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…and a Happy New Year. I don’t know if I’ll get another post in before the holidays, so consider this a farewell to the ol’ 2007. It was a terrific year; my first back in Madison. From the Vegas trip in February, to the Great Snowy La Guardia Debacle in March, my wisdom teeth ordeal in April, and Our First Camping Trip in May. The summer was filled with the Milwaukee Brewers, Miller Chill, the Freedom Grill, and many screamed obscenities into the night regarding Derrick Turnbow and Ned Yost. We had a few speedbumps along the way, mostly involving the Chicago Cubs and their generally terrible fans. The fall was filled with magic fairy dust and work. My twenty-ninth birthday came and went, and then started working on an iPhone application at work which was cool. Ever since the summer I’ve been on an advanced debt-repayment schedule, and it came to a head this week when I sold my truck and paid off the loan I had on it. Now, as the year ends, I am looking forward to a year where I am on foot and moving forward.

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Well, I don’t have a car anymore. I sold my Chevy Tahoe this morning, and I’m just now trying to figure out all the steps I need to go through next. It’s made more difficult due to the fact that it’s Saturday and so nothing is open. My short list is: CXL my insurance, CXL one of the parking spots in our apartment, sign up for Community Car, get the lien release for my auto loan payoff and send to the buyer, start walking everywhere… hmm.

I thought I’d prepared myself for a world without owning a car, but obviously it’s a little bit more disconcerting once the car is actually gone from your parking space. It’s not that I all of a sudden need to go somewhere, but simply that Stacy is at work and I don’t have a car. It’ll take a little getting used to, s’all. In no time, I’m sure I’ll be working at Flipper’s and getting my law degree.

All in all, I think this is for the best. Time will tell, however. Time will tell.

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I’m in a moderately empty terminal in O’Hare waiting for my 9:40pm flight back to Madison. Fun onna bun. The flight from California kinda sucked; I was the aisle seat next to a gigantic man. I really felt sorry for him, as he was doing his damned best to not spill over into my seat and it looked like he was more uncomfortable than I was for most of the flight. What really cooked my crockers was the dumb bitch seated behind me who talked real loud to the lady next to her the whole approach and landing. I couldn’t get away without violating federal airline safety regulations, which you all know I revere. Anyways, here’s all you need to know about her: she looked like a plain-jane white woman from Chicago, she explained that she was originally from Chicago but now living in Santa Cruz, and she talked in a valley girl accent. Once on the ground, she proceeded to do the following:

1. Call her father and speak in Polish very loudly about picking her up. Oh yeah, she made sure everyone heard her Polish.
2. Brag to the lady next to her that no one can ever tell what language she’s speaking, but in fact it’s POLISH because there are so many POLISH people in Chicago, and that’s one of the reasons the city is great.
3. Proudly announce how much it ‘totally sucked’ when she worked in retail in high school and POLISH women would come into the store and talk about her in POLISH but of course she could UNDERSTAND them because she speaks POLISH.
4. Explain that her family lives in Schaumburg. Imagine this is being said with the relish that probably accompanies Paris Hilton telling some poor fuck where her 3rd favorite mansion is located.

Every time she rattled off another of my bullet-pointed examples, my eyes grew more narrow and the scowl on my face deepened. I ended up rereading the same paragraph in my book 5 times because her screeching about Schaumburg and Polish distracted me every time. Even the fat guy next to me started shaking his head. Then the pilot announced that our gate was still occupado so we had to wait 10 minutes. “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck,” the fat man said. “POLISH!” the retard screamed.

All was well, though. I went directly to the airport Chili’s and ordered a 7 & 7. They counteroffered with a Sprite & Canadian Club, which was really just absurd. We settled on a Crown & Coke, and I couldn’t help but think of madd scientist and cal schlepping along Market St like Vandover and young Geary quaffing Crown & Cokes and laughing at all of the examples of Lemon Torts littering the streets of San Francisco.

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Well said, madd scientist, well said.

It was my distinct pleasure to be stationed in sunny California while Wisconsin was deluged with snow, ice, and a rampaging, out-of-control wwhazz-and-bellygirl-with-a-sled-in-tow. Their desecration of cemeteries is notorious and the dead positively reel at the transgressions. Upon your own deaths, expect the welcome wagon to consist primarily of cold(er) shoulders and flaming bags of poo on your front afterlife stoop.

How was the Blue Moon last night? Was that guy working? The one who serves drinks? He’s terrific.

I must confess: Cal, I was in San Francisco on Saturday night, but declined to inquire about your whereabouts. Why? Because you live in a city (and a part of that city in particular) that is openly hostile to visitors. Yes, yes San Francisco, I’m driving a car. I know that it’s anathema to all you hold dear and all, but I didn’t relish the thought of driving in a circle for upwards of 45 minutes so I could get a spot of tea and some crumpet crumbs before rocketing away. Our alternative: cab from hotel to Cal, Flipper’s burger, cab back to hotel, pay another $8 per hour for the luxury of keeping my car at said hotel. All in all, a headache inducing plan. And who knows? Maybe we would do all that and Cal would be face down in a book on Lemon Torts at the Law Library, or busy buying German tchotchkes at his favoritest German Tchotchke Store. It was a difficult decision to make, but we skipped directly to Step 2: descend on Winter’s Bar in Pacifica and watch the Packers game with GMX. We drank goddamned motherfucking the most delicious sangria on god’s green earth. I was wild-eyed; delirious with taste excitement even before my prawns with white-wine garlic sauce appeared at the table. IT WAS GOOD~!

Madd, are you gonna be stopping over in SFO for any length of time this week? Maybe we could 3 or 4 twenty ounce beers. HOLLLARIT.

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I’m proud as pie to announce the next great leap in whazzmaster.com history: http://iphone.whazzmaster.com. It’s really basic right now, but all the important stuff is there: comments. I know you idiots love typing grotesque examples of the English (and whazzzish) language on there, so the first version only shows comments, comments, and comments, grouped by post. I’ll probably add the posts on there at some points, but for now we’ve got glorious comments on-the-go. Could you get the same info myriad other ways? Yes. You definitely could. But that would preclude me from deploying my first Ruby on Rails application, so too johnny-be-badd for you.

I should note that if you aren’t using an iPhone or a Safari browser, that link will likely look like complete garbage. Sorry you Treo dudes.

It’s snowing outside. Hard.

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