Chicago: They paved a fetid swamp/and put up a parking lot

The only book I've read more than once is 20k leagues under the sea.

I read short stories, essays, poems, and plays many times, more than full books.

I think Clark/Division used to be a real "side of the tracks" divider between the Gold Coast and Cabrini Green. Now the projects are mostly gone, Old Town is spiffy, but the Mark Twain SRO and the rest remain. I wonder what the real-estate story is behind that, since you're right, Jesse: it would be the perfect spot for the kinds of stores near the Chicago and North/Clybourn stations.

Congrats, AJ! I will buy you a beer next time I see you.

Thanks!

Shouldn't you be buying all the beers now?

I finally got around to taking the water flow regulator out of our shower head (our water pressure is just okay, not great, and I want great water pressure (yeah yeah firstworldproblems I know)) and in search for a diagram of which part actually is the flow regulator, I found this hilarious how-to page:

http://www.freeexistence.org/highflow.html

Next time somebody asks me why I think libertarianism is ridiculous, I'm going to just point them to this page and be done with it.

Haha. The desire for a good shower makes for strange bedfellows.

My shower is all muffed up. I have a showerhead that I take with me to any apartment I've ever rented (got a new one when I moved to Chicago from Gso) and it finally cracked and it sprays all over.

That's manageable, but what really sucks is that the hot water is 120F, and the cold water pressure that fluctuates greatly. It's a pretty crappy shower experience, having to keep the water lukewarm so that when the cold water drops off, there will still be enough cold water to keep it from being scalding.

jeff is right, I should be buying all the beer

Now that you're in the 1% with your fancy, high-end library job and all.

I wonder what the highest paid librarian in the country makes?

From a 2006 NYT article about the New York Public Library:

The library’s most recent federal tax filing shows that the total compensation for Paul LeClerc, the library’s president and chief executive, had increased to more than $800,000, a jump of more than $221,000 from just a year earlier.

I don't know if he'd consider himself a librarian, though.

congrats aj

i checked out museum of love from the library on jesse's recommendation like 5-6 years ago, didn't finish it, returned it but it wasn't checked in properly so they said i still had it out. it's still on my record as "contested."

i am also not a big rereader but there are a few books i've reread multiple times: lolita, pale fire, confederacy of dunces. and some books i reread obsessively as a kid, though mostly not novels: more things like the book of lists or the guinness book of records or the rolling stone record guide.

oh yeh, Confederacy of Dunces, too! I occassionally reread bits and pieces of Lolita.

Obsessive childhood re-reads are like a whole new category. I had a pile of YA books that I reread over and over, some of which I checked out repeatedly from the library (all the John Bellairs eg). I have forgotten most of the titles but there was one about werewolves and there was a band in the book called the Sebastopol Simians bc they were from Sebastopol and wore gorilla masks.

(note: I found this confusing bc I thought Sebastopol was in a foreign country until probably high school.)

There was one about a friendly robot, too.

god I kind of want to read some John Bellairs books again, I was all about them in 6th grade. But I suspect they'd be crap.

OMG you guys he was MY FAVORITE

my bff and i would sit in her attic, read john bellairs books, and listen to buddy holly. it was the only thing i liked about 6th grade.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nKJ_uvquASQ/SgJCjM6v1WI/AAAAAAAAAe4/EuExO202gq8/s400/house+full+dj.jpg

THIS WILL NEVER BE CRAP

Aww, nuts: No results found for "Sebastopol Simians".

never even heard of that dude before

Not only did I take the flow regulator out of the shower head, I soaked it in CLR, too. And I Drano-ed the tub and bleached the shower curtain. I'm going to take a second shower, I think.

http://www.goreybooks.com/images/covers/mummywillcrypt.jpg
the gorey covers drew me in, but the stories were good too iirc -- scary!

(i did not know who he was at the time, but i liked the covers)

http://littlewolfblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/gorey_treasure.jpg

i have this one at home, and the cover is laminated with contact paper because that is the phase i was in at the time i read it
the "cover everything with contact paper" phase

tbh I remember almost nothing about the bellair books other than the gorey illustrations and the fact that I imbibed them like they were ambrosia

this one was SO good iirc

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__HE5SocNmDg/S23Gx0yLrbI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/guhTgivfaYA/s320/weatherend.jpg

Actually, the only other thing I remember is the location where they were shelved in my elementary school library, which is very strange but I guess it makes sense considering my current profession

another 6th grade favorite was John Christopher

don't know him, i don't think, but the gis for his name brings up a startling number of creepy mug shots :-/

I think I still own this somewhere:

http://s11.lucyphotos.com/images/orig/q/2/q2781ih8rri42q8r.jpg

or rather
http://s11.lucyphotos.com/images/orig/q/2/q2781ih8rri42q8r.jpg

actually come to think of it I read the chronicles of narnia in 6th grade too. this leads me to believe that my reading life has been all downhill since I was 12.

Are any of you guys working today? Its gross out there, apparently the City decided that shovelling, plowing, and/or salting was out of the question on a holiday.

I'm actually flying into Lincolnshire today. kinda scared of driving, but I don't have to be at work until tomorrow so I'm content driving as slow and methodically as possible (see cos we don't get snow/ice in FL so I have never driven in it, megalols)

Well, according to the forecast this stuff is supposed to taper off soon and it'll hopefully be cleared off before you'd have to worry about it. The only two roads that were salted and/or plowed, Michigan Ave & LSD, were actually pretty smooth, the trouble was just that they hadn't even touched any of the other streets.

No work for me today. I don't think I'll leave the house.

^^^ man with a good plan

If I didn't have a huge project deadline tomorrow, I'd have called off. Problem is, now that I'm here, I realize that I have all of my work done but the people I need to coordinate with are all off today.

I'm off today, too.

today is errand day and i'm wondering how i can make this fun for myself

New year, new thread: Chicago MMXII