the everyday adventures of sabrina

the silly thing about spending a bunch of quality time discussing preferred covers of leonard cohen’s ‘hallelujah’ and contemplating building a playlist of nothing but them is when you do that but aren’t actually already depressed enough to listen to ‘hallelujah’ a dozen times. of course once you listen to them all you are!

stupid jeff buckley.

aiee! very, very bizzy lately.

it’s good to be in french class again. i keep having weird mini-epiphanies as some bit of vocabulary that i’d forgotten pops back into my head. on the down side, i’ve lost command of what the tenses of verbs (beyond présent and passé composé) are called and what they’re used for. i can still use them if i don’t think about it, but hell if i can tell you what the imparfait is for or how to form it. okay, okay, i know what conditionnel is for, but only because the name makes it pretty obvious. still, it’s a little bit strange sometimes, dredging through my head like this.

“csi: miami” premiere last night: sincerely very meh. i think we should get more BOOM! in a season premiere, you know? i feel a little let down.

been working a fair amount. breaking the rules because i have to work from home to take care of stuff. oh well. some days are more irritating than others. someday, someday i can stop screwing around with piddly shit (like this pile of scripts i’ve been messing with, lately) and do something useful again. i have hopes, anyways. oh, and also new minion wasy starts next week: muahahahahahahahahahahahaha! minion! fetch me my coffee!!

have reverted to using the blue line to commute. last week i gave it a trial run, as i’d heard they’d completed the slow zone restoration between division and grand. they did! lovely new cement ties holding the tracks in (they look very funny, like they’re coated in whiteout, in the dingy nastiness of the filthy division stop), and not only have i not had to wait long for a train to arrive, i have been able to board easily, and gotten downtown in good time — about 25 minutes door to door. no doubt i am tempting fate by making this post, but still, after all the endless kvetching, i figure the cta deserves a little love when they quit screwing up quite so much. (i feel a little bad now about telling my new downstairs neighbor, who moved in about three weeks ago, that the blue line was unusable. hopefully he decided i was merely cynical due to accumulated years of disgust, and not actually an idiot.)

got some work done on my clapotis this weekend. i had a couple free hours (shock!) and decided that, dammit, it’s been languishing on the needles for far too long and i’m sort of sick of looking at it sitting there in the basket, and besides, i want to wear it, for pete’s sake. so it’s about, i think, halfway done now. maybe a little more. mohair-heavy yarn on addi turbos == mistake. it’s extremely slippery and sort of annoying to knit with, because the loops won’t stay still. but i finally picked up some speed with the pattern, and after zipping along for a couple of hours i got at least a quarter of it done on sunday, and another couple of rows last night as i was sacked out in front of Horatio and Friends’ Mystery Hour, and while i won’t give any guarantees of a date of completion, i think it’s actually possible that i might finish it at some point in recorded history. so that’s nice.

the baudelaires are still sitting in the Naughty Project Punishment Corner, as i have yet to recover from the realisation that i’m going to have to rip out and reknit the whole first sock because i knit it all wonky. i keep thinking that i should just finish them, but then i get sort of bitter about the impending frogging, and all the work i’ve put into them to have netted basically 1/2 a sock now. and of course i can’t start any new socks until i finish them, because i’m a one-pair-at-a-time girl, so … that probably explains the clapotis progress. maybe i’ll finish the clapotis and then go back and finally finish my MS3, and by that time (which will easily be the year 2045) i can finish the baudelaires. :)

hm, what else? oh! i got a fantastic pressie from my SP11 the other day. by “the other day” i actually mean a week and a half ago, but, you know… bizzy. the pictures are up on flickr but i haven’t had time to write a coherent post. i actually started using them on my clapotis, replacing some of my boring stitch markers, and i’m feeling pretty good about myself because i’ve only knitted them into the fabric about three times so far (which is pretty good for me using fancy stitch markers). also: cheese! how can you go wrong? so that’s pretty awesome. perhaps it is actually the stitch markers which are to blame for my clapotis progress this weekend? hmm…

they extended the road construction on my block another few weeks. they have been ripping Le Moyne St. to pieces since june — by which i mean the entire north side of the street was ripped up, dug out, and a water main replaced, and every day they dig it up and then fill it up again with gravel at the end of the day, so it’s been gravel since july. the practical implication of this is of course that there is no parking there during the day, so that’s annoying. i keep violating my personal sartorial restriction against sweatpants in public as i have to go get out of bed and move the car at 6:30AM — on the bright side, at least no one else is awake to see me. they claim that they will be done soon, and in fact today they have huge cement trucks out there doing their little cement truck thing, so that’s sort of interesting, except for the fact that if they fill the holes up with cement, they’ll be huge potholes by may, and if they don’t, they’re going to have to resurface the asphalt, and really, you know, given all that has transpired since then i really feel more than ever that they could honestly have given us more than one day’s notice they were going to be doing this all summer (and autumn) long. stupid water department.

this weekend shall also be very bizzy: saturday is the company’s 25th anniversary party, and i’m very excited: it’s going to be held on the trading floor, in the pits! i’ve never been down to the trading floor. i’ve never even seen it from the viewing gallery, because that’s closed except to tour groups now, so even though i work there i can’t just go strolling in and look. of course it won’t be the same seeing it with, you know, a party going on instead of floor trading, but at least i can see what it looks like. then sunday i’m heading up to the illinois railway museum with a friend to visit it before they stop running trains for the season, and then i have the white sox season closer. then it’s five whole months until baseball again. :( the world series doesn’t count… i mean, go cleveland! and all, but, … meh. i still blame kenny williams, and also the ban on mark buehrle’s tarp sliding in the rain. all the bad luck stems from that ban! rescind the slip ‘n slide ban! save the 2008 season!

oh yes:

okay, that’s it for now. gotta run go get ready for work now. also, i think somewhere in this hubbub i forgot to pay my gas bill. i wonder where i put it…

i’m completely booked all weekend — literally, i’m leaving the house at like 6:30 tomorrow morning and not getting home until late sunday. i’m only going out to the ‘burbs, but, i’m literally booked, so i’m staying in a hotel out there. so since i couldn’t take tiger with me, i had to take him to the vet’s to kennel him for the weekend. :( i feel terrible about it. i know, he’s getting much better care at the vet’s office than if he was here at home and i had to keep commuting back and forth twice a day, when his med schedule would be completely wacky because no doubt i’d be trapped at various obligations and then get stuck in traffic, but still, i felt so bad when he gave me his big sad eyes look as the vet tech was taking him away.

and now kiyoshi is wandering around the apartment meowing all the time.

i’m such a bad kitty mommy. :(

Hey, what a shocker! Da Mare is on board with Blago’s ridiculous cash handout!

You know, it’s a sad day when I have to side with Judy Baar Topinka, but … for pete’s sake, people. The state is flat broke. Where is this money coming from? Is there a magical transit leprechaun pot of gold that you just found in the governor’s mansion? And, yeah, let’s just throw cash at the CTA and ignore Pace and Metra, because that’s a really good way to make the collar counties feel warm and cosy about how well they’re being taken care of by these funding packages. Not to mention, this only postpones the problem for another month! I’m sorry, but eliminating busses in November sucks just as much as eliminating them in September, it only buys you guys a few days off the hot seat. And, did I ask this already — where is this money coming from?? Seriously, you just spent months in a budget stalemate because there was no money. So either you were holding out on us all summer long about the secret pile of cash under G-Rod’s mattress, or you’re waving your big gubernatorial Discover Card at the problem, and guys, I gotta tell you, you seriously cannot put your regional mass transit on a charge card. And it’s not a frigging solution to the problem!!!

Although, I will say this about the whole situation: I’m really enjoying having chats about this issue with the firm’s in-house lawyer, at work. He’s, predictably, conservative, but as it happens, I really enjoy talking about political issues with people who disagree with me, so long as we’re both more invested in a quality debate than in dogma (that caveat being why I avoid discussing politics with, say, family members), so we’ve actually had several really fun conversations. Anyways, today I ran into him in the hall, and I was like, “Hey, I bet I know something we are in total agreement about right now!” And I wasn’t wrong!

hm. have been running around (as usual) lately, but:

1) Still working on the sysadmin blog. It turns out, it takes time to come up with that style of blog entry — way more time than slapping up a quick link and complaining about people maligning britney spears. who knew? am contemplating asking other people to contribute. i still think a sysadmin blog would be a neat idea, but i no longer thing i am up to the task of 2 full length articles a week. so, for now, back burner.
2) Have been reading Dr. Housing Bubble lately. i appreciate the reality check, vs. people telling me that a mortgage is a “forced savings plan” (yeah, one with a $10-$15k upfront nonrefundable fee, plus one where you’re not earning interest, someone else is) and irritating guilt trips over renting. i like renting! renting is perfectly workable for me. i may eventually buy a place, but it’s certainly not going to be in this market, and it’s certainly not going to cost me 50% of my net income. that shit is insane.
3) Got the new Kanye West album yesterday. *thumbs up* did maybe feel a little out of place, being a white chick in a volkswagen, windows down and radio up, driving around Woodlawn and 97th, yesterday. oh well. life’s rough like that sometimes.
4) I’m still pretty hot over the transit funding situation. Apparently now G-Rod is trying to be all save-the-day and ride his magical unicorn in with a bucket of cash (Sun-Times) and is actually pissed off that the transit boards are not falling at his feet in gratitude. “I would say that they should not look a gift horse in the mouth … it seems to me, pretty ungrateful if they turn down this help.” I can actually agree with Judy Baar Topinka on this one: “[T]his is just a payday loan.” It’s not a solution! You are waving your Discover Card at the CTA in hopes we’ll all shut up bitching! Maybe you should quit trying to kill bills that would raise actual money to fund our transit, like more than a couple of weeks’ worth of cash, if you want us to shut up! Arrrrgh! I am so sorry I ever voted for you. The only thing you’ve done I still approve of is the pharmacy emergency contraception mandatory distribution, and frankly, I could have gotten that from a lot of people.
5) Stupid transit. I’m driving to work today, and just thinking about this situation is about to make me late getting ready for work.

dear popular media outlets and entertainment “journalists”:

you can pick on a lot of things to do with britney spears’ appearance at the mtv video music awards.

you can pick on her hair, which clearly needs some TLC and a pair of scissors.
you can pick on her vacant facial expression in this photo.
you can pick on lip-syncing.
you can pick on tacky costumes.
you can pick on insufficiently practiced dance routines.
you can even pick on the music if you want to pretend to a higher journalistic plane than this.

but you cannot say that she is fat. she’s not. she’s not emaciated, but she’s not fat. she’s not “too heavy,” as your article says. she’s not a slob. her arms are toned, her boobs are not falling out of the bra, she has a defined waist, she has nice thighs, and she has a nice belly. she’s not fat. quit making such a fuss as though she weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and could barely wash off the cheeto-dust from her fingers before going on stage just because you can’t see every rib in her upper chest like hilary swank. britney spears is not fat! you are being ridiculous!

no love,
–s.

so this evening after work i meandered up to 810 N Dearborn and fait l’examen, and now i’ve managed to get myself all registered for classes at the Alliance Française de Chicago. so starting next week, twice a week, i’ll go wear a beret and smoke gauloises and make snooty remarks about the english. and if i’m really lucky, i’ll remember what the hell the imparfait de l’indicatif is used for.

after registering, i walked home, which was not a bad walk at all (about three miles), except for the part where i was wearing cute but very thin-soled ballet flats (which are perfectly comfy so long as your chief activity is wandering around a carpeted office, and not, say, broken sidewalk, for walking over which one might want a shoe with more arch support than a thin piece of suede). also, next time, maybe not so much with the scenic foot tour of cabrini-green.

so someone, like, friended, or whatever the appropriate verb is, me on facebook, thus inviting me to sign up, and so, despite having lost my .edu email address possession (cough kinda cough) apparently that’s no longer a restriction, therefore i signed up. (i feel like such a trendwhore. only, given my very lateness to facebook, a really incompetent one….)

i promptly clicked to see who else from my high school graduating class was on there, looked at their profile pictures, and realized we’re all old now, and closed the browser tab with extreme prejudice.

dammit. i can’t be old! i’m hip and with it! i have funny-colored hair! i have a sweet pair of red patent mary janes! i listen to indie rock! i … dammit!

i’m going to sulk over here in the corner and, like, do some retirement planning. stupid kids and their stupid facebook. dammit.

warning: sabrina’s got her cranky pants on today.

this is JUST the news i wanted to hear about vote on the the goddamn mass transit funding bill in the goddamn illinois house.

A plan to raise taxes to help Chicago-area mass transit systems has failed in the Illinois House. …

The plan called for increasing sales taxes in Cook County and the five surrounding “collar” counties. It also would have raised a real estate tax in Chicago.

hey, G-Rod… thanks a lot for withholding your support and repeated insistence that you’d veto, making sure that cook county couldn’t raise its own goddamn sales taxes to fund its own goddamn mass transit, so the whole goddamn state didn’t have to chip in. now, instead of paying an (average) extra $35 per year in taxes, i can pay an extra $150 per year for my transit pass, which will now access far, far fewer buses and much crappier trains. oh, it isn’t fair for the poor drivers to have to pay to support transit they don’t even use… fuck that shit! transit indirectly serves everyone in this whole goddamn region, especially the drivers! every time my car isn’t out there taking up space on the kennedy, that’s your asses being served! every time some teenaged kid schlepps his ass after school from Lane Tech to a White Hen downtown, making seven bucks an hour so you can get your coffee, that’s transit serving your lazy cheap ass! if White Hen has to start paying ten bucks an hour just to get people who are willing to spend four hours on the goddamn el every goddamn day, YOUR CHEAP BAD COFFEE JUST GOT MORE EXPENSIVE, so SUCK IT UP just like how you told us transit riders to suck this up.

i hope gas goes up to eight bucks a gallon, you goddamn intellectually lazy, selfish, shortsighted fucking morons!

p.s. and for you suburban morons who are all pointing and laughing and saying we deserve to have the cta collapse due to our clear mismanagement:

Without new funding, Metra plans to divert $60 million of its capital budget to fund operations this year, which would reduce the amount the agency can spend on track maintenance and equipment.

hey, diverting capital funds to operations — that always works out well. just look at the CTA! y’all have fun with that!

p.p.s. Hey Los Angeles — enjoy the Olympics! we’ll just catch it on tv. it’s cool… illinois is just rolling in cash, we didn’t need that tax and tourism revenue anyways.

p.p.p.s. rod blagojevich, it’ll be a cold goddamn day in hell before i vote to elect you for so much as Sangamon County Dogcatcher.