Sunday, December 28, 2008

I just can't keep it up

I keep telling myself I'm going to update this everyday and honestly I mean to do it and I keep forgetting.

I am continually looking at the world around me as blog fodder. "I think my reader will find this interesting" I am constantly saying to myself. Well let's just see.

I've been in Detroit visiting family and friends for 8 days now. Alot of times it's fun, but the days have been kind of boring. I can promise I've put on weight, seeing as my days primarily involve 6-8 hours in the same chair, playing World of Warcraft and watching The Dark Knight. I should be looking for a job, but I keep saying "I'm on vacation."

Two days after I got here, I went on a road trip with my brother. It was not trunks full of beer and checking out Minnesota's Biggest Ball of Twine though. This was a business trip. He had to make a delivery to another business in Cinncinatti. My brother is a funeral director, so you figure out what kind of cargo we had. This cargo was supposed to travel by air, but things got messed up and so we saddled up at 7:30 in the morning and drove 5 hours to Cinncinatti. The adventure does not stop there.

On our way back, we passed a Sonic, which I pleaded we make our lunch stop. Cakes (my brother) had other plans. Before I knew it, we were in the Golden Coral, a depressing all you can eat buffet with relatively abysmal food and an amazing desert bar. This one meal set in motion a chain of events that was both fun and miserable.

So we're driving home, it's around 2 PM. Some time later, we notice that it's raining ice. The roads are treacherous and people are sliding to their doom all around us. The longer we drove, the worse it got, until we realized we weren't going to make it to Detroit tonight. After getting approval from the company, we used our trusty GPS, found a Hampton Inn in Bowling Green, got some pizza, and watched the Discovery Channel. In the morning, things were much better and we finished the trip.

I've got to hang out with friends alot, but they all have their stupid jobs, so it hasn't been as much as I would like. But, I've still got 7 days to hang out with people, so hopefully, more fun things will occur. And now, a materialistic list of what I got for x-mas.

External Hard Drive
Webcam
Pants
Socks
Underwear
Shirts
The Muppets Season 3
The Dark Knight
Munchkin (amazing card game, Chicagoins need to call me and we'll play)
Candy Girl by Diablo Cody
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
I Heart Ranch Dressing:Things White Midwesterners Like by Author Unknown
A DnD t-shirt.
A Trader Joes gift card.
A Target Gift Card
A Chili's Gift Card

I think that's everything. Happy holidays to all. As always, I love to know if you're reading this. Its not that I'm begging for comments, but just if I got one from more than Alicia once and a while I would know who is out there.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Secrets

I was just reading a friends blog and I read an old post in which he posted an e-mail he sent to our teams coach regarding the direction our team was headed. I am no longer on said team, because people had problems with me.

In his e-mail, he omitted a part. He said he did this because the blog is public. I'm convinced that part was about me. Now I just want to know what was said.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

There's always tomorrow.

I had decided I wanted to try and make this a photoblog. I didn't get to take a picture though. Tomorrow I'll try again.

Tonight I had my last level 3 class at iO. I don't know how I felt about level 3. I guess, from what Shotts (my teacher) told us in the beginning, I feel the way everyone feels, but it's not really a good feeling. I am now totally in my head, knowing all of the things I need work on, and it's affecting my scene work. Shotts told me I need to show more emotion. Everything I do is internalized, and that's not entertaining or interesting. It's hard to do for me, because I'm not a very outwardly emotional person. If I'm happy, I smile, sad, I frown, and so on and so forth. But at least I have something to focus on.

I don't know why I'm so socially awkward. I felt really alone tonight. Tonight was the iO holiday party, which was techinically for staff, performers, and their significant others. But, my fellow students told me that Charna had told them to grab drinks and food and have a good time. So, I thought maybe I would stick around. I saw John (the only person I talked to, only long enough to say hello and shake hands.), Katie (who I spoke to for about 90 seconds) and her boyfriend (2 minutes), and Tina, who made eye contact with me numerous times, but never acknowledge my existence as someone who she would even call an acquaintance. At that time, seeing everyone having a good time, and not having a good time myself, I decided just to go home. I didn't feel like I belonged there.

I guess I have to learn how to make friends. I just don't know how to do that I guess. According to Facebook, I have over 60 friends here in Chicago. In real life, I think it's more like 5 or 6. And I hardly ever hang out with any of them.

I need to find a way to turn this around. I'm sure the 4 of you that read this are tired of hearing these woe is me stories. Hopefully I can write something positive tomorrow.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

What happened.

We all saw the blog post (www.cheezhead.com) and laughed. "It's so poorly written, it couldn't possibly be true."

Well it was. Reports are showing that one month after the CEO looked me right in the eyes along with many of our colleagues and said "We have no plans for massive layoffs. It wouldn't make sense for us to do that. We will be trimming head count. But we will be doing that by not filling positions that are left open naturally"

A massive layoff takes planning. It takes more than a month to figure out who goes, what kind of severance to offer, etc. I know in my heart, the higher ups knew this was going to happen. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it either. I saw reps in the room that I really looked up to, the ones I wanted to be like. People hitting 200% of their quotas. I saw a friend of mine who just hit his 5K bonus for invoicing 25,000 in his first 6 months (actually a little less than 6 months) who was told they weren't sure he would even receive that. Theories are going around that they got rid of a lot of these top performing reps to save money in not having to pay out all of these bonuses. That doesn't seem like thinking about the future to me, but who knows where a corporation's mind goes when things go sour. It was a great company to work for, but they made some mistakes.

Aside from the lying, I hold no ill will to the company. I appreciated the severance package. I don't know that they had to do that, but if they didn't have to, it was really pretty generous in my mind. I've got enough money coming to me to get by (with unemployment) until after my x-mas vacation home. When I come back, I'll hit the job boards hard, knowing I can find a new job.

The saddest part, is the people. I'll miss you guys and I hope you will all keep in touch. You were my first real friends in Chicago and I want you to still be a part of my life.

Friday, December 5, 2008

*snore*

There isn't much to say at this point.



Tensions are high at work, everyones just kind of waiting to find out what will happen.



Kristen's show was excellent.



My caloric deficit is at 4,467! It's been a good week so far.

Favorite songs I heard today. 12/4/08

It was not a good day for the shuffle. Only had 8 songs make the list instead of the usual 10.

1. Time of the Season- The Zombies
2. Local God-Everclear
3. Too Big for Gidget-The Brunettes
4. Terrible Vision-Rhett Miller
5. King of the Road-Piebald
6. Heart Songs-Weezer
7. Mint Car-The Cure
8. The Chords of Fame-Teenage Fanclub

Thursday, December 4, 2008

2 things.

1. Making a mix cd for someone who doesn't like music is hard work.

AND

2. Kristen has a show at iO tonight. She's still a student. I'm proud of her and a little jealous. It's time for me to take the reigns and get something going for myself.

Caloric Deficit-2,640. I think this is working, I've shed three of the pounds I put on over the holidays.

Favorite songs I heard today. 12/3/08

1. I Don't Like Mondays-Boomtown Rats
2. Can't You Hear Me Knockin'-The Rolling Stones
3. Halleujah- Rufus Wainwright (it should be noted, any time I hear any version of this song, I'll love it)
4. What Girls Want-Material Issue
5. The Marxist Brothers-NOFX
6. With Arms Outstretched-Rilo Kiley
7. Son of a Preacher Man-Dusty Springfield
8. Mars Loves Venus-The Brunettes
9. Fairytale of New York-The Pogues
10. Stubborn Kind of Fellow-Marvin Gaye

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Gimme!

It's amazing how when you ask someone for $9,400, they suddenly stop picking up their phone.

The Lessons I learned

Last night in class, I got some really great notes. Most of them came from watching other peoples performances and aspiring to do the great things I saw them do or from notes Shotts gave to other people.

His note for me was to dance. That was his big thing for me. He said "I think dancing in a scene will make you uncomfortable. Don't take this the wrong way, but we want to see you be uncomfortable. That's funny to us." I get it, I really do. I love watching people be uncomfortable onstage. But I think it still needs to be real. If I felt the need to dance in a scene, I would've done it.

Some other great notes and ideas I took from last night:

Improv welfare-Doing nothing until someone gives you something.

"Improvisors on stage are like raving paranoids. Everything that is said to them means something"
-Del Close

And my favorite....

A cake made of waffles!!!! This is the key to my culinary success. Begin developing recipe.

My caloric deficit for the week is now up to 1,751. Still have 5 days left to reach 5,250.

My Ten Favorite Songs I Heard Today 12/2/08

I've decided to do this as a daily post, hoping I'll have something else to say as well while I'm here.

In no particular order. Actually, in the order I heard them.

1. Death on the Stairs-The Libertines
2. Boulevard Trash-The Exploding Hearts
3. Leviathan-Wafflehouse*
4. Vietnow-Rage Against the Machine
5. Bone Machine-The Pixies
6. Don't Turn Around-Ace of Base
7. Lost in the Supermarket-The Clash
8. It's A Hit-Rilo Kiley
9. Jealous Guy-John Lennon
10. Four Minutes-Madonna

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Playing to an empty room.

There's no one there, but I've decided to start writing alot more. Many people I know have blogs and update them everyday, even if it's a single sentence about McDonalds French Fries. Of course, I would love to know you're out there if you are.

Yesterday, I decided to experiment with my diet a bit. I'm not going to be counting points with Weight Watchers anymore, but instead trying to create a caloric deficit based on my Basal Metabolic Rate. I'm doing this both through calorie reduction and excercise. The goal is to have a deficit of 5,250 calories a week, which should result in a 1.5 lb loss. We shall see. So far, as of yesterday, my deficit is 951 calories. That's because I didn't get a chance to work out.

The visit home was great. I loved seeing my family and friends and eating a ton of foods that are absolutely delicious.

It's strange, but I'm not really pannicking about work. I've kind of gotten used to playing the cards as they've been dealt. I'm going to keep going about things as usual, make sure I do at least what's required of me, if not more, and just try to succeed. If that's not enough to keep me here in '09. I'll find another job.

I've been considering going back to school or at least continuing my education in some way. I don't know if it will be theatre focused or not. I should've gotten a marketing degree or something. Maybe I'll get certified as an IT guy and then I could do that. That seems like most of the improvisors/actors I know do that in some capacity.

I just need to learn a trade. And get a haircut. And upon recent inspection when I was in the bathroom, trim my sideburns.