Archives for the month of: June, 2005

when i was in high school and trying to decide what i wanted to study at university i toyed with several different areas of study. one of them was archaeology. i ended up entering college with an undecided major (and would later transfer to rtvf). in the college of arts & sciences two freshman seminars were required and for my first (and only) i chose one in the field of geology. the seminar was about the effect of geology and geographical location on the development of societies and dovetailed nicely with my potential major. the main text for the seminar, Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. At the time, that book was the most interesting thing i’d ever read. later i took courses in anthropology and archaeology and learned about the maya, evolution and zooarchaeology. i suppose you could say i was stoking the fires of my interest in the development of my species.

today eric gave me a link to an article that originally appeared in Discover magazine that is along the same lines. it is about the supposed ‘biggest mistake’ to have occurred in the history of humanity – the abandonment of a hunter-gatherer–based society for an agrarian one. if you are interested in anthropology or the history of humanity in general, i think you’ll find the article pretty thought-provoking.

this weekend was/is the wired nextfest. one of the columbus, ohio crowd, dan, was in town because his girlfriend was one of the nextfest’s coordinators. so, tuesday night dan came to tuesday night pizza with eric, matt and i. i shall hereby refer to dan as ‘the idea man’ or ‘idea man dan’ as he has some of the craziest schemes i’ve ever heard for a whole range of subjects, particularly education via the internet. since eric is working for an education-related company now, the two of them had a lot to talk about.

friday i spent the day in evanston – mark and i went to lunch and then saw ‘batman begins’ – my second time, his first. after that, we met up with eric at the comic book store. i bought the first three issues of ‘fillerbunny,’ the chris ware volume of monographics and one of jeffrey brown‘s latest books. shortly thereafter mark had to leave to plan a party so eric and i went to borders so i could pick up chuck palahniuk’s new book, ‘haunted‘ (which i’m going to start reading now…i’ll continue ‘the blind watchmaker’ afterwards). on the way there we ran into ian, his brother and one of his friends. we solidified plans to meet up later that night for ian’s last big night in town before he movies to san francisco. after borders, eric and i went back to the movie theatre and saw ‘bewitched‘ then took the el to cross-rhodes for dinner. we went back to the apartment and recovered from the heat for a few hours (and napped) then left sometime after midnight to meet ian at smartbar. colette had just started spinning when we got there. we stayed for a few hours, danced and had a few drinks then called it a night.

saturday eric and i went to nextfest. a couple of the other lotek guys came into town or made it a point to go to the nextfest for a sort of mini-reunion. aaron was staying with sheila so the four of us met at garcia’s in lincoln park for lunch then went to navy pier. we met jeff at the door and all got in free by dropping dan’s girlfriend’s name. we met dan and tomo inside and stayed till closing.

the nextfest was cool in some ways and disappointing in others. it places a big emphasis on showcasing the future of technology, but as sheila pointed out, not much of it seemed genuinely futuristic. although, all of us are pretty tech-savvy and i had seen a lot of the stuff in popular science (the flying cars, for example) or on some of the tech blogs i frequent. so…i guess we were all pretty biased. it probably seemed really out-of-this-world awesome to the average non-technophile (not that i know what that person would be doing at the wired nextfest).

some cool things i saw included:

after nextfest we frank at spoon in old town. we sat outside and had some sweet potato fries and some drinks. a lot of drinks. we kept thinking that we were going to leave and go somewhere else, but no one could decide on anything so aaron would order another vodka tonic and then everyone else would get another round too. our waitress was this ballerina with the joffrey that is best friends with a girl frank broke up with a little bit ago, so that added an extra level of intrigue to the whole night. we stayed for 3 or 4 hours and i got to hear all kinds of stories, including the (in)famous aaron & vice ‘cop’ story.

today i got up early to run…er, walk – since i was pretty wiped out after all of the drinking and walking around in the heat yesterday. mom and dad were in town for a wedding, so eric and i met them for lunch at the cheesecake factory in old orchard. after that we ran a bunch of errands and bought new shower curtains and stuff for when ben and sara come to stay with us in a few weeks. we ran into at least 3 traffic jams due to accidents or whatever so we were at a standstill in the stagnant heat with the top down for a really long time. hopefully i won’t get a sunburn. so – after a pile of dishes and grout-scrubbing (not that i actually did both of those things…), i’m putting off doing laundry until tomorrow or maybe never because i’m finally cool and relaxed instead of sweaty and grouchy.

at last, i have processed all the photos i promised you weeks ago.

alas, while organizing the photo backup on my firewire drive i discovered over 100 unprocessed photos from the office graduation party that was thrown for kate, kyle and me. i’ll get those posted…um, soon? (maybe)

eric: she’s broke. only $80 to her name or something like that

kara: don’t you have like -$3000 to your name?

eric: yeah, but i use a different style of accounting than she does. it’s called the “Oh Shit Method”

antonio: you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

look, if someone doesn’t get me this natural 20 tshirt (size S), and quick i’m just going to have to…buy it myself.

already purchased today: time tags, perfect for running!

today aaron, antonio and i took a trip to the loop to find antonio’s golden goose: an all-cereal restaurant called ‘cereality.’ this is a new place located around my old stomping grounds – the civic opera/mercantile exchange area of town. turned out that the restaurant wasn’t open yet – far from it, in fact – and we ended up eating at blackie’s and paying $14.00 for parking.

being in the nw loop stirred up a lot of memories for me though. eating lunch by the river behind the boeing building…soup from specialty’s…rushing to the opera after work…catching the train for ravinia…chinese from eat & drink…movie lunches. mostly lunch memories actually, now that i think about it.

tonight eric made more of his awesome chili and i watched the second episode of ‘beauty and the geek,’ the single greatest reality show ever. are these real people?? they’re like caricatures of geeks and airheads.

today it was so hot it felt like i was walking on the surface of the sun. buying a car (with a/c) is looking really attractive.

the thing about chicago is that one day it’s still 50° and windy then the next day it’s 90° and so humid you can’t tell if the sheen on your body is sweat or condensation.

i got up early this morning and went for a run and i was fine (creating my own breeze and all) until i stopped outside my door. the sun broke through the clouds and it felt like a spotlight was on me. within 2 minutes i was soaked in sweat.

i can tell you’re all so excited about this entry already.

anyway, this afternoon eric, pat, jess, lindsay and i went to the belmont sheffield music festival and saw mike & joe play for a crowd of sweaty, wasted yuppies. ok, they weren’t all yuppies. some of them were flaming gay and also eric smelled some hippies (patchouli!). lots of dogs, too – it was so hot i thought this bulldog was going to literally trip over its tongue.

the band was great and so was the street food (bbq chicken skewers). eric predicted that they would play at least one u2 song and he was right. actually i think they managed to play every single one of the ipod/itunes commercial songs. after they finished we went to sheffield’s and watched pat and lindsay play some pool. pat, jess and lindsay stuck around to eat some of the world’s largest polish sausages (pat’s assertion), eric went to mayfest in lincoln square with jon, cecile et al and i came back home so i could drift in and out of heat-induced unconsciousness while watching the simpsons and family guy.

yesterday maria and nicole came into town! they picked me up at work and then we went back to my place so they could settle in and shower. eric drove and we met up with lindsay, pat, jon and brian at the daily in lincoln square. we ate and had some blue moon…and many rounds of shots. after dinner we walked to the rail on damen and drank some more (more shots), played bar video games and took some great pictures of maria being obscene with the game/video machine.

we continued our bar crawl in wrigleyville. brian, pat and i got there first and as we were passing the cubby bear pat started freaking out because a nirvana cover band was playing there. he grabbed us both and INSISTED that we go inside. he even paid for our cover and bought us a round. the lead singer of the band really had the kurt cobain thing going on – he had longish stringy blond hair and a fuzzy shapeless cardigan and everything. everyone else showed up and after awhile we went down the block to a bar that had a little dance floor set up. same drill as before – more beer, more shots – but this time with dancing. these three guys were there – all roommates i guess – and one of them was a really good dancer. brian kept yelling ‘you got served!’ and ‘serve it up!’ over and over.

we closed that bar and then headed over to western to tais til 4. tais was really crowded, even when we left at about 3:30. pat drove maria, nicole and i home and i was in bed by 4am.

today i got the day off work, so we slept in until 11. mark drove over to pick us up and we went to a korean restaurant…called…’korean restaurant’…for lunch. the bulgogie and cucumber kim chee were sooo good. while we were eating adam called and we passed the phone around – his wife is having a baby in december!

after lunch mark took some pictures of us outside the restaurant and while he was lining up his shot some random guy came by and took a picture of us with his camera phone. sketchy much?

maria and nicole left about an hour and a half ago and i miss them already. lindsay and i are trying to plan a trip to st. louis sometime this summer and pat said he’d like to come too. i don’t see these guys nearly enough.

this weekend should be pretty low-key…pat invited me to a concert sunday afternoon but i think i’ll probably spend most of the time recharging. i haven’t seen a movie for awhile so maybe i can catch ‘cinderella man’ and see if it lives up to the reviews.

photos from wisconsin, last night, my mom’s retirement party and the office party are pending.

kara: right now on the WB: a new show’s premiere – ‘beauty and the geek’! it’s AWESOME

jon: oh my god kara! they made a show about your life!