"I dunno, philosophize with him."

Today was not the offical first day of spring semester, but it is the first full week so close enough.

I started my day with some ceramics, where I spent the better part of 3 hours ruining my jeans and generally failing at making pottery. Despite my utter lack of experience on the subject, my teacher thought it would be a fun idea to make us all make cylinders all afternoon.
Being hunched over a wheel for even that length of time has strained my lower back, which is double the fun. I can't wait until I get to do that for 6 hours later in the semester.

After a hefty break (reading in the lounge) I winced over to my Chinese philosophy class, of which I am now sure will be the toughest class I've yet to take. My teacher is very smart and knows a lot of things, although he likes to talk about himself in a braggy sort of way, but I suppose if I had a doctorate and knew philosophy and had been to a diplomatic lunch with some big cheeses in China and flew planes and backpacked across the country twice, I would feel slightly superior to the wishy-washy art students in front of me too.
Today I learned so much I don't know how I'm going to remember it.

Today, YOU learn: "Bejing" is not pronounced "Behj-ing" like Americans do, but is actually just "Bay-jing"
and
"Taoist" and "Daoist" are two different romanized forms of writing of same philosopher, but are both pronounced "daoist"
The more you know! (the more pretentious you can be)

Whiskey, and make it hot.

Today Chicago forgot how to handle snow.

It started snowing sometime this morning. I noticed it when I was running an errand for the office.
During the afternoon tour, the courtyard of the museum was nicely blanketed. It looked lovely out. After the tours left, I returned to the office and was filing in a corner when people first began to talk about the snow. I heard that even the buses were creeping along the streets. There are no windows where I was, but I imagined great big flakes piling up on the sidewalks. I decided to leave a little early.

They weren't big flakes. They were still the tiny ones that had been blowing about earlier.
Let down, I took the red line to Chicago Ave to take the bus home. It may not be snowing thickly, but it is cold, and I didn't want to walk from the blue line station.
The snow was collecting at a steady rate as I waited for the bus. It didn't come, so I slogged down one stop, to avoid the crowd at my present stop. It still didn't come, so I slipped all the way down to Michigan Ave to wait at the stop there.

Chaos! Cars with one rear corner sliding sidways, sluggish traffic, a school bus that cut off a sirened firetruck before getting stuck in the intersection, that firetruck then scraping a car trying to wiggle through the deadened traffic, a bus end that nearly wipes out three of us standing too close to the curb, five buses too crowded to get on...

I left work at 3 and just got home, at 6:30, in a commute that normally takes 20 minutes.
Why is Chicago acting like Oregon on a snow day?


I got home and filled Mapplethorpe's water dish with snow.

I just discovered my bag of chips that had been in my bag, and that I was ravenous for, somehow absorbed the snow through the plastic and they are all soggy and inedible now.

Post more

It's come to my attention that I have been slacking in the updates. Rather, it's come to my attention that people still read this thing.
Fall semester was far too busy and I slowly forgot about the blog. This semester, I hope to do interesting things in my life and remember to tell you about them.

Here's a picture of the mountain as I was boarding the plane Friday morning.