one of us needs to be a unitarian

what's not to love about a religion that requires no belief, and doesn't even really require that you be religious? as far as we can tell, all it really does is reward us for recognizing our vague sense of spiritual void. all you have to do is decide that you feel a little lost, be willing to accept some mediocre classical music on assorted saturday afternoons, and offer minimal financial support to anti-war movements. existential crisis resolved. and now, back to our beer.

the dream lives on

i stand corrected.
apparently the fleece-and-rectangularglasses-wearing shaggy grad students, do get their coffee at the place that sells the pumpkin lattes (which, to my glee, are still on the menu). it remains unclear if they're going to starbucks for lack of a more hip alternative, or if they're not as sophisticated as i want them to be. either way, i may still have a chance to infiltrate their hangouts!

please limit yourself to two carry-on items

why am i always carrying around so much stuff?

for all the time spent talking about people and their existential/emotional baggage, i'd like to take a minute to rant about my actual baggage.

i don't really see what i could do differently. backpack (with workstuff including necessary books and papers, water bottle, and items that would otherwise go in a purse), lunchbox, coffee cup, gym bag- i dont' really see myself lightening the load substantially. but it gets a bit ridiculous, and really makes it hard to make a graceful entrance into my building at the end of the day. so of course, i keep running into hotbutpotentiallygayindianguy in the parking lot. actually, it's worse than that, because he always seems to be driving in behind me so i know that the humiliation in imminent. it never fails. the only times i see him i'm in my gym clothes with my nice-ish wool coat over the addidas pants, hair all matted down from running, carrying all this crap, looking like a goober.

everybody is lame except us.

come on, people, where were you last night? we tried to call you and drag you out for cheap drinks and tasty snacks. what's not to love about venturing out in the fresh snow, creepy light-up santas smiling down from porches? to be fair, almost everyone who reads this lives hours away from chicago. but still. if you really liked us...

so without you, we learned that village tap in roscoe village has a fantastic selection of microbrews on tap, including my favorite sprecher black bavarian, good tunes, and plentiful supply of eye candy. good hair, tall, smiling, jeans-and-fleece-or-sweater crowd. no backwards baseball caps. we also learned that tiny lounge is only populated with middle-aged men in white button-downs (doh) and that while riverview tavern has no view of the river, it does have a view of shaggy writer-type desperately hitting on the faux-goth-with-exposed-midriff bartender who was so clearly uninterested that it was almost painful to watch. (not too painful, obviously, since i have full details on the band he hopes to start. also, $3 sierra nevada pints are a good anesthetic.)

sadly, now i'm at work extra-early, wondering if maybe this was the reason none of you were willing to go out on a wednesday.

the tiers on the wedding cake come tumbling down

an old roommate of mine used to say that, at any given moment, you can only be sweet on one person. as someone who falls in love every week and runs a pretty busy racket of crushes and stalkings, i say that you can, in fact, be sweet on lots of people. unless, of course, most of those people turn out to creepies.

my blogmate says that she's no longer good at screening for creepies, on account of her ongoing relationship with mmmb (saving for later the rant about why she gets to stumble into a romantic weekend in milwaukee while i'm stuck at home working on my CV). so again, as someone who is always smitten, i think my screening mechanism is working relatively well, particularly as i seem to have some kind of magnetic effect on creepies... as detailed by the following story:

new guy at work. cute, very cute, though he pays more attention to his hair than i'd like. i dutifully stared him down at various meetings until one of my colleagues totally busted me looking at his butt. i can't even pretend like i wasn't planning the wedding. when he started staring back my weird spidy sense told me that i should probably do a little more investigating. so i conducted an extensive survey, by which i mean i asked 2 people, neither of whom had anything even remotely nice to say about him. the funny thing is that their descriptions were totally different from each other, but between them it really wasn't pretty. come to think of it, he said some pretty stupid things at those meetings.

from this i have drawn the following conclusions:

1) don't trust anyone who spends that much time on his hair
2) figure out if the guy is a creepie before falling in love in love with him
3) if you're going to check out someone's ass, try to be subtle about it

nothing says romance like a good face-plant

it's the classic story.

girl sees clown.
girl becomes infatuated with clown.
girl peripherally stalks clown.
clown occasionally acknowledges girl.

one find day we find our heroine feeling particularly bold. she decides to make eye contact and is rewarded with playful banter. inspired by this reciprocity, girl continues to make eye contact.

"it all comes down to this moment," she thinks, as she passes him in the hall.

and then he sticks out his foot and trips her.

could this be love?

"jackass" sounds classier when you say it with an italian accent...

...but it is downright unnerving when it comes from the mouth of my ninety-five-year-old grandfather. thankfully, it wasn't in a sentence about me, or anyone in my family. he was mid-stream in our predictable sunday-afternoon routine of pasta followed by coffee and cookies followed by monologue of times when he's been screwed over because of his thick accent. but for all the afternoons i've waited patiently through "and so i said, no, YOU need an education!" i've never really heard him use angry-sounding words. this might be partially because he interrupts his story any time there are new people around with a big smile and "how old do you think i am?" followed by the proud display of his photo in the italian community center newpaper winning the asti spumanti for being the oldest italian in town. this also might be because it is essentially difficult to angrily twirl pasta on your plate without getting sauce everywhere, and it's just poor form to waste good sauce. or this might be because being angry gets in the way of his whole back-of-the-hand-against-the-forehead life-is-very-hard schtick where he sighs that he has to take blood pressure medicine. (ninety-five and on ONE pill. life is very hard, indeed.)
and to be fair, he wasn't really angrier than usual; i just didn't know jackass was in grandpa's english vocabulary. maybe he just learned it? he did just get cable, although i assumed it was for the foreign-language news station, not mtv.

so what is the proper form to respond to a 95-year-old guy's first swearing in english in front of granddaughter?
1) "hell, yeah, gramps, bust that shit out"
2) dignified horror: cough into napkin and look around uncomfortably
3) undignified horror: "what the %&$@ did you just say?"
4) concentrate very hard on spaghetti and pretend it didn't happen
5) waste precious time blogging about it instead of working on research project with upcoming deadline

clearly i have made my choice.

hot sync this

i like to think of myself as a hip, modern sort of girl. i have a slick little lap-top with so many shiny little peripheral accoutrements that i had to go out and buy a USB hub. actually, i didn't go out at all thanks to my friend amazon.com, but i was proud of myself for having the knowledge of, and need for a USB hub. that said, i've never really been much of a techie, and i use my little gadgets with only marginal proficiency. at a lecture the other day when the prof said something about "anyone who can program a VCR can do this," i was privately embarassed- i don't know if ever got that down and now i don't even own a VCR. so when my palm pilot died a sudden, tragic death a few months ago, after a few weeks of adjustment, i got back in the habbit of making little lists in my little calendar and was starting to enjoy the satifaction of physically crossing things off and having a place to stick all my little post-its with important pieces of information on them (palm pilots don't work well for that). but now i have a new palm pilot that is, of course, much more sophisticated and is requiring me to learn a whole new grafitti alphabet and for the life of me i haven't had a chance to read the instruction manual. i don't know what made me think it was a good time to buy that MP3 player i've had my eye on. i can't even make it talk to the computer so i'm stuck listening to the weirdo music that came preprogramed. ever tried running to india arie?
add this to my growing pile of evidence that progress stinks.

stop the progress

as usual, i dont' get it.
i know that it's out of style to think of men as grunting idiots who can't talk about feelings or pick out curtains and believe me, i'm all for sensitive straight men who dress well. but some guys just cross the line. in what universe do they spill their guts to my friends and colleagues, not in a "hey, i got me a piece of that" way but in a "i'm so conflicted and confused about what's going on with us" way.
enough already. get a shower poof if you must, but please, go back to suppressing your emotions.

fuji apple fu

sushi with the girls last night brings up this title... such a fantastic name for such a fantastic dessert. any food that ends in -fu should be awarded extra style points, although apple spice cake drizzled with caramel topped with ginger ice cream doesn't really need any extra points. sorry, hot guy at miami flavors ice cream shop; i'll never forget the special time we had together with the coconut ice cream and carlos castaneda readings. but it's grown cold outside, and a new semi-ethnic dessert has stolen my heart now. don't fret- i think when it gets warmer again we still have a chance to be friends.

always a bridesmaid...

holy wedding weekend. here are the highlights (good and bad)

low: flight delayed by an hour causing me to arrive to rehearsal dinner an hour late

high: shacking up with the bride-to-be in the bridal suite (possibly the only upshot of being the only bridesmaid at the wedding stag). fancy pants room with big ol' hot tub (full o' bridesmaids)...

low: 8 AM $50 hair appointment for the dreaded up-do

high: discovering that the bride's petticoat thing (bought for the purpose of avoiding the "bridal wedgie") stands up all by itself
low: professionally taken candid shot of me putting on deoderant
high: climbing under the dress (already on the bride) to help her get her garter and shoes on

low: limo breaking down on big city streeet on way to wedding
high: limo guy actually getting out and opening the hood
even higher: bride hiking up her dress and running down the street to get into backup limo

cut to reception and after party...

low: flirting shamelessly with groomsman who was not, as i orginally thought, there alone.
lower: drunken groomsmen dropping like flies. lots of vomiting.
even lower: cops called from hotel bar on belligerent drunk friend of bridesmaid
high: calling my parents who come together to pick me up from drunken after-party

low: flight home delayed by 2 1/2 hours
high: killing time with my parents in sketchy 24 hour diner next to the airport drinking $1 budlight in can with a side of crinkle cut fries
low: flight home next to abrasive, slightly maladjusted psychiatrist who really wants to talk to me (i think i'm becoming a magnet for people with sociopathic tendencies)

the downward spiral (apologies to trent reznor)

sad (but acceptable): drinking alone.
sadder: trying to drink alone, and failing.

how excited i was to open my fridge looking for the last of the spiced wine leftover from this week's hanukkristmasfest, only to find out that spiced wine does not save well. i will keep that strategy in mind next time i'm looking for wine-flavored pancake syrup. holy molasses.

but never fear; a girl determined to drink alone will find her way. next, how excited i was to finish the last glass of the mark west pinot noir brought for hanukkristmas by a good friend. aah, a toast to friendship; it's not so bad to drink alone if the initial gift was from a friend, right? oops- apparently i already drank alone a few days ago, and polished off all but one sip of the mark west.

oh well; resolving to buy another bottle of that pinot noir for the next dinner party, i headed back to the fridge for a beer. not as classy, but beggars can't be choosers... except that the only beer left in the fridge was paulaner salvator double bock, a bad idea from awhile back, only here for boiling brats.

so now it's just me and my good friend jameson, wondering where the party has gone.

people don't kill people- postal workers do

new use of blog: diffusing violent rage between boring conferences.

i will not lose my cool at work. i will not use my cool at work. i will not behead the next person who crosses my path.

but really. if you were to look at the relative amount of time i've spent at any one task today, the clear winner would be parking and unparking my car. i actually got angry enough to leave a nasty note for the jerk who has decided that his (or her) new car deserves two parking spaces. on my way out of frazzled stop #3 today i got personally yelled at by a parking lot guy. i think i'd rather get a ticket than get verbally assaulted by the 80 year old security guard.

and the worst is yet to come: mandatory "volunteer" community service, all alone with curmudgeon boss- you know the "when i was your age i had to walk to school up hill in both directions barefoot in the snow" guy- he's that guy. i was supposed to share the misery with a co-worker but she "forgot" about it and booked a ticket to vegas.

now i have to make photocopies. i will not lose my cool at work...

queer eye unfiltered

raise your hand if you're a straight male who uses a shower poof.

on a non-blind but nonetheless non-good date a few months ago i had a guy confess to using a shower poof with such gravity you'd think he'd just told me that he likes to watch beaches while eating cookie dough.

man-using-shower-poof doesn't even qualify as metrosexual.

well, now i'm just being snotty.

all right, i know this is being picky, but one of the higher-ups at work spent a good part of a lunch meeting using the word denouement over and over again when he could have easily just used conclusion. i know it's his m.o. to sound all intellectual, but i really think if had to use it as a slide title in his powerpoint presentation he could have spelled it right. is that a horrible standard? i don't really care if people have typos on blogs, or even fancy powerpoint presentations. but if you're going to strut, it helps not to have a limp, you know?

sultry chromium devil

i'm the first to admit that i don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of mainstream american culture, but even if i did, the following phenomena would continue to baffle me:

1) buffalo wings. i don't understand. they're tiny, slimy chicken parts slathered in more slime except now it's sweet slime fueled by red dye #8 and some kind of chemically extracted BBQ flavor. they come in basket with slimy, stinky french cheese and, just for fun, celery. i can't for the life of me understand the zeal with which people (some of whom i respect very much- like my blogmate and my brother) eat such nastiness.

2) american girl place. for those of you fortunate enough to have missed this insanity, let me describe it briefly. massive 3-story establishment of department store proportions dedicated exclusively to the selling of very creepy and VERY expensive dolls that can bought to look just like the children of the purchasers (along with a dizzying array of accoutrements). the whole thing is some kind of shrine to itself. they have their own restaurant where the dolls can be seated at the table next to their weird twin owners. the dolls can then be taken to the doll salon where grownups pay other grownups to coiffe the dolls with trendy up-dos. it seems like every tourist family strolling down michigan avenue is armed with multiple american girl place bags in hand (tourists flocking to the michigan avenue gap like it's somehow different from the sheboygan gap is another topic all together). people actually stand in long lines just for the priviledge of entering the store.

3) people waiting in line at the gym to use the newest, fanciest treadmills when there are numerous, slightly less shiny but nonetheless fully functional treadmills available. add all the display features and calorie counting that you want. running in place on a revolving mat is the same activity no matter how many gizmos adorn the apparatus. i'm sure that the same number of calories are burned, and i'm also sure that a) you're just as likely to trip and fall, and 2) running in place indoors in the meat market gym is just as sucky.

and finally... 4) giving shoes proper names. it's very entertaining to look at the names that shoe companies give the various styles. i think that "black mid-calf boot #71632" would suffice. instead you wind up with NWbrayden, or, my favorite: sultry chromium devil.

epi-blogue

some brief follow-up on prior blog topics:

1. chatty wet goth sitting on the stairwell patiently waiting for amyandmichelle apparently angered the fungal scholar who lives downstairs. i arrived to my apartment this evening to find an anonymous note signed "apt #1" whose handwriting suspiciously matches the other notes on the main door reading "please leave all mushroom related subscriptions for ls" asking me to stop letting strangers into the building. that's fair, i guess, but if i were to line up the chatty wet goth and the guy who reads all the mushroom stuff, and they both were to look you in the eye and tell you they just forgot the key or arrived too early for their guests, you wouldn't be able to tell which was the creepie and which was the actual neighbor. and chatty goth is a better conversationalist than my mushroom neighbor. besides, i was home the whole night so if there was a ruckus caused, i would have heard it, and naturally would have been hanging out my window slack-jawed spying on the whole scene.

2. my blogmate's commentary on least favorite songs has resulted in my boyfriend thinking he's quite clever (qcmb?) by downloading as much dido as possible and playing it for me every time we're about to leave the apartment, leaving me with stupid white flag in my head all night long.

i leave it to you to decide which is worse: letting unwanted goth in from the rain, or letting unwanted dido into my head? i will go dooooown with thiiiiis ship....

un-pent rage

we all know that chicago is a city of unexplainable random traffic jams, but the one i encountered today wins the award for it's near induction of psychotic break. on my way from target to the grocery store (step 1, buy everyone's holiday gifts in one place, step 2, buy assload of potatoes for latke making) i found myself stuck in standstill traffic on a not particularly busy road at a not particularly important intersection at 11AM on a sunday. not just a little backed up i tell you, NO MOVEMENT for about 20 minutes. i made myself feel better about it by imagining the gruesome carnage that must be surrounding the worst accident ever. damn it, i thought, if i'm going to sit here, growing older, feeling my life pass me by with avril lavigne for soundtrack (how can a city with so many people have so few radio stations?), somebody had better be dead. but alas, it wasn't a 4-car pileup with 2 ruptured spleens and a decapitation. it was the world's longest parade of non-badass looking harley riders. i kid you not, thousands of very docile looking motorcylce riders parading down western avenue, blocking traffic for miles in every direction, ruining my life.

i guess i'll save my tyrade about not understanding buffalo wings for another day.

play on mr. wendell

as i embark on my quarter-life crisis, i've been trying to broaden my musical horizons a bit and have made the unfortunate mistake of starting to pay attention to the words. i should have stuck to blindly singing along without giving any thought to what i was actually saying because now i'm really annoyed.

i think it's time to talk about the many ways in which song lyrics can suck.

#1. singing about prostitution or homelessnes- especially when the misguided rocker is so presumptuous as sing from down-and-out's point of view- or when using the predicament of prostitution or homelessness as a metaphor for how hard life is. countless examples... modern- the corrs, older phil collins.

#2. no one understands what it's like to be famous- i'm sure i don't know what it's like to brittany spears, but i'd like to keep it that way thankyouverymuch. and besides, no sympathy.

#3. wrist slitting sadness- these are tricky, as the songs actually tend to be kind of good as long as they're not too goth. but listen to dido long enough and you want to jump off a bridge a little bit.

#4. cryptic and weird- the most frequent offense among singers i actually like. it's good music, but what the hell is dave matthews talking about? sarah mclaughlin, natalie merchant... barenaked ladies, bjork- they all do it. it's easier if you just give up and stop trying. you'll never know what postcards from chimpanzees sympbolize.

#5. blingbling- i'll actually take a good amount of girl shake that thang before i start to burn out. and there's really something pretty funny about a lady on the street and freak in da bed. at least it's not pretentious. JZ can sing about his love soliders all he wants. same with boy bands. everybody rock your body, man.

#6. creepy fairy world- a category reserved exclusively for tori amos.

#7. and finally, the lowest of the low, SELF INDULGENT AND ANGSTY. my personal contemporary favorites are "you don't know what it's like to be me," and "did you really think that i was gonna give it up to you?" i'm mean really, "did you think that that was something i was gonna doooooo?" all these 20-something garage bands that sing about not knowing who they are and not getting along with their parents and just wanting to be themselves. i can't take anymore.

frank lloyd wrong

i'm so sorry, that's the worst title ever. but there it stays, taunting you with its badness.

one of our faithful readers informs me that our blog is difficult to comment on because the stories are so random. and since we only have a few faithful readers, that means a significant percentage of our readership refuses to become commentor-ship, which is a problem. so today i implore you to please help me by commenting on this story:

if you've been reading along, you'll know that my good blogmate recently went on a date with a local architecture buff. sounded good. only it turned out that he wasn't really an architecture buff, but didn't actually like architecture, or anything else, and he was so undecided about the date that he called back to make sure she understood it wasn't a real date, and couldn't carry a two-sentence conversation for the whole thing. so it was a non-good non-date with a non-architecture buff. my biggest disappointment is that, once again, i didn't get to spy on them. but the bigger problem is that my blogmate is taking the suckiness of the non-date personally. my argument to the contrary?

1) you cannot make someone un-boring
2) you cannot make someone un-depressed or un-dysthymic
3) you cannot give someone tact
4) you cannot remove someone's receding hairline or bad teeth
5) you can run, but you cannot hide someone's fatness

but most importantly: she only went in the first place to see a) if she remembered who this guy was, and b) since he was clearly dysfunctional and broken from his previous relationship, at least he might be funny enough for not a romantic rendezvous, but a life-coaching situation where she got to give him advice on girls while they watched the wb and ate pizza. therefore:

6) if your highest aspiration for the guy is that you might be able to recognize him on the street and laugh at his anti-social tendencies, i say you cannot take it personally if the guy doesn't sweep you off your feet.

people, help me here.

architecture binge

ok, ok, i know that i promised myself that i'd stop slandering lame-o on the blog, but i really need to talk about this... more than i already have.

actually, it's really not about slander (or libel- i can't ever remember which is which). it's about me. i continue to believe that confessing bad thoughts or deeds gets you half way to absolution.

the result of the unfiltered blurting out of "hey, you don't get to ask me out and then take it back!" was the making of actual plans to meet lame-o face to face. mind you, they're casualcupofcoffeebutdefinitelynotadate plans, but progress has been made- we've even talked on the phone now. but get this: i have NO CLUE who this guy is. it seems that the person with whom i remember shamelessly flirting all those years ago was someone TOTALLY DIFFERENT. and you know that it wasn't on discovery of this most interesting plot twist that i decided to suppress my filterlessness. no, no. maniacal laughter of "ha! i have no idea who you are!"

what worries me about this whole fiasco is that it sounds like i was throwing myself at not one but two people, and my ability to recall the whole thing has been clouded by 1) the effects of excessive alcohol intake, and 2) the fact the memory filter that allows me suppress unsavory events is working just fine. is it possible that i've really managed to merge these two guys into one collective groomsman?

in any case, the upcoming non-date was as good an excuse as any to find myself having a meltdown about mascara in the makeup isle at target with my blogmate (who was totally useless to me in the picking one of the zillion kinds of mascara that there are). how am i supposed to know if i want lengthening, waterproof, fattening, volumizing, curved brush, straight brush, black, jet black, near black, panoramic (panoramic?)? talk about too many adjectives- i just want not to have clumpy eyelashes (or to wear anything on my face that has to be removed with abrasive chemicals)! fortunately, while our non-drinking friend doesn't know anything about booze, she knows plenty about makeup and hair clips and stuff- so we were able to put in a frantic cell phone call and have her bail us out of our mascara debacle.

with non-clumpy eyelashes and my best lookhotwithouttryingdon'tyouwishthiswereadate outfit, i'm ready for my close-up mr. deville.

step 4: drag your friends down with you

for a variety of reasons, one of my closest friends doesn't drink.

to be perfectly honest, i 've had trouble coming to terms with it. for one thing, she really looks like a martini girl. and of course there's the fact that i'm much more aware of my own drunken foolishness when i find myself engaging in said foolishness with a stone-cold sober person.

she will very clearly never be a drinker, though she does from time to time seem to enjoy short booze lessons, and will occasionally even try a sip of something... with the delightfully predictable consequence of the squinched up ewican'tbelieveyouimbibethisvoluntarily face.

anyway, tonight i made her sink to a new low. we had a trivial amount of wine left over after a small dinner party and had already washed and dried all the glasses, but i had just about sold her on the idea that she'd probably like beaujolais nouveau (it's not a bad beginner wine if you think about it). unwilling to let the opportunity pass me by, i somehow convinced her to drink the beaujolias straight out of the bottle... and wouldn't you know someone else walked into the room just in time to catch her in the act.

score one for raging alcoholism.

there goes the neighborhood

arriving home from work this evening, i noticed a man in a black leather jacket facing my door talking to himself and making strange motions. excellent, i thought. finding someone masturbating on the doorknob is even better than the time i found the three guys urinating together in my back parking lot. "excuse me?" i said, and the guy jumped about a foot in the air, apologizing for being in my way. as he turned around, i realized not only was there a creepy guy at my door, but a goth creepy guy with blue eye makeup everywhere. only he wasn't really a goth creepy guy (no dirty doorknob deeds, just adjusting a broken jacket zipper), he was actually a sad-looking drowning-outside-in-the-rain goth with his makeup dripping blue all over his many ankh pendants. as i entered the apartment to check my mail, the goth knocked on the door. "excuse me? do you know amy and michelle? (or something like those names) they live on the second floor? do you know if they're home from school yet?" so as i blinked blankly a few times, wondering how i would possibly know that information since i'd just gotten home, even if i did know amyandmichelle, he launched into a detailed earnest explanation of amyandmichelle's exact appearances and usual class schedules, and that he was one of the pair's boyfriend from out of town who visited frequently... so i assumed he wanted me to let him in out of the rain. no: "hey, is that your boyfriend who lifts weights? he really gets on my nerves." more blankly blinking as i tried to figure out why mmmb lifting weights three hours away could possibly get on the poor wet goth's nerves. "no, that must be someone else." enter a detailed description of somebody who apparently lives in this building and lifts weights early in the morning. now wet goth has become chatty wet goth, and i still can't figure out what he's doing here. "umm, would you like to come in from the rain?" "oh, i would never do that. one time somebody else wouldn't let me in. really? i could come in?" now, i can't imagine why anyone would distrust a wet make-up-streaked black-leather-wearing large man talking to himself looking like he's masturbating. but he just seemed so pathetic out there i couldn't leave him there. i left him on the indoor stairs landing to wait for amyandmichelle in warm dry peace. so i either win karma points for my good deed, or if i don't show up for work tomorrow, someone come check my apartment and see if maniacal laughter and german industrial music are pouring out my window.

meat marketing

2 games that are fun at the gym on a cold sunday afternoon:

1) racing on side-by-side treadmills. 40 minutes of "oh, yeah? i'll see that 9:30 mile and raise you another 30 seconds..." by the end i was trying to distract myself from wanting to quit by trying to picture which would cause more of a stir: stopping to vomit, or stopping because i fell off the treadmill. i'm pretty sure i lost the race to my blogmate, but it's a proud second place since i'm so tired i couldn't walk up the stairs to my apartment.

2) stroking the ego of the guy lifting weights next to us. (disclaimer: i'm not cheating on mmmb; i'm just the wing man. wingwoman? wingperson? anyway.) as we were dutifully taking turns at the pull-up/tricep dip machine, we noticed an attractive appropriately shaggy-grad-student type on the adjacent lat pull. so we stared, just a little. we saw the wedding ring right away, but then he saw us seeing the wedding ring. now, i'm not saying this guy was showing off because he had an audience. all i know is that two of us did three sets each of two exercises on that machine, and this guy was on that lat pull the whole time. maybe he really wanted to work his lats for ten sets, but seeing as his form got progressively worse, we were fairly sure he was enjoying the attention. so we kept staring to see how long lat-guy would stay. and the longer he stayed, the less attractive he became. there's something unsettling about a grinning man lifting weights, even if there are two badass hotties checking him out.

merry, bright, and a little kitsch

it was a multicultural extravaganza, otherwise known as let'seatcandyanddrinkciderandseatthemenorahnexttobobbleheadjesusunderthetree. now one tiny corner of my blogmate's house is disgustingly christmas-ey in a quasi-tasteful way. it verges on classy and well-done, but the tree lights are just lopsided enough for the whole job to look pretty amateurish. top it off with the weird felt $1 christmas tree skirt and hand-me-down '70s disco ball ornaments, and it's straight out of the martha stewart catalogue.

it's all fun and games until somebody chokes on a clove.

i'm dreaming of an ecru christmas

ok.
i have a graduate level education.
i worked in a computer lab for three years in college.
i have a large vocabulary and can use words like algorithm and quotidian.

so can someone explain why i cannot figure out how to type in a promotional code to get free shipping on my online christmas order? i just spent the last ten minutes on the phone with a malicious customer service lady who helpfully answered my question, "can you tell me why my free shipping promotional code isn't working?" with "because you typed it in the wrong place."
i've been determined to escape the whole frantic-holiday-ness by ordering everyone's gifts online instead of fighting the mall... but instead i have some random collection of discountwear all guaranteed to clutter my apartment before december 25. and because it took me so many tries to get the free shipping right, i now have duplicate gifts coming in different colors at different times. also, i have no idea what color these gifts actually are. i understand that men are confused by women's distinguishing seafoam from moss from ocean. but if you had to choose between yellow, white, aviator and racer, what would you do? (i picked aviator. it sounded more official.)

next year i think i'll take mmmb's suggestion of making everyone a clay-handprint ashtray.

simple pleasures

i'd like to take a moment to sing the praises of old, run-down movie theaters. you know, the ones with the 18 rows of half-broken seats atop slightly (or very) soda and popcorn sticky floors. the zitty geeks who work there are a little more goth. the tickets are only $6 and are those tiny yellow generic ones that just say "admit one." the ticket nerd tears the ticket in half and then runs over to the concession stand to help you there. it's really a satisfying funk factor. i'm the first to admit that there's a time and place for the 45 screen megaplex with stadium seating- like when you're seeing lord of the rings or something. but don't you think there's something satisfying about taking your money to the rinky dink place? i do.

ruin everything why don't you?

it was an action packed afternoon, in spite of it being overcast by the worst weather i have ever seen. leftover pizza and most of the first season of gilmore girls. have i mentioned how much i love that show? then there was the weird email exchange and, of course, there were chocolate covered raisins, which i love almost as much as gilmore girls. i kept on eating way past the point that i felt completely sick.

anyway, i went to bed feeling totally disgusting and very tired, having not showered in a LONG time, but i woke up a new woman. actually, i wasn't really a new woman until i finally took a shower.

no really, there's a story here.

so i looked around at my wrecked apartment- how can you make such a mess when you've spent the ENTIRE DAY on the couch?- and decided that i'd wash the dishes, coffee pot included and make some coffee. then i compromised and said that if i washed all the dishes i could go out and buy coffee. poised in front of the sink, i looked down at the zillions of dishes and thought, to hell with this, i'm going out for my coffee. i mean afterall, it's thanksgiving.

then things got better.

i step outside in my satisfyingly grubby outfit (i've been taking great pleasure lately in going out dressed like a total slob) and discover that there is a lovely surprise blanket of snow covering everything. really, it was very pretty and suddenly life was good again. i think to myself, it's thanksgiving. i'm all alone in chicago, that's true, and my dad is in berlin (though presumably not doing the cool punk things that i'd be doing if i were in berlin) and my mom and brother are together in our home town and it's nearly sub-tropical climate. however, i'm sort of digging this young single adult alone for the holidays thing. PLUS, i get to have my thanksgiving dinner at the country club with my friend and her husband with the assurance that he's the third wheel, not me.

things are looking up.

plus, i can totally justify the fancy pants latte.

man it's taking me a long time to get to the punchline... so i'm walking along in my rodeo t-shirt (under many layers of winter clothes), with a lovely view of the half-block of snow covered sidewalk between me and the coffee shop, when i look down and see, smiling up from under the ice and the snow, a codom. for crying out loud.

and the hits keep on coming

i really thought it couldn't get any worse. but then i was so determined to tell lame-o how lame he was that i sent ANOTHER email saying "hey i was just trying to call your attention how much you suck," only to discover that i really did send a blank message and then sent TWO mean emails. then i had to send a third message apologizing for being so mean.
i give up.

curses, foiled again

i can't win. I CAN'T WIN. seriously.
so let's all take a moment to recall lame guy. the one who asked me out (sort of) and then took it back (passively).
after a solid week of stewing i finally came up with the perfect comeback. it took the frontal release of only one hour of sleep in thirty six, but i finally found the gumption to call him out on his poor internet fliriting skills. i closed my eyes and clicked on the send icon.
"mail truck." the response came in less than 5 minutes. i knew it. yay.
but then. "hey, your email came to me blank. happy thanksgiving."
i just can't win.


maybe i can divert this new-fangled fearlessness toward beating the guy who lives above me senseless. the heard of elephants that he's keeping up there makes my windows rattle.

FP - that's fancy pants

why didn't i think of it first? all this time i've been throwing around terms like schmoofy and ritzy with reckless abandon when i could have been saying fancy pants. or even better, just doing the hip abbreviation thing- FP.
classy.

speaking of which. the falafel place really needs to have photos of the food up on that board.

food for thought

a few thoughts about falafel, and the good people who make them available to the public:

first of all, how do you explain falafel to someone who's never heard of it, and convince them to try it? i have had zero success on this one. honestly, chickpeas and unidentified flying spices mushed into little balls, fried and served with sesame paste sauce? terrible. vegetarian meatballs? (isn't a vegetarian meatball an oxymoron?) crunch patties served with flavor sauce? score one point for simpsons reruns...

second, what kind of community organizing action do i have to take for there to be more falafel in my neighborhood? there are two perfectly nice middle eastern restaurants within walking distance of my apartment, so i know i'm being spoiled here, but i was thinking something seedier. fluorescent lighting, cracked yellow tile floors, orange formica booths, bored bad-toothed man behind a small counter graced by a drink-pepsi menu board with the few remaining little block letters announcing that my fal f l & p ta will only cost $ 2. 9, thank you very much. wouldn't my little neighborhood be a better place? i also aspire to hire one of the local street personalities to sit for long hours at said formica booth nursing his coffee and shouting non-sequiturs at poorly dressed patrons such as myself while i squirt tahini onto my fal f l from a sticky ketchup bottle.

third, while i may not have my falafel paradise, i should really give a shout-out to the good people at more-respectable-falafel-institution cedars of lebanon. i hosted a dinner party the other night and, realizing at 5:30 that guests were arriving at 7 and i was still stuck at the office, called the good people at cedars with the following exacting demands: "hi, umm, i have 12 people showing up at my apartment in an hour. Can I get some combination of chicken, falafel, hummus and tahini?" in the time it took me to buy salad makings from the next-door produce market, cedars produced more food for $50 than i will reasonably expect to eat in this lifetime. don't ask me why "food for 12" meant "so you want falafel, do you? just back that forklift right up to our loading dock, and soon you will feed the whole city of chicago!" so thank you, cedars. but now i have two problems: 1) how will i fit the upcoming thanksgiving leftovers into my freezer now that there's no room left? 2) will anyone ever come to my place for dinner again? they know they'll be eating leftover pita and chicken shawarma until 2006.

bested again

i think that cute-indian-guy-who-lives-in-my-building (who i've been passively stalking for months) is gay. how did i not notice this before? for one thing, most of the men who live in my building are gay- especially the cute ones. suddenly it all makes sense.

phooey.

now my only hope is that he could assume the role of the hot gay friend. who doesn't need more of those?

by the way, i don't know if it gets more badass than porkchops and whiskey. i, for one, am impressed with my blog mate.

whiskey a-go-go

in another effort to live vicariously through my much cooler blogmate, who is currently out on the aforementioned blind date, mmmb and i thought briefly about a carefully constructed outing in which we just happened to be in the same neighborhood and say, wouldn't it be nice to meet for an after-dinner cocktail? i tried to convince her that she should call us when he steps out to use the loo and tell us what neighborhood they're in. thankfully, she has better sense than that. really, who needs me spying on the date?

so instead, mmmb and i are left alone to our own devices. we had all these plans to go out on the town. so how did we find ourselves back at the apartment grilling pork chops and drinking jameson?

making up for lost blog time

having been a blog slacker over the last couple of weeks, i'm coming back in full force. blogging with a vengeance. actually, i'm saving drafts of blog entries with titles only, just so that i'll remember them. pre-blogging?

in keeping with the vein of trying to be more of a badass, i went out to a show last night- mind you, it was school night. there have been a few outcomes of said outing that have served mostly to prove that i'm really not a badass and am, in fact, an old lady. for one, my right ear is ringing and has been ringing since the show. did i really sustain permanent hearing loss just to scratch the itch of wanting to be young again? and i of course febreezed all my clothes upon getting home to get out the smoke stench.

things in favor of badassness?

1) managed to lock myself out of the apartment (the designated set of going-out keys was missing a crucial one) and had to locate my friend who actually is a badass and is generally up at that hour to get the spares- she was at home cleaning her kitchen
2) pulled off the dangly retro 80's earings

but that's not the point.

the points are these.

1) all bands, no matter how big or small, have groupies
2) i just can't swoon over rock stars any more. especially those who really try to act like rock stars- i reserve the right to swoon over the more humble types rendered sheepish by their success. even when they really are rightfully hot and possessing of tremendous stage presence i just won't do it. this was particularly annoying on account of the bands middle level of famousness. you shouldn't act like bono unless you actually are bono.

maybe the world isn't ready for bloggers like us

so here's a story that's long overdue for the telling. a suburban legend, if you will.

being the hip young urban professionals that we are, we sometimes like to seek refuge from our rather wholesome professions by engaging in something a little more badass. you guessed it: trail running in the suburbs. so off we go on a saturday morning in search of one of the many forest preserves in suburban chicago to find something that vaguely resembles wilderness so that we can combine the self-satisfaction of having gone running with the sheer and utter delight of being covered with mud. i am, of course, hungover. the other, we'll call her blogger #2, is the one with the sense of direction. i am the driver. blogger #2 is somewhat competently navigating, but she's also telling me a story about some guy who traveled around living in yert which i is making me laugh uncontrollably. whether or not yerts are funny is a question to ponder some other time- this is more important.

anyway, the first trail head in berwyn is a bust. it just looks sucky so we move on to the next one. still in berwyn. in we go. it's green. there are picnic tables, BBQ pits, bathrooms. looks promising. so we drive along trying to find the trail head. it's this long driveway thing with lots of angle parking- oddly populated for a saturday morning. lots of cars, each parked a few spots away from the others. mini-vans, sedans. sitting in the family cars are somewhat family looking men. middle-aged, not too fashionable, but we're in berwyn. vertical striped shirts that look a little too early 90's, mustaches. nascar dads, if you will. we pass car after car of single men. a few have ventured out of their cars. a couple of smalls groups of men talking to each other. the bloggers are silent. we drive on to the end of the driveway thing and have to make a u-turn at the dead end, coming back to take in the scene again. still silent, we are, until we find ourselves back on the road. finally, blogger #2 breaks the silence. "you know, in madison there's this park where middle aged men go for same sex hookups..."

maybe you had to be there.

better living through chemistry

as the aforementioned meddlesome blogmate, i would like to state for the record how proud i am to be the go-between in a date setup in which i have absolutely no business whatsoever. this is even better than the whole girls-going-to-the-bathroom-in-groups ritual. the only thing better than hearing about other people's blind dates is getting to help arrange them.

i have to give this guy credit for directly calling and making plans to go out on saturday. although i was secretly hoping that this would involve some sort of contrived dinner party plan where we, by which i mean i, got to check him out. now i'm stuck in the anticipatory-living-vicariously role, which at least is also the ohmygodwhatareyougoingtowear role, which i also enjoy. but the advantage to being middlegirl was that for one brief evening, my phone was ringing off the hook and making me feel very popular.

even i am a snuggle bunny

so how many blog-worthy events can take place on one november afternoon?

lots.

first- arrival of lame email that you already know about.

next- prethanksgiving (pause for a second to observe the following: any activity sounds more legitimate when you call it a pre-something). i get myself invited to a friend of a friend's for turkey and such (most of the sides are well represented, but note the conspicuous absence of white-trash casserole). kegerator. giant big screen TV (sounds redundant until you actually see this humongous TV). NFL Sunday ticket, allowing the hosts to watch about 9 football games at once- they don't care about the outcome of any of them really, but the performance of the individual players may or may not have dramatic consequences for their fantasy football league... what was that i was saying about not understanding men? it's all good fun, but i feel compelled to go home to finish watching lofty french film noir to make up for. it would have been a classy redemption if i hadn't passed out on the couch in true, thanksgiving fashion. pre-sleeping?

and then, the crowning moment.
let's back up for a moment. saturday afternoon i'm running with my meddlesome blog-mate. acutally, she's really not meddlesome, so much as the go-between. the truly meddlesome one is my peripheral lifecoach who has stumbled into a potential set up for me and knows that my other blog half is always willing to act as my emissary in these situations. anyway, on saturday afternoon it's a "hey, we might have a guy for you."
now fast forward to about 9:30 PM on sunday night when i've talked to this guy on the phone and have a date with him next weekend.
still not entirely clear to me how this all evolved so quickly. you can imagine that it actually took multiple phone calls between the various involved parties. it's all kind of a blur of "no, i don't play tennis."
wait until you hear about the guy...

good things come in small packages

picture it. 5 foot tall north indian girl takes on burly pool playing duo. no really. out in ukranian village the other night with 2 of my girlfriends and assorted other people. i finally give up on getting the two tight-lipped science guys to talk to me to catch, out of the corner of my eye, my friends TOTALLY HUSTLING the pool table. the same girls who picked the quarters lined up on the edge of the table right up ("we thought somebody forgot them...") were spanking the seemingly pool veteran guys they were playing. tall beefy ex-frat type with hat on backwards, clearly just the wingman for the flannel shirt beer gut guy who is the, well, not brain exactly, but something behind the whole operation.
it was great.

sweet and sour rant #1

not to be trite, but i really don't understand guys at all. i'm really not a man-hater. i'm not. i think it's silly. but what am i supposed to make of this?

flashback: girl with recently acquired new boyfriend meets cute, slightly punkish guy at a wedding a few years ago. stag to the wedding, of course, on account of the newness of boyfriend. realizes she's flirting more than she should be and gets her faithful ex-roommate from college to bail her out and escort her drunk ass back to hotel room before she gets into trouble. boy calls a few weeks later and she dodges. the end...

just kidding. years and a couple of boyfriends later other college friend (the one who was getting married before, not that it matters) discovers that boy and girl are living parallel lonely lives in the big city and meddles. boy sends girl endearing email, stopping shy of "i never stopped thinking about you," settling on "maybe we could get coffee or something." girl is intrigued. writes back... enter the mailer demon who eats girl's first attempts at answering said endearing email. after much difficulty the two finally manage a pretty lively email exchange. feels a little too much like online dating but girl goes with it. guy never mentions hanging out and disappears... girl makes a good party story out of weirdo guy who asked her out and took it back. a little flabbergasted, really, that boy sought her out and then rejected her. moves on. goes back to stalking her favorite clown. the end...

just kidding. 3 weeks (or so) later, boy reappears with extra-lame email (they were all pretty lame, to be honest). sorry for the radio silence. blah blah blah. what has girl been up to. still no mention of hanging out.

are you kidding me?!?

bring the troops back home

this has nothing to do with the recent election.

my mild-mannered boyfriend (mb, henceforth referred to as mmmb), is engaged in a full-out war. seems that at a recent work conference, mmmb ate lunch with an acquaintance who turns out to be a raving right-wing christian evangelist lunatic. rrwcel asked mmmb if he was saved, mmmb told rrwcel that he most certainly was, thank you, and from there it went downhill. rrwcel told mmmb it wasn't good enough to just be saved, that mmmb wasn't nearly sorry enough for his sins, and that mmmb having led an appropriately mild-mannered life without major rebellion or drug addiction from which to repent definitely meant he was going to hell.

rrwcel really picked the wrong guy to try and save, as mmmb is already a reasonably religious lutheran-school-educated guy (rrlseg? no, i'll stop). but mmmb is not a lover of this or any other rrwcel's, and so the two of them are now in full e-mail war in which mmmb sends rrwcel quotes from zen buddhists, marilyn manson, homosexual mystics, and the bible, and rrwcel emails him back re-affirming his going-to-hell-ness with out-of-context quotes from corinthians. i am not a lover of rrwcels either, but i am a lover of mmmb, and i'm getting a little worried that a lynch mob is about to form at mmmb's door. does he qualify for the witness protection program??

this suburban life

yesterday i took my neighbor's cocker spaniel to the area dog park, made greek salad for a dinner party, counseled a male friend on his love life, lamented my dying patio herb garden... from this series of events i draw two conclusions:

one: i seem to have become eerily domestic in the last twenty-four hours.

two: i want a puppy.

i'm trying to resist the urge to ramble about my equivocal feelings on gender traditions in this modern age, or about how i reeeeeally reeeealllly want a puppy and i promise i would take such good care of her and i would walk her and feed her and love her and you'd never have to do anything please please please can i have a puppy can i? instead, for now i'm going to content myself with begging my neighbors to let me walk sophie more often, so i don't have to be any more domestically responsible by having a dog of my own.

i don't know, maybe i'm just especially deep?

just a brief shout out to a good friend for having the cajones, or at least the sleep-deprived filterlessness, to stoll leisurely down a sidewalk crowded with middle-aged men, telling me why she dislikes thongs. and not a one-line description, either - we're talking PhD dissertation on the various types and brands she has tried, and exactly what happens with each. all without batting an eyelash at the heads turning her way. i know everyone has a filterless friend, but this is not that girl. this is a well-mannered new england girl who can name multiple plaid prints and spoon soup in the proper direction.

it takes a strong man

on saturday afternoon my boyfriend (mb) and i were in lincoln square having lunch with my aunt, who is visiting from guatemala, where she has been living for the past three years working as a therapist at a church-run mental health and retreat center up in the mountains. first of all, cheers to chicago for having a guatemalan restaurant for us to visit while we talked about her work. second, cheers to my aunt for being a catholic nun with her masters in biology who, despite those traditional-sounding titles, now works with herbs and crystals and reiki masters. but third, and most importantly, cheers to mb for agreeing to the following evening: as we left the restaurant my aunt invited us to a slide show being put on by one of her other nun-friends about one of their recent visits to the retreat center. my aunt gave us a terrific out, saying she was sure we had other plans, but no... mb: "actually, i would love to see those slides!" and before we knew it, there we were with a dozen sixty-plus-year-old happy white-haired nuns eating ham sandwiches looking at vacation slides. i'm not sure which was my favorite part of the evening - the stacks of feminist literature on the host nun's bookshelves, the whole group's dismay over the recent election results, or mb's excitement about talking with one of the nuns about her recent trip to bangkok. i don't know, if anyone has seen "the ladies' man" you'll have to explain the joke to me. but i stand by the title of this post. not every man would spend his saturday night that way. to be fair, we did go to huettenbar afterward to re-hash the evening in a sufficiently masculine smoke-filled wood-paneled german-beer-stein-pounding fashion.

i was always worried about his inevitable second chin

so up front i have to warn you, i'm just not as funny as my partner in blog crime... but here's what i got:

we all know that feeling. that wake up and look at the clock and think to yourself, "that can't be right" feeling. so you blink a couple of times, dimly aware that it's a little too sunny in your bedroom. yup. it's 7:15. you were supposed to be at work at 7:00. and yet, it's 7:15. then it begins. "MOTHER &%*$@#&!!!!!!" so you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, trying to decide how stinky you really are, running out the door half dressed with most of your stuff still strewn around the apartment (as opposed to in your bag where it's supposed to be). how many of those days end up going well? at least the sox won.

my subject refers to thing that i resentfully said over dinner with my girlfriends the other night. the point wasn't really the maligning of the ex-es but, what with the aforementioned smoldering resentment, i couldn't resist. i would feel bad about it, but for the amusing consequence of one of the gals laughing so hard that she snarfed water all over the place.

number one favorite thing about post-season baseball, immediately followed by presidential election: easy way to avoid reality television. a little too much anxiety though- i don't have any fingernails left.

grammar girl goes postal

with all apologies to some of my favorite musical artists, lyrics i wish had never found their way into songs: anything about party people getting down. (et tu, ozomatli?) and definitely anything about setting your spirit free. spirits should also not sing, fly, or soar.

i think any subject of writing, whether it be lyrics, poetry, prose, or anonymous e-manifesto, belongs in one of two categories. either it is poetic, and deserves to be treated as such, without cliche, or it is not. i'm not saying we shouldn't talk about the little things - i mean, clowns? upn? who am i to judge? but i say: celebrate the mundane! who needs party people getting down? why dress it up? how about pointy-shoed girls wearing hoochie pants all lined up coatless in the cold looking for something they can't have? how about scruffy underemployed twenty-somethings in the middle of nowhere milling around a parents'-basement-cum-bachelor-pad swilling pbr and talking about the bears? it's priceless just like it is. although it is harder to rhyme with basement-cum-bachelor pad...

did i already mention my feelings about inappropriate uses of "you go, girl"? maybe i'll save that for another time.

send in the

clowns.

this is a subject which has come up briefly before in this blog, but as most people do not work with clowns on a regular basis, i think it bears further discussion.

we have a clown troupe that comes through regularly to entertain children (and staff), and every time they come through i feel a little confused. how is one supposed to feel when seeing clowns? the professional part of me feels a little warm and fuzzy that we're child friendly enough to provide such entertainment. the child part of me is a little distressed, because i want the clowns to be a little more colorful, maybe all piling out of a small car or wearing rainbow wigs or something. these are more down-to-earth punk-looking clowns who just happen to have red noses. think pseudo-professional hobo clowns. the post-gen-x part of me likes the punkness of the clowns. the cynical part of me likes the fact that they help everyone take their jobs less seriously. the insecure part of me wants to talk to the clowns but can't because i worry i'm not funny enough for them. the schoolgirl part of me loooooooves that my blogmate has a crush on one of the clowns. it's even better than my college roommate who dated (in succession) a circus juggler who hit on her at the mall and a psychiatrist-trapeze artist who got exercise by wandering around the neighborhood on stilts. better than that, because although those situations were certainly unique, a crush on a work clown is like a crush on a minor tv personality, say, the restaurant guy that the mom is dating on gilmore girls. attractive, but no barometer for what he's really like. for all we know, restaurant guy and the cute clown are deviants or raging alcoholics or mama's boys (you pick which is worse). the psychiatrist-trapeze artist on stilts really was out there, but you could at least talk to the guy, even if it was "so... how are those stilts going for you? when is your next bungee-as-art performance?" how do you strike up a conversation with a clown? is it socially acceptable to just stare at his red nose, or is that offensive like women not wanting men to talk to our breasts? do you address him by his clown name? do you want to know his real name, or does it take away the magic if he's not "dr. dufus"? what does it do to your fantasies when they involve a guy named dr. dufus?

distressing.

toto, i don't think we're in kansas anymore

while talking with my boyfriend and some of his friends last week about their favorite songs, one of them mentioned a song he wants played at his wedding someday. since when do guys get together and talk about wedding songs?

while at a family wedding recently, my parents easily handled all of us cousins in taking advantage of the pre-dinner open bar. since when is my mother a better partier than i am?

while packing my lunch for work today, i completely forgot the dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans i'd meant to bring as a treat. since when do i forget about dessert?

something is wrong.

high school movies and political satire- but not in that order

while a lady i work with plays me alicia keys at 5:30 in the morning, i reflect on the cultural happenings of the week.
the winning quotation: "i feel like there was all this political satire that was potentially funny," the sad truth being that after a night at the theater (the artsy minimalist kind) our little circle of non-artsy more pragmatic types found that most of the humor was just beyond us. said another friend, "yeah, you really have to hit me over the head with it." in spite of not getting it, the play was very good, complete with cool punk theater and girl with stinky dreads sitting in front of me. seriously though, the decor in this place was fabulous.
all this followed by a lengthy conversation about high school movies and why we love them. not only the john hughes films of the 80's, but contemporary high school movies, totally irrelevant to our generation. these adolescents are much more scandolous than molly ringwald and anthony michael hall. scantily clad, misbehaving, rich, stylish teens... but we love them. we decided that love for high school flicks runs through our veins and we just can't resist.
back to the grind.

blog candy

so how many adjectives do you take in your coffee? the issue at hand: whether schmoofy lattes are rendered socially acceptable when they are seasonal. is it somehow OK to order a nonfat decaf pumpkin spice latte because of it's association with autumn and halloween? clearly, ordering a soy halfcaf sugar free vanilla double latte is just annoying. for the sake of argument we're leaving out the fact that all things pumpkin flavored are cool by virtue of their urban hippiness.

speaking of urban hippies. the campus is crawling with very cute, slightly shaggy grad students these days. they only seem to surface at this time of year, messenger bags slung over shoulders, grey t-shirts, fleece vests. not birkenstocks, exactly- something less smelly. you picture them pouring over t.s. elliot or noam chomsky or something in the little coffee shops (more grungy and cool than the pumpkin latte places). oh right. we don't have any of those... the coffee shops i mean. but we do have the urban hippies- at least in october.

sometimes the truth hurts

i can't believe i had to hear about the tragic downfall of our favorite breakfast joint on my very own blog! perhaps my blog-mate and i are suffering a breakdown in communication (or this is really just a cutsie vehicle for us to amuse ourselves with our own babble).
but really, enough with the closings! first the cool gelatto place with the trendy ikea furniture and really yummy flavors like coconut and bacci. the best part was that you only needed to buy five to get a free one.
going back to come back in for a moment, i never even got to swipe one of their cool blue pint glasses.
fortunately there's a new yummy ice cream place close to where the other one was-- i'll try not to consider that the one brought on the demise of the other. they have banana milkshakes.
haven't really found the right breakfast booze venue here in chi-town.
apparently my life as an endless grad student doesn't render too m any good stories. ooh. but there was the time that my (ex)boyfriend's cat jumped out of the car window at the wendy's drive through into the wendy's kitchen causing quite a stir.

rock the vote

so, over the weekend i was running thru a local arboretum when a turtle had started to cross the road in front of me. i stopped to watch, then another runner stopped to watch with me, and it soon became apparent that the cliche about turtles being the last to finish the race or whatever is grounded in reality. going nowhere fast. problem was that there were cars on this particular path... so the two of us flanked the turtle so he wouldn't get squished. then a third runner stopped further up the road, motioning cars to slow down. then the first cars came by and stopped to watch the progress... by the end of the journey there were 12 people safeguarding this turtle.

i was feeling very proud of my little community that could band together to protect our slow-footed friend... until i heard a tragic story: my favorite breakfast place is about to be torn down to make room for more lake view condos. i ask you: what is more important? another overpriced condo? or a place that makes the best hollandaise sauce a veggie benedict could ask for, and pairs it with a bloody mary for only $1??? i think the facts speak for themselves. so i turn my cause from the turtle to the table: anyone reading this, please join me and save the come back inn!!! can we form a citizens' interest group or something? people for the ethical treatment of breakfast booze?

things that are annoying

the car on your street, parked TOTALLY crooked. you picture a drunk blond girl, staggering home from a night with ritzy martinis in her hand that accessorize her ass-tight jeans and pointy shoes who really too tired to try anymore and just gave up with the parallel parking endeavor half way through and just left the friggin' car that way. but maybe you've just got the story wrong and there's a compelling to walk away from a car in mid-parallel-park to stick out into the street for 3 days.

paralyzed boys who send unsolicited endearing emails and then fail to deliver... then you get to unload your woes about said paralyzed boys to the episodically insightful boyfriend of a friend who reads you the riot act about how pretty and smart you are and how men should be falling at you feet. WELL, THEY'RE NOT. you're quietly admitting to yourself (and probably your inner circle of 9 closest girlfriends) that, liberated or not, you're about ready for that engagement ring already and he's still standing there under the burrito sign, unable to decide he actually likes burritos.

it's also annoying that for the apparent 6 times a day that the simpsons are on, they never seem to on at the moment that you need to be rescued from your girliness by a good half hour of crass (but let's face it- side-splitting) humor.

his name is wally and he likes to mambo

so after meeting the polish soul brother who wears his bass a little to high on his chest and makes disconcerting orgasm faces while he plays we rode home in silence for a while until we found ourselves on the topic of a certain clown that we know.
actually, we don't know him. that's the problem.
but really, since blogging is all about honesty, only one of us has any desire to know the nameless clown. i mean... know him.
so our conversation was led down the path of what it means exactly- to be de-clowned. is it about taking of the enourmous shoes and red nose... or is it dirty?

in other notes... seriously, saw a great band tonight. reminded me of my former life's career goal to go on tour with james brown. on further review of my non-existent musical ability, i thought it might be more reasonable to one day play the cowbell in a band someday. until i saw this band with a nationally renowned cowbell player, and cut short my dreams. back to the office. :)

no joke about the band though. bad-ass middle aged latinos (and token pole), guayaberas and all. even those of us who ruthlessly mock the painfully white salsa geeks couldn't keep our asses in our chairs.

count pointer-count

my turn, although the less creative of the pair...

oldest child of two working-class dying-industrial-city-native types, i moved around a lot before finally graduating from a high school in which the teen pregnancies outnumbered the college bound. naturally, i fit in fabulously, by which i mean was just plain obstinate. i decided that i would only read modern literature that nobody else had read and which i really only pretended to understand, refused to pollute my mind with mass media, etc. god forbid i might watch football. it would have all been fine, really, except that goths don't exist in a town where everyone works at the truck factory. which is probably for the best; i've never been very good at make-up and the white face paint would have just stained the black clothes.

10 years later, here i am, reading cosmo, watching sitcoms on the wb, and calling my girlfriends in crisis because i don't have the perfect pair of shoes for a party this weekend.

what 8 years of higher education will do.

points of disagreement

gilmore girls
the cars (especially tonight she comes)
beer that tastes like molasses
sheet and blanket vs. duvet cover alone
where one of us should spend her weekends
whether or not the other's local bar is cool enough for us
appleton, wisconsin
goat cheese
well-fitting pants
whether one of us should fall in love with off-road biking

are these my favorite movies?

boogie nights
eyes wide shut
ghost world
welcome to the dollhouse
in america
french twist

going solo

so i here i am, one half of the new, extra-girly, email geek team, venturing out on my own.
destined to be nerdy, the child of 2 brainy college professor types, i spent the first 12 years of my life in chapel hill, north carolina. uprooted to nashville just in type for the awkward junior high years, undergrad at university of texas in austin... campus to campus. i was powerless to resist the draw of life as an academic. who knew defending a thesis would be so intimidating. might as well put if off a little longer. that's the great thing about graduate school- you can do it forever.
made an important discovery about reheating coffee this morning. heat up the black coffee a little too much an then add cold milk, rather than adding the milk first and reheating it in it's doctored state. you get less of the icky reheated taste. who knew?
mission for the day: $10 haircut at the punk supercuts equivalent, stock up on $3 wine at trader joe's, return overdue library books, climbing gym.
mission for the season: find ridiculous autumn-y harvest festivals with pumkins and cider and stuff... maybe even a hay ride. learn to cook soup with sophisticated ingredients like leeks or squash. paint the living room.
what next?

wisdom, the sequel

14) frosted tips are specific but not sensitive for gay men
15) when the hot guy is fishing for an invite, even if you're not the one interested, take one for the team and get his number
16) girls really do tell each other everything.
17) all size 8s are not created equal

people to stalk

fungal scholar who lives downstairs
sheepish indian man with motorcycle
charming indian neurologist with girlfriend
shaggy grad students
the guy at miami flavors who fed us with a spoon
cute bike shop guy
fine arts professors living in wicker park
anyone with real estate in lincoln square
urban hippies with messenger bags and fleece
smelly french man on plane
duck lady in new orleans
reclusive film director (without angst)
pleated-pants-wearing-sweater-tucked-in snitty man who yelled at me

opening day

so how do you separate fact from fiction? did he really say that we were dating or did that just get extrapolated later? how many pregnant women can one highly specialized work force tolerate before it all just falls apart? are we really this bored?

welcome to the colloborative effort of two circus clowns (or something like that) who really ought to be sleeping. instead we've decided to unleash our collective proclivity toward filterlessness onto the unsuspecting public. perhaps we can inflict on you the uneasy sensation that we so often feel: vulnerable in a way that makes you uncomfotable.

no really. there are two of us. unrelated. un-entangled. too much spare time... or maybe not enough. here's our wisdom for the day (some is borrowed and some is our own creation)...

1) once your pants come off it's a whole new kind of awkwardness
2) there are no secrets in the age of google
3) beer beats fancy martini any day of the week
4) women can be sexy and drink bourbon at the same time
5) no matter how independent you think you are, AAA is a good thing
5.5) you can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
6) it's possible to get lost on a circular trail
7) don't ever throw a steaming hot turkey carcass into a plastic trash bag
8) you don't have to be jewish to make matzoh ball soup
9) there's nothing good about an office park
10) sometimes it really is just about the conquest
11) you have to ask yourself if you want the girl (or boy)
12) hot dog restaurants are only good from a distance (resist temptation!)
13) hmm... sounds like your alternator

that about does it.
tune in next time for the shallow girl's guide to trail running.
otherwise known as "don't ever leave your car in berwyn."