Heed the Horoscope - Part II.

Ever since Georgia Nicol's knew that my brother's fly was down, I have had a little more respect for the horoscopes, particularily the ones with something quirky about them.

Yesterday's horoscopes had some quirks for my mom and M. My mom's warned that medical problems may arise ("What, again?"). Prior to hearing that, she had planned to try driving alone for the first time since her surgeries. Instead, she heeded the horoscope and decided that staying put might not be such a bad plan.

M's was just odd. "Strange and curious things will happen. Strange and curious people will do strange and curious things. Curioser and Curioser." I'm not sure how her day was but we both went to an evening spin class. In it was a guy that someone had tried to set her up with some months ago. It was not a match that night, although M thought he seemed like he was probably a nice, but very nervous, guy. Odd enough that he would be in that class. After class, it was Taco Tuesday for us at Theory. Of all the bars in the world -- or, River North --, he walked into ours. Curious and curiouser for sure.

Now, if only my horoscope would say something like "buy a lottery ticket." I'd heed that immediately.

Thankful.

For reasons that make me sound like a bad niece (because I am), I did not go to Wisconsin on Thanksgiving.

Thankful #1: I avoided a familial argument that I undoubtedly would have picked as it has been brewing for awhile.

My grandmother gave me a pass a couple weeks ago, telling me that if I had an invitation to go anywhere else, please go. M and her mom both invited me to Indy for the weekend. I spent Thanksgiving with them a couple of years ago and it was a super time.

Thankful #2: Having a friend willing to take me into their family for a couple days.

But, for a couple reasons, I decided to stay in Chicago for Thanksgiving Upon hearing that, two of my friends invited me to join them and their families on Thursday.

Thankful #3: Having more than one friend willing to let me join their family on a holiday.

H had been given VIP tickets (read: seats available) to Chicago's Thanksgiving Parade and offered me one on Tuesday. I hadn't been to a parade since I was a little kid. I think it was the Circus Parade in Wisconsin. But, who doesn't like a parade? I started getting excited like a little kid almost immediately. The only potential problem was the weather forecast. I kept saying, don't rain on my parade (literally), Mother Nature.

Thankful #4: No rain! While it was gray and around 40, there was no precipitation. We stayed for the entire parade, until Santa arrived, and met some of the nicest people.

After a quick workout (and warm up -- 40 degrees isn't cold but our toes were numb by 11:00), it was time to continue the festivities. O was with her in-laws and invited us all for cocktails. The table was set for at least twenty people. While we were there, people came and went. It was a loud, fun, festive time.

Then, it was time for dinner. We headed back to the neighborhood. My friend's parents were in town and her mom made a delicious dinner (which, happily for me, did not involve turkey). It was a really nice dinner with friends.

Thankful #5: A Thanksgiving that was low-stress, high-fun, and friend-filled!

Flirty Girl.

Flirty Girl Fitness is a gym in the West Loop specializing in offering classes like Video Vixen, Pole Dancing, Bikini Boot Camp, Doggie Style Yoga, and Hula Hoop-la. I think Chicago is its second location and the brand has expanded into fitness dvd's, which you may occasionally see late at night.

After attending a bachlorette party that involved a pole dancing class, O invited girls to take a pole dancing class and then head out for non-pole dancing as part of her birthday celebration. If it had not been her birthday, I'm not sure I would have gone. Not because I'm opposed to pole dancing as an activity or profession but because I was not sure that I was physically capable of doing the class given my knees.

As it turns out, I wasn't. But, it was nonetheless fun to watch my friends. Some of them are really quite good at the spins and tricks. Always good to have a backup plan.

Sure, there were some women at the class who were clearly there practicing for work. And, they were incredible. Pole dancing is a real skill. These women had all body types, including some that defied belief that they would have the upper body strength to climb the pole or the abs to pull themselves back upright. They were hanging from the pole, upside down, dropping six feet using nothing but their legs to stop their fall. At the end of the class, the instructor (who was great) clearly decided to just show them how it was done after they had been impressing us rookies. I don't know what the instructor's background is but it would almost be a pity if she doesn't pole dance professionally because even I would consider paying money to see the tricks she can do. (No stripping involved in this class, mind you.) Just amazing.

After the class, we went out for drinks and dancing. No poles involved but I dare say some of the non-pole moves got incorporated into some of the dancing last night. The only negative from Flirty Girl is that now some of my girls have stripper injuries in the form of big bruises on their arms and legs. Fun to explain that one.

Freakonomics.

Freakonomics is now a movie. I read the book and thought it interesting. O and J saw the movie when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the spring and highly recommended it. When H asked if anyone wanted to attend a screening of the movie with a Q&A session with Steven Levitt to follow, I immediately signed up.

The screening was interesting. The movie was akin to a documentary and generally well-done. There was one vignette on cheating in sumo wrestling that was too long for my attention span. Or maybe it was that I was sitting too close and reading all the subtitles made me nauseaus. Hard to tell. Otherwise, lots of documentary-dramatizations of topics in the book. And, while I didn't stay for the entire Q&A portion of the screening, there were a lot of thoughtful and only marginally pretentious questions asked, fairly amazing given that most of the audience were U of C students.

And, because it was a University of Chicago production with a well-known economist involved, they couldn't restrain themselves from an experiment. They turned attending the screening into a pay-what-you-want experiment. You had to pay something more than .99 but there was no limit otherwise. Levitt announced that the average turned out to be $8.60. I think that really means $10 or $15 with a few strong outliers, including the two people who paid $100 to attend. He said that in previous experiments there was an option to pay a penny and a full twenty five percent of the people took that option. Unsurprisingly, they were also the people least likely to actually attend the screening.

Economics in action.

Halloween!

Some people really know how to do Halloween up right. And, I'm happy to say that I know some of them and live around a lot of them.

Like all little kids, I dressed up to go trick-or-treating. I can't remember exactly when I stopped coming up with Halloween costumes -- probably by high school at the latest -- and I only remember one Halloween costume between then and last year. Of course, last year marked the first Trump girls Halloween where we were the Spice Girls, including David Beckham. During the perfect day in August this year, M came up with our costume for this year. We were the four seasons, Mother Nature and Father Time. Unfortunately, Mother Nature and Father Time were sick this weekend so it was just the Seasons on Saturday night.

We attended a party that had an Alice in Wonderland theme. The details were incredible. Bottles of wine were re-labeled as "embalming juice" and "spider venom" all bearing a "Drink Me" tag. The table holding the snacks was set up as the Madhatter's tea party. Mannequins were dressed a characters from the movie. And our hostess was a dead ringer for Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. People actually flew in for the party so the costumes were all generally good and creative. Two girls as the Double Rainbow. Medusa. A Jersey Shore group but with the genders flipped, so a bearded Snooki. On our way home, we stopped at Butch McGuire's for a drink to see even more costumes. As we walked home, we knew our costume was a success because a drunk girl in line to get in some bar yelled out "heeeeeeeey, you're the four seasons!"

Yesterday, I learned that my new neighborhood goes insane on Halloween. The streets were overrun by children. And, parents holding wine glasses.

The houses had been decorated for the past week or so. The most incredible one had a giant witch with eyes that lit up red, on a broom in front of full moon that changed colors depending on the time of day. Some turned their front yards into graveyards. Others had twenty or so jack-o-laterns decorating their front steps and balconies. But, on Sunday, the houses dialed it up a few more notches.

One house opened up to become a mini haunted house, offering face painting and fortune telling. Another house had what appeared to be mannequins of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the scarecrow out -- appeared to be, that is, until they came alive. Many a scared child had to be told that Frankenstein was a nice monster. One house had a magician doing tricks involving fire. Another house had characters doing the Wizard of Oz. Someone had set up a projector, including sound, to show Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin on the side of their building. There were fog machines. Some houses handed out full-size candy. It really was an incredible display of Halloween festivity, all individually orchestrated.

Its almost too bad that Halloween only comes once each year.