i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

i stayed up half the night watching cnn, drinking wine from a plastic bacchus cup in front of the television, listening to arlo guthrie's version of "the city of new orleans" over and over, stunned silent.

i have to go to orientation for school in a little while. talk to me anyway. tell me that you're safe and warm and dry, if not happy. tell me something good, please.

good morning, america. how are you?

trent lott's new book is called herding cats: a life in politics. i would like to point out that i have been using the phase "it's like herding cats" for much longer than trent lott has been publishing autobiographies, and i am VERY UPSET about awful republican senators appropriating my phases for their own personal use. he didn't even give me a cut of the profits. *fist*

hey, look, top five lists are back!

today's top five list is for my indulgence only, because now i live in this new city and it's weird and strange and wonderful: top five favorite things about where you live. we've done variations on this list before, but humor me and tell me everything you love about the city or town or state or country where you live. (and tell me where it is, too, if you don't mind. because i'm nosy.)

my top five favorite things about chapel hill, north carolina:

1. i have never lived surrounded by so many carolina basketball fans before. last friday i walked into a store in the mall and literally tripped because i was so shocked to see all the carolina merchandise. it's like coming home! it's incredible! THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!

2. the carrboro farmer's market is a ten minute bike ride from my apartment.

3. my new favorite place to lounge around drinking overpriced coffee is the carolina coffee shop. they make a feta cheese omelette to die for.

4. three words: CHEERWINE. SHINER BOCK. let me repeat that: CHEERWINE. SHINER BOCK. cheerwine, my all-time favorite soda, a too-sweet cherry soda only adored by people who grew up drinking it; and shiner bock, my all-time favorite beer, a mediocre texas beer. neither is very good. neither available if you don't live in the south. i love them both. *HEART* (also, since arriving here a week ago, i suspect that i have consumed at least six gallons of sweet tea. omg. sweet tea. who knew that my buttons could be pushed by beverages?)

5. i didn't realize how much i missed having a university library at my disposal until i walked into one of the libraries here on tuesday. omg, books.

honorable mention: there's something fiercely and strangely collegiate about the carolina campus, in a way that i never felt with the carleton campus. a sense of dear god, i do go to a large public university full of crazy undergrads who want to stare at my breasts and touch my tattoos. it kind of makes me want to start dressing like an ivy league prepster and tie a sweater around my shoulders. i won't, though. that would be weird.

what about you? what about where you live makes your heart start thumping overtime?

(i could also make this list: top five things i miss most about chicago that aren't the boy or sid or any other people i love: cubs on my tv every day; useful reliable public transportation; goose island 312; thai oscar delivery; the davis movie theater.)

The radio is doing a string of songs about New Orleans and it's making it really, really hard for me not to pick up and run off to New Orleans right this second, to sit in seedy bars getting progressively drunker on hurricanes and feeding endless quarters into the jukebox.