I'm homesick for my home away from home

Carrboro, I love you, but you bore the hell out of me. I can only appreciate beauty for so long before I need to bask in the gritty 24-hour gleam of the city. I'm counting down the hours until I can count down the days until I'm back in Chicago. All my memories seem more intimate when I experience them as just another anonymous, coffee-swilling speedwalker, gripping my cell phone and handing out fruit to homeless women (I like to hand out oranges... they need the vitamin C). Right now, I really miss the Lake, which looks like a sleek science fiction ocean in the middle of the jagged urban badlands. My boyfriend kissed me for the first time while we were watching the sailboats come in one night, and people walking by stopped and watched because we were so fricken adorable. True story, it was cute squared.

Tell me your favorite tourist spot in Chicago, and I'll ruin it for you by telling you that I made out there. Navy Pier? CHECK. Millennium Park? CHECK. The Point? CHECK (aaaaand regret). Revolving doors anywhere in the city? CHECK. Jaywalking across Michigan Avenue and almost getting hit by a bus? CHECK.

I am stupid

So far this week, I...

1. picked UCLA to beat Duke,
2. claimed that I wanted to be "the Amelia Earhart of neurobiology,"
3. exploded small tubes of glass all over a table and wiped them up with my bare hands,
4. cried over a boy (Although estrogen can probably take the fall for this craptasm),
   
5. LOL'ed a Friends episode,
6. watched a For The Love Of Ray J marathon,
7. managed to ruin hummus,
8. and forgot my umbrella after obsessing over the hour-by-hour forecast for ten minutes one morning.

The list goes on, but it's just depressing to think of how incompetent I am at living my own life.

I don't think #2 is that bad... imagine if one day you simply vanished into a hippocampal wonderland of place cells, AMPA receptor trafficking, and neurotransmitter playgrounds. That's where good neurobiologists go when they die. (Bad neuroscientists have to hang out with Carl Jung.)

Things I would miss if I lived in the 1940s

• My iPod
• the Beatles
• ethnic food, especially middle eastern and thai
• Johnny Depp movies, and vibrators
  
• wimmen's lib
  
• the end of the Cold War
• microwaves
  
• Google, and vibrators
• polymerase chain reaction
• not being called a spinster
  
• PubMed and Web of Science
• laparoscopic surgery
• the HPV vaccine (I got dose #2 yesterday. I'm so responsible.)
• Long lasting batteries, and vibrators
  
• cell phones and digital cameras
• word processing
  
• President Barack Obama (and vibrators)
  

Giggle-O-The-Day

I have been watching this video over and over all evening and it hasn't gotten less funny:

Unseen footage of the Australian lyrebird

If this doesn't make you laugh, you must have a diaphragm* of STONE!

*the organ that enables laughter, not the convenient contraceptive device. Don't put rocks in your pants, gals.

Albums good enough to pay for

Last night I watched an hour of VH1's weekly top video countdown and remembered why I gave up on pop music in 7th grade. By the way, as you may have predicted, the new single by the Fray sounds exactly like the previous singles by the Fray. Thus, I would like to provide you with a list of albums worth buying.

• TV on the Radio, Dear Science
• The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed
• Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
• Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
• David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
• Fastball, Keep Your Wig On (and I'm looking forward to Little White Lies in April; go pre-order it)
• Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
• The Beatles, Revolver (and Abbey Road, White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Let It Be... Naked)
• Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne (or at least all the Tweedy tracks)
• Voxtrot, Mothers Daughters Sister and Wives
• John Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
• Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (I know I put Wilco on here twice, but I don't know how people can exist without both albums)