Internet wars and more

Time is a mystery. Here it is, Sunday night and I'm already about to begin my third week of school. And what happened with week two?

Hard to say.

Some time, earlier, I managed to get a load of laundry done. After the wash cycle I found myself in the basement three quarters short of warm, dry clothes, so I spent the rest of the week watching my socks dry in the frigid Chicago air that sneaks into my apartment.

A little later I returned from a long day to find that my internet was dead along with my faith in Comcast. I have since been embattled in a never-ending blame game: Router people say it's Comcast and Comcast send me off to router people.

By midweek I was curled in the fetal position on the rugless section of my living room, being warmed by the glow of my internet-less computer and begging the Comcast woman on the other end to understand that she was causing me to utterly lose my mind. And wa-la. She got it. No, she didn't fix my internet, nor did she offer a concrete solution but she lent me a sympathetic ear for 20 minutes and sometimes that's all you need.

Until - after a sketchy and cold bike ride to the other end of Chicago to swap modems - the internet fails me again. I'm letting it go. And I've found a new friend by the name of HaxByToph who graciously has not put a password on his wireless access. Thanks man.

Sometime throughout the internet war, I hit the streets for a reporting and research project in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago. We had to write a descriptive piece on a place, any place, we cared to choose. Before we were let out they advised that it may not be best for the men in my class to, say, hang around playgrounds with kids, lest they be deemed pervs. The same should have been said for single 20-something women who snoop around dog parks. So there I sat on the periphery of the dog park, talking into my voice recorder, sans pet for the better part of an hour. I was eyed for threat of puppy-napping. Which, I won't lie, I came close to.

Here's a little honey that was top of the list for potential puppy-napees:


A random yard found during my Bucktown travels:


Everyday is a grab bag of unknowns. The mornings tend toward the positive if even exhilirating (yes! We scream in our heads. This is why we are here!) where as the afternoons are hours worth of anxiety: where are we headed, what are we reporting on and how long do we have to write it up? Nothing makes you feel like a bad ass reporter like a breakdown 10 minutes before deadline. Ah, it's a good life.

The first quarter isn't conducive to a budding social life, but luckily my fellow 61 students are in the same boat. Friday, post distressing writing assignment, I went with a few people in my lab to have drinks at a local Evanston bar. Under such circumstances - chatting with many new people at once - I couldn't be more accommodating. I want to do EVERY. Thing. Hence accompanying my new friends to watch the Boston Red Socks game. Yes, that's right. I went to a sports bar to watch a game.

Maybe I didn't pay attention or even could recall who the red sox were playing, but it was lovely and even better to gripe together. We can grow closer by our common confusion/fear of our daily journalistic existence.

Another week another big question mark. But this thing called grad school is getting better or something close to that. I'm holding onto those morning lectures and guides me through the rest.

Now if Comcast could just button up and fly right then I might be able to get on with my life.