i am posting from my phone because my computer took a spill at the airport (although officially i’m all about this not being the cause of failure) and while it made it through everything without any cosmetic damages, it is definitely not working properly. my trip to texas has come and besides some delays and a wonderful connecting flight experience in arkansas on the way there (more on that at a later time), everything was good. i was on a 6am flight back to chicago this morning and i was actually at home and ready for a nap earlier than I typically wake up on a saturday. taking the computer to the apple store tomorrow so probably won’t have full on computer usage capabilities for a few days. luckily i have my trusty iPhone. the below mugshot of me and my five day scruff (i swear i will shave tomorrow) is courtesy of my boredom and inability to sleep.

it’s about 2:30am. i’ve tried to get to bed about three or four times already this evening. every time i try i just lay there. i think the fact that i’m such an anxious person is what’s keeping me up tonight. there’s always so many things to be pondering and unnecessarily dwelling on.

when i woke up this morning i was in so much pain that i couldn’t move for 15 minutes. for the third day in a row i’ve woken up with an aching back. i can’t recollect it every hurting this bad. i’m hoping i’ve just been repeatedly sleeping on it wrong. i’m also exploring the possibility that i could be anemic. i’m going to pay a visit to the doctor (which i was supposed to do today) after the holidays for my yearly check-up and hopefully find a reason i’ve been so fatigued lately.

i’m saving up my project runway 4 - week 1 entry because i’m still working on it. all i know right now is that i’m cheering on steven and jack.

bleh. i need to go out and find some adventure so that i have something to write about. i’m sad to say that i’m sort of sad that it’s winter already. as much as i love the cold weather and the snow, i don’t think i’m ready for it yet. i wish i had some time to get out and explore a bit. i’m contemplating playing softball next spring, although i’m not certain about that yet. i have no coordination and that might just be asking for trouble. i do know that i would really like to start working out and running again. i fell so out of shape that i think i might be able to really convince myself to do it.

that’s it for now. let’s hope my journey down to texas on wednesday is a bit more exciting and i have something to write about wednesday evening. exciting, not traumatic though. i DO NOT need a repeat of my journey back to texas last christmas.

until later.

today was probably about a hundred time worse than i could have expected. i think it was worse than most people were expecting. it all started early in the morning when i went over to the mailroom to pick up some interoffice mail envelopes. i walk in and our mailroom guy is packing things into a box. i couldn’t figure out what to say so i ran out of there as quickly as possible. later i find out one of out IT guys was let go. and it just starts piling up. ellie (one of my directors) pulled me into her office and had to tell me that my favorite local broadcast buying directors was let go. that’s when things just became completely shitty. a few minutes later ellie comes into my office and her eyes were teary and she tells me what janet (our local broadcast buying director) had just done … she was speaking to jodie (my supervisor) to regroup regarding some last things and she went out of her way to compliment how great of a person i was to work with and everything. that pushed me over the edge and i started tearing up a bit. it’s so hard to have to see someone you respect so much and who respects you so much be let go. the day didn’t get any better. tons of other great people were let go and it was an incredibly sad day all around the agency.

as crappy as the situation is i must say i have a great deal of respect for all of the upper management of the agency because they handled everything with such an incredible amount of humanity and grace. over the course of the past few weeks since we lost the big account i think we’ve seen every senior VP cry or at least noticeably sad at least once over the situation and knowing they were going to have to let people go. everyone got decent severance packages so that definitely makes it a bit easier for the atmosphere knowing that it’s not a life-and-death, out-on-the-streets type situation. it’s over now and that’s a bit of relief because we can finally turn the page and start a new chapter at the agency.

enough with the sadness …

it’s the weekend now, which is always a good thing. i stayed in this evening and did some relaxing which was a welcome change to this past week which was rather busy.

okay, so i have nothing else exciting to write about, so instead i’ll post a funny clip from this past week’s episode of The Office (forgive the quality, when it gets uploaded to youtube the quality deteriorates horribly, i will have to work on implementing my own flash video/music player on this site later this weekend): (update: videos pulled from youtube by nbc for copyright infringement)

and i’ll leave you with a funny quote:

i’m sweet like sugar, soft like suede, but unlike a piano, i never get played

the bad
Layoffs began at the agency today. I was fortunate enough to be spared. I didn’t think it would be this bad. Once it started happening to friends and people I’ve grown to develop great working relationships with it sort of just hit me. We lost a couple of people on our team in Austin and I’m still a bit in shock at the moment. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be horrible. Everyone else finds out tomorrow and I have a feeling things are going to be incredibly depressing around the office here in Chicago as it starts happening people I work with and see on a day-to-day basis. I’m really dreading tomorrow.

the good
Now for the good. It’s not very exciting but I’m rather thrilled about it. I sort of had this epiphany/sudden realization today. I was walking down the street this evening and it sort of just hit me (in a manner very similar to that of the car that nearly did the same when I wasn’t paying attention). It was that point when after something that really got you down and was difficult to get through suddenly finally becomes the past and you realize that you’re a million times stronger and better now that you’ve made it through everything. Everything is just so much clearer to me now. This all put me in a really good mood. And what else put me in such a good mood? These songs: Lesson Learned - Alicia Keys ft. John Mayer & No One - Alicia Keys (click to hear).

Ha. So I had an interesting evening. After work I met up with my friend John at Penny’s for Thai. Had some amazing vegetable rolls there. Anyway, so the whole purpose of us meeting up this evening was to go see RuPaul’s new movie Starrbooty which was showing as part of the Reeling Film Festival. I must say it was a rather “interesting” movie. It was definitely good in a sort of cheesy, drag-comedy way. The great part is that RuPaul was actually there. Now that I think about it I guess I should have taken pictures, I had my phone on me the whole time. I keep forgetting about it. Anyway, so now I can say that I sat just a few feet away from her in a theater one time.

Erg, it’s almost 2AM already?!? Where does time go? I swear it was just about to be midnight a few minutes ago. Okay, I guess everything else I have to say can wait until later in the week. Until later.

My weekend sleeping habits have completely thrown off my sleeping schedule. Sure, I know better. But do I do anything about it? No. All the sleep I tried catching myself up on on Saturday threw me off yesterday and I didn’t end up getting to bed until after 3am. That’s not horrible until you factor in the fact that I woke up at about 645am. I actually came home today and passed out but woke up because of a nightmare. And here I am now.

This past Friday I had dinner with Bernie and Chris at this great Italian place around the corner from me. I had this vegetable risotto that was pretty much some of the best I’ve ever had. Plus the wine and company ended up being just as amazing. Overall, Friday night was rather great. I would have taken pictures but I frequently forget that I have a camera on my phone. More random pictures would surely make for more interesting posts. Saturday wasn’t as great but that’s because I was in some sort of funk, a common occurrence over the last few Saturdays.

I got really bored this afternoon, and I’ll be the first to admit that this is more pathetic than I usually get but, I did a sampling of what is on my TiVo at the moment (below). Everything in green is a recommendation based on my viewing habits and preferences and while I’m impressed with the accuracy after only knowing me for a few weeks (the old Series2 TiVo was laid to rest last month), there are some random things on there. I have season passes for Brothers & Sisters, as well as Weeds but I haven’t really started watching them yet. I’m just not ready to start getting into Brothers & Sisters yet and then while I’m dying to catch up to where I last left off on Weeds, every time I start watching I get this feeling in my stomach that is just unpleasant. It’s weird when you associate certain actions like watching Weeds with certain memories and it sort of messes with things. It’s not that I can’t watch it, it’s just that I’m afraid to find out how it will make me feel. That probably made no sense because I provided no background but, anyway …

Yeah, as usual I have nothing. I need to put some excitement back in my life so I have something better to write about. :\ This week should be a bit more exciting. Today was rather exciting although the total lack of sleep last night made for a horrible afternoon of trying to stay awake. I’m checking out two Reeling Film Festival movies this week on Wednesday and Thursday so I’m definitely looking forward to that and then it will be Friday before I know it.

Since I’ll be going back to Texas next week to visit the family for Thanksgiving, I’ve started to prepare a list places I would like to eat. The list so far:

• Sonic
• Whataburger
• Chick-Fil-A
• BBQ

That’s all I’ve got for now. It’s getting late and I still have to watch Samantha Who? before I will allow myself to sleep. Until later.

First off, let’s talk about how annoyed I am that Garth Books’ new ultimate hits album isn’t available on iTunes. I can’t even remember the last time I bought an actual CD and I’m hesitant to do so now. Erg, but I badly want one of his new songs and it would be nice to have all his hits. But am I really willing to take a step into last century?

I woke up this morning feeling horribly nauseous. I felt the same way yesterday but didn’t think anything of it. I ended up staying home today which actually turned out to be more annoying than anything. I hate trying to work from home and not having network access. I took care of a few urgent things and then people kept asking for things I didn’t have access to so I just put up my out-of-office message and spent the rest of the day in bed.

This past weekend was the best weekend I’ve had in a few weeks, or at least Saturday was good. I ended up hanging out with a couple of friends of mine who I hadn’t seen in months. Had a great time catching up over dinner and drinks.

Other than that things are just kinda going along as normal. Next week is my final for my computer science class. Kinda nervous about it but I just hope I can do on it as I did on the mid-term. Luckily since it’s technically just an undergrad course and I’m a grad student I just need to worry about passing it since no grade is actually recorded on my record. I’m starting to think that I might need to take a break after a few quarters just so I don’t go crazy.

In great news, we’re supposed to hit sub-freezing temperatures for the first time tomorrow night/Wednesday morning. A few more weeks and I’ll finally get the first real snow of the season. How exciting!

That’s all I’ve got (for now).

I was going through pictures on my phone and realized that I never posted this picture of the most amazing pineapple fried rice I have ever had. It was from this Thai place, which I need to figure out where it was. Not only is the presentation pretty damn cool but it tasted amazing.

•Sent from my iPhone•