HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting a new phone
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a negative
WORD OF THE DAY: New phone
After a massive day yesterday and today being a public holiday here for Memorial Day we were going to lie low. That is just what you do on public holidays combined with vacation time. I have been setting my alarm for 9am and I am happy/sad to report that i5t going off at9am is what is getting me out of bed. My body clock is starting to get later and later. But in my defence the clock was wound back an hour from Canada to Chicago, so really I am getting up 30 minutes before. Yeah, that’s right! I am staying in the guest/office room and with the air conditioning on the blinds drawn over the window and the comfiest doona and pillow, I rekon I could easily sleep there all day.
My blog was starting to get away from me. The last few days have been so busy and then we aren’t getting to bed till 11.30pm, I am just too tired to even contemplate trying to put words onto paper. But today I have made a deal with myself that I have to load at least 2 pages and get myself out of Canada and at least into the USA. I’m currently still on my day tour in Quebec City.
Cheryl and Joe had some errands to get done so after breakfast I made myself at home on the couch, computer fired up and the TV House Hunters International on the box, I sat there all day and pimped out 3 blogs. It does take me about an hour to 1.5 hours to complete 1 entry depending on how much we had done that day as to how much information I need to source/Wikipedia. It is a big job but with over 33, 200 people having clicked on my site, it is enough incentive for me to keep on keeping on. I also know I will be thankful I have kept such a detailed account and that makes me a little proud as I pat myself on the back.
I also did some homework on mobile phones as I NEED to have one. I don’t use it for calling as such but I do rely on it for texting. I want another Blackberry. I love the qwerty keyboard and the phones in general and there is a new one out the Blackberry Torch that has the keyboard and is also touch screen. That is the one that I want. I looked at prices and they are all around the 600USD to buy the phone out right and then we are not 100% sure that I can unlock the network when I get home, which would then render the 600USD phone useless. So I have decided to buy a cheaper phone to get me through the last 4 weeks and looking at prices online at home, the Blackberry Torch is around the 350AUD mark which is a hell of a lot better than 600USD. So when Cheryl got back we jumped in the car and drove to Best Buys, which is like a Harvey Norman back home, to get me a new phone. I had a budget of 100-150USD in mind and when we finally got served they showed me a wall of phones that I could buy on a pre-paid account. It is quite an ordeal to get international roaming on the phones and no prices are given for any of the carriers on the cost of international anything, as it is just not a thing many Americans get into. So after some deliberation and recommendations from the phone guy, I purchased a 45USD phone which is locked to the AT&T network and I purchased a 50USD preplan for the month. It gives me free calls and text messages in the US and I can go online or call the carrier to get international capabilities added to the plan. So I got a way cheaper phone than planned, it has a qwerty keyboard and I am a happy camper back in textland. Now I just need to add on the international bit and then give it a test run to Australia and Ethiopia.
We headed out to dinner at 5pm. The guys are so keen to show me as much of Chicago as they can in the week that I am here, which also includes the food of the city. Next on our hit list was a Burger. Chicago is known for its burgers and in the last few years there has been a revival of Burger restaurants opening. We decided to try one of the newer ones that opened called The Burger Bar and these things were massive. That was all there was on the menu, and you could add or take off as much as you wanted. I don’t know what had gotten into me but I had the triple pork and it was amazing. Knock that down with a vanilla milkshake that came with 4 cookies in the cream and then a disgusting cocktail that I couldn’t finish we were now fed and watered ready for the Comedy Club, where we were going tonight. It isn’t any normal comedy club, it is a famous Chicago Entity known as Second City. We did have some time to kill, so the gang showed me the neighborhood where the club was, called Old Town.
Old Town includes the Old Town Triangle Historic District. This historic district is now an affluent gentrified neighborhood home to many of Chicago's older, Victorian-era buildings. In the 1950s, the majority of this area was an enclave to the first Puerto Ricans to immigrate to Chicago. They referred to this area as part of "La Clark" until commercialization decorated late 1960s shop signs with the name of Old Town. The neighborhood is home to St. Michael's Church, originally a Bavarian-built church, and one of 7 to survive the path of the Great Chicago Fire. The neighborhood is also home to the famed The Second City improvisational comedy troupe. Many of the streets and alleys, particularly in the Old Town Triangle section, predate the Great Chicago Fire and do not all adhere to a typical Chicago grid pattern. Through the 1930s, an art colony emerged in the neighborhood as artists moved from the Towertown neighborhood near Washington Square Park. Old Town was also home to many gays & lesbians from the 1920s through the 1980s. There were numerous gay bars lining Wells Street (all of them closed now). This was the first "gay ghetto" in Chicago, predating the current Lake View neighborhood (which is the current epicenter of gay life); the first homophile organization in American history, the Society for Human Rights, was established by Henry Gerber at his home on North Crilly Court in 1924. As the area gentrified, the gays moved further north to Lincoln Park and then Lake View neighborhoods.
After the Martin Luther King assassination, and the subsequent riots, the neighborhood experienced a tense racial division during the 1970s and 1980s which left a de facto segregation between Old Town north of North Ave. and Old Town south of North Ave. In the early 2000s this trend has begun to shift towards a gentrification of the area. Currently, Old Town south of North Avenue is a mixture of rich and poor though is steadily gentrifying. The continued demolition of the Cabrini–Green housing projects to the south has led to significant demographic changes in the neighborhood. It was cool to walk around the ‘hood’ and see the bars and restaurants full of people enjoying the long week-end and I feel sorry for the suckers that have to go back to work tomorrow!!! SUCKERS.
We walked back to Second City to find our seats and settle in for what would be nearly a 3 hour show.
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood. The Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City has produced television programs in both the United States and Canada. Since its debut, the Second City has consistently been a starting point for comedians, award winning actors, directors, and others in show business. The Second City was the first on-going improvisational theater troupe in the United States. It evolved from the Compass Players, a 1950s cabaret revue show started by undergraduates at the University of Chicago. The troupe chose the self-mocking name from the title of an article about Chicago by A. J. Liebling that appeared in The New Yorker in 1952. The cabaret theater, comedy style of the Second City tended towards satire and commentary of current social norms and political figures and events. In 1961, the theater sent a cast to Broadway with the musical revue, From the Second City, directed by Sills and earning a Tony nomination for ensemble member Severn Darden.[5] Eventually, the theater expanded to include three touring companies and a second resident company, and now fosters a company devoted to outreach & diversity. The style of comedy has changed with time, but the format has remained constant. Second City revues feature a mix of semi-improvised and scripted scenes with new material developed during unscripted improv sessions after the second act, where scenes are created based on audience suggestions. Another Second City innovation is the inclusion of live, improvised music during the performance.
Some Alumni that made there starts from Second City include: 1964-David Steinberg, 1971-John Belushi, 1973-John Candy, Bill Murray, 1974-Dan Aykroyd, 1976-Shelley Long, 1978-James Belushi, 1988-Mike Myers, 1989-Chris Farley, 1991-Steve Carell to name a few. We only paid 25 bucks for our tickets and even though we were seated in the last row of the whole room, we had a great unobstructed view of the stage and we didn’t want to be close to the stage anyway in case they get participants up from the crowd. No thanks and they did just that and the improv for that was hilarious. The show was pretty funny. I think with improv there can be good nights and bad nights and this was a good night. I understood most skits that were on, there was just one about past presidents that I really didn’t know what was happening, but otherwise I had a good laugh all night. I am not sure if it is an Australian thing, but we really don’t find David Letterman funny, so I was unsure what the funnies would be like tonight, so I was pleasantly surprised by the show and its contents. There was an intermission after an hour and then they came out to do another hour. After they said their thanks and farewell they came back out after another short intermission and gave us another 40 minutes of material that they were still working on, so some of the skits they were holding notes. They had wait staff going around all evening taking drink orders and you could also order food from them as well and our bill was given to us in the last half of the second session. Leaving Second City just after 11pm, we all left with smiles on our faces and if you are in town then I do recommend you drop in and see a show.
Back home, and a goodbye to David, he was attending a funeral of a family friend, so we wouldn’t be seeing him till Wednesday I then was on a mission to work out the international package for my phone on line. AT&T’s web site like any other phone carrier is all over the place and it took me forever to find, sign up, login and add the package to my plan. It was 10USD and I am not really sure what I get for that, but I sent Shelly a text message and she replied straight back so hallelujah it works and welcome back to the land of mobiles. Also the funny thing is I now have a Chicago number and it is a city prefix of 312 which not even Cheryl has for her number. I am in the ‘groove’ with a 312 number. Oh now I really am getting into the Chicago swing of things!!! Light was off at 1am and time to get some shut eye after a day of not doing too much at all and it was great!!!
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