Seek and Destroy

This morning as I was ignoring my alarm clock, I was greeted fondly by Nuku, my little five-year-old tabby. I tend to sleep on my side, and she likes to crawl onto my hip and lie down my leg. It's a cute comfort, being fondly affected by my pet. I got a cat because I wanted something to take care of that was capable of returning my affection, and my Baby Girl loves me in spades. She's soft and cuddly and doesn't require much maintenance—scratch her ears, keep her food and water stocked and her litter box empty, and that's all she needs from me.

Living alone once more deprives her of some significant amount of attention, and hey, I can understand this. I worked 78 hours from Monday to Sunday last week, so even those hours I spent at home were spent asleep. To mollify her, I keep a window open for her to go out and play when I'm not around. She's mostly been an outdoor cat since I adopted her as a kitten, and she likes the big space to go out and play. Now that I live on an alley not far from some dumpsters, I've started getting presents.

At first it was a small rat. Perhaps it was a mangy mouse, I can't tell. At any rate, it could fit in the palm of my hand—or more importantly, it fit into a paper towel and then could be easily flushed. I was proud of her for being a good hunter. She's a cat, and cats are supposed to be good at that kind of thing. Besides, it's practical. Being an outdoor cat is not without an element of risk from vehicles, or perhaps another animal attacking her (this happened once as a kitten, and she's been terrified of other cats ever since). But if she can stalk, hunt, and kill, it makes me believe she's capable of keeping out of the way of a car's tire or successfully defending herself if she's attacked again.

A day or two after I flushed the first rat, I found another one in the same place—on the tile by my front door. "Good for her," I thought, "the city is trying to keep control of these pests, and here she is doing her part!" I admit dead things give me the jibblies, but Nuke had done her part and I had to do mine. The next day I found two of them.

This was enough for me for a while. I didn't want her to get in the habit of bringing something in every day. I'm glad she can hunt and kill vermin, but I don't want them in my home if they didn't start there. I shut off her access to the outside for a week, hoping the urge to kill would pass, and it did. After I let her out again, two weeks went by without incident.

Until this morning.

Living near Lake Michigan in Chicago means even the August nights frequently drop below 70 degrees. A steady, cool draft flowed over me as my favorite Stevie Ray Vaughan album transitioned me from dreams into waking. Hearing my alarms go off (yes, that's plural. I'm quite a heavy sleeper) cued my Baby Girl to jump in bed with me and curl up on my hip. When I was ready to rise, a couple of clicks with my tongue gave her fair warning that I was about to start moving, so she cleared off. I staggered out of my bedroom door and turned toward the closet for my dead rabbit.

Wait, what?

That's right, a rabbit. In the same spot Nuku leaves all her presents from the outside was her first kill too big to fit in the palm of my hand. She'd bagged herself a bunny at least half her body weight. The closest I've seen a rabbit to my home is a quarter-mile, but she got it home, through the window, and across my living room to my front door like my personal feline Santa Claws.

I'm glad I keep a handy supply of plastic bags, paper towels, and surface cleaners. To steel myself for having to touch a dead thing from the outside, I reminded myself of the Halloween episode of South Park when Stan's goldfish is killing people, dragging them inside, and Stan's mother is cleaning up the bodies ("My boy is a good boy! Such a good boy!).

I'm shutting that window for a while.

I Will Survive

I don't know who I am when I'm not busy. I've worked 47 hours from Monday to Thursday between the office and the bar, and with the Cubs playing home games 4 out of the 5 weekends in August, I'm gonna be so, so tired.

Also I started jogging a few times a week, which can be hard to find the time to do. I got those Perfect Pushup things to use, too. Mostly they're just okay, but it's cheaper than a gym membership and seeing them on the floor is a regular reminder that I can drop and do a few pushups while I'm thinking about it. I was gonna say drop and give me 20, but I still peter out before I get past 15. Maybe later.

So tired.

I paid off another credit card two weeks ago and still had a few bucks to spare for rent and such, so I increased regular payments on the rest of my cards by about 20% and I'm spending my cigarette money toward my credit card bills instead of on cigarettes. I smoke(d) about one pack every two days, so now instead I put an $8 payment on one of my credit cards three times a week.

I'm weary, but it feels good. Since I moved to Chicago, I've never worked this many hours to make this little money with this high a level of bills—but never have I made such significant progress. It goes to show that motivation and discipline are more important than income and resources.

I'm dedicated and I'm motivated to make more of myself and do better. I want to go to grad school, and though I know I won't be debt free by this time next year, I know that my credit is going to look better so that I can get the loans and/or scholarships I'm going to need.

Also I wanna look better naked. It's working.

And now it's time to throw some laundry into the dryers, put on some running shoes, and melt some more of my belly away before hosing myself down, passing out, dragging myself upright, riding the train, and working another 15 hours tomorrow.

But it's looking like I can sleep in Saturday and Sunday, so that's cool.

G'night.

Couldn't Stand the Weather

Two words I've heard lately that I never thought I'd hear after leaving Dallas are "Tornado Warning". Yet here we are, going through another bout of severe rainstorms with my Weatherbug chirping at me at least once a day with this very message.

They say April showers bring May flowers, but Chicago is about two months behind. I love my new apartment, though—no matter how many cats and dogs fall from the sky, the depth of my windows keep the rain on the correct side of my walls regardless of the strength of the wind. I love it.

Everyone here says this past winter was the worst they've lived through in many, many years (if not their whole lives). I didn't think it was that unbearable. I mean, we only hit temperatures above 80 this past week, but honestly it never bothered me. Perhaps in a few years when the novelty of the snow has worn off I'll sing a different tune. Until then, I'm content J Maybe if I'd lost some weight things would have been different.

In the meantime, I'm quite seriously contemplating graduate school again. It took me so long to get a job once I moved here, and longer still to get on my feet financially, I didn't audition last February as I would've liked. But as much as I adore the Chicago experience, I'm looking forward to trying again. A.R.T., U.C.L.A., and CalArts are my top three choices, with A.R.T. standing WAY out in front. Not only are they connected to Harvard, but they're the sister school of the Moscow Art Theatre. If I got in, I'd get a taste of Moscow once more, this time for a whole semester.

I've no idea if I'm going to be in good financial standing between now and then. I work two jobs as it is, and I'm trying to hammer out the technical aspects of my home-based voice-over work for even more cash. Perhaps it's in my future, but whether I get enough money in my pocket or not, I'm going for it. I can't stand the thought of another year passing me by without reaching for my dream. Reach it I may, fail I might do, but fear is something with which I am through.

So there :P

My Poor Brain

Work has been killing my eyes lately.

Currently our project is to enter all the data from June 25 to September 30^th of last year into the NEW database using reports pulled from the OLD database. This used to be easier, because when we started this job last October, we had the ability to have someone hand us reports covering whatever span we wanted. Now, nobody has access rights to use the old system, and just before they lost it, they pulled an entire year's worth of data in each report. Not a bad idea.

To me, this means I have to edit down these documents to only show the information we're supposed to enter. Tis quite tedious; one group we work with has 25 clients, and for one client alone it meant trimming a 4,000+ page document down to about 500, searching EVERY PAGE for the lines we need and deleting the rest. It gives me a daily headache, takes several hours, and the 30 people we have on staff can't do their work until I'm done with mine.

But it means LOTS of overtime J I'll take a few headaches if it means I can pay off a few things. And I can work from home, so I don't have to spend all those hours at the office—laying on my couch to get work done is quite lovely.

It's especially nice now that I have a clean apartment. I took advantage of the long weekend to clean like I've never cleaned before. When I moved in I had a few spiders in my place, but I couldn't find anything specifically to kill them. But I figured as long as they didn't bother me, I wouldn't bother them. I was sure having them around was getting rid of everything ELSE I would worry about if they were gone, but they started getting too big and bold. So I got some fumigators for the bedroom and bathroom, locked the cat in the closet, and got rid of them hopefully once and for all; once I cleaned that, I took care of the rest of the place with a fever that took eight hours or so to complete. I borrowed a drill as well, and hung just about everything I've ever wanted to hang. I've been here nearly five months, and my apartment finally looks like a home. I love it.

So now I'm off to fill my belly with a breakfast base to absorb the $12 buckets of beer at The Claddaugh Ring (a hell of a deal, since one beer is usually $6 around here) and watch the ©ubs game. They have a Sunday drink to offer, too.

Guess I'm done being productive for the weekend.

Within the Reach of My Arm

Bouncing is the second easiest job I ever had. The hardest decision I ever have to make is to sit or stand, everything else is pretty straight forward. Tonight was no exception.

The train home, however, was a mild pain in my ass.

The bar is 10 stops away from my home, which equals a ride of roughly 30 minutes, give or take. We closed up early tonight, so I was on the platform by 2:30, reading about Michael Corbitt and listening to a combination of my ipod's random selection and a Cubs fan arguing with a Sox fan over which was the better franchise.

A series of announcements told us that the train was delayed for two reasons. First, a fire had broken out on the tracks somewhere downtown. After we heard the trains were up and running again, we got a message that power was cut because two women had jumped (fallen?) onto the track at an earlier station. Thirty minutes later, a train came by and actually stopped in spite of its "Out of Service" banner. At least I had brought some entertainment to pass the time.

I turned the music down because I wanted to hear the baseball argument without getting involved. The rivalry between the Cubs and the Sox is one I find interesting as an outside observer. I'm happy when the Cubs win because it's good for business, but I have to agree with what I've heard—Cubs fans hate the Sox, but Sox fans just hate the Cubs fans. I'm not a fan of the Cubs fans myself, but only when they're drunk and out of control and it's my job to kick 'em out.

In this case, both men were rather drunk. Sox Fan was, of course, trashing the Cubs while praising the loyalty of their fans, all the while throwing insults preceded and followed by the phrase "No offense." It all seemed relatively rational until he called Cubs Fan a cocksucker.

CF was a big guy, about an inch taller than me and about as wide. SF was a little guy who knew he'd pushed too hard. He tried to apologize and offered his hand, but to no avail. CF eventually lifted SF up by his shirt and slammed him into the wall next to me. I felt it was time to intervene.

I inserted myself between them, trying to talk CF down, but nothing worked. SF kept apologizing, but that only made big fella angrier. We were attracting a crowd.

I said everything I could think of to make the guy back off: SF had apologized & was being stupid anyway; someone could call the police and he'd be arrested, and he'd have to wake up in a jail cell instead of a warm bed; none of it mattered to CF. He acted calmly enough, but kept pushing into me, trying to get past me, and wouldn't be sated until he had SF's blood drying on his knuckles.

I told SF to get out of there, and he did—left the platform entirely. Big guy kept pushing me, and now that there wasn't a target behind me, he'd chosen me instead. Rationalizing didn't work, so I tried a show of force and pushed back hard enough to let him know fighting me would be more trouble than it was worth. Caught off guard, off balance, and incredibly drunk, he fell backward into the wall that provides a (paltry) wind block in the middle of the platform.

Great. Now he's mad.

Finally another train showed up. I tried to tell him my argument with him was done and we could all just go home, but he wasn't having any. SF had wounded his pride with words, but I hurt him worse—knocking him into a wall hurt his pride and his body, and there was no way in Hell he was gonna let me go.

He never hit me, nor tried to. I suspect he's one of those "I don't start fights, I just finish 'em" kind of guys. That kind (I've noticed) does whatever possible to provoke the other guy into hitting him first, but if no one hits anyone, it turns into a standoff I witnessed in middle school a dozen times.

He did everything he could to block me from getting on to the train. When he stood in the doorway of one car, I moved into another, but he followed and stood over me as I sat down and ignored him. The conductor had seen us already, called CTA security up, and had us thrown off the train.

DAMN it.

Seeing the other man was the aggressor, the security made CF leave the platform with a threat of calling the police. By the time the next train came along, I had waited more than an hour. Instead of being home by 3:00, it was around 4:00 by the time I was nestled on my couch with the undying affection of my cat.

This whole experience leads me down two trains of thought. First, if the Cubs finally win, it'll be an amazing time to live in Chicago. It'll shake this town to its core. There will be celebrations, there may be riots, and I'll be in the middle of it all, honored to bear witness to the end of 100 years of dissatisfied die-hard fans. But it'll only sharpen the North/South Chicago rivalry that I tried, in my own small way, to quell earlier tonight.

They say no good deed goes unpunished. I could have stood back and failed to intervene, but I'm glad I acted as I did. I was bullied as a kid and never stood up for myself, because I was always bulled by a crowd of no less than four. Even worse was having the power to stop bullies from picking on smaller kids and me doing nothing to stop it. That Sox fan, though rude, was smaller by far than the man he was insulting, and didn't deserve the beating he was sure to get. That Cubs fan turned into nothing more than a bully, driven to fury by words alone and unwilling to listen to reason or honor an apology.

Had things gotten uglier I could have been hurt, arrested and charged, spending a night in a cage instead of a bed. As it happened, both men left the same platform, and reason dictates they may have run into each other again and the mess started over without me, my intervention meaningless. But the thought of being there and witnessing a bully take advantage of someone is something I will never abide. Sometimes the world will be this way and I won't be able to stop it.

But the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.

The Apartment Blog

I was two months in my new place before I could finally start unpacking. I didn't even get the chance until a few weeks ago, but by then I couldn't unpack because I had been promised a new apartment to make up for the maintenance issues I've had here.

Then I had the opportunity to actually see the place I was supposed to move into next—and I didn't like it. It's on the 10^th floor instead of the first, so there's a remarkable view of the lake, but the walls were so thin I could hear normal-voiced conversations through them. Hardwood floors meant I had to walk gingerly not to echo to my below neighbors, and I couldn't risk setting my speakers on the floor. It's a little bigger than my place, but the addition of a dining area breaks up the space more than I'd like (senseless since I have no dining table).

And perhaps the biggest turn off? Once my lease is up, I know for a fact that the new place isn't worth an extra $300 a month. The lake just ain't that pretty.

Where I am now, I don't share a wall with anyone—my closet and bathroom are along the laundry/storage room, my living and bedroom share with the lobby/mail room, and the other two walls go directly outside. I've never heard a neighbor, and no matter how loud I've had my stereo or how late at night, I've never been heard (or complained on, anyway). I never have to wait for an elevator; I have lots of air flow and sunlight opportunity since I'm in a corner apartment. And I bought a couple of bad ass barstools to go against my kitchen counter/table thingy. Pictures are coming once I find the cord that connects my camera to my computer. And maybe when I finish cleaning up.

My hole in the wall is finally, blessedly, starting to turn into a home. One of the pitfalls of a vintage building, however, is the lack of plaster walls—they're all concrete after about 1/8 of an inch, so I can't even hang a picture without a drill. Luckily I know someone willing to spot me one. Once my things are hung and I find a spot for all the crap that just doesn't seem to go anywhere else, I'll be settled somewhere I can be glad to come to every night.

All I need is time.

The Job Blog

Back in February I decided to bite the bullet and apply for a permanent position with the media company for which I'm currently temping. It was a little soul-crushing. I've come to enjoy working in an office environment, and found I can even excel in a way I didn't think I could. Being given a project to work on (or manage, as the case may occasionally be) and making sure it's done efficiently and accurately is something I came to appreciate. I went to bed every night with a satisfied sense of pride and accomplishment.

Nonetheless, working for media advertising is a machine I have no interest in perpetuating. I'm given a job to do and I do it very well, thank you, but I have no interest in the field. Indeed, it churns my stomach a little, the thought of trying to make people believe they need to spend money on things they neither need nor want. Yet with other job prospects falling through, I knew I needed a safety.

So a month ago, smiling, I put on my best suit, slicked my hair, and gave to four people one example after another why I'd be a tremendous asset to their company. And I would, too. Several folks I've worked with wrote letters of recommendation to the human resources department singing my praises (one of these was shown to me. I showed it to my parents, who hung it on their refrigerator. I was honored). Though the company never stated it during the process, I had been warned that a requirement for the position was a GPA of at least 2.75. I knew I was shy of that, having been a poor (though not unintelligent) student, but I believed the months I've spent working for this company would overshadow my work ethic of ten years ago. I was wrong.

A form letter of rejection came to my email a week ago (three weeks after the interviews, mind you). Speaking on the condition of anonymity, I was told that it was my GPA of 2.651 that eliminated any hope. I graduated college seven years ago, and have now spent seven months working closely with (and from time to time, saving the asses of) peoples within this company using my intelligence, work ethic and creativity on a daily basis. The man I am shares only a face with the boy I was (that and my taste in music), yet my troubled past follows me even today. Choices I once thought inconsequential have returned to haunt me long, long after I left my college days behind.

I'm not so upset at failing to get this particular job. I'm upset because I have repeatedly proved my worth. I have sacrificed more of myself and the things I hold most dear than I ever have before, all in the hopes of perpetuating my life in a new direction. An adult direction. I went through much pain and loss making certain I was a most worthy asset, and to them I work with directly, this has been witnessed and appreciated. I have been trusted above others to be efficient and accurate. But no matter the sacrifice, no matter the quality, speed, or professionalism I have embodied, a simple litmus test eliminated me with no regard to who I am today.

It is insulting.

I'm over it, though. I didn't want this job to begin with, and now that I've been guaranteed not to get it, I can say so out loud. What I need is a job at all, one that isn't likely to end in the foreseeable future, one that provides me with stability enough to pursue my career goals as an artist. What scares me is that I won't be able to find one, and it'll be because of who I used to be—not who I am.

So for now, I'm still a temp. It has its benefits—overtime pay, my own office with a 28^th floor view of downtown Chicago, the ability to watch TV or listen to music while I work. I'm also still bouncing in Wrigleyville whenever the Cubs are in town, so I have a solid fifty to seventy hours of work each week. My cat gets upset, but at least we have food on our table and a roof over our heads.

I guess the necessities are in place. Now it's time for the spice.