Surprise!!!

You live you learn. I guess…

Here I had thought that working for Bank-mart had numbed me to any potential surprises. Been there, seen that. Especially since the company I started working with was bought by Bank-mart and we began the ever-so-fun process of transition. I’ve become accustomed to most things. An OCD mail service lady that has it in for me. The non-existence of break rooms. The fact that booking conference rooms for meetings costs $75.00. And yet…

I go to our ‘kitchen’ (I use that term loosely as the only kitchen-esque quality it possesses is a sink and a fridge) to wash out my coffee tumblers.
Alas! A fellow team mate (not from our building, thank goodness) got there before me.
Now, which of the following, socially and culturally and work-placedly acceptable tasks was she there to perform? Let’s bring it back to school days with some multiple choice:

a) to pick something up from the printer
b) to fax a document
c) to put something in the fridge
d) to get a cup of afternoon coffee
e) to brush her teeth.

If you, like me, would have assumes choices a through d, you, much like me, would be in the wrong!

Because yes. The bathroom is a whole 30 yards away.

Ugh. Shudder.

Small discoveries of Adult Life

College is both tragically and unquestionably over. And with it all the deceptive creature comforts that the four years in the Bubble entailed.
Never locking your room and never having anything stolen.
Free, warm, at times edible, at times quite tasty, food, offered in a variety format. Want salad? Put one together in a bowl. Want chicken? Load one up there on your tray!
My 16 hours of employment a week was considered a lot, or at least a respectable amount.

Now you want salad? Walk your ass to the grocery store, get them veggies, wash, peel, tend and mold them into something delicious. Good luck you novice to cooking!

The point of the above is simple and much more concise than I made it out to be:

Life in the real world is constantly teaching me new things.

Some lessons are grandiose. Others not so much. Like this lil tidbit:

Fabric softener is the most amazing thing EVER!

Though I have been doing laundry for about six years now, I was a simple dryer sheets girl. Standing in front of a boy. Asking him to love her. I watched Love Actually this weekend and seem to find myself in a Hugh Grant frame of mind.

Anywho, seriously, next time you do a load, put a capful in during the rinse cycle.

Your clothes and your nose will thank you for it.

Adventures on the CTA: Douchebag Edition

So Judgment day has come and humanity now has to pay for its sins.

The upside is that the good may survive this Armageddon if the wicked are righteously punished for their transgressions. Yay.

It seems like a certain quota of those punished must be met but how to chose among so many?!?
We've got rapists, murderers, baby eaters, thieves? Not to mention Kirsten Dunst?

There should be only one criteria, in my opinion, and it should be this:

Any able-bodied person who chooses to stand by the car reader/bus driver, blocking new entrants' access to the bus, slowing the bus down, delaying everyone's commute, and pissing me the fuck off.

Now, due to the double whammy of being an only child and an Aquarius, I have come to have more pet peeves than most (ok, I could start a shelter) but this has got to be top three.
I have failed to understand such behavior and thus have relegated said transgressors to be sacrificed for the greater good.

There is a scale though, not all being equal (unlike U. S. of A.)

Double douche bag points if you block the Chicago Card reader

Triple douche bag points if you block the Chicago Card reader and act surprised/like you are doing me a favor when you so graciously move your ass aside so I can pay my g*ddamn fare

Quadruple douche bag points (for both participants) if two or more douche bags team up to stand on both sides of the front of the bus, thus creating a funnel-like bus entry system. I do not need to squeeze by two assholes just to get home

In the meantime, time has taught me to accept the things I can't change, or know the difference or however that footprints in the sand thing goes.

But come Judgment day.... I shall be uber victorious.

A good hair day? C'est posible?

It seems at long last, after many trials and tribulations, I have made peace. Not in the Middle East, but with my hair!!! (Even better - oh no she didn't!)
Today's look was achieved through the wise words found on yahoo.answers. If you desire wavy, hollywood style hair, but your own cabello is rather unruly, you can take the following steps to maximize potential:
Step one: cut a hole in the box
Step two: shower at night, apply a generous amount of leave-in conditioner to your chronically highlighted hair.
Step three: go to bed, letting hair air dry
Step four: in the morning gently brush out any tangles
Step five: braid hair, beginning tightly as high as you can go and forming the rest of the braid very loosely
Step six: mouse that shit up! I prefer Herbal Essences Body Envy:

Pimp the braid until it dries, then let loose and enjoy enviable, volume-y wavy hair!!!


Disclosure: not a picture of me. Too lazy to figure out how to use my new camera.

Done!

At laaaaaaaaaaaaast! This weekend I proved to be a tad more productive than usually and finished something that has been in the works since Halloween... painting my bedroom. Hot pink. On the semi- d.l. from the landlord.
Me (dropping off rent and buttering her up): I was wondering, and please feel free to say no, if you'd mind if I added a fresh coat of paint to one of the bedrooms?
Landlord: What? Which room?
Me: The one with the door (yes, the other room has a snazzy mirror-sliding door.
Landlord: What's wrong with it?
Me: No, nothing is wrong, I just wanted to refresh it.
Landlord: (clearly not understanding the concept that someone would chose to paint a room that didn't have a fatal flaw it in): Yeah, sure.
Victory!
She was unaware that by 'fresh coat of paint' I meant hot pink. What what?
Anywho I finally got around to it and finished it. It looks rather pimp-tastic. Black and pink thing going on. My first full-scale solo project :):):)

Adventures on the CTA: Winter Edition

It is not yet 9 yet I am already bored out of my fucking mind at work. Now if only doing work might aleviate such boredom, I would be ok. Unfortunately this is not the way this trend is progressing. Thus, in an effort to uphold one of my New Year's resolutions, I will attempt to write my first blog entry. Dun dun dun..... Here goes nothing!

Adventures on the CTA: Winter Edition

Yesterday two occurences on mass transit managed to surprise me. I like to think that having grown up in Chicago and never possessing a vehicle has increased my amount of exposure and experience with the CTA relative to other people. Alas, something new.
Scene: I get off the Blue Line on the Western stop. I use my iphone for its main purpose - ctabustracker.com and learn that my connection Western bus is 3 mins away (!). This means I have to hustle up the ramp past multitudes of people before I dash across 4 lanes of traffic. Alas, people ahead of me are slowing down, and therefore slowing me down. As I get closer to the exit I see the cause/culprit. A homeless man has prostrated himself, Jesus-style on the floor by one of the turnstiles. Since there are only two, the CTA employee is hustling people through the gate. I attempt to go through the other turnstile next to homeless Jesus (what, he looks harmless), yet am yelled at by the opeator to go through the gate. In the end I make it to my stop and bus on time but I wonder if CTA operator handbooks handle cases such as these. Will she attempt to make him get up? If so, how? Questions without answers.

The second occurrence, what else, occurred later in the evening after I was coming back from seeing Frost/Nixon at Webster Place on the Ashland bus. Now mind you 1. it was snowing 2. I have a dastardly low cold threshold and 3. I had to wait 9 minutes. So I bundled up. Poofy coat, pants fashionably tucked into my boots to protect from the snow on the ground, a hat with a bill that dangerously limits my vision yet looks good on me so what can you do, and a scarf tied ninja-style on my face. I guess perhaps my eyes were visible but only from the viewpoint close to the ground, like a child or a dog. So I get on my bus, headphones muted so I could hear it my card didn't scan. It didn't. So I scanned it again as I heard the bus driver saying something. This time it scanned fine. Finally she speaks louder and is like "Maam, I'm going to have to see your face for at least a little bit". That's a new one. Taken completely aback, I lower my scarf, she says thank you and I sit down, verlempt in realizing I was mistook for a potential terrorist. I guess in the CTA operator handbook there has to be a section about being able to provide a physical description of potentially dangerous passengers.

MMM, public transit