They don’t use flat sheets here.

Your mattress is covered by a mattress pad, just like home in the US, and then covered by a fitted sheet, just like home in the US. You sleep on top of that one. And then, there’s a duvet (comforter), in a duvet cover. Except…

YOU MISSED A STEP.

For the benefit of those reading from Europe, in the US we have two sheets. There’s the fitted sheet over the mattress, but then there’s another sheet, called the flat sheet (or top sheet, but usually flat sheet, because it’s “flat” and hasn’t got elasticised corners like the fitted sheet), that goes over you. Depending on the weather, there may be a blanket or two (or six, if you live in Minnesota) over the flat sheet, but before the duvet (or comforter). In some places there is no duvet at all, but just blankets and then a quilt or bedspread. But there is always a flat sheet. The sheets get laundered, the blankets and duvet (or quilt…especially not quilts, especially-especially if they’re real hand-sewn quilts) get shaken out once or twice a year but don’t get dumped in the washer, like, ever. Because you don’t have to wash them if you have sheets!

But there’s no flat sheet here in Europe. It’s just you and your duvet cover. Need a thick blanket? Great! Don’t need a thick blanket? Uhhhh…. well, shit. The duvet cover gets laundered, which is great, except for the part where (a) MY FEET ARE COLD and (b) have you ever noticed what a total pain in the ass it is to stuff duvets into duvet covers? Because it is, and I have.

Now, I’ve had a nasty headcold, verging on flu, for the past few days. (Don’t talk to me about Sudafed. It’s banned here. If you talk to me about how awesome multi-symptom cold-and-flu decongestant tablets are right now, I will fly over and cut you. And then I will go to CVS, get out my ID and buy the most Sudafed I am allowed to buy, and fly my ass back home to Holland and rest assured I will not have to be a total mouthbreather next time I catch a cold.) It’s meant some fairly unpleasant hacking coughs, the kind of constantly running nose that results in Kleenex Nose — you know what I mean, when you’re blowing your nose so damn often your nose-skin gets chafed and painful and you dread every single time you have to reach for the kleenex because you know it’s going to hurt, but you can’t put moisturizer on your nose because the skin is already so sore you know no matter how For Sensitive Skin your moisturizer is, it’s going to sting like you’ve just dunked your face in a vat of acid — and a bit of feverish hot sweaty attempting-to-sleep nights where you can’t stand having the covers either on or off. Without the flat sheet, there is no middle ground. And I’m here to tell you, I MISS MY FLAT SHEET. Because I usually sleep nude, unless it’s super cold out, and there has just *got* to be a middle ground between “holy mother of god, it’s broiling under these covers” and sticking-your-leg-out “JESUS IT’S THE ARCTIC CIRCLE OUT THERE.” In the summer, that was one thing. Duvet cover alone was fine then, it was 35°C and no one cared. Today? Last night? I feel like I need to sleep wearing some tights just so I can stick my foot out when I get too hot, and not get the shivering shakes as a result. I mean I literally tried to sleep one day in some loose cotton capri pants (that was a quick fail. Nobody sleeps in button-up capris, for a reason). Guys. The flat sheet is a miracle of engineering that lets you keep a tiny bit of insulating air around your poor overheated leg, so it can cool down slowly, and gently, in a controlled fashion, without freezing your extremities off. It’s a tiny gesture of civilization in an uncivilized world.

Look, Europe. I don’t ask you to take much as an example from America. Not our wacko two-party politics, and certainly not our tipping-the-waitstaff confusion. But the flat sheet. Seriously. It’s a thing of beauty. It will transform your life. Just do it.

LITTLE OWL, HOW DO YOU LOOK SO ANGRY AND SO CUTE AT THE SAME TIME?!

If you click through to the Flickr photo and hover your mouse over the times, you can see notes with all my goals for my times. If you don’t want to do that, let me just say: I nailed those suckers. Woo!

I should write a real race report later, but I’m pretty tired right now. (I’ve been up for 15 hours, and I spent 4 of those endurance racing, another one getting to and from the endurance race, and 15 minutes sitting in a shallow tub of ice water. It’s been a long day.) So here are the highlights:

SWIM
OMG, WTF, BBQ. So Hurricane Irene was torturing New Yorkers (or at least it was supposed to, to listen to some of them banging on about it. Like my friend Natalie said, if there was a Lake Michigan hurricane that came in and blasted Chicago, the only news coverage we’d get would be “Make sure you have a canoe, and allow extra travel time to get to work tomorrow.” But I digress.), but meanwhile, some tendrils of it were stretching across the continent and stirring up crap around here (or at least I am blaming Irene for this crap). We had a forecast that called for winds out of the north-northeast at 15-23 mph through the early morning to the afternoon, and that came true. The lake was incredibly choppy — not wavy; wavy is different. This was just a hot mess of unpredictable, fast, short, and randomly directional waves. Plus, the swim route was shaped like a letter J, where the first 1/4 mi was south, then you did a U-turn around a buoy and came north for the remaining 3/4 mi. The winds were NNE. The water was moving SSW. We got to swim against that. It was the crazy icing on top of the flailing, splashing, kicking bumper cars madness of the swim.

I admit that, after my blog post the other day about the tri, I felt a little bad for that offhand crack about kicking people back if they kick me. I’m kind of a girl scout, so I was all “I shouldn’t say that, it’s meeeeeean to kick people.” After experiencing the Chicago Triathlon swim start in that water? Fuck that noise. You kick me, I kick you back. I seriously got through that batshit swim using a few advanced swimming techniques: 1) bilateral breathing. It was really important to be able to breath on both sides, not just the side I was most comfortable on, because that side was into the rising sun and the rising waves, so switching was really killer; 2) Rotation – I was able to kick my rotation way up more than I usually do in the pool, so I could get my face farther out of the water to breathe without inhaling water; and 3) mentally referring to anyone who pissed me off in any fashion, like the guy who couldn’t swim straight and kept swimming into my left side and pushing me out towards the boats so that I actually stopped and trod water long enough to let him get totally in front of me so I could get on his left side instead, as “green-cap fucksticks.” I’m sure that most people in the wave before mine, such as the two T2EA athletes who are obviously superior in every way, are very nice people, but a lot of them are very aggressive yet inept swimmers, aka “fucksticks,” and that wave had green caps, so the epithet “green-cap fuckstick” was coined. There were a few green-cap fucksticks wearing other colored caps, but I was trying to not inhale water, so I stuck with what worked: green-cap fucksticks. Oh, there were so many green-cap fucksticks. I think my on-goal swim time despite the water conditions working against me was largely due to my immense desire to get the hell away from all the other swimmers.

Then there was the 450 yard dash up the crumbly asphalt to transition. After I’d already been walking around all morning barefoot, including the 3/4 mi walk from transition to the swim start and a half-hour wait in line for a porta-potty, because I decided not to bring flip flops. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. IT IS A HURTY ONE. And, oh yeah, the time for this gets applied to your official swim time. I did splits, and this took 4 minutes, which means my swim time was 39m, which was under my 40m goal, so HA, take that, stupid asphalt. Ow, my poor feet.

T1
I actually rocked this one. I ran across the grass (sweet cool, cool, soft grass…) and through the route I’d scouted and walked earlier, found my row with no trouble (it RULES having the rack row with the recycling bins at both ends), found my bike with no trouble (thanks to it having a big bunch of red silk flowers on the stem, the blue masking tape arrow on the ground, and oh yeah, it was second from the end nearest bike out/bike in), toweled my feet off to attempt to get the dried cut grass off (which failed), threw my helmet on, rolled my socks on, put my shoes on, pulled my bike gloves out of my shorts legs (oh yeah, did I mention I forgot to leave my bike gloves in transition, which I realized when I got to the swim start, and my feet hurt so much I said “fuck it” to walking them back to transition, so I just shoved one inside each shorts leg before I put my wetsuit on), and ran for bike out. A volunteer and several spectators publicly admired my flowers, I shoved my gloves in my teeth, mounted the bike, and headed for the ramp up to Lake Shore Drive. I got up the ramp, over the bridge over the river, and once we had settled a little I pulled my gloves on. I like to think that it makes me look coordinated that I can pull that off – putting my gloves on with my teeth while biking in a straight line. I probably just look like some idiot who forgot to put her gloves on in transition. Whatever. It totally saves me like 45s in T1, so I’ll take the idiot look.

Then… oh yeah. Irene. Fucking Irene and her fucking bullshit headwind. What the hell. The first leg took me 30 minutes. I was Not Happy – 30 minutes x 4 legs = 2 hour bike; my goal was 1:45 atmost. But the headwind was transformed into a tailwind for the return south, which I forgot to hit the split button to stop when I turned around at Chicago Ave, but it was certainly a lot easier to bike. Then the turn back north, into that bitching bullshit headwind. I seriously was going up overpasses at like 10 mph, it was sad. (OTOH, those moments gave me opportunities to pass slowpokes and people on mountain bikes, so that was happy. I also passed one woman riding a bike with a full rack and two saddlebags, but I told her as I went that riding with the saddlebags made her super hardcore, so I don’t count her as a slowpoke.) The second and third legs combined were 46:35, which made me happy because I that meant my first south leg was 20m, which is way better than 30, and meant I could hopefully still manage under 1:45. The second leg south took me 26, and then I was back at transition. I deliberately let the gas out a little more on the last lap – telling myself this is my last race of the season, I don’t have to save anything up for tomorrow or later this week. I don’t know how much of an effect that had, but it was some nice mental encouragement.

I will say, I had a WHOLE lot of fun watching the traffic going the opposite direction and spotting people in T2EA jerseys and cheering for them. Also, I had a few riders tell me, usually while passing me, that they liked my flowers. So honestly, the bike was basically just full-on entertainment. I probably inhaled a thousand tiny insects just because I was grinning like a dork the whole time.

T2
My goal for this was 3m, which I didn’t make, even a little. I think it’s basically because there were a lot of people in the aisle trying to find their racks (again, recycling bin FTW) so I had to go at the pace of those in front of me, and transition was huge. I’m not sure why else it took me 5 freaking minutes. I pretty much took off my shoes, took off my gloves, pulled on my running shoes, slammed on my TriMonster visor, clipped on my race belt, and ran for run out. Granted, run out was a big twisty maze to get to (I should have retraced my swim in steps, but instead I went down the aisle outside and I think it made the route longer than it needed to be. But that was autopilot: that was how I walked to swim out, when I walked the route in transition. Next time, walk out the full transition, not just inspecting the ins/outs and scouting landmarks.

Run
Oh my. My good intentions to do the race as run 20m, walk 3m repeats failed immediately. I ran for like 3 minutes, then walked for 3. Then I ran for like 2, and walked for 3. It was a quick and humbling flameout. I don’t mean I hit the wall or anything, but I definitely had to mentally eat some humble pie about how well I’d be able to run off the 25mi bike. I wound up run/walking the entire course. My first mile was the slowest, and second mile the second slowest, though, so I did get better, and settled into a 14:30 average pace, down from a 15:07 average over the first two, so that’s ok. Not the 13:45 I had hoped for, but it’s not like it’s a crisis if I finished 5 minutes later. Besides, doing my second 10k as part of my first ever international triathlon – I think I’m entitled to guess wrong about how my legs might feel. Next time I’ll know better, and will have trained more. So it’s a learning experience.

I will say that the spectators along the run were fantastic. There were some really great signs – “Spandex makes you sexy!” and a few others. I tried to tell the signholders that I appreciated their work when I saw something good. I must have high-fived at least a dozen kids along the way, too.

The run took me back past the T2 tent at swim start (backed up against the run route at about .75 mi), did a little dance for them, then got about 10 high-fives and immeasurable cowbell, which was totally sweet. Seriously, I bet more than one person left that race today going “man, I’m training with T2 next year.” We were all yelling encouragement at each other the whole time. It was superfantastic. Spotting other T2 competitors and cheering them was like half the fun of my race – cheering them on kept me going. Them cheering me on kept me going well. :)

But I also was really buoyed by some friends who came out to watch me compete. Sean and Steph, of course, were there from the start – Steph came over to hug me while my wave was queued up waiting to jump in the water, and they spotted and cheered me at bike in, run out, and were waiting for me at the T2 booth after the finish. Sean also took some amazing photos. Liam was waiting for me at the Lake Shore Drive underpass just before finish, and then he ran around and met me after the finish. Trish was on the run route just the other side of the first T2 tent. Craig took some photos of me right after the finish and hung out for a while with me. And John brought his bike and cheered for me at bike in plus about three spots along the run! You guys all rule. Seriously, it meant a whole lot to have friends out there cheering for me. :)

Ok… that’s the totally superficial race recap. Now… I AM GOING TO SLEEP!

Triathlon, though, is asking a lot. First of all, it requires me to get up off my ass with a much greater frequency than I am accustomed to. My workout habits prior to taking up running last year were basically “eh. Do I feel like it? Yeah? Okay.” or, more frequently, “Do I feel like it? Nah. Cool.” But now! Now? I have a schedule. A schedule I actually go out and make an effort to stick to. A schedule that includes two days a week where people notice if you’re not there. And, of my two off days per week? I actually want to do MORE workout stuff on one of them. It is remarkably difficult to respect recovery days, even after reading other people’s cautionary tales about overtraining and the consequences thereof. I mean, I am a lazy bum by nature. I point and laugh at gym bunnies from the couch, when I see them on tv. What the hell bizarro world did I wake up in that I’m a workout person now?

And these are not piddly, saddo workouts where you show up at the gym and do half-hearted bicep curls with 5 lb. weights for ten minutes, then do some crunches on a mat in the back corner where no one can see you. Every planned workout on my schedule, except one, involves two things: biking followed by running, or swimming followed by strength training. Tuesday’s group swim workout is the only easy day where you only have one item on your to-do list. I now approach the swiss ball and the foam roller with intent. Worst of all, I’m now the kind of person who feels let down if she misses a day. (Especially since I’ve missed two Thursday group bricks in a row due to work – argh!)

And then there’s the influence of all this on my music collection. It all started last summer when I started running, and discovered that Ke$ha made for really good running music. It doesn’t require any brainpower to listen to, and it was upbeat and amusing enough to make struggling up even that bastard hill south on the lakefront path coming up from under the Solidarity Drive underpass something even I could manage. I like Ke$ha now – I offer no excuses. This proceeded apace until I made the ultimate sacrifice of my music credibility to acquire more upbeat pop music to keep me running… Oh yes, I did it. I’m not proud. (I will say that, sorry kids, “Peacock” is fucking annoying, not clever — I had to untick that one in iTunes.) But… yeah. I don’t ask you to respect me after this confession of my radical loss of judgment, but just accept me for what I am… a lazy bum by nature who depends on other people’s perkiness (no matter how ridiculous) for motivation.

But while the crazy workout dependency seriously jeopardizes my self-image as a total slacker, and I’m hesitant to own up to the sudden Top 40 obsession in mixed company, those are not the only significant shifts I have undergone. For example:

I have a drag suit again – for the first time since the fall of 1994, my last year of high school competitive swimming. A drag suit, for the uninitiated, is a worn-out swimsuit (or you can buy a mesh purpose-specific suit) that is baggy and floppy, which you wear over a swimsuit that actually fits. The bagginess and floppiness creates drag in the water, meaning resistance, making it harder to swim. I traditionally wore drag suits to the point where all the spandex was gone and I could actually tie a knot in the excess fabric at the belly. This particular drag suit was unintentional: I bought the suit in February of this year, and I wore it only a dozen or so times before it started to show wear. Very disappointing — I used to get a full season’s swimming out of one suit, which was 5 days a week, often 2x/day, for three months. (NB: TYR is my favorite, or sometimes I wear Speedo, but this is from The Finals. Not sure I can recommend them, with this example as my first purchase from them. I have two other of their suits, in a smaller size, that I bought at the same time and am alternating, so we’ll see how long they last. I am going back to TYR next time though; no more experimenting.)

But it happened that I had dropped a few pounds and I needed a smaller suit then anyways, so I just continued wearing this one as a drag suit, so at least I can get some value out of it. The spandex has continued degrading at a nice clip (accellerated by my actively destroying it, by not washing chlorine out and by wringing the hell out of it), and it’s very nearly to the belly-fabric-knot point. This makes me oddly proud: I are a real swimmer! I show up wearing shit like this and don’t care if everyone around me is going, “why is she wearing a potato sack to the pool?” You may laugh at my potato sack, but I’ll be the one laughing when I take 10s off my 800m time!

I was doing the laundry the other day and caught myself thinking, “I should get another bottle of SportWash next time I’m at Fleet Feet; it’s only ten bucks.” This is significant because I am the sort of cheapass who sneers at Target or Jewel for asking $14 for a bottle of Tide, and waits for it to go on sale, because I think that $14 is ridiculous for a bottle of laundry detergent, and then, on top of that, I generally only use half the prescribed amount because I think the full capful is too much detergent and wasteful. (I also cut dryer sheets in half. Scrooge McLaundry, at your service.) Note that at $14/30 loads, 46¢ a load, the Tide is actually cheaper than the $10/20 loads, 50¢ SportWash. Logic may not be my strong suit here. (That said, the SportWash works way, way better than regular detergent at getting stank out of my workout clothes, which is no small thing to ask.)

This cabinet used to be full of soapmaking supplies. I had to find a new spot for a bunch of it so that I could make room for my bulk purchases of Gatorade and my massive 5 lb. bulk jug of whey protein powder. Yeah. I’m THAT jackass, now.

(Though, I’m not yet to the point of being the guy at work who has a FEEDSACK of whey protein powder under his desk. I’ve bought 28 lb. bags of cat food smaller than his protein stash, man.)

This is what I do for breakfast daily: 6-8 oz nonfat yogurt, protein powder, spirulina, stevia, 6-10 strawberries (depending on size), banana or two, soy milk to cover. It’s actually really, really tasty. The spirulina was one of those things where I was like, “oh, it’s a ‘superfood,’ huh? We’ll just see about that.” But it turns out that I really like it. It has this sort of fruity taste that works really well in a smoothie. Also, the “gross green health food” look really amuses me for some reason — I feel kind of like it’s straight out of a 70s show. The best thing about this smoothie, though, is that it’s a fantastic breakfast that keeps me from getting hungry until like 1 PM — which is great, because I can’t stand it when I eat at 7 and am hungry for lunch by 10:30. The smoothie lets me totally forget about eating until 12:30 or 1, and that makes me really happy. I don’t think it’s a particularly low calorie health food — I’m guessing that it’s around 500 kcal or so, not that I actually measure anything — but it gets me fruit and protein and calcium and freaky green health food entertainment value, so I’m happy.

And lastly…

My idea of appropriate interior decoration for the home has expanded to include “beat-up, raggedy pieces of Tyvek.”

I can’t wait to see what next crazy effect triathlon has on my life.

(No, I don’t know what happened in this blog post. I started out writing short, choppy, silly sentences and ending with smileys, and then things got kind of out of control, YAY! :D )

(i can only assume that the actual editors of the Tribune would be either entertained by this tale of having some random idiot in the basement of the Tower getting their calls by mistake; be irritated by said random idiot being presumptuous enough to take calls on their behalf; or simply be relieved to not have to deal with the calls, most of which are actually very simple requests, if the call center personnel were bothering to listen to the callers’ questions rather than transfer them to “Editorial”-by-which-i-mean-me as soon as the caller turns out to not be calling about paying their subscription bill. i suspect the latter since when i transfer calls to their extension, it always goes to voice mail.)

i did, eventually, succeed in finding someone who is responsible for the call center, and she updated the magical Excel spreadsheet of extensions, but nonetheless, the calls continue. i suspect that someone in Sri Lanka literally didn’t get the memo. it has tapered off somewhat since the sheet got updated, but in a typical day, i still get around 2-5 calls, and i usually get a couple of voice mails per week, generally on Monday morning after the weekend.

i could ask for a new extension, but i actually sort of enjoy the calls, most of the time. it breaks up my day a little, and gives me a little human contact away from the computers. also, it’s an excuse for me to learn more about the paper, which is a side of the business i would otherwise have effectively no exposure to. of course there’s occasionally a real winner that turns up — like Angry Screaming Man, who left me many voice mails about how the fucking this and the fucking that were motherfucking whatever and his fucking issue was too fucking important for motherfucking voicemail (but not so important that he actually left his phone number so i could call him back), a few weeks back; or Crazy Birther Dude a week or two ago who was enraged that a reporter from our august institution had dared to go on the Chris Matthews show and remark, in response to a question, that he thought that the President of the United States had anything at all more important to do than to try and prove his citizenship by birth, which shamed the entire Tribune and we should feel just terrible about it all. (that one was, more than others, a trip.) a few days ago i got to talk with a gentleman who was barely able to restrain his glee about newspapers’ dwindling print circulation, and forecast our complete institutional demise in ten years or less!!! at least every two minutes he had me on the line (to which i responded each time, “Well, I certainly hope that won’t be the case, sir,” because sometimes i’m nicer than the callers objectively deserve). but other times i get to chat with people who organize open-house Thanksgiving dinners for entire communities every year, who want to touch base with a reporter who did a story on them years back, or whose grandkid was in a featured photo and they’d like to get a reprint, someone who is gushing with praise for a columnist and wants to make sure that said columnist knows that her work is appreciated, stuff like that. one time i had someone who wanted to know the exact dimensions of the broadsheet paper, and i’m not sure why they couldn’t just use a ruler, but who am i to judge? so far as the callers know, i’m just there to answer the phone.

the most fun ones are the truly, truly “random” calls though. one person called me to ask about how he could get a Russian travel visa for vacation. someone had told him to call the newspaper because we would know. (i’m not sure why; maybe because of correspondent writers? i guess journalists travel a lot and so therefore newspaper people can answer all kinds of travel-related questions? i’m still drawing a blank on that one. i referred him to the Russian embassy, feeling relatively certain that they could either help him out, or decide he was too hapless to be let in to their country.) another woman called me because she wanted to send fan mail to the Regis and Kelly show. sure, we have TV stations, but … we’re not, you know, WABC where Regis and Kelly shoot. we’re not even in New York. but she was adamant that she’d been told that we would be able to help her, and did not want to hear any of my expressions of doubt. i quickly figured out that she wasn’t going to let me go until she had an answer (and she had my direct extension because the call center happily gives this to the callers, so they can all call me back directly any time they like, now that they know what line goes directly to a human), so i pulled up my browser, put write letter to regis and kelly in the search field, and read her the answer. hey, she went away happy, i got her off the phone, win-win.

but most of the calls are more routine, so i’ve gotten good at answering some of them off the top of my head. i don’t know why the call center doesn’t do the same, but, truthfully, i think they just want to get the callers off their lines as fast as possible, to keep their individual call times down — that was one of our objectives, in the call center i worked in in high school — and so they don’t bother to take the two (to twenty) minutes it takes to establish what the caller is trying to ask, and look up a phone number not on their magical Excel list.

here are some of the things that i have learned, thanks to the random calls:

• Pretty much all the useful phone numbers and emails are listed on the web site, including a list of all the editors, their job titles, and email addresses. There’s also an FAQ.
• The main switchboard is (312) 222-3232, Advertising (including classifieds, announcements, and obituaries) is (312) 222-2222, Editorial is (312) 222-3348. For help with a subscription, call 1-800-TRIBUNE, but if you ask them any question they don’t know they’ll probably just transfer you back to me.
• There is a list of fax numbers and email addresses to submit your press release here.
• To suggest a story idea or submit information, email tips@tribune.com.
• Recent back issues of the paper are available in the Tribune Tower gift shop for $1 each.
• To search the Tribune archives, go to the main chicagotribune.com page, scroll all the way to the bottom, find the column labeled “Perks,” and click on the last item in that list, “Archive.” There are two archives, 1985 to present, which is text-based and fully searchable; and 18-something to 1985, which is scanned print and you can search headlines. Article reprints are available for a fee. If you would like them for free, you can contact the Chicago Public Library or your local library, and learn about the wonders of microfiche and inter-library loans.
• (Kids today have no frigging clue what microfiche is. And they should turn that noise down and get off my lawn.)
• To get photo reprints, go to the main web page, and click on the “Photos” link all the way to the right on the tabs across the top, then click “Buy Tribune Photos” in the right-hand sidebar. If you don’t see the phone you’re interested in in the listings, there is a requests page. Or you can call (312) 222-3080.
• If you want to contact the author of an article, their e-mail addresses are usually printed at the end of the article on the web site.
• Some people, inexplicably, do not know what section of the paper “the front page” is in. Others don’t know what a byline is, or what “above the fold” means (though, arguably, i suppose, that latter one is less important since we started printing a tabloid format.)
• Other people think it is easier to call the newspaper in order to ask what section of the paper an article is in — even when they have the actual newspaper in front of them; they just want to be told where to turn the page to. (i really, really have no explanation for that one.)
• We cannot delete your comment from a blog that you posted and want to rescind now that your rant looks pretty silly a couple days later.
• Most of the writers seem (to me) happy to hear from readers.
• Mary Schmich’s last name is pronounced “schmeek.”
• Jon Yates is The Problem Solver, and can be reached at yourproblem@tribune.com.
• And yes, I understand that he may have upset you with his latest editorial, but no, I seriously do not know what time John Kass comes to work so you can call him and not get his voice mail. I am in the basement, nowhere near the newsroom, and, much as it saddens me, I cannot just go up to his desk and ask him to call you back, either.

<niqui> i mean, those [dunkin’ donuts chocolate filled donuts] have got to be the single least healthy food item on the planet — even the KFC Double Down has some protein in it, somewhere, among all the fat — but i liked them
<twork> didn’t the KFC DD (hm, DD, coincidence?) actually test with less fat than, like, a whopper or something like that?
* twork remembers being surprised at some of the comparisons when it came out.
<niqui> http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20101018/double-down-kfc-101018/20101018/?hub=TorontoNewHome
<niqui> apparently less than a triple whopper with cheese
<nrose_kenedy> and pink donuts don’t taste like fake strawberry anymore, they just taste like pink
<wasy> there is a triple whopper?
* wasy *shudders* at the mention of pink donuts
<wasy> dammit. now /me wants donuts
<niqui> http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/04/21/kfc-double-down-is-better-for-you-than-salad/
<twork> ah, okay, well a triple whopper with cheese is bound to be hard to beat for fat content. that’s practically cheating.
* niqui kinda likes the pink donuts
<twork> mmmmm, cheating.
<niqui> i mean, i’m not going to go out and get one on my own
* twork wishes to cheat.
<niqui> if i go to DD to get a donut, it’s probably going to be either a ordinary glazed donut, or a blueberry cake donut (mmmm, fake blueberry).
<niqui> but the pink donuts are OK.
<niqui> …i kind of want to try a KFC double down now :(
* niqui looks guilty
* wasy has wanted one since the moment /me saw a picture
* niqui passes a KFC on her way home from school.
<niqui> i could get one on my way home tonight.
<wasy> where is there a kfc?
* twork remembers the last time /me went to a KFC, being sorely disappointed compared to KFC feeds of /me’s youth.
<niqui> on my way home FROM NUTRITION CLASS.
<wasy> ha
<niqui> kfc on south wabash just south of harrison. next to the dunkin’ donuts, of course!
<niqui> it’s a combo kfc/pizza slut, for the students.
<twork> once you’ve had Harold’s, it’s hard to go back to the colonel.
<niqui> !! our harold’s is closed!
<niqui> expired license.
<wasy> oh, right. /me has seen that place.
<wasy> !!!
* niqui saw the signs on the way home tuesday
* wasy feels the itis coming on just thinking about harold’s
* twork hasn’t had Harold’s in months. it may be time.
<niqui> if harold’s made a double down, that would be *epic*
<wasy> death
<wasy> that would be death
<niqui> i would die of a heart attack within minutes
<wasy> tasty, tasty death
<twork> but a good death.
<niqui> but i bet it would be *delicious*
<twork> you have to go somehow…
<nrose_kenedy> best. suicide. ever.

This can only end in tears. But not for about 10 months!

Oh, and just for kicks: