Endless Winter

This time last week, I was driving back from Austin. It was 80 degrees out. Currently, there is a slushy mix of snow on the ground. Last night it rained for hours. Is it spring or winter? I don't know how much more of this cold I can take. Now I'm back being stuck in Chicago. This past week has thrown me out of whack. It's taken me a few days to adjust after that whirlwind trip. It's hard to fathom I only just got back on Monday morning. Traveling for days will do that to you. So, I wrote about SXSW experience. You can read it here. I love the headline: "A Chicagoan Does SXSW the Hard Way." "The Hard Way." Yeah, that pretty much sums up my entire life. I always do things the hard way, even if there's an easy solution.

I did my taxes a couple of days ago all by myself. I used the site Taxslayer, which was pretty easy to navigate. I pretty much made no money last year. Like, I seriously don't know how I'm still living, it was so low. Of course I didn't report all of my income and I did spend half of last year working as an unpaid intern, but still. It seems like the older I get, the less money I make. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I made less last year than in '07. How pathetic. The good news is for once I don't owe any taxes. I'm suppose to get an ample refund, but I fear all of it will go towards my back taxes. I really hope the government will somehow overlook this and deposit the funds in my bank account, anyway. Fingers crossed. I really need to make more money somehow. I'm considering bartending at the neighborhood pub or something. I even joined a focus group list. There's gotta be someway for me to bring in more income without compromising my beliefs.

Since I've been traveling so much, I keep getting antsy about what my next trip will be. I really need to keep going somewhere every month or I might lose it. I found out a good friend will be in Indianapolis the last weekend of April, so I will try to meet up with her for a day. The boyfriend's friend is getting married at the end of May in D.C, so if I can figure out a way to afford a plane ticket, I will probably go. I have a couple of friends there, so it'd be good to see them again. There are just too many places to visit but not enough time. And with it getting warmer out, I'll want to go to even more places.

Next week might be a busy week. We're playing ping pong for our next Saucony game and on Tuesday, there are three shows I want to see, and it's Whiskyfest on Wed. I used my clout to score two VIP tixs to the event valued at $155/ticket. I'm nervous we're not going to make it out alive. I'm not really a big fan of whisky, but maybe I'll change my mind.

Today I was on Facebook and came across a profile of a woman I worked with back at my intern days on "The Howie Mandel Show." We have a mutual friend, so that's how I found her. Turns out, she lives in Chicago now. She's also a freelancer like me. And she's from Ohio. And her status happened to say something about wanting to play ping pong. I messaged her but she didn't remember who I was. After all, my Howie days were over 10 yrs ago. Hopefully she'll come to ping pong and we can catch up. In my almost five years of living in Chicago, I've never found anyone who I knew from my L.A days living here. I've worked with L.A based crews and have discovered old high school pals living here but not L.A peeps. I guess it was inevitable for this to finally happen. Chicago just got a lot smaller.