the everyday adventures of sabrina

i used to have only two rules for suicide, developed when one day i was riding metra to work one day and we were … “unexpectedly delayed.”

   1. Don’t fuck up anyone’s commute.
   2. Don’t leave a disgusting mess for the EMTs.

later i added a third rule, when i had moved into an apartment building i’d been specifically looking forward to having rooftop access at, only to learn that literally a week before i moved in, they’d cut off rooftop access due to a jumper.

   3. Don’t fuck up any of my shit.

now, i see (after reading this) that i neglected to set a very obvious rule out. thus i present to you the world premiere debut of sabrina’s fourth rule of suicide:

   4. Don’t take anyone with you, you selfish bastard.

i have two words to say in reponse to this opinion piece: HELL YES.

Given the multiple ineptitudes of Rod Blagojevich — his reckless financial stewardship, his dictatorial antics, his penchant for creating political enemies — should citizens create a new way to terminate a chief executive who won’t, or can’t, do his job?
…
The Blagojevich experience suggests that the answer is yes, Illinois should write a recall mechanism into its constitution. Having endured the Blagojevich era, we believe voters never should have to endure another one like it. They instead should have the power to recall an inept governor.

i have voted on a number of occasions, and on some of them have later decided that i chose poorly (or at best, the better choice was still an idiot). but i have never regretted a vote so much as i do my vote for G-Rod. ugh! at this point, i think the best thing blago can do for illinois is bond democrats, republicans, and independents in a spirit of togetherness as we all gather to bitch about the ways that we want him to quit his job and get the hell out of our hair.

Sirs:

This is in response to your opinion piece of 28 October entitled “Tell us what you think: Removing a governor.”

From your op-ed pages to God’s ears. The best thing Blago has done for me for the past few years is given me some common ground with people with whose politics I otherwise often disagree — we can gather at the coffee machine at work and all bask in the togetherness of wishing he would quit playing “I’m the fun governor!” at our expense. I feel that he has actively worked to make my life worse, with his hamfisted attempts to control the state (with special appreciation for how he’s handled the ongoing RTA/CTA/Metra problems), and the worst part about it is that he hasn’t even made anyone else’s life better in return for my inconvenience; he’s an equal-opportunity clown. He has all the subtlety and governance skill of a hyper two year old, only we don’t have the power to send him to his room so he’ll quit breaking our stuff. I long for the days when the most irritating thing about our governor was his slight tendency to engage in illegal funding schemes.

In other words: Yes, yes, we need a recall clause!

Sabrina L Downard
Wicker Park, Chicago
847 xxx xxxx (mobile)

so, as you might have heard, i recently settled a little debate between the irs and me regarding whether or not i had in fact filed my 2003 tax return. (me: of course i have, i always file my taxes, and your stupid electronic system’s braindamage is not my problem. them: oh yes it is, sweetcheeks.) part of the problem was that i would have just redone the goddamn taxes from scratch (having long since lost my TurboTax 2003 disk) except for the minor problem of having mislaid my file folder of tax papers for tax year 2003.

now, as you may or may not recall, in early 2004, i was busily looking for a new apartment, signing papers for one, finding money to pay for the move, packing, and, finally, moving. i in fact moved in april of 2004. i filed my taxes electronically on the morning of april 15 — i recall, because i had insomnia that night, so i gave up on sleep at around 2AM, then got up and did my taxes. (really, you’d think the taxes would have put me back to sleep, but nooooo.) it actually worked out to my benefit, because of course the evening of april 15, everyone’s servers exploded due to those who procrastinated ever so slightly more than i. (not that i hadn’t planned to do my taxes that evening. it was just that, with the insomnia and all, i had nothing better to do than my taxes.) after that, the tax information got packed — i remembered very distinctly putting it someplace specific so that i wouldn’t lose it, in case i needed it. it is to this day a mystery why i didn’t leave it with all my other goddamn files of back tax years.

i never did find that goddamn folder, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the one year i ever had an issue with my taxes?

fast forward a couple of years, and the irs is getting ever more cranky about this strange gap in my taxpaying history, and i cannot find that file. i mean, it’s the file folder with everything — W2s, 1099s, mortgage interest statements, donation receipts, everything. it’s the file. and i have no clue, none — for years running, i have no idea! — what i did with it, despite having made a point to put it some place i wouldn’t lose it. in the end, i started running down the list of everybody i can remember, trying to get duplicate papers for everything — which is a pain in the ass, because you try remembering everyone you might have done tax-related business with five years ago. in the end, i actually stooped to calling the irs (which, honestly, should probably have been step #1, but since i am Denial Girl, step #1 was, well, denial), and the nice lady said “oh, do you still have a copy of your 1040? just send it to us, don’t worry about the rest — everybody sends us your W2 and 1099s anyways.” and since i had filed electronically and had saved myself a PDF — like i always do — i did in fact still have my 1040 (and nothing else).

so i mailed it in, and now, three months later, i’m all good. denial is really, i must admit, an ineffectual approach to this sort of situation. oh well.

but now we come to the life lesson part of the story.

you ever have something in your house that you know what’s in it, you don’t have to look? i mean, you’re quite sure what’s in it, and you don’t have to deal with that (nor do you want to), so you’re not even going to open it?

so i was cleaning my office this afternoon, because frankly it was a fucking mess, and it got so bad i couldn’t stand it anymore (chiefly driven by my attempt to start cleaning yesterday afternoon, which in fact resulted in increased mess), so i went through every bit of paper i had been piling up for a rainy day, shredded everything that looked interesting, pitched every single envelope, sorted the rest, pitched a bunch more crap i didn’t care about, shredded some more stuff, generated a huge trash bag of ripped-open envelopes and the stupid inserts they put in your electric bill and another huge bag full of shredded goodness, and as i was transferring some files from my filing cabinet into a filing box i’d newly emptied of piled-up old mail i didn’t care about in 2006 and sure-hell didn’t care about now, i noticed a banker’s envelope leaning against my bookshelf. now, this envelope was full of correspondance, from a while ago — i’d briefly enjoyed some cross-Atlantic penpal chatter after having been bored one day and putting a penpal ad in SFX magazine, which to this day remains the one and only magazine to which i have ever subscribed which enjoys the privilege of my actually reading every single issue as soon as it arrived, though i digress — and we’d all long since quit writing. by ‘long since,’ i mean, since i lived in hyde park. where i moved out of in early 2004. i thought to myself, well, i’m throwing shit out, i might as well dump that shit. so i unwrapped the closure on the folder, and sure enough, piles of letters and unused airmail envelopes inside, … along with a bright red hanging file folder.

i always store all my tax files in bright red hanging file folders.

yes kids, after four long years of searching, in two different apartments, and after having finally gotten the goddamn mess figured out with the IRS, i have finally got my 2003 tax folder back.

…

and that is why you should always obey the two year rule, because if you don’t, you assume you know what it is that you’re ignoring, but since you’ve ignored it for years now, you’re wrong, and man, doesn’t that make you feel like a damnfool idiot?

but now, if you’ll excuse me, i have to vacuum and try to forget what a damnfool idiot i am.

you know your weekend is not going to shape up to be what you might have hoped for when you get up in the morning, go to brush your teeth and wash your face, and the bathroom sink hot water tap sputters and spits and eventually runs out of water. to be followed in short order by the kitchen hot water tap, the kitchen cold water tap, the bathtub cold water tap, and eventually the bathroom sink cold water tap.

scant minutes after i left a mildly confused-sounding message for my building manager (“Hi, um… I dunno if the water department was working on anything again… but I don’t have any water… like, at all…”) my doorbell rang and it was he; apparently the main pipe for the building asploded. So now I have no water. No water means no coffee. All the water I have is what’s in my teakettle (which I think is empty, actually), and what’s in the toilet tank.

I think I’m going to have to go make an emergency bottled-water run to Jewel. No shower is bad enough, but — No coffee, man! What is this, a third-world country?!?!

i stopped by the post office today and picked up a certified letter that was waiting for me:

C E R T I F I E D    M A I L

WE COULDN'T ALLOW YOUR CLAIM

Dear Taxpayer:

WHY WE'RE SENDING YOU THIS LETTER
This letter is your notice that we've disallowed your claim for credit for the period shown above.

WHY WE CANNOT ALLOW YOUR CLAIM
You filed your original tax return more than 3 years after the due date. Your tax return showed ana overpayment. To claim that overpayment as a credit or to obtain a refund, you have to file your tax return within 3 years from its due date.

yes, folks, it’s true: my 2003 tax return is finally filed, in order, accepted, and DONE, DONE, DONE. i’m not even miffed to have lost my $100 refund from 2003, since i knew about the 3 year forfeit rule going in. i’m just ecstatic to learn that it’s over with!

i might have spent my entire evening thus far listening to violent femmes really loud and dancing around inanely. you can’t stop the dancing. MY TAX NIGHTMARE IS OVER!

also: i should finally be receiving my 2006 refund soon! “6 weeks.” countdown to long overdue $600: COMMENCE.

i watched this week’s episode of CSI: New York¹ last night. it was subtle, but if you listened carefully, when the time machine was activated, they had TARDIS sound effects in the background.

teehee!

–
1: shut up. i only need two words to justify this habit: Gary Sinese.

following the tradition where, as one thing goes right, another two go wrong — i had my stereo repaired recently and it’s fantastic and wonderful and marvellous and i am so grateful to have it back and that is naturally why both my cassette tape deck and, apparently now also, my dvd player have gone tits-up.

the tape deck, okay, that i can live without. i have used it on average about … twice a year for the past six years or maybe longer. it really didn’t get a whole lot of use. i’m very sad it’s dead, for sentimental reasons (that tape deck is at least 50% responsible, along with my vintage sansui stereo receiver, for getting me through high school relatively sane), but … realistically, i am more than happy to admit that the cassette era is over.

the DVD player, though… that i’m cranky about. it’s a lovely little slim philips model, and it can’t be much more than two years old. it’s multiregion, and does pal to ntsc conversions, which is helpful since i have a fairly respectable selection of Region 2 (and a couple oddball 4) discs. and, also very nicely, it plays DivX and XviD, so i burn things to CDs all the time and play them back on the television, which is great. the player does not seem to be dead-dead-dead, but it has decided to not power on anymore, which is sort of inconvenient since it has a disc in it at the moment. and not just a disc, not even just a rental disc, but a rental disc rented by someone else that we were watching at my place. (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, if you want to know — by the way, i really recommend it; we laughed our fool heads off.)

but, i’m just so tired of always replacing things when they break. it’s always felt very wasteful, but most of the time, you can’t argue with the economies of it — if a new player costs $75, and a repair might cost the same or possibly even more, who’s going to stick with the old and busted one? but now i’m just feeling curmudgeonly, and so i decided that i’m just going to repair the damn player, unless it costs me more than $100. it’s probably just a bad power supply or blown capacitor or something, and that should be totally reasonable to fix. and i’m sick of the waste of just replacing things. so i’m not gonna do it. so take that, cheap chinese electronics imports!

so today was yarncon, which — i didn’t realize when i first heard about it — was actually organized by some friends. who knew? also, it was held at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse, which is, … oh, a whopping three or four blocks from my house.

i’d volunteered to be a Stitch Doctor, and help out folks with questions, but apparently everyone already knows how to knit and crochet and were therefore not in need of help. at any rate, at least it was a good excuse to get in some more work on my clapotis.

i also sat for Franklin of The Panopticon, for his 1000 Knitters Project. i am, IIRC, knitter number 198! it was fun to sit with him — i thought i might feel self-conscious, knitting for a camera, but he was really friendly and fun to chat with, and i barely paid attention to the camera. actually, i think i tried to convince him to go buy some sock yarn from the vendors in the next booth over.

i was very good, myself. i had promised myself that i was only allowed to buy yarns that were unique and indie crafted — no commercial yarns! also, those yarns tend to be expensive, and i am cash poor until monday-payday, so that helped keep me in check as well. i came away with three skeins of yarn:

hand-dyed with natural dyes merino worsted handspun single, from Green Apple Yarn, in a pleasing sort of daffodil shade.

hand painted raw silk from “Carpool,” who does not seem to have either a URI or even much google-fu, as i cannot find a link, which is sad, because she had the most fabulously pretty handpainted tussah silk fiber which i totally lusted after. i’m not sure what i’m going to do with this — she was knitting a sock out of it, but as pleasant as i find the idea of cosy warm silk socks, i’m just not sure i can really get behind it in reality. also, this yarn seems too pretty to stuff in my sneakers. we’ll see.

this DK, handpainted by Shannon Okey, jumped into my bag. i never saw it coming.

so, anyways. that was my day! now i am going to cast on for a pair of Dashing for someone, and i shall continue to work on my Anti-Baudelaires, and with the clapotis done, this leaves precious few hibernating WIPs to feel guilty about ignoring, so i feel pretty decent about this whole knitting productivity thing right this very moment. :)

hey, al gore, you still rule! congrats on the nobel peace prize! love ya!

MONKEY!!!

-> *anonymous_benefactor* OMFG
-> *anonymous_benefactor* MONKEY
-> *anonymous_benefactor* you rule :))))
*anonymous_benefactor* hahahahaha
<wasy> monkey: 5, niqui: 0
<davidr> hahahaha
<davidr> those little handles are tricky
<wasy> monkey: 5, niqui: 1
<wasy> monkey: 6, niqui: 1
<twork> …..?
* niqui cackles and cackles and cackles
<wasy> niqui got her screaming flying monkey
<twork> niqui has a screaming flying monkey???
<wasy> it doesn’t scream or fly too much yet
<wasy> monkey: 7, niqui: 1
<niqui> surprisingly hard to aim
* niqui <– laughing too much really

No. I cannot give up. I am not a quitter. I am a winner. Winners never quit, and quitters never win. Quitters also never have any goddamn socks!

I frogged the purple Baudelaires because I was sick of being defeated by them. They were socks! I normally finish a pair of transit socks in like 4 weeks. 6 if I’m lazy. I’d been working on these SINCE JUNE. Okay, they did spend a lot of time in the Naughty WIPs Basket, but still, what with all the ripping back, I had knit at least three socks. And was faced with knitting at least another one and a half. They had to be stopped or I was never going to knit another sock again. So I frogged them, balled the yarn up nicely, stuck the ball bands (which of course I saved) in them, put the yarn in the bin, picked out some new sock yarn to start knitting on… cast on for another toe-up with my 2.5mm needles… and, yesterday, faced with a finished toe, despite my earnest and defiant intent to start with a plain, ordinary, no-frills stockinette and ribbing sock…

STARTED THE BAUDELAIRE PATTERN AGAIN.

I have decided to call these socks the Anti-Baudelaires. They have stripey yarn, which will be too busy for the lace. I haven’t looked at the pattern once. I haven’t even tried on the toe yet. There’s a tiny hole in the toe where one of my bar increases was weird, and I’m not fucking ripping back. I’m patching it up when I weave in the ends, and to hell with detail. I WILL PERSEVERE, AND I WILL HAVE THESE SOCKS IF IT KILLS ME. And what’s more, I’ll have them before Thanksgiving. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

this morning, i’m coming east down jackson street, and i notice, blocks ahead, a white sign floating out over the street — looking like something that’d been tethered to a building, perhaps the building next to the CBOT building, but had broken loose of its bottom tethers. the wind is blowing it around pretty well, and all i can read of it is:

ORES
STRUCTI

so, naturally, i figure this is some sort of ad banner for some sort of new construction condo building downtown — of which there are countless numbers at this point in time — and so i resume looking around for the source of the emergency sirens i could hear behind us.

we get a little closer to the building and notice that it appears that two people dressed in black are scaling (or rappelling down) the front of the CBOT building, with the enormous white sign, which we can now read a little more of:

AINFOREST
ESTRUCTION

and i say, well, you know, these guys are pretty generous, it’s nice to be a philanthropist when you make stacks of cash, but i don’t know that the building would really be sponsoring a giant sign on the front of the building about saving rainforests, so that seems a little odd. meanwhile, there are sirens around us everywhere but still can’t find them.

then we’re at the front door and i run inside and think no further on this (other than idly wondering, inside, why the hell there are still so many sirens), until around 0900 when i run down the hall to fetch coffee and blair mentions something about the rainforest protest, and suddenly everything clicks.

tribune:

Police this morning arrested two protesters on the Chicago Board of Trade building in the Loop and were trying to get two others off its roof.

The demonstrators, members of the Rainforest Action Network, climbed up the side of the CBOT building at Jackson and Wells Streets at the start of the day’s trading and unfurled a 50-foot banner protesting the expansion of U.S. agricultural businesses.

man, some days it really pays to pay a little more attention to details, you know? i totally could have moblogged that!

my buddy bill doesn’t have a blog and therefore cannot post his own squee, but this really needs to be squeed about. he ran the chicago marathon yesterday, and finished in 4:06:52. dude, four straight hours of running! how is that not completely freaking amazing? first marathon, too!

i’m going to feel way less badass next time i spend 50 minutes on my elliptical, i tell you what. :)

way to go, bill!!!!!