3 Things

Computer - fixed. I made an appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for Thursday night after work. There was a 30 minute delay but it was worth the wait. The tech fixed the problem and now my computer works again. I was right that the problem was due to too little memory left. So now I'm doing research on external hard drives to buy. Dear reader of this blog, if I know you in real life and you have any advice on external hard drives, I'd like you to help me out.

100 push-ups, so far so good. Meaning, I'm still doing it and just able to eek out the minimum amount needed for the last reps. But I am feeling more manly lately, which is a plus I guess.

Job - seems okay so far.

Memory Problem

My laptop won't run. It'll turn on, but I get the above image on the screen and that's all it will do. A blinking icon in the shape of a file folder with a question mark on it. No programs get started, I'm not able to access anything, and if I hit the power button it simply turns off. This is because my hard drive is almost full. It was fine Tuesday but then I just HAD to download season 4 of The Office and I got the message that my startup disc was almost full. I stopped the downloads and decided I'd deal with this the next day. The next day, yesterday, I tried to turn on the computer and was met with this surprise. Now my computer won't work and none of the User Guide tips are helping. As someone who's mood is unfortunately tied into the functionality of my gadgets, this is not good.

Stop the world, put everything on hold, this is priority number one.

First Day at New Job

Yesterday was my first day at the new job. So far I've been in a training/computer room learning about the information management systems they have here at the Firm. I hope to learn the tasks of my actual job soon.

More Red Ball

Red Ball with Rance on Saturday. We were at the McCormick place on the ITT campus on the southside. There was shade and nice weather and the people seemed much more happy to interact with the Reb Ball than at the Field Museum. There were also nice looking college ladies around... and the realization that I'm a decade older than most of them. Yeesh.



Red Ball with Baker. We were at the Chess Pavillion on the lakeshore bike path near North Beach. Less interaction with the ball this day, mostly because most people were there to jog or bike down the path. Some stopped and looked at it. We also got to see Vince Vaughn bike by which was neat.

This concludes my assignments with the Red Ball. Thank you Red Ball.

8 Year Anniversary of Being In Chicago

Eight years ago, on Sept 17, 2000, I moved to Chicago. In three weeks I'll have officially lived in Chicago longer than I lived in Florida. Also, three years ago around this time of year I moved into my current apartment. This is the longest I've lived in one residence in a long, long time.

100 Push-Ups Program

You may have heard of the 100 Push-ups thing on the Internet. It's a 6-week training program that purports at the end of the 6 weeks you should be able to do 100 push-ups in a single rep. It may be a load of BS, but I've decided to try it.

I've read the pages of later weeks and it appears that if you are not able to do the push-up reps of a certain week, they recommend repeating a week. So this program might accually take longer than 6 weeks.

My initial test showed me which column I'm supposed to be in but I decided to go down one column because mine looked to hard. I did Day 1 of Week 1 yesterday and OH. MY. GOD my arms are freakin' tired. How am I going to last until the end?

Week of Me

I took a week off in between jobs. So I'm working on me. I'm a work in progress.

Canceled

The title is in reference to 3 CSz gigs I've had in the past week get canceled on me. I could have used the newly free time to get stuff done.

One good thing having newly opened up free time on Saturday was being able to have lunch with my buddy Matt. Matt was in town this week from Edinburgh with his wife. I got to see him Wednesday and Thursday nights too. It was good seeing him but I shot myself in the foot schedule wise. I was supposed to free up my nights during this time but forgot. So instead of being able to hang out and get way too drunk at the Brauhaus on Friday night, I had 3 shows.

One of those shows was the Beatbox. I made myself be more aggressive in the show and not flinch away from the free style raps. I get much better this week.

Weird Dreams

I've had two odd dreams in two nights. Both inspired, I think, by an accident an acquaintance of mine was in. She's a teacher for the deaf, I think. She had a scooter accident with a van and is laid up in the hospital with multiple broken bones. But she's alive, which is main thing. Anyway, this event has crawled into my subconscious and into my dreams.

The first night my dream wandered over to some park at night. While I was trekking over to some destination that has since faded, on the sidewalk next to the park was my friend James. He was doing sign language translation to the song that was currently playing. This must have been the song that was playing on my clock radio in the conscious world. Back in the dream world, the sight of my friend doing this was odd, but in my dream I was like "oh yeah, that's right, James knows sign language. I forgot about that." It was also funny that I didn't question at the time the logic of doing song translation on a street corner. And the fact that he wasn't the only one doing this on the street corner; there was another person there, some faceless lady, also doing song translation. So weird.

The second dream was much more freaky. While doing something that I can't remember in the dream, news came my way that my friend Pad was in a major accident. He was walking across the street when he was hit by a van. Because I was the architect and writer of this dream, I knew where this story was headed. I was a character in this story and I had dread that he was dead. I had no idea at the moment if he was or not. I was on my way to the hospital to see him. When I arrived at the hospital the writer side of my brain let my character self in the dream in on the secret that Pad was dead. I started crying in the dream just as I walked into the waiting room, which was full of mutual friends. Everyone had this devastated look on their faces. It was a horrible dream.

I hope she has a speedy recovery.

Training the Temp

I'm training a temp to take over my job. I came to work yesterday to find him sitting in my chair. My boss didn't tell me they were bringing in a temp; this fact alone speaks volumes. Just add it to the long list of reasons I'll be glad to be leaving this place.

Weedend

Friday
Shock Corridor show - good, fast paced
Rattlesnake wicker park show - fun. Great to be performing with them again.
watched a great Reckoning show at the wicker park venue.

Saturday
Red ball gig through CSz - a neat thing to be part of, but the last hour of the 3.5 hour gig was hard to get through.
Bubbles Academy charity kids show - neat to do, but the end was difficult because we lost the kids' attention.
My first ref slot at CSz was canceled - was actually bummed about this.
K-stud's birthday party - got there WAY early and later in the night played Rock Band.

Sunday
Stayed indoors.

The Return of The Vermont People

The Pub Quiz at the Hidden Shamrock, hosted by John Glynn, started up again. We got 2nd place out of 3 teams. But it was dramatic because we tied after 7 rounds and had a bonus round to see who would get first place. We would have gotten first place straight up but we second guessed a few of our questions that ended up costing us the prize.

Labor Day

Labor Day this year was nice. I went to my friend Katy's pizza/birthday party at her place. A bunch of fellow Snakes were there and it was good to be with them again. Afterward I went to the Music Box for a showing of a sing-along version of The Little Mermaid. It was super gay, and silly, but also a lot of fun.