ask for directions?

i have a bit of a thing for signage. i love a good sign. there are signs for everything, good or bad. these are some i've seen recently.

ikea red hook, brooklyn: entering parking lot

on walkway to plane. it's not that uneven.

please sit, relax

so remember, a couple of weeks ago, i received my dining table and had a bitch of a time assembling it? if you don't, read about it here. if you do, you'll remember that i also talked about my lack of dining chairs. the sad pictures of the table "staged" with two folding chairs.

well... all that changed today. with the boyfriend in tow, i headed to brown elephant, a resale shop in chicago, to find two to four dining chairs semi-appropriate for my new table. with a bit of coaxing from the boyfriend, i decided on these four chairs. they're two different pairs, but similar enough for the unobservant. though the fabrics are different. i'm hoping to remedy that in the future. i was a bit uncertain about them, but looking at the price and the fact there was a sale on furniture i really couldn't pass them up. with the money saved we decided on a cab home (instead of lugging the four of them onto the train and then the bus). and after an additional trip to home depot for some metal cleaner they look almost new. aren't they pretty?!?

they look almost the same!

chair 1

fabric of chair 1: sturdy tweed

chair 2 w/ camel suede fabric

a long long time ago

remember a while ago, i temped at a magazine office? the second time? i was putting together a promotional mailer for the re-release of one of their magazines. it was three days to brutal labor, wrestling with cardboard boxes, peeling apart labels without easy peel backs, and bathing in a sea of plastic packages.

so it went as follows:

step one: unmask the fruit pad from its plastic package.
step two: assemble fruit to look like fruit with paperclip and netting.
step three: figure out cardboard box configuration.
step four: put two handfuls of shredded paper into box.
step five: nestle fruit into shredded paper.
step six: top with the two information cards. one with the contact info, the other with an extremely unhealthy jam recipe.
step seven: close box.
step eight: attempt to remove back from label. find that three labels have the sticky on the wrong side. fourth try reveals a usable label.
step nine: label box.
step ten: stack box.

now for picture illustration of the horrible thing.

wildlife

i ran into the craziest squirrel today, while walking across campus. it was going nuts about a paper bag. who knew?

midterms

what a bitch! i've survived two, now one class left.

the first midterm was for my favorite teacher, and probably my favorite class this semester. the teacher's tests are difficult but not impossible; his midterm is always harder than his final; he gives more than 100 points, while keeping the grade out of 100; and he's the easiest grader and gives points for everything. so this test was probably the worst out of the bunch. i can't say that the material covered was hard, though he did throw us for a loop with the first problem. he did tell us to skip it and go back, so that's in his favor. i was extremely anxious going into the test and was on the verge of hyperventilating the entire time, which did not improve my test-taking skills. i was shaking horribly and had difficulty handing it in. i finished early though; first one done like always. looking back on it, it wasn't a difficult test. there were only four questions, and the last three were not horribly difficult. we were allowed our notes, so i had made a three-page abbreviated version to quickly look at. i feel bad for people who had to flip through the entirety of their class notes to find assistance. the first problem was crazy. lots of variables, all over the place. i finished it, but many others didn't. i feel okay about it. i'll find out tomorrow.

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last night's midterm was a whole other beast. for this one i was allowed a one-piece of paper cheat sheet, so 8.5x11 front and back. i didn't start studying or even working on the cheat sheet until yesterday afternoon. this teacher is a horrible test writer. she puts in problems that have no relation to the homework, and she includes definitions of certain terms, although there are a million terms to choose from. also she writes the problems so that you know exactly what she is looking for although the question doesn't actually ask for it. and she is the toughest grader; she nitpicks everything that is at all wrong. some parts of the problems threw me for a loop, but overall i did well. i'm just scared of the nitpicky grading. she'll mark an entire problem wrong because i messed up one part out of five. if i did poorly, i can really only blame myself, because i really didn't prep for the test. we'll see...

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my final midterm is next tuesday and thursday. yes, it's over two days. the class meets twice a week for an hour and ten minutes at a time, with the weekly class time adding up to the normal 2.5 hours. so for the midterm to be the 2.5 hours, we have to take it over two classes. tuesday is open note-open book, which is fabulous for me. and thursday is closed, but i intend to fill up my calculator with the important equations. still i will have to learn what those equations mean in order to use them. this test will definitely be interesting. he's sort of a stickler in the grading department, but the benefit of having half of the test as open book will be extremely helpful. the weirdest part is that since i'm an online student i will have to, essentially, attend that class for the week. i don't know how the entire class is going to fit into that room to take the test. there will be a lot of cheating off of each other. for the tuesday part of the test i will create another cheat sheet for myself, so that i don't have to flip through the book or my notes to find helpful information. i will just have to sort through a couple of pages.

score a goal on the blackhawks

i'm watching the chicago blackhawks game. they are playing the buffalo sabers. the first period was frustrating. there were bad calls. and a bunch of mess.

but it did make me remember something i wanted to blog about. goalie helmets.

i love looking at them. and it's really weird, because you never get a good look at them. either the goalie is being crowded by other players, or it's on top of their head while they're taking a break.

what got me onto this top is at some point i got a good look at the new goaltender's helmet. i have yet to have an opinion about turco's goaltending skills, but i can say that i don't like his helmet.

what is with the weird demon guy on both sides of his helmet? now niemi, who should go down as the best goalie in 2009-2010 season, had one helmet that was pretty bad. it apparently had two of his favorite video game characters on it, one on each side. but at one point he got a proper helmet.

with the hawk on the front and smaller ones on either side of the throat guard. totally cool looking, and applicable to the team name. and i'm sure that helmet starting to bring fear to several teams in the nhl.

fly away with me

i need to preface this entire post with the fact that i love airports! for all the time i spend in them, i should!

today i went on a field trip to o'hare airport with the student cmaa chapter from iit. cmaa is the construction management association of america. pb, a construction management firm, allowed us to tour the site and see all of the awesome things being done! we started off the a rundown of the entire project in their off-site office. they are building 6 new and/or lengthened runways for o'hare. and they are all parallel. this was weird for me because i know that most airports have the nw/se runway configuration in order to give them optimal runway usage in any wind or weather. this causes a slight lack of productivity because planes cannot take off and land at the same time. apparently, now planes don't rely on wind direction in order to take off so parallel runways are feasible. o'hare will still have a diagonal runway to use in extreme circumstances. in order to build these runways, the construction company has had to demo homes, move streams, reroute trains (twice), and will eventually move a cemetery. we were shown the new railway bridges (we didn't get out to take pictures), the new fedex sorting facility (with it's green roof), the new runway extension (from on the runway and from the top of a berm), and the new air traffic control tower (also from the bus).

the funnest part was probably the school bus transportation. on the way out there, it was fun to talk to all my friends about something other than class. and then the school bus that took us all around the site. i really didn't think it would make it. school buses aren't meant to be driven on dirt construction sites. most other people were enthralled by the planes taking off so close to us, but i travel so much and have been to god-knows-how-many air shows that the planes were the least interesting part to me. i am really happy i ended up taking my camera. make sure to check out my panorama pic set that includes an awesome shot of the skyline in the distance.

green roof on top of the fedex sorting facility

on one of the new runways

more ohare

united plane going by

what up, school bus?

scarf season!

fall is upon us, and it's time to bust out the scarves! my all-time favorite accessory, scarves are unique, stylish, and functional.

i'm a petite person, so i am often cold or at least chilly in most environments. even in the summer, i carry a light hoodie or sweater to combat the chill of air conditioning. so when fall comes around and it's not quite time to wear the dark and heavy winter coat, adding a scarf to your outfit is the way to go. it adds some warmth as well as flair.

the scarf pictured above is the one that my grandparents gave me from their trip abroad. not sure where they actually bought, or who actually bought it, but my grandmother said it is from afghanistan. true or not, i really like it. it's bright pink on one side and the mix of yellow and black threads on the other side give it a green tint. the border design is really interesting, and since i spend a couple hours each week bored in class, having something interesting to look at is crucial.

reading now

on a recent trip to strand (everyone's favorite bookstore in nyc) i got several books. more than i expected. and several i didn't expect to pick up. i recently finished two of them.

 chuck klosterman's eating the dinosaur was on my list. along with nick hornby's juliet, naked and a jean chatzky book. when i bought my books, i was reading fargo rock city, which is also by klosterman, so i decided that i should continue in that vein. this book is more all over the place than his other collections of essays. fargo was about 80s rock. killing yourself to live was about rock deaths. sex, drugs and cocoa puffs was about music, movies, and sports. downtown owl was about north dakota (the author's home state). this book about everything. there's some music (we couldn't expect him to not write about it), and some sports. but there's also musings about deeper ideas. the fascination of voyeurism. the need to laugh at everything. and the unibomber as a genius. his essays are interspersed with fake interviews with individuals that are hilarious, creepy, or downright brilliant. there is also an essay titled "best response", that is written from the perspective of people in tight jams. my favorite book by klosterman is hands-down downtown owl - his only novel - for its originality. but my favorite essay collection is eating the dinosaur, because if i could time travel that's exactly what i would do.

i never intended to own hector and the search for happiness. i saw it at strand, picked it up, and didn't decide to buy it. but my boyfriend had read it in german, had read the entire series in german, and thought that i should read it too. francois lelord wrote hector for exactly the same reason hector goes in search of happiness. "once upon a time there was a young psychiatrist call hector who was not very satisfied with himself... because he could see perfectly well that he couldn't make people happy." hector is simply written in almost the same way children's books are written. the simplicity belies the great importance of the "lessons" contained in its text. hector sees people being happy or unhappy, and he makes conclusions as to why. the beauty of this book is that innately we see the same qualities in ourselves and others, but fail to grasp and apply the lessons because of distractions, comparisons, and unfortunate experiences in our lives. the book puts them to us plainly, so that we can apply them and appreciate them in our own lives. and start our own search for happiness. though we need to remember: "it's a mistake to think that happiness is the goal."

dine away

i finally bought a dining table! well... i bought it awhile ago, but it finally arrived! the legs were in their own box. the tabletop was in a cardboard and wooden contraption. it almost looked like something houdini would try to get out of. looking at it, there seemed to be no logical way to get the top out of the container. but i went at it with an exacto knife and the backside of my hammer, and soon i had popped off the front, which was all that was needed. then i had to summon my roommate to help me carry the top up the two flights to our apartment.
then the assembly... the first leg was a bitch. i drilled 6 pilot holes using a cardboard guide and when i put the leg in place to screw it down the leg didn't fit. so i drilled a second set of pilot holes. on the second leg, i didn't know how to mirror the first legs holes. but somehow i got it. the third and fourth legs were easy, except i screwed one of them on backwards. i wondered why the holes didn't quite align. when i finished screwing them in place, i went to admire my handiwork and oops! the leg was on backwards. had to re-screw that one! but i really like it. i need to figure out how to get the sticky off of the sides of the table. (you can see it in some of the pictures.) they had wrapped the tabletop with bubblewrap that had a sticky back, now the sticky won't come off! i deserve a damn good pat on the back, for not only assembling the table well, but also for using the drill especially for drilling pilot holes!

first two legs are on!

set-up for legs three and four!

pilot holes for leg four.

the fully-assembled and upright table!

table done! can you see the sticky on the chrome?

"staged" with the only two chairs i own

getting it done

totally weird title... i finally went to see a gastroenterologist about my semi-chronic stomach pains. i get this really intense pain in the lower part of my stomach when stressed, eat certain foods, or combination of both. the annoying thing about it is that it is completely random. dairy sometimes give me pain but not always. the pain is generally located in one spot, but not always. most often it coincides with stressful moments, but again that isn't always the case. when i've told my family about it in the past, their immediate thoughts go to ulcers or heartburn. neither of which i have. i've had these pains for so long that i tend to brush them off, but recently i had a stomach virus that gave me symptoms that were fairly similar to my usual bouts. so i decided once and for all i needed to figure out what was wrong with me that way next time i'm ill, i can straight up tell the doctor that i have this or that. and separate new symptoms from old symptoms. and of course the only way to find out if you have gastrointestinal problems is with a colonoscopy. they mildly sedate you and stick a camera up your bum. luckily my boyfriend will be in town (not so lucky about the laxative i'll have to take the night before, or how out of it i will be afterward) to take care of me. to cart me home from the hospital, not to witness the procedure. and granted this whole thing is mute it my insurance doesn't cover this procedure for someone my age. it's not particularly normal for someone under the age of 40 to have one done. we'll see.