An (almost) Perfect Friday Afternoon

Finding a job is really tough, and looking for a nanny job requires me sitting behind my computer all day constantly trying to persuade parents to let me take care of their children. ( I have already fill out over 60 applications for full time and par time nanny jobs). This intense amount of sitting on my butt in my house often times alone has made me a bit antsy. So today I knew I needed to go out and do something but I wasn't entirely sure what.

I thought maybe I would go for a run... but that seemed like an awful lot of work.
I thought maybe I will go down town to the Navy Pier or out to the lake... but that was a long commute.
I thought about maybe taking my paints to the park and painting... but carrying all the stuff for painting wouldn't be easy.

So after thinking about it for a while (having yet to even get out of bed and make breakfast) I thought, well we didn't get to do a lot of drawing with ink in Drawing and Rendering so maybe I will walk down to the park and just walk around and become inspired to draw something and then I will just sit in the park and experiment with the ink drawings, pack myself a nice picnic lunch and make an afternoon of it.

There were a couple of unforeseen issues with this plan.

At first things were going great! The park is beautiful I am thinking of things I want to draw and how I want to do it. There are people out walking their dogs, playing with their kids, even fishing.

I start looking for a place to sit and start drawing and I realize that there are no picnic tables, plenty of park benches but no picnic tables. Which is odd. 

I walk through 2 different parks and I can't find a single picnic table. So I finally decide I will just sit on a park bench and eat my lunch and go home and draw. 

I take out my sandwich open my chips. I am enjoying my lunch and I see this little squirrel sneaking up to me. First, I don't think anything of it then all of a sudden.... 

He's up on the park bench scooting closer and closer to me. Clearly unafraid of me and clearly tamed by the innumerable members of society that have fed him from their picnic lunches.

After a couple of attempts to shoo him, which just perplexed him more than anything I packed up my lunch and decided for a squirrel free lunch at my own house. 

I ate my lunch in peace and drew a little when I got home. Ink is hard and stippling is time consuming. 

Mostly I just realized how great the parks are right around our house! 

And that makes this Colorado Girl pretty happy! 

I'm in love with Improv

I love doing improv! I love watching Improv! I love talking about Improv! I love thinking about Improv! I love improv!

We started classes at The Second City yesterday. We saw a free improv show the first week were here,  one last night after class,  saw the Improv Allstars show, and then decided to stick around for the free improv show again. I feel like any questions or doubts that I had in my mind that I made the wrong choice or I would be in over my head were just completely dissolved in the last few days.

Megan and I at Up Comedy Club for Improv Allstars
(We actually got to see our teacher perform in the show tonight!!)

I was sitting in the Mainstage theater today waiting for them to start their improv set and I just realized I felt like I was at home, I feel like I belong here!

Class yesterday was great! I didn't realize really how much I missed doing improv until we were there playing games and doing scene work. I wasn't nearly as nervous as I thought I would be, the class was filled with a lot of people our age who had recently graduated from college and loved doing improv. It couldn't have been more perfect!

We talked about ensemble and being able to work together with your ensemble and your scene partner to be able to give and take equally. We told stories about Blue Dragons, a Purple Piccolo Player, and Gazebos. We made friends with some fun people Vellon, Adrian, Nathan, Jessie, etc... AND the best part of it was... all my fears about being in a level that was too advanced for me, or being in a level that was to basic for me, or not getting along with the people in the class were proven completely wrong in one class!

I can't wait for class on Thursday!

Megan, Travis, and I ready for our first day of school!

My official Second City ID Card, with it I can get into shows for free/discounted!! 

Let the summer of improv commence!!!

More Catch Up

I promise I will get better at this! I promise I will post more often and stay up to date! I promise that soon my blog posts will be relevant to what is currently happening in my life....
But for today I need to do some more catch up!

I am getting ready to post a couple food pictures ( I apologize) I generally hate pictures of food on the internet, but here is why Instagram is not worthy of these photos:
This first meal represents so much more than just my ability to cook dinner by myself, I have been able to do that for awhile.
This meal represents the fact that we found an apartment (looked sketchy there for a while)
We were able to figure out the gas hook up.
We got internet set up (Phew!)
No amount of pointless hashtags would ever be able to describe what it feels like to make your first meal in a new apartment in a new city with a whole new world of opportunities waiting for you.
(OK, sorry it got kind of cheesy there for a second)

Travis' New Occupation and the Greatest Bar in Chicago

Two completely unrelated things, but it's what I am talking about next.
Down in Lincoln Square (about a 20 minute bus ride from my apartment) they have little concerts every Thursday night during the summer, and it was fantastic, there were tons of families there with their kids and the kids are all jumping and dancing around while their parents enjoyed the music. Needless to say this is apparently the place to be on Thursday nights. Megan and I decided to go get food (we got fantastic Mediterranean sandwiches) and on the way back we see this...

A guy (or girl...) rides around in a bicycle with this on the back and stops places and puts on puppet shows. This isn't actually Travis' new occupation BUT if you know anything about Travis you know that he would be happy to do this all day. This puppet show was hilarious! Just a couple of puppets dancing to some music, but the kids loved it! You see that little window on the bottom right of the box, kids would walk up to that window and wave some money in front of it and the puppets would come down from performing and grab the money from the kids! GENIUS! Every kid wanted to give the guy (or girl...) money just to see the puppets up close. Just to put an extra smile on your face: one little boy, probably 7 or 8, walked up to his parents with a wide-eyed expression on his face and says "It's kind of AMAZING because no one is doing it! There is no one there doing it!" 

Ahh, theatre magic at its finest! 

Chicago has arts and cultural encounters around every corner and I am enjoying it so much!

On a totally different note, We found the greatest bar in Chicago (ok, ok I haven't been to every bar in Chicago...yet... but this one is pretty cool!) 

You walk into this bar they check your ID (typical bar protocol) and then you get up to the front "hostess stand" and she explains to you that every game is free play, "except for Wizard of Oz because it's brand new today and really rare." They call it a Beercade, it has about 20 different games of pinball including (wait for it) Indiana Jones and Star Wars! Plus they have all your typical old school video arcade games (Pac Man, Mrs. Pac Man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, etc...) You name it, they probably have it! It was such a blast! There was no cover charge and all the games were free (except for Wizard of Oz which did actually look really epic, although not worth my dollar). 

We will be going back and we will be bringing Travis and we will have a great time! 

Tonight I start at The Second City! So stay tuned for that post :)

A (not so brief) Introduction

Welcome to the Cozy Corner (theoretically I am blogging from this cute and cozy little corner... but in actuality we now have a couch)

Any how, This is me, Emily Forest. I recently graduated from Northern Arizona University and have moved to Chicago to pursue improv with The Second City and other theatrical endeavors. And I thought well... why not document this adventure somehow. So here goes....

This picture was taken during one of my lengthy stays at McDonald's in order to mooch free wifi while waiting for my apartment to grow up and finally get some of its own. I have been pondering, planning, contemplating, and scheming what I wanted this blog to look like and then realized that so much has happened that I should be writing about. 

So in a nutshell (and with a lot of pictures) this is what my life has looked like for the past couple weeks. 

MOVING! 

Almost all of my worldly possessions... except of course my microwave... oops

HOME!

So this is it, my new home. It's an adorable little apartment in a very ethnic neighborhood with loads and loads of families. People watching from the front window is prime. 

Good News! after 2 weeks of living here we finally have internet, furniture, and most importantly HOT WATER! 

It finally is starting to feel like a home. 

My Room

Hanging out (pre-furniture) with Travis, my roommate. 

TOURIST

Ok...yes, I spent the first few days doing very touristy things with Megan (my other roommate) and her mom. We went down to the Navy Pier, which was just as magical as I remember it being when I was a kid. We took a architectural boat tour through the canals, which was informative and fascinating, so I can blurt out random, mostly useless, facts about different buildings in the city of Chicago. 

I ate some good old Chicago style deep-dish pizza (both with my mom and sister and with Megan and her mom). 

In a decision to stay out of the heat one day we checked out the Art Institute of Chicago and the painter in me sort of died and went to heaven. So many beautiful paintings by so many talented artists in one spot. The impressionist exhibit at The Art Institute of Chicago literally rendered me speechless. What can you possibly say when you are standing in a room with paintings by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Seurat?

We found ourselves in Millennium Park upon exiting the Art Institute and wandered through, saw the Bean, the spitting fountains, the Frank Lloyd Wright Bridge, and many interesting people. 

I am sure you are thinking we couldn't possibly fit more into this week than we did... but wait... 

We checked out the FREE Lincoln Park Conservatory and Zoo

Not to mention we completely unpacked, built a couple Ikea dressers, and started looking for big kid jobs... (or more likely minimum wage jobs to pay the bills while we contemplate why we all graduated with theatre degrees...)

Just to prove I really did do all that stuff here are a couple pictures: 

 

                                              

 

  

There you have it... my first week in Chicago in a nutshell.