marsha!

"Dear Claire,

I really like the photo of you and Rob and the kids...(that I took) Yes,
I'd say those two crazy blondes look like Mother and Daughter!! Love,
Mom....thanks for the phone call....Darn it, I missed Boston Legal last
night also. I heard Candice got kidnapped the other night...I'm getting
hooked. I recently saw James Spader on Conan...and He said he liked
dressing up a girl in one episode because the clothes are so much more
comfortable. His favorite things now are good food and drink...and he
admits to gaining girth. That show went from a year like being The
Practice to being very camp.
I can see how you enjoy it. Love, Mom.....ps. stay warm"

thanks, brain

for choosing today, a few days before finals, to obsess over why i: don't challenge myself/don't have a better job/sell myself short/settle for less than i'm capable of. while we're at it, why don't we go over global warming, the meaning of life, and why no one will ever love me? oh, and that chicken-and-egg thing. i've got NOTHING but time.

oh my goodness!

thanks for the shout-out, mac mccaughan!

also: there are lots of new photos on my flickr page, because apparently i care about that more than graduating from law school.

hot dresses and sweet jams.

it was such a long week but by friday i'd forgotten about it. bought a hot dress because my next paycheck is going to be at least twice the usual (although, who am i kidding? i would have bought it anyway). saturday went to erica's birthday party, which was a lot of fun, but cut out early to go see portastatic with kastrup. i had the plans before i knew about her party (and, um, it was portastatic), but i think it all worked out for the best. i just don't think i could have dealt with another night in a generic lakeview/old town bar or club. i love my friends, but my already-limited tolerance for that sort of scene has been worn pretty thin lately. like, threadbare. plus i really needed to laugh a lot, and with kastrup, that's a given. it's too bad i sort of took that for granted for a while.

the show was awesome. apparently so awesome that somebody fainted, although i don't remember it. (and not because i was the faintee. for once.) you know how i feel, or maybe you read hopper in the reader (although i like her blog post better). rocking and heartfelt and true. and just when i thought the show had reached its incendiary end, they played "BABY," gal costa/os mutantes tropicalia touchstone reconfigured as americana rave-up. dude sang the english AND the portuguese. randomly met jim wilbur and the talented violin player while waiting at the bar. totes good people. this means that i have now for-serious talked to 3/4 of superchunk. funny how these things work out.

tomorrow is going to be so crazy, but as long as the blue line is halfway functional, it should be ok.

thanksgiving is going to be awesome this year. i am so stoked and grateful. i hope the same is true for you.

more happy photos.

another little cousin. sadie grey murphy was born yesterday. one day old, and she looks way wiser than i'll ever be.



given her parents, we know she is already hipper.

half full.

spent all of yesterday in a legal research k-hole, but things are looking up. to complement my optimism, here is a photo of my young cousins mia and ted:


also, although the underlying events are obviously nothing to laugh at, this is the funniest thing i have read in a little while.

sick.

i am sick of ricola drops. i am sick of tea. i am sick of my job and almost all of the people there. i am sick of people generally, with about 5 or 6 exceptions.

that last one was particularly exacerbated this morning. as i walked to the bus stop, i saw people ahead of me walking around something. that something turned out to be a homeless guy laying in the middle of the sidewalk. now, i'm as jaded as the next girl; if dude was merely laying in an alley, i would have kept on walking, told myself that he was just sleeping (one off), and convinced myself that there was nothing much i could do anyway. but this guy was in the middle of the sidewalk, and he was kind of twitching. i asked him if he needed to go to the doctor, and he didn't appear to hear me at all. so i called 911, and stayed until the firetruck arrived. the cops and firemen managed to sort of rouse the guy, but it took some doing, and he didn't look well. and when i got on the bus, i could still see a medic trying to communicate with him, and not getting very far. said cops and firemen were obviously annoyed that they were called out to deal with the situation, and they equally obviously thought i was some kind of bleeding heart naif for calling them. (i recognize the redundancy in that sentence, but bear with me; i'm too busy trying not to cough up a lung to worry about syntax.) totally fucking rude macho bullshit. but i'm not mad at them; they still did their job. i am extremely disappointed with all of the people before i got there who didn't do anything. yeah, maybe he was drunk. but who the fuck knows? he could have had a concussion, or a seizure, or worse. and ok, even if they didn't care, even if they could not give a shit about some smelly black homeless guy, they also completely don't care about the many young children who live in the neighborhood.

i am merely extremely fucking frustrated with school.

capsules.

1. this tells you all you need to know about yesterday:

"cko444: today is so fucked. i'm trying to write a memo on stuff i've never seen before, bill is rageful, angel is gone, jen is wearing ugly boots, and the brownies taste weird."

2. this sums up current events better than i ever could.

3. talented friends:

ad astra per apsera got another pitchfork review and it's not completely gay! and s & t's entity shallowboi got a a glowing writeup in the Ptolemaic Terrascope, which is like the psych-rock bible.

man, i'm glad i'm frittering around on the internet this morning, because it enabled me to see that my conflicts teacher cancelled AGAIN. this makes seriously 6 or 7 times now, excluding holidays! i want a refund.

second wind.

you know how sometimes you just have the best girl talk, or just plain talk, with a friend, and it makes you feel infinitely better and hopeful about your disfunctional little self? that's the kind of experience i ended up having tonight with loren, at the bar, and in the car. after we drank pbr from giant chalices, or "schooners," as the bartender was intent on describing them. south bend rundown to follow, early-morning-standardized-testing-experience-in-the-southside rundown to follow that, i'm sure.