The Adventures of Team Parker

My grade 1 teacher used to make us sing that song when it used to rain. Seeing as we lived in Cape Town, we sang that song a lot! Well, it’s raining in Chicago and it just ain’t letting up.

This morning, I woke up from a dream about making scrambled eggs for breakfast. (We watched this Gordon Ramsey video last night, so I guessed that’s what that was all about. ) So when I got out of bed, that’s what I did. I must say, kudos to Chef Ramsey, the eggs did come out perfectly! All fluffy and light and yummy.

Of course, then I was up and breakfasted and it was barely 8 o’clock. Forsooth! So I took a shower and got dressed, neated up and then started checking my mail, blogs, Flickr etc. And then I got bored. Really bored. I decided, okay, I’m going to get a new copy of Oblivion from Gamestop (The previous copy was scratched! What a bother!) and also, that I could not bare to live another day without marmalade, so I would need to go to Whole Foods as well.

Then I started checking out bus routes. The Chicago Transit Authority, which runs most of the public bus routes here in Chicago, partnered up with Google last week. Now if you want to know how to get somewhere, you go to the CTA site, type in your start and end points (Madison and Clinton to Canal and Roosevelt) and select a time. Then it shows you a Google street map, with the bus stops marked off and it outlines the route. It tells you how far you have to walk to the bus stop and how long the walk will take, what time the bus arrives, how long the bus takes to travel to the stop you get off at, and how far you have to walk from there to your destination. Try it – it’s really nifty.

But niftiness can be all for nought if none of the buses go to where you need to be! I did find one that would take me there but it only runs during peak hours. And as I said earlier, I was already bored stiff and I didn’t want to wait around for four hours. So I got out the big, black coat and decided to walk.

I was soaked after one block but as I was already soaked, I decided there was no point turning back. So onwards I toiled. I got to Gamestop and realized that the “reasonable” price for my game was the minus tax price.

Have I mentioned before that they don’t include tax in their prices here? Why the frak not I ask?! You pick up an item that says $4.50 and get to the counter and they charge you $5.10. It makes perfect sense to include tax in a price since there’s no way you can not pay it. I just don’t get it…

Anyway, I bought my game (argument: worth six months of continuous game play hence economical) then I went to Whole Foods and wandered round and round and round, oggling all the food. The cheese stall, the dessert stall, the breads stall, the soup counter, the antipasti counter, the hot food counter, the cold food counter, the olive counter (hmmm!), the large rounds of roast turkey that looked so divine, even the frozen mushroom patties looked so good!

I eventually had to ration myself and decide what to have. I plan on making a bread and butter pudding so I had to get some orange marmalade and some cinnamon. I haven’t managed to find marmalade anywhere else and I knew Whole Foods would have it. They did – yay! The cinnamon I got cost $3. That was the cheap cinnamon. The other brand there cost $6. Can you imagine paying R40 for a small bottle of cinnamon powder? Hectic! Then I got some strawberries (couldn’t resist) and a lemon cupcake the size of a softball. Hmmm…

And then I trekked home in the rain again. Now, Whole Foods is all about being green and earth friendly. So they have these tough paper bags. Which are great. Except when it’s pouring with rain. Now wouldn’t you know, today is the day I forget to take my foldy, re-usable, canvassy Sainsbury shopping bag with. Well, by the time I got home, my Whole Foods bag had pretty much disintegrated and I was carrying the groceries and what remained of the paper bag, like a babe in arms. I’m all in favour of reusable pags and paper over plastic but come on people. When it’s pouring with rain and your patrons have to walk the 15 blocks back home, maybe some plastic would be appreciated!

By the time I got home I was fairly miserable. I felt cold, icky, clammy and hard done by. But all was soon well, coz as soon as I got to the apartment I changed into my PJs, got into bed with a bowl of hot soup (bought from the market), and put Oblivion on. And yay – it works! Guess what I’ll be doing for the rest of the afternoon?