Busy weekend, sleepy head, quick links

Busy weekend: Why haven't I been posting anything? I went out for a belated group birthday dinner with two old friends last night (the Moroccan chickpea/sweet potato tagine at Lula Café is indeed delicious, but would benefit from the addition of some dried fruit). It was a sad little gathering. Three women, all sleepy, going to dinner at 7:00 and ordering iced tea instead of wine so we could stay awake. Ben keeps meandering down the hall into my bed in the late wee hours and jostling me awake while he returns to sleep, and then I can't get back to sleep. Seriously, five or six hours of shut-eye is nowhere near enough. (This is why I have zero interest in ever adopting a newborn. Sleep deprivation sucks.)

Ben's first soccer game was this morning, in the hot sun, on a dusty, dry field (it hasn't rained in a good three weeks here). I spent the second half sitting on a park bench in the breezy shade, yapping on the phone. I have no idea if Ben's team (The Revolution!) won, or if a victor was even declared. He was too hot and sweaty to really enjoy the game—and I can totally relate. I'm hoping to get back to the health club now that Ben's in school, and I've got my eye on the Hydro-Fit class so I can avoid sweating while supposedly getting a cardio workout with a bunch of elderly women who are arguably in better shape than me.

After we hosed Ben off, it was time to take a scheduled tour of Wrigley Field. Any of you local Cubs fans should look into that—on weekends when the Cubs aren't playing at home, they have tours to support the Cubs Care charity, and you learn a lot of ballpark trivia and history. (Take the kids only if they're good at behaving for two hours straight.) I sat at the Associated Press's assigned seat in the press box. I sat in the home and visitor dugouts, wishing I had something to spit or a Dusty Baker toothpick to gnaw on. I learned that the three to six people who work inside the manual scoreboard during each game are always men. The guide explained that first, women are too smart to work inside a steel box that becomes an oven on warm days and a refrigerator on cold days. That, plus the limited plumbing facilities for the scoreboard staff—basically a funnel connected to a pipe. We also toured the Cubs clubhouse. Did you know that in the narrow hallway that leads from the clubhouse to the field, there's a little alcove containing a grungy sink and a urinal? With no door? Lovely, just lovely.

Then we had a late lunch at Heaven on Seven, Chicago's outpost of New Orleans cuisine. The poboys were shockingly underwhelming, but the creamy garlic mashed potatoes? All three of us enjoyed them. And the Tangerine Man and I did our share to support a Louisiana business by ordering Abita beers (the dark-brown Turbo Dog for the Mr., the Amber Ale for me). The culinary highlight for Ben was using my wee dish of balsamic vinaigrette as a dipping sauce for everything. Who needs ketchup for your tater tots when there's balsamic on hand?

Tomorrow, I have to haul ass to Target and get a birthday gift for a Sunday afternoon kid party. I asked the mom what her daughter likes. "Oh, she likes the same stuff Ben likes," she assured me. "Trucks and cars?" I asked. "And Spider-Man?" Actually, no, as it turns out. The birthday girl prefers Barbie and Bratz to vehicles and superheros. Ben likes the concept of Barbie more than the dolls themselves. Barbie toothbrush? Check. Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus necklace from a Happy Meal? Check. Pink, in general? Check. But when the girls pull out Barbie dolls, he loses interest quickly. You know, when I was a kid, my sister and I had a Barbie doll (might've been her redhead friend Stacy) with an inverted nipple. Seriously. Our dog chomped down and left an inverted-nipple tooth mark.

Sleepy head: The only reason I'm not sound asleep right now is that I took a much-needed nap from 6 to 8:30 tonight. I'm still sleepy, but feel compelled to put out for you, even though it's been less than 48 hours since I last posted. Is that OCD? An overly acute sense of blogger duty? Self-defeating behavior keeping me from actually catching up on my sleep, even though I've been complaining of sleepiness for days?

Quick links: Check out Mona's funny brain poems.

And Francis Heaney finally ponied up some delicious new Six Things cartoons.

There's a new blogger in blogtown: DoctorMama. She's got me on her blogroll, so clearly she's a woman of great discernment. The comments she's left here indicate that she'd totally fit right in with my circle of friends. Here are her qualifications: She shares my friend Kristin's fondness for the New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg; she reads magazines while brushing her teeth, as I do; and she's a heathen like me and most of my closest friends.

Okay, I thought this was going to be a 5-minute post, and it's taken me an hour. I really must go to bed. G'night!