thoughts on life

1. eating right.

i expect that when i don't eat sweets for a week and work out twice (not a lot of effort, but more than i've made in the past) that i would lose weight. nope. up .2 pounds.

2. chemistry.

i expect that when i study for 7 hours that i would get a better grade than i did last time. nope. 4 points worse. and i understand this shit! oh, well. i guess i don't.

this is when i GIVE THE FUCK UP.

this is where the american school system has failed me. elementary school and middle school were way too easy for me. so i didn't have to study much. now i don't have the attention span to read something i'm not interested in, like chemistry.

i also expect A LOT OF IMPROVEMENT when i put in even the smallest of effort. but real life doesn't work that way. real life is much harder and and brutal. so teach your kids that. because sugar-coating life isn't going to make it any easier when they grow up.

chemistry haiku

because last night's chem exam was mind-blowingly terrible, i couldn't put the truth into many words. so here's a haiku:

like an awful dream
unsolved titrated bases
an exam soon failed

it wasn't seeing my ex at the restaurant tonight that bothered me. it was the fact that he was there with about 10 of our old friends. it was the looks on their faces when i asked them what they were there for and they looked at themselves uncomfortably as they fumbled for words. they were there for his birthday and i was there for a friend's going away party. it's a small world and it's not the first time i've seen him in chicago at other times. it's really not a big deal. it's the friends he got to keep and i lost.

that i had planned on having a big birthday party that i was going to invite all these old friends to, but decided not to, because i didn't think they would come. nothing is worse than planning a party that no one come to. but he gets to plan this party and have all those people come. i just miss having people to hang out with, to chat with, to connect with. and some of those people i really connected with. but you split up and you lose more than one relationship... sometimes you lose them all. and i can deal with that... when it's not rubbed in my face. tonight it was. and it's no one's fault.

so there were three big parties at this restaurant, ours, jim's, and some girl with whom i currently work. i knew practically everyone in that damn place. everyone who came in the door i was saying hello to. it was really weird.

pictures

i don't think i have the right lens for taking interior shots. that or else this place is a lot smaller than i'm thinking it is. it is small, but that's all we can afford because we're poor.

condo...?

we made an offer on a condo and they accepted it. well, not right away, but there were concessions made that we were happy with, so we've taken that 2,463 step! now all we have to do is wait. yeah, i've never done that before.

anyway, the place in question seems smaller because it's a little different layout. plus, we're losing the back porch storage area that we have here. we're also losing the original woodwork, forged metal doorknobs, built-in hutches... you get the point. but we'll also have a dishwasher, which we don't currently have, and... ta-da! a washer and dryer! and central air.

so we have to get rid of some stuff. well, we should have gotten rid of this stuff before we moved last time, but we like our stuff. so here's a small (maybe not so small) list of the crap we need to part with:

* my books that myopic won't take
* our 2 air conditioning units
* some of my simpsons games, because we've played them and they're lame (like simpsons life) or because it's still in the wrapper (like simpsons jeopardy).
* a mac tower computer that was purchased in 1996. i still have the original packing slip.
* a purple imac. so cute. so useless. it still runs... on OS 8
* i'm thinking of getting rid of my photo enlarger and its paraphernalia. i had it set up once or twice in my other apartment, but it's a pain to seal off doors and windows to every ounce of light. plus, i think the enlarger has the wrong lens in it. anyway, i have the pans, the chemicals, lights, the whole nine yards. i'm hoping to use it as a bargaining tool against some of the harder scott-owned objects. maybe.
* the horrible, black, held-together-with-nails entertainment center. it was left in my last apartment and it followed us here because we had no other way to hold our TV and its accouterments. but i have a feeling it will fall apart the second we take the TV out of it.
* any glassware (decorative or functional) that i haven't touched or looked at in the last 2 years. this includes many of the object that are in the hutch at the end of the hall.
* clothes i haven't worn in years that are being stored under our bed, in the hutch in our bedroom or in the 2nd BR closet.
* shoes. a lot of my shoes.
* the items i bought for my never-held 30th birthday party. this includes an inflatable palm tree, light-up fish keychains (which are probably now all dead), and random other things.
* my albums i've never even listened to and are totally worthless.
* coats. i'm a total coat whore.

it's a lot of stuff. but i've labeled it and know what needs to go, so the harder part is done. i would say "hardest" but the hardest part is deciding what to do with it. some of it can be given away. but i'll probably have a yard sale. the only problem with this is that it needs to be above 60 to do this. and we close on April 15 (if our financing goes through, and it should). so cross your fingers and pray that it gets really warm really fast. because i don't want to lose out on the tens of dollars i could make foisting this stuff off on unsuspecting people.

chemistry is funny

and every time after class, i feel like doing this:

girthday

that's right, it's my birthday. i've gotten to that age when most of the celebrities are younger than me and i compare my (lack of) accomplished goals with anyone else who is my age.

take my sister's co-worker, for example. he has this job that pays him enough to be able to live in lincoln park with his wife at home with 2 kids. he travels and has a cabin up in wisconsin. i thought he was at least 4-5 years older than i was. nope. he's 2 years younger. he was a freshman when i was a junior. sigh.

but the good news is that when i checked dlisted, all of the Birthday Sluts were younger than me! yay! and i still look 5-6 years younger than i really am, according to my chem mates. thanks, guys. i really appreciate that. :)

now if you'll excuse me, i hear a Carol's Cookie beckoning me from Whole Foods.

dumb. ass.

sometimes i get this bug up my butt to go workout in the morning. which means i'll drive to bally at clybourn, work out, drive to the fullerton stop, park and take the red line from there. usually i remember that i have done this and i remember to get out at fullerton after work.

so today, i leave the house to go to class, with windshield washer fluid in hand. i go out to damen and go to the place where i thought i parked my car. it wasn't there, but i thought maybe i parked somewhere else.

nope. i left my car at fullerton. yesterday. and had totally forgotten about it.

so it's 4:30pm, i have class in a half an hour. i can either a) get on the brown line, take it to fullerton, drive my car to class, b) get on the brown line, take it to belmont, switch to the red line and take that to class, c) take a taxi, d) ride my bike.

since i didn't get frost bite on my way home, i assumed it wasn't freezing. so i dressed up warmly, pumped up my tires and got to class only 5 minutes late. and it was SO NICE to be out on my bike. ah, i've missed it.

now all it has to do is warm up to above 40 and maybe i can ride more often.

yet another sink hole

this time it's farther south. but they're getting more vicious.

happy roman polanski day

vegas pics

here are my pictures from the vegas trip. enjoy!

Flickr, baby

comparison

I was on loc.gov and i found some really old pics of vegas from 1910... compare the mountains in both pics.



here is the original panoramic photo

here's another photo from lov.gov from the same era.

vegas

this past weekend, the hubby and i went to vegas for a friend's wedding. we had never been to vegas, so people were taking bets on whether we would like it or not.

we didn't like it.

we flew into vegas on thursday afternoon. we stayed at the MGM Grand, which i think is larger than disney world. by the time we got to our room, we were already annoyed. but we relaxed and enjoyed the view (see pic above) and hung out and met up with kristin and rudy later for dinner. it was with rudy's family at wolfgang puck's in the MGM. the food was awesome. later that night, kristin and i met up with margaret at the Luxor, which is attached by walkways that i think MC escher designed. we had to go through the MGM to New York New York, then through NYNY to Excaliber, then through Excaliber to the Luxor. and sometimes the walkways were clearly marked, sometimes they weren't. it took us at least 30 minutes to get from my hotel room to margaret's room. but the one thing vegas has down is customer service. everytime we needed to ask for directions, everyone was really nice and helpful. it's like they know that wandering through crowds of drunken douchebags is annoying.

scott likened vegas to a frat party in a mall. everyone is drunk and wandering around, thinking they look cool. the two things that were working against me in vegas were 1) i don't drink, 2) i don't gamble. but being there for only 2 days was enough for us not to open fire on a crowd in the middle of the strip.

the other thing we didn't know about vegas is how big it really is. annette suggested we eat breakfast at the Golden Nugget, which was on Las Vegas Blvd North. we thought, can we walk? the answer was given to us by a 25 minute cab ride... no, you cannot walk it. we wandered around Old Vegas for a while, then headed back on The Deuce, which is the double-decker bus that goes from Old Vegas to New and Improved Vegas. that took about an hour. jesus.

another thing we learned is that traffic on the strip SUCKS. imagine rush hour traffic on the kennedy/edens junction at 5pm on a friday... all day long. on friday, amy and i had to go pick up kristin's flowers at the local Jewel, which was down Flamingo. it took us 40 minutes to go from the corner of Tropicana and Vegas Blvd to Harmon, which is the next light. 40. minutes. the entire trip to the store took more than an hour. it was a little nerve-wracking.

the wedding was great. we got a limo ride out to the chapel (on the freeway) and nighttime in vegas when it's 65 degrees was very nice. the chapel was cute, the ceremony was awesome. then we went back to the MGM Buffet for the reception dinner. they had anything you would possibly hope to ever want to eat. i took a lot of pictures (which i'll post on flickr when i get around to it) and ate mashed potatoes and salad. why they don't have mashed potato dressing, i don't know. the night ended around 11pm, since i was so damn tired and not feeling all that well. but the wedding party continued to gamble throughout the night.

we left on saturday, after getting together with everyone for lunch at the monte carlo (not the burned part). it was good to hang out one last time in the Worst Place on Earth. we took some group photos, since all of us hadn't been together in such a long time. then we headed back to the hotel to catch the shuttle. then back to chilly chicago.

ahh, it's good to be home.