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.)

defensive action

before my blogmate has a chance to publicly mock me about my consistent and obvious sports watching bandwagon-ness allow me to self-deprecate.

yet again, my life has been taken over my obsession with the final rounds of a sport that i normally care nothing about. if you ask my blogmate she'll tell you that i do this all the time.

i understand that as a 50% french person it's my moral and genetic obligation to care about "football" (i think you can only spell it "futbol" if you're actually a fan of ridiculous, latino-style, "gooooooooool"-screaming commentating, a phenomenon that i personally find to be extremely irritating).

i've always been a bit of a disappointment to some of my french relatives, mostly for my inherent american-ness, but also for my inability to serve any useful function in the spontaneous soccer matches that take place before, during, and after summer gatherings -the rules are such that everyone plays, shoes or not, skirt or not, and that wrath of my grandmother when you've taken out her geraniums is the price you pay for participating in the national pastime.

the truth, i've never really cared about soccer... until now... for the following reasons...

1) respectable excuse to repeatedly hang out in bars in the middle of the day
2) recognition from my boss that this is important, such that he actually makes sure i get out of work in time
3) keeping up with the jones' - i don't know if it's a chicago thing, but EVERYONE is talking about this. it's like reading middlesex or eating sushi - it's necessary data gathering so that you can talk to people at parties
4) chance to publicly love france
5) weird visceral satisfaction - for some reason i keep doing this
and, finally
6) REALLY HOT GUYS with nice legs and really emotive faces who cry like babies when they lose and rip their shirts of when they're happy. i spend most of my waking hours conjuring up schemes by which i get to marry zinedine zidane.

is there a support group for this?

at least you can pick your friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

good times.

friends with desk jobs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all systems go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

i'm not reassured.

SWM seeks punctual SWF

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

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

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

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

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

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

foreplay

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

but screw that.

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

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

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

excrutiating.

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

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

there goes the neighborhood

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

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

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

classy.

hatred on wheels

i hate everything.

no offense to my blogmate and mb (mbm & mb...) but today i hate bicycles and the people who ride them.

after spending the better part of last week wallowing in congested, vomiting misery on my couch i was finally forced to pull myself together and go to work today... but from the second i left my apartment it was all wrong. i was pulling out of the driveway before i realized that my nice hot cup of coffee was still sitting on the kitchen counter, and on the road less than 3 minutes before everything went to hell. i was specifically aware that bike the drive (the yearly cyclist love fest where they close off LSD to cars for some good, old-fashioned two-wheeled fun) was happening this weekend, but specifically thought that it was happening yesterday. i'm still way too chicago-dumb to attempt an efficient maneuver through city streets without any help from mapquest, and proceded to work my way south in a slow, disorganized way that was anything but sexy... and that landed me at work a good 20 minutes late.

things might have moved a little faster had it not been for all the wholesome, happy, bike-helmeted families that were meandering their way westward, obstructing not only my usual route to work but also clogging every intersection between me and my destination.

i'd like to think that my irrational rage was born from my own, inner outdoorsy-ness and my sadness that i couldn't join in on the fun. but really i'm just a bitter girl who hates everything.