Rhett and Alice Come to Town

Our friends Rhett and Alice visited Osa at the beginning of the week. It was great to see them again, since it has been 9 months since I visited the Philippines! Osa met them when she went to Japan as part of the JET program. Fortunately they were able to come over to the Philippines to attend Osa's wedding.

Rhett and Alice are now driving across the US, from North Carolina to Oregon, where Rhett is enrolled in the aquaculture program at the University of Oregon. They stopped by Chicago and we had a chance to eat Lou Malnati's pizza, try Portillo's Chicago Hot Dogs, and visit the Signature Lounge in the Hancock Building.

More photos can be found on my flickr page.

Bruce Sterling

Well according to Bruce Sterling's Blog, he is done with his first draft for a new book. I'm very excited by this, since I generally like his novels, and I particularly love his short stories. I could read and reread stories about Leggy Starlitz and Deep Eddy (Edward Dertouzas) all day long. In fact I have had to buy a third copy of "A Good Old Fashioned Future" since the first one I read to pieces, and the second I gave away to a friend. I must admit that I didn't really like "The Zenith Angle" too much, but it may be that I've become an old person, and I have a fixed idea of how things should be, and anything that deviates from that too much must not be very good. I hope not!

This Week

Well now that I've found that I won't be moving to Philly (damn you talent plus!) I need to start looking for work again. I have registered to attend an informational meeting about Doctor's Without Borders (MSF) in the middle of next month. I think that would be an interesting job choice, and some killer overseas experience. I'm just worried that Liv won't be able to come with me, but hopefully she could visit. I also hope I get stuck someplace in Europe, South America, or Asia, but I think the experience would be great anywhere.

I also have to have dinner tonight with the gf's family. Her dad is moving to the Philippines next week, so this is her last chance to see him before he leaves. Her youngest sister is also pregnant, she and her husband are very excited. Gf is excited too, but considering her family is crazy this should be really interesting to see how it works out.

Fashion Show at Macy's

There was a little fashion show tonight at Macy's, featuring the INC brand line. I know I know, how could I have gone to Macy's? Well they have this brand Walter that my gf likes, and this is the only place in Chicago where we have found it. We also reasoned that since the food court was only recently allowed to reopen after being closed by the city, that it is currently the cleanest it will ever be so we should take advantage of that.
Of course I didn't bring my camera, but the show was kind of lame. Lot's of gray and t-shirts for men, colorful tops and boring bottoms for woman. Not too inspiring at all, although I do think the majority of Chicago would look much better if they at least tried to dress this well. Wilde once said the bad taste was better then no taste, but I'm not convinced he could even imagine people who dressed as badly as some of these people do.

Dressing in the Summer

It is very hard for a man to be well dressed during the summer. Days like this, temperature in the 90's and humidity hovering around 100%, are just very very uncomfortable. Someone recently told me that sweat was just nature's way of telling you that you were moving too fast or working too hard for conditions. That is a load...on days like this I usually just sit here, not moving at all, and still I sweat. I have stood directly in front of my ac unit, blowing full blast, and I could still feel the sweat forming on the side of my body not facing the fan. It's almost impossible to wear clothes in conditions such as this, and that makes me grumpy.

MySpace Still Sucks

So now I have an announcement on the top of my myspace page saying that my account has been phished. What the hell is that?!? I mean I know technically what that means, but it pisses me off that it happened. News Corp can spend $5B on a newspaper, but it can't protect it's users? God this sucks....now I'm going to be paranoid about everything else I do online.
Thanks MySpace, you are the best!