Posted 12:41:12 PM by Ben
sorry, no update on the odometer just now, my car is parked three blocks away (the reason will become apparent in a moment). since last sunday, the tv has indeed just sat on our living room floor, unused except as an occasional beer stand. evan talked to someone at the wal-mart headquarters and they said they would have to get back to him. right. yesterday after class i went to see "pretty girls make graves" at the bottom lounge. i was exhausted yesterday (a result of staying up to four in the morning the previous night beating super mario brothers four time consecutively) and almost didn't go to the show. then the red line took forever to get up there, and i wished i had not gone, then the opening bands all sucked, and i looked for a place to sit down. finally, though, PGMG came on stage and my journey seemed worth it. they are the kind of band that should have moved on from the bottom lounge and be playing large (ie, shittier) venues, but for some reason the booking manager for mp shows has been able to keep them, which is fine by me. they were one of the most frantic bands that i have ever heard/seen. i highly recommend that you check them out if you have not already. after the show, we trekked home, leaving mike who then had to work the second show, beginning at 10. i then went home, did nothing particularly fun, fell asleep on the couch and then got up at 2am when mike called me from the red line and i went to pick him up from the bus stop. although late, i was happy to provide such a service. the red line stop in the middle of the night, no matter what the weather, is the worst place on earth. the only real down side being that when i went back to my parking spot (thinking no one would have found it in the 20 minutes i was gone) there not only was a car parked there, but the owner of the car peeing between some other cars. instead, i had to park three blocks away. not bad considering the time of day. we then came home, made some jalepeno poppers, and then i finally made it bed around 4. at least i got sleep until noon today. tonight, being halloween, doc is playing "28 days later," which i still have not seen. those are my entire plans for this halloween. no parties that i can think of, no costume in my immediate future. maybe i'll eat some candy. chris, have fun with those riots in madison, maybe i'll make it up next year. (in case you (the rest of you, not chris), madison is famous for it's halloween rioting on state street).

Posted 10:13:32 PM by Ben
today went something like this:

i got up late, lounged around and talked to lindsay and my parents on the phone. then, sometimre around 3, evan comes into the living room and declares, "i'm going to go to wal-mart, purchase a large tv, and then we can use it for 90 days before i take it back using their guaranteed return policy." while i usually endorse schemes whole heartedly, this one made me weary and at first i was unwilling to go along with it. i should have trusted my instincts. later, evan pitches the idea to andy, and he convinces me that it's a good idea, somehow. we then drive to the closest wal-mart (which is almost an hour a way. aren't wal-marts supposed to be everywhere these days?) and do just what evan says. he picked out a big ass tv (27 inches) and we take it out to his car. despite the fact that it was too big for his trunk and we had to remove it from the box to get it into the car, all seems well. then we get suck behind a freight train for 20 minutes, and i could feel something bad growing. the entire ride home i felt worse and worse about all of this. perhaps it was as andy said, the thrill of the hunt was over, the scheming had been done, and now that we had accomplished out goal it wasn't as fun. i don't even want a large tv. nevertheless, we got it home, moved around stuff in our living room, put it in place, and pressed the power button. nothing happened. it would not turn on, and showed signs that it had previously been damaged. so, after all that we have a broken tv sitting in our living room and the feeling that we were the ones that had been had. damn karma, gets you every time. with that portion of the day completed, i felt compelled to do little more tonight than watch bring it on (on television) while trying to write a book review (yes, book review) for my ba seminar. man, it's gonna be a long week.

Posted 2:32:18 PM by Ben
back at it again. no, chris, i have not been busy with school work. rather, i've just been unmotivated (that's not even a word, is it?) latley. but, now i'm back, but still with very little interesting to write about. yesterday i did the following:

*answered the phone at 10am when my dad called to ask about computers. i told him i was still sleeping and i would call back when i got up.
*work up at 11:00 and listened to terri gross interview matt groening on npr.
*weird. then called my dad back and gave him my expert advice about the new computer(s) he is planning on getting. i think i surpased my dad in computer knowledge when i was 13.
*waited around for andy and eventually went to sam's club out at 95th and western. if you have not been go. among the items purchased: 3.25 lb (yes, that's in pounds) of jalapeno poppers, a giant tub of feta cheese, apple cider and 168 cans of faygo (purchased for doc) at under $.20 each.
*drove to the cub foods on 87th by the dan ryan to purchase a case of lacrosse beer (the kind with a picture of a fish on the can).
*watched riskey business on tv.
*went to see "intolerable cruelty" with mike and becky.
*came home, and then drove in the pouring rain to arturo's mexican restaurant at armitage and western.
*vowed to go to lazo's next time, as arturro's sucks now.
*came home and ate a few (3) of said jalapeno poppers before going to bed.

not a very productive day. oh well. today i'm sitting here at work for five hours. this is less productive. the only question i have asked in the three hours that i've been here is, "do you know when daylight savings time begins? " man.

Posted 8:44:04 PM by Ben
so, finally here are some pictures from the trip i took out to the east coast at the end of the summer. i'm doing this from work, because i have nothing better to do and there are three, count 'em three, people in the lab. so, without further ado:

our 25 hour train trip got off to a rough start, with a 1.5 hour delay right off the bat. we sat around and tried to amuse our selves. the big board said that their were technical issues to deal with. oh boy.


this was really the only picture that i took on the entire train ride. just not in much of a picture taking mood. next, andy and evelyn are sitting around the apartment in dc that we stayed at.


oh washington dc. we were going to ignore the whole tourist thing while there, but we couldn't resist. they are going to put a big fence around the washington monument soon, so i thought that i better get one last hug in with the monument before it was too late. then andy and i found this great statue of george mason, all alone in the middle of a flower garden, so we thought it only appropriate to hug him too.


they are also building this giant wwII monument right at the end of the reflecting pool, so the whole this is empty now. kind of sad and depressing. get some water back in their quick. then that night we went to see the ex at the black cat. damn fine band. i spent a good portion of the show watching the drummer. does anyone here at chicago know dorthee brantz? the drummer looked just like her.


this is the outside of the place in dc where we were staying. a very roughly converted warehouse off an alley. then, we went to new york and andy and i walked out to the center of the brooklyn bridge and pondered the city a little. kind of, mostly we just wondered where mike norbeck was and why we didn't see him running over the bridge. in case you didn't know, mike's the most wannabe brooklyn kid here at school.


now comes a little gap in the pictures. we hung out in new york for a few days, and then went up to suggs house in binghamton. we were fed great food, drank tons of wine and then spent two hour just soaking in a hot tub. the only picture i managed to take was my shriveled hand. then we went ba ck to margret's house in scarsdale the next day, ate more great food and sort of hung around and did little but relax. i took no pictures in this time. i guess i was too busy taking it easy for photographs. the next photo i have is wus hanging out in the nyu library while we waited for willa to get home. my sister looked at this picture and asked, why was there a yard sale in the library? yeah, we were kind of a mess.


we eventually made our way to times square, but we couldn't figure out who was on trl. that night we went to a game at shea stadium. what a shitty park, let me just say, if you go, don't get your heart set on finding nachoes, it might take you 2.5 innings to get some.


the next day we made our way up to boston via the chinatown bus. it might have seemed longer, but i just sat and read moneyball. that night we droped off our stuff and went to the middle east to see, among others, quasi. the next day we met up with liz bellis, who graduated from the u of c last year and now goes to harvard law school. she took us a law school drinking house (that's not the real name, but you get the idea) where we sat around and drank free beer all night. good ol' harvard.

then the next day i got on a train to rochester to visit pete, but i took no pictures there. none. so, that's it.

Posted 7:43:16 PM by Ben
back in chicago, back at school, back at work.

first of all, the twins are in the playoffs. they beat the yankees in game one and as i write this they are playing them again in game two. of course i have to work tonight, so in lieu of watching the game i thought i'd listen to it on the internet radio. easy right? wrong. it cost money and i forgot that i don't have a code this year. in my last minute scramble to find a code i see that if i sign up to buy 8 free weeks of sports illustraed i get the free audio on the internet. so, i did and it worked. now all i have to do is remember to cancel in the next 8 weeks or i start paying money.

it's funny how things go. i'm just beginning the quarter, but the month of october is already filling up. this weekend we are painting the apartment, next my family is coming to chicago and the weekend after lindsay is coming to visit. i'll give you one guess which one i am looking forward to least.

baseball on the internet is about 1000 times more nerve racking than watching it on tv. every fly ball sounds like it could be a home run. the annoucers gets so excited that i think i'm going to have a heart attack each time something happens. it's only the second inning. i think i may not make it though the entire game.

school seems to come last in my mind on the priority list. maybe that's not best, but what can i do?