what a crazy day. not only bad at work, but fraught with family stress (ask me offline...) and i was too tired to deal with it all. i have been up since 4 am. yesterday i was up at 4 am as well.
ugh.
i guess i should explain why i was up so early.
i flew from detroit to boston yesterday for a work project, and my flight left detroit at 7 am (ET). the car service picked me up at steve's parents' house at 5:15, which is ungodly early. i spent a really long day in boston, finishing with our last research subject at almost 8:30 and then didn't get to bed until 11. that made it awful difficult to get up at 5 ET (4 here in Chicago) this morning so that i could catch a cab to the airport in time to catch my 7 am flight back to chicago. ugh. i can't believe i'm still up.

we had a great weekend in michigan. we got to spend time with lots of good friends and see both steve's family and my mom's side of the family, so even though it was a bit busy at times, it was great to feel so loved. :) it was neat to see how huge liam had grown, and to see tiffany, who we hadn't seen in a long time. it was lucky that we got to see christy + brian before they left for their weekend up north, and rebekah + minh before they left town for san francisco. it's a visit like that, with lots of lucky scheduling, that makes me wonder what it will be like to visit ann arbor in two years (if we're not living back there, that is). after all, when i flrst left new york i'd go back and have tons of visits scheduled and lots going on, and then over time people left town, or fell out of touch... and then the last few times i visited new york it was almost depressing. the feeling of being connected to the city and having friends there was so much diminished from what it had been, and i was back at my hotel much earlier than i would have liked. i went down to times square (i used to stay just north of times square at 7th and 51st when i was there) and spent time at sephora and the virgin megastore (both of which were open until midnight) just so that i wasn't sitting in a hotel room alone in what had been my hometown.

today i saw a really funny thing. here in chicago there are cops on horses, cops on bikes, and -- my favorite -- cops on ATVs. i was walking home from work and we live near a really fancy health club. as i walked by i saw a cop on an ATV signal to man in a porsche to pull over, and i saw the cop pull out his pad of citations. i know the cop probably didn't chase the porsche, and the guy was probably either pulling up to the health club or the garage nearby, but it really looked damn funny. and you can bet that the cop was thrilled to get to write out a moving violation!

apartment building update: many of you may know that we were originally told that a grocery store was going in on the first floor of our building within a few months of our move-in. well, it hasn't happened yet and although there had been signs of life in the open retail space, things were moving slowly. well, it's finally looking promising, since they had a building permit posted for the first time today.

apartment building update #2: aparently there were two more break-ins on friday. i am going to have to call the cops in the am. i need to finally report my missing jewelry box. ugh.


two things i've been meaning to point out (so they're not really new anymore but they're still very amusing to me or i wouldn't make the effort anymore):
1. if you weren't aware that some of our fine congressmen attended a coronation of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, you should definitely read the Salon.com coverage. apparently our congressman was in attendance -- was yours?

2. also in the not-so-new anymore but i've been meaning to share my fascination with it category, apparently there will be a Gene Simmons/Kiss themed racecar at the Chevy Rock And Roll 400 NASCAR race in september. i think this is the best thing those NASCAR knuckleheads have come up with in years! you can see photos of Gene with the racecar here.