Last night I did a lot of walking. I don’t remember a lot of the trip despite being relatively sober throughout the whole thing, but i did get drunk / hungover / sober a few hours before doing this, so it’s kinda complex.

Around 1am I left my house, ran to 35th & halsted, went to an atm and got some money, and then hopped on the north-bound number 8.

I went straight to the back of the bus. It was pretty late on the south side, and as such, the only people on the bus for several blocks were me and 3 homeless people who had sought shelter on the bus. As always, I ignored them, they ignored me, and we had an OK trip until another non-homeless person jumped on around 32nd.

Well, I took the bus up to the blue line, and decided to transfer so I could venture out onto a random stop to see if I could find a new bar to drink at. It was about 1:35am by the time I got to the blue line, so I still had plenty of time to find a spot that would close at 4am. I had known of a few bars that were open until 4, but i’d been to each of them, and wasn’t really interested in standing in a corner drinking because every seat in those places was likely to have been taken.

I took the blue line up to the california stop, got off, and began walking. I went east, and walked down milwaukee avenue in search of a place to drink, but wasn’t able to find a bar to walk into.

As I walked, I realized I was only a few blocks from the home of a girl I used to date. With fear that she would somehow see me in the area, I rounded a corner, and began walking down Armitage, and took that all the way to Humboldt Boulevard. From there, I tracked back south to north avenue, and walked from north avenue back to western, and walked from western to Chicago avenue.

North avenue is a pretty sketchy street, but it wasn’t the worst place I’d been all night. I got to see a car being stolen on north. The driver was speeding straight down the road with the car’s alarm blaring for everyone to hear. I was the only person in the area though. I did see a couple of other people walking alone, but we all stuck to ourselves.

When I got to chicago avenue, I was pretty hungry. So, I went into village pizza and got this vegetarian pizza they had sitting out for the sale of slices. After paying, I walked back out, and stood at what I believed was the east-bound bus stop. I didn’t pay any attention to signs, I just waited for the bus, and got on.

I rode this bus for a good while, and eventually was hit with a suprise. I was on the west bound bus. I immediately jumped off, and figured out where I was. Chicago & Central Park.

Fearful for my life, I put on my best ‘homeless junkie’ face, hunched my posture, and initialized my ‘hungry walk’ back east.

The walk was relatively calm. There were a few people out there, people who resembled pimps and prostitutes. One couple even asked me if I was ok. They said I seemed lost, i mumbled out ‘im nice’ because that’s the kind of thing heroin addicts say, and continued to slowly walk back east.

As I walked two different buses passed me. One even pulled away without opening the door with me standing right at the bus stop. After screaming various threats of terrorism against the cta out loud, as the driver pulled away, I continued walking, and eventually go to my original starting location, western.

I prettied myself back up, because I was no longer in the ghetto, and hopped on the loop-bound bus to chicago & state. We got to the stop relatively quick, and I transferred to the redline which I took back home to 35th.

At 35th, I realized that we were out of toilet paper, as well as several other essentials for the home, and I was hungry because I was only able to eat half of my slice of pizza before the west-bound bus showed up. I stopped into subway, and got a sandwich. The great thing about the subway in bridgeport is, it’s open 24/7. So, you can walk in at any time, and eat reasonably good food. I checked my phone, it was 6am. I finished up eating, left, and went next door to the 24/7 cvs, where I bought tp, air freshner, some bathroom stuff cleaner, and some cold meds for my coughy self.

The walk home was kind of nice. It was pretty calm, nobody was outside, almost silent. I then got home, unpacked, caught up on some internet things, and passed out at about 8.

2pm, back up. Oh, this insomnia is killing me inside.

Up until 3 days ago, I had never even heard of a bank called ‘interswitch’. Then in our abuse helpdesk, we received several complaints about several different interswitch phishing pages that several different customers were hosting. Each customer was operating a free webhosting service, and each simply had fraud signups. Every reported phishing account was terminated by our customers, and we haven’t heard from them yet.

Then today, we recieved a barrage of about a half dozen of these emails:

<title>Attention Card Holder</title>
</head>

<table border=”1″ width=”100%” id=”table1″
style=”border-collapse:collapse;” height=”444″>
<tr>
<td>
<table border=”0″ width=”91%” id=”table3″>
<tr>
<td width=”137″>
<img src=”http://www.interswitchng.com/you/images/interswitch-logo.gif”
alt=”InterSwitch” width=”121″ height=”61″/></td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border=”0″ width=”753″ height=”18″ id=”table4″>
<tr>
<td height=”12″ width=”747″>
<img src=”http://interswitchng.com/images/red-line.gif”
width=”770″ height=”6″/></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border=”0″ width=”95%” id=”table5″ height=”102″>
<tr>
<td width=”733″>
<table id=”table7″ height=”51″ width=”99%” border=”0″>
<tr>
<td><font face=”Verdana”>Attention Card Holder,</font><p>
<font face=”Verdana”>This is to notify you that our
services are being upgraded to a new, better and more
secured system . You are now required to
<a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”
href=”http://muyideen1.t35.com/inter-logon/index.html”>
<span class=”yshortcuts”
id=”lw_1200067074_0″>CLICK HERE</span></a> and register
all your DEBIT CARDS, X-CHANGE CARDS, and CASH CARDS
online <b>
IMMEDIATELY</b> so as to enable your card
to work on our new servers. Only registered cards will
work with the ATM machines.</font></p>
<p><font face=”Verdana”>Note that in order to
continue using your card for ATM transactions, you <b>
MUST</b> register your card(s) online <b>IMMEDIATELY</b>
<a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”
href=”http://muyideen1.t35.com/inter-logon/index.html”>
<span class=”yshortcuts”
id=”lw_1200067074_1″>BY CLICKING HERE</span></a> .If you do not
register
your ATM card(s) immediately, you will no longer be able to use
your cards with the ATM machines or for ATM transactions and your card(s)
will
be cancelled or terminated.</font></p>
<p><font face=”Verdana”>Adhere to this
instruction on receiving this message and <b>
<a rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”
href=”http://muyideen1.t35.com/inter-logon/index.html”>
<span style=”TEXT-DECORATION:none;”>click here</span></a></b>
<b>
<a rel=”nofollow”
style=”text-decoration:none;” target=”_blank”
href=”http://www.goodfriendz.com//ray/modules/global/inc/f.html”><span
class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1200067074_2″>immediately to register your
card</span></a></b>. Our goal is to
satisfy all our customers need.</font></p>
<p><font face=”Verdana”>InterSwitch Nigeria
Limited</font><p> </td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border=”0″ width=”751″ height=”10″ id=”table6″>
<tr>
<td height=”10″ width=”745″>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p align=”center”><font size=”1″ face=”Verdana”>Copyright(c)2009.
InterSwitch Limited. All Rights Reserved </font></td>

Why would a phisher send mass-mailings to every country in the world about a nigeria-specific bank? Are they really this slow? This time, they are hosting their website at t35.com, another free host, which is off our network. I just don’t know why there would be this large of an effort to phish customers of a bank that exists in nigeria.

So, i ended up going out at about 11pm the other night for drinking. I didn’t have anyone to drink with, but i needed something to do and felt booze would ok to consume. I had a train to catch early in the morning, so I decided to stay local to bport and drink at a bar called Mitchell’s.

I’ve talked about mitchell’s before. There are 4 bars within a few blocks of me, half of which are inhabitable by good people, but all bars seem to attract at least a small majority of dickheads.

Well, I stumbled my way through the snow, and got to mitchell’s after about 10 minutes. I then stood outside the bar for a few minutes and smoked a cigarette. While I was smoking, my neighbor mike walked up to me and started bragging like he always does about knowing someone who owns the bar. I usually silently doubt mike, because I’ve caught him lying to me many times before, but he seemed pent on drinking with me in this bar, and I really couldn’t dodge him. So, we walked in, and sat down.

Mike immediately left my side, and went to the other side of the bar and started talking to some guy he knows. “god i hope he’s gone” i thought to myself. I know mike doesn’t have a job, I know that he’s probably going to try and get me to pay for his drinks, and I know that I’m too weak to say no to the guy. Well, mike was over on the other side of the bar trying to scam drinks out of that guy, and I was sitting by myself waiting for the bartender to stop small chat with the other patron.

Ten minutes later, I’m still staring at the bartender waiting to order my pint of guiness, and he finally noticed me. The bar wasn’t crowded, but I guess he was preoccupied, and simply didn’t notice me. When he came over, he gave me a free pint of guiness to say sorry, and I began to drink.

Halfway through the glass, mike returns to the bar stool next to me, and shortly after walks up the guy he was talking to in the corner. Apparently the guy did know mike from previous encounters, but i didn’t really care. Mike’s friend was about the same age as him, and much bigger than him. Mike continually referred to him as “the kush man” because he’s a fucking idiot and loves to talk about weed all the time despite never having anything of actual quality. I’ve spent hours deseeding the shit he’s sold me when I first moved to the neighborhood, and I’ve smoked with him out of his personal supply, and he never has good stuff. I have 20 year old nerd white guy friends who have better pot than him. Mike exaggerates everything he has in his life, and will continue to serve as an example of why it is bad for a person to have a big ego for the rest of time.

Well, mike asks me what I’m drinking, i tell him what i’m drinking, and he starts to brag about some bullshit he drinks that’s imported from mexico and sold at the rate of $5.50/tinyfuckingbottle. He’s currently drinking out of one of those ridiculous 16oz bottles of bud light that they’ve been selling. “oh yeah?” i say to him, “have you ever had guiness?”. He seemed ignorant to the ways of dark beer, so I let him have a sip. “thats not bad man, but modello is so much better”. He would then go on to order a modello, but never offered me a sip. “Great job selling modello, mike” i think to myself.

Mike’s friend was drinking the same thing as mike, but didn’t seem nearly as enthused about the situation. Mike would eventually walk outside to smoke a cigarette, and his friend would tell me that he doesn’t know how to talk to mike, because he doesn’t believe a word that the guy says. “you too, huhh?” i say. “yeah, i guess…” responds the older gentleman.

Mike would eventually return, and when his friend left he began to call him the n word, and told me that his friend is a coke addict.

When Mike left, his friend started talking to me, and then told me that he would be going down the street a few blocks to buy some coke. “oh, what kind of price?” i asked, having not done coke in roughly 2 years, and having only done it once, I was well overdue for a miniparty. He gave me a small rundown of some prices I couldn’t afford, and I ended up just telling him that i was alright with the pot i have in my desk at home.

Well, mike came back, and showed off some of his tattoos, one of which is his wife’s name “particia” written in cursive across his forearm. He then went on to rant about how his wife is worried about him going out to bars, which i don’t blame her, but i don’t want to get in an argument with mike tonight because i know he’ll take everything way too far.

As the night progressed mike would drink the modello, and I bought him a carbomb because he’s never had one, which he completely fucked up by pouring the shot into the glass rather than dropping the shot into the glass, and he drank more budweiser because he doesn’t know any better, and eventually came time for him to go leave with his cokehead friend to buy drugs in the bad part of town.

“hey mike, can you give me 5 bucks?’ he says. I’m already a little drunk, and a fulltime pushover, so i throw him 5 bucks. Then he says again “sorry mike, can i have another five?”, “no, i’m not going to give you 10 dollars when I’ve already bought you a drink tonight”, “come on mike, i don’t want to look like an asshole” he says, “fuck off” i say.

He paid his tab, and left the bartender a dollar tip for well over an hour and a half of service that was riddled with free drinks from the bartender for some reason.

After mike left I was still there. THe bartender came back, saw the dollar tip, and had a disappointed look on his face. I would go on to drink a pint of bell’s lager, and left the bartender a $28 tip to make the bartender feel better about being fucked over by mike.

I then stumbled across the street and grabbed a couple of chicken tortas, and began hiking back. When I reached wallace, the street I live on, I began walking south, and as I was walking back into my home I could hear a faint yelling. Sure enough, it was mike. he was upset, probably because I wouldn’t give him the money he needed to impress the bartender with a fancy tip. I then decided that he wasn’t worth the time, and went into my building.

The following day, I took amtrak out to bloomington, IL, and drank a completely unhealthy amount of alcohol with some friends who own a tech company out there. Over the course of 6 hours we each drank roughly 10 to 14 pints of guiness, 4 carbombs, and i drank a couple of glasses of wine for good measure. At the end of the night we had run up a bill of about $400 for their company credit card, I had been given a job offer that would require I move to bloomington to teach their staff for 6 months, and later move to new york to manage their datacenter. They say they’re prepared to offer me 48k, but i’m really not sure if I want to leave my current job and chicago. I do kind of want out of this city, because the lack of social contact is really killing me, and i believe i could use a fresh start in a new city, but i’m also pretty sure none of my social habits will change, and I’d probably be more lonely out there.

i got back from portland last night around midnight. It was fairly nice, many fun times, most of which can’t currently be located in my memory.

I got there at about 3pm their time, and met my buddy victoria at the airport. We grabbed my suitcase, and took their rail line, ‘the max’ back south downtown. There, we stopped to talk with a friend of hers, and while we were there, a group of people who weren’t wearing pants jumped on the train along with us.

So, we were on a train with about 14 or so people only wearing their tops, underwear, no pants, with shoes/socks/etc, just no pants.

So, we got off a few stops later, and surprisingly, the group of pantsless people got off with us, and proceeded to walk in the same direction we were heading in.

As we walked down the street, the group, i’m sorry, i should say “mob” came in closer to us, and began striking conversation with us. When we got to a no-walk crosswalk, i decided that I was a bit overdressed, so i yanked off the belt, handed it to victoria, dropped & removed my pants, and victoria did the same.

We would go on to walk another few blocks with this group, with dancing of course, and eventually a pantsed stranger wandered into the group. When the group asked him to drop, he was weary at first, but then they further encouraged him, and he ended up whipping out his underwearless stuff on a public street.

But somehow, this was all perfectly ok. He swung his stuff around on a street corner in front of a group of college-aged people, we all got a laugh, and that was that.

From there, me, victoria, and the mob got onto their streetcar, the mob rode that for one block, but i was still carrying my suitcase, so me and victoria vouched to continue back to her place so I could drop off my suitcase, and we could come up with plans for the later day. After the mob left we rode around without pants for another block, but eventually put our pants back on.

A few stops later we got off, and went back to her place. It was an interesting first hour.

i might write more about portland. A lot of stuff happened, and I’m pretty sure my credit card’s going to have a debt for a really long time.

If I had to pick one food which represents my spirit more than anything other, it would have to be french toast.

This morning at about 5am I wandered outside to halsted street, grabbed a north-bound bus, got off at roosevelt, and walked from there over to roosevelt & union, and stopped into a delightful little restaurant called White Palace. Don’t let the name fool you, this is not a racist establishment. People of all colors and followings congregate into this ultra-diner, throughout all hours of the night & day, on any given day.

I sat down, and a waitress offered me a cup of coffee. I looked at her, and recognized her from my previous stop in, in mid-July, when I’d gone in for a hamburger at 4am on a saturday night. I accepted her offer of a cup of coffee, and proceeded to load it up with sweet & low and french vanilla coffeemate creamer. I then took a moment to pick out what I’d eat for dinner. I could recall reading a yelp.com review in which the critic raved about how tasty their toast was. I made it a point to get the toast, because he had made it sound like the greatest thing since birthday presents. In addition to the toast, I also chose french toast, because i had never been disappointed by a breakfast of french toast. I didn’t fuck around with it either, i went straight for the french toast, no strawberries, no bananas, no whipped cream, none of that bullshit. Just straight french toast, syrup, and butter. I’m not a huge fan of butter, either. I was always grossed out by most solidified dairy, but i recently came to accept butter being there. Cottage cheese however, fuckin’ hate it.

So, anyway. I ordered the food, and it was all brought back to me in like 10 minutes. I ate the toast first, and it was just as good as I imagined it would be. Before my food came, I had consumed an additional serving of coffee, and was now on my third cup, mid-toast. I ordered the texas toast, because I couldn’t really understand any of the other words the beautiful latin waitress said to me about the types of toast they had, but the texas toast was decipherable and in the end it worked well for me.

After scarfing down the toast, i moved onto the french toast. This.. frenchtoast.. was.. Delicious! Everything was well presented, and I’m pretty sure adding anything else to the dish would have ruined it. Everything was beautifully toasted, it wasn’t too hard, wasn’t too soft, it was just.. perfect. The kind of perfection you would marry had you found a human being who was able to maintain such a level of perfection (not possible).

After finishing the french toast i got another cup of coffee and some more of the texas toast, and then i got my bill, $9.88. “holy shit is that cheap or what?” i asked myself. I had like 4 pieces of toast, 4 wedges of french toast, and 5 cups of coffee, wow. I paid the normal bill, gave the waitress a nice tip, and wandered outside back to halsted, and then i took the bus back to 33rd where I wandered back home, and now i’m here, writing about toast.

It started snowing again. We had many days of warmth, and now it’s back to this.

Off to shower, and then to work. Au revoir.