Snow makes everything infinitely more impossible.

For the past 48 hours everyone in Chicago has been talking about the massive snow storm we were about to get. And now that it's here, I've officially commenced what we'll call the Season of Complaining.

I've lived in Chicago all my life, so I consider myself a hard core Chicagoan. I say "Ma" instead of "Mom" and drink Old Style like water. I know the grid system, hate the Kennedy and can tell you who has the best Italian beef in the city off the top of my head.

But no matter how many years I spend in the city, no matter how many pounds of snow I shovel off my car year after year, I still become a little whiny bitch for the first few weeks once that first snowflake hits the ground.

This is how it usually goes down:

It will take me longer to dig my car out of the snow than it normally does to make the full trip to work. After pulling the reverse-drive, reverse-drive until smoke literally envelops my car, I will dejectedly get out of my car and begin to dig my wheels out with my hands. And this will all be transpiring on Lincoln Ave., one of the busiest streets in Chicago where people will continue to drive past my hunched over figure, spraying snow from their back tires into my face. Thanks. Really. And of course I won't have a scraper or a brush, which are both kind of necessities in dealing with Chicago winters. What can I say? I'm an asshole.

After you sufficiently freeze your ass off on the street, it never fails that once you get on the road, highway, expressway, etc. that your windshield wipers somehow get covered in ice, even though you cleared them out not once, but twice before you left. And obviously you get stuck behind an oversized Vienna Beef hotdog truck that continuously spits up dirt and sleet right onto your front windshield. Let me just get rid of that, you think, but then you fire your wipers up and they tear across your dry windshield, with huge ice chunks grinding rock-sized grooves into the glass.

So then you'll do what any normal person would do and open your driver's side window, still trying to maintain the 75 mph you were cruising at and heave yourself out just far enough to grab the wiper as it comes back up. Only, maybe you grabbed too hard because now the wiper is in your hand, but you're back inside your car. DAMN IT. You just broke your wiper blade right off. MOTHERFUCKER.

Swearing and squinting, eventually you'll make it to work an hour or two later. You'll park, ride the elevator up to your floor, sit down at your desk and without fail, the office douchebag will stick his big fat head into your office and say, "The roads are a mess today, huh?" then laugh that goofy ass laugh that drives you nuts and walk away. And he'll be wearing snow boots.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

You'd think I'd get used to the freezing cold winds that even the warmest coat can't break, the slushy, five seconds away from spinning out of control every time I change lanes morning commutes, the slow and inefficient way in which the Chicago DOT responds to the weather report. I know all this, and yet I still complain. Why?

Because that's part of being from Chicago. We complain.

We complain about the Bears, we complain about Daley, we complain about the expressways. We complain. That's what we do.

I know that winter means I'll walk around for about two months with the cuffs of my pants soaking wet. I know that it means once Dec. 1st hits, I will have about only one 6x6 area of street that I can actually park on that's not now considered a "Snow Route". I know that instead of turning on the heat in our apartment, I should just plop a big metal garbage can in the middle of my living room and burn my money in it homeless person style. ComEd you can kiss my ass.

I know all this and I still choose to live here because once that first crisp, white snow falls, all the dirt and grime and muck we've become innoculated by every day is washed away and I all at once remember that I live in the greatest city in the world.

Happy first snow storm Chicago!

Because guest blogging is oh so cool.

I'm over at The 'Stache today. It's my first Peter-less 'Stache post! I hope I made his legacy proud.

Baby it's cold outside.

Sometimes the fates decide to take this little snow globe we're living in, turn it upside down and shake.

And sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Super Tuesday on my mind.

I realize that coming from me, saying "Vote" doesn't mean much. You don't know me, you probably don't know enough about me to respect me. Most of you don't understand this innate, unwavering sense of duty. I am just one person, sitting at a computer somewhere in the Midwest, feeling unsettled and dissatisfied with the leaders of our country. But I know there are more of you out there, I feel that.

And I challenge you. Say something to somebody, anybody--the guy on the bus sitting next to you, your sister, your friends at work, the receptionist at the dentist's office. Voice your opinion. Put up a sticker or a sign. Be heard. Color indifference a new shade! Don't just vote one way because your parents are or because you always have or because you don't know enough to vote intelligently. Voting is not just a right, it's a responsibility. Take it seriously.

I haven't done much that I can really say is great in my life or remarkable, but it's never been so easy this time. Be present February 5th. Be great.

Didn't think the day would come, did you?

I met a boy. And I'm in T-R-O-U-B-L-E with this one.

Hum drum dumb numb.

There's something about those city buses that crawl through the park in the morning, something slow and depressing. Like an old dog lumbering along, trying to keep up with his owner. This morning on my drive to work it hits me particularly hard. Umbrellas open up to dirty skies, blotting out blueless days. Those blurry faces staring vacantly out sleet-streaked windows, following the same yellow lines of the same filthy streets for weeks upon end.

Finally, I break from the park and head up Lakeshore Drive, pausing at the Chicago Ave. stoplight where a man in french cuffs leers at me from inside his immaculate BMW. His glossy black cuff links stare back at me like the eyes on a snake.

Green light. I hit the gas. Hard. Swerving in and around idling cars, I accelerate, the heaving and whurring of my car engine drowning out the traffic report whining out of my radio. Faster and faster until I'm going 85 mph, trading the sad, snow-soaked skyline of the city behind me for the blank, outstretched gray horizon ahead.

At about Harlem Ave. it strikes me that I'm still going 80 mph and for what? I'm speeding faster and faster toward my life in a box. A box with knockdownable walls and numbered plaques. Every day it records my permanence with erasable pen.

When I arrive at work and get out of my car, I slam the door shut and gaze into the driver's side window. The face I see I do not recognize.

Heart attack imminent.

My heart keeps time with the rhythm of the words running through my head, "Don't be nervous, don't be nervous, don't be nervous." Like the annoying caw of a parakeet in a pet store.

But then I start to actually listen to the words in my head and my heart beats faster, "Don'tbenervous, don'tbenervous, don'tbenervous" making it all at once impossible to think clearly or breathe normally.

I'm inside my head almost all the time these days, holding my breath as I breaststroke through the muck to find something, anything, to steal my attention away from the anxious, insistent metronome ticking of my heart.

But you.

B u t y o u, b u t y o u, but you, butyoubutyoubutyou.

Damn it.

Strange Wilderness Shark Scene

If this thing doesn't make you laugh, you are dead inside.

I lost my shit the first time I saw it.

Because you should and I will like you more if you do.

One of my best friends in the whole world is running the NYC Triathalon this summer and raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society at the same time.

I can't think of anyone more deserving or someone who would be more grateful if you would donate. Maybe you don't know her as well as I do, but we all know someone who has been affected by cancer. For all those times you've wanted to but didn't, here's a chance to make a difference.

Donate here.

Please enjoy the following photos of me and Don when she was in Chicago to run the marathon in 2006.



Thank you in advance for your donations!

Choo choo, baby!

Did Sam Seaborn write this speech?

Home.

When you're away from home for two weeks, you return to what seems like this altered state of reality. Everyone you left before you went away went on doing whatever they did before you left. They washed dishes, had conversations, sang along to the radio in the car, went on walks. And I am left wondering in my hotel room if I am important enough to be thought of once in a while.

After I washed the warm, thin desert air from my hair and took off the face I painted on before I left Arizona, I felt odd. Uncomfortable. Unsettled and uneasy in my own home.

I wonder what it is, this strange adjustment to a life I, oftentimes, don't feel connected to.

Looking into the crystal ball.

"You know who you are acting like?..." he says with a smirk dripping with malevolence. It doesn't have the effect he hopes. I know I'll never be. Like her.

His face studies mine searching for some sign of irritation, but I remain slack-faced and unimpressed. The rising fury inside me is always quelled by the upturn of his easy smile. The spark in his eyes belies his furtiveness, giving into something completely innocent and uncomplicated. I am mistaken, malevolence is not in his vocabulary. I am bested. It never was.

It's the little things we do to each other. How its not completely understood why I call him at odd times, once on a random Sunday at 2 p.m. breathless, with an urgency only felt by me, overexplaining the reasons in our underlying circumstance. Like a sinner at the melodramatic hour of repent, confessing the depths of my soul to some dusty, draped velvet window. Sentence after sentence, not stopping for periods, devoid of brevity, I canter on and on. I do this to try to subjugate doubts only bouncing around in my head. Fears only gripping my heart.

He waits silently on the other end until I'm finished. He knows its more for me than for him. I know he doesn't have the answers and he tolerates me.

Things have become more unsaid than necessary. We've become characters in our own silent movie. A tragedy parading as a comedy.

He's the king of all things sidestepped. Nimbly he dodges in and out of the way of anything that he might have to answer to, to justify. I let him have this. A gift, from me to him. He's unaware of what I have sacrificed.

We don't understand the massiveness of us, yet we play around in it like boots kicking up rain puddles. Only one of us is aware of the consequences. And I just don't care that much. He's my past and assured happiness. To hell with future miseries. I am a hedonist at her worst. A junkie strung out on immediate gratification.

One day we'll realize that what we've cultivated is a habit of avoidance. I'll no longer be around for him to quip playfully to, "You sound just like her right now" roll my eyes and feign annoyance. I will have become too weary of the game, my rain boots buried deep in my closet.

OBAMA.

That is all.

Off and running.

So my traveling season starts again today with two weeks in Phoenix. Oh how I love O'Hare airport in the winter.

I'll catch you guys up as soon as I can, but for now...enjoy these photos from NYE 2008.