oh dear god what is it with the phil collins and whatever musak service they have here in the biz center!?! how many times am i going to have to endure this!

...just got back from a whirlwind 22 hour visit to california for a really interesting one-day seminar on how women use the internet. considering that i'm a woman, i wasn't really surprised by anything. i mean, come on -- who's surprised to know that ivillage isn't where all of the women go when they're online? but still, it was an interesting day of discussions and there was hard-and-fast evidence that women aren't going to any particular type site (or type of sites) in vast quantities, so well, i guess that's something. i suppose i may have more to say on this when i'm not so damn tired, but really i just thought i'd stop in the biz center before even going up to my apartment, so that i could make sure that nothing exploded at work today. now, however, with the phil collins "dance into the light" (!) blaring, i think i might have to call it a day and turn in...

g'night brave internet users!

fun link that really cheered me up today (thanks, Becky!)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4146756343&category=6

i officially have two bosses now, even though when they announced the company restructure they said not to think of it that way.
i paraphrase, but here's how it went at the company meeting:
"for those people who have directly reported to one person and had a 'dotted line' reporting relationship with another member of management, you will now directly report to both. it may sound like you have two bosses, but it will actually be more clear now who you are responsible to and your current boss will still be in charge of your review, but will receive input from the other member of management that you work with."
clear as mud! luckily i work closely with both. still, it's very office-space-ish. that movie is such a great satire of how companie work nowadays that it's frightening.

we had our office move today. by 5 pm we had to be all packed up and have our computer equiptment all wrapped in pink bubble wrap. everything had a numbered sticker and the IT staff came around letting us know that all of the servers were going offline at 5:05. and they did -- i was right in the middle of submitting my timesheet (which was due at 5). doh! still, i can't believe how crazy our office looked during the course of this week, with piles upon piles of free crap from vendors and media kits and magazines and general mess! and the orderliness with which the whole thing was planned makes me believe quite confidently that all of my boxes will just be there in my new workspace when the new office opens on monday. and that will be amazingly hassle-free and wonderful. i mean, of course there will be unpacking just as there was packing, but it was all very organized. they were even taking down the company's name off of the elevator bank wall today. very, very efficient movers with their jumpsuits and tags for everything. if only we'd done that for our personal move...

hockey hockey hockey
yes, folks, it's playoff time again and the hall household provides loyal viewership to the networks silly enough to air the NHL (and i don't mean that in a bad way -- we're grateful they DO air it!) while it's not quite as much fun to watch games alone as it was to watch en masse at fort awesome, steve is still happy enough to yell at the TV while i putter around, half-cleaning, one-third reading and whatever-the-remaining-amount-is (it's late) watching the game.

steve doesn't enjoy hot-tubbing (some sort of fear of germiness, which makes me fear that he's becoming more of a hypochondriac like his mother) so i went down without him just now. it was like the UN of hot-tubbing. i shared the hot-tub with an Asian guy in a speedo and an African-American guy with big tattoos while the windows of the room were cleaned by a Hispanic building employee (who speaks little English, but is very nice and answered my questions about his web surfing habits when i ran into him at the mailroom internet kiosk reading Univision.com several weeks back). it was interesting that i noticed the multiculturalness of it all, because it's probably super common here, just as it would be in NYC. i remember that's what i really loved about living there; riding the subway or just being out around town and hearing all of the different languages and seeing what people from every different walk of life were reading, wearing, and talking about. i suppose this building really isn't a microcosm of Chicago since it's pretty expensive, but at least it's more diverse than most, if not all, areas of Ann Arbor would be. it's definitely more diverse than any of the neighborhoods that we wanted to live in around Ann Arbor, that's for sure. maybe if we stay in Chicago awhile i won't even notice the diversity, and i'll just notice it when i'm somewhere like Minnesota, and everyone around me is white...

It's a sad day for finger lickin' good chicken fans everywhere...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-first-kfc,1,2159579.story?coll=chi-news-hed
I'm glad they're putting up a museum. And to think that the preparation secret was pressure cooking the chicken!
I love that old-school sort of fast food neon sign. I hope Arby's never demolishes the rest of their remaining signs...
http://www.geocities.com/chucksphotospot/signs.html

things i'm very excited about:

spring!!!
trying out Google's Gmail (yes, i am a dork)
Kevin coming to visit
going to New Orleans for the Jazz + Heritage Festival
open-toed shoes season
Jamba Juice (okay, so this isn't exactly a new thing, but we went there twice this past weekend, so it's really top-of-mind)

i suppose it's only fair to write about things i'm also not-so-excited about. we have a big office move coming up this friday. they are shutting off everything and kicking us out on thursday at 5 pm (which is good -- i need encouragement to leave at a reasonable hour). however, in the move a lot of us are losing our offices and moving to cubes. ew. i have no idea how we'll do our group meetings and i have a lot of stuff and a big fear that it won't fit. i already have a helluva time keeping clutter under control (my office frequently looks like a war zone). i have learned that i am the sort of person in the sort of profession that either needs a secretary or a lot of space. when i have neither (such as at my last job in pizza-land) the resulting workspace isn't pretty. in addition, i'll actually have to go oustide (!) to get to the new building. it's just right across the street from our apartment building, but STILL! hmph. the upside is that our new building is connected to a much larger pedway system than the current building, so i shouldn't really want for anything. mike (my star employee) and i gave it a quick look-see today and found: dunkin' donuts, cosi sandwich shop, fedex, starbucks, hallmark, several independent delis, a newsstand, kinko's, a chinese place, a key maker/watch fixer stand, and a secret-looking doorway to a bennigan's (god forbid i ever somehow need to go there!)

a couple of pedway links:
http://www.gapersblock.com/detour/archives/subterranean_city_a_tour_of_chicagos_pedway_part_1.php
http://www.dirtyoldtown.org/blog/chicagopedway.php

maybe i should take a pedway tour from the chicago architecture foundation:
http://www.architecture.org/tours_3.html
actually, i think i should take a bunch of tours from them: some of the buildings here are amazing and i'm intrigued by the history of it all (as opposed to my time in detroit, where there were awesome looking buildings left in such sad states of decay that i really didn't want to know the sad stories of their demise).

there were tornadoes just south of chicagoland this evening. crazy! i had no idea, and i was still at work on the 35th floor. i guess i kinda assume that if it was bad here in the city the building management would do some sort of alarm/alert.

steve has been very into the hockey playoffs, and i have been watching quite a bit over his shoulder. it's neat that they ended up with quite good matchups -- both between historical and neighborly rivals. other than that he's just been working. i am trying to encourage him to be social, but it hasn't worked yet. we had an awesome picnic this weekend in the park with some fancy-schmancy stuff from the local zingermans-ish deli. and then of course we went to Jamba Juice: twice (Steve insisted!). did i ever tell you that i looked into whether or not they'd franchise to me? i was convinced after my first trip to Jamba that if only they'd let me open a store in Ann Arbor i would not only be financially set for life, but happy and healthy and probably even prettier and wittier (okay, so i'm adding those last two on just for fun, but you get the point)...

i am really anxious to check out the white stripes/loretta lynn album.

final note for the evening: i wish ralph nader would go away.

My favorite story of the week (not 'cause I am glad this happened, but I like the goofiness of it):

Close encounter with oven cools off Oliver's love story

London: Celebrity chef Jamie Olier learned recently that if you can't take the heat, definitely get out of the kitchen, at least when you're not fully dressed. While cooking a Valentine's Day meal at home for his wife, Jools, the Naked Chef took his moniker all too seriously -- with disastrous results. He elected to put the meal together while he was in the altogether.
According to a report in The Sun newspaper, the naked chef managed to burn his -- hmmm, how should we say -- manhood on the stove as he cooked away.
"I was naked in the kitchen and burnt (myself)," he told The Sun. "I really ruined my evening and my night."
The burn seemingly cooled down Oliver's ardor for the rest of the night, so, upon recovery, he took his wife to Paris to make up for causing the romantic inconvenience.

_______________________

If only Steve had been able to take me to Paris after he burnt his arm/chest/stomach in the kitchen last fall...

Okay, so on a more positive note, I was very lucky to see a good number of the people I love in Michigan this weekend. My good friend Christy had a birthday party on Friday night, so we saw a bunch of our friends there and kept Christy and Brian up until they practically had to kick us out at 2 am. I was really sad to have to go since I know we won't be doing that very often anymore. Then on Saturday I was able to see my friend Becky and her four month old son Liam and then my friends Holly and Brian and their new baby, Maya, who was born on Thursday. I took it as a lucky sign that I was home in Michigan the week that she was born so that I could meet her. I think it meant that this was a good weekend for closure and new beginnings. She was so small that it amazed me to hear that not only was I smaller than she was at birth, but that my brother was even smaller -- he was less than 6 pounds!
Were any of you loyal readers less than 6 pounds a birth?

This weekend was our last weekend to clean out Fort Awesome, and it was really sad. Not only were there completely random things left behind, but the house was pretty dusty and had a bunch of those irritating dead Japanese beetle bugs lying around -- it really did look like nobody had been there. I took both my digital camera and my 35mm camera to Michigan and ended up not taking any photos with either since the house was too changed for me to do so. I wish I had taken some when all of our things were still there. I guess I was too busy getting ready to move over the holidays (as well as enjoy the holidays!) to do that, and I kept thinking I'd be back there for a weekend, and I wasn't. When we finally were done getting rid of everything and putting the trash out and sweeping, I wrote a note to the new owners and left it on the kitchen counter. I started crying, and I'm starting to tear up right now thinking about it as well... I loved that house, probably even more than the little house that I grew up in. I was really proud of it and loved that it was a gathering place for our friends. I told the new owners that we had a nickname for it and that they could email us with any questions. I want them to take good care of her...
I am crying again. I am such a sap...