Mayfest

Went to Mayfest.

I'm not a big street festival goer but Saturday afternoon I had free so after rehearsal I went to Mayfest with Rachel and Mark. Once there we ate German food and drank many beers. I also got to hang out with people from the sketch group Brick and they are great people. While sitting on a curb and talking, we periodically played a game called "Guess If That Woman Has Dyed Her Hair." Surprisingly (to me anyway), most of the time the answer was yes.

Memorial Day

Today I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo with James & Marla. We saw a few of the animals and ducked into the penguins building when a downpour started. Despite the weather, it was a nice trip and I was glad to be out and about with friends.

Coolest thing: meerkats
Grossest thing: fish eating the poop of a hippo

Baby Shower

Yesterday I went to the Ries baby shower. It was held at ComedySportz and was a nice mix of improvisers and regular people. There were nice foodstuff for people to nibble on and some cool activities to keep people occupied. One was decorating onesie jumpers with puffy paint. Another one was cutting up headshot photos of the parents-to-be and create what-will-their-baby-look-like images. The results in both of these arts and crafts activities were pretty amazing. Before the opening of the presents, the Rieses deemed one of each of these things the "winner" and they got a small prize.

Another game played throughout the baby shower was this Words-You-Cannot-Say game. When we got to the shower we were all given one necklace with a pacifier on the end. We were also given a small slip of paper that told us the list of words we could not say during the shower. If someone slipped up and said one of the words then whoever heard them say it could take their pacifier. The person with the most pacifiers before the opening of the gifts would get a prize.

The words were: baby, boy, girl, Dave, Jen, pregnant, belly, improv, show.

I won the Pacifier Game with 6 pacifiers (next closest was 4) and got a $10 iTunes giftcard.

Even if I hadn't won anything, I still would have said I had a really good time at the shower. But winning something made it extra nice.

The Power Outage

Our apartment has had a power outage problem for past 3 days. Today the problem was finally solved.

Late Saturday night (wee hours of Sunday) we experienced a couple temporary power outages. I wasn't there for it, I was at an unemployment party (not mine, the host of the party). When I got home my roommates informed me of this odd problem. Sure enough, an hour later the power went out again. I was at my laptop computer when it happened and it was pretty strange to experience my entire room going dark at once while the laptop screen be unaffected. But I was limited to what I could do since the wireless router for the Internet needs electricity. The past two outages had power back on within 10 or 15 minutes. It was not so this time.

I awoke Sunday morning and found the situation unchanged. That day we noticed that the microwave and toaster were still on. So every outlet except one had no power. This was quite odd. We called our landlord and he sent out a handyman. The handyman said it must be ComEd's problem. We called ComEd. They said it was a problem with the building. And this time I was on the side of ComEd; the people across the hall had power so it must be a problem within the building. Thus, the landlord's issue to solve.

Cut to Monday after work and the situation wasn't improved. I was ticked off. We had no electricity for almost 48 hours. At this point my more genius roommates had used an extension cord to connect the one outlet with power to our fridge, so at least our food was safe. But I was still mad. My barking voice mail made our landlord send an electrician this time.

The electrician came and assured us that, yes, the problem was within the building. He thought it must be at the main fuse in the basement. The problem was that the basement was part of the downstairs cleaners and we couldn't get in there without their permission since they were a tenant too. Fortunately, the electrician was able to give us a temporary fix. In the fuse box in our actual unit, there were three fuses. It looked like all but one of our unit outlets were tied into two out of the three fuses. The third fuse powered just that one lone outlet that was powering our microwave and toaster (and now the fridge). So the electrician made a bypass at the fuse box that gave us power. But we would need to be very economic with our lights usage otherwise that fuse would blow.

Tuesday after work the electrician came by along with our landlord with the keys for the basement. The owner of the cleaners were also there. Sure enough, the main fuse in the basement was the problem and all was better. The electrician came back up to our apartment and undid the temporary fix. Finally the problem was officially fixed.

Allergies

I've been hit with allergies again this week. Usually after a few days of using my over-the-counter antihistamine of choice my allergies subside and I'm okay. Not this week. A normal pack of 24 will last me around 3 months or so. I've gone through half in a week.

Derby Party

My friend Tony invited "the guys" over to his apartment to watch the Kentucky Derby. We'd make a party of it, bring things to eat and drink over, bet on the horses, and drink mint juleps. It was a nice time and the mint juleps were pretty great. Bill brought his girlfriend, Megan, over and they both dressed up for the occasion.

But we kicked her out since she was a girl.

No, not really. She stayed and it was fine. Pad won the betting pool on the derby, fyi.

Bike Flat & Stand Up

I went to see my friend Vanessa do stand-up at Zanies. She had two sets that night and I had an obstacle in getting to the earlier one. As I was trying to get the bike tire pump hose off of the nozzle, I wiggled the nozzle too far to one side and the tire tube ruptured at the nozzle. So I chose to go to the later set and get my bike tire fixed.

I did learn how to do this last year but I haven't bought any of the needed tools for this nor have I bought any extra tubes to store at my place just in case. Perhaps I will soon.

Vanessa went second out of three in the show I saw. The guy that went first was a guy I saw open for Maria Bamford awhile back. I liked him more this time than I did the other time. As for Vanessa, I liked her set and I thought she handled the crowd pretty well. The crowd was really antsy and prone to not pay attention for whatever reason. Perhaps it was because this was the night the Bulls won a game in triple overtime? Maybe, but if they were just big basketball fans, they wouldn't have been at a comedy club during the game. Anyway, I was glad to have finally seen her do stand-up. It's a tough thing to do.