a bomb regardless

2005-07-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

2005-06-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

oh man
i've been busy, busy. well, and kind of mildy manic depressive. in an undiagnosed kind of way. as such, i have, in fact, been writing. just not here. because i'm sure you've missed me, i invite you to visit chicagoist. especially if you live in chicago. it's fun.

2005-05-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

items for which my employer really should reimburse me
1. frozen pizza, potato chips, ice cream, and all manner of "comfort food" purchased as a result of stress incurred.
2. tylenol pm procured on a 10-o-clock run to walgreens post-anxiety-attack.
3. my cell phone bill, if it actually cost money for me to call my mom in tears at midnight.
4. tissues.
5. the chocolate that i bought my mom for mother's day as compensation for answering my calls at midnight.
6. my cable television/escapism bill, uh, if i actually paid for cable.
7. therapy. lots of therapy.

2005-04-29T09:20:00.000-05:00

enter tumble weed
so, i've been long absent, largely due to an inclination to write adolescent nonsense. and my opposing motto: if you can't say anything grown-up, don't say anything at all. i seem to be going through some sort of quarter-life slump--not a full-blown crisis, but something related. which, in my willfully uninformed mind, involves a combination of symptoms associated with both adolescence and mid-life crises. for example, whining that my life isn't fair while purchasing a shiny, shiny new gadget. and i have this whole metaphor worked out for my current life/social situation? whereby my bff/roommate and her fiance are wheels together? and i'm a third wheel? only, they're moving forward and i'm just spinning in place? and how if i don't get out of my stupid rut, the connection between us will stretch and stretch and stretch and eventually snap? yeah.

it's not that bad, though. i'm not quitting my job, or cheating on anyone. not crying uncontrollably or writing bad poetry. but then, i have been making comments like "oh, i'll probably be alone for the rest of my life," while secretly hoping that the gods of irony, romantic-comedy style, will see fit to step in and prove me wrong.

which reminds me of this fabulous joke i heard once while at the magic kingdom: what did cinderella* say to the guy when she arrived at the kodak photo center?

wait for it...

i'm waiting for my prints to come!

bwahahahah. oh. uh, yeah. time for me to go.

*or was it sleeping beauty? snow white?

2005-04-01T11:34:00.000-06:00

"we're pretty sure you won't die, though"
this is funny.

2005-03-28T10:48:00.000-06:00

it suddenly occurs to me that i function better under the illusion
that nothing, nothing is ever going to change
even the good stuff, you know? i mean, despite the fact that i have higher aspirations than my current occupation, i find it easier, on a day-to-day basis, to go to work believing on the surface that this is what i'll always be doing. because to believe that it will change for the better is to give myself a power i'm not sure i have. and the notion that it could change for the worse is unthinkable.

not that my life is so bad. but i'm really just treading water. i'm not drowning, but i'm not swimming either.

my best friend, j., has always been a better swimmer than i. well, not a better swimmer swimmer--i can swim, but, you know, metaphorically. a better swimmer.

she and her boyfriend got engaged yesterday.

and i feel so disgustingly selfish, because despite the fact that i adore s. (and j., natch) and i love j. and s. together and their betrothal is hardly surprising, i am terrified.

things are going to change, they must change, they always do. i just wish that i would, too, and stop being the same old me: put some damn goggles on, take a deep breath, and get kicking.

i don't need a husband or a fiance or a boyfriend. just the maturity to simply be happier for my friends than i am sad for myself. to accept change with grace. to believe in my heart that i am capable of moving forward regardless of anyone else's place, pace, or standard.

i am. i can. i do.

i must.

hey, it's worth a try.

and while i can't be as happy as you are, dear j, i love you too much to hope for anything but the utmost happiness for you. congratulations, guys.

2005-03-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

parental vow that is sure to be broken once i actually have kids (however that's going to happen), because they'll inevitably find out and will love the forbidden to spite me #1
no wiggles. sorry, honey, that's the way it is. let's listen to raffi, okay? nice, grandfatherly raffi? or mozart? mozart will make you smarter! you still want wiggles, huh? mommy can sing the wiggles for you! toot toot, chugga chugga, big red car! because the wiggles invaded mommy's brain! and replaced all sorts of interesting things? like steinbeck plots? with their songs! oh, baby, don't cry. you really like those happy, goofy, earnest-yet-creepy, seemingly-oblivious-of-double-entendre* old men? ow! now, how many times have i told you? we don't hit mommy! ow! ah! gah, fine. let's go to walmart.

*dear wiggles: why "do the monkey"? "dance" is so much more precise than, and just as easy to sing as "do"! come on and dance the monkey! see? it's better! unless, of course, you actually do mean "have sex with the monkey," in which case "do" is rhythmically superior, and the ambiguity might ward off some nasty allegations. but do you really think that's appropriate for young children?

2005-03-18T14:05:00.000-06:00

as it turns out, all squirrels hop kind of like bunnies
as i was trekking from the bus to work earlier this week, i spotted a stump-tailed squirrel. having previously been acquainted with a stumpy*, i stopped to observe the critter and noticed that, rather than running or walking like most four-footed animals, it did more of a bunny hop across the street. and then i was mesmerized by this bunny-hopping stumpy squirrel--could it be a freakish bunny-squirrel hybrid, what with the puff-tail and the mad ups? i've been meaning to try and find him again for further observation, but then i realized today that squirrels really just move like that. and how did i not know that?

*scroll down to the willlliams college entry. also, i should note the squirrel-extermination controversy. the library employee mentioned on the above-linked site wrote a letter of outrage to the school newspaper after hearing that campus squirrels were being captured and exterminated. moreover, stumpy was missing! and i actually wrote an email to the interim president of the college asking if he knew anything of the scandal. and he didn't even respond!

also, spa vacations are expensive. my naivte is totally taking a beating today.

2005-03-16T23:09:00.000-06:00

falling apart a little, but, hey, that happens sometimes
so, my birthday's in ~~a month~~ two months* and a half, and i'm thinking of going somewhere by myself, and being by myself. on purpose. so as to be the master of my own happiness, blah, blah, avoid disappointment, etc. go to a spa or something (any recommendations?), maybe in the southwest, where it's warm and i know no one. but, jesus, am i not both a little too old and much too young to be so angsty and bitter?

last week i was finally able to talk to the manager of the office where i occasionally meet with my good buddy, psychiatric nurse practitioner n., and where i formerly saw therapist d. i was confused because i had received notice from my insurance company that they had been billed for a visit with n., which they claimed to have paid for, despite the fact that i had been told he wasn't covered under my insurance (though therapist d. was) and had been paying out of pocket since i started seeing him. so i asked this woman what was going on--was he covered suddenly? why was my insurance company billed without my knowledge or consent? and she tells me, "oh, that was december 8. you saw d. on december 8, and n. the next day." so i say, "no, i haven't seen d. in months." and she says, "yeah, you saw her in december." and i say, "no, i mean, many months, like since last summer, or spring." and she says, "no, you saw her in december," as though i just forgot that i saw her in december and haven't seen her since? "i think i would remember if i had seen d. on december 8" i mean, why was this woman so intent on arguing with me? exasperated, and without even thinking, i burst out with "i'm not that crazy!"

ha!

god, depression is hilarious.

anyway, i finally suggested that maybe she was looking at records for 2003 instead of 2004, and she finally realized that i am depressive, not delusional, though she didn't quite yet get that she is dumb. "well, we didn't bill your insurance company because n. isn't covered." so, what, i'm imagining this piece of paper in my hand that gives a check number for the insurance company's payment? I KNOW N. ISN'T COVERED, BUT YOU BILLED THE INSURANCE COMPANY AND THEY PAID YOU. MAYBE, I COULD BE WRONG HERE, BUT MAYBE. YOU. MADE A MISTAKE. or several.

i think she still didn't believe me, but oh well. the part where i said i'm not that crazy? was awesome. i seriously could not stop laughing about it. which leads me to consider that i am, perhaps, a little bit off.

*i was once good enough at the maths to take multivariable calculus. happily ever after, the end.

2005-03-11T12:00:00.000-06:00

sometimes i feel like whining and stomping my feet
but being a couple of decades too old for that, i blog. my apartment is a mess, i have too much laundry to do, and we're only about halfway through a two-week span of hosting various overnight guests.

though my arm is now feeling better, it was hurting and still does a little, and i have to keep icing it and stretching it and forgetting to take ibuprofen for it, as well as go to more inconveniently-timed and -located appointments for it. due to my general smallness, my work desk is too high for me to healthily type and mouse, but raising my chair would leave my feet dangling uncomfortably and not at all ergonomically. and when i emailed a guy about a keyboard tray, he didn't respond.

in the past week, two water bottles (old gatorade/juice bottles) and a plastic starbucks cup have disappeared from my desk overnight. similar disappearances occurred a few months ago. WHAT THE HELL? my hypothesis is that someone in the cleaning staff finds my recycling habits unhealthy and takes it upon herself to save me from myself. or is insane. and they don't even empty my wastebasket. in my quest for vindication, i was told just to hide the bottles in a desk drawer, but i can't stop thinking of utterly uncreative ways to fight back. like a big note that says 'don't touch my shit. thank you.'

for most of the past week or longer, my college alumni email account that i use as my primary address has been down or accessible only by first jumping through a flaming hoop followed by a back handspring. after sticking with it through this and other outages, i find out today that they are discontinuing email service. and i understand and support their decision, but i'm still annoyed, because now i have to make something like a decision. do i just use the yahoo account i already have, which gets gobs and gobs and gobs of spam, but at least puts it in a handily ignored folder? do i get a gmail account that i can use forever? do i get a free address (or use the one i already have) from my commercial isp, knowing that it will inevitably change if i decide to change my service? what should my user name be? do i do one of the above but only give out my other alumni address, which isn't really an account, but a supposedly lifetime forwarding service (and also somewhat cumbersome because some stupid girl in my class had the nerve to have the same initials as i do)?

and, most importantly, which will make me seem the coolest? because i'm nothing without a hip email address.

2005-03-08T10:50:00.000-06:00

i've always been under the impression
that i'd never broken any bones
that is, excluding the middle finger of my left hand, which i crushed at age 6 as a result of swinging on a portable clothing rack. wheee! when i was "little," my hypochondriac nature and my fear of having my parents anywhere but rightnextome, especially at night, caused my mother to declare that babysitters were not to call my parents unless one of us was bleeding to death or vomiting uncontrollably. a similar attitude was taken toward doctor visits--there were four of us, after all, and to panic over every flu and tumble would inevitably lead to insanity. and, you know, we all survived. but i think i grew up with this sort of romantic idea of emergency, as though the chaos of our lives would suddenly vanish and in its place would be unadulterated attention. i imagined broken bones--a leg or an arm--the hospital visit, doting doctors and parents, a cool cast, a few days off school, then awe and signatures from schoolmates who otherwise ignored me.

ah, but no such luck. or great luck, as it were. i had my share of stitches, and nothing more painful or enduring than a sprained wrist for which my dad purchased a drugstore brace. i wore that for awhile, then on and off when i felt a tinge of soreness, or maybe a little need for pity. never saw a doctor for it. and while i probably would have preferred to at the time, i don't remember it being so painful, and it got better with the brace.

so i was surprised yesterday, when i saw a sports/occupational doctor for wrist and arm pain i've been noticing while sitting at my computer, mousing and typing around, and an x-ray showed an old fracture. "you must have been a tough kid," he said after i explained that i thought i'd sprained it playing soccer 12 or so years ago.

i called my mom immediately after the appointment, and she half-jokingly asked, "are you trying to make me feel guilty for not taking better care of you?"

and i was afraid it would sound like that, but i really wasn't. i was just amazed and, you know, a little bit proud.

2005-02-18T08:49:00.001-06:00

allow me to introduce my good friend, anxiety.
and when i say "good friend," i of course mean "mortal enemy"
not that i haven't tried, you know. to embrace it. to give it the chance to help me get stuff done instead of paralyzing me. but no, no. it's just a big, fat jerk. and all those well-placed signs clearly stating "don't feed the anxiety"? not helping. it's a very, very hungry anxiety. last night, i was kept awake worrying about my roommate's potential gym membership, which really has very little, if anything, to do with me. oh, and then! then, i started thinking i should blog about this. and so then i kept myself awake thinking about what i would write.

and now, nightmares!
sometime last week, i had this dream wherein i was extraordinarily stressed. something about raw eggs all over the place and my mom being mad at me. so, believing myself to be in a real-life crappy situation, i shouted out loud: "THIS IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!" and, what do you know, it was.

and last night, after finally falling asleep with my very good friend, blogging anxiety, i had a dream that i came back to this blog and had lots! of! comments! which was very exciting, and most of them were mildly complimentary, but then there was this one that went like this:

"what is this? a blog for 10-year-old boys? shouldn't you be critiquing new york times articles?"

which was naturally very confusing and somewhat upsetting, and i wanted to think of a clever response, but all i could think of was an entry title: yes, this is a blog for 10-year-old boys.

welcome, 10-year-old boys!

actually, you're probably not going to find this very interesting. sorry.

and no, i probably won't be critiquing any new york times articles. though i wholly agree with my blogroll's consensus on that mommy blogging one. and i hear that this is awesome.

2005-02-07T08:54:00.000-06:00

thoughts keeping me awake last night
crap, i didn't put a magazine in my backpack for the gym tomorrow. i hope i remember to do that in the morning. will i really take the initiative to apply for that job i really want but know i'm not going to get when i just got semi-promoted? if so, should i send them a sample of my audio work? if i don't, will they discount my claims that i've done such work? if i do, will they think i'm a big dork? hey, that one time, senior year of college, when i threw up in a cup at the purple pub (the one and truly only time i have ever been there) because two (male) friends thought it was funny to keep getting me more beer (and, well, i should take responsibility for this, too--i did drink it), and then we left; uh, did anyone do anything with that cup of vomit that was sitting on the table at the crowded bar--ideally, did i take it out with me and dump it somewhere outside when we finally had the collective good sense to get out of there and stop drinking, or did we just leave it there, sitting on the table, for all the cool kids to find?

2005-01-27T16:38:00.000-06:00

making a mental note to be more careful what i wish for
so, after an evening of moping and crying that i can't take my job anymore because i have no work and it's pointless and boring and mind-numbing and my incredibles adaptation was killed, i go to work (i was going to take a mental health day, but decided to postpone it until tomorrow, when i'm going to get 2/3 of my hair chopped off--fun!) and am assigned to write a1000-word audio-enhanced story on these glittering (literally) beacons of girlhood.

2005-01-25T09:33:00.001-06:00

well, not exactly exactly
i feel compelled to note, as regards my last post, that i don't feel entirely comfortable citing a capital-g God, especially in this generally irreverent space. yet i did not do so casually. though i haven't worked out a definition of a higher power or religion that makes sense to me (if pressed, i might say something like eric zorn does here (which is really more a series of questions than a definition), though i wouldn't go so far as to say that i don't care whether or not god exists), the notion of a sort of unspoken spirit, or feeling, in the respectful witness of community--something larger than what can be spoken or done by an individual--does make sense to me.

just to, you know, clarify.

2005-01-24T11:40:00.000-06:00

on holding each other up
as i was obsessively editing and re-posting the entry below, i read this entry from frog, and hey, that's just it. she quotes parker j. palmer on depression:

...by standing respectfully and faithfully at the borders of another’s solitude, we may mediate the love of God to a person who needs something deeper than any human being can give.

yes, that's it exactly.

2005-01-24T10:47:00.000-06:00

connections
one
my grandma loved johnny carson. even though i didn't pay enough attention--i never pay enough attention--burned in my brain are memories of staying up late at her house (and i had this special tiny red suitcase just for the purpose of visiting grandma), watching the tonight show. though i don't think i really understood what was going on and was most likely a little bored (the oldest i could have been is 11), in my memory, it makes sense to me that she adored him. maybe it's that i was there with my grandmother, that she didn't force me to go to bed when i was terrified to be alone, but when i think of johnny carson, i think of a tremendous comfort. avuncular, he was. i remember being sad to hear that he went off the air, but soothed by the thought of my grandma's stash of tonight show videotapes, both homemade and later ordered from one of those time-life-type programs, with the tv ads and the phone numbers and the low monthly installments. and awfully late, as it happens, i am drawn to the idea of buying a johnny carson dvd.

two
a couple of weeks ago, i made a teeny-tiny internet friend named will. will didn't know me but, like a lot of other strangers, it seems, i was drawn to his story and, god, sad as hell to read his dad's post on saturday. i've been thinking about will all weekend, and how remarkable it is that i found his little bit of the internet, and how the stories people share, whether read by hundreds, thousands, or just a few, make an impact, fulfill a need, and create community. we're warned to take caution on the internet, as though in constant danger of accidentally walking down a darkened alley--it's vast, it's mysterious, it's full of predators, it's an enemy of privacy, a minefield of credit-card-number-seeking opportunists. but then, like the world wide world itself, you find stories. stories of loss, of staggering heartbreak, of courage in the face of tremendous hardship, and stories of hope, of flickering joy, of love, of peace. you can be reading a blog and feel suddenly compelled, as one commenter on will's site did, to press that "next blog" button up there and find out, from sheer randomness, that someone's sweet little boy has died. and you are affected, you care, you suddenly see life from a different perspective, and you are a different person, if only for a moment. and maybe this is over-the-top romantic, but i like to think that, even if only in the tiniest of ways, we're all holding each other up, just a little. sure, there are jerks out there, and sometimes, often maybe, even the most supportive community can't make a dent in despair. but there are those out there who are trying, perhaps just by being present in acknowledgement and respect of one another's pain.

to john and mary: thank you for sharing will's story. he is, and will be, remembered.

2005-01-20T10:26:00.000-06:00

best cure for a headache? get another one!
i arrived to work yesterday a half hour late and weighted by an inexplicable feeling of anxiety, the clenching in my chest and gut i used to call "the homesick feeling" when i was 7, 8, 10, 12 and at a friend's house overnight, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to be in my own bed.

it was a bad start to a gray day in which i wasn't to eat dinner until 9:45 pm. for the rest of the morning i did my best to ignore the low-level headache picking away at my brain.

then, when it was time for lunch, i ventured into the department kitchen to retrieve my turkey sandwich and yogurt from the refrigerator. the refrigerator, maddeningly crammed with the personal salad dressings, leftovers from today's lunch, leftovers from yesterday's lunch, leftovers from last week's lunch, cream cheese, bagels, milk, and juice of 50 people. so of course as i take my bag out, styrofoam boxes come toppling to my feet, and there's nowhere to put them that they will stay put. and by the time i finally extricate myself from the avalanche of other people's food, someone has opened the freezer door above me, and when my upper body, led by my head, flings to standing, the great momentum in that gesture is suddenly, painfully interrupted by the freezer door.

i spent the rest of the day holding ice, double-bagged in jewel grocery sacks, to my head while, in search of some good cheer, i typed out web addresses with my one free hand.

2005-01-14T10:50:00.000-06:00

come to think of it, i have gotten
some very tempting offers on the el
it was a bright, summery morning, i was on my way to work, and love was in the air when a jolly fellow sharing my car broke into my semi-catatonic state and asked for the time. always happy to engage in some brief neighborly helpfulness, i checked my phone and answered him before staring out the window some more. and then the mating dance began:

"my name's kirby. what's yours?"

"elizabeth.*"

"you're very pretty, elizabeth."

"thanks."

"you wanna go out sometime?"

"no thanks."

"it's because i'm black, isn't it?"

now here i just had to laugh. despite my protests to the contrary, he badgered me and continued to insist (and really, what man doesn't know a woman's mind better than she does, eh?) that i wouldn't go out with him because he was black. frankly, if he really needed me to pin my rejection on a physical attribute, i could easily have pointed out his crooked, brownish teeth or the fact that he was easily three of me all rolled into one. that wasn't even it, though, necessarily. i mean, you never really know who you're going to fall for, though i'll admit to being shallow enough that those particular characteristics would have been impediments to my affection.

instead, i tried to tell him the god's-honest truth: i'm just really not into guys who proposition me on the el. in fact, i could no longer even be sure that i'm into guys anymore, what with my pathological celibacy and all. only it didn't come out quite so eloqently, and i babbled on nicely about how i would have to know someone better before agreeing to meet him somewhere or give him my phone number. to which he repeatedly insisted that i wouldn't go out with him because he was black, and i was therefore a big chicken.

we finally reached the end of the line, and as i descended to street level to catch my bus, he shouted after me: "CHICKEN!"

anyway, he seemed like a really nice guy. maybe i should have given him a chance, even though his name was kirby ("a warpstar knight-in-training,... his most amazing ability is to inhale his enemies' powers and give them a taste of their own medicine").

the time i may have really missed out on potential true love, though, was several months later as i was waiting for the train to leave the station i now wistfully refer to as the "lost lovers' el stop," the very terminus of my short relationship with the beloved kirby. i waited alone until a charming young man with a gangsta slouch and knee-high pantswaist boarded my car and uttered those fateful words: "wassyur name?"

"mary,**" i responded demurely.

"can i get your number?"

"nope, sorry."

"what, you don't date black guys?"

"um, i don't give my number to strangers."

"you white bitch!"

and then he bailed. sigh. i think back on that moment and my mind races with all the things i could have said but didn't.

no, all i could manage was a short, heartbroken whatever, and then i kicked myself all the way home.

*my standard pseudonym for situations such as these, elizabeth is what my mom wanted to name me. instead, my dad won that argument with the name of an apparently hot female character in an late-70's/early-80's primetime soap opera.
**a slightly less-used pseudonym, rooted in my middle name (marie) and the fact that sometimes it just comes to my head faster than elizabeth.

2005-01-13T11:29:00.000-06:00

i'd love to report that cats don't snore,
but i can't, because they do
i once told someone in college that i thought that sleeping together was the most romantic thing two people could do. not, you know, sex. just sleeping. not that i knew from experience or anything--nor do i know any better these days--i have the cumulative dating experience (spread among three guys) of a whopping nine months (six of which were in high school) and a thing about people seeing me sleep.

and yet i wish i could get a photograph of the way my cat sprawls across my pillow, head resting on mine, front leg stretching over my neck.

yes, my most romantic relationship ever is with my cat. and not only is he a pillow-hogging head-spooner, but he snores. it starts out as a purr, then alternates between a soft wheezing and a whistle.

ugh.

maybe i should join a club or visit the local laundromat.

2005-01-11T09:18:00.000-06:00

kitty likes tamari, and other unrelated tidbits
i wasn't kidding about the cat posts, people. but it's okay, this guy's hilarious. last night, i found him in the kitchen sink licking the top of the empty tamari-sauce bottle. current list of my cat's favorite foods: bread, corn, peas, tomatoes/tomato sauce, broccoli, and sometimes tofu. he generally refuses bits of leftover bacon and chicken. see, FUNNY! right?

you'll have to forgive me; my email is down for the second day in a row and i'm feeling a little irreverent-communication deprived.

learning something new every day, learning something that makes an impression only every three days
last friday, i learned that no one was planning on clearing the back staircase of the six inches of snow accumulated there. and i learned that it was kind of tricky getting down those stairs with the six inches of snow. so i shoveled it.

on saturday, i learned that no one was planning on spreading salt on the shoveled-but-now-icy staircase. it occurred to me that this might be dangerous.

on sunday, i learned that it was not a good idea to attempt to descend the aforementioned staircase wearing flip-flops. actually, the thought had crossed my mind before i did it, but, you know, i'm 24! and INVINCIBLE! and i now have a bruise on my, ahem, posterior, the approximate shape, and size, of australia. it hurts to sit.

2004-12-31T14:03:00.000-06:00

here's to 2005, which shall be full of stories about my cat
as the year draws to a close, i'd like to take some time here to remember my missed opportunities of 2004:

january: brought home new cat. did not instill my authority.
february: did not pursue coveted npr job with sufficient aggressiveness. henceforth, terrified to even look at job board.
march: returned terrifying novel that i did not care to finish to college acquaintance just before saying "oh, no big deal" regarding his possession of two of my most favorite books ever, then hugged him goodbye before he returned to new york or belize or whereverthefuck.
april: did not agree to live with bad grammar girl. did not, therefore, have fun by also celebrating with margaritas.
may: did not wear a sombrero to see fountains of wayne at rockin' de mayo.
june: did not spend my birthday money on a bigger television. instead, vacationed in europe. did not stay there.
july: did not get drunk and perform at the company picnic talent show. did not get fired.
august: did not just eat the damn eggs.
september: moved into a new apartment, but did not redouble my efforts to train the cat not to be an asshole. he jumps on these counters, too. and the pantry shelves. and my pillow when i'm sleeping. and the dining room table.
october: did not befriend random dude to whom i sold that wilco ticket, even though he looked remarkably like cute guy god.
november: linked to an npr personality without including my resume.
december: did not make plans for new year's eve. am destined to be a cat lady for 2005 and beyond.

2004-12-29T21:13:00.000-06:00

another one bites the dust
while i recognize that i am relatively fortunate (and how surreal and disturbing is it that i saw some kid on the bus today wearing a hoodie upon which the words "tsunami bomb"* were emblazoned?), i cannot honestly say that this past extended holiday weekend was a joy. there was, indeed, the lying, the hiding, the yelling, the stomping, the selling of drugs, the comiseration with law enforcement, the blatant underage drinking, the threatening, the racism, the homophobia, the repossesion of gifts, and the revelation of covert surveillance.

i feel more sad for than angry at brother p., around whom most of this is centered, though i wish for my own sake that i could, as he thinks i do, hate him. or that i just didn't care. but, damnit, i do.

so that was the worst thing about christmas, in my own little personal world.

the best was the airing of grievances.

happy belated festivus, everyone!

*turn down your volume before you click that link. seriously.

2004-12-29T20:54:00.000-06:00

i think i have a secret crush on zach braff
but don't tell anyone, okay? because it's embarrassing.

2004-12-22T09:26:00.000-06:00

somewhat criminal
i succumbed again this morning to the temptation of dunkin donuts, mainly because i had already spent a healthy 20 minutes or so in the brisk (subzero) out of doors and it was evident that my bus would not be coming in the immediate future. i can say, though, that this time i did purchase a relatively healthy* bagel and cream cheese.

about halfway into my consumption of this treat, my bus finally arrived. i boarded without fanfare--half a bagel in one hand (eaten the sandwich way, not top/bottom-wise) and a fare card in the other. shortly after sitting down, a recorded voice intoned:

according to state law, and as a courtesy to other passengers, there is no smoking, eating, or drinking on the bus.

it became clear, when this announcement was made a second time shortly after another passenger boarded with his dunkin donuts booty (and being as i had never heard it before), that the driver was initiating it in response to the aforementioned booty.

i have a few things to say about this.

firstly, there is eating and drinking on the bus because, look! we're eating! and drinking! just like cranky, cold, and tired people do on their way to work every day. maybe, anonymous bus voice, you meant to say that smoking, eating, and drinking on the bus are prohibited?

and can it really be against state law to drink coffee on the bus? or eat a bagel? i think they should make that law a little more specific and say that it is against the law to spill coffee and eat flamin' hot cheetos on the bus. and what's this courtesy to other passengers, as long as i'm not spilling coffee or eating flamin' hot cheetos? would it be okay if i brought enough for everyone to share? and while we're discussing bus annoyances, can we make a law that says if i can smell your cologne, you can't ride the bus? and instead of the announcement, can we make it so the driver presses a button and the offender immediately vanishes, only to find him- or herself outside the bus? and if that proves technically impossible, perhaps the driver could actually speak to the person, and maybe pick him up, and maybe toss him out the back door, then sigh, do that hand-dusting-gesture thing, and say "well, back to work" before getting back in the driver's seat? okay, good, that would be awesome.

anyway, given that i had already thrown away anything that could have been used to wrap and preserve my bagel remains, the only way i could cure this great ill against the state and my fellow passengers was to keep eating until the bagel was gone.

so i did.

and it was delicious. (sweet, sweet crime.)

*i am not fooling myself, however. it was, after all, dunkin donuts.

2004-12-20T09:30:00.000-06:00

come to think of it, i should have started a fight
so there i am, in the merry winter wonderland that is chicago, my ride to work in california.

it's cold.

did i mention that it's cold? it's cold. wind-chill-below-zero cold. and i don't have a ride to work. but whatever, i never had a ride to work last winter, so i'll survive. it's pretty much impossible for me to get to the el without passing a starbucks, and i have cash in my wallet, an unusual enough situation (and you'll soon understand why) to warrant special action. and, well, it's cold. since i don't drink coffee, a venti hot chocolate seems appropriate, and it's only three dollars and eleven cents, and it's cold, and i don't have a ride to work. so there you go.

as i exit the starbucks, i see the train that i really should be on, but it doesn't matter, because, after all, it's cold and i need something hot to drink and it doesn't really matter when i get to work because i'll have nothing to do there anyway.*

so i'm drinking my hot chocolate and another train comes and i get on it and eventually get to the end of the line, where i have to catch a bus, which, oops, is driving away, and i can't run after it because in my hand i've still got half of the largest cup of hot chocolate i've ever before possesed, so, okay, i'll wait for the next one. i wait. and i wait. after 10 or 15 minutes, my hot chocolate becoming a misnomer, it occurs to me that i still have cash in my wallet. and i haven't had breakfast. and it's cold! and dunkin' donuts is right there, at the bus terminal, in full view of the bus stop and vice versa. i meander into the establishment, chocolate coursing through my nervous system, my appetite whetted for a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant. the place is cramped with travelers buying a doughnut or two in exchange for the brief shelter, and a tiny well-dressed woman ahead of me wants a low-fat muffin with her coffee. she shouts at the indian woman helping her as though it's the only way for her english to be understood. the cashier/purveyor of muffins/likely proprietor wisely plays along:

ugly american: are those low fat?! i want low fat!
wise dunkin donuts proprietor: yes. low fat. [reaches for muffin]
ua: no! no! does that have sugar on it? that has sugar on it! i don't want that!
wddp: is low fat.
ua: no, i don't want sugar! that doesn't make any sense! give me the other one without the sugar!
wddp: [reaches for a muffin to the right of the sugar-encrusted low-fat muffins]
ua: no, the other one! the other one! without the sugar!
wddp: [reaches to the left] corn muffin?
ua: yes, corn. that's fine. without the sugar. why do you put sugar on the low-fat muffins? the other dunkin donuts doesn't put sugar on them. it doesn't make any sense to put sugar on a low-fat muffin! it's supposed to be low fat.
wddp: yes, low fat sometimes sugar, sometimes no sugar.
ua: no! it doesn't make any sense to put sugar on the low-fat muffins!
wddp: yes. low-fat. no sugar. yes.**
ua: *exasperated sigh* can i have some equal? i want 4 packets. [takes her muffin, coffee, and equal, and pushes through other customers] excuse me!

what i should have said: actually ma'am, sugar on a low-fat muffin makes just as much sense, if not more, than sugar anywhere else. sugar content has nothing to do with low-fat designation***. in fact, your mindless pursuit for "low-fat" foods is likely to greatly increase your sugar consumption. if you want a low-fat coffee cake muffin with no sugar on top, then make your own. now go eat your snackwell's and quit terrorizing innocent dunkin donuts personnel. happy diabetes!

but, yeah, i didn't say that. it would have been fun, though.

*except blog. mmm, blog.
**read: whatever lady, just get the hell out of my store and never come back.
***also, the muffins were actually "reduced fat," not "low-fat," bwahahaha.

2004-12-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

i am such a sucker
oh, man. this is probably something i shouldn't be posting, because it may say something about my sanity that i'm not sure i want anyone else to hear, but i just gave some random person at work a check for her sick cat. i don't think i would have had the guts to do this, but she sent an email to the company asking for money, and oh...

see, i had a sick kitty once, and even before i knew he was sick, he was so tiny and sweet that i was irrationally sure he couldn't be mine, and that i would do something wrong or miss a sneeze and he would die. i'd had him for a month when one morning he started seizing... and the next day, my dad yelled at me for spending $600 on what quickly became a dead cat.

it's not something i can write eloquently about, because i can't spend too much time thinking about it, but, yeah. i just gave some random person at work 50 bucks for her sick cat. and i really hope he makes it.

2004-12-09T16:28:00.000-06:00

in which i transcribe the post-it-note list on my desk
1 big pig
3 chicks
crocodile w/12 teeth
blue fish #4
yellow fish #7
purple, red, orange
1 frog
cow w/11 spots
3 cows w/red cowbells
long-distance horse
horse w/blanket 2
smallest & biggest cats

2004-12-08T10:28:00.000-06:00

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas might not be so bad
at least, the respite it will provide from my job will be joyously welcomed. sometimes, when i feel like pretending to be paranoid and self-centered, i think a certain publishing division of a certain children's television network might be trying to slowly drive me insane. in discussing this with my senior editor yesterday, i referenced howard's end and realized that she thought i might be going insane as well. but seriouslly, publishing division of unnamed children's television network! only connect! for real, dudes.

anyway, despite the fact that i have come to see christmas as merely a breeding ground for anxiety and homicidal rage, frantic shouts to call 911 and desperate cries of "you called 911?! you weren't really supposed to call 911!" and woefully unkept promises that "chrismas is cancelled, and this time i mean it," i sort of think that christmas might be bearable this year. i'm not sure why, actually, and i think i have tended to think that in the past, only to be disappointed--and that disappointment is what makes it really suck, but i still think maybe it wil be okay.

2004-11-18T22:00:00.000-06:00

celebrity appearance on abr!
and by abr i of course mean this blog. when you start to have celebrity appearances, you know, you automatically graduate to tla-dom. just like et.

speaking of tla's, npr came to my blog! only i was wearing, like, a t-shirt and jeans, when i totally should have been wearing my natty new work clothes. it reminds me of the time i met al gore*. did i ever tell you about the time i met al gore? no, of course not--i read the archives! or, at least, i know what's in them.

so, once upon a time, i was a news intern at a commercial radio station, and al gore was in the "green room." i'm shy and don't like to ask too much of my superiors, so i was dutifully attending to the ap wire and abc news feed while everyone but the host was out chumming with a.g. so the host says to me: "don't you want to meet al gore?" and i say "but don't you need me?" and he says "no, of course not, get out there!" so i had to go meet al gore, which wasn't such a terrible thing, except that i'm not one to collect celebrity encounters, because what can i say? so out i went, and all these people who actually got paid to work for a radio station were shaking his hand and telling him their names and job titles, so just after my supervisor, the news director, did as such, i shook al gore's hand and said, "hi, i'm k- (surname). i'm the news intern."

and then everyone started laughing.

only, you see, he actually talked to me! instead of saying "nice to meet you" as he did to everyone else, he chuckled (sigh, al gore!) and asked me how i liked it, and we had a little mini conversation. i didn't tell him about how a high school friend and i had a rhyme about being in love with him. because, well, tipper was just standing right there.

*hey, do you think if i link to al gore, he'll come to my blog and leave a comment?

2004-11-15T11:24:00.000-06:00

i actually kind of like the pledge drives. does that make me weird?
chicago public radio is doing their semiannual pledge drive thing, and i have to say, i kind of enjoy listening to the people telling me why i should be a dollar-a-day member. maybe it's that i pledged what i could several months ago and therefore feel no pressure to give at this point. and i've not really heard pledge drives in other communities--in the boston area, i hear, they're really irritating and boring. and apparently my mom's npr station pre-empted a 'hidden kitchens' segment to beg for money.

what tickles me about the wbez pledge drives is that they have station personalities--peter sagal, ira glass, station manager torey malatia (regularly abused at the end of this american life)--riffing on the themes of the pledge drive, making clever or awkward metaphors, unscripted and exposed. last week, a woman on the air [ed. note: gretchen helfrich] was doing just that with peter sagal, and when she mentioned something along the lines of hoping to "induce" people to call in and pledge, sagal interrupted her, saying "is that right? can you use 'induce' like that?" and there was a beat of silence before the woman began arguing that it was, and he argued back that he had only heard it used in terms of his wife's pregnancy. "like, inducing labor?" they moved on, agreeing to look it up when they were off the air, but a couple of minutes later, the news host broke in to say that she had just looked up "induce" on dictionary.com, and read the definition to the woman's advantage and sagal's mild embarrassment. now that i think about it, it sounds an awful lot like college radio, but with better, professional, voices, and i just adore that. which is why i will work there someday. hopefully soon.

dear wbez: please let me work for you. pledge drives + me = love. and everything else! sigh. love, k.

2004-11-11T13:09:00.000-06:00

and there's a cake hiding in my closet (shhhh!)
so, other than last week's election of he-who-shall-not-be-named, things have been going rather well. in honor of best friend/roommate j.'s birthday (which is actually today), we attended a wilco concert at the sullivan-designed auditorium theatre over halloween weekend. it was rather a surreal (but nice) (if you recognize the reference here, by the way, shush. you'll only embarrass yourself. and me. good thing i can't figure out how to get my comments working again!*) experience, due to the last-minute illness of brother n. and subsequent replacement of his co-concert-goer status by a random (but cute!) fellow who responded to my desperate craigslist ad. i think his name was dave. we met him at starbucks and exchanged currencies, all with j. still unaware of our surprise destination. then dave kept offering to get us drinks at the concert. what a nice guy, that dave.

also, the furniture in our new apartment is finally all in a presentable state. we visited ikea over the past weekend and remedied the situation of the paper-box bookcases in my room, and other crucial items have been stripped and painted and stained and varnished as necessary. unfortunately, all our overhead light bulbs have been dying--we need to figure out how to get those changed. hey, how many liberal arts graduates does it take to change a light bulb?! actually, i think we just need a ladder. or someone really, really tall.

earlier this week, i sat in on a recording session for the voice of dora the explorer. as with my christopher robin experience, i am both enchanted and puzzled by this child's professionalism. how do they get that way? are child voice actors just like child screen actors? will they turn out like corey feldman, or sean astin? actually, i've heard that elmo, who is actually a grown man, is rather a primadonna. but you didn't hear that from me.

*oh, maybe they are working. in that case, does anyone know how to get blogger comments working on my old school template?

2004-11-05T09:05:00.000-06:00

fine lines
i'd like to take a page from eric zorn's playbook (regular notebook readers will recognize the title of this post) and emphatically agree with this. hurray for zorn permalinks!

2004-11-03T13:14:00.000-06:00

i'm a big* liberal whiner baby
john kerry just made me cry.

i like what eric zorn (ed. note: updated to permalink) has to say. i hope so, too.

*actually, i'm quite small. i wish i were a few inches taller, but isn't that always the way?

2004-11-03T09:22:00.000-06:00

i kept forgetting about conditioner this morning
it seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but i'm not sure that it is, other than the fact that i'm utterly confused and disappointed this morning. oh, and i was up 2 hours past my bedtime!

first, i forgot to put the conditioner in my hair before i used the soap. usually, when i'm done rinsing soap, i rinse conditioner, but when i was done with the soap, i realized there was no conditioner in my hair. so then i put the conditioner in, and promptly turned the water off. i forgot to rinse my conditioner! so i had to turn the water back on, etc. i also forgot my meds today. depressing.

i was going to write a dramatic post about the impending departure of all sorts of american civil liberties, and end with the hope that maybe i'm being overdramatic and maybe john thune and that fucking asshole jim demint aren't really that evil, and maybe etc., etc., checks and balances, blah blah blah. but i don't know. i want to know! someone, please tell me everything's going to be okay. ohio?

also, in an entirely unrelated development, i'm thinking about buying a radiohead cd.

2004-11-02T11:24:00.000-06:00

"statistical dead heat"
i'm sure no one reading this needs me to say so, but i'm going to anyway.

vote.

that's all.

oh, and hey! i saw wilco on saturday night. jeff tweedy says you should vote, too.

2004-10-22T14:42:00.000-05:00

we went to chuck e. cheese for lunch today

and look at what i got for JUST 1 TOKEN!!!!

2004-10-22T10:12:00.000-05:00

maybe it's the egg
it's been almost four weeks since i moved out of my old apartment, four weeks since the landlady's daughter told me she would meet me there to refund my security deposit, then that she would send it right away, then that oh! yes! i have to send you that check! i'll send it today! and now she has stopped taking and/or returning my calls and emails.

she owes me one thousand dollars.

and, well, i never did clean the egg off of my ceiling--i couldn't reach it and it was all crusted and stuck and not really that noticeable anyway.

2004-10-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

awareness
from time to time, the tips of chicago skyscrapers light up with the culturally dominant colors of the season--green like the dyed river for saint patrick's day, red for valentine's day, green and red for the winter "holiday season." on saturday night, i was walking downtown with my dad and my brother p. when i noticed that the aon center was topped with a band of pink light. a twirl with my nose to the sky revealed that the white antennae atop the sears tower appeared pink as well.

"huh," i mused aloud. "why are those lights pink?"

oh-so-matter-of-factly, my brother replied: "breast cancer awareness month."

to be honest, i wasn't expecting an answer at all, much less this one from p.--predisposed not only by age and gender, but a neurological anomaly, to be self-absorbed. amazing. i was embarrassed for myself, but proud of him, and proud of the women and men who are obviously succeeding in their campaign for awareness.

i have so far been only indirectly affected by this disease, but i have listened and read enough to just barely grasp the enormity of its toll. please take a moment to visit this site and click on the button (today and as often as you can remember) to help fund mammograms for women in need.

2004-10-13T13:00:00.000-05:00

a brief argument in favor of hibernation
i moved two weeks ago, no more than a mile from where i lived previously, and my mind has of late been occupied (vacated?) by more tangible things than writing (i mention this not as an apology, but merely as an acknowledgement of time past)--drywall anchors, the dining table that needs to be refinished, moulding hooks, the groceries that are no longer just across the street. overall, this is best for my health, if not my writing. yet the tangible--the shortening of days, the chilling of the air--is also beginning to take its toll on me. i adore autumn and winter for the opportunities they present for indulgence in warmth--down comforters, tea, fire, soup, scarves. i hate them for the constraints they put on my movement, on my will to move, and the fact that i must continue with routine in spite of the aforementioned temptations.

it's a gray day, and i'm stuck in front of a computer under fluorescent lights. life, now, would be better in bed.

2004-09-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

crunch time
attention! this is your last week to register to vote. for the love of whatever you hold dear, be sure you are registered at your current address by this saturday, october 2. especially if you live in one of those fabled "battleground" states. and, oops, it's looking like that could just include illinois.

2004-09-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

i'll see your disgusting, and raise it a mock
well, folks, it looks like the grammar bitch is back. yesterday, i sent a carefully-worded letter--much nicer, i'd say, than what i posted here--to the editor-in-chief of my alma-mater's student newspaper. he quickly and emotionally responded to accuse me of personally mocking the writer of the article as well as "everyone else involved in the production of the newspaper." he seemed not to understand my "motive."

well, for a start, it would be nice if something was done to prevent such a panoply of errors from again appearing in the newspaper.* lazy writing makes the paper look bad. lazy writing makes the college look bad. lazy writing degrades the very subject matter it seeks to illumine. unfortunately, this fellow has some trouble with illumination himself. without ever offering examples as to what was so offensive about my letter, without even attempting to deny, justify, or express shame at the mistakes published under his watch, he closed the email with this kicker: I really can't properly express my disgust with this letter, so I suppose there's nothing left to say.

oooh, damn. them's fightin' words.

errr, i mean, those are fighting words.

actually, i respectfully responded with a request to explain exactly what was so disgusting about my letter. he hasn't replied. what do you suppose that means? i'm thinking it means he still doesn't have anything to say.

i've reposted my original critique of the article. i sincerely apologize for hurting anyone's feelings, but gosh golly gee. 20 mistakes in one article!

*one could also imply from my letter a recommendation for the writer to not use that clip in applying for writing jobs when he graduates in 9 months. too bad, because it was actually a pretty interesting and informative article--every journalist loves a scandal, right?

2004-09-22T10:23:00.000-05:00

oh, these shooting pandas make me mad
there seems to be a major fracas going down at my alma mater that bears a striking resemblance to the plot of the human stain. this is all the more remarkable considering the fact that the fictional college philip roth details in his novel is so clearly based on my school that it was chosen as the setting for the ill-fated film adaptation starring anthony hopkins, gary sinise, and nicole kidman. (i escorted her to the bathroom during filming, by the way! i heard nicole kidman flush!)

now, there are innumerable reasons to be upset about this story--naturally, that such an incident ever occurred; secondarily, that some jerk-offs are publishing speculations as to the name of the offender (a target of which happens to be a professor revered and respected by yours truly) without any proof or official word. but frankly, i don't know enough about the matter (nor do most of the people commenting on it, i gather) to issue any condemnations. putting aside the obvious issues for a moment, what really, truly, insanely, to-the-point-of-losing-sleep* upsets me is the extremely poor quality of the article (linked above) published in the college weekly newspaper. okay, the reporting seems balanced enough, though, again, i can't personally speak for accuracy; and the style is nothing less than questionable. the campus is too small for a jayson-blair-izing, and i assume there were no forged documents involved. but the grammar--oh, the grammar! it pains me to tears.

this 1700-or-so-word article (presumably front-page by the looks of its placement on the online version), written by the EXECUTIVE FREAKING EDITOR (editor!) of the paper, contains no fewer than 20 (20!) (ed note: edited from "twelve" to "20" with some help from best friend j.) grammatical/syntactical errors. now, considering the larger issue at hand, one might suggest that these are minor infractions. i mean, someone--a faculty member at the #1-rated liberal-arts college in the country (according to u.s. news and world report)--used the n-word, right? absolutely, and people are right to be very upset about this. but when a person is continually distracted by the stupidity or, at best, laziness of the writer, it becomes increasingly more difficult to focus on what is, and should be, the greater issue. and the executive EDITOR (editor!) of the newspaper for the #1-rated liberal-arts college in the country (according to u.s. news and world report...oh, did i mention that already? my bad.), and the people who should have copyEDITED (edited!) that article before it was published** need to realize that. i am saddened and ashamed. words (and commas!) are important, people! considering the circumstances, you'd think that would be obvious. apparently not.

*i've taken my time posting this, but it was actually written in a post-lights-out lights-back-on frenzy.
**i'm assuming it was printed as published online--regardless, the errors are inexcusable.

the title of this post is of course a reference to this book and the joke upon which that title is based.

2004-09-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

instrumental
i love music, but i've never been exceptional at creating it. i picked up a violin in the fourth grade, largely because participating in band or orchestra was required of the "gifted and talented" program in which i ended up, and one couldn't actually participate in band until fifth grade. my desire to play the piano just like my friend down the street probably influenced my parents in their purchase of a piano, something for which i shall feel guilty for the rest of my life. i've toyed with singing and dancing--rather desperately, i'd say, in high school--only to be summarily rejected from anything audition-related. i acquired a guitar after a brief and doomed relationship with a music major my freshman year of college, and then embarked on an equally brief and doomed quest to become a songwriter.

strangely enough, the most arbitrary of my musical acquisitions, the one taken up with the least feeling, the least desire--the violin (frankly, i really wanted to play the flute, but my dentist dad insisted it would lead me straight and fast down the path to overbite-land)--has stuck with me the longest. much like the grades expected of me in my fourth-through-sixth-grade g/t classes, it never occurred to me to stop even when it was no longer a requirement. as my elementary-school classmates gradually dropped out of orchestra, latching onto choir in middle school, flag-twirling in high school, i dutifully sawed away at my student-violin a's and d's in first position. it wasn't until my junior year of high school that i felt inspired enough to beg my parents to pay for private lessons--again, i suspect, something to do with a boy, who could play fourth position on the e string like he was born to, *sigh*. it was my private instructor who, after some time with me, decided i need a new violin. after i played it for the first time, i knew she was right. as though with the snap of fingers, my bow travelled across the strings more smoothly and the sound was fuller and decidedly less squeaky. i promised myself i would practice more, and that i would keep playing the violin through college. the envy and admiration i hoped to inspire (but didn't, of course) in the boy were mere icing on the cake compared to my growing confidence with the instrument. i never got the boy to like like me, but my orchestra teacher declared me "most improved" at our senior concert, and seated me first chair in the pit for the summer production of pirates of penzance. to be honest, though, i still wasn't very good--it was just that the talented players also happened to be talented stage performers, as well.

and my talent never unveiled itself in college, either, though my practice took on a greater urgency--i knew that if i didn't finally get good in college, i wouldn't play much in the unstructured real world. i took more lessons, a semester of music appreciation, and a year of music theory. i really wanted to take a jazz improvisation course, but i went to italy my junior year instead and, when i got back, my teacher had retired and the student symphony conductor was the asshole best friend of my asshole freshman-year ex-boyfriend.

and that was it. since then, i've not much touched my violin, and i've flirted with my guitar once in a while--a strum or two here and there, a class last summer at the old town school of folk music, a sideways glance at the case gathering dust in a corner of my room.

then, a couple of weeks ago, one of my coworkers sent an email soliciting a donation for his 10-year-old daughter, who wants to play the violin, or maybe the flute, in her school orchestra. apparently, the family can't afford to rent or buy her one, and many schools, including hers, no longer help with such things. i had two violins, neither of which had been touched in years. so i gave away my old squeaky student violin. i went to my mom's house and unearthed it, along with my beautiful "real" violin. i replaced a missing string on the student violin--there was a whole cache of them in my good violin case--and i got it roughly in tune against the piano/picture-frame stand in my mother's living room. it was a relief to know that i could still accomplish those simple tasks, and i wedged the violin briefly between my chin and shoulder for a few squeaky scales. and then i brought it to work and just gave it away. i wonder if i'll ever miss it--i still have my good violin, and i'm thinking of bringing it here to chicago and maybe taking a fiddle class or two at the old town school. and maybe i'll be responsible for someone else's tortured and guilt-ridden love of music, and maybe she'll be responsible for alleviating my guilt, just a smidge, and allowing me to appreciate, once more, what i have.

2004-09-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

it smells like lou malnati's in my cube, but my cube is not lou malnati's, and that is sad
so, i was thinking, how about i start every post from now forward by acknowledging that i haven't been writing much lately, and then giving some lame-ass excuse for it? let's give it a try:

i haven't been writing much lately. i've been busy. and tired.

actually, i've had nothing to do at work, which is where i normally blog, but somehow, having nothing to do sucks the life out of me far more than having meaningful and fulfilling work to do.

j. and i went to free tuesday nights at the mca last night, which cheerfully reminded me of the previous time i was there. a. and i were admiring lee bontecou and wearing clemson and williams sweatshirts, respectively, when another museum patron approached us demanding to know what a williams person was doing with a clemson person. we apparently didn't inspire enough indignation with our explanation that we were, in fact, both "williams people," one of whom spent some formative years in clemson, s.c. he went on, seemingly accusing us of indirect support of some dictatorial monarch or other who had a nephew who once went to williams. confusing, but hilarious.

boy, what i wouldn't do right now for a slice of the lou.

2004-09-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

good girls, good girls
okay, so here's how it went. it all started with a little networking--best friend j., new to chicago and seeking a position in architectural preservation, had discovered a potential opportunity at the ridge historical society, "a not-for-profit organization founded in 1971 to preserve and promote the history of the ridge communities of beverly hills and morgan park." two weeks ago tomorrow, a friday evening, there was a talk scheduled on the premises regarding the prairie school in beverly. i consulted the trusty rta trip planner to, well, plan our trip. it was simple enough--just take the red line down to its southernmost stop, hop on bus 103 west, and it shouldn't take much more than an hour.

now, i am familiar enough with chicago to know that the far south side has something of a "reputation," and i mentioned that to j., but i'm not one to duck into a cab and waste 20 or 40 bucks or whatever just because i might be the only one of two white people on the train. and i never really know what people mean, exactly, when they insinuate that a certain area is a "bad part of town." is it really "bad," or is it just poor and populated primarily by african-americans? and i guess i'm naive, but i don't understand why i should be afraid to ride a busy train and bus in broad daylight just because i'm a woman and white.

ANYWAY. j. and i took the red line south and indeed, once all the sox fans got out at 35th, seemed to stand out. however, but for the time it ultimately took us to get to the ridge historical society (around two hours), the trip was essentially uneventful. well, there was the plainclothes woman on the train with a gun in a holster on her waist, but i have to just assume she was a cop.

we got off the el at 95th street, eventually got on the bus. as it inched along 103rd street, we realized that there's a metra train that goes directly from downtown to beverly, and that probably would have been faster. so, when we finally left the historical society shortly after 10 pm having gone on a virtual slide tour of all the prairie-style homes in beverly--and there are about a million--we decided to check out the metra train situation. we had just missed a train, and the next one wasn't coming for another hour, so we walked back up to 103rd and camped out at a bus stop. j. called her boyfriend to chat and i anxiously peered down the street looking out for the bus or maybe even a cab just to take us to the el. in the twenty minutes that we stood on that relatively quiet but well-lit street, i kept thinking i was seeing a cab coming, but it always turned out to be a cpd squad car.

again, i firmly believe that basing one's fears on demographics is about the lamest thing ever, but with each successive cop drive-by, i have to admit that i was getting increasingly nervous. so when the fourth stopped at the red light just beyond our neglected bus stop, i contemplated asking if they knew a number for a cab, but favored instead pretending (unsuccessfully) that i was perfectly at ease. and then, the passenger-side cop rolled down his window.

psc: where ya girls goin'?
me: [voice a little too high] oh, we're just waiting for the bus to get to the el!!!!
psc: dee el?
me: uh, yeah.
psc: [increasingly incredulous] what el?
me: the red line! 95th street!
psc: 95th and stayte? why?
me: uh, well, we live up north. near montrose.
psc: gyet in da cyar!
me: uh, are you sure?
psc: yeah, wee'll give you a riyde.

i looked over at j., who was trying to get off the phone with her boyfriend, "uh, i gotta go, some cops are giving us a ride," and, contrary to all we've always been taught, we got into a car with strangers. they clearly thought we were insane. "you girls are goin' in the wrong direction," the white, middle-aged men told us. "and whattaya doin' down heeyre anywyays?" when i said we were "checking out beverly, you know, the historic neighborhood," they asked, "what, ya plannin' ta rob it?"

we finally arrived at the extraordinarily well-lit and heavily populated el station, and driver cop pulled right into the bus lane in front of the entrance. passenger-side cop stepped out of the car, and, as the plethorous young black men watched, opened the rear door, let us out, and, in place of a friendly good-bye, shouted after us: "good luck!"

and, by god, we made it home alive--grateful for the ride but troubled by its implications.

2004-08-27T16:06:00.000-05:00

searching for a home, via chicago
i've been desperately trying to ward off blogly defunctitude, but it's been a few days (and the cop tale is coming soon, i promise--though it's probably going to be a total letdown now that i've pre-blogged about it) because best friend j. and i have been apartment-hunting. decisions are difficult enough for me, but as j. is self-professedly decision-impaired (and also very strapped for funds), this week has been one of lost sleep as well as lost opportunities. things are looking up, however--we seem to have found a keeper! as long as the landlord can overlook our criminal records...

it only occurred to me this morning how appropriate it is that i've had via chicago stuck in my head for the past several days: i moved past the stuck verse (where the cups are cracked and hooked / above the sink / they make me think / crumbling ladder tears don't fall / they shine down your shoulders) to the revised final refrain: searching for a home, / via chicago.

2004-08-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

coming soon
best friend j. and i took a ride in a cpd squad car on friday night. i shall withhold details pending the following:
1. completion of all the work i inadvertently created for myself last week by completing my work.
2. formation of this question in your mind: "what on earth could they have done?" this will happen much more quickly if you know either or both of us, but if you need help, scroll down.
3. determination of a manner in which to phonetically indicate a chicago accent. please comment with any suggestions. a's are particularly important.

2004-08-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

fragile
i was so proud of myself at the beginning of this week for having almost all of my work done and travelling through the channels necessary for approval.

but now, it's all come back. and might as well be covered with fat red "YOU SUCK" stamps. "where would a child draw a honey pot on this page? and why?" "rewrite." "rewrite." "rewrite." "this sounds bad. make it cute and funny." "WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID WE HIRE YOU?!"

when i give myself space to step outside my neuroses, i know that i have plenty of reasons to feel good about my writing. but the negatives almost always overshadow those, not necessarily because they are more plentiful; perhaps they simply pack a more powerful punch. or maybe they are right.

2004-08-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

(finally) lucky seven. and seven. (part 3 of 3)
okay, so here we are at the fancypants bar that calls itself 101 north, conveniently located at 101 north street in a town whose name you can probably guess if you've been paying attention. let's take a moment to survey the scene: it's a saturday night and the seats are largely occupied, though not necessarily by students or professors, which is something of a mystery. do these people actually live in this town that was established solely for the purpose of a school over 200 years ago? don't townies and next-town-over-ies generally disdain pretentious college-y establishments? anyway, most of the friends and acqaintances i came to meet are seated at a long table (actually, a row of 4-tops pushed together) just south of the bar, and the seats at the bar proper are generally populated with mysterious (for the aforementioned reasons) middle-aged men ("mam," let's say, for short). in my recollection, it seems that my friends are all enjoying their drinks of choice at the table (though best friend j. is perhaps standing behind me in tacit support of my undertaking) and i am standing at the bar near a vacant seat, summoning the gods of the casual drink order. the bartender (bt), a dashing male 20-something, approaches:

bt: can i help you?
k: i'll have a georgia peach, please.
bt: georgia peach?
k: yes, please. [oh crap]
bt: what's in that exactly?
k: uh, you know, i'm not really sure. [duh, hello?! you just looked at the recipe on the internet! why couldn't you remember peach schnapps, orange juice, cranberry juice??!!! just one ingredient, maybe?]*
bt: alright, well... [grabs relatively unremarkable bartending book]
k: [shit. breathe.]
mam 1: heh, she stumped the bartender.
bt: [flipping through book] hmmm...
mam 2: what'd you order?
k: uh, just a georgia peach.
bt: it's not in here. hold on. i have another book.
mam 1: what's in it?
k: uh, well, i'm not really sure, actually.
bt: [digs bartending for dummies out from somewhere. god. i don't know. i'm losing it here.]
mam 2: you ordered a drink and you don't know what's in it?
mam 1: have you ever had it before?
k: well, a friend made it for me once, and it was really good. i just don't remember how he made it. [way to think on your feet under pressure! yes! i am surviving this ordeal!]
mam 1: so you took a drink from someone and you didn't know what was in it?
k: uh. no, not exactly. i just don't remember what was in it.
bt: [perplexedly paging through bfd]
mam 2: [louder] she stumped the bartender! [to bartender] hey, she should get a free drink for that!
mam 1: free round of drinks for everyone! she stumped the bartender!
bt: ha. no. [sighs] it's not in here**, either. you don't remember what's in it?
k: [wincing on the inside] no.
bt: well, i'll see what i can do. [throws some lemonade in with some seltzer water and maybe some peach schnapps? once again, i have no idea.]
mam 2: she should get a free drink, at least. she stumped the bartender!
bt: 7 dollars.

oh jesus. re-reading this, it all goes so quickly, but it's an eternity in my mind. battle-weary, drink in hand, i retreat to the table: the familiar faces, smiling faces, drinks procured and sipped with ease. why can't that be me? to the queries of "what the hell just happened?" i tell my story, finding solace in the laughter, tempering my mortification with the mantra it makes for a good story. buddy a. sips an amber carbonated concoction, and i ask what it is. "7&7," he says. "huh, that sounds simple," i think. "can i try it?" i ask. and there it is, my drink: the 7-up a harkening back to my favorite childhood soda, the whiskey similarly comforting, like a blanket. and it comes from a., my unlikely mentor in certain things social, a little bit because he's better at it than i am, but mostly because i adore him.

and this, dear friends, is the story of why i drink like an old man: there's never any trouble with a 7&7.

*actually, i think i may have remembered the peach schnapps part, but i was too embarrassed to even say that out loud, for some reason.
**bartending for dummies, folks. my carefully chosen internet drink was not even in BARTENDING FOR DUMMIES.

2004-08-13T10:29:00.000-05:00

lucky seven. and seven. (part 2 of 3)
it was some weeks later that i returned to 101 north, and this time, i decided to go prepared. the social aspect of the outing was far less intimidating--we would be celebrating the showing of a friend's play. not only would friend a. be there, but best friend j., my partner in social anxieties, would have my back as well. and regardless, i was pretty comfortable with all attending: no uber-chic professors, girly-cool a capella singers, or greet-with-a-hug-and-kiss poseurs. however. however. there was still the matter of the drink.

i hoped to avoid the attention garnered by my gaudy drink choice of the visit previous, so, much as i prepare for a trip to blockbuster in avoidance of decision-induced paralysis, i spent the hours before meeting my friends weighing my drink options. setting aside the obvious problem of self consiousness, at the heart of my dilemma was my general aversion to spending money for and/or ingesting something i really don't want. i could always order a rum and coke and be one with my wallflower of a drink, but i don't like coke. or i could follow my mom's suggestion to order simply ginger ale or sparkling water and merely appear as a participant in the ritual of mindless alcohol ingestion. the thing is, i don't have a problem with occasional mindless ingestion of alcohol; i just want it to taste good. thus, i did what any normal college student would do on a saturday night before going to a bar: i sat down at my desk and did some research.

i started by doing a google search that looked something like this. i then visited various of the resulting sites, scanning drink lists for simple-sounding drink names, dodging those with words like tiki and devil. when i found a drink with an appropriate name, i would check out the recipe to gauge tolerability. i didn't necessarily want a fruity drink, but i also figured that including some juice in the recipe would lessen the chances of an incriminating shudder. thus, the georgia peach. look! look at how simple it is! and it sounded like something i might have heard before--slightly exotic for the northeast, perhaps, but it's basically just cranberry juice and orange juice. and i love cranberry juice! and right there, in the box to the right: served in a highball glass. no special liqueurs, no blue curacao or pureed mango. just a simple drink. say it with me: georgia peach. georgia peach. i committed that name to memory, conspired briefly with the eyeliner i bought for my high school senior prom, and made my way to north street.

2004-08-11T16:44:00.000-05:00

lucky seven. and seven. (part 1 of 3)
it all started with the gathering of participants in a writing tutorial i was taking the fall semester of my senior year. our terrifyingly cool (by which i mean the opposite of both uncool and warm) professor invited us for cocktails at 101 north, a rural massachusetts bar trying to be a new york bar emulating a rural massachusetts bar. though well into my 21st year and surrounded, anyway, by establishments that couldn't care less, i had a deep-seated terror of ordering alcoholic drinks. i didn't care so much about being carded as being either ridiculed for my drink choice or saddled with some 8-buck concoction that i couldn't sip without shuddering. the only drink names i knew were screwdriver and sex on the beach, neither of which i was willing to speak aloud, let alone imbibe. naively, i thought the menu would be a safe bet: i know what's in the drink, and one cannot be embarrased for simply ordering something from the menu, right?

so, keeping in mind that a quick decision and confident delivery gave me the smallest chance of belying my inexperience, i held my head up high, made eye contact with the bartender, and said something along the lines of i'll take the berry sophisticated-sounding cocktail, please. and everything was okay for a moment or two: he poured various liquids into a shaker, and he shook, and then. then, he whipped out a FREAKING HUGE-ASS martini glass. shit. shit. shit. and into it poured my drink. i paid for it and sheepishly brought it to the table, where everybody else had brown or clear drinks in tumblers and bottles. wow, they gushed. what did you get? and that was pretty much all anyone other than friend a. said to me that night. that, and that's some drink. yeah. fuck. no kidding. therefore, alcohol outing lesson number 1: do not order fancy drinks from the menu. they're pink, they come in martini glasses, and, if you're anything like me, they'll outshine your own goddamned perfectly sufficient radiance.

2004-08-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

i decided not to have a nervous breakdown
i was pulling hair (my own) and hyperventilating this afternoon when i changed my mind about the nervous breakdown. for the past several days, i have been carrying out the digital equivalent of staring at a piece of paper, writing something brief, then balling it up and drop-kicking in the general direction of the nearest recycling bin. that is, as regards my "real work," not my blog. who'd have thought deciding whether to write a story about a playful 6-year-old clown in first or third person would be so difficult?

anyway, i made myself a deal that i wouldn't mess with my blog until i have a solid draft for this book--i'm breaking my word, but it's coming along. and i'm not yet writing the story here that i really want to write, which will be up soon. i hope.

2004-08-05T13:03:00.000-05:00

unseasonably cool
wrapped up in preparations and contingincies and cell phone plans for best friend j.'s imminent arrival in chicago, i almost forfeited today's lunchtime walk. it's unseasonably cool today, a mild 72 degrees, the skies blue and buoyed with puffy cumulus clouds--cotton sweater weather. walking through the neighborhood adjacent to my workplace, i couldn't help but be overwhelmed by reminders of lives past and, hopefully, hints of lives to come. i felt southern michigan and western massachusetts; red, orange, yellow, and berkshire purple; singlets and spikes and the metallic taste of water when taken from the fountains on the grounds of our high school cross country course. there were picnics aside muddy brown rivers and crystal clear streams; a swimming hole behind the fire station; a capella al fresco; apple trees and apple crisp. and what wouldn't i give right now for an aimless drive on a windy road?

2004-08-05T09:19:00.000-05:00

and then, several days later,
i discover a smattering of egg on the ceiling. i think i'm going to need a ladder.

2004-08-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

i have a dream! or two.
i had a dream last night that dennis kucinich was reading my blog, and communicating to me via email its brilliance and wit. this was somehow facilitated by the fact that he was a member of my alma mater's faculty. i was flattered, but also embarassed, thanks to this post in which i briefly extol the virtues of cuteness as regards presidential stature. oops. sorry, dennis.

the good news here, however, is that an article in this week's newsweek mentions a study in which it was determined that divorced and depressed people who had vivid dreams were less likely to remain depressed. of course, i am not divorced, and have been a-wrastlin' with this disease, officially, for a bit over six years... but it has improved lately, and for that i shall thank dennis kucinich. and that armageddon one, where the buildings were sliding into the lake. that was awesome, in a terror-inspiring kind of way.

2004-08-02T11:09:00.000-05:00

don't cry over spilled milk, but in the case of some exploded eggs...
it's monday, and i'd like to say that i had a wonderfully relaxing weekend, free of obligation and stress, but such was not the case. no obligations, but somehow i managed to stress myself out over the fact that i was doing nothing all weekend, though i had nothing to do. and then, there was the egg incident, a perfect example of how i can inadvertently make my life much more complicated than it needs to be.

i arose at around 10 on saturday morning, had a glass of water and a granola bar, and went for a run. the beginnings of an exquisitely sunny, summery day were on hand--it was cool enough to survive the 4-mile run, but became hot enough by the end for me to feel as though i had accomplished something. i was sweaty, red-faced, and hungry when i stepped in the shower. craving protein, i decided i would boil some eggs and have a toasty egg sandwich for lunch. i finished my shower and started the boiling water, briefly considering a glance in how to cook everything to make sure i knew how long to boil my two eggs, then, for reasons born entirely of a strange sense of internal intellectual vanity, i opted for relative ignorance--i am smart, and experienced, enough! to boil eggs without reference material!

so boil i did, and after what i had arbitrarily judged to be an appropriate amount of time, i turned off the burner and, running the eggs under cool water, peeled them. (note: remember this. i peeled them. yes, i took the shells off. every time i've told this story so far, my listeners have asked: did you shell them? yes. yes, i did.) and they were boiled! and they were fine! but they felt a little soft.

and being as i was making a sandwich with these eggs and was kind of thinking that maybe i didn't want the yolks to be runny, it occurred to me that i might want them to be slightly more cooked. so i put my toast in the toaster, fired that baby up, and put the eggs together in one of my two pretty blue ceramic ramekins. and then i put the pretty blue ceramic ramekin, laden with my perfectly, maybe a little soft, boiled eggs, in the microwave. and i pressed 2-2-2, not necessarily intending to microwave the eggs for 2 minutes and 22 seconds, but thinking that about a minute or a little more would be good, and why press 1-3-3 when you can press 2-2-2 and just interrupt the thing if necessary?

so my bread was toasting, my eggs were perfecting, and i removed the butter from the fridge and set out a knife and a plate when i noticed, about a minute into microwaving, that small popping sounds were coming from that direction. time to stop cooking(!), i brilliantly deduced. so i opened the microwave to stop it and, THOUGH THE LITTLE POPPING SOUNDS CONTINUED, reached in to retrieve the ramekin (dear vessel for salsa and small servings of ice cream!). ramekin in hand, i pulled away from the microwave (which, by the way, happens to be on top of the refrigerator--this is important), my arm raised above my head as if in exultation of the awesome power held within, as though i were carrying an olympic torch, at which point THE EGGS! FREAKING! EXPLODED!

and when i say that the eggs exploded, i do not mean to say that they let out a little pop and spurted egg parts all over me and the microwave and the refrigerator. no, friends, the EGGS EXPLODED, with a sound not unlike the popping of a large and overfull balloon (you know, that sound that makes you feel like you may have just had a freaking HEART ATTACK?!), and spewed egg debris not only all over me, my face, my hair, the microwave, the refrigerator, the stove, and the linoleum floor below, but well into the carpeted living-room area, with smaller bits of yolk and white a good 12 FEET from the epicenter of the explosion. and, naturally, i had also dropped the ramekin, which lay in pieces at my feet.

my upper lip and hand stung as though burned, and, shaking, emitting but a shocked and whining "eennnnhhh," i removed myself to the bathroom, ran cold water over my hand and splashed it on my face. i retrieved my cat from the blast site and closed him in my room. then i called my mom, pitifully asked why she never taught me that boiled eggs explode in the microwave ("honey [*hahaha*] i never [*hehehaha*] knew that [*hahahohooheheha*]!), and cried.

2004-07-30T08:47:00.000-05:00

hey pretty lady, how you doin'?
well, since you asked: it's 8 am. it's raining. i don't have a ride to work. i am dressed in the most comfortable clothing i can wear to work while still maintaining a smidge of self-respect, including a shirt i think i have owned since the 8th grade.

i feel as though i have a toothpick lodged in my sinus cavity and a soggy cottonball up my left nostril.

and you're objectifying me. it's not in your words, but in your tone, the context. you don't want to know how i'm doing; you just want me to know that you're looking at me. and i am not flattered.

2004-07-27T14:44:00.000-05:00

ten miles for the chunky monkey, please
try as i might not to have hangups about food and excercise (and secondarily, money and time), i suspect that i lean toward the obsessive when it comes to such matters. pizza and miles run pile up in my brain in a thoroughly unscientific manner, and their relative heights determine whether i feel "gross" or moderately healthy on any given day. i also had this new year's resolution to eat less from boxes and cans and more real food, a goal in which i have succeeded somewhat. but all this internal chatter and weighing and planning meals so as to avoid more than one pizza per week or one bowl of ice cream per day can be paralyzing. yesterday, i gazed into my near-empty fridge trying to construct a reasonable list of inexpensive items that could get me through this week, and for a half hour or so, all i could come up with was yogurt and ice cream.

gradually, i forced myself to write things like "carrots" and "couscous" and "cucumber"* and dragged my allergic, gross-feeling self to the jewel across the street. and back, sans ice cream and with my overcompensatory booty of vegetables and grapes. the thing is, just after tossing in my basket a generous bag of frozen peas, i discovered that ben and jerry's was on sale, and recalled the dollar-off coupons for ben and jerry's back at the apartment.

and this, dear blog readers, is how i ended up waiting to cross broadway in baggy sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt with but a pint of chunky monkey in my hand, somehow eliciting a tantalizing hey baby, wassup? from a passing biker. maybe he was imagining what the chunky monkey is about to do to my ass.

*this post is brought to you by the letter c.

2004-07-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

can't. breathe. and i appear to be crying! arg!
something's in the air, and my body's not liking it. i've always been aware of the potential for adverse reaction to pollen, grass, mold, dust, blah, blah, etc. but i don't remember ever feeling quite this allergic. it sucks! to hell with thoughtful commentary! and i made the mistake of taking some walitin-d yesterday at 5 pm, and i felt great until i tried to sleep. crap! i hate medicine! the solution, of course, may be to take it in the morning instead, but now i have to wait until tomorrow. *grumble.*

an additional but entirely unrelated annoyance: i was deputized saturday morning as a volunteer voter registrar, wherein my idealistic notions of politics and the freedoms we are afforded in this country got the better of me. and then were trampled. (let me apologize now for my poor sentence structure. i have not the air to fix it. or maybe i'm just lazy.) i was assigned a corner not far from the sears tower (yes, that is the sears tower) where there was naturally an abundance of people not from chicago or suburban cook county, but that was fine. and there were the people who responded to my bright and smiley query ("hi!!! are you registered to vote!!!???!!!") with a smile and a yes, thank you. awesome. but what absofuckinglutely killed me were the (predominantly young and well-dressed) people who said "no" and kept walking. and it took every bit of composure i had to keep from hurling at them finely-worded missives. well, i irritatedly shouted "that's too bad" to one guy, but i don't think that counts, being as, well, you can guess what i wanted to say. (could i possibly write one more parenthetical? (meta, meta, meta, annoying!) i thought so.)

2004-07-22T09:02:00.000-05:00

oh dear god, my generation
conversation overheard
20-something coworker: so, can you vote online?
30-something coworker: no, you have to go to a polling place.

arg.

2004-07-21T14:13:00.000-05:00

because i am insanely bored
i just had a thought: i hope i don't get fired for my blog. actually, i think that a lot. but if i were going to get fired for my blog, i'd probably have already gotten fired for my email, so i'm not too entirely worried about it. though i know it's not exactly the same thing.

anyway, i just remembered another blog that i've been reading for the past few days and had considered putting in my blogroll, but won't, because it terrifies me. zach braff has a blog. it's remarkably down-to-earth and chatty, but the endless commenting on that precise fact is maddening. also, the fawning. it just strips away the refreshing nature of the very thing we admire, if it is in fact worth admiring, and i'm still not sure about that. most terrifying, though, is that the comments remind me of the time i emailed matt damon to invite him to my senior prom. very. embarrasing. maybe i'll tell that story sometime. but first i'll need a drink.

2004-07-21T10:52:00.000-05:00

not cutting the blogroll, though, oh no
amidst the expanse of worklessness that has filled my days of late, i've explored some new blogs and decided it's high time to blogroll more that i've been reading for a while already. i wonder if it seems strange for a young'n such as myself to be so occupied with family-oriented blogs; maybe it doesn't, though, as it seems some of those bloggers are interested in my writing as well. anyway, as much as i consider this blog an opportunity to veer off into discourse of anything that occupies my brain for more than a few minutes, my writing and my thoughts always come back to my family: how we are now, how we have been in the past, and how we will be in the future. so, naturally, you'll see that reflected in my links. enjoy!

2004-07-21T09:48:00.000-05:00

way too much copy, way too much thumb
cut, trim, slice, "edit like crazy." that's what i'm all about this week. late yesterday, my clifford book, in its current incarnation, finished making its departmental rounds with the official notation: way too much copy. *sigh*. this was not entirely surprising, as (though you wouldn't know it from this blog) i tend to overwrite. also not surprising, given the approximate limit of 200 words for an entire story. assign me a ten-page paper and only with excessive amounts of crying and consequent coaxing will i make it over eight pages, but tell me to write a 200-word book on clifford the big red dog and i'll do my best to write it under 300.

anyway, i didn't have time to cut clifford up yesterday; instead, i went home to make myself dinner. now, i love to cook, but i hate. cutting. vegetables. or anything that would require cutting, actually. but sometimes i have to. often i have to, damnit. and then OH MY GOD i just sliced my fucking thumb open and THERE'S BLOOD EVERYWHERE! all over the spinach bag! and gross, i have to wipe blood off of the spinach bag! then i finished cutting the onion and cooked my dinner and ate it with a paper towel wrapped around my thumb. it still has that bright-red hue of not healing about it. i think it was bleeding a little again this morning.

now i'm back to clifford, and all of my cutesy detail is gone, but if i have to take out "and snuggle in his soft red fur to stay warm," i'm going to cry.

2004-07-17T23:20:00.000-05:00

hey angie, there's your crabs!
i visited the shedd aquarium today with cousin l., one of the highlights of which was overhearing the exclamation above, uttered and received without a giggle or trace of irony. i whipped out a pen and a napkin from our picnic lunch to write it down. and they were freaking giant crabs.

then we took a "water taxi" from the museum campus to navy pier, during which a country-club-ish woman in her fifties kept pointing at the sears tower and insisting that it was not the sears tower. finally, one of the "crew members" explained that it was, in fact, the sears tower, and then continued to rattle off a series of woefully inaccurate facts about chicago. "comiskey park is considered the south side," he said, "and that's around 57th street. and hyde park is down there too." now, i wish that hearing people say crap like that would just make me smug and generally proud that i know better. instead, it just pisses me off. then he said that he "thinks lincoln park is somewhere around the north side." he ought to be kept at least 10 feet from tourists at any given time, but there they were, in his care. of course, anyone who can look at the sears tower and straight-facedly claim that it is not the sears tower deserves to think "comiskey park" is around 57th street.

but let us not dwell on the negative. as i mentioned previously, millennium park rules. so much so that i am tempted to sit here and think of a way to more eloquently word my praise, but i'm exhausted, so that will have to do. there is a fountain that spits at you. the link doesn't even come close to doing it justice, lacking as it does the multitudes of kids and teenagers and adults running around, soaked and squealing with delight. there is also the bean, dear bean that i love. and frank gehry! oh, frank gehry. see, i am speechless. if only i could harness the evil energy of my rants and dirty jokes for the good of reviewing public art.

2004-07-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

and so commences the inaugural weekend of the big sister club
from what i have observed in families unlike my own, being an only child is a glorious and underappreciated thing. one is generally doted upon, indulged, and free of rivalrous strife. while i don't remember the brief 16 months i spent basking in my parents' undivided attention, there is anecdotal evidence to indicate my dismay at the arrival of brother c. according to my father, i ran eagerly from my room to greet my mother newly home after some days in the hospital, only to stop dead, glaring, upon sight of the wailing invader perched in his carrier-throne atop the kitchen table.

i therefore felt more than sympathetic when i answered my phone last monday to a tiny 7-year-old voice telling me her mom was napping with the baby and that she found my number and just decided to call me. cousin l., born in china, has been with her "forever mom," my aunt h., for 6 years. for many of those years, she has begged her mom for a little sister. i'd hear these pleas and think, be careful what you wish for, kiddo, but you can't much convince a 5-year-old that granting this desire, unlike the indulgences of toys and movies and dinners out and attention that she has always enjoyed mostly at her whim, is the beginning of the end of everything-i-want-i-get.

this is not to say, of course, that acquiring a sibling was all about indulging l., or that having one isn't ultimately worth the sacrifice. but for a 7-year-old kid, suddenly having a 2-year-old sister is not as fun as thinking about how your mom is taking YOU to china to pick up YOUR new sister, and she's going to be SO CUTE and FUN and will LOVE YOU SO MUCH and YOU CAN DRESS HER UP JUST LIKE A DOLL! because, in reality, she is so cute she's cuter than you, and won't share her chalk and bites you if you try to take it from her, and your mom dresses her up like a doll and makes you put your own goddamned clothes on.

so i invited cousin l. to a sibling-free weekend in the big city. and now here i am, with a 7-year-old kid in my bed, having just watched freaky friday (with jamie lee* curtis and lindsay lohan, of course) and let her fall asleep without going potty! bad! so i had to wake her up before letting her settle in my bed. i don't even want to think about what would have happened had it not occurred to me to do that. it's been a fun day (millenium park rocks! more on that later...) and i anticipate having kid pee and barf and poop in my bed someday, but i don't think i'm quite ready for that yet.

*ed. note 7/19: how did i miss that before? i thought "jamie curtis" sounded kind of weird.

2004-07-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

must. relax.
yesterday evening, i caught myself turning into a pissy-lakefront-path biker. i was rolling my eyes and sighing and shaking my head and even blasted a couple of annoyed EXCUSE ME's without a second thought. not a good sign. look, i'm even using caps! that's how bad it was.

it was only my third bike ride on the path, where i am much more often a laid-back-ish runner. okay, so i have a constant internal snark going on even when i run, but i generally don't feel regular urges to mow people down just for being idiots. in past observations of pissy biker behavior, occasionally as a target (i think we got the finger a few times when i was training for the marathon last year), i have always contended that if you're too uptight to enjoy a bike ride on a warm and sunny summer day, cruising past the lake, then there's something wrong with you.

but last night, weaving through the multitudes crowding the path by north avenue beach, i seriously wanted to teach one of those beach-vollyballing bitches a lesson in how they had better watch where the hell they're walking.

2004-07-14T13:08:00.000-05:00

when you're 16 and you find some beer
a few months ago, my three younger brothers and i went on a weekend cruise with our dad. we sailed from florida to the bahamas and back. the day we were moored at nassau, brother p. (16 going on 12) ended up curled outside the door of the cabin he shared with brother c. (22), the keycard jutting from the lock and cash falling from his pockets, a frat boy in the making. this might have been cause for worry, but the fact is that this kind of behavior is considered relatively normal for a teenage boy, and if the physical discomfort didn't teach him a lesson, the ridicule heaped on him by my other brothers (who had also been drinking, but not so obnoxiously) may have made a dent in his consciousness. and the very carnivalesque nature of the weekend made it almost acceptable regardless.

he likes to talk a big talk, in his bizarrely exaggerated way, imitating beavis and butthead ("heh-heh. beer.") and shouting such creative edicts as "i love beer!" while stomping around the house. so when brother c. started complaining that the beer he kept in my mother's fridge was disappearing faster than he was drinking it*, the culprit was obvious. the kid is neurologically incapable of lying.

so on a rainy day when p. was at his so-called girlfriend's house--conditions ripe for bedroom-raiding--my mom sighed and braced herself for the inevitable. but unlike the tumultuous days of c.'s adolescence, when such a raid might produce empty bud cans and a sickly potted marijuana plant, the missing beers were unopened, stashed in a corner, probably buried under some dirty clothes.

he was hoarding warm beer. when you're 16 and you find some beer, you drink it. and then you throw the cans carelessly somewhere where your immortality-oriented brain thinks no one will ever notice it, and then someone finds them, and you say you don't know how they got there, but your mom grounds you anyway, and you call her a bitch because, hello, obviously you had nothing to do with the empty beer cans in your underwear drawer.

*let us put aside the obvious ill logic, here, of keeping beer in a house peopled with errant teenagers; c. is moving into a home of his own imminently, and mom's house will be a theoretical beer-free zone.

2004-07-12T14:59:00.000-05:00

and now, a word about childhood
jen, of post-below fame, got married last summer, a few months before her mom died. those two events, more than anything i've experienced in the last two years (including graduating from college, getting a real job, being wholly responsible for a live animal, and losing my second grandparent), seem to me to signify the end of my childhood.

i miss her. i should write to her. i've been meaning to write to her since the last time i saw her, at her mother's wake.

also, i ought to find me a swing.

2004-07-12T14:44:00.000-05:00

underdog!
i just love that john edwards is the new democratic vice-presidential candidate. because he is so cute. and that's what i shall base my vote on in november. cuteness.*

but underdogs. yes. way back when, previous to 8th grade (when my little ole future high school beat out the downstate powerhouses for the mythical pre-class-system state title in basketball), an underdog was something completely different.

an underdog was being pushed into the sky, then left to gravity and the forces of pumping. my memory of the underdog is most vivid in neighbor jen’s backyard. i'd plop into a swing hanging from her squeaky metal playset, kick my heels back. jen would stand behind me, grasp the sides of the swing, and pull up just a little before pushing up, up, up until i was above her head, where she’d let go, running forward and shouting “unnnderrrrrdaaaaaaawg!” and i would swoop down and back up, leaning back and kicking my legs straight, soaring, wondering if this would be the time i'd finally swing over the top bar, all the way around, loopy with the power of the underdog.

*ha! just kidding! i'm totally, like, all about the issues, man. (who says 20-somethings are disaffected?)

2004-07-12T11:53:00.000-05:00

i may not know elmo's lawyer, but
wow, compliments. i'm so honored i'm shaking a little. so i've got to get back to work. as in, not actually doing the work i am supposed to be doing but blogging instead! woo-hoo! disney princess activity book be damned.

i was going to post something about john edwards last week (he's so *cute*!), but then i didn't. maybe later.

g., if you do end up in a muppet prison, let me know. i'll see what i can do.

2004-07-01T09:17:00.000-05:00

and you took your gun with you, just in case, as you always did
so, the word is that my pooh dialogue isn't pooh enough. as such, it has been suggested that i return to pooh's roots and read some a. a. milne, which is where i was when i encountered the phrase above. two questions arise: one, christopher robin carries a gun? always? and two, why have i never read this before? imagine how exciting our sound books could be with gunshots! and the sound of bullets impacting flesh! and the cries of agony! and the last gasping, desperate breaths!

2004-06-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

oats, peas, beans, and barley grow
i've lost my cleverness and it's making me depressed. or maybe, i am depressed and it's making me lose my cleverness. either way, i continue to be disinclined to write, though by most standards i've been having a decent life lately. while work bores the heck out of me and reeks of unproductivity, i bought an old bike on saturday and look forward to prettifying it (supposedly, it has a great derailer, whatever that means), i seem to have finally succeeded in de-homophobifying one of my brothers (and attended the pride parade yesterday with him and my mom, who really needs a gay child on which to lavish her gay pride excitement), and i have a pork roast (which promises to be quite delicious, particularly paired with my fresh local bicolor sweetcorn) marinating in the fridge. i also have a new cousin to welcome on wednesday when my aunt h. and cousin l. return from china, and fourth of july festivities approach.

yet i feel storyless, generally unexcited, and kind of bored. which is just all kinds of dumb. i'm craving cable (and cosby reruns), despite the mounds of books i suppose i should enjoy reading, and avoiding critical and/or creative thought. arg! hey, stupid synapses, stop re-uptaking my serotonin!

2004-06-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

"salsa and a little rock n' roll"*
it's been lonely here. and by "here," i of course mean this blog, not the real world. no, in the real world, i've been keeping myself busy warding off the demons of thought. i'm back at work after a last-minute dash across the pond to visit best friend j. in england, and i'm lucky enough to have a job that replaces any inkling of contemplation with such children's favorites as "hail! hail! the gang's all here" and "there's a hole in the bucket." and the weekend before, i had chance to witness the best. wilco. concert. ever. (how about those periods for emphasis? i see people do that all the time, and it's kind of cute, but i'm not sure it's working here.) i adore jeff tweedy, even though he says his fans don't know him. i'm sure he's right, but, as he also says, his lyrics perhaps allow us to know ourselves a little bit better. or something. i really don't want to go all crazy philosophical here.

so, i'm back in action, with perhaps a little less zest than in my honeymooner blogger phase, but back nonetheless. i think. as per my catchphrase: we'll see.

*jeff "i love to dance"** tweedy, in response to a request for "how to fight loneliness," which he did not play. they opened with "via chicago," though, which was great, as i'd never heard that played in concert before, even in chicago.
**sigh, he said that too.

2004-06-11T15:55:00.000-05:00

they izzall screamed 'n ran, know what I'm sayin'?
this is providing me endless entertainment.
via patriotboy.

2004-06-11T09:21:00.000-05:00

why i don't quit my job
we may not have the day off for the national day of mourning, but someone in my department has chosen to honor this day that is special for another very important reason. we have brownies and cupcakes and a poster of america's favorite twins upon which the exclamation "happy birthday, ladies!" is emblazoned. indeed. happy 18. sorry you won't be getting any mail from me today.

2004-06-09T10:03:00.000-05:00

in the midst of despair, a moment for rejoicing
the cable internet bastards finally "found" my april payment! i'm not going to be unjustly reported to a credit bureau! maybe there is a god.

2004-06-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

you're breaking up
it's been a useful phrase this past week, a poignant notion--"breaking up"--applicable to a cell phone conversation with my dad in my spottily covered hometown, to trying to get through a funeral reading without utterly breaking down. and perhaps to the death of a loved one who faded, then sputtered, and then was gone like a dropped call. only i can't call her back to say goodbye, or tell her that i loved her.

i don't process death well, and i tend to attribute that to my irreligiosity, but i suppose it's fairly universal. it just fucking kills me. and i don't want to write about it, but i do. i keep thinking about how my grandmother just kind of broke up, and, just as my dad will announce that he's going into a "bad area" for cell coverage, she seemed to sense that her signal was waning. in the past month, she had sought out her parents' burial plot and her stillborn twin sister's plot, and had breakfasted with my dad, my brothers, and me just days before her death. she had even caught glimpse of her often-lost black sheep son in a passing car. we can't say we weren't warned, but it's overwhelming nonetheless. am i supposed to see my dad cry, to get a phone call in which our signals are fine, but he still breaks up? under the circumstances, i'm certainly not sorry i did, but damn, it breaks my fucking heart.

i'll miss you, grandma.

2004-06-03T08:51:00.000-05:00

all through the town
five simple rules for sharing a bus with me:
1. do not smell like ass. this includes, but is not limited to, smells of: cigarette smoke, body odor, excessive perfume/cologne, beer, fried chicken, and actual ass.
2. draw an imaginary line between your seat and mine. do not cross it.
3. two words: inside. voice.
4. turn that shit down.
5. take a picture, it lasts longer. no, on second thought, just stop fucking staring at me.

2004-06-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

when in fact she has been naked since christmas
watch out, folks, because there's a new trend among teenagers in which they sleep naked and walk around their homes in robes. naked! i read about this in an "ask amy" column in the chicago tribune. you'll have to sign in if you want to see it yourself. seriously, if your biggest problem with your 14-year-old is that she sleeps in the nude and doesn't wear a nightgown under her robe, you should consider yourself damn lucky.

coincidentally, this weekend at the family home, we had an ongoing "discussion" regarding relative nudity in the house. my three brothers tend to loll about in their boxers. when my mom complained, citing their potential reaction if she or i were to walk around similarly clad, i experimented with my bikini-cut underwear and a tank top. they all screamed and ran. i'm thinking that will be my new indiana-time wardrobe of choice.

2004-05-26T14:53:00.000-05:00

i am annoying my coworkers
tickle elmo!

2004-05-26T13:35:00.000-05:00

like google, only much, much creepier
yes. well, i'm a little late hopping on these internet trends, like amazon wishlists, but a friend pointed out last night that they are searchable. and one can often find long lists of people from one's college town, or one's hometown, for instance, by entering just one letter in the name field and the town. so far, i've hit several wishlists of people from my past, people i'd mostly forgotten about: a few professors, a former soccer coach, an old family friend. the best is that my orthodontist wants gamecube!

and then there are those random people whose "about me" fields read more like dating site profiles than identifying descriptors for people looking for the right john smith from anytown:

-If you're looking for necromancy, I'm the guy to speak to!
-I don't have any hard drive space left on my coumputer.
-Most people know me by my stature, ambition, energy and happy go lucky peronality.
-i'm lacey... or lacey meow. hehe. *heart* cats. and hardcore too! ;)
-I HAVE RED HAIR, WAS BORN IN MERIDIAN, MISSISSIPPI AND I AM MEAN AS A SNAKE!

uh, hmm. anyone want to go in on a gamecube for my orthodontist?

2004-05-25T21:34:00.000-05:00

brother p., age 16
i must admit, it's difficult to like him sometimes. i'm confident the rest of my family will agree; he has no problem calling my mom a "fucking bitch" to her face, cheerfully bullies our youngest brother, and, in his quieter moments, loves to make strange, feral-animal sounds and shout division-one-school fight songs at the top of his lungs. he's mildly autistic (though nothing about him is mild), a condition which renders him incapable of empathy and therefore very capable of inflicting pain. his emotional responses are rarely appropriate to the occasion, and the slightest tease or nudge can send him into a rage. he's extraordinarily sensitive to what he sees as threats to himself, and frustratingly, heartbreakingly insensitive to the needs of other people.

there are times, though, when it seems a switch has been temporarily thrown in his brain, and he does something few other kids would ever do, something i'm sure i wouldn't have done myself. he was riding home in his girlfriend's car after school today when he noticed a cat lying in the street--it had been hit by a car. (and let me just say that at this point, i would have closed my eyes and thought about something else, and kept moving--death and suffering are things i prefer to ignore when i can.) he urged his girlfriend to stop the car, and ran out to the cat. it was still alive. so he picked it up and started going door to door, searching for the dying cat's owners. finally, a woman told him the cat was hers. he explained to her what had happened, that he had found the cat in the street, and directed her to the animal emergency clinic where my mom had taken our dog several years ago when she was hit by a car. then he went home with his girlfriend.

a few hours later, he badgered her to take him back to the house--he wanted to find out if the cat was okay. the same woman answered the door. she had taken the cat to the clinic, where he was put to sleep.

according to my mother, p. has been talking about this cat since he came home, and not as though he is proud of what he did, but with a sense of sadness at having to do it. to know my brother is to realize the gravity of this event, free of rage and noise--just simple, sincere and appropriate feeling.

another feature of his condition is a tendency toward obsession. his fixations often lean toward the tragic: the sinking of the titanic, the holocaust, semptember 11. and mingled among those historic devastations are the tiny ones he holds just as closely.

2004-05-25T15:29:00.000-05:00

never mind
yep, that was a bad idea. i knew it when i was doing it, and i did it anyway. please disregard anything you may have seen in this space previously.

2004-05-24T21:06:00.000-05:00

illinois tourism: it's a war on war
holy crap. i just saw a television commercial for the state of illinois ("mile after magnificent mile") in which the intro to wilco's "war on war" was the soundtrack. fortunately, i am beyond being disappointed in artists who "sell out"--i think i read an article or something* recently that indicated that such indignance was rather passe, that it is possible to be both commercial and original/artistic/etc. (then again, juxtaposed with my entry on "a company in my back," maybe this is a little troubling...) anyway, i don't think it bothers me that much--frankly, i find it hilarious, and i hope that jeff tweedy does too. obviously, the producers of the commercial chose this music because it's catchy, and perhaps for the subtle undertone of using a "local" band, but if you know the words ("you have to lose/you have to learn how to die/if you wanna wanna be alive"), it's a rather strange tune to use for promotional purposes. of course, it made my heart skip a beat, but that's just because i'm in love with jeff tweedy. if i weren't in illinois already, i'd be here in a flash.

*aha, found it! from the 5.17.2004 issue of newsweek, "rock's big bounce," by devin gordon: "...today's rock bands are less sanctimonious, and much savvier, about money matters.... today behavior that used to constitute 'selling out' has become a way to fend off the siren call of a corporate deal. if your band makes enough money off an ad, then there's no need to bolt your indie label for a major."

2004-05-24T11:48:00.000-05:00

verb tense inconsistencies
if i know it's there, and you know i know it's there, do i have to fix it?

2004-05-24T10:59:00.000-05:00

fighting cameras with cameras
last night, i made the mistake of eating chocolate after dinner, and with the weird tempestuous weather and my apartment's newfound starkness (the cat out of sorts as well), i was positively sleepless. and thinking about weird dreams wherein i come into possession of a purse that belongs to the girlfriend of this guy at work and i plot to break into their apartment to return it without anyone noticing. what could that mean? this guy is supernice and from indiana, but creeps me out a bit--like he's too friendly to me for someone who has a girlfriend. but perhaps i am just unnecessarily suspicious.

which brings me to an episode on the el this weekend, in which i don't really think i was unnecessarily suspicious, but i suppose it's possible that i was. i'm sitting there, in my favorite sideways seat, minding my own business, when these two middle-age-ish guys sit down across from me. one guy, in a red flower-print button-down shirt, is fiddling with an small and expensive-looking digital camera, then attempts to look as though he is casually dangling it from his middle finger and thumb, casually aiming it in my direction, casually glancing at the digital screen, and casually tapping his forefinger near the shutter release. so i stared and glared and kept an eye on the camera, and was about to move when i saw him press the shutter release, look at the digital screen, and satisfiedly put the camera in his shirt pocket. arg. i sat there stewing about this infringement on my privacy, etc., etc., until i remembered that i have a camera phone! so i took my own surreptitious photo of the stupidjerk. ha! an eye for an eye, a photo for a photo.

finally, i am troubled by the season's ends of my albeit somewhat shameful television indulgences. are/were season finales always so dark? goddamn, it's like god is dead and innocence is lost, and even when the justice system is at its best, it fails. don't we watch television to escape this stuff? then again, it was all so brilliant, in a heart-wrenching kind of way. oh, poor rory, and joan, and amy. it's going to be a long summer.

2004-05-21T22:03:00.000-05:00

there's a company in my back*
once again, work today sucked the creativity right out of me, and while i was inclined to hop on blogger and rant about finding the thermostat at 40 (40!!!) this morning, and then getting on the el and seeing a poster produced by the mayor's office of special events that included the line "gospel at it's best," i resisted. and that's all i will say about it here.

no, right now, i am thinking about having a company in my back, and how funny it is that it sounds like i have a monkey on my back. and the idea of my job as this destructive habit that i have yet to kick. damn monkey. damn company. npr, why do you never call me? i'd so much prefer to work for an organization.

anyway, early last week, i read this article by anna quindlen in newsweek called "an apology to the graduates." she specifically addresses folks graduating from college in 2004, but i think it's probably fair for me (a 2002 graduate) to include myself in terms of the "generation in history" in which she groups '04 grads. she writes that we have grown up, more than any other generation, with overly high expectations from our parents and ourselves. that "it is no longer enough to make it; [we] must make it BIG." i'm not sure my expectations for myself or even my greatest desires really require making it big, but i know that i do feel this need to keep moving, to keep achieving until...i don't know when. as quindlen puts it: "find the job. find the mate. scale the ladder. have the baby. make the deal. make the birthday cake." is that me? i think part of me is that. and "who will win the contest?" she poses. "perhaps it will be those of you brave enough to stop moving." but what if i consciously stop moving in order to move more effectively later? i'm trying not to move so fast (mostly because it causes me to trip, and run out of breath, and collapse), but the itch, the need to wriggle, the desire to be better, oh, it's still there.

fucking monkey.

*wilco

2004-05-20T19:54:00.000-05:00

laugh, kookaburra! laugh, kookaburra! gay your life must be!
oh, the songs, the songs, they are stuck in my head. for the first time in weeks, i worked consistently throughout the day, compiling lyrics for "100 playtime songs." as such, all the little things that i thought i might write about have been crowded out of my brain by lyrics like... oh, i don't have anything in my head right now but kookaburra, actually. crap. i will refrain, however, from articulating the grand contradiction my juvenile mind has discovered in this song with its words of arcane, or at least double, meaning. oh well. more later, perhaps, when (if?!) kookaburra leaves.

2004-05-18T21:16:00.000-05:00

lessons learned today
1. fried tofu is still tofu, despite mark bittman's claims regarding its tofuist conversion power.
2. frying things in one's kitchen makes it smell. bad.*
3. adding peanut butter to one's homemade balsamic vinaigrette does not turn it into that yummy peanut sauce/dressing at the w-town thai restaurant.
4. the goodyear blimp flies (floats?) over baseball games, too!
5. checking sitemeter every hour does not make one less bored, nor does it make more people come to one's blog.
6. threatening one's building manager to move out might result in her actually sending one the fax she's been saying she'd send for the past several days.
7. wearing a cute new summer top is pointless if it's too cold to ever take one's jacket off, even inside.

*okay, i already knew this, but let's just say i have been reminded.

2004-05-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

u-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi
i was walking home from the el yesterday evening, in my brand new green gap side zip cropped pants, feeling good about existence in general, when i encountered a scowling, smoking old woman who stared at me for a moment and then uttered this pronouncement: "ugly." i was offended for a moment until i heard her say the same thing to two people walking behind me. and then i was kind of amused. and then flabbergasted and amused. which is not to say that i personally lay claim to any particular notion of beauty, but that, regardless of my ugliness, it is rather shocking to hear someone so casually, and with such great disdain, say it out loud. anyway, i had forgotten it until this morning when something prompted me to chant that which has become the title of this post, and which continues: you ugly, *clap* *clap,* you ugly.

but to back up a little (and completely change the subject), i was returning last evening from a "triathlon seminar" at a local running-gear shop. let's just say that the presenters may have talked me out of doing a triathlon, at least this year. i was completely overwhelmed with discussions of interval training, toe clips, lactic acid, driving to wisconsin, wetsuits, and strengthening your core. my one surge of feeling potential for triathletic prowess was when someone asked about bilateral breathing. yes! i can do that! but i don't really want to do anything hard, other than maybe endurance-wise, and i have no means to haul my as-yet-nonexistent bike to wisconsin just to get a good uninterrupted workout in which i attempt to apply pressure evenly to the pedal through its entire rotation. after the presentation, i approached this dude, sherron, a former israeli secret service agent and now triathlon coach, and explained that last year i ran the chicago marathon, slowly, and just had fun, and asked, is it possible to just do a triathlon for fun? and, like, not do all this speed training crap? and he said yes, but also seemed kind of doubtful. sure, he said. if you can do that, just have fun and smile at people when you get on your bike. i could never do that. ugh. well, i'm still thinking about it. i know i can do it, but now i'm feeling like maybe i don't really want to do it all by myself. we'll see.

in other news, i have a roommate! wellesley girl j., in fact. and she seemed totally appreciative and not at all freaked out by my solicitousness, which leads me to contemplate my attitudes toward niceness. generally, i am initially suspicious and ultimately annoyed by people who are too nice. and i have to say that this hasn't exactly been good for my relationships with people. now i am tempted to leave you with some awful cliche, but that's probably not a good idea. so take that for what it's worth, and go on, be mean to me. i may just fall in love with you.

2004-05-16T16:00:00.000-05:00

in which* they all come out of the metaphorical woodwork
i love days like this in chicago, when in the aftermath of often-months-long crappy weather, the sidewalks and the lakefront vibrate with energy: people biking, people running, people rollerblading, people walking, people sailing, people just sitting with their sunglasses on, people reading books, people with funny strides, people who need to relax their arms, people with headphones, shirtless people, people biking without protective gear, people who let you know they're coming up behind you, people who nearly run you over. and i rollerblade to the gap to spend my birthday coupon and diminish its value by spending way more than the minimum needed for the 15-dollar discount, but it's sunny out, and a woman who clearly used to be a man (maybe still is, technically) helps me find the right bra size, and almost everything i buy is on sale. and some guy on the lakefront looks at me funny, and i can't tell if it's because he thinks i'm cute or weird. and i just skate on by without worrying about it.

*while i suppose this turn of words is technically public domain, i am directly influenced in using it by the brilliant daddy zine. that's all.

2004-05-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

ephtastic vol. 3 (and this time, i really mean it)
so, i attended the annual peter pond lecture last night and, sadly, have no keychain acquisitions to report. however, i must say that the evening went remarkably well otherwise--quite possibly the greatest 'bill' alumni event in my own short history as an alumna. the only downside (besides the lack of a kitschy keychain giveaway) was that, in a lemming-like attempt at etiquette, i lost my umbrella. and it's a rainfest in chicago these days. but it's okay, because i wanted a smaller one anyway.

i arrived fashionably late, a result however not of fashion-consciousness (ha!) but of necessity, and gravitated toward the one person i knew: a '99 grad and the queen of networking. i didn't last long standing next to her, so i found myself a drink and plopped onto a couch with intentions to simply observe. well, this is going to be a little awkward, i thought, but i wasn't really feeling bad about it--it's who i am. i just don't go wandering around in a roomful of old men introducing myself. i was the youngest person there--the next-youngest being '99 grad l., and then everyone else was at least five years older than her, and mostly something more like 15 or 20 years older. so, whatever, i'll just sit here and let the hors d'oeuvres come to me. then, some guy, a '94 grad, sat down on the adjacent sofa with his non-bill friend, and started asking me questions about my bill experience, what i was up to in chicago, etc. "i don't know how to do this schmoozing thing," he admitted. so the three of us just chatted amiably and comfortably(!), in a prime location for hors d'oeuvre traffic. that alone would have made my night.

then, there was the actual lecture, given by a professor and one of his tutorial students from the class of '04, on the subject of community development. it was brilliant and envy-inducing (my tutorial experience did not makeme that smart), but for the fact that it was something of a veiled plea for money. (the glory of the tutorial was much stressed, with the implication that financial support is needed to expand the tutorial program.) i know, i shouldn't be so offended because they're not actually asking me for money--i don't have the kind of resources they're after--but my understanding was that these lectures were for education and discussion, not fundraising. and it's a little bothersome too, i think, that while the two presenters discussed things like the unequal distribution of wealth within communities, they were subtly campaigning for the 400 million dollar fundraising effort of one of the already wealthiest educational institutions in the world. i mean, you have to wonder: what good is a college tutorial if we can't even get our kids through high school? they even mentioned the public-school-funding crisis currently underway in williamstown. would it kill us to allocate some resources (even under the guise of property taxes) in that direction rather than as a means to distinguish ourselves further from other elite institutions? but perhaps i am merely envious that i am no longer there to enjoy the fruits of the fundraising.

but wait, i've deviated somewhat from my original point, which is that i really did have a good time last night. the lecture, aside from the fundraising undertones, really was fabulous, especially when the student presenter referred to another '04 student who happens to be notorious among those of us lucky enough to have shared a campus with him. yet i was the only one there, other than perhaps the professor, who knew what this kid meant when he said: "and d.n. said, in typical d.n. fashion...." oh man, that killed me.

the best part, though, came after the cocktail hour, and after the lecture. i actually hung around for a few minutes (by that time, the two 7&7's i had imbibed had made me a little more willing to engage), sticking with '99 grad l. while looking for an opportunity to talk to the student presenter about d.n. in the meantime, i ended up being introduced to the alumni relations representative who was there from williamstown. and i was talking to him when the guy in charge of the chicago alumni chapter said: "okay, you guys ready to go to dinner?" and alumni relations guy b. invited me to dinner! score! and, to make an already long story slightly shorter, i went to dinner with all of these very interesting and bill-loving people, including l., and a guy who was actually quieter than me, i think. and i sat right in the center of the table, so i could talk to everyone, and i actually did. holy crap. if i hadn't yet experienced a breakthrough, this was it. and i had an awesome salad, even though i totally wasn't hungry, and when i talked about myself, my life almost sounded kind of interesting. and, sigh, i just love people from bill. and when we said goodbye for the night, alumni relations guy b. kissed me on the cheek* like i was actually his friend, and chicago chapter president s. gave me a hug, and i felt all warm and fuzzy and bill-full inside.

*in a totally i-am-a-sophisticated-person-who-greets-people-with-a-kiss kind of way, not in a i-could-someday-love-you kind of way. out of the gutter, people!

2004-05-12T16:04:00.000-05:00

no, his name's not really vince
ugly babies! the first one is my little brother.

i was eight years old when he was born and learned to change diapers and mix formula and basically be a mini momzilla with him and another brother, who is one year older. one day, i had him upstairs with me--we grew up in a ranch-style home with only a loft/study/den on the second floor--and decided to carry him down the wooden stairs. i'm not sure why he was up there with me, or why i decided to bring him down, but there we were. he couldn't have been more than a few months old, definitely less than one year. i think the rest of my family was sitting in the family room, all with a view of the staircase when i slipped.

in such a situation, it would seem as though instinct should kick in and take over for rational thought in favor of survival. but, no, i distinctly remember a thought process as i fell with my baby brother in my arms. if we fall down the stairs together, i will roll over him and crush him, i thought. i have to let go so he doesn't get hurt.

so i let go, and he bounced and rolled down the unpadded stairs like a toy, a babydoll tossed in a childish experiment to see what would happen. only he was my brother. and as soon as i let go of him, i stopped moving. it appeared as though i had let him go to save myself, and my mother, in fact, insisted that i threw him.

thankfully, little baby bones are still largely cartilage, and he was less harmed by the whole ordeal than was i. 15 years later, he's still pushing the boundaries of injury, a little* rugby player who loves to crowd surf.

*okay, he's recently surpassed me in height, but i can't imagine him ever being anything but little.

2004-05-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

thanks be to bizrate
whew. i got the tickets. but not, of course, before getting charged 20 bucks in addition to the original ticket price for "convenience" and "processing." i'm still trying to decide whether i'd feel better if they were just honest and, rather than attempt to cloak the true reason for these charges, label them "ticketmaster profit, thank you." nutwads.

wow, i bet if someone googled "nutwad" they'd end up at my blog. (addendum: score!)

thankfully, after making my purchase, a window popped up asking me to rate my shopping experience. i gave ticketmaster generally high marks, as, hey, i got what i was looking for and it was quick and, yes, convenient, though the time limits totally stress me out. (one minute to enter my password!? are you kidding?! what the fuck's my password?! thank goodness i anticipated this and practiced yesterday by pretending i wanted to buy hillary duff tickets.) anyway, there was a free-for-all commenting section, and i got my comeuppance. and as to what convinced me to buy from ticketmaster: "other: i had no choice."

by the way, if you spell dictionary incorrectly, you may end up here. damn, i can't believe i actually wrote my own papers in college. all that "...hard work, which includes extra hours of studying..." could have been avoided, if only for the serendipity of a typo.

2004-05-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

let the friend-making begin
today marks the official beginning of my social week. (or was that rockin' de mayo that started it all? perhaps it was....) i'm thinking i'll attend a found party this evening. mainly because i have a whole pile of finds that i have heretofore been too lazy to send in, and because i'm curious as to what sort of fun will ensue. we shall see. it does require me to miss another gem of cbs programming, but i think i will survive. (though amy does get "news no parent ever wants to hear"! maybe i should tape it.)

tomorrow evening will probably lead to an "ephtastic vol. 3," as the annual peter pond lecture is to take place, complete with cocktail hour at some pretentious men's club. the best part is that at these events, they always give away keychains--at the big "climb far" fundraising event, it was carabiener clips, and at last year's peter pond lecture, keychain flashlights. maybe a photo frame tomorrow evening? i'll keep you posted.

then, on saturday, i get to meet potential future roommate wellesley girl j., who is hopefully not frightened of me by this point, what with my veiled obsession with her, offering her a room in my apartment and a job at my company, and next, i shall ask her to change her name and join my family, and we'll go on "camping trips" where we hold hands and dance and chant around a fire.

2004-05-11T11:28:00.000-05:00

sold out (but there's still ticketmaster)
i had at least three dreams early this morning wherein 10 am rolled around and i was nowhere near a computer to buy wilco tickets, or i looked at the clock and it was 10:23 and i realized i had forgotten about the wilco tickets. i even shot out of bed at 6 convinced i needed to get on my computer as soon as possible to buy them, because it was so far past 10. and then i tried to go back to sleep, but eddie kept pawing my face and whining: "i'm starving! you never feed me! oh why, oh why don't you ever feed me?"

so at 9:50 today, i hopped onto the wilco website and refreshed it until i had the option of purchasing tickets...and gave them my email address, the supersecret password (hint: yankee. hotel. password!), agreed to their terms and conditions, etc., etc., and clicked "buy." and all the tickets were gone! it was like my nightmare come true, even though i have four notes on my monitor and keyboard and water bottle reminding me to do this at 10 today, which i did, but they're all gone anyway.

it's okay, because i have two more chances (and i will spend the night outside the vic on friday night if i have to, but i'm hoping ticketmaster will come through for me tomorrow). ugh, ticketmaster.

2004-05-10T15:03:00.000-05:00

ephtastic vol. 2
reading over my previous post, it occurs to me that some might think i was drunk, shouting strange missives at disaffected rockers in the midst of hundreds of people i had never met. i was not. in fact, i didn't eat or drink anything from about 4:30 on saturday, when i left for the concert, until about 11, when i arrived back home. i was desperate to have a front row view of fountains of wayne (and for them to have a front row view of my t-shirt, alas), so i basically pressed myself up against these howie-day fans' butts until they got out of the way, and, as i was alone, there was no one to save my spot for a margarita or port-a-potty run. too bad, 'cause it was totally rockin' de mayo.

2004-05-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

ephtastic
okay, so neither chris nor adam invited me on stage, or even acknowledged my repeated shouts (from the front row!) of "yeah ephs!" and, during "valley winter song," "yeah, williamstown!" in fact, i heard a vicious rumor that the aforementioned song is not actually about williamstown, which makes me want to cry.

hmm. i talk about wanting to cry a lot in this blog.

worse yet is that adam did acknowledge a group of girls wearing sombreros and dubbed them the "mexican wine-ettes." gross. hello, i was wearing a purple-and-gold-tie-dyed t-shirt emblazoned with everyone's favorite hermaphroditic cow, but whatever. i don't need a couple of old guys to be my best friends.

and, one of the roadies gave me a setlist! rock on!

2004-05-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

k's law
just as i decided to relax, along comes a crack at the perfect job.