i can't believe i didn't take any pix

so i took saratoga public transportation for the first time in my life (minus trolley travels) today. full of ugly teenagers.

the best thing i saw was an ad about cdta workers. the ad featured tammy, a cdta bus operator. (brother jeff and i LOVE tammies. too much, really.) her "life motto"? "to become a role model for other employees"

that's my life motto, too. tammy has inspired me, as so many tammies in my past.

i'm surprising my oldest niece tomorrow by taking her out to lunch and she'll probably be blessed with getting to meet too many of my friends. the life lesson i hope we all impart on her impressionable 13-year-old brain? to become a role model for other employees.

that's almost a complete sentence, right?

look what i saw

merry christmas, from the brisbins!

i present you with some favorite photos from the past few days.

this is dad explaining to the rest of the clan that i'm his favorite. he's demonstrating his adoration of me by showing off the 'daddy's little star' ornament i made him in 1989:

this is doug, a friend from my travels home from chicago:

this is marcus, another new friend. he looks like andre 3000, even though you can't really tell from this photo:

check it, a mennonite on a cell phone! also, other new friends in the foreground:

an 'artsy' view of some bridge near toledo:

these ladies had some trouble with the vending machine:


that's all for now. maybe i'll provide you with a saratoga edition at the end of my stay.

home actually

at last, i'm here in the bed of my youth, preparing to get a real night of sleep.

here's a quick round-up of my home-for-the-holidays commute:

my train was 16 hours late. i slept on a floor and a bench in a station that was about (i'm not exaggerating) 40 degrees. after the train was 7 hours late, they let us into a mildly heated lounge, which we were kicked out of after about 2.5 or 3 hours. yadda yadda wah wah wah whine whine gripe and grumble, we finally board the train and sit still on the tracks for another hour. this is me on the train:


the train starts moving and a conductor walks down the aisle distributing vouchers for a free hot dog to each passenger. this coupon helps us all forget the misery of the preceding 16 hours. thanks, amtrak!!

two or three hours later, the train stops for another three hours. i stumble half-asleep back to the cafe car and find friends i'd made at the station. we drink cheap beer and laugh a lot and exchange contact information.

i pass out in indiana, wake up in syracuse, and finally arrive in albany around 11 am, the day after i was scheduled to arrive.

paul and i do not get lost driving home from the station, nor do we crash due to slippery conditions.

i will post a few favorite photos from the last 48 hours during the next 24 hours. i'm sure you're all dying to see 'em.

happy holidays, y'all!

i got a new (badder) attitude

it's 7 am. i'm still in chicago. i should be halfway home by now.

remember how i said i loved train travel? maybe that still might be true. but i totally hate this train station.

this is me at 4 am:


sitting in temperatures of approximately 47 degrees. i felt like a homeless person. only with more money and a home and a job and a shower and stuff.

when our train was 7 hours late, they let us into the first-class sleeper-car lounge, which is mildly heated, but still colder than my apartment. this is me now, after finding out that the train will probably leave 11.5 hours after scheduled:


i look green, right?

there are more amish pictures and stories to share, but they hardly seem important anymore.

i must say, people here are freaking nice. no one is freaking out. people are disappointed in the way the station is handling things, but no one is causing a scene. respek.

holy crap! (puns aplenty)

ok. i have some synch. maybe.

still reporting from union station. so delayed.

so there's an amish family here which i think might be weird, but maybe not. i snapped two photos of the one i have a crush on (what? i'm a lonely gal!):



i just did a quick google search to see what the amish views are of trains, and the top of my search (i think google personalizes their search results now, so you probably wouldn't have the same result) was a link to a yahoo answers question about amish people whoopin' it up at union station.

also, remember the cool toilet thingy (scroll down to second pic) from the harold washington library? it exists here, too!

live blogging from the train station!

omg. train travel is so much fun.

i'm not even on the train yet, everybody's wicked delayed, and humans love to complain.

i kind of feel like a rich hobo. look at me, blogging like a mofo in fingerless gloves and a hat i stole from the coffee shop.


somehow the 'south lounge' area of union station has managed to become segregated. i'm sitting with the ostensibly lower class peoples because that's where there's the most room.

i wish i had a more exciting story to share. or something synchronous. instead i'll just complain about people complaining. i mean, seriously people. you really think that travelling during the first days of hannukah and three days before christmas when the majority of the northern part of our country is getting blasted with wintry wintry winterness is going to be easy and delay-free?

wah wah wah. that's all i'm hearing. except for this lady.


she's jolly as heck. i like her. and her afghan has birdhouses on it. awww yeaaahhh.

check back later for more live-blogging. i don't think this really qualifies as live blogging, but i don't give a care.

family time tomorrow!!!

** LIVE UPDATE!!**

the trains are delayed because the toilets are frozen! i learned that from a friend i just made. i love runnin' with outcasts!

no matter the weather or lack of money, support your local coffee shop

i think this is synchronous:

bored to near-death at work, i'm crusin' facebook, looking at the profile of someone i went to college with and had only a few interactions with, mostly negative. doesn't really matter. but in his little "friends" cell i see john vanderslice. i think, 'oh, that's weird that it's a friend thingy and not a fan thingy.' then i think, 'wait, i'm playing john vanderslice on my ipod right now.'

i haven't listened to john vanderslice in months, at the very least.

i understand what they meant about the wind here

my life ain't been worth a blog lately. i did talk to my mom on gchat for about an hour this morning, though. she's getting good at Web 2.0.

look how domestic i was last night. i left a treat for my roommates to return home to:


and tackled a mound of laundries:


headin' home tomorrow. i was told the train from chicago to albany is party-times. i'm going to document it. unless it isn't and i take a sleeping pill and pass out. then i won't document nothin'.

can't wait to see my family and friends. can't wait to see the sky. chicago, you're lovely, but there's no place like home.

where my synch at?

it's that time of the month. not my period, just my lacking synchronicity.

which, this month, means an increase in total freaks at work.

real things said to me in a five-minute period by the smelliest person i've ever smelled:

"$2.30 ... that's a good age, huh? hahahahahaha"

"sometimes i go somewhere and it's like 7 o clock and i'm like 'what is it happy hour? i don't feel too happy!'"

there was some other completely incomprehensible stuff, too. i'm livin' the life.

'i'm a mermaid!'

on a happier note, we also caught part of a TLC show called 'mermaid girl.'

this amazing eight-year-old was born with her legs fused together. doctors have suggested surgery to separate them, but the girl doesn't want to. she's accepted her differences. amazing.

we didn't start watching til halfway through, but this clip answered some of our questions, namely how does she go to the bathroom?

check this out:



also, later in the program she and her mom call the doctor 'doctor hottie' or something equally cute.

blowing chunks of baby calf

ugh.

i ate veal for the first time ever tonight (synchronicity to follow) and i also just barfed veal for the first time ever tonight. BABY CALVES DON'T BELONG IN MY BELLY!

my friends invited me over for dinner and when i was facebook-chatting with one of them he asked if there's any off-limits food and i said veal, not expecting that to be on the menu. then he said 'what if you don't know you're eating veal?' and i don't remember what i said. probably that it wouldn't matter much if i didn't know i was eating it.

then i saw that delicious-looking-and-smelling meatballs were being prepared when i arrived at da crib. then i peeked at the recipes sitting on the counter and saw that the meatballs called for veal. but i figured that if i wasn't eating veal steak (does that even make sense? meat confuses me), i could stomach it. i could fuggedaboudit. so i did.

then i felt awful and had a headache and i'm still not sure if i'm just getting a migraine (which would be synchronous also, but i'll spare you) or if i ate some poisoned veal.

sigh. the receiving of a good deed (tasty food prepared with love by people i enjoy) doesn't go unpunished, i guess.

dreamy service

i don't mind dreaming about work. i think it makes perfect sense, and for as long as i've been working, i've had work dreams.

the problem i've been having lately is dreaming of customers. when i dream about customers, we're never at the cafe. often i'm dating the customer in the dream.

then for the next four or five times i serve them, i feel really awkward like they know all about my dream.

i had a dream that one customer's penis split into two, and i still have trouble looking him in the eye (it has nothing to do with the fact that he's 6'7") when i tell him how much his medium latte costs.

and then last night i had a dream that i was happily in love with another regular and when he came just now and made small talk with me (for the first time) i was totally mortified and convinced he knew about the dream.

i think i've been sleeping too much.

a discourse on discourse

it's (ostensibly, i haven't checked any charts) a full moon tonight. sadly, nothing too crazy happened.

i did have a revelation, though. you know how the majority of my friends aren't straight? well, i was hanging out with two of them tonight and something was said about how i'll never call myself a 'fag hag' and one of my friends called me a 'fruit fly.' that sounds way better, and now that i've looked up the definition, i see that is way better.

also, my psychically connected friend and i both ate spinach salads for dinner, even though a time zone separates us.

also i bought pre-sliced onions and was ridiculed for this fact. whatever. i don't care if i'm unmarriable because i don't like to cook. at least it only takes me five minutes to prepare a large salad.

me 'n my murderous roommates

i woke up later than i had planned today (a little before noon) and walked out to the living room window to see what the weather was doing. i wanted to know what to wear to the gym. as i turned around to go back to my bedroom, i saw a person on the couch:


we don't usually have couch sleepers, and definitely not on a weeknight, but i didn't think too much of it.

until i came home about an hour and half later and saw this:


she hadn't moved at all.

i made a few loud phone calls and took a shower, hoping she'd wake up or something. after my shower, she was still there. i thought maybe we had a corpse in our living room. i didn't know if i should contact the boys or what to do.

so i kind of pretended it wasn't happening. then it struck me, just seconds after typing in a gchat conversation: 'i think i have a corpse on my couch.' i remembered that i came home from work one night to find these new friends:


my silly roommates played a prank on me! and i don't think they even knew how easy it is to get me to fall for stupid stuff like that. but now they do. i'm probably doomed.

this is our mantle. nathan wants to turn them into a coat rack. i hope it happens.

caught on digital camera!

look at this ghost (i circled it for you). that's what it is, right? that's in my home!

a merry synchronous day

i came home from a completely out-of-synch (but pleasant) journey to logan square to find that alan had bought a christmas tree! so we pumped some sick holiday jamz and trimmed dat shyt!


happy holidays, from your handsome friends at 1057 west foster (photography courtesy nathan bluestone)!

***

and now for awesome synch:

i had a dream on thursday about our (i will speak for my coworkers) favorite customers. they came in at night instead of in the morning and they were like bizarro versions of their real selves. totally somber and weird.

today i saw them and told them and one of them said that he had a dream about me too! in his dream, he went to pee in the alley but his boyfriend and i decided to just pee on the street. i went standing up and then i had a green mess all over my pants.

his dream of me was on thursday as well. i'm getting really good with my dream powers.

it's really winter now

the winner of the contest is ...

... drumroll ...

me! or maybe the family. because i decided i probably won't quit.

nothing too synchronous to report. if you have 45 minutes to kill, and want to watch a documentary full of cute, fat britons, watch this. it's about people with prader-willi syndrome. they can't stop eating. they're also very immature emotionally.

the scenes that involve their romantic lives are the best. dude proposes on his first date! also when the guy goes home and makes his dad buy him so many smirnoff ices at the pub. brilliant.

i'm not sure what i think about pws, but it's a good film. i love brits. and fat people documentaries.

stuff like that makes me so afraid to have kids. stuff like this makes me want to have so many of them:


that's a pre-election school worksheet from one of the kids i babysit. naming the similarities and differences between obama and mccain. hard-hitting.

choo choo!

i don't want to be a babysitter in chicago anymore. please respond with good excuses for me to give when i quit. so far, all i've got is something about 'other commitments' (total bullshit. the family is just kind of boring and totally unsynchronous. and the oldest kid gives me crap about my tattoo every time i see him).

exciting news for me: i got accepted into a classroom internship, i got a GRE prep book from the liberry, i'm gonna sing with some dudes that are forming a band this weekend. oh, also, i came home from work tonight and my roommate showed me the 7+ mannequins he acquired today to decorate the pad. stay tuned for photos.

today was pretty weird, otherwise. it's not even a full moon, yet i had to be mediator in an argument between two freaks who were calling each other evil and bragging about secret societies and being the king of england and scotland and dragons and working at the alley. also, i bought makeup today. just eyeliner, but it's the first makeup i've bought in ... oh, i'd say a year or so.

look, don't i look exactly the same but slightly more alert?

it's a trick, actually. i'm totally exhausted and the makeup has totally worn off, i think. i just opened my eyes really widely. i don't even know how to do makeup. paul, come show me how?

people, seriously, please submit babysitting quitting excuses. the winner gets a hug and maybe a more-exciting surprise.

talk about thinspiration

omg

i can't stop watching youtube videos about obese people. i did this a few months ago after adam and i watched a show on tlc about conjoined twins. i'm not sure what sparked it tonight.

look at this:

they won't let me embed it, so click here.

'you got any popcorn?' so sad:

great minds think alike

while perusing the myspace page of my internet crush (i'm not that creepy, i swear -- he has a link to it on his blog, he's askin' for it!), i saw that he has one of the favorite images brother jeff has ever shared with me:

i love this image so much that i saved it to my computer and i show it to friends and coworkers (who, sadly, are one in the same. siiiggghhh).

i don't think that's synchronicity or even evidence of soul mate status, but it reaffirms the validity of my crush on this studly blogger. it also reaffirms the validity of the blog crush i have on all of the steeez crew, since i learned of his blog from their site.

i wish i knew cool people in real life. c'mon chicago!

it's all coming back to me now

just like celine dion.

anyway, two synchronicities today. i think my female cycle unsynchronizes my life experiences.

here they are:

1.) this one is doubly awesome. at work today i was playing a wilco album and a customer said that he was listening to the same album on his ipod. hours later, i receive a txt from some hor that said: 'i just had a quasi-synch with wilco.' (you'll note this is not my first wilco-related synchronicity)

2.) i was thinking today that i should call father. i'm admittedly a terrible telephoner, even of the people i love the most in my life. but it works both ways. none of us really call each other (or at least no one really calls me), but we still know that the love exists. so i had to do some errands, and who rings my phone? jeff 'skellie' brisbin himself.

glad to see a return of the synch. it's getting cold out there.