i don't care how idealistic you might be: money is good.
mb and i spent the weekend back in madison visiting college friends, and over drinks were reminiscing about the things we did to get through several years spent living on skimpy financial aid checks. turns out i made it relatively unscathed - i didn't call it "poverty;" i called it "vegetarian." others didn't fare so well; mb's friend chad tells a funny story about months gone by without heat one winter because he had just bought an engagement ring and his roommate decided that a bmw xz-something was really worth $80,000. mb himself lists an impressive array of luxurious make-ends-meet jobs including chicken farmer, can factory worker, box factory worker (to this day he claims to be able to distinguish single from double-corrugated eyes closed), and opener of little milk cartons as elementary school assistant janitor (for children who, although young, clearly and demeaningly understood the class structure separating the milk drinkers from milk openers).
so now we find ourselves in our first jobs that make more money than our previous positions as supper club waitress and mattress maker. granted, it's not much by city standards, what with the beautiful people who wear nike cashmere tracksuits to take out the trash. but we're thrilled with the ability to go out for dinner besides to subway. so i found it odd when, in an attempt to be healthier during a busy work week, i made a pot of lentils and couscous for us to use for lunches, and mb returned two days later telling me his coworkers were all making fun of him for his depression-era meals. turns out they've noticed we eat like this a lot, and are concerned that mb must need a raise because we can't feed ourselves better than canned beans.
now, in my defense, clearly they haven't tried my lentils. i'm a pretty decent cook, and anything flavored with wine, bacon and tony chachere's cajun seasoning is a good thing. but where i sputteringly protest, "but this isn't poor-people food! come on, i can finally afford the couscous and bacon!", mb has decided to revel in his newfound pauper role. he requests more trappings of poverty so he can keep up his new work image.
is there such thing as "nouveau-poor"?
and can i help him pull this off without resorting to spam?
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
the lost art of b.s.
i live in ongoing awe of some of my more senior colleagues. these are people who can, in any situation, retain and recall all of the salient details and also command a sophisticated and insightful understanding of the big picture.
i will never be one of those people.
on some level my expectation must have been that without any particular effort i could passively become smart and good at stuff. having realized that such a transformation would actually take a tremendous amount of motivation and effort, and that - let's face it- i probably wouldn't succeed anyway, i've started looking for loopholes.
basically what i've found is that there's no upper limit to how much one can bluff. it all started with a couple a stalling devices that i picked up from some friends at work- things you can say when you're up against a wall that either so vague or so universally true that they're almost never the wrong answer. while i want to say that over the last few weeks my blogmate and i have been involved in a collaborative effort to expand the list to cover one's behind in a variety of situations, the truth is probably that while i've been busy confabulating bullshit answers, my blogmate has actuallly been getting smarter and more sophisticated in her understanding of things.
whether or not i'm acting alone, i'm escalating my ploys to make it look like i know what's going on. i've come up with two basic approaches:
#1) embellishment- if you have a reasonably good idea of what the key issues are, but have been unwilling or unable to back yourself up with hard data you can usually get around ever providing it. the truth is that most people don't want to listen to you drone on about the details anyway- all you really have to do is use big words to get across that you understand the concept and make it seem like you're doing people a favor by leaving out the minutiae.
#1a) dumbing it down- the opposite tactic, only for the most skilled participants, is to use inappropriately small, childish words to describe highly complex or worrisome phenomena- it makes it sound like you've arrived on a higher plane of understanding.
#2) plausibility- if you actually have no idea what's going on but you have enough free time to harvest some (but not necessarily all) of the details, you can usually arrange them to come out of your mouth in such a way that they make sense to everyone else. take it step higher by either drawing a conclusion that sounds pretty reasonable (and vague), or by finding a way to make your data back up a known reality.
every day i get one step closer to greatness.
i will never be one of those people.
on some level my expectation must have been that without any particular effort i could passively become smart and good at stuff. having realized that such a transformation would actually take a tremendous amount of motivation and effort, and that - let's face it- i probably wouldn't succeed anyway, i've started looking for loopholes.
basically what i've found is that there's no upper limit to how much one can bluff. it all started with a couple a stalling devices that i picked up from some friends at work- things you can say when you're up against a wall that either so vague or so universally true that they're almost never the wrong answer. while i want to say that over the last few weeks my blogmate and i have been involved in a collaborative effort to expand the list to cover one's behind in a variety of situations, the truth is probably that while i've been busy confabulating bullshit answers, my blogmate has actuallly been getting smarter and more sophisticated in her understanding of things.
whether or not i'm acting alone, i'm escalating my ploys to make it look like i know what's going on. i've come up with two basic approaches:
#1) embellishment- if you have a reasonably good idea of what the key issues are, but have been unwilling or unable to back yourself up with hard data you can usually get around ever providing it. the truth is that most people don't want to listen to you drone on about the details anyway- all you really have to do is use big words to get across that you understand the concept and make it seem like you're doing people a favor by leaving out the minutiae.
#1a) dumbing it down- the opposite tactic, only for the most skilled participants, is to use inappropriately small, childish words to describe highly complex or worrisome phenomena- it makes it sound like you've arrived on a higher plane of understanding.
#2) plausibility- if you actually have no idea what's going on but you have enough free time to harvest some (but not necessarily all) of the details, you can usually arrange them to come out of your mouth in such a way that they make sense to everyone else. take it step higher by either drawing a conclusion that sounds pretty reasonable (and vague), or by finding a way to make your data back up a known reality.
every day i get one step closer to greatness.
Monday, January 09, 2006
whore #3 and the french fries that weren't
this low expectations thing is working out great!
after a grueling work week i finally started decompressing on saturday night, first over ass-kicking margaritas at caesars (one margarita, actually), then at the movies, after which i wondered if a small role in major motion picture would be worth running in the credits as "whore #3."
then came brunch with twinset on sunday morning followed by mid-day bourbon on the rocks with ck and my blogmate. we were all a little rough around the edges that day (even before we hit the bottle), such that our romp around lakeview consisted of a brief blitz through the gap and tj maxx- that is, of course, after ck gave me a good schooling on where one's tea kettle should live. "you put it AWAY?!?!" my blogmate proceeded to taunt me with the empty promise of french fries, leaving me alone on the couch to round off the night with pizza and buffy the vampire slayer.
all and all i was quite pleased with how the weekend went, and returned to work feeling vaguely refreshed. i also came away with the sense that when it comes to j-date i have a stay of execution. i just don't see how i can squeeze in 3 to 5 dates a week when i have so much drinking to do.
after a grueling work week i finally started decompressing on saturday night, first over ass-kicking margaritas at caesars (one margarita, actually), then at the movies, after which i wondered if a small role in major motion picture would be worth running in the credits as "whore #3."
then came brunch with twinset on sunday morning followed by mid-day bourbon on the rocks with ck and my blogmate. we were all a little rough around the edges that day (even before we hit the bottle), such that our romp around lakeview consisted of a brief blitz through the gap and tj maxx- that is, of course, after ck gave me a good schooling on where one's tea kettle should live. "you put it AWAY?!?!" my blogmate proceeded to taunt me with the empty promise of french fries, leaving me alone on the couch to round off the night with pizza and buffy the vampire slayer.
all and all i was quite pleased with how the weekend went, and returned to work feeling vaguely refreshed. i also came away with the sense that when it comes to j-date i have a stay of execution. i just don't see how i can squeeze in 3 to 5 dates a week when i have so much drinking to do.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
nowhere to go but down
every year i generate a long list of new year's resolutions. most of them are pretty mundane, and as most of them appear on the list year after year, i've realized that regular gym attendance, daily flossing, and abstinence from chocolate covered raisin binges just aren't attainable goals.
as such, i've decided to go minimalist, whittling the list down the list to one, simple concept: low standards.
while my blogmate was, for the most part, supportive of this strategy, she did give me her trademark meaningful eyebrow raise which i correctly took to mean: "i hope you'll make an exception for men, where higher standards might be a better approach."
in truth, i think i've been doing this low standards thing for a while, but it all gelled as my blogmate and i planned our new year's eve festivities.
a few weeks ago, we heard that our boss of all bosses was having a party at his fabulous frank lloyd wright mansion in hyde park. it seemed perfect- high quality food and booze, walking distance from my blogmate's house, absolutely no social pressure. no need to go shopping for sparkly new year's attire (that invariably squeezes in all the wrong places)- no one to impress at this party, no pretense of coolness. and, of course, we'd get to to see the house.
it seems we were the only people with this point of view, and due to a dismal rsvp rate, the party was cancelled. had we rsvp'd on time, someone might have bothered to tell us... but of course nobody told us, and even though the house seemed bizarrely quiet, we rang the doorbell and had our coats off and hung up in the closet before the very important man that we barely know asked us, "did you think there was a party tonight?" did i mention that his fly was open? in spite of our obviously interrupting christmas present-opening with his family and friends, said important guy broke out a very nice bottle of wine and he and his thankfully granola wife proceeded to give us a private, thorough, tour of their fantastic, and thankfully interesting house. i think i made it a little easier by knowing a little moore about frank lloyd wright than the average person, and by opening with the bit about another one of our colleagues (who'd had the sense to stay home) asking about the andrew lloyd weber house.
one traumatic hour later we were back out on the streets of hyde park, desperately searching for someplace to ring in the new year, which turned out to be my blogmate's living room, since the only bar in the neighborhood was closed. it wasn't bad really- my blogmate mixed us captain morgan and diet cherry cokes (more rum than coke, i think, but it was hard to tell), we wolfed down the yummy brownies that mb had made, and watched the univision equivalent of dick clark's new year's rockin' eve- feliz 2006 live from acapulco. these women take boob job to a whole new level.
too stupid to quit while i was ahead, i convinced ck (who originally wasn't going to go out at all) to keep the party going and actually talked mr. andrew lloyd weber off his couch, out the door, onto the el, and into a bar. so then there was alot of drinking and a subsequent lot of headache.
one could argue that spending new year's this way- barging in on my boss' intimate family gathering, getting drunk at a bar with people who didn't want to go out in the first place- is downright pathetic. but in low standards land it was fantastic.
as such, i've decided to go minimalist, whittling the list down the list to one, simple concept: low standards.
while my blogmate was, for the most part, supportive of this strategy, she did give me her trademark meaningful eyebrow raise which i correctly took to mean: "i hope you'll make an exception for men, where higher standards might be a better approach."
in truth, i think i've been doing this low standards thing for a while, but it all gelled as my blogmate and i planned our new year's eve festivities.
a few weeks ago, we heard that our boss of all bosses was having a party at his fabulous frank lloyd wright mansion in hyde park. it seemed perfect- high quality food and booze, walking distance from my blogmate's house, absolutely no social pressure. no need to go shopping for sparkly new year's attire (that invariably squeezes in all the wrong places)- no one to impress at this party, no pretense of coolness. and, of course, we'd get to to see the house.
it seems we were the only people with this point of view, and due to a dismal rsvp rate, the party was cancelled. had we rsvp'd on time, someone might have bothered to tell us... but of course nobody told us, and even though the house seemed bizarrely quiet, we rang the doorbell and had our coats off and hung up in the closet before the very important man that we barely know asked us, "did you think there was a party tonight?" did i mention that his fly was open? in spite of our obviously interrupting christmas present-opening with his family and friends, said important guy broke out a very nice bottle of wine and he and his thankfully granola wife proceeded to give us a private, thorough, tour of their fantastic, and thankfully interesting house. i think i made it a little easier by knowing a little moore about frank lloyd wright than the average person, and by opening with the bit about another one of our colleagues (who'd had the sense to stay home) asking about the andrew lloyd weber house.
one traumatic hour later we were back out on the streets of hyde park, desperately searching for someplace to ring in the new year, which turned out to be my blogmate's living room, since the only bar in the neighborhood was closed. it wasn't bad really- my blogmate mixed us captain morgan and diet cherry cokes (more rum than coke, i think, but it was hard to tell), we wolfed down the yummy brownies that mb had made, and watched the univision equivalent of dick clark's new year's rockin' eve- feliz 2006 live from acapulco. these women take boob job to a whole new level.
too stupid to quit while i was ahead, i convinced ck (who originally wasn't going to go out at all) to keep the party going and actually talked mr. andrew lloyd weber off his couch, out the door, onto the el, and into a bar. so then there was alot of drinking and a subsequent lot of headache.
one could argue that spending new year's this way- barging in on my boss' intimate family gathering, getting drunk at a bar with people who didn't want to go out in the first place- is downright pathetic. but in low standards land it was fantastic.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
henry "big mama" henry - or - why i want to marry a park ranger
even though my blogmate just outed my inability to tie together my vaguely amusing observations and experiences...
it seems that other people are managing to make the hurricane funny. like me, my uncle decided to drop everything and run to d.c. to visit my ailing grandmother, who, by then, was not so much circling the drain as she was slugging down egg nog and very much enjoying the company of her entire extended family... and i do mean ENTIRE family, including my ex-aunt, ex-uncle, and ex-step-cousins... holy dysfunction batman!
getting back to the story, my uncle showed up with a new orleans newspaper (and enough beer to inebriate an elephant) which had an entire section dedicated to funny (if not quite sad) pictures of objects displaced into bizarre configurations by the ferocious winds of katrina, complete with avant-guard captions like, "fridge on roof," and "door on telephone pole." my uncle seems to have made a sport of reading the "death notices" (apparently there's some technical reason why they can't be obituaries) and trying to read between the lines about how and when they actually died. henry "big mama" henry was actually viola "big mama" henry, but my uncle's slip of the tongue made me giggle for a good 20 minutes (probably had something to do with my helping him drink his case of yuengling).
after visiting my grandmother and boozing it up with my aunts and uncles, i hopped on a (tiny) plane and made my way to hot springs village arkansas (touted as the world's largest gated community... home to cheap rental condos) to booze it up with my parents.
when i was younger i couldn't understand my parents' need to hide away in BFE for the holidays, but now i really look forward to the annual antisocial fest. one of the highlights of my sojourn in the ouchita national forrest was the bald eagle watching boat trip out on lake ouchita, complete with loaner binoculars and charming (and quite knowledgeable) park ranger. i came to the conclusion that dating a national park ranger would be almost as useful as dating a computer geek- someone who could help convert me from wannabe out-doorsy to actually out-doorsy. plus, i'd finally have a suitable other half to go on double dates and weekend hiking trips with my blogmate and mb.
other highlights were visiting the bill clinton gift shop in little rock and eating beef jerky with my dad (at my vegetarian mother's complete revulsion). not only was the beef jerky quite tasty, but i made the rather exciting discover that one serving has only 80 calories but 13 grams of protein. less fun activities included slaving over the 1000 piece puzzle of an the palais de ville in paris (which we'd bought at my insistence at walmart, along with the beef jerky) and having to gulp down mediocre chicken fried stake at petit jean national park on christmas day.
it's a good thing my standards are low.
it seems that other people are managing to make the hurricane funny. like me, my uncle decided to drop everything and run to d.c. to visit my ailing grandmother, who, by then, was not so much circling the drain as she was slugging down egg nog and very much enjoying the company of her entire extended family... and i do mean ENTIRE family, including my ex-aunt, ex-uncle, and ex-step-cousins... holy dysfunction batman!
getting back to the story, my uncle showed up with a new orleans newspaper (and enough beer to inebriate an elephant) which had an entire section dedicated to funny (if not quite sad) pictures of objects displaced into bizarre configurations by the ferocious winds of katrina, complete with avant-guard captions like, "fridge on roof," and "door on telephone pole." my uncle seems to have made a sport of reading the "death notices" (apparently there's some technical reason why they can't be obituaries) and trying to read between the lines about how and when they actually died. henry "big mama" henry was actually viola "big mama" henry, but my uncle's slip of the tongue made me giggle for a good 20 minutes (probably had something to do with my helping him drink his case of yuengling).
after visiting my grandmother and boozing it up with my aunts and uncles, i hopped on a (tiny) plane and made my way to hot springs village arkansas (touted as the world's largest gated community... home to cheap rental condos) to booze it up with my parents.
when i was younger i couldn't understand my parents' need to hide away in BFE for the holidays, but now i really look forward to the annual antisocial fest. one of the highlights of my sojourn in the ouchita national forrest was the bald eagle watching boat trip out on lake ouchita, complete with loaner binoculars and charming (and quite knowledgeable) park ranger. i came to the conclusion that dating a national park ranger would be almost as useful as dating a computer geek- someone who could help convert me from wannabe out-doorsy to actually out-doorsy. plus, i'd finally have a suitable other half to go on double dates and weekend hiking trips with my blogmate and mb.
other highlights were visiting the bill clinton gift shop in little rock and eating beef jerky with my dad (at my vegetarian mother's complete revulsion). not only was the beef jerky quite tasty, but i made the rather exciting discover that one serving has only 80 calories but 13 grams of protein. less fun activities included slaving over the 1000 piece puzzle of an the palais de ville in paris (which we'd bought at my insistence at walmart, along with the beef jerky) and having to gulp down mediocre chicken fried stake at petit jean national park on christmas day.
it's a good thing my standards are low.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
merry x-box
my always-astute blogmate mentioned today that one reason that it's sometimes hard to post on our blog is that she thinks of one funny thing that she wants to share, but wants to share it in some larger context instead of what it actually is, which is "this one tidbit of this one thing was funny." with that, let me share a few highlights of a very merry midwestern christmas devoid of any context...
-friday night fish fry with mb's family at "daytona north," a nascar-themed bar in which 2 pints of new glarus, one pint of various-alcohols-mixed drink, one miller and a soda cost $11
-my realization that jeans and a brown gap cable-knit sweater are not festive enough 12/23 wear, compared with mb's sister's hot pink cargo pants, sequined tank top, black velour hoodie and enough cubic zirconium to stop traffic
-mb's brother's excitement at receiving low-profile athletic socks: "wow! now i can have the look of miami in the weather of wisconsin!"
-six hours with butterknife and new-husband-of-butterknife (phob? p-hob? you really need an acronym) playing "apples to apples," a game involving matching the most appropriate (or least appropriate) noun cards to an adjective card, which sounds very nerdy, and is in fact very nerdy, but made more fun by p-hob's insistence on matching "sultry" with "anne frank" and "sensual" with "helen keller"
-the fact that 2000 years past its prime, my father still considers rome to be the center of the universe
-my dad's timeless aphorisms: "some things are like grandma and grandpa... you just leave them alone."
all in all, a very fun- and cookie-filled few days. now my blogmate and i are both back at work, both back on, again, a relatively soul-sucking project, made better by the fact that we're in it together. already we're competing for the "who was the biggest idiot today?" award. more to follow.
-friday night fish fry with mb's family at "daytona north," a nascar-themed bar in which 2 pints of new glarus, one pint of various-alcohols-mixed drink, one miller and a soda cost $11
-my realization that jeans and a brown gap cable-knit sweater are not festive enough 12/23 wear, compared with mb's sister's hot pink cargo pants, sequined tank top, black velour hoodie and enough cubic zirconium to stop traffic
-mb's brother's excitement at receiving low-profile athletic socks: "wow! now i can have the look of miami in the weather of wisconsin!"
-six hours with butterknife and new-husband-of-butterknife (phob? p-hob? you really need an acronym) playing "apples to apples," a game involving matching the most appropriate (or least appropriate) noun cards to an adjective card, which sounds very nerdy, and is in fact very nerdy, but made more fun by p-hob's insistence on matching "sultry" with "anne frank" and "sensual" with "helen keller"
-the fact that 2000 years past its prime, my father still considers rome to be the center of the universe
-my dad's timeless aphorisms: "some things are like grandma and grandpa... you just leave them alone."
all in all, a very fun- and cookie-filled few days. now my blogmate and i are both back at work, both back on, again, a relatively soul-sucking project, made better by the fact that we're in it together. already we're competing for the "who was the biggest idiot today?" award. more to follow.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
when life hands you lemons...
while my blogmate and i occasionally tell each other stuff over the blog, more often we engage in avid pre-blogging, either because we just can't wait for the other to find out just how witty we are (as if we don't both check the blog every 45 seconds), or because we're considering writing about something that seems a little too delicate to be blog-appropriate. over and over again, for example, we came to the conclusion that blogging about the hurricane was probably wrong.
with that, it's time to introduce you to our our good friend ck. my blogmate and i have both grown quite fond of ck this year. we openly envy her irish-ness, her extensive knowledge of north-side pubs, and the fact that she often has good work gossip. while there's abosultely nothing funny about the fact that ck just lost her aged grandmother, i did find it a little humurous that my blogmate and i clung to her every word as she described going back to ireland for the funeral, where her huge family rented out a b&b for the week and had a designated bar that served as a rendez-vous between family functions. "is it wrong to want to go to irish funeral?" i asked my blogmate.
now it's a couple of weeks later and my own aged grandmother as rapidly dwindling, throwing a major wrinkle into my holiday plans. again, nothing funny about it, except for the ridiculous packing dilemma that has ensued. ironically, it all seems to come back to the hurricane. this was supposed to be a fun week, with evenings spent at fire-place-containing wine bars (who knew there were so many?), and careful prepartion for my annual weekend in the boonies with my parents. with a suitcase full of fleece, wool socks, chocolate and bourbon i was supposed to head out to arkansas to meet my folks at an abandoned golf resort to join them in their yearly binge of anti-socialism (that the festivities were slated to take place in arkansas and not the usual northern alabama is actually also a hurricane by-product).
but now my grandmother has fallen quite ill, and i have to zip off to washington dc to see her. a lifelong new orleans resident, she's now resettled in maryland post-hurricane. hence the packing dilemma. i might be going to dc where i have to look respectable enough to talk to doctors at a nursing home. i might be going to arkansas to go hiking and have christmas dinner at the state park lodge. i might be going to a funeral in new orleans (packing challenge #1), in which case i might as well go to my high school reunion in new orleans (which justifiably would merit three weeks of wardrobe planning), and will be certainly be going to my favorite new orleans dive bars with all my friends who happen to be in town (and at high risk of running into several ex-boyfriends requiring a degree of cuteness that takes alot of effort for me). so not only the weather, but also the circumstance will be completley different in all of these potential locations. how's in the world does one pack for such a trip?
one of our research gurus at work once said, "don't ever be sad about your data- you can always find something to say about it." maybe the same thing is true about blogging. that or the filterlessness is getting out of hand.
with that, it's time to introduce you to our our good friend ck. my blogmate and i have both grown quite fond of ck this year. we openly envy her irish-ness, her extensive knowledge of north-side pubs, and the fact that she often has good work gossip. while there's abosultely nothing funny about the fact that ck just lost her aged grandmother, i did find it a little humurous that my blogmate and i clung to her every word as she described going back to ireland for the funeral, where her huge family rented out a b&b for the week and had a designated bar that served as a rendez-vous between family functions. "is it wrong to want to go to irish funeral?" i asked my blogmate.
now it's a couple of weeks later and my own aged grandmother as rapidly dwindling, throwing a major wrinkle into my holiday plans. again, nothing funny about it, except for the ridiculous packing dilemma that has ensued. ironically, it all seems to come back to the hurricane. this was supposed to be a fun week, with evenings spent at fire-place-containing wine bars (who knew there were so many?), and careful prepartion for my annual weekend in the boonies with my parents. with a suitcase full of fleece, wool socks, chocolate and bourbon i was supposed to head out to arkansas to meet my folks at an abandoned golf resort to join them in their yearly binge of anti-socialism (that the festivities were slated to take place in arkansas and not the usual northern alabama is actually also a hurricane by-product).
but now my grandmother has fallen quite ill, and i have to zip off to washington dc to see her. a lifelong new orleans resident, she's now resettled in maryland post-hurricane. hence the packing dilemma. i might be going to dc where i have to look respectable enough to talk to doctors at a nursing home. i might be going to arkansas to go hiking and have christmas dinner at the state park lodge. i might be going to a funeral in new orleans (packing challenge #1), in which case i might as well go to my high school reunion in new orleans (which justifiably would merit three weeks of wardrobe planning), and will be certainly be going to my favorite new orleans dive bars with all my friends who happen to be in town (and at high risk of running into several ex-boyfriends requiring a degree of cuteness that takes alot of effort for me). so not only the weather, but also the circumstance will be completley different in all of these potential locations. how's in the world does one pack for such a trip?
one of our research gurus at work once said, "don't ever be sad about your data- you can always find something to say about it." maybe the same thing is true about blogging. that or the filterlessness is getting out of hand.
Monday, December 19, 2005
like fine wine
i hope i get funnier with age. you'll all be rolling on your high-tech floors-of-the-future at my incredibly sharpened blog-wit, if only i age like the relatives mb and i saw this weekend.
we spent the weekend in sunny milwaukee being very good people by visiting our grandparents that we won't see over the holiday. i don't know which visit was more entertaining: mb's grandmother's tirade about how she can't stand playing cards with the others in her building anymore because they keep falling asleep mid-hand, coupled with a misguided attempt to change the cable-tv-music-station away from classic country in favor of something the kids were into nowadays (resulting in a very awkward five minutes of listening to megadeth with grandma)? or my grandfather's proud stories of getting the good gimbel's suits for $15 by befriending the german-immigrant buyer and, in a stylish holiday first, introducing mb into the family tradition of bestowing upon unwitting visitors the results of said bargain shopping? i especially loved the size-up mb got once grandpa realized there was another male to become a recipient of his stores and stores of tj maxx bargain hunting. "what size? no, i know. wait." slow pan up, slow down, then disappearing into the closet. if mb were female i think he could sue for harrassment for that ogling.
our older relatives all get to have their quirks, and we all smile and laugh about it. i can't wait. when i'm older, i want the following eccentricities:
1) long rambling pointless stories
2) a wordless single-eyebrow raise when i think people are full of it and am unable to suppress my sarcasm
3) undying love for the same sweater or pants over and over again regardless of how repetitive or how style-less
4) insistence on buying loads of cheap stuff at marshall's and tj maxx, then wondering why i have such a full closet and still nothing to wear
hmm. guess i don't have to wait for my aarp card, then.
we spent the weekend in sunny milwaukee being very good people by visiting our grandparents that we won't see over the holiday. i don't know which visit was more entertaining: mb's grandmother's tirade about how she can't stand playing cards with the others in her building anymore because they keep falling asleep mid-hand, coupled with a misguided attempt to change the cable-tv-music-station away from classic country in favor of something the kids were into nowadays (resulting in a very awkward five minutes of listening to megadeth with grandma)? or my grandfather's proud stories of getting the good gimbel's suits for $15 by befriending the german-immigrant buyer and, in a stylish holiday first, introducing mb into the family tradition of bestowing upon unwitting visitors the results of said bargain shopping? i especially loved the size-up mb got once grandpa realized there was another male to become a recipient of his stores and stores of tj maxx bargain hunting. "what size? no, i know. wait." slow pan up, slow down, then disappearing into the closet. if mb were female i think he could sue for harrassment for that ogling.
our older relatives all get to have their quirks, and we all smile and laugh about it. i can't wait. when i'm older, i want the following eccentricities:
1) long rambling pointless stories
2) a wordless single-eyebrow raise when i think people are full of it and am unable to suppress my sarcasm
3) undying love for the same sweater or pants over and over again regardless of how repetitive or how style-less
4) insistence on buying loads of cheap stuff at marshall's and tj maxx, then wondering why i have such a full closet and still nothing to wear
hmm. guess i don't have to wait for my aarp card, then.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
consumer rambling
in the blissful hysteria that characterized my frenetic dash around lakeview this afternoon, having survived yet another marathon of standardized testing, i found another opportunity to basque in consumerism and draw meaning from the meaningless.
first stop: $1.99 dry cleaner where i dropped a pile of sweaters that were, let's just say it, disgusting.
then on to the bank where they seem to have gotten rid of drive-through tellers altogether, resulting in alot of fumbling with envelopes and such as i deposited off the annual hanukkah check from my parents (which, in theory, is to be spent on new laptop, but in fact, is getting spent on piecemeal on various other more impulsive purchases like mascara
mad dash through the housewares store in search only of cheese cloth (yes, i really do have use for such an item), nonetheless walking out with arms full of other kitchen items that i suddenly couldn't live without (am i really going to use a rolling pin?).
moving on to marshall's to get the socks that i abandoned this weekend when faced with the grim prospect of waiting in the pre-christmas saturday afternoon line. there i acquired a pair of sparkly j-lo brand sunglasses to replace my sadly defunct pink faux dolce & gabanna (purchased at the sadly defunct french market in new orleans) and engaged in a bizarre silent war in the purse isle with a fabulous little asian girl who seemed convinced that i was after the dooney and burke purse that she had her eye on. it was particularly silly since #1) dooney and burke purses are way out of my price range, even at marshall's, and #2) they're ugly and #3) scary girl didn't actually know which purse she wanted but was gripped by the overwhelming fear of my finding it first.
last stop: liquor store, to assemble the accoutrements needed for spiced wine (i told you i had a use for cheese cloth). i blame my blogmate (with whom i was chatting on the phone) for the frenzy of christmas beer buying that ensued- suddenly i had to find out if honey-apple beer is really yummy or really disgusting. $100 later, after shamelessly flirting with a nice looking guy in scrubs (who sadly turned out to be a med student- no surgeon for me), i walked out of binny's ready to go on a good old fashioned drinking binge.
back home, i unloaded the car and asked myself, "does lugging a big-ass box of booze up the stairs count as exercise?"
first stop: $1.99 dry cleaner where i dropped a pile of sweaters that were, let's just say it, disgusting.
then on to the bank where they seem to have gotten rid of drive-through tellers altogether, resulting in alot of fumbling with envelopes and such as i deposited off the annual hanukkah check from my parents (which, in theory, is to be spent on new laptop, but in fact, is getting spent on piecemeal on various other more impulsive purchases like mascara
mad dash through the housewares store in search only of cheese cloth (yes, i really do have use for such an item), nonetheless walking out with arms full of other kitchen items that i suddenly couldn't live without (am i really going to use a rolling pin?).
moving on to marshall's to get the socks that i abandoned this weekend when faced with the grim prospect of waiting in the pre-christmas saturday afternoon line. there i acquired a pair of sparkly j-lo brand sunglasses to replace my sadly defunct pink faux dolce & gabanna (purchased at the sadly defunct french market in new orleans) and engaged in a bizarre silent war in the purse isle with a fabulous little asian girl who seemed convinced that i was after the dooney and burke purse that she had her eye on. it was particularly silly since #1) dooney and burke purses are way out of my price range, even at marshall's, and #2) they're ugly and #3) scary girl didn't actually know which purse she wanted but was gripped by the overwhelming fear of my finding it first.
last stop: liquor store, to assemble the accoutrements needed for spiced wine (i told you i had a use for cheese cloth). i blame my blogmate (with whom i was chatting on the phone) for the frenzy of christmas beer buying that ensued- suddenly i had to find out if honey-apple beer is really yummy or really disgusting. $100 later, after shamelessly flirting with a nice looking guy in scrubs (who sadly turned out to be a med student- no surgeon for me), i walked out of binny's ready to go on a good old fashioned drinking binge.
back home, i unloaded the car and asked myself, "does lugging a big-ass box of booze up the stairs count as exercise?"
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
slim's nephews
i'm working my way through slim's table, a narrative written by a u of c sociologist in the '90s about time he spent with a group of men who congregated regularly at valois see-your-food cafeteria here on 53rd st. (good book, although it seems to be less about my favorite breakfast joint and more about interpersonal relationships between retired black men. really, is this author the first person to notice that black men care about each other's health and happiness, and have self-respect? also, i sincerely want to know how the middle of a college neighborhood can be repeatedly described as "the fringe of the ghetto.") anyway, recently my blogmate and i been trying to get some studying done, and remembering that we were never very good at sitting at home engrossed in book-learnin', have been trying out local coffee shops as places to read. i would like to invite the slim's table author to come study with us, because times have changed since the musty dusty 1990's.
first stop: borders hyde park at 53rd and lake park, right across the street from the infamous cafeteria, est. 2003, curious to former hyde parkers who remember the neighborhood as only jimmy's woodlawn tap and the co-op, now looking *gasp* yuppie? borders does a booming business in its coffee shop, and i got the only table left in the house. sadly, not much studying got done, as i was sandwiched between a throng of black men in their daily rotation around a chess board and a patchouli-scented circle talking about police brutality and drawing analogies between the self-actualization of black men and sperm swimming to meet the, umm, embryo. (a for effort, but i didn't have it in me to correct the birds and bees...) it was honestly like being in slim's table 2, but the repeat themes of daily gathering place as identity formation and (surprise!) self-development was even funnier in a typically white-bread location.
feeling like perhaps hyde park had gotten too cool for me to study here, i spent the weekend up in lakeview alternating book-learning with christmas shopping (and naturally demanding that my blogmate do the same). slim might have enjoyed meeting his fat white star-trek-watching brothers all gathered at the borders in lakeview engrossed in a loud conversation about their escapades with women in college... except that here the themes were bad flannel as identity formation, and apparent lack of self-respect, because the "escapades" described clearly all involved women who refused to sleep with these guys. (who tells that as bragging rights???)
we learned a lot about our neighbors this weekend. at the belmont library nobody knows how to use inside voices ("i'm LOOKing for a BOOK on alTERnative CHInese GARdening??? no, GARdening??? GGGGGAAARRdening?"), at the coffee shop someone thinks we're law students and wants us to petition for something or another, at duke of perth someone thinks we're accounting students.
i draw the following conclusions:
1) if i want a neighborhood within ten years to overflow with new luxury condo developments featuring granite countertop and hardwood flooring, i should hire someone to write about how ghetto the neighborhood is.
2) we must look young and cute if strangers think we're law or accounting students, which would make us several years younger than we actually are.
3) if i were a sociologist, it would be much easier to get work done.
first stop: borders hyde park at 53rd and lake park, right across the street from the infamous cafeteria, est. 2003, curious to former hyde parkers who remember the neighborhood as only jimmy's woodlawn tap and the co-op, now looking *gasp* yuppie? borders does a booming business in its coffee shop, and i got the only table left in the house. sadly, not much studying got done, as i was sandwiched between a throng of black men in their daily rotation around a chess board and a patchouli-scented circle talking about police brutality and drawing analogies between the self-actualization of black men and sperm swimming to meet the, umm, embryo. (a for effort, but i didn't have it in me to correct the birds and bees...) it was honestly like being in slim's table 2, but the repeat themes of daily gathering place as identity formation and (surprise!) self-development was even funnier in a typically white-bread location.
feeling like perhaps hyde park had gotten too cool for me to study here, i spent the weekend up in lakeview alternating book-learning with christmas shopping (and naturally demanding that my blogmate do the same). slim might have enjoyed meeting his fat white star-trek-watching brothers all gathered at the borders in lakeview engrossed in a loud conversation about their escapades with women in college... except that here the themes were bad flannel as identity formation, and apparent lack of self-respect, because the "escapades" described clearly all involved women who refused to sleep with these guys. (who tells that as bragging rights???)
we learned a lot about our neighbors this weekend. at the belmont library nobody knows how to use inside voices ("i'm LOOKing for a BOOK on alTERnative CHInese GARdening??? no, GARdening??? GGGGGAAARRdening?"), at the coffee shop someone thinks we're law students and wants us to petition for something or another, at duke of perth someone thinks we're accounting students.
i draw the following conclusions:
1) if i want a neighborhood within ten years to overflow with new luxury condo developments featuring granite countertop and hardwood flooring, i should hire someone to write about how ghetto the neighborhood is.
2) we must look young and cute if strangers think we're law or accounting students, which would make us several years younger than we actually are.
3) if i were a sociologist, it would be much easier to get work done.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
yet another way to waste time...
just what i need. a website linked to my email that lets me make little pictures of a skinny, fabulous me with hip clothes and trendy backdrops.
Friday, December 09, 2005
looks can be deceiving
my blogmate convinced me to blow off my responsibilities this morning in favor of serving as moral support for the pick-up of her injured car from the body shop. in exchange, i used the trip to the north side and time off work to get a much-needed haircut.
wandering down broadway perusing my options (quickly avoiding anything with "salon" or "coiffeur" and mulling over "cost-cuttery" and "supercuts") i stepped into the cheapest one i could find with the largest array of product in the window (supercuts). as i waited my turn, i assessed that my choices of hairstylist would be either the pierced tattooed guy with the man-pixie 'do, or the cute woman with the head full of beautiful curls. since i have, well, less beautiful curls than that, i quietly kept my fingers crossed for the curly-haired woman to be ready when it was my turn.
fifteen minutes later, i was sitting happily in the chair of the man-pixie having my layers fixed amid a discussion of which was a worse drunken college activity: drunk-dialing your ex, making a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on, or drunk-dialing your ex in order to play for them a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on. our conversation hit a natural pause, and only then did i notice another customer, clearly in awkward agony, sitting in the chair of the beautiful curly-haired woman as she expounded upon the various ways in which her virus had caused her to have warts in her private area, and how she could have had it for years, and how it could affect her cervix. as i desperately tried to come up with a new conversation subject to not overhear any more about genital warts, the man-pixie muttered to me, "this is getting old. i've heard this topic several times already."
i win.
wandering down broadway perusing my options (quickly avoiding anything with "salon" or "coiffeur" and mulling over "cost-cuttery" and "supercuts") i stepped into the cheapest one i could find with the largest array of product in the window (supercuts). as i waited my turn, i assessed that my choices of hairstylist would be either the pierced tattooed guy with the man-pixie 'do, or the cute woman with the head full of beautiful curls. since i have, well, less beautiful curls than that, i quietly kept my fingers crossed for the curly-haired woman to be ready when it was my turn.
fifteen minutes later, i was sitting happily in the chair of the man-pixie having my layers fixed amid a discussion of which was a worse drunken college activity: drunk-dialing your ex, making a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on, or drunk-dialing your ex in order to play for them a mix tape of all the versions of bizarre love triangle you could get your hands on. our conversation hit a natural pause, and only then did i notice another customer, clearly in awkward agony, sitting in the chair of the beautiful curly-haired woman as she expounded upon the various ways in which her virus had caused her to have warts in her private area, and how she could have had it for years, and how it could affect her cervix. as i desperately tried to come up with a new conversation subject to not overhear any more about genital warts, the man-pixie muttered to me, "this is getting old. i've heard this topic several times already."
i win.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
at least i have netflix
ok, it's not that i mean to talk about boys all the time, but as long as these things keep happening i feel obliged to report them.
the other night i assembled a small army of wingmen and women and headed off to another night of south asian theater destined to elude me. you might wonder why i'd choose to drop an entire evening struggling to keep my eyes open through a staged reading of indian political drama. my purpose: stalking my newest crush- yet a another theater guy (this one, at least, is an actor, and a darn good one at that). arguably if i had known that we'd be ambushed into staying for the post-reading discussion i would have dedided that no boy was worth it. additionally, had i known that survival would only earn me ten of the most painfully awkward minutes of my life i would have realized that this particular boy was definitely not worth it.
from this rather painful experience i conclude:
that i'm 100% in agreement with my blogmate: the only function of post-theater/film discussions is for the snotty participants to basque in the sound of their own voices,
and
that i can't shoulder the burden of awkwardness when cute bengali actor actually concludes an already uncomfortable conversation with, "hey, a bunch of people are going across the street for, um, libations... but i'm not going... i'm going home."
seriously. three hours i could have spent watching buffy the vampire slayer.
the other night i assembled a small army of wingmen and women and headed off to another night of south asian theater destined to elude me. you might wonder why i'd choose to drop an entire evening struggling to keep my eyes open through a staged reading of indian political drama. my purpose: stalking my newest crush- yet a another theater guy (this one, at least, is an actor, and a darn good one at that). arguably if i had known that we'd be ambushed into staying for the post-reading discussion i would have dedided that no boy was worth it. additionally, had i known that survival would only earn me ten of the most painfully awkward minutes of my life i would have realized that this particular boy was definitely not worth it.
from this rather painful experience i conclude:
that i'm 100% in agreement with my blogmate: the only function of post-theater/film discussions is for the snotty participants to basque in the sound of their own voices,
and
that i can't shoulder the burden of awkwardness when cute bengali actor actually concludes an already uncomfortable conversation with, "hey, a bunch of people are going across the street for, um, libations... but i'm not going... i'm going home."
seriously. three hours i could have spent watching buffy the vampire slayer.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
it's a small world after all
yet another reason to hate blind dates.
i came home the other day to a rather surprising message on my answering machine. a colleague/friend had called to tell me that a friend of a friend was a single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c. if you calculate the odds, i'll bet there's more than one single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c, but i had a hunch that this might be the same single, jewish sociology grad-student at u of c to whom my blogmate introduced me a couple of years ago. and i was right.
the last time i check there were 9 million people living in chicagoland. how did this happen?
i came home the other day to a rather surprising message on my answering machine. a colleague/friend had called to tell me that a friend of a friend was a single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c. if you calculate the odds, i'll bet there's more than one single, jewish, sociology grad-student at u of c, but i had a hunch that this might be the same single, jewish sociology grad-student at u of c to whom my blogmate introduced me a couple of years ago. and i was right.
the last time i check there were 9 million people living in chicagoland. how did this happen?
Sunday, November 20, 2005
multicultural high-brow
we seem to have stumbled onto a good theme here.
during that same evening of drinking with my co-workers that precipitated this whole train of thought, i asked the jameson-snubber (js?) if he had really sent me a message the other day in portuguese. i hadn't thought about it much at the time, since we were busy and i figured out what he was talking about, but three days later was wondering why he'd picked portuguese to thank me for my help. so we discussed his various travels a little, established that his portuguese came from three weeks visiting friends in portugal plus its similarity to other romance languages, etc.
i mentioned that if js had a need to communicate with his co-workers in portuguese, i'd be happy to be the recipient but he might also try my friend dwtacc. his surprise at her brazilian heritage was entertaining in that everyone thinks she's every ethnicity but her own, but funnier was his doubt that they'd communicate well, what with the whole portugal/brazil thing. i know he just meant that different countries have different dialects and all that, but it really sounded like js thought his three weeks in portugal would be too pure for her life of understanding the language. i let him dig himself a little hole before telling him i was sure her undergraduate portuguese major would surely iron out those differences.
i don't intend to disparage the poor jameson-snubber who just didn't know dwtacc to know what he was saying (although i'm secretly hoping that dwtacc will somehow use this information to her advantage and then tell me about it). i only use it as an example of my growing theory that prizing individuality and unique experiences has its limits. we all get through education and interviewing for jobs by talking ourselves up, trying to convince everyone to hire us because we have something special that they can't get anywhere else, packaging our eclectic experiences like they grant us a unique position to understand the world. but does it hold up? i think a set of experiences gets you into a certain job, social circle, academic standing, whatever, and after that initial acceptance those experiences are pretty much a version of what everyone else has done. is it special that js speaks some portuguese? yes, if he worked in a gas station in northern wisconsin and was trying to get out. and yes, in that i don't speak portuguese. but does it make him better at his job, or funnier over a beer, or quicker getting someone to sleep with him?
i kind of wish i'd spent some time in college working the cash register at fleet farm instead of all the resume-padders, so i could be less of a hypocrite while i rant.
ps: blogmate, mb just found the jason mraz cd i bought before moving to chicago.
during that same evening of drinking with my co-workers that precipitated this whole train of thought, i asked the jameson-snubber (js?) if he had really sent me a message the other day in portuguese. i hadn't thought about it much at the time, since we were busy and i figured out what he was talking about, but three days later was wondering why he'd picked portuguese to thank me for my help. so we discussed his various travels a little, established that his portuguese came from three weeks visiting friends in portugal plus its similarity to other romance languages, etc.
i mentioned that if js had a need to communicate with his co-workers in portuguese, i'd be happy to be the recipient but he might also try my friend dwtacc. his surprise at her brazilian heritage was entertaining in that everyone thinks she's every ethnicity but her own, but funnier was his doubt that they'd communicate well, what with the whole portugal/brazil thing. i know he just meant that different countries have different dialects and all that, but it really sounded like js thought his three weeks in portugal would be too pure for her life of understanding the language. i let him dig himself a little hole before telling him i was sure her undergraduate portuguese major would surely iron out those differences.
i don't intend to disparage the poor jameson-snubber who just didn't know dwtacc to know what he was saying (although i'm secretly hoping that dwtacc will somehow use this information to her advantage and then tell me about it). i only use it as an example of my growing theory that prizing individuality and unique experiences has its limits. we all get through education and interviewing for jobs by talking ourselves up, trying to convince everyone to hire us because we have something special that they can't get anywhere else, packaging our eclectic experiences like they grant us a unique position to understand the world. but does it hold up? i think a set of experiences gets you into a certain job, social circle, academic standing, whatever, and after that initial acceptance those experiences are pretty much a version of what everyone else has done. is it special that js speaks some portuguese? yes, if he worked in a gas station in northern wisconsin and was trying to get out. and yes, in that i don't speak portuguese. but does it make him better at his job, or funnier over a beer, or quicker getting someone to sleep with him?
i kind of wish i'd spent some time in college working the cash register at fleet farm instead of all the resume-padders, so i could be less of a hypocrite while i rant.
ps: blogmate, mb just found the jason mraz cd i bought before moving to chicago.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
the 3 p's of high-browing
sadly, i think my blogmate is right. those who use the word proletariat seldom are the proletariat. that was probably even true in the age of emile zola.
nevertheless, i give full credit for use of the word, and would like to add a few more to the list. i think you'll find that proletariat is the only one allusive to gloriousness.
my second favorite (after some debate and some time spent on dictionary.com) is plebeian. my former roommate (also known as the bride) introduced me to the word during the long debate about what we were going to name our (now tragically deceased) kitten. i was voting for miko, but tb decided that he was just to plebeian for such a sophisticated name. we ended up settling on emile, which (in retrospect) is only relieved of snotty connotations by its reference to the aforementioned writer.
finally there's pedestrian, as in "your taste in literature is so pedestrian." this ridiculous statement was made by one barista to another (i overheard it when i, myself, was employed as a coffee girl), who apparently failed to realize how absurd it sounded. baristas, admittedly are a bizarre breed of service industry types. really they're lower on the totem pole than waiters, cocktail waitresses and bartenders, but tend to be more artsy and well-read, thus feeling entitled to call other peoples' taste pedestrian.
i don't know what else to say. power to the people?
nevertheless, i give full credit for use of the word, and would like to add a few more to the list. i think you'll find that proletariat is the only one allusive to gloriousness.
my second favorite (after some debate and some time spent on dictionary.com) is plebeian. my former roommate (also known as the bride) introduced me to the word during the long debate about what we were going to name our (now tragically deceased) kitten. i was voting for miko, but tb decided that he was just to plebeian for such a sophisticated name. we ended up settling on emile, which (in retrospect) is only relieved of snotty connotations by its reference to the aforementioned writer.
finally there's pedestrian, as in "your taste in literature is so pedestrian." this ridiculous statement was made by one barista to another (i overheard it when i, myself, was employed as a coffee girl), who apparently failed to realize how absurd it sounded. baristas, admittedly are a bizarre breed of service industry types. really they're lower on the totem pole than waiters, cocktail waitresses and bartenders, but tend to be more artsy and well-read, thus feeling entitled to call other peoples' taste pedestrian.
i don't know what else to say. power to the people?
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
down with the ship: take 2
in the ongoing saga of work being especially soul-sucking these days, my immediate team and i decided to re-invent a long-standing work tradition. it is customary that at the end of a long month, teams celebrate by going out to dinner together. it may only be november 16th, but we decided that this month has gone on far long enough, and decided to pre-empt the end-of-month civilized dinner with a mid-month beer binge. lovely.
the highlight of the evening?
one of the guys was expounding on the virtues of grey goose, and how he doesn't think jameson is good enough (and my faithful readers already know what an affront this is to me) compared with single-malt something-or-other, and his eighteen languages that he speaks, and his mastery of technology, etc... suddenly one of the women, just as educated as this guy - but two beers apparently goes a longer way for her - starts shouting...
"you have to learn to live with the PEOPLE! join the proletariat! i am the proletariat! look, i use little words! you're all, 'look at me, i'm slumming it! i ate duck pate instead of goose! tee hee!'"
now, as i argued, the true proletariat doesn't know the word proletariat, but regardless, i think plans were made to drink schlitz together, which works out well for me.
the highlight of the evening?
one of the guys was expounding on the virtues of grey goose, and how he doesn't think jameson is good enough (and my faithful readers already know what an affront this is to me) compared with single-malt something-or-other, and his eighteen languages that he speaks, and his mastery of technology, etc... suddenly one of the women, just as educated as this guy - but two beers apparently goes a longer way for her - starts shouting...
"you have to learn to live with the PEOPLE! join the proletariat! i am the proletariat! look, i use little words! you're all, 'look at me, i'm slumming it! i ate duck pate instead of goose! tee hee!'"
now, as i argued, the true proletariat doesn't know the word proletariat, but regardless, i think plans were made to drink schlitz together, which works out well for me.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
going down with the ship
while 99.9% of our loyal readers already know what it is that my blogmate and i do for a living, and while the few that don't probably don't care that much (or have already figured it out because, let's face it, we're pretty transparent)i think that i can preserve our (flimsy) cloak of anonymity and still dedicate some time and internet space to ranting about our profession and its current state of suckiness. again, as 99.9% of you are close personal friends of ours, you've probably already noticed that we're in foul moods these days, and if you've got any sense you're steering way clear of us... unless, of course, you are mb and can't really avoid the cranky or you are one of our colleagues and are just as miserable as we are.
at the end of the day, i suspect that things are seeming extra bad because our long, grueling hours of work all seem to for naught. it's bad enough that we're never seeing our beds or bed partners (or, in my case, failing to acquire bed partners), but our efforts are seeming increasingly futile. as my boss put it today, "we're basically rearranging deck chairs on the titanic." my blogmate describes it as soul sucking, my other boss just keeps saying, "my flight for fiji leaves in 20 minutes," and i keep scribbling the words "giant martini" on bits of paper and passing the notes to my coworkers.
however you want to describe it, it just ain't good.
at the end of the day, i suspect that things are seeming extra bad because our long, grueling hours of work all seem to for naught. it's bad enough that we're never seeing our beds or bed partners (or, in my case, failing to acquire bed partners), but our efforts are seeming increasingly futile. as my boss put it today, "we're basically rearranging deck chairs on the titanic." my blogmate describes it as soul sucking, my other boss just keeps saying, "my flight for fiji leaves in 20 minutes," and i keep scribbling the words "giant martini" on bits of paper and passing the notes to my coworkers.
however you want to describe it, it just ain't good.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
the devil is in the details
i know it's been a long time since we've posted. work has become something i can only describe as soul-sucking for the last few weeks, and also, i'm lazy. but here is a brief amusing tale:
mb is well known for being a very numbers-oriented guy. doesn't understand the point of competition in music or art or really anything that can't be quantified. life has gotten very good for mb with the advent of google earth, now allowing him to measure every run, bike ride, and swim in lake michigan, so never again would he have to (gasp) *estimate* the distance of his workouts.
enter the upcoming hustle up the hancock race. mb decided to register himself. and me, for that matter, which is going to be a separate funny story. currently i can't hustle much of anywhere. i can sort of saunter to my coffee, meander to my beer, wander to the tv... are those races? anyway, mb was distraught to realize he didn't know exactly how far in miles the hustle-up-the-hancock is. when he asked me, i suggested that it would be impossible to calculate without knowing the pitch of the steps, width, etc.
undaunted, the next day mb showed up with detailed diagrams of staircases and an estimate for his upcoming hustle. where, you might ask, did he get this information?
"i happened to run across an office building stairwell standards manual."
he *happened* to run across a *what*?
i laughed for two solid minutes.
mb, i mock because i love.
mb is well known for being a very numbers-oriented guy. doesn't understand the point of competition in music or art or really anything that can't be quantified. life has gotten very good for mb with the advent of google earth, now allowing him to measure every run, bike ride, and swim in lake michigan, so never again would he have to (gasp) *estimate* the distance of his workouts.
enter the upcoming hustle up the hancock race. mb decided to register himself. and me, for that matter, which is going to be a separate funny story. currently i can't hustle much of anywhere. i can sort of saunter to my coffee, meander to my beer, wander to the tv... are those races? anyway, mb was distraught to realize he didn't know exactly how far in miles the hustle-up-the-hancock is. when he asked me, i suggested that it would be impossible to calculate without knowing the pitch of the steps, width, etc.
undaunted, the next day mb showed up with detailed diagrams of staircases and an estimate for his upcoming hustle. where, you might ask, did he get this information?
"i happened to run across an office building stairwell standards manual."
he *happened* to run across a *what*?
i laughed for two solid minutes.
mb, i mock because i love.
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