i was recently added as a contact by this person, a 23-year-old girl who finds hairy women (and their arms) to be sexy.

this confuses me. my arms are not particularly hairy. right? witness this photo. my baby fine blond hair on my arm is nowhere to be seen. it is practically invisible!

then why would i be added by somebody who finds photos like this attractive? (not that there's anything wrong with hairy arms. but the sexual aspect is...weird. right? it's weird, isn't it?)

now i am full of doubt.

they're teaching kids poor journalism already! witness this article. it is hysterical. it is relentlessly upbeat. it makes an event sound like an amazing ocassion. it is about one of the worst days in my life. too long of a story. i love medill already, but that event was an effing disaster.

i did get an ethiopian dinner out of it, though. and for anyone who's worried that this blog will further devolve into me citing the ways in which chicago is superior to d.c., well, the district's tibs still hold first place by a long shot.

Laptops are breaking the $400 barrier, huh? Wow.

(Not that I'm complaining.)

hey, want to know how to become an unmotivated fatass? i have an answer for you: run a marathon! seriously!

i ran the marine corps marathon almost a year ago, crossing the finish line in a time of approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes. to train, i had been running 15-30 miles every week for five or so months. i was probably in some of the best shape of my life. i had cut out most alcohol; i was getting good sleep; i was drinking gallons and gallons of water. clif bars ruled my life, and i felt pretty good.

and then i became stay puft.

after getting through the marathon, i barely worked out again for an entire year. i tried the running thing again, honestly, but without an attainable goal i just couldn't drag myself out to do it. my running partners and fitness team had disappeared with the marathon training. and generally, i figured, hey! i just ran a marathon! i'm allowed to be lazy for a while. before i know it, a while had turned into 12 months. the only thing that prevented me from becoming hurley-sized was being blessed with a somewhat-enviable metabolism and the fact that i walked everywhere, including a mile to and from work every day.

so anyway, when i came to chicago, i figured newish life, new gym! i signed up at the chicago sweatshop, which seems great so far. adequate equipment, mostly gay guys so no gross ogling, and, best of all: lots of spinning classes! i heart spinning, as cheesy as it may be. a few years back i did spinning for an entire summer, and it's a kickass workout.

anyway, i took a spinning class last night for the first time at the new gym. we all saddled up, as it were, and the instructor told us to get pumped, warm up, find our pace, several other fitness class cliches, etc. i was spinning happily along and imagining how great my thighs were going to look if only i could stop eating boxes and boxes of kraft mac and cheese.

until my instructor a) turned out the lights b) put on a 45-minute soundtrack of southern roots rock.

for the ENTIRE CLASS we biked in the dark or near-dark, listening to the likes of CCR and other illustrious groups. "um, is this weird?" i wondered to myself, trying to gauge others' reactions. of course i couldn't, because we were in the FUCKING DARK. the only thing i could see was the enormous stereo system with its red, yellow and green blinking lights, which kind of made me feel like i was biking through space. in a bad 70s movie. while someone was yelling "CLIMB THE HILL FEEL IT NOW BURN YEAH!" at me.

i was scared.

but i'm going back tonight. i think it's a different instructor. maybe i'll actually be able to see her face this time.

last night, after grabbing a couple of beers with a friend, i went home and dove into my sweet, sweet bed for some sweet, sweet sleep. much-needed sleep, as school requires me to wake up at 6:45 every day, work for eight hours straight, and get home at 5. so, the sleep. i like it. it helps with the animals in churches reporting.

but horror: at 4 a.m., ominous clomping started resonating throughout my apartment. i knew right away what it was - my upstairs neighbor, trodding around. i'd heard him/her many times before. i don't begrudge them walking around - our floors are squeaky, and you have to get from the bathroom to the kitchen to the bedroom and back somehow, after all. i'm not expecting noiseless creepy ghost gliding.

but at 4 a.m. on a friday morning? AND FOR TWO HOURS STRAIGHT? i swear to god, it was like my neighbor had put on a pair of 20 lb. hiking boots and trod a rut in their floor. i tried everything to block it out. i put on the fan to create some white noise even though it was like 40 degrees out; i put in my shitty $1 earplugs from the 9:30 club. nothing worked. i even, and oh my god, i sound like an 85-year-old crank, took my broom out of the closet and banged it repeatedly on the ceiling. NOTHING.

what the fuck could they possibly have been doing? why are you clomping around at 4 a.m.? why are you wearing enormous clompy shoes while you do it? why do you hate me? why did you run down the apartment stairs at 5 a.m., leading me to believe you'd gone off to do your clomping on a street corner, only to come back 15 minutes later?

what's my recourse here for dealing with this kind of situation? do i leave a passive-aggressive note in my neighbor's mailbox if it happens again? do i storm up the stairs in my pjs and zit cream to berate them? or do i seethe silently until i can't contain it anymore and go beat them senseless with my broom?

As many of you are no doubt aware, some of my so-called friends have recently invented a hurtful new nickname for me. It came about as an intolerant reaction to a personal preference I expressed at our last get-together. A preference which, I should emphasize, I did not choose, but which seems as perfectly natural to me as it seems apalling to others.

But it's not the nickname that upsets me. If my friends can't accept me for who I am, so be it. I can take it. No, what really galls me is the hypocrisy displayed by my tormentors, as many quietly confided to me in private that they have the same feelings — and, on more than one occasion, indelicately asked me to help them pursue those feelings.

I can only assume that the abuse being directed at me is born of a profound sense of self-loathing. What are you people afraid of? Being happy? Being yourself? Or can you just not stand the thought of telling dad?

Well, I hope all you manage to work it out. I really do. But I refuse to be ashamed by the prejudices of your misguided Texan culture. Frankly, I feel sorry for you.

Well, almost. Dell home has the Canon SD400 for $263; they've also got the SD300 for $206. They're both very tiny and are supposed to take pretty good pictures. The difference seems to be a megapixel and perhaps some very slight image quality differences. I think that's enough of a reason for the splurge, although if anyone feels strongly that I'd be better off blowing that $60 on videogames, please let me know.

UPDATE: I pulled the trigger, and an SD400 should be winging its way to me shortly. And yeah, I went with Dell, despite the warnings. It's true that I've been through lengthy waits getting my orders in the past, but that's the worst Dell-related headache that I've encountered. And I'm not in any hurry.