so glad that the week is over. it ended up being incredibly stressful and i didn’t get half of the things i wanted to get done at work.

thursday night was rather exciting though; we had a dinner with our vh1 sales rep and some various presidents from mtv/vh1 networks and some other departments of the company. i love these nights because they are some of the most gluttonous nights i’ve ever had. the wine bill alone had to have been $1000 alone. we had two bottles of this 2002 silver leaf cab (along with lots of other bottles), and it was some AMAZING tasting wine; it should have been for $250/bottle. i got made fun of because i asked for my $40 steak to be prepared well done. i know it’s a steak sin to do that but i absolutely can’t handle having my steak pink.

in other news … i’m going through a bit of drama trying to get the new apartment situation straightened out but i’m hoping i’ll have everything figured out by early next week. if not then i’m going to go insane if i have to start looking for an apartment again.

i’m thinking about finally getting a membership to the art institute. i figure it would come in handy this summer when i’m looking for things to do on the weekend.

wow my life is rather unexciting. i need something exciting.

yes, i am sad as well. or am i?

i never liked ribs anyway. that whole eating-food-off-an-animal-bone concept freaks me out a bit.

Chili’s drops GSD&M as advertising agency

AdAge: Chili’s to Part With Longtime Agency GSD&M

AdWeek: GSD&M, Chili’s to Part

Chili’s Announces Search for New Advertising Agency

the good news is that we have a lot of great/exciting new business prospects!

i have incredibly great news this evening (for me at least, maybe not so much for you. you could probably care less) … after less than 12 hours of apartment searching i found a place that i’m very happy with. i must say that it was completely unuexpected. i woke up this morning and went to look at two places in ravenswood. while they were decent they were quite small and a bit out of the way. living off the brown line wouldn’t have been the worst thing but i wasn’t really interested in doing it. after that i ended up going to look at three other units in edgewater. they were nice and i decided one of them was a good option as being a finalist.

now i was with my friend kevin walking in lakeview when a lady for one of my apartments called and tried moving my appointment back almost two hours. i was having none of that so i just cancelled on her. my friend ended up convincing me to go to one of those apartment finding services. having a bad experience or two in texas, i was trying to avoid this. i did it anyway since i had some time to kill.

an hour later i was out looking at places. the first sign of success was that for what i was looking at paying for a studio, she was able to find several one bedrooms in some even better areas.

the first place i looked at was in andersonville. it was a 1 bedroom garden unit of a house that was converted into a 2 flat. really great condition as the owner is in the process of redoing it completely. new everything inside and it’s rather spacious, at least more spacious than i had planned. free laundry and i even have a little mudroom/sunroom type area in the entry way. really liked the place.

the second place was a fairly nice 1 bedroom in a lowrise building. the hardwood floors of this place are what got me. i’m a sucker for nice hardwood floors. it was a bit smaller but the living area was sunken from the entry way so it had a neat look.

the third place was a fairly nice 1 bedroom in a lowrise building as well. it was on the 7th floor of about 8 floors. the east view was amazing … it looked out onto the lake which was rather pleasant (it wasn’t an amazing lake view since all it was was lake. had it been lake and some of downtown then i’d be really enthused). yeah it was nice.

ultimately i went with the first place just because it seemed like the perfect place. it’s a house turned two flat so i only have two neighbors so i imagine it will be fairly quiet. my potential landlord lives next door so i wouldn’t have to worry about not getting a hold of management or anything like that. he is finishing up redoing everything inside of it so there likely won’t need a lot of things later on. so i turned in my application and i’m just waiting on the final word which should hopefully be sometime early this week.

this place is really close to come of my favorite places in andersonville: joie de vine (best wine bar ever) will now be a block and a half away, one of my favorite pubs/restaurants is two blocks away, hamburger mary’s/mary’s attic is only a few blocks away. plus there are tons of other great places within a train stop or two: crew, m. henry, and all these othere countless places i’ve heard good things about.

overall i’m pretty exciting. it should be a good place to live in. now i just wait to hear.

so happy that this went so quickly. i couldn’t have asked for it to have been any easier (assuming the rest goes smoothly).

more to come soon.
until later.
.ryan

i just spent an hour working on a new style for this thing only to decide that it looks like crap in internet explorer and firefox (i use safari (mac) and it looked freaking classy).

i suppose i have a lot to catch up on. it’s been nearly three weeks since i’ve made a decent post. we shall see if i remember some of the good things i’ve been meaning to say.

work has been insanely busy. i remember when i first started that i was begging for things to do to stay busy. now i’m working 45-50 hour weeks and i’m still not getting everything i need to get done. i swear i’m not complaining though. i do rather love my job. i’m working on some amazingly fun programs right now. i’ve had four day weeks for the last three weeks so that’s part of the reason i’ve had to work so much. lots of cable upfront presentations have been going on but sadly i’m having to miss out on a lot for client calls and the other uncancelable meetings. speaking of when i first started on the team … it’s been almost a year (may 8). can’t believe it.

a couple of weeks ago i received a call from UT asking for a donation. i was floored. seriously?!? it hasn’t even been a year since i graduated. plus they have some student calling and asking for the moneyt. as if i’m going to be guilted into giving them money. it was at that point that i decided the university absolutely WILL NOT see a dime in donations from me until my student loans are paid off. i stopped paying my alumni association dues because i decided there’s no point to until i’m making so much money that i have money to throw away like that. i don’t need to pay $600 for a freaking alumni sticker that i don’t even have a car for anymore. i just started paying on my student loans back in january and it was kinda depressing. i have like $21k in student loans and my principal balance on both loans combined has gone down about $11 in the four months i’ve been paying. the good news is that i’m going to have a HUGE student loan interest deduction on my 2007 taxes.

i’ve started looking for a new apartment, as my current lease expires at the end of may. i have decided that i’m ready to live alone again and that i need something a bit closer to work. the commute time drives me insane, especially with the late hours that i work. since i don’t need much room anyway i’m aiming for a studio apartment. i figure that will do nicely, plus then i won’t have to buy a lot of furniture beyond a couch and coffee table. i’m finding that most places aren’t listed for Jun 1 yet. so i figure i’ll really start looking next weekend or the weekend after that. my goal is to only spend three days on finding a place. two weekend days and one weekday.

other than that nothing too exciting going on in my life. i have to admit that i have been slacking with my running. haven’t kept up with it as much as i would have liked to in the last couple of weeks. i’m getting back into it this week though now that the temperatures are supposed to level off (it’s been insanely cold for the last week or two).

until later.

i’m still working on coming up with something good to say. check back later.