Oh snap, it's May

January is a poor time to restart your life in Chicago, primarily because it's too damn cold to want to do anything but bundle oneself up under covers and curse oneself for ever leaving sunny North Carolina.

May is better. May is the start of Chicago summer. And that means farmers markets, music festivals, walks along the lake, swimming, sunshine, flowers, puppies!, suger, spice, everything wonderful. With warmth comes new adventures, new birth, new...blah blah blah.

Who am I kidding. I'm restarting this blog so I can get an extra entry into the givaway competition at fantabulouslyfrugal.com, a saweeet blog about discounts that I found a few days ago while trolling the internet for cheap purses.

Any site that gives information on both sweet online shopping deals for cheap AND ways to get free chicken from KFC is a website after my own heart. But not only does fantabulouslyfrugal do that, the site is also having 31 Days of Giveaways -- everything from Indian literature (Interpreter of Maladies, what what!) to itunes gift certificates to super pretty delicate little Bumble Beadz scrabble tile necklaces.

And the scrabble necklace tile WILL BE MINE.

So yeah. Fantabulouslyfrugal.com. A seriously fantabulous blog. Check it out.

Fast Forward

By day 15, the process of actually living my life had officially gotten in the way of writing about it. I hate it when that happens.

But the rest of my time before I started work passed reasonably well even without the gimmick of writing about it. Wandering through the Sonoran desert, crashing tech blog hotel parties, exploring my new old city. And then starting work, with all the new people, conversations, thoughts, bars, and experiences that naturally accompany such a change. Life was alright.

But now it's the new year. And the newness of life as a yopro (if that's not a word it totally should be) is starting to wear off. I'm getting restless. My mind drifts, my eyes wander, and the process of thinking of new games and tricks to play on myself as I force life and excitement into my days begins again.

So stay tuned...

Day 12 - 14

The weekend Alex visited.

Day 12 was impressionist art and deep dish pizza;
Day 13 whirling dervishes, millenium park picnics, military mothers, and couch passing outness;
Day 14 was cubs clinching first place, the birthday of my lil sis, and irrational indecisiveness.

Day 11

The content of Day 11 was mostly lost in a haze of popcorn, vodka, and that pine-orange banana juice. The highlight was the valuable discovery of the glory that is House.

Second day in a row where the friends were good, but the television shows were better. I should really work on that.

Day 10

There are not two, but FIVE seasons of Hercules the Legendary Journeys on DVD.

Count em.

Five!

Day 9

"Don't worry, you'll be ok"
-My mom, upon hearing that I was going to hanging out with my friend Sammy and her boyfriend, in an attempt to reassure me that the fact that I am currently single when most of my friends are in relationships in no way means I am going to die alone.

Days 7 and 8

-Day 7 was beer and Bring It On and conversations about family and life and death.
-Day 8 was wine and french bistros and conversations about love and marriage and friendship.

Both nights were spent with high school friends from the days of yore. In my hurry to start fresh and build a new life and cut all my superfluous youthful ties, it's easy to try to forget how valuable old friends actually are. The ones who may not match up perfectly with who you are right now, but who were always there for you when you needed them then. Cutting through all the converational getting to know you bullshit and spending nights talking about things that actually matter is...nice.