new years' resolutions?

got any?

since meeting my college roommate, i have always adopted her yearly new years' resolution: have more fun. it's nice - i never have to feel bad about resolutions like exercise more, eat healthier, be nicer, and so on. but i can think of a few that should go on the list this year:

1. stop calling blogmate every five minutes to tell her "i hate everything."

this is hard, because we've had a stressful few work weeks, but for 2007 i will try to substitute with some other more benign cliche. "it's the right thing to do" in particular works well and can be employed in events where i am asked to do something i don't like (in place of "i hate everything") as well as at the end of hard days such as yesterday when my blogmate asks me, "so can we drink tonight?" much more versatile. i can work on this.

2. get out of board game rut.

in college mb would bring a cribbage board on vacations, and set up in front of various non-midwestern scenery (eiffel tower, castles, etc.) he shared this love with ck, my blogmate and me in st. lucia last spring, and since then we enjoy bringing our somewhat-obscure little card game out to bars. when my blogmate and i play, we kind of hope to attract the attention of some young male bartender. unfortunately, every time we've tried this we've only attracted the wrong bartender, like the one with four kids or the short one with bad teeth *sigh*. so i'm thinking of expanding our bar-game base. i was secretly hoping for dominos for christmas, but no such luck. oh well, an excuse to go shopping for myself once the checking account recovers.

i did receive games over the holidays, which is awesome! but mb, butterknife, b's husband and i demonstrated recently that just the receipt of more gifts is not enough to break the cycle. we have spent the last several holidays together playing "apples to apples" for hours on end, and the game is fun but so addictive that we're all a bit burned out from last year. i had purchased for butterknife a much-desired trivial pursuit 80s edition, and we tried mightily to stop playing apples to apples in favor of the new game - which lasted for about 20 minutes until we realized that although we are children of the 80s, we have no idea which former reagan aide said which memorable thing. so we switched to my new present from ck, a more promising game called "quickword," which is a series of word puzzles kind of like boggle. anyone who knows butterknife's husband and me knows that our vocabularies are substantial, and we were quite excited about getting to stop feeling so lame about the 80s and start kicking ass with the word games. but no such luck - total word block. mb, who spends a great deal of effort pretending he only knows little words, was all over this one, with entries like "surreptitiously," while the rest of us could only produce "so." after another 20 minutes we guiltily looked around the table and went right back to apples to apples, which we promptly played until midnight when there were no cards left and we were all falling asleep at the table. doh. maybe the new games need more booze? i'm willing to work on this.

3a. Finish new awesome website.
3b. Stop working on new awesome website (it's for our wedding) and start working on actual wedding.

i won't post the actual link here, but email me if you want to see pictures of our wedding party and parents as bobbleheads. mb and i not having cable or bunny ears for the tv has resulted in some extra free time which we have used to learn more about photoshop and making animated gifs. but don't go looking at the "wedding info" section, because it's the only blank part. perhaps for 2007 we'll do something about that, hopefully before we decide to learn how to make flash movies.

accepting additions to the resolution list now - either for yourself or for me. come on - it's the right thing to do. :)

hippie holidays

i hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season, that nobody is struggling to fill last-minute holiday requests like "please, honey, would you mind picking up some butane for my kitchen torch so that i don't have to lie to my grandmother when she asks me how i'm enjoying my creme brulee set from last year?", and that everyone's home decorating is done to your satisfaction.

me?
i have picked up the butane.
but the holiday decorating is getting out of hand.

it started out simply enough, with a plan to host an appetizer party a few weeks ago, and with the realization that our apartment doesn't really have enough space to hold guests, appetizers, and a tree, we decided to scrap the tree and decorate our free-standing bike rack for a very merry bike-mas. it actually turned out great - faux pine garland and white lights strung in triangle fashion with a few ornaments here and there, presents at the bottom of the bikes. the bike-mas tree was a hit of the party, second only to mb's re-creation of his mother's famous beef smokie chubbies (for the uneducated, that's mini-hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls).

add to the bike-mas festivities mb's beloved "zwarte piet" dolls, which means "black pete" in dutch; they are the friendly but politically-incorrect-in-america traditional christmas elves in holland. i'll summarize their presence: mb loves them. i love hiding them. so ensues the now-annual holiday tradition of each of us taking turns hiding the zwarte piet dolls in each others' stuff.

all fine so far. but now add ck's much-loved holiday gift to mb: wind-up hopping lederhosen. mb loves them, and i also love them. we gave them a prominent home on the dresser right next to the small lego "little jo-na" that mb gave me a few years ago (it really looks like a teeny lego replica of me; weird.) but last night i headed for bed to find the lederhosen sitting on my pillow next to mb. this gives me the feeling that the holiday festivities are taking over just a little.

i can't help but feel like my life is becoming a little bit too animated. mb and i are generally good-natured and happy people, but we realize that there are limits. for example, this weekend we watched a video on the life of ram dass (some guy who was a harvard professor with timothy leary who got booted from harvard after they started running experiments where they tried to create a placebo-controlled trial of hallucinogens to stimulate religious experience). when they did the segment where ram dass brings all the hippies back to his father's farm near boston while they all skip around in a big circle and bathe naked in the stream, we decided that we are not *that* good-natured. and last night, when we were reading the travel-blog of mb's hippie college friends who left their jobs to take a two-month stint camping around the country with no particular plans or destinations, hearing about their enthusiastic descriptions of the "energy" of the desert and the good vibes of parking lots despite entering said parking lots forgetting that their bikes were on top of the car (oops - ouch), we coined a new term:

some people are so good-natured that you just want to mock them.

so my hippie-mocking cynicism balances the take-over of the lederhosen a little, i think.

right?

glass half full

i won't lie. since thanksgiving i've definitely done my share of sulking. for one thing, self-loathing is a fairly distasteful experience, and since i attempted the turkey trot knowing full well that i was on the brink of serious injury, i can only blame myself for the searing pain and the limping and the crutches. so i hate the hobbling, and i hate myself for doing it.

that said...

there's something to be said for having a stress fracture.

that i appear to have done this to myself while running, or even better, while attempting a 10 mile bike/sprint suggests some sort of dedicated and accomplished athleticism. i'd even go so far as to say "hard core." no one has to know that said bike/sprint was completely out of my league.

and i'm told by kl and dh that i look cute when i'm so vulnerable and pathetic.

so i get to be badass and adorable?! i can't lose!

still woozy under the effects of all the attention, sympathy, and looks of admiration, i decided to take it one step further and go on my first ever helicopter transport of tiny sick baby. nevermind that i almost shrieked in terror while in the MRI machine, being fearless is fun, and flight doc just sounds cool.

i probably don't have to tell you that the helicopter experience was somewhat hair-raising, what with my overwhelming sense that we were about to fall right out of the sky. i also probably don't need to inform any of you that no amount of badass injury or life-saving can will save you when what you need is interpersonal know-how.

it figured that the other doc on the flight was someone i've known peripherally for a couple of years, and that i've had to be a little icy with him several times in the past, as he constantly feels the need to make veiled references to a brief romantic stint that once transpired between me and a friend of his (more adventures in self-loathing, but that's a story for another day).

it came out in small talk while in flight (over the headsets, mind-you) that he'd recently broken up with his rather serious and live-in ex-girlfriend, and of course i got roped into admitting that no, i wasn't seeing anyone either. flight doc made some "oh, so should we catch a movie later?" crack that was just weird enough to make me a little uneasy (since i was already practically sitting on his lap in the tiny helicopter cabin). not knowing what else to do, i gave a a really weak, "oh, you don't want me, i'm damaged goods," and started talking about my stress fracture.

i almost got away with it, but as we were landing the PILOT called me out on this not so slick maneuver, again over the radio for everyone to hear. "jo-na, am i imagining things or did he just ask you out and you said something about your leg?" again i failed to be quick-witted at the moment it really counted, and muttered something about the two of us going way back, and was left limping along behind to the stretcher, feeling like a complete tool.

i would be mortified by this experience, except that it offers the chance to work my stress fracture, my helicopter baby rescue, and the fact that i once dated a 5'4" nicaraguan man all into one, convenient, self-promoting story.

it's like my boss always says: never be sad about your data

home for the holidays

so i feel a little bad about blogging at my family's expense. i get off so easy when it comes to family. they're great... and i invited them here.

but here's the backdrop:

my dad, grumpy, with his week-long, miserable bout of intractable hiccups

me, despondent, with my blown knee, hobbling around on crutches

my brother, groaning, wondering what he did to deserve this, trying to figure out how to have a phone conversation with his new, still under-the-radar girlfriend without my parents noticing.

at their absolute worst my parents are still very cool people and 98% of the time i walk around feeling very fortunate that i'm the progeny of relatively hip, open-minded, well-educated parents who rarely make me crazy.

except when they make me crazy.

mom (examining the various pride and prejudice interpretations i have on DVD): "where's the new one?"

me: "you mean the 2005 keira knightley version? it's in your hand."

dad: "[jo-na], when was this old version filmed?"

me: "i don't know dad"

mom: "no, not that one. the other new one."

me: "what?"

mom: "the one with gwyneth paltrow."

dad (holding the old, two-volume version): "how long is this one"

me (to mom): "you mean emma"

me (to dad): "i don't know dad, long."

mom: "yeah, that's it."

dad: "but where did you get this version? did you buy it?"

me (to dad): "it was a gift"

me (to mom): "that's not pride and prejudice mom, it's, um, emma."

dad: "when was this old version filmed?"

mom: "i thought it was pride and prejudice."

me (flustered): "but it's even called, 'emma,' "

mom: "what's the other one that's about emma."

me: "oh, clueless?"

mom: "yeah, clueless, that's the one i like."

dad: "how long is this one?"


boy am i glad that i stocked the bar before they got here.

monday morning quarterback

one of the the things i love about my good blogmate is that, like my father, she has blind faith in my abilities. this faith gives me the false belief that i can, in fact, do the things she thinks i can.

for a while we can both feel good about ourselves.

but then it all breaks down.

in her ever patient indulgence of my triathlon and boy-meeting fantasies, my blogmate helpfully suggested that ck and i participate in a ride n' tie (some kind of bike/run race) last week, as a first peak into the world of the chicago tri world, and a way to jump start the winter training.

seems like a good idea, right? ck was up for it because, well, ck is always up for anything (which is perhaps the thing the collective jo-na loves most about her), and neither she nor i were too worried that the description of this event was a little vague on the website.

we started to get nervous when ck picked up the race packets. "organized chaos," was how the guy described it.

as it turns out, the ride n' tie isn't so much as a competitive biking and running as it is sprint training for crazy people. we probably should have realized that only people of a certain disposition are up and out at 8AM for a late november race in schaumburg. we also probably should have realized that we are not of said disposition. we also should have realized that the biking was just a way to make the time between the sprints SHORTER.

after much swearing and complaining and passing each other up on the course muttering to each other about the drinks the instigator of this madness was going to buy us, we finally limped across the finish line. 10 miles. two people. one bike. much running. much pain. MANY crazy people. we felt pretty bad about our 2nd-to-last place finish until we realized that the winners came in at a sub-five-minute pace.

we felt much better about ourselves once it was all over, and have been alternating states of soaring triumph and searing pain, wondering just who we think we are.

but it's ART!

while helping throw a baby shower this weekend for our good friend jz (formerly known as twinset, although i submit that the name has to change with the still-stylish-but-more-laid-back mommy-attire these days) i was talking with dwtacc (whose name should also really change: are opinions about the acc still relevant here?) about her recent expedition to the museum of contemporary art. apparently berets can be worn without irony in certain settings. also, apparently i could be an up-and-coming artist, since people drawing single diagonal lines on paper get featured as "early works" at the mca.

i'm going to start asking mb (does his name have to change? does it have to be mf now? i don't like that as much) to wear the beret i bought him as a joke a few years ago to our living room from now on. two reasons:

one, we're having an appetizer-and-mulled-wine party in a few weeks, and mb decided that on the evite we should list "location" as "fancington," our joking name for the apartment. let me be clear, this place is not so fancy, especially with the millions of bikes all over the place, but compared to the place in hyde park with the huge bugs and the lack of reliable heat or water, and with the dishwasher, well, we think we're living in high style. plus, according to ck's book that i read, jackie o named all of her homes, and who are we to be outdone? so i think since berets are apparently fine in such high society, it's time his made a more regular debut.

two: we recently got netflix and i am going to start making the claim that we're not movie-watchers so much as art film connoisseurs. similar to the merging of the cds that comes with every deepening relationship, we are introducing each other to our favorite films from college. we take turns on the queue, and after last night's debut of "last dragon" (which was fanTAStic!) i think the level of film here at fancington will soon be reaching an all-time high. next up, i think, are "glen or glenda?" by the great ed wood, and "tron."

my insightful blogmate (whose name will NOT change, although the associated praise-adjectives do vary somewhat) pointed out yesterday that we all believe more strongly in the things we were exposed to in high school or college, like her anger with the starbucks people that burn the latte-milk after years of barista-hood. so maybe the films at fancington aren't GOOD so much as they happened at an impressionable point in our young past(s). but if single lines on paper are contemporary art, breakdancing-martial-arts and cross-dresser-mockumentaries featuring bela lugosi are practically religious icons.

elliptical therapy

right on the heels of my good blogmate and i deciding that we had to abandon the "i hate everything" moto in exchange for the more reasonable and well-intended, "it's the right thing to do," i find myself pondering the kind of misanthropic question that can only lead to trouble: why is everyone lame?

after a particularly distasteful self-extrication from work this morning i went straight to the gym in order to enable some quality perseverating and expend the last of my dwindling energy supply on the elliptical machine. easier said than done, as i realized when i got there that i'd lost my membership card. this prompted a little more eye contact that i really wanted from the guy behind the counter, who looked more like someone who'd just come back from a 3 month, marijuana-intense trek through the himalayas than the average nerd with the big math book that usually mans the entrance. i should have left well enough alone when he asked me how my day was going, but i was a little incensed at the question (since it was 9AM and i was dirty, tired, and sleep-deprived), and attempted some kind of crack about how i wished i'd slept in my own bed. sherpa guy understandably took this entirely the wrong way and yet again i was back to painful self-extrication.

once i was finally up and going on the elliptical machine i thought a bit about my blogmate and mb's music classification scheme and decided that the mix cds i've been compiling in my head for the last three months could be broken up pretty neatly as "run," "bike," and "wallow" (i also considered "seduce," "flirt," and "high-brow"). i then moved on to more meaningful thoughts like, "people suck" and "online dating is like poking a sleeping bear with a stick," before giving in to some serious stewing about the rise and fall of the stock analyst. (pay attention, rw, this one's for you.)

a few weeks a weeks ago i went on a date that would objectively be described as "fine," although in the larger scheme of things might be more like "great," just by virtue of it's not totally sucking. then commenced a week of vaguely flirty, albeit somewhat unsatisfying emails, until he abruptly went dark. i wasn't going down without a fight, and in a moment of post-call, post-jogging delerium, i enlisted my good blogmate to help me send a last email, inviting him to a drinking event that seemed right up his alley in a funny sort of way.

oops.

the response came fast, and initially seemed like the rejection i'd anticipated. roughly, "can't. busy. sorry."

fine.

if only he'd stopped there. "pseudo-goth wine bars aren't' really my thing. i don't think they're anyone's thing."

ouch!

and more to the point, wtf?

i ellipticized furiously, trying not to think about how much my knees were hurting, and did some final tweaking to my carefully crafted, snarky mental response:

"i would argue that competitively priced belgian beers, found stumbling distance from a good friend's house should be everyone's thing. but that's neither here nor there, as i believe the expression you're looking for is 'no thank you.'

"come to think of it, i believe the expression i'm looking for is 'what's your problem?' "

i understand that this response can only exist in my head (and possibly for all of you to enjoy), and that i can't go around antagonizing stock analysts just because i'm disgruntled. but this whole experience has left me in a state of recalcitrant ill humor, which i suspect will only be remedied when i start stalking that really hot guy who sits in the window at the argo tea on broadway.

ode to art film

as some of our loyal readers predicted, the movie i saw at reeling, the chicago lesbian and gay international film festival (which was inexplicably sponsored by canada) was actually very interesting and quite good, although i did preemptively make it very clear to dh that under no circumstances were we staying for the post-film panel discussion ("feminism and gender identity"). at least i knew it was coming this time, rather than getting ambushed by the post preformance deconstruction (lest we forget the heated debate that followed the staged reading of the indian political drama - admittedly i probably wouldn't have been so bitter about that if i hadn't been there chasing a boy).

in flipping through the festival's program, i was very, very sad to discover that i've got a prior committment this wednesday, prohibiting me from viewing, "in the blood," another of this year's offerings. read on:

"in the blood is homo-horror at its finest! cassidy clarke is a closeted jock at an NYC college whose homophobia has kept him from unlocking a hidden inherited ability: seeing the future while fantasizing about the nearest stud. meanwhile, there's a serial killer on campus targeting young co-eds, and his baby sister, jessica, is exactly the killer's type. what will cassidy do when he realizes every time he fantasizes about a guy, he's plagued by images of jessica covered in blood?"

will someone PLEASE go see this movie and give me a full report?!

fidelity

over the weekend mb and i started the important process of preparing for our marriage: we consolidated the cd collections. this, as it turns out, is quite an undertaking, since mb has A LOT of bootleg jam band shows from college, and A LOT of euro-trash trance and techno from living in holland.

i know every modern person at some point compares themselves to high fidelity, so pardon the modern-day cliche, but i really felt like a perverse version of the "how do you catalogue albums?" scene. we definitely couldn't alphabetize since mb has at least 50 cds that all start with "dj" something dutch. as mb put it, "soooo much dj psycho bitch..." plus, as n has pointed out a long time ago, it's a little weird to have boy bands right next to punk. not that we have boy bands or punk, really. so we have loosely conceptually-based ordering by life phase. jam bands, live shows, electronic, and mixes made by us or our friends all get their own sections. studio albums have r&b going to "brother-music" (modest mouse, radiohead, etc) thru beastie boys to trip-hop, a brief stop through my old roommate's contribution of prince, beck and cake (which are only related in their being my favorites in her collection), a short and patchy classics collection featuring siouxsie and the banshees next to earth wind and fire and james taylor... then to the dregs, like my blogmate's and my still-current obsession with crappy world music, my undergrad lesbian-rock phase (come on, you liked indigo girls and ani difranco too!) quickly followed by my alternative-christian-band phase (do you remember sixpence none the richer? that stupid "kiss me" song? it totally fits in that spot). we round out with single-band collections (beatles, barenaked ladies, bob marley) and our combined-but-still-paltry i-do-too-have-culture collection of assorted jazz and classical music that we heard once and bought it to look smart sitting on our shelf.

so i am glad that we are tackling the important issues of facing our life together. no sitting around weighing the details of where we're having our wedding or whether orange or red flowers will look better, no sir. only the good stuff. now if only i can convince my parents of that when we see them over thanksgiving and i have absolutely nothing to report in the way of actual wedding plans, with no brother and butterknife there to bail me out of the cross-examination.

sm, is this what you had in mind by "bridezilla"?

escape hatch

in planning a highly anticipated, yet potentially awkward saturday morning breakfast date this weekend i decided it was probably wise to install some kind of solid bail-out plan should i have the sudden need to, well, bail.

the first idea was to make some sort of work-date with my blogmate, whose help i legitimately (and quite desperately) need in fixing my large, mostly defunct set of research data (to answer questions like, "why are my patients' ages coming out in negative numbers?). it seemed like that was sort of a triple-threat excuse: 1) get out of date, 2) project enough dorkiness to make myself repellant, and 3) fix broken data set.

but then an even better proposition came along. a few weeks back i gave my good friend dh a bit of a scolding for his ambivalence about missing his league football game to go watch the one-time showing of his sister's movie at the gay and lesbian film festival. assuming that i'd actually be busy or out of town or something i told him i'd go with him for moral support, as it seemed unlikely that any of his fellow recreational football players would be willing to accompany him.

dh, of course, remembered this promise and called the other day to remind me of the 2pm saturday movie time. his suggestion was that if the date was going well i could just bring him along to the movie with me. in my violent rejection of this plan i perhaps mis-prioritized, starting with 1) "angry lesbian movie is probably not good first date material", and 2) "no way am i exposing this guy to YOU and your unfilteredness."

dh was understandably wounded. "wow, that's pretty harsh! are you REALLY saying that i'm WORSE than the gay and lesbian film festival?!?"

fair enough, but as it turns out the date is a no-go, leaving me alone with my garbled data and some serious art film to look forward to.

well-informed?

boy am i glad that i started reading the newspaper. how else would i find out these crucial pieces of news?

front section, mind you:

was houdini a british spy? 2 biographers suggest escape artist spied on anarchists, hunted couterfeiters, and was slain by spiritualists.

elephants pass mirror test. elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, a measure of self-awareness that until now has been shown definitively only in humans and apes, researchers reported monday.

italian lawmakers raise fuss on toilet rights. the question of whether italy's first transvestite lawmaker should be allowed to use the ladies' room in parliament has triggered a full-blown debate among politicians.

so i'm no closer to knowing who's running for what november 7th, but now i have things to talk about at parties.

office politics

as my blogmate gets girlier, what with the shiny engagement ring and wedding planning, i'm just getting dorkier.

i'm not sure when i became such an incurable geek, but i can't really find a better explanation for my standing in line at office max today to pay for my brand new paper shredder.

in addition to being a big nerd, i apparently have the sense of humor of an adolescent boy... unless any of you would have such a hard time suppressing the nearly irresistible urge to giggle when the nice girl at the check out asked if you needed an lube for the shredder. i had no idea shredders needed lubricating.

so i got home and eagerly started shredding things, wondering if maybe those people at enron were just shredding stuff because it's fun (it's really fun!), and why it took me such a long time to realize that throwing away bank statements and credit card receipts without the aforementioned shredding was probably a bad idea.

apparently the shredder got mad at me for making fun of its intimacy issues - that or its little motor buckled under the pressure of my frenetic shredding... either way, now i've got a glorified trashcan, a guilty conscience, and lots of documents with no place to go.

smoke and mirrors

for the most part i like getting to work someplace brainy like u of c, but sometimes it can be a little tiresome.

for example, there are dedicated "centers" for the following, some with their own buildings:

integrative science
biomedical discovery
translational studies

seriously? do they know how ridiculous they sound?

it runs in the family

From : sister
Sent : Thursday, October 26, 2006 7:32 AM
To : brother
Subject : amazon

i'm officially a dork. i just ordered "medical
statistics at a glance" just because i thought i
might like to read it.

From: brother
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 7:55 AM
To: sister
Subject: re: amazon

i just got a book from the library called "The Box -
How the shipping container made the world smaller and
the world economy bigger."

dork contest:
you 1
me 1

movin' on up

sorry for the recent absence. my good blogmate and i have been a) studying night and day to try and pass our qualifying boards so that we can be full-fledged workin' types who get paid, b) stuck in suburban texas at a prep course, and c) FINALLY actually taking said board exam. soon there will be celebratory drinks.

many things could be said about the pain of boards preparation, i'm sure... like the people in farmer's branch, texas at boards-school who probably now hate us because we spent the entire week laughing in the front row, drawing silly pictures of ourselves hating to study and getting progressively fatter as the week of pizza delivery went by. or the guy who told us he could not possibly go out for margaritas because *he* was taking the boards on monday (for those not in this business, the boards only come once a year, meaning that everybody takes the boards on monday - but more importantly, what are you doing in suburban dallas if not taking advantage of the abundant margaritas???) or we could regale you with stories about the boards themselves, which assess our ability to deal properly with the pressing issues that affect this nation's children, like whether the bite of a black widow or brown recluse spider is worse for you, and what nastiness can be passed on in rabbit poo and mouse urine. sweet.

but now the big climactic two-day test is over, and we have to move on with the rest of our lives. in a way it's actually been nice to have an excuse not to deal with anything. finish project for work? sorry, taking boards. pick location or date for wedding? no can do, boards. as my dad suggested (immediately after hearing news of my engagement), work out a pre-nup? sorry, boards. also, buzzkill. nice. but also boards. post on the blog? well... you see which item comes first.

speaking of blog posts, i hear that the famed naterohan.com is back up and running. to recap, naterohan.com was once owned by naterohan, but it was purchased by some megaconglomerate in a brief moment of lapsed renewal. i look forward to hearing the triumphant tale of its return. but i close with a brief excerpt from butterknife's husband (nobody says it better) regarding a formatting issue... let me just say that my blogmate and i have been happy about the increased blog-tivity in recent months, and if this is why, i am sad but amused.

From : butterknife's husband
Sent : Monday, October 23, 2006 10:25 PM
To : jo-na, naterohan, butterknife, beloved friends
Subject : AAAHHH!!!

Finding naterohan.com back up and running? Awesome.
Linking to other friends' websites to find a reference to the Quaker Steak n' Lube, in Middleton, WI? Awesome.
Finding a link to my sister's website on naterohan.com? Awesome.
Not Awesome: filterless.blogspot.com = sister's website. filterless.blogpost.com = gay porn links.
Naterohan.com -> links to the latter.
glad that's in my browser's history, fellas.

existential wedding bitch

there's no reluctance here. sign me up.
with big looming test just a week away what could be better distraction than a newly engaged blogmate?
my down-to-earth, feet planted on the ground friend can now frequently be found lost in time and space, gazing into the shining sparkles of her new pretty ring- satisfying for me since until now i've had the monopoly on whimsical musing.
plus, there's all sorts of planning... sans bridezilla... and i get to help.
the questions that arise:
how can she drink her morning bloody mary on wedding day without spilling it down the front of her dress?
if we go try on fancy dresses at saks do we actually need to look nice, or can we go nike-clad carrying bottles of evian, as if we do this all the time?
three cheers for low maintenance-ness.

things that are awesome about canada

blood orange gelato
mountains
salmon (oh, the salmon)
smart cars
the cutest bums ever! canadian accented "excuse me, but are you going to eat those leftovers?"
the cutest bum-deniers ever! canadian accented "i'm so sorry, but i have a teenage son who wants that. very sorry."
eh?
aboot.
the largest, most manicured hedges EVER
a mass transit system that spans trains, buses and sea-buses (vancouver) on one ticket
the adorable suggestion by vancouverites that the reason they don't have a mass transit map is because "there are just too many buses" (really? but we can do it in chicago?)
taking a public bus to the wilderness (grouse mountain hiking)
coffee, and its everywhereness, and its goodness
loonies and toonies (how can canada take itself seriously?)
the fact that all service workers in whistler can tell us with no trace of irony that the best local hike is along the river of golden dreams (snicker)
more salmon
watching downhilling mountain bikers flying over our heads while drinking a pitcher of kokanee gold beer
chair lifts that enable us to only hike downhill
hotel hot tub with lake view where we drink straight rum from plastic bottle (classy)
large signs welcoming us to the wilderness
sitting on top of a mountain looking at a glacier, and leaving with new shiny rock. :)

back to school

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

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

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

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

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

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

return to sender

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

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

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

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

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

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

and a few days later...

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

and finally,

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

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

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

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

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

rules of engagement

where is emily post when you really need her?

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

but i stand corrected.

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

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

people just don't know how to behave anymore.

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

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

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

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