But Why?

A slew of people have asked me why I do this....why I started it.....why I keep up with it.  Well, the short answer is "because I hate the summer in Chicago."  That doesn't really answer the question though.  I'll elaborate....

Many moons ago, I was hoofing it from the train station to my office.  It's about four downtown city blocks.  Not a huge trek, I know.  However, if you're me and you absolutely loathe all temperatures above 70 (especially if those temperatures come with a nice, steamy dose of humidity to boot), making that trek on a 90 degree morning is akin to crossing the Sahara Desert.  Not fun.  Not fun at all.  Hang on....I feel a sidenote coming on.

SIDENOTE:  Before you get all uppity about my I-Hate-Summer confession and start railing on me about how I'm nuts and all that, let me just put a sock in you for a second.  I am not a summer person.  It doesn't agree with me.  When it's hot (and humid), I feel AWFUL.  I can't breathe.  I'm wicked uncomfortable.  Everything hurts.  When it's summery out and people are all "isn't this weather wonderful?!?!?!," it makes me want to go postal.  No, it's not wonderful.  It fucking sucks.  End of story.  I'm a winter girl.  I like fall a lot too but I live in Chicagoland, which means we only get two seasons - winter and summer.  Unlike just about all of humanity, I adore the Chicago winters.  Truly adore.  I like it when it's witch's tit cold.  A perfect day to me is about ten degrees with no wind, a foot of snow on the ground, and a bright sun in the sky.  When it's frigid cold and crisp, I feel my best.  I would much rather live in a place that is always cold and then travel to the warm when I want it.  Warm that I seek out on purpose doesn't seem to bother me.  I spent my honeymoon in Jamaica and I loved every bit of it.  I'm sure the fact that I spent all my time in some form of water while drunk out of my mind on rum drinks had a lot to do with that.  Nevertheless, summery weather I seek out is fine.  Summery weather that's thrust upon me is not.  Yes, I know this is odd.  No, I don't need to you tell me I'm crazy.  I was a penguin in a former life.  I may have been meant to be a penguin in this life and I just got lost somewhere along the way to existence.  I don't know.  Nevertheless, this is me......so deal.

Hi.  Welcome back from the sidenote.  Let's keep going, shall we?  Where were we?  Oh, yes....walking from the train and it was hot.  Right.  So, anyway, I was standing on a corner waiting to cross the street and making an internal note about how ridiculously uncomfortable I was thanks to the stupid weather.  It occurred to me right at that moment (most likely because I have soldier friends and family members) that not everyone had a nice, air conditioned office to go to.  Some brave men and women were, at that very second, lumbering around in a desert far, far, far from home while wearing over one hundred pounds of gear......and they didn't have any nice, air conditioned offices to retreat to.  They had tents....in the desert.....in a war zone....with scorpions.  Okay, just no.  I vowed right there that I needed to stop focusing on the things that made me unhappy and start paying more conscious attention to the things that made me happy.  So, as an exercise, I decided to write down ten things that happened over the course of the month that either made me happy or filled me with glee or made me laugh really hard or whatever.  Ten Happy Things was thus born....and it caught on.  When I was still posting this thing on MySpace, it got to the point where I would get angry emails at the end of the month asking where the list was if I hadn't posted it in a timely manner.  I didn't realize that so many people cared about the things that make me happy.  Apparently they do.  I've since moved the blog here (mostly because MySpace is completely lame) and I'm trying to build up the readership to my previously famed MySpace levels.

So.

There are a few things you should know.  Well, okay, there are a lot of things you should know but here are a few things you should know about this blog:

1)  The blog titles will almost always be song titles or lyrics.....and those titles and/or lyrics will always in some way relate to something on the list.  Sometimes they'll be quotes though so don't freak out if you can't figure out what song I'm referring to because I just might be doing my best version of sneaky and putting a quote in there instead of a song thing.  You can usually tell the quotes.  They have quotation marks.  Duh.

B)  I am a HUGE sports nut.  Huge.  Especially for golf and tennis.....and hockey.....and football.....and baseball.....and the Olympics.  Okay, let me start over.  I am a HUGE sports nut for just about every sport but basketball.  Thusly, there will be a lot of sports-related Happy Things.  That's just the way it is.  I will warn you, most of my sports likes and dislikes are unpopular.  I don't like Tiger Woods.  I loathe the Yankees with every ounce of my being.  I wish Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal would go far, far away.  I don't think there are any better people in the universe than Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Andy Roddick, Evgeni Malkin, and Mike Piazza.  I like the Bears and the Blackhawks fine but I am a rabid fan of teams that have nothing to do with the city I live in (mostly because I'm not from here originally).

c)  A raisin.  If you went to college with me and were also in band, you understand what this means.  If you did not, well, I don't know what to tell you.

5)  I fly my freak flag with vigor.  I use it to signal passing ships.  I'm into just about every geektastic thing there is outside of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and RPGs.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, anime, comic books, Firefly, cartoons from the 80s.....all that kind of stuff......I'm way into it so you're going to see lots of that as well.

VI)  I use some coarse language here and there.  Not a lot...but some.  Not enough to get an R rating or anything.  We're all adults here.  You can handle it.

That's about it.  I do this as a mental exercise for myself.  Other people just happen to like it.  I'm not trying to please anybody but I welcome your thoughts.  Try not to be mean.  I'm not mean so I don't really like it when people are mean to me...especially if they don't know me.  But, you know, such is life.  I can roll with it.