sheriff

as you all know, my work for the past year has revolved around one particular lawsuit involving, among others, the sheriff of cook county.

good news: he announced last week that he won't be running for reelection in 2006!! woohoo!! good riddance to bad rubbish!

bad news: some other equally questionable folks hope to replace him. are there no reformers in chicago? silly question. of course there are. just none with enough clout to stand up to the bad guys.

this and that

am recovering from thanksgiving. both from the huuuuge amounts of food and from the general chaos of being with all my family members at once. seriously, it's insane. but it was a lovely turkey day.

went with sisters anna and cherie and anna's friend jen to black friday shopping. i used to scoff at people who did this sort of thing, but i have to admit it was a lot of fun. it was more of an adventure than anything else. wake up at 4:30am to go brave the dark and the cold and other crazy folks in an attempt to save some money and feel the holiday spirit. i went in my pajamas and we just laughed our butts off outside of the new target on rt. 41 while waiting for the store to open. my christmas shopping for my niece and nephew is done, and aside from a nasty cut on my thumb from a $3.99 24-pack of diet pepsi, i survived the ordeal unscathed.

i also learned that it's called black friday because it marks the first day that retailers generally make a profit. for the first 11 months of the year they're in the red. can that be true?

ooh and before turkey day had a lovely lovely dance party with jen at the hideout. had somehow managed to miss all of jen's previous dance parties. she was, as usual, a man magnet and had interesting boys fawning over her all night. i was content to just dance like a fool and stare at the interesting people all around me.

efe and i also just received our new digital camera we ordered from amazon.com. it's a tad bulky, not as slim as some that i've seen, but i dig it. hopefully i'll figure out how to use it and download pics asap.

oh, and i'm going to my first bull's game tonight. exciting!

Ode to Lola

You are my wife.
an inspiration with
crazy busted up toes
inside kick-ass shoes
that i always covet, covet, covet
heart of gold : balls of steel
quick as a whip : smart as a tack

don't worry, the GRE will not defeat you.
it may try to enervate you
but it is ultimately innocuous in the face of your
brains, your willpower, your dedication

i have faith in you.
good luck!

I am woman hear me roar

Here's to the blessedly complicated ladies in my life. I wouldn't have you (or me) any other way.

"When we observe a woman who seems hostile and fiercely independent some of the time but passive, dependent and feminine on other occasions, our reducing valve usually makes us choose between the two syndromes. We decide that one pattern is in the service of the other, or that both are in the service of a third motive. She must be a really castrating lady with a facade of passivity --or perhaps she is a warm, passive-dependent woman with a surface defense of aggressiveness. But perhaps nature is bigger than our concepts and it is possible for the lady to be a hostile, fiercely independent, passive, dependent, feminine, aggressive, warm, castrating person all-in-one. Of course which of these she is at any particular moment would not be random or capricious -- it would depend on who she is with, when, how, and much, much more. But each of these aspects of her self may be a quite genuine and real aspect of her total being."
-Psychologist Walter Mischel, quoted in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point

Travel

So we're off to Turkey. I am so incredibly pumped. Efe leaves the 16th of December and I join him on the 23rd. His brothers think I'm crazy to go to Turkey in December -- they think I should wait until summer - but I am so excited. I think we'll have a wonderful time. A few weekends ago Efe and I spent a hilarious few hours in Borders, reading over all of the Turkey travel book that the Diversey/Clark Borders had to offer. One was a guide to Turkish customs and had a section on body language. It attempted to explain in words how to perform the various gestures that have a particular meaning in Turkey. (Put your hand sideways, move it in a circle and say oh-HO-oh - this means that you think someone is exagerrating.) We played charades - I read the description and performed the gesture and then Efe had to figure out what I meant. It doesn't sound funny, but it was.