The end is near

My computer is on the verge of imploding. During the debacle that was our office move, I managed to drop a lamp on the keyboard of my laptop. It left me a nice concave space, in case I ever need to rest an orange on my keyboard while typing. That part wasn't a huge deal. I can live with having to reach a little further to hit the UIOP890 area.

The real problem stems from the CD that's now trapped in my disk drive. Apparently, the unfortunate lamping crushed part of my disk drive and now it won't eject. But damned if it doesn't try. Every time my computer wakes up it sounds like an old emphysemic robot hacking up a lung. It's this weird mechanical, grinding cough. With a bit of a beat box rhythm to it. And it always coughs three times. Exactly.

Regardless, it sounds like things breaking and it makes me uncomfortable.

Hoo-ha avenue

Fun fact: there are two streets in Chicago that rhyme with vagina. Melvina and Paulina.

CJFFL

This morning, Mike and I went to watch our friend Jason play flag football. But this wasn't just any flag football league. It was the CJFFL. The Chicago Jewish Flag Football League. All week long, Jason had been talking this league up, so we had some very high expectations going into this. Thankfully, the CJFFL was able to meet those expectations and quite frankly, blow them away.

The day started with a long trek up to Rogers Park, a bit farther than I would have liked. But well worth it. After we had driven for a good 15 minutes, we started getting antsy. Which resulted in a premature cab exit. There were a few flag football games happening in a park that we drove by. This had to be it. But then we looked a little closer and decided that all those guys were way too jacked to be part of a Jewish Flag Football League. So, on we went.

When we got there, this is what we saw.





Amazing.

Jason's team didn't perform as well as they could have because their star quarterback hurt his back in practice. Hurt his back in flag football practice. Yes. But they still pulled out a solid win.

I have never in my life seen a rec league as serious as this one. So many f bombs. So much yelling. So many yarmulkes. If yarmulkes and yelling don't sound like a good time, then I don't know what does. Yet, despite all their fevered intensity, guys were still smoking during halftime and sometimes immediately before kick returns.

It was so hard not to make slightly off-color jokes about this league and its weekend warriors. Luckily, we were hanging out with Jewish girls who could go ahead and make them for us.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend my Sunday morning. We are definitely coming back to tailgate. Kosher, of course.



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Addendum:
I'd like to give Sarah Cleland Walsh credit for the correct spelling of yarmulke. She dates Jews, I guess.

Leave your pants at the door

Last night, I tried to walk across the hall to go to the bathroom without pants on, thinking Mike was asleep. Well, wouldn't you know it, at that exact moment Mike was leaving his room to go to the bathroom.

He saw me. We made eye contact. I had to make a quick get-away.

It looked as if I had bounced off an invisible wall in the middle of the hallway.

After I put pants on and came out into the hallway, he admitted to almost falling to the same fate. But awkward pantless bathroom trip was averted because he saw the light on in my room. I did not get the luxury of such warning signs. And honestly, I didn't really care that Mike had just seen me in my underpants. After living together for more than two years, nothing phases me.

I think I'm more comfortable with it than he is. Sometimes I'll try to talk to him through the bathroom door as he's trying to pee and he'll interrupt me and yell, "Just wait! I'll be out in a second...this is getting too domestic."

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's already gotten there. We have a very strange dynamic. I like to describe us as a crotchety old married couple. We live together, share bills, bicker about chores, and don't have sex.

Plus, this is what might happen if a bear and a ninja reproduced.



The world would be destroyed by these creatures. For everyone's sake, we better stick to the sexless domesticity.

Hair today, mangy tomorrow

My hair is really long right now. It almost reaches under and around my armpits. If I had a couple more inches I could probably swing it around as if I had hair nunchucks. Or maybe a shaggy bola.

Since this is the longest it's ever been, I have a real lack of awareness toward its length. As a result, sometimes it gets caught in and around things. Which is not a huge problem. But it make me think that I'm bad at being a girl. I mean, sure, I can put together an outfit, get my hair did, and wield a mascara brush with reasonable accuracy. But sometimes I just don't want to. Sometimes I want to chill. And say I don't feel like being a girly girl right now. I want to be a tomboy.

Well, I really hit the mark this week.

Today, as I was running my hand through my hair I found a matted entanglement on the left side of my noggin. It was like something you might find on a pack animal. My fingers just could not navigate through this labyrinth of hair. A follicle impasse, if you will. (A dread-locked dead end, if you won't.) Now, before you dismiss me as a complete dirt ball, let me tell you what I think happened.

Most mornings I air dry my hair. It's pretty cooperative, so I don't see a need to burn it into submission on a daily basis. In fact, at some point, I had heard that you shouldn't brush your hair while it's wet because it's more likely to break. Well, since I have fragile hair sometimes I just go with the air dry and no brush. A couple of days had gone by with a brushing and on top of that, I had thrown my hair into a crazy bun the day before.

All of these factors compounded together led to me having something a forty pound cat would cough up attached to my head. So, I spent about 15 minutes grooming myself like a mangy bear. Classy.


This might be a llama.

Bikes!

Bikes and rock climbing do not play together well. I came to this conclusion on my way home from the gym. As I was braking. My bike is super old, so sometimes the brakes stick. And on top of that, my forearms were so weak from climbing that I would've had trouble crushing a bubble.

Bad things were about to happen. Like careening into a curb to avoid traffic. It looked as if I was blindly following a GPS system that hadn't been updated. "Turn left in 20 feet." "Hmm, there doesn't seem to be a road there. But if you insist..." I thought my bike was going to disintegrate from the impact. And it's not as if I hit that hard, my bike is just that old. But I still love it.

Poor Schwinn Beach Cruiser. You've treated me well ever since I bought you at a garage sale in Richmond for thirty dollars. You've even managed not to get stolen for two whole years! That's the longest streak I've ever had of not having a bike stolen. But I can tell you're on your last leg. And that you're suffering. After this winter, I might have to take you out back and shoot you. But know that it'll hurt me more than it hurts you.


Mine is blue.

Giraffes are funny creatures. But they've got no comic timing.

Crinkle Bearcat Palin

If I had been fired out of Sarah Palin's hoo-ha, this would be my name.

Red Bull and hickory-smoked beef jerky. Breakfast of champions. There is something severely wrong with the way we live our lives.

My limbs look like scratching posts. This weekend we played rugby on a pointy lake.

It's been raining for the past three days so the fields were a mess. You'd think all that rain would've soften things up. Not the case. Because while the ground itself was fairly cushy, the grass was like a hairbrush. And I nearly drowned in a ruck. I was face down under a pile of humans thinking about how it's possible to drown in as little as one inch of water.

Well, at least it was warm out.

"Free chocolate!"

That's one way to get attention on Michigan Avenue during lunch rush. It definitely got mine. We were about to cross the street when I heard two girls feigning enthusiasm for their job. "Free chocolate...hey...free chocolate?..." In their defense, the words did do all the work for them. I guess I would've slacked off, too.

Well, as soon as I heard their feeble sales pitch I did an about face and started walking toward them. But I didn't want to seem too desperate, so I just walked unnaturally close to their station at an awkwardly slow pace to let them think THEY were imposing chocolate on ME. I'm pretty sure they saw right through me, but it made me feel a little better about mooching chocolate.

Ollie and I were really hungry and excited about chocolate, so we decided to eat ours as we walked. I almost got hit by a car because I was so distracted by the flavor. It was like I had just gone bobbing for potpourri, then followed it with a dark chocolate chaser. Awful. I looked down and saw this:



Who thought this was a good idea? Have we so thoroughly exhausted every possible fruit combination that we have to turn to flowers and other unsavory flavors? If I wanted to eat lavender I would go chug some body lotion.

There's no such thing as a mild shellfish allergy.

The newest phrase craze

At work, a couple of us are trying to introduce a new phrase into the office vernacular. When something is really awesome we want people to say, "that's the cat's asshole!" We think that claiming a British origin for this phrase really helps our cause. So far, it's been absorbing into daily conversation like piss on a flat rock.

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The other day while I was riding the bus to work another not real phrase popped into my head. "Man, he could talk the pants off a rabbit." This is my thought process. I would argue that this phrase should be reserved to describe only the sweetest of sweet talkers. Because not only did this person convince a rabbit to give up his only pair of trousers. He was also able to convince the rabbit to put on trousers in the first place! By overcoming an inter-species language barrier! That's amazing!

I once saw a pigeon eating a chicken wing.

This is true, but it sounds like the start of a new age poem.

Furballs and assassins

Mike and I are the same person. Except he’s…so furry. But other than that. Same person. The other night we were working outside of Panera when a dad walked by with his daughter. She was young, probably around ten. And they happened to be holding hands. Most people probably wouldn’t think about it. They might’ve even thought it was cute.

Well, Mike says, “I wonder what her parents think of the age difference.” Which is awful, I mean, who says that? But then without blinking, I say, “I was thinking the same thing!” We are terrible, terrible people, which is probably why we get along.

The main difference between us is that while we’re usually thinking the same thing, Mike says it out loud. Regardless of how grossly inappropriate it is. He has diarrhea of the mouth. Where as, I usually have some sort of super filter, which causes a little too much self-censorship. When we’re not being the same person our differences tend to balance out. Don’t ask me why, but it works.