Tell me about your fiscal shelter.

Hello Sarah, Caroline, Amy and the invisible Eryn - I'd like to hear about your experiences with the economy that we are told is failing. Do you feel the pinch in graduate school? Amy, what do who have to say about the future of print media? What the hell is happening in Louisville? Feed my head people, I need input.

- Emily

Real Winter

It's 6 degrees right now in Chicago but don't worry - it feels like -6. Oh, and the high in a few days is going to be 1 degree. 1. I'll try not to post anything else that's purely the temperature as I trudge through this season.

Outside world in '09!

So the best way to avoid the fact that I'm getting observed the day after tomorrow and haven't come up with anything to teach the children is to blog about moving to a new city, right? Right.
Snow in this city is beautiful...for about 10 minutes before it turns into an icy grey death-trap for those of us with unsuitable footwear. My apartment is a sauna. Herin lies my new city dilemma. I need to go out and do things with my very limited social circle so that it will become a less limited social circle and something that more closely resembles actual friends, but I just don't wanna. I want to stay in my tropical paradise apartment, eating string cheese, not bathing, and watching the Ludachristmas episode of 30 Rock over and over again. I know I should go see some amazing art show or explore a new neighborhood with some ridiculous acronym or at the very least go sit in a bar I've never been to so I can watch prettier people getting hit on. Instead I sit in bed reading US Weekly and feeling guilty about how I'm not feeling guilty about not going out. Of course, it's all really about staying safe, and not putting myself out there, and not having to be in super-awesome social mode, and not worrying about whether people will like me, and stopping all that crap should really have been one of my New Year's resolutions. Is there such a thing as a January 11th resolution? 'Cause I'm making one.
-Caroline

A typical night in Las Vegas

Well, okay. A typical night for me is sitting in my teeny, tiny apartment with my cat. But to make it more interesting, I'll tell you about the craziest Vegas night I've had yet. It's the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I meet up with my friend Andrew at the Double Down Saloon, a notorious punk bar in the heart of the Fruit Loop (gay district). We proceed to watch some bands and drink too much Ass Juice (I wasn't brave enough to go for the other house special, a bacon martini). Eventually, Andrew leaves.

I'm too drunk to drive home, so I wobble over to the hot dog stand across the street, which appears to be run by a loose coalition of drag queens and bull dykes. I get a hot dog, eat it, and keep walking down to the Hard Rock Hotel/Casino, home of the best penny slots in town.

Now it's about 3:30 in the a.m., and some tourist from Washington, DC decides he wants to make out with me. He's not bad looking, and I am still kinda drunk, so I consider it for about 15 seconds, then extract myself from his embrace. Making out with random tourists is probably frowned upon by locals. After I park myself in front of the slots for a while, and take a few more laps around the casino, I sober up enough to drive. When I wake up the next morning, I feel like hell, but I'm also pretty excited about my adventure. Now I just need to start having more of them.

transitions::bad humor

This truck is now parked in a garage in the NE quad of Portland. The burgundy Ford (purchased for $600 four years ago) traversed the lower crescent of the states carrying a sewing cabinet that belonged to my grandmother, a fancy juicer, a treasured collection of cookbooks, some clothes, and ::GASP:: an entire trunk of journals and other words that found their letters on paper. These items, vehicle and driver arrived in Portland without incident three months ago. And now, it's time to do it all over again. Except this time there will be four passengers (two of them canines) and an endless amount of time.

I think I would enjoy this transition more if it weren't so overdue. I spend most of my time behind a desk in a bookstore in the belly of a vast nonprofit that is so extremely effected by whatever it is that we are supposed to believe in wrong with the economy that the entire building in SILENT. A collective corporate inhale, belt tightening and all, and it seems that no one wants fresh air - just static and waiting. I usually feel like this poor guy. . .

It seems I've stuck my head too far into the pickle jar and I'm perplexed, humbled by the predicament I have gotten myself into. The bear in the picture was shot to be freed from her misery and this bear needs to find a more promising solution! At least I have better odds!

Truly, my solution is simple. I'll quit the silent but festering job that is blocking my senses, and I'm so glad. I have a hand full of months left of my 20's and I plan to use them wisely. Another exchange of fool-hardy optimism for a chance at something a bit better - and if not better, at least different.

But I'll tell you something you already know. This transition stuff. . .well, I think I'm learning that it helps to stay nimble, or suffer the unfavorable task of scraping rust from the parts that were mobile.

-Emily

how my life is like a sitcom

so i'm sitting with two cute blondes at jimmy's, a university of chicago bar, and am having a good time catching-up after the holidays. i go to the bathroom and when i come back apparently some boys want us to sit with them. while i was gone these youngins have pulled up two chairs to their table. two. as they pull up a third, i realize its so i can sit down. they approached these fine ladies while i was at the toi-toi. so, i sit and drink my whiskey and soda and chat with these boys. i talk to the one from arizona about how the cardinals won their wildcard game for the play offs and the other about his future in neuroscience. i am the girl with the good personality. i am a girl in a bar whose friends have been hit-on. i am the chubby brunette whose blonde friends have been hit upon. seriously. seriously?

-Sarah

collecting time

Though I always hate the pressure of New Year's Eve, I like the turning of the year. School suits me well because terms end and begin afresh. This is the time when I collect and list and collate all that I let loose in the previous year. If I have it on a list, I've captured it and think it will be done.

I did swell in my classes last term, but I didn't do a heckuva lot else. I wrote on a piece of paper that I will try to schedule time to do things besides school in the coming term. I will leave Hyde Park.

I had a list of things that Eryn and I were going to do when she was visiting me for New Year's Eve. When she got the flu and couldn't visit me, I mostly stayed home like I had the sympathy flu. I wasn't off to a great start, but I redeemed myself today by going to Intuit, Chicago's outsider art museum. It was wee tiny compared to Baltimore's Visionary Art Museum, but it was free and got me out of my apartment.

I will be mighty fine in oh-nine.

-Sarah

For serious, ladies

Bitches, update! I love this place. Moving is hard. I love life/life is hard. Blah blah blah. Somebody else write something. Drinking whiskey and blogging is always a good idea. Over and out.
-Caroline