snail mail..

say.. ya know it's nice and all that the world is so technologically advanced that we can email each other from far corners of the earth. but i gotta tell ya.. opening up my "real" mailbox everyday for the past several years has been oh so boring! i mean.. ever since email, the only things i ever get in my mailbox are bills, junk mail and more bills! no more postcards, no more greeting cards, no more handwritten letters from friends or family that i haven't heard from in a while..

it's really kinda sad.

i mean, sure we all still keep in touch via email.. but the actual physical process of opening my mailbox no longer excites me anymore. i remember when i actually used to look forward to checking the mail in case i got a letter from a friend or a postcard from my sister who tends to travel quite a bit. in fact the last postcard i did get was back in june when my niece, who is 7 years old, wrote me from nepal. that was nice.. but very rare. bless her heart for not having email yet..

anyway.. just thought i'd rant about how opening my mailbox these days is really just another chore. i'm thinking this post probably dates the hell outta me.. eh? i need to stop starting sentences with "i remember when..."

bougie bengali...

my ass hurts as i sit here in front of the computer browsing the internet. i spent the majority of this afternoon scoping out furniture options while simultaneously staying abreast of spectacular athletic events on tv courtesy of the olympics.

like how puerto rico beat the shit out of the usa basketball team!!!!!!!!!!!! ouch! i was rooting for the so called "dream team" at first, but that short little puerto rican #7 (arroyo?) was seriously schooling some of the dream teamers at various points of the game.. so i couldn't help but start cheering for him, and therefore puerto rico.

how ironic is it that the u.s. lost and iraq won? ok, so it wasn't the same game, but.. still! i think the olympics is how wars should be fought. seriously.

anyway. as i sit here and look around me, i realize that my stay in this shitty little apartment is slowly but surely coming to a close. it never really felt like home, and justly so, as it's just a temporary abode until i move into my condo. but as i look around me i also realize how sucky my furniture is. hence the lengthy web browsing to see what kind of furniture i want to have in my new condo. i'm feelin' a little bougie as a result. mm..hmm.. it's all about the leather baby.

i'm thinking brown.. cappucino.. chocolate. mm.. chocolate. i spent the majority of the 90's and early 00's having decorated my apartment(s) with mostly black furniture, and i tell you i'm sick of it now. it's time to move on to the next color. earth tones.. browns, olive greens, beiges. fall colors even. the thought of redecorating from scratch excites me to no end.. yet the thought of how much i'll probably have to spend scares me. but i've been good.. really good actually. i've saved more in the past three months that i have in some years, so maybe it won't be so bad...

i haven't blogged in a while. i worked two straight 14 hour days last week, so i've been pretty exhausted. haven't had a lot of alone time lately which exhausts me even more. perhaps this coming week will be different.

a couple of things of note since i last blogged:

• the prince concert was fantastic! what a show! he played a ton of favorites and few extended jams. he's just oh so cool.
• i hosted a summer bbq last weekend that was just magnificent! the weather was fabulous, i got to hang out with a ton of friends i hadn't seen in a while, and ate like a pig.
• speaking of pigs, the cops showed up later that evening to try to ruin the bbq festivities. they made us empty out open wine bottles and take a cooler full of beer back to my friend's car. while that's completely justified thanks to illinois liquor laws, they felt the need to take it a step further on the asshole power trip meter and made me take down my tent with some excuse about how the (plastic) stakes were damaging the grass... whatever. as they left they mumbled something about not playing football because the lakefront isn't a football field. again.. tip of the asshole power trip meter. after they left we busted out four hidden bottles of wine and continued the party for a few more hours.
• my boy lenny must've felt my disappointment with his hairdo, because he is now sporting a nice, fresh, short fro. i like it.. i like it! peep the new do here.
• the timing of nbc's coverage of the olympics very badly coincides with valuable outdoor sunshine time which left me torn both yesterday and today. then i figured i could just tape it while i was out, considering the shit isn't even broadcasted live anyway.

my ass hurts. i can't wait to get a new office chair.

short shorts...

this weekend was perhaps the most summery weekend in chicago this year. it was beautiful!! saturday was 80 degrees, and today is probably closer to 90.

now that's what i'm talking about. that's the summer i know and love.

upon realizing last week that we were already close to the end of july, i started to panic, thinking that once again, i was letting the summer breeze right past me. the three short months of blissful temperatures that we get in chicago are not to be taken lightly. as i've grown older while living in this city, i've realized how much you really have to make a conscious effort to get out there and enjoy the weather while it lasts. but my work situation doesn't help much, as most of you know summer is busy season for us and i absolutely loathe my job because of it.

at any rate, i spent the past few days making it a point to hang out at the lake which is literally a hop, skip and jump away from my current abode. yesterday i wandered about the lake front and walked over to hollywood beach which is the longest strip of beach on the north side as far as i'm aware. i went over to a vendor to buy water and realized that they were renting out beach chairs for $5. i wasn't quite prepared to just lay out on the sand, as i hadn't brought a towel or beach blanket or anything, so i ended up renting the beach chair and plopped myself down in the middle of the beach facing the lake while listening to meshell ndegeocello's bitter and ani difranco's educated guess, took off my shoes, rolled up my pants and bathed in the glistening sun. it was marvelous.

but at one point as i sat there for well over two hours, i started feeling a little sorry for myself. because everyone on the beach had on shorts except me.

as some of you may know, i suffer from a somewhat common and cosmetic ailment called psoriasis. it's a skin condition which causes my skin cells to reproduce faster than my body can shed the old skin cells. as a result, the overproduction causes the cells to surface on to my skin and cause flaky patches on my legs, arms, back and stomach. i say cosmetic, because it's neither fatal, nor does it really cause any pain or discomfort except when it itches.. and it's not contagious. so really, as far as diseases go, it's not a bad one to have, if that doesn't sound too bizarre. but it's still a disease. and the way it looks on my skin can at times be unsightly. my legs are the most affected. my first outbreak happened in 1999 shortly after my trip to the bahamas, and at first i wondered if there was something in the water. but later i went to the doctor when it started spreading all over, and was diagnosed with psoriasis.

so getting back to the point of this entry. i rarely ever wear shorts in public. i have my good days and my bad days. sometimes i feel like i don't give a shit, and wear shorts to the beach. other days i'm a little more self conscious about it. i've been in many situations where people have passed by and i've caught them glancing over at my legs. i take tremendous solace in the fact that it's not contagious, but there are some days when i just wish people would stop staring. somehow though, when i'm on vacation, i manage to get by wearing shorts without much problem).

so saturday was one of those days when i ventured out alone and just didn't feel like dealing with the whole self conscious routine (when i'm with c, somehow i don't feel as self conscious). so i wore pants. and the whole time i sat there on the beach i wished i had just said fuck it and worn some damn shorts. but it was too late, so i just rolled my pants up to my knees and stretched out my legs so the little asshole psoriasis patches could get some sun. it felt so good to have my legs out in the open, feeling the breeze and soaking in some sunshine. i was isolated enough on the beach that i didn't really have to worry about too many people passing by. so that was nice. it was relaxing. but i couldn't help but get a little upset at the fact that this is actually something i have to deal with. in the grand scheme of things it's so vain and trivial. and i am so thankful that i don't have some fatal or debilitating disease. yet it manages to get me everytime.

i'm undergoing treatment for this incurable disease, but it's been five years now, and while the rest of my body has seen results (like my arms, back, stomach), my legs are still the same. when i was a teenager and into my late twenties, i used to get a lot of compliments about my legs. and now i can't even stand to show them...

i'm not one to really care what other people think. i've never tried to mold my appearance or behaviour to suit society's expectations. yet, this whole psoriasis thing puts a dent in that attitude bigtime. it's not that i'm vain in that i don't want people to see my legs the way they are.. it's just that i don't want people to look at my legs and think i must have some communicable disease and therefore they should shy away from me.

but of course there's no way in hell i can ever control other people's thoughts. so i think i'm just going to adopt a fuck it attitude for the rest of the summer and just wear shorts whenever i want to. it's obviously easier said than done because it's a huge mental thing for me.. but i'm gonna try.