As often happens, times they are a changin'...And with the exception of the outing of Deep Throat, they are specifically changin' for me.

I'm movin' to a new city, I'm no longer on the (meat) market, I'm almost done with j-school and I have a completely different idea of what to do with my life than I did nine months ago. Whew...none of that is life-altering or anything...

Change is quite a thing. It means ripping the rug out from under your feet at the same time that it means wiping a messy slate clean before your eyes. Some embrace it with alacrity, while others run in terror from even the idea of it.

But I'm rolling with it...I'll let y'all know how it goes.

My only regret is the windy city I leave behind. My time in Chicagoland grows ever shorter. Just one week more.

I've felt so at home here--while my Eastern roots (and my overpriced education) are yanking me back toward the Atlantic Ocean, I do feel the Midwest resisting the pull a little.

To illustrate this, I will take you all to a little place called, "Howl at the Moon"--a dueling piano bar of the Jake Ivory ilk (Boston peeps know what I'm talking about).

At this fine establishment, the pianists (who know the chord progression of every song ever written) like to engage the bar's patrons (and score tips) by pulling at the strings of hometown pride. It all starts when some drunken bride-to-be and her posse of penis-hat wearing bridesmaids slap two bucks on one of the pianos for the players to bang out a song about their home state. Five seconds into that song (which is usually something ala Sweet Home Alabama), drunken people from other parties approach the pianos and up the ante to change the song. The dumbasses who pay the most get the glory and the pleasure of hearing most of their song.

Tonight, it started out with New York, New York. Robert the piano guy asked the 80 or so people in the bar, "who here is from New York?" Myself and one other girl, completely smashed and wearing a royal blue-sequined thrift store prom dress (part of a bachelorette party), throw our hands in the air and scream. We then heard crickets chirping.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, someone paid a certain amount of money for the pianists to switch over to the Sweet Home Chicago song. Ordinarily, my hometown pride would have made me scowl and act like an uppity New Yorker...but I really did want to hear the Chicago song more. I felt that rush of pride as I heard it! But then some dopey guy from Tennessee paid over 20 bucks to hear a song I've never heard about a state I've never been to. That's when I joined the camp of people shouting and demanding they play the Chicago song again. And later on, one of the pianists asked if we wanted to hear the New York song again. Crickets chirping again. Nah, no interest. I like Chicago better.

I'm gonna miss everything from the 20 degree temperature drop between Broadway Ave and Lakeshore Dr, to the vagina building, to the smell of Chicago hot dogs on the street...

But now it is time to try D.C. on for size.