Monday, October 31, 2005

The Best Seat in the House

Oh my god, kids in Halloween costumes are so cute they make my ovaries hurt. Earlier I saw two toddler boys dressed as Batman and Robin. So freaking precious, I wanted to steal them.


Today on the el an old scary man offered me a seat. On his cardboard box marked "fragile." It was sitting between his legs. Sick. I'm also not sure why, but the last two times I ventured out of the office for lunch, I've had the distinct pleasure of having a male literally stop in his tracks in front of me and shoot out a massive snot rocket into the street. Two out of two times. I spent 24 years of my life not having to witness that on my lunch hour- and now- twice in a row. Lucky me.


So I want to get back to the awesomeness that was the White Sox celebration on Friday. In general I don't claim myself to be a baseball fan. I love going to games, I'll sport a kids baseball T that cost sixty cents at the Village, and I'll read some steroid articles, whatever. My history with the White Sox includes a total of attending three games in my lifetime. Nevertheless, I feel a special connection to them as a result of me playing first base for the White Sox in my youth softball league. We won the league championship one year, I was about twelve, and probably this same height.


So coincidentally the Sox rally happened to occur directly on the corner where my office is. Funny, the sidewalk in front of our office building has been "under construction" for about five months to no avail, and all of a sudden there's a World Series won and the sidewalk is miraculously flawless overnight. LaSalle street on Friday was much like the parade scene in Ferris Bueller's day off. Only with thousands more people. Crazy super fans started lining up at 8 am. We tried to go downstairs to check it out at eye level but after squeezing out of the building we realized we had a better view from upstairs.


Here is the view out of the window in my office, when they were first setting up for the extravaganza:



Oh wait, did I say the window in my office? I meant the office of someone making four times as much money as I do. I only have 3 cube walls that are as high as my shoulder.


After spotting shady looking men on top of various office buildings, we started dubbing them snipers and became a little worried about a possible terrorist event. Just for one fleeting moment, though, cause those angels started dumping "ticker tape" on the people below from large black plastic garbage bags. First of all, every newspaper referred to the event as a "ticker tape" parade. Apparently I'm the only person in the world had never used or heard of the term ticker tape before Friday. Why don't they just call it confetti? Or better yet, "shredded newspapers." Second of all, doesn't it seem like there should be a better way than to have people dumping the ticker tape on people? These guys could care less about dispersing that tape. They would just dump out the whole bag on the next ledge below them. We have some ticker tape on our window ledge in one of our most professional-looking conference rooms that I'm sure some nasty pigeons will make a fabulously comfy nest out of. It's a great souvenir.


What an amazing sight to see, though. There was someone in just about every office window, people standing on the roof of the Merchandise Mart and other buildings, and the sheer amount of people in the streets below blew my mind- all people who must have not been able to even see anything. Either everyone came out to celebrate the big victory, or to celebrate an afternoon off of work. Here's the work of my camera cell phone through a thick pane of glass:




Here is the view from one of the Director's bay windows in his office, which they called the "sox hospitality suite":




And, finally, another view from my cell phone of the masses below:



If you enlarge this bad boy I think you can see a grease mark in the lower right hand corner that was on the window from a co-worker's forehead.


In conclusion, I think I've just got to point out that I had the pleasure of witnessing Steve Perry sing a cappella version of Don't Stop Believing on the computer via wgn.com. Um, let's just say it rivaled Aaron Neville's version of God Bless America for worst rendition of a song ever.