The Day Prison Bait Didn't Work... kind of
Last Friday afternoon I went grocery shopping for the first time in a long time. It's what I do: I eat almost everything in this apartment and then, at the last possible moment, when I've run out of everything, then I go shopping. I have a real love/hate relationship with grocery shopping. If I was the only person in the grocery store, so that there was no one there to know that I prefer Cookie Crisp to Cheerioes (not really), or that I love frozen pizza and I hate fruit... then I would love the grocery shopping experience. I think, for the most part, I don't care what other people think of my shopping... but, today, I had to buy hand soap for my bathroom because I'm running out. Now, my mom has become allergic to about 97% of all handsoaps on the market... so I have to buy specific soaps unless I want to hear her bitch to me about there being no soap whenever she comes to my apartment (and, trust me, once was enough). So I've got this mauve-ish/pink handsoap thing that I stuck behind some other stuff in my cart, because this soap container screamed "momma's boy!" I finish my shopping, head out to my car, and the woman who checked me out at the register comes out to my car. The packing girl had forgotten to pack that one item... that one, particular item. So the register woman's waving the soap above her head "Excuse me, sir! Excuse me! You forgot this!"... and I'm like "please God, now is the time to take me," but I was not smote. I was simply handed some soap, thanked the woman, and put it in my trunk.
See, it's poop like the above that makes grocery shopping a crappy experience. But I do love the fact that, for the next week or two, when I say to myself "what's to eat?" I have an answer. And I've even got some "creative" (not really) ideas for a cream of mushroom/chicken/rice/green beans dinner that will simply be fabulous! And I also got some Hersey's Kisses with almonds because I like almonds now... and they're to die for, girl! Heavenly!
Alright, enough of that... Friday night I had a lengthy phone conversation catching up with Ken. As mentioned here before, he just finished ALS... which amounted to the same or similar levels of isolation from him that his being shipped to the Middle East offered. The good part was that I knew he wasn't being shot at... although, maybe I just don't know enough about ALS. Regardless, it had been a couple months, it seemed, since we had caught up and, as such, we had an epic conversation filled with 'Oh, I forgot to tell you...'s and 'did I ever mention?'s. In the 'fantastic news' file, it looks like he's going to come out to Chicago to see the opening of my writing five show "Sweet Pumpkin Pie and Other Niceties." The first show just happens to fall on the weekend of his leave... so he'll probably take 4 or 5 days and fly out here; hang out and shoot stuff; hit on all the women I know; see the show; and fly back. What a great visit that will be! (there's sarcasm in that sentence and I'm not sure why) But, I suppose some even better news to come out of this trip is that it will finally give me motivation to clean this cesspool of an apartment. (that was a little joke for the dearly departed Brandon Bartlett)
Last Saturday afternoon I spent going to the Create Jewelry store owned by one of my Conservatory classmates, Courtney (the one who may or may not have a boyfriend if you're following the comments sections from home). There I met another of my classmates, Jenny, and her sister-in-law Victoria. Now, I must admit, one of the reasons I did this was that I felt sorry for Jenny because she's only been in Chicago for two months and I didn't think she knew anybody here. But, it turns out, her brother and sister-in-law have been living here for at least five years... so I felt like kind of a douche. And I felt like even more of a douche because I showed up like fifteen minutes before Jenny and Victoria got there... and I had to just walk around and look at beads for fifteen minutes. And, even though the store has a cool ambiance... it's a small store. Fifteen minutes is a lot of time to kill when you're in a small space... regardless of the ambiance. But Jenny and Victoria arrived... and I couldn't help getting the feeling, in the back of my head, that Victoria and Courtney were thinking I was just doing this to try to hit on Jenny (or Courtney thinking I'm doing it to hit on her... which I could see her thinking). But, honestly, I wasn't. Jenny reminds me of Courtney McKay in her approach to life, and her constant state of excited bewilderment. It's that same thing that drove me nuts about Court, while making me love her at the same time... and I see it in Jenny. So I probably feel a lot closer to Jenny than I should, after only knowing her for about a month... but I do, in fact, already feel close to her. And so, basically, I just hung out for about an hour and a half/two hours while Jenny and her sister made some pretty kick ass earrings.
Sidenote: I saw a commercial today for USPS.com. It's the postal service's official website and they said that you could use it to get stamps, which intrigued me because the Walgreens where I get my stamps charges almost a full dollar more than the price of the stamps themselves. I've just been using it because I don't know where else to go to get stamps. I suppose I could find a post office... but shut up and stop making extra work for me! Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to order stamps directly so as not to get hosed whenever I need stamps. I went onto the website and looked up the prices and, yes, they sell stamps at face value... but they charge $1 shipping and handling! SHIPPING?! Aren't you the POSTAL SERVICE?!! Are you really going out of your way to get these stamps to me?! So, the bad news is that for 20 stamps, I'm not saving any money by using the actual post office... but for a roll of 100 stamps, the post office still only charges that $1 shipping charge. To me, that's one hell of a bargain. "Hmm... 20 stamps with a $1 charge or 5 times that amount for the same charge?" This isn't a Jeopardy question folks... this one is pretty straight-forward.
Speaking of straight, tonight was the last night of Mockupations! (Wait for it... it'll make sense in a minute) I was expecting to have a few people in the audience, so I was really looking forward to this show. The show was going pretty well, I thought, and I (personally) seemed to be getting a pretty good response from the audience. Then came the part of the show when I went into the audience. I had the great fortune of being able to sit next to Greg, who is one of the writers of the writing five show "Sweet Pumpkin Pie..." that opens in March. It was totally awesome that he was able to make it. He had told me that he was going to try to make it... and he did, obviously, so that's awesome! Also, across the aisle from me was Jenny, who had told me earlier at Create that she was going to try to make it to the show tonight, too. She also knows Katy in the cast, so I've been giving Jenny crap to come see the show for about three weeks now. So it was cool to be right next to people I knew in the audience... I actually felt comfortable in the audience (not that I don't normally... but I always worry that I'm going to be seated next to someone who hates the show or something, and it's going to throw me off). As I'm seated, looking around at the audience around me, I noticed the entire front row seemed to be very young looking, attractive young ladies. Daflos would later say something like "It looked like a prom threw up on our audience." Yeah, there was literally a row of prison bait at the show... and, by the time I went back on stage, I was able to pick out the fact that much of the laughs I was getting was of the young female variety. And in the back of my head, that evil thought floated around "You could probably seduce a few young ladies tonight, if you wanted to." And, to me, that's what being a rock star is all about. But, then again, the kind of person who would have sex with someone that they saw on stage is the kind of person that I would call a "skank"... and I would brand as such (if they were into branding). And I'm not really into skanks... so I ended up being happy that they were laughing, but kind of repulsed by their presence. It's weird how what we tell ourselves in our head can change how we view people... completely devoid of anything that they do. Maybe it's not weird... maybe it's sad. Yeah... it's probably sad that these young girls went to our show and laughed and what I thought was "skanks!" I think I need a punch in the bracket.
After the show, we went to Burton Place (yes, another bar) as a cast. The writers came with us and Katy and I were even able to drag Jenny with us. Jenny got me a hard cider, which I had never had from a bar (remember that time Sellers and I made some on accident? We're awesome). I stood around and talked to Jenny, mostly. She's originally from Florida, but has lived in New York (twice) and Los Angeles. She worked at NBC in New York as one of those people who gives tours... and she met her boyfriend while doing a Shakespeare tour. She was in Twelfth Night and played Viola and her boyfriend played Orsino (I'm sure they found it difficult to act the show... *gag*). And that's the other thing! Her boyfriend lived here before she moved... so not only does she have family here, she's also got a boyfriend here! What the shit?! I thought she was all by herself, trying to do this Second City thing, and I felt very akin to her... but she's just a big liar-pants. She is wearing the liar pants.