Mystery!

Last Friday when I came into my cube at work I noticed a yellow award ribbon tacked to my bulletin board. This was definitely a new addition to my cube. It said "Good Eater Award" with a picture of a monkey eating a banana. I'd never seen this ribbon before in my life, it just magically appeared in my cube. I naturally assumed that it was left by coworker Todd because he is obsessed with monkeys and he's caused a disturbance in my cube before. However, when I confronted him about it, he denied it. I'm still assuming he did it though, mostly because I don't really have any other ideas.

Anyway, Wednesday morning when I came in there was another bulletin board gift waiting for me; a kind of scary football guy wearing a pink tutu. I don't know what that's about. I'm kind of hoping that there are more to come and when complete, they will uncover a secret message of some kind. But somehow I doubt it. I don't think anyone who has a picture of a football player wearing a tutu is smart enough to pull that off.

This morning I received yet another gift. It's a button that says "Not Until the 10th." Don't know what that means exactly. If it's referring to October 10th, it's a little late.

Mutemath

I feel the need to publicly declare my love for Mutemath. They're basically all I listen to these days. I saw them the other night at the House of Blues in Chicago for the second time and it was fantastic, as expected. The first time I saw them, I only knew one of their songs because it was on American Idol (yeah, I watch American Idol. Shut up), but some coworkers were going and they strongly encouraged me to come. They insisted it was the best live show I'd ever see, and they were right.

Here is a sampling of what goes on at a Mutemath show:

- When the drummer comes out on stage, he puts his headphones on and then duct tapes them to his head. He gets a little hyper. So hyper that he broke is drum pedal in the second song.

- The lead singer plays a variety of "instruments." My personal favorite is the keytar. He also has a little keyboard/piano thing that sits front and center on the stage; sometimes he plays it, sometimes he does flips over it, and sometimes it's played like a drum by various members of the band. In the final song, he ends up playing an inexplicable piece of machinery that is sort of played like a guitar but basically just plays sound effects. Also, the lead guitarist plays his pedals sometimes.

-As you can see in the video, there is general destruction of the stage and everything on it at the end of the show. They weren't quite as destructive this time as they were the first time I saw them, which was mildly disappointing, but I think I'll get over it.

So there you have it. Mutemath does not disappoint. We may have stood a little too close to the speaker and I think I might be deaf now. But it was worth it.

Crazy Neighbors, Part 2

Just when I thought the neighbors couldn't get any crazier, I came home the other night to be greeted by a pick-up truck on the front lawn. I believe this officially makes us the Naperville hillbillies.

Meanwhile, I found out that they do own a used car dealership in Indiana, hence the plethora of cars parked in any available open space on our property, now including the front lawn.

To top it off, the other night I was watching TV, minding my own business, and I hear quite a bit of yelling and fighting below me. About a half hour later, the high school aged girl that lives below us rings my doorbell and asks to use my phone to call her dad who I knew from a previous conversation was in Indiana. So I let her use my phone, she gets the answering machine, leaves a message in another language (most likely Chinese or something, the mom is Oriental), then leaves. I debated whether or not I should ask if everything was ok, but she didn't seem upset and I didn't want to get involved. An hour or so later, my roommate comes home and I tell her this slightly unusual story and she informs be that the girl is sitting out in the backyard with the dog. So I'm pretty sure that this girl fought with her mother, possibly about the annoying dog, and her mom threw her and her dog out of the house. I really have no evidence that this is what happened, but it makes sense.

To top that off, I saw the dad yesterday at church. He breezed right by me, and I'm not sure if he saw me, but I didn't say anything because I forgot his name. Now I feel like I to be nice. Not that I was planning on being mean or anything ...

Go Cubs GO!

I would be remiss if I didn't write something about my beloved Chicago Cubs today as last night they became Division Champs. Good job, guys. I wrote about my feelings towards the Cubs back in June when I went to a game.

The most fun part is watching the crazy fans on TV. They're so hopeful. It's not that I'm not excited. It's just that I don't get my hopes up much anymore. I simply try to enjoy the winning when it happens.

You Might be Obsessed with Apple if...

I was looking at a website today and on it, someone was giving away irises. At first glance, I got a little excited because I thought it was an Apple related product...an iRise. Something to place your monitor on perhaps, fashioned to match your beautiful Mac. Much to my dismay, I soon realized they were talking about the flower.

Crazy Neighbors

I'm sorry, but this post is strictly for complaining purposes. You don't have to read it if you don't want to.

We have some crazy neighbors ("we" being my roommate and I). These are the people that live below us. We live in a cute little house on the top floor. It's very adorable and I love it, however we can't seem to get away from weird people.

When we first moved in, there was a couple living below us that we spoke to maybe once. We never really saw them coming or going from their apartment, but we know they did because their car was gone sometimes. They also had a car sitting in the garage with all flat tires. They had an aquarium and some garbage cans sitting behind the car in the garage. When they moved out, I opened the garage one day and the aquarium and garbage cans were in the exact same spot, but the car was gone, as though it had magically been lifted out of the garage without disturbing anything. I can only imagine this may really be what happened seeing is the car had no working tires.

Anyway, now we have a new family downstairs consisting of 2 parents, a daughter who's probably jr. high or high school age and a little boy who's maybe 7. He's always playing outside by the garage. I've almost hit him with my car maybe 10 times now. At first, they all seemed fairly normal. When they moved in, they had two cars; a ghetto old pick up truck and a van with lots of dents. Then one day, another ghetto old car appeared. Then another. Then one day I pulled into the garage and there was a nasty old Jeep parked in their spot that I'd not seen before. That adds up to 5 cars. They have 5 ghetto old cars packed into our small little parking area behind the house. I imagine they won't be bringing anymore cars home only because they won't actually fit anywhere!

Then, the other day my roommate came home and informed me that they had a dog on a chain out in the backyard and he was sitting on top of his dog house, Snoopy style. I was a little surprised that I'd not seen or heard this dog at all. He just magically appeared. Kind of like their cars. Is there going to be another dog tomorrow? Probably. Anyway, I didn't really care about the dog thing as long as it wasn't annoying, and it hadn't been, so fine. Then, this morning, 4 a.m., I hear freakin' barking in the back yard. I thought for sure they would hear their stupid dog barking, but either they didn't hear him (which would mean they're all deaf), or they chose to ignore it and he continued barking for at least an hour.

During this hour, I went through many options in my half asleep head. I considered going downstairs, knocking on their door, and insisting that they shut up their stupid dog, but I was too lazy and it's kind of creepy outside at night. Then I thought about calling the cops. Then I thought I'll wait till the morning, knock on their door and tell them I'm going to call the cops if it happens again. Then I came up with what I believed to be my best option. Go Seinfeld on the stupid dog and take care of it once and for all. This was clearly the most fun and violent option. I just needed to find a Newman of my own. Apparently I'm a very angry person at 4 a.m.

Garage Sale Fun

This morning I shopped a few garage sales with my mother and my friend Emily. We found one particularly impressive estate sale in an old house with lots and lots of old (and some weird) stuff.

I enjoy estate sales immensely because you get to actually go through other peoples' houses; houses that usually belonged to an incredibly old person and are filled with furniture from the 70's and gaudy wallpaper. Such was the case at this particular house. It was amazing. I was highly successful at this sale; I purchased The Wizard of Oz sountrack on vinyl, a cubs pennant that's gotta be from the 60's, and a People magazine from 1985 with Bette Davis on the cover. Amazing finds, I know.

Anyway, the best part of the estate sale was not what we bought, but the disturbing conversation we had with a fellow shopper. Emily and I had made our way into a small bedroom inside the house filled with a bunch of clothes and other random junk. There was a very small closet with a few clothes items hanging inside, one of which was some sort of fur shawl type thing. While we were rummaging about in this room, a woman came in, maybe in her 60's, and started trying on this fur thing. She was rather pleased to find it and starting telling us this story about how she once bought a very small fur shawl for $.50 at a garage sale for her granddaughter to play dress up in and she went on to sell it at an antique store for $30. She was very proud of this and told us the story a number of times while we smiled politely.

After she stood there staring at herself in the mirror wearing the shawl for a few minutes, her husband showed up in the doorway and their conversation went as follows:

Woman: Honey, should I buy this?
Man: -grunt-
Woman: Remember when I bought that really small fur and sold it at the antique store for $30?
Man: -grunt-
Woman: What if I get naked and wear only this?
Man: -grunt-
Me (in my head): WHA?!

The rest of it was kind of a blur (I was mostly in shock) and Emily and I desperately looked for a way to exit the room. Somehow we managed to get out of there without bursting into fits of laughter (or throwing up).

We finally checked out and got in the car where we could laugh sufficiently. We found out that my mother was in the next room during all this, heard it all going on, and laughed out loud.

A bit later on, we arrived at a "multi-family" garage sale which actually only consisted of two houses. Somehow we'd gotten back on the subject of the naked fur lady and as we got out of the car and walked towards the garage sales, we were joking and giggling about this poor woman and her uninterested husband. Seconds later we looked up to see that our very own naked fur lady was at the garage sale next door. I sincerely hope she didn't hear us talking, but if she did I don't feel too bad. Perhaps she will be more discreet next time. Nobody needs to know about her kinky fur-filled sex life.