For my birthday I got myself sneak preview tickets for Where The Wild Things Are! It’s showing at the Michigan Theater on October 6 thanks to 826 Michigan.
Speaking of movies, last weekend Katie visited and we saw (500) Days of Summer and I enjoyed it a lot.
I saw the Star Trek movie yesterday. I had never seen any of the previous movies or television series so I didn’t know what to expect, other than cheesy uniforms. I liked the movie a lot, especially Spock, who seems like the ultimate superhero for philosophy majors.
tags: movies
1) Friday night I watched Dollhouse live on TV for the first time with Julie, and it was actually an exciting episode!
2) Saturday I went to a one of a City Year community service day. I helped paint part of a mural illustrating the growth of broccoli for an elementary school in Kenwood. It was nice to be around the other volunteers, who were mostly people my age, and participate in something City Year-related after hearing so much about the organization from my roommate Laura.
3) I also went to El Circo Cheapo with Katie, which is kin For $10 we saw some very impressive hula hooping, juggling and aerial acts. The only downside was that because there wasn’t a stage or graded seating in the performance space, it was hard to see what was going on a lot of the time.
The other cool part apart from the show itself was walking from the Ashland-Lake El stop to the venue.
View warehouse walk in a larger map
I have never walked around that area of Chicago before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but basically it is blocks and blocks of anonymous looking warehouses, only differentiated by the small signs posted outside the entrances listing each building’s tenants. It was both surreal and calming, and I kind of want to go back there even though there weren’t any stores, parks or public places besides the street and the sidewalks.
4) Today I had a Chicago thrift store epiphany after going to the Village Discount Outlet on Milwaukee near Western. Since moving here I have been the Salvation Army on Union, the Brown Elephant on Halsted and the Unique Thrift Store at 35th and Archer, and was completely unsuccessful at all three. At Village Discount, I easily found 5 shirts that I really liked, and bought them all for $13!
5) And after that, I saw Sita Sings the Blues downtown with Julie and Katie, which was excellent.
I need to post here more often again, if only because I feel like I am losing my ability to write effortlessly and coherently. Several times last week at work I took 20-30 minutes to write relatively short emails, because I spent so much time thinking about the best way to phrase each sentence. Even writing this paragraph has been a painful process. Is it still called writer’s block if the writing in question is as trivial as a text message or email? I don’t know but whatever it is, I have it.
I hadn’t purposefully coordinated my new wave boredom-combating efforts with the New Year, but maybe it happened subconsciously. My recent efforts:
I saw Crystal Castles last weekend with McComas and Xixi. I enjoyed the performance a lot. I think that the singer is two years younger than me, which makes me feel old in a way that famous actresses and actors who are younger than me don’t.
A lot else has happened since I last wrote. I have discovered the joys of Tom’s Lemon-Lime Flouride Mouthwash for Dry Mouths. Mummy visited and we saw Second City (funny, but not as funny as I expected, possibly because by the end of the show they are performing for a largely inebriated crowd) and the Museum of Contemporary Art. I saw Fears of the Dark which was surprisingly scary and gruesome for a film made up of black and white animated shorts, although by the end the fear had turned to mild boredom.
I also have a new bed, because my old bed has returned to what it was truly meant to be: a sofa. For a couple weeks I slept on my little foam mattress on top of Laura’s little futon mattress. I got my iGo membership packet and card this weekend so I went to IKEA. I have to say that it is a bit awkward going there by a shared car. I had to guess how much time I’d want to spend at the store trying mattresses out, and how long Laura would take finding the things she wanted. We made it back just in time, and everything fit easily in the Honda Element, but I was pretty anxious the entire drive home because traffic bad even though it was a Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t help that the two Chicagoland IKEAs are both 30+ miles away, compared to the College Park IKEA which is only 9 miles from home in Maryland. Still, I want to go back there next pay period and get an actual bed frame, but maybe I can borrow someone’s car then so I can just pay for the gas and not worry about time constraints. And maybe I will go to the Bolingbrook one instead of Schaumberg and the traffic will be better because I won’t be going anywhere near O’Hare.
Can you believe that the election is a week and a day away? I barely can. I am actually kind of sad that it is coming to an end. This election year has been a thriller, so for once it’s not just me and one or two nerdy friends who are interested in it. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was talking to Mike and who to vote for in the Democratic primary (I didn’t end up making it to the polling station but I think I liked Howard Dean because of his blog) and when I filled out my first absentee ballot in my dorm at GWU. This is the first election year where I haven’t concurrently been in an political science class. (NSL, ninth grade: we made up Greek tragedy skits about the unresolved election in which Tennessee and North Dakota(?) seceded from the Union.)
I updated the homepage for the first time this morning. It went more or less smoothly, except for a Web Comment from a grad student who was upset that some of the students in the photograph weren’t wearing bicycle helmets. But the photo selection wasn’t my fault, and the powers that be deemed it a non issue, after all, Illinois doesn’t have a helmet law.
Patrick is visiting his sister who lives in Manassas. Today we met up in DC, just like last year. We went to the Spy Museum which was expensive and silly. Then got lunch in Chinatown and went to see the Modernism exhibit at the Corcoran, which was very cool. I have painful museum legs now.
It was good to see Patrick. It hasn’t been that long since I let school but seeing school people at home is always a trip in a way. He feels the same way as me about summer, so we commiserated.
Then I had dinner with Maurie and friend-Greta and sister-Abby, and we watched Grease. A very enjoyable experience.
Class starts Monday. I don’t have my economics textbook yet. I am a little nervous.