This morning I had an interesting start to my day. I live in a large multiple-address apartment/condo complex very near O’Hare. From my observation, many limo drivers live in, and service my building. I’m guessing the proximity to the airport is responsible for this. There is also a CTA bus that services the main entrance, the #69. It comes off the public street and pulls into the service drive that borders the parking lot. I sometimes take this bus since it comes right to the door and takes me to the Cumberland Blue Line station, where I take a Pace route that brings me to the Chicago-Evanston border.

Just a few minutes ago, I was walking out of the building a minute or two late and the bus was already in the service drive ahead of me. Being from the hood, I run for the bus, hollering to get the driver’s attention. Do people from other economic areas run for the bus? Sure they do. But in the hood we do it with much more fervor, typically becuase the schedules of our routes are much less frequent. Basically, running for the bus is an Olympic sport where I come from. There’s speed, technique, and strategy involved. It’s also worth noting that the typical driver of a route in the hood is not as courteous as more thriving areas. I mean, you have to damn near fling yourself in front of the vehicle for the driver to stop. Are there inconsiderate drivers in nice neighborhoods? Sure. But in 20+ years living in the hood, I can attest there are many more that drive our routes.

So here I am running through the snow, screaming at the driver to wait. An attendent was shoveling the walkways around the parking lot and he joined in verbally, trying to get the driver’s attention. His efforts, though noble, didn’t help and I strided past him with the bus still pulling away. There’s a sweeping left turn to the service drive ahead and the bus has already made it. I’m running in the middle of the drive, cutting down to the apex of the curve to try to gain on the bus, (the aforementioned strategy.) I hear a car horn, a very closeby car horn. There weren’t any cars in the drive when I started running so it startled me so much I almost lost my footing in the snow. Behind me is a limo. I give him the ‘my bad’ hand sign and move to the right so he can pass. There’s a bustop on the public street immediately after the service drive and I’m still running hoping to catch the bus there. Here’s where it gets interesting.

The driver let’s down the passenger window and says “hop in!” I look over, genuinely surprised, and he must have seen my eyes go to the front passenger door. “You gotta get in the back!” he yells as he guides the black stretch Town Car ahead of me, slowing so I’m now directly across from the rear door. Mind you, I’m still running. So, I go along with this scene from a movie and grab the handle, still at a modest jog, and literally hop in the moving car. I’m thinking to myself this man is an incredible driver to match my speed through his mirror alone. Yet, he’s a nut job for offering me to jump into a moving 1.5 ton vehicle in the snow. Once inside, he releases a tirade on the CTA driver that would cause a NYC cabbie to blush. He’s got the typical blue-collar Chi-cawgo accent. Knowing I’m gonna make the bus, and honestly, thinking this will make a great blog post, I relax a minute taking in the scene.

We make it to the bustop I mentioned and he says “let me pull in front of this prick so he’ll actually stop.” We come to a stop, I thank him repeatedly as I exit the car. “good luck!” I hear him say as I close the door and make it to the door of the bus just as he was ready to pull off.

Welcome to Tuesday, huh? If anyone reading this has spoken to a limo driver that says he helped a guy catch the bus this morning, please extend my thanks again. If you, sir, are reading this, I owe you one. Hopefully I’ll bump into you around the apt building again to shake your hand.

This is a cap of me working out my best options in Cafe World. The most useful columns aren’t in view: Yield/hour and Daily profit. To briefly explain the game, you buy dishes to be prepared and sold by the serving. They vary by the time needed to prepare, how much they sell for per serving, and how many servings they yield. Of course, the prices of the dishes from the owner’s POV changes as well. The most basic conflict is a very quickly prepared dish, (anywhere from 3 minutes to a few hours,) that is cheap for the owner to buy and is ready to serve quickly compared to a dish that takes maybe a day or more to prepare, costs more to purchase, but also sells for more and serves more. At my level, Cafe World gives me many options to choose from. I’m currently saving up for the newly released expansion so I decided to take a good hard look at what my best options were. I did the same thing with FarmVille, (farmer cost vs. duration of growth vs. harvest price.) I used to be anti-FB games but these two are pretty heady. CW adds the dynamic of table and seating arrangement and the ‘buzz rating’ which controls how often patrons visit your cafe. There’s lots of room for strategy, perfect for any Geek B-)

While international travel isn’t impossible simply cause I’m from the ‘hood, (meaning broke) it’s definitely a bit of a reach. Being a Geek, culture is very important to me…any knowledge really. So, what do I do? I tend to travel the world via food. Below is my first post here about food. There are many to come

Today I went to lunch with my co-worker Michelle, whom I lunch with often actually. (Melissa’s sister by the way, responsible for us meeting…thanks M’India!) When we first left the office, I suggested Potbelly’s. Once we got there, I realized Bar Louie was just down the street. We’ve been to Potbelly’s before (as I said, we lunch often) but never Bar Louie. So off we go down the street towards a burger & nachos. We pass an al fresco dining area of an Italian place neither of us have been to. Trattoria Demi, downtown Evanston. Ohh Emm Gee!

The seating area looked especially inviting, which probably first got my attention. There were some menus on the table and I felt the prices were extremely good for the dishes listed. Michelle, (whom I call M’India) loves rich food as much as I, so the Italian bistro won out over bar food.

Butter!	My 1st time having this…	Mussels & sun-dried tomato!

Everything about this place was egg sell ant! The food and atmosphere were amazing! What a beautiful day in Evanston it was.

Made for great bread dipping!	The calamari stole the show!	Delish!

All images courtesy of…TreoBenny of course!

I have recently met and fallen hopelessly in love with an amazing woman. She digs my Geek, is easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had, has a great personality and wit…basically she’s perfect. But…it didn’t take long for my location to cause me grief.

She’s coming over today but I’m still a bit uneasy about her coming on my block. Now one could argue that I should ‘keep it real’ and be proud of where I live. To those I say pay close attention to the rest of this paragraph: I love my people. I am very proud of those of us that find a way to be happy and make some type of progress in spite of being dealt a bum hand. But I am NOT proud of a culture that celebrates ignorance, rudeness, and lethargy. No, these things are not only a symptom of Black people, but this blog is not titles ‘a Geek among Black People.’ A ‘hood could be populated with any ethnicity, as I define it here. It mostly means economically depressed with no constructive community. Just a bunch of poor people being stagnant and destroying each other.

My girl does not judge me and from what I can see has seen enough of the world to understand that a person’s environment is not always what makes them who they are. But the fact remains that the prospect of her visitng me has rough edges around it. How am I dealing with it? Just by being honest.

Does this situation sound familar to you? On either side? Share your thoughts if you would

I’m Geekin’ on the train on a Monday morning…the image of my girl is still vivid in my mind, (see previous post) but while I had a minute I figure I’d explain…wait…I don’t owe you any explanation. This is MY shit right here…

However, in hopes of encouraging others to make the jump to the cheapo domain of the time, (right now it’s .info but that may change) I wanted to write a couple lines about why I decided on .info for this space. In chronological order, the 1st thing that got me to .info was the fact the original version of the domain I wanted “geekinthehood.com” was taken. Adding the ‘a’ made the .com available, but I wanted to show other Geeks, that maybe aren’t willing or able to throw out a sawbuck everytime they want a domain name, that with a little thought a .info can thrive.

The first idea I had to help promote the .info was to include it in the logo design. Hopefully it’s the image and now words that stays with people so when they say your site to themselves in their head they remember the correct extension. Secondly, whenever possible I use case to stress .INFO. I feel these letters specifically have a very stately look when in caps, not as garrish as other letter strings.

So…go out and buy your domain. Dont’ worry about the .com, just take a few minutes to think about how to associate your cheapo extension with your site. Good luck family!

Geeks need love too

What does Ren & Stimpy have to do with being a GEEK in the HOOD? Cause its stooopid funny, that’s what…LOL!