The Clown Prince of Italy is one loud Mother Effer

Nino here, on the left has been whooping it up across the street from my place for the last three days. An Italian Circus has set up camp in the heart of one Chicago's largest Mexican neighborhoods, and each night Nino and his pals love to blare Neil Diamond and the Lone Ranger theme at ear splitting levels. It's brutal and funny all that the same time.

Earlier today I had brunch with Rusty and told her that the circus left town. (Incidentally we determined it's not the menu that made it brunch, it was that we waited over an hour for a table and even had to buy cookies at a bakery to fight off starvation.)

"That's cool," she said about the circus. "Go check on our table."

When I got home, I realized how wrong I was. It turns out Nino isn't leaving town until tomorrow, and he and his circus cronies are now competing with some sort of religious revival in another portion of the park. So anyway, the circus and the blaring religious music has driven me out of my home and into a coffee house to catch up on my favorite blogs. Perhaps they will let me sleep here.

Last week I had the ear of a former president, a one Mr. Bill Clinton. My boss made me go to his book signing at Borders for his latest, and in my view, lamest book about how we can all make a difference. Snore. But for just $20 and three hours of my life waiting in line, I had the chance to have the following exchange with Bubba (let it be known that Smokey Robinson was playing in the background.)

I said to him, "Promise me Hilary can win next year." As he was signing my copy of Giving, I see that my comment agitated him. He paused, the publisher chick handed me yet another book that will gather dust on my shelves, and in a huff he said:

"Well if she doesn't, it's not going to be my fault."

Oh snap! I thought he'd take my hand, look deep into my pleading brown eyes and assure me that the team of Clinton and Clinton was going to save me from four years of looking at Mitt Romney's face.

The Four Horsemen of the Public Transit Apocalypse have been closing in on Chicago during the last month or so. The CTA has been holding this "Doomsday" budget over our heads, threatening us with higher fares and bus line cuts if we don't call our legislators and get more dough for them. I, for one, am all Doomsday'd out. We hear this every summer, and I don't know who to believe. This drama has us all stressed out. Yesterday a lady on my bus was one missed green light from blowing up the #18.

As we're chugging along, she says, "You have GOT to be kidding me! Why are we going so slow? I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

At question were the skills of this driver, who appeared to have this "I'll get there when I get there" attitude. She, much to our dismay, was taking us all for a leisurely morning drive. Now, I've been commuting on the CTA for 11 years, and I'm well aware of situations where buses are, for scheduling reasons, kept back to avoid bus bunching. This wasn't one of those times.

Was the passenger crazy? Maybe. But I felt her pain. What you want is a happy medium. You've got some drivers who will drive on sidewalks, pass your ass up, or turn Canal Street into the Indy 500 to stay on schedule. And then you got others who don't appear to give a shit. I'm just not sure how a state budget can fix that.

Who in the hell are these people?

Can someone explain to me why your computer has to come with free pictures like a $.99 picture frame would from Dollar General? Wouldn't it be something if these were like my children from a former life and maybe in say, 1998, I had a traumatic experience and developed amnesia? If the latter is true, it appears as though I homeschooled my children.

Yes, I've been drinking since 6.

PROCLAMATION!

Over the summer I popped into the Chicago History Museum and it reminded me how much I loved 19th Century newspaper headline writing. HANGED! or RIOT! or ANARCHY! or DEATH AMONG WHIZZING BULLETS! Just really delivered the punch the stories deserved. Contemporary copyeditors pussy foot around, in my view.

Take this headline from today at Chicago Tribune online edition:

Killer escapes mental health lockup, Elgin police say

LAME! It should read:

HOMICIDAL MANIAC COMING TO YOUR HOUSE FOR DINNER!

Also from today's Tribune:

'Family Secrets' jury begins work

Now this mob trial has been going on all summer, so maybe the copyeditors are just plum exhausted. However, this might be the last great Chicago mob trial so they could inject a little energy into the headline. How about:

WILL THEY SLEEP WITH DA FISHES? MOB JURY DELIBERATES!

The Sun-Times is no better. Here's one their evening headlines:

Plane carrying aviation adventurer Steve Fossett missing after leaving Nevada airstrip

But I think this is much better:

MARCO?

Anyway, let me know if you think I should submit my resume to either of our great city's Big Dailies.

I finally have something in common with President Bush!

The following has been revealed in the new book you see pictured:

Both I and George Bush have been crying alot since he's become President.

I know what saddens me about his administration. But what about him? Is it the long hours, the fact that the Right Wing can't seem to go a month without having one of their own revealed not only as homosexual, but creepy and deviant, or maybe it's just that he's losing his mind.

In other political news, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is proving to be a bigger tard than I thought he was with this budget nonsense. Politics it not only local, it is immediate and fucking ridiculous. He eliminated the state funding for a program called Cease Fire, an organization that works in West and South Side neighborhoods to quell gang violence. Cease Fire was forced to layoff "violence interrupters" who are primarily former gang members, this weekend, and fifteen people ended up dead in Cease Fire neighborhoods like Englewood and Humboldt Park. I remember an interview I did a while back when I asked a police commander about Cease Fire. "It works, it just works," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

It's too bad they weren't working this weekend.

God, I miss these guys

Real Men of Questionable Genius

Singer: Real Men of Questionable Genius
Today I salute you, Mr.-18th-St.-Bus-Driver-who-can't-wait-for-a-Delivery-truck-to-clear-Canal-Street.

Singer: You're on a tight schedule

That's right, your busload of sleepy commuters would rather die in a head on collision then be five minutes late to work

Singer: You want to get them to the Red Line.

Oh yes, drive up on that curb, take the sidewalk, and then maneuver through those signs back onto the street because who knows when that semi will make it into the dock.

Singer:Mr.-18th-St.-Bus-Driver-who-can't-wait-for-a-Delivery-truck-to-clear-Canal-Street.

Bonus: I added two new sketches over on the sidebar. Be kind as these are DRAFTS! Comments are welcome.

Gotta go! My dates are here!

It was a beautiful day here in equatorial Chicago. A perfect day for a long stroll down 18th street where you meet a neighborhood friend who says at first when asked, that he’s doing fine, but then admits, “Actually no, I’m terrible. I’m so hungover.” You tell him that his sad, bloodshot eyes and bedhead gave him away, and that you are on a quest for an enormous iced coffee because your head feels as if it is stuffed with cotton.

Yes, it’s a day where the AC can be turned off, the windows opened wide, and the sunshine and pleasant mercury-tinged air can pour into your apartment.

It’s also, apparently, a perfect day for your neighbhor’s house to catch on fire.

I was in my powder room seeing a man about a horse late this afternoon when I heard the sirens. Not an unusual occurrence in these parts. But there were several sirens and they all seemed to stop close. The smell of smoke soon followed, so I hurried up my business and rushed to my front window to make sure it wasn’t my building going up in flames.

The streets below were lined with fire trucks with scores of black and yellow-clad Chicago firefighters spilling out to attend to a fire about a half-block from me.

So adorable, these guys. Each and every one. A bigun dragged a hose over to the hydrant below my window and I fell in love immediately.

Just finished the Ark

One more week of this torrential downpour business and we're going to be all Atlantis'd-out.

Anyway, I built the Ark on my lunch hour today. It's moored over at Monroe Harbor. Everyone's invited.

Peace out.

Meet Me in East St. Louis

I had a dream last night that scared me to my core. This morning as I sat at my computer, I tried to determine its meaning. And it led me here. Back into the arms of my blog.

Non sequiter first. How in the hell does Carrie Bradshaw smoke and type? I'm trying it now, and it's impossible. Mislead by TV again. It's easy to drink and type though. Five minutes ago, ok fifty minutes ago, I cracked into this beer that you can't get in Illinois anymore. I picked it up last month in Michigan for a beer-loving boy I know who is currently in Alaska, most likely drinking beer in an Igloo with an Eskimo chick right now. Whatever. I bet she's frigid.

Budump-bump.

Back to the dream. I had a quasi sex dream about Fred Thompson last night. Now we only spooned, but I'm freaked out just the same. It goes right up there with the dream I once had about Don Rumsfeld where he was interviewing me for a job while we both sitting on a twin bed covered in a frilly white comforter. And my all time favorite--the full fledged sex dream starring me and Medavoy from NYPD Blue.

What can I say? I'm strange and my dreams are exponentially stranger. Writing helps one keep the demons in check. So here I am. It was either blogging or therapy.

I had promised in June to come back with an exciting recap of the summer of 2007. Though it wasn't a bad summer, and one certainly befitting a woman of (gulp) 35, this is all I have for you:

Work, cocktails, beach, 35th birthday, Second City classes, cocktails, work, sassy new haircut, cocktails.

About the post's title. I was on a project today where I had to do a little research on the city government of the aforementioned East St. Louis. You don't have to be from the Midwest to have a preconcieved notion of life in this city of about 30,000 across the Mississippi from St. Louis. What's striking is how the city's government embraces this image on their web site by including the following as their city's trivia:

East St. Louis was mentioned on an episode of The Simpsons as one of the 300 most liveable cities in America, coming in right below Springfield as number 300.

Another Simpsons episode mentions East St. Louis when Homer flees the country to open a casino on a tropical island.

On another episode of The Simpsons, Homer mistakenly brings Barney to the AAA rather than the AA. Homer then inquires about a trip to East St. Louis, stating "Is there any other St. Louis?"

On That '70s Show Kitty states that Red is going to turn their home into East St. Louis with his drug dealing

On the April 17, 2006, episode of WWE RAW, Vince McMahon stated that he thought he was in hell, but his driver just made a wrong turn into East St. Louis.

Poor East St. Louis. They need a hug. You'd think being the hometown of Senator Dick Durbin would give them a little boost, but alas, this is not the case.

Sorry folks, blog's closed! Moose out front shoulda told ya!

I was walking down 18th Street the tother day when I passed Pilsen's only Chinese restaurant. It was closed, with a sign in the window telling everyone they were closed for summer vacation and they'd be back in September.

Eureka, I thought! That's what I should do! While I certainly don't want to keep throwing up the occasional half-assed post, I don't want to say good bye to my blog forever. So I'm taking a summer break. Consider this your end-of-school yearbook entry.

See you in the Fall, and I promise to deliver one helluva guess-what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation blog post by Labor Day!

And (I just looked at my freshman yearbook for inspiration) party hard, stay cool, don't get pregnant and good luck with whoever.

Frenz Forever,
Angie

Ald. Ed Burke is in the house!

He's even pinker in person, like piglet pink. No offense to the piglets.

I'm just kidding, I don't know enough to have a beef with the 14th ward alderman or why he was standing in the lobby of my building when I came back from lunch. Maybe he was there to pick up Mayor Daley, whose doctor's office is in the same building as my job? I should have walked up to him and told him how glad I was that the SEIU was able to unseat a few of his incumbent cronies this past election.

When I got off the elevator upstairs, I told a few folks leaving my office that Ed Burke was waiting for them. They didn't care. "He sure is red, that guy," I said.

"Hmmph. He's probably drunk," a coworker said as the elevator doors started to close.

Check out 10 things you might not know about the Chicago City Council.

A beer drinkin' woman*

La Salle. Peru.

Two words that don't mean much to some of you (like my amigo in Madrid who reads this blog, hola dude!) but to a few others. . . you just know where I'm going with this post.

La Salle-Peru is a pair of twin cities about 100 miles west of Chicago. I grew up in La Salle, and like many, I have a conflicted relationship with my hometown. Though I bitch, and bitch I wouldn't trade my early years there for a stint in some fancy suburb. No sir. A few years at a fancy English boarding school? Well maybe.

Anyway, I was there over the weekend for a belated Mother's Day celebration slated for Sunday, so on Saturday I decided to forget my troubles and got sucked into a hazy vortex called Elle's, my favorite local watering hole that was celebrating 25 years of existence. It was fun. It was funny. It was at times, ugly. It was Elle's.

When I was a wide-eyed young Democrat interning in DC, I lived in this all-girls dormitory. One night I was sitting in the family room with the house mates and everyone was talking about where they grew up. I remained quiet a bit until a girl from Texas asked me where I was from.

"Uh Illinois, from a small town west of Chicago."

"Where?" she asked, interested.

"You wouldn't know it. It's like a hundred miles away."

She sat up in her chair. "Seriously, where?"

"LaSalle-Peru."

"I KNOW THAT PLACE! MY MOM GREW UP THERE! EVERYONE REALLY LIKES TO DRINK THERE, RIGHT?"

Everyone likes to drink there. Yep, she knew the place all right. She jumped up to call her grandma by the way. Of course the old lady didn't know my last name (my mom and her family were carpet baggers in the 60s) but I was able to prove to her that I was indeed the geniune article:

A LaSalle-Peru girl, an LP girl if you will.

Perhaps the grandma was a little nervous because indeed, I turned out to be the intern that semester who quickly grew tired of the other girls who wanted to sit around, nurse a drink and chat about New Gingrich and the Contract With America, while nervously casting glances around the bar. I would leave them, go to the bar, slam beers, bum cigarettes and try to make the Irish bartender fall in love with me. I was also the intern who got a 19 year old intern so drunk, she came home and threw up while I used her phone to call my LP girlfriends. . who were at . . . you guessed it, Elles.

It's in our DNA, I'm telling ya.

A girl who grew up in LP likes beer, and will never be the lady who sips a fruity mixer and acts all silly after one cocktail. An LP girl most likely has had a run in with the police well before her 21st birthday. An LP girl has made out with a boy(s) in the woods, in the dead of winter, and may or may not have come home that night with her bra in her jacket pocket. An LP girl has to be careful on dates to not out-drink the guy sitting across from her. While an LP girl has a high tolerance for alcohol, she has a very low tolerance for self important, overly stylish places where drinks cost more than a week on the 60.

Well anyway, I know I have fewer and fewer of those nights left in me. And I'm ok with that, as I am closing in fast on middle age.

*As I was writing this post, a blues song called "A Beer Drinking Woman" by Memphis Slim came on WXRT. Here are the lyrics: The story's true ladies and gentlemen. All the names have been changed to protect the innocent. The year 19 hundred and forty. The city, Chicago. The place, Rubin's Tavern. The story goes something like this:I walked into a beer tavern to give a girl a nice time. I had forty-five dollars when I enter, When I left I had one dime. Wasn't she a beer drinkin' woman? Don't ya know, man don't ya know? She was a beer-drinkin' woman. And I don't want to see her no more. Now, when I spend down to my last dime. She said, 'Darlin' I know you're not through'I said, 'Yes, baby doll. And the trophy belongs to you. Wasn't she a beer drinkin' woman?Don't you know, man don't you know? She was a beer-drinkin' woman. And I don't wanna see her no more. Now she'd often say, 'Excuse me a minute. I've got to step around here'. And ev'ry time she came back. She had room for another quart of beer. Wasn't that a beer drinkin' woman? Don't ya know, man, don't ya know? She was a beer drinkin' woman. And I don't want to see her no mo'.

Alexander Hamilton was hot

About 7 years ago I was in New York for a wedding when I walked by Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church and told my friend Jennifer that I thought Alexander Hamilton was hot. Why? I don't know. I thought it was funny. Later, hammered, at a hotel bar with the post-reception crowd I pulled out a twenty dollar bill and said to a girl, "Wasn't Alexander Hamilton hot?" She grabbed the $20, held it close to her drunken face, and said, "You're right! Alexander Hamilton was hot!" So what if we were looking at Andrew Jackson, aka "Old Hickory." They all look alike.

So why the Alexander Hamilton story? Because I'm a gigantic dork with next to no life, tonight I'm watching Alexander Hamilton's American Experience thingie and I'm super excited about it. And on Wednesday night? I'm going to find out the untold story behind the Spanish Inquisition, and maybe drink alone.

Go see the new movie Waitress with Felicity. It was adorable and I was glad I saw it until this morning when my boss reminded me the Writer/Director/The Vera-like Waitress Adrienne Shelley was the one who was murdered in NYC last fall. That made me sad.

Today at lunch I was in line at the CVS when this bum busted through the door, marched in, grabbed a T shirt and something else I couldn't see, and walked right back out, alarm be damned. The guy behind the check out shrugged his shoulders and told me he wasn't about to do anything. I then demanded I too get my stuff for free and started stuffing shit in my bag, urging others to do the same. Just kidding. I said, "That's awesome, good for him." and walked out with my purchased flavored water and $35 pack of gum.

On the bus home tonight I was captivated by this gent wearing a cap that read, "Jesus NOW!" My, my I thought, aren't we pushy? What if Jesus is busy (I don't imagine he has a ton of down time these days), and he's like, "My child, I will get to you when I can. Be patient." And this dude would be like stomping his foot and whimpering, "NO! JESUS NOW! NOT LATER, NOW!" What a jerk.

When Jesus Now got off at the train station, I scanned the packed bus and saw my friend KC's husband at the front holding on with one hand and trying to balance his bag with the other. Frustrated, I couldn't get his attention, so I called my friend and said, "Call Adam and tell him I'm on the bus!" She thought that was funny, but I was serious. I then told her I'd text her if I saw him making out with the driver.

Here I am!

Forgive me James Brown, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last post. I haven't a viable excuse to offer for my absence. It is my longest to date, and I feel awful!

So anyway, I met this fella you see here this weekend at the Kane County Flea Market. Think Lemon Shake-ups, funnel cakes, chocolate covered bannas . . . oh, and mint condition, recently deceased R & B singers! (I didn't buy him, I swear, although I need to spice up my cubicle at work.) The perfect end to a day of flea marketing was a six pack of PBR and a smattering of smokey treats on Rusty's porch.

I have been hurting for blog material as of late. With a job that has yet to illicit any feeling from me one way or the other, a short commute that hasn't produced anything remotely blog-worthy, and a feeling that maybe beer soaked tales aren't that funny, I'm kind of tapped out. I did ask a new pal (an Atlanta transplant) if I could use one of her stories, and she obliged. I'll try and capture her voice (imagine drunken southern drawl, peppered with hiccupy giggles) Editor's notes are in parentheses.

"So I was with a bunch of guys from work at (I forget the name of the restaurant) in North Carolina (or maybe South Carolina). Bubba (forgot his name) said it was a great place for fried chicken. We hadn't ordered yet, so I went to the ladies room. It was a small bathroom, but it had a stall and I walk in and see this woman with her pants pulled down DRYING HER ASS. I said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry!' and start to leave, but she tells me it's ok, I can stay. Horrified I went back to the table. The ass dryer soon exited the bathroom and WENT BACK TO WORK."

Where is Dateline NBC where you need them?

Operation Overkill

I'm with the Little Village folks who are pissed off at the way the federales handled the fake id raid yesterday.

Immigration officers hit a mall, wearing the garb you see here, toting rifles and machine guns, and stopped 150 people, the Tribune says. It freaked a lot of people out. They're saying this big show was put on to intimidate Mexicans, and with an immigration rally scheduled for next week, well, the timing is mucho peculiar.

Now they did arrest 22 people, including the leader who is wanted for conspiring to commit murder. But acting like Little Village is Baghdad? Not a good idea. An already police-weary demographic doesn't need another reason to not attend a community police meeting, or call 911 when something is wrong in their hood.

I've watched enough cop shows to know that if you really anticipated some big "fire fight" that would have warranted all that heavy artillery* and military uniforms, this raid wouldn't have happened with all those innocent people milling about. And if you really wanted to hit pay dirt with the illegals, why don't you raid some condo developer's job site next time, or any of kitchens of the fancy downtown restaurants?

Yeah, that won't happen.

Unfortunately Pat Fitzgerald was at the center of this. Maybe he's losing his edge after coming up empty on the CIA leak case.

Pat, ok, fine. You got a bad guy. But at what price?

*I made that up. I have no idea what heavy artillery is.

Can now check "Add Godzilla to skyline" off to-do list

What is that pointy white thing in the background?

About a year and a half ago I was sitting in my friend Jennifer's North side condo doing what we've done about a billion times before over the past ten years. Drinking beer, talking, and hanging out with her dogs. It was a couple of weeks before her wedding and Jennifer asked me if I wanted to move West with her and her soon-to-be-husband Scott.

"West? Uh sure. Like Irving Park?"

That actually wasn't what she had in mind. I was thinking she meant the West side of Chicago, and she was talking about Portland, Oregon.

As in half-way-across-the-country-Portland, Oregon.

As in you'll have to get on a plane and set your watch back and use different money to be able to hang out and drink beer and speak in code and annoy everyone around you Portland, Oregon.

They were serious. It was Portland or bust.

Anyway as they say, time flies when you are having fun and by golly if Jennifer and Scott didn't go and buy a house in Portland. The day of reckoning is here. They close tomorrow. Then they come back to Chicago, pack up their dogs and drive west to an adorable house built in 1910, complete with a yard, ghosts, and trees! (I'm a little jealous about the yard and the ghosts, btw)

On Friday, I enjoyed some Mexican food and dangerously strong beers at the Map Room with Jennifer, Scott, and his friends Steve, Chris, and Jeff. It wasn't a late night, so when the former Chicagoans decided it was time to go I declared that I must say goodbye to her in a bar and not on a cold Bucktown corner. So that's what we did. We hugged, I sobbed and said "I wish I knew how to quit you!" she slapped me and told me to snap out of it, and then we stood back, waved and watched Jennifer and Scott leave.

We were speechless for a bit. They really did it. I guess maybe there was a little part of me after all, that was ready to call their bluff. Like maybe they'd run back in laughing and say, "Portland? Are you kidding me?"

Chris spoke first. "Hmmm," he said, "if I knew they were really moving, I would have bought their dinner tonight." I thought that was pretty funny.

In an effort to stay strong, we did a shot of tequila in their honor, swore to continue fighting the good fight without them, and then I went out and hailed a cab on that Bucktown street alone.

Did I mention that I have my own room at the new house?

Bar hopping with Phil Cline

God, I am on a freakin roll with this law enforcement celeb spotting. Last night I was at Hawkeye's completely captivating my friends with my dramatic Fitzgerald story, and wouldn't ya know it? The soon-to-be-jobless Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline walked by our table.

As a friend of the police, I had to greet him. He was quite personable and didn't try to beat us up once. Jennifer was pee-oh'd because she was in the john when I stopped him and she wanted to tell him she thought he got the shaft, what with his "early retirement" and all. I wanted to send him over a drink, but he snuck out.

Later when I was in the cab going home, I called Jennifer to tell her Rusty and I were at Dugan's with Phil Cline.

Today when I left my job the very nice hr lady told me to come to her with anything, anytime. She said I was "part of the family" now. I thought that was sweet. But the one family I have now is plenty. Back in the day when we used to fraternize (not canoodle, there was never any canoodling) with middle-aged homicide detectives, we were invited into their "family." That was a second family I did want, because there were perks like cigarettes and beer and armed escorts home into your questionable neighborhood and promises of getting off if you ever killed someone.

Of all the girls on all the streets of Chicago, he had to walk by me

I am the world's biggest spaz. And possibly now one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted.

At approximately 12:48 p.m. CST, Patrick Fitzgerald passed me on Jackson somewhere between State and Wabash. I couldn't believe it. I did a double take, and stopped for second, and tried to get my shit together. I wasn't sure what I should do. Of course, I quickly began to think of the implications for my blog. .

Do I take a picture? Do I chase after him? Do I continue on to Walgreen's to buy toilet paper and shampoo like a normal person would?

Fuck that.

I decided follow him. Now, don't get excited, I didn't have to run or anything. He hadn't gotten that far, I just had to walk fast. Pretty fast actually.

The Federal Building is just a couple of blocks away from my office (something I seriously didn't think about when I accepted my job, I swear) and apparently he was hungry and popped into the Cosi at State and Wabash.

I snuck in the line behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He had just taken out his PDA and thought I was trying to get ahead in line. He gestured for me to move ahead.

Now for the second time in my life, I proceeded to act like the biggest dork in front of Patrick Fitzgerald. I said something to a long the lines of "I'm a big fan" and "I really appreciate the work you do." And he said something like, "I'm not the only one, there are a lot of people working with me." I shook his hand, told him to enjoy his lunch, and bolted.

I had to get out of there. It was too much. I had originally planned to act cool and buy a soda or even a second lunch but I couldn't.

That poor guy, he probably gets out for lunch like once every year and he had to run into me.

And anyway, the timing with a new job couldn't be worse. I couldn't come back and email my friends or update my blog with this breaking news. Instead, I was forced to tell a group of new coworkers sitting in the kitchen when I got back to the office. It's way too early to "just be myself."

"Hey, how is it outside?" One asked.

"IT'S GREAT! I JUST SAW PATRICK FITZGERALD!" I exclaimed, not too loudly though because our employee handbook warns against being "boisterous" in the office.

Silence. Blank stares. More silence. I went to my desk.

Later one of the gals came up to me and said they all kind of talked about me after I left the kitchen.

"Most didn't know who he was. Or they thought you said Peter Fitzgerald."

"What? Patrick Fitzgerald! PATRICK FITZGERALD!"

She smiled. I think she likes me. And who wouldn't like the crazy new girl who stalks public officials and causes them to look a little scared when they're in line to buy food?

Easter Themed Image Gallery

This one of a 80s era Jesus closing a deal is my favorite.