19. If Only I'd Knew

Write about something you now know that you wish you knew earlier in life.  How could this knowledge have helped you?
Eh, this. I swear this comes up all the time on Reddit. There's an AskReddit every few weeks where people prompt, "I'm X years old, older redditors, what would you tell yourself at that age if you could?"

The thing about getting perspective is, you have to earn it. It's easy for adults to tell you things about what lies ahead, but you only get that perspective by living it out yourself. Sure, I could TELL my 15-year-old self not to worry about what people think so much or whatever, but when you're that age, you're so caught up in it, and you don't have the later perspective to understand how trivial things are. And I'm sure the problems I have now (even though, honestly, I can't complain about much) will seem banal in another ten years. Sure, it's great to get advice from an older perspective, and eventually you realise that maybe your parents weren't completely full of crap, but the only way to grow and learn as a person is to make mistakes and suffer through them. It's definitely not pleasant, but trial and error seems to be the best way to actually learn a lesson.

Let's be honest, I'm writing in here right now because I'm fucking exhausted after a weekend filled with drinking, and I feel obligated to stay in lab for at least another hour and a half. I was genuinely trying to study/read papers, but my eyes are all droopy and I just can't do it. My boss isn't even here this week, so it probably doesn't matter if I bail (also I'm a useless rotation student) but I just feel so guilty. Everyone else has work to do and I'm just staring out at the incredibly depressing sky. It's that 2:30 feeling that 5-hour energy is always talking about.

My St. Patrick's day weekend was, as usual, escapade-y. Three of my friends and I went to check out the river around 12:30, 1 pm, which was its special St. Patrick's Day green as opposed to its normal murky green. (Also I saw it today because I took the bus and it still has a slightly less depressing green hue to it.) As the great Tommy Lee Jones once said, "If they can dye it green on St. Patrick's Day, why can't they dye it blue the other 364 days?"

Not Pictured: GFP

The weather was pretty craptastic, as opposed to last year (sunshinnnne I miss you) so we didn't stay long at the river. I mean, that and the fact we were all still sober. Since Molly demanded consumption of beer with food dye in it (because nothing says appetising like drinking alcohol that looks like it's gone mouldy, which is apparently the particular shade of green beer lends itself to) we headed to good ol' Friar Tuck's, which is at this point in my life here sort of my go-to for, "Well, we need to go out and everywhere else is really expensive." I swear, I randomly end up there a lot. Unlike Saturday, it is very rarely a conscious decision. And I've definitely been there for every St. Patrick's Day since I've moved here, which is three. Three St. Patty's. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Anyway, we headed there and indeed were filled with green beer. Brian of course had to watch the Big 10 semis, as the Bucks were playing, so we wound up consuming about four pitchers and several jello shots (which, to their credit, actually tasted like alcohol) before the Buckeyes finally beat Michigan State, much to the chagrin of my friend who was actually at United Centre. At that point, we were hungry, so we went to Binny's to buy alcohol and then took wine to Stella's, where all of us consumed just all of the food.

Waiter, I think this has expired.

Aside: I keep hearing this buzzing noise, like a phone or something, except I know for a fact that no one besides me in this lab has a phone. And no one is even in here right now, so it's definitely not the vortex. Shit, I'm going crazy.

Right so after eating all the food, we grabbed "dessert" sort of from Windy City Sweets, where I got chocolate-covered pretzels with chocolate chips on them. Yeah, that's right, chocolate-covered chocolate. The pretzel was only a pretense. After this, Molly and Brian departed, leaving Catie and I to finish drinking wine on our own at my house until we met up with some other people from our programme. If you do the math, this puts us at around 9pm.

By ten we headed out to Wicker Park, incidentally taking the worst bus ride ever on the 72. Seriously, everyone was too drunk and n00b to handle it. But we made it out to Big Star, which I was secretly sort of pissed about because I've been wanting to try their tacos since forever but was still way too full from our diner food. Regardless, we enjoyed $2 beers and the company of our fellow grad students. I use the term "enjoyed" a bit loosely in regards to the latter.

After that, I had the joy of taking the blue line to the red line, where I stood at Jackson for 16 minutes until it showed up. If you've never waited by yourself at the Jackson stop for the red line at 4am, I... well, I don't really recommend it. There were actually plenty of people, none of whom seemed terribly threatening, but still, not the best idea. I got off at Sheridan and grabbed some enchiladas verdes, because of course now I was hungry enough to consume Mexican.

I made this with my hands

The reason I was so determined to make it home, rather than staying with any of the lovely people who suggested it, is because I had to get up bright and early Sunday (aside: I would have had to wake up by 9, though I woke up at 7:30 because I'm a psychopath and don't sleep anymore) to head out to Lombard, which is apparently a suburb, and get fitted for this stupid bridesmaids dress. That was appropriately depressing, as the dress is not going to look great on me. Huzzah! I rewarded myself with a trip to IKEA for lunch and decor. Upon returning home, rather than sleep, I mounted some pictures and fabric in frames to hang up, set out the new rug I bought, and sewed new covers for our futon pillows, since the shitty-ass fabric I bought when we moved in was pretty much destroyed, despite the fact that we don't curl up with them all that much. But now the house looks marginally more like a home, so that's pretty nice.

So obviously today I'm still quite tired. Also I have bandaids on 30% of my fingers, partially from sewing/framing and partially because I have a bad habit of abusing my cuticles. I still have an hour and ten minutes to kill before I feel like I can escape, but this writing has every so slightly bolstered my attention span. I swear, I couldn't even read that well on the bus this morning, despite the fact that I'm reading 1Q84 and loving it.

I've had some time off from writing reviews, but next week three of my shows pick back up, so no doubt I'll be sick of writing after that. Okay, everyone who doesn't read this (so everyone in the world), god speed.