Talking with Strangers

Hi there, everyone! It has been a few weeks since my last post, but you must have noticed by now that as a quarter comes to a close, the frequency with which I post decreases dramatically. You see, the end of every quarter usually involves what I call "the writing cave," which is more a state of mind than an actual place. It involves focusing solely and intensely on research, writing, and editing. My quarter was technically over on Tuesday, but except for a small celebration dinner, I was still in the writing cave until Friday night, when I turned in a version of my MA paper to my readers.

With the end of a quarter usually comes a celebration dinner, so on Tuesday (when my last paper for a class was due) we got dressed up and headed out to Nico. Two notes:
1. Nico is in an area of Chicago called the Gold Coast, which is also known as the Viagra Triangle. What does this mean, you ask? It means that you are likely to see quite a few older (by our standards) gentlemen either with or angling to pick up younger women. Therefore, all of these conversations were with men between 35ish and 65ish.
2. The tables at Nico are so close together that they might as well list it as communal-style dining. If you want to ignore the people at the tables next to you, you could, but why would you? Good wine, Italian food, close quarters...who are we to say no to conversing with the people who are a foot away from us?

As soon as we sat down, the gentlemen at the table next to ours struck up a conversation with us. We spent a lot of our night enjoying food and talking with these two men. They were bankers from New York who had already had a few drinks somewhere else and were halfway through a bottle of ridiculously expensive wine ("the perks of an expense account," one of them said). As it turns out, the boss was just in Houston to see Reba McEntire at the rodeo, and had majored in political science "way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth," as he put it. We learned about his divorce, his travels to seemingly everywhere, his house in the Hamptons where he recently had a garden "put in" because he was deeply concerned about the environment, his Aston Martin, and talked with him about whether or not he was being too nice by giving his girlfriend a pair of earrings from Barneys. The younger man talked about his indiscretions in high school and college, his wife and three daughters, and the effects of his job on his conscience. Both men were really drunk, but perhaps we learned even more because of it. I think that the boss was somehow still eager to impress people, unconvinced that anyone would take him seriously without hearing about the cars that fill his garage. I suppose insecurity affects more than just adolescents (people roughly ages 13-25). His stories should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The story about the earrings, at least, was most certainly true because he whipped them right out of the Barneys bag to show them to us--I wondered if he was going to show us the receipt to prove he had paid a substantial sum for them. The younger man made Mark feel lucky that he had not gone into banking, as it seems to have taken a toll on his soul. As they left, they each gave Mark their business cards and offered to pay for a round of port for us, but we politely declined since we would be driving home.

Once those gentlemen left, we could not help but hear that the table of gentlemen to our right were talking about politics (my thing) and economics (Mark's thing). One of them heard us talking about what we overheard them saying and invited us into the conversation. We talked about corruption, capitalism, fascism, solutions to the economic problems of the country, world economics and politics, and it was fabulous. They talked openly about their beliefs, and even though one of them seemed particularly set in his views, they were never dismissive of what we had to say. The dialogue that we shared was something I thought happened only rarely. No one approached the subject like it was a zero-sum game. They have the kind of wisdom that comes with age and the experiences that come with it. In sharing that with us, they allowed us to benefit from their at least 50 years of experience. Multiplied by three men, that's a minimum of 150 years of living compared to our mere combined 47. While two of them were American, one of them was Australian and one of the Americans had spent a substantial amount of time living in Zurich and several areas of Africa, so we got the added benefit of international perspectives. We offered these experienced, but perhaps jaded men our well-researched, but perhaps idealistic opinions--reminding them of those ideas buried in books that they might have read in a philosophy class before they knew that they would be executives. Although we left before they had finished their meal, we saw them again while we waited for our car. We picked up right where we had left off, surprised that while we had been thinking about what they had said, they had sat around the table thinking about what we had said. They invited us to go with them to a nearby tiki bar, but as much as we enjoyed the conversation we both had to work the next day.

I don't know what to make of all of this, except that talking to people is fun. It's so easy to get on the bus or the elevator and awkwardly avoid conversation with the person who is so close to you. An elevator ride may only yield small talk, but I don't think I have ever been angry when someone commented on the weather in the elevator. In fact, it invariably makes me feel better to talk with someone than to whip out my phone, check my e-mail, and pretend that no one else is standing next to me in a line or on the elevator. I just wish I could muster up the courage to do it more often.

Pictures from the past few weeks:

Just to give you an idea of how much snow accumulated on campus

Ravioli and marinara that we made from scratch (a post about pasta-making will be up next week). Not the most appetizing photo, to be sure, but it was delicious.

A small bouquet of ranunculus we picked up from a little flower shop in Lincoln Park--they were on sale because they were only supposed to last 3ish days or so, but they didn't start getting crispy until day 6!

Sometimes, Smokey doesn't like when I write papers on the couch or at the desk. He will meow incessantly until I bring everything over to the bed and let him sit on my lap. Every once in a while, I give in and this is the result: Smokey reads Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy.

This post is vanity, all vanity. This is a gown that I fell in love with after seeing it on the designer's website, but have no occasion for--not to mention it would have to go on super sale for me to justify purchasing it even if I had an appropriate social event on my schedule. Mark spotted it in the store, and despite the fact that I told the kind sales ladies that I had no reason to buy it they insisted that I try it on anyway. I did. I love it. I will probably never own it, and that doesn't bother me because I don't need it...but it was too lovely not to post. 

We also visited a store called The Pirch, which was full of lovely home appliances--like this stunning range. Seriously, check out their website.

Clearly, whenever we have our own home, we'll just have this as part of our set-up in the backyard. Yep. Backlit dials are a necessity.

You know you are getting older when pictures like this are legitimately exciting.

There were at least three of these panels (and there are at least two rows on this panel that couldn't fit into the picture) of gorgeous marble, stone, and granite y'all. 

Mark particularly liked this one because the red knobs meant that, as he said, "this range means business." Some of the setups they had in the store included vent hoods that were remote controlled and had warming lights and racks. Talk about serious home cooking and entertaining.