at least you can pick your friends

one of the many nice things about my blogmate's new neighborhood is that she lives stumbling distance from the four corners (affectionately self-dubbed T4C) on taylor street. admittedly, liking T4C is about as challenging as liking death cab for cutie - it's a perfect bar, right down to the light fixtures.

yesterday, as my blogmate and i sidled up to the bar with the cribbage board while we waited for mb to get back from swimming, i instantly fell in love with bartender. tall, punk, devastatingly attractive british boy with an almost comically sexy british accent. he was like a character in a nick hornby novel, without the requisite broodiness. i was so busy gawking at him that my blogmate was left with a pretty lousy cribbage partner.

eventually another hot british guy with an equally soul-melty accent ("what'll you have, love?") replaced the first, and just as i was thinking that i was never going to another bar ever again, the music was muted and everyone turned their attention to the metromix review of T4C that came on TV. apparently "hot bartenders" gets billed just below, "ten beers on fancy european taps," and "tater tots" as the bar's main perks.

before i could get good and depressed about the reality that i wasn't the only one who knew about the dreamy bartenders, in came twinset with a personal crisis that i found so entertaining that i forgot all about my new soulmate(s).

for reasons that are ultimately generous and nice, twinset's mother-in-law is moving to chicago this weekend. let's start out by saying that 1) this is not a surprise and 2) twinset is fundamentally pleased with this decision. they've been talking about this at least as long as i've known them... so it's a bit of head scratcher that suddenly this whole thing is going down in such a flustered state of chaos. it seems that all of a sudden mother-in-law sold her house (somewhere east-coasty) much faster than anyone had anticipated, leaving twinset and her husband not very much time to work out alot of details like, where was she going to live?, and how was she going to get here?

but the real question has become, what are they going to do about the baby grand piano, which apparently must accompany mother-in-law to chicago? apparently there are no relatives anywhere up the eastern seaboard who want this piano and NO ONE (not even mother-in-law) actually plays the piano, but someday potential grand children may need piano lessons.

twinset and her husband live a 2 bedroom lofted sort of place downtown and cannot, WILL NOT accommodate this piano, so the decision has been made that the baby grand will go with mother-in-law into her (drumroll please) ONE BEDROOM DOWNTOWN APARTMENT.

as you can imagine, a transcontinental piano move is an expensive, big deal. and it's probably not a reasonable suggestion (though it mother-in-law did put it out there) that the piano could get put on its side and shoved in the walk-in-closet.

my blogmate, mb, and i were in stitches by this point, with mb saying that if it were a shiny white baby grand that he himself could make room for it, fulfilling some kind of john lennon fantasy in which my blogmate played it while wearing a white ballgown and he stood by and gazed at her while wearing a white tuxedo. we all made helpful suggestions like, "maybe your mother and law can put down an egg-crate and sleep on top of the piano," and "maybe one day you guys could use it as a baby crib." then we started placing bets on how long it would take for the piano to wind up in twinset's apartment, as we described vivid disaster scenarios on moving day. "what it the piano exceeds the weight restriction of the freight elevator?" and "what if it won't fit through the door?"

good times.

friends with desk jobs

coming home from a stroll (read: shopping) around lakeview this afternoon, i was feeling cheerful until i got to my building. first off, big box addressed to me sitting outside the front door, clearly marked "dell" on the side. only slightly less effective than "steal this piece of expensive electronic equipment," if you ask me. i'm also marginally annoyed that i couldn't trade in the free wireless router for, say, a cheaper computer, since i already have a wireless router, but that's another story.

anyway, i quickly had to shove the "why are the dell delivery guys idiots?" thoughts out of my head to make room for, "why does the lobby smell like feet?" and "why is the elevator making such creepy lurching movements and horrible sounds?"

i was feeling cranky about these things for a minute, but then i checked my email and immediately felt better. i'd like to formally thank my good blogmate (mgbm) for bringing her good friend sm into the mix... mostly because between mgbm and sm i now get TONS of emails.

to my extraordinary delight, sm loves many of the things i like, such as figure skating and boys. recently, she has joined me in compulsive buffy the vampire slayer watching. her play by play of the experience makes me 1) feel better about my own unhealthy obsession, 2) re-experience the entire series, and 3) have many messages in my inbox all the time. it's great.

sm has become so predictable in her buffy-related correspondence that when i got a completely anonymous text message on my cell phone that only read, "omg! oz is a werewolf?" i knew who it was and what it was about without any hesitation.

further enhancing my internet experience has been the fact that, despite having what i suspect is a fairly hectic work schedule, mgbm has been sending me many, funny little emails lately, mostly in the "i hate everything" variety.

so let's drink to mgbm, sm, friends with time to email, the internet, and buffy the vampire slayer... and angel, because he's hot.

all systems go?

i'm really not one for conspiracy theory, or even one to revel in the incompetance of government agencies...

and i understand that euphemisms sometimes serve an important social function...

but i was listening to a story this morning on NPR about the upcoming NASA launch of space shuttle discovery and i found it pretty interesting.

apparently the 20 highest ranking NASA guys had their big vote the other day - the launch is scheduled as planned, even though the chief engineer and the head of SAFETY voted "no go."

now, i know absolutely nothing about rocket science, but this decision makes me nervous.
the HEAD ENGINEER and HEAD SAFETY GUYS think this a bad idea and we're doing it anyway? disconcerting on a tangible level, and also in more of a spidy sense way. aren't they just asking for something bad to happen, what with going ahead with a launch inspite of this very public vote.

the most entertaining aspect of the story was actually the "go" executives talking about why they were pro-launch. sure, there have been a few "loss of vehicle incidents," but these no go votes represent "healthy debate."

i'm not reassured.

SWM seeks punctual SWF

by the time i was done with my work day and my blogmate had completed operation buy-new-plants-for-new-backyard, and by the time we were both done battling northside, pre-cubs-game traffic we were both ready for a beer or three. it was thus with much relief that we finally managed to find each other at the village tap. i drank stella and she drank molasses (otherwise known as rogue hazelnut) and we munched on spinach and mushroom quesedillas feeling pretty darned good about ourselves...

and that was before we'd even realized how good we had it.

come to find out that my good blogmate had been wondering why she been greeted with such a welcoming grin by a certain suit-wearing gentleman hanging out in the bar, awkwardly without escort. she then arranged herself at a table such that she couldn't see what i was seeing which was a markedly attractive, well-dressed man pacing nervously around the bar, until he was finally joined by a similarly nervous woman who greeted him with a rather stiff handshake.

it was only then that i reported my discovery of the obviously internet-type blind date that was happening to my soon-to-be enlightened blogmate, who finally understood the frantic pre-drinking that she'd been observing while she waited for me.

we then proceeded that have a good, prolonged laugh at the new couple's expense, and developed various creative, though ultimately unfulfilled schemes to send the guy a drink as a condolence pride for 1) being on a blind date 2) having his date show up WAY late and 3) being busted for it by us. that said, we're not quite that mean, and we decided to leave it alone.

and i decided that i had another airtight reason not to go on j-date.

foreplay

as a general rule i try to avoid work-related shop talk on the blog. if i have to talk about my job i try to generalize things as much as possible, maintaining the illusion to my audience (and mostly to myself) that i'm just like everyone else.

but screw that.

i've had some minor health problems in the last few weeks that have resulted in my having to share various bits of very personal information with various doctors, all of whom have turned out to be uncomfortably aged-matched male peers. if you're a single girl and you're a pediatrics resident, the absolute last person you want examining you is single, boy as your internal medicine resident, especially when you work at the same hospital as him. it's just weird.

when the nephrology fellow wanted to know when i'd last smoked marijuana and did i prefer sex with men, women or both, that was awkward, but at least the weirdness was blunted by his being dorky and married. today when i went for my kidney ultrasound i was especially horrified to discover that my test would not be done by the fat, middle-aged radiology tech i was expecting, but by a young trendy resident with cute shaggy hair who was, let's just say it, hot... and definitely not wearing a wedding ring. i would have been completely mortified by the situation if he hadn't been so obviously mortified. instead i decided to lay back and have a good internal laugh at the comical absurdity of the situation.

"so you didn't want to wear a, um, gown?"
"she said i didn't have to. do you want me to?"
"uh, i don't know. i guess this is fine."

excrutiating.

and this is all before he couldn't actually find my left kidney and needed to call in his boss, who proceeded to school him in front of me,
"i've told you before you need to set the internal edge definition to 2" (or some other piece of technical hoopla that i didn't understand).
by the time it was all over i was lying along on the stretcher, covered with ultrasound gel, feeling like i needed to smoke a cigarette.

all i can say is, you don't really know awkwardness until a cute radiology resident puts an ultrasound probe down your pants.

there goes the neighborhood

i understand that there's nothing edgy about living in boystown. but that's part of its appeal. it's safe, the gardens are well groomed, and it's quiet. or at least, it used to be quiet.

a few months ago i woke up to the sounds of a loud, fairly awkward shouting match taking place in the street below. it was one of those domestic arguments that you really don't want to overhear - i felt a little embarassed just lying in bed listening to it, not only for its obviously not being meant for public consumption, but for it's awful, psych 101 quality, to the tune of, "YOU'RE UGLY! YOU'RE UGLY ON THE INSIDE!" painful, right?

not as painful as the fight that woke me a few days ago, i think between the same two people. they carried on long enough for me to make a number of observations about them, the first being that they were loud, obnoxious morons who both seemed to have been the recipients of exactly the wrong amount of education. enough schooling to know a few 3 syllable words, but not enough to know quite how to use them, or to quell the overwhelming springer factor. it started out with alot of "YOU'RE SO HYPOCRITICAL!" and "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I HAVE THAT OBLIGATION?" before things started really degenerating. to follow there was alot of "FAT SLUT!" and "LAZY WHORE!" and finally a resounding chorus of "NO YOU SHUT UP!" before the cops finally came.

classy.