So I guess there is an upside to all my whining about everyone in the office taking a vacation while I slog through August in my business casual attire: their absence means I’ve gotten to take the lead on some pretty cool, higher-level projects that would normally be considered above my pay grade.  Which, of course, has an accompanying downside: work has eaten my face.  (Term credit: Alice.)

So it was especially nice yesterday to meet up with my longtime friends Princess and Monkey to go to the Chicago outdoor film festival, which was showing one of my favorite movies from childhood:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3K3A86Rweg]

Apparently every white woman in the 18-34 year old age cohort in the city of Chicago had the same idea, so when we arrived at the park (45 minutes early! should have been plenty of time!) it was already packed to the gills and we had to insert ourselves onto a teensy tinsy strip of dirt between two large blankets people had already laid down.  We sardined ourselves in and got out our sandwiches to eat, and were munching contentedly when:

“I know! Those DeeGees are such bitches!”

“I know this one DeeGee from my chemistry class who seems okay, but I sororities aren’t the same at all schools, so I’m sure they are total bitches at your school.”

Oh no.  We had seated ourselves next to a large cluster of girls home from their freshmen  year of college whose primary objective was not to sing along and enjoy the campy goodness, but who instead wanted to chat, and catch up on what happened in that first year of college, and have deep conversations about true love while they passed the white zinfandel back and forth, swigging directly from the bottle.

Can someone please tell me: when did college freshmen start looking like such babies?  And when did I get so crotchety?  I was seriously about 2 “oh my god totally”s away from chucking a baby carrot at them and threatening to expose their underage public drinking to the cops patrolling the place if they didn’t shut up and let me gaze upon Danny Zuko in peace. (Or at least gaze upon his forehead, as we could really only see the top quarter or so of the screen, sitting as far back as we were with our view blocked by the surprisingly tall lawn chairs of people in front of us.)

But it was a truly beautiful night, cool and clear, and I looked up and saw the skyscrapers glowing around us and then looked down and saw thousands of fists pumping in unison, dancing along to “Greased Lightning,” and I realized: even with annoying teenage background noise, this is a pretty great town, and life is pretty good.