Surreal Unseasonable Day


Those south of the Mason-Dixon line don't appreciate days like these. The thermometer says seventy two degrees in the shade. I'm in the mood to invest with the waterhouse.


The late-lunch crowd relaxes in the air around the green river while comfortably shaded. I'm later advised to not take any pictures of the building seen near the edge of the upper right hand corner. Shhh...don't tell anyone.


America wins on days like these. I even saw a rainbow this evening. I deem the weather: Awesome Event of the day.

Not awesome event of the day: Spending fifty cents (two cycles) on a dryer that rewarded me with 10% dryness. Everything is hanging from something.

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Sprots Report



As reported on another blog, somebody got their ass handed to them on the basketball court...except it wasn't me. The jumpshooting and relatively out of shape Quinn Goodwille couldn't counter the onslaught of post moves in two losses that featured plenty of airballs, lost dribbles, and breath catching on both ends of the same half-court.

Leftover Chinese - 2 Owltakecarefit - 0

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Eester


Two brunches in two days.

As usual, my parents are in Florida and strange things happen. Sometimes, this weekend was like stuffing your mouth with a package of peeps. Sometimes it was like eating that cake. I'm not sure where the toosie rolls fit.

...

Full cable restored. I don't watch much television, but the extra options were missed.

I have viewed 'Mean Girls' 2.5 times in the last month.

Being an unwilling participant in a fender bender after a festive night (not my sober driver's fault), I didn't notice that I've a bump on my head until tonight. I guess I had a functional reason to be ripped that night.

If you wear the Easter Bunny costume and pose for pictures during family brunches...do you smile too?

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Walk

I took a walk today. It wasn't exactly warm, but the sun was out and I needed the fresh air. Here are a few things I saw:


Greetings.


Jaguar gas.


Yaweh's comeback special (tomorrow).


I don't know, what is Speed Hump?


Speed Hump.

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Stop Watch

Estimated trip home from Dan's apartment in the UIC campus: fifty-five minutes.
Actual trip: 49 minutes and 12.7 seconds.
Friendship: preserved

Estimated wait-time to meet Miller: - 2 minutes.
Actual wait time to meet Miller: 9 minutes 45 seconds.
Friendship: almost even.

I you have time to kill and happen to be in downtown Chicago, stop in and check out rock posters. A few of them posters on display were made by Steve. Now you have two reasons to see the posters.

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How to Cancel out a Good Deed at the Train Stop

1 Approach stairs heading towards train platform and take a few steps upwards.
2 Notice suburban family walking down the stairs.
3 Note that the mother and young daughter are walking hand-in-hand down the steps with each person holding opposing handrails.
4 Conclude that the daughter will not let go of handrail and her mother will not ask her to get out of a stranger's way.
5 Retreat backwards down the steps so the family has a clear path down the steps.
6 When you back off the last step onto the sidwalk, inadvertently step on a woman's toe with the heel of your shoe.
7 When your apology and polite concern is ignored, shrug shoulders and continue as if nothing happened. Realize a few hours later that she could have been in too much pain to respond. Oops.

(Click here to see the careful demolition a building)

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I've got some Grey Hairs

For a few moments, an excursion to downtown felt strangely like going to work: Cold, cloudy, nothing about the atmosphere to get you excited. It was still a good time. Although the sun was out yesterday morning and for a good part of today, it feels like the sun has been hiding since January.


Everybody takes pictures of this building. This is my hastily framed and incorrectly focused version of the Sears Tower from the east. During a typical workweek, I see somebody holding a camera up to the sky at least once a day. I'm thinking of spending the next two weeks of lunch breaks taking pictures of people taking pictures of buildings. I wonder if they would mind...


"We would like to introduce our manager, Phillip. Phillip MaBucket."

City folk, country folk, and squirrel folk converge to take their minds off the world by looking at a history of the world as seen by artists. Everybody exists and stops for a few moments to join a People's Summit on the steps. It's always a good time.

Sales
Kid on train platform: "You want to buy some candy?"
Me: "What are you selling it for?"
Kid: "For me"
Me: "That's a damn good reason, I'll take a snickers."

No churches or baseball teams...just cash.

The Corpo-Pool

Round 1: 28/32 - 1st Place
Round 2: 8/16 - 8th Place and sinking

Television Phrase

I heard the phrase: "Yeoman's Effort" thrown out a lot during the basketball telecasts. As used: "It will take a 'Yeoman's effort' to hold of X scorer." There's nothing in the link provided that makes any sense out of the term. Wha?

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Heredity vs. Environment vs. Wallpaper: Part II

Green and yellow and green and yellow and green and yellow....and green and yellow. More wallpapers worth mentioning...and appreciating.


Eerie Reverse silhouettes. As if the small ovals weren't creepy enough (I grew up thinking that they were eyes), within the big ovals we see a matriarch of some sort posing with an...angel? elf? child? You be the judge.


More Flowers and Birds. Most of my time spent in this bathroom was spent reading my dad's Penthouse magazines from 1983...I could have been staring at the wallpaper. The image that will stay with me is the row of flowers. I always thought that was a UFO of some sort and it scared me.


Tulips and Daffodils. Or buttercups. I don't know my annuals too well. Either way, the Nintendo stayed in this room while I grew up. It definitely looks nicer as a picture than it does an entire room. This pattern also appears on a wet-bar and in the form of a window shade. Yeah...my mom liked this one a lot.


The Hallway. One of my earliest memories: Standing close to this pattern and crossing my eyes. I saw twice as many squares and half the flowers were floating. This act was probably bad for my eyes, but it made for an interesting visual experience. I should do that again sometime.


The Kitchen, Dining Room, and Birthday background. If you search through my family's entire photograph collection, you could find almost every family birthday going back to 1977. When my folks finally move out of the house, I'm going make sure my brothers and parents hang a large print of this pattern in the background for their pictures. I'm serious. I will always associate this wallpaper with birthdays and watching tv during dinner.

You've seen the wallpaper that I grew up in a Threes Company house. Almost every room in the house featured such active backgrounds. I read somewhere that rooms of certain colors evoke certain behaviors out of people. That leads me to believe that having this wallpaper around me all my life makes me the normal person that I am now. Yeah...normal.

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Heredity vs. Environment vs. Wallpaper: Part I

I grew up in one house. Every day was spent among some funky wallpaper. This past weekend, I took some pictures. The question I asked myself: Am I the way I am because strange wallpaper was always around me?


Birds and Flowers. This was the "powder room." Guests got to powder their noses among bluebirds and um...blue flowers. I learned how to say "birdie" in this room.


Flowers and something... This pattern runs all around the dining room. I never looked at the art inside the green ribbon until I took this picture. It looks like two people in an ambiguous relationship enjoying a day by the stream. The image forever burned into my mind is the umbrella-shaped thing on top. What the hell is that?


The Jungle. When my eldest brother moved to college and my family decided to give my cousin a few years of good ol' American upbringing, I was sent to live in this room. I slept in this room from second through eighth grade. This wallpaper could have been a good reason to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs back in highschool. I can't imagine what that would be like. You don't really need drugs to get freaked out by the staring animals.


Car Walls. If you want to learn how to read while sitting on the toilet, get wallpaper that has a lot of words. For the rest of my life, I will always equate late-night constipation with the words "Whippet Coach" and "Locomobile."


The Space Program. It is said that my brothers picked this wallpaper out when they were about seven years old (1976). Never trust a child with a decision like that. I lived in this room during the high school years and whenever somebody would enter the room for the first time, they would ask: "What's going on with this wall paper?" Then they would comment about the red carpeting (same as the color you see in the picture). I'm betting this had an effect on me.

Stay tuned for Part II: Yellow and Green and Yellow and Green and Yellow and Green.

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Everything Happened


Two.


Jacob got the driving tour of prospective neighborhoods today. Lake Street.

The visit home coincided with this tragedy. I always thought stories like these happen a few states away from where I'm from. I've rarely ever been proud to have grown up in this city but seeing your hometown make a name for itself with something like this just ain't right. They placed the time of the shootings at 12:51pm. I sat down to lunch at 1:15pm not a mile away without having any idea of what happened. After that, the rest of the day had a strange air to it. That's the way it goes.

Making fun of things during my day is starting to bore me. I think it's time to make this web blog more random and entertaining. I'm not sure what that means yet...stay tuned.

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The Interweb Experiment



I've flirted with finding companionship on the internet a few times in the past few years. It's been an interesting experience, but I think I'll go about it the old fashioned way. This is pretty much a basic game: You contact somebody. They might respond. If they do, you paint a mental picture of yourself. They paint a picture of themselves. At any time, communication can stop. If it goes far enough, you talk on the telephone and agree to meet. From there anything can happen. Sometimes it feels like a job interview. Other times, you just don't call each other back. Sometimes the night gets away from you. Either way, the internet is not a pretty place to meet somebody.

From this experiment, I've learned the following:

- Borrowing a phrase from someone you used to date and using it to catch an eye or two didn't work.
- Most users of Match.com are looking for their Ken doll. I'm not quite that with my dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes and soul patch.
- Most gentlemen callers flood every woman's inbox with unoriginal cut/paste messages.
- Taking a different, more personal approach from that printed above didn't work either.
- My christmas card picture of 2004 rated high among those who responded.
- It's very convenient to stop contact if you decide you're not interested. I think I did that as much as it was done to me.
- My chances are probably better if I bump into a stranger in public or talk to random people.
- One positive: I made a friend...and I think we'll stay friends.

Conclusion: Roll the dice if you must, but I wouldn't recommend it (especially if you're asian and male).

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Facts or Opinions

My parents celebrated forty years of marriage today. Fact.

I thought I could live with reduced cable until I realized that this is the best time of year to watch college basketball. Opinion.

Instead of going through the tedious process of re-re-ripping CD's into my mp3 player, I'm borrowing them from other computers. Fact.

I've let too many vegetables live a useless life in my 'fridge these past few weeks. Everything was brown today. Fact.

Today's lunch consisted of a gyro enjoyed in an unheated sandwich shop. It was refreshing. Fact and Opinion.

The exercise bike tells me that I'm between 150 and 160 when I'm warmed up. My target heart rate according to Discovery.com is 116.4 bpm. Web-MD - 97-146 bpm. I think that's good in small doses. Fact and/or Opinion.

I am listening to Boston through my headphones right now. Fact. It is blowing my mind. Fopinionact.

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Scene: A Conversation of Convenience (loosely based on my life)

*answer telephone*
A(spoken): "Please send me document A. I'd rather not walk all the way across the office to get the paper file."
B: "Um...okay. If I have it electronically, I'll send it to you."
A: "Thanks."
*check electronic files. find nothing. locate paper copy*
B(emailed): "I don't have it electronically, would you like a fax?"
B(muttered to the monitor): "Do you still want me to walk across my office to fax it to a place you'll might have to get up and walk to get?"
A: "Yes."
*blankly stare at computer for a few moments. recall telephone conversations where person on other line loses breath during long sentences. shake head*

Where in the Interweb is Carmen San Diego?

Recent Search terms that aren't disturbing:
- don majkowski every rose has its thorn (packer fan)
- "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS" (fans of legendary movie lines)
- pics of nellyville sitting down (once upon a time, this image was on the internet)
- chinese new year "bowl of oranges" (year of the rooster)
- Rendezvous Milwaukee female (fun at first)
- "go brewers" video (this must be found)

Successful Impromptu Traffic Move of the Day

The Q-Turn: Start in the left turn lane, turn left towards right hand corner of wide perpendicular street. Stop at the corner angled toward the left side of the street. Pull a sharp turn and stop at right hand corner of perpendicular street in position to make a legal right turn on original street. Discuss legality of q-turn.

Closing Stats

Bucks victories seen at the United Center: Zero out of three.
Amount of game witnessed: 2.5 quarters.
Servings of red meat: 2.
7am temperature: 50 degrees
5pm temperature: 32 degrees

done.

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Two Season Weekend

...and not much else to say.


Between seven and nine birthdays were celebrated last night. Somebody made a cake. I took a picture.


Somewhere over those buildings, a thermometer recorded a high of sixty six degrees. We took this chance to stare at traffic while sipping water.


Left turn by cutting through standing traffic aborted.


The neighbor's cats got their first taste of the outdoors in months. It must have felt good.

I hear the temperature is going back to the thirties this week. Perfect.

- This game featured getting great seats for the up close hockey action. The woman next to me hailed me as a hockey genius for predicting a short-handed goal when the Wolves blew a power-play possession. I missed my seeing my first hockey fight in person because I was buying a pretzel. Good times.

- Among all the music I've recently evaluated, I recommend:

The new Beck album (to be released). I haven't listened to much Beck in the past few years...but this album is pretty chill. I like it.

Soundtrack for the movie Vanishing Point. The songs for this movie have the perfect balance of funk, soul, gospel, and rock. Vintage 1970's.

Fischerspooner's forthcoming album. I don't know anything about their prior albums...but I like the sounds.

Duran Duran Greatest. This music reminds me of my older brother and his days as a preppy highschool kid. Good for nostalgia.

- With my cable roster limited to only 10 channels that I would regularly watched, I notice that TBS is now in the habit of playing the same movie nine times in a three day period. You can't help but love that type of variety.

- The Brewers are 4-0 in exhibition games so far. The record means absolutely nothing, but it's good to see...just like today's weather.

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The Neighborhood

In a county of 5.3 Million people, the following events will happen every once in a while:

1) I'll run into JP on the walk home twice in one week. Running into friends on the street makes the big city feel smaller.

2) Once in a while neighbor one, neighbor two, and I will take the same train back from work but sit in three separate cars. We'll find each other and the walk home will feel like walking home from school...Without the Stovetop stuffing.

3) One day I might see Neighbor three at the grocery store and he'll tell me a story about how a woman got her heels caught on a rubber mat and almost fell.

4) If I leave for work when I usually wake up, I'll run into Fran and we'll chase kids down the street.

5) I'll see neighbor four driving home from work while I'm on my bike. At a red light, I'll knock on her window and we'll talk about where we are coming from.

I think about these random events and I wonder why some people love growing up in the suburbs...

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Backwash Flurries

The Fox weatherman declared that tonight the Chicago area might see some "backwash flurries." I've never heard that term before, but it just doesn't sound good. Backwash flurries. Anyway, I think it means the tail of a weather system is kicking winds back over the lake thus giving us a little lake-effect snow. I could be wrong. Backwash Flurries.

The calendar says "March" but the weather says otherwise. I think this qualifies as "lousy Smarch weather."

I saw the Futureheads last night. I listened to the album a few times last fall and sort of liked it. Turns out a nice sell-out crowd greeted the band. It was pretty entertaining...Especially the part where I had to get out of somebody's way every thirty seconds.

Ice cream was randomly purchased a few days ago. I even bought fudge. Every time I move out of an apartment, I wind up throwing away an almost full quart. Odds of it happening again: 2-1.

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