WhistlinDixie

Settling In

Well, I am finishing my move into my apartment here in ChiTown. I am about a twenty minute drive from work, which is a huge improvement from the fifty plus minutes that it took to travel between work and Stephanie’s during rush hour. We actually got a great deal on this room. It normally costs two grand a month, but we got it for 900. The only trade off is that I don’t get room service (boo hoo). If you were wondering, room service does not cost $1,100. A lot of that discount is because of the apartment hunting agency that we booked through.

Westmont, the ‘burb that my apartment is in, seemed pretty nice when I first got here. When I went out for groceries last night, I about peed myself. Just up the road are dealers for BMW, Lexus, Mitsubishi, and Porsche, to name a few! The real accomplishment last night was just getting groceries and getting all of my stuff off of my bed (and onto the floor) so I could sleep. One way that I have found to help with getting up at 6:15 is to just convert it to EDT, so I think of it as 7:15. So, I am actually getting to sleep in. (I awoke at 7:00 every weekday while I was at school). The trade off has been going to sleep when the clock reads 9:00. Make me feel like a kid again, just not the way that I had always hoped to experience it.

Work has been interesting. First day I must have walked three miles in brand new dress shoes. My feet are still recovering. I finally got my ID number today, so I can request permissions tomorrow. Without permissions, I cannot log on to any of the computers. I should get them Friday or so. Until then, I have been having some of the other guys log me in with their accounts. The past two days, I have been working on a redesign of the internal website for CACH. I finished it up before I left today, so it should be posted soon. What I get to do tomorrow, who knows. I just hope I remember my lunch this time.

If you want to hear more, talk, whatever, IM me or call me. (OK, so maybe calling will be a little difficult, since I have received no requests for my number. Maybe all have you have been calling my parents. Just call, I get lonely.)

Updates

OK, hunting done. I’ll be staying at Stephanie’s this weekend and moving into my "studio apartment" on Monday evening or Tuesday. I also got my new cell phone today. If you want my number, email me or call my parents. Once I move in to my apartment, I will have internet access, but I will not have access until then. Feel free to visit me. The trip is long, but pretty simple.  Already sounds like CJ will be making the trip sometime.

In other news, the trip to Mme’s is starting to come to fruition. It now has a finalized date (July 29-31), which is a welcome advance. It sounds like everyone will drive up to Flint, where I will give them a brief tour of campus. We’ll take off for Linda’s in Lansing and spend the night there. We’ll travel to Mme’s on Saturday and spend the day and night there. Then, on Sunday, we’ll drive back to Flint, drop me off, and go back home. If you are interested in a more accurate itinerary, talk to CJ, the mastermind behind the trip.

Goodbyes

I’ll be leaving around 3:00 this afternoon for my big trip to Chicago. We’ll be apartment hunting tomorrow and my parents will be driving home on Sunday. If we are unable to find an apartment over the weekend, I am going to stay with my second cousin (I think), Stephanie, and her husband Jason until I can find something. They live about fifteen minutes from the hub, so the drive will not be bad. The one catch is that they have a two year old and a three month old, both boys.

Once I get there, I don’t know if I’ll have any way to access the internet. Therefore, emails probably won’t be the best way to communicate. Once I get a consistent connection, I’ll post it here so you can know that I am "contactable" again. Who knows, maybe I’ll even show up on AIM and Messenger again. I’ll also be getting a real cell phone sometime next week, so you can actually call me if you feel like it. It’ll have free nights (9pm-7am) and weekends too. If you want my number, email me and I’ll get it to you as soon as I get it. That is, of course, if I can connect to the internet. Anyway, I’m packing up my computer now, so see you in a while.

ChicagoLand Ho!

Just got the callback from UPS. I am now an employee of theirs and will be starting on Monday. That means that I will get to rush and pack my stuff so we can go apartment hunting over the weekend. Not only that, but it looks like an entire wardrobe restructuring will occur on Wednesday so I have the clothes that are appropriate for the job. (Shirt and tie, anyone?) I’ll be in ChiTown until mid-June when the work term ends. Then, it’s family vacation time. Then I get something like two weeks downtime before I go back to school. I don’t think that my life will be boring anytime soon.

I’m Back

I think over the past two days that I have seen almost all of ChicagoLand. The North Suburbs, West Suburbs, South Suburbs, East Suburbs, Downtown, I caught glimpses of them all. Paid almost $5 in toll to see them, too. The interview went well, but I won’t find out if I’ve been hired until Monday of Tuesday. All I have to say is that if you plan on going to ChicagoLand, make sure that you get maps with good detail (ie, maximum magnification from MapQuest or some other online service). We forgot to do that for the route between CACH (Chicago Area Consolidated Hub) and our hotel, so a five minute drive turned into a half hour one in which we drove by our hotel twice without noticing. Drove almost every interstate around ChicagoLand while we were there, too: I-94, I-90, I-294 (toll), I-290, I-55, I-80 (missed I-355 (toll), I-80 (toll), I-57). I got to meet some relatives while I was there, also. My dad’s uncle, Ruben, and his cousin’s daughter, Stephanie, were supposedly close together, according to my grandma. Instead, they were a forty minute drive from each other. Can’t blame her too much, though, since she has never been to ChicagoLand in her life.

Brian’s surgery went well. The doctor said that it usually takes about twenty minutes to remove some torn meniscus, but it took him closer to forty five minutes to finish up on Brian since he had a discoid meniscus and he couldn’t get it to come out. Instead, it kept slipping out of his gripper and floating back into Brian’s knee. He said that it was the most challenging surgery that he has had in a while. Brian was never one to make things easy for anyone, so this didn’t surprise me much.