I left work early today. It was nice taking the train with hardly anyone on it. Like clockwork, I always fall asleep on the train on my way home. Today I snored myself awake. The lady next to me moved to another seat. Hey, more room for me.

Apparently, this is crappy weather week in Chicago. I miss summer but I would rather have really cold temps and snow instead of this wind and rain.

Oddly enough, the Taco and Burrito Palace has really great cheeseburgers.

If I lived in a place like this, I would make it into a haunted house.

Alex and I met for coffee today at Julius Meinl. I like how therapeutic talking to a friend for a few hours can be.

The only things I purchased during my trip to New York were a pair of $5 earrings and a $20 dress. Thank god for sample sales. I've received so many compliments on the earrings and I love telling people they were so cheap......almost as much as I love telling people one of my silver necklaces is from my trip to Greece when it was actually from a trip to Target:)

My improv coach is giving our team comedy cash or funny bucks. (I like funny bucks better). It's to motivate us to branch out more and challenge ourselves. I'm excited to try something new in rehearsal. I think it's about time. I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable on stage and now I need to go the extra mile. Ok, now who wants to see me play an older southern woman like Blanche on Golden Girls? Eh? Eh?

Just another bus ride to work...

I have a plastic box at home where I keep a bunch of very important and sentimental items. It's mostly cards, wedding invitations, show flyers, letters, etc. I did find something that I totally forgot about. It was an old receipt with the phone number of the first guy I ever dated. Insert awwwwwwww sound here.

I'm still working on my novel and I have around 11,000 words. I got lazy and hardly wrote all weekend and I was afraid it would be hard to catch up but I wrote about 4,000 words today. Easier than I thought. Although I can't even imagine how many punctuation errors there are. Yiiiiikes.

Beautiful Horses was one of the teams that opened for us tonight. Both opening teams brought a great crowd and surprisingly, so did Claudia and I. There was a speech and debate team from Florida in town and they randomly found the Playground. They talked to us for a while after the show and well, I think Williams & Martinez now has a fan club:)

I taught a workshop today at the Playground. It was really interesting and a lot of fun; the group of people had totally different improv backgrounds, which I loved. Even though I've coached teams before I learned a lot about myself and what I need to work on, teaching wise. I used to be a lot quieter but now I side coach more. There were a couple people in the workshop who definitely needed side coaching, or maybe even a time out. After the workshop I took advanatge of the 70 degree weather and walked around Lincoln Park:)

I took my fancy camera out and went to the Gold Coast. Walking around the Rush/State area, I was the only one without a designer handbag or tiny dog. So I went a block or 2 east so I was away from all the swankiness and in a quieter area.

Oscar nominee Michael Shannon made an appearance at the ATC Theater. He told some stories and then everyone did some montages. It was Armando-esque. The stories were really interesting and weird. He is definitely one of the most intriguing actors I've ever seen.

Sunny and 50 degrees. Perfect!!

I signed up for NanoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. I have to write 50,000 words in a month and if I do, I receive a certificate and a feeling of accomplishment. I should be at 6000 today but I'm about 1000 short. You can write about whatever you want and in any genre you want. My novel is basically my life story but with names changed. I decided to call it In A Nutshell; it's a sarcastic title because it takes me at least 3 pages to tell just one tiny story. But I think the stories are pretty great.

I finally went to Kuma's Corner for the first time. Since I had never been I decided to go easy and get the Kuma's Original burger with cheddar, bacon and a fried egg. Best burger I've had in a long time; it definitely lives up to it's reputation. Ohhhhh man, it's a good thing I went to the gym the last 4 days.

Tonight was our 1 year anniversary for Williams & Martinez!! We had a great audience. A lot of friends came out to support us and our opening teams. And we had a really great show with some fun characters. Characters I need to play more often. And tonight reminded me why I moved here and how many supportive friends I have. So thanks Chicago:)

I stumbled across this house in Old Town tonight. After watching clips of scary movies last night, I was almost waiting for someone in a mask to appear in the window.

I watched Splatter Theater tonight at the Annoyance. It was awesome. A great cast; everyone was perfectly casted for their roles. I wasn't sure what to expect.........well, I knew there would be a lot of blood. The special effects were pretty great. Molly and Charley were hilarious and Ray as the murderer was so eerily calm. Very good qualities in a murderer.

It's always hard for me to stay out late on Friday nights since I had to wake up at 6am. Tonight I had drinks with Alex and Seth and by 9 I was a zombie. Not literally. That would've been cool though.

Love writes a letter and sends it to hate.
My vacation's ending.
I'm coming home late.
The weather was fine and the ocean was great
and I can't wait to see you again.
-The Avett Brothers

Hey fall, what up?

I like going to the movies by myself. I saw New York, I Love You and was so caught up in the romantic aspect of the movie that I walked about a mile in the rain. I suddenly came to and hopped on the bus home.

Thanks to Tyler Via a.k.a. Broadway for takin this pic of our Williams and Martinez show. Doesn't that guy in the front row look like he's having a great time?! (There were more people in the audience but they all sat in the back rows.)

This was the highlight of my day. Enough said.

I started off the the day by making my first trip to Hot Doug's. Oh man, it was more than worth it. I had the three chili wild boar sausage with dijonnaise and smoked gouda. Yes, it was amazing.


















And I finally dressed up for Halloween! In case you can't tell, I was Meg from Family Guy and I only spent $12 on the costume. Adal and his roommates had a party tonight and there were some fun costumes. It's interesting to see how clever improvisers can get.

I'm at the point where I love everything about Starbucks except their coffee.

I was fascinated by the man next to me on the train reading his book that was in Hebrew. Unfortunately, that did not come across in this picture.

There's a really short alley between Clark and Broadway near Diversey. A lot of people leave Ballys and use it as a short cut. I feel like walking that few extra hundred feet around the corner make a difference. Or that's what I tell myself. I never use the alley, mostly because it requires running across Clark St. through traffic. No thanks.