1) The sound of sirens in the middle of the night can be like a soothing sort of white noise.
2) Taking the train to the airport is actually really easy, as long as your bags are reasonably sized.
3) Rick is about a thousand times better at parallel parking than I could ever hope to be. And this is not some stereotypical "girls can't parallel park" thing... but I really can't parallel park... the fact that I'm a girl has nothing to do with it...
4) It's quite a challenge to cook in a tiny kitchen with two curious cats underfoot... and on the counter... and in the sink... and on the stove...
5) Starbucks Via coffee is awesome...
6) But walking to Starbucks or Argo Tea is even MORE awesome.
7) The 40-degree weather we had yesterday was "actually pretty nice," according to the guy who took our order at Argo. This leads me to believe that I was perfectly justified in buying a second winter coat at North Face -- apparently "real" winter hasn't even started yet...
8) The smaller the residence, the louder the dishwasher. Seriously, that thing is crazy loud. I'm in a chair ten feet away from the TV, and I can't even hear what's going on.
9) It's very convenient to have a grocery store downstairs, especially when you lug home four bags of groceries and immediately remember five items you forgot to buy...
10) You don't realize how often you use a garbage disposal until you have a kitchen without one.
11) I really, really, really can't wait to have a bigger place so I can get the cats' litter box out of my bathroom... :)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving!
Is everyone ready to eat way too much and then sit in front of a TV for hours?? Good! :)
Stuff I am thankful for:
*Family and friends -- this year, I'm especially thankful for my second-favorite-possibly-adopted brother Eric and my beautiful new sister-in-law.
*A move that went about as smoothly as possible, even with: only a week to pack for three different destinations (Vegas, a temporary apartment, and a storage facility); an awesome wedding to attend; a car that was packed too full and had to be completely reorganized and resulted in a few things being left behind; days of too little sleep and too much coffee (what?!? There's no such thing! :)); and a mom who was in the ER and at the hospital for tests the day before the cats were scheduled to be flown up to Chicago.
*And I'm thankful that mom made it to Chicago with the cats and is feeling better! (And hopefully will KEEP feeling better over the next few weeks!) And she made pie today!! :)
*Coffee, chocolate, and gelato (it seems like I've been eating a lot of gelato lately...)
*An almost absolute assurance of snow this year, with a definite possibility of a white Christmas.
*The excitement of a new city and new places to explore.
*Road trips, purple sweaters, online shopping, giant coffee mugs, lip balm, the sound of the ocean (especially when lying on a beach in Hawaii), multi-colored pens, sugarless gum, cool hotels, music, spicy food (and Cholula hot sauce to make previously un-spicy food spicy), sleeping in, hot chocolate with marshmallows, and lists of random thoughts...
*And finally, I'm thankful that no REAL Muppets were harmed in the creation of the pillow that was on our hotel room bed in Las Vegas:
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!
Stuff I am thankful for:
*Family and friends -- this year, I'm especially thankful for my second-favorite-possibly-adopted brother Eric and my beautiful new sister-in-law.
*A move that went about as smoothly as possible, even with: only a week to pack for three different destinations (Vegas, a temporary apartment, and a storage facility); an awesome wedding to attend; a car that was packed too full and had to be completely reorganized and resulted in a few things being left behind; days of too little sleep and too much coffee (what?!? There's no such thing! :)); and a mom who was in the ER and at the hospital for tests the day before the cats were scheduled to be flown up to Chicago.
*And I'm thankful that mom made it to Chicago with the cats and is feeling better! (And hopefully will KEEP feeling better over the next few weeks!) And she made pie today!! :)
*Coffee, chocolate, and gelato (it seems like I've been eating a lot of gelato lately...)
*An almost absolute assurance of snow this year, with a definite possibility of a white Christmas.
*The excitement of a new city and new places to explore.
*Road trips, purple sweaters, online shopping, giant coffee mugs, lip balm, the sound of the ocean (especially when lying on a beach in Hawaii), multi-colored pens, sugarless gum, cool hotels, music, spicy food (and Cholula hot sauce to make previously un-spicy food spicy), sleeping in, hot chocolate with marshmallows, and lists of random thoughts...
*And finally, I'm thankful that no REAL Muppets were harmed in the creation of the pillow that was on our hotel room bed in Las Vegas:
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Back in Austin... with random pictures!
It seems like every time I'm at my parents' house, I end up finding pictures I'd forgotten were taken. Which means, of course, that some of them are bound to find their way onto the blog. In lieu of pictures of Steve and Faisal dancing together at Eric's wedding (which I am sooooo tempted to post... but I won't, because at least half of that couple would like to maintain his professional image... :)), I present some other random (less embarassing) stuff:
And finally, I have to include some pictures of sweet little Kiko, who went to kitty heaven to visit Allegro last week -- in fact, it sounded like Kiko was suffering from the same recurring strokes that afflicted Allegro in her last year of life. So they'll have plenty to talk about in between heaven-mouse chases and feasts of tuna and naps on fluffy cloud pillows...
Friday, November 19, 2010
Settling in...
It has been a crazy few weeks -- packing, movers, more packing, Eric's wedding, more packing, driving a thousand miles, unloading the car at our new place, UNpacking, trying to get settled... and in a couple days we'll be flying back to Austin for Thanksgiving. Yup. I am officially wiped out...
Moving in was a bit easier than I expected -- we took care of parking in about two minutes, got the keys to our place without much trouble, and borrowed a luggage cart to haul our stuff from the car up to the 20th floor. It only took three trips to unload everything, and once we had, it was painfully obvious how small our new apartment was. I mean, all we brought was what could fit into a CAR, and yet it still took up tons of space in the apartment. But after a couple days of unpacking and rearranging and creatively using random empty areas, I seem to be managing the clutter rather effectively. For now. We still have a few boxes of clothing and bathroom items back at mom and dad's house, and we're hoping to mail them up here when we're in Austin next week. The problem, of course, is that just about every available space in this apartment is already occupied with something... so I'm afraid the "uncluttered" look won't last very long...
Riff and Piva are adjusting, as well -- actually, Riff is doing great and is acting like his usual mischievous self... Piva is taking a bit longer to get back to "normal." She hides under the bed quite a bit (although I suppose I shouldn't assume she's hiding -- maybe she just really likes sleeping under the bed...). And even though I can't read cat minds, I'm fairly certain they're both wondering what happened to the rest of the house... in fact, I think they may be suspicious that we've shut them inside a large bedroom, and just outside that doorway at the end of the hall is a many-roomed abode with plenty of space to run. The first night we were here, I had our empty suitcases sitting in the hall across from a large hanging mirror. Riff jumped up onto the suitcases, looked over at the mirror, apparently thought something along the lines of "oh, THERE'S the rest of this place," and proceeded to lunge at the reflection... needless to say, I moved the suitcases...
My one complaint so far is that someone nearby in this building is a smoker, and the smoke travels through the air ducts and gets into our nice, smoke-free apartment. It's especially bad in the bathroom, from about 7 o'clock until midnight or so... whoever it is must get home from work and immediately light up, then chain smoke until bed... yuuuuuuuuck... But hopefully we won't be here for TOO long...
I do, however, love the fact that I can get to Whole Foods without even leaving my building, and today I found a Starbucks just down the block. I happen to know we're also within walking distance of Argo Tea, several Walgreens drugstores, Ghirardelli, and all the shops on Michigan Avenue. Ghirardelli is the most important, of course... :) I need to explore the neighborhood more, because I'm sure there are plenty of other shops and restaurants that I don't know about...
We're about to head out to meet my parents for dinner, but hopefully I'll be able to post a few pictures soon. I mean, I'm sure everyone wants the grand tour of my 600-square-feet of magnificent opulence...
Moving in was a bit easier than I expected -- we took care of parking in about two minutes, got the keys to our place without much trouble, and borrowed a luggage cart to haul our stuff from the car up to the 20th floor. It only took three trips to unload everything, and once we had, it was painfully obvious how small our new apartment was. I mean, all we brought was what could fit into a CAR, and yet it still took up tons of space in the apartment. But after a couple days of unpacking and rearranging and creatively using random empty areas, I seem to be managing the clutter rather effectively. For now. We still have a few boxes of clothing and bathroom items back at mom and dad's house, and we're hoping to mail them up here when we're in Austin next week. The problem, of course, is that just about every available space in this apartment is already occupied with something... so I'm afraid the "uncluttered" look won't last very long...
Riff and Piva are adjusting, as well -- actually, Riff is doing great and is acting like his usual mischievous self... Piva is taking a bit longer to get back to "normal." She hides under the bed quite a bit (although I suppose I shouldn't assume she's hiding -- maybe she just really likes sleeping under the bed...). And even though I can't read cat minds, I'm fairly certain they're both wondering what happened to the rest of the house... in fact, I think they may be suspicious that we've shut them inside a large bedroom, and just outside that doorway at the end of the hall is a many-roomed abode with plenty of space to run. The first night we were here, I had our empty suitcases sitting in the hall across from a large hanging mirror. Riff jumped up onto the suitcases, looked over at the mirror, apparently thought something along the lines of "oh, THERE'S the rest of this place," and proceeded to lunge at the reflection... needless to say, I moved the suitcases...
My one complaint so far is that someone nearby in this building is a smoker, and the smoke travels through the air ducts and gets into our nice, smoke-free apartment. It's especially bad in the bathroom, from about 7 o'clock until midnight or so... whoever it is must get home from work and immediately light up, then chain smoke until bed... yuuuuuuuuck... But hopefully we won't be here for TOO long...
I do, however, love the fact that I can get to Whole Foods without even leaving my building, and today I found a Starbucks just down the block. I happen to know we're also within walking distance of Argo Tea, several Walgreens drugstores, Ghirardelli, and all the shops on Michigan Avenue. Ghirardelli is the most important, of course... :) I need to explore the neighborhood more, because I'm sure there are plenty of other shops and restaurants that I don't know about...
We're about to head out to meet my parents for dinner, but hopefully I'll be able to post a few pictures soon. I mean, I'm sure everyone wants the grand tour of my 600-square-feet of magnificent opulence...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Home sweet, uh, soon-to-be not home...
We're back in Austin for another, oh, 8 hours or so. I'm doing a quick load of laundry, and then heading straight to bed (it really FEELS like midnight right now, even though it's only 10 back in Vegas -- I think traveling by plane really saps my energy for some reason. But I guess that's good... I'm already reacclimated to the central time zone... :)). We'll hopefully be out of here by 7:30 or 7:45 tomorrow morning, and we'll see how far we get by tomorrow night...
I'm actually a little nervous about moving into the temporary apartment -- we haven't even SEEN the place yet, so I'm hoping it's okay. I mean, sure, it's only temporary... but I'd still like to be relatively comfortable in my temporarity (yes, I just made that word up). Temporarity comfortability. That's what I'm looking for...
And since the dryer just buzzed to inform me that my clothes are dry, I must go fold, pack, and get some sleep. I doubt I'll have a chance to post anything tomorrow, so -- see you in Chicago!!
I'm actually a little nervous about moving into the temporary apartment -- we haven't even SEEN the place yet, so I'm hoping it's okay. I mean, sure, it's only temporary... but I'd still like to be relatively comfortable in my temporarity (yes, I just made that word up). Temporarity comfortability. That's what I'm looking for...
And since the dryer just buzzed to inform me that my clothes are dry, I must go fold, pack, and get some sleep. I doubt I'll have a chance to post anything tomorrow, so -- see you in Chicago!!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Wedding pics!
I can't believe my little brother is married!! :) It was a great weekend with lots of family (my cousin Luke even flew in all the way from Switzerland!) and friends -- it was so nice to have everyone in the same place at the same time to celebrate with Eric and Rachel. We're about to head out to dinner, but here are a few pictures from last night:
Tomorrow we'll be flying back to Austin, and then bright and early Tuesday morning we'll be on the road (in a car that is packed as full of stuff as it can possibly be) to Chicago. If all goes well, we'll be pulling into our new home city sometime Wednesday afternoon, and attempting to get settled into our downsized apartment... this should be interesting... :)
Monday, November 08, 2010
Friday, November 05, 2010
Tired... sooooooo tired...
This week has FLOWN by -- I can't believe how quickly time passes when you have five million things to do and a finite amount of time to do them. I feel like I've accomplished a lot this week, but somehow I think I should feel more prepared for the next few weeks... as it is, I feel totally UNprepared. I still have things to pack, I still have laundry to do, I still have things to throw away... we still have furniture that, thankfully, some friends are taking off our hands tomorrow (although there's more where that came from... furniture? Anyone??).
But I definitely have figured out the pancake thing... in fact, I think it's safe to say that I've got mad pancake-making skillz...
So, if anyone wants a really great pancake breakfast, feel free to come visit me in Chicago. Because if I've learned one thing this week, it's how to make super good pancakes (and I managed to use up all our eggs and most of the bottle of syrup I had in the fridge... that was really my main motivation...).
My plans for tomorrow include more packing, more laundry, and drinking lots and lots of coffee. (But no pancakes, because, as I mentioned, I am now completely out of eggs.) But for now, I'm off to bed... hope everyone has a good weekend! :)
But I definitely have figured out the pancake thing... in fact, I think it's safe to say that I've got mad pancake-making skillz...
So, if anyone wants a really great pancake breakfast, feel free to come visit me in Chicago. Because if I've learned one thing this week, it's how to make super good pancakes (and I managed to use up all our eggs and most of the bottle of syrup I had in the fridge... that was really my main motivation...).
My plans for tomorrow include more packing, more laundry, and drinking lots and lots of coffee. (But no pancakes, because, as I mentioned, I am now completely out of eggs.) But for now, I'm off to bed... hope everyone has a good weekend! :)
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!! Part 3...
Been running around like crazy the last few days, but I'll take a quick break and jot down some random stuff:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!! (Oh, wait -- I already said that... well, it's probably worth repeating... :)) It's starting to really hit me that I have less than a week until people are coming to pack up all our stuff and move it into storage, and I still have soooooooooo much to do. For some reason, I thought it would be easier to pack for a temporary apartment... I have managed to buy some new sheets and a blanket for the bed in the apartment (it's a queen and we have a king, so I didn't have any suitable bedding), which are now all washed and folded and ready to go... and I've packed some towels and a bunch of sweaters... and I've done about fifteen thousand loads of laundry... and I've started getting some stuff together in the kitchen and in the bathroom... but I've still got quite a lot of work to do before we're ready to go...
So who's excited to see the holiday drinks back at Starbucks?? I loooooove peppermint mochas and gingerbread lattes. Although I have to admit it seems a little too early to be reintroducing them -- if I'm remembering correctly, they waited until the week before Thanksgiving last year. That seems more appropriate... but I'm not going to complain, since I do love a decent peppermint mocha...
Why does it seem like all your stuff multiplies when you're about to move? I mean, really, how did I accumulate so many pens and unread magazines and random bottles of perfume? (Should I throw it all away? Or will I be doing a lot of writing and have plenty of time for light reading and need to constantly smell good once I'm in Chicago??)
I have been using my suddenly free weekday mornings to perfect my pancake recipe. I found a couple pancake recipes online a few weeks ago (including one on a food blog, whose author proclaimed the recipe to be "the best pancake recipe ever!!"), and tried them out one weekend -- they were HORRIBLE. The "best pancake recipe ever," in particular, was an eggy, chewy, culinary disaster, and I couldn't figure out why anyone would make it more than once (and I DID follow the recipe correctly, in case you're wondering... :)). So I've been experimenting with my OWN recipes -- each day they've been tasting better and better, and I think today's was ALMOST perfect. I added a few dashes of cinnamon to the batter, and it really made them quite tasty. I'm just hoping I can remember the proper amounts of ingredients I used -- I tend to not write down recipes... I'm one of those "I'll try a little of this and a little more of that" kind of cooks. Which, surprisingly, works out pretty well most of the time...
Okay, I should get back to work, lest I forget to do something important... By the way, I had a dream the other night that when we arrived at our temporary apartment in Chicago, I opened the refrigerator, and it was full of jars of olives. Like fifteen jars of olives. Nothing but olives. What does that mean??? (That means you have really weird dreams, Lisa... :)) Back to packing...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!! (Oh, wait -- I already said that... well, it's probably worth repeating... :)) It's starting to really hit me that I have less than a week until people are coming to pack up all our stuff and move it into storage, and I still have soooooooooo much to do. For some reason, I thought it would be easier to pack for a temporary apartment... I have managed to buy some new sheets and a blanket for the bed in the apartment (it's a queen and we have a king, so I didn't have any suitable bedding), which are now all washed and folded and ready to go... and I've packed some towels and a bunch of sweaters... and I've done about fifteen thousand loads of laundry... and I've started getting some stuff together in the kitchen and in the bathroom... but I've still got quite a lot of work to do before we're ready to go...
So who's excited to see the holiday drinks back at Starbucks?? I loooooove peppermint mochas and gingerbread lattes. Although I have to admit it seems a little too early to be reintroducing them -- if I'm remembering correctly, they waited until the week before Thanksgiving last year. That seems more appropriate... but I'm not going to complain, since I do love a decent peppermint mocha...
Why does it seem like all your stuff multiplies when you're about to move? I mean, really, how did I accumulate so many pens and unread magazines and random bottles of perfume? (Should I throw it all away? Or will I be doing a lot of writing and have plenty of time for light reading and need to constantly smell good once I'm in Chicago??)
I have been using my suddenly free weekday mornings to perfect my pancake recipe. I found a couple pancake recipes online a few weeks ago (including one on a food blog, whose author proclaimed the recipe to be "the best pancake recipe ever!!"), and tried them out one weekend -- they were HORRIBLE. The "best pancake recipe ever," in particular, was an eggy, chewy, culinary disaster, and I couldn't figure out why anyone would make it more than once (and I DID follow the recipe correctly, in case you're wondering... :)). So I've been experimenting with my OWN recipes -- each day they've been tasting better and better, and I think today's was ALMOST perfect. I added a few dashes of cinnamon to the batter, and it really made them quite tasty. I'm just hoping I can remember the proper amounts of ingredients I used -- I tend to not write down recipes... I'm one of those "I'll try a little of this and a little more of that" kind of cooks. Which, surprisingly, works out pretty well most of the time...
Okay, I should get back to work, lest I forget to do something important... By the way, I had a dream the other night that when we arrived at our temporary apartment in Chicago, I opened the refrigerator, and it was full of jars of olives. Like fifteen jars of olives. Nothing but olives. What does that mean??? (That means you have really weird dreams, Lisa... :)) Back to packing...
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