WHAT DO YOU WANT?: 06.2005

nose surgery sucks.

i better not break my nose again, because i don't think i could go through surgery again.

lots of blood, vomiting of blood, bruising and swelling (think me in a ring with mike tyson, minus any ear pieces missing), tubes stuck up the nose, tape all of over my face and general uncomfortableness. though, i will say its not too painful.

today is the first day i've actually been able to move around since my surgery, on monday, so i've been occupying my time with wimbledon, bits of movies and tv, reading birthday mail/messages (thanks guys!) and trying to eat. chewing real food is impossible, but even taking down ice cream is an arduous task. talking is also quite difficult, so most of the time i've just been mumbling one word answers. my poor family, they probably think i've gone mean in my post-surgery period, when really, i'm dying to talk to them, and i just cant get the words out.

well, despite all my bitching, i guess it was a good thing i got my nose surgery. they discovered during the surgery that my nose was broken worse than they had thought, 'shattered' was the word he actually used, and that scar tissue had formed, and that breathing would have become increasingly difficult over time. ofcourse the doctor was telling me all this right after i had woken up from anesthesia, so i only caught bits and pieces of the description.

its funny how kids are so honest in their reactions. when i went back over to the doctor's office today, i could tell people were avoiding looking at my face, as it was mostly taped up, with some bruising on the side and around the eyes..not a sight you'd want to be confronted with. but this little kid walked right by me, mouth dropped open, and he just kept staring as he walked by. no tact, whatsoever, but i guess thats what makes kids cute. i was kind of tempted to go "boo" at him, just to see i could freak him out a little more.

okay, i've expended too much energy for the momemnt. back to bed. oh yea, where i have to sleep upright for a week! its just as uncomfortable as it sounds.

yea, thats real bone, muscle and brain. oh yea, and the chess set is real too.

BODY WORLDS

so monica and i went downtown today to see the body worlds exhibit at the museum of science and industry (the COOLEST museum in chicago..if you ever come here, you have to go to this museum).

anyway, the exhibit was amazing.
i wasn't sure what to expect when i found out the pieces on display were real people's bodies, but it was much less gross and much more interesting than i had imagined.

they had full body displays, with all the skeleton and the muscles. they also had skeletons with just the nervous system. and then there was the body shape that was composed of just the blood vessels in the human body...so cool...you would be amazed how many capilaries are in your fingertips and toe tips. there was also the fetal section, where an 8-month pregnant lady was on display, as well as little embroyos. its crazy that life comes from that tiny beginning.

the anonymous donors who gave their cadavers to this body worlds display were thanked profusely throughout the exhibit. their bodies were then taken and "plastinated". sounds like a made up term to me, but it really means that the bodies were dunked into some plastic polymer substance, which dissovles away the fat and water surrounding the body, leaving the muscle, bones, and organs preserved in perfect condition. see here .

i'm so intruiged by the people who donated their bodies to this exhibit, knowing full well their body systems would be on display for the world to see. i wonder what kind of deaths they had...diseases, old age, murder? eh, probably not, but who knows...the exhibit revealed none of that. i still don't think i could donate my body this kind of science...now i don't have much respect for my body after it's not of use anymore, as in dead, but imagining my skeletal system on display is rather offputting. i think i'll stick to being an organ donor.

the blood vessels in your arm.

fun, no?

how cool is this? out in dubai they're making one hell of a luxury development, consisting of about 300 islands that form the world!

i want a piece of antartica, or ireland.

seriously, how much chicken can one man eat?

well, the weekend was fun.

i went to poultry days, a tournament in ohio. this town, versailles (pronounced ver-say-elles...and the locals will correct you if you try to pronounce it frenchy style, as i found out) pretty much lives for this weekend in june where they throw a giant chicken festival called poultry days. they sell chicken dinners, around 27,000 of them, during the weekend, host this huge ultimate tournament where every team has a chicken-themed name, and pretty much just worship the chicken in every manner possible.

anyway, the tournament was kind of fun. i was playing with a team that i knew absolutely nobody on...they were cool people and very nice to me, but i imagined i would have a blast playing at this tournament, and i really didn't. it just made me realize how much more fun you can have at tournaments when you're with people you know and love. and it made me miss all my girls from new york. weep. cause when i started shimming on the line, nobody laughed and shimmied back, or threw a couple slow fakes. instead they all just looked at me like i was an idiot who couldn't dance (which is probably what it looks like to everybody but the columbia women's team)
and playing with a team you don't know is hard, because it takes a while to figure out people's playing styles...who cuts where, who throws what, and so on. and people don't really trust you with the disc unless you earn it (rightly so), and i never really earned it this weekend, so i felt rather useless out on the field.

anyway, side proposal....a columbia alum team for next year? that would be sweet.

at least i got to see sai and ben, even if it was only on the field for like five seconds. i wish i could have hung out with them, but my search through the hoards of tents in the dark for them was unsucsessful, and they never found me either. but the craziest thing all weekend was when i ran into an irish guy that i played with last summer in ireland. of all the places i thought i'd see fergus again, versailles, ohio, was not one of them. and it turns out he's in chicago for the summer, so that was a nice surprise.

on the drive back from ohio, i decided to stop in bloomington to see tom... it was kind of on the way back, and i'd never been to IU, so that was cool to see. tom drove me around bits of the campus and the greek houses...HOLY SHIT. the frats and sororities there are pretty much mansions..like for real, MANSIONS. i've never seen anything like it. they're like five times the size of U of I houses, and 100 times the sizes of columbia ones. unreal.

and finally, the pistons win a game.
even though i want the spurs in the long run, atleast this game was actually a well fought game. the other games just became walkovers in the end. and my theory that ben wallace plays better without corn rows held true. i love his hair when it's out in a fro..its so crazy! so great.

but now, back the reality that is waking up late, lounging around the house, becoming the house maid/resident plumber, playing summer league, and going out to bars, forgetting my id, and then getting kicked out even though i am actually 21, almost 22! that burns.

ugh.

i owe so many people phone calls:

cass
eugene
ben
alex
whitney
my cousin
my aunt
the boy who rear-ended me
the girl who rear-ended the boy who rear-ended me
citibank
ugh, and the list goes on...

i'm sorry, i'm bad with the phone.
plus there's no cell reception in my house, so everytime i get a voicemail, i don't get to check it until i leave the house, and i probably remember to bring my cell phone with me about 1 out of every 10 times i leave the house.

but i promise, i'll try!

okay basketball tonight!
ooh, and driving to ohio tommorow! poultry days! i'm excited.

damn, it was hot today.

i don't think i'm made for the hot weather. i took one step outside today at 2pm, and came right back inside. over 85, and i'm staying indoors.

anyway, around 5pm, i did venture out to pick up monica and joe and head over to our first summer league game. too bad this game was way up north, and it was prime traffic time, because the duration of our game was shorter that the amount of time it took to get to the fields at bunker hill.

nonetheless, a fun game. our team won! woo. and today, we had the special opportunity of playing on a field with 1 ft+ grass length. i'm not kidding. think of the grassy fields that surround the little house in the prairie, and that was where we were playing. a big frickin illinois prairie, in the middle of a forest preserve, of course. it actually had to be established that "touching grass" didn't necessarily mean the disc was down, other wise all low-releases would have been automatically deemed down.

also humorous...one of the kids on our team dropped down into the grass and started crawling forward military style before the pull, and the other team actually couldn't see him! now this kid is commonly refered to as 'commando'. haha. i imagine that name could be easily mistaken as an indication of other habits.

got home in time to catch the second half of GAME 7, and i'm kind of sad because the Heat should have had that game. they had a couple of opportunities near the end to run the board, and really pull away, and they didn't. wah. oh well, detroit's pretty cool too, i just really liked dywane wade. anyway, spurs v pistons should be a pretty good series, and i'm excited for more basketball! i hope it goes the whole 7.

okay, i guess we're going out tonight. i have to go get myself ready. apparently we're hitting up the ever classy (with a capital K, as jen would say) bamboo room.
oh summer nights.

NO SENSE!

okay, someone needs to explain to me the logic behind this one...

after some recent discussions, it was made clear to me that anybody who steps on your property has the right to sue you if they get injured on your property. like, say, a burglar, entering your house and attempting to steal from you, trips on some loose wires and breaks his arm; apparently he can take you to court for damages to his body because he fell in your house. WTF!!! you didn't even want him in your house!! or little punks who trespass onto your property and fall into some hole in your backyard can sue you for not maintaining your property, even though they're the big idiots who decided to go where they're not supposed to go.

i just don't get where any sense comes into this law. it seems so unfair. uninvited people come onto your property or into your house, and you are now responsible for their welfare? NOT COOL. you had no warning, and didn't even get a chance to clean up.

now the only reasoning i can possibly see behind the law, and this is still a stretch, is that some sneaky person might invite a friend into his home, and when his friend hurts himself, claim that the friend was actually uninvited, and there by escaping all responsibility for inviting his poor injured friend into his unsafe house.

but still, i think most people of the law could tell the difference between an 'uninvited' friend and a burglar. i don't know, one of them might have a mask on.
anyway, if you have any insight into this legal situation, please, indulge me because i would love to hear about this one...

in other news

:: mango is my new favorite fruit

:: dywane wade is my new favorite basketball player (come on, miami!)

:: plumbing is my new favorite career option ( i fixed both leaky toilets in our house. go me.)

:: modern marvels is my my new favorite tv show

:: the green camry '94 is my my new favorite car to drive (it has super sensitive supsension, which means turns and bumps can be quite extreme! fun!)

:: www.bbcnews.com is my new favorite news website

hmm. thats about all the radical changes i can think of in my rather tame summer existence.

life consists of waking up whenever i feel like, doing some list of house chores (fixing toilets, reformatting computers, etc. etc.), hanging out with friends, going to friend's restaurant grand opening, watching all the basketball conference finals games, going out to random bars in the suburbs, and just bumming around with my family.

things might get spiced up a bit next week though...summer league starts, i'll probably start working somewhere (its too bad my lifeguarding certification expired), and reks and i decided that we're definitely going out downtown! its rather sad...for living so close to chicago, we don't go downtown very often, and i'm already missing that city buzz. somehow hinsdale's amenities aren't quite the substitute for the new york city night action.

allright. off to bed. my bro and i are driving down to champaign tommorow morning. too bad most of the u of i peeps have left already!

the zook house.

what does my village do with an historical house that the new developer insists must go?
duh, they MOVE THE ENTIRE HOUSE!

they actually split the house into four pieces, lifted it out of the ground by its foundations, put the pieces on to flatbeds, and rolled it down the streets, unfortunately causing a lot of large branch destruction in its path.

but it was pretty incredible to see a house on wheels. one of the pieces alone was 160 tons!