I love my life!

I LOVE my life in this city. :-D Where else in a couple months can you meet Salman Rushdie, Isaac Mizrahi, Vigo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, and go see a Henry Rollins show and run into Terrance Howard on the street in a couple months? I wish I didn't have to go to work because there's enough things to do to fill all my time and works gets in the way terribly!

I'm going to try to figure out how to add some pictures because this has been great. I'm looking forward to continuing the fun.... this month I'm going to go to a book signing with Daniel Vosovic (project runway participant) and a gentleman from Fermi labs is coming this week to talk and sign books as well. There's just so much cool stuff to see and hear.

Lets see if this works to add the pics of Rushdie, Mizrahi, Vigo, and Isaacs:


Rushdie


Mizrahi



Vigo


Jason Isaacs

I haven't done much sewing. I have a jacket totally finished and lined in a flourescent green fabric (I swear I didn't pay any money for the fabric!!) but I have to force myself to commit to putting the buttonholes into it. That's always the scary part for me. I have 2 more jackets cut out that I want to get finished. And I bought another handful of jacket sewing patterns to start. I also started a class on knitting gloves. 2 cuffs done so far. I tried to sign up for a basic drawing class (prerequisite for fashion design drawing) but it was full and I was on the waitlist. It started a couple days ago and I never got a call so I guess I was too far down on the list. I took classes when I was working on my apparel design degree years ago, but I've forgotten everything so I really want to get a refresher.

I had heard about a big fabric warehouse on the south side of the city, but I thought it was impossible for me to get to but I just discovered its really only a block or so off the same train line as my condo so I'm going to make a road trip (what do you call it when it's on public transit rather than driving??) tomorrow or Monday. Also, the Art Institute is having a big tapestry exhibit that starts today so I see a visit tomorrow or Monday to go see that as well.

I read that the textile museum in Washington DC is now affiliated with the Smithsonian so I am going to try to get a trip out there to see what upgrades have happened. I haven't been there in years.

Filling in the gaps

Wow... as I read through my posts, I realized I jumped from having my house sale fall through to suddenly owning a condo downtown. In case anyone is actually reading any of this, the house did finally sell about 4 or 5 months after the move. Whew. And I did sell the car right after the move so everything eventually worked out. I went almost 2 years without driving at all.

Oh, and the job offers.... I had taken the offer with the smaller company and gave that a try, but discovered that I am too set in my ways. I NEED the bureacracy of a large company, with all their standards and rules and ways to do things. I gave the small company several months but I felt like I was strugging the entire time and finally had to give up for my sanity. I lucked out when I called the other company back and asked if they still had any openings. They hired me right away which was a relief and I'm much more comfortable with my worklife now.

I do miss the floor-to-ceiling unobstructed view of Lake Michigan that I had in the first job. That almost brought tears to my eyes after 10 years of working in a basement with no windows. Now I still have windows but I get to view other building windows about 20 feet away. LOL.

Beginning again

Okay... 2 years hiatus already?? wow. So much for the idea of blogging about the culture shock and shift of living in the city.

I now have a condo downtown and I am thoroughly enjoying downtown living. I walk to work (or if I'm lazy I can take a train for the 8 blocks) and take public transit everywhere. There's something going on every night to keep busy if I want to.

I experienced my first formal runway show... They had Fashion week here a couple weeks ago and I managed to be one of the last ones to fit into the tent for one of the nights of the fashion shows. Very cool!

Also, the local museum is doing a big exhibit on couture fashions in history so I had a chance to go look at a lot of historically significant fashions, and on top of that I went to a book signing by Isaac Mizrahi this week. I must admit, for a book signing that took place in a large bookstore that does several booksignings per week, it was a frustrating and chaotic mess to get the books signed and so I have no pictures of me with him because they decided they were running out of time. He was there a grand total of 1-1/2 hours from start to finish which was very disappointing considering the turnout of people that were spending money on his book and looking forward to the signing.

As part of the fashion week, I also attended a seminar on how to get a fashion line produced. It was very informative and makes me seriously consider making a sewing pattern line to sell. If I could just find some time to get to it along with all the other things I want to do (such as keeping up on a blog??!)

And about a month ago, I finally had a chance to get out to New York City and enjoyed a chance to get through the FIT museum. The clothing exhibits were nice, but I lucked out and they were having an exhibit of goth throughout history... from historical mourning clothes to current goth fashions to goth fashions incorporating future technologies. There were some STUNNING clothing examples there, and also some grunge goth yucky styles. If anyone is in that area, I strongly recommend seeing it.

And then the karmic universe shifts again

Well, things were going TOO well. The buyer for our house withdrew her offer. At the house inspection, we were told her brother kept complaining that the house was too big for her, too many things would get expensive to keep up over the years, etc... None of which were valid cancellation reasons based on her purchase offer. So she invoked the "unsatisfactory inspection" clause even though there was only 1 minor thing mentioned and we were not given an option to repair it. So now the house is on the market again.

I had someone test drive my car, and that person is really interested in it, so other areas are still moving along.

Other stuff going on during all this -- Some of my old friends get together in another town (a ways away) on Thursday nights and this week would have been my last opportunity to go watch. So I made arrangements to go with a friend. It broke up around 12:30am, and as we were driving back along the expressway, in the pitch dark, with no other cars around, we suddenly encountered a man dressed in black walking down the center of the middle lane of the expressway. It was a miracle we didn't kill him. Until about 10 seconds before we saw him, we'd been going 70mph in THAT lane. We would have nailed him smack center.

And other stuff -- My sister had tickets to see Chippendales up at the Mt. Pleasant Casino, so I went with her last night. First time I'd been to a show like that since I got married 12 years ago. They were probably cute, but I couldn't tell. That was my first and last ever time I'll go to see a show there. You couldn't see the stage AND you couldn't see the projection screen because of the bad way they lay out the seats. So I got to sit there for 2 hours, listening to bad 80's music and not see ANY of the show and just wait to go home. BEYOND complete boredom and waste of money. And they do concerts and tons of shows there. I can't imagine how they manage to get anyone to come back. She was upset, rightly so, at spending the money for nothing. We ran into groups of women at McDonalds afterwards and it was everyone's experience that they couldn't see any of the show. Again, amazingly bad facility.

Everything coming together

Wow... things just seem to be happening fast. I received 2 job offers on Halloween. One much much lower than the other, but the lower one was the job that I really wanted more. Fortunately, we reached an agreement that was acceptable to both of us and so I accepted a job at Highland Solutions which is a computer programming company down in the loop in Chicago. The other company offer was Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois. That job was also very tempting for different reasons than Highland's. It was not an easy decision. I don't usually take risks, and the company I chose was definitely the riskier of the two (a 16-person company vs. the monolith that we all know is BCBS)

And yesterday we received an offer on the house. It was lower than we hoped, and we wanted to make a counter-offer but were warned that the buyer had another house picked out whose sale price was lower than what she was offering us. So if we didn't take her initial offer, she was going to go with the other house. After long and serious discussion, we decided to take it. There were several other benefits, such as the person doesn't need to sell a house first and also she wants to close the same day we're scheduled to move out anyway. The timing couldn't be more perfect.

So I've given my notice at my current job, and will be moving to Chicago in less than a month.

The only glitch so far is my car. I was assured when I leased the car that the lease could be tranferred to another person. Today when I tried to arrange that (I have someone that wanted to take it over) I was informed by the financing company that I can't transfer it. Instead, I can add someone to the lease, but I still remain on the lease. I called the car dealership and they said "no", I COULD transfer it. I made them call the financing company and they came back and said that it did turn out that I had to stay on the lease. I find that to be deceptive sales practice since that was an assurance that helped convince me to sign a 4-year lease. I may have to follow up with the dealership and point this out and see if they offer any workable alternative because of their misinformation. Right now the only way out of lease is to buy it outright and then sell it to someone. Anyone out there want to buy a 2-year old VW Passat?

House is for sale!

Anyone want to buy a house?? We finally have the house clean enough and signed with a realtor last week and the garage sale is over and done with.

On the job front -- I had 2 face-to-face interviews last week, and a phone interview with a third company this week. I'm pretty sure the 2 companies will come through with a job offer, and the third one is too early in the process to tell. I've had a couple of pre-screening emails from several other companies. And I'm still putting in applications to new job postings every day, just to be safe.

I'm looking forward to the process being over soon. Each of the two companies require a drug test. I'm not surprised that the big corporation company requires one, but I was surprised that the smaller 16-person company does too. Either way, I'm unconcerned since I'll pass without a problem (though I did make sure to skip the poppyseed encrusted tuna that sounded wonderful at the restaurant for dinner tonight just to be sure).

We've signed the lease for an apartment, and the el is just a block from our front door. Both the companies that I've interviewed with have el stops right next to their buildings so it would be door-to-door curbside service every morning which would be awesome.

I know which company I hope to work for, but there are still several details to be worked out which would seriously affect my decision so I'm not going to post anything about that yet (in case either company reads this). And that may sound silly, but I'm read articles that said prospective employers are googling prospective employees a lot lately, and looking for blogs to get a feel for the person. :-) So if you're a prospective employer and reading this.... *wave* HIRE ME! YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Job Search Irony

I have to admit I find it very ironic to be filling in a web application to apply for a job as a Web Developer and have the company's website keep crashing in the middle of it. I'll give them points for consistency -- and it always crashed at the same spot. But I couldn't submit my application because the site wasn't working.

And I wonder, is it even legal to demand a social security number on the first page of an online job application? Or is it really a phishing scam that is pretending to be a job posted on career builders? I decided not to apply to one, just in case.

Contractor Hell

Is it a rule that contractors have to be bad? A plumber was scheduled to come out and do a couple of minor repairs to get the house ready to sell. They were supposed to arrive between 1 and 4:30. About 4, I call to make sure they're coming and am told that the plumber is running late but would definitely be there. At 5:30, call and are told the plumber is running late but would definitely be there. Well, 9pm rolls around and still no plumber so off to bed. Of course, took the afternoon off from work the next day to meet the plumber. So call the company the next day and the woman agrees that was really bad service and says the manager had stepped away and would be back in a couple minutes and she would have the manager call. Guess What?! Never heard back from them.


So, next is the landscaper. Leave messages to schedule a landscaping company to come out to do some touching up of the flower beds and pull out a dead tree. Company never calls back.


Today, scheduled a handyman to come at 4:30 (fortunately AFTER work this time) and do some minor repairs around the house. Well, it is currently 10 minutes to 9 and he hasn't shown up, nor has he called. So far, still don't have the plumbing repairs done, the landscaping done, OR the handyman jobs done. Now a different landscaper is scheduled to show up tomorrow. Anyone want to start placing odds whether this will go through or not? Ihad thought I'd be able to start showing the house next week to the people that have expressed interest, but now stuck spinning wheels with the unreliable contractors.


Later when I get the info, I'm going to come back in and update this with the contractors' names and start a hall of shame.