Running the Race of Life

ALWAYS SOMETHING TO DO

admin — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:22:01 +0000

Eight hours really aren’t enough time during a workday to get everything done. There’s always something else. Whether it’s another report or some keyword research, I have to save something for tomorrow. Which only adds to my workload because I’ll get more to do tomorrow as well. I could stay and work some overtime, but I wouldn’t get paid for that overtime. A lot of jobs will give you time and a half for overtime, but I’m working on salary so I get paid the same regardless of how many hours I put in. I want to do a good job, don’t get me wrong. And I strive to be professional. I don’t mind going out of my way to help out either. But I need a reason to go out of my way every single day. I’m not up for promotion or a raise any time soon. All I’d be doing by staying after my work day ends is taking time out from whatever else I have to be doing. I do have a life outside the office, though no boss wants to hear that. No one has said anything to me about anyway. Not yet at least, but it might be coming any day now. I’ve got my argument down pat though. I’ll be fine.

SEMANTICS

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:10:51 +0000

I don’t like the majority of Chicago condos I come across. Some of them are nice, but they’re mostly just like other apartments. If I’m going to own a place, it needs something to set it apart from other places. For example, a house is a house. It has foundations and room and it’s what you think of when you think of a home. But a condo has two or three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and whatever else. Sometimes, there’s a study or den, but you can find that in an apartment. No one stays in an apartment forever. At the most, it’s a few years and then you go find somewhere else to live. That’s the basic point of moving from apartment to apartment. A house means that you’re settling down. A condo isn’t the same. I know you might make a profit off a condo when you sell it in the end, but it’s not really your home. What makes it more special than an apartment in that same building? Sometimes, the rent of an apartment similar to a condo will be close to what you’d pay for a mortgage. So what’s the real difference? Is it just semantics?

SPORTING EVENT

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:23:58 +0000

I was not proud of having to file for bankruptcy, but people in town were reading about it like it was some type of sporting event. It was scary. Greenberg bankruptcy was the headline in the local paper, and it was the lead story on the local cable news as well and the local television and radio outlets. I was suddenly more famous than I wanted to be. It was really a problem. I had hoped to keep it quiet, but the media had dug the story out. Or rather, the story was fed to them by someone who wanted to do me further harm. I never wanted to file at all, but things just got beyond my control. I had no choice. If I didn’t file I would lose everything. Thirty years of hard work would go down the drain. It probably will anyway. Then there was Sarah, the news anchor at the television station. She kept badgering me to go on TV and become famous. When I reminded her that I was already famous, and that is why my bankruptcy filing was a story, she didn’t seem to get it. She literally was camping at my doorstep. The station had pulled an RV in front of my place and she was spending 24 hours a day there, waiting for me to come out. I stayed in most of the time, and was able to sneak out the cellar door once. But then they staked that door out, too.

UNBELIEVEABLE ARTIST

admin — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:21:55 +0000

My friend Hilary is really an unbelievable artist. Every time she shows me something else that she has done, I am amazed. Being a bit of an artist myself, I always tell her how jealous I am of her incredible skills. The funny thing is, that she does not even study art. She is in graduate school for math. Last time I was at her apartment, she showed me a sculpture she was working on. There were cutting tools lying all around her room, and a huge hunk of wood sitting in the middle of them. She told me that she was trying to make a bust of Bob Dylan. Most of her art is music centric, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. She has a really great poster of Jimi Hendrix that I absolutely love. I told her one time that I wanted to buy it from her, but she said that it was not for sale. I even offered to pay her to make me another one, but she said the first one was way too big of a pain in the butt to make another one. Another favorite of mine of her work is a pencil drawing she did of Jim Morrison. It is so lifelike that every time I look at it I wait to see him smile.

CHALLENGING DAY

admin — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:45:56 +0000

Today is going to be another one of those busy days. I’m trying to stay fairly calm about it but it’s a challenge right now. I’ll be working with some machine aluminum along with a few other materials. I really hope I can keep my thoughts on the job I have to do today, though. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. I can’t wait to get home later tonight because I need to get ready for a very magical evening out with a special someone! I finally got my crush interested in going out on a date with me! I hope I can maintain my energy today. I feel pretty exhausted. I’ve been putting in additional hours at work and I’ve had the stress of trying to make sure everything goes well with this date. I want it to be memorable. Right now I just feel like a nervous wreck. I think I’m still in shock that she actually said yes! I can’t remember the last time someone I really liked said yes! It almost doesn’t feel real. I’m just enjoying the feeling while it’s here because pretty soon I’ll be working with machine aluminum and my job is going to jolt me back to reality! Ha!

SPORTS TEAMS

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:09:31 +0000

I don’t really understand why sports teams have the names that they do. What exactly do Bulls or Cubs have to do with the city of Chicago? Or the New Orleans Hornets? I realize the Jazz used to play out of New Orleans and that made sense, but then they moved to Utah. At least, the Los Angeles Angels makes sense. Los Angeles is the city of angels after all. But before they were the California Angels, which doesn’t make as much sense, though the name does have nice ring to it. New York Knicks, I understand. Knicks is short for “knickerbockers,” which is a term for New Yorkers. Boston Celtics makes sense since they’re a lot of Irish living in Boston. Orlando Magic makes sense since Disney World is down there and Miami Heat is self-explanatory. The name I really hate is the Los Angeles Lakers. Are there even any lakes in Los Angeles? It’s right near the ocean. I know they were originally the Minneapolis Lakers and Minnesota is full of lakes, but I reserve the right to be annoyed. If I am a sports fan, then I have the right to criticize. It is my money and that of other fans who pays the players, coaches, referees, and more.

MOVING TO CHICAGO

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:45:29 +0000

My girlfriend has been thinking about moving to Chicago for a while now. Before she moved out of her first apartment, she was looking pretty closely in Chicago in the north side area. She finally settled on the Gold Coast after looking at all of the Chicago Neighborhoods, but ended up staying in the suburbs. She now lives about ten minutes away from work, which she loves, mostly because it saves her a bundle on gas. That and the commute is not at all as bad as it used to be for her, or how bad is it would be coming from Chicago. That is the big thing that kept her from living in the city. She hates coming down to see me as it is because of the construction, she would really loath making that commute everyday, five days a week, which I understand but she also wants me to think about moving in with her when my lease is up. However, I could not make that commute either and I hate the idea of living in the suburbs. I love the city way too much and I think I would go crazy living in a place where everything closes at nine o’clock.

NEGOTIATION

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:33:51 +0000

Temp staffing firms are the tools of Satan. Well, maybe not all of them. Maybe just the ones that I’ve gone through to get work. While it is nice to have someone who negotiates your salary and hours and everything for you, they also tend to take a nice chunk out of the money you make. I understand that’s how they get paid themselves, but sometimes they take too much. And you have to call and call and call them to get work. Sometimes, I’ve emailed them 8 times during a week just to get a response. The jobs they give me aren’t all that interesting. I’ve had stints in offices where I didn’t really understand what the business was but I got by just by making copies and sending faxes. I’ve worked in factories and have done customer service. Do you what customer service is? It’s getting on the phone with customers and getting yelled at because they don’t know what they’re doing with what they bought. And it’s always your fault that they don’t know what they’re doing and never their own fault. Do you understand why I get annoyed if a firm takes a slice out of my paycheck? I really earned that money.

GREAT AMERICAN BALLPARK

admin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:25:55 +0000

One of my favorite things about going to Cubs games is how suddenly every single person sitting around you is your new best friend and person to debate sports with. Last week I was at the game and ended up chatting the entire game with a guy who is from Chicago, but is now a Cincinnati bankruptcy lawyer. He was telling me all about how the Reds have such a nice stadium in Great American Ballpark, but that they really struggle to fill it since the team is so bad. He was saying how with Dusty Baker there now that there is a renewed sense of hope. We joked about remembering the same case for the Cubs when he first came to Chicago, and how disenchanted the city became with him. I told him I liked Dusty for the fact that he was a great motivator and was able to get the most out of his players, but that he was a terrible game day manager and that he could not manage a pitching staff to save his life. He agreed with me and added that he also did not like how he never got angry. We both agreed that sometimes a team needs a Lou Piniella type freak out.

AVID SPORTS FANS

admin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:17:42 +0000

It is really funny to see the different paths people take after college. One of my good friends from the journalism school took a totally different career path than I did after graduation. I sought out to become a journalist, and my friend Evan opted for law school. We had met our first year in the journalism school, and we hit it off when we realized we were both avid sports fans. We ended up taking all of our journalism classes together. He is now a Brooklyn Bankruptcy Attorney. It is really funny for me to think of him as a lawyer. To me he will always be the guy who would decide he had enough class in a given day and walk back home and not go to his next class, despite already being on campus for it. Our other friend Zack could never understand that. He always figured it was one thing to not want to go to campus to go to class, but he could not fathom already being on campus and not making the effort to go to class. Zack jokes all the time that Evan could have two meetings in a day with clients, but he will not go to the second one because he wants to go take a nap.