My most recent improv class seemed to have an obsession with scenes that referenced sodas. Both obscure (I can recall at least 7 Crystal Pepsi references) and mainstream (many characters drank Coke Zero). I'm just now drinking my first Coke Zero and I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my friend Bryan last week. Coke Zero basically tastes almost identical to Regular Coke, but with no sugar or calories. So it's Diet Coke, but it tastes better.

So I ask you this, dear reader. Why does the Coca Cola bottling plant have two different vats of soda? One that has a bitter diet aftertaste and one that provides the same diet concious nutritional value as the the diet brand, with better taste. Shouldn't they just start selling Coke Zero as Diet Coke and say "Our Diet Coke tastes like regular Coke now!" I can't understand the logic.

I realized I have yet to talk much about my new job. I had to snap this picture on the fly. I've only been there 5 days, so I don't think it would be good to become the "blog" guy just yet. Maybe in a couple weeks. Anyhow, that's my desk. Dennis the Conquestador is keeping an eye on everything just like he was at Careerbuilder.

I'm working in the Marketing department for a small IT consulting firm. It's alot of cold calling, but it's not as aggressive as CB was in the approach. It's basically like "we're just trying to get the word out, if you aren't interested, that's cool, we won't call anymore". I really like that aspect, but I'm suffering from culture shock. It's all I can do sometime not to fire off a snappy rebuttal when people tell me no. I'll get used to it though.

Yesterday was an awesome day. It was my Aunt's 60th birthday so to celebrate we took a day trip to New Buffalo MI. The reason for our destination was 3 fold.

1. We're renting some houses there this summer for a McGillen family trip. We got to check out those houses. They are really nice.

2. It's a pretty suitable meeting place. My parents, aunts, uncles, brother, and cousins from MI all met us there. It's only a 3 hour drive for them, and only an hour and a half from Chicago. Aunt Colleen also came from Iowa to suprise Patti. She hung in Chicago (actually La Grange) with Patti and Peggy. We don't see Colleen as often as we'd like, since Iowa is pretty out of the way. I think it had been about 2 years since I'd seen her. So that was really cool.

3. We ate at Redamak's. For those who don't know, Redamak's is a seasonal burger joint that's only open from April to October. To be honest, it's not the greatest burger, but they are good. I wouldn't make the trip just to go to Redamak's, but New Buffalo is a really quaint town and it'll be great to spend at least 2 or 3 days relaxing with my family this summer.

I took some pictures, but now I can't find my camera so you'll have to do without for now. I think I may have left it at the Holiday Club so I'll need to call them.

Friday was the girl's birthday. When I asked her where she wanted to go for dinner she said "I want pizza. I want to go to that place we saw on the Food Network where you draw on the walls" Gino's East it was. Neither of us brought Sharpies, so draw on the walls we did not. But we did eat some yummy pizza.

After that we walked over to the Disney store to kill some time. We both found awesome Wall-E t-shirts on clearence for 5 bucks. Mine is the Buy and Large logo (for those who haven't seen the movie, BnL is the company that basically destroys Earth and owns/operates the floating space resorts that everyone has to live on) and Kristen got an Axiom crew shirt (Axiom was the main ship in the resort fleet). When we were checking out, the cashier's were making jokes about us bringing them birthday cake (Kristen had left overs from the cake she got at work). Not wanting to carry it around we gave it to the Disney store employees and they recipricated by giving us free Mickey water bottles.

From there, we took a bus to the Holiday Club where a good deal of our friends came up to drink and celebrate. It was a good time and then we went home around midnight. Hopefully, my lady had a great birthday.

If you were wondering if Chase Bank thinks it's customers are stupid.

They do.

I recieved this letter in the mail informing me of the closure of my main branch and letting me know where my main branch would be. Note: the branch was not being shut down, just moving. At first I thought this was nice, very helpful information. Then I looked at the map they provided to show me where my new branch was. Take a look.



The green star is my current branch. The blue star is my new branch. Notice the addresses. They moved from 3227 W. Addison to 3225 W. Addison. In the same shopping plaza. They moved next door to the old branch. Did this really warrant a letter from the branch manager to all of their thousands of customers? Someone needs to let Chase bank know we're in an economic crisis and while they may be strong now, wasting paper in this fashion can kill them.

Welcome to all of you that have come here from the e-mail I just sent out. I wanted to boost my readership so that I will have a reason for writing. Please comment once and a while so that I know you're reading. Love you all.

Gotta spend money to make satisfaction.

I had a craving for chinese food today.

It cost me 18 dollars.

It was infuriating, because it was worth every
penny.

I love Chicago Improv.

It's a place where anything can happen. Last night I went to see the Armando Diaz show and then a Q + A with 3033 that Jason Chin did for his podcast. All of that was great. But the "place where anything can happen" thing is that you never know who might show up at iO.




Yep, that's Jack McBrayer (30 Rock's Kenneth the Page) and Ike Barinholtz (Mad TV).

Jack was just on point in every scene and also as my friend Dan and I noted, really knew how to hang back and only get into a scene if he was needed.

Ike was another story. He seemed a little more "eager" to get on stage a lot and went pretty lowbrow pretty fast. I have no problem with lowbrow certainly, but much prefer intelligent lowbrow improv to doing big scenes about ballsacs just because the word ballsac is funny. Not that Ike did exactly that, but that was my main perception of him.

Anyhow it was an awesome show and the 3033 Q + A was really interesting.

4/2/09 Stats

Calories eaten:3168
Calories burned:3133

caloric deficit -55 calories.

Stats 3-31/4-1

This is for the purposes of keeping track of my caloric deficit and seeing how it matches up with weight loss.

Starting weight:378

BMR:3133 Calories

3/31:

Calories eaten: 2356
Calories burned: 3397
Deficit: 1041

4/1
Calories eaten:2955
Calories burned: 3544
Deficit: 589

Rays of light.

Somethings are looking up on the job front. If I get a full time job, I worry that I won't go back to school like I planned. But I think that I will, I'll just go part time.

I'm really sort of excited at the possibility of being a paralegal. It'll feel good to have a real career to compliment my dream goal of acting.