Trying to keep up with the resolutions...

It's hump day already!  I'm surprised how fast this work week is moving.  Since I didn't start thinking about making some resolutions sooner, I'm getting anxious about the upcoming year.  I am trying to my best to budget, as well as pay off a HUGE debt that took me almost 10 years to pay off.  I'm getting to the end of it FINALLY, and until that is taken care of, I cannot make any plans.  It's frustrating because I have gotten the itch to spend.  There's clearance sales.  Friends are booking trips for Spring Break.  I have to wait.
I know patience is a virtue but I'm already restless.  I figured I can get my mind off things if I keep myself occupied with catching up on November events on my blog.  Here goes!
The first weekend I got a chance to go to dinner at Mia Restaurant and went to see Crookers perform at The Mid.  It was on a whim.  It was nice.  It was perfect.  Then Friday the 13th came.
I was at work when the news feed started popping up on the Paris attacks.  I still had an hour to go, so I barely glanced at what was going on.  I wanted to finish up my work and get out of there.  At first the headlines read possible terrorist attacks, but I never read up on it.  I left work and ran some errands.  By the time I got home, it was all over the news.  My heart sank.  I never knew the magnitude of what was happening.  It had disrupted an entire city into a state of panic.  Paris was under attack, and no one knew yet if it was officially over.  That weekend I stayed glued to my television.  My friend in Italy contacted me and we messaged each other for a bit that Saturday.  The whole world watched Paris unravel and we couldn't do a thing about it.  It was terrifying to see the images of dead bodies.  I felt so hopeless. 
During the next couple of days, the news completely focused on what was happening in Paris and in Belgium.  Looking back, some much has happened since then.  I don't know if I can ever be truly comfortable with the idea of traveling without wondering what if something like this happens again.  But since we too, have been hit with acts of terrorism after the Paris attacks, I am reminded it can happen in my own city as well.  We are not immune to the violence we can face anywhere.  What are we to do in the meantime?
Unfortunately, the answer still remains the same.  We continue to live our own lives, and pray that things will change; that things will get better.  It's not an easy thing to do.  I was invited to go to a birthday party the following week.  It fell on a Tuesday.  I had to take some days off since I accumulated so many days during the year from work.  I figured I could go to this party after all.  The birthday girl wanted everyone to meet up at Siena Tavern which was pretty quiet.  She had a private room towards the back where everyone was having dinner.  I skipped that part altogether.  We slowly made our way towards Parliament nightclub.  Since it was a week night, the club was partially closed off.  I was impressed by how many people did show up for the birthday girl.  She is well liked and it was nice that people came by for support.  Afterwards, we headed down the street to Time nightclub.  I knew I wasn't going to stay out long.  I was getting sleepy.  Regardless, I think the birthday girl had a blast, and that's all that counts!


I still have to get use to the man bun.  It's everywhere...



Me and the birthday girl!



At Time nightclub...

The calm before the storm...

Back in September, I spent the first part in Italy, and the rest of the month attending birthday parties.  Lol.  Once October came around, things had slowed down a bit.  I'm glad it did.  Sometimes you want to be able to stop and smell the roses.  I got a chance to finish a new self-help book, as well as focus on trying to get my apartment ready for the winter (if it ever shows up).  It took forever, but I finally found a picture I could hang over my couch in the living room.  After countless hours spent surfing the net, I narrowed it down to one.  I'm glad how it turned out too.  I knew I wanted something abstract.  From that point it was just a matter of finding the one I liked to go with my décor.  It was an interesting process, because it's so time consuming.  I didn't want to settle for any old picture!  And that's how it should be!  The last thing I wanted to do was to have something hang on my wall for the sake of covering up my wall.  It's easy to get "stuck" with things, but you should have some passion behind the madness.
Regardless, the first weekend in October was pretty chilled out.  Me and my friends from time to time like to have mass group textes to see how we're doing.  Since so many events are happening in everyone's lives, it's a nice way to catch up to one another.  Our friend from the bridal shower at the Drake hotel invited us to come over and check out her new apartment.  She moved back in the city at the end of the summer and is also in the process of planning a wedding.  We drove down to Downer's Grove for a light dinner party.  She cooked with one of her presents from the shower:  a brand new Williams Sonoma iron skillet!  We had a good time catching up.  It was nice not to do anything too crazy. 

I love my birthday scarf!  I wore it for the dinner party.

I wore it with my cotton twill moto jacket.  The weather was changing around this time.  We had light rain/ mist and crisp weather.  Wasn't "cold" yet.

One of her bridal shower gifts.  She bought some cheese and crackers for appetizers. 

Magiano's has a nice spread!

Good times hanging out with the ladies!

The following weekend things DID get a little crazy (but that's my life, you know?).  The funny thing about those nights, they're unexpected.  You can never plan for those, but remember, anything is possible in this city.  I saw on Facebook that one of my favorite spots in the city was closing down.  Japonais!  Definitely one of the best restaurants in Chicago for sushi.  But over the years, with it's massive space, was getting harder and harder to fill up.  There are always new places opening up in the city.  And with Chicago's fickle crowd, you can never tell which ones will bring the patrons back.  Japonais was around for over 10 years, which is a huge accomplishment!  The fact that it lasted so long is impressive in my eyes.  Plus, with it's dock area patio, boats would sail up and park for a quick bite to eat.

I headed down to Public House and met up with some friends who were watching the Cubs game.  At this point, there was hope we could make it to the world series.  But my friends were done for the evening.  That's when I decided to head down to Japonais for their closing party by myself to see who I would run into.  Since I use to go there regularly 10 years ago, I figured I'll run into some familiar faces.  Did I ever!!  I was glad I saw my old friends I use to party with back in the day.  We had some good times.  We decided to go out and make a night of it since we haven't hungout with one another in sooooooooooo long.  We jumped around to Parliament, then ended the night in Cuvee.  I had a blast!  For a spilt second I felt I traveled back into time.  I miss that feeling... 

Missed these guys!!

At Japonais for their closing party.

Headed over to Parliament and met up with some more friends...

Getting silly at Cuvée

What a loooooong night!!  Peace out!

Ending July with an Act of God...

UGH!!!  One of the most frustrating things that could happen to someone!  A pipe burst.  And to happen when I was at work.  I started to cry when my landlord called me.  I couldn't believe it.  To make matters worse, it was early in the morning too.  Around 8:30am.  I cringe just thinking about it.  Mostly because you feel helpless.  Mostly because you wonder why me?  My landlord called me back to explain the situation once he soaked up all the water.  He said it was an act of God.  But what did that mean? 
Sometimes in life, you wonder why certain things happen to you and not someone else.  Were you "chosen" to go through this?  What did this experience teach me?  Why was a pipe burst an act of God?  There will always be pivotal moments that will be unexplainable.  What matters in the end is how you react to these unfortunate incidents.
Let's face it.  We've all heard how bad things happen to good people.  Being "good" offers no protection from Life's misfortunes.  It's a terrifying reality that we face daily.  There are times when I think my life is pretty boring, but then I quickly remind myself that it could change in an instant.  It  could change into something I'm not ready to handle yet. 
At the time, my co-workers calmed me down a bit.  They re-assured me that my apartment is pretty old, and things will break down from time to time.  It happens.  That made me feel a bit better because they were right.  What was once new will become old.  This can be applied to ourselves as well.  We all will die eventually, this we know.  But how and when is the question. 
If it weren't for my friends at work, I would have been a mess for the rest of the day.  I went home early to see the damage myself, and luckily it wasn't so bad.  My landlord placed a bunch of fans around and left the air conditioner on to dry up the humidity in the apartment.  Unfortunately, my neighbors downstairs had it worse than me, which to this day I feel pretty guilty about it.  This affected other people and I couldn't help but feel responsible.  Since it happened on a Thursday, I stayed with a friend at their place that night, but on Friday when I came home from work, I went straight to the gym.  My apartment was noisy from all the fans that it sounded as if I had a  jet engine running!  I was getting aggravated.  Luckily my girlfriend wanted to grab some drinks at a rooftop bar.  I figured that will kill a couple of hours.  I showered up and ran out of there because I started to get a headache from all the noise.  We ended up at Kensington Roof Garden and then went downstairs to where Parliament Nightclub was located once it got late.  Due to the noise ordinance in Chicago, most rooftops are closed by 11:30pm.  We danced for a bit then headed to Room 7 and ended our night there.  I was happy my friends were around to hangout with me.  I had the fans running the rest of the weekend, and by Monday night, I felt my place had dried up enough to turn off the fans and air conditioner.  I had to get rid of a bunch of stuff too.  Mostly things that were under my bathroom sink.  Oh yeah, the water that was spilling all over the place was hot water.  Go figure...

Kensington Roof Garden was a great place!  Me and my friends had a great time there...

Checking out the scene at Room Seven...

A hot night in July but we made the most of it...

The Longest DAY of the year Part 2

Trying to recap summer when it's fall is pretty challenging.  I'm terrible at blogging, but I want to get this moving before the holidays arrive.  That's when things get really hectic.  On my down time lately I've been trying to clean up my apartment a bit.  I've neglected that, too.  I usually clean my place on Saturdays but I've accumulated so much "junk" that I've decided to tackle my weekend projects in full force.  I've even got a list going so I can handle these tasks one by one.
Back to the LONGEST DAY of the year (so far).  I finished up my work party and went back home to freshen up, just so I could go BACK downtown to ANOTHER party right down the street where I was from originally.  lol.  Our work party ended at 9pm, plus we were under that sweltering sun for 4 hours.  I NEEDED a shower badly.  I ubered it home and decided to wear my neon orange strapless dress.  Since this birthday party was at a nightclub, I knew it wouldn't start hopping til after 11pm.  It gave me some time to unwind and rest for a bit.  Once I showered up, I got my second wind and headed to Parliament.  I was the first one there of my friends, so I made it over to the birthday boy's table.  He had bottle service.  Luckily they showed up soon, and we had a great time.  I danced so much my feet were killing me the next day.  We stopped by Time nightclub for a bit and called it a night.  I got home by 4am.  So technically, since it was a Friday and I had worked earlier that day, I was officially up 22 hours straight!  I had been up at 6am!  I was exhausted, but it was worth it.  Like I said, it's pretty common to pack so much in one day...


With the birthday boy himself...

Good times!

Over at Time Nightclub

What a night!

Girls Night Out...

Since today is Happy Hump Day Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to mention my girls night out back in November.  Don't get me wrong.  There are times where me and my friends like to get together for some drinks to catch up with one another.   But that month in particular, everyone needed to go all out for some much needed fun!  One night in particular, our friend invited us out for a sushi night at Butterfly Sushi.  She had just settled in her new apartment and has been out of the loop for a bit.  Since I hurried on home from work, I switched into jeans and wore my Halloween headpiece AGAIN to spice up my look. lol.This was a nice time to catch up since the upcoming holidays were going to be hectic for everyone.  I wasn't in the mood so much to hangout because my throat was hurting.  The winter of 2014 was definitely not my healthiest.  I was sick 3 times before I finally gave in and went to the doctor.  I tried to ride it out with lots of green tea but it was kicking my butt.  Regardless, I went along and had a good time.  We ended up down the street at The Dawson for some cocktails afterwards. 

 I LOVE my friend's fur vest from Argentina!



Once Thanksgiving was over, Black Friday was the talk of the town.  I opted NOT to join in the madness and do some online shopping instead.  I usually find pretty good deals.  Regardless, in the nightlife scene, this weekend is a difficult one because a lot of people are either out of town or spending time with family.  What did we do?  We decided to paint the town red!  lol  We figured we could hop around and get a chance to enjoy new venues.  We first started off at the rooftop at The Godfrey Hotel for some drinks and conversation.  Our group of  3 quickly escalated to about 10 in a matter of time.  I had fun running around and meeting new people.  We took a little field trip down to Parliament nightclub and danced the night away!  I also had my first drink of Dom Perignon and I must say, I was impressed!  I'm not a fan of champagne but that was good.. 

We were photo bombed by the bartenders!  Too funny!

Our group is slowly growing...

At Parliament getting silly...

 

The next day our girlfriend was going to entertain her co-workers to a night out.  I was pretty beat from the night before, so I knew I was going to take it easy.  My other friends joined in the festivities, and I was happy to see them.  It's hard to get everyone together in one place.  I told myself that this was the last night of the remaining year that I will wear my Halloween headpiece.  It was time to retire this trendy accessory and save it for another occasion.  But in the meantime, I matched it up with my gold leather pencil skirt and off I went.  We headed to Bevy nightclub for some hip hop and ended up at The Mid for some major EDM.  Cassette was djing, so the place was packed!  Overall, both nights were long and crazy, but I loved every minute of it!  Sometimes the unexpected moments are the most memorable ones...