Mexico, anyone?

I started my life in Chicago during an eight week internship two years ago. My first weekend in Chicago some friends and I were searching for a Mexican restaurant. We lived in the south loop (where there is nothing, besides a roof top restaurant and a Bar Louie). So we started walking, looking for the some lunch. After about 10 minutes we were starving and couldn’t find anything but a few expensive chain restaurants (we had gone out the night before and were in despite need for some greasy food and a diet coke, or twelve). We stop a couple walking down the street and ask them if they knew of any great Mexican restaurants in the area. They look at each other, and the slightest smirk came over the man’s face (we wouldn’t realize why until much later). He turns to us and says "no Mexican restaurants here but get on the pink line and take it to a 18th. You'll find a great Mexican restaurant there". Naïve little interns, we hop right on the pink line like we were Chicago natives and not temporary implants.

As we rode the pink line west more people exited the train. I remember turning to one of my friends and saying, “I don’t think this is right… we are really far out from the city”, and we were. By the time we got to the stop, the city was a skyline and we were very much in Mexico. The stop was painted like Cancun, Spanish, everywhere. In fact, you couldn’t find English anywhere. We tried stopping a few people on the street asking for a good restaurant, they didn’t speak English… We stepped off the train and into a third world country (or so it felt like)!

No one spoke English, there were no usual Chicago stores (7 Eleven, McDonalds, Corner Bakery) Just a few local stores and a street fair/ parade. We walked around for what felt like forever, looking for somewhere we could sit down and have lunch. Looking back, we were probably in a pretty bad area of Chicago, in fact, I know we were. It was pretty sketchy, and we couldn’t even find a restaurant that was open and looked clean enough to serve food. We finally chose somewhere to eat at, and as were eating I almost spit out my soda in mid air, we didn’t even look if the restaurant took credit card! That’s all we had. Thankfully, they took VISA… and no one got sick after our lunch. We hurried back to the train and headed towards the city.

That next Monday I told my boss that we went that West on the pink line to a Mexican Restaurant and her eyes bugged out at me.. “YOU went WHERE!?” She asked. She immediately called her fiancé and said, “You’ll never believe where Kate went this weekend, all the way…”, this confirmed the smirk on that man’s face, he sent us into trouble, and we, ate pretty decent Mexican food.

Freakin' Fish

When I'm bored, I shop. When I'm having a bad day, I shop. When I need something fresh, I shop. Before I had a job, I shopped A LOT (which doesn’t make sense because I didn’t have the money, but I made it work : ).

Well one day, I was bored, so I went shopping! I walked by an aquarium in Old Town and was intrigued by the colorful fish. Twenty minutes later, I was the proud owner of a beta fish (I wanted a Greek one! : ). Well, I probably should have thought this through before I bought a fish....

One, I don't like fish.

Two, I don't like to change the water (I think its gross and I dont want to touch the fish or drop it).

Three, I travel a lot so the fish goes hungry.

Four, I don’t think I was ready for this kind of responsibility.

So here I am, with this fish, that I don’t like (its name is fish) and it tricks me all the time. This fish literally dies, and comes back to life. I will be gone for a long weekend, and I come home and, Shit. The freakin fish died. So I am creeped out (because I don’t like to touch the water) and I don’t know what to do, so I put a bag over the bowl. I leave my apartment to ask someone downstairs to help me dispose of my poor fish (I felt bad for it) but couldn’t find anyone. I go back to my apartment and lift the bag, ITS A MIRACLE! The fish is alive!

This has happened multiple times.

The last time it was on its back flipped over and it still came back to life.

So now my fish and I have a better understanding. I purchased a fish feeder when I am out of town and it hasn’t fainted lately. I still won’t change the water, so if you visit, that is what I expect from my guests : )

Point of the story, think before you shop : )

Ghettobug

Okay, so... I don't know how to pop the hood of my car. I know, I know, I should know how to do it, but I can't figure it out. Anyways. My black car looks white (because of all the salt on the road) and I'm out of wind shield wiper fluid. So here I am, driving in the city trying to see out of my window and its getting harder to see by the minute. I have my wipers going but it's not helping enough.I try to jump out of my car during a red light (to brush off some salt) but as I slide out I rip my nylons on my torn leather seat and burst out in anger. Damn it. (I must do this once a week). The light turns green and now I am just angry. It occurs to me that I could get a ticket for my windshield. What's a girl to do?! I reach into my back seat, pull out a bottle of evian and open my sun roof. I begin pouring the water down my windshield and let my windshield wipers go full force. As I am doing this I'm laughing because I think this is pretty cleaver (and kind of sad that I am wasting my evian on this). As my window clears up I see a "thug-like" man standing at the crosswalk in front of me (He has a comb in his hair, large boots without laces and a neon jacket) and this man has the nerve to scream at me "That's GHETTO, girl!".

Okay, so maybe it's a little ghetto, but I'm improvising! The sad thing is, this man has no idea. My windshield wipers are the least ghetto thing about my little car. My seats are ripped, my heat doesn’t work unless I bang on the dashboard, and sometimes the car just doesn’t turn on. Truth be told, it may be a little Ghetto, but it’s a cute car and its better than my old commute. : ) Now I just have to make sure I always have a bottle of water available for long drives in the ghettobug!

Dodging Pedestrians

I hate when I’m driving and pedestrians start walking in front of my car. Its one thing if they don’t see me, but they literally walk IN FRONT of me like I’m not there. Sometimes I think they are trying to get hit for insurances purposes. I use to be afraid of deer in the suburbs, and now its crazy citizens of Chicago. Just last week this man literally made me swerve into another lane because I thought I was going to run over his feet. SO, look out pedestrians, because the beetle is outttt!

Oh, Mr. Cab Driver..

 With this cold weather I have gotten a little too comfortable hailing a cab, and I have met a wide variety of crazy cab drivers too. Lets see..

There was the cab driver who yelled at me for the ENTIRE ride because I mentioned I would have to pay with my credit card. First, I get in his cab and when I tell him my address he says "I didn't want to go south!". Then, he SCREAMED at me that I was selfish, inconsiderate, and rude for not having cash. You would have thought that I was a little child being yelled at by her father. He was cursing and I was annoyed. Here I am, a paying customer, and I am getting yelled at by someone I have hired to take me from point A to point B. This would never happen in any other business situation. I would never yell at a client like this (I would get fired). I begin talking back to him, but realize he was in control of the situation. I would either have to get out of the cab on the middle of Lake Shore Drive or listen to him yell.

Then, there is the cab driver who was very, very religious. He was preaching his views to me as he dropped me off at a bar. Telling me God doesn’t exist in Wrigleyville and I need to make sure I get up for church tomorrow morning because I needed to ask for forgiveness. Then he told me about his seven children, all named after people in the Bible. Good Lord.

I have only had one woman cab driver, and I am pretty sure she stole the cab from her ex-boyfriend. She wasn't very sly, she was on her cell phone telling people she "took his car" and she was going to "make the money back she wasted on him". Next phone call I was pretty sure she was prostituting herself for later that night.

I also have had a handful of noisy drivers. Awkward conversation at its finest, let me tell you... You’re in this little vehicle, and some strange man is striking up a conversation with you about something you absolutely have no interest in. or even worse, he’s hitting on you. Sometimes they start asking me how much I pay for my apartment and what I do for a living. Things I don’t want to talk about with them, so sometimes I make up really interesting stories to make the time go quicker and more fun.

Two summers ago we were leaving Wrigley one night and got in a cab. It was Steph, Steph, Michelle and I. I will never forget this driver, he was rocking out to awful 80’s pop, so loud you couldn’t think straight, sucking on a lollypop. We asked him repeatedly to turn it down, and he wouldn’t. He loved life and was very entertaining. He took us totally out of the way and we ended up having to pay double. That’s the worse part about cab drivers, if you don’t act like you know where you’re going, they totally take you the wrong way and charge you more. If you call them out on it they get even more rude and uptight. Point of the story, there is always an adventure with cab drivers! : )

Posting Next 30 Days

I am making a commitment to post on my blog about Chicago for the next 30 days straight--

Get excited : )

love.love.love.
Kate