For those of you that will read this, I hope you appreciate the title of this blog. If you know anything about me at all, you would know that I am one of, if not the biggest, complainer on the planet. I've learned to embrace this (negative) attribute by channelling my daily adventures and misadventures into a blog. Oh yeah and it's a Mates of State reference. Duh. But you'd only get that part if you were cool enough. (That reminds me: go download some MoS now. I suggest the new album, "Re-Arrange Us")
Anyway, what's up with me? So glad that I asked. I just moved to Chicago, IL at the beginning of August. Graduated in May from school with a theatre degree in my hand and hopes and dreams shoved into my pockets like soggy wet oatmeal you wanted to save after that Holiday Inn cost you $50 a night and the least they could do was let you steal stuff from the continental breakfast that forced you to wake up between the ungodly hours of 8 and 9 am. So yeah, a degree and soggy-wet-pockets full of dreams. Oh and four amazingly talented and caring roommates, and a ton of fellow alumni. And I'm sure I know what you're thinking- it's exactly what every local that I have met thus far has been asking me, "Why Chi-cAAHHHHRRR-go?" (Every mid-westner talks like that, trust me.) First of all, stop asking me that. Secondly, 'cause I wanted to! I'll answer this question one last god damned time: I'm here for the atmosphere, a taste of a big city away from home and school, iO, Second City, The Annoyance, The Playground, Comedy Sportz, Chicago style hot dogs complete with celery salt and a pickle, Lake Michigan and when it freezes over in the winter, Culture, Festivals, cheap and clean and convenient public transportation to wherever it is you want to go, night life, friends, DANK pizza (Sup, Giordanos? Oh and if you haven't tried Ian's special this month which happens to be Crab Rangoon pizza, GET ON IT!), and Oprah. Okay the last one was supposed to make you laugh. But all the rest is true.
And so far I've been able to experience most of that, and I'm sure there is more to see and do along the way. Yeah yeah yeah, don't remind how cold this winter will be. I'm sure you'll regret reminding me once you check back to this blog to read how much I can actually complain about it. Good news is, you can stop reading at any time. However, I strongly suggest that you continue- just in case you are personally mentioned somewhere in the body of text and I happen to make fun of you. In fact, why don't you save yourself some time and do a quick search of the page for your name. Go ahead, scan for it. It might be there. And after it it might say "I secretly hate the shit out of you."
Okay. For those of you brave enough to push on: I'll bring you up to speed without getting too wordy (and then later we'll get into the good stuff- the real, oh-my-God-Carol's-day-to-day-life-really-is-a-living-hell.) Basically I got here and was like, okay- now that we've moved in all of our stuff, ate good stuffed pizza (again: sup, Giordanos?), and drank a ton of Miller Lite and Jameson which then helped us christen the house with a rousing game of strip Apples to Apples (yeah, it can be done) WHAT NOW? Well, being the hungry-actress I am (HA), I self-submitted myself to a lot of film opportunities. One of which was participating in the 48-hour film fest, which was a positive experience. Met cool people and got a chance to act like myself in front of a camera. Didn't win any awards, who cares? And the other was what I thought would be fun- got to be an extra in a new Ron Howard film, The Dilemma. Unfortunately, the experience WOULD have been a good one if I wasn't stuck listening to another one of the extras talk for 9 hours as we waited to film about how when he was on the set for Transformers 3 they had gourmet chefs and got to eat the same food as Shia. GUESS WHAT? I DON'T CARE. I think his name was Derek, once again though- who really cares? Not this girl.
So after those situations played out, I was still like "Okay, get a real job now?" Because unlike Derek, the successful manager at a Walmart, slash print model, slash extra actor, I possessed what half this country doesn't have- Ha ha, I forgot I had a degree. So where did I go? Thanks to a good friend, Susan (I secretly hate the shit out of you) Glynn, I went to an open house at a Temp Agency. Although I may have taken like 2 hours on the computer literacy exams, I passed and was assigned a job that a monkey could do in just a few days! What was this monkey-brained job you ask? I literally sat on a street corner for 12 hours a day counting people crossing the street and entering coffee shops. Yeah. Imagine all of the stuff I could complain about THAT! (My poor roommate Becky had to hear most of it) I'll spare you all, but I will say this: Complaining can ACTUALLY get you somewhere. Seriously, after sleeping off my delirium from the first day, I whined to my supervisor (Who will hereafter be called Howie due to his striking resemblance to Howie Mandel) who then moved my position to a much shadier and less busy street corner. Ha. I win. Anyway, I left that job with $393 dollars in my pocket. Not the soggy one, the empty one.
Since then, I was fortunate enough to meet up with an old friend, Sasha, that has crucially hooked me up with a job in her office. All I do is sit on a Mac all day (fancy schmancy right?) and manually log video interviews. I'm sure I'll start complaining about that sooner or later. My first day was Thursday and I was completely out of it. I had to ask the guy sitting next to me where the ON button was on the computer. Question: because I am a young and hip 20 something, should I be more Mac literate? I honestly felt like the hugest buffoon walking in there like "DUUUR, I'm from Virginia! Help me!"
Well, it's probably time to put my pants back on and head to class at iO. The cool September breeze has swept back into the streets and thus No-Pants-Summer has officially ended. Thanks to my roommate Nicoke for introducing the concept to me. (I call her Nicoke only because I use T9 to type text messages and it won't let me spell NicoLe correctly) Hope all of that wasn't too much to handle. Trust me, these blogs will slowly gain momentum as crazier things keep happening to me that I feel like complaining about. Not that they haven't yet- What about that time when Ryan and I saw what we thought was a homeless man building a lamp-bomb on the red line? Or when I accidentally text messaged an old friend that I wanted to warm him during the winter? Or when that women wiped her butt in front of us outside of the Jewel Osco? Or Or Or Or...
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