Sorry to do this here, but it's necessary.

I'm cleansing. Bear with me.


OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

These are the certainties of my life for which I have become extremely aware. If you are a friend of mine, you will nod to one, many, or all of these things. I'm not happy with the way my life is going, and I recognize the following truths:

-I am a terrible friend. See rest of list for details.

-I do not allocate my time in a way that is fit to allow for the return of phone calls, party invitations, or hangout time. The best way I've found to handle this is to work in groups of people.

-I cannot, for the life of me, balance everything I want to do.

-Because of this lack of balance, I try to do everything and fail at most things I attempt, while only barely succeeding in a few. I tend to prioritize these things ahead of my friends, and ahead of time for myself.

-Despite how well I fake it, I do not have my shit together. I'm working on it, but my relationships with those important to me (you all) are taking the toll, and have been for some time.

Why would I post such a personal thing here? Well, for the most part, for therapeutic value.

If you're reading this, it means I have had some significant interaction with you that has had a strong bearing on my life to this point, whether that interaction is still going today is irrelevant. You being able to see this message is my note of thanks to you for helping sculpt the positive points of my life to where it is today.

Now, this should also not be taken as a cry for help. I am not trying to get sympathy or "get well soon" cards. This is simply what it is, an announcement so that you all know that I'm about to completely overhaul my life, and I'm not sure where I'm going to turn out.

Ulitmately, this is also a public apology for all of you whom I've irritated by not keeping in touch or spending enough time with you; I've certainly destroyed enough amazing potential friendships this way. While I can't promise it will change, I can promise that I still will do what I can, when I can.

Mind the gap.

Remember when I ordered pizza for the first time all by myself, sophomore year? I was so proud of myself I kept the receipt and it's still in my room somewhere right now. Actually, I think I only ordered pizza one time after that, I still get super nervous everytime I have to pick up the phone.
But since graduating college, I have consistently ordered pizza every wednesday night (it's part of my job at the teen center, wednesday is free pizza night), I've been calling dominoe's so much I even have their phone number memorized! Ohhh how I've grown up. Maybe one of these days I'll conquer my fear of ordering other types of food too, like sandwiches, or ooooooo maybe even chinese food! mmmmm. One day.

A medley

Thom's post has inspired me to give an update on my life. After the wonderful Little 500 weekend, I had an internship at the 9th Annual Chicago Improv. Festival. I worked for 5 days and had a couple complimentary workshops. I got to work backstage at a lot of really cool shows and meet all sorts of famous people, especially in the improv community, but the notent notables were: Horatio Sanz, Mo Collins, Emo Phillips, and Peter Grosz (if you know Peter Grosz, you have my respect).
Here's me with all the MadTV stars after I got to interview them. They were pointing at me cause I asked them "Who's the funniest person in America?"
It was a great week, though busy and filled with lots of commuting my first Chicago parking ticket ($50 fucking dollars for forgetting to write a date on my parking pass), and trucking around lots of fluids including beer, water, and Red Bull, as they were sponsoring the Festival.
I also got some good news yesterday that Oak Park high school has a Psychology position open. I am going in to speak to them Wednesday morning so hopefully I'll get offered a position. It'll probably be part time, but still something I'll consider as it's in the area of Chicago that I want to live in and if I can get a full time position later it'll totally be bad ass. Temporarily, I also got a new serving job as the restaurant I'm in now is closing. I'll be working at Arlington Racetrack and getting shift pay rather than tips! I'll make 144.50 for a 9 hour shift and the best part is that I'll be out by 7pm, meaning I'll finally get to have a consistent social life. Hooray! The bad news is that orientation was sunday morning from 9-3 and I COMPLETELY forgot about it. I'm a jerk.
Here is a photo of me from Little 5 weekend, getting down with my buddy Pringles. Fact: I was not drunk.


And here's Rob. Fact: Rob was drunk. Notice the wet spot. Fact: Rob is not graduating.

That's it, I call "uncle."

I give up. Thom, you're writing my paper for me.

It's due in 4 hours, and I'm on page 3 of 20. I can't seem to get my head going and motivation for any sort of work is out the window. This is the last big project of my college career, and it's the "big one"- my senior capstone.

No motivation. at. all.

So. Thom, I just need to you come up with a quick little 17-page bit about waveform analysis and matching with regard to audio retreival, matching, and voice identification. The demo website we used is:

www.overtone.com

If you could just e-mail that to me by 11:45 tonight, that'd be swell. That'll give me time to turn it in.

Thanks, I'm going to Yogi's.