Last Visit to America

No no no no--I haven't renounced my US citizenship, despite my throwing foam bricks at TV newscasts for the past couple of years, and despite rumours started by certain individuals.

No, I have simply made last US visit as a Netherlands resident. And the reason for this self-paid (ouch), four-day Chicago trip?--to pick tiles. This was my Tile-Picking Trip.

One Eternal Question of Life is: what is the essential difference between men and women? If anyone has grasped the irreducible, crystalline answer to this question, they certainly haven't conveyed it in language that I can understand. But after this trip, I actually think I'm close to the answer. The core essence of the difference between men and women is: their reactions to Tile Picking.

Now, "Tile Picking" is just my shorthand for the seeming millions of choices in the superficial aspects of a new home--lighting choices and laundry-appliance choices, choices of bathroom and kitchen appliances and their finishes and colors, of flooring, of closet and cabinet arrangements, and--yes--the picking of tiles. "Kitchen cabinets--stainless-steel or wood? The wood--painted or natural? Natural--stained or varnished? Your stain--dark or light? When you say dark, do you mean more reddish or more neutral? When you say red, do you mean like cherry or more like walnut? OK, cherry wood--more aged cherry wood or new cherry wood? Well, sir--for new cherry wood you'll need to pay for this stain at six hundred dollars, and further may I recommend these complementary cabinet hinges at only a thousand dollars. AAAAAGGGGGH. But then--I'm a guy. Most women consider this tile-picking for a new home a pinnacle of their life, a moment electrifying, rapturous, far sweeter than merely living in the space (with which they will soon find fault no matter how they prolonged the thrilling tile-picking process). Yes, no matter how they groan and wince and "Ooh"-and-"Ah" at the choices, no matter how they whoop and curl their toes and flap their arms towards the climax...women consider tile-picking better than shoe shopping, better than sex, better even than a pastry shop. By contrast, a hetero male would rather have his fingernails sequentially pulled out by a tow truck and a thousand septic fishhooks than to have to line up even ONE MORE damned row of tiles, or cabinet fronts, or kitchen faucets, or, or, or.

So you get the idea when I tell you that not only did I spend three hours pointing my finger at...stuff, limiting my mumbles and their financial damage to "Yes", "No",, and sometimes in the interests of efficiency "YesNoNoNoYesYesNoYesNo", or "How much is that option", and "Can we come back to that later?"--BUT I had to pay for the trip: trans-Atlantic airfare, rental car, hotel, plus take three days of vacation time for the most expensive three hours of my life. And that vacation time is time I'll need later for biking, if the NL weekend weather doesn't improve.

Maybe I'm not being fair. I am in fact moving back to the US in a few weeks. I love the Netherlands, but when your whole life is going in a different direction on a different continent, you inexoribly begin to see that faraway place as Your Life and your present location as a vacation of sorts (no matter how hard you happen to be working there). So, as I'm relocating to America...I'll need a place to live.

And given weird US tax laws...(1) IF you're a citizen of the US (and I am), and (2) you plan to be in one area for three or more years (and I do), and (3) you can afford to buy a place (well, we'll see), then you are much better off buying a home. Now, the regular houses in Illinois are generally chopped up into many, many rooms, each very small. This is apparently because Illini couples haven't yet figured out how you stop having children. This doesn't work for me. I don't particularly need walls. And just now, Deep Suburbia and flamingoes in the front yard don't much appeal to me, not after a taste of real urban apartment/loft life in NL. So when I discovered new condos going up, with shops built in, immediately on a Chicago-line train station...I acted. Heaven help me.

Like I say: it's still under construction, but at least the roof is on now. This is in fact my building, the first of six in the land between the camera and my building.
 

For our European friends: in the US other than city centers, "apartment" is an apartment that you rent; "condo" or "condominium" is a (usually larger) apartment that you buy.

In the foreground is the rail line to Union Station in center Chicago. My own little corner of the building is the top floor, nearest (the round part).
 

OK, enough proud-papa pictures. It is wonderful. I should mention one nauseating little spoiler that I can do nothing about.

The US is infested with overhead utilities, all of which are well-placed to mar any view that threatens to please the eye. I hate this about America (and Germany). The Dutch have the right idea. It's not about "Oh, dearie me, how much do underground utilities cost?"--it's about "WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY DO YOU WANT TO HAVE?" At least with utilities, the Netherlands have voted "CIVILIZED" and the US have voted "UGLY." It's as simple as that, and I hate it, but in the US you have to look at CRAP no matter how carefully you've chosen where you live or how much you spend on it. Americans either LIKE their country ugly, or they just don't know any better. Either way: Barf to the fourth power.
 

About two hundred meters/yards to the west is the train station.
 

It's actually been there for a while. But in 2004-5 it will be moved two hundred meters east (towards Chicago, and across Oak/Main Street). This will put it just 60 meters north of my condo. But the noise will be OK (I've checked), because station stops will no longer block Oak/Main Street (which is largely why they're moving the station).
 

This is the pleasant main drag in my new little home town, and the view from my north windows...well, my view through the power lines (ugh).
 

So, the tile-picking trip: I flew across Saturday, did customs and changed planes in Newark airport, which they have taken to calling "Newark Liberty International Airport." I asked one of the airline pilots "Why in the world is the word Liberty stuck in the middle of the airport name?" and he said it had something to do with the Statue of Liberty, which is indeed closer to New Jersey than it is to New York City. "Fair enough,?" I said, "but what is it doing in the middle of an airport name? What meaning does it add?" (The logophile in me coming out.) He repeated something about the Statue of Liberty, and how the name got added after 9/11, and after all, what could be more American than the Statue of Liberty? "The Statue of Liberty is French," I remarked. The pilot had of course attended school and had to concede the point--but he looked like he would bodily throw me out the plane. Fortunately, we had already landed and I escaped down the jetway.

Very heavy storms around Chicago, plenty of white knuckles. Landed at O'Hare late and late at night.

The rental car, ah yes, the rental car. The desk (Budget rental car) was closed, and had just one sign: "Proceed to Shuttle Buses." On the floor nearest the closest doors was a red arrow "SHUTTLE AREA", pointing away from the doors and down the inside hall. I walk through the doors just to check anyway, and a sign on the door says "For Shuttle Area, go back and follow red arrows." I do. The red arrows take me the length of the terminal, down a long hall, down an elevator, outside, and the length of the next terminal. I stand directly under the sign "Rental Car Shuttle". No buses come, for half an hour. I call the Budget 800 (national) number. They suggested I go back to the desk where I started and call. "Can you just connect me to the O'Hare office?" No, they couldn't do that. What kind of business is this? I call Information for the local Budget office--it clicks over to the national number and I get the same people. They still won't connect me to the local office, and still suggest I walk back. I do, with my luggage and all the way back, two terminal lengths and an elevator, where I started. I have been up 22 hours now. I call on their phone and explain where I was and ask "Why are you sending no shuttle buses to "SHUTTLE BUSES?" He said we'll send someone, just go outside. I ask, "OK, outside which terminal, the one I'm calling from or the one all the arrows point to?" And he asks (drum roll, please: "HOW MANY OUTSIDES ARE THERE?" I stumble for a moment and respond, "Well, just one, but it's a big world out there, so could you be a bit more specific?" He would not; he just repeated his question. I mention that the sign on the Budget counter only says "Proceed to Shuttle Buses"--it says nothing about phoning. "So do I now go through the doors that the airport signs guide everyone away from?" He repeats his question about the number of outsides. I whisper for a moment to get him to listen carefully, then slam the phone down with all force.

Oh, no you don't. It gets better. The shuttle bus drops me off and I go inside to the counter. There is a sign warning that they're doing network maintenance and there could be problems: "Thanks for your patience." Like I had a trace left. Sure enough, the computer can't find my car. In fact, their computer system is down. The guy whines "This isn't supposed to happen for another hour." and the other counter help throw up their hands, too. (I find strange as this is a 24-hour facility.) The guy whines again and points to a company memo. "Computers go down at 11:00 pm EDT." and points to his watch, exactly 10:00 pm. "Jesus Henry Christ" I hiss, "they don't even know what time zone they're in."

They hand-write the forms, and I leave with a car exactly two hours after I get my luggage. Hotel is fine, except that someone is bowling or playing basketball upstairs. Monday I start to pick appliances, what joy. Tuesday morning is three hours of tile-picking, which I would have every reason to call "tile-picking Hell" except that the company rep who showed everything, recorded the choices, and (the part she obviously relished) then totalling up the economic damage--she was gorgeous beyond words. Not gorgeous enough to make me prefer tile-picking to pulling fingernails, but enough to take just a bit of sting out. In short: I have never even spent on a car what the condo's options alone will cost. My good friend Dave calls the phenomenon "cashtration", and he's close.

My Sentence of Slavery...I mean, total condo bill...in hand, I drive up to the appliance store to narrow down the appliances. This is in Libertyville--and it occurs to me that in 1982 I interviewed at an enormous pharmaceutical company in Libertyville, and I looked seriously at a home on...was it something like Loch Lomond? It's not on my map. I stop in town and ask a postman (I assume he knows the area), and yes, he knows it--it is indeed Loch Lomond, and it's less than a mile north.

The lake has grown over with houses and trees, and its shores are private, so this is the best picture of my almost-home lake I could score. My. What a different life that would have been.
 

But I'm puzzled: why does an affluent part of such an educated state raise slow children--and then put up signs bragging about them?
 

The storms that rocked our plane Saturday night were not kind to the ground, either.
 

If anything has to be destroyed in a storm, though, I'm glad it's billboards.

A few hours in and out of my office at work, and then it was pack and run to O'Hare International, the world's busiest airport...
 

...where the Budget computer found no trace of my rental. The counter woman frowned and called over the manager, who asked that I explain what I done wrong.

Just perfect.