No Train

Today is the first workday without Paulina. The CTA has closed down our train station for a year to do rennovations that should have been done years ago. But, better late than never.

To put a metaphoric spin on things, it rained all day as we each walked farther to get to Addison. The CTA had plenty of workers out on the corners around Paulina to remind us all that the station was closed, in case the signs on the trains, the flyers they've been handing out all month and the big green fence with "Closed" signs all over it weren't enough. They even had the customer service reps from Addison out on the street -- or at least, that must be why nobody was at Addison to help K out when her U-Pass stopped working.

Unfortunately, no one told the Red Eye guy, so no celebrity gossip and quick local news bites while we all waited for the trains at Addison ... and waited to get through the new southbound bottleneck at Belmont and Fullerton.

The Addison station gives a glimpse into the clean, well-lit and spacious station we can look forward to in a year. And now we can watch as they slowly tear down and rebuild Paulina -- since we get to pass by it each day.

Mine eyes have seen the grime

last month I finally got contacts. This may seem rather vain and materialistic for me, but there is a greater purpose. We've read a lot about how people who want Lasik surgery should try out contacts first to see if you get dry eyes or other discomfort. You can always take out a contact, but surgery is forever.

This whole experiment almost ended as soon as it began. I crammed my left contact up under my eyelid somehow on the first day, then suffered through four days of headaches and blurry focus at work from all the reading I have to do there, finally taking out the contacts in the men's room at work on Friday. I went back to the eye doctor, and she gave me a different brand of contact, and suddenly, everything came together. I'm starting to wonder if maybe she made a mistake and just didn't want to say anything.

Unlike the last pair, it almost feels like I'm not wearing contacts. So now I can go about my day without many of the inconveniences of los lentes, but also without the blissful ignorance. For instance, do you know just how gross the shower stalls are in the men's locker room at the Lake View YMCA? Maybe you already knew, since you don't wear glasses, but I only just found out. At least we each get our own stall ...

But the good seems to outweigh the bad, so far. There's nothing to fog up when I pull my scarf over my nose in the cold, and rain and snow don't blind me when I walk to the train. I want to go to Six Flags now so I can ride a roller coaster without putting a death grip on my glasses.

Time Flies.

Remember when I used to update this blog pretty much every day? Yeah, that was back when I had a job where I mostly sat around at a computer all day waiting for something to happen. Those were the days. I had another job like that in January, but it only lasted a week. They figured out that it was cheaper to not pay me than to pay me to sit there surfing the web, waiting for them to give me something to do. At least I was all over that Heath Ledger thing when the news broke.

Anyway, back to work again, this time with no time for web surfing. I don't know how I'm going to keep up with this blog, let alone the news, online shopping or music downloads. But, working beats not having money, and being the only income-earner for the first time ever makes that more important now.

It's some what sobering to think of yourself as the breadwinner. Everything depends on you, and suddenly you don't mind so much when the boss comes up to your cubicle and, in that "I'm really trying to be nice, but seriously, you'd better" kind of way, asks if you can work late again tonight.

But, I like money. I only wish I'd realized this back in college. Maybe then I wouldn't have wasted my time wandering around the UNC Charlotte English department and taking tons of useless electives. I mean, History of Jazz was good fun, and I did got to Chapel Hill for the first time (before that mega mall in Durham killed Henderson St.), but has my knowledge of the roots of modern jazz helped me pay the bills, let alone buy an iPhone?

Shit, this post is already longer than all those "how to blog" articles tell you. And I haven't kept the subject simple and concise. What keywords brought you to this post? Charlotte? Money? Work? Phaw. I guess I'll never make a living at this.