My Kaplan audition

As I look for a "real" job, I have sunk so low as to consider teaching test-prep classes for Kaplan. Actually, I'm thinking about taking the LSAT (again), and I thought I might as well try to make some money since I have to study for the darn thing (again) anyway.

Kaplan makes their prospective teachers do an annoying 5-minute "teaching" audition. You're supposed to teach something non-academic and hopefully entertaining. I had completely forgotten about my Monday audition until about 2 hours before I had to be there and was at a loss to think of something I actually knew how to do. I mean, you can't teach someone to play the banjo in five minutes. I'm pretty good at coming up with snarky one-liners, but that's a skill you've just gotta be born with.

So here's what I "taught" them:


How to find love, or at least entertainment, on-line
Ellen’s top 10 online dating tips

Who here is involved in a long-term, satisfying romantic relationship? Congratulations. This is for the rest of you. Why trust me? I’m a veteran of at least 50 blind dates, 5 semi-serious relationships, and I’m currently dating an adorable, reasonably-gainfully employed Northwestern alum. So I guess I know as much about it as anyone.

1. Pick a site that suits your attitude toward dating. If you’re serious about finding your soulmate, E-harmony attracts a likeminded crowd of earnest suitors, but if you’re feeling ironic about the whole process, the Onion personals might suit you better. If those people look too weird, you can always go with Match.com. If you think Jewish guys or girls are hot, there’s also J-Date, but you should probably let them know up front if you’re not Jewish. (Um, yes, I was on J-Date. And um, no, I’m not Jewish.)
2. Now you need a photo…or better yet, three. This is why digital cameras were invented—you can practice looking into the lens until you achieve the perfect friendly yet alluring expression for a head shot. Try not to get too much of your arm in there. I also recommend uploading an action shot of you doing something you love—I got a lot of attention for one of me racing my bike…perhaps it was the lycra outfit. Or the carbon-looking wheelset. Then I’d post a photo that shows some personality, like you demonstrating your awesome hula hoop technique. Don’t post a picture of you with your drunken friends or one taken from some artistic angle that obscures your features. You want people to actually recognize you when they meet you. And don’t try to Photoshop your ex out of the photo. That’s tacky.
3. Next write your headline. This can be catchy or just sincere, whatever suits your personality. I used to use “putting the funk in functional”, but if you’re a small-town girl in the big city, I guess you can go with that. Just make sure it’s spelled correctly. More harping on proper spelling to come.
4. Make a list of what makes you unique. Be specific. Don’t tell them you’re smart. Tell them you can make 113-point Scrabble words and explain the difference between Marx and Weber’s theories of class. (You can imagine what kind of men I attracted with that stuff.) Don’t tell them you can cook. Tell them you can teach them to bake a perfect pie. It’s to your advantage not to be vague. If you tell people what your actual interests are they’ll know if you have anything in common and have something fun about which to write to you.
5. That for which you are looking. Again, be specific. Everyone thinks they’re smart and athletic and funny, but not everyone wants to climb Machu Picchu with you and can make camping in a hailstorm fun. This helps to weed out the people who would rather be shopping. Also, try to avoid clichés. They will make you sound boring, or lazy, or both. Half the people on-line are looking for their “ideal partner in crime” or someone who looks equally good in both hiking boots and evening dress. Yawn…

A few more tips

6. Proofread. Nothing will kill your effort to come off sounding intelligent more quickly than misspelling the word “intelligent”.
7. Be positive! Don’t make a list of everything that was wrong with your ex, e.g.: “Just for once I’d like to date a guy with a JOB and his own running automobile! Is that too much to ask?” You don’t want to seem bitter.
8. Be honest. 5’8” does not mean 5’6”. If you say you work in Counter Intelligence, that had better mean you work for the FBI, not McDonald’s.
9. Don’t be afraid to contact people. I find I’m much better at finding the people who are right for me then they are at finding me. My most effective approach (with all credit due to my friend Alex for the idea) was to send people a list of the Top 10 Things I liked about their profile. That gave me a chance to show off how funny I am (or think I am)…and if I couldn’t find 10 things to mention, I knew it wasn’t worth writing. That tactic garnered me a 90% response rate, I swear.
10. Keep it fun. Online dating is often more about quantity than quality, so most people you correspond with won’t turn out to be the love of your life. Just remember that a bad date can mean a priceless story to tell your friends. My favorite date was the guy who told me, “you’re an attractive women, but you really don’t know how to dress yourself. I’ll take you out again if you let me buy you something to wear.” I’ve gotten more mileage out of that story than most relationships.

Good luck out there!

Something reeks, and it's not the saerkraut.

The closing of the Berghoff restaurant after 107 years of operation in downtown Chicago garnered a lot of media attention, along with a lot of wistful reminiscing about demise of the culinary landmark. “Oh, no…first Marshall Fields and now this?” mourned many of the city’s self-appointed historians.

I learned the other day, however, that the Berghoff didn’t really close at all. Rather, it’s now reopened, albeit with some remodeling, as the Berghoff Café. The owners passed it on to their daughter, who is using it as the headquarters of her catering business. You can still go to the cafe for Berghoff beer and wiener schnitzel...if you really want to. But the food might leave a bad taste in your mouth. Apparently a main impetus for the restaurant's closing, re-opening, and name change was that the Berghoff was thus able to lay off its entire union staff, many of whom had worked at the restaurant for decades. Some were re-hired as non-union busboys. Former employees have since sued the restaurant for non-payment of pension contributions.

Do you think they can true this?

The sky is falling

Funny thing happened to me on the way home from the gym the other day...

There's a large new development going up in Pilsen--Centro 18, a rather hotly-debated public-private collaboration that promises to sell 21 per cent of its nearly 400 condominiums at "affordable" prices. Whether or not they're truly affordable is questionable. They may provide an opportunity for some middle-class residents of Pilsen to stay in the gentrifying neighborhood, but given that the average income of Pilsen is $29,000, few current residents will actually be able to afford even the "affordable" $190,000 condos.

I have more to say about Centro 18 from a sociological perspective, but I'll leave that for another day.

A demolition contracter is currently knocking down the factory buildings that covered two city blocks at Peoria and 18th Street, where the condos will eventually go up. They've got a wrecking ball out there and are clearing huge piles of debris. The funny thing that happened was that, as I was passing by on my way home Saturday, a six-foot-long piece of steel came off one of the buildings and HIT me. More accurately, it hit the front wheel of my bike, breaking the rim. I of course hit the ground.

I'm pretty much fine...I have a lot of bruising since I crashed without any warning and thus didn't get a chance to slow down, and I've been pretty exhausted from the aftermath of all the adrenaline and a mild concussion, but I'm pretty sure nothing's broken. I'm a little freaked out by the fact that a big piece of steel falling from four stories up missed hitting my head by about a foot. It sliced through the aluminum rim of my wheel, so I'm trying not to think too much about what it could have done to my neck!

Now I am shopping for a new bike...

Back from LA...

...with all my stuff!

I spent a week in LA trying to unload all my belongings before shlepping that with which I just could not part back to Chicago. I even made Luke sit outside with me all day Saturday having a yard sale. We got pretty burned but took in almost enough to pay for 8 days and unlimited miles in a minivan. I think his forehead peeled for a week.

Oh, the van, the van... I rented a seven-passenger Mazda MPV and, as you can see, packed it absolutely full. Luke bought some new flip flops in Colorado and had to squeeze them into the glove compartment. But it all fit...sort of. The seats didn't exactly recline.



We took a detour from I-10 north through Colorado to I-70, stopping in Jerome, AZ; Silverton, CO; and for two nights in Crested Butte, CO. This was my fifth trip to C.B., where I always stay at the Christiana Guesthaus. The innkeepers Martin and Rosie offer a hot tub, homemade granola for breakfast, and friendly hospitality. This visit to the wildflower-peeping and mountain biking mecca of the Rockies was all too short, but I will be back.

Here's a picture Luke took of a townie bike in Crested Butte, where everyone rides around on old Schwinns when they're not ripping through singletrack on $3000 cross-country racing rigs. C.B. is a funny mix of bourgeois tourists and 50-year-old hippies prolonging childhood indefinitely.



A fully-loaded minivan is not the vehicle of choice for rural Colorado. Despite my vehicular limitations, however, I was determined to drive up dirt Gothic Mountain road to 11,000' Schofield Pass, where one passes beautiful Emerald Lake and trails set off through fields of wildflowers into the Maroon Bells-Snowmass wilderness area.

The van made it up that hill, although I did blow out one tire on a pothole earlier in the trip. The spare wasn't exactly accessible, given that I had spent three hours packing stuff on top of it, but luckily the tire survived long enough to make it to Crested Butte's small mechanic shop. The friendly owner at first informed me we'd be waiting a few days to order a tire, since the nearest Dunlop dealer was 250 miles away in Denver. This would've been a problem. Luckily he located a single, dusty used tire of the appropriate dimensions from the back of the storage area, and we were on our way.

Upon returning the vehicle, Hertz reimbursed me for $40 I had spent on the tire and failed to comment on the fact that the side panel of the van was coming a little unstuck after Luke hit a piece of debris on the highway. I had tried to McGyver it back together with a little piece of wire, but one couldn't tell because my handiwork was obscured by mud from the dirt roads upon which my rental contract expressly forbade me from driving.

Next time I'm renting a Jeep.