1) I took my first Zipcar trip last weekend to the IKEA in Canton. I timed it perfectly so I flew past the incoming football traffic on the way there, and snuck back to Ann Arbor in the middle of the game while everyone was still at the Big House.

I bought a FADO table lamp which is now my new Lighten Up! companion. Something about having an orb shaped lamp just makes the sunrise simulation that much better.

2) Almond milk. It tastes really good and I don’t have to refrigerate it until I open it.

3) I got a kneeling chair for $5 from the Recycle Reuse Center. It even has wheels! I still have to see if I actually stop slouching as much.

I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving.

tags: annarbor, purchase

I realized that I am probably going to have to buy a new laptop for school, because my beloved ThinkPad T42 doesn’t meet the minimum requirements.

Once upon a time I would have been excited about getting a new computer but now I am just conflicted. Ideally I would like a computer with a screen exactly like the one I have now (15″ inch, 1400×1050), just with a bigger hard drive, more RAM, a faster processor, and a better video card. But no one seems to make laptops with a 4:3 screen any more, so I’ve accepted that I will have to give up on that.

My (perhaps) more realistic wishlist:

• 1680×1050 resolution, or 1440×900
• 15.4 or 14.1 inch screen
• NON GLOSSY
• No more than 1.3″ thick
• a large 7200 rpm hard drive
• video card with at least 128 MB memory
• Intel Core Duo processor at least 1.8 ghz
• less than $2000
• Windows

Also, I obviously want to avoid any issues such as the palm rests getting too hot to touch, or an incredibly annoying fan.

After researching all afternoon, I have a feeling in the end I will get another ThinkPad T series. I’m leaning towards the T400 (14.1″ screen) with discrete graphics. I will miss my current screen a lot, but after my experience at work I have begun to accept that to do any serious multi-tasking I just need to use an external monitor. And I guess it will be convenient to have a ligher, more compact laptop for portability’s sake.

tags: navi, purchase

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.

tags: chicago, live, movies, purchase

This week the Lighten Up! sunrise simulator that I ordered arrived. Paired with a small lamp and 60 watt incandescent bulb, it generates a growing glow starting around 6:00 am and peaking a half an hour later at full brightness. I am convinced that it makes waking up more pleasant, and it also allows me to go back to sleep more easily when I wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t have to constantly check my alarm clock to tell what time it is — if it’s dark I know that I don’t have to get up any time soon. It’s comforting having something running routinely and automatically, so much so that I didn’t turn off the light over the weekend even though I could have slept in. During the week it is usually my alarm that ends up waking me up at 6:25, but yesterday and today I woke up around 7 to a light room.

Anyway, I strongly recommend the Lighten Up! device to anyone who has to wake up in the dark in the winter and doesn’t like it, or anyone who is fascinated by the idea of sunrise simulator but doesn’t want to blow an absurd $90-$120 on a fancy alarm clock with a built in light.

tags: experiment, health, purchase

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.

tags: live, movies, politics, purchase

It rained from Friday afternoon until about an hour ago. Julie and I tried to brave the outside yesterday and go to the Celtic Fest Chicago, but we only lasted about 20 minutes before giving up and taking the bus back home. To make up for it I make cheeseburgers and she cooked fries for dinner.

By this afternoon it was misty enough to walk around without an umbrella and not immediately get drenched, so I took a walk. I walked by Barack Obama’s home. There were four Chicago Police cars blocking his street, along with some jersey barriers and metal fences, and a bunch of black Suburbans parked directly in front of the house. Other than that it wasn’t much different than any other intersection in the neighborhood.

What else. I have decided that I need a real futon or a bed, because Beddinge is not cutting it. I don’t mind having a foam mattress, but the split in the middle drives me crazy. It creases up and I always end up sleeping diagonally so that half of my back is in the “valley.”

tags: purchase, weather