Hey everyone! Another month comes to a close and boy, has it been a good one! Here’s a bit of what I did this month!

I went to Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America twice this month! I did end up getting the 2017 season pass that includes season parking as well as the 2017 gold dining pass which means I get lunch, dinner, and a snack every visit, and I get a free sports bottle. With these passes I can go to almost any Six Flags park and enter with my pass and get food there. Best of all, I got to start using those benefits already!

I’m not being sponsored by Six Flags although I wish I was! Anyway, I love Fright Fest because of all the Halloween decor but I always leave the park when the actors come out to scare park attendees. I always make it a point to see the hypnotist and the fun Halloween musical performance they do though!

On October 31st I got this green cup from Starbucks! It’s not THE holiday cup but apparently it’s one of them according to the lady that handed it to me from the drive through window. According to Starbucks it’s a cup design celebrating community and several people have speculated that it’s in an effort to get people to vote. I thought it was a Thanksgiving cup!

For work we took a little trip to a local farm! We saw pig races, visited the petting zoo, rode the hay ride, and went food shopping. It was great!
Also this month I saw not one, not two, but THREE musicals!

First musical I saw this month was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with my sister at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. I was here for Evita earlier in the year and I still loved it this time around. The cast was amazing and the “theatre in the round” style is so much fun! I especially loved the Rosemary and the Miss Jones actresses but everyone was good and it was a great time. Since it’s close to my office I just went to Target to pass the time before the musical started on a Friday night. Worth it!

The second musical I saw, chronologically but perhaps most importantly, was Hamilton! I somehow got tickets (by logging into all my Ticketmaster accounts on every device I could the day tickets when on sale) for the second week of performances at the PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago. And it was amazing!!! I’m so glad I finally got to see it as I’d been dreaming about it for so long and imagining it in my head. I’ll likely do a whole separate post on it but it was by far my favorite musical ever.

I had a goal to know all the words to the musical by the time I went and although I did not meet my goal I think I was fairly close. I still liked some of my made up scenes better but the choreography was beautiful, the set was astounding, and the lighting was downright incredible. Now I did see a Wednesday matinee performance so I think that the actors weren’t putting so much effort into it or hadn’t properly warmed up yet through the start of the first act but they did much better as the performance went on. I’m so happy I got the chance to see it!

And the third musical was The Book of Mormon that I saw at the Marcus Center for Performing Arts in Milwaukee. I had missed it in Chicago earlier in the year and I was scrolling through social media when I saw a promotion from the theatre announcing a lottery for discounted tickets. I entered and won two tickets for $25 each (all fees and taxes included)! I laughed so much for the entire show. I’m very happy I got the chance to be able to get the tickets and had the time to do so. The actors were really good, they were actually a lot of the Broadway actors on the tour so that was really good to get to see and especially at such a great price!

And you might already know if you read my previous posts but I met Hannah Hart, youtuber and star of My Drunk Kitchen, at a book signing in Nashville, IL. Hannah wrote her second book, an autobiography called Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, and I knew I had to get it. It was super easy buying the tickets, especially since I’d used the same system already to meet other authors on their book tours. Hannah was so incredibly sweet and lovely. The fans in line were too (for the most part). Three other fans in line next to my sister and I hung out with us. We were numbers 160-164 (one person didn’t show somewhere in there) and we had a blast. Unfortunately something always seems to go wrong at Anderson’s bookstore so when it was our turn to go get our books they forgot about us and skipped our row. By the time the realized they’d messed it they had already allowed groups in the 200s to go through. We were having fun so it wasn’t too bad, just annoying, especially as they had put up a sign that said 160 on it so they would know when to call us up. Oh well, we got our books and photos with Hannah so it all worked out! Btw, I did a book review on Buffering if you’d like to check it out herehere!

And lastly, I went on my very first work-related travel trip! (I’m not counting the time I was sent to Chicago for training at my old retail job.) I headed out to Cleveland for orientation for a new mentoring program at work. I am the mentee for this program and I’m so happy to be a part of it. While the planning part of it was stressful, it was totally worth it! I think my mentor is great and I’m super excited for the rest of the program. I can’t say much more than that but it was very nice seeing a new office and I can tell that a lot of thought and effort was put into the planning and implementation for the program so I definitively feel the pressure to step it up! Oh, I did a whole post though on the trip here and a make up look while in Cleveland!

And that’s my October! Let me know what you guys have been up to!

Thanks for reading!