Backpacking Close to Home

Tango last night was way better than last time. They made the boys switch partners every few songs, so I didn't get stuck with the one guy the whole time. And even he wasn't that bad--either I'm getting better or he is, or both. Afterwards, some of the students were standing around outside making plans to go dancing--apparently there's a place on Madison that has open tango dancing every Tuesday and Friday night, and they like to go to get the extra practice. Cool! I packed my dancin' shoes in my backpack this morning so I can go after I leave here, which I think I will. I even got a free ride home from a couple fellow students, so that was loverly. Suddenly riding in a car is big excitement for me.

Speaking of being in cars, though, yesterday I was very glad I didn't have one. See, there was this big accident on Lake Shore Drive late yesterday afternoon. I don't know exactly what happened, but it must have been bad 'cause traffic was backed up even on the city streets by me at work, which was miles south of the problem and considerably off the highway (Lake Shore Drive), too. At 5:30, I got on a bus to go home, quickly realizing I was in the middle of a huge neverending parking lot. Over an hour later, I was less than halfway home and realizing I didn't have enough time to get home, turn around, and get to class. Little by little, people just started giving up and getting off the bus. Classic Office Space image of the people outside walking along, brisk as can be, leaving all the suckers in the cars and buses to suffer. So, being as how I was so happily unchained, I took my backpack and got off, too. Leaving behind the bus of despair, I wandered around through the nice park, saw all the people (lots of people running and exercising...What is this? What are we doing here? Why all the movement and effort? I know of no good reason), walked a good half hour to an el stop (which I happened to know where it was 'cause I'm all city savvy now), and took it straight to class. I got there at 7:45, class started at 8, done and done. What I love is that I had originally planned on going home and eating before I went to dance class, but, just in case, that morning I had packed my dancing shoes and skirt in my bag so that I would have options. Thus, as I was cheerily moseying to dance class without a care in the world (well, except for that I really had to go to the bathroom), my future self got to say to my former self, "Hey, gooood thinkin' there, self." Fun. It's much better than outsmarting yourself, like when you hide your money someplace no one will find it, except that then when you want to find it, you can't find it. I hate that.

I was working on a whole life-as-bus metaphor for a while there, but it's not quite done yet. Something about how sometimes you get on the wrong bus, but you're not sure if you should get off, because at least with the bus you're on, you're going somewhere--you just don't know where exactly you'll go or if you'll get there on time. But if you get off, who knows if you'll find another bus--it could be worse than the one you're on. But sometimes if you just get off the bus, everything works out.

Hmm. You know what I mean, Vern?

So I sort of got leaky red pen all over my finger today. I tried to wash it off, but it didn't work. It dried in a formation that looks an awful lot like I gouged my finger and there is blood dripping down and all around. And here I'd planned on going tango dancing tonight. Now I'm worried that my potential dance partners are going to think I have a hemorraging digital wound and won't want to dance with me. They'll see my finger painted with red and think, "Ack! What if she's got a bloodborne disease? Stay away!" Suddenly I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I cover it up? Should I put a band-aid on a fake wound? Is that dumb? Similar to a kid pasting the contents of an entire box of band-aids on his body just to feel special? I have never had this problem before.

If you have cats, you might enjoy this blog entry which gives a pretty accurate description of life with them and humans' feeble attempts to outwit them.

Big Event of the Day: Tango practice
Percent Chance: 70%

People-Watching

I can't say this entry is very easy to follow, or that it really has a point, or even that it is worth your time. But if you are looking for a vacation from whatever it is you're supposed to be doing right now, boh-hoy are you gonna like this blog. Pages and pages of ramblings I have for you, most of them taken almost verbatim from my little Becky brain in the past few days....

Yesterday on the way home my bus driver was a young, buzz-cutted white guy. Looked no more than 25. He didn’t seem to fit in. I all of a sudden noticed (or realized) that except him, most bus drivers I’d seen were middle-aged and non-white. Any youngish ones were usually black. The bus drivers were usually males, with the occasional black woman. I just didn’t really notice that’s how things were until this kid struck me as being so different.

Why is it that a young white guy almost can’t have a buzz cut now without looking like a skinhead? It’s not fair, I know, but it’s what I always think of. I just assume he’s racist or something. Is an entire haircut species off limits now? Or am I just reading into it too much? I guess more to their concern would be how people of color look at them. Do they assume you're a white supremacist? 'Cause that might not be an image you want to portray. (Well, unless you do, and you're trying to send out a mean little message there.)

He somehow looked to me like he'd been in the military. I can't quite say for sure I got this notion, other than the buzz cut, except for that he was very tidy, had an impeccably clean and pressed uniform, and seemed to expect a lot of his passengers (sort of like the Soup Nazi. Oh wait, maybe he really was a skinhead then.). So it got me to thinking: Do you think military men and women are more or less tolerant of others? Do they have bigger egos or smaller? Sometimes I think it’s kind of both. I assume (and we all know what happens when you assume) that military guys = small town America = closed-minded. But lots of city people enlist too. Hmm. I'm thinking they're likely to have bigger egos than civilians because they're pumped up of patriotic pride and do-goodiness, yet in some ways be humbler because they serve others. (I think a lot of this is coming from the military guys I met on New Years Eve, but partly also from a friend of a friend I met who was in the ROTC. Hmm. Now look who's generalizing...)

There was a guy this morning on the bus sitting in one of the front seats with crutches. He was chatting up the bus driver, talking about the Bulls, or Cubs, or somebody. I don’t remember. They were using names I don’t know, mostly because I don't follow the players at all; I only go to Cubs games for the fresh air, good times, and overpriced beer (shhh, don’t tell John).

Anyway, the one guy obviously wanted to talk. I wasn’t sure the bus driver did or not. But then he kept talking back to him. And it kinda struck me in the face, a little metaphor. For them, the conversation was like eating, or (so as not to risk being banned by Garrett’s health club), “getting it on.” Both parties were interested, got something they needed out of it, so they kept feeding and would keep feeding until their needs were met. Obviously, conversation fulfilled something they needed at that moment, and it wasn't a basic transaction, such as "How many blocks until Fullerton?" or "Are you getting off here?". These strangers were conversing for another reason, a "non-essential" reason, we could say, if you wanted to divide speech into functional and non-functional camps.

Was the bus driver lacking in real conversation all day, spending most of his time telling people to exit at the back and honking at wayward pedestrians? And was the crutch guy irritated at not being able to do stuff because he was on crutches, and so savoring the fact his conversational ability was unharmed? Were they both just bored? Did he and the bus driver discover they had something in common?

What about when the person next to you on an airplane talks to you? Why do they do it? Is it for selfish reasons, or do they think they're doing you a favor by talking to you? Do you look lonely? Do they wish more people would strike up consersations with them, so they imagine you would like to be conversed with as well?

I've had both really amazing airplane-seat conversations and some not-so-good ones. But I'll have to say the really good ones outnumber the bad. I know not all of you may have had this luck. About the coolest conversation I ever had was a three-way--I had cool people on either side. One was a world-traveling British guy who had tons of adventurey stories to tell (we ended up being pen pals for a while after that) and on the other side of me was an early 20s-aged girl with Downs syndrome who managed to overcome it to such a degree that she lived on her own, went to college, and now traveled the country doing motivational speeches. She was reading "A Teenager's Guide to Female Friendships" or something like that when I sat down next to her. Which she could either have been reading because, having a disability, she needed help understanding all the bogus societal rules we live by, or maybe she was preparing for her next engagement which could have been speaking to teenage girls. Anyway.

But as a whole, most people sit and don’t talk on public transportation. Besides the fact that a lot of people find it weird to strike up a conversation with a stranger, I think it’s also because we know, more likely than not, we’d end up getting pissed off or pissing someone else off, so it’s safer just to not even go there. There is something to be said for both silence and talking.

Also this morning, I saw a woman with a little boy in a stroller waving goodbye to another woman as she was getting on the bus. The woman getting on the stroller was white, and the one staying with the baby looked southeast Asian, yet they both looked like they cared for the child and he trusted them both implicitly. Babysitter? They’re the same age. What if it was a two mom situation? It looked to me like that was the case. So I was thinking about this. What does that little boy call his two mommies? I mean, if you have two grandmas, you can call them both Grandma, ‘cause you’re not likely to be around them both at the same time. But if you’re all living in the same house, how do you call for one and not the other? “Mom!” and two moms walk in. “No, I mean that Mom. Elizabeth.” That’s weird. Can’t be having your kids call you by your first name. That’s a slippery slope into disrespect right there. But hey, you know, I got it. Just like if you had two grandmas living with you, you’d call them both a grandma-like name but they would be a little different, like Nana and Grams, or Nonnie and Grandma. So I’m thinking you’d just have one be “Mom” and one be “Ma” or something like that. [sound of me dusting off my hands, in a “so that answers that question” fashion]

A block or two later, a girl loaded her bike onto the front of the bus into the special bracket thingy. I'd never seen anyone do that before. It was neat. A little scary. The talking crutch guy said how this one time, the person didn’t load it right and it fell off on the expressway, kerclunk kerunch…. And the bike’s owner wanted the CTA to pay for it. Our bus driver got off the bus and helped her load it (a good idea, considering what would happen if she did it wrong). Also, the crutch guy never mentioned what happened to all the cars behind that bus who suddenly found a mangled bike in their trajectory… and car vs. bike is not as sure a win as car vs. bus. I wonder if a ten-car pile-up occurred as a result of that little blunder.

I almost got into an accident on the expressway once. Scary scary. Somehow all 5 of us in all the lanes swerved in just the right way and no one crashed into anyone—we were going like 55… it could have been bad.

When our family went to visit Christie in Mexico over Thanksgiving, she told us how mad it makes her that no one down there moves over for ambulances, that people die because the ambulance couldn’t get there in time, and people on the road seem to see no connection to their own mortality when they do this. “Well, it’s not happening to me, so I don’t need to move over and disrupt my day." Little realizing that it could be them hovering on the brink of death one day, waiting for an ambulance that won't come.

I liked to think here in the US we were somehow better than that. Nope. Not too long after moving to Chicago, I witnessed it happen right here. I hear a siren, yet instead of it getting louder and screaming past, the sound just repeats and repeats like a child's toy stuck against a wall, and I realize it’s 2 blocks down and can’t go anywhere because no one will move over. My jaw about hit the sidewalk in disbelief and anger. If I was an ambulance driver I would start a tally chart. A tally chart of how many times we got there and the patient was dead already and if people had just moved their asses we could have gotten there in time to save him.

Big Event of the Day: Tango lesson #2
Percent Chance: 99% (I only hope I don't get put with annoying guy again)

A Nice, Normal Color

You know, I wish I had something interesting to write today. It has been a very average 24 hours. Not bad, not good. Just average. Like if you had to graph my typical activities at every hour of the day, the line of best fit would be a mirror image of what I exactly did. Take train home, stop at Quick-E-Mart for milk, make dinner, load the dishwasher, watch Tavis Smiley, assorted Friends and Will and Grace episodes, part of a Buffy episode until I got tired.... sleep, hit snooze, wake up, come to work, not much to do (thank goodness), lunch, chat with coworkers, prepare to go home. I wouldn't say it was gray, because it wasn't unpleasant. Or beige, which sounds like it's missing something. More of a soft buttercream color.*

*As you may be able to tell by my fondness for this and other tedious color distinctions, I used to work at a paint store after high school and on breaks from college. I got really into (and quite good at, if I do say so myself) color matching. I earned myself a little reputation, yes I did... people would come in with a swatch of fabric or chip of paint and they'd say, "I want Becky to match this, because I hear she's the best." Ahhhh..... I loved the glory of it all. We all should be so lucky to enjoy such fame and expertise in our jobs. Sigh. One day.

Big Event of the Day: Continue cleaning (I'm going on 3 consecutive days here--yay me!)
Percent Chance: 84%

Mostly Lionel Richie

A morbid thought to start off with... After going to a wedding shower this weekend, I thought about how these past few years, wedding season has been 4 months of bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and weddings. And how these are the years of our lives when we’re going to wedding after wedding because that's the part of their lives our friends are in--the getting married part. Soon it will be the having babies part, and then it will be baby showers and baptisms everywhere. It’s sad to think that there will be a time down the road when all of our friends start dying, and we'll spend our time going to funeral after funeral.

Anyway.

I listened to Lionel Richie all weekend.


I got a quite amusing treat when I opened up the little book that came in the CD case and saw how Lionel and the Commodores used to look. There were jumpsuits and plunging necklines and (am I seeing things?) unnecessary mirrors strapped onto their clothes. And the hair. Wow.


The epitome of sexiness in 1975.


I think they got these outfits cheap from a sci fi space TV show pilot that didn't get picked up.


I named this picture "Costume Party."

I also didn't know they were the original singers of "Brick House." Apparently they were a pretty funky group of big-haired dudes in their day, but now all us young white folk remember them for today is "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)" and "Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady." Kinda sad.

I finally caught up on the dishes yesterday. They had been edging me out in the race for weeks. I finally did about 3 loads of dishes in 2 days and got them all done. Yeah baby. (Do I say that too much? Hmm.) Then I started cleaning my apartment--organizing, throwing away, sweeping, 409ing. It was big. BIG I tell you. Very exciting. Soon I'll be a functioning human being with a functioning house! I can't wait.

That's gonna be it for now...

Big event of the day: More cleaning
Percent: 91%

Laura Wins!

Yay! Laura saved the day for everyone! See, I decided not to write a new blog until I had proof people actually read my last one. I have needs, people!

Funny you should mention root beer, Laura. When I was in Ecuador they thought that was the grossest drink imaginable and they couldn't understand why we would drink it. One guy had gone to the U.S. or Canada (I can't remember) and tried it and he said it was horrible. Which, come to think of it, even though I love it, it's weird. What exactly is the flavor of root beer anyway? The only way I can describe it is to say it tastes like root beer. Which as we all know from high school English, you can't define a word using the same word repeated. So.

Tango was fine, but not as fun as I had hoped. It's very hard. I figured it'd be like all the other dances but it's not. We spent the first half hour learning how to glide across the floor in time to the music, walk without bending our legs (weird) and lean forward the whole time without falling over. There is lots to remember. Oh! And then I got put with this youngish guy as a dance partner who got more irritating as the night went on. Now I know I'm a competitive person, and I know I have a hard time when I learn something new because I want to just skip to the end part where I know everything... BUT. This guy just started last week and he spent the whole time interrupting me every 3 steps and telling me what I was doing wrong. RRR! Fine if you're the teacher, but you're not, so what makes you the expert!?! Sheesh. I mean, I guess I should be glad there was a boy for me to dance with at all-- the last dance class I signed up for there were 5 girls and 2 boys and so I always had to practice my steps by myself. I dropped that class because I didn't learn how to do anything, just counting off in the corner like that. Anyway. So the teacher gave me a CD I'm supposed to burn a copy of (woops, forgot about that 'til now) of tango music so I can practice. I dunno. I would still like to know how to tango, but I am worried that the whole thing has been overhyped. We'll see how next Thursday goes.

Tomorrow: Arabic. YEEEAAAAH baby. And it starts at 2:30 in the afternoon. Which still leaves me hours of sleeping in and sitting around time before I have to leave. Well, at least an hour anyway.

I try to get a good color spread in my weekly wardrobe. Like if I wore pink, red, and purple on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I try to mix it up and wear green and blue on Thursday and Friday. I get sick of the same colors.

A few weeks ago, I was proud to notice that Chicago drivers (in my opinion) don't honk excessively. Except I've noticed it getting worse lately. Now, when something happens, instead of a 1-second scolding, they issue a 5- or 10-second blast that is completely unnecessary and just pisses everyone else off. I think you can directly relate horn-blowing to the friendliness of the city's inhabitants. Case in point, from what I hear, New York City is bad on both counts.

You know those old people who go to the post office, or the hardware store, or the grocery store, or whereever, and can't leave without first having an in-depth chat with the person behind the counter, just about nothing, while the unwitting worker (and everyone else in line) is held prisoner until they stop talking? And you think to yourself, does this person ever get out of the house? Do they have no one else to talk to?

Last night I became that guy. On my way home from tango class, I stopped in the Quick-E-Mart by the el stop, picked up a few things, and when I got to the counter and saw it was Edith, the checkout girl that I knew, for some reason I felt I needed to tell her, in detail, alllllllll about my tango class, and my annoying partner, and how I almost got my toes stepped on, and blaaaaah blah blah blah blaaaah, and I seem not to notice that I'm the only one talking, my words the biggest, loudest thing in the store....

and then suddenly something made me stop--I swear I heard imaginary crickets chirping--I looked at her, acting politely interested while waiting for me to leave; I looked around the now-empty store; I looked down at my feet, which were currently demonstrating tango steps on the linoleum floor without any encouragement from her, and I just thought, "Wow."

Then I left. It was scary.

So boys and girls, what did we learn? It is easy to become that guy.

Oh yeah,
Big Event of the Day: Take out the garbage
Percent Chance: You'd be surprised. Let's go 36%.

Happy weekend.

Someone Please Give This Girl Something to Write About, FTLOG

Big event of the day: Buy shower gift for this Sunday
Percent chance: 90%
(Yesterday's big event, cleaning, sooo did not happen. But I did invent a new recipe involving bacon, cheese, wine, and minced onion toasted on crackers. It was actually good, to my surprise. ...Well, you know, with bacon, how could it be bad?)

I ended up watching a really good documentary last night. (I worry that this flagrant documentary-watching makes me very old, but then again, if anyone's ever said to you, "You have an old soul," that's a compliment, right? You're wise and stuff. So there you go. This is how people get wise. (....Listen to me. I should be one of those people who asks for your contribution to PBS.)) Anyway, it was about illegal immigration.

Ah! Uf! EEE! That was the sound of me running for cover because I raised a controversial issue. At least that's what happens in my parents' house anyway.

I just wrote to Channel 11 and asked them to rebroadcast it. How much of a nerd am I? Hmm, you know, the people who decide what programming to run on PBS, they must sit through and watch thousands of documentaries. I bet those folks learn lots of stuff. I bet sitting down to dinner with one of them would either be really interesting or horribly boring.

Tomorrow I start tango lessons! Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! Soon I will be like those ladies in the movies who hold roses in their mouth while their partner drags them elegantly across the floor. (Betcha never heard drags and elegantly in the same sentence before, did ya'?)

Know what's weird? I've got a bunch of CDs on my desk, and they're being all pretty reflecting (refracting?) the light into pretty rainbows.... but now that I look at them, I think it's a fluorescent rainbow. Yep, that green is very ectoplasmic, and that pink is very 1986 spandex leggings.... somebody please 'splain to me why.....ohhhh. The light in this office is fluorescent. Duh.

Okay, that mind journey brought to you for entertainment purposes. Obviously, clearly, and without a doubt I have run out of things to say. Also....meah.

But tomorrow I start tango lessons!!!!!!!

Quick addition to today's blog: Here's the story about the glowing pigs.

Day 4 of Boring

Big Event of the Day: start cleaning up my apartment so, among other things, I can open the windows and not have random important papers blowing around
Percent Chance:
Of Doing Something: 50%
Of Putting Away or Cleaning More Than 5 Things: 12%

I signed up for classes today! Yay me! Between that and Michigan Avenue after work, I have been spending way too much money lately--last night I bought the super-duper best of Lionel Richie CD with like 30 songs on it. I'd been wanting to get me some Lionel Richie for years now. (....Oh, what a feelin'....we're dancin' on the ceilin'......)

Anyway, but the classes. Becky equals so excited. Bum bumbum buhhhhh.... Arabic! and Tango! Oh, baby.

So John tells me there's a bill in Congress to extend daylight savings time. As in start it earlier in the year and end it later. Some countries, Russia being one, have daylight savings time all year long, with an extra hour in the summer so they're two hours ahead. Some people think the U.S. should do this too, in addition to changing the beginning and ending dates. The major reason given is to save evergy costs, since people won't need to turn their lights on at home until later. Of course, it'll be dark for more hours in the morning then. What do you think?

Stuff I Knew and Stuff I Did Not Know

Big event of the day: Going home after work and not doing anything
Percent chance: 99% (I may take out the trash if I get a burst of energy)

I was reading Waiter Rant again today, and a random comment caught my attention. People were commenting on the "waiter rule," the rule that says you can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat the wait staff. One person commented (this seems like it belongs in a quote book):
One of the biggest headaches we encounter at age 50 is that almost everything we read, we already knew.
Sad, huh?

Also, I think just as telling is how a person treats others when they're having a bad day. It's easy to be nice if you're in a good mood, but if you're sad or angry in other aspects of your life, you have to exert effort to be kind to others in spite of your own problems.

I have just been informed (apparently this is old news, but not to me) that "Becky" is a term black people use to refer to white people in a derogatory way, as in "I'm sure Becky over at the Starbucks can pour you the half-caf non-fat latte you're looking for." I don't think I like this. That means every time I introduce myself to a black person I'm going to wonder if they're inwardly chuckling at me. What sucks is that I am very Whitey White McWhiterson, which would probably make it that much funnier.

Slightly Bitter

No fun! No one writes anything! I have to run out, get some stuff done tonight and then leave for a wedding tomorrow, so this will be my last blog until Monday.

I will spare you one entertaining thought--just one! Maybe if you were nicer I would write more things... but no! No fun for you.

Has anyone ever passed out from a bad smell? We were discussing at lunch how riding the el or bus in summer is awful, because these really sweaty, smelly people get on and everyone's crammed together so there's no escape. Sometimes it's so crowded your face is like in their armpit. Nicole used the phrase, "I felt like I was going to pass out" regarding a recent experience. Well, could this ever happen? From overheating, yes, but from smell? And do people ever throw up from bad smells? Again, you say you feel like you're going to, but do you think it's real or imagined?

Discuss and have a good weekend.

Oh yeah, big event of the day: finish my taxes (WHAT!? Yeah, I said it. I am that much of a procrastinator)
Percent chance:
Of doing it at all: 100%
Of doing it before midnight: 3%

Title-Type Heading

Big event of the day: pick up dry cleaning
Percent chance: 89%

I lost a couple bucks at poker last night. I should have given up while I was ahead. I was definitely off my game last night, as the number of times I had to be reminded to ante, what hands would win in a particular game, and even what game we were playing increased as the night went on.

I was running late today (I'm always late on Wednesdays, for some reason) and so I'm eating cereal at my desk. I happened to look at the back of the cereal box and they have mini pictures of the newest General Mills cereals. Did you know now there's Peanut Butter Cookie Crisp, Berry Lucky Charms, and Islandberry Crunch (featuring, as mascot, a suspiciously Chip and Dale-reminiscent squirrel wearing safari gear)?

I don't have much original to write today, but I do have an article for you. It's an angle on the pro-life/pro-choice issue I hadn't heard before. Sort of a "what-if" scenario that takes into consideration the difference between human beings' best intentions and what actually ends up happening.

Grocery Store Not Quite as Fun Anymore

Big event of the day: Poker at Christy and John's
Percent chance I'll go: 97%
Percent chance I'll win money: 55% (if we don't play any guts games...I hate those)

This change in the weather is nice, but it's making me realize I suddenly have almost no nice outfits to wear to work. This winter I stocked up on sweaters and turtlenecks, but that ain't gonna do me much good when it's warm out. More shopping.... Shopping's okay, but when all you have nearby that's cheap is Old Navy (and that's not always so cheap), your options are limited. I didn't know this before, but apparently stores like JC Penney and Kohls only exist in the suburbs.

Not much exciting going on today. I did go to the store yesterday--almost blew it off, but then I decided to be good. On the way there, Laura asked me, "Do you really like living in the city? You're not sick of it?" I didn't know what she was talking about. "Oh, like going to the store, how you have to carry everything on the bus." Well, I hadn't thought about it until she said something. But now I can see how that would get very annoying over time, yes, especially if you're bad like me and wait weeks and weeks until you have nothing left in the fridge but eggs, milk, and a questionable head of lettuce....When I got out of Jewel last night I waited over 40 minutes for a bus just so I wouldn't have to walk the 6 blocks home from the el station, and even then the 2-block walk from the bus station to my apartment with my 15 bags just about killed me--not to mention, of course, the long haul up the 3 flights of stairs.

Time for poker.

Scientists Scare Me

Big event of the day: grocery store after work
Percent chance: 50% (let's be honest)

I saw Rent this weekend. (Or maybe it's RENT. Maybe it's one of those type of fancy name deals.) It was a good time, and we met some cool people waiting in line, but wooooo boy, so cold. We were outside for 6 hours. It was one of those, even when you go inside, you're still cold hours later 'cause your bones are frozen deep down. But now I get to say I did the die-hard, wait-outside-for-tickets thing. And for our sacrifice, we got to sit in the front row of a Broadway (well, Chicago Broadway, anyway) musical. I'd never sat in the front row for anything before. It's pretty cool. And only $20!

It's 11:30. This last half hour before lunch is killing me.

I am trying to think of interesting things, but none are forthcoming.

Okay, here's one thing I found out the other day. I was being all smart-like and reading Scientific American, so I swear to you this is true and not from a random website. Going off the success of making an artificial heart, scientists are now working on a way to make artificial cells so from there they can make whatever organ (or creature?) they want. Artificial cell wall, artificial all the little wiggly guys inside (the only one I can think of the name of is mitochondrion....). To me, it doesn't seem a far leap for them to want to make lots of different cells and teach them to work together.... like if they came up with the right "recipe" for lung cells, and skin cells, and brain cells, etc., they could make a functioning artificial human being! All they'd need is to make two of them with unique DNA and then they could reproduce and create a whole population of cyborgs and then they would take over the Earth as in every apocolyptic sci-fi horror movie made in this century! BWWUUHhuhuhuhuh. (That was me shuddering from the thought.)

Also, my friend Joe tells me that scientists have successfully crossed jellyfish and pig DNA to create pigs with glowing snouts. Like, just to see if they could do it. Ummmm, frankensteiny and unethical, anyone? Now I'm no huge animal-rights picketer, but I'm hoping there's a back story to that one, because right now it just sounds like a basement science project mess-around hobby kit, "New and Improved! With Real Animals!" specially designed for the sociopathic scientists.

Friday, I love you Friday

Big event of the day: Happy hour after work--Yay!
Percent chance: 98%

It's almost time to go, actually, so quick like a bunny here's some stuff.

Soy milk is the squeezed-out juice of pureed soybeans. I couldn't tell whether they were cooked or not--there are conflicting reports. The best way to know what it is is to look at a recipe. Apparently you can make it at home! (That's one recipe I don't feel the need to try out, thanks. Although, incidentally, I really do like soybeans. A little salt, they're quite yummy.)

Once you have soy milk, you can make lots of things, including tofu. Tofu is curdled soy milk, just like cheese is curdled cow or goat milk.

Katie from work and I are going to see Rent tomorrow! Or we're going to try, anyway. We're going to wait in line for the $20 tickets you can buy the day of. I am excited, but not too excited, because I don't want to get too excited and then not get to see it. It is a defense mechanism, really. A musical defense mechanism.

Off to get some margaritas!

Niblets and Quandary

I am instituting a new feature of my blog. At the beginning I’m going to write my big plans for the day or the thing I’m looking forward to for that day. Today’s is going to the dry cleaners after work. And because it’s me, I feel the need to put in a qualifier of “percent chance I’ll actually do it.” Today’s percent is 85.

I came across this quote on a blog. Now I didn’t write it, but it struck my funny chord so harmoniously (liked that extended metaphor there, din’cha?) that I wanted you to hear it too. “Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for an hour. Light a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
…

Aside from the morbidity (and unless you’ve actually been hospitalized for burns), it’s pretty funny.

I finally saw "Walk the Line" last night. It was very good. You know what I think’s interesting though? There aren’t many good original movies out there nowadays. Studios put together these formulaic movies that they figure will sell, based on market research or whatever, but they don’t add anything worthwhile to society and are barely worth the 2 hours you spent watching them. Notice how every year, more and more of the critically-acclaimed movies are the biopic films, like "Walk the Line," "Ray," and "Catch Me If You Can." It’s like they don’t know how to write good stories anymore and so they have to look to other people's lives for their raw material. I think it shows how bad things have gotten. I don't know whether it's Hollywood's fault for making people prove their movies are going to sell before they get approval to make them, or whether worldwide creativity in general has taken a downward turn. Are we destined to hear the same old stories recycled again and again from this point on?

I worry about songs, too. More and more lately, the new song I hear on the radio sounds just like 5 other songs I’ve heard, some of them even sharing parts of the same melody. I'm sure the same cookie-cutter marketing philosophy is going on--people could make original stuff, but they don't because it doesn't sell.

But you know, in music, there may be other factors at work, too. I've heard Spanish songs that remind me of English songs, and vice versa. Now we know (or can hopefully assume, unless they're on the same record label) that the Spanish singer and the English singer don't listen to each other's music. So how did they both spontaneously come up with the same tune? I'm thinking they probably don't have many melodies to choose from anymore--there are only so many ways you can combine the 12 notes in the scale--and they both hit upon one they thought hadn't been done yet. Is this an indicator that musical doomsday is drawing near? When every possible melody will have been written, and there is nothing more to write that someone hasn't already done? What then?

They say that if you lock some monkeys in a room and give them a typewriter, eventually (after a near infinite amount of time), they’ll give you Shakespeare. The idea being that a random collection of letters every so often inadvertently spells a word, and therefore, if you wait even longer, you could get a sentence, or even a whole book! (By the way, trippy short story on this idea by Jorge Luis Borges, about a world whose only books were pages and pages of randomly-generated letter combinations.... People tried to extract meaning from the occasional coherent word or phrase, like "the combed thunderclap." Here's a link to it, if you’ve got 15 minutes to kill and want a little brain gymnastics (skip to the last 3 paragraphs for the best part, if you're short on time or your boss is coming).)


Am I making sense?


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What is soy milk? I don't get it. Soybeans are a vegetable. I get how you can get oil out of them, just like you can out of peanuts or corn, but milk? And for that matter, is tofu curdled soy milk, or just fermented soy? Rest assured, I will get to the bottom of this.

Eye Yam Board

I am bored at work and so I just googled myself. (I like using google as a verb. At first I was against it, but now I think it's kind of cute.) Anyway, two people with my name came up: one, an officer in the US miltary, fine fine; and the other (apparently I've missed this), the president of some online "adult video" company! Ack! So if you happen to know my last name (I am attempting to be sly and not attach my last name to yet another thing out there in cyberspace), you can google it and see. I'm at work so I didn't investigate very much. She goes by Becky, too, which is weird--I always figured if I got to be CEO of something (hey! stop snickering), I'd go by Rebecca. But I guess in the porn industry, not so much with the high class. In fact, I bet they have people heading regional divisions with names like Sapphire, Thunder, and Randy.

I finally went to IKEA this weekend. I got, among other things, a cute little kitchen cart. I have to hand it to those Swedish engineers. Everything fit so snugly in the little box, all the pieces cut to just the right size, all the drill holes lined up perfectly, with the easy-to follow, pictures-only instructions so they work in any language.... 1-2-3, instant kitchen cart! I have to say it was a very pleasant furniture-putting-together experience. Plus, I got some giggles out of the instruction manual. My favorite picture is of the confused guy with question marks over his head, followed by a picture of him on the phone to a big building with a waving flag out the top that says IKEA. (Since I can't figure out how to upload the picture, here's a link to a page with the picture in question.) I love his black-and-white emotions. Have all the tools to get the job done = happy. Don't know what to do = sad and confused. Ahh. So like life.

I also got a rug, two shelves, and some mirrors. Yay! Apartment going to be presentable soon.

Don't have a lot of time to write today... work to do. Sorry! I don't mean to disappoint. Like you, I have spent the afternoon bored because no one is updating their blogs and thus without anything fun to read. I'll try to write more tomorrow.

What a week. And just think--it's only Tuesday! Sigh.