wheels keep on spinnin' round...

this morning i sat in the backyard with cody (the landlord's dog -- i'm dogsitting while the landlord is away) and changed the tires on my mountain bike. my friend michael had some slicks that he bought for his mountain bike, but he got a new road bike at the beginning of the summer and sold me the tires. the tires have been sitting in my apartment for about two months now, collecting dust (because i'm really good at not doing things). a couple of nights ago i hung out with a friend and learned about changing tires/tubes, and in the process managed to flatten the tube on my front tire. so, since i needed to replace that tube anyway, i figured it was as good a time as any to try out the new tires.

tomorrow will be the test. i'm planning on getting up (relatively, for a sunday) early and going for a ride. i went for a short (30 minutes or so) ride today, but i've been feeling all post-avonex-y all day (i'll admit to not being a very good girl lately as pertains to taking my shots, so when i do take them, like last night, i get all flu-y and achey), so i'm not sure if i could feel much of a difference. i will say that these tires kind of weird me out -- there is almost _no_ tread on them. but they do look nice on my wheels. so, more to come on this topic, after i've had a chance to try out the new tires.

am currently listening to the album "wish" by the cure. it came out in 1992, when i was, oh, a sophomore in high school! for some reason this album popped into my head the other day. shit, 1992 was thirteen years ago! when oh when did i get so old? and how is it that my brain can remember song lyrics with which it has had no contact in a decade or so, yet, i can't remember details of cases i've read the day before? have i mentioned here my theory that i have adult ADD? the more likely truth is that i'm a sucker for the pharmacological marketing machine.

so, good news -- my friend grant got an invite to be on law review!!! i'm absolutely thrilled for him -- he poured his heart and soul into his write-on competition submission and deserves that invitation. i didn't know grant very well until this summer (we work together at our internship), but in the past couple of months he's become one of my favorite people. and i should keep him around because someday i may need him to give me a job.

meanwhile, on the other side of my social spectrum, i ran into one of my friends at the law school yesterday. this is a friend with whom i used to be pretty close, but to whom i've spoken infrequently this summer. the weird thing is that i can't tell if i'm sad about this or if i've just accepted that this is the way these things go. i do miss the group that i spent so much time with during the school year, and i hesitate to say that i've "replaced" them with other people, but i know that, to some degree, that was the inevitable result. we all clung together because we were in the same small section, and it was easy to form a social unit. but now that we're branching out into new jobs, new relationships, new networks, there are more opportunities to find friendships that are more relevant and sustaining. i'm not at all suggesting that i don't value the people with whom i spent my first year -- we were "in the trenches" together, so to speak, and some of them are very near and dear to me -- but the next two years of school will have a lot to offer.

tonight i sat with michael and steph on the front porch. they're planning to move back to the northwest after school is done. michael asked me if i thought i'd stay around here. that's the $25,000 question, isn't it? i will admit that during the past school year i was pretty certain that i did not want to be in pittsburgh post graduation. but now that i've had some time to see the city, to get to know the neighborhoods a bit, i must say that the idea of staying here does have some merit. i've always thought i'd end up in chicago or back in boston, but at this point, what would honestly be the right set of circumstances to get me to either of those places? the perfect job? maybe. but i'm getting to a place where i need to start seriously thinking about where i want to be, what i want to do, how i want to get there...

(and i thought i had gone back to school to avoid all of that for a while. silly me!)