I’m heading out at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning to drive up to my friend Dee-Dee’s family cabin in the northern wilderness of Wisconsin. The last time we went there, Dee and I were almost killed by a combination of duck hunters and kayak fatigue. The time before that, Natasha, Dee-Dee and I got stranded in the middle of the lake when we couldn’t get the boat motor to start, and had to take turns rowing to shore with one oar. Oh yeah, and then we killed a pileated woodpecker on the way home.
But this time, it’s going to be smooth sailing. You know why? Because I bought a special cowboy hat at Target that I’m going to wear all weekend, and it makes me feel rugged in the way that only a straw cowboy hat made in China can make you feel.
Assuming I make it home alive, I will hopefully have photos to share and stories to tell. Until then, have a great Labor Day weekend!

Filed under: General on August 29th, 2008 | 12 Comments »

Sometimes when my cats are just minding their own business and curled up on a chair somewhere, I like to walk up to them, squeeze them really tight, smoosh their faces next to mine and say, “Who is the cutest cat in the world? How come you’re so tiny? Why are your paws so black?”
And then sometimes they try to crawl inside my underwear drawer and make a nest, and I lift them up real high and say, “Who do you think you are? Who said you could go into my dresser and throw my underwears all over the place?”
In both scenarios, their response is exactly the same: to furiously lick their fur wherever I touched them, as if to remove all traces of my existence.
I’ve decided to adopt a similar practice whenever people annoy me, but I’m going to use wet wipes instead of my tongue.

Filed under: General on August 22nd, 2008 | 27 Comments »

Sometimes Rabbit says, “Another day, another dollar,” which always makes people laugh at work.

Sometimes Rabbit needs a little something to take the edge off.

Sometimes Rabbit likes to keep up on current events.

Sometimes Rabbit thinks everything will be all right.

Filed under: Sometimes Rabbit on August 19th, 2008 | 22 Comments »

Here’s what I learned today:
1. If you forget to renew your license plate registration and it is two weeks past the due date, the city of Chicago will try to tow your car away.
2. If you get to your car before the tow truck does, you should fly like the wind.
3. If you drive around with a “TOW NOTICE” plastered on your window and weird yellow numbers written in official police grease paint on your windshield, people will look at you like you’re wearing an orange jumpsuit and leg shackles.
4. If you don’t want your car to be towed away, you will need to hide it in your garage spot and walk everywhere until you can get the new sticker for your plates.
5. If the guy who parks next to you in your garage spot sees the greasepaint and torn “TOW NOTICE” on your car, he will give you dirty looks and contemplate turning you in.
6. If you see that everyone online is making cool manga self-portraits, you will feel compelled to do the same.

Filed under: General on August 14th, 2008 | 19 Comments »

If you and I hang out in any of the same blog circles – and let’s face it, this is one incestuous pool we’re swimming in, so we probably do – then you’ve already heard several exciting recaps about Davecago 3. But just in case you haven’t, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: I met up with RW, Mrs. RW, Leah, Kevin and Katie, Dave2, Kelly, Lynne and her beau, Tori, Robin, Suzanne and Gary for some pizza. Then we got some ice cream. Then we went to one dark bar for fancy drinks. Then we went to another brighter bar for more fancy drinks. Then we got into cabs. Then we went home.
See? Boring, right? That’s what you get for trying to skate by life just reading the Cliff’s Notes. You never even got to hear about this stuff:
Chapter One:
A friendly, yet unfamiliar face that I would soon learn belonged to a radioactive girl named Tori walked in and said to me, “Hey, I think we know someone in common! Do you know Vickie?”
And this being a blogging event, my brain would not compute, so I said, “I don’t know, what’s her site?”
And Tori said, “No, I mean don’t you know Vickie? I’m pretty sure she said she’s friends with you.”
And I said, “I’m not sure… is she at vickie.com, or vickie.blogspot.com? She sounds familiar.”
And Tori said, “You’re not hearing me. She doesn’t have a blog. She’s a person. A person you know in real life.”
And then smoke came out of my ears and I spoke in binary code for the rest of the evening.
Chapter Three:
Kevin and Katie innocently ordered something called a “white pizza” and unwittingly started a race riot at my end of the table. Fortunately, Dave2 had made salt ‘n pepper buttons for everyone to promote peace and love, and soon enough we were all back to our harmonious states.
Chapter Four:
I said, “Hey nerds!” to Kelly and Leah because they were synchronizing their Blackberries and talking about persistent user IDs, but then I had to laugh at the irony of calling someone a nerd while I was busy trading buttons with other bloggers and wearing a lanyard at blogger meetup. It always feels so good to be with my own kind.
Chapter Seven:
I tried to impress RW and Mrs. RW by acting like an absinthe aficionado, but they saw right through me. I’ve totally never even met the Green Fairy, and RW is like BFF with her.
Chapter Nine:
I like to tease Kelly because she has foxy* hair and smells nice, so I stole her bag of brownies (homemade by the radioactively fabulous Tori), but soon realized that you should never play keepaway with people who are 3” taller than you because they will just reach up and grab the brownies without even fully extending their arms and you will look dumb and not have brownies anymore.
Chapters Eleven – Thirteen:
What happens at Violet Hour stays at Violet Hour. I can’t really tell you any more about that.
Chapter Fifteen:
Suzanne kept pretending that she doesn’t have a blog, but I know for a fact that she blogs at www.myhungariangrandmotherisavampire.com, but just doesn’t want people to know about it.
Chapter Seventeen:
Gary told us about how he is going to start a blogger commune in Costa Rica, where we will all eat yucca and sugar cane and pineapples and coffee beans all day long, and it sounded like heaven. I am going to be in charge of growing cinnamon sticks, which I will wrap with pretty ribbon and sell to British tourists.
Chapter Nineteen:
I got jealous because Lynne and everyone at her table were drinking fancy tequila mojitos so I decided to order my own fancy drink called a Tequila Mockingbird, which, despite the clever name, tasted kind of like grapefruit salt.
Chapter Twenty-One:
My phone started buzzing, so I looked down and saw a text message from another blogger, Jessica, who was trying to warn me about some artistically compromising photos she had taken while under the influence of the Svengaliesque Sarah. I made Dave2 pull up the photos, and then was shocked, offended, and extremely disappointed to learn that you can only zoom in so much on an iPhone before the photo gets really grainy.
Chapter Twenty-Four:
Leah, Suzanne and I shared a cab and were almost abducted to Schaumburg – a fate worse than waterboarding – but were able to disorient our cabbie by making him drive down streets closed to through traffic. After he dropped me off, apparently Leah also cleverly convinced him to do an illegal left turn, at which point the cops pulled them over and she was safe to Twitter in peace once again.
Chapter Twenty-Four and a Half:
I ate almost all the remaining brownies before going to bed.
Chapter Thirty-One:
Robin shared secrets with Dave2 and me that some people would kill to learn. All I can say is that it involves World War II and a chain letter. It will be ages before anyone else learns what we now know, and I’m not sure I am going to be able to deal with the responsibility of this knowledge.
Now don’t you see why Reading Is Fundamental? Don’t try to coast through life on Cliff’s Notes alone – you miss all the good stuff.

*I’m trying to repopularize the term “foxy.” Please help me in this endeavor.

Filed under: General on August 11th, 2008 | 18 Comments »

Q: What’s huge and yellow and goes “sploosh?”

A: 30,000 rubber ducks being dumped into the Chicago River!

On Friday, the Windy City Rubber Ducky Derby was held to benefit the Special Olympics. I adopted four ducks, but they didn’t win. Stupid loser ducks.

When I first heard about the event, I wondered, “Hey! The Chicago River is really slow. How the heck are those ducks going to make their way across the finish line?”

The answer? The Chicago Fire Department, of course. Let’s hope there were no barge fires while this race was going on, because all the fire boats were otherwise occupied squirting at a bunch of rubber duckies.

And by the way, did you even know we had fire boats? I sure didn’t. Sometimes they like to just shoot straight into the air. Show offs.

Next year, I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to make my own special rocket ducks and toss them into the water while everyone is distracted by the excessive display of aquatic firefighter virility. Then when I win First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth prizes, the whole city will finally know my name and give me the respect I deserve. I will so totally own the Rubber Ducky Derby. OWN IT!

Filed under: General on August 10th, 2008 | 16 Comments »

“Who do you love more – me or the boxed wine?”
“Right now? Don’t make me choose.”
“What does the boxed wine have that I don’t have?”
“A spigot and 13.5% alcohol.”
“Damn you!”
“Glug glug glug.”
“I said damn you!”
“What? I can’t hear you over the din of cheap shiraz pouring into this juice glass.”
“You mock my pain. Never do it again!”
“Can’t you quote any other movie than Princess Bride? It’s getting old.”
“Prepare to die!”
“Hey, is there any colby jack left?”
“Bottom shelf.”
Fin.

Filed under: General on August 7th, 2008 | 14 Comments »

For the past week, I have been tormented by an infestation of flies in my apartment. Where are they coming from? Why do they keep choosing my apartment? I have no food here. Truly, no food at all. I’ve been defrosting my refrigerator for the past three days, and have been surviving on nothing but peanut butter and pretzel sticks, both of which are hermetically sealed after use.
I suppose it could be due to the fact that it’s 95 degrees and humid out – perfect fly incubation weather – and some asshat keeps opening up the window in our back hall which is directly above the dumpster.
But more likely, my apartment was built on top of the Hell Mouth and we’re only days away from the Evil One once again walking the earth. If the walls start to bleed, I’m out of here, security deposit or not.
By the way, what good are cats that can’t even catch a fat, slow fly? No good at all. I could totally pull a blindfolded Daniel-san move and catch these flies with chopsticks if I wanted to. I’m trading the cats in for bullfrogs this weekend.

Filed under: General on August 4th, 2008 | 17 Comments »