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.