Chicago!

I am posting some pictures, with minor narration. This should not discourage MS from doing a better, more elaborate, better written version.


This is me with some big statues of legs walking. We could see them from our hotel window and I thought it was this sculpture garden I saw in a book as a kid. But it wasn't. What was wild was that that sculpture was in the art museum we visited!



Can you find the Mad Scientist?


Mad Scientist with Sue, the T-rex. I told him to look fierce and here's what I got.


Omigod Shoes!


From the great minds at the Field museum...


They can strip your bones clean in five minutes flat. How I love them.


Us with a pervy blues guy. Taken by Alyssa, coolest barmaid in Chicago.



3/4 of our pictures are of manatees and flatheaded bloxes. I am allowed my one peacock photo op. For some reason, I look both morbidly obese and mentally retarded here.


The Tribune building (where I tooootally geeked out) has nifty thingis built into it from everywhere, like the Pyramids of Giza, Monticello, and Boston Avenue Methodist Church.


A very windy city, indeed.

FIN.

70-61

70. I wish I could go back in time and tell my high school self that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to look for jeans that squash your butt flat. "Junk in the Trunk" is idolized--nay, worshiped--everywhere but your little KKK town. In fact, your future husband, 15 year old Flannery, would sell his immortal soul to see you with the donk you used to posses (and were ashamed of).

69. Let's talk about sex: for the first time, I am going to come out of the closet. I am finally willing to admit my darkest sexual secret. Or maybe not.

68. I have a love/hate relationship with my body. On one hand, I love love love the curves and would not trade the rich and sexy voluptuousness for anything. On the other hand, I often feel fat.

67. I am extraordinarily proud of my fashion sense. I feel that I dress well and feel that this is a true achievement since I do it so incredibly cheaply. This makes me a vain asshole, I know.

66. I have a cat, a dog, a man who is nice to me, and a decent house. It is actually hard for me to think of anything else I want.

65. If someone is rude to waitstaff, I can never like them again. A lot of people say that, but I really mean it.

64. One time (unknowingly) I dated a skinhead who didn't believe in dinosaurs.

63. My life has turned out infinitely cooler than the plans I had made for it. This makes me disinclined to make life plans, as things work out so beautifully when I just sit back and live as opposed to fighting it.

62. I miss the ocean more than I miss a lot of people. I like the way it feels to be submerged in the one thing that is older, bigger, stronger, more powerful, and more full of life than anything else on earth. Whether I succeed or fail, whether humans destroy themselves or make the world perfect, there will still be the ocean.

61. I still bite my nails.

80-71

80. In college, I was joined at the hip with this girl named Amanda. We were best best best best college friends. Shortly after I graduated, she sent me this e-mail entirely out of the blue that was, honestly, one of the most vitriolic, nasty, hurtful things I have ever read--not just to me, but to anyone anywhere. She accused me of saying all sorts of awful things (none true, of course), and generally went nuts. It totally blew me away and devastated me. I mean, I've had the same two best friends since 2nd grade--it was like my mom disowning me after we'd gone on a shopping trip. Ever since then, I've been petrified of accidentally hurting a friend's feelings. If I don't hear from someone in a while, the logical part of me knows why, but there's this teeny tiny primal thing in my head that's all "What did you do?"

79.Everything is more fun with music.

78. I don't like to wear pants. Skirts and dresses are infinitely more comfortable. Pants never fit right and touch you in too many places.

77. I have more friends now than I've ever had in my life. It's really strange, because you always hear about how people had tons of friends in high school and college, then they dwindled. It's been the opposite for me. And not only do I have more friends now, they are as a whole of higher quality. It's like I took the best from the past, culled the negative influences, and kept accumulating the best of the best. I hope this trend continues.

76. Speaking of quality, one of the most important things I've learned from MS and his family is that you shouldn't get the cheapest of something just because it's the cheapest. Quality matters, and it's better to spend just a little bit more for a decent product. It seems elementary, but I've always been sigh tight-fisted that it never occurred to me NOT to just buy the cheapest shit.

75. I've always wondered who invented socks.

74. Cooking makes me feel like a real, live grown-up. It also makes me feel smart and responsible. I don't know why.

73. When I take out sick from work (like today) I agonize over the decision for hours, then spend the entire day analyzing my every cell to see if I truly don't feel well and if that feeling unwell is severe enough to have warranted my staying home. This is from the person who crawled out of the newspaper room window almost every day in high school and spent half of first grade crippled by an imaginary stomach ache.

72. If I ever move away from Oklahoma, I will be depressed by the lack of violent thunderstorms. They terrify people who aren't from here, but we all think they are totally awesome.

71. I'm prettier in my head.