• Getting home from work at 5:30AM, being due to be back by 8AM, waking up for all my alarms but then falling right back asleep, waking up again at 10AM, heading directly from bed to car.
  • The temp worker afraid to get garbage juice on brand-new designery jeans, spilling garbage ketchup on them, being good-natured about it.
  • The temp worker who quit because our sleep-deprived boss didn’t respond to his request to borrow a dolly quickly enough.
  • The beautiful, old, hand-painted bathroom signs in the park district field house.
  • The directness of the Metra slogan, “Next time, take the train.”
  • Having been at a music festival for days colors your perception of music for a while. Lackluster music becomes more exciting imagining it outdoors, live, and heroic.
  • The fucking drum sounds and drumming on Howlin’ Wolf’s The Back Door Wolf. Badass no matter where you spent the last week.
  • Driving on Elston, watching a funeral home worker wheel a coffin through a narrow doorway, bump it into the door frame, disappear into a dark room.
  • The scary-looking white dude, wearing a track suit, staring at me while I walked up to the studio.
  • Trying to make an almond milk shake, making chocolate ice instead. Snowball-, not food-grade.