Lately there has been a lot of ruckus in and around Chicago's north side. I feel there is a lot to write, but I'd like to avoid both list-making and Keroackian ramblings . . . so here goes an attempt at cohesive middle ground. Gosh. Writing is hard.

Last week, despite the amount of love I have thus far poured into my relationship with my bicycle, I got a flat tire. After buying a new inner tube, changing the tire, getting another flat, patching the original inner tube, changing the tire, and getting yet another flat, I'm taking a hiatus from biking. This hiatus is a bit of a shame because the weather lately has been fantastically autumnal annnndddd that's a bit of a lie. I think last week it rained every day. But ever since Sunday, anyway, when a run through Uptown yielded sundry fall smells and sights (i.e. aromas of ginger, cilantro, burning leaves and slanting-saturated-September-sunlight-lit scenes of man-sized kites and a million frolicking dogs) it's been beautiful and I wish I could trust my Schwinn to not crap out on me. But it's going to take a LOT to rebuild that trust.

This past weekend was the start of Ramadan, a fact about which I knew naught until dining at an offshoot of Usmania, a restaurant on Devon a couple miles from our apartment. The main restaurant features middle-eastern food, but our choice was its "Indo-Pak Chinese" counterpart across the street. Though the self-applied descriptor led us into hoping its offerings might be something of an edible Indian/Pakistani/Chinese trifecta, the menu in fact features only Chinese food (plus the apparently obligatory dates and lassi). Most if not all our fellow restaurant-goers were observing Ramadan and breaking their respective day-long fasts with the traditional Chinese Buffet o' Islam. It was delicious.

"so then the bee-bop was just pouring out of the speakers, and by bee-bop I mean mexican tunes -- you know he kind with the bouncing tuba baseline and boisterous brass accompaniment -- and sweet maoxie, once known as maoxie-moonpie-(keifer) danced and jived during her daily witching hour, twitching and swangin' to the hottest new moves -- for instance the wolverine, a newly created northside chicago step a la ms. spektor but no not muskovian -- straight from the waterways of the pleasant peninsula -- and one sunrise prior to all these shenanigans and tomfooleries a fantastic bout of golden versus vintage green helmets ended in a not-so-decisive but completely invigorating irish victory, a success that inspired little maoxie to dance the more, dance on off into the moonpie sunset moonlight -- she danced twenty new kanji into my japanese lesson book and she pranced a ticket for the goodman's very entertaining take on our lady of the underpass into my hands, and then she collapsed onto the futon -- a big, soft, jungian mop of feline exhaustion bearing the weight of illinois on her shoulders, the shoulders upon which future feline generations will be standing and calling those of giants" KeroWack