Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Zombies

I don't know what our deal has been lately. Sunday night, Corey dealt with horrible insomnia and only got a couple of hours of sleep. Last night I had trouble sleeping. I tossed and turned all night long. Mostly I just kept getting uncomfortable or had aches and pains that would wake me up. I took a pain killer before bed, but that wasn't working, so I ended up taking some Tylenol PM. I still woke up several times during the night, but at least I got a little bit of sleep. The other problem was that you're supposed to take the Tylenol PM when you can get 8 full hours of sleep. I took it around midnight, which meant at 6:15am when I was supposed to get up, according to Tylenol, I still had 1 1/2 hours to go. I finally got out of bed around 7am. I still made it to work on time, but I was definitely a zombie for a while.

The other strange thing about today is that it's almost May, yet I had to break the winter coat back out. It's pretty cold today. I looked out the window an hour ago and there was snow coming down. It's pretty much stopped now, but man it makes you wonder what we're doing to our environment to make the weather act so crazy.

Yesterday I was harassed by a toothless thug wanna be on the "EL." He saw my Harley shirt and kept asking if I could get him one. I tried to explain that I didn't sell the shirts, but he was convinced that I had a closet full of them and could get him one. He even offered to pay extra for one. Luckily a friend of mine happened to be on the train with me at the same time. I'd answer his question and then turn away from him to face my friend and talk to her. I even put my hand up in front of my face to shield him away and give off obvious body language that I didn't want to talk to him, but he kept bugging me. After the guy wouldn't catch on, I had to be rude... well more like blunt with him. Eventually I said, "I don't know! Look, I'm talking to my friend here" and I turned back to her and finally he left me alone.

Creepy El ride, creepy sleeping, creepy weather!

-Mo

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Help My Creative Friends

We are fortunate enough to have some really creative and talented friends. A couple of them are currently taking part in contests, and you can vote for them!

First is Clay Morgan's commercial. Clay is an actor, improviser, media magnate and aspiring filmmaker. He has entered a contest to create a TV commercial for 98.9 The Rock, a radio station in Kansas City. The winner of this contest wins a huge grand prize of $20,000. To vote for Clay's entry, go here to the 98.9 website. There are over 300 entries, so don't waste your time going through them all, just vote for #66.

Next is Dan Telfer's shirt design. Dan is also an actor and improviser. He's also an amazing graphic designer. He designed one of the Billy Brimblecom Benefit posters you've probably seen around town. He has submitted a design for a shirt and you can vote by going here, and voting his design a "5". The winner gets a nice $2000 paycheck. You may have to register, but it's free and by now you probably have a junk mail email account at a free site like hotmail or yahoo for things just like this. If you don't, now's a good time to start that.

Thanks for your support.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Not much exciting (which is exciting)

Not much new to report. So far everything is still going smoothly with the condo. We should be officially locked in by Thursday. In the meantime, we've kicked into major savings mode. You don't realize how much money you waste with going out, ordering in and just not paying attention to your checkbook. Not that we were throwing our millions of dollars around or anything, but by being a little more careful, we're able to save a lot. For example, I've learned that I love Aldi's. There I said it. We spent almost 1/2 of what we'd normally spend at the normal grocery store on food that was just as good. Plus, we stopped by a little local Mexican grocery store in our neighborhood and bought green peppers, carrots, apples, pears and deli cheese and only spent $8. $8!!! Awesomeness! Plus, since it's relatively close to our apartment and the weather's been nice, we've been walking there for added exercise.
It's been nice that for the first time in 2 years, I'm not crazy busy. I'm still dealing with back pain, which leads to hand and arm pain as well as my hip and leg. I'm in physical therapy again, so that's helping and I'm trying to stay relaxed and get more sleep than normal. It's the first time in my entire life that I've made sleep a priority. I don't always get to bed as early as I should, but at least the effort's there.
The timing of not being as busy has worked out so that we can spend more time working on Billy's Benefit, which is going to be an awesome night. So many people have stepped up to help him out. It really shows what a great person he is. I'm really looking forward to my trip home, not just for the event, but to see my family, friends, the nieces and my sister who is coming in town from NJ. Hope I get to see all you KC folks out there.

-Mo

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Do you have hair on your back?

Last night Corey and I did a show with another girl for a group of middle school boys and their dads. We didn't do this show in association with any theater. Another improviser had a friend who did stand-up and was looking for a 20 minute improv act to go along with him. The original improviser had to work and couldn't do it. She started asking around and the word got passed along to us. We figured it'd be a good way to make a quick buck.
I'd have to say that last night was one of the weirdest shows I've ever been a part of. Let me start from the beginning... We were told to show up at ___ address at 7:30pm, that the show started at 7:45pm and we'd go on for about 20 minutes, maybe a little more if we wanted to and something about highschoolers. The weirdness started when we got there. The so called address wasn't listed on the building. The problem was that there were two schools next to each other, neither with numbers on them. We were about 30-40 minutes early, but wanted to make sure we were at the right place. I called the stand up guy (who had never contacted me the night before with details like he was supposed to) and said, "We're here, which building is it." His answer was, "I don't know. It's the one assigned to the address I gave you." No shit... thanks for pointing out the obvious.
Eventually the stand up met up with us. However, he didn't introduce himself and explain what the order of the night was going to be, or why these kids were here... nothing. He didn't communicate with us at all. He just hurriedly shook our hand and started walking towards the building. He offered to pay us a little more if we performed for 30 minutes and said we should pay attention to what the kids were talking about. Now mind you, at this point we still have to meet up with our 3rd player to figure out the line up and we still don't' know when we're going on.
At this point, we peek into the gym where there are about 50 boys and their fathers to get a sense of what kind of group this is. I hear the speaker asking questions like, "Do you have hair under your armpits yet?" and "How many of you have had a wet dream?" It was a sex-ed class! Apparently these boys were all 5th graders about to go into middle school and were having a sex-ed class with their dads to prepare for the new school. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage the openness. What was awkward is that we weren't told anything about it and here's two girls (me and the other improviser) awkwardly standing there as the poor embarrassed boys have to be asked about theirs and their dad's first erections.
The stand up dude kept telling us to make sure we incorporate what they were talking about into our show. I don't think he understood what we did, because it would be highly inappropriate to act out some of the subjects they were discussing... be it men or women improvisers. After he did his act (which was just him standing up there saying, "wow, you guys just had some awkward talks with your dads... ha ha. I had a wet dream once, when I slept in the bed with my grandpa. ha ha. It's good to be open about this stuff... ha ha") Then he introduced us. This was finally the point when he communicated to us, not before the show... right then and now we found out... um okay I guess we're on.
We ended up just playing 5 games and kept it themed to school, not sex. They actually really loved it and were an easy crowd to play for. In the end, we even got a little bonus money. Next time though, I'd send in 3 guys to improvise and I'd give them a heads up about what to expect.

Monday, April 10, 2006

It's ours, All ours!

Whooo Hooo!!!!

We're buying a condo. I'm freaking out, excited, scared, thrilled and happy all at once.
Since we're on a month to month lease in our apartment, we started checking out bigger apartments to move to a couple of months ago. We just felt like it was time to upgrade. Never did we think we'd be able to afford to buy a place in Chicago, let alone a place in our neighborhood. We were stunned and excited that there was a two bedroom condo in our price range just six blocks away from where we live now. It was too good of a deal to pass up. It's just a block and a half from our cousin Anne. It's a gut rehab, so everything is brand new, it's an older sturdy building but everything is very modern and we fell in love with it immediately. As long as this 5-day attorney period goes as planned, we'll close on May 26th. This is such an adult step!
It's not a ton bigger than our place now, but the kitchen and bathroom are huge upgrades. Plus we'll have a dishwasher and washer and dryer. And most importantly, it'll be ours. It'll be a great investment.
Here are some pictures of the model condo (the one directly above ours)....

The kitchen - The sink is in the right corner, it’s missing the faucet at the moment, but it’s the kind with the extending hose nozzle thingy.

Here's the bathroom, again the faucet isn't in yet, but you can see it
it's the kind with the above counter sink (which I love!). You can see the tub/shower. What you can’t see is that to the left out of frame is just a shower stall. There are two showers in this bathroom, and much more space than this picture shows.

Another view of the awesome kitchen - and Oh My God - Counters!
This last one is of the living room (love the exposed brick!) Since we'll be in the garden unit, instead of a door to the porch, we'll have french doors opening to an extra little room where I'll probably do hair.

Now with the 2nd room, there's no excuse for you people not to visit.

-Mo