lakeview, we have a problem

i live in a pretty nice section of town. quite gentrified, nice shops, good restaurants. that last one can be a problem. i have a hankering for run-of-the-mill mexican, tacos and burritos and such...and i can't find any. metromix is giving up nothing non-fancypants in my neighborhood within walking distance. as much as i'd love to chow down on another sesame-encrusted tuna filet like the last time i went to an upscale mexican restaurant, i was thinking more along the lines of some freakin' tacos. my last place in uptown had two mexican places across the street from each other and another on the way home, and those were just the ones i knew about coming off the train.

looks like chipotle again for me..

highlights from my thanksgiving:

• listening to gangsta rap on the way to my mom's place in the 'burbs.


• gorging on delicious, waistband-popping vittles.


• having real cranberries and 'canberries' on the same table.


• playing super mario bros. 2 in its entirety, switching off with scott.


• watching 'spiderman 2' with kristin and rudy, and thenceforth ripping it to shreds, even though it was a good movie.


• having a happy, purring cat on my lap for a good portion of above movie.


• listening to gangsta rap on the way home.

in fact, the only bad thing about my thanksgiving:
having to fucking work at 6:30 in the fucking morning the day after.

wiitarded

what's it gonna take to get one of these systems, eh? the stores i know are going to get what, 10 a week? every two weeks? shouldn't i be able to 'preorder' or stake my claim on the next shipment by this point, even if it takes me a month to get one? amazon's still not taking preorders; compusa isn't offering it either online or in the store; it's nowhere to be found on sears' website, only the games; and my most convenient target said they wouldn't get it at all until fucking february. my 'contacts' are so small and untechy that no one i immediately know is going to get this or is even looking for it.

this blows. how long is it going to take until the market is saturated?

disassemblance of a house

another in my fondness for curious houses.. this one without a happy ending, again. i first discovered this house in april, i think, right next to eat a pita on halsted. it looked a little funny, so i took a picture:

something very waffly about it. supposedly it was a plumbing business or something, but it had a 'for sale' sign prominently displayed on it.

a while later, i walked past it and it had changed:

the waffling was gone. sign was still there. hrm, maybe they're doing reno.

oh, how naïve i am:

well, that's the end of that. i didn't see any permit signs or anything on the barricading fence. it's got a foundation in its place already. god willing, those will some day be overpriced, crappily-made condos. i imagine i came on it pretty late in its lifespan.. i bet it wasn't always waffled, that something covered that up in the past. now i'll never know.

word of caution (an update)

the next time a fire breaks out when you're making toast, make sure you're not on the broil setting.

heroin is a hell of a drug

so i did this story on chicagoist sunday. i may have said some things in the last blurb that were.. questionable. (it has since been edited.) basically i questioned, in the case of a 14-year-old girl lying about her age and having sex with a 25-year-old man, whether or not she would get punished for her actions. she lied, but i seriously doubt she knew what she was getting into. i forgot what it was like being 14 and how screwed up everything is, and how you want to be 'cool' by pretending you're older and doing grown-up things. i think i've just been influenced by movies too much, like 'freeway' and 'hard candy,' where the supposedly innocent young girl turns the tables on her predator.

now, i haven't seen either of them (making my logic suspect, but w/e), but one trivia fact i like is that matthew bright, who wrote 'freeway' (and 'freeway 2'), was one of the genius warped minds behind 'forbidden zone.' in fact, he was probably my favorite actor out of the whole movie; his delivery left me in hysterics. another is that the director of 'hard candy,' david slade, also directed the 'sour girl' video for stone temple pilots. i just went back and watched it on youtube and.. holy fuck, is that.. is that weiland? goddamn, when'd he get so hot?! nevermind the fucked up tongue bunnies or gothtastic buffy, i want a ticket to go back in time and ride that writhing smooth-skinned heroin snake. yowza.

i'm not checking out how he looks like now, cuz that'd just be no fun. and probably pretty yucky.

*insert crappy wii pun title here*

you know something? i haven't owned a new gaming console in a very, very long time. i think even when i had the SNES it had been out for a while. i'm just not that kind of person...and when i was steadily gobbling up consoles, i was still under my parents' jurisdiction and, subsequently, their mercy. we were always a nintendo family; first the NES, then the SNES, then.. well, i rented the N64 a few times. that's where i dribbled off, forsaking consoles for my PC.

well now, i'm groin-grabbingly excited about the wii (pronounced 'we,' in case you haven't heard it from umpteen other sources). i've fallen off PC gaming recently and have acquired some older consoles.. unfortunately a lack of decent games for the PS (even ebay appears to suck - i was never into playstation and don't know what to look for) keeps me from playing mine, and i have to unplug my bunny ears (yeah, shut up) whenever i want to play atari. i'm ready to step it up.

the wii's a shit-ton cheaper than the ps3 or xbox. it's shiny apple-white. it's got the wireless remote controller dealies. there's seemingly no limit to what you can do with those things: swing 'em like tennis racquets, simulate a steering wheel, stab baddies, etc. the whole setup is just so innovative. i'll gladly take artistic over mind-melding graphics, altho those are nice. plus rumor has it you can d/l past games from nintendo's entire library (select ones of course.. i'll pay them not to make anticipation available) for a small fee. $5 for bubble bobble? ..well, it beats a kick in the dick, anyway.

i just read a pre-review of excite truck (successor of excitebike, i guess). what grabbed me was this: you can put your own soundtrack to the game by sticking in an SD full of your own mp3s. definitely spankworthy. but the real reason for this post lies in this picture:

i so want to be that chick.

highest of highs, lowest of lows

the past two days have both rocked and sucked. mightily. first off, yays to the dems, even though 1. bush is a lame duck and 2. i actually voted republican in the cook county board prez race, and the lousy democratic machine still came out on top. we'll see how all that goes. but anyway.

thursday one of our guys from a satellite office came into town, so we went out to dinner that night, to scoozi. pre-dinner, i went furniture shopping with the only female bond salesman (saleswoman? saleslady? salesperson?) at our firm. she was scoping chairs for her domicile. that was cool.. if i'd gone downstairs and drank at the bar instead, god knows how much more fucked up i would have been. dinner was ok - they made a good cream of asparagus soup - and i had a few drinks during the proceedings. our oldest guy talked my freakin' ear off until we mixed up the tables a bit. i landed in the thick of the younger, testosterone-laden, shit-talking crowd. much beer was consumed (by them, not me) and many threats were made. gotta love the irish.

we ended up going to coyote ugly. i didn't even know they had a fucking coyote ugly in chicago, but there we were. they had the louisville vs. rutgers game on tv; all the guys were standing drooling at the game instead of the chicks at first. there was really only one that was like, whoa, that chick's hot. she had a ginormous rack. our young stud sales assistant PJ kinda sorta wanted to ask her about the authenticity of said rack.. and she just said, 'they cost a lot.' done and done. she gave me my first shot of the night, after i guessed one of the girls' favorite bands right. i didn't get to pick the shot. i think she mentioned a 'jose' and a 'cuervo' somewhere. follow that up with a round of jager shots.. and then a round of tequila for the boys and a soco & lime for pia and me.. all the time wondering if my pasta was gonna stay put. (it did.) it was weird.. last night in the throes of my drunkenness among seasoned men, i realized you can be an asshole and still be a good guy. weird how that stuff works.

the thing about my work is, even if you get rip roaring drunk the night before and stay out till 3, you come in at your usual time, which for me is like 6:45. there's zero sympathy for guys who take the day off and constant ridicule for those who get in late. enter me at 7 am the next morning, shaky, bleary, nauseous, but there. that's what counts. everybody was there with me, but i don't drink that much and i hardly ever drink that much. i didn't have a headache, but this feeling of surly urpiness and mood swings wouldn't go away. and what's even better than being hungover at work for ten hours? oh, having a former coworker drop by with her three kids unannounced. i'm not fond of the woman, either. luckily she has a severe fish allergy, so when lunch showed up, she scrammed.. but not before she borrowed my bathroom key and made one of her filthy urchins give it back to me. i hate when parents do that. it's not cute, it's annoying, they're getting child germs all over my stuff, fucking stop it.

what dampened the whole day was knowing i was going out to dinner/drinks again tonight, this time with my chicagoist peeps at zapatista. i told myself no drinks - i didn't even have much of an appetite - but a pumpkin margarita was unpassupable. and the sesame encrusted ahi tuna filet, with mexican rice and sauteed spinach? to. die. for. fanfuckintastic. i had to cut the evening short, however.. i must check on the welfare of my kitty tomorrow and i need some serious rest. must drag my decadent self into bed.

get your vote on

so tired.. but must post.. reading chicagoist for such a long time, i couldn't help but get caught up in politics as well. chicago and politics go together like italian beef and provolone cheese, fer chrissake. (mm.) it's my first midterm election tomorrow, and i finally feel like i know what i'm doing. i voted in the 2004 presidential election, but had no farging clue what the rest of the ballot was besides bush and kerry. i've researched the candidates, i know the races, i'm gonna go in there tomorrow morning and bam. civic duty done. i never thought i'd be this excited about politics. it's actually rather scary. but dammit, i'm really a part of this city now, aren't i?

and oh yeah.. you. vote. or it's your ass.

guess who's home...!

'bout time. her blood count is stable so far. to keep it there and help it improve, i get to feed her three different medicines every day. the liquid's gonna be the best. ever try to force an eyedropper full of goop down a fully-clawed cat's throat? one of the few exquisite pleasures of life. to add insult to injury, i opened up the bottle...and the dropper shaft was broken clean off. not only that, i can't see nor hear the broken piece when i shake the bottle. it's as if it was always broken. very weird. i just scuttled off to walgreens and got a dropper with markings on it. thanks for the suggestion, scott. otherwise i probably would still be trying to figure out how much a tenth of a teaspoon is and measuring the 0.5 mL dose that way.

my kitten.. how i missed her. i hope she'll be swatting at my cables and shoestrings in no time.

cat update

it's been a hard couple of days, but bailey's doing much, much better. they transfused her tuesday night like i said.. at that time, her blood count percentage was 9.9%; after the transfusion it went up to 24%, which is almost normal, and it's bounced back even more since then. no lab results yet, but they're 99% sure of what she's got, so they started her on medication already. it's very treatable and most likely a one-time thing, probably obtained back when she was a stray. the best indication that she's gotten better is her attempted clawings of doctors and attendants. that's my cat!

it hasn't all been roses. i was a zombie yesterday. crashed at 7 pm.. just couldn't function any longer. i called the emergency place this morning around 7 to get an update. they said she was fine.. then told me she had to be picked up by 8 that morning or she'd be left there all day with no supervision. meanwhile when i went there on tuesday night, the nurse said they closed up at 8 and opened back up again at noon. what happened is, i got lucky, for they only do that on wednesdays. of course, they only told me that this morning after dropping the bomb on me. so, had to leave work, grab a cab, ride up there, get bailey, cab it over to my regular vet and drop her off there. the emergency place offered a pet taxi service. fuck that. it cost roughly the same amount (kim tells me $35 vs. my $32 cab ride; he waited for me in the lot) and i got to see my kitty and pay my bills. it was worth it to see her, but god, way to stress me out. no warning from the ER docs when they called with updates, no 'oh by the way..' this is why i hate going to doctors. i just didn't need the extra stress.

i did, however, manage to get a few titters out of bailey's headdress...

poor thing.