Whee-ow. I've been crazy busy lately, or at least it seems that way.

Hung out with Jubb and Jinx this weekend, which just was as totally high school as I'd predicted. Not that I ever drank cheap liquor in a friend's hotel room in high school — but as someone who was once forced to break up just such a party, I was aware of their existence.

So anyways, we were super-lame and didn't go anywhere except to the liquor store and back for some beer and cheap champagne. Very festive. If I remember correctly, there was also a fair deal of haterating.

Jubb has strangely creepy long hair now.

Another reminder that I need to shave my head again before it gets really cold out. Chicago weather is a jerk. It'll be nice and warm in the morning, when I'm getting dressed to go to work, and then freezing cold when I'm biking to and from my classes.

I wore a T-shirt under my gray hoodie today and had to battle both the cold and Chicago's trademark gusting winds on my way to class. A lot of the parks in my neighborhood have huge black metal gates on them, and the wind had literally swung said gates open, turning the sidewalk into an obstacle course.

In the summer those same sidewalks were fair game for sprinklers. Only Chicago drivers seem to respect bikers, oddly enough. Homeowners don't even know I exist. Pedestrians fear me. There's no good way to bike up behind someone on the sidewalk at night when you don't have a bell. Even "excuse me ma'am, I'm coming up behind you on your left" seems to terrify your average pedestrian.

After my harrowing ride to class, it turned out that only one person had had any time to read the revised version of my latest nonfiction essay and earn my respect forever. I felt like Joyce writing it, in the sense that I was unwilling to submit a completed version until the very last minute.

The obsessive will explain his priorities now. I had three essays due Monday, which meant the one I wasn't getting a grade for got pushed back to Tuesday, which is the day I decided to read through every PVP comic, which is why I was still making changes at 4:30 today, an hour before I had to leave for class.

I muttered something about "stupid Chicago weather" on my way back to the bike rack, actually offending a girl in a White Sox hat who was walking in front of me. There's something wrong with a city where people take observations about the weather personally.