deboardin' the airplane-o

It's true. Everything is bigger here. Cars, cows, cleavage. You name it, it's XXL.

Everything is also shiny and new down here. I'm used to walking around Chicago and seeing a smidgeon of grunge here and there (admittedly less so after my move from Hyde Park to Lakeview). But here in Plano, there are no homeless to awkwardly avoid eye contact with. There aren't abandoned houses or neglected alleys that serve as an eyesore in between beautiful homes. I don't even think there are dumpsters here.

Things here are built with purpose and resolve. The big-ass streets are what still get me - while Texas certainly has its fair share of weather problems, the roads make it obvious that snow is not one of them. I'm not used to seeing such perfect, uncracked, unpotholed pavement. It's unnerving, like seeing a face that's too symmetrical or beautiful. There are no flaws here, no points of interest to focus on, and as a result, not much to say about the locale.

I don't think I could ever live in a place like this, where life is uninspiring but easy and comfortable if you're privileged enough to have the money to live here. But I admit it makes for a nice getaway during the week. By the time I find myself longing for Chicago I usually only have to wait a day or two. Then an insane weekend inevitably sweeps me in with the current of the city and I find myself wanting nothing more than to be curled up with a book a thousand miles away, which is exactly the kind of refuge Plano offers. Then the cycle starts over: board plane deboard plane Chicago Chicago board plane deboard plane Texas Texas Texas Texas Texas. If my life were a Daft Punk song those would be the lyrics and it'd be an awesome song.

Game of Thrones

I started reading Game of Thrones, the first in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. I picked it up after having taken my time strolling through The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was about the life and after-life history of woman whose cancerous cervical cells - "HeLa" - were scraped from her body without her knowledge when she was undergoing radioactive treatment and subsequently became the first to survive in cell culture. Going from a pleasantly-paced nonfiction about a poor black woman's out-of-control tumors to a full-on medieval labyrinth of fantasy where if I blink the main character has probably already died definitely feels like a weird literary swerve.

But Game of Thrones is amazing. Truly, it captures the elements everything a fantasy should - dragons! magic! noble royal families! sexy sexy men! - but what makes it stand out is Martin's fantastic storytelling. I can't remember being this engrossed in a book since high school. In a lot of ways it reminds me of when I first became obsessed with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and it brings back all those feelings of excitement and intrigue that remind me that I haven't gone so far into the real world or gotten so caught up with working that I can't enjoy a good ole fantasy story anymore - something that I'd been afraid of when I graduated about a year ago. 

Another fun thing about reading Game of Thrones is talking to others who've read it. Last night at a cross-team dinner, a ThoughtWorker mentioned the series and I may or may not have almost leapt out of my seat out of excitement (my mouth was filled with fajita). It's just one of those books that inevitably lends itself to conversation, especially now that there's a critically-acclaimed HBO series about it as well. I'm only about 300 pages into the first novel - that's another thing I love, how long they are - so I have to earmuff myself a lot but nonetheless, it's a fun softcore cult to be a part of, similar to the Reddit or Arrested Development community.

If you've been hearing a lot about this series, I strongly recommend you pick it up, for your own sake. And a little for mine too, so we can obsess about it together until the end of time. Winter is coming!

exhausted

if you asked me to describe my life or how i'm doing in one word, that's what it always is.

i just got to my hotel room in plano and face-planted onto my bed, muffling my anxieties along with my sweaty, dirty, makeup-run mug. i promised myself i wouldn't get up for anything other than the food delivery order i'd made en route to the hotel...but then quickly realized i was falling asleep, so i forced myself up and crawled to my computer and decided to write a blog entry (upon remembering getting berated this weekend by friends who complained of the lack of updates)

on the plane ride i thought of what i'd done this weekend and counted the hours that i spent NOT in the company of somebody i knew. the grand total amounted to four. FOUR measly hours spent alone out of approximately 78 - no wonder i'm going insane. here was my itinerary, as frantically and furiously typed out in a word document, friday morning at 6:00 am at gate E5 in the united terminal of dallas fort-worth airport:

friday:
- tour an apartment for a remote family friend
- go to the TW office
- dr's appointment at NMPG
- buy a mattress at sleep city
- gorge on sandwiches at DMK
- unpack unpack unpack
- roll around on my mattress until unconsciousness

saturday:
- brunch at sam & george's
- teeth cleaning at dental salon
- TW company picnic at jackson park
- comcast cable appointment
- grocery shopping
- dinner at the apartment
- drinks at the neighborhood saloon

sunday:
- cleaning old apartment
- white sox game
- fly to plano
- arrive at hotel
- pass out forever

i managed to do everything except pass out forever. stupid eggplant basil - come faster so i can fall into a food coma and dream about a world devoid of airplanes, apartments, and waiting for the cta.