This is fantastic:

 http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Thanks to Rob from work!

Brett :o)

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More photoshopping.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Just brusing up my photoshop skill set.

Ahh, to spend an evening. I need a job.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Yay, a new look… I call it my unemployed cry for help.

Go.

No, seriously. Go.

Many thanks to Kody for the photo from our 2006 Chicago trip.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Today Wesley and I ventured into the city with two specific missions in mind: to visit Luxe Home (which really reminded me why I want to be an interior designer) at the Merchandise Mart (b/c I decided Wesley needed to see it) and to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art (because Tuesday is the free day… apparently brought to us by Target) The largest exhibit space contained the work of one mister Gordon Matta-Clark.

From Wikipedia: He is most famous for works that radically altered existing structures. His “building cuts” (in which, for example, a house is cut in half vertically) alter the perception of the building and its surrounding environment.

There were quite a lot of really cool pieces. My favorite consisted of three pieces of an exterior wall of a house, all cut to the same height and width, however they weren’t consecutive pieces… they contained different parts. The wall is presented with the exterior of the house showing first, as you walk around it… you view the inside (shown below in another gallery)

Though some were done legally, a large number of his “building cuts” were done illegally in abandoned buildings in boroughs of New York City. He actually had (from what I read on the wall) at least 1 warrant out for his arrest, though I would imagine that there were more. The way he cut the buildings (inside of them) was especially deliberate. He didn’t just cut them anywhere, he cut them in places that would open up the space in some way and allow it to be seen differently.

Many of the abandoned buildings that he altered were demolished, and to document we are left with photographs (which was largely what the exhibit consisted of) as well as some of the pieces he actually removed. Though it was quite cool to look at the pieces, the overall point in most cases had to be understood through the photograph. (To me anyway–if you’re altering space, the piece you removed won’t tell you quite as much about it as the result after it was removed.)

All in all, it was quite an interesting, cool, and very fun Chicago day. Days like this remind me why I love this city so much. For anyone interested and in Chicago, his exhibit runs through May 4. There were also quite a few other cool exhibits that you can learn about at The Museum of Contemporary Art website.

In other news:

No news on the job front yet.
I got to hang out with Brandon B. today, he was in for work as per his usual for Tuesday nights. Normally I can’t hang out during the small window of time he has in which to hang out, because I have to pick Wesley up in Aurora during those times. However, today Wesley was off, so it finally worked out. Even though I was quite tired, I treked back into the city for a visit. It was quite fun, and very good to see him.

Well, I should attempt to sleep I suppose…
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Hello there my faithful [and anyone who still reads with the tiny amount I update really deserves the word] internet companions! I hope life finds you well at the present time. I find myself quite unable to sleep at the moment. I should be sleeping because Wesley has to work in the morning… I’ll get to that a little later.

As many of you know, I recently moved to Chicago… Again. Well, I suppose I should say that I am in the process of moving to Chicago. I am up here, and have been since the evening of Sunday, January 19th. I’ve been living at one of the three Extended Stay America hotels in Schaumburg. (A northwest suburb, about 30-40 minutes out of the city, depending on traffic) I hope (only for the sake of those in the other two Extended Stay hotels in this suburb) that we are in the bad one. There is a tiny kitchen-like thing that does contain a microwave, a hot plate (with only one functioning burner) and a small prep-sink. Irritatingly, the room is only serviced every five days… that’s right… same towel and washcloth for dishes for 5 days at a time. Yuck! (the card in our room says they are changed every three, but they most definitely are not.) You actually can go down to the front desk and exchange them out, but that seems kind of sick to me too. “Here are these dirty towels, may we have new ones?” I just wash them out really well every day. The beds here are very hard, and by the time the morning comes, have hurt my back much more than my bed does. The TV has about seven channels, the most entertaining of which is the Discovery Channel. A few minutes ago, I watched a man hollow out a camel (after drinking the liquid from one of its stomachs) and sleep in it for protection in the desert. We’ve also been on a very healthy diet of “How it’s Made,” “Smash Lab” and millions of episodes of “Mythbusters.” I like such shows, I guess… much more than I like watching animals being hollowed out while eating my tasty minestrone soup. Yuck to that. (I like soup but I’ve never eaten so much of it in my life.)

Wesley’s work has put us up in this hotel, it was quite convenient at first as he was working at the restaurant here in Schaumburg, which is right around the corner. Starting today (and from now on) it seems that he’ll be at the one in Aurora. Aurora is not close to Schaumburg. Its about a thirty-five minute journey (one way) that involves two interstates and a tollway–I-290 to tollway I-355 to tollway I-88. There is, however, another way you can take that does not involve the tollway–that is if you’d like to get there in one hour and fifteen minutes. Don’t forget that I now get to drive this FOUR times a day. There, to drop Wesley off, and back to the hotel– (I’ll get to how I spend my days in a minute.) and then back to pick him up, and back to the hotel again. The drive actually isn’t that bad as the entire thing is bordered by buildings, etc. At night, most of it is very well lit. Its just a lot of miles, and a lot of driving and a lot of tolls. I did get I-Pass today, which I totally couldn’t afford– its $50 bucks. A $10 deposit for the transponder, and $40 in preloaded tolls. One advantage to I-Pass is that tolls are only 1/2 of what they are if you pay cash. (I wish I’d realized this BEFORE last night as I’m VERY out of coins, and I need to do laundry again.)

Our hotel does have coin laundry facilities. Four washers–of which two are broken, and six dryers–of which three are broken. For $2 in quarters per load, I can do laundry. Growl. Aside from paying lots of money to do laundry using a shitty facility, I also spend my days applying for as many jobs as one can possibly imagine. My resume has been re-written and re-set up to accomodate my most recent job at MBS, and I have lots of different cover letters for different kinds of jobs. I should probably have different resumes as well, but I’m not trying to bother my nice resume writer that much. What I have is pretty comprehensive. I also watch DVDs… the first couple of days were hell as I forgot the power cord to my computer and had no internet or DVDs. Barf– my parents FedExed it though, and everything was okay. (Thank’s Mom and Dad!) Today I began work on a really cool concept for a portfolio site for myself, now if I can just figure out Actionscript in Flash a little tiny bit more (and yes, I do have a book on it with me that I’ve yet to look at… I’m sure it won’t be too bad once I actually work on it.) and then I can make it super-cool and jazzy and fancy. I’ve already completed the Adobe CS3 Classroom In A Book on Flash, so I’ve got movies and button states, and symbol types and all that crap down pretty well. Now its just putting the programming with it (its always putting programming into stuff that slows me down.)

I also spend small portions of my days exploring the suburbs. A little bit around Schaumburg, but after being here for two weeks, I pretty much get it…. and around Lombard and Oakbrook. That’s where we’ll be living. We found an apartment in Lombard, IL and were accepted and everything.

WHAT? You say?!?! LOMBARD, IL. Wesley will be working in Aurora, IL which is about an hour out of the city… he doesn’t want to commute that far every day (I suppose I can’t blame him, I wouldn’t want to either.) so we picked Lombard which is just about halfway in-between. Its about 25 minutes from My friend Brenda (in a e-mail she sent a few days ago) could not have put it better: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Aurora is NOT Chicago” Well, Brenda…. neither is Lombard. Lombard is 22 miles from Chicago, Aurora is 25.5 miles from Lombard. maps.ask.com lists the drive times as about 1/2 hour each… I think they’re closer to 20 minutes. Maybe it’s factoring in traffic… I don’t know.

Unfortunately, this means (not only that I have to live in the suburbs—– Y U C K !) that I have to keep my car, which I had certainly not intended to do. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to make it work yet, but we’ll see. I’m just going to go for it I guess. I’m hoping to get a good job that I enjoy. There sure are a LOT of opportunities for jobs out here. Tons and tons and tons. The Chicago Tribune, and Careerbuilder.com (which I suspect may be headquartered here as it has a very large building right next to the Cumberland stop of the blue line) have teamed up to make a pretty cool job-finding site. It has all of the regular stuff from careerbuilder.com, but specifically on the Tribune’s site. I would guess they probably add the postings from the paper in as well or something, I dunno…. anyway… the site is different. It lets me quickly research jobs and apply for many at once by simply checking boxes… and voila, it sends them all my resume at once. It doens’t let you click ones that require extra work (like jobs where you must include salary requirements or a cover letter, or a real copy of your resume, or design samples or whatever) which keeps you from looking stupid and applying twice… once incorrectly. Hopefully all of this lovely techology will help me find a job in the very near future.

I ‘ve gone into the city mabye about five times since I’ve been here. Going in really helps me take my mind off of how much I miss all of my friends, and especially my family (and my dog Casey!) Sitting by yourself in yucky hotel is NOT good for the mind body or soul. A few days, its been absolutely necessary as its been two snowy to do anything. Most days though, I just can’t do a lot because I’m waiting for Wesley to get off of work so that I can pick him up during the times anyone I know in the city can do anything. (8-10pm) I really must call people and try to see if anyone has any time during their days free. I have this 30 day transit pass that I bought for 80 dollars the first day here (because I thought I was going to need it— that was before we found out about Aurora) so I might as well get some use out of it. I really do need to get out of the hotel though… I get pretty depressed sitting up in here all the time. Naturally, when Wesley gets off work, he really doesn’t feel like doing a lot. Not that I have the money to be doing much of anything anyway, just… REALLY sick of being at this hotel.

Unfortunately, we’ll be here for almost as long as long as we have already been here. We have fourteen days behind us and eleven ahead. I’ll check out of this hotel (FOREVER! Mwhaha! and return to Jefferson City to get all of my stuff on the 13th. I’ll be back in Chicago on the 16th unpacking. I will then be alone for part of a week (except the weekend, while Josh and his boyfriend come visit from DC!) while Wesley goes to Florida for final training classes. Upon Wesley’s return, his friend Matt from Jefferson City (who I sort of know) will be joining us up here. (I guess we’re moving all his stuff in the van with ours before that date, and he’ll be spared the trouble of moving it! Lucky him!) Yay on splitting the $1100 rent 3-ways instead of two.

By the way. Living in the suburbs is not at all cheaper than living in the city. The apartmets (until you get about an hour out) are almost exactly the same thing as in the city, for the same price… only you have to keep your car… so that sucks. It actually costs more to live in the suburbs. For some reason, Wesley has it in his head that it doesn’t… has I’ve heard him say multiple times on the phone to people, that living in the suburbs is cheaper. Normally I probably wouldn’t be so irritated by this, but aside from meeting with a two new friends (Scott from Wisconsin and Carlos who lives in Chicago) he’s essentialy the only person I’ve had face-to-face conversation with in the past two weeks. We all know how social I tend to be, and how this cooped-uppedness is NOT good for it. I almost feel a little bad for him at times, because I know when I’m being bitchy for no reason… but he can dish it out just as well, if not better, than I… so then I don’t feel bad. We actually are getting along fantastically well for two people who have been sharing a small and shitty hotel room for the past two weeks though.

Living in the suburbs isn’t all bad though. The only West Elm store in the midwest is very close to our new apartment…. and there are two malls within an 8 minute drive (the closest Yorktown Center/The Shops on Butterfield is like a 2 minute drive) The further away one (Oakbrook Center) has a full Crate&Barrel, Pottery Barn, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany & Co, Bang & Oulfesen… as well as a ton of other things. Though the whole thing is oddly minus a roof… it feels pretty much like a normal mall… and most of the stores look like normal interior mall stores… but the whole thing is outside. There are also tons and tons of good and suburby chain restaurants really close to us, if you enjoy that sort of thing. Buca Di Beppo, Maggiano’s, BRIO, The Capital Grille…. and that’s just the beginning.

Since we’ve been here, I’ve thrown a bit of money away on a few good meals. As far as chains go, I can only remember eating at Big Bowl. For local fare, all in Chicago: Foodlife at Water Tower Place, Socca, The Kit Kat Lounge, Halsted’s. I haven’t had a bad dining experience at a local restaurant yet. I’ve also had some good drinks. My favorite by far was something chocolatey and minty at The Kit Kat Lounge. Sidetrack is still as fun as I remember it, I went to Musical Monday’s… yay for showtunes on videos! (Though they were a little more well known and more accessible to the public than the ones they play on Sunday’s at Freddie’s in St. Louis, which I did NOT appreciate… I like the obscure stuff… I know it better.) I also went to Roscoe’s on Wednesday to celebrate Wesley’s birthday and sing some Karaoke (which was actually Friday, the 1st but he worked.) A drag queen named Honey took our songs. They had considerably more Broadway selections than A&C in CoMo, but I suppose that’s to be expected.) I sang “Find Your Grail” from Spamalot, and also an Elton John song that I sing a lot.

Well, I’m still not really sleepy… but I should at least close the computer and try a little harder to get that way. Thank you for reading, as always!

Much love….
If you’re in Chicago: Let’s hang out soon.
If your’e in Mid-MO: Come visit me soon!
If you’re Josh: See you on the 18th!
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

I’ve added points to help with this.

1. A herniated disc in L4 - Ouch! This hurts. It is very bad in the morning but gets less painful throughout the day. Sitting down in the morning causes my right leg to go numb for a while.

2. A Bulging disc in L5 - Less ouch, I think… but together they suck. Suck, suck, suck.

3. This looks like small intestine to me…. though I don’t really know if that’s what it is… but its gross.

4. and 5. must be fat… Is my back really that fat? I should be studied. Gross. That’s gross. There is a visible line inbetween 4 and 5. I believe this is where I lost weight, and then gained a bunch back. The outer-fat looks newer to me as its a little more brightly colored.

The doctor wants to do a corti-something epidural. He says it will help with the pain. That’s nice but I really want the problem solved… not the pain alleviated. Apparently I need to do some exercises… walk a lot (no problem as I’m moving to Chicago) and stand up as straight as possible. Maybe the pain will remind me to do the things I need to do. I don’t have time to get the shot anyway b/c I’m moving tomorrow.
I’ll be living with my friend Wesley. His work is putting us in a hotel for up to three weeks while we look for a place. After we’ve found one… whenver we can, we’ll be coming back for all of our stuff. I think his work is paying to move us as well… which is nice. Hopefully they’ll stop by my house too b/c I have most of the stuff we’ll need… and he doesn’t.

I’m excited kids!

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

So here are a couple of new posters for The SoCo Club. The first, for the Ginger Dial [no website available] art show features three of her painting very crudely blended together in photoshop. The second is for a Steff  Mahan performance. She’ll be returning to SoCo this February.