"You were nothing but a vanity project to me"

I found this t-shirt today. A WSPN t-shirt that was made my sophomore year, I believe. I haven't worn it ages. In fact, I had it in a pile of clothes I wanted to give to my friend Sara cuz she always liked them better than I did, but I never made it back to Brooklyn before moving to Chi, so that didn't happen.

Wearing this shirt has got me thinking about some of my favorite WSPN memories and thought I'd blog about it. How about reverse chronological order:

1. The last week of our senior year finding "WSPN, you were nothing but a vanity project to me," signed Alissa DeVogel on the whiteboard.
2. Alissa discovering 2+ year-old milk in the WSPN office fridge. I wasn't there. TG.
3. Finding "biddies" for Myles on Facebook instead of performing our music director duties. Other distractions included Shannon's giggle fits and marveling at Sam's height.
4. When Ike told me and Alissa that we were the upper crust of Skidmore society -- clearly because of our power held at WSPN.
5. Crying because moronic sophomores who called the station "wispin" were gaining power and we were getting old.
6. Having the school sponsor our passes to CMJ two years in a row. Which meant the school sponsored our attending open bar concerts and minimal conferences. RJD2 and Gang of Four show sponsored by Sauza Tequila being the true highlight. Also stopping at Mantee's in Westchester and eating ribs and rice his grandma made for us.
7. Discovering Rhonda. Watching Kelly Clarkson performing whiskey wasted on YouTube. Plunger bowling. All the things Mantonio showed me... Soulm8 4ever.
8. Breaking unwanted LPs by throwing them against the lockers with Laura and Nick in the middle of one drunken Saturday night.
9. Getting calls during an early morning show by a guy who told me he felt like 50 Cent without a G-Unit whenever he went to Wilton Mall and asked me if he went to college, if he would find his G-Unit. Did I have a G-Unit, he wondered?... I learned years later this dude was Charlie McC.
10. Gettin' mono.

Also, the free music and having first crack at it. Yeah, that was pretty great.

Visitor #3

This weekend my friend Alissa came to Chicago for a visit, her first here. We did lots of fun things: saw Why? play Friday night, went to the Lincoln Park zoo, got in an argument deciding whether to go to John Hancock or Sears Tower, went to John Hancock's Signature Room for martinis, had dinner at the Fiddlehead Cafe (that place where I saw that Swarthmore alumni thing going on that I wrote about several posts back. Sorry, I don't link you to previous posts like other bloggers do, not because I don't know how, I do, but because I'm just lazy), brought people from different periods of my (recent) life (Skidmore, Saratoga, now) together at Rainbo and had a lot of fun, found ourselves in a taqueria turned late night karaoke bar (all the songs were in Spanish), woke up too early this morning and spent a little time in bed watching Gossip Girl (A's call, not mine, and three-quarters into it, after Chuck told S "Your life is over, slut!," A decided she really liked it), then walked around my neighborhood, had lunch with Maggie, and called it a weekend. Alissa makes me laugh differently than I usually laugh, orders for me in restaurants, calls me Gedz, and has the most entertaining interactions with strangers I have ever seen. Alissa also says "hella" now; it's weird, but it was a hella fun weekend.

Having a friend coming to visit and showing her around my new city really made me feel like I live here. I liked it, except that all the fun and the little-to-no sense of responsibility I have right now has made me start to feel a little anxious. Yes, I am temping, so I am "working," and making money, and also looking for things, but I don't really know what I'm looking for. I took advantage of having someone who knows me quite well here this weekend to get an outsider perspective on what I should be doing. We brainstormed on my skill set and interests and concluded that if I give up on the editorial pursuit, I should be a cab driver. I, however, don't really want to be a cab driver, so I really have some thinking to do.

I know these questions, this anxiety isn't unique to me. Duh. It's probably one of the hardest things most people have to deal with, figuring out what they want to do. I don't really need to figure that out yet. I just want to find a job that could potentially introduce me to something I want to do, and if it doesn't accomplish that task, I would deal with it for awhile, and probably enjoy it, as long as my coworkers were people I liked and the dress code didn't mandate super conservative attire in varying shades of drab.

Maybe this is why there's that book about parachutes. I haven't read it though; I am afraid of heights--unless there are martinis at the top.