Thursday will be my monthsary of living in Chicago.

Thursday will be my monthsary of living in Chicago. Here are the things I miss about Columbus (besides Aidan, of course):
– driving and knowing where I’m going when I’m driving
– the library
– Marcs
– no tax on ALL food, not just some food
– La Chatelaine
– spring coming when it’s supposed to
– the suburbs being closer than a 40 minute drive away

But what I love about living here is:
– being with Adam all the time
– seeing the skyline as I walk down the block
– downtown
– living so close to great places to eat
– my Chicago friends
– LUSH (even though I haven’t actually bought anything there yet…)
– public transportation, especially the Blue Line

Even though I have my ups and downs (as everyone does, and today is a blah day for me), I have a general feeling of contentment here. And that’s good. I don’t go out a lot or anything simply because if I go out, I’ll spend money, and I need to save every penny that I can for the moment. In Ohio, I’d learned to pinch pennies and live pretty frugally. If I’m out and about, I’m going to get hungry and buy food, or I’m going to see a Mrs. Fields store and happily drop $8 on two dozen Nibblers, and that’s just something I don’t need to do now. But dammit, I wish I hadn’t conjured the image and taste of those damn cookies in my head now. I’m craving some. Crap. That damn store is just a couple train stops away….

NO!!! MUST RESIST!!!!!

Seriously, I need to be careful, or else I’m going to gain weight like a mofo. Quite honestly, I haven’t been feeling all that pretty lately, and it didn’t help that I got the most hideous fever blister on my bottom lip Saturday. UGH, just UGH. It’s healing up now, but it was gross over the weekend. Yet another reason I wasn’t too keen on going anywhere in public. Those things are gross and embarrassing. But in addition, my hair isn’t that great, I feel boxy, and even though Adam tells me every day that I’m pretty or something, it just doesn’t sink in. I feel dumpy.

Today is tax day, but I sent mine in last week. The IRS has already cashed the check, too, so that’s all taken care of for another year.

Juno is out on DVD today. I’m totally stoked about that! Adam’s gonna pick it up today, and we’re going to watch it tonight. I’m excited. It’ll be nice to watch it without having a rip-roaring sore throat.

Although, I do worry that I’m getting either a UTI or a kidney stone. My lower back has been hurting a lot, especially the past couple of days. It could be that the Slacker Sack makes me slouch, but I’ve also been drinking a lot less water and a lot more orange pop than I normally do. A month of that can turn into something bad really quickly, can’t it? At any rate, I’m definitely going back to drinking water like it’s going out of style and cutting back on the pop (even though it’s SOOO good).

Mylin has a new CD today. But seeing as I’m on a strict budget until I find a full-time job, I won’t be buying it for a while. I will definitely buy it, though. 🙂 I ♥ Mylin and her music.

I really want to read the book AUDREY, WAIT! by Robin Benway. It’s getting a lot of hype and it sounds very cute. I haven’t read a new book in weeks and it’s kind of driving me crazy. I don’t have a library card here yet, and I’m obviously not purchasing new books. Granted, Adam has a lot of books that I haven’t read yet, so I can start going through those until I get my library card.

I did some major geekery Sunday night. I was up until 3am moving most of my MP3s to the external hard drive. I also spent hours going through and putting them in the correct folders, sorting them out, all that stuff. I had a LOT of duplicates. Deleting those is really helping to clean off my drives. Now I’m putting all the music back into iTunes which takes some time, too. I have a lot of tags to fix, but not nearly as many as I used to have back in the day. I’m kind of neurotic about my MP3s. But once this is done, I shouldn’t have to do it again! 🙂

America’s Next Top Model is my latest obsession. I love when the marathons come on TV. Adam and I like to make fun of Saleisha’s Cover Girl commercial from Cycle 9.
“If my fortune cookie could say one thing, WHAT WOULD IT BE??” I’ve been recording and watching the current episodes also. It’s nice to be current for once. It’s easy to get sucked in TV here. Adam has the hookup. HD, DVR, OnDemand. My first few days here, I watched a LOT of TV. Now I’m weaning myself again. I don’t want to be a couch potato. And I certainly don’t want to gain any more weight.

The upstairs neighbor apologized for the foolishness that went down last week. He turned out to be a really nice guy, so I’m guessing that things will be better from now on, and they have been.

Writing. Well, honestly, it’s not going much better, and I really do think it’s time for me to throw in the towel. I don’t even have good ideas anymore. It’s just… faded. The desire, the ideas, the talent. It’s gone. And instead of trying to force it to come back, I’m going to just let it go. And if that means settling for a regular job and being a regular person, so be it. It’s better than putting all this pressure on myself to write when my heart’s obviously not in it anymore. Or maybe my heart is in it, but my mind knows better. I’m just uninspired. Well, I’m inspired when I read the blogs of my favorite authors and all, but when I open Word, all inspiration flies out the window. I don’t know how to get back that joy I had when I was writing ONLY YOURS. Will it ever feel that way again?

Anyway, today is errand day and I need to go and get dressed. This groceries for two thing is really taking some getting used to. Later.