i love the teevee by my cube. fox news is sooooooo concerned about the heat wave.
news flash: it’s super hot out! this groundbreaking story brought to you by WFLD-TV! … in other news, my left sandal broke a strap on the way to work, walking up jackson to cross clark street. it was entitled, i suppose, as these shoes are six or seven years old (though only infrequently worn), but still, i am sad. if only i had gorilla glue at work, i could haxx0r my shoe!
907 PM CDT sun Jul 30 2006 …Excessive heat warning remains in effect until 8 PM CDT Tuesday… An excessive heat warning remains in effect until 8 PM CDT Tuesday. According to the Illinois environmental protections agency… elevated ozone levels on Monday will compound the situation with unhealthy conditions for frail and sensitive individuals. An excessive heat warning means that a prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures is occurring. The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity will combine to create a dangerous situation in which heat illnesses are likely. Drink plenty of fluids…stay in an air conditioned room if possible or at least spend some time in a cooled location…stay out of the sun…and check up on relatives and neighbors. Provide water and shelter from the sun for pets. Residents of the city of Chicago should call 3 1 1 for information on locations of…and transportation to…city cooling centers. Expires:311030 gmt
VTEC:/O.CON.KLOT.EH.W.0002.000000T0000Z-060802T0100Z/
now, to contemplate whether or not this scuttles my plans for biking to work. it’s only like four miles … but the return trip would be four miles through a 105�F heat index. which does not sound particularly appealing now (and i suspect will sound even less so at 1530 tomorrow). otoh, dude, i totally have a water bottle…
stupid foul weather screwing with me wanting to take the shiny new bike out for a spin!
MLB has an article today talking about (among other things) the macdougal acquisition… and how KW is still not trading brandon mccarthy. yay! this makes me happy. i like our goofy-looking rookie, and he does good work, and it would make me sad to give such a good player (“…the 25-year-old right-handed reliever who probably will be part of the White Sox starting rotation in 2007.”) away to someone else who would then win games with him.
also, in addition to him being a fine pitcher (which i, jealously, wish to hoard for our team) i find it really entertaining to watch brandon. especially when he’s wearing his socks up high, dude is eighty-hundred and nine feet (and two inches) tall!
in honor of having to explain what chucks are, and justify my fondness for same, today to someone:
first of all, my apologies to everyone who’s been bugging me to go out and be social, or at least, for the love of god, to update my damned blog. sorry, sorry, sorry! have been very busy lately, and when have been not busy, have been either stressed and anxious due to quitting old job and starting new job, or sleepwalking due to insomnia. trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted to have been around me anyways. my cats didn’t want to be around me.
but now, a very short update about the job. as mentioned previously, my cube faces a television which broadcasts CNBC all day. mostly this is “meh” at best, but today i happened to notice them airing a special groundbreaking news item: apparently a new study reveals that bicycling is actually worse for the environment than driving. the reason given is that because bicycling makes you healthy, and if you’re healthy you live longer, and if you live longer you generate more trash and use more energy and so on and so forth. since it’s a well-known fact i have nothing but disdain for treehugging filthy hippies and their filthy hippie self-powered transit, i went out and bought a shiny new bike after work. screw the environment! i’ma ride a bike! my shiny new bike is a charmer. she’s blue and white, has blue fenders and a silver chain guard, a built-in back deck and headlamp (!!!), and a kickstand. technically speaking she’s not really new… i’d say, oh, 1950s vintage, and she’s got a little rust so she’s not particularly shiny either, but she’s new to me and she’s shiny in my sight. and i get a kick out of riding her, which i did for three miles up western avenue and across division, then up ashland during rush hour (and lived to tell the tale, even without my helmet). so, screw you greenpeace hippies! i’m riding my bike! MUAHAHAHAHAAAA. (and i’m going to donate the santa bike to working bikes, from whom i acquired my shiny new bike — who needs a name — sometime soon. i like my santa bike in theory, but in practice it hurts my wrists to ride it, so i had to either make a bunch of changes to the santa bike or replace it, and i went with a replacement. for sixty dolla! woohoo bargain-hunting recycling charity co-op shopper niqui!) pictures of shiny new bike later. gotta run, now.
niqui loves herself some insomnia, yeah. that’s good times!
am doing the regularly-scheduled-2:15-AM-wake-up thing again. v. irritating. it’s like, what, it’s not enough to not sleep, now it has to happen on a schedule? (why does my mental voice, when writing remarks like that, sound like such a yenta? oy!) in other news: started working for $job++ yesterday. (err, make that $job, now, i suppose.) i was terribly amused on my way to work as i thought i was rocking the doctor who look pretty well: dress shirt, pinstriped trousers, and black chuck taylors. (work shoes were tucked away in the bag, you see. very practical professional woman chic.) this turned into a sort of abashed sense as i got wandered around the office a bit and ran into one of the higher-ups multiple times before i had a chance to change shoes. hopefully no one looked down at the floor, i suppose! anyways, $job seems pretty neat thus far. i’ve traded in my office for a cube facing both a hallway door and a ginormous plasma HD tv which plays CNBC incessantly all day, which my new coworkers assure me i will learn to tune out in just a couple of days because it’s so annoying (i am grateful i am not the only one who confesses to being distracted by the talking heads so prominently placed to the corner of my eye — especially the one guy who looks like joe lieberman’s little brother. oh! imagine my surprise when i made that observation and my coworker who was helping me with stuff had no idea who joe lieberman was. how apolitical — how different from $job–!). i have few and unimpressive multiple displays compared to most other people: i “only” have two 17″ displays. (despite their sharp resolution and clean lines, i do miss my lovely old 21″.) yesterday’s task was setting up xp with all its shiny bells and whistles; today’s will be setting up my linux box. mmm, shiny multiple displays. which window manager shall i choose? i suppose i should probably go with what everyone else uses since i’ll have to support it, but, is it all wrong if i confess that i still like fvwm2? your pal niqui is using outlook + exchange. … it’s not nice to laugh at the handicapped, you know; you should stop that. — on the bright side, i have fuck-all to do with the email system, which is something to be extremely grateful for. all i have to worry about is telling outlook to use a proper quoting mechanism and send in plain text, and keeping my virus scanner up to date, and my work is done in that particular area. hah. my alarm went off; i had to “get up for work” five minutes ago. gotta cut this short, i guess. working the middle shift today: 7AM. also have a late meeting in hyde park to run off to after work, so i should be nicely tired when i get home tonight so maybe i can actually sleep through the night, tonight. that would be nice.
so today’s my last day of work for the university.
it’s all a little scary and sad, really. i’ve worked at the university for four and a half years. so it’s a little like an entire undergraduate career… only, you know, with less debt incurred by the end of it. anyways. sad. quitting sucks. even if am totally excited about the new gig, it still sucks.
we make plans for big times,
get bogged down, distracted.
we make plans for good times,
all neon, all surface.
so kiss me before it all gets complicated—
i’ve got a taste for blood.
oh boy, i love the chronic insomnia, yes, yes, yes i do!
cliff politte, i disown you! you are no longer one of my guys!
(no, that’s not just the 105� heat index speaking. it’s the BITTERNESS. any time they put politte in he’s, like, guaranteed to give up three runs at a minimum!) in other pitching related news, i support the now-officially-downplayed rumor of trading freddy or javier and putting mccarthy in as a starter. i’d write more on that, but i’m feeling kinda cranky at the moment.
one thing i love about NWS alerts is how fond they are of using ellipses. it’s so … dramatic!
1042 am CDT Fri Jul 14 2006 …Excessive heat watch in effect from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening… The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued an excessive heat watch…which is in effect from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening. Hot air will move into the area from the Central Plains beginning Saturday…but a lake breeze will help moderate conditions in Chicago. However southwest winds will allow temperatures to climb into the middle or upper 90s Sunday through Tuesday. High humidity levels combined with high temperatures will push the heat index into the range of 100 to 105 each day. Low temperatures overnight will only drop into the middle to upper 70s…allowing little relief. A weak cold front may flirt with the area Tuesday afternoon…but the heat could persist into Wednesday and Thursday. An excessive heat watch means that a prolonged period of hot temperatures is expected. The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity will combine to create a dangerous situation in which heat stress or heat stroke is possible. Drink plenty of fluids…stay in an air-conditioned room…stay out of the sun…and check up on relatives and neighbors.
so, what are all y’alls’ plans for this weekend? i think my plan just became “pick up some snacky food products on the way home from work today, and catch up on my netflix backlog in air-conditioned comfort.” because i love nothing so much as state-sanctioned excuses to not leave my apartment!
hahahahaha. politics, the police, professional positioning, and parody all in one.
(a student-created video of the dean of the columbia b-school longing for the fed chair. almost enough to make me want to go back and take some more econ classes because evidently some of the students are pretty fun.)
it should go without saying to anyone who knows my many, many opinions about driving that a prominent feature in my childhood was the video game Pole Position. i would scrounge quarters any way i possibly could, and would even willingly accompany my mom to her bowling night (which was très boring to a kid, as i was allowed to neither bowl nor drink bloody marys with the grownups) in order to gain access to the bowling alley’s arcade, which had a sit-down Pole Position which could entertain me for so long as the quarters held out.
it is in this spirit that i point out to you what boingboing pointed out to everyone else earlier today:
PREPARE TO QUALIFY!
this is the only time you’ll have me cheering for you so don’t get used to it.
also: WAY TO GO, PAULIE. that’s my guys, gettin’ the job done, boys. playing white sox baseball even if it is the all-star game. take note, suckers.
cingular is accused of forcing attws customers to upgrade (at their own cost) and degrading their service if they didn’t? you don’t say!
gosh!
courtesy of 
�writchrd:
i may give them grief, but i still love my guys.
