gobble gobble (for real this time!)

happy thanksgiving! or, for those of you who don't celebrate this holiday, happy thursday! :-)

i won't bore y'all with a list of who/what i'm thankful for this year, primarily b/c said list would be way too long to type out right now. i woke up this morning and started thinking about a quarterly list of thankfulness, and even that's kind of insane. so, here are a few of the people and things i'm thankful for, in no particular order:

--the amazing folks who helped me move out of casa de eulalia

--friends who've offered up their couches/futons/air mattresses so i have somewhere to crash

--bff, for so many things. it's not her birthday, but i could definitely write another post about our friendship and how grateful i am for her.

--everyone who's donated , either online or offline. i've been blown away by y'all's generosity.

--the friends who, while casa de eulalia still had a physical presence, were more than ok with coming over to hang out on the cheap.

--anyone and everyone who's subsidized food and/or drinking outings in the past few months. thanks for making sure i don't starve to death and for keeping my alcohol tolerance at a steady level.

i feel like i'm forgetting someone or something, so i should probably stop here. this was meant to be a partial list, anyway.

enjoy your day! :-)

supply vs. demand: the food pantry edition

(o hai! as you can see, i do indeed have internet access while at bff's this week, albeit on a limited basis. i'm enjoying it while i can - which means you get to read a new post. woo!)

anyway...i was just reading this article about food pantries in the area and how they're unable to meet the growing demand of folks who need assistance. i've tried to support local food/clothing pantries whenever i can, even during my recent turmoil. and here i am being thankful once again, this time for not (yet) having to visit a food pantry for basic supplies. yeah, i don't have a kitchen to call my own right now, but i can still buy food, so, yay. ok, technically yayboo, but you get my drift.

here's what i'd like from y'all. find a food pantry in your area and make a donation. food, clothing, money - whatever you're able to give. i know that sounds a bit weird, given my usual plea for donations these days, but i also know that there are people out there who aren't as relatively lucky/blessed/etc. as i am right now, and that's not something i want to lose sight of.

kthxbai.

gobble gobble in advance

i'll be hanging out with bff for a week starting tomorrow afternoon. woo! my 'net access might be a bit limited, though, so don't be surprised or alarmed if i don't post updates here or on my other site in a timely fashion. same goes for responding to emails and posting/responding to tweets.

that said, i'll wish y'all a happy thanksgiving now. contrary to what some folks may believe, i have all sorts of things to be thankful for this year. i'll spare you the details, but i am truly happy/thankful/grateful for everyone and everything positive in my life.

i reserve the right to edit or delete this post if i am indeed able to haz somewhat regular access to teh interwebz, though. just sayin'.

louis vs. rick

do you have a cat? do you know someone who has a cat? do you like silly internet humor?

behold, your new favorite thing: the story of a man who taught his cat to use instant messaging.

it's as silly and hilarious as it sounds. of course, we all know my sense of humor is slightly warped, so you might not find it as funny as i did. apologies in advance if you feel your time was wasted.

i love chicago.

this shouldn't be a newsflash to anyone, but i really do love it here. i was leaving a staged reading at the goodman tonight and in the few blocks it took me to walk to the bus stop, i fell in love with chicago all over again. seriously. i damn near wanted to hug the city. yes, i know that's impossible, but that's how i felt.

therefore, it is your job to remind me of how much i love chicago when it's the middle of winter and i'm bitching about the never-ending cold and/or thundersnow. kthx. :P

this is so very true sometimes

(via sjb)

midweek update

i just typed out the title and realized that this is periously close to a mid-month update. yikes.

applied for 34 jobs so far this week. made a couple of calls about potential referrals for housing; nothing solid as of yet, but i am now in possession of a multi-page list of agencies that could maybe possibly be of assistance. paid my cell phone bill and my life insurance bill. almost finished my quota of state-mandated volunteer hours. made dinner for the friends i'm currently staying with. saw some of y'all this past weekend. will probably see a few (if not more) of y'all within the next week or so. yay friendship and all that.

can i tell you guys something that you probably already know? i miss having my own apartment. this is not a new revelation, obviously, but it really hit me earlier today. it's not that i'm not grateful for the friends who are letting me sleep on their couch (and the other friends who've pretty much guaranteed my housing situation for the rest of november), b/c i am. really. honestly. i can't say enough about how thankful i am about that.

but i really miss having my own apartment. i had a really intense dream last night and for a brief moment when i woke up this morning, i wanted to call one of the people involved in said dream and invite them over to hang out. but i didn't. i couldn't. i can't. and that makes me...well, a bit sad. i really want to have a place of my own (or even a stable roommate situation) by the time my birthday rolls around. i honestly don't know how long i can keep living out of 3 bags (four, if you count my stash of library books) and bouncing around from couch to couch.

i'm sorry. i don't mean to complain about things, b/c i know shit could be a lot worse than it is. but i'd also be a big fat liar if i pretended that i don't get bitchsmacked by the reality of it all every now and then. b/c i do, and today happened to be one of those days. (also, i just finished watching last night's episode of "parenthood" and my emotions are all over the gotdamn place.)

so, yeah. that's what's been going on with me so far this week. how the hell are y'all?

so simple, and yet...

i've identified 2 goals for november:

1) get a job; and

2) find a place to live.

obviously the first goal has been on my list for quite some time now. the 2nd one is a more recent addition, but that doesn't make it any less urgent.

these sound fairly straightforward, right? if you've been reading this blog (or my other blog) for any amount of time, though, then you know that finding a job isn't as easy as i'd like it to be. as for finding a place to live...well, let's just say that whole process will go a lot smoother once i have something that resembles an income.

but i'm working on it. i've applied for 6 jobs so far this month (yes, i know the month just started yesterday), there's a couple of potential freelance gigs on the horizon, and the contact i mentioned in my post last thursday will hopefully be able to put me in touch with someone who knows someone who might be hiring, so we'll see.

as for housing...right now i'm just happy for the fact that i pretty much have this month covered w/r/t places to sleep. i have some potential agency referrals that i'll be following up on within the next week or so; fingers crossed that something feasible comes out of that process.

here's to a (hopefully) productive november!