Kim’s Domain

So I just, for the second time, turned down a potential job for a VERY prestigious theatre company in Chicago. I did contemplate just saying I was interested and backing out of my summer commitment, but it doesn’t feel right to me to do that. And even though the opera company I’m working for this summer is small, the opera world itself is small. I just think it could come back to haunt me, even if it’s just a guilty conscience (which can be bad enough with me). I think I’m doing the right thing. Getting the chance to put PSM for opera on my resume and finally call two operas seems like excellent experience to me. And at least this theatre company sees that I’m working a lot and seemingly in demand, so that could increase my appeal. My roommate thinks they’ll stop me calling me because they’ll think I’m always busy. I did (which I hope didn’t appear desperate) tell them that I am available this fall after my summer gig is over, and that I hoped I’d get the chance to work with them. I guess we’ll see.

Tomorrow I will (hopefully) get around to uploading pictures from my Bostson/NYC trip, and possibly to writing an update on the experience. Tonight I have to do the dishes and perhaps turn in early, since I’ve been up since 4:45 CST.

And on a totally other note, we signed the lease on our new apartment tonight. Hurray! At least THAT agony is over. It’s a beautiful place, too, I can’t wait to move in.

So if anyone out there is actually reading this blog, I wouldn’t mind a comment or two on whether you think I made the right decision about the job I mentioned earlier. Ultimately I know the right decision is whatever decision I think is right and am most comfortable with, but I’d like to take a poll and see what other people might have done in my place. Just out of curiousity.

Yo, I’m in Boston (Bahston), fair city of the Car Talk bros.  Wicked.

I’ve never spent that much time in Boston, but I’ve always liked it.  Now that I’ve had a couple days to explore it in more depth, I REALLY like Boston.  And I’ve still got a few more days to spend here.

I landed at 10:30 Saturday morning after a wicked early flight.  Devon and Bil picked me up and took me straight to the Supreme Kitchen for some eats.  After a pick-me-up of coffee, OJ and bacon and eggs on a bagel, we went back to their place to drop off my stuff and give me a chance to freshen up.  Then we took the T to Park Street, where Bil changed to the green line to go to work and Devon and I got on the E train to the Prudential Center.  There we did a lot of browsing and found this fantastic store called Teavana.  They had free samples of hot and cold tea, and one of the sales lady showed us and let us smell many varieties of their tea.  It all looked and smelled amazing, and in the end we walked away with two ounces of Morrocan Mint each (my boyfriend is a big fan of Morrancan Mint tea, so I thought I’d bring him some back).  We then met up with our friend Taro (can you say Weathervane reunion?) and had dinner at Chilli Duck, an incredible Thai restaurant.  Taro and Devon had the Pad Thai, while I tried the yellow curry.  I’ve never been adventurous and ordered curry before, and I’m so glad I did.  It was DELICIOUS.

After dinner we said good-bye to Taro and took the T home to pick up Bil.  We all grabbed some warm clothes and headed up to New Hampshire to meet up with Nate.  (You guessed it, another Weathervaner.)    By this time it was 9, and by the time we got up to Littleton it was almost midnight, 16 degrees and Nate’s band was done playing.  We ended up going to party in Lancaster where this guy had carved out a sled path on his property.  A bunch of us grabbed inflatable tubes and made chains going down the path.  It was so much fun, but the second time we were doing one huge chain, and I slid off my tube and was sliding down on my a**.  So I yelled at the guy in front of me to let go of my legs so I could stop sliding and get off the path.  Unfortunately he let go and I stopped just in time to see the last two people in the chain heading right for me.  We all collided in a heap but managed to stop ourselves from sliding too far.  Not a scratch on me, just a fun story to tell.

Then Devon, Bil, Nate and I retired to Nate’s place and sat by the fireplace just chilling and catching up.  The next morning we were able to see the surroundings, and it was breathtaking.  The mountains in the distance and all the world still and covered in snow.  New Hampshire really is a beautiful state.  I wish it weren’t so far away from Chicago, I’d go back there this summer in a heart beat.

Devon, Bil and I drove back to Sommerville at 9:30 so Devon could get to work by 1.  Bill and I checked out the Harvard campus, meaning right afterword to head downtown and watch the St. Patty’s Day parade.  Instead, we saw a flyer for a second annual anti-war protest in Boston Commons and decided to check that out instead.  I took a whole bunch of pictures and even a movie with my digital.  There were a couple hundred people, many with signs and banners.  One guy even dressed up as a bomb with Bush’s face on it, the eyes cut out so the wearer could see.  I’ll get these photos uploaded in an album soon so you can check them out.

Bil and I got hungry, so we got lunch at the food court downtown and then headed to DSW and Payless for some shoe shopping.  After our successful endevours there we headed back to Hahvad Squah to check out Planet Aid, a cool thrift store that gives its proceeds to charities around the world.  By this time we were exhausted and headed back home to crash.  When Devon got home from work, we head to Davis Square to have dinner at Diesel Cafe.  The place is huge and really cute.  It’s got all different kinds of seating areas, from couches to regular cafe tables to a large island table in the back.  It also has two pool tables, and we shot a couple rounds before callling it a night.

And this is just the first couple days of my trip!

So as I was writing my long treatise on my current apartment search and how insane it has been, my computer did something it hasn’t done for a really long time.

It crashed.

So, following is a reconstructed version of what I’m sure would have been a brilliant and insightful post.

What are we thinking?

My roommates and I have almost nothing in common in terms of what we’re looking for in an apartment. So naturally we thought it would be a great idea for the three of us to get an apartment together. I don’t remember apartment searches ever being this hard.

We have seen countless apartments, and only one has made our hearts beat faster. Unfortunately, it happens to be located in an area that has very difficult street parking after 6 pm. And all three of us working in the arts and often working evenings, this is not an ideal situation.

So, the search continutes. Last night we went to one of those apartment hunting places that finds out what your criteria is and drives you around to see different places. Unfortunately, we got placed with an agent who appeared to be on his second day on the job. He didn’t know how to use the company database effectively, he didn’t know very much about any of the apartments his company was showing, and he just didn’t understand that we’re under a time crunch and have very little time to view apartments all together, since we have conflicting schedules. We were so excited to go somewhere where people would do the work for us and were sure we’d see something we hadn’t seen before; needless to say our actual experience was a big disappointment. We didn’t look at a single apartment, but spent an hour going through large numbers of apartments in the database, finding nothing that really excited us. Finally, this guy’s co-worker across the aisle stepped in with some helpful ideas and suggested we give them a chance to put together some apartments for us and come back later.

This is exactly what we didn’t want to do, since we don’t have any more time to look at apartments together before I go out of town for 10 days.

But we agreed and made an appointment. I don’t know if we’ll keep it, we’re so frustrated with these people. To be fair, we are not easy customers. If it truly was that guy’s second day on the job, I feel sorry for him getting clients like us. We can’t always agree all the time on what we want and have a tendency to argue over what we think is best course of action. So this guy had his hands full with us. Nevertheless, he’s in the service industry and we were not happy with our service.

Today the goal is to search around the area where we found the apartment we’re happy with and see if anyone has any parking spots for sale. We have appointments to see more places tonight and tomorrow night. The good thing is that no matter how frustrated we are at the end of one night, we always wake up the next day hopeful and confident that we’ll find something we like. It’s almost a metaphor for the human condition. Or maybe I’m full of s*&#.

Ah, the apartment search.

So the beloved Brown Line that I live off of is going to be under construction starting…I don’t know soon I guess. The entire line. So do we take a chance and live off the Brown Line knowing that certain stops will be closed for large amounts of time and we’ll have to deal with the buses? Or do we switch to the Blue Line?

We’re looking at I think four different apartments tonight, and hopefully more tomorrow night. Two are in Wicker Park, one is out in some neighborhood I’m not sure what to call, and one is still close to Lincoln Square. I guess we’ll see how it goes. As long as we eventually end up with decent street parking and a dishwasher, we’ll be happy!

p.s. If anyone is interested in a two bedroom in Lincoln Square, ours will be available May 1. E-mail me on Friendster and I can give you our landlord’s contact info.

Ohmigosh. I went to the most amazing sushi restaurant with my roommate, my roommate’s friend and her boyfriend. It’s called Tano Shii and it’s on Clark in Edgewater. We ordered the chef’s special, which isn’t on the menu, and basically means the chef asks you questions about what you like and creates something special for you on the spot. We got 4 orders, each one delicious, creative, beautiful and nothing I would have dreamed up. Then after the four orders, he gave us one more on the house! (Jesse and I have had excellent luck this week getting free food!) My favorite orders were the first two and the very last. In the first two, we had yellowtail tuna with avocado and pesto (avocado was a theme tonight, every order we had came with avocado…heaven!) and the second was a warm dish, eel with mango and avocado and something fried. Who knew eel could be so delicious? The last dish had tuna, crab and a plum sauce on top. Also excellent was the salsa he made with tuna, roe, tomatoes, onions, avocado (of course) and cilantro, served with fried pita.

On another note, my good friend Jon from good old NU got engaged last night. Holy crap. As he put so eloquently to me, did I ever imagine 9 years ago when we were making out on his bunk bed in Shepard Residence Hall that I would be at his engagement party? Nope. No idea. And that now makes two of my friends from college that have gotten engaged in the last couple weeks. And so it begins…

Well, I finally did it. I am a red head.

I’ve always been envious of red heads, except for the whole freckle thing. But I’ve got the next best thing - artificially red hair!

I’ve had the new hair (dyed, by the way, not a wig, in case you were wondering) for just over 3 days now, and already I’ve noticed people giving me looks that I’ve never gotten before. And Thursday night when out with a couple friends we scored free dessert! Maybe it wasn’t a red hair discount, but I like to think it was. The only downside to this whole thing is that I have to extra careful about what colors I wear. Shirts that look fine with brown and, most recently, blond hair don’t necessarily go with the new do. But it’s a small price to pay.

Anyway, welcome to my new blog. I’ve been resisting starting one, but now that my friends are all spread across the country and the world, I figured this will be a good way for people to keep up with what I’m doing. At least, those who will care enough to read it.

Since I just started this blog there are no pictures yet, but hopefully within the next week I’ll start posting pictures so that those of you not in Chicago can see my roommate, my boyfriend, and my new apartment I’ll be moving into in May…although I don’t know where it will be yet, but you’ll know when I do!