donezo

presented my last, "seminal" piece of work for my master's program this afternoon. it was well received. my class is a mixed bag of documentary students and long-form magazine-style writers. i am neither. i squeaked into the class because i decided that one of my majors - i had two - wasn't worth a damn, so i dropped it and took this class instead.

if you want to get an idea of what we writers in the class were striving to do, read something written by katherine boo, formerly of the new yorker, or hanna rosin, an editor at the atlantic.

i'm going to be pitching my story to a magazine after the holidays are over. it's sort of my meal ticket, or a big break, if i get published, but i understand that it's a bit of a long shot. a feature-length story by a very green writer... hmm.

so our presentation today consisted of full screenings of all four documentaries (each around 20 minutes in length) and the 10 stories written by the long form writers. we only read excerpts. i was the second person to present, which was lucky, because we still had a full house at that point, and people were still awake. four hours later, not so much. most everyone that wasn't in the class had bounced (could you blame them? four unrelenting hours, no breaks) and the people that were there were completely saturated.

i went and drank a pitcher of 312 afterward with my good friend amy, her roomies and a couple of people from the program. the idea was that our whole class was supposed to go for drinks, but of course being journalists we just dissipate and do our own thing. MBA students we are not. by drank a pitcher i mean we each had a pitcher's worth of beer, not that we split one. this is the midwest, after all.

so now i get to pack up my life yet again, and deploy boxes to the four corners of the earth. i'm beginning to think i don't have the right to own anything. i also can't sleep and have a headache from the beer. i took a melatonin and hope to be sleeping soon.

i can do it, i can do it

reaching the home stretch in the re-write of the story that has dominated my last quarter. i mean literally dominated, because it's my master's thesis, in a way. it's the journalist take on a master's thesis. the last step in my professor's 10-step re-write guidelines (eight of which i have ignored) is to open a blank document and re-write the entire fucking thing without cutting and pasting. i've reached the last section and i just had lunch in order to give myself the mental energy to do this shit. it's been a solid three hours of concentration, which for me and my gnat's brain (thanks, internet!) is a goddamned miracle nowadays.

it's moments of mental clutter and exhaustion that i wish i was religious or that i meditated or some shit. i have crap for tools to clear my head. i feel like i need an energy injection right to the brain. if i was religious, i like to think, i could just get down on my knees and pray for some sort of brain cleaning. i've actually tried to pray, not today but some other time, and my mind wandered and i felt like an ass speaking quietly in my mind to someone that doesn't exist to me. i've also tried to meditate, but that shit was harder than hell and i think i'd rather just finish my story then have to try that again.

so i went and did the closest thing - boiled some water and made some strong, plain black tea. that'll clear the shit out of the frozen trader joe's pizza flavor i have in my mouth, at least. let's hear it for the final push!

argh. help.

and so it happens

all of your older girlfriends, or perhaps more experienced girlfriends, tell you that there's always one person that likes to rain on your parade during a happy event. let's say a recent engagement of marriage. there's always one comment that girds the goat, and even though it usually comes from a person who has less than you in some way, that comment festers.

i can't say that i'm easily bothered by bitchy comments. i like to think it's because i don't hang out with bitches, which helps reduce the likelihood of biting remarks, and so therefore i have a lot less occasion to be confronted with shitty comments. once in a while, though, one sneaks through, and even though you know all about it, this canon of the bitchy engagement news comment, and fully anticipate who the comment-giver might be, it still sucks when that person delivers it.

why? why doesn't anticipating the shittiness and who the shit-delivery person will be negate the crappiness of the message?

all around, you can kind of sense people's emotions when you tell them your news. let's continue with this example of an engagement. there are the friends that flat-out ignore you, there are those who are overjoyed, as you are, there are the really awesome friends and relatives that do fun things with you like ring shopping and dress trying-on and only match your excitement with theirs. and then there are those whose carefully measured responses make you wonder why they're disappointed, and those who just fling evil offhand. it's crazy, how people react, the range of reactions you might get. if a person can say with certainty that no evil has ever been flinged towards this grinchy friend, doesn't it make you wonder how she hasn't once thought about how such statements would be interpreted? and isn't that just a fucking shame?

ladiesbug my ass

photo credit here

the flippin weirdest thing happened yesterday. i was on my way to class, around 1 p.m., just walking on a typical autumn day, leaves falling, overzealous kellogg kids running my ass over on the sidewalk, busy networking or whatever the fuck they do, when something on my exposed collarbone pinches, and i look down at the same time as i reach to see what it is, and a fucking LADYBUG has just bitten the shit out of me, and then flits off into the sunlight.

what the FUCK? since when are ladybugs mean? i didn't run through a meadow of ladybugs and disturb its habitat or anything. if anything, it should've bitten those obnoxious kellogg students, not some innocent-though-stupid medill student who's going to make shit for a living after shouldering massive amounts of debt.

i mean, really. that ladybug was pissed. i have a welt, now. and more importantly, i'm puzzled. should i expect ladybugs to be menacing from now on? they are the one species i won't smash if it's caught in my habitat or on my person, but damn, if they're going to go around biting folks i might have to re-think that.

go giants!

watching game 6 of the NLCS championships (GO GIANTS!) for those of you living under a rock during the past week or so.

also, eating cookies that i just baked, reading back issues of the Times that i missed this week (i stack them up if i don't get through them and read them later. do you do that?), blogging and researching a paper due monday.

an actual paper, not a story.

i find that when i have lots of time to myself, i like to do about 47 things at the same time, each pleasurable in their own way, or mandatory by way of school.

i had a four-hour lunch today with two friends from school. an inadvertent occasion. we went by a place i'd seen on check, please! chicago, which looked good. picked up jesse and spence at their place (a 25-minute endeavor because i live in the sticks), then we went over to this restaurant.

CLOSED for catering, re-opening in 2 hours. we walked down the street (not the best neighborhood, therefore the most promising for good eats), and found a korean hole-in-the-wall that serves only soups of various kinds. spleen, tendon, tripe-filled soups. we had lunch there, but soup with veggies and a bowl of rice is not filling, so we went BACK to the original place, which was packed because of the airing on the show, and waited nearly 90 minutes for food. we were originally just going to order a shitload of lumpia to go, but a table opened up so we decided to order more stuff to try. fortunately, we weren't hungry like some of the other restaurant patrons, who got downright angry at the owner/manager.

you can't really feel bad for the hungry people; if everyone got seated at the same time, you're bound to wait for an hour to eat. the kitchen staff was busting they asses to get food for these people. it was BYOB, so after the first hour, the boys got the bright idea to go next door and get some oversized bottles of sierra nevada. we got our plates eventually, and they were pretty yum.

one of my theories in life is that islanders aren't that good at running businesses. i don't think this applies to all, of course, but if i had a dollar for every hawaiian restaurant owned and run by hawaiians that folded in under two years... i'd probably have a lot of dollars. i'm kind of extending this observation to all islanders, because i'm lazy in the brain and judgmental. i observed this owner guy today, and while the food was good and they surely hustled... who closes their restaurant for 4 hours on the weekend that their restaurant is featured very prominently on a local restaurant review show?! they had a catering event that morning, which i get, but perhaps separating the catering and the restaurant kitchen would be worth its while. or limiting the catering menu only to shit you can slam out in the wee hours of the morning before the restaurant opens for lunch. no?

tell me if you can figure this out

maybe it's the early hour, but i'm having trouble understanding the bar graph towards the top of this infographic. [click to enlarge. again, my blog template has column sizes that are too narrow for the full size, but the automated blogger sizing makes it too small. and i'm too lazy to crunch the image proportions by hand and adjust in html.]

do you get it? how can imports and exports worldwide vs. the U.S. yield such odd numbers? shouldn't the imports and exports be inverted versions of each other?

this infographic, and many others of outstanding quality, comes to you via mint.com's blog. mint.com is a great, free online service that helps people with their personal finances, to budget, reach goals, etc. i don't use the personal finance service (i keep meaning to, but, let's be honest. i live on student loans, so i know exactly how much i have to spend each quarter.), but i do subscribe to their blog. i find that it addresses financial issues that are more sophisticated than the average mass media outlet, but does so in a clear, easy-to-understand way, and often presents them in nice, modern formats like infographics for news nerds like me who like the digital stuff.

that said, i actually do know why the bar graph is yielding such odd numbers. if you look up worldwide coffee import/export numbers on a bloomberg terminal or a website that covers world economic trade numbers (morningstar might also be useful), you're basically going to get tonnage and dollar values for coffee producing around the world. if you graph them, they won't make sense, because of course it would be far too easy for the import/export numbers to be calculated in a straightforward manner.

i'm sure nothing in this post furthers the world in any positive way, but maybe someone out there can help me out.

gamboling about on the internets...

The Black Ivy from Street Etiquette on Vimeo.


if there was a degree to be earned on random treasure-hunting on the internet, i think i could bronze medal. or at least earn an AA degree. seriously.

today was particularly fruitful. one of my friends buzzed (he's one of three that still uses poor 'ol buzz) an esquire magazine infographic on pant sizes by american retailers, and from there i found a male-oriented blog about fashion and general outward appearance called Put This On. that lead me to many other things, but more importantly a video/slideshow/still photo project called The Black Ivy by joshua kissi and travis gumbs of the fashion blog, Street Etiquette.


it's gorgeous. the video production quality is beautiful (i have an appreciation for such things having shot a few shitty video projects myself). the people are gorgeous. it's enviously styled. i don't even subscribe to the prepster movement and i love this project.

if i had a cork inspiration board above my desk like i had most of my life, i would pin these stills up. one day, when i stop living as a gypsy or roma, i will.

ok, so maybe some people are right

so, my tribe (with few exceptions) consists of drum-beat worshipping, morning-growling, daylight-stomping coffee drinkers. i have never apologized for my coffee addiction; quite the opposite, i reveled in it. i celebrated it. i mocked people who did not understand its seduction.

makes your heart palpitate? excellent, it's working! jittery and unfocused? pthhhh, a noob. can't sleep at night? that's why people invented ambien!

oh, so glib.

after hell and back in six days without coffee, i jumped (ok, we all know me better than that. i probably slogged) out of bed at the crack of noon and joyously (alright, inscrutably and unemotionally) poured water from the brita into my coffee maker's water well. i carefully measured (i.e. dumped unceremoniously) peet's italian roast into the gold mesh filter. i hit "start," cackling and rubbing my evil hands together.

i knew my clean, fresh, innocent-pink bodily system should probably start off slowly, so both of my two cups were one-third soy milk. and here i sit, heart palpitating,

jittery and unfocused,

and likely unable to sleep for another 82 hours.

fuck.

i knew this morning that coffee probably wasn't necessary. i even considered tea. but the thought of abandoning my rite of passage into adulthood, my personal vice and source of solace, my morning ritual of reassurance was too much to bear. i had to start up again. no one was going to lead me out of the territory on a sled in the dead of winter and abandon my old ass to die alone. i'm a heart-thumping, hand-shaking, wild-brained warrior in this tribe.

detox days 3, 4, 4.5

eating to feel full. that's what just germinated in my gerbil brain as i sat down and tucked into a bowl of not un-delicious but somehow un-soul satisfying vegan lentil soup (lentils, onion, olive oil, tomatoes, vegetable broth).

that's what detox does for me. it unhooks my need for taste and karmic satisfaction from eating. when detoxing, i eat to fulfill bodily demands, not because i want to eat it or it's particularly interesting or tantalizing. i stop when i am full, which is a feat the unscaleability of which i cannot accurately express.

today, which is day 5, i woke up feeling alert for the first time since saturday. alert and with greatly reduced back pain. days 3 and 4 were defined by what i can only describe as crippling back pain. i spent over an hour last night stretching and downward-dogging and forward-bending in an attempt to ease the tension, which seemed to draw from the base of my spine and spider around my hips into my belly. leaning into the pain made it so acute i became nauseous. trev insisted that i stop this detox foolery and spend tomorrow in pursuit of a hamburger, and see the doctor. i insisted back that's i'd made a big pot of uninspiring lentils and was not about to waste it.

i'm glad i was able to name what it does, these seven days of torture.

an interesting viewing, 23 minutes

one of the professors teaching my capstone course - where i'll be working all quarter on what amounts to my final project for the program - is brent huffman. he and a chinese documentary filmaker teamed up on this project for al jazeera about chinese living in africa, and the existing tensions. it's pretty interesting.



or, you can watch it on al jazeera's website, here.

detox day 2

photo by Su-Lin

i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee. i miss coffee.


that said, i'm feeling a bit better now than i was for most of the day. might have to do with the 90-minute nap that randomly took hold of me this evening. i closed my eyes due to the caffeine-withdrawal headache, and suddenly it was almost 7 and i had nothing in the hopper for dinner.

this afternoon, i went to the school and spoke to the new students coming in this semester along with fellow students, and on my way back i kept forgetting that i was detoxing and considering dinner options:

"maybe i'll get a gyro."

doh!

"hmm, maybe i'll get sandwich."

doh!

"damn. i guess it's $*#%)^& quinoa again."

tonight i mixed it up and made this recipe, again from the best veg blog ever. brown rice instead of quinoa, yay. lots of garbanzos for protein, and i swapped in kale and artichoke hearts instead of asparagus. i also skipped the dressing and squeezed lemon over everything instead, which turned out quite yummy.

my dessert, if you can call it that, is a small glass of soy milk. and half a peach. i'm actually craving chocolate, which is rare. i'm not really a chocolate person.

from past experience and reading, it seems that day 2 is the toughest. last time i did this, day 2 was headachy and it just got worse from there. i'm hoping this time i'll be energetic starting day 3, like a lot of people say.

the thing that is striking to me is that i'm not eating stuff that i wouldn't ordinarily eat. i actually do eat quinoa with some regularity, and i eat brown rice exclusively, if i'm cooking at home. it's just that between those meals i have nice options like... noodles, eggs, a pork chop once in a while.

detox day 1

photo by Heather Ingram

so, it's that time again. no meat, dairy, caffeine, eggs, refined anything-time. this is partially tipped off by my three weeks at home, spent mostly eating and enjoying myself and my family and friends. i was actually pretty active during the three weeks, managing to hike, run, swim and even lift weights. i also just started to feel the need for a change, maybe because of the change in seasons? i'm not sure. i know i have been craving sweet potatoes and kale, which has got to be the weirdest craving i've ever had.

and... a couple of things happened in a row, namely: #1, i have eyes in my head and clearly i am not at my most svelte, and #2, those eyes in my head saw what the numbers said when i got on the scale in my mom's bathroom (i'm too broke and gypsy-like to have a scale).

so, off i go.

today was the first day back in the chi, so i went on an extensive grocery trip that involved the asian market and trader joe's. i managed to buy about 5 bags of groceries (mostly produce) from the asian market for $40. i managed to spend $65 on two bags at TJs. typical.

breakfast: oatmeal, peppermint tea
lunch: tofu, spinach, broth (lazy girl's soup)
dinner: quinoa, kale, tofu, roasted tomatoes, a recipe from one of my favorite food blogs

my fridge is stuffed full of chard, kale, spinach, tofu, grapes, peaches, cabbage, carrots and various non-dairy milks. i'm giving almond milk a shot. i also bought beans and quinoa up the ying yang for its protein.

i also bought the chicago groupon for this place. i'm curious to see if raw food is as nasty as it sounds.

whilst lost in the land of the internet...

i'm researching and writing a draft (due tomorrow at 10 a.m., way to go procrastinator) of a long-form story about the student loan market for the upcoming quarter. i stumbled across this infographic by collegescholarships.org and ByJess.net and thought i should share. (click on it for a readable version, my damn template has such narrow columns.)

it speaks for itself.



Infographic by College Scholarships.org

my summer

...is almost over. what do i have to show for it?

not much, but it's been fun. 3 weeks of seeing friends and my family and running amok in the streets, when i've felt like it.

i don't even have a single photo. my need to visually record my life has diminished significantly, i suppose.

i would really like one of these. i think it will help with the inspiration!

tee hee.

nighttime adventures

i just saw a very large lady riding a bike crash directly into a wall and wipe out.

???

i guess she just didn't see the wall? it is nighttime.

on another note, in the "free" area downstairs, someone has placed a box containing a broken car headlight.

what the fuck?

all this in a quick trip to 7-11 for some ice cream.

alicia keys isn't doing it for me

neither is adele.

i'm in-process of readying myself emotionally to write. i noticed not-so-recently that for me to produce creatively, i get the best results when i manipulate my own emotions. i have to make myself depressed in order to write something that i'm happy with. i usually deploy extremely emotional ballads to do the dirty work, then go to bed feeling very glum after an hour or so of typing.

this is probably fairly fucked up, but as creativity goes, i'm thinking a lot of people are the same way. aren't a lot of artists totally unstable? i'm not saying i'm van gough, but i think the creative process can be similar for a lot of people.

that said, nothing's working. my usual songs aren't working. is there such a thing as being too stable?

possibly said today

"and, jesse, where's he?"

"yeah, where is jesse?"

"he's drumming."

"drumming?"

"oh. still doing that?"

"yeah, drumming. with a cardboard tube on a... box. and miaowing."

"drumming and miaowing out the window."

"i see."

"he's just so good at it, the miaowing."

in defense of dating a dud

not a dude, a dud. a dud can be a dude or a dame.

it dawned on me while in the shower about 23 minutes ago that dating a complete booooo, thumbs-down, everybody-hated-him-except-my-mother guy really made me appreciate a couple of things.

first, and more obvious, is that it made me appreciate T all the more when he came along.

second, it made me embrace the full, unadulterated me because i gave so little of a shit about this guy that i basically said and did whatever i wanted. his only manipulation leverage was that he could make himself such a complete pain in the ass that i would do what he wanted (on rare occasions) just to avoid the burden of dealing with his tantrums.

i'm going to argue here that being completely selfish and self-involved in a relationship, while shitty for the other person, kind of helped me be me all the way. finally.

i've had trouble with this in the past. the one time my mom had me evaluated by a shrink, he essentially said that i grew up too fast and strove hard to be something i wasn't, which was actually very accurate. i think my mom just felt guilty from the point forward for indulging me when i said i wanted to go to school at 4 years old, thus making me a year younger than the others. i'm not really sure what to think about that nugget.

BD (before dud), i was never fully relaxed enough to express all of my opinions, let my tendencies bust out into the open. i'm a tomboy, i curse enough to make people uncomfortable, i'm logical to a point of emotionlessness, i have a horrible temper, i mistrust every single person on the planet except for like, 3 people of varying connection to me, the list goes on. in the past i've tried to be more stylish than i naturally care to be (stylishness takes effort, which i frequently don't have the energy for), i've tried to be high-maintenance (also takes way too much effort), i've tried to be girly and pleasant. ha. my pleasantness is derived from the fact that i'm deadpan and lazy and sleepy, not because i'm actually pleasant. it's a by-product if it happens.

PD (post dud), i was able to see how much i changed myself to make myself more likeable. that's some wack shit. sadly, it took me about 29 years to figure out how to be me.

part of my 30s loftiness comes from the fact that i have accepted my faults and am more-or-less comfortable in my skin. hats off to people who have had a steeper and faster learning curve. it's not an easy one.

A is for asparagus, P is for pizza!

photo credit

i had my most defining californian-in-chicago moment last week after the cubs game. my friend amy, who grew up in a northwest chicago suburb, was kind enough to invite me to a cubs game with a couple of her family members and friends. we go, and i manage to impress at least amy and the girl next to her with my double hot-dog and fries chowdown. and then after the game we go to a pizza place.

not any pizza place, mind you. this is a walk-in joint just a few steps from wrigley field, meaning it sees dozens if not hundreds of drunk cubs fans a few times a week (and, let me tell you, no one does drunk like cubs fans. maybe white sox fans). its specialty is pasta pizza, by which i mean pizzas that are topped with pasta dishes: tortellini, mac 'n cheese, chicken alfredo penne. after my hot dog duo, i thought i'd go light with a slice of the asparagus and potato pizza. after a couple of bites, i gave up. my stomach couldn't take it. i tried mightily to give my pizza away, but no one, not even amy's trash-compactor of a brother-in-law, would even touch my slice.


shit. in california, a pizza covered in asparagus and thin slices of yukon gold tater would sound like a spectacular idea, especially for the drunk baseball fan who wants to squeeze some veggies into her ballpark diet. in chicago, i became the pizza leper. i got "eewwwwwwws" in surround sound. it was brutal.

driving at night

jesse and i decided to go and get popeye's at 10 tonight. then we decided he should learn to drive a stick shift, which he did. and so we had late-night driving and chicken eating, giggling all the while.