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.

more important than halloween

still halloween for another half hour. that's great and all. it's my favorite holiday, but...

i've had my cat bailey for a while now, since february. she was a stray, so i got her checked out at the vet, got her vaccinations done, had her spayed, all that good stuff. i figured she'd be good on the health front for a while. she's still very kitten-like and always wants to play with me. she used to be like that, anyway.

a few weeks ago i noticed her losing energy. i figured it was cuz i didn't actively play with her all that much and that she was getting used to that fact. she's also been meowing a lot - she hardly ever meows - and having some poop issues. (sorry, but there's a point ->) last night she sat on my desk.. when she got up, she left a little something behind. that ain't normal. i called the vet today and took her in.

it turns out my feisty little kitty has severe, life-threatening anemia. they think it's a blood parasite. it's so bad that as of this moment, she is getting a blood transfusion. the vet sent me to an emergency hospital since i was the last appointment of the night and they had to close. kim and scott picked me up and took me, bless their hearts. i don't know what i would have done if i'd had to go it alone. the shock of her condition was bad enough... i would have gone crazy.

they warned me that with anesthetizing her (they had to gas her at the vet's just to examine her, she doesn't like doctors at all) and taking blood samples and prepping her, that her already weakened system would have to go through yet another few shocks.. they warned me that she might go into cardiac arrest. and i keep thinking.. what if it's something i did? what if she got sick because of me, because of something i did or didn't do? if they go through all the trouble of giving her one or more transfusions or even having to resuscitate her, would it be worth it to go back to me, the owner that's hardly ever around, and when she is, she's always picking her up and putting her somewhere else, or yelling at her to get off the dresser or stop scratching the couch, or being too busy or self-absorbed to give her the attention she deserves? but.. don't all owners experience that at some point? i don't know.. i'm exhausted and confused. and i don't want my kitty to die. she's not even a year and a half, and she's gravely ill. i hope, dearly hope they find whatever is wrong and fix it. and then she's not allowed to so much as sneeze until she's at least ten years old.

every month. without fail.

i love midol. too little and i could cheerfully dig out my throbbing ovaries with a rusty spoon. too much and i feel like i'm stoned off my gourd. either way, surrounding people are sure to be entertained, and isn't that what's important?

eep

ok.. this is a first in my apartment-renting appliance-having career. my toast just started on fire. it was toasting for maybe three minutes max. i'm not sure what made me get up and check it.. it smelled very toast-y right off the bat, and maybe in the back of my mind i thought, 'it shouldn't be toasting this fast..' in any case, i saw smoke coming out the front of my toaster oven, opened it up to see if anything was in there besides toast that was screwing up the process.. and a small lick of flame started to form. turned it off, freaked out, realized i don't have a fire extinguisher, got out some baking soda from my fridge.. it burned itself out in about 30 seconds, however. the plug felt hot when i went to unplug it. normal? not really sure.

this oven's always been kind of iffy. smelled like plastic far longer than it should have after its first use. i've toasted in it 95% of the time i think; i can also remember making two grilled cheese sandwiches in it with no ill effects. i don't know if the toast was just too close to the heating element, or if there was too much energy going through the thing. either way, i'm kind of tweaked right now. must pick up extinguisher and look into renter's insurance. :/

the morning after

i don't want to be here. let them send me home. i don't want to be here. let them send me home... let me fucking sleep. my legs hurt. i hate everybody. i ate too much pasta. i'm saying 'fuck' every other word. just let me go home.

there's only one word to describe me right now:

happyist hour

tonight was my first chicagoist happy hour, my first official time meeting the other myriad staffers. i'm not that great meeting a lot of new people at once, so i was hella nervous on the train going to piece. plus i saw a guy who kinda looked like scott smith, and when i looked at him he kinda looked at me, but i was so freaked out that i didn't know for sure that i just kept avoiding his gaze the entire trip. so very relieved was i that it wasn't him. that would have sucked. in retrospect, if it had been him, i don't think he would have looked at me and said nothing.. being the douchebag that i am, i don't know that i would say the same in reverse.

once i got there and settled in, though, everything was cool. of course i forgot my camera, but i don't take a lot of people shots anyway. lots of people showed up; very happy about that. olivia and i kind of ended up in the middle of all the conversations, so we got to talk about her weird beer. (kim's scott, you ever had? not bad.) what was really nice was the pizza. mmmmm mm. that's what thin crust should be. it reminded me of... damn. i can't quite put it into words. something delicious in a land beyond time, how's that? they do carryout but no delivery. pout.

nice to meet you all, chicagoist peeps. it's nice to be part of such a cool little group, even if i only do weekends.

more artsy, less fartsy

listening to: black heart procession, 'a light so dim'

so i've got this wackass air conditioning unit in my apartment. built-in, wall unit, a/c stinks like dead musty fish, can't really do anything about it. that is, until i realized that it almost looks like a projection screen for a very small projector...

cool and all, but what are the odds i'd actually watch movies on it? i'd have to get a projector, make sure it conforms to the specified space, find some movies.. fuck that. that'd only be good for parties anyway, and i ain't no partyer. then i looked at it again, and thought it might be a good tableau for some photos i bought recently. the problem is, i bought three and was planning on framing them. i'd hate to break up the triumvirate. instead, i put up a photo of my own:

printed out on four 8"x11.5" matte photo paper, then fixed into place. i likes it. a lot. the best part is i can take a new picture and change it out once i get sick of it. beats having to air mail something from belgium...

*grump*

so i went to delilah's with kim tonight. $6.50 for a mudslide. in a glass that doubled as a votive candle holder. it was that small. i knew bars could be expensive, but jesus christ. upon entering my domicile i went straight to the liquor cabinet, for it did not quench my thirst for booze.

what a shitty week i've had. and i know tomorrow's just gonna be the shittiest day of them all.. my sales assistant stud partner is out, along with the woman for whom i cover when she takes off. plus i've had a couple drinks, which i normally don't do. lord, this is gonna be fun. good thing i already brought some baileys to work beforehand. i think ahead like that. fuck, i should get a raise for that. at my place, it's not out of the question.

chicagoist antisocial

listening to: nin - 'i do not want this'

i've noticed a change every year. after girls' weekend, i get sullen and withdrawn and angry. yesterday it was quite bad, hate simmering just underneath the surface. i felt extremely combative, daring. why? i wish i knew. it might be that i have to socialize with people whom i normally don't see. but i've known these girls for.. god, for the better part of my life now. maybe that's what pisses me off, that i don't have more to say to them. every year i feel i'm in the same place, that i never change, that i have nothing to talk about.

this year was a tiny bit different. i did join chicagoist recently. (i've been meaning to mention that.) but when nobody knows what the fuck chicagoist is since they're not into blogs or they live out in bumble, what difference does it make? i'm still not in a relationship. i haven't bought a house or gotten a fabulous job. (altho i did note that, strangely, i've been at my job longest out of all the girls who went this year. freaky.) i'm small potatoes.. the perpetual tagalong sister. i don't so much feel as if i come from a different time from them all, since they're all about 5 years older, so much as i feel like i come from a different planet. despite the beautiful surroundings and getting out of the city, ultimately girls' weekend amounts to me wanting to spend a great period of time by myself afterward...wondering why i don't have the skills to communicate. like always.

wish you were here

and if you don't like pumpkin, you know what you can eat instead?

my ASS.