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Sunday, September 28, 2003
The TiVo
Seriously, it's like God shone down upon our entertainment center and gave unto us a gift that is worth its weight in gold. It's the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. So beautiful. I want to cry.
Really.
We can record anything at the push of a button. And there it is whenever we want it, even if we've missed the beginning, or we feel like watching after it's already started. Oh god, I love it so much.
Love love love.
I'm a little misty-eyed right now. I feel that I should go upstairs and watch an old episode of Friends or something. Since I have 5 saved on there right now.
Love.
Love.
Love.
It's no coincidence that TiVo and lOVe share two letters. And if you make the "L" lowercase, it looks like an "I" and so that makes it three letters that are the same which is just too many to ignore.
Must. Go. Watch. Now.
9/28/2003 11:49:00 PM link
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Saturday, September 27, 2003
The Movie
I've just found out that Gwyneth will be in Chicago filming Proof for 11 days in October. My birthday is in just over a week (oh, and I've updated the wish list...). I think that God is giving me the present of meeting her, don't you?
They'll be mostly on the south side near U of C and Hyde Park. But this just means that I'm going to have to hang out down there for a while.
AND they're looking for extras. How much would I die to be an extra in a Gwyneth movie? Do you have to be union for that? Anyone know? Anyone?
9/27/2003 07:36:00 PM link
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Thursday, September 25, 2003
The Homework
I've been working on accounting problems for far too long tonight. Why did I not learn to not leave homework until the night before it's due?
Oh right. It's been three years since I've been in school. I didn't get the textbook or syllabus until Monday. And I'm sick.
Shake it off, Micky...it's only the first week.
9/25/2003 01:53:00 AM link
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Wednesday, September 24, 2003
The Longest Night
As I began my walk to the train station, I realized that my throat hurt. I was starting to get sick. But did I do anything about it?
No.
As my very first grad school class wore on, I got progressively worse. Luckily, the bookstore was in the same building as my class. Unluckiliy, the bookstore closed 15 minutes before our break time, so it was of no use to me. I bought some ginger ale from a Chinese restaurant around the corner.
Riding the el when you're sick is not fun.
Even when I got the drugs in me, it didn't get better. Granted my nose has stopped running for the most part, but my throat is in this curious stage of hurting and not hurting at various intervals.
Here's the point. Being sick is only being made worse by an article I was reading about a man who has been stuck in an international airport terminal for 15 years. Somehow this knowledge is totally stuck in my head, combining itself with thoughts from my economics class, and my online fundraising class homework. All of this combines itself with the fact that my throat is killing me.
Which all contributes to the fact that I'm awake at 4am. The TiVo man is coming in 4 hours. Maybe I'm just too excited to sleep.
But I sure am tired.
9/24/2003 04:01:00 AM link
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Saturday, September 20, 2003
The Wedding Cake
I can't say that this wedding was spectacular. Not bad...but nothing to feature in the big book of weddings, if there were such a thing. (Actually, I bet there is...probably published by Vogue or something. Please don't send links to the Big Book of Weddings. I don't care.) In fact, the most memorable thing happened at the reception.
The bride and groom were cutting the cake. I was sitting at a table near the cake table with my Great Aunt Dee. We were joking around, saying how selfish it was for them to just eat cake in front of us without sharing. Come on! We like cake too!
It didn't help that the buffet was smaller than the buffet you would find in the smallest cafeteria in the world. (OK, and don't send me links to the Big Book of Small Buffets or the Big Book of Tiny Cafeterias either.)
Since all of this was in a jokey fashion, when I suggested that she go and steal one of the smaller cakes that surrounded the main cake, I didn't think she'd take me seriously.
But the next thing I knew, they had finished the cutting extravaganza and had retired to the head table for some sort of photo retrospective, and my aunt was cutting our very own cake at the next table. Notice how I said "the next table"? She comes back to our table with two plates of cake and says to me, "I put it on Helen's table so they wouldn't know it was me." Meanwhile the waitstaff is freaking out because they've lost part of the wedding cake, not noticing that it is sitting right in front of them, conveniently hidden under a napkin. And Aunt Dee and I are sitting there, one table away, watching the whole thing.
Damn, that cake was good.
9/20/2003 11:46:00 PM link
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Thursday, September 18, 2003
The Purchase
So I just spent 40 minutes on hold, but it was totally worth it...
I just ordered TiVo.
9/18/2003 01:37:00 PM link
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Wednesday, September 17, 2003
The Gel
Sometimes, I feel that I should share my mistakes so that others can learn from them.
Tonight I made one of these mistakes. Now, I want you to go get a pencil and take notes. This is important stuff.
So I forgot my toothpaste, thinking that of course my parents will have some that I can borrow. Sadly I forgot to ask until after they went to bed, so I rooted around in the bathroom cabinet to see if they had any laying around. My search proved fruitful when I discovered two Rembrandt sample packs. Totally enough for tonight, if not my whole weekend home.
After a harrowing battle ripping the package open with my teeth, I squeezed the gel onto my brush.
It looked strange. But it smelled minty. I wondered if toothpaste could go bad. I decided that it couldn't and started to brush.
It tasted strange too. Kind of like medicine. I brushed for a minute longer, and then had to take it out of my mouth. I looked at the package.
Canker Sore Relief Gel. Not toothpaste. Not even minty. It was my brush that smelled of mint.
The moral of this story is to not brush your teeth with anything that doesn't look like toothpaste.
My whole mouth is totally numb right now.
9/17/2003 11:59:00 PM link
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Sunday, September 14, 2003
The Orientation
Oh look. It's been a whole week. You know what happens when I design a show. But it's done now.
Anyway.
Remember freshman year? Remember when you had to get to campus a week before everyone else to have "orientation"? And remember how all you really did was hang out in a big "peer group", all looking for your "peer mentor", who is virtually indistinguishable from all other "peer mentors", because they insist on wearing matching t-shirts, and even though you know that being shown around the campus and hearing about things like the pep club is important in some worlds, all you really want to do is go back to your dorm and unpack your CDs?
(Remember when I wrote normal sentences that didn't go on for a whole paragraph? Yeah, me neither.)
Although I certainly felt like a freshman yesterday, it was nothing like that. We were in a fancy club, having a fancy lunch, with not a matching t-shirt in sight. Ages range from 22 to 75. Instead of groups sprawled out on the floor, big tables of ten students and/or faculty members fill the room. Sometimes we sit in silence, realizing that not only do we not know the people at our table, most likely we will never see them again, especially if they aren't in our department. And the tables are so big, that you can only talk to the people on your half, whether the people of the other half of the table look interesting or not.
There's only so much reading of orientation materials that one can do. Because let's face it. It's boring. I don't really care to read the policy afor academic dishonesty. If I'm cheating at the grad school leve then I probably don't belong in grad school anyway. (Oooh...that could spark a big debate on cheating...yes, I know people do it...no, I wouldn't do it. But I don't feel like judging those who do. Remember, I eat a lot of McDonalds. Everyone has their flaws...) Eventually we sit and talk about Chicago weather and where everyone is from. When all we really want to do is go to our department meetings and register for classes.
I could go on for even longer about the boringness of orientation, but I won't. I have class on Tuesday night, Thursday night, four Friday afternoons, and some random internet class. And the girl who sat next to me the whole day is all for getting our whole class out for drinks after the first sad day of accounting.
Heh. Look at me...I'm a grad student.
9/14/2003 10:13:00 AM link
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Sunday, September 07, 2003
The Karma
I'll just come right out and say it: I've been eating a lot of McDonalds this week. I know...you can all look down your noses at me, but you can't say it's not convenient. And tasty. Face it. It's good stuff.
But I digress.
Today I went for my usual breakfast of sausage biscuit and medium orange juice. Things were insane for some reason, and I had to give my order about three times. Then I drove up to the first window. The woman at the first window asked for my order again. Then she told me to drive up to the second window and order one more time. When I drove up, the same woman was there. Or her twin was there. It was very strange. And then she ran away and some guy came and gave me my food.
But I never paid. The dude just waved me along, even after I kind of held my money out to him.
Look at you, judging again. I think I deserve it after all the business I've given them.
You wish it was you.
Update: Minutes after posting this entry, (at precisely 11:37 pm...) the Princess dragged me to McDonalds yet again, because she was hungry. And we all wonder why we won't ever lose weight...
9/07/2003 11:30:00 PM link
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Friday, September 05, 2003
The Alley
Let's not talk about the trashcan in the alley behind my house. Let's not talk about how it sounds like there is a large animal inside it trying to get out. Let's not talk about how when LIJ looked inside the hole in the lid, he saw nothing but a small mouse. Let's not talk about how when my landlord opened up the lid with a rake, LIJ saw several more rodents.
Except not mice.
Rats.
No, seriously, let's not talk about all that.
Or about the fact that all three of us were too creeped out to do anything about it except leave them there and tell the girl who lives upstairs not to throw any trash away.
We'll be staging a no-trash rally at our house this week. Don't bring any trash. We're not throwing it away at our house. We're taking everything to the neighbors' trashcans.
So no comments. I think I'd much rather you judge my unhealthy eating habits.
9/05/2003 12:55:00 AM link
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Thursday, September 04, 2003
The Meal Plan
So I had McDonalds for three separate meals today. And I ate in my car for three separate meals.
On the upside, at least I ordered something different every time.
Oh, wipe that judgemental look off your face.
You don't know.
9/04/2003 12:49:00 AM link
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Wednesday, September 03, 2003
The Transformation
Does anyone know exactly how and when I went from guy who dresses nice most of the time to schlub who dresses like a trucker (but not in that trendy Ashton Kutcher way)?
Seriously, sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how it turned out to be that I pull out the t-shirt on top of the pile and put it on with any pair of pants that is still actually hanging somewhere.
Wanna hear a story? I didn't own my first real pair of jeans until 3rd grade. (That's not totally true...my parents put me in jeans when I was two, and paired it with a brown suede fringed jacket. I was so western earth child. You could practically smell the patchouli.) But once I started dressing myself, the jeans when out the door, and I dressed like a mini Alex P. Keaton.
I kid you not.
Then my third grade girlfriend Amber (Amber? Laura? I forget...I've slept since then...) decided that I needed to wear jeans. So I bought some, because what's a guy to do? I feel like that was also the first time I wore high top tennis shoes, because that's what you wore if you were cool.
So I wore my stonewashed jeans with my high top Nikes. Later in life I even experimented with the tightrolling of jeans. I owned a Vaurnet t-shirt. And a hypercolor t-shirt. And things went fairly smoothly from there. Through high school I maintained kind of a casual comfortable preppy almost like a Gap ad, before they got all trendy and had dancers and Madonna and Missy Elliott.
Now I won't lie and say that, in college, sometimes I went to class in flannel pants. But what are you supposed to do when you have class at 8am, but homework till 4am? You wear your pajamas, then you go back to your dorm and go back to bed, that's what you do. But in general I still kept up a nice appearance, even when I put on the Bennigan's uniform.
And then...I moved to Chicago. Gone were the jobs and classes that required me to look presentable. Suddenly I was in major sitting around mode. The only time I had to work, I either wore a tuxedo, or I wore jeans and a t-shirt, never knowing what I might have to clean, and so never knowing if I might get dirty. I still have a number of button down shirts, but I think I've worn maybe three all year long. Last winter it was all about sweaters...or t-shirts under my coat, in case I didn't want to ruin my sweater. Most likely a sweater that I have owned for three years.
And now it's summer. If I'm not wearing shorts, I'm wearing jeans. And I'm always wearing a t-shirt. And probably a hat. Because my hair is getting inappropriately long, but I refuse to get it cut by anyone other than Jennie, and she lives in KC, so sometimes I don't get in there as much as I'd like.
You know, it just dawned on me (seconds ago, actually) that I'm about to go back to classes that I might need to look decent for. Can I just go in my usual t-shirted extravaganza? Some t-shirts are trendy, but some of them sport reebok emblems from 1998 that I haven't thrown away just in case I find myself painting something.
We're going to have to do something about this.
For free.
9/03/2003 02:06:00 AM link
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Monday, September 01, 2003
The Drink
Seriously, when did it become cool to drink Campari? That stuff is like cough syrup. It's even red, people.
I've bartended for a long time now, and I've served it once. To some people from London. (In a restuarant off I-80 in Iowa...go figure.)
And today I nearly drained the bottle from all of these dorks who think that it's the new trendy drink.
No. It is bad. Do not drink it.
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