower pace groups. So I plugged along and ran the last five miles on my own. I did finish, but I clocked in a good half an hour behind my peeps.

One half
The number of my nipples that started chafing before the run was over. I have always been the miracle boy who never sweats and rarely has chafing issues ... and suddenly on top of my exhaustion, discomfort and prolonged wall-hitting Saturday morning, my right nipple started to feel like it was about to be rubbed bloody by my shirt. I'm sure part of the problem is my nipples were laser-hard in my last mile ... along with the goose-bumpy skin all over the rest of my body as I started into the early stages of heat exhaustion. But I was also wearing a moisture-wicking running shirt that was dripping with sweat and water. And—to me, at least—moisture-wicking shirts are more scratchy and irritating than cotton. Which is as welcome as a gay in a Vatican bathhouse among true runner circles. But I like the gays, so I usually run in cotton.

In any case, I took my shirt off for the last mile, something I haven't done since 1) I turned 40 and 2) I started wearing a heart monitor, which I think looks as ridiculous as a divorced Republican presidential candidate at a "family values" rally. Of course, Matthew was waiting at the finish line with his camera, so now there's a photographic record of what I look like with a broken headlight and an electric chair restraint holding up my moobs:

Second week. More advanced.

My expensive, distractingly muscular trainer is trying to kill me. Or make me all muscly. But my money’s on the murder.

While last week was all about getting a feel (ahem) for what I was capable of in the gym, this morning was all about making me throw up. Or at least shake violently when I tried to use any motor skills during the day. We worked chest, back and legs in 45 take-no-prisoners minutes this morning, followed by a sadistic 10 minutes on the stretch tables, followed by a reasonably motor-skilled shower (alone, for the record), followed by a wobbly five-block walk to my office, followed by an entire day haunted by the feeling that I had been secretly filleted in my sleep and the deep, aching pain all over my body was just a manifestation of the fact that my muscles had been surgically separated from my bones in some nightmarish slasher movie.

In 18 years of regular workouts, I’ve done plenty of super sets (a term for rapidly alternating between different exercises that target the same muscles) but I’ve never done super sets that made it super hard to walk as though I'd yet to develop the locomotion skills of a toddler. This personal trainer stuff hurts in my muscles, my bones and even in the cushion in my checking account, but it also ROCKS in all the right places. I should have done this years ago, and I can't wait for Thursday's brutal attack. In the mean time, I'm going to attempt a training run on Wednesday morning. The official target is five miles, but I reserve the right to slash that distance drastically when I get to the end of our block. Because I might feel a lot of pain by then. Or I could feel nothing.

Two years ago today ...

I met a tall, disarmingly handsome fella at a lovely brunch. He laughed at my jokes. He quoted Sondheim. He wasn't subtle about ogling me when I wasn't subtle about showing him the tattoo on my abs.

And now—two job changes, one new condo, one 40th birthday, six new plants, two marathons and a whole bunch of show tunes later—we're waking up alone, half a continent apart. He's in Louisville and I'm in Chicago. He'll be traveling all day and I have a whole day of meetings. And since he won't be home until tomorrow, I might go buy some stuff tonight to strip the hardware on the front door.

While it's not the most ideal second anniversary celebration, I know we still have time to spend an anniversary or two ... or 48 ... together; we made a pact that we'll give this relationship 50 years and then just cut our losses if we decide it's not working out.

Fortunately, early poll data indicate a long, happy run.

Where there's a will, there's an anniversary

I know! By the time you get to the end of this post, you'll be calling the Pulitzer committee on my behalf to show them my deft talents at weaving two disparate topics into one seamless, artistic, finger-on-the-pulse-of-the-American-Zeitgeist headline. What can I say? It's a gift.

But first, I have to tell you that we ran six one-mile sprints yesterday morning. In rain that could be alternately described as sprinkles, heavy downpour and diluvial. And I was wearing what are quickly becoming my least favorite running shorts. The shorts' little pockets routinely cough up the stuff I put in them for safekeeping—keys, running gel, harmonicas, bougainvillea—and spit them to the ground. No matter how carefully I tie the shorts' thick gray waistband cord, it eventually snakes out of the little panty portion of the shorts and hangs down my leg like a steroidal tampon string. And the mesh material in the shorts' panty portion is starting to get chafey. And by "chafey" I mean "sandpapery." Especially when it's drenched in diluvium. I remind you: This diluvial sandpaperiness is located 100% in my delicate panty region. What's more, the domestic partner's running shorts responded to yesterday's torrential rains in a similar fashion. This may be way too much information for some people (Hi, Mom!) but after running for an hour and a half in wet sandpapery shorts yesterday, our ... um ... toys are pretty much ruined for the next few days. So we spent yesterday afternoon snuggled up in bed, swathed in Desitin® brand diaper rash ointment and watching a marathon of My Life on the D List, Project Runway and almost two DVDs of Sex and the City. Which is probably how most gay people ... um ... express their love for each other. But not on the weekend of their second anniversary.

And yet, rusty Buicks won't get in the way of our marathon training. In fact, I'm heading out to run three or five miles (I never decide how far I'm going to run until I hit my first mile and see how my aging joints are feeling) just as soon as I post this bit of rambling. Because six hours of TV doesn't make for tight abs.

But on to the intended point of this post! Finally!

Part the First: The domestic partner and I finalized our wills, powers of attorney and other binding legalities on Friday, spending an hour signing our names and making decisions about whether we want to be left to die with or without nourishment if we ever become vegetative and Tom DeLay tries to diagnose our condition via videotape from the House floor. So we are now bound together by a formidable pile of notarized documents ... and we're as legally married-ish as the United Kakistocracy of God Hates Gay People will allow. And now I guess I should start sleeping with one eye open, because the domestic partner will stop at nothing to get sole custody of my dishes.

Part the Second: The will signing adds one more gift-worthy entry to my 10-day marathon of momentous July anniversaries, which in 2008 mark eight years of living in Chicago and five years of blathering on and on ad nauseam right here on poor, unsuspecting blogger.com. Here's the current lineup, for those of you keeping score at home ... and mapping out your July gift budget:

July 12, 2007: I proposed to the domestic partner
July 16, 2000: I moved to Chicago
July 18, 2008: We signed our wills
July 19, 2003: I started this blog thing
July 22, 2006: I met the domestic partner
July ??, 2008: I accept my Pulitzer

Oh, the things I’ve done

CULTURALLY
The domestic partner, his brother and six other friends enjoyed our first concert under the stars together at Chicago’s stunning Millennium Park on Friday night. The program featured Tchaikovsky’s emotional-roller-coaster Pathétique Symphony, preceded by a lovely piece by Jean Sibelius and an impenetrable, shrieky post-apocalyptic thing by an early 20th century composer named Szymanowski, who may have been a nice person, but we wouldn’t have invited him to play at our wedding so it’s probably good that he’s long dead.

After that, we trekked to Navy Pier to experience Maudits Sonnants, a French ensemble that works very hard to defy categorization. Essentially a human carillon, the group hangs from a massive umbrella-shaped chandelier suspended by a crane. They play bells, beat drums and swing from trapezes as they spin around and around as we mortals gasp up in awe from the ground below.

Here’s what they look like via a camera phone without a flash. Those little pendulum things are people attached to huge collections of drums and bells. Heavy drums and bells. Spinning wildly right over our heads!


ATHLETICALLY
I’d been worried by Friday night’s relatively warm humid air ’cause we had to get up and run 14 miles on Saturday. Then it stormed during the night. And I mean stormed. And it was still rainy and wet when we met at 7:00 am to start our run. Fortunately, the rain had killed the heat. Also fortunately, I love running in the rain. So I had a kick-ass 14 miles … though I got a pretty hefty blister on my left achilles tendon. And 10 poor-person store-brand band-aids later, it’s still red and oozy and gross. Mmmmm!

ROBOTICALLY
We borrowed the domestic partner’s nieces (and their parents and assorted sisters and cousins and aunts) for a matinee of Wall•E on Saturday. Anthropomorphic robots! Adorable cockroaches! Hello, Dolly! clips! Hidden Disney references! What’s not to love?

HISTORICALLY
On Sunday morning we donned bright red stickers and boarded giant buses and found ourselves one pair of culottes shy of being official tourists, but we didn’t care! We were taking the Chicago Historical Society’s celebrated Devil in the White City tour! After a brief slide show, we drove through the historic Prairie Street district, once home to many of the movers and shakers (and financiers) behind Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition. Then we drove past a bunch of houses and churches that were built with recycled architecture from the exposition. Then we drove through the old fair grounds, which are now south-side boulevards, neighborhoods and the property around the Museum of Science and Industry. The tour was interesting, but not packed with enough stuff to merit what the historical society was charging … especially because we got NO drive-bys of what’s left of Dr. H.H. Holmes’ hotel o’ serial killing, which is featured prominently in the book.

LAZILY
Sunday night, we were going to meet friends at Sidetrack for show tunes, but we hit a wall. A wall of laziness. We also hit a big Sex and the City DVD collection, and I have now finally seen most of the first two seasons. That Samantha was a slut.

WORKILY
My boss and I took a prospective new employee to dinner last night for an extended interview at a fancy-ish restaurant in the theater district. There must have been some Judy Garland retrospective (or maybe an artistic evening of Nick Lachey in a Speedo kicking the shit out of John McCain while humming the Sweeney Todd score) at one of the nearby theaters because the place was packed with homos, all of whom giddily disappeared into the night promptly at 7:15. We were just starting to wind up our interview in the newfound quiet when the waiters pulled back a curtain at the end of the dining room and suddenly we were in the middle of a freakin’ open-mic cabaret show. Do you know how hard it is to ask interview questions while a schlubby white girl struggles to channel her inner Latina dancer through three choruses and a bridge of A Chorus Line’s “Nothing”? If Madonna can be a movie star …

EXPENSIVELY
So I had my first official workout with my expensive new trainer (the one who can meet me at 7:00 am instead of the one they assigned me last week who was free only at 6:00 am) at my expensive new gym (the one that thinks it’s a “luxury brand” though it stocks its locker room with cans of Barbasol® brand poor-person shaving cream) this morning. Let me just get this out of the way before I go any farther: HOLY SHIT my new trainer is hot! And this may just be the drooling, giggling schoolgirl in me talking, but he also seems to be a kick-ass trainer as well. This morning, we just went through all the equipment at the gym so he could get a feel (ahem) for what I was capable of doing (ahem). On Thursday, he starts treating me like the bitch I am, whipping me into the manly man I’ve always wanted to be. I tried to take a “before” picture with my crappy digital camera this morning before I left the house, but the domestic partner was gone and I couldn’t find a place to prop the camera to take a decent picture. So I may take a delayed “before” picture when the domestic partner gets back tomorrow night. Not that I did any significant growing this morning. Ahem.

Expensive things I have bought this week

Two tickets to the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Devil in the White City tour this Sunday. Serial killers! World’s fairs! All in one bus ride! The domestic partner and I have invited three other couples to join us for the tour, and they’ve all turned us down. So we’re stuck doing it with each other. So to speak.

Two tickets to Kathy Griffin in October. The only seats that were available when I got to the box office (it’s easy to avoid Ticketbastard fees when you work close to the theater!) were the crappy ones up against the wall in the second and the third balconies (survey says no) and one set of stage-left box seats. The guy at the box office described them as “just like the seats where Lincoln got shot.” Sic semper it, Jesus!

An Equinox gym membership near my new office and 48 sessions with a personal trainer. Six months of pain, sweat and 40-year-old gay vanity all for the low, low price of more than two house payments! And so far … I’m not impressed. I walked in off the street and gave the salesperson (who kept calling Equinox “a luxury brand”) a no-effort closing on the most expensive membership package available, with three requests: I wanted a trainer familiar with the needs of a marathon runner, I wanted someone available two days a week at 7:00 am and I wanted to start on Friday. And I was paying top dollar, so I kind of expected these not-unreasonable requests could be met. She said someone would call me on Thursday and set it all up without any problems. Except there were lots of problems. Nobody called. I called three times before I got someone who could schedule me for Friday. Then I had to reschedule because they hooked me up with the wrong scheduling dude. And after way too much “luxury brand” customer service, I finally—at 8:00 pm last night—got a meeting confirmed with … a non-runner who is booked every day of the week at 7:00 am.

But I wanted to get started, so I had my pre-training evaluation today at 6:00 am (yawn) and then did my own workout for an hour. And by 10:00 this morning, I’d already been contacted by a different trainer who is available at 7:00 starting next week. His stated specialty is “building lean muscle mass,” which I hope he means on me.

And while the Equinox facility is nice, it doesn’t really give the impression of being a “luxury brand.” It’s decorated in a minimalist style that is much closer to “not decorated” than “minimalist style.” It has significantly less equipment than the ghetto gym by my house (yes, I’m now one of those self-obsessed homos with two gym memberships). And I’ve seen nicer locker rooms in … um … certain types of locker-room-themed niche movies. But Equinox gets tons of points for its volume of 6:00 am eye candy. There was even one hottie who was strutting around in little black underpants in the locker room when I got there at 6:00 … and then standing around in a towel blow-drying his pubic hair at 7:00 when I started my workout … and then still padding around in just his dress pants at 7:45 when I finally got in the shower. His two-hour locker-room presence was borderline creepy, but he was totally channeling Rami Kashou (naked!) … and I didn’t see anyone complaining.

But it is done. I’ve ponied up my midlife-crisis cash, I’ve booked my time and I’m on my way to … um … whatever it is I’m going to accomplish with the help of a paid professional at what is purportedly one of the best personal-trainer gym chains in the country. And I still have some of my extra-large shirts from when I used to weigh 15 pounds more than I do now. Just in case.

Regular is as regular does

I’m so predictable in the mornings. I mean like a Madonna movie. I have a glass of milk (or a protein shake if I’ve had a run or a workout and maybe a piece of raisin toast if I’m alert enough to fire up the toaster) every morning before I leave for work. And in the first few hours I’m at work, I eat a banana and a cup of Yoplait (cherry or peach or blackberry if I can find it in the store) and I make a bowl of plain oatmeal with some kind of dried fruit in it.

But the kitchen in our ultra-plush, space-needle-like office is even farther from my desk than it was in the ankle wart of an office we just moved out of. And a bowl of freshly nuked oatmeal is HOT. And my hands are already full from carrying all my dry bowl-of-oatmeal ingredients. So I have to stack everything so I can carry it all without burning myself:
Fortunately, my fully assembled stack o’ fiber looks a lot like a hockey trophy, so nobody makes fun of me. And I get to bask in Stanley Cup adoration every morning as I move my bowl back to my desk even though all I’m really accomplishing is a bowl movement of another pronunciation. Which, at my age, is sometimes big news.

And for the record, my tube of oatmeal is all ripped up from being taped shut for the move to our new office. I decided that a disfigured tube of oatmeal is preferable to shaking little oatmeal flakes out of all my file folders for the next month. Am I right? Can I get an amen?

Get a load of how clean my desk looks. That won’t last long. Also: Join me in hating that curvy cutout on my desk. It’s a platform that raises and lowers my computer to the typing height of my choice. But I’m perfectly happy with the regular height. And the huge gaps in my desk are hungry little fuckers that eat pencils and erasers and sometimes even low-carb snacks. And the hardware under the desk that raises and lowers the platform has already severed three arteries and two tendons in my knees. So even though that platform thinks it’s all clever, I will not treat with the respect that it thinks it’s entitled to. Because I am Not! One of its! FANS!

How to have an exhausting July 4 weekend

Hang out at the lobby bar in your fabulous new office building on Thursday night after work. Drink your first Tom Collins, which just may eclipse the vodka tonic as your drink of choice on the rare occasions when you order an adult beverage. Meet the domestic partner and his brother for the downtown fireworks later that evening. Ooze through the million-strong sea of staggeringly immature and rude Chicagoans on your way back to the train afterward. Collapse in bed almost two hours later when you finally make it home.

Cheer over the demise of the unrepentantly racist, homophobic, warm wet butthole of a bigot Jesse Helms. Feel bad that he didn't suffer more before he died.

Start your next home-improvement project: upgrading your poorly insulated, ill-fitting front door. To get started, buy new deadbolts and door handles that match what you think you'll find when you finally get decades of paint off the the existing escutcheon plates. Also buy gaskets to attach to all four edges of the door to make it more soundproof and able to keep your expensive air conditioning and heating where you want it to stay. Still to do: Strip the hardware you're going to keep. Sand and paint the door. Replace the hardware. Fix the broken quarter-round on the door frame. Find a new door knocker that fits the 5" holes in your door. Figure out a way to maybe upholster the back of the door to add even more insulation so you don't hear every freaking conversation in the hallway. Pick a date you're going to do all this so you're able to guard the homestead against invading miscreants while you have the door off its hinges through all this stripping and painting and drying.

Run five one-mile sprints on Saturday morning and rock at them. Run one 10-mile run on Sunday morning and choke and die in the heat. Also do chest and arms at the gym for the first time in three weeks.

Finally decide what you're going to do for your mid-life crisis: Hire a personal trainer. Which is cheaper than a Ferrari and less pathetic than a combover. Start researching the best place to work with said trainer: your neighborhood gym or one close to your office.

Cuddle up with the domestic partner to watch all the DVD extras on Sweeney Todd.

Have an impromptu barbecue with all your loser friends who haven't already been invited to better barbecues. Ply your hunky straight neighbor with food and liquor so he'll do all your barbecuing for you since it's his grill anyway. Then watch in awe as your friends' very gay conversations don't even faze him.

Spend the last few hours of the weekend singing showtunes and bonding with said friends over even more adult beverages at Sidetrack.

Crawl home. Write a blog post. Expire.