The 5-Mile 5K and Other News

I have had roughly no free time since I last wrote and the free time I did have has been going to things like sleeping and eating and if I wrote a blog about every microwaved quesadilla I've been eating, I'd lose the three readers that I have. (Ok, technically, the last time I wrote was tonight but that was a two sentence apology for being a bad blogger so I hardly think that counts).

Monday afternoon took me downtown for the first day of my internship where I helped out with the Youth Ensemble. The kids were a far cry from the ones I'd worked with during my time with MCT. These kids know their theatre. They undoubtedly know more than me and they're 10 years old!

I probably could have blogged on Tuesday since I had a bit of downtime but I didn't. Quite frankly, I can't remember what I did on Tuesday apart from returning to Metropolis Coffee and Jackalope Theatre. I went back to Metropolis because I was early to meet with Jackalope. I got a hot cocoa (still pretentious way of saying hot chocolate) but I got it in a to go cup, which was stupid because I sat there and drank it anyways. Unfortunately, I burnt my lip, really, really badly! It still hurts today!

Wednesday was a long, crazy day. The Tony N Tina cast are a bunch of troopers because they were at the theatre at 7 am to do promos for local television. I got there at 9 but it turned out to be a 12 hour work day for me because we did a show of Tony N Tina and immediately turned the space around to do a performance of We Gotta Bingo.

Thursday was a really crazy day for me. I started my first real day of office work with Lookingglass Theatre Company and it was press night for Tony N Tina's Wedding at CTW. This meant that my email inbox basically exploded while I was trying to be very professional at another new job (is it a job if they aren't paying me? I'm going to call it a job, it's work, after all). Press night was our largest audience by far and it's my job to make sure that everyone is happy which is a tall order since it's only been my job for about a week. Everyone in the cast/crew was freaking about one person in particular -- Chris Jones from the Chicago Tribune. Being the literal new kid on the block, I had no clue who he was but all of the Chicago theatre vets in the room (read everyone except me) were focused on impressing him. I was mainly focused on not royally messing up in general because it had been a really stressful day! The show was awesome. The large crowd meant that I had even more trash to pick up then usual but everyone had a great time.

P.S. The reviews are in and it's a hit! Read about it here.

I'm a little disappointed that my wonderful house management skills were not mentioned but maybe next time.

After all that, I got roughly four hours of sleep as Thursday became Friday but I lied at the start of this post, I used just a smidge of my free time on Friday to do some crafting. I've been decorating and my room is full of picture frames that are mainly pictures of me and Whitney on our various adventures but I decided that it was time to balance out all of the pictures of Whitney with pictures of people I actually like so I got resourceful and went to Pinterest. I wanted to do a project that my friend had sent me using an old picture frame and some twine but I didn't have those things, I did (and still do) have tons of cardboard though, I took advantage of that and Janell gave me some clothes pins and voila! It turned out better than I had hoped -- it really doesn't look like cardboard! And now I get to display all of my favorite people... and Whitney.

After doing my little craft, I hit the streets because I had to pick up my 5K RACE PACKET! The Mermaid 5K was on Saturday, October 1st. It was like one of the first things I put on my calendar after I moved here. I think I'd been here roughly four days when I found out about it and decided that I was doing it with Ms. Amanda Belscamper because once a mermaid, always a mermaid. The craziest part of picking up my 5K packet was not that they seemed to have absolutely no system for distributing the packets but that the packet included a flyer for my own show! Yup, right there behind my race badge and a temporary mermaid tattoo was a flyer for Tony N Tina's Wedding. Hopefully the good reviews combined with the non-stop promotion will mean that we have lots of sold out performances. We didn't have a sold out performance Friday night, but we'll see how things go.

Absolutely soaked.

And now, the Mermaid 5K update! I was so excited. Mandy was so excited. Mother Nature was so excited that she decided to give us weather that only mermaids could enjoy. Meaning rain. Lots of rain. It rained all freaking morning. I was an idiot and brought my backpack full of work stuff because I wasn't sure how much time I would have between the race and the show and it got soaked. My sweatshirt got soaked (and is still hanging out to dry). I'm saying that it was a 5-mile 5K because we basically walked half of the track to get to the starting point!

Mandy ran the race while I walked with her roommate Reagan and Reagan's friend from work, Kelly, but we all had time to take a selfie! (And get photobombed).

After the race, Mandy and I took a photo with some real mermaids! Just kidding, they were absolutely miserable looking actresses wearing mermaid tails and holding umbrellas so we cropped them out of the photo and captured our own mermaid amazingness.

Mermaids Take Chicago!

Perfect post race meal

We went out after the race for brunch to regain our strength (and warm up). We went to Elly's Diner which was delicious. I got the veggie benedict because it seemed like a great blend of protein, carbs and vegetables! And it came with hashbrowns and who doesn't love that.

Being soaked to the bone, I took an Uber back to my apartment where I warmed up just in time to go back out to work (and by the way, the sun was now shining!). After another successful show, I went home and got a good night's rest.

Today, I had a seriously lazy day off where I overate and took a nap. My third roommate, Mary, just finished bringing all of her stuff in (Don't worry, I helped) so now we can start getting ready for the housewarming/birthday party that we're having this Thursday!! So that's it for now! Thanks for reading.