Who needs running water? Pssh, obviously not me

So I am moving into a new apartment down in Old Town in July. I am pretty freaking excited, but my excitement has crescendoed at a rapid pace in the last month as "renovations" in my building have rendered all the common spaces with an appearnce to that of a bombed out Sarajevo in the mid-90s. I mean, be it the 8 foot by 5 foot hole in the wall in my hallway that is now boarded up like an abandoned warehouse? Or the piles of new and broken drywall taking up most of the lobby? Maybe the plastic tarping cutting a ghetto path through this same hallway since there is dust everywhere and they don't want the mid-40s era carpeting to be damaged. I was talking to a kid in the elevator and he said he has had trouble sleeping and is constantly coughing like he has tuberculosis cause of all the dust on his floor.

And that is just the common areas. In my apartment, everything related to plumbing is FUBAR. My bathroom sink is clogged, and Draino had no effect (maybe I should have just chugged it). One day I flushed my toilet and it kept on flushing...for 3 hours. Both my kitchen sink and shower shoot out random brown water for extended periods of time when I periodically turn them on. And now my shower flat out just doesn't work. It has a flow similar to an old man with an enlarged prostate. And when I contacted my building manager to administer Flomax to said shower? I was told someone will be by within the week. Are you serious?!?! Within the week? So I get to look forward to bathing in water droplets like some emaciated contestant on Survivor for the foreseeable future. My apartment once had an old-school, pre-war charm. Now it feels like its going to be condemned. This move can't arrive soon enough.

Seeing as yesterday was Father's Day, my family came down to Chi-city for the day, which was sweet as I didn't have to drive up 94 to MKE like I always do. We decided to go to the Shedd Aquarium aka The Best Place in the World. So we decided to CTA it up, for adventure's sake, and get on the Red Line down to Roosevelt. Now its an easy trip, you get off at Roosevelt, head due east and BAM, you're there. Well, my mother is one of the most outgoing and social people you will ever meet. So naturally, she starts chatting with people on the train. Well her gregarious nature was noticed by one of the Red Line's many resident crackheads. So as we depart the train, my mom is being approached/chatted up by a woman who I think starred in that leprechaun video. Well as we are trying to get away politely and expediently, I manage to point us due south and we start walking. All of a sudden, I realize that we are well into the South Loop and have walked way too far south, and not east at all. No big deal, except my dad is in a walking splint since he broke his leg a few weeks ago and it was not reacting well to all the walking. So I got a big fat dumbass label on my forehead and gifted my father an awesome inflamed leg for Father's Day. Love you Dad!

The Shedd was amazing per usual, except for the one thing I always neglect to recall when fondly remembering the joy of the Shedd...the horrible little children. Seeing as it was a Sunday afternoon, every exhibit looked a filming of Jon and Kate plus 8...plus another 25. Kids climbing the walls, and tables, and anything with a flat surface. All those cool interactive screens where you can scroll through fish names and facts and such to get an idea of what you are looking at? Pretty much all either malfunctioning due to being treated like a Whack-a-mole or occupied by grubby little beasts with one hand up their nose and the other smacking the LCD. It was a lesson in how not to parent. It was also an awesome unintentional ad for birth control. I could feel all my sperm committing suicide in my body's attempt to provide me with sterility to avoid such pint sized disasters. I literally had a kid pop up from between my arms as I was holding a railing and looking downward, scaring the hell out of me and nearly causing me to swat him like a fly. I did see one father pulling his son off a display and scolding him for acting like a savage. I wanted to go give the dude a hug or a high five or something. He clearly deserved to celebrate Father's Day, while the rest stood idly by like prison guards as the inmates brawl. But fear not, I still had an awesome time and think that fish are still cooler than most girls I knew in college.

So Ive had The Offspring- Half Truism stuck in my head for awhile now. The little rise he does in his voice in the verses "show in your eye-i-eyes" just really makes me happy for some reason. But it also made me realize that they were a band I love that I never really mention. Like everyone has a band or two that they know a million songs from and really crave from time to time, but never mention among their favorite bands and don't really own a CD from. My dad's band of this description? Scorpions. I can't even talk about how awesome that is especially if you know my dad. And I did find an old Scorpions album, but they didn't have ITunes back then, so it still fits. But yeah, ive always loved the Offspring, though I hate Pretty Fly for a White guy. The Kids Aren't Alright is one of the most badass intro riffs of the 90s and its just awesome and upbeat music. Not to mention the lead singer was once a PHD student in Molecular Biology at USC. How nuts is that? Most lead singers of punk bands have advanced degrees in regrettable tattoos and dropping out of High School, so booyah. So go figure out your fav band you never mention and rock out to their catalog.

"Your self-liberation will leave this behind, beyond slings and arrows, that rain on your minds..."

JW