A decision has been made!

As I previously wrote about in this entry, I wanted to enter the real estate brokerage world. Last week, after many interviews with firms of different sizes, I decided to join Be Realty, a smaller brokerage firm with three partners and seven total agents. They seem like great guys and we share many of the same values, as evidenced by their 5-star Yelp reviews and several customer service awards. It also seemed like a great fit because they are looking to grow and would like me to help with the internal functions to help facilitate that growth. While I'm new to the real estate world, I know the business side of things pretty well so there's some real value added that I can bring to the company. It's another chapter of my working life getting underway!!

The stretch of holiday parties and sporting events that started the night before Thanksgiving has finally come to a close....sort of. Actually, it started with our trip to Vegas the weekend before Thanksgiving and runs through Thursday of this week. But, since discretion is the better part of valor, I'm backing out of a bank holiday party on Tuesday. It's just too much!!

Friday we had one of my clients' Christmas party. It was at a super chic, super hipster-dufus type of place in a super hipster part of town (Wicker Park). The place is called Violet Hour and it's one of those places that doesn't have a marked entrance (we literally walked and drove by it three times) and the bathrooms are also not labeled. A waiter pointed me in the right direction and as I turned down a hallway, I was face with four, unmarked, white painted doors. I said to myself, I'm opening a door and going to the bathroom. If it's a coat closet, it's not my problem! Fortunately for the other guests, it was indeed a bathroom. Normally at these places, the wait staff are very pretentious and just awful, but we they were actually quite attentive. The formally normally is pretty bad and overpriced. Now, I don't know about the prices, but the food was very good actually.

While Marissa was sick on Saturday and Laura stayed home to take care of her, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Harris Club for the Bulls game at the United Center by my good buddy Doug. At the Harris Club you get free drinks and food (very good food!). We had a great time and didn't see a minute of the basketball game from our seats. The Blackhawks were on TV, so we were watching them in the bar area. Ha! Great fun. Plus we played some pool. Here's a picture of the Saturday night crew:

Doug is on the right, his son Jonathon on the left and our football neighbor at the Bears games, Gar, in the back.

Speaking of Bears games, if you saw the Monday night game against Dallas, you know it was bitter cold. The game time temp was 9 degrees with an 11 below windchill, but I really didn't know it was that cold. It seemed cold, but not THAT cold. In the 10 years that I've been going to games, I've acquired warm clothing, layers and boots that really do the trick. I didn't even need hand warmers until the second half! Mike Ditka's number, 89, was retired by the Bears in a ceremony at half time and boy did he look cold. His speech was pretty quick, as you might expect. 

Last week our little girl turned 9 months! I feel so bad for getting her sick over the last week. This weekend she actually threw up several times for the first time ever. She was such a trooper though. Despite being so sick, she didn't cry at all while throwing up. We're hoping that she gets back to normal tomorrow. 

And here she is in her latest Bears outfit. Very cute!