twincityhacker

Sophie and I went to the Irish Lion. She had a Guinness, I had a hard cider, and we both had a bit of each. The cider tasted good, the Guinness, not so much.

We chatted over drinks about this or that, for two hours, and when we were polishing up our drinks a nice public defender wanted to buy us drinks. We weren't at first, because she was driving and I weigh 120 soaking wet, but we ended up getting two orange juices and talking about his work and the pub and Bloomington in general.

The Irish Lion is the ragged edge of the "respectable" Bloomington. Going east, it's college campus, boutiques, and generally nice places. The west, it's shady, and where most of the murders and drug dealing happens. Next to the bar used to be the train tracks, so there was a literal right side/wrong side dynamic going on.

The pub itself used to be a bar/whorehouse, with the bottom floor being a bar where the railroad men could cash their paychecks and the top being the rooms were the prostitutes plied their trade. The bar next door, The Crazy Horse, was more or less a straight up brothel. The area was called "The Levy" in both senses of the term: the dividing line between goodness and deceit, and where people tried to get a cut of the paycheck they just cashed.

The guy was slightly bitter, as he was getting ready to defend a man for murder. Recently, the police had found the bones of man who had been missing for some time. A few years ago a more affluent family had their daughter kidnapped and the town was crawling with FBI agents. And other things.

The public defender wanted to buy us a drink, because he had a relativity good day and wanted to share the karma. And probably put a little good karma out as he sounded ready to bitchslap one of his clients for being a moron and that if he didn't give something better than the BS he'd be going to jail for a minimum of 25 years.

And he said good something about Jasper, that the people there mostly did things as they should. Bloomington is good on the surface with lots of poverty and a much larger homeless population that would be expected.

A good day - educational, fun, and illustrating how very lucky I am.

on top of all this, I've lost my glasses. So I won't be doing anything today except sulking and listening to the radio because I can't see anything. Well, unless I put my nose about three inches away from what I'm looking at.

Which is why this post will probably look all wonky, because I'm touch typing and can't read the results.

Anyway, I put down my glasses where I always put my glasses, something goes CLUNCK and suddenly, I have no glasses. I've cleared off my dresser ( where I normally put my glasses ( the floor around my dresser, the trash, the floor in the rest of my room, under the bead, under the heater, in the sheets, and so on. No glasses.

Anyway, now I'm really going to bed, and hope that in the morning I will be able to think clearer or something. Because really, I can't see at all, so I'm more or less fucked if I can't find them.

Found my glasses, thank fuck. I decided to turn over my mattress and there they were, nearly at the foot of the bed. Considering my dresser is near my head, they must have bounced off of a ton of stuff to land there.

I don't care if your usual practice space is currently a construction zone, sword fighting below my window at 5:30 AM is just not on.

My presentation went well. Judging from the questions in class and talking with the professor afterwords, I think my biggest problems was that I dumped too much information too quickly and I'm not very good at transcription.

Also during the presentation, the professor made the comment that it was interesting choice of attempting to find regularity in an area that seemingly had none. Which is odd, because I think one of the bedrock assumptions of science was to look into chaos and see the order in it.

I thought I did 1000x better than the guy that went after me, because he made the unfortunate choice to try to condense an explanation predictive English syllable structure in 15 minutes. And while portions of my discussion were speculative and my data sheet had errors, his data sheet was flatly contradictory.

That night Margo wanted us to meet and greet her girlfriend, who was flying in for spring break. I thought we were meeting at the Runcible Spoon an hour earlier than we were actually going to, so I had some spare time. Since Vintage Phoenix ( the comic book shop ) and Boxcar Books are both on 6th street, and indeed Boxcar Books is right next door to the Runcible Spoon I poked about in those two stores.

I was still early for the meeting, but B had also arrived early so I chilled with her on the back porch of the restaurant while we waited for Margo and the guest of honor Sarah. Since I was bundled up, I was just slightly frozen from the chin to where my trusty IU ( ball cap ) hat perched.

It went from us two to about ten very quickly, and I had a great time. I went halfvies with Becca, so we shared our ravioli and breakfast sandwich. It was all very good. The company was much better - though my slice of apple pie, which I very pointedly shared only a bite of with Athena, was one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.

After paid my bill, I got trapped next to the counter by the other girls, so I had to wait until everyone else filled out -- and then ended up at Becky's to hang out as everyone thought I was going anyway. Also good time, as there was impromptu yoga and the retelling of relationship drama which explained some awkwardness that was bubbling though dinner. We also played I never, which is a joke for me because I never do anything so it became a running gag when people said something really outrageous was that I was finally taking a sip.

Since I hadn't slept in about thirty hours I was a wee-bit silly that also had people asking what the hell was in Becky's water. As I was a bit stiff and sitting up straight hurts my back, I ended upside down on the counch and so on.

In the end, had a good time but didn't sleep for thirty nine hours. I was going to do laundry, but I took a nap as soon as I got home instead, so my sleep total is about 14 hours so far.

I sorted some adminstrative things with the school today, and went to the library to look for things for my presentation, and ate. My life is thrilling, so:

[Poll #1356347]

Because there is so much I could do, and after several hours of plowing though Old/Middle/Modern English grammars I'm planning to do tomorrow, I'm afraid I'll just decide to nap instead. = )

Next time I have some spare time, I need to go jeans shopping. My favorite pair of jeans ( that became so after my previous favorite had become unwearable from poison ivy ) just ripped. This would not be so horrible if it had not ripped right under my butt, which makes them both unwearable and difficult ( for me ) to mend because the stresses in the fabric there would cause the stitches to wear out really quickly. Plus the seams look half ready to go and it's just time.

So, shopping. On my to-do list! I'll probably get to it sometime in mid-May, or when I have only two pairs of jeans left, what ever comes first. = )

Campus is closed for the rest of the day. No Language Structure for the rest of the week. = (

But I did finish registering for the Midwest BLGTACC, that's taking place here February 13-15. And since I get to go for free and not pay the $60 registration fee, it's even more awesome.

Speaking of money and awesome, I heard back from Amazon. I ordered something from their Marketplace at the beginning of December, and never heard back from the seller where my books went. Today, Amazon refunded my payment, so now I have $30 that I didn't have yesterday.

I'm still going to tromp half way across town to get my ticket for the film festival today. After I tromp over to Wright to get something to eat!

Since Obama asked nicely for people to volunteer on MLK Day, and made his people build a website to advertise places that need volunteers, guess what I did today!

There was a children's activity day at the library, and since I went to a weekly story time/craft project in Chittenago at my public library, I did my service thing there. The library in Bloomington is much, much bigger than the library I had in Chittenago though. The entire Sullvian Community library would fit into the children's section, minus the peaked roof.

My job was at the button station, where I spent most of my time making sure that the toddlers didn't draw on only one or two pieces of paper instead of half of the stack. There was a very odd mixture of buttons, though. Half of them were community is love buttons with hearts or stars on them. Then their artist got a scene of humor, and started drawing more elaborated one with Martin Luther King Junior quote, like a boat on a wave and two squid holding hands. There were the just werid ones with flowers growing out of a dinosaur's head, and tentecles coming out of a flower pot.

Then the guy just lost the plot. The finale was a guillotine that said "if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Even if it is a verbatim quote from King, this is for a children's craft time.

I pulled out the guillotine ones, because I didn't want the parents freaking out that their toddler is coloring an execution device. Not that most parents would notice, as my favorite button says "We have guided missiles and misguided men." The parents called it a rocket ship, but it's pretty damn clear it's an ICBM.

So I helped color heats, met some new fun people, then got fed really good pizza from Uncle D's New York Pizzeria. Onion and tomato, with feta cheese sprinkled over the top after it comes out of the onion. Yum!

Also, everyone over the age of five was so freaking happy to see Obama sworn in tomorrow. Two things over heard sums it up pretty well: "In 23 hours Obama will be president!" and "I'm so happy that my country doesn't torture anymore!"

I have one more paragraph to go for my classics term paper. I have one more section to write and the bibliography, and then I'm DONE. It will be very nice to stop existing on sorta-iced coffee.

It's now 94 degrees in my room. It's 61 degrees outside. The air coming out of the computer manages to be cooler than the rest of the room. = (