We set a date!!!

After conferring with my mother, who told me there's an unofficial tradition in our family to get married on Labor Day weekend, Efe and I have decided to set the date of our wedding to Labor Day weekend 2006. Turns out both my grandparents and my sister Anna were married on Labor Day weekend. So the Big Day will be: September 2, 2006.

21% Republican!!

Received a link in an email from my friend Paul. How Republican are you?

http://paulkienitz.net/republican.html

violence

saw the news this morning when i was checking the weather. bombs in london. i was gripped with the same paralyzing fear i had felt when i learned bombs had destroyed commuter trains in madrid. i've been to both of those cities, used public transit, have people i care about who are living there. i visited the atocha train station in madrid to see the memorial that was built there after the bombings. it was unreal, literally unfathomable that someone can purposely seek to end so many innocent lives in the name of ideology. i heard from kat that jen, who is studying in london, is alright. thank god. my heart goes out to all londoners and their friends and family.

in an unrelated act of violence, efe and i witnessed a brutal beating on train home from the taste of chicago this past july 3rd. the train stopped at fullerton. it was around 11:00 pm. we were sitting sideways, facing the platform. we watched as two hispanic girls attacked a shrieking blond girl on the platform. one of them grabbed the blond girl by the back of the head and slammed her face into the glass-enclosed waiting area on the platform, and then smashed her head into the metal side of the train, directly across from where we sitting. again, a feeling of disbelief and panic -- i shrieked as if i were reacting to a violent episode in a movie. noone moved to help the blond girl, who crumpled to the floor of the platform crying and moaning. someone dragged one of the hispanic girls onto the train, with the intent not to prevent her from hurting the blond girl, but to prevent the hispanic girl from being caught by CTA authorities or the police. she obviously wanted to pummel the blond girl some more, but someone blocked the exit. a few moments later the hispanic girls fled, the preppie boys helped the blond girl up. she wasn't bleeding, just bruised and understandably shaken. i was amazed that none of the men on the train did anything to stop the hispanic girls. i too, did nothing. i was scared the hispanic girls would turn on me. such a sickening display of violence on the girls part and cowardice and apathy on everyone elses.

Jaded

I used to think that only having your heart broken by icky men can really jade you. Now that I have a wonderful fiance, I thought those days of table-pounding despair, yelling, "Damn you, damn you to hell!" were over. Oh boy was I wrong. Turns out, I got burned, bad. By a girl. By the girl who was subletting my old apartment on Diversey. The cheeky harlot
1.) returned my keys sans a back door key. she said she lost it but that she had made an extra set for her boyfriend, so she'd give me her boyfriend's set. did she? noooo. she left the keys on the back porch under the citronella candle as we had previously agreed, but did she leave the damn back door key? noooo!
2.) i found out from maite, my former spanish roommate who is wonderful, that miss gita (the aformentioned cheeky harlot) NEVER cleaned anything in the apartment during her 2 month sublet, and didn't clean anythign when she left.
3.) she is now living in new york or traveling the world or some such bologna, and i have no way to really make her know my level of annoyance the way i would like

i have no idea whether she has access to email, but since i have a penchant for writing nasty emails, i emailed her:

"i just spoke w/ Maite and she is very angry with you. she said that you left the apartment a mess when you left and that the whole time that you were in the apartment you did not clean anything. i don't know who you think you are or where you learned your manners, but it's common courtesy to clean an apartment and make sure that it is clean when you leave it. i have no recourse other than to bitch at you over email-- i wish i had been jaded enough to demand a security deposit from you. now i know. add your apparent refusal to clean anything to the fact that you were a total flake about the keys and practically demanded that i bring MY futon to YOU is really unforgivable. may you enjoy your travels and learn some manners and responsibility along the way. "

p.s. this girl got her mba from university of chicago!! for shame!