[Pauses for general readership to ask: is commuting all she's EVER going to talk about from now on?]

In the four weeks I've been commuting downtown, I have grown weary of non-commuters. The location of my office is surrounded by shopping and by other tourist-type attractions. So while us working folk usually fill the streets during the morning and evening hours, the lunchtime/afternoon streets are often choked with people lollygagging over leisure pursuits. I cannot suffer this.

I like my fellow commuters because we all are in pretty much the same position, and thus we all naturally abide by an unspoken code. We've got places to go and people to see and time's a-wastin'. Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours. No unnecessary chatter. No looking at the bright side of things. Move. Go. Do.

To avoid the non-commuters, I often travel through an underground pedway that connects several buildings within a few block radius. This pedway has shops running through it, and it does offer shelter during cold and precipitation. But really, the thing I love best about it is the fact that the pedway is little known to all except those of us who spend every day working downtown. The pedway walkers are all people who have places to go and people to see and time a-wastin'.

I can't help but think of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. In Wells' story, the world has split apart into two races. One race lives above ground and is happy but also lazy and ill-prepared for the rigors of the world. One race lives below ground and is mean and predatory and feeds, literally, on the lollygaggers up top. The social undercurrent suggests that the above-ground race is descended from rich bitches who never learned how to do anything for themselves, but spent their lives whiling away the hours and building their empires on the backs of the laborers. The underground race is descended from the laborers who never learned any social graces--like, say, "don't eat other people"--but who learned well how to survive by any means necessary.

This structure probably made tons of sense to Wells during the days when laborers were forced underground to work in coal mines and other similar environments. So one might suppose that his vision died once the profession of coal mining became little more than a novelty for many people (despite our ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels). However, thanks to the pedway and to the gobs of tourists who see no problem at all with stopping in the middle of a public thoroughfare to consult their map, Wells' vision lives on.

Watch out! Five hundred years from now, my offspring will be noshing on yours

Now that I work downtown, there is a lot of running in my life. There's still the 20 or so miles of my usual running. But now there is running to make the train, running to make it to work, running to avoid getting hit by traffic, etc.

But, for some reason I can't figure out, I have done a great job of getting my ass in gear in the mornings, such that I do not have to run for the train (most) mornings. I don't understand this because getting my ass in gear in the mornings has never been my forte.

So while I'm not running in the mornings, I get to contemplate the sign outside a local mechanic's that says "Winters coming Spooky isnt it"--how profound. Three things bother me about this sign.

(1) Lack of punctuation.

(2) I guess this doesn't bother me, but it always makes me think of the rock and roll fantasy camp episode of The Simpsons. "I've got to put up the storm windows. Winter's coming!" If you've never seen the episode, you didn't get that just now.

(3) Finally, I realize that they're going for a Halloween connection "spooky," but the arrival of winter is not at all spooky. What would be spooky is if winter didn't arrive, thereby screwing with the previous several millennia of weather patterns.

All of us at Your Friendly Neighborhood Bank would like to offer our insincere and unsolicited congratulations on your excellent credit rating! By accomplishing the heroic feat of paying your bills on time and not spending more money than you earn, you have demonstrated a great deal of financial responsibility. And now we'd like to help you do something about that. Please, won't you join us in credit hell?

Don't you want our shiny new card? See--you can choose any background you want! Even kittens! We offer a variety of nominal reward programs, which allow you to slowly and painfully earn points that will evaporate long before you purchase this ugly candelabra or any of the other random things your points can be spent on. We also offer this tempting introductory rate, which we expect to raise within a few months when the economy comes out of the crapper and interest rates rise accordingly. Your exceedingly responsible fiscal behavior also entitles you to a credit line that far exceeds the amount of money you make in a month. Because that is what we are all about: helping you spend more money, even though not spending money is just what qualified you for this once-in-a-lifetime offer in the first place.

We would appreciate that you reply by the deadline listed below. However, if you miss that deadline, don't worry. We'll just send you another notice with a new deadline and even larger, brighter font. Perhaps you are visually impaired and have had difficulty reading this notice. Honestly, that's the only reason we can think of that would explain your refusal to respond to our polite entreaties.

Won't you let us make your life temporarily better by helping you acquire more things? Because when you get that momentary rush that accompanies a new purchase, we get that decades-long rush that accompanies an interest-acruing balance.

Join us. Together we can make a better world for wannabe loan sharks everywhere.

Most Sincerely Yours,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Bank

My landlord has been spiffing up the place recently, putting an ugly picture up in the second floor hallway, and an even uglier picture up in the first floor hallway. He also put down a new mat for the front entryway, and the interior door that has a habit of not latching now bears a sign: "For security purposes, please pull this door shut behind you and make sure it locks." This, I assume, is in lieu of actually fixing the door.

But in the spirit of making the place a little more functional, I spent 15 minutes of my weekend replacing all the candle bulbs on our dining room chandelier, 7/8 of which were burnt out. But one of the new ones burnt out as soon as I flipped the switch—bastards. So we are still at 7/8, but at least we're now on the desirable side of that. I also bought a new shower curtain liner to replace the old one that was frankly getting kind of gross.

And speaking of landlords, a two-flat down the street from me has a "For Rent" sign up which includes the following specification: "No Smoking-Pets."

WTF is a smoking-pet? Like this?

Normally, I don't feel the need to apologize for lack of content on this site. I do have a life outside of blogging, difficult as that might be to believe. But right now is one of those times when I do feel compelled to apologize because there's been very little for several weeks now, excepting for gloating and complaining and cryptic comments. Perhaps I should blame my Cubs-related depression. Perhaps I should blame my lack of publishable thoughts.

But really, I should blame my disrupted schedule. The commute for my new job is substantially longer than the commute for my old job. And even if it weren't, starting a new job has resulted in a general upsetting my of routine and in a taxing of my mental resources as I struggle to figure out just exactly what it is that I'm supposed to be doing for eight hours a day, five days a week.

So there will be improvement at some point in the near future. Just don't quote me on that.