my snow day experience aka MY NATIONAL TV DEBUT!!!!

in case you've been living under a rock the past couple of days and haven't heard about the blizzard that IS chicago, please do your research prior to reading this blog entry... because this entry is devoted, in its entirety, to the SNOW DAY WE GOT ON WEDNESDAY. okay, granted, it wasnt a "snow day" in the traditional sense, as we were still working, but most people were working from home since it was a MESS out there on wednesday. i just went to the office because i live pretty close to the office and try to minimize the amount of time i work at home because, quite frankly, i dont like working at home.

anyway, wednesday looked like it was going to be a pretty mundane day, as there were essentially two people in the office (that i knew at least, and that was including me). of course, i should have KNOWN that wouldnt be the case since the other person in the office was only like one of my favorite people EVER.

if you remotely know me, you know i like to... dream big, if you will. my goals in life are to be the next oprah and copyright my smile. sigh. anyway, if you know me, you also know that i absolutely LOVE the camera... i totally eat it up. from my debut on romper room as a two-year-old, to my appearance in the audience on TRL, to getting my picture up on the Times Square digital screen, to getting interviewed for the Lakers fan cam in LA... well, let's just say, it takes a fair amount of shamelessness to have gotten some of these gigs.

anyway, our office is strategically located in one of the BEST areas of chicago (if i do say so, myself). among other things, we're right next to the NBC building. and thank GOD for that. i dont know if weather channel people would otherwise typically be taping right in front our BUILDING if we weren't right by the NBC building. who knows...and quite frankly, who cares?! i was DETERMINED to get on that camera, if it KILLED me. i mean, think about it. there were so FEW people traipsing about (i mean, when the city of chicago basically tells you to stay inside unless you absolutely HAVE to go outside, most people listen... clearly not me, but whatever) and there were QUITE a few news cameras... the odds were TOTALLY in my favorlkdsjflksdj!

i had my strategy all mapped out. and by strategy, i mean... well, just going up to the newscaster to get me an interview, thank you very much. scientific method and all that. thank goodness, my friend missy is such a good sport. haha. she totally waited out in the blizzardy winds while i stalked this weather channel man. i literally just walked up to him (well, what? he had a microphone!) and was like "so... are you guys interviewing people for tv?". he looked slightly blindsided (i guess people accosting him to get on tv doesnt happen very often...? whoops) but recuperated quite nicely and was like "why? you want to be on the show?" well, you dont have to ask me TWICE. duh. hahaha.

anyway, to make a long story short (believe me, this actually isnt the point of this whole story, ironically), it took a couple of tries to FINALLY get on camera (the mic stopped working, etc) but FINALLY, that third time was certainly a charm! in the midst of all these tries, i noticed a few people stopping on the street to ask him for a picture. which made me start to wonder just WHO i had actually accosted. anyway, do you guys know Jim Cantore? i hadnt heard of him, but i guess he's a pretty popular personality (hence, all the people stopping him on the street and all that). and there i was, trying to make small talk (to primarily distract myself from the cold) with questions like "so... how long have you been doing this... what show are you on... etc, etc". ugh. i really need to work on doing my research before deciding to accost reporters. duly noted... for next time.

ANYWAY, so finally, there i was, being interviewed for the weather channel by the one and only Jim Cantore. it was the BEST FIVE MINUTES EVER!!!! i knew the interview was going to be pretty quick, so i made sure to dump all my charm into every sentence i spoke. and you better believe i was flashing those pearly whites every two seconds. i even commended the city of chicago multiple times on how well they were doing cleaning up the streets and stuff (well, hey, it never hurts to get the city of chicago on your side and i was SERIOUS! i think this city is phenomenally efficient at cleaning up the city! i was shocked, personally). big ups, chicago, big UPS.

anyway, i was FREEZING after my interview so i jetsetted back into the office, while Jim (we're totes on a first name basis now) continued his reporting, so i didnt even say thank you for putting up with me and all that. im the most selfish person ever, i know. hahaha. but whatever. i get back to the office, share my little moment of glory with missy, and get back to work. well, a few minutes later, i was just taking a little break and doing a standard facebook perusal (you know, the usual) when i was SHOCKED to see that i had FIVE new friend requests (that isnt normal for me, considering i had JUST checked facebook like two hours ago... how much could change in two hours, really?). but wtf!! at first, i was like, "oh god, do i have a virus on my facebook account?" but then i proceeded to take the liberty of sending each of my five new friends a message asking how they found me on facebook. and omg, a few minutes later, the responses started filtering in and... you guessed it! they had ALL seen me on TV!!! nearly fainting doesnt even beGIN to describe my reaction. i mean, i guess i could have been more weirded out about the fact that i was on tv for like two seconds and that was all it took for them to find me on facebook but whatever. i like to look at the positive side of things... and MAN, these people were SO COMPLIMENTARY about my TV debut (um. can i just share... one guy said that i should be on the NEWSLkjflaksjd! (a DREAM OF MINE!)... another one called me OPRAH JUNIOR!Lkjfalksdj!... one guy was an old acquaintance from ohio state who randomly saw me while eating at a restaurant in texas!!)... well, it took literally NO time at ALL for me to get right on confirming them as my friends like right then and there.

sigh. so much for internet security. haha. and so much for humility. as i was sending messages back to them, you KNOW i was including a link to my blog for all the world to read! hahahah.

man, the day couldnt get any better. seriously! i was FLOATING on cloud nine by that point. anyway, so missy and i leave the office around 5 PM and she goes one way while i go to my bus stop. and who do i see, but good ol' Jim, my favorite weather channel news reporter that i simply couldnt get away from stalking earlier. hahaha. so while i was waiting for my bus to come, he was still taping. but then, he finished taping, so i FINALLY went up to him to give him a (very delayed, but better late than never!) thank you for letting me be interviewed. anyway, he was like the nicest person ever to me and told me i had such great energy or whatever in front of the camera today (well, that's all you really have to tell me for me to go off to cloud nine again. hahaha). anyway, long story short, we ended up grabbing a couple of drinks after his broadcast because it was his last day in chicago and, well, i should really just become a chicago ambassador or something. i love advertising this city and welcoming people to it.. Ambassador Christie. has such a nice ring to it, really. anyway...

it was all so very delightful and merry and Jim gave me some really great tips for getting on TV (well. okay, maybe it was more professionally phrased in terms of getting into broadcasting, but whatever. haha) and, well, it was all just such a grand self-confidence boost in terms of my future as the next Oprah. hahaha. anyway, ironically, that's STILL not the end of this tale. so we're walking towards michigan avenue, and the roads are like DESERTED and i needed my cab! anyway, so he sees one like across the street and he like hops, leaps, jumps over all these ginormous snow mounds (that's what happens when cleaning the roads/sidewalks involves shovelling the snow aside..) to grab me my cab. which was all very nice and all, except.. well, i CANT scale snowbanks like that! wtf. but he made it look so easy. so i was like, well, if he can do it, so can i, gosh darn it.

yeah, falser words were never spoken. i already have sensitive knees to begin with (they have been known to pop in and out of their sockets at free will) and last night was no exception. so yeah, in my grand attempt to scale one of those snowbanks, i totally felt that knee pop out of the socket and man, it was like a blinding sorta pain. but i barely knew this guy, so of course i just pasted my smile on as i got in my cab (politeness is my middle name, and all that. haha). it was only when i got home that i realized how much worse was the pain in my knee than has been the case before. maybe im just not as resilient as i had been in the past. or something like that. all i know is that i certainly had to take a darn day off work today to go scurrying about from urgent care clinic to urgent care clinic (MAN! the number of people that get sick/hurt in the course of one DAY is ridiculous!) to get my darn knee looked into.

anyway, thank GOD i was able to pretty quickly see a doctor at my second clinic and THANK GOD FOR MY PAIN MEDS! i am NOT a fan of taking medicine, but i have never been so grateful for medication in my life.

so. in conclusion. what a snow day. what a snow day indeed. i mean, what else is there left to say, really?

habitat and hammers, evil olive and battle scars

mmm how i love me my saturdays. this saturday was a little different than normal because a few weeks ago, kind of on a whim, i signed up to volunteer with habitat for humanity. sometimes i really do wonder what thoughts are going through my head with some of the decisions i make "on a whim". i feel like this happens more often than not. and quite frankly, i was more than a little anxious about what to expect with this project. why anxious, you ask?

when you include sentences like "I have never done [Habitat] before, nor am I the most "handy" person (ie: lifting heavy things, etc) but I would love to help out in any way possible." (straight outta my gmail, i swear) in emails to the project organizer, you really have to wonder what is going through that organizer's head as he is emailing you back. i mean, on the one hand, they do need people. on the other hand... if you cant lift heavy things, why in the world would you want to be volunteering for a project like habitat??

sigh. thankfully there are people in the world less judgmental than i, so i was delighted to hear back from the organizer indicating the project details. anyway, whatever, at the crack of dawn saturday morning, i was up and at 'em. okay, granted i was about ten minutes late and the last person to arrive at the meeting point (oops), so that didn't really add anything to the initial impressions i was bestowing upon the group but whatever. i am sorry, but 6:45 AM on a saturday? i actually kind of judge the others for NOT being late. haha juuust kidding.

anyway, it actually turned out to be pretty fun... yes, there was a lot of lifting (i have since learned about the dangers involved if if you have no sense of dimension and are hauling around long pieces of plywood with people standing around nearby... whoops) and hammering (oh GOD, the hammering. when they first handed me that hammer, not going to lie, i just kind of blankly looked at it), but at the end of the day, it actually WAS a fairly rewarding experience. maybe it wasn't necessarily the work that we did (although it WAS pretty spectac to see some before/after snapshots), but the habitat organizer also turned out to be one of the sweetest grandfatherly sorta men ive ever met. his eyes literally sparkled when he talked about the habitat projects he's worked on... and that, my friends, pretty much did it for me. haha. with that, this man TOTALLY reached Papa V status in my mind. hahaha. doesnt take much, apparently. (for those who don't know what "Papa V status" is, just think of any exponentially adorable person you have met in YOUR life, and that should pretty much suffice).

anyway, i turned down drinks with the group afterwards because i was totally falling asleep on the car ride home (no worries, i wasn't driving. obvi.) but THEN, one of my friends who i hadnt seen in AGES called me about going out later that night. and, while im a homebody/old soul at heart, i cant turn down a night out if it's more a REUNION than anything else. WHO are we kidding here. haha. so i take a napper when i get home, awaken feeling all refreshed and energized just thinking about the good karma i helped instill in the world from the day's events (haha just KIDDING, people), and start getting ready for this night out.

okay, so i lied. i wasnt exactly refreshed and energized... i was still kind of exhausted. but whatever. off to evil olive (a bar/club in wicker park... which plays FANTAST music, just SAYING) i went.

so there we all were, drinking, dancing, making merry, you know, the usual. anyway, i was delighted to have met one of my friends' friends who i self-designated my male twin in life (hmm. i was going to detail WHY he's my male twin but i actually forget the reasoning behind this oh-so-privileged designation. eh, oh well.) who informed me that he loves him some MJ. sigh. in an act of gusto, i decide to take the opportunity to make my way to the deejay to request a little MJ because im only like the nicest person ever (and, let's be honest, the dude said he would read my blog going forward. well, duh. you tell me THAT and OBVI ill do whatever you want... well, within reason.) when, out of the clear blue, some CHICK just took me OUT.

i was shellshocked. granted, it was all very accidental in nature (let's just say i was the victim of some really awful, flaily arms that this girl apparently called dance moves...), but STILL. she totally hit me smack in the MOUTH. and it. HURT. i actually lost feeling in my lip for a few minutes. it was all very touch and go for a while there ("a while" meaning like 2 minutes, because that's just about how long this whole tragedy played out).

anyway, in the midst of all this raucous (where she was apologizing profusely and i was kind of giving her My Look- more out of shock than out of anger... it was totally an accident), of course, of COURSE, the only thing i could think of was...i simply cant have these accidents happening if i want to copyright my smile at some point (another new years goal of mine. oh, have i not mentioned that one yet? whoops). yup. superficiality at its finest, people. but whatever. i mean, i was lucky to come outta there with a mere bloody lip! what if she'd knocked a couple of my teeth out?! heavens. i could've just said farewell to that new years goal right then and THERE. and we just can't have that happening, people.

anyway, i say all this when, sadly, very sadly, i wake up this morning and look in the mirror... and actually kind of admire that bloody lip of mine. i mean, i've NEVER had a broken bone or anything before! now, omg, my very own battle scar! hip hip hooray!

oh saturday. a roller coaster of a day, if you will. from helping to build houses for needy families to getting knocked out at a club... a study of contrasts if you will. story of my life.

the corner bakery guy and i, a love story

ah. corner bakery. have you guys ever been here before? id never heard of it until i moved to chicago, but i quickly fell in love with it. it's so COZY (and, weird as this may be, i LOVE the font that they use for their restaurant title. have i shared my love/natural attraction to fonts? anyway. this would be a standard case in point). the food isnt like the most amazing thing EVER, but it's certainly delicious enough for a regular day's lunch out. i never tire of it, at least.

my initial discovery of this place was because of the lunches i would eat here. however, after a couple of months, i realized that, if im going to be drinking coffee in the morning, i might as well come HERE instead of starbucks since it is just that much darn cheaper (and tastier!). i highly recommend their hazelnut coffee. delicious, even to me, and i am not a huge fan of the actual taste of coffee (which is exactly why starbucks coffee makes me want to gag each and everytime i choke that stuff down). granted, who knows if it's the actual taste of the corner bakery hazelnut coffee that i am advertising here... or the two packets of splenda that are drowning out the taste of everything with the deliciousness that can only be fake sugar... or the heaping mounds of cinnamon that i dump on top of the coffee to, well, drown out the taste of everything else in that cup. but i digress.

i began frequenting corner bakery even MORE regularly after i discovered the beauty of their "buy six cups of coffee, get the seventh free" cards. it's amazing how quickly you accumulate free coffees if you go here every morning before work and are religious about getting your cards stamped and all. talk about the deal of all deals, really.

of course, becoming a "regular" at this place was only inevitable. i mean, this place is like right across the street from my work. and the DEALS to be had (especially compared to starbucks...)... im a sucker what can i say. who knew that it would only get BETTER from here. i mean, dont get me wrong, i was totally content enough with my "buy six, get the seventh free" deals. what can be better than that?

try... free coffee... every. single. day.

see, this is the beauty of being an openly friendly person, i guess. so there's this one corner bakery guy that is always working the counter when i come in (because i obvi come in around the same time every morning since i have a regular daily routine). anyway, when i first started coming in, he would charge me for the coffee and then stamp stamp stamp my glorified card with gusto (sigh. he's so adorable and friendly and. well. pitter patter goes the heart for adorable, friendly people. you know. the usual. haha).

but then one morning (no different than any other morning), i come in and he's just like "medium coffee, right?" because, duh, im a regular and my order is NOT difficult. so i confirm this and he hands me my cup for coffee and i have my wallet all out ready to pay away, and he's just like "nah, dont worry about it." sigh. i was a little affronted because, if you know me, im all about fairness and paying my way through life and all that. but whatever. i was just like "aww! thank you SO MUCH!" (because who DOESN'T love a friendly thank you, really). so i was all about ready to traipse off with my totally free cup of coffee when i realized... this was the corner bakery guy's lucky DAY. today was the day that i had just happened to have baked cupcakes for my coworkers. so what do i do? i'm just like, "oh wait a second! here, because you gave ME coffee, im going to give YOU some cupcakes. do you have a plate?" hahaha. and that's right. i totally gave this guy cupcakes in exchange for coffee. talk about the BARTER SYSTEM COMING RIGHT BACK INTO CAPITALIST AMERICA!

well. i thought it would end there. i mean, i may drink coffee like it's water, but at the end of the day, it's NOT water and does cost money. but no. ever since that fine day... i have NEVER had to pay for a cup of coffee! GOD, i feel special. hahaha. i mean, it was a gradual progression, let's be honest. it started out with me being genuinely surprised when corner bakery guy would say i didnt have to pay for my coffee the first few times... then, this progressed to me taking my wallet out, but definitely just more for formality's sake because i mean, who are we kidding here (but i didnt want to seem GREEDY hello)... to, well, the point im at now, where he just hands me a cup as im walking in and i dont even bother taking my wallet out. in fact, i would be slightly offended if i DID have to take my wallet out, thank you very much.

hmm. is that weird? illegal, maybe? who knows.

even just last week, i went to corner bakery for the first time this new year to buy a coffee cake for my friend and tacked on a coffee to the order. i knew he was going to charge me for the coffee cake (i mean, HELLO, even I'M not that special), so i figured he'd just tack on the coffee on top of it, since a bill was already being generated (and since i hadnt been there in SO LONG). but no... free coffee it was AGAIN! okay. maybe it had something to do with the fact that i greeted him with, "WOW, i havent been here in so LONG, how ARE YOU?" hahahah but whatever. midwestern charm and all that.

sigh. how i love going to corner bakery now. it's all very scientific, really. because if i walk into corner bakery and DON'T see him working, i immediately start reevaluating my order. i mean, should i splurge and get a specialty beverage that morning (since i already KNOW i will have to be paying for coffee since this whole under-the-table is limited to him working the counter) or just stick with paying for a cup of coffee and actually USING those buy six, get the seventh free cards that are still sitting in my purse (since, OBVI, i haven't been using them as of late since i cant have HIM stamp these cards if he's ALREADY straight up GIVING me coffee. )? anyway. at least it gets my mind churning that early in the morning.

man, i hope he's working tomorrow morning. i dont want him to think im taking him for GRANTED, heaven forbid. and since im toting some baked goods to the office ANYWAY, im totally going to barter it up with him (just like in that initial free offering of the coffee) so that he realizes that i truly do appreciate his totally illegal shenanigans and am certainly NOT taking it for granted (well, kind of).

anyway, dont think i dont give credit where it's totally due. i was TOTALLY going to take a picture of corner bakery guy and post it in my blog to actively advertise him to my blog audience and subsequently, give him the link to my blog (it's not my fault if i HAPPEN to grab another blog follower in this whole love story of a process), but i figured that he may not actually WANT to be advertised for totally doing something illegal on a regular basis. hence the discreetness of this entry (note how i dont mention his name NOR the corner bakery location which i frequent... ahhh always a THINKER, that i am. haha).

sigh. the corner bakery guy and i. a love story if ever i heard one. HA.