On Thursday October 6th of 2016 I finished Stranger Things by powering through the last 4 episodes before work. Phenomenal show, highly suggested you watch! It is on Netflix, about childhood, aliens, the 1980s, and only 8 episodes, so go watch now! I can't wait for season 2. That night for dinner we had leftovers and I worked on re-editing the lax highlight I made for a kid. Still trying to figure the ins and outs of this new program, FCPX.
Update as of 10/18 - Holy cow I am back! It feels so good to be editing videos again and I have definitley found my editing program. There will be a new piece to the blogs, and it is called a vlog. Videos of my life and events from the past week. I am not trying to make this a vlog where I just talk to the camera the entire time, in fact I don't really do that at all in this first one, but instead me telling a story of how my days are spent. This first week isn't great, but I will be working on my editing skills with each edit and hopefully it will get me to doing more videos (there is quite the stack of videos from the past 6 months to get through). Enjoy
Friday October 7th was a work from home. Some serious activity was going on outside of our apartment. Obama in the building? Or should I say alley? There were a plentiful amount of police in our alley, blocking off the streets, and eventually a long parade of police vehicles followed by 10 black SUVs with American flags on the front made its way down our back alley between the buildings. Police were monitoring the alley, turning people back and sending them from the direction the parade would be coming. They also took out all of our trash bins, I guess in case of any hidden explosives? With all of this and the helicopters overhead, I think it's safe to say that someone important, probably the president may be in town? Later in the day I found out he came back to do early voting. Thanks Obama!
Later that evening Beth and Grace made their way over. I met them halfway from the L, oh Beth has been blogging it up. Read here! After chatting for a bit, I picked us up some Wing Stop to enjoy with Rach before heading out for the evening. Gotta love Wing Stop wings, they had some new korean spice flavor, solid. After we ate, we headed out to DOC wine bar. Our first time here despite being within 100 feet of the place on Clark. It was pretty chill. The song above (Loyal) played when we were there, and immediately became the theme to the night. After sampling the wine flights named Ferris Bueller (reds) and Risky Business (whites), we walked over to Headquarters, the beercade. In the meantime, the Cubs won game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. Once we got to HQ we were super satisfied as there were not that many people there. We immediately made our way to Q*Bert to shatter the record board, then played a ton of other games including but not limited to: Pacman, Ninja Turtles, Pinball, & Skiball. After a drink or two we headed out and started walking back home. Before getting home, we made a pit stop at AliveOne bar on Halsted. A fun little bar with a small dance room in the back with a live DJ. Yo DJ, spin that track. Grace dominated the dance floor and then we walked back home to call it a night.
Rise and shine. I woke up early the next morning on Saturday October 8th at 7:15am and drove back to Napes to coach the squad. After a 2 hour practice I made it back to the city around noon. I jogged a quick mile over to the farmer's market to meet up with Rach, Beth, and Grace. We walked about the zoo, saw some animals, including a crazy tongue flicking cow, ate a large popcorn, I jumped over a table, and we enjoyed a lovely sunny fall day. I know I say it every time I go to a zoo now that I am an adult, but some of these animals look so darn sad. Especially the large Lions and Jaguars that just pace back and forth looking out at the humans. Poor guys.
After a beautiful walk back, we were at our apartment where I took a quick power nap then woke up and made some delicious burgers for dinner. Sure I cut the onion entirely too large, but it was still delicious. Rachel made this amazing Apple strudel pie thing in the crockpot for dessert. It was honestly so tasty served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I had like 3 bowls of it before we headed out. We surely need to make it for the next party we attend. Yum. Beth and Grace are still here despite saying they may leave. Around 8 we Ubered it over to Brian's new place. My second Uber (from my phone) ever. His place was pretty dope! The ceilings were like 10 feet high and his kitchen sink was huge. Megan was out of town, so it was just Brian and their dog Crede. The gummy I had earlier was starting to kick in as SNL came on. It was a pretty funny episode providing laughs for us all as we indulged in a few select brews. I guess it wasn't funny enough though since Rach, Grace, Beth, and I were all asleep on the couch by the end of the show. Thanks to Brian for the lovely photo. We cabbed it home and went to bed. Fun night.
The morning of Sunday October 9th started with some Marathon watching. It was the 2016 Chicago Marathon, and our friends Aly and Torie were running this year. I went out early and saw the leaders of the marathon pacing at that 5 minute mile. Crazy fast. Rach and Beth joined me to cheer on Aly and Torie. Both were doing amazing and kicked butt that day. Torie's 7th marathon, finishing in 4:54:01 and Aly's 2nd, finishing in 4:17:52. Awesome work ladies. Maybe I'll try to enter the lottery and run next year? Always gets me in the mood after watching friends and strangers putting in work. Props to Beth for getting this great shot of Torie seeing Rachel.
I headed out to Concordia Chicago around 11 to watch my Cats go 3-0 in a fallball tournament. The boys looked good, almost mid season form. Excited to see what the spring holds. I drove back to the city and hung out with Rachel at home. Beth and Grace had headed back to the burbs via train at this point. Rachel made us a salad for lunch and then a bit later made us a super tasty apple and chicken pasta dish for dinner. We put up our two couches on the list of craigs. Kinda tired of leather, if anyone is interested holla at yaboy before they're gone! That night we watched the second presidential debate which in my opinion was extremely boring. I am tired of watching the two argue and Trump never answering any questions. Like the entire internet says though, Ken Bone, the man in the red sweater who asked one of the final audience questions, won the debate.
Monday October 10th was a rough one. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, having to use the bathroom. I didn't feel well at all so I took a sick day and watched a few episodes of the show The Sixties on netflix. Highly recommend for anyone interested in the history of big events in the 1960s. Tom Hanks is a director or producer or whatever as well, well produced sir! This made me think that I want to start learning more about our Nation's recent history. I feel like they don't teach it at all in high school and I really have no idea. Who's with me!?
The next day on October 11th, Tuesday I drove to the burbs after dropping Rachel off at work and did laundry at my parents. Later I had 18 kids at cats fall ball (the most yet), a kid hurdled a box net, and I worked late. I got home around 10 and had fish and rice for dinner made by Rachel. She really is the best always making nice meals for us. Love you Rachie! The Cubs also pulled off a miraculous 6-5 win that night to advance to the national league finals. Chicago! Our neighbors put up a great little sign.
Wednesday October 12th was a simple day that involved me finishing the book 11.22.63 by Stephen King. I had finally gotten through all 30 discs of this book on tape and really enjoyed it. I am going to go ahead and say this is the longest book I have listened to. It is about the assassination of JFK, time travel, and what would have happened if it didn't happen. Exciting story that I would recommend you all to read (or listen like I do). After I finished work I had a Cats meeting and then slept at my parents. I fell asleep in my childhood bedroom with the lights on while doing laundry. Must have been tired.
So If you didn't notice, I am trying out this whole Vlog thing. I am still doing my blog in entirety at this point, but maybe will make the transition. Anyone like a video aspect instead of all the text and photos? I am not comfortable at all talking to the camera yet, so maybe I will make it a double duty type of thing for now.
Video of the Week: Awesome timelapse all about Chicago. I hope to make something similar some day. Would be neat.
TV Show of the Week: Stranger Things - Like I said up above, if you haven't watched this new series yet. Catch the first season on Netflix right now. Aliens.
Book of the Week: 11.22.63 by Stephen King. The final day for JFK. Plus you can't go wrong with Stephen King. Read it!
See ya next week.
Josh
