The Intelligence Estimate

It was brought to my attention by a friend of mine here in town that it has been a few days since I've updated my blog. Since his simple existance hangs on my every word, I thought I'd introduce the rest of you to him and get him off my back all in one swift motion.

This dapper young man about town in the photo is Ryan. He's the unfortunate soul who refreshes his browser window every few minutes to see if I've updated my blog. He, like myself, is new to Chicago. We both work at the Blue Man Group ticket office. He is 22 and has a double major in theater and something really useful like greek/classical studies. This photo was taken with my camera at work one day by Ryan. This was the last picture taken with my camera before it got broken. Now it would be hasty to assume that because he was the person who took the last picture with the camera that he was the one who broke it. It would be hasty, but it would also be correct.

See, shortly after this picture was taken Ryan handed the camera back to me and I took a seat near him. I was holding the camera up looking to see if he'd taken any more photos on the camera. There are always threats of pictures of his butt, but so far there's been no follow through. Ryan was standing behind me. As I was looking at the photos Ryan made some wild gesture behind me (probably defending his innocence in the butt photo debacle) and he accidentally struck my hand. The camera flew across the room, hit the thinly padded concrete floor, bounced twice and rolled into the corner.

Now, to Ryan's credit, he was immediately appologetic and offered to pay to have it fixed. I said I'd get back to him. It turned out not to need anything more than a good smack to get the lens back in place, but I didn't tell Ryan that. Not right away. Where's the fun in that?

Now then, I hope this little story has served to give you e-mail subscribers a slice-of-life look at my life here in Chicago and introduced you to a fellow blog reader. But more importantly I hope it will end his nagging. But honestly, I suspect once he sees his name and photo on-line he will be so addicted to the attention that he will start juggling our wedding china just so I'll write about him again.

Anyway, I'm thinking about making these "Who's Who" features a semi-regular occurance in the blog so you guys can all get to know one another. However, don't feel like you have to trash my stuff just to get mentioned here...that's Ryan's job.