Cold Chicago

Braving the recent cold snap, University of Chicago students have morphed into well-insulated lumpy beings cloaked in puffy coats and accessorized with fur. My snow boots are being put to good use. (Usually they're on display in my room because I think they're the coolest.)

While the sight of bulky, busy students scurrying campus is the norm, a few notable nude exceptions have occurred. Funny that the coldest time of the year coincides with the most public nudity I've seen so far. About a dozen rather unabashed but still sort of ungainly and embarrassed undergrads streaked campus in the polar bear run Friday afternoon. The rush of naked skin against the snow seemed more shivery than scantilizing, and the whole idea of "streaking" campus is sort of bastardized when the school sponsors the event and offers free food to attendees. My next door neighbors, members of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, appeared to have not received the memo about when the streaking was going on. They were naked in our joint front yard yesterday afternoon. Somehow the general conformity and unoriginality that defines fraternity culture made what should have been at least a moderately interesting or even scandalous activity completely mundane. I mean, I glanced out my window, but all I can say is they're lucky it's still a few months until bathing suit season.

I did brave the cold, cold temperatures on Saturday to visit the MAPS exhibit at the Field Museum. It was totally worth it, although I did get whiney on the way to lunch and accuse Ben of deliberately misleading me on the length of the walk to the restaurant I had selected. I don't know how I managed to survive my upbringing in South Dakota. The only positive impact of the temperatures is the added incentives I have to stay warm inside with a good (or at least useful) book. I'm really lucky I'm not in grad school in Hawaii or something, there my distractions would probably be intense: the scantily clad people would be good-looking and the weather much nicer.