I am enjoying a homemade lime soda in my new apartment. I don’t know what Stephanie eats around here, because when I opened the fridge for the first time on Monday afternoon, all I found were the leftover mojito fixings from the bachelorette party. Minus the rum of course. But yes, two lime wedges + two squirts of bottled lime juice + four glugs of club soda + one packet of equal = the beverage of the week. Perhaps of summer 2007. Perhaps of my adult life.

I have graduated and moved to Logan Square to live with my high school friend, who is a year older and already well versed in the ways of being a young Chicago professional. Hence the spacious apartment and mojito fixings which I am currently enjoying. I am trying to savor my first and last week of floaterdom in a long time, before starting up a summer job at the Field Museum, for which I am supposed to edit 150 hours of newly digitized tape, all narrated by the same British sea captain, all recorded in 1958 on this now obsolete machine.



School really had me there for awhile. The past two months consisted of holing up in my increasingly disgusting room for increasingly long hours, finishing my research and radio projects, studying for finals, and pausing only to play a frantic round of charades with Kate while Laura studied flashcards on the couch. And then there were the free pizzas, which were delivered to our door night after night by one of Kate’s connections, a kind Minnesotan named Murph.

Considering what a nostalgic person I have been in the past, always reaching out and lovingly touching an old tree or book or candy wrapper or something like that, I was surprised to find myself hardly caring about the transition from college. I used to commemorate this sort of thing with a large number of doodles, photos, or other scrapbookable items, or at least try to start up some teary conversations on a sofa with someone. But this time I just put on the put on the cap and gown and tried not to fall asleep.

My only tear, in fact, came when I put Kate on her train back to Springfield. Though it was mostly induced by something hilarious we had just found in my purse, that’s when it hit me that we’d reached the end of an era. I am going to miss that girl, my partner in bean-based recipes and charades, when she is sweltering in a trailer full of volunteers this summer down in New Orleans. While I am highly enjoying my lime soda and the notion of building good credit, I know there will never be anything quite like the late night freakouts, both fun and miserable, that I shared with Kate and Laura at 1246 W. North Shore.

As a small tribute my former roomates, I will now publish some selected items from our past charades, all of which were guessed correctly, with no verbal cues aside from the occasional frustrated scream, most within three minutes or less.

A group of palm trees go to a bar and meet on a pillow filled with eyelashes while on their way to the Million Man March in Rio de Janeiro. (Kate)

Beautiful, pregnant, hip moms at Deluxe Diner eat French toast fried in my brain fluid while I wash dishes in the kitchen on my 47^th birthday. (Katie)

Jack Kerouac goes on the road with Jordan in the minivan to Mt. Everest while singing “Wheels on the Bus”---Kerouac flips out and hits Jordan with a box of Zingers, and the van falls on the belly of Michael Jackson’s baby. (Kate)

An old Ukrainian woman at your wedding, threatening your husband with a broken bottle of PBR. (Katie)

An Italian man licking beef-flavored gelato off the streets of Jamaica while Elvis looks on in disgust. (Kate)

Laura riding on a sled of fried tofu through Poland, interviewing elderly people about their sexual past while Sporty Spice throws spoonfuls of chocolate pudding into their eyes. (Katie)

Mao and Gandhi covering themselves with cocoa butter and reading Dorothy Parker from inside a snow globe. (Kate)

Steve and Benito Mussolini lost in the lingerie section of K-Mart in Topeka, Kansas, while Art Garfunkel frantically pages them over the PA system. (Katie)

After wrestling the urge to write yet another entry about the weather, I think I should address the larger problem at hand. College has slowly sapped my will to be creative. My craft supplies are covered in dust. Did you know that stickers can expire? My piano is at Jordan's house. Our band practices keep getting rescheduled because of homework obligations and midterms. My diary is buried somewhere in my room under W-2s and jewelry that I am apparently too practical to wear anymore.

I need to do something, fast. I need to smear myself with poster paint and roll around on a piece of butcher paper in the park, like my roommate Laura did last year when she felt similarly boring. I need to experiment with pastry art. I need to revive my addiction to organizing magazine clippings in various decorative boxes that I decoupaged myself.

It's all the Cuban's fault that I'm suddenly so upset by this. I met him last night at the Literacy Center, during the 15-minute break from teaching ESL to an alarmingly skinny and sarcastic Polish man. Once I found out, over the water cooler, that there was a Cuban in the house, I tracked him down and introduced myself, asking him for recommendations of Cuban films that I could watch for my Latin American Cinema class. In other words, he is a fox.

He was so determined to communicate over the language barrier, and my heart basically melted all over the formica table as I heard him say things like, "Fresas and Chocolate is a movie polemica," and "it is open up minds in the community Hispanic," interspersed with several frustrated Spanish cusswords. I wanted to talk to him in Spanish but my 6'7" boss with the wavy red hair, pale skin and icy blue eyes, which altogether makes him resemble a human American flag, if you can imagine such a frightening thing, was standing right behind us. This is a house of English, I could almost hear him say.

So I told the Cuban that we would discuss films after class. An hour later, once Andy and the other students left, I rushed to write my evening report and put on my coat, naturally getting my scarf tangled in the computer mouse when I stood up, causing me to nearly fall backward into my chair. I recovered and accompanied the Cuban and his Peruvian friend out the door, while mentally coaching myself not to rely too heavily on Ecuadorian teenage slang phrases that would translate roughly as "Hella," "Phat," "Choice," and "My bad."

The scoop on the Cuban is that he's a political refugee, escaping imprisonment for x dangerous ideal and y instance of being referenced for such ideals in z internationally-distributed newspaper. He was so engaging and animated, and I was so intimidated and infatuated, that I could hardly concentrate on what he was saying. My chin started to quiver in a way that only happens on the rare occasion when I am experiencing a major moment of cross-cultural communication. My knees started to wobble. The Cuban continued talking and I nodded. I looked nervously at the Peruvian guy, who had apparently heard all of this a million times. Was he prepared to catch me if I fainted?

Ten minutes and several failed attempts to show them that I am capable of putting a Spanish sentence together later, I saw them off on a Northbound 147 bus. The Cuban promised to compile a list of must-see films. I trudged home through the slush, a normally mundane task transformed into a zombie-walk of embarrassment and fantasies of zipping through Havana in a rickety Volkswagen, sitting next to the Cuban and discussing in perfect Spanish our favorite songs by Buena Vista Social Club. Sigh!

Now here I am. Surrounded by boxes of unused stickers. Staring a midterm study guide. Wondering what I should wear to the job fair tomorrow. Wondering if I should erase all this and write about the weather instead. No! That's exactly what the Cuban would not do.

On Monday I decided to show the weather who is boss. I went to the pool, determined to move around without the constraints of a sleeping bag-like parka and boots. The pool was still closed, with the lights off, when I skipped in at 3:55 p.m, my swimcap tugging my face into a permanently interested expression. With five minutes to kill until the lifeguard came out, I stood by the water and triumphantly examined my long-forgotten knees and bare feet. 

Then I heard a strange hissing sound, sort of like the canned breathing that comes out of a respirator or scuba tank. I looked over towards the wall, where a pair of glass double-doors led directly outside. The view revealed a snowy campus with a bunch of sleepingbags walking around. The doors were closed, but from underneath they spewed a thick blanket of fog. Having discovered what was undoubtedly Chicago's answer to Narnia, I instantly felt like Lucy from The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, and not the 2005 version, but the old BBC version, with the awkward, gaping-mouthed Lucy, except this time in a neon blue Nike swimsuit, goggles and matching cap.

I slowly walked toward the doors, and with each step, the floor tiles felt colder. I stopped when I reached the edge of the fog blanket, confirming my suspicion that it was made of frigid air. From here I could see the doors more clearly, and recoiled as they appeared to be drenched in their own sweat. The hissing sound continued, and the fog poured in, music video-style, now streaming past my ankles. 

I took a deep breath and tip-toed towards the doors. By now the floor felt not unlike that of a garage in December when you're forced to get a can of pop without shoes on. The temperature of the surrounding air seemed to have suddenly dropped at least 30 degrees. The door rattled and hissed as the wind blew on the other side.

Once I was in front of the doors, teeth chattering, I saw that they were frozen shut. They were not only frozen, but covered with smooth icicles on the inside, some of them in the mysterious shape of round globs the size of party balloons. I touched one and found it to be slippery. Stepping back, I saw that the doors were indeed sweating. Sweating and refreezing. And shaking. And spewing fog. And making breathing noises.

"Crazy, huh?" Shouted the lifeguard from the far end of the pool. I hadn't heard her come in. She startled me. "Yeah," I said, jumping defensively in the water. I huddled in the pool for the next half hour, freezing and fuming at Wintry Re-Mix for one-upping me.

The wind was so strong on my ride back from Metropolis Coffee that it made a thwapping noise in my spokes. It's currently seeping in through my bedroom window, too. I guess this is the long-awaited "cold snap" that I've heard so much about. I have learned more weather-related slang in the past two months than I have in my whole life. I wonder if Al Gore is behind this.

I cannot wait for Todd's 5th annual duck dinner this weekend. I'm probably going to bring the same appetizer I did last year, to stay constant with the main menu, which, to my knowledge, has never changed. I'm also going to miss J.R., whose toast at the 2nd annual duck dinner I will never forget. "Ahh, the pretention."

Break ends on Tuesday, when school begins. Highlights of the past month include making and imbibing mulled wine on several occasions, watching my 5-year-old Ethiopian cousin lead us in Christmas carols on her 3/4-sized guitar, and having my dad fix my bike, accessorizing it with a rear-view mirror and flashing light, and declaring it "pimped out."