Day 15

I went to see This Means War today with a friend from PetCo. Pretty good movie, attractive men, always a good time. When I pulled into my parking space, I saw the following on the base of a street lamp. I don't think any additional exploitation is needed.

Sometimes I have friends

I have one friend outside of either of my jobs. Her name is Nikki and you met her a few posts back.

A few weeks ago, we went for a drive and ended up at Fossil Creek Creamery. My love of goat cheese started that day. Obviously all the cheese I got from there is now long gone, eaten with delicious crackers. Well she went there a few days ago and got more cheese, so we are going to have a wine and cheese and movie night. I'm excited! I'm going to go have an adult evening with a friend I made as an adult!

Aaannd Theeeeenn

After mom and I spent, what, 2 days? in Chicago; she LEFT ME!! ("He left us, he left us!"  "But that's not what I'm gonna do!" name that movie!) All ALONE!!! In the big city of CHICAGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To wait for Lindsey to come pick me up! :)

We had already checked out of the hotel (because those crazy places make you leave my like 11am, in what universe are people awake by 11am on their vacations? ...Oh yeah, this one.) The hotel people were nice enough to let me leave my baggage in the storage area so I didn't have to lug it around while exploring on my own and waiting for my ride. With just my purse and my jump on/jump off bus card, I took mom to the train station, cried a little, and rode the bus all by myself (look mom, I'm a Big Girl Now!) around the city till I decided what I would do. Unsurprisingly, I decided to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say that Chicago has one of the nicest bus systems I've ever had the pleasure to navigate. I didn't use the L-train while I was there, but the buses are fantastic.

For those of you not in the know, the Lincoln Park Zoo is in Lincoln Park in Chicago just north of the Miracle Mile. It is huge and free to get in and parts of it are coaxingly nice, and I think that other parts will catch up eventually. I had my camera (when do I not) and took pics. I even recorded a bit of video of my talking to/for the animals like mom and I do so I could show her later when I go home. Yes, mom and I are those people.

They have a fantastic ape house with chimps and gorillas. I tried not to use my flash, so most of my pics from in there ended up blurry.

The big cat house needs some serious work, but they have lots of different cats, which I LOVE!

He's in a box! Like a house cat!

This tiger was so cute, it was like he was posing!

After I shot these, I took the bus back to Miracle Mile and found a place to sit and have a coffee while Lindsey was fighting traffic into the city. After she made it, we drove back out to the zoo and looked around for a bit since she had never been there before. While we were in the cat house, the male lion started roaring. He walked into his outside exhibit and continued while we watched (and while I filmed it). It was awesome! I love lion roars!

He tired himself out with all that effort and had to take a nice nap!

 After the zoo closed, Linds and I took the bus back into the city (it's a few blocks) while leaving her car since we found a free parking spot next to the zoo. We were going to go eat at this one place, possibly pizza, but we were starving! and the wait was like an hour, while standing outside in the COLD! So we went to the Hard Rock and ate.

After dinner was the long drive to Peoria, where Linds lives. The next day, we went to another zoo!!!

Goldfield

I had the day off Tuesday, and so did my friend Nikki, so we decided to take a little trip. I had found this ghost town online that was only like 35min from here called Goldfield Ghost Town. It's this little tourist trap kind of place. The guy who built it did so in an area near the Superstition Mountains where a lot of people had discovered gold in the rush. He built very near the original town site, but most of the town an disappeared years before. All the buildings are built to look like they're from the early-mid 1800's.

There's a narrow gauge train that takes you on a circuit around the town and the conductor tells you all about the area and why this was built, etc etc. Since it was summer, the reptile house that I really wanted to see was closed for the season. I'll  have to come back in the winter. There's also a mine tour and a mystery house. We didn't do either of those things. We wandered around and looked at the shops.

Nikki and I in front of the train.

Hurry Up Ernie giving the tour.

Goldfield from the train.

This was just cool.

Superstition Mountains

After we left we went to see this housing complex that Nikki is thinking of getting a house in. Looking at that house made me want a house. I am tired of renting, but I also don't want to buy a house and have that keeping me here. I want to leave Arizona in a few years and don't want to have to sell a house.

After that adventure we went to Sweet Tomatoes for a late lunch, vegged out at my place for a while, and then parted ways. I then took a short nap, and watched 8 episodes of Criminal Minds. It was a good day off!

Outside the Bordello in a Go-Go dancer cage

Took this pick just for mom!

                                                                      We're in elevators!

Sad

I'm reading my friend's backdated blog posts from earlier this month, and there are tears streaking down my face. She had a tragedy early in December, and I was (am) 2000 miles away, instead of right there where I felt that I should have been. But she has friends and family, people closer to her than I am, and I trusted them to get her through it. I didn't want to bother or poke and prod. I hope I can offer my condolences next time I'm home; I hope I can see her then, offer whatever she needs. I wish I had been keeping up with her blog, or any bloggers, so I could have commented when she posted, but I haven't. I've been busy and not spending as much time reading the blogs of people I know as I should be. I can't even imagine what she's going through. I love you Ginger!

GrrArgh

I am looking for a new place because the roommate of doom is getting to be too much to deal with. I really really hate looking for apartments. What's online on these apartment search sites can not possibly be all there is, but it's the easiest thing to look for, and I hate having not enough money. But I do have more money than I had, so that helps. Where do you people look when you're trying to find an apartment?

I either want a studio for just me, or a 2 bed for me and the roommate that I like and also can;t stand anymore of the roomie of doom. Good roomie doesn't want to spend much more than we're spending now, so it just might be me all on my own, though I think she has it in her head that the only place we're gonna be able to find it gonna be like $2000/month each or something. Wish me luck, and give me advice please! Also, Cindy, wanna live with me?

Maybe I should post some actual content

I've been posting a lot of nonsense and drivel lately. Not that it terrible matters because no one really reads this except me. But if I'm gonna have to look at it, I might as well put something here about my life. I applied to a few more jobs a week or so back. On of them was at a doggy daycare called Downtown Dogs. I emailed, then got a response saying "Hey lazybones, come in a fill out a app, dork." So I did, then got called back and set up an interview. First interview time ended up clashing with work, so I called back to reschedule. Person who I needed was in a meeting, and didn't call me back that day. Just as I was going to call yet again the next day, she called back, and we rescheduled for Monday the 10th. The she called me back again saying that Oops, I have something that day and time. So NOW I have an interview there on Tuesday at 3pm. Hopefully it doesn't go more than an hour because I have to work at 5, which means I like to be out of the house and on the road by 4. But I will be a little closer to work coming from the interview rather than my house.

Hopefully I get this job. It's working with animals, and is pretty much a job I've done in the past. Well, more of a conglomeration of various jobs I've done. If they don't hire me, they're crazy. I am totally qualified! Hell, I'm probably over qualified, but hopefully they'll hire me anyway. The I can push back my JoAnn's jobs to fewer hours and not have to drive all the way out to Maple Grove quite so often.

In other news, my roomie Mandy's cousin had a baby girl, and Mandy's mom bought two onesies and a hat off of me. Yay! She got these three:

The most fun I've had in a long while

The Murder Mystery Party was, as is stated in my title for this post, the MOST FUN I'VE HAD IN LIKE FOREVER!!!! At the very least, probably the most fun I've had since graduating college. It was just a blast! I got to hang out with my friends who I haven't seen in far too long (though, when you're 23, three weeks is far too long!), ate great food, drank some wine, played a game, and took lots of pictures.

We each had our characters, and we had a booklet that went along with each character. Inside there was info that we had to tell about other people, and info about ourselves that we didn't want coming out. There were four rounds, and then we took a guess on who did it, then in the back of each booklet there was a bit to the end of the story about who did it and who didn't and why and whatnot. It was fabulous! I can't even get over how much fun I had. We are planing to have another one, which will probably be a potluck so Kelly (and Toria and Nika, but mostly Kelly) doesn't have to pay for everything and do so much work. There are themes for other ones and it's all fantastically great fun. I can't wait till Kelly gets the pics up, they are fantastic.

Kelly and Nika made everyone place signs with their character's name on them and objects that pertain to their character. My character was Evelyn C Leigh, called EC. She was a cheerleader in high school. On my poster is says EC, and there is a mega phone, and balloons, and a chain cutout of girls in skirts and a speak balloon saying Go Team! I put it on my bedroom door, because I'm totally still 12, I swear.

After we were done, we went out in the back yard to get pics of everyone with their sign, and I did them like mug shots, it's pretty cool. The we took a few group shots of various kinds, girls pics, guys pics, and random other stuff. The we sat around and hung out and stuff until like 9pm. I had such a great time! I miss these people so much! I realize how much of a hermit I am when I get around my friends and need to be around them for a long period of time.

Still squeeing!!