fun. Times

So because I got busy, Chicago got hot, and a lot happened this will be a long blog, but it will be full of fun. (like the band) times, friends new and old, and exciting news.

First off an update: The Cozy Corner got a sign! Being bored and unemployed has given me time for arts and crafts.

Jenna Visited

A good friend (Jenna) came to visit and spent 4 days with us, which was super great getting to see an old friend. It just felt right that she was here hanging out. So now we will pester her to move here for the next 2 years, that way she can visit permanently. On the Wednesday that she arrived we went downtown and checked out Taste of Chicago, where I ate my first ever churro... crazy I know. 

I also got free/cheap alcohol because the woman working at the Budweiser tent was clueless. That being said we hung out for a few hours in the sun on the lawn waiting for the fun. (like the band)  concert. 

The concert was fantastic! They were super chill, they played all their hits plus a couple of songs I had never heard before that were absolutely beautiful. I don't know what more to say about it, it was just kind of a perfect day and a wonderful concert! I had an incredible time. After the concert we had time to make it up to the Navy Pier to watch fireworks... we stopped by The Bean and Millennium Park on the way. It was a long walk and we made it just in time. Nothing better than a great concert, cheap alcohol, and fireworks.

The next day (Thursday) we went to the beach with Jenna, because you know we have a lake and a bunch of man-made beaches. It was a beautiful day, the water wasn't too cold, but quite refreshing. Travis found some geocaches, I read some of Ellen Degeneres' book, Jenna read Harry Potter en español, and Megan and I went swimming and we all soaked up the beautiful sunshine. (I might have soaked up a little too much considering I am still recover from my sunburn from last week). 

While Jenna was here we also discovered a park called Oz Park with statues of the characters from the Wizard of Oz and dedicated to the author of the book.

And of course, Jenna couldn't visit Chicago without seeing some Improv. We went and saw Improvised Shakespeare at the iO. Not only was it some of the best improv that I have ever seen, but it might have also been the best Shakespeare I have ever seen. It was absolutely hysterical and I would definitely go see it again. We tried to go see the free improv set at Second City, however it started at 1:00am and that would have posed several problems. So Jenna went to Second City and bought a t-shirt. 

After this whirlwind of 4 days we had to say goodbye to Jenna, but hopefully she will be back to stay ;) 

The Week That Hell Took a Vacation in Chicago

This past week has been so incredibly hot! Now I realize that Chicago is hot and humid, but this was crazy! When the weather says it's 92º but it feels like 99º and the humidity is over 90%, that's when I get cranky. With no AC we have to find things to do just to get out of the heat, like go to the movies, sit in McDonald's, go to the grocery store, eat a lot of ice cream, and take freezing cold showers about every 2 hours. 

Megan got an AC unit just in time for the weather to become bearable. But now at least one room in the house will always be cold no matter how hot it gets outside. 

My Birthday

I don't know about you, But I'm feeling 22... Everything will be alright, if we just keep dancing like we're 22... (your welcome for getting that stuck in your head for the rest of the day). There didn't used to be anything particularly special about turning 22 until Taylor Swift wrote a song about it. 

Anyway, I didn't do anything super crazy or extraordinary. On Wednesday night before my birthday Megan and I went to the Roger's and Hammerstein Celebration at Millennium Park. We got Panda Express and set up a little picnic and enjoyed songs from Sound of Music, Showboat, Oklahoma, South Pacific, and a few others I had never heard of. It was a lovely night except for the fact that it poured for about 20 minutes and a lot of people didn't have umbrellas and got soaking wet. I had an umbrella and I still got pretty wet. 

The whole thing was pretty great. People had whole little tables set up with full dinners and glasses of wine. I loved just looking around at all the different types of food that people brought. I had a blast and the music was great!

On my actual birthday, it was ridiculously hot, so Megan and I went to see The Heat (to get out of the heat) and got dinner at Costello's, where Megan works and food is free. We then had class. It was the first time I cried because of improv class. We had a substitute teacher who really frustrated me and made me think too much, but at the same time challenged me and taught us a lot. Yay! The good and bad things of crazy older men who were a significant part of making Second City what it is today. 

After class, like usual, we went and saw the free improv set with a bunch of kids from class. As always they were fabulous! After the improv set Megan and I with a few of our new friends Nathan, Jessie, and Velin went to a bar across the street and got drinks and hung out for a while. 

All in all, I would have to say that it was a pretty good birthday and I don't know about you but  I'm feeling 22. (I had to do it again). 

In Other News

I got a Job!! Working for a Stage Manager... as her nanny, but still!! I'm getting paid and I now personally know a Stage Manager in Chicago, connections can be found everywhere! 

So look at my job stats: 

101 Nanny applications

13 Rejections with no contact 

7 Email only conversations

5 Phone Interviews

9 Interviews in person

1 JOB!! 

All things happen for a reason. I am hoping this job will not only benefit me in that now I have a job, but also connect me to theatre people in the city. 

Unfortunately it is only till the end of November, but that gives me time to find other work! 

I also get to go home to Colorado for 4 days in August for a friend's wedding and to see family. The acquisition of a job and the generous donation of my parents have made it possible for me to go home for a few days and I am super excited. It also means that I get to be home for my little brother's birthday. As my Father so poignantly put it "Spend $300 to save $5 on shipping." 

Coming Up

The weather in Chicago is going to calm down :)

Auditions for Second City's Conservatory are this Friday and I am super stoked. 

So stay tuned for more posts (hopefully not so far apart and so long). 

Happy Fourth of July

Here was our plan for how today should go:
-Wake up
-Go to the grocery store and get cup cake papers
-Make lunch
-Make Freedom Cupcakes
-Eat dinner
-Go down to the Navy Pier to watch fireworks
-Come  home set off some of our own fireworks
-Go to bed

Well as you can imagine it didn't go exactly as planned.
This morning things were going great. We went to the grocery store and got the rest of the stuff to make cupcakes and we got fireworks. We get home and decide to make lunch and realize that we have no bread, and almost no other kind of food to eat....
So what better way to celebrate America than going to McDonald's for lunch. Ok.... so not too bad... so far

We make Freedom Cupcakes, which were delicious.

We all got ready to go downtown thinking if we got there an hour and a half early we would have no problem getting near the Navy Pier or along lake somewhere to watch the fireworks. (This was our first mistake)

We found ourselves in a mob of thousands of other people trying to make their way to the Navy Pier. It felt incredibly like trying to get into Times Square for New Years. The traffic was a mess, there were people everywhere, whole streets were closed down. As we get like a block away from the Pier we just hear this police officer yelling, "They shut it down! Move west! The fire marshal shut it down!" I was pretty convinced they would't actually shut down all of the Navy Pier and not do fireworks just because their was too many people. So we just started walking north. Every police officer that we came across were all saying the same thing, "Navy Pier was too full" "You can't go past this point" "They aren't letting anyone into the pier" etc... (It actually sounded and felt a lot like those end of the world movies where thousands of people are all moving together trying to get to some place that is supposedly safe only to get turned away) (Note: I looked it up, over 100,000 people were turned away from the Navy Pier and the fireworks show).

Finally we found a street that wasn't blockaded by the police and we walked all the way to Lake Shore Drive (just about a block or so north of the Navy Pier. And the only place we could sit to watch fireworks was on the median in the middle of the highway... So we sat up on the median along with hundreds of other people.

Tons of people were crossing the highway trying to get to the other side to sit, and I swear it looked like zombies. Groups of people would just run out in front of the cars, climb over the other median, run out in front of the cars going to the other way and climb of the next cement wall and then drop down onto the sidewalk below. It was insane.

I tried to take pictures of it, but my camera isn't great so this was the best I could do.

People lining the median next to us. 

Waiting for the fireworks to start. 

People running across the street to jump over the other median. 

All the people on the other side of us. 

Fireworks! 

So we ended up have a relatively good view of the fireworks. The trees were blocking all the low ones but everything else but pretty good.

After the fireworks were over we decided to find a bar and wait for things to die down before we headed home. We found this bar called Pippin's and we sat outside and drank some beers.

We got up to leave and started walking towards the Red Line station. There was all this commotion and a couple of really loud bangs... which could have just been fireworks (or something else... anything really, we have no idea). Anyway, there was a ton of police right at the corner where the Red Line station is. It was insane how many cops there were. They were making sure that people kept moving, but none of them were saying what happened. So we go down into the station and there is close to 200 people in the station milling around and yelling at each other and still even more cops. So Megan, Travis, and I just went through the turn stiles and got on a train and went home.

If anyone can figure out what happened we would love to know (It was on the corner of State St. and Chicago Ave).

Anyway after we got home safely and entered good old Albany Park that sounded similar to a war zone because of the incredible amount of fireworks going off consistently. We decided to light some of our own fireworks, which turned out to all be the kind that smoke... should have read the labels better.

Megan lighting her first firework

Travis and of course.... his puppet! 

Everything aside, I would say it ended up being a pretty successful 4th of July away from home in a new city:
Made freedom cupcakes
Saw fireworks
Drank some beer
Got the shit scared out of us
Lit our own fireworks
Got safely into bed as it sounded like the world was ending around us.

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.