Playing a Little Catch Up With Random Thoughts

Wow it's been a while. Almost a week, to be exact.

For some strange reason, I guess I just haven't quite been in the mood to blog. I haven't been keeping up with my cell phone blog, and I'm finally realizing just how much maintenance it takes to keep two blogs up. Even though I don't really do anything all day, I STILL manage to procrastinate blogging. I guess it's because I was so used to doing it when I had something better to do. Now that it's that "better thing to do", I don't wanna do it anymore. I tell you about being a procrastinator.

-----

I'd like to begin this post with a list of my most recent accomplishments:

1. I finished watching every episode in all 12 seasons of South Park. Yes, this makes me a geek. But I don't care.
-Side note: I've adapted a little South Park lingo into my everyday conversation. Like saying "I'm seriously" instead of "I'm serious". And "Jesus tap-dancing Christ".
2. After having tried for months to watch this movie, I finally watched Half Baked in its entirety, and realized that it's really probably much better if you're baked when you watch it. Or at least if you're not alone.
3. I watched the entire first season of Chappelle's Show over again. Have you ever noticed how short that show is? I remember now why I used to hate watching it on tv: every two seconds he kept going to commercial! Jesus tap-dancing Christ!
4. I watched Katt Williams' American Hustle last night. Didn't stay awake through the whole thing, but it doesn't matter because I've watched that movie enough to know it by heart.
5. I got so bored that I decided it was a good idea to copy the US Constitution by hand. I made it all the way to Article I Section 4 before I was cautioned to stop, seeing as the endeavor was pointless. If I had a dictionary, I'd have started copying from that. Hey, Malcolm X did it!
6. Have you noticed that in order for me to have possibly gotten all of this done in the last two days, I have to have done NOTHING? Well, that's right. It sure feels nice to be able to sit in front of a tv (okay, my computer) for two days straight and not gain an obscene amount of weight. Then again, I guess I'd have had to eat more than two granola bars and cheese crackers in the span of like 48 hours (from Thursday night to last night at like 2 in the morning) to really gain that much weight.

-----

Remember Lite Brites? Those things were the SHIT next to Easy Bake Ovens. For those of you who may have been deprived of such childhood pleasures, Lite Brites were devices that were very simple. It was basically a big plastic box with a light bulb, and a black sheet of paper with little designs stenciled out. You put the paper in front of the light bulb on this little screen, and you push tiny colorful light bulbs into the paper to make wonderful light creations. Lite Brites had ENDLESS possibilties for two reasons. First, it came with so many stencils and blank pieces of paper you couldn't have finished them in one night if you tried. Second, it was a nighttime activity (you had to have the room completely dark to fully enjoy the liteness of the light bulbs), so your mom wouldn't let you stay up late enough to do more than like two stencils at a time.

Lite Brites were not toys that lasted forever, though. Inevitably, you'd lose those damned light bulbs, or find other more ingenious uses for them than sticking them in a sheet of paper. Then the light bulb would go out, and by then you've turned the papers into other things and you only have three light bulbs left and your mom won't buy you the expansion pack because you didn't take care of the original supplies so you're just out of luck.

I ask this because I referred to myself as a lite brite earlier to a friend and something in my brain clicked. Just why are light skinned people known as lite brites? Last I checked, lite brites aren't light...it's a black piece of paper with colorful light bulbs!! And last I checked also, I'm not colorful. I'm just light skinned with brown eyes and brown hair.

I just don't see the connection...

-----

Normally people have allergy problems in like August or early spring, when there's pollen about and all over gobbedlygook. Well, my allergies sprung up when it got cold. So I guess it was a change-of-weather phenomenon or something. Used to be when the weather changed from hot to cold and cold to hot I would just have a bronchitis flare-up. Now? I get asthma attacks and wake up with a terrible postnasal drip. So it's either I'm going to cough a lung out or I can't breathe at all due to narrow air passages and overzealous mucus. This also means I'm either going to be puffing albuterol from an inhaler or popping benadryl like it's vitamins. I'm still trying to decide which is worse.

-----

I would like to make a very important clarification on behalf of all my fellow Chicagoans.

We are not used to living in cold weather. We are used to weather fluctuations. They are two different things.

Everybody else has even weather. You know when it's spring, fall, winter, and summer. Seasons are consistent and dependable (okay maybe not, but they aren't that bad).

In Chicago we're all confused and that's probably why it always feels colder. We don't get steady winters where it's always cold. A winter can go from 50 to 0 degrees in range, and we can have 30 degree weather changes from day to day! Summers are either super super hot or so mild you wouldn't think it were summer if it weren't July. Spring must run on colored people time because it never comes fast enough (we have snow in April. April, ya'll!! Ain't that some crap?) and fall just...well fall doesn't exist. It seems like it goes from hot to cold real quick.

When you've got weather fluctuations like this, OF COURSE it's going to seem like an extreme place to live. It is! It feels so cold because the cold is not constant.

Now, I'm in Dekalb right now, which is a good 80 miles away from Chicago. And the weather's not much better out here either. In fact, I'm looking out the window now and just a few minutes ago leaves were blowing and I couldn't tell if it was raining or snowing. And just as suddenly as it started, it stopped and it looks like the sun may come out.

I tell you about this weather.