Old acquaintances:

I walked out of the Rep a few days ago and a girl standing near the door stopped me.

"Excuse me."
I stopped, looked at her, hoped she wasn't asking for money or for me to sign some Greenpeace petition.
"Didn't you go to Chamblee?"
I become much happier. "Yes! When did you graduate?"
"2000. Same as you."
She gave me her name and told me that she had a fellowship to do some research there. And then I left, I had to get home.

I didn't remember her at all, even when she gave me her name. A little embarrassing. It's always weird when stuff like that happens.

Too young:

On Tuesday morning, I stopped at a suburban Dunkin Donuts to get some coffee on my way to work. While I was there, I started talking to two older men sitting at the counter. One of them asked me what I was doing out at that time of morning (it was maybe 8 am), so I told him I was going to work. He told me I looked too young to be working. When I said I was 21, he (and the other guy) looked surprised and said something along the lines of "you'll be glad later." I hope those guys are just really out of touch, because I don't think I look much younger than I am. Right? I could pass for 18 maybe? I was wearing a T-shirt that was much too big (why are there never enough smaller sizes for uniform type shirts? I guess I look less ridiculous than someone in a much too small shirt).

Work and all that:

Job was OK. iPod is shipped, so I should have it in a couple of days! No substantive word from hiring people. I've got to wait another week.

Oh, and D--, call me back. I'd call you, but your number is unlisted. I miss you.

British shower gel:

I have this bottle of British shower gel that I've been dragging around with me since I was in Greece. Like the mysterious never-ending vodka bottle of the beginning of my second year at the U of C, despite many uses of the shower gel, it has not been depleted. I don't know how this works.

Unlike the never-ending bottle of vodka, this bottle of shower gel is interesting in its own right. First, it has a hook on the top, so I can hang it over my shower curtain rod, useful particularly in my last apartment which had exactly enough room in the shower for two bottles of shampoo and either soap or my razor, but not both. The other cool thing about this bottle of shower gel is that rather than advertising about the gel itself, the bottle extolls the virtues of taking a shower. I believe the exact phrase is "Taking a shower puts a zing in your day."

I know, I know, it's because there are still British people who take baths every day. I just find it amusing.

Employed!:

I got a job! I'm a lab technician for Clarke Mosquito. I know, I know, but I really wanted something that got me in a lab and wasn't just typing. And it'll pay the bills, which is key. 40 hours a week, $10 an hour. And in Oak Park, which isn't even very far. I'm excited. I start Monday.

Weird ringtones:

I'm at the Reg right now, and someone near me has the Harry Potter theme (you know, from the movies) as his ring-tone.

TV:

It's funny, I can go months without watching any TV at all, as either of my roommates from this past year would attest. But now that I have a TV that actually works, I watch TV roughly constantly. I'm home, I turn on the TV. I know the Fox afternoon and night-time comedy schedule by heart. I watched Scrubs last night (pretty funny) and the Cubs the rest of the time, along with 3 episodes of the Simpsons, 1 of Seinfeld, and 1 of that 70s Show. This is partially a result of the lack of internet in my home. I get home, and I can either read, talk on the phone, or watch TV. So, you know, since I'm home a lot right now, I watch a fair amount of TV.

Unfortunately, I don't get CBS. 5 years ago, of course, that would have been no big deal. In fact, I would probably not have even noticed. But now... Well, is anyone in Hyde Park willing to have me over to watch The Amazing Race? Please...

Back to Baltimore:

For those of you who follow such things, I'll be going back to Maryland on July 1. My birthday. Why did I agree to this? Anyway, I imagine you can guess why. It's not exactly bad news, but it's not terribly good either.

Still no word from the people actually doing the hiring, though. Sorry for the crypticness.

Urrgh:

Sorry for the lack of updates these days. I don't have internet at home right now. SBC completely failed to set up my phone line yesterday, so I have to call them and find out if they operate on their own calendar or what the deal is.

And I'm looking for a job. Which really, really sucks. I found a job I actually want (rather than just am willing to do to pay the bills) so hopefully I'll hear something from that or from a temp agency or from any other job. Once I finish moving in, I'm going to be bored as well as unemployed and I'm really sick of reading the Trib ads every day.

The apartment is nice, though. At least, it will be nice once all the boxes/random open suitcases/pieces of bubble wrap are off the floor and off to where they belong. And it would be nicer if my furniture wasn't limited to:

• A futon mattress
  
• A TV older than I am
  
• The aforementioned boxes
  
• A bike
  
• A small set of Ikea desk drawers
  
• A lot of maps and photos
  
• A bookcase with not quite enough room for my books

Driving into the suburbs:

I've been a real city girl for the last 4 years. No car meant that I basically stayed inside the city limits, with an occasional foray into Oak Park or some Metra-accesible suburb. But now I have a car and I drove to Schaumburg this morning. I remembered how much I missed driving. I also, unfortunately, remembered how much I hated getting lost when a wrong turn on the Kennedy led me practically into Wisconsin. So I was almost an hour late. Which sucked. I blame Mapquest, which didn't tell me what to do when I-90 and I-94 split.

Oh well. I got a nice drive on the Tollway, I suppose.

A happy post now:

I think I've sounded a bit depressed recently. So, a happy post: I'm almost done moving. I have a handful of things to take over tomorrow, and then it'll be done, and I'll be in my nice new place. It's annoying that I'll have to do this again in 10 weeks, but I think I'll just give away everything then.

What is your nation?:

Interesting article in the NYT Magazine today about the Jews of Ireland and how hard it is for them to fit in there. Many of the younger people have left because they want to be somewhere where it's culturally normal to be a Jew.

This is something that resonates a lot with me. I don't know where I'm from, I don't feel like I fit in exactly anywhere. I can't go back to Atlanta; that's not home, nor really has it ever been. Much as I love Chicago, I'm still in many ways an outsider here (it's soda, not pop). Cleveland is a nice city, but it's not my city. And Ireland is a lifetime away.

I have thought about getting Irish citizenship, moving there. Sometimes I think that the shared memories are enough, that I could be a part of that country. But-- but I am an American. My family and friends are here and my memories are here. I don't want to give up my past, not for a country in which I'll still be an outsider.

So I'm stuck in some sort of limbo, living places that I love but not really feeling that they love me back. Knowing that I will always be a little bit of on the outside looking in. In London, I was the American, in Chicago the southerner, in Atlanta the Irish Catholic.

If someone were to ask me in a bar what my nation is, I would not be able to answer.

Graduated and moving out:

Sorry for the complete lack of posting over the last few days. I have been a bit busy. I graduated from the U of C on Saturday, after four of the best years of my life (despite what I said at the time). I am staying here in Hyde Park for the summer at least, though I am moving from my current apartment. Then, well, everything's in flux. I think I should hear something from the job I want soon, and, if I get it, might be able to start as early as September. So I might leave HP at the end of August and head home for a couple of weeks, then move again after that.

I don't know. I would really like a summer job, and I would like to know if I should be looking for a more permanent job. Or maybe going back to grad school? Graduation made me all nostalgic for being in school, for the classes and the amazing people I've met here over the last four years. I know that grad school isn't what I want now, or possibly ever, but I don't really want to leave here either. The thought of a whole year without the U of C is not a good thought.

Off to do some laundry and pack up more stuff. We're hoping to get most of the stuff moved today, so I can move out for good tomorrow afternoon.

Packing:

Man, do I hate packing. Like, take how much you think I hate packing and multiply by like a million and you might be close (though that feels I bit like "me too times infinity!" "times infinity plus one" "times infinity squared" and so on). Anyways, guess what I'm doing now?

Yes, I'm trying to put everything I own into a relatively small collection of boxes and decide whether each box is going to Atlanta with my father (via Wisconsin, somehow) or staying in Chicago to be with me this summer. The books that I'm sending to Atlanta are looking at me balefully, but I need to accept that I'm not going to read Wittgenstein this summer and leave it at that. Cause I'm really not. And stop looking at me like that, Mr. Wittengenstein.

Then there's the stuff like the humidifier that I bought because my upstairs neighbor really likes blasting country music at 3 in the morning. I thought maybe the white noise would help. Will I need that in the new apartment? Hopefully not, especially since I'll have an air conditioner and two terrible box fans to drown out whatever odd music quirks my new neighbors have (hopefully not involving Lifeteen music at 9 on Sunday morning, but maybe she was just trying to get me to go to Mass). So that I'm giving away. I'm also giving away the speakers that I bought in the hopes of making my laptop happy only to discover that they didn't work terribly well and were sort of a pain. So those are going too. But what about the posters that have seen better days? Or the roughly 8 million blankets that I own? Do I need all of them?

I hate making decisions and these are hard ones. And, uggh, my parents should be in tonight and I have a job interview tomorrow morning and I have to clean (and I'm not even getting started on the stove, which is covered by an burnt smelling black layer since we haven't even wiped it down since Spring Break). And when is all this getting done exactly?

Gmail:

I now have 6 Gmail invitations and no obvious people to give them to. So if you want one, email me in the next couple of days or they're going up on eBay.

Mmm, more Sangria:

The college bowl team gave me a Sangria recipe book and pitcher on Saturday, and I made one of the Sangrias tonight. It was called Raspberry Lemonade Sangria and it involved limoncello, raspberries, lemonade, and sparkling wine (I used a cheap Brut Cava, since it's Spanish and all). It was quite good, though Will felt the taste would have been improved if the strips of lemon zest weren't quite so large (excuse me for using a carrot cleaner rather than one of those fancy zesters). Definitely a sweet, summery drink.

On climbing:

On Saturday, Will, Sudeep and I went to Starved Rock State Park, downstate a couple of hours from Chicago. The park itself consists of miles of paths, most of which are generally the sort of over-marked, boring things designed to protect the state park district of Illinois from lawsuits.

However, if you look a bit, there are infinitely cooler paths, beaten by others who hated the park ranger's processed paths as much as we did. Sure, technically using these cooler paths isn't 'legal' in the strictest sense of the word (since the park did have big signs threatening various punishments for those who ventured off the marked trails), but clearly we weren't the first. So we spent an afternoon scrambling up cliff faces and pulling ourselves up sandy mountains with giant tree roots, choosing places where we probably wouldn't die if we fell, though possibly convincing old ladies otherwise.

Will raised an interesting question, though. Would this have been as fun if it were legal? I was pretty sure not, though I was never afraid of being caught, so I don't think we could have felt that sort of thrill. I think it was more because had the climbing we did been legal, we would have known that it was perfectly safe. No state park is going to let a couple of dumb kids climb up a cliff without making damn sure that it's as safe as walking a level path of raked gravel. So we were courting danger a bit, but not the danger of getting caught; rather, we were in danger of hurting ourselves, a much more satisfying thrill.

This is tied into why roller coasters don't really do it for me. I'm not particularly afraid of heights or speed, and I know that riding in a roller coaster is about a hundred times safer than driving a car down the interstate. Why should I find it thrilling, then? My thrills need to involve some sort of fear, that moment when the horse I'm galloping loses his stride for half a second and I wonder if he and I care going to fall in some desperate mix of human and half a ton of horse, that moment when I'm windsurfing (which I haven't done in far too long) and I hit the funny wave and go under and my board's over me and I have to struggle to the surface, or that moment when I'm climbing a cliff and realise that my footing's precarious and I can't see a good way up from there, but I can't go back down either. I can't feel that way on a perfectly safe roller coaster.

No more technical difficulties?:

So I tried today and this published with no problems. I never heard back from Blogger support, so I'm not sure what got fixed. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed.

Anyway, I am done with finals!! Forever. Now I just need to find a summer job and make sure I have a summer apartment. And do so much packing, since I want to be mostly done before T-- comes on Wednesday.