Friday: A Case of Strange Happenings

Upon returning yesterday, besides the overall poor reception of the new history of design, the day was a bit off; in all kinds of way.

I found yesterday's arrival on campus to be a strange a return. Though, I've only been gone for 2 days it felt like I have not been present for a while. The "welcoming", was also strange (for lack of a better word for welcoming and the word strange). I felt strangely disconnected from a lot of people yesterday; odd to say I was hoping to find better footing on my last post, but it feels like I've completely fallen of the horse. A few people that knew asked, "How are you?" stimulated a strange after thought, how am I? Of course I'm still fine, but the tonality of it seems detached. Everything seems detached. Strings are cut, to say the least. I wonder if Monday, is going to be any different?

After all my classes, the campus seems emptied, and barren. I took my trip to the Home Depot to get a 2x4 to build my stretchers for painting. On the way down on Roosevelt , I saw a blind lady arguing with a homeless man (the one's that peddle by the expressway); the blind lady actually instigated the argument. It was strange to see a blind person argue. Though, I did not pick up the start of the conversation, I heard the argument arose. The lady was crossing the street with her dog, the homeless man telling her to move a little to the right, the lady stopped to tell the homeless man, "mind your own business and let my dog do its job." She stood in the middle of the expressway arguing with the man, as the light turned red. I watched to see if she made it across the street.

After I dug through a bunch of 2x4s with promising fronts, but rotted backings I found one; not the best, but it'll do. On my way back to campus carrying 7' 1/2 long 2x4 I saw the blind lady coming back in my direction, the homeless man was no longer at his post.

I spent the last hour and a half working on building the stretcher only to be done with the frames; Monday, is going to be another work day.

EDIT: On the way home on the bus, I was looking out the window, I noticed some girl with terrible make-up that from far away it looks like she's wearing sunglasses with the polarized shades. Up close, it was just make up.

As I got home, my friend Teng decided to fix up his old yellow bike. I told him of a bike shop Nik mentioned to me a while back; I might as well check it out. We were off to Nearly New Bikes.

Taking the scenic route on Halsted we slowly made our way up north. [Edit]As we passed Harrison at UIC, we saw a group of people enjoying live role playing with padded swords and all. [/EDIT] On the way up north, we saw a man on his horse and carriage traveling south in front of the northern project building. Strange, no?

In the course of waiting for the guys to finish changing his tires, the guys at bike shops were pretty good and friendly. The guy Jim, seems like a very hard worker and a great father, as he was telling us stories of his kids when he was working on the bike. They had good taste in music, as I walked in I heard Todd Rundren's, Hello Its Me playing in the shop as I lightly sung the chorus; one of my favorite songs.

By the time we got back (around 8), we decided to take his bike out for a spin, I went to grab my bike and we took my short route around. The center point of the route was Ping Tom Park, and by the time we reached the end of the park, I was telling him stories about my little biking trips. I told him how one time I was biking through the end of the park, and circling back, there was a couple that was making out, and how awkward it was to circle around them just to get back.

Making back to the other side of the park, which is the playground I normally circle through there when there aren't kids around. As I came around the corner, I see two people on the slide making out; speak of the devil. When we got out of the park we just laughed about it. NOTE THIS PART if you're reading.

As we came to the end of the route, Teng gets a call to see Fast and Furious, and so we put away the bikes, and waited at the gas station. The hypothetical 4 minutes turned out to have been much longer. While, at the gas station the owner son's was making fun of Teng; it killed some time.

When Henry finally arrived, we got the reason for the delay. He was dropping off Phil's girl. [RECALL THE NOTE] Henry was angry at Phil for making us late, and even more so for not telling him where he was to pick him up. He waited 15 minutes after agreeing to drop off his girl in front of his house. Only to call him to found out he was in Ping Tom. Guess who Phil saw at Ping Tom? Teng and I. So, those dam teenagers was Phil and whoever that was. We were laughing at what a small world it was. Henry was mad that we were late.

Fast and Furious was probably the worse of the franchise, not to say the franchise was the best to begin with. I was expecting as much, as everyone would be revving their cars and driving fast shortly after. Heck, two cars were dragging when we were gassing up.

Friday, was a strange day...

-David M.