Phoning it in!

One of my resolutions for the year should have been to stop composing blog entries with lists of random, unrelated things simply because I'm too lazy to come up with a clever way to link them all together. But it wasn't, so here we go:

1. I went to Ikea yesterday, which is a fun excursion until you hit the 2-hour mark. This usually occurs somewhere in the sofa section, which is convenient. One can just collapse on a pleather couch and is too exhausted to realize how uncomfortable the furniture actually is because one is too busy taking refuge from the bright yellow price tags and the overwhelming congregation of European couples buying plastic chairs. I think this is how Ikea sells so many futons.

2. I had lunch at Fuddruckers yesterday. It's the second time in the last month that I've been to a Fuddruckers, and I've quickly remembered how much I love it. It's really overpriced and tacky, and there's a greater chance to see the bare chests of overweight, middle-aged men when they take off their Lands End fleece pullovers, but YOU CAN PUT ANYTHING ON YOUR HAMBURGER, even though there are actually only, like, ten options, and I honestly only add pickles, onions, and lettuce (a new development! it makes it almost healthy!) to my burger. Also, you can sometimes get FREE shitty cookies. My life resolution is to always live near a Fuddruckers.

3. Getting to see the suburbs is, surprisingly, refreshing, since Chicago can get overwhelming. Also, I'm still obsessed with Ordinary People, and even though Arlington Heights isn't Lake Forest, I don't know any better. Take me to chorale practice, Elizabeth McGovern!

4. Resolutions: 2007 is going pretty well so far, even though we're only a week into 2007. I haven't actually left the apartment to do the whole "work out" resolution, but I have been using my one fifteen-pound weight. And last night I did ten push-ups. I also had a salad last week! And I spent one hundred and sixty dollars at Jewel on Saturday and some of that went to one of those bagged salads that I can eat AT HOME, rather than going out and spending nine dollars on one. Too bad "brilliant planning" wasn't a goal, because I could have checked the shit off of that one.

5. I watched the entire first season of Rome last week. Now that Gilmore Girls is officially horrible and Big Love hasn't started its new season, I need a new melodramatic TV show to watch. Also, I have someone to watch it with, and I do stuff like watch entire seasons of TV shows or try to read Atlas Shrugged when I have the opportunity to have non-literary discussions with someone I'm interested in. (And thank God Rome is more entertaining and less draining than Ayn Rand novels.)

6. Nicole and I saw Pan's Labyrinth last week, and we both loved it. It's the second-best movie with "labyrinth" in the title - it could have used more Bowie.

7. Work is still ten kinds of sucky. I've stopped staying until five, simply because the sixty dollars in not-overtime I'd be taking home won't kill the pain of being here an extra five hours a week.

8. Janna came over to visit our apartment last week, and she told us that she saw Rosie O'Donnell at her restaurant a few months ago and that she's "actually pretty in real life." You learn something new every day.

9. I've read two books so far this year, and I'm proud despite the fact that one was a play (The Glass Menagerie) and the other (The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan) was less than two-hundred pages. I'm in the middle of The Safety of Objects by A. M. Homes, and at the top of my list is Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham.

10. These last three things have just been filler so that I could end the post with ten things. I promise I'll try to fall down on the El platform tonight so I'll have an embarrassing story to tell tomorrow. Until then: LAUGHING BABIES!!!!!