week three-ish

well, my first week at faust was really good. i was constantly surprised at how, by the time i got home at the end of the day, i wasn't tired. instead, i was kind of energized. the atmosphere and the people there are just good for me, i don't know what else to call it. even on days like today, when i was making mind-numbing numbers of edits on a corporate report, there was still teamwork involved and a real sense of me doing something that matters... and even better, something that is helping out my buddy.


my projects have been coming along well, and i'm starting to get more and more integrated into the process where i become involved with clients. after reading my employee manual a little, i realized that i'm not really supposed to discuss ongoing projects in the open like this, at least until they go to print. so no hairy details anymore. all the same, i have been tasked with a really cool internal project so that i can be part of the chicago design survey this year. this is where each chicago design firm submits work to a catalog and it's collected and published, non-juried. bob wanted me to be a part of this, which i thought was really really great. the project is to design a wrapping paper based solely on typography, and one that is not attached to any particular holiday. i'm really excited about working on this when i get some spare time!





over the weekend, i slept a lot and tried to get rid of my massive sinus congestion that i'd been fighting all week. it's a little better now, thank god. i spent the first half of saturday in bed before finally getting out into town to meet dave (my coworker and newfound friend at faust, if you remember) at a really great acoustic show from rogue wave at reckless records. i was only a few feet away from the band, and to top it all off... it was free! how badass! after the show, dave and i, along with a couple of his friends, went to a great mediterranean place. it was kind of shitty and rainy, but by the time we finished eating it had let up a little. the two friends were mercedes, one of dave's roommates, and her friend mada, a rather tall romanian chick.


we all talked about what we were trying to get into that night, and lots of options came up, but i had been determined to make it back to the fanatically good belgian waffle shop called Baladoche by the end of the day. dave was exhausted, mada had shit going on with her boyfriend, so me and mercedes swapped cell numbers and decided we'd figure something out. i took off to camp out at a coffee shop and work on suzie's package, and eventually met up with mercedes to catch "where in the world is osama bin laden." not a bad flick, mostly a great angle on the underexposed friendly side of muslim people. they're not all terrorists, you know? also a nice bit of revealing history on the united states' long-term presence on middle-eastern power struggles. yikes. so not a bad time, but by the end of it all we had no time to catch waffles. so we walked north to clarke's (where i'd gone with brian a week before) and had tasty late night snacks because i was f'ing starved. mercedes cabbed it home and i went back and crashed, pretty exhausted. i was glad to have made a new acquaintance.


sunday was another good sleep-in morning. i got up and kind of lounged around for a bit before finally getting my shit together for a nice bike ride to evanston. why ride to evanston? well, turns out i switched to a bank that has no branches in chicago... so i geared up for the 5 mile urban ride (which everybody seems to think is an impressive distance around here) and went to deposit my first paycheck. as i set down my bag to access the atm, i noticed i had a little stowaway. i've always like ladybugs. i think they're good luck.




then i rode back to ukranian village to meet up with mercedes again. she had offered to give me a tour of the neighborhood (since i'm looking at lots of apartments in the area) and it was a nice day for walking around. there are lots of great little shops and cafes, as well as a no-shit ukranian market full of crazy smells and chocolates and meats... anyway i ended up picking up some wine to bring back to dave's apartment, where they throw a movie night every sunday. it was a bizarre scottish film, but i had a good time and met some new people.


around three weeks now in the windy city, and i feel like i'm really getting into it. brian moves up at the end of the week, and then things get really interesting! here's to that!


much love to all my family and friends. i miss you guys!

it's all good

yesterday was my first day at faust. it started with a relatively early morning to catch the bus, then 40 minutes on that route until i made it to the metra train. at this point, it was a relaxing wait in the sun after a strangely stressful bus ride. the trip on the commuter train was simple but strange as my stop took only 11 minutes to reach. i am used to doing rides on the metra in excess of an hour so it felt weird to not have out a book or something. a fifteen minute walk to faust from the train stop found me in a really cool office space. dave was there to greet me and let me in. i was shown my new workstation, a sweet g5 setup with 3gb of ram and a cinema hd monitor... which doesn't mean a lot unless you're a big geek. basically, it's a sweet computer setup.


when sally came down to the slab (aka office level) i was offered coffee, which i gladly accepted, and she invited me to hang out and chat for a little bit until bob came back from the dentist. i had a little time to get my computer set up as i like it before sitting down with sally to go through the employee manual. it was loaded with things that set up the employee as someone who carries weight and responsibility in the day-to-day stuff, and basically lays it out as a place where adults come together and get shit done. there are guidelines to work from, but it leaves a lot to fall on the shoulders of the conscience of the employees, and less on the authoritative position of the owners. i think this is absolutely the way it should be. i'm excited to have so much responsibility in this place. it makes me feel like i'm finally being treated as an adult.


around lunchtime, sally and i went into a nearby town to pick up lunch for everyone. i had a wonderful veggie burrito over lunch with my new coworkers and it was a great time. the rest of the day pretty much consisted of finishing up the employee manual, doing my basic tax forms, taking the more-detailed office tour, and talking with bob a little on how to get started on the tech side of things. all in all, it was very chilled out and they didn't ask me to do anything other than just breathe and get acclimated. later on in the day, one of their original employees came in and i was invited to sit and chat with the group. this guy, jason, had worked with faust for four years and they had clearly absorbed him as family after a little while. i hope i'm around long enough to find something similar.


dave offered to give me a ride home, which was super nice of him. dave is one of the nicest people i've met in a while, always lighthearted about stuff but hardworking at the same time, which seems to be everyone's attitude at faust. i think he's filipino in background and seems to have a great west coast sort of style going which i figure he picked up from going to school in california. he got his masters at UIC and grew up in oak park so he seems to really know the city. anyway we rode home and kind of talked about random stuff, but it was really easy talk woven into smart conversation. right up my alley, you know? i think dave and i will get along really well. we had to run by his place in ukranian village (a rather cool part of town) and he was able to take me right to my place since it was on the way to his volleyball match.


today was just as easy, even though i actually got to start working on things. i have two jobs running right now, one for the school of the art institute of chicago and one for a regional printing house. the first will be a couple of giant window banners that will go on the SAIC's new fashion gallery space in downtown. these will advertise the event while covering up a couple of giant storefront windows that are boarded up for some reason. the gig for the printer involves redesigning the panels that they apply to the sides of their delivery trucks. both large projects in scale, but not too intense... both working within a pre-existing design system... clearly intended for me to use as a way to get my feet wet and learn the faust process a little while at the same time giving bob an idea of how i work and what kind of skill set i'm bringing with me. i came up with a couple of really simple ideas for the banners today, one of which bob seemed to be pretty interested in, so already some positive results. not huge or anything, but simple and positive is a good way to start, yes?


the day was filled with good music and an easy atmosphere, despite the fact that bob and dave are constantly crunching work for deadlines. you'd never be able to tell if they didn't mention it... everything stays so positive. it's just a great environment, and i feel energized coming home at the end of it all.


the joke in the office today spun off of a story in the news about a cougar that was found in the city (in my neighborhood, actually), and was subsequently killed in a hail of police gunfire. nothing really funny about that, but of course i had to bring up something about "which bar was it hanging out at?" then that crack led to the story of my falsified legend among friends as a cougar hunter, then dave's equally fictitious crush on the older mom who owns the local cafe, and things just went on and on until by the end of the day i'm pretty sure the four of us had conjured up a nice little inside joke. hey, these things matter.


well, i'm getting sleepy and though there is more to go into, the gist is that i made it home after a flat tire and later realizing i'd left my keys in dave's apartment... got some really healthy groceries at whole foods (including THE BEST GRANOLA EVER-- and it's made locally!) and in general all is well. i feel so good; things have sort of eased into place, and i'm ready to really start making stuff happen.


in may, brian moves up to start at his new t-mobile location and get rooted in the jazz scene, and then in june we will move into our new apartment (wherever that may be). in july or august, eric will move up to start at northwestern in september. in the midst of all of this stuff in the summer, suzie will have flown back to cleveland for the summer and we finally have time to hang out after the big new years rendezvous... so these are all the Next Big Thing and i'm ready for it all.


i'm stoked about life again... it's been awhile. well i have to look over some material for the SAIC meeting in the morning, so off to that. peace, readership.

recap for the holes in the week

it's been a good week, and since i've been unable to sit with my blog for most of it, there are some holes in the documentation. i will now fill in those holes. most of them, anyway.

on wednesday, brian and i got out and made the bus for a wonderfully sunny and windy day in the city. they seemed to either be perfect urban hiking weather, or absolutely miserable: cold, drizzly, windy, gross. this was the case, for example, as we made our way back to the apartment on tuesday night. i had my bike with me from the faust meeting, and rode at a walking pace with brian's luggage on my back as we walked for an hour in the rain. it was awesome, and poor brian didn't even have any rain gear on. oh well we made it. so on wednesday, we just sort of roamed around in search of adventure. in the midst of this quest, we were walking down clark (or broadway?) and happened upon a charming little place aptly called Austrian Bakery. and so it was. i enjoyed a magnificent raspberry/cream cheese danish and an almond pretzel with my coffee. brian had some kind of meaty-ass sandwich. the real treat came afterward, though, when i realized that the orange juice machine actually functioned. holy crap, fresh-squeezed orange juice is so good. to follow up, brian decided to shell out for a slice of tiramisu, which he generously shared with me. it was really incredible, so much so that i was too distracted to photograph it.






after our trip to the bakery, we sort of made our way across lincoln park, where we approached the lincoln park zoo. at the gates, i suggested we keep walking because i didn't want to pay for a zoo. brian said he loved zoos, but really didn't want to spend the money either. we continued south along lincoln park until we came to this secondary gate to the zoo, which was not as large and not really marked, but clearly an entrance to the zoo. it was wide open, no ticket booth, just a giant walking path in and out of the zoo. and then it hit us... this is a public zoo. free. animals for everyone, no tickets needed. holy shit, right? you would kind of expect there to be a bunch of socialist animals inside, but they were real american animals, including zebras that didn't ever move and lions that were really good at ignoring the super-annoying kids yelling outside their pit. we exited the backside of the zoo to walk to the lakefront, and after a photo op, we took a moment to sit near the waves and reflect.




following this chunk of adventure, we headed towards downtown in search of food and other good things. i stopped in the north face store on michigan avenue to see if i could find some adventure pants, but to no avail. adventure pants have been on my mind for awhile, and have recently become a priority. these are adventurous times. we continued along michigan ave. until we reached the gap store, where i was sucked in with tremendous force. and what do i find there? fuckin' adventure pants! so i try them on, decide they're badass, and check out. eventually, we found a pizza joint (one from the chain we'd been seeking the day before) and enjoyed a beast of a pizza.

after dinner, we split up. brian hopped the el and went home for a nap; i walked over to this design symposium that faust had invited me to. it was a discussion of the work of three established-but-still-fresh women designers, as moderated by one rick valicenti. i got there before the fausts, and ended up hobnobbing with a couple of the kids from buzz co for awhile. the presentation was really cool, and the motif seemed to be three different approaches on "remaining unapologetic" about your work as you make decisions and put them out into the world. this really spoke to me, as i think this is the next step in my design maturity. it speaks to confidence, experience, and a position where you can get away with it, all things which seem to come after about 8 years in the career. or so said rick when i mentioned this idea afterward. it was good to speak with rick as always, and he did me the kindness of pointing me out to the audience before the question-and-answer portion began. he explained that i was from alabama and now worked for faust. "everyone say hi to paul."

everyone: "hi, paul."

after all of that was done, i headed towards brian's side of things and we met at a place called Clarke's on belmont. it's basically a hip 24-hour i-hop, but with only two waitresses working the whole restaurant. we made a drawing, as brian and i will do sometimes, and ate french toast and belgian waffles and warm bevs spiked with whiskey and kalhua. it was a good chill late night thing, spoiled only by waiting for the bus for freaking ever in the cold. we were clearly underdressed.

thursday morning brought lots of sleeping in, but most importantly, the debut of adventure pants. we walked down belmont to the Bleeding Heart organic bakery, which i had been curious to visit. the girl behind the counter greeted us with blue hair and punk rock, and we were glad to have it. i had a muffin, brian had something like a scone, i think. either way, we enjoyed it. the rest of the day consisted of us walking around, hopping on buses, getting cold and wet, getting our feet soaked, walking into a marshall's to buy fresh socks, and going to see a movie. the movie was ok, kind of funny but super predictable. the trip home became very rushed afterwards as we started calculating how long it would take for brian to get back out to the airport for his late flight. he ended up making it home alright, and i crashed out pretty hard with a nice swelling sensation in my throat.

today, friday, has been an interesting one. i got up this morning with the intent of making a trip to faust for lunch. it was going to function as a practice run for my commute. when i went to look up the nearest wachovia to get some cash for a train ride, i suddenly realized that there are no wachovia banks in chicago. somehow, when i decided to switch to wachovia in february, i remembered there being lots and lots of wachovias up here. nope. totally made that up. so i called sally and told her i wouldn't be making the trip i thought i was, and asked if she had any suggestions for banks. she said she'd email me some.

with the hope that i may not lose all of my shot at a commute practice run, i decided to at least see how long it takes to ride my bike to the metra line that will take me to faust. it's a solid 35-40 minutes in some rather ugly traffic, on bad roads, in sketchy-looking parts of town. i think i will look for an alternate route over the weekend. all the same, it was good exercise. i actually rode much further south than i needed, all the way to cermak, then across cermak to the lake, and up the lakeshore for awhile until i came out way up on north clark. it was a really massive ride, and by the time i happened upon a cool place called Uncommon Ground, i was quite ready for a rest. this place was part restaurant, part coffee shop, part music venue. the radio was playing a nice mix of built to spill, feist, and dido, with other random stuff thrown in sometimes. i asked the hostess for a nice place to camp out, and she took me to a big soft chair. i found out a good bank to run with from sally, signed up with Harris Bank, sent out some emails, ate veggie chili and a big goat cheese salad, and packed up to go sit at a starbucks in roscoe village. there, i sat for awhile to work on some mixtapes. by the time i made it back home, i realized that i had to be at a show in an hour.

i repacked my messenger bag with a change of shoes and headed down western ave again to the empty bottle, where i saw two bands: the f*ck buttons and caribou. the former (who i'd never heard before) were actually really interesting. a lot of experimental electronics, sampling, and shit like that. kind of ratatat meets m83, maybe? caribou are a favorite of mine... they put on a cool show but i wasn't as stoked about it as i'd hoped to be. the drumming was very cool to watch, mostly. all the same, it was good to get out and see some fun live music.


on the ride home, i was hauling ass in traffic, dodging taxis in the rain, and was crossing this bridge when i hit one of those fucking potholes i'd mentioned in an earlier post. this one wasn't one of the worst i've seen (it didn't flip me over the handlebars), but it did catch me with little time to react. somehow i kept my head on straight and just took the hit instead of swerving into traffic, but this gave me a sick pinch flat on my rear tire. the good news is that i had just bought some tubes earlier before i went to starbucks. plus, i was only a few blocks from home at this point so i was just glad i didn't get injured.


finally, i came home and put on walking shoes and my headphones to go get some groceries. more unusual foods, more delicious sandwiches... tonight, salami on asiago focaccia and toasted pita with garden veggie hummus. hell yeah! plus, vitamin-enriched orange juice for my tonsils. what a long day, i'm ready to crash now. if you've read this entire entry, i'd be willing to bet that you are too.

for april 8

until today, april 10, i have been locked out of my blog because a robot marked me as a spam blog. so i apologize if you tried to read this and couldn't get to it... anyway this is the entry for april 8.

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yesterday was hilarious. it all started with waking up at 5am to the smell of cigarette smoke in my room, which ultimately ended up with me writing an email to my upstairs roommate who decided it was ok to smoke in his room. after becoming wide awake with the anger of being poisoned in my own home, i eventually fell back asleep before getting up at 8am for my first official faust interaction. i'd decided to go by bicycle, which left me with a pretty good 40 minute bike commute to downtown. riding the streets of chicago is SO FAST because everything is flat... not like birmingham where even the flat parts are just secret little hills. it's also really fun and really exciting, with traffic zooming everywhere and having to dodge two-foot-wide-ten-inch-deep crevasses that the people around here call potholes. you really gotta pay attention around here.

faust had invited me out to join them for a 10 o'clock meeting with one of their favorite clients, The Buzz Company. this place is basically a placement agency that freelancers can use to find work. the catch is that the whole staff is equally as quirky and creative as the people they hire. just hilarious people who have put themselves in the position to have shitloads of fun with what they do and allow it to make them successful in that way. faust has been working with them to make these catalogs that show off particular freelancers as products in some sort of fashion magazine. there's good copywriting, great photography, and overall i think it's a perfect example of faust throwing out ideas and then taking one and running with it. the whole meeting was really warm and easy, and i bonded quickly with kelly, the buzz co's vice president. i caught her subtle reference jokes really well, and i hope that basically it both established a good situation for me working with buzz co in the future while at the same time showing faust that i can handle this human interaction stuff like a pro when i need to.

after i got out of that meeting, i called brian, who had just flown in that morning. met him over near wrigley field at a starbucks, and then we headed up the red line a few stops to get to his new store. i camped out at a borders bookstore cafe while he interviewed/hung out with his new store manager for something like three hours. by the time he got done with all of that, we were both starving and so we got back on the red line and got off at depaul university to try and find this pizza place that brett had recommended. we were at that weird time in between lunch hours and dinner hours, though, so the place, and every restaurant nearby, was closed. so we started walking towards wicker park in the hopes that we would find something. we ended up at some pita place (brian called it the pita version of a subway) where i had a gyro and brian had something i can't remember how to pronounce. we enjoyed it and eventually made our way back across town to the apartment.

we got back and took naps before going out with dan and matt (the roommates) and their needlessly forward chick friend, jess. i asked dan if he'd gotten my email about the smoking stuff and he was really cool about it, so that worked out well. i was prepared to ship out to a new place if i had to. anyway, we went out to a place called Waterhouse over at paulina and roscoe. i enjoyed some sort of chicken and pear panini and a giant Magner's irish cider, which came in some sort of cross between a champagne bottle and a beer bottle. massive. you can get cider everywhere here, i love it. we had a really good time going out with these guys, who i mentioned before don't exactly fall in line with what you would expect me to enjoy in people. brian especially did a good job of trying to bring up sports a lot when scores would pop up on tv, as this is a skill set he has that i truly don't. all the same, i think everyone involved had a lot of laughs, ragged on each other a little bit, and just had a straight up good time going out to a bar. as we were leaving, we ran into a gaggle of girls who were waiting for the rain to stop (it was pouring) and suddenly brian was significantly less eager to leave.

so we stalled in the doorway for awhile as dan went to get the car. eventually that whole situation dissolved when one of the three just ran out in the rain, and matt picked up another one of them to carry her to her house. random shit! the last girl kind of ran after her friend, and brian was left to think about what he should have done differently after i opened the door to opportunity with "do you guys like playing scrabble?" the whole thing is hilarious to watch because brian turned off his dating radar in the months preceding the move because he didn't want to get tied up before we left. and now it's on full blast because there are loads and loads of cute girls around here. i told they guys in the car on the way over there that my radar is totally off as of late, and with the best of reasons, but that i would gladly do whatever i can to help brian find the curly headed jewish girl of his dreams. does that mean wingman duty? do i even know how to run wingman duty? shit, who knows. would Goose ask the girls at the bar about scrabble to help Maverick out? i think so. i will quickly prove to be one of the worst wingmen of all time, but my heart is in the right place.

we all went home after an hour and a half i think, and brian and i regrouped to head into the drizzly night in search of new things. we took the bus for awhile, and tried to go to this new bar i read about in TimeOut, but the soft open mentioned in the article clear hadn't taken place. so we started walking. the general idea is usually that i start walking towards a given destination in the hopes that brian will see a place that interests him along the way. in this instance, i started towards Baladoche, this incredible belgian waffle place, while brian looked for a good bar to check out. we ended up walking all the way to the waffle place after a lot of indecision about bars, and the waffle place was closed. so i thought, let's just head back towards Schuba's, a cool indie venue we passed that was closer to out house, and see what's up there. we headed in that direction, where we ended up finding a place called Jake's Bar. the neon sign in the window was a skull and crossbones with the bones being pool cues, but the interior was nice and had little candles on the table. i'm a sucker for candlelight.

the atmosphere was great, the bartenders were conversational, and Crocodile Dundee was playing on the bar tv the whole time. i had rums-and-cokes while brian sipped on whiskey and the night went along really smoothly. this place had a jukebox loaded with stuff like radiohead and the flaming lips in addition to your usual jukebox classics, so i unloaded some of the myriad quarters from my manpurse and started a little live dj jukebox session. this definitely included 'fake plastic trees' as well as 'yoshimi battles the pink robots pt. 1', among others. in the middle of all of this, the bartender walks up to us with a white paper bag and says "hey the waffle place down the street dropped off samples, if you guys want one!" and sure enough, after our long search, a hot delicious baladoche waffle fell at our feet. unbelievable. this led to a lot of pronounced laughter and back-slapping between the two of us, as well as some "dude can you believe that shit", you know the usual. i told the bartender about our long, roundabout quest for a waffle and she was also intrigued by this happenstance. we stayed out until 1 or so and had a hilarious time before heading back home and crashing out.

no doubt, a great indication of things to come...

The First Day

mom dropped me off in nashville on thursday night, and my flight left at around 8:45 to arrive in chicago around 10. the image below was taken from the tv in the airport terminal while i was waiting for the plane to arrive. for those who know my connection with the number 23, i felt reassured. of course, there are other connections to be drawn in this particular image : )

the flight was short but not without some thunderstorm turbulence. once i arrived and gathered my massive amounts of luggage, i took the el to belmont, then rode the bus to leavitt street, where i was pleased to find a starbucks on the corner. two blocks later, i stepped onto the front porch of my new place. i called dan to come get me at the door. the apartment is a duplex, and ours is the top unit. dan is a straight-up kind of sports-loving chicago dude, someone very interested in basic man things and who decorates his apartment with giant posters of The Rat Pack and Goodfellas and shit like that. he also has a great trophy case collection of empty jagermeister and captain morgan's bottles. despite what would seem like drastic differences in our interests, we talked for a good hour and a half while i unpacked all of my shipments and inflated my bed. he's a a nice guy, easy to talk to, and i think we'll get along just fine. i went to bed thursday night strangely satisfied and ready for the morning.

when i woke up, the light coming in my windows was really beautiful. it was awesome just to wake up and have nothing else to deal with after so many months of going from one major step to the next. i got up after a little while and looked up nearby grocery stores on my blackberry (which has become quite the useful little mofo!) and walked to a Dominick's. but not without stopping at the nearby starbucks first! anyway dominick's is kind of on par with a publix or something like that. i had made up my mind a few days back that i wanted to really embrace this creation of new experiences. so in line with that philosophy, i bought only groceries i'd never bought before. croissants, weird yogurts, a new kind of granola, fresh bagels from the bakery, awesome irish cheddar, etc... no more peanut butter and jelly, no more buying the same grocery items every week. new, strange things like Green Tea Mango Yogurt are the new norm, for better or for worse. i'm not completely deviating, since it's still stuff like granola and yogurt. but it's a different kind of both. baby steps.

after getting my groceries, i came home and made a sandwich. croissant with strawberry cream cheese and irish cheddar... yum! then i poured myself a glass of water and headed out to the front porch with a book of dave eggers' short stories to wait on my bike and my laptop to be delivered. eventually, my bike showed up, and i unpacked and reassembled it while i waited for the next fedex truck to bring my computer. turns out he had already tried to deliver it and reported it as the wrong address, so i had to call fedex and have them arrange for a saturday delivery. no biggie. i happily got all my bike gear on and rode to a nearby bike shop to get a tune up and whatnot. not only is the shop only 3 minutes away by bike... it's full of wonderful helpful people who were really excited that i was one more of the 25,000 cyclists in this city. they even had a shop dog named Buddy who apparently has his own fanclub with pins and everything. badass. 

so i dropped off my bike and launched off into a neighborhood hike, discovering lots of wonderful little shops and cafes and stuff in Roscoe Village before finding myself in familiar territory near Lakeview. when i got hungry, i dipped into a pizza shop and had myself a 3 dollar slice of chicago deep dish to go, which i carried for a block or two to eat on a starbucks patio. good shit! the weather, by the way, was absolutely amazing all day. sunny, breezy, and in the 50's, just the way i like it. once i started to realize how far away from home i was getting, i started heading back in that general direction. somewhere on Western Ave, i happened upon Fearon's Public House, a genuine irish sports bar deal with some sort of cider on tap. i peered into the window, surveying the scene, and decided i'd give it a shot. there was wonderful mahogany stuff everywhere, some obligatory guinness posters, and lots of nice TVs hanging from the ceiling. as i ordered my pint, i realized that not one but two of these screens were showing soccer! so i sat and sipped my cider while watching highlights from italian serie a and scottish premiere league, simultaneously. and all the while, i was marveling at the brilliance of a bar WITH NO CIGARETTE SMOKE IN IT. 

after an extended period of sipping on that pint, i walked home and kind of chilled out for a little bit before heading back out to grab some stuff at whole foods. there, i was really stoked to find that they sell Strongbow cider in 500ml cans, which you can't get in alabama because of the alcoholic content. ludicrous. on the walk home, i had a great chat with suzie, who had just returned from a trip to italy, and decided to drink a cider on the way home. drinking beer on the street... just another new experience, as far as i'm concerned. not something i'll make a habit of, but it was fun while it lasted. 

after that i pretty much went home and hit the couch to watch High Fidelity before crashing out. a good start.