I poked around Lincoln Park yesterday and was reminded of 2001's Chicago Marathon, the most potent memory being that on our (my/Conrad's/Jenn's) way through its grassy knolls I was plagued by a severe need to use the loo. But I didn't, the mindset being that were we to stop we wouldn't quality for Boston. Loo or no loo, we still failed to qualify, so I totally could have peed instead of testing the strength of my bladder for 26.2 miles. Oh well. Fond memories, to be reenacted in about 20 mintues.* I'm chugging gallons as we speak.

I've been t-a-g-g-e-d by an LJ-er. Is that sort of cross-breed tagging allowed? I say yes.

Current(ish, but not really) Reading List

1) Burr, Gore Vidal
2) Caffeine Blues, Stephen Cherniske, MS
3) A Passage To India,** E.M. Forster
4) In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

*Or maybe 6.25 months. Dave -- are you in?
**Recent conversations in T.C. yielded the fact that I crapped out about a year ago with 50 pages to go. Embarrassing. But I still remember more of the details than my dad (phew).

I am about to (dis?)embark on a journey that that can only be classified as possibly foolish, but grand. [note: I, barring not one instance, have always been confused when filling out embarkation/disembarkation paperwork at airports. I realize the correct respective definions right this minute, with a dictionary at my fingertips, but it's a fleeting realization, I just know it . . . ] Anyway, I've vacuumed and oiled up my car, fitted it out with a new coconut air freshner, and am about to fill it with many of my personal belongings. Woo.

This Girl tagged me, and I don't even really understand that whole concept of tagging if there isn't actually any sort of physical contact, even though I do know and use the phrase "phone tag" sometimes, but really the whole ordeal reeks not faintly of the LJ culture, a fact I feel I should be uneasy with but am apparently not. So, here I am, playing along in one, slightly changed category:

5 [Least] Favorite [B]oo[k]s*

1) The Children of Men, P.D. James
2) The Summons, John Grisham
3) Sole Survivor, Dean Koontz
4) Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sophie Kinsella
5) The Philosophy of History, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

*mostly taken from my Tokyo apartments' "libraries" of mass-market paperbacks discarded by prior Commonwealth residents, but #5-er is from PLS's Seminar V reading list, it being perhaps the most impossible piece of philosophical lit. I've ever pretended to even attempt to try to start to understand.

The end.

Today is a beautiful day. Purple Mountain Majesties and Amber Waves of Grain Beautiful. I'm going to take down [edit: my dad is going to take down] my mom's bike from the garage rafters, and I shall reenact my haunch-busting rides of yore.

This weekend we've watched two Oscar-nominated films, Capote and Walk The Line. Having now seen three of the five nominated for Best Picture I'm thinking it's safe to say that 2005 was a joyless year for screenwriters. Continuing with the joyless theme and spurred on by the wiles of Hollywood I plan to read In Cold Blood ASAP. I firmly subscribe to the idea that it is better to read the book before watching its related movie and not the other way around, but it's like I've always said: "Any time is Capote time."

I just finished Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years In Tibet, one in a batch of Asia-based books I purchased to stave off the symptoms of Serious Asian Withdrawl. Soooo, now I'm wondering whether or not I should see its cinematic rendering. See, the book is written in first-person and I am having trouble imagining the narrator/protagonist as Bradley vs. Pittsburgh. I guess I'll go have a think on it while out wrecking my haunches.

Peace. Out.

Photos! None of which are from Lora's wedding, all of which are from (separate) travels to Chicago. On the left we have me and Slobs (she of the taxi-taking-to-work and the loving-of-Cold Case) on Mardi Gras, my Jesus air freshener (which spent some time in the glove compartment due to having lost its aroma but regained a place on the rearview during a stop at the E-Z Mart in Cadillac) and, lastly, my name tag from the Women For Hire career fair, a tag whose vigilant watchwomen aptly take the place of the club any day of the week.

I have spent a lot of time in the car lately.

Firstly, I don't understand HTML, which is the reason behind my blog's phoenix-esque regeneration and residual scarring/wonkiness. I checked out HTML For Dummies from the TADL, but have yet to crack it past the 3rd page. I don't know what that makes me, but I feel like I should be reading up, if only for the sake of starting and and finishing a project. I haven't had much me time (read: moi toim, Australian style) lately, though, so there's been little reading for personal joy.

Secondly, This weekend was another fun one of travels. I ended up checking out a number of lovely apartments, partaking in "one" interview (with five potential future supervisors), attending my cousin Erin's bridal shower *and* winning lots of free stuff, including, but not exclusively, a flat-brimmed Miller Lite hat and a $10 gift certificate for Purple East in Grand Rapids. Two raffles, two cities . . . hooooah. Also, I am reallllllyyy starting to learn my way around Chicago. Like nobody's business.

Thirdly, phoenixes are totally awesome, just in case that fact wasn't clear already.

Fourthly, in addition to being awesome, the word itself falls into a category of ubiquitously applicable monikers (UAM's if you will), that, because of their universal grandiousity, seem to be applicable to even the most mundane topics. Some example UAM's: genesis, impala, mercury (one of many off the Periodic Table of the Elements), nova, luna, eclipse (really any celestial body or phenomenon), puma. etc. And, some (faux) examples of their application to mundane scenarios: Genesis Reality, NOVA Construction, Phoenix Tour Group, and Mercury Hot Dogs. Mmmm, perhaps Mercury Hot Dogs is a stretch. Regardless, it's an interesting phenomenon, and one that I began noticing with more clarity than ever before after spending about an hour last night poring over the yellow pages.

Fifthly, Wikipedia is the greatest source of sketchily-written knowledge ever. THE GREATEST! Apparently in some arenas it's about on par with the Encyc. Brit. as goes accuracy (read here). This fact took the pep out of my dad's step a bit, I think, but it infused a giant pep in mine. Side note, I had to retake the ACT for a tutoring position and, in addition to proving that I am still qualified for undergraduate studies, I also discovered that the ACT uses Wikipedia as a source for its reading section excerpts. Cool.

Check it out, my blog is wearing an orange jumpsuit.

I've posted none of the vaguely promised photos from the events surrounding the lovely Lora's & Lee's wedding, and for that I apologize. I'll do my best to scrape up a couple publicly acceptable ones from Sarah's emails whilst cheating on the folks' dial-up with the library's high-speed, but I've gotta set up a clandestine meeting with the high-speed first. Shhhhhh.

Anyway, some of my favorite moments from the weekend included 10) Discovering that molded butter patties are, in fact, not white chocolate, 9) Witnessing Lora spend 10 minutes locating the front of her petticoat (a layered undergarment roughly the size of Saskatchewan), 8) Watching the wedding video montage, 7) Dancing to Hey Ya after a heavy round of slammers from the 60's and 70's, 6) Spiking the lemonade. Wait, what? 5) Receiving the cold shoulder at Croc Rocks and the warm one at Braveheart's, 4) Accidentally losing my contacts down the sink, spending the day in a gritty haze, getting chauffeured from Lansing to Alma and finding my corolla proselytized upon, ashed upon, and loogied upon . . . yet untowed (phew!), 3) Discovering my optical saviour in the friendly woman at the Alma Wal*Mart's* vision center, 2) Team-coining the word "manphlet" (it's like, um, a pamphlet . . . with, um, men in it) and 1) Playing pass the cucumber at the bachelorette party.

But in all seriousness, Lora's wedding was truly beautiful and it really made me appreciate all those dialogues she and I shared in, ohhhhh, 7th grade, during which Lora would paint a vivid mental image of her future nuptuals and I would try to play along by squeezing a drop of imagery out of my bewildered and unprepared cache of creativity. Dear Lora, you've proved that (mental) practice does, in a sense, make perfect reality. WELL DONE.

*This is the only time I have ever relied and ever will rely on Wal*Mart for my livelihood. Gross.

These photos are of early March's version of the dunes and the lake. Cold and pretty all together now.

I don't think I have a home anymore. Maybe it's my car. Which smells like funk. Gross.

I'm back in Chicago after a stint in the Greater Grand Traverse area, hiking over the Sleeping Bear Dunes in the snow and scamming pretzels and Chicago advice from The Old Mission General Store. Currently Jess Bev (TC) and Jake (Tokyo) are bonding on Jake's couch, which makes me appreciate the harmonization of spheres that a combination of high school friend and Tokyo friend can be.

In other news, I will post pictures AFTER LORA'S WEDDING. And I know my comments aren't working -- I'll figure it out. And I also know my site was broken for like 5 days. It was a period of intense mourning and strife for many, and it will never ever ever ever ever happen again.

Bah.

So so so, after a weekend enjoying Scolson's hospitality in Columbus (highlights included . . . a million things, but mostly a 6.25-hour-long interview and many unavoidable glimpses of the curious world of Auditors In Busy Season), I've landed in Chicago for a couple days to look for apartments and get a feel for the city's katrillion neighborhoods. Highlights here have been various and sundry, i.e. unprecedented hospitality (as above), a lot of driving, a powerful Mardi Gras celebration at Slobs's digs, a lovely if not much-interrupted phone conversation with Taylor, a trip to chinatown to cling to some nostalgic Asian Allure, a viewing of The World According To Garp* and, um, a little jaunt on the beaches of Edgewater.

The apartment search is mayybbbbeeeee completely overwhelming. At first and second and even third glance, the options seem to be simply bursting forth from the sidewalks and the pages of craigslist and chicagoreader. But, if agonizingly slow, they are indeed narrowing. Hooray.

Heart,
Eliz

*As go movies based on John Irving novels, this one is definitely the most bizarre of the three I've seen, and the adaptation leaves out ridiculously important portions of the book. But it's definitely worth watching to see Robin Williams in the bloom of tolerable youth, and John Lithgow as the bouncy transexual Robert(a) Muldoon. t-o-t-a-l-l-y worth it.