Having lowered my expectations, I was fairly certain I wouldn't be feeling all that disappointed when the official decision from Northwestern came back as a denial ( Read more... )

For a moment, a longer moment than I like to admit, I thought Tom might be dead.

Tom walked out of his condo on a Sunday evening, suddenly and without explanation, and then he'd disappeared, and the first I'd heard of it was Tuesday, after the police had been notified and several of his closest friends had sent out a general notice letting people ( Read more... )

Dear Bilal ( Read more... )

I've been receiving an email from my own email address, several times a day, offering me a job as a MYSTERY SHOPPER. Each email purports to be from a man named Michael McDowell in Seattle, Washington. Each separate email has included a different salary possibility--$650/wk, $700/wk, $950/wk--and all I have to do to get started is send them a bunch ( Read more... )

And then, this morning, I decide to go further than simply checking to see if Northwestern has rendered a decision. (The answer to that question remains: "Reply Hazy Ask Again Later ( Read more... )

I'm really, really bad at being sick. It's fortunate, for me, that it tends to happen rarely, although when it does happen it tends to last for longer than necessary. (I say "necessary" as if my illness were part of some predestined event, as if my coughing and sniffling were designed to teach me a lesson of some kind ( Read more... )

Nineteen-twenty Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois, is a building located in the center of a yard surrounded by other buildings, a good distance away from any sort of actual "drive," next to a section of winding sidewalk that goes past an Escheresque library building and what is, for now, a frozen-over lake. There are six or seven different paths you ( Read more... )

There is on my desk a small framed drawing by local set designer and visual artist John Randle, a souvenir from the Neo-Futurists' production of Alice in September of 2004. The drawing is of the Eagle, a character from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland who I have no memory of, surrounded by a quotation from its scene in the story:
"Speak English ( Read more... )

Dear You ( Read more... )

Oh. Oh I get it now. Let me make sure I have this straight, okay ( Read more... )