There's a new hair sheriff in town.

Here are some things that have been going on lately that are not related to St. Patrick's Day and dodging drunks on Southport:

I'm sick on the cold. For realsies, Chicago. Let's do this. It's pretty much Springtime everywhere else but here. I'm tired of wearing silk long underwear. I'm tired of sweating through three layers of shirts at work. Yeah, that's right. Three layers. Of shirts. In March.

I have successfully written a new resume, one that I'm pretty proud of. I've sent it to a few friends who have responded with accolades of the highest order. "Oh, Tyler! You make me want to hire you so hard right now." That sort of thing. I sent it to my mom this morning, and of course she found some typos and things that "sounded really fucking awkward, Tyler" (the "fucking" is my emphasis; I'm sure she thinks that all the time, though). My mom is really good at finding mistakes in mostly everything I do. I don't mean this in a bitter way. I appreciate her keen eye and attention to detail. (Thank God, by the way, that she doesn't read this. I know that she's aware of my blog's existence, but I think she knows that it's better for both of us that she doesn't read it.)

The reading at the Metro was really good. Tom Perotta read from Little Children, which I now really want to read. A Columbia College professor, Alexis Pride, read from her forthcoming novel, and it was pretty entertaining even if it reminded me a lot of Dangerous Minds. The event began with Dorothy Allison reading part of her memoir Two or Three Things I Know For Sure over the loudspeaker with the house lights down, and then she took the stage at the end and read an essay with the most graphic descriptions of lesbian sex I've ever heard. I wasn't really surprised by her decision to read it, but Lindsay was, and she was pretty shocked by the language. (Here's an example of the tamer stuff: She compared her labia to a manta ray.) I bought a copy of her book Trash and got her to sign it, and while I was trying to come up with something really cool and clever to say to her, my star-struck nature only allowed me to say that I liked Bastard Out of Carolina. She was nice, although she was much more interested in Lindsay than me.

The whole event made me start thinking about taking creative writing courses. Which made me think about doing creative writing in grad school. Which now just makes me mad because I change my ideas about graduate school education every week.

Speaking of grad school: I was looking at UChicago's website this morning, specifically the creative writing department of the MAPH program. I finally decided that the website is written as if someone is having a conversation with you and trying to outsmart you with complicated language and sentence structure. If I already can't quite follow the website, I'm becoming more nervous about applying. It's not lookin' good, y'all.

I met my new friend Sarah for drinks at Guthrie's on Saturday night (after a quick old skool pregaming sesh with Nicole where we both had two Mike's Hard Lemonade). Sarah's as funny in person as she is online. Also, I can get over the fact that she's in her late twenties. I mean, she is the same age as my favorite babysitter. Also, she had a master's degree before I entered my junior year of college. But I won't hold that against her; she links me on her blog and I think we all know how much I like people reading this.

Speaking about my own vanity: I took pictures of myself at work on Friday.

Speaking of pictures of myself: My new MySpace pic is the shit.

Here's something I just thought of today: It's kind of creepy that Cher and Josh get together at the end of Clueless.

Finally, in keeping with Chicago's fascination with extending St. Patrick's Day for as long as possible, I'm wearing one of my cable-knit sweaters today. I can't think of anything that the Irish gave America that's as important as the cable-knit sweater.