eh, what the hell...
So this is me as of September 8, 2008.
I have a job at an engineering firm in the Chicago Loop. The office is on the 34th floor of a building you can see on pretty much any picture of the Chicago skyline. It overlooks Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. I tend to stare out the window a lot. I'm a "Staff Civil Engineer" in the Transportation-Roadway division, which basically means that I help the "Project Engineer"s with whatever they don't want to do. This includes mostly CAD work and calculating quantities of these things called "pay items," which is everything needed to construct a project broken down into specific items, like "10-inch PCC Pavement" or "42-inch reinforced concrete pipe." It's not as bad as it sounds.
I take the blue line el to work every day because I don't like driving and also you would have to be pretty rich to pay for parking in the Loop every day, which I am not. My home stop is Division. My work stop is Monroe. The only thing that I don't like about my commute is that the entire stretch that I ride is in the subway, which is ugly and gross. I much prefer the elevated tracks where you get to look at houses and parks and shit as you ride rather than concrete walls.
I own a car, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it since moving into this place on August 1st. It's sort of a waste of money (insurance + city sticker + street parking permit, etc.), and I might get rid of it if I'm still using it only once every two weeks or so throughout the winter.
I live in a neighborhood called East Village, which is in a community area called West Town. Most people laugh and say Chicago is confusing when I tell them this. It's easier to understand when you know that it is on the (north)west side of Chicago, and it is directly east of a neighborhood called Ukrainian Village, I guess. Before it was a very Mexican neighborhood (which was before it was a gentrifying mostly-hipster, some-Mexican neighborhood), this used to be a very Polish neighborhood, and there are a bunch of Polish-style cathedrals around here. They look pretty cool (at least from the outside), and they do masses in Polish, Spanish, and English. I really like my neighborhood. It's half brand new condos, and half old, brick walkups. I live in one of the latter. There are a fair number of trees, and it's far quieter than Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, etc. Even though I live only half a block from Wicker Park.
I am studying for the FE exam, which I am taking in October. I should have taken it in April 2007, but I was a terrible and unorganized college student, so I'm just getting around to it now. If I pass, I will officially be an EIT (Engineer In Training), which is basically what I have been acting as for the last year.
On the weekends and lots of weeknights too, I go to bars, they are my primary source of "fun." Our favorite is a place called the High Dive, which is on the opposite end of our neighborhood. They play a lot of "indie rock" music that I mostly don't really like, unless they let us take control of the jukebox, and then they play Weezer and New Order over and over again.
Sometimes I go to concerts. Last fall, before I was living in the City of Chicago, I went to the Empty Bottle for a concert at least once a week. Now that I live a mile away from the Empty Bottle, I go to concerts there about once every few months. I find myself caring less and less about the particular bands playing, and more and more about who is going and how much fun I stand to have. I've found that it's not a bad way to be.
I have a job at an engineering firm in the Chicago Loop. The office is on the 34th floor of a building you can see on pretty much any picture of the Chicago skyline. It overlooks Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. I tend to stare out the window a lot. I'm a "Staff Civil Engineer" in the Transportation-Roadway division, which basically means that I help the "Project Engineer"s with whatever they don't want to do. This includes mostly CAD work and calculating quantities of these things called "pay items," which is everything needed to construct a project broken down into specific items, like "10-inch PCC Pavement" or "42-inch reinforced concrete pipe." It's not as bad as it sounds.
I take the blue line el to work every day because I don't like driving and also you would have to be pretty rich to pay for parking in the Loop every day, which I am not. My home stop is Division. My work stop is Monroe. The only thing that I don't like about my commute is that the entire stretch that I ride is in the subway, which is ugly and gross. I much prefer the elevated tracks where you get to look at houses and parks and shit as you ride rather than concrete walls.
I own a car, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it since moving into this place on August 1st. It's sort of a waste of money (insurance + city sticker + street parking permit, etc.), and I might get rid of it if I'm still using it only once every two weeks or so throughout the winter.
I live in a neighborhood called East Village, which is in a community area called West Town. Most people laugh and say Chicago is confusing when I tell them this. It's easier to understand when you know that it is on the (north)west side of Chicago, and it is directly east of a neighborhood called Ukrainian Village, I guess. Before it was a very Mexican neighborhood (which was before it was a gentrifying mostly-hipster, some-Mexican neighborhood), this used to be a very Polish neighborhood, and there are a bunch of Polish-style cathedrals around here. They look pretty cool (at least from the outside), and they do masses in Polish, Spanish, and English. I really like my neighborhood. It's half brand new condos, and half old, brick walkups. I live in one of the latter. There are a fair number of trees, and it's far quieter than Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, etc. Even though I live only half a block from Wicker Park.
I am studying for the FE exam, which I am taking in October. I should have taken it in April 2007, but I was a terrible and unorganized college student, so I'm just getting around to it now. If I pass, I will officially be an EIT (Engineer In Training), which is basically what I have been acting as for the last year.
On the weekends and lots of weeknights too, I go to bars, they are my primary source of "fun." Our favorite is a place called the High Dive, which is on the opposite end of our neighborhood. They play a lot of "indie rock" music that I mostly don't really like, unless they let us take control of the jukebox, and then they play Weezer and New Order over and over again.
Sometimes I go to concerts. Last fall, before I was living in the City of Chicago, I went to the Empty Bottle for a concert at least once a week. Now that I live a mile away from the Empty Bottle, I go to concerts there about once every few months. I find myself caring less and less about the particular bands playing, and more and more about who is going and how much fun I stand to have. I've found that it's not a bad way to be.