So general all-around blog antagonist Frosty left this comment, not too long ago:

"Right now, Dickie is failing his econ quarter at Northwestern. Let's say a silent prayer for him."

(He then went on to pray I get hit by a truck.)

It's hard to watch an aspiring journalist, guided by principles of truth and accurcay, get the facts so horrifically wrong.

Because as chance would have it, I get to turn on my computer this morning and write the following three words:

I'M DONE, BIATCH!

I wrapped up my econ/business reporting yesterday. (I still have a lot of crap to do for my classes, though. And those are the classes I'll probably fail.)

It got very hectic there at the end, but I pulled it off rather smoothly. Here's to a great quarter - the learning curve was literally three times as steep as in the Fall. It's crazy to think back to snow-boarding just two-and-a-half months ago - to see how much things have changed.

Yesterday I wrapped up this feature that turned into a magnum opus about the Midwest power grid. 'Turns out the major utility out here doesn't even use the local grid - they get their generation from back east for the cost savings and efficiencies, and they're not gonna change back even though the Midwest power grid is implementing the same efficiencies and savings next month.

This disjointed structure has the potential to create all sorts of problems without the right management and coordination, and I discussed the potential links to what happened in the great Northeast blackout back in the Summer of 03.

A little dry, but pretty newsworthy, right? As I talked to sources, a couple of them mentioned how nobody's writing about this.

I wound up working on this for three weeks - battling through the Great Chicago Plague and everything. On the significance scale, this is probably the most important thing I wrote all quarter.

Nobody picked it up.

Instead, they picked up a local profile I wrote on a Ford dealership.

...

Excuse me, for one moment.

[WHUMP!WHUMP!WHUMP! WHUMP!WHUMP!WHUMP!]

Ow, now I have a headache. I think that's gonna leave a mark.

To be a fly on the wall when that decision was made:

"An investigative piece on the chances of a repeat of the Northeast blackout here in the Midwest due to energy re-structuring? And where do we live? The Midwest? Hm. ...Nah."

"Oh, wait! Look at this in-depth article on the Ford dealership, way out in Matteson, Il! Stop the friggin' press! We're running this baby front-page!"

*sigh*

(BTW, I was covering that dealership b/c it was one of the top ten minority-owned businesses in the area last year. But still...)

***************************************

Last night, after a couple hours of studying for our exam on Friday, a few of us went to this bar in Lakeview.

If anyone ever asks me why I would want to live in Chicago, over, say, Los Angeles, I will tell them about last night.

Amid the people ordering drinks, there was a pit bull sitting at the bar. Not in a menacing or WT way - he was just chillin' up there on the bar seat, calmly minding his own business. And nobody apparently thought anything strange our unusual about it.

F'n brilliant!

(Actually, it turned out to be one of those ploys by the owner to pick up girls. He kept coming up to this girl at our table and giving her random updates on what Duke was up to - "Look, he's staring out the door! He sees something out there!" is an actual quote. But still...)

It's cold, miserable - the horrific fluffy stuff is pouring down with a vengeance as I type.

But pit bulls drink for free in the bars.

God bless this place.