SQUANDERED
You're a reporter. It's Barack Obama's first prime-time press conference.

The president has just unveiled a stimulus package that's supposed to slow the country's economic free fall, one many are calling the worst since the Great Depression. Tomorrow, his Treasury secretary will outline his plan to bail out the nation's floundering banking system. American troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Justice just upheld Bush's "state secrets" defense in the civil cases stemming from extraordinary rendition. There's recently been an election in Iraq. There's about to be a one in Israel.

The president calls on you midway through what's been a fairly adversarial question-and-answer session.

Would you be the moron who asks the president what he thinks of Alex Rodriguez using steroids? I mean really, for the rest of your life, would you want to be that guy?

STATUS UPDATE
The air outside is hazy, dolorous. In other words, it is vastly more pleasant than the current political and economic climate, which grows icier regardless of atmospheric CO2 levels. Chicago felt the heat this weekend, as temperatures reached into the high-50s and snow mounds reduced, revealing scattered poop mounds previously suspended and preserved in the lingering frost.



On Saturday, I demolished a bucket of balls at Diversey Driving Range, working up a sweat and appetite that would later be satisfied with homemade pizza and Perkulator at the Wolfgrant Inn. Sunday was cooler but satisfactory. Lauren and I walked down to Praha where we bought an old kitchen cabinet for a fair price. That night, we bowled our team toward world domination at Lincoln Square Lanes.

I am pleased.

VARIOUS MATTERS
• When I go to bed on Tuesday evening, I often stare at the ceiling and wonder if I will sleep soundly or toss and grumble through the evening. This inevitably leads to prolonged tossing and grumbling. I spend subsequent evenings trying to catch up on lost sleep, a task which is largely impossible due to the anxiety born of its heightened importance. Grumble.

• Saturday, as the Chicago Kickball Winter Classic wrapped up and we gathered our coats and jackets and began to repair to Ravenswood Pub, someone espied a man in a black jogging suit striding westward across Winnemac Park some 50 yards yonder and shouted "Hey look. It's Blago!" Sure enough, it was. The former governor, whose rangy gait and poof of black hair is unmistakable at that proximity, pumped his fist in the air as a few onlookers cheered. "Did you do it?" someone yelled. "No!" he answered, disappearing past a shoulder-high thicket of brown prairie grass.

• Tomorrow evening, Mr. Gnome is playing at the Double Door. I would like to attend this music show.

• I started reading No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. I am enjoying it, at times.

• Grumble.