back to school

i'm sorry, dear blog readership, but with my blogmate out of town (hopefully having the time of her life), not only are you all deprived the the funnier more articulate blog-half, but you're also also stuck listening to the boring, silly ranting that usually gets directed at her in small spurts of email, text, and phone conversation over the course of the day.

with that... what could be better than being a grad student with a real salary?

yesterday i attended the first of a year-long series of lectures entitled, "essentials of patient oriented research," a class designed to fulfill some kind of educational requirement of subspecialty training that might more aptly be titled, "how to be academic 101," or at least "how to fill out forms."

it's hard to describe the atmosphere in a room full of doctors, all fresh out of residency, who finally thought they got to act like grown-ups, but who are instead sent back to the classroom. imagine a group of fairly attractive, trendy-looking young professionals who have spent some number of years enslaved at the hospital, who now have to sign in, take a cookie, and sit still for an hour and half. they take attendance and make you move the front of the class and actually call on people to answer questions. the funny thing is that no one even tries to look like they're taking it seriously. people just sit there giggling, smirking, sleeping, trying to figure out how they can get out of coming to school every week but still get credit. the only word i can think of that describes it is "campy."

as i sat there, trying desperately to stay awake as a very enthusiastic dr. something-or-other gloriously pontificated about ideas and imagination and hypothesis and, yes, the theory of relativity, and i battled my inner demons. do i come to this class every week, in the continued (yet futile) hope that these lectures will actually be interesting and may even restore to me the smart braininess of my youth, or do i do like everyone else and just rig the sign-up sheet? did you say that you'll have cookies every week?

but then i did another survey of the room and was quite surprised to discover that i was filled with hotties. non-wedding-ring-wearing hotties. throw in the cookies and you got a deal!

return to sender

i think i'm caught in the middle of something sordid... or at least kinda funny.

i've never had the presence of mind to do it myself, but i've heard a slick way to block unwanted suitors is to hand over your digits with two of the numbers reversed.

seemingly, someone named monica has been handing out my number as some kind of decoy and now i find myself caught up in a tangled web of deceit and shadiness... or at least something a little weird.

first there was a phone call, mid-day, from a peppy sounding young girl,
"hi. monica?"
"nope, sorry wrong number."
"sorry, bye."

and then came the texts (exactly as they appeared in my phone):

"Hey whats up little girl. Hope im not interupting or anything. I was talking to sandra and we were talking about going to hooters this weekend and wanted to see if u wanted to go."

and a few days later...

"Whats going on little girl, just letting u know that nobody's getting together today. So do u got any plants for 2nite."

and finally,

"MONICA!!! Whats up? U doing anything 2nite? Any spot worth hitting up?"

i'm sure the right thing to do would be to send a polite text back alerting the sender of my inadvertent interception of this communication. for example:

"dude, i ain't monica!"
or
"hooters? really?"
or
"i don't know who 'little girl' is but i think she played ya"
or
"interrupted has two "r"s and you have the wrong number"

instead, i'm willfully allowing this debacle to continue... because i think it's entertaining and i'm hoping it gets juicier before it lets up. after much speculation, i still can't figure out what sort of relationship would result in these text messages. flirty, awkward, and a little trashy. little girl?! HOOTERS?!? is that a date? i can't even figure out if the sender is a man or a woman, or if there are multiple senders.

what i do know is that someone is going be pretty embarrassed when they find out that i am the recipient of their carefully crafted correspondence.

rules of engagement

where is emily post when you really need her?

a few blogs ago i suggested that the problem with internet dating was people's inappropriate sense that, having already succumbed to such powerful (yet inherently unromantic) forces, adherence to well-established social norms was unnecessary.

but i stand corrected.

it seems this phenomenon has nothing to do with the internet and that single people are just, well, clueless.

i come to this conclusion after a few phone conversations with one of my good friends who has no trouble meeting men and getting dates without any help from cyberspace, but who is encountering as much deviation from protocol.

people just don't know how to behave anymore.

for the record, if a girl gives you her number, the right time for the first phone call is NOT 1 AM on a saturday night. and if you give your number to a girl and avidly encourage her to call you, and said girl actually does call you as promised, RETURN THE PHONE CALL. easy, right?

given this kind of barbaric courting behavior, i have authorized my friend to use any tactics she deems necessary to retaliate, or at least passive aggressively enforce the rules, and decided that any of the following excuses were fair game when she got called on thursday afternoon for a thursday night date:

1) i'm washing my hair
2) i have plans
3) i don't want to
or (the truth)
4) i can't go out with you because the season premier of grey's anatomy is on.

maybe we all need to go back to finishing school...

adjustment

over brats and beer at my blgomate's house last night i decided that twinset, twinset's husband and i had officially become honorary midwesterners. we didn't meet much protest from the chicago/wisconsin cohort - i guess people are always happy to have accomplices in brat eating and beer drinking.

but i still have some adjusting to do, as i had to take pause after reading this sentence in the paper this morning: "[barack] obama, who was the featured speaker at sen. tom harkin's annual steak fry, has repeatedly said his not a presidential candidate for 2008..."

sen. tom harkin's annual steak fry?!?

filterless survey

given the success of our previous call for the opinions of our loyal readers (see animist electronics: reprise), i'd like to put forth a new question for discussion, banter, and hopefully insult and mockery.
there's always lots of talk about what makes good hangover food, but for all the lying around on the couch you'll do after you've avoided vomiting (or gotten it over with), what movie should you watch? this issue came to mind after i heard about an obviously bad choice for this kind of predicament. i started making a list in my head of better alternatives, and came to the conclusion that almost anything would be a better idea than "happiness" (except for maybe "the hours" or "fear and loathing in las vegas").

i head off my list with:

office space
the big lebowski
better off dead
real genius

i'd like to invite the members of the academy to make their nominations in the category best (and worst) hangover film.

mockery turned on its ugly head

mb has been busy at work lately with many projects, at least one of which seems to involve training on patents and involves the creation of an "inventor's notebook" which i have been mocking ruthlessly. an inventor's notebook? what's that for? i have been composing mb's potential daily entries, which go "dear inventor's notebook: rob is such a tool! i couldn't believe what he said to me today..." and so forth.

but today over dinner, while mb and i were discussing vegetarian cooking (yes, mb, who believes that bacon is not a meat but more of a seasoning, was talking about vegetarian food), he wondered aloud, "you know, with all the advances in technology, i'm surprised that someone hasn't come up with a plant that grows meat." he envisions trees with bacon strips hanging from them, or perhaps a large shrub with coconut-like shells that, when cracked open, bring forth hamburger.

#1: i'm not sure if genetically engineered plants that grow meat would be better or worse for society.
#2: i take back everything i said about the inventor's notebook. mb might actually be the next thomas edison.

boring vortex of despair (you know who you are)

biking home from the dentist this morning i listened to a matchbox 20 song that i've always secretly liked, until i noticed the line, "i'm bleeding and broken."

(subject for another day: aren't fillings supposed to be made of some kind of creepy, indestructible polymer that shouldn't just randomly chip, mandating more dental visits?)

i then started thinking about jessica simpson (who i saw on "the view" while i was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's) and nick lechey, both of whom are currently plaguing the airways with dueling pop ballads of loss, strength, and redemption.

while i myself am presently stewing in a miserable funk (because my friend offered me her extra ticket to the killers and i can't go because i'll be in dallas doing homework), i'm concerned that black holes of mundane, gloomy drivel are taking over the universe.

rob thomas, jessica simpson, and nick leshea can sort of get away with it because, well, they're too rich and fabulous for anyone to stop them. but such behavior is not for lay people! unless you're david boreanaz (angel), brooding is not attractive. unless you're ben gibbard (death cab for cutie front man), content misery doesn't work. in short, unless you've a whole lot of sex appeal, you don't get to go around flaunting your vague, dysfunctional sadness.

content, discontent

back from a lovely "weekend" in northern wisconsin, if one can describe sunday through thursday as weekend, avoiding all the "wait, why aren't you at work?" questioning. for the record, we weren't at work because our jobs are awesome.

for four days i loved everything.

it was all very informative. i visited the well known tourist spots of shawano, embarrass, and green bay, and learned all sorts of interesting things at my blogmate's childhood home. though i'd been warned about refrigerators that outnumber humans, i still got a good laugh at "the zucchini bars are in the beer fridge." i got to meet nate rohan, fallen blog hero, at a bar where beer was 75 cents (at that price, the seven dollar all you can beer special seemed a bit ambitious). i played lots of cribbage and acquired my own cribbage board, made at least two trips to wal-mart, ate a very satisfying amount of breakfast meat, and somehow over the course of the week worked up the nerve to make myself an online dating profile.

it's taken a little revision to make it a little less redneck - perhaps trying to find a mate while you're in an "oh my god i love wisconsin, farms, and cheese curds!" phase isn't the best idea, but suddenly the iron was hot and it was time to strike.

and now i'm right back to hating everything, and possibly everyone.

with the help of my blogmate i specifically wrote my blurb to sound a little mean and sarcastic hoping to repel a specific kind of earnestness, but i failed miserably. why does everyone have to be so disgustingly nice? and also boring? and also have absolutely no sense of humor?

i don't mean to be harsh - clearly it takes some guts to accept your fate and join the online dating pool, and probably takes even more guts to actually send out messages, but dear god people, keep it together.

i understand that it's fashionable for men to have feelings (and for the most part i'm all for it), but "i am looking for my soulmate" is totally uncalled for. just because you're vulnerable enough to use a dating service doesn't mean you have to put it ALL out there for everyone to see all at once. sooner or later you can tell me all about your parents' marriage and your last relationship and your love of puppies, but the rules of social engagement can't all get suspended just because it's the internet.

and can we ban the use of the words, "cuddle," "romantic," "big heart," and "teddy bear?"

"i am looking for my soulmate," has become so generic that i'm putting in the category of "my style is pottery barn." it goes without saying. also going without saying are, "i like sports," "family is important to me," and "i want a girl who doesn't play games."

so here it is:
swf iso emotionally stifled, slightly angry, sarcastic guy who is appropriately self-deprecating about reading personals ads and will tolerate my love of buffy the vampire slayer. will negotiate with social smokers. please submit avatar.

yogurt vs gasoline

several days ago, at my good blogmate's suggestion, we attended a bicycle film festival at columbia college (which basically meant every tattooed bike messenger in the city drinking pbr in cans and hollering at the screen). there was a funny short film by the above title in which a guy on a road bike raced his brother on a motorcycle in getting across the city. you can predict what happens - guy on road bike coasts merrily down a bike path, while motorcyclist gets stuck in all kinds of traffic, and road biker wins by a lot. but it was cute - every time they showed the road biker, ice-cream-guy-style music would play, the weather looked a little nicer, people were waving; every time they showed the motorcyclist the music got angrier, people were honking, etc.

i've thought about this little short several times in the days since then. first of all, it's definitely inspired me to ride my bike more often, and i've tried riding to work a few times (mb does it all the time since he works downtown, but it's an 8-mile ride to the south side for me). it's a fun ride, especially when the gay games was being held all over the city and i got to ride past the men's water polo team hovering outside of the uic pool waiting for results, and the women's softball tournament in washington park. second, with the summer classes i've been taking, i haven't had tons of time for leisurely exercise, so i've been combining my trips to work/class with my exercise by bike-muting. but third, and most importantly, with the summer classes and the bike-muting i haven't had much time or energy left to go shopping, and as a result my credit card bills look fabulous. i couldn't believe how much less i've spent in the past two months! it's hard to drop $100 at target when i'll have to carry the results on my back.

naturally, i can't leave a good thing alone, and conclude that biking leads to a more active and less expensive lifestyle. now that classes are done (and thanks again to ck and my good blogmate for accompanying my rum-drinking celebratory post-exams afternoon yesterday) and i'm up a few modest dollars, it's shopping time.

goodbye, hippie-grad-student-low-consumer lifestyle - he-LLO, sale racks!

b.y.o. lawn chair

it should be no surprise to any of you that i'm frequently guilty of cinematic slumming. the fact that i actually own "bring it on" might tip you off. no big shock, then, that i went to see "step up" the night it opened. (my partner in crime for the evening was sm, my new ally in pop teen culture obsession, who was more than willing to delay watching a few episodes of dark, broody angel.) i won't lie - i thought "step up" was great. good dancing, pretty people, predictable story line, happy ending.

but i'm beginning to wonder how my (lovely, yet) snobby, eccentric, vegetarian euro-parents produced a daughter who loves smash box-office dance films... and apparently tailgaiting.

for those of you who managed to miss all the media fanfare (and the deafening roar of the planes overhead), this weekend was the chicago air and water show, a two day blitz of military planes and skydivers doing crazy dare-devil tricks over lake michigan for a crowd of thousands of beer-drinking, hot-dog eating onlookers. i think my blogmate remains a little bewildered at what all the fuss is about, but both of us have spent enough time getting educated by behemoth state schools to know that any excuse to sit in a folding chair next to the grill eating potato chips and sipping miller light is a good one. so much the better if there are actually exciting things happening in the sky overhead.

you'd think i'd be consistent enough in my love of such mainstream fare as to admit that i'm not really tongue-in-cheek about it anymore, and that i'd not be quite so fickle when it comes to my snob-quotient. as such, you'd think that i would have been friendly to the cute guy who was actually nice enough to flirt with me, and would have surpressed the urge to completely high-brow him, even if i did think he was a 21 year-old ticket scalper (he wasn't).

the inner redneck: never there when you really need it.

back on the bandwagon again

though i'll take a fair amount of slack from my good blogmate (mgbm) about my inability to come through with my trademark (though usually ineffective) flirting after she plunked me down in a room full of cute, smart, sweaty runners, i'd like to point something out. mgbm has always been the one to call me out for my chronic bandwagon-ness, especially when it comes to fashion and sporting events... but suddenly, now that i've hopped onto her particular bandwagon, i've seen surprisingly little of her patented smirk/eyebrow-raise combo.

now that i've abruptly decided that the triathlon is the only thing i've ever wanted to do, and have started biking, and swimming, and even running occasionally (with the concomitant shopping for the massive amounts of gear all these activities require), it's more like a big heave of relief coming from the mgbm/mb cohort. for one thing, we decided a long time ago that what i need is an outdoorsy boy, but mostly the issue is keeping up with the jones'. all of a sudden it seems like everyone i know only ever wants to go running, swimming, or biking, and by a bizarre shift in the tide i actually enjoy running, swimming, and biking.

all this is 1) making me feel pretty good, 2) enabling shopping, 3) enabling eating, and 4) generating good people-watching and good stories.

good people-watching at the bicycle film festival where possibly every punk, tattooed, urban bike warrior in chicago had amassed to drink old style in a can...

and good stories after i went solo to ohio street beach to frolic in my new wetsuit and got glared at by a ridiculous tri-trainer who was taking himself WAY too seriously as he lubed himself up to get into his wet suit, and leered at me angrily in a "what is this ridiculous amateur doing on my beach?" sort of way. not only was mgbm quite sympathetic as i told her this story, but she glorified it, and my unfair persecution to some of our collective tri friends.

peer pressure is awesome.

animist electronics (reprise)

i have mentioned in old blogs that i assign tendencies and preferences to my electronics, much to the dismay of my computer engineer brother. you know, the cd player doesn't skip; it's attention starved and wants to be held. the blender simply enjoys fireworks. etc. at some level i know none of this is true, but with one exception: my mp3 player truly loves me and wants me to be happy.

i noticed this in the winter during the hustle up the hancock, a benefit for the american lung association, when my play mix started with hooverphonic "lung" and some similarly appropriate set of songs for me. during my last few weeks of training for the chicago distance classic half marathon, my playlist has consistently shuffled to bubba sparxxx "ugly" every single time i get to the financial/chicago board of trade area. (let's not start too many accusations about just what bubba sparxxx is doing on my shuffle. or ask me how i feel about the cbot. i didn't pass judgement; my mp3 player did.) one day when i was down by the lake feeling nostalgic for st. lucia, my mp3 player kicked out in sequence something i can appropriately call a "tempo run" without having to do any speedwork, although this might only be appreciated by my blogmate (who drunkenly listened to as much caribbean mtv as i did): don omar "bandoleros," rihanna "pon de replay," panjabi mc "jogi," damian marley (i forget which one), and rupee all in a row. it picks fast songs when i need a pick me up, slower ones when i need a break, and rounded me out today during the race by playing dave matthew's "last stop" at the actual last water stop of the run. lovely.

but i'm sad to report that the playlist is getting a little old. mostly because i blew through it all in one pleasant but blister-filled morning. so i'm soliciting suggestions for new running tunes from a crew that knows more music than i do. all moby, beastie boys, groove armada taken care of. retro welcome, doesn't have to be techno (matisyahu "king without a crown" works just fine), doesn't have to even be good (thanks to the good people at niketown for getting this in my head, arrested development "tennessee" is going on next round). your thoughts?

darwin (award nominee) for president?

we don't generally post anything political on our blog, but this is amazing. i have some questions:

1. a zinc mine?
2. really?
3. a zinc mine?

back to the drawing board

series of exchanges had today during statistics class:

me (to classmate): *something non-committal about stats ta, who i did not tell classmate that i have been considering as a potential set-up for a couple of my friends.*
classmate: "[stats ta] needs a girlfriend."
me: "you know, if i knew that he were single, i'd try to set him up with someone."
classmate (confused): "really? but [stats ta] is a big dork!"
classmate (again, light bulb on): "then again, i guess that's better in some ways. i guess my husband is kind of a dork."
me: [say nothing, try not to agree even though i know her husband, who is bald and wears bowties, and is, in fact, a dork]
classmate: "i guess... hey, didn't you just tell me that your boyfriend does SAS for work? so he's a dork too!"
me (sorry, mb): "yeah, he's cute, but he's kind of a dork."

*enter stats ta and professor. professor makes lame math jokes. stats ta laughs.*
me (to classmate): "mathematicians have no sense of humor."
classmate: [says nothing, engrossed in class, better student than i]

*enter other guy in class i have been vaguely considering as set-up potential for friends.*
me (to guy2): "mathematicians have no sense of humor."
guy2 (laughing at stats jokes): "[stats ta] is the (i kid you not) mac daddy."
me (to self): this place is hopeless.

-----

from this afternoon i conclude that 1) mathematicians have no sense of humor, and 2) neither do people involved in summer statistics classes.

sorry, girls. i tried, but even if they're single you can't have these guys. i couldn't take it.

i am such a child

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)