A quick and up-to-date...

DIARY

In the last two weeks, not much exciting has happened.

I finished unpacking for the most part. Visited Jessica several times during the week, all while the students at Loyola and the U of C filtered in and took over.

Last Friday, Sam and I threw an apartment-warming party, which was also the unofficial ribbon-cutting ceremony for "gothic funk". For more news on this, look for the gothic funk manifesto, or simply listen to Des'ree whilst wearing a Hawai'ian shirt, dancing through blacklight, and firing off your taser. (I'm generally pro gun-control and anti taser-control, which puts me at odds with most legeslation). But I'll talk more about gothic funk later.

The party was to kick off with a barbecue at the Thorndale beach at sunset, but I was the only one who came. I crawled into the water with early aspirations of swimming out to the buoy. But it was cold. I did finally take the plunge and go under, and then, shivering, I crawled back up on those rocks and let the wind beat me dry. I went back home.

I'd been home for about an hour, but still hadn't bought the beer or snacks, when Amber (whose link I've somehow misplaced) arrived. I was a bit taken aback... she'd gone down to the beach for the barbecue, but nobody was there. I was very abashed, and continued being abashed, and then Liz arrived. We walked down to Jewel and bought a 30-pack of Old Style, pretzels and tortiallas, salsa, and garden burgers et al. (Incidentally, why are garden burgers so expensive, considering what goes into them is so much cheaper than actual meat?!)

In the end, the party was attended by Amber, Jessica, Liz, Ben, Mercedes, Joe, Gemma, and Colin... and Sam and I. Liz took off early. Jess showed up but was exhausted from her long day at work, and went to bed almost right away. The FIST crowd arrived more or less at once, with Ben showing up a bit later... and Sam getting back from work at one. Ben and Gemma left around one. The rest of us hung on 'til the bitter end... 4 AM. We polished off, in total, some 40 Old Styles (I contributed 10 myself, that being required for the pyramid I was building). We talked about the range of things, but the topic kept shifting back to politics.

Hence, the current appearance of my blog.

The next morning, Jess and I returned to Hyde Park. By this time I was getting more emails about the Canaryville context site. I've agreed to make some changes, but I'm not going to alter my revision process as soon as I get a pissed-off email. I sent the 29th as a tentative revision date. We hung around Hyde Park, unfortunately missing church on Sunday, but we did enjoy a nice lunch at Salonica with Elisabeth, and then headed out to buy a suit for an interview I attended Monday. Well, we got the suit and shopped around, but Jess' car broke, and I didn't make it back to Edgewater until 11. Skyler had come down to visit and interview... Sam was up in Marquette getting his stuff... and now I realize that the context I need to provide to make this make sense is more than I want to get into right now.

Suffice it to say that Skyler went to his interview Monday, and I went to mine, and as far I know, neither of us has heard anything. We sat up and talked... politics of course... ate quiche and Ramen, and I watched clips from Bowling for Columbine over and over, but mostly just the part where the kids are on the rampage, and listened to the song Cryptochid by Marilyn Manson. Together, they make me angry. Angry, and more angrily articulate in repetition. And that gives me the energy to break from inertia, and actually accomplish what I think I should be doing these days.

Last night... at Colin's... the first debate.

~ Connor