You've Got Mail.

Well, it finally happened. No, I didn’t get married. My Employer ID number finally came in from the IRS. That was Monday night so on Tuesday morning I registered with the IL treasury and then headed to the bank to open a business checking account. Turns out that since I’ve been such a loyal customer to Citibank that they will give me a free business checking account. Well, that and I have to sign up for online banking, overdraft protection, and a credit card as conditions for not paying a fee. But the catch is that they are going to do everything short of a body cavity search before they open the checking account. I found it a little strange since I’m not asking to borrow money but just accessing money that I’m going to deposit in the account. So it may be a week before the account is open. And then yesterday morning I got a call from the NASD (no they’re not busting me already) and they gave me the username, password, & CRD # for the business so I can register with the securities department in MI. So things are progressing nicely. It’s been the busiest week for the firm so far.

Last weekend I had my friend Amy from New Orleans here to visit. She was an AmeriCorps volunteer with me in Jacksonville. We had a good time and went to a few cool places around the city. On Thursday we went to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty much the same as last time I went but still freaky. There were ridiculous crowds though. On Friday we went to the Museum of Contemporary Photography at 600 S. Michigan. They had a pretty cool exhibit where the photographer took the same picture simultaneously from various positions. It was cool to see the same person with the different backgrounds from each direction. I recommend it. It’s free but they want a donation and it would only take 10 minutes to look at the exhibit (maybe a half hour for the whole museum). Then we stopped by the Archicenter, which, of course, is one of my favorite spots. Nothing too new there. Then we hit the Chicago Cultural Society, which is also on Michigan. They had some interesting work there too. If you are on a tight budget those three places are good bets because they are all free, all on Michigan Ave, and all within walking distance. And if you do it on a Thursday, you can hit the Art Institute for free too. We also went to the Cubby Bear on Wednesday night for some live music. And on Saturday night we went to see a double feature documentary at this cool little theatre on Milwaukee as part of the “Chicago International Documentary Festival.” The first movie was about the Ukraine during the 20s, 30s, & 40s, and was actually in English and the other movie was about fallout from Chernobyl, which is also in the Ukraine. Unfortunately Kramer wasn’t around to say Ukraine is weak and feeble. The best part was the theatre. You walk in off this crappy street straight into the theatre. It was just a big room with art on the walls and about 10 rows of 6 wide stadium seating. And the seats were oversized, rocked, and had huge arm rests with cup-holders. They even provided free wine and water, it was the perfect complement to the Quizno’s we had for dinner.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and I let’s also hope that this damn cold weather goes away. Adios.

PS - Pictures are from my trip to the Jax zoo last month with Heather. That giraffe's head was about 6 inches from us. And since I talked up Heather a couple posts ago I thougt I'd provide a picture.