don't ask me why mb and i found ourselves reading about kool-aid on wikipedia this evening.
but look at the list of flavors. seriously, did someone put one of these in thinking nobody would read about kool-aid?
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
sour grapes
egocentrism is not without its pittfalls. perhaps if i didn't see myself as quite so much the center of my own little universe i'd spend alot less time feeling slighted.
i say this after feeling personally and specifically persecuted after receiving an invite over myspace to join some kind of jewish american singles group, and after indulging in some quality fuming in the car this afternoon, consumed by the conviction that attractive men pushing baby carriages exist for the single purpose of making me feel jealous and spiteful.
i say this after feeling personally and specifically persecuted after receiving an invite over myspace to join some kind of jewish american singles group, and after indulging in some quality fuming in the car this afternoon, consumed by the conviction that attractive men pushing baby carriages exist for the single purpose of making me feel jealous and spiteful.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
there goes the neighborhood
it's not that i was surprised that the sheffield garden walk was a big, drunken frat party. i knew exactly what was in store for me. and it was totally worth it to spend an hour and a half ogling the lead singer of better than ezra...
it was also worth it, just in the overhearing of this conversation between tiny blond girl (in her tiny shorts and tiny tank top) and nondescript guy (who was admittedly attractive in an abercrombie kind of way):
girl: "hey, i think i know you!"
guy: "really? how do you think you know me?"
girl: "i think we made out in a bar!"
guy: "really?"
girl: "yeah! some bar in viagra triangle!"
it was even better than the other abercrombie guy whom i passed right as he was loudly belching into his cell phone.
it was also worth it, just in the overhearing of this conversation between tiny blond girl (in her tiny shorts and tiny tank top) and nondescript guy (who was admittedly attractive in an abercrombie kind of way):
girl: "hey, i think i know you!"
guy: "really? how do you think you know me?"
girl: "i think we made out in a bar!"
guy: "really?"
girl: "yeah! some bar in viagra triangle!"
it was even better than the other abercrombie guy whom i passed right as he was loudly belching into his cell phone.
Monday, July 17, 2006
drunkonomics
you will be happy to know that my bad attitude is fixed.
i had a little meltdown in the office today, and forced my blogmate to stop what she was doing (actual work) to deal with my anger at school, namely, my complete lack of understanding of the famous economics guy (hmm... feg? it's so simple and perfect) running this course i'm taking. turns out the feg thinks we all understand calculus, or at least variables, and definitely supply and demand. but the feg is teaching hospital staff, not economists, and we health care people are not theoretical types. at one point a few years ago i told my blogmate that working had killed my capacity for abstraction (and to her great credit, my blogmate consoled me that at least i'd ever had it, and noticed when it was gone). so, ever helpful, my good blogmate suggested several practical strategies for surviving the feg, including getting help from her brother, who turns out to be an economics-for-dummies instructor, or from my sociologist friend who actually picks girls to date based on their understanding of statistics.
i have a better solution: gin. it turns out that one g&t makes indifference curves more tolerable. perhaps after two, i will forgive the feg for assigning reading that we never discuss in class, and after three, i might forgive the fact that this class is supposed to be about health research and not economics in the first place.
don't talk to me about the law of diminishing returns. i don't want to hear it.
i had a little meltdown in the office today, and forced my blogmate to stop what she was doing (actual work) to deal with my anger at school, namely, my complete lack of understanding of the famous economics guy (hmm... feg? it's so simple and perfect) running this course i'm taking. turns out the feg thinks we all understand calculus, or at least variables, and definitely supply and demand. but the feg is teaching hospital staff, not economists, and we health care people are not theoretical types. at one point a few years ago i told my blogmate that working had killed my capacity for abstraction (and to her great credit, my blogmate consoled me that at least i'd ever had it, and noticed when it was gone). so, ever helpful, my good blogmate suggested several practical strategies for surviving the feg, including getting help from her brother, who turns out to be an economics-for-dummies instructor, or from my sociologist friend who actually picks girls to date based on their understanding of statistics.
i have a better solution: gin. it turns out that one g&t makes indifference curves more tolerable. perhaps after two, i will forgive the feg for assigning reading that we never discuss in class, and after three, i might forgive the fact that this class is supposed to be about health research and not economics in the first place.
don't talk to me about the law of diminishing returns. i don't want to hear it.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
mb:1. sea lions: 0.
you will all be happy to know (and unsurprised if you know him) that mb did not get eaten by sea lions today in the alcatraz challenge. in fact, he thinks he took 17th place overall and 3rd in his age group. this for a 1.5 mile swim through choppy sea water and a 7-mile run up hilly switchbacks, none of which we actually have in chicago, so he did well.
meanwhile, back at the ranch, i have to learn that just because i am biking on roads and paths with many other people this weekend, that does not give me free license to mumble obscenities like i typically do while driving. on my bike people can actually hear me, which has been problematic. a very surprised triathlete putting on his socks certainly did hustle to get out of my way, though.
meanwhile, back at the ranch, i have to learn that just because i am biking on roads and paths with many other people this weekend, that does not give me free license to mumble obscenities like i typically do while driving. on my bike people can actually hear me, which has been problematic. a very surprised triathlete putting on his socks certainly did hustle to get out of my way, though.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
head above water
i have no idea how i earned the college reputation of being the zen roommate. granted, in our house of 3, my roommates were a pierced angry feminist social work/chemistry major and a tiny punk neurotic microbiologist who's allergic to everything, so that might not be saying much. but it certainly doesn't fit my recent bouts of irrational anger.
briefly, the good mb is training for some event this weekend involving flying to san francisco and swimming from alcatraz to the mainland then running 7 miles. in preparation for said event, many negotiations have been had regarding training swims in lake michigan. i had recently lost a long-standing bet in which he insisted that the ohio street beach is a mecca for crazy triathlete swimmers and i told him crazy triathletes did not deserve their own mecca. having discovered said mecca (there are lane ropes in the water and up to 100 people at a time decked in head-to-toe spandex), i finally agreed that we could go swimming there. does mb accept this graciously? of course not. he blinks at me a few times and says (to his girlfriend who has just conceded that she is wrong) "i was actually hoping we could drive to the point and swim in the big scary open cold pointy waves, because that will more closely simulate the conditions at alcatraz." so now every single time a swimming-related negotiation arises (which in our household is frequent) i am immediately angry. even though i like swimming, and even actually like swimming in the big scary cold pointy waves off the point. but what kind of person takes his girlfriend's concession of defeat and pushes even further? and then, this weekend when we finally agreed to a morning of swimming and lounging at the beach, found out that the beach was closed (e coli), and on my return later to discover a re-opened beach, i thought i was doing the right thing and called mb to have him join me for the swimming i assumed he desired. do i get any thanks? no, i get "i think you like to do too many things. can't we just sit instead?" sit? am i the one who's planning to fly cross-country to plow through sea-lion infested 50-degree water? so, in conclusion, swimming = angry.
with the upcoming event at alcatraz this weekend, i thought that my random angriness might be over, but fast forward to my current enrollment in this summer course through work that teaches research methods and cost-effectiveness analysis and such. now, my vocabulary is pretty good, but i could not for the life of me understand why every single instructor needed to use the word "heuristically" in every lecture. each time it comes up i have gotten a little madder. do they need a thesaurus? then i asked mb to look it up online, and discovered that "heuristically" means "rule of thumb," or "a set of guidelines based on estimates or best guesses instead of actual data." this explains why economists love it. i concede.
in the end, i have a new job that lets me take classes, a hobby involving playing at the beach, and a new word that i can use for just about anything and sound smarter. and blog material to satisfy my recently-deserted blogmate and self-appointed critic sm (which reminds me, s, when you were in law school i can count on one hand the number of phone calls i got from you, so if i don't have a blog for a few weeks while i'm trying to be in school and start a new job, i don't want to hear it. you're long since forgiven for the few-year pause in correspondence, but if it happens while you're in new york i will show up on your doorstep anyway and demand to be entertained. heuristically, of course. i think.)
briefly, the good mb is training for some event this weekend involving flying to san francisco and swimming from alcatraz to the mainland then running 7 miles. in preparation for said event, many negotiations have been had regarding training swims in lake michigan. i had recently lost a long-standing bet in which he insisted that the ohio street beach is a mecca for crazy triathlete swimmers and i told him crazy triathletes did not deserve their own mecca. having discovered said mecca (there are lane ropes in the water and up to 100 people at a time decked in head-to-toe spandex), i finally agreed that we could go swimming there. does mb accept this graciously? of course not. he blinks at me a few times and says (to his girlfriend who has just conceded that she is wrong) "i was actually hoping we could drive to the point and swim in the big scary open cold pointy waves, because that will more closely simulate the conditions at alcatraz." so now every single time a swimming-related negotiation arises (which in our household is frequent) i am immediately angry. even though i like swimming, and even actually like swimming in the big scary cold pointy waves off the point. but what kind of person takes his girlfriend's concession of defeat and pushes even further? and then, this weekend when we finally agreed to a morning of swimming and lounging at the beach, found out that the beach was closed (e coli), and on my return later to discover a re-opened beach, i thought i was doing the right thing and called mb to have him join me for the swimming i assumed he desired. do i get any thanks? no, i get "i think you like to do too many things. can't we just sit instead?" sit? am i the one who's planning to fly cross-country to plow through sea-lion infested 50-degree water? so, in conclusion, swimming = angry.
with the upcoming event at alcatraz this weekend, i thought that my random angriness might be over, but fast forward to my current enrollment in this summer course through work that teaches research methods and cost-effectiveness analysis and such. now, my vocabulary is pretty good, but i could not for the life of me understand why every single instructor needed to use the word "heuristically" in every lecture. each time it comes up i have gotten a little madder. do they need a thesaurus? then i asked mb to look it up online, and discovered that "heuristically" means "rule of thumb," or "a set of guidelines based on estimates or best guesses instead of actual data." this explains why economists love it. i concede.
in the end, i have a new job that lets me take classes, a hobby involving playing at the beach, and a new word that i can use for just about anything and sound smarter. and blog material to satisfy my recently-deserted blogmate and self-appointed critic sm (which reminds me, s, when you were in law school i can count on one hand the number of phone calls i got from you, so if i don't have a blog for a few weeks while i'm trying to be in school and start a new job, i don't want to hear it. you're long since forgiven for the few-year pause in correspondence, but if it happens while you're in new york i will show up on your doorstep anyway and demand to be entertained. heuristically, of course. i think.)
Friday, July 07, 2006
defensive action
before my blogmate has a chance to publicly mock me about my consistent and obvious sports watching bandwagon-ness allow me to self-deprecate.
yet again, my life has been taken over my obsession with the final rounds of a sport that i normally care nothing about. if you ask my blogmate she'll tell you that i do this all the time.
i understand that as a 50% french person it's my moral and genetic obligation to care about "football" (i think you can only spell it "futbol" if you're actually a fan of ridiculous, latino-style, "gooooooooool"-screaming commentating, a phenomenon that i personally find to be extremely irritating).
i've always been a bit of a disappointment to some of my french relatives, mostly for my inherent american-ness, but also for my inability to serve any useful function in the spontaneous soccer matches that take place before, during, and after summer gatherings -the rules are such that everyone plays, shoes or not, skirt or not, and that wrath of my grandmother when you've taken out her geraniums is the price you pay for participating in the national pastime.
the truth, i've never really cared about soccer... until now... for the following reasons...
1) respectable excuse to repeatedly hang out in bars in the middle of the day
2) recognition from my boss that this is important, such that he actually makes sure i get out of work in time
3) keeping up with the jones' - i don't know if it's a chicago thing, but EVERYONE is talking about this. it's like reading middlesex or eating sushi - it's necessary data gathering so that you can talk to people at parties
4) chance to publicly love france
5) weird visceral satisfaction - for some reason i keep doing this
and, finally
6) REALLY HOT GUYS with nice legs and really emotive faces who cry like babies when they lose and rip their shirts of when they're happy. i spend most of my waking hours conjuring up schemes by which i get to marry zinedine zidane.
is there a support group for this?
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