"It's Gonna Be Legen- Wait For It..."

Back in the spring, about half a dozen of us from CCC Edgewater got the idea to move into a community house together in the fall, once our leases expired. Though we did some looking and planning, in the end, things kind of fell through. Our friend Lisa moved off to Seattle, and our friends Ben and Sam decided they just wanted to room together on their own, as two bachelors on the prow, I suppose. So that left Cary Anne and I and our friend Kelly. Last month, we started looking at 3-bedroom apartments together in Edgewater, and soon we put a down payment on one. 

Back at the start of October, several of our friends from church were generous enough to help us move all of our stuff. For CA and I, it meant saying goodbye to our studio in Roger’s Park and for Kelly it meant abandoning the 1-bedroom place she was living in only a few blocks south of our new place. Getting furniture up the stairs to our new 3^rd floor walk-up was about as fun as going to the dentist, but we did it (with a lot of help) and we managed to only break one bookshelf.

As you can imagine, Cary Anne and I super excited to be living in a place that is more than just one room. Our new place has a dining room, a living room with a working fireplace, a balcony, a sun room, and a washer/dryer in unit. It’s basically a palace compared to where we were living, and we’re very thankful to have the opportunity to upgrade. We’re also thankful for our new roommate Kelly who is the Ted to our Marshall and Lily (for you “How I Met Your Mother” fans). Kelly is a night nurse at a local hospital, so sometimes it feels as though we don’t have a roommate at all, but we’re excited to have her as a larger part of our life when she is around and awake. In fact, she has already started trying to pry us into renaming this blog “Two Gingers and the Things They Do Together…with Kelly.”

There has also been a recent change on the job front for me. As many of you know, since we moved to Chicago, I’ve been working at a restaurant called Cosi, taking orders, making drinks, and serving food. I was also helping part time at Cosi’s corporate offices in the suburbs, taking care of some clerical work that no one else seemed to have the time to manage. Recently, the corporate office lost their receptionist, so I applied, and I now work there full time. It’s great to finally have a “real job” with benefits, and for the first time in our marriage, Cary Anne and I are on the same basic work schedule so we’ve been enjoying our evenings together.

Not too long ago, we spent one of those evenings at our first Cubs game together. Cary Anne bought the tickets off of a co-worker, and I was excited to go because the Cubs were playing the Reds. Though the Cubs fell behind early on (surprise, surprise), they did make a comeback and tied things up by the ninth inning. After that the Cubs had multiple chances to win and blew them all, CA insisted we leave when it was after 11pm and the game was about to enter the 12^th inning. Though I was sad to go without seeing the end, it was OK, because the Cubs ultimately lost by a single run.

For now, we're excited for the future: a new place, a new roommate, and a new schedule. So stayed tuned to this blog...now with more Kelly!

From Chi to KY

A couple of weeks ago, Cary Anne and I had the chance to travel back to Lexington for a long weekend. Though we travelled to Kentucky back in May to spend Memorial Day with our friends Chris and Hannah, we hadn’t been back to Lexington specifically since Christmas, so I was excited…and CA seemed mildly amused.

I was determined to jam in as many visits as I could during our short time there, so on Friday afternoon we headed to my old high school to catch up with my old English teachers, Mr. Egan and Mrs. Wilkinson (though I guess now that I’m an adult, I can refer to them as their real people names- Gary and Tara). We told them all about our lives in Chicago, and they told us all about their continuing adventures in teaching and how Tara taught on a broken foot for half a day when she stepped off a curb wrong, but refused to admit it was actually broken. Apparently she gave her Creative Writing class the exercise of writing short stories explaining how she broke her foot, but soon realized that was a bad idea when half of the stories she got back began with, “Mrs. Wilkinson was so drunk…”

After that, we hopped over to see my old co-workers at Geno’s Formal Affair. It was great catching up with everyone. Since my departure, they’ve hired multiple new people, 2 of which are local beauty pageant winners, so Hunter made sure to inform me I’m not pretty enough to work there anymore anyway. We also caught up with Jordan, who we know from college and who has been the Assistant Manager at Geno’s for a couple of years. She and her husband, Tyler, are planning on moving to the Big Apple next year (unless we can soon convince her that Chicago is infinitely better) so Jordan can pursue a career in fashion, so we shared our knowledge of living in a tiny apartment in a big city. In fact, Jordan recently launched a new fashion blog and you can check it out here.

That night, we grabbed dinner at Waffle House with Sharonda and her boyfriend, Jay. Waffle House is a place of nostalgia for Sharonda and I since we spent many late nights there during the summers I was home from college, and Cary Anne and Jay like greasy breakfast enough to tolerate our insistence that we eat there. Neither Sharonda nor I are great “phone people,” so it was great to hear all about what they've been doing over the past several months.

On Saturday, we drove down to London, because our old college friend, Cam, was getting married. This was the highlight of the weekend because it allowed us to see so many of our old friends from University of the Cumberlands (most of whom we hadn’t seen in over a year). The ceremony was beautiful and simple, and was followed by a reception at a local country club. There were vases of water beads on every table, and many of us UC people sat in the back and tried not to make a scene as we took turns bouncing them and throwing them at each other. The older people around us kept staring and frowning; I don’t know why.

On Sunday, my whole family got together to celebrate my brother’s 29^th birthday. He was a bit predictable in his selection of a Mexican restaurant for dinner followed by frozen yogurt from Orange Leaf for dessert, but I’m not complaining.

Overall, it was a great weekend back in south.