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July 26, 2005
he had it coming / he had it coming / he only had himself to blame
I had the best weekend. One of my seriously favorite people came to visit me. She shall remain nameless in case some one googles her during her confirmation for a judgeship. She shall remain unconnected to me and my gun hating politics.
The weekend started out on a great note as we scored free hot fresh krispy kremes. We went right after we picked her up from the airport as that is the closest one. It is hard to resist. We went inside so I could watch the machines, leaving porch boy in the car with his baseball game. (How great was porch boy to not watch the cubs-cardinals game so he could have dinner with me and go to the airport.) At this location, they give fresh donuts to those making purchases. Interesting, as we really only wanted one. The line was not long, but it was slow as no one was seemed to be being helped. We all, in line, were given our hot, fresh krispy kreme. We waited and then these dyed blond older ladies cut in front of us. At that point we had gotten what we wanted and no one had appeared to be helping anyone in line, so we just left. Awesome.
We spent a lot of time hanging out and chatting or hanging out and reading. We walked out to the harbor and watched the boats. The three of us went downtown for a NPR fundraiser/live interview by Ira Glass on crime in Chicago during the 20s. People were being murdered for reading the wrong newspaper during the paper wars. People were being murdered at an astonishing rate. It was quite interesting. One of the stories the historian dude told was of the women that the musical chicago is based on. Plus, I got to see Ira Glass in person. I love Ira Glass’s voice, and for an hour and a half I was awash in his voice.
The visitor also got her wish for a “Chicago” hot dog. I guess they are different as they put a large amount of stuff on it (include a full quarter of a pickle).
Sunday we did our best to not melt, which involved staying inside most of the day watching the thermometer outside reach 111. We did venture out for both Trader Joe’s and for sushi. Dude, I do love sushi, and my favorite place is so close to the apartment. Whenever an sushi eating person comes to visit, we go there. Porch boy is not a fan, so I rarely get a chance to partake.
Whenever one of my friends come to visit, we spend some amount of time doing things in my neighborhood. During those time, walking with friends, I appreciate how nice it is to live in my neighborhood where there are so many cool things within walking distance. One way is a short walk to the lake/park. Another way is a very short walk to Wriggly Field. There are more restaurants than I can count, bars and shops and ice cream too.
I was sad to drop the visitor off at the airport. I really enjoyed having her back around, if even just for a moment. We are both quite bad with the phone, so we don’t stay in constant touch between visits. When we do get to see each other, it is quite a treat. It reminds me how much I love having a good female friend around and how sad I’m going to be when Leta moves away.
Posted by christina at 2:44 PM | Comments (2)
July 25, 2005
so there isn't any sweetness in the dreaming
I have heard that I am incredibly sweet in my sleep. Last night it was proven to my half awake conscience when the phone range at 3:18 am. Porch boy picks it up and hands it to me as I've already made it across the bed.
Hello?
May I please speak to ...... (insert porch boys full name)?
May I ask who is calling?
...(some name my sleepy brain doesn't remember), I'm wondering if he is my brother.
Um, I don't think so.
Is he a heavy set guy?
Nope.
Is he from ...(some place I can't remember)?
Nope.
Okay, thanks.
You have a good night.
Yes, I end the strange phone call with a very sweet "you have a good night".
Posted by christina at 11:04 AM | Comments (1)
July 22, 2005
and you kissed me like you meant it
Monday night porch boy expressed disbelief that a whole year (plus a couple weeks) have gone by since our "are we going to make it in the long term, we're going to try to answer that by going camping far away together" yellowstone vacation.
Memories flooded back yesterday as I viewed someone else's pictures.
It is was so cold at night, too cold to sleep at some points. I had not anticipated the cold of the nights of the first weekend in July in the mountains.
It was the first (and only, I believe) 5 straight days where porch boy and I spent every moment together. Camping is a lot of fun. Porch boy took to it nicely. He built and played with the fire each night as I tried to sit in it to combat the cold. We cooked our meals. We went out a couple times, but mostly it was us and the fire.
we oooo'd and ahhhh's over the views, the animals, the springs. Yellowstone is truly a beautiful place. It is amazing that such different terrain exist relatively close together.
and during those five days, somewhere amoung the driving, the shivering, the people, and the buffalo, we knew. We knew that this was the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with - cooking, camping, cleaning, bickering, kissing; there was no one we'd rather be with. Though, really, it was (is) more than that for me. I have found the person i would rather be with than being by myself. Though for lots of people who don't like to be alone, this seems like less of a statement than the former one. For me, who would rather be alone than with the majority of people on this planet, this is the ultimate statement.
and when porch boy asked me to marry him two weeks ago, i said yes.
Posted by christina at 3:58 PM | Comments (2)
July 19, 2005
when we're driving in the car / it makes my baby seem so far
i hate chicago traffic. I don't understand why cops don't enforce traffic laws. A couple of things really bug the hell out of me about chicago drivers:
(1) People will pull up to the right of me at traffic lights in the right turn lane. When the light turns, they do not turn left, they speed through the intersection to get in front of me. It frightens me as they are more worried about beating me through the intersection than not running over pedistrains.
(2) People enter the intersection when they cannot go through it all the way. There is this specific intersection that it always happens. It happens most evenings. I hate it. People are so stupid. I have seen a cop sit there and watch this stupidity.
(3) Trucks park in the right lane like it is legal or something. Everyday there is a truck in the right lane somewhere. This evening it was a little debbie truck that made traffic so bad all the way down sheridan in rogers park. I leave after rush hour, so I don't usually hit traffic, which make it annoying when i do. If it was just traffic, it would be okay. But traffic cause by the stupidity of truck parking in the right lane annoys me doubly. I really just want to sit behind them and beep until they move.
Posted by christina at 9:42 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2005
don't drink the water
I have found the best place in Chicago – the dog beach!
Saturday we joined ben and Julie and their dog lilibee at the dog beach. It was so much fun. There were dogs running everywhere playing with each other, with their owners, in the water. It was so so so so cool. I saw (and got to pet) boston terriers, pugs, an italien greyhound, amoung many many other breeds, including precious lilibee. It was the perfect day for the beach – hot enough to drive you into the water.
I must admit I enjoyed the fresh water beach as the water did not sting. I’m sure it is oh so clean, but I didn’t drink it and I took a shower immediately upon returning home.
Funny thing is that my trip to the dog beach made me be a little more realistic about owning a dog. I do want to own a dog, so badly that I just lay my head on whatever dog I happen to have and love love love it. Dogs just need so much, and currently, it is all my energy to plod through school/work right now. I really think that having a dog at home would completely cuase me to implode. Okay, not really, but at this moment in my life I have to work a lot. The strange thing about when I get stressed about work, I just want to work more. Yesterday I had this big struggle between my stress wanting me to go to work and my brain knowing that today was going to be a long day and knowing that all I really wanted to do with my afternoon is hang out with the boy I met on a porch. And so that is what I did (though I did work a bit at home).
It is truly the season for engagements around here. In the past month or so four couples I know have gotten engaged (three with one person in the dept and one that the boy use to be in the department). How crazy is that! The latest is my friends Jon and Chris. They met the same night that porch boy and I met. They didn’t start dating until a month or so after. They are awesome. I hate hate hate that they can’t get legally married. It is so stupid. Why am I allowed to marry porch boy, but they can’t marry each other? How is it any different? I DO NOT understand why this is such an issue. I look forward to a time when my children can look back and shake their heads in wonder that there was a time when people who loved each other couldn’t get married.
Posted by christina at 7:36 PM | Comments (2)
July 17, 2005
the only one for me is you / and you for me
Today I heard a couple stories on sunday all things considered.
First was about a teammate of Lance Armstrong won the day's race. As much as I admire Lance's fight to overcome cancer, I have to admit it really annoys me all the media focus on him. The Tour de France is a team sport. I do not claim to follow the tour closely, but I have heard enough NPR stories to understand that it is a team sport. Lance's teammates push the pace and tire other riders as Lance rides behind until the end when he pushed ahead. I want the media to focus on the team. I understand that people sign up for "his team" knowing that they will give it all for his win. Why doesn't team discovery channel win the Tour de France? Why does the win only go to Lance? Why is there only one yellow jersey? It seems to wrong that the same guy wins year after year becuase of, yes, his hard work, but also the hard work of a lot of riders that I don't hear about everyday on the news. I understand the concept of a team captain who everyone else strives to work under, but becuase one one people see his name in light, shouldn't that captain change year to year?
The second story was about a very very cute hippo-turtle relationship.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4754996
Posted by christina at 9:35 PM | Comments (1)
July 15, 2005
forever it's you / forever in me/ ever the same
The ibook arrived a day early, and I am in love. The universe rewarded my coming in before 8 yesterday with my laptop. The early arrival meant I could leave around 5 to go home and play with it. I left it in the box all day until i got home. I have so much willpower.
I had originally hoped that the laptop would arrive and my ring would be ready today. Since one happened early, I'm thinking the ring won't be early, as it is due to me done on Monday. (It is at the jewlery getting resized. Yes, i told hunk o' man the wrong size. I'm just not the type of girl that know what that ring size is. I had just assumed it was the same as my other hand. Though, in my defense, i do wear my rings loose and with this ring I just can't do it. I'm already paranoid about losing it. I don't need the extra help in that department by it being too big.) I am still holding my breath that it will be ready so ben and julie can see it tomorrow during our afternoon at the dog beach. Julie is going to be quite sad if I don't have it.
I would also like to know why it takes a week to resize a ring. Tom and I looked up how they do it and it seems like an afternoon of work - removing a portion of the material and then welding it and polishing it. Sounds like something i could do in our labs. Not that I would, but I could.
Knowledge I have to share today -
(1) When removing stickers from car windows (we have lots of them b/t northwestern and the city of chicago), a razor blade + goo gone works best. When I did my stickers, I did it all with goo gone, and it took a while because I had to wait for the goo gone to dissolve the thick adhesive. With hunk o' man's car last night, I scraped off all the sticker and used the goo gone to get to last of the adhesive off. It was so much quicker.
Knowledge I would like to be given -
(1) How though logically I know that I have all the important things in life - love (hunk o' man, fam, friends) and health, things at work still bother me a lot. I hope with time I gain the ability to not let things at work effect me personally. I wonder what it is like to be one of those people who can compartmentalize, who realize that work is work. I really wonder what it is like to be one of those people who just don't care about work, who takes advantage of the system, who coasts through. I don't want to be that person, but i wonder how it is possible since it seems so undoable for me.
Hunk o' man and my ibook rock my world, especially since I just figured out how to spell check a web box. awesome.
Posted by christina at 12:45 PM | Comments (3)
July 13, 2005
if you like pina colas
I have changed my running route. I have been meaning to start running on the lake (there is a really nice running trail and park along the shore) now that it is hot and sticky. Most of the year, the wind off the lake makes it too cold, so i run inland from my apartment. Saturday, I finally changed. It is so beautiful, plus has a lot more runners (to motivate me) and way less streets to cross (decreasing the chance of getting hit by a car).
I've seen some random things so far in the park. Saturday it was a dog drinking from a water fountain. This morning it was a tv crew filming and guy (unrealated to the tv crew) walking around barefooted in while linen pants and a white overcoat and white bere (sp?). Quite a strange sight.
My computer is somewhere over the ocean. It should arrive Friday.
Currently, the hardest thing for me is remembering or learning or accepting that grad school is a learning experience, that i don't have to do everything perfectly the first time. That I work on the edge of something and so things don't always fit in a box.
did you know that one could get married in a library? After hours, of course.
Posted by christina at 9:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2005
lights will guide you home / and ignite your bones
My laptop finally bit the dust Thursday. It has had problems since last November when the cooling fan went out. I did buy a new one and was going to replace it. I never was real motivated because i found that if I kept the laptop elevated so air circulated underneath it, it would be okay. There was also an issue with the display wiring. At certain angles, including the one most people would put the screen, the screen would flicker. I just worked around it.
A week or so ago I got a weird error and though I had lost it forever. It worked fine the next day, but it is motivate me to backup the important stuff. It also commence serious conversation about a new laptop. We had be throwing the subject around for a while. Ben has become quite partial to apple laptops. Due to my many years in the yearbook and newspaper fields, I'm comfortable with apples and pc. It was all just in theory so I didn't declare an allegiance. I did read an interesting article about how apples are acutally less than dells when you compare the options.
When my laptop finally died, I was not surprised. It made the click click of the hard drive dying. My only question is whether I can redownload all the music I bought from itunes and emusic. Guess we'll see.
I thought that I would wait until after Sept, as there are computers everywhere and I really just need my laptop for conferences. I then realized that I would not be able to change my ipod. I could set up itunes on the desktop computer, but I am worried about blowing all my music away and so I decided that i should just go ahead and bit the bullet. I have money saved and so buying it now versus 2 months from now isn't that big of a deal. Plus I found that I just really need my own computer.
So after some research and finding that apple gives student discounts (not much, but $100 off the computer I'm getting) plus they are including a free ipod mini, which i can sell to defray that cost of the computer, I decided on an 12 in ibook. It weighs 5 lbs! My back is going to love me.
Hunk o' man and I were downtown last night for dinner, and popped by the apple store just to look. It confirmed that it is the laptop for me. I placed the order when we got home. Due to my luck with things breaking, i went ahead and got the 3 year warranty. It was only $189 more and totally worth it if something breaks.
Expensive past couple weeks all around. I have definitely spent more money in the past four weeks than the whole year before that between the car, and great sale on new balance sneakers in which i got two pairs, and now my computer. All stuff I need. It is crazy how things come in waves.
Posted by christina at 1:11 PM | Comments (3)
July 7, 2005
the smile on your face
Liz came into town last Saturday. She usually comes in for the 4th of July weekend. Usually I go out to Naperville, but she wanted to see the place and the kitty and the Cubs game. Despite having grown up in the area, she had never been to Wriggly. Therefore going has put an end to all's amazing at that fact.
We had a great day. The weather was perfect. We had lunch outside in the sunshine followed by yummy italian ice and ice cream chatting in the sunshine. There no less than 4 ice cream shops on southport rd between belmont and irving park (1 mile). It is insane. The game was fun, though the cubs lost. Some of us minded more than others. And then us + hunk o' man went downtown to meet Liz's best friend from high school and her b/f for dinner. One the way there hunk o' man witnessed a mooning. A guy on the el car was mooning his friends has it pulled away from the platform we all had gotten off on. It made his night.
Yesterday Thomas Louise has surgery on his right shoulder. I spent the majority of the day at the hospital hanging out for this, that, or the other reason. It was outpatient scope surgery. I do have to say after my long history of hanging out in hospitals (as my mom was a nurse and we would go there after school), it was weird to be there for someone else. The small part I saw of evanston hospital was nice. The out patient surgery waiting room was nice. It had big fish and no screaming children, therefore better than the er.
Tom is doing as well as expected. He's on a lot of pain pills, so it sounds like he is just sleeping a lot. From my post surgery convo with the doctor (who was super cool), it sounds like he is going to have more mobility with his right arm than we thought (we thought none). He'll be able to drive once he's off the super pain pills and type and eat and stuff. He has this really awesome cool pad for his shoulder area. I covet it.
After I got Tom settled with ice and food and drink and pain pills, I went up to our "local" outdoor concert area, Ravina. It is a short train ride from evanston. It is the regional train metra, who confused me and caused me to miss a train because they drive on the WRONG side of the tracks. Wrong being the opposite of streets and the el. But it was cool, as the ride was much shorter than i had anticipated, any my "later" arrival meant no line to pick up my ticket. Hunk o' man, Steve, and Jen were already up there. I got there with plenty of time before allison krauss and union station came on. The whole event is quite cool. It was packed with people in the lawn with full fledged picnics. Had i had more time and energy, it would have been really cool to put something really nice together complete with wine and cheese and fruit. Though I was quite happy with my sandwich and sunchips.
The night was perfect, though a touch chilly. We curled up and listened to the beautiful music as we watched the stars come out. It was definitely one of those nights that you live the moments in between for.
Posted by christina at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
July 5, 2005
hey julie / look what they're doing
So I am overwhelmed, still, by work issues, that the task of posting about all the cool stuff i've done lately has been daunting. So I'm going to do it piece meal.
(I would just like to pause and say that I hate the friction tester. People tell me it should behave in certain ways and it does not!)
Anyways. To the nice happy thoughts.
Weekend before last, hunk o' man + friends and I went to Vermont for Ben and Julie's wedding.
Vermont is beautiful. Spending time among trees and hills makes me miss living among trees and hills.
The wedding was small and done quite well. It was mostly family. I am quite happy that we had the opportunity to go. I adore ben and julie (though not as much as I adore their dog) and loved getting to see them get married. All of the friends stayed in this house at the "base of operations" inn. The house is meant for family reunions; it sleeps 16. It was perfect as it gave all the friends a place to hang without disturbing anyone. Both night the bride and groom hung out. (after the wedding just for a bit, but the night before the wedding, there was tequila shots going on. not for me though, but for others who can stomach tequila shots.)
The wedding, beside taking place outside in a heat wave, was nice. It was a somewhat traditional Jewish wedding. I enjoy the component of Jewish celebrations that recognize that everyone is not as happy at that moment. The wedding and reception took place at a family friend's "farm". He didn't raise anything, just had a lot of land. And ponds. And a babbling book. It was enough to make ben go around announcing to me that he wants land. I, myself, have always had dreams of living in the middle of nowhere. I either want to be in the middle of a city or the middle of the woods. When I was young I wanted to be a forest ranger so I could live in the woods. That career choice made me look at environmental science which somehow turned into chemistry and then into chemical engineering than to materials science and engineering and here I am. Most days I wish I would have stuck to my original plan. Ben is the only thing that makes me glad I came to grad school this past month.
Anyways, the reception was complete with people being lifted on chairs and lots of dancing. It was the longest wedding/reception for me yet (though, this is only my third friend wedding).
This past Sunday ben and julie had us over for brunch so we could see all their cool wedding presents. They got some cool stuff. Copper pans are awesome.
Posted by christina at 10:31 AM | Comments (1)