Just so you all don't think I love EVERYTHING that comes out of the South Side, here's my review of a book on Amazon that I just read, written by a guy who grew up about 1/8-mile from where I grew up...I'm such an ass, but the book deserves it. It's TERRIBLE:

This would get an English class "F"...get an editor!, November 8, 2007
By South Side Andy "South Side Andy" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews I grew up in the same area as the gentleman who wrote this book. I know of the bond that friends in that neighborhood had...I experienced the same thing in my youth (and still today, although I'm not six decades along in those friendships, but getting there). So I was excited to see (a) a South Sider doing well and trying to spread the knowledge of what true friendship--long-lasting friendship--is, (b) a book written about my neighborhood, and (c) someone trying to qualify and quantify the significance of this type of long-lasting friendship.
I was completely disappointed. First, I felt bamboozled (by my own fault, as I should have checked) because it was self-published--not that self-publishing is bad, but I would have looked more into the quality than I did had I known. Mr. Cass says he rewrote and rewrote the book over and over...but obviously, he never had an editor, or anyone who might have gotten a C-plus in high school English, look over the text. Either that, or he got totally ripped off by someone who didn't even look at the book. Here are some mistakes: "ownly"; "we'll" when he means "will"; random returns and indents in
the middle of sentences; terrible ,terrible use and misuse of punctuation; and the list goes on. It was an extremely difficult read because of that.
So I thought I'd get past that and the content would shine beyond the grammar implosion. Not so. The summary heavily overpromises a much better story than what you get. There is little to no depth of characters, stories -- memories that fashioned the friendship, supposedly -- often last two paragraphs or less, and more time is devoted to roadtrips AWAY from Chicago than the times spent in the neighborhood that fostered the friendship.
One whole chapter, on their club (which is mentioned in the summary as a key part of the book) barely gets into any detail about any of the parties that the characters supposedly had every weekend one year. Or why those parties might have galvanized the friendship. If there were so many and they were so good, why do we hear little about them other than, we had some drinks, we got into some fights, we invited some girls over, and we had fun?
Overall, this book needs a LOT LOT LOT of help. I'm sorry to be so harsh, but I was so very disappointed after thinking a fellow South Sider might have hit it out of the park and got something published about our way of life...as such, this book is a stream-of-consciousness memoir that appears to be hastily thrown together to impress the friends that appear in the book and make a quick buck on the side. On top of it, it's a poor representation of growing up in the Gage Park/Marquette Park area (in the 50s and 60s and beyond, racial tension was EXTREME in this area--why no more than maybe a minor mention of that?). Good thing the online publishing house has a good marketing dept., because they bamboozled me pretty good. Please don't be the next one to be bamboozled.

SNOW!

Not much...very light, but snow is indeed falling as I type this. I love snow, though I'm not fond of the cold that brings it. :)

Anyway, as you were...

Is it possible, do you think, to be allergic to a particular day of the week?

I'm serious...I take Claritin every single day, and it does the trick. Except on Sunday evenings, it seems that I happen to break into a hay fever attack in the evening oddly enough every now and then.

I've ruled out a few things:
1. It's not the house or the room I'm in, because I used to have these hay fever attacks at PFW on Sunday evenings when I was at work, and even had them before that, though I can't say for sure that they were on Sundays, specifically...though I think I remember a couple Sundays where I was leveled by hay fever attacks.
2. It's not the dog, nor am I regularly around a different dog or cat on those days, because this was happening before I went by my parents' house on Sundays, and if it was Kazak, I'd break out in a hay fever attack on Saturdays too.
3. Although I do eat slightly differently on Sundays, it's not anything unusual. Just a bigger meal during the day and a smaller evening meal, if that.

The things I haven't ruled out are that it only happens on Sundays in the fall--but I've always known that the fall is a much more difficult time for my allergies anyway...I just want to narrow down why it happens on Sundays in the fall. Because, the weirdest thing is this: I didn't have a hay fever attack on Sundays regularly until I started this freelance editing work. Like, when I was hanging out at my parents' or Gina's parents' house(s) on Sundays, I didn't have this problem.

So, maybe I'm allergic to editing on Sunday nights. Does anyone think that's possible? And I'm only half-joking here. Maybe there's some dots that I'm not connecting...any wild ideas?