The goings ons and a new installment of what I'm saying now

Yesterday I went up to the north and clybourn stop of the red line to have lunch with my brother, father, and stepmom. We went to a mexican place called Uncle Julio's. I ordered frog legs. Once I saw them on the menu I decided I had to try them and they were certainly interesting. Sort of a gamey chicken tasting meat with a hint of the sea I thought. They brought them out still whole on the leg so it looked like I had 3 severed lower frog sections on my plate. They were ok but I'm not going to start patrolling the edges of marshes and streams to catch my own quite yet. The rest of the our party, who ordered more traditional mexican dishes also enjoyed their meals.

After lunch I chatted with my brother for 30 minutes outside on a corner and then walked over to borders with the intention of writing two letters. Sally, former nemesis currently mr. briefcase player and legal scholar, was sitting in the very seat I was pining to get. We talked for ten minutes about life, I walked around a bit, and when she kindly gave it to me when she left. Its a good thing too because about three minutes later I spotted Kevin Cho headed down the escalator. I start waving and he gets a really weird look on his face as he's trying to figure out who I am and why is he always subject to these strange events. As he's about to disappear from view though he manages to elucidate who I am even as I'm beginning to wonder if its really kevin cho. He came up and we had a nice rambling conversation about life for thirty minutes before he left and I got back to my correspondence.

Upon leaving borders I decided that it would be cool to just walk around, this led to me walking from north and clybourn to the drake hotel, over to navy pier where I found a sweet pocket knife lying on the ground, and took in the great tourist kitsch that is navy pier. I was debating whether or not I should try to sneak onto the ferris wheel but decided against it as I didn't want to freeze to death though I could have used the paper I was carrying stuff my clothes as insulation if the ferris wheel happened to stop with me at the top. And though I love a good movie reenactment (in this case the day after tomorrow) I decided that furtive ferris wheel rides are in the end probably not as fun as just getting warm.

I went back to hyde park and met up with rose, rachael, a non-tormey megan, and friends for some salsa dancing in Ida Noyes. I was very impressed by the uniform skill of the participants, but managed to learn some elementary manuevers with the great and well-appreciated help of n.t. megan.

This morning woke up and watched the movie shane, with rachael and I making snide comments about the celibate well-shaven lifestyle of the title hero at the end and having a very short argument about whether or not he died at the end, I think he did. Rachael is too good to me as a roommate. While watching the movie we got to pause for leek, potato, and asparagus soup with homemade rustic wheat bread (made with a sponge, rachael was particularly pleased about that) and then she took some of the fabulous pizza dough we made ("Best Recipe 8-hour rise recipe) and made a dessert pizza with strawberries, cream cheese, a little powdered sugar, and the version of whipped cream that comes about from actually whipping cream. It was heaven.

So I cut myself shaving yesterday. I wish this event was unique but the truth is it isn't. I really need to start shaving better, because I can't go on like this. (sorry to subject the reading public to this but I thought that a direct admission of the problem would help bring about some change)

I had lunch with nadine the other day, which was nice because I got a chance to catch up with her, and on friday got a call from an old friend that I haven't spoken to in about a year and had a nice talk with her. Feeling pretty good about life at the moment, wish some things were different but hey that's par for the course I suppose.

Now for another installment of What's Joe Saying Now. Its been a while but I came upon a particularly good word while perusing the dictionary this morning. (yes I do that) The word is oojamaflip. Before I define it I just learned something interesting while looking it up again to get the word right. In rachael's OED dictionary its there, but its not in the online dictionary and a similar but different word has the verbatical definition. Anyway here it is according to both

oojamaflip = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

oojah = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

though in rachael's dictionary the sauce or custard was called whipped eggs with sugar. So for instance He-who-must-not-be-named in the popular harry potter books is an oojah. but in that case he's not whipped eggs with sugar. Oojamaflip does seem to exist online but where listed it seems to be used as a replacement for widget or thing-a-ma-jig. I think if anyone reading this is going to start a new ultimate team they should call it oojah or oojamaflip, at least publicly, the condition of course is that I have to be invited to play on it. The uncertainty of whether it should be oojah or oojamaflip will only enhance the joke since we don't know ourselves what it should be be called. We could call it oojah or oojamaflip?, or ooo for short. Fantastic.

Disclaimer: I wrote the below and now I don't know what I think of it, it might just be really boring and I suspect I'm wrong, feel free to stop reading now.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the word "sorry." When someone says that I often take it as an admission of error, the one who says it would like to take back what they did, but it also is often used in the sense of, "I'm sorry this had to happen", meaning whatever happened is unfortunate for you and I feel bad but I would do it again because its the way things have to be. Seeking to remedy my understanding I looked it up and both definitions are present which isn't surprising but it seems like the two definitions can mean two very different things in the same context. The question of degree is important because the difference is whether the person would go back and change something given the chance. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, it just seems like when using the word you can't tell the depths to which someone is sorry unless they go on, which leads to confusion. Oh well, its still no excuse for the athlete's apology (something so regular and widespread it should get its own definition soon) of I'm sorry other people may have been offended by my actions. The classic non-apology.