Frozen Pieces of Life

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

From the AP:

Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage – and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote – the minimum needed – to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.

Vermont was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples and joins Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa in giving gays the right to marry. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

Tuesday morning’s legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states’ laws.

House Speaker Shap Smith’s announcement of the vote brought an outburst of jubilation from some of the hundreds packed into the gallery and the lobby outside the House chamber, despite the speaker’s admonishment against such displays.

Among the celebrants in the lobby were former Rep. Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, and his longtime partner, Chuck Kletecka. Dostis recalled efforts to expand gay rights dating to an anti-discrimination law passed in 1992.

“It’s been a very long battle. It’s been almost 20 years to get to this point,” Dostis said. “I think finally, most people in Vermont understand that we’re a couple like any other couple. We’re as good and as bad as any other group of people. And now I think we have a chance to prove ourselves here on forward that we’re good members of our community.”

Dostis said he and Kletecka will celebrate their 25th year together in September.

“Is that a proposal?” Kletecka asked.

“Yeah,” Dostis replied. “Twenty-five years together, I think it’s time we finally got married.”

Craig Bensen, a gay marriage opponent who had lobbied unsuccessfully for a nonbinding referendum on the question, said he was disappointed but believed gay marriage opponents were outspent by supporters by a 20-1 margin.

“The other side had a highly funded, extremely well-oiled machine with all the political leadership except the governor pushing to make this happen,” he said. “The fact that it came down to this tight a vote is really astounding.”

Also in the crowd was Michael Feiner, a farmer from Roxbury and gay marriage supporter, who took a break from collecting sap for maple syrup-making to come to the Statehouse.

“I’m taking a break to come and basically make sure that I was here to witness history,” he said.

The House had initially passed the bill last week with a 95-52 vote.

I have always believed that the oppression of homosexual couples will be looked back upon as a stain upon our nation, incomprehensible to future generations that grow up without as strong a presence of homophobia around them.  While having state Supreme Courts agree with this view is nice, having legislative bodies–people actually elected–support gay rights is better.  Congratulations to Vermont for being truly progressive.   

For making me even slightly more inclined to become a good cook, Mark Bittman deserves more credit than I can muster. This is THE cookbook for people who can’t cook. The recipes are simple, yet delicious; he instructs, while encouraging independence and growth. For every basic, elemental recipe there are dozens of spinoff recipes, enabling you to create the same dish in countless ways. For those of us who don’t have time to master dozens of cooking techniques, it allows us to cook the same dish we end up making every Thursday, but in new and exciting ways.  For those of you with ambition, there are endless styles and techniques to be learned, but for those of us with wretched kitchens, borderline-serviceable tools and little time/ambition, mastering one technique will suffice.

In my time as a United supporter, few goals have made me as happy as this one.  A moment bigger than the game and the reason I watch sports.

So the Bears have finally landed a quarterback of some repute. Yesterday, the Chicago Bears acquired Jay Cutler for Kyle Orton and a couple of first rounders. My football IQ is not high enough to begin pontificating about the Cutler’s likelihood of success, but I do think it will be interesting. He seems to be an emotional lad with a propensity for getting snockered regularly. Considering that Rex Grossman was audibly booed at home during his time under center, Cutler’s sensitivity combined with alcohol and Chicago nightlife could be something to behold. So whether it will be good or bad, I don’t know, but I think it will be interesting. Go Bears.

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of with tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance everyday? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that–well, lucky you.

Obama has gone to the gym, for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row. — Washington Post

It’s amazing what people can do with their lives.  For one person to accomplish so much while still managing to exercise more than I do is somewhere between admirable and aggravating.  At least with Clinton he was wildly brilliant, charasmatic, but also a lousy husband and fat.  That enabled me to say to myself, well surely he accomplished great things with his life, but he did so at the cost of his health and relationships.  This Obama guy seems set to keep his armor chinkless, if that’s a word.  He smokes cigarettes, you say?  He’s DOWN from three or four a day to the occasional one.  That’s not a habit, that’s perfection.  Do you know how many smokers would like to have three or four a day?  About every single one.  If I was able to restrain my smoking habit to one with coffee, one after lunch, one after dinner and one before I went to bed I would have never quit.  It is nearly impossible to do that.  It’s harder than quitting altogether.  So even in his vices he’s achieved some level of perfection.

In another story certain to warm the cockles of any environmentalists heart, Trucks and SUV’s will outsell cars for the month of December. I’m not one of those who feels it’s necessary to legislate what kind of cars people should drive, but this seems unfathomably stupid at this juncture.  Leaving the environment aside, which I think is pretty far from the minds of most SUV owners, the economics of this don’t make sense.  Oil prices, for wherever they’re located today, are hardly predictable or stable.  With a one-year price range that fluctuated $110.00, you’d think we got the message that while SUV’s may be affordable one minute, that can quickly change.

I am never one to play the environmental demogogue and, honestly, people can drive whatever they want.  But I just have a question for my SUV and truck driving bretheren.  What, exactly, is so great about driving these automobiles that you are willing to risk the chance that oil prices could almost instantly spike while the economy is in an economic downturn?  Could you display for me a pro/con list for purchasing an SUV/truck?  If you need one for work you are exempted from this discussion–I get that.  There must be something magical about these automobiles that I simply don’t get.  Cool looking, check.  Safe, check.  Spacious, check.  Handle well in adverse conditions, sometimes check.  But that’s where it stops for me and I know that there are cars that satisfy those criteria while getting more than 10 mpg, so I would never be so inclined.  Just wondering, America.

So this is Christmas.  What have I done?

On November 1, Jenny and I moved to the beautiful city of Chicago.  Previously we had lived in Saratoga Springs, NY, the city of my birth.  We liked life enough there, but felt that if we were going to become the people we envisioned when we closed our eyes we needed a more fertile soil in which to grow.  It’s not that Saratoga wasn’t beautiful or that I was displeased with my job or tired of my friends; it was none of those.  We simply believed, and still believe, that there is an ideal version of ourselves that wouldn’t be easy to cultivate in the same location where I was planted.

So that brought us here.  We didn’t have jobs when we arrived, as we are restaurant scrubs.  It’s pretty difficult to apply for jobs in restaurants from afar.  Alot of what makes someone fit a restaurant doesn’t show up on one’s resume and doesn’t always translate over phone interviews.  You simply have to feel someone out.  It’s kindof remedial work at its basest level, but what separates one server from another is often intangible.  You just have a certain way about you that guests find comforting.  I like to think I have that, but who knows.

The job market here has been pretty difficult.  It’s not exactly a growth economy these days, so the openings have been slim.  For those restaurants that have had openings, I have applied, put on my best garb and tried my best to lend a positive impression.  For the most part, with one restaurant the clear exception, I think I’ve acquitted myself well in the interviews I have attended.  One day I simply fell flat–I wouldn’t have hired me that day–but that happens.  Still, no avail.  No one knows the restaurants I’ve worked at from a hole in the wall here.  The Olde Bryan Inn, my previous workplace, might as well be in Siberia.  It makes things tricky.  People simply have to take your word that the place you worked is as you describe it.  You can tell them it is the busiest, most acclaimed restaurant East of the Mississippi, but it really doesn’t matter.  They’ve never been and they’ve never heard of it.  I’m lucky if they’ve heard of my hometown.  So, to summarize, it’s been rough.

I told you this to tell you this: I wasn’t able to make it home for Christmas.  Money was an issue.  We’re pretty poor these days and haven’t splurged on even a dinner out in about a month, much less plane tickets.  We’re in full-on hoard mode and the economics of heading isn’t congruent with our current lifestyle of scrimping.  My parents offered to fly me back, but I couldn’t do it.  I’ve been looking for jobs consistently since I arrived and to apply for a job with the caveat that I would need X days off around the holidays seemed foolhardy.  Turns out it didn’t matter, as I haven’t received any offers, but that was where my mind was.  Employment is priority one, everything else secondary.  So here I am on Christmas morning, starting a blog.

It’s alright with me, but is certainly sucks a bit.  I had my little cry fest last night when Jenny informed me that she had bought me a few small gifts for Christmas.  We had decided that we weren’t going to give presents until a later date when money was a bit less tight.  Jenny, however, being the thoughtful and sweet person that she is, didn’t want to let a Christmas pass without giving something, bought me a few small presents.  This rocked me.  Within a second I was overwhelmed with a torrent of emotions and thoughts.  How could I be so selfish?  Why am I always so self-centered?  She deserves someone as good as she is.  Why do I always mess up the holidays? Etc., Etc.  But most of all it brought my massive disappointment with the move into focus.

I came here with pretty massive hopes.  We had saved a good amount of money–thankfully–and had imagined this working out differently.  I had been given some job leads that seemed promising before I left.  None of them bore any fruit.  Companies simply aren’t hiring.  The company I had hoped to work for, Lettuce Entertain You, has over 35 restaurants.  Right now, if you check their website, they have ONE opening in all of their restaurants:  Line Cook at Petterino’s.  When I came to visit Chicago a month before we moved there were nine server openings, when I arrived in November there were none.  I don’t know that there has been more than two server openings in the company since I arrived–both of which were at their high-end prototypes, the $200 tasting menu variety.  I have no experience with that.  And although I applied, I knew I wasn’t a candidate.  People with the company have been kind and gracious enough to speak with me at length and offer me their counsel, but receiving counsel doesn’t pay for much.

I had intended to return home for Christmas, buy Jenny something massively cool, invest in all the things that would enhance my “new life”: books, lenses, martial arts instruction, dance lessons, basketball leagues, new dining experiences, social outings, fine wines, etc.  I haven’t done any of that.  I’ve pretty much lived within the walls of my apartment.  Thankfully, my favorite hobby is free.  Photography doesn’t really cost anything, so that has provided me with a refuge from domesticity.  I’ve been able to go outside and see the city for nothing.  Just me and my camera.  That has been nice.

But I still can’t help but feel a vague sadness on this day of joy.  Christmas has always made me sad.  It is the one time of year where everything comes into focus for me.  All my shortcomings, resolutions failed, growth, new developments and longings take center stage.  This year the microscope is particularly focused.  There aren’t many vague feelings.  Nothing is blurry.  Everything is sharp.

So on this Christmas I am able to see everything for what it is.  And while that picture may not be too appealing, the vale of murkiness has been lifted.  I know where I stand on this Christmas and know what it is that I would like to have changed a year from now.  I would like to find a job, obviously.  I would like to be as good to Jenny as she is to me.  I would like to get home.  I would like to take care of myself so that I can stop thinking about myself.  I would like to feel comfortable again.

No doubt I will have my regrets next year.  I will feel that vague sadness that tends to inhabit me on these days.  But, hopefully, it will be a new set of problems.  That is all I want for Christmas:  a new set of problems.  Is that too much to ask?

Merry Christmas everyone.