It’s been a while, so I promise not to disappoint.

I’ve been considering different blog topics for a while, and I must say that most of the things I was going to write about were philosophical babblings about things no one thinks about but me.

And while I think you may have found them interesting, and I am sure I will get back to that eventually, today I have decided to get back to something funny. And nothing is funnier than self-deprecating top-ten lists, right?

So here, for your reading pleasure, is the Top Ten Stupidest Things I Have Ever Done.

10. My senior year of high school, I went to Taco Bell one day shortly after it rained. I rolled down my window to order and pick up my food. Then, I decided I was going to be a hot shot and sped off across the parking lot without rolling up my window. There were huge puddles in the parking lot, and when I drove through one, a lot of water splashed up through my window and into my lap. The worst part? My chalupa was in my lap.

9. I took a class my freshman year of college that was taught by a former president of the university. He took about five of us at a time out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Afterward, since it was raining, he drove us all home. He pulled up to my dorm, and I got out of the car, pulled my backpack out of the trunk, and ran for the door. Right before I got inside, I realized I had not closed the trunk. My stomach sunk as a turned around just in time to see the former president of the university getting out of the car, in the pouring rain, to close the trunk before he could drive away.

8. Once when I was bowling, I picked up the ball, walked to the lane, wound up, and then gasped in horror when I didn’t see the ball rolling down the lane. I turned around and realized the ball had flown off my hand on the backswing… and rolled directly into the snack bar.

7. For almost eight months, every time I turned on the hot water faucet in the bathroom sink in one of my apartments, freezing cold water came out. Every time, I assumed this meant that we did not get hot water in that sink. And for eight months, I washed my hands and face in freezing water. Then one day, a friend tried to fill her water bottle with the cold water faucet and discovered that hot water came out. Turns out the hot and cold labels on the faucets were just switched. I never bothered trying the other faucet. And yes, my roommate knew about the switch the whole time.

6. On a side trip to Copenhagen during my time in Europe, we were wandering down the water’s edge looking for the famous Little Mermaid statue. We walked, and walked, and walked, and eventually hit a dead end. So we shrugged, and turned around, and walked some more…. and hit another dead end. Suddenly we realized we had walked through a gate that was now closed and surrounded by a fence that had barbed wire on the top. We were locked in a shipping yard. My friend Scott said it best when he quipped, “We are the definition of ‘stupid Americans.’ What were we thinking? ‘Hmm, crates and boats and gates with barbed wire. All the tourist attractions will definitely be in here!’”

5. At work, I once wrote an email to my friend Shannon about a conversation I had with a guy the night before. I sent it, then, fractions of a second later, panicked when I realized I had sent it to the author of the book I was working on instead of Shannon.

4. When the song “How Bizarre” came out, for weeks I was convinced that the words were “Help Is On.” The song came on once while I was talking to a friend, and I said, “This song is so bizarre.” He said something like, “Ha, very funny.” He thought I had made a lame joke, but really, I had no idea that what the real name of the song was.

3. There was a section of the cadence my college drumline played where I (as a cymbal player) had to march backwards. I was marching along when I saw the eyes of the snare player in front of me get very wide. As I wondered what was in front of him, and therefore behind me, to make his eyes get wide, instead of turning around to see, I yelled “What?” I faintly heard him yell “Cone!” as I proceeded to fall over a large orange traffic cone and roll into the drunk college students lining the street.

2. One night at a work happy hour, I suddenly realized I was drunk and it was time for me to go home. I got up and left, somehow managed to make it to the train station, and got on the train for a 45 minute ride home. The second the doors closed was when I realized just how badly I had to pee. Let me tell you, the el is fun when you’re drunk, but not when you’re drunk and you have to pee.

1. The night before I graduated college, I drank a screwdriver, sex on the beach, and a long island in rapid succession. Enough said. I will say that I knew exactly what I was doing at the time, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that makes it better or worse.

These were in no particular order. Feel free to pick the one you think is worst. Or to remind me of something else stupid I have done.

Hope you got some laughs.

It has come to my attention this week that city life has given me some rage issues. My morning and afternoon commutes have started to make my blood boil. It’s probably not something that I should be proud of, but I figured it might make good blog material.

So ready or not, here comes a rant of epic proportions.

First of all, let’s talk about revolving doors, shall we? They are everywhere in Chicago. And guess what, folks! They are not scary or difficult to operate! Just step into the next available opening and push! That’s it! This is not double-dutch jump rope. You do not have to carefully time your entrance. Nothing annoys me more than people that skip an opening and wait for the next one as if they are afraid of getting crushed by the door.

I’ve noticed these are also the people that barely lay a finger on the handle and take tiny baby steps forward as they go through the door, thereby taking forever to get through. Just push! What are you afraid of, germs? You touch thousands of surfaces a day that plenty of other people touch. Don’t lick your hands afterward, and you’ll be fine.

Next, let’s discuss elevators. There is a bank of four elevators in my building that only go to the bottom four floors with offices on them. That’s right, four elevators servicing four floors, with a maximum ride time of about 30 seconds. Translation? An elevator comes approximately every 15 seconds! Therefore, you do not have to stick your hand, foot, or whole body into the closing elevator doors to make sure you get on this one! Let the stupid doors close and the people already inside get to their floors. Wait the extra 15 seconds for the next one. I swear, sometimes so many people stop the elevator doors from closing that all four elevators end up on the ground floor and waiting before one gets to move. So FYI, I hate the people that enter the elevator when the doors are closing. Don’t be one of those people.

Moving on to another set of closing doors, next on my list is the el. The el is very crowded during morning rush hour, but is usually tolerable if there are no idiots on my car that do the following two things: (1) board the train while other passengers are still trying to exit through your door, and (2) insist on being the first to board but then park themselves in the doorway instead of moving into the car. The first one is just common sense, people! Let people off before you get on, or else you are blocking their exit. And the second grates on my nerves to an extreme degree. People have to be on first because they think the train with leave without them, and they have to stand by the door because they are afraid they won’t be able to get off at their stop if they have to walk more than one step to the door. And these are commuters! People that ride the el every day! The only reason anyone is not able to board or get off on time is because the doors are blocked by people who do these things. In their ridiculous attempts to prevent a problem that doesn’t exist, they end up creating the problem. Bah.

Oh, and another thing about the el. I don’t care how much crap you are carrying with you or how large of a person you are. You are not entitled to two seats. I hate, I hate, I HATE the people that put their bags down on the seat next to them and pretend not to notice all the people standing around them, and even more than that, I hate the people that in the aisle seat when there is no one in the window seat. Unacceptable, people. Move the (bleep) over. What do you want the rest of us to do, climb over you? Or do you just think you’re too cool to let a stranger sit by you? Everyone has the same right to a seat. A seat. One. Not two.

I think everyone will be with me on this next one: I am enraged by indecisive walkers. I cannot stand being behind someone that is making it perfectly that he/she has absolutely no idea where he/she is. (I reiterate that, as I mentioned in a previous post, the whole gender neutral singular subject pronoun void annoys me too.) Pick a direction and walk, people. Just go. You may not know what is on the next block but the only way to find out is to get there! People on the Chicago streets walk like they are in a parade or something! Step it up folks! You may not have anywhere to be, but I do! And even when I don’t, I still walk like I do.

Alright, I feel better. Thanks. You all saved me a couple hundred in therapy bills. And perhaps kept the next person I saw doing any of these things from being body slammed.

Thank you and good day.

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that life is not really an ongoing process of learning. Life is an ongoing cycle of learning and… unlearning.

My first experience with this was at puberty, when I discovered that my mantra of “I hate boys” was no longer true. Instead, I was wishing that boys would like me. I had spent my whole life up until then being certain that boys were stupid and icky and I would never want to be associated with one. But suddenly, and still today, while I mostly still think that boys are stupid, and many of them are still icky, some day I do want to be married to one.

I also came across a lot of these situations in college, especially in my higher math classes. In every math class of my academic career, from Kindergarten through two semesters of calculus, I learned that 1 + 1 = 2. Simple, right? And always true. But alas, I later spent my last two years of college unlearning that fact. No assumptions about 1 + 1 could be made any more. In some number systems, 1 + 1 = 0. (I kid you not. In higher math, all bets are off. Why do you think I got out when I did?)

But one concept that I find has been going through consistent and rapid cycles of learning and unlearning is the definition of the word “home.”

I grew up like every other kid, being taught to memorize my address so I would never be lost. I was given homework, and told what time to be home. Home meant the house where my parents lived, the place where I slept, period. No confusion.

But in college, things got complicated. I can still remember that awkward moment when I first referred to my freshman dorm room as home. I struggled with the idea of not knowing where home really was any more. Could I really call this 12 foot by 12 foot room my home? But on the other hand, how could my home be somewhere I did not live eight months out of the year?

Fortunately, after a few weeks of this melodramatic pondering, I decided that the more important question was, “Why do I care?” But still, during that time, I had to unlearn the strict definition of home as being the house where I grew up, and learn that perhaps my home changed depending on my geographic location. It was more about where I belonged at the time.

My semester in Sweden brought this issue up again. Multiple cities complicated the situation enough. Throw in multiple countries, and an over-thinker like me will obsess for a while. There was one jaunt of traveling I did during the semester that was nearly three weeks long. When I stepped off the train in Stockholm, I can remember thinking to myself, “God, it’s good to be home.” Then, of course, I spent a subsequent two or three weeks wondering how I could possibly feel at home in a country where I did not speak the language. I mean, these people put salt on black licorice! And actually ate it! What was it that made me think I belonged there?

Again, it was time to unlearn what I thought I knew about homes. I knew I didn’t belong in Sweden. But I felt at home there. So what is it that makes a home?

I’m still not sure that I know. Twenty-something is an odd time in a person’s life when it comes to homes. In the last five years, I have lived at seven different addresses. I have lived in two countries and in two states. At some time, I considered every single one my home. Even more, at some of those addresses, I found I also had second or third “homes,” at my church or at my friends’ places.

In the course of writing this, I have become convinced that home is more a state of mind than a location. I am at home in my house, because I will walk around in my towel or bathrobe. I am at home in my cubicle, because I can reach for things without looking. I am at home in my car, because it’s the only space I really have where I can belt out songs as loud as I want.

As I page back through the places I have lived in my life, the one thing they all have in common was the sense of security I had while in them. It’s a feeling of safety, comfort, and familiarity.

Later on in my life, I will probably, once again, unlearn this.

But for now, humor me and let me believe that I’ve got it figured out.