Helloween

And goodbye as well. With Halloween 2012 drawing to a close, I'm also looking to fill my four-post-per-month quota. I'm weakly making it onto the weekly. I should be calling it Balloween since I'm feeling progressively more and more like balls.

Today I didn't get round to dressing up, but I was rocking a crew-neck t-shirt, which isn't that odd except that I'm so accustomed to the v-neck in the last few years that I actually feel a touch out of sorts in a crew-neck. Like my neck is confined or something stupid like that. Of course strangers don't know that I nearly exclusively wear v-necks (no, seriously, I cut my crew-necks into v-necks a lot of the time), so as usual, all in the brain. The moral of the story is that there's very little story here.

Smoking line, the cut-off line for cigarettes, so you can't. smoke. here. Each morning I walk by the Merchandise Mart and I'm fascinated by the smoking line that is painted onto the sidewalk. Fascinated because it exists, but also fascinated because it is obeyed. The idea is that the entryway is not flooded with smoke, and it's a nice concept, but given the wind in Chicago, the efficacy of the smoking line is questionable. That, and it's also really intriguing to me to see an arbitrarily painted line observed, one that adheres to the 15 foot rule. Why fifteen feet? Why not.

As you can see, I'm not too into linking the disparate parts of this post to one another. What I am into, is wondering if Skidz brand clothing will return. Peep these shots below. Those aren't costumes, those are fashion!

Merry go round indeed! They're not skidding! Or are they?

This girl right here!

Happy Halloween folks.

I Don't Work Here

Quite frequently in my life I'll be in a place of business and someone will make an inquiry of me that is the sort of thing you might ask an employee of that place of business. This is a roundabout and dumbass way of saying that people tend to think I work at most stores I'm in, regardless of attire. I certainly don't dress to code at any of these places. One of the earliest I can remember was coming off some temp office work during the summer before starting college and rolling into Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get some bedsheets before leaving for school in a day or two. I informed the woman who asked me where something was (that's right, I don't remember this detail just over eleven years later) that I in fact didn't work at the store (I was wearing a button-up and slacks — side note, people apparently hate the term slacks), and then directed her to where the item in question was. How can I remember that I directed her correctly but not remember the item? I just can.

In the years since, I've sold tennis racquets, shoes, advised a few folks on whether or not to buy certain articles of clothing, and I suppose that's about it. Actually, in a few recent instances I've dispensed doughnut purchase suggestions but then, for reasons even I can't fathom, I already wrote an entire (and long) post about that.

When I'm not mistaken for an employee, I can often be found giving directions, taking pictures of you when you're on vacation, or aggressively being hounded by canvassers (I include homeless people in this designation). Something about my general demeanor must make all of these things happen. The thing is I really don't mind most of these interactions because I enjoy helping people, I just can't figure out what it is that suggests I am either an employee or an expert on directions.

At any rate, I've a feeling I've blogged about this nonsense before (I've really got to get in the habit of checking that beforehand) but if you haven'r read it, it's new to you.

Next time you need help shopping, your photo taken, or directions, well, I'm bound to be in the vicinity.

Renesaince Rambling

I was on some company website the other day and I don't know how the hell I ended up there in the first place, but one thing I always check out is the team page. It's tough to write a bio about yourself or have one written about you, but either way it tells you a bit about how a company wants to portray themselves. And I'll say that generally I don't like it. On the bigger corporate side, these bios tend to be formally written, dry, a touch boring, but just contain the facts. This is as expected for what they want to portray. It's the smaller places though, the newly-launched tech and media ventures, or the ad/design shops looking to be edgy/cool that I tend to take the most issue with. I get that even when trying to avoid tooting your own horn, you still have to make note of some accomplishments so that someone who's never heard of you can get an idea of, well, your accomplishments. But too much of it seems to come from the same school of what's cool like, perhaps they are trying too hard.

The reason I bring it up is that one of the team members lists himself as a "Renesaince [sic] man." Apparently spelling is not part of his Renaissance. 

In more boring news, I'd also seen that someone on LinkedIn who was in my network had fallen into my 2nd tier. As this individual was in the 500+ connections realm, I thought it was pretty interesting that they would specifically disconnect from me. Perhaps it was in response to my not accepting what I presume was his wife's invitation to connect, though I'd never met her in real life. The thing is, I'm not a prolific LinkedIn user, and all of the people I'm connected to are people I know or have met in real life. And not every person I know in real life and is on LinkedIn is someone I am connected to there.

It just goes to show that peoples' online behaviors are weird. But then, people are weird. Especially in the sense that anything outside of our own prescribed systems is alien and difficult to understand.

Alas, Internet, I must give you a rest. Until tomorrow then...

Fall[acies]

You ever dislodge a booger and have it go up your nose? It's really disconcerting for some reason even though it's comprised of just those things that just left there anyway.

I was thinking about sinus infections because I get them every fall, and because my girlfriend's sinuses are always crap and I thought I'd make a hyperlink to someone signing the word "us." But in rudimentary googling, I returned no results. What a sad thought that in ASL, there is no us. Bad enough that it's already co-opted for A/S/L.

Mostly in fall I dream of cross country and the pleasant experience of running over hill and dale. Even the scent of port-o-john chemical leads to fond reminiscence. Of course it's not long then until it will be nut-bitingly cold. 

In other running news, the Chicago Marathon was yesterday. I was too lazy to get around to the course this year, but I did at least catch the last few miles on my computer. The NBC live webcast was rather awful, with cutaways every few minutes to interview god-knows-who or lend another update to the weather. I understand that not everyone happens to be a running enthusiast and they are trying to draw in viewers, but that is not the way to do it, especially not in the closing minutes of the race.

At any rate, watching these guys (Kebede and Lilesa), drugs or not, click off miles in the 4:40s and still be able to surge and drop into the 4:30s boggles my mind. And that they battled each other. It was an actual race. Multiple surges in races of 5k or less took their toll on me, though I suppose in the longer race there are more opportunities for moves and time to counter them. I can only imagine the horrible death of covering an early move and paying for it for 7, 9, 12, 15 miles.

One of the stranger aspects of the marathon to me is that you eat and drink during it (technically you're not quite eating in a lot of these instances). One year perhaps I'll get injuries figured out and be able to train to run a marathon in a time I'd consider reasonable. Maybe this will even be the city for it.

In political news, for the opening presidential debate it might be worth taking Matt Taibbi's word for it.