Vrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooom!

Way back in 2005, I professed on a list of hundred things about myself that I have always wanted to drive a race car at regulation speed. Jon must have been paying attention, because for this past Valentine's Day, I got a certificate to Chicago Indoor Racing, good for lessons and two spins around the track. We redeemed them this weekend with a work friend of mine who purchased the same gift for her fiance's birthday.

Technically, they're very fancy go-karts, but they're low to the ground and go up to 30 mph so it was still totally awesome. Plus it felt much more official wearing jumpsuits and helmets.

This is the starting line. The action shots I got just showed blurs.

I didn't finish nearly as well as I felt I had--something like 9th in the first race on Track 1 and 7th in the second on Track 2 (Jon placed 6th and 4th). Not to make excuses, but general consensus was that the rule-flouting people in our race who had no problem cutting us off and actually hitting people have probably done this before.

I feel like I look like a groupie in this picture. That was not my intention. Maybe next time J will be MY groupie.

Next time we take a spin, I'd like to be in a bigger group of people that we all know. Do I smell bachelor/bachelorette party?

apparently one CAN live without television...sort of

As you've seen before, we've decided to downgrade our television-viewing opportunities (no cable/dish). The only channel we get clearly without acrobatics is Fox. And we always happen to turn it on during shows I don't particularly care for, such as the Family Guy spinoff about Cleveland.

But with my long-held devotion to Netflix and a not-dialup Internet connection--on top of the fact that we're both working so much that we barely have time to sit down on the couch--I don't even miss it.

Isn't that shocking? ME, not miss tv?!? I know.

So I've taken to getting the bulk of my daily television allowance by walking through patient waiting areas (I could dedicate a whole other post to how all the tvs in the various departments tend to be tuned to the same things at the same times: Access Hollywood, Ellen, Dancing with the Stars, The Biggest Loser and local news). And I also watch in the department breakroom.

The tv in the breakroom is hooked into the hospital-wide system, which has sort of an On Demandlike option for movies. So over the last few months I've seen 30-minute snippets of dozens of films that I will inevitably add to my Netflix queue just to see the endings. This is awesome because a) the queue is getting robust again, and b) I can sort of pre-screen the films.

The downside?


The On Demandlike program is completely controlled by the patients. As you can see, if some guy in the room that supplies our tv feed decides he needs to pee during The Blind Side, he can pause it. And I eat my dal and rice, patiently hoping he comes back. The worst is watching them decide. I see them flipping back and forth and back and forth andbackandforthandbackandforth. I usually eat at 4:30, often by myself, and wonder if people can hear me screaming at the television for that patient to just choose "Up" already because time is ticking on my lunch hour.

Why don't I just give up and watch regular tv, with cable? Because even watching some patient play solitaire is more appealing to me than having to sit through commercials.

human conductor

Things are getting somewhat settled--albeit VERY SLOWLY--in the new apartment, but one thing that's hard to get used to is that the only channel we can get in here without some serious acrobatics is Fox* (which wouldn't be so bad if my work schedule didn't overlap with So You Think You Can Dance. Don't tell me what's happening; I'm hoping to catch a marathon of the current season soon).

But the World Cup is An Event, so we pulled out the big guns. Jon had made this very fancy antenna when we were in the condo, and as you can see we are able to get ABC. But only if we hold it juuust so.

Excuse the hair. I didn't want to miss anything by trying to fix it after I jumped out of the shower.

I had to hold the antenna at a different place than Jon did (of course we took turns); who knows what conducting a signal with your torso for a few hours does to your body.

What I lacked in jumping up and down, I made up for in yelling. My dad would have been proud, if he weren't busy jumping up and down and yelling in his own living room.**

The neck pain was totally worth seeing Espana win it all. Sorry, Ale, your guys played a hell of a tournament, but after the U.S. and India, I always root for Spain.





*No cable or dish--we're trying to save for a wedding.
**We were worried about missing something if we drove over to my parents' house to see the extra time.