Randomy randomness...

So I just finished unpacking from our California trip, and now I'm packing AGAIN for a weekend in Austin. We haven't been down since Thanksgiving, so it'll be nice to see everyone. We're looking forward to dinner at Rick's parents' house tomorrow night -- that was our Friday night tradition for years. And hopefully we'll be getting together with some friends over the weekend (if said friends can find a babysitter... :)). The great thing about packing for Austin is that it's already about 500 degrees down there... so I don't have to worry about a coat or heavy sweaters...

Is anyone else sick of hearing about the royal wedding? I can't wait until William and Kate have finally tied the knot so I don't have to keep hearing about all the "romantic details" of the upcoming nuptials. C'mon, news channels... I'm a cynical American... I. Don't. Care.

Have I mentioned that my brother is awesome?? He happily took care of Piva and Riff while we were in California, and he's going to check in on them this weekend while we're away again. Someone is getting a free dinner at Morton's! I mean, not Eric... I'll just get him a coffee mug or something. But I'm sure SOMEone, somewhere, is getting a free dinner at Morton's...

We saw a great condo yesterday and have extended another offer. One of these days we'll actually manage to buy a place. Rick has been in the habit of posting all of our condo selections on Facebook, and, unfortunately, none of them have worked out. So this time he kept the listing out of the social network loop in the hopes that he wouldn't jinx it. (Or maybe just because it's getting annoying to announce our intentions to buy a place, only to have some complication pop up...)

And a few more random vacation pictures:

Old church in San Francisco...

Stuffed otter on our bed at the hotel in Monterey (it was 20 bucks if you wanted it... I was hoping they gave them out free with the room... but nooooooooo, of course not... :))

Bunny (with chewed up ears??) on a trail off Highway 1...

 Highway 1 scenery...

Does anyone remember that scene in Harry Potter where Dumbledore takes Harry to the cave to retrieve the locket, and before they go into the cave, they're standing on that big rock surrounded by ocean? Yeah, that's what this reminded me of...

Waiting for our turn to drive through a one-lane construction zone on Highway 1 (apparently a lot of the road was damaged during the rainy season, but most of it was minor, so they were just corralling everyone into one lane... but the part we had to detour around was actually washed away completely...).

A California vineyard...

Okay, I suppose I should go finish packing for tomorrow...

Laundry day!!

I thought maybe if I acted really excited about it, it would be more fun... but nope, it's still just laundry. :) (And it really DOES seem to be some sort of official Laundry Day today -- I was lucky to find two empty dryers for my clothes. It's busy down there right now...)

Look what we returned to:

 

Green stuff! Although it's still rather sporadic in the park:

But the point is, we finally have visual evidence of the change of seasons. We can stop wondering whether or not spring will really show up, and start wondering whether or not we'll ever be able to find our warm-weather clothes over in our storage unit... (And as you can see, it's cloudy and foggy today -- otherwise you know I would've had another skyline picture here... :))

In celebration of the Sprouting of the Green Stuff, I shall, at some point today, break into some of this:

Yeah, no way was I coming home from Ghirardelli empty-handed. (And nevermind the fact that we have a Ghirardelli two miles away in downtown Chicago -- this is VACATION chocolate. It's different. Just go with me on this.) I also came back with a bag full of taffy from a candy shop at Fisherman's Wharf -- they literally had about a hundred different taffy flavors... barrels full of colorful sugary chewiness...

Oh, and I must report (with some hesitation) that I quite enjoyed using my Kindle on this trip. I can definitely see how it's a great travel accessory. But I'm not ready to toss away all my paper books... there's still something to be said for holding a BOOK in your hands... being able to flip back to a section you've already read... seeing how many pages are left until the end of the story... Reading a Kindle is sort of like reading with blinders on -- you only have a good view of the immediate page you're reading. Everything else is hidden... it's a bit strange at first. But it's a great idea for travel, and I'm sure I'll be using it again...

Okay, off to fold laundry (laundry day!!!! Nope, still not exciting...) and then we're heading out to look at a condo with our realtor. After I eat some chocolate, of course... 

Goodbye, palm trees...

At dinner tonight, I overheard the waiter at the table behind me ask a recently seated patron if he had "any immediate appetizer requirements." This resulted in a flurry of responses inside my brain:

Yes! I need crab claws! Crab claws forthwith!

I require shrimp cocktail post haste!

Of course I require appetizers, my good man! Do I look like some sort of namby pamby, appetizer-eschewing commoner?? 

Why is there not a bowl of spinach-artichoke dip on this table RIGHT NOW?

Personally, I don't find appetizers dramatic enough to warrant immediate requirement... :)

And as we ate dessert (a reasonably sized slice of chocolate cake, which we split...), Rick asked me if I was "enjoying the last dessert we'll be having for the next three weeks." Well, I WAS, until he said that... (Apparently someone thinks we've been eating too much dessert this week... :))

We spent the day walking around downtown San Diego. The weather was PERFECT today -- I hope I soaked up enough sun and warmth, because I'm assuming it will NOT be quite the same when we get back to Chicago. But we had a great week of ocean views (and inland detours) and rocky cliffs and palm trees and salty sea air... so we're ready to get back to our cats and our skyline view and our regular old trees (which will hopefully be turning green by the time we get back) and our giant lake.

See you back in Chicago!

 

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a good holiday! This may be the first Easter that we haven't been near family, and, consequently, we spent our day in hotels and on the road. We did, however, listen to Don Francisco's "He's Alive" on our iPod in honor of the holiday, which is one of the best Easter songs EVER. (Mom, remember the Ted Cornell Chorale version of that song? I think that's my favorite arrangement -- unfortunately, we don't have it on the iPod. :)) Of course, my absolute favorite Easter song has to be the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah... but for some reason, it seems to be reserved for Christmas performances. I don't know why that is. I mean, not that I'm complaining about people performing it at Christmas... but Handel DID include it in the "Easter" portion of the Messiah. The fact that it seems to be all but ignored this time of year is a bit strange... I would petition for more Easter performances of the Hallelujah Chorus...

Anyway, our driving on this Easter Sunday has brought us to San Diego -- the final city on our journey. (Cue sad face here... :( Okay, YOU guys probably aren't sad, but I am... :)) On the one hand, I wish my vacation wasn't winding to a close... but on the other, I'm looking forward to getting back home and making sure Eric didn't free our cats out into the wild... (Just kidding -- I'm sure Riff and Piva have been extremely grateful to have company now and then this past week. :))

Yesterday's drive took us south into Santa Monica, and the farther we drove, the more we were reminded of Hawaii -- sandy beaches, palm trees, sunny skies, rolling green hills. (In fact, Rick and I both decided that this trip has made us miss Hawaii, and perhaps we need to find a way to get back to Maui soon...)

Those houses on the beach are owned by some very lucky, and, presumably, very rich people...

Our hotel in Santa Monica overlooked this area. Right behind those palm trees in the middle, you can see the original Muscle Beach (there's another one located in Venice Beach now, but the one in Santa Monica is the original). It's been there since the 1930s, when men did manly things like climb on top of each other to create testosterone-fueled man towers:

We didn't see any of this kind of thing going on... but we did see a bunch of guys swinging from metal rings like monkeys... honestly, it sort of looked like fun...

Oh, and I have to post this picture for mom and Aunt Carol -- we saw this street on our drive today:

We have no plans for tomorrow except to visit a place down the street called "Chocolat" (hey, the reviews online said they have great espresso... that's the only reason I want to check it out... why else would I want to go???) And then it'll be back to reality... but hopefully reality will include some chocolate... :) 

Happy Earth Day...

While I'm not much for the increasingly popular idea of turning off all your lights on April 22nd to show solidarity with Mother Nature and to stop evil, evil man-made global warming, I DO have a love of the natural beauty found on this planet. So in honor of Earth Day, we took some pictures (although honestly, it was less "in honor of Earth Day," and more because this is what we saw on our drive from Monterey to Pismo Beach today :)):

Before we set out on our trip down Highway 1 today, we happened to hear on the news last night that part of the highway was closed due to a landslide -- apparently during the rainy season, part of Highway 1 washed away into the sea. (Fortunately, no one was on the road when it happened, because it's a looooong way down...) As we drove, we kept seeing signs: "HIGHWAY 1 CLOSED 50 MILES AHEAD"; "HIGHWAY 1 CLOSED 35 MILES AHEAD," etc. We assumed there would be some sort of a detour once we reached the closed section, but since we'd only planned out about 100 miles to drive today, we weren't worried about the extra driving.

Does everyone remember my story about Saddle Road in Hawaii? The car rental company in Hawaii was so paranoid about that road that they actually threatened to void the car rental agreement if they found out you drove on it. Well, the "detour" road around Highway 1 was about fifty times worse than Saddle Road. In fact, to call it a "road" would really be using the term quite loosely. It was more like a winding hike and bike trail that had been paved to accommodate cars... a one-lane path that hugged a sheer drop-off into a valley of redwoods and brush and (I can only assume) the rusted-out remains of unlucky cars. Ten miles of the twisting, turning, motion-sickness-inducing "road" took us at least an hour to traverse. Eventually, the road settled down into something less chaotic, and a yellow dividing line appeared to prove that we were finally on a TWO-lane road. (We were also, we discovered, on a military base, surrounded by tanks and barracks and wide-open fields of obstacle courses -- normally not open to civilians, but an exception has been made, considering it's the only road around Highway 1...)

By the way, you'll notice I took no pictures of this section of our journey -- this was mostly because I was fighting off a bout of car sickness, and was afraid to move my head in any direction for fear of upsetting my already unbalanced equilibrium. (Well, that, and there were very few places to stop a car and take pictures on the narrow hike and bike trail...) 

Needless to say, it took us several hours longer to reach tonight's stopping point of Pismo Beach than we expected it to take. But hey, we wanted some adventure on this vacation, right? (Happily, it did NOT include plunging off a cliff into a valley...)

And we were finally rewarded with the view from our hotel balcony:

 

Whew...

Before we arrived in San Francisco, I knew there was one thing that I absolutely HAD to do while I was here -- go to the original Ghirardelli shop by Fisherman's Wharf. And since Rick and I have been living in Chicago and think we're a couple of intrepid city navigators, able to walk miles in a single afternoon, we decided to forgo a cab and walk to Fisherman's Wharf from our hotel. After all, we've walked from Lincoln Park to downtown Chicago many times -- four miles round trip, no problem. So the mile and a half or so from our hotel to our destination seemed like a simple feat...

Of course, this was BEFORE I remembered that streets in Chicago are as flat as crisscrossed pancakes, and the streets in San Francisco are more like this:

Our hotel, by the way, is at the very bottom of that hill...

And then once we got to the top, we had to walk DOWN another hill to get to the wharf (see Alcatraz in the distance?).

But the good news is, we finally made it to the promised land:

That sundae was huge... I couldn't finish it... even after all that walking...

After Ghirardelli, we wandered around the wharf for a while. I wish the weather had been better -- it's been cloudy all day, with intermittent drizzly rain. So the gray skies and haze didn't make for the best pictures:

We're now back at the hotel, attempting to recover from a day full of hilly walking, and trying to decide where to WALK for dinner... hopefully we can find something close. My feet will never forgive me otherwise...

Long day...

I should've known, when we walked into O'Hare this morning and breezed through check-in and security in ten minutes flat, that the rest of the day would NOT go as smoothly... and yet, for a few brief moments, I actually allowed myself to think that this air travel thing was actually pretty darned convenient...

And then we got to our gate, and noticed that our plane was delayed. Not a lot -- only a half hour or so. Nothing we couldn't manage. But of course, as these things are wont to do, the half hour turned into an hour... at which point we noticed that our plane (to Dallas, where we would catch our flight to San Francisco) and a plane that was departing for (ironically) San Francisco, were scheduled to leave within five minutes of each other from the same gate. Well, THAT wasn't going to happen...

(On a side note, since about fifteen people asked us today why we didn't just take a direct flight to San Fran: we probably waited too long to make our reservations, at which point every direct flight was either super expensive, or departing at an inconvenient time, or both. And since Rick has been accumulating miles to get to "platinum" status anyway, we figured we'd just collect some extra miles... But as I mentioned to mom earlier -- we ARE taking a direct flight back to Chicago, fortunately...)

Eventually, our slightly delayed flight turned into a two-hours-delayed flight, and it became quite obvious that there was no way we'd be catching our flight to San Fran from Dallas. So Rick got on the phone and switched us over to a later flight... which worked out okay, because by the time we did finally get to Dallas, we were starving and had plenty of time to get food.

So after eating and procuring a couple cocoa cappuccinos from Starbucks (where, incidentally, they had a sign at the register saying "we do not accept tips at this location." What??? We somehow managed to find the only Starbucks in the world without a tip jar! :)), we made our way to the gate, where the flight was scheduled to leave on time. But the longer we sat, the more I noticed a change in the previously blue sky... I asked Rick to check the weather, and a tiny little storm had popped up outside of Dallas. "I hope that doesn't end up coming this way," I foreshadowed... without realizing I was foreshadowing.

Of course, as I said, I SHOULD have known that things would not go smoothly... So yes, the storms got bigger and meaner and ended up grounding all air travel at Dallas/Ft. Worth for a good hour. So our "on time" flight turned into another delay. But the good thing about those Texas storms is that they pop up and run their course pretty quickly, so we didn't have to hang out at the airport TOO long....

(Another side note: when we took off from Dallas, we could see a TON of the wildfires that have been plaguing the entire state of Texas recently. One was so big that we could actually see flames from thousands of feet in the air... not good... hopefully Texas will start getting more rain...)

Finally, at about 8:45 California time (10:45 back home), we arrived in San Francisco and headed toward baggage claim to face our final hurdle: when we switched our flight, we opted for one that departed late enough that we knew we'd have time to make the connection. There WAS an earlier flight, but we would've had to RUN across the Dallas airport to an entirely different terminal to even have a slight chance of catching it. When we asked a gate agent about our luggage, she said she didn't think they'd have enough time to switch our luggage over to that earlier, other-side-of-the-airport flight, so chances were good that our luggage would tag along with us on the later flight. So we stood at the baggage claim carousel at the San Francisco airport, hoping we'd see our bright blue and red bags on the conveyor belt... but they never appeared.

And THIS may be the only time today that things went off without a hitch -- because when we went to the baggage office and presented our claim tags, the woman behind the counter immediately found our bags and brought them out. (You know, sometimes I think those little claim tags are useless, but thank goodness I didn't misplace them on this trip...)

So after an entire day of travel, two cappuccinos, one caramel latte, and hardly any food to speak of, we are FINALLY in San Francisco, WITH our bags, and I think it's way past my bedtime... Food will have to wait until tomorrow... :)

Off we go...

I just finished this book, which is immediately going on my list of favorites -- I loved it. I'm not usually a fan of historical fiction -- apparently I feel that a written account of a time before HD television and iPods will somehow be less interesting than a modern era. This book was proof to me that I shall, henceforth, be required to give historical fiction a chance...

As the name might suggest, the book takes place back in the late-1800s/early 1900s, when people in Hawaii who were afflicted with leprosy were forced to live in a colony on Molokai. It follows the life of a girl named Rachel, who, at the beginning of the book, is seven-years-old. When one tiny spot pops up on her leg (the beginnings of the disease), she is taken from her family on Oahu, and literally shipped off to Molokai. The book spans Rachel's entire life, from her imprisonment on Molokai to her eventual release back into the "real" world... and I was really impressed by how the author was able to make a story about a horrible situation (and what could've been the END of a life) into something that was ultimately about LIVING. I would highly recommend it...

I wanted to finish this book yesterday so I could download something new onto my Kindle and finally give it a try -- we're leaving for a week in California tomorrow morning, so I figured this would be the perfect chance to give my "paper" books a rest and allow my traitorous self to try out an e-reader. (Don't worry, Books!! I shall return, I promise!)

We're flying into San Francisco and then renting a car and driving down the Pacific Coast Highway -- we're planning to really take our time (as opposed to our usual marathon road trips), so hopefully I'll have lots of time to blog and post pictures. So be sure to check back this week and read all about our adventures... or maybe just our boring drive and our stops at random restaurants. Who knows. :)

See you in California! 

A is for apple...

Okay, first things first:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! :)

Eric is in Austin at the moment, hoping that his presence on mom's birthday will help him attain "favorite child" status. But mom is much too smart to fall for such an obvious ploy... (I, on the other hand, shall promise fajitas and key lime pie to anyone who grants me Favorite Child status...)

Hope you're having a great day, mom!! :)

So this is one of those things that has been making the rounds in the blog world for a couple months now... and I've finally decided to cave to blogger peer pressure and submit my own answers. (Must be one of those "writer's block" kinda days...):

A. Age: Oscar Wilde said, "One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything." That Oscar Wilde was a smart guy...

B. Bed size: King... I can never sleep in anything smaller than that. Well, at least not for a long period of time. I like to stretch out when I sleep so I need lots of room. Maybe I'd be better off on the floor...

C. Chore you hate: I'm not fond of scrubbing floors or cleaning shower grout... in fact, Rick was usually the one who cleaned our giant shower back in Austin (now we have a tiny little shower, so it's not as bad... :))

D. Dogs: Awww... now I miss Echo...

We probably won't get another dog for a while... harder to take care of them in a big city...

E. Essential start to your day: I believe I recently mentioned my love of coffee. Must. Have. Coffee.

F. Favorite color: Purple!

G. Gold or silver: I prefer silver to gold, although I don't really wear much jewelry anyway...

H. Height: 5'4"... and a half... maybe 5'5" if I stand up reeeeeaaaaalllly tall.

I. Instruments you play: I took about six years of piano lessons... so technically, I CAN play the piano... I'm just not all that good at it. If you want to hear me play anything, you'll have to give me a good week to practice... especially since I don't have a piano at the moment...

J. Job title: My last "official" job title was Communications Specialist. But now I'm a random occasional freelance writer/editor/proofreader. So if you need anyone to do any of those things, let me know...

K. Kids: I don't have any, but there seems to have been a strange baby boom amongst my Facebook friends recently. If I read one more status update about a baby, I'm quitting that site. Apparently Facebook = spontaneous pregnancy...

L. Live: from New York it's Saturday Night?? Oh, wait -- I suppose that was a short vowel sound in "live." I think I've made it pretty obvious that I live in Chicago. :)

M. Mom’s name: Leilani (happy birthday, Leilani!! :))

N. Nicknames: There's not a lot you can do with Lisa except chop off a syllable... so most people call me Lis... Rick drops off one more letter and calls me Li (which, interestingly, only one other person -- one of my high school friends -- has ever called me). Eric wins the prize for coining the most nicknames for me... Lease, L, Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam, L Dawg, Second Favorite Child, etc.

O. Overnight hospital stays: None so far... well, except for the day I was born, I suppose. I was probably overnight in the hospital for a day or two...

P. Pet peeve: I'm really annoyed by impatient drivers, especially when everyone is pretty much going at the same pace and impatience isn't going to change anything.

Q. Quote from a movie: "I know! You can construct a weapon... look around you -- can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" (50 points to anyone who can tell me what movie this is from... but not dad or Rick, because it's too obvious... :))

R. Righty or Lefty: Righty... although I'm not bad at eating with my left. And I once won a contest when I was a kid where everyone had to draw a Sesame Street character with their opposite hand -- my stunning portrait of Burt had everyone convinced that I was ambidextrous... 

S. Siblings: My older brother, Robert, who lives in a cabin in the middle of nowhere (seriously -- he lives in a very sparsely populated area of Montana... although I should mention that he built the "cabin" himself, and it has a really awesome gourmet kitchen...); and my younger brother, Eric, who lives next-door... practically. :) My long-lost half-sister Aimee died in 2002 -- I miss having a sister...

T. Time you wake up: Lately, between 8:30 and 9 most mornings... hey, I was getting up no later than 5:30 when I was working, so I'm catching up on my sleep now...

U. Underwear: Uhh... yes? (Is there a question here??)

V. Vegetables you dislike: Carrots (which, as I have mentioned before, taste like dirt. I mean, not that I've ever actually eaten dirt -- they just taste like what I ASSUME dirt would taste like), and I'm not a fan of raw onions, tomatoes or cucumbers, although I don't mind them as much if they're surrounded by other foods on a sandwich. Oh, and I think eggplant tastes like metal and has a really icky texture... (do I just have weird tastebuds or something??)

W. What makes you run late: Underestimating the amount of time I need to get ready? Also, Rick... Rick makes me run late because Rick is always late... ;)

X. X-rays you’ve had: Just teeth... I think that's it...

Y. Yummy food you make: I make all KINDS of yummy food, although I have to say I'm especially proud of my baking abilities... I'm WAY too good at making cookies and cake...

Z. Zoo animal favorite: I love all the big cats, because I'm always fascinated by the fact that they act so much like my little cats... and then I realize that my little cats would probably eat me if their claws and teeth weren't so tiny...

I also would've accepted "chocolate"...

This brought a smile to my face today:

And Rick has finally returned from the wilds of Indiana... or wherever he was (I seriously lose track sometimes :)), which means I can stop talking to myself and baking random individual-sized cakes. Too bad I didn't have any ice cream in the house -- I have a feeling cake PLUS ice cream equals extra happiness. Okay, extra temporary happiness -- I assume it would wear off as soon as I stepped on a scale.

Yeah, it's probably good I didn't have any ice cream in the house...

I think...

I think a random blog post is in order for today:

I think coffee is one of the best things ever, and whoever first introduced this magical elixir to our country should have a holiday named after them. (Introducer of Coffee) Day would mean an automatic day off for everyone... except people who work at Starbucks, Caribou, etc. After all, what would (Introducer of Coffee) Day be without a place to get coffee???

I think it's perfectly acceptable to eat various forms of chocolate for breakfast. Not that I've ever done that.

I think if everything in life went exactly as we planned it, it would be a lot less fun to tell stories about all our crazy mishaps. I was thinking about this as I looked over my travel itineraries for trips we're planning to California and Texas -- apparently we bought plane tickets too late, because Rick and I can't seem to get seats together (even after Rick called the airline about the California trip and was told, "oh, there are plenty of seats available -- we just can't change your seat assignments on the computer right now..."). And I'm not sure we have a rental car in San Francisco yet... or hotels... But this will be a GREAT story to tell one day... right??

I think that Charlie Sheen's idea and MY idea of what constitutes "winning" are two vastly different things.

I think shopping for a condo should be a little bit easier than it's actually been. (But "good things come to those who wait"? And perhaps even "third time's the charm"???)

I think I may have accidentally baked a cake while Rick was out of town this week... okay, I KNOW I accidentally baked a cake. And it probably can't be classified as an "accident." Shhhhh... don't tell Rick. (He's not reading this, is he??)

I think spring really, truly, finally IS here in Chicago.

I think some things (and some people) are worth fighting for. It's when you give up and STOP fighting that you know you're really in trouble.

I think I should start thinking about making something for dinner, because I should probably eat more than just cake...

Return of the skyline...

We had three straight days of this last week:

I mean, it got to the point where I was quite certain the entire world had disappeared in the aftermath of some sort of horrific biological lab mishap, and if I attempted to travel beyond the borders of the city of Chicago, I would be chased and eaten by brain-hungry zombies.

Fortunately, THIS eventually made a reappearance:

(Taken from my dining room window, hence the chairs at the bottom of the picture...)

And I was so excited to see it, that I started snapping random pictures... as if I don't already have fifteen thousand skyline photos in my possession...

And here's a random picture of Piva drinking water from the sink... because that's how she rolls. (Please pay no attention to the fact that the sink is badly in need of a good cleaning... it's on my to-do list...)

Status update...

There's a little box on Facebook's homepage where you're supposed to regale everyone with interesting tales of your current "status." It prompts you by asking, "what's on your mind?" As if Facebook cares... as if Facebook Personified is comfortably seated in a leather chair, legs crossed, notepad in one hand, pen in the other, head tilted inquisitively to one side... and then Facebook says, "so tell me -- what's on your mind?" Do I really want to tell you, Facebook Personified? Or do I want to keep some things to myself? It amazes me sometimes what people put "out there" for everyone to read.

Lately, I've been keeping most of my thoughts to myself (and off of Facebook). Strangely, once I started with the Facebook updates, I felt pressured to keep saying SOMEthing, no matter how insignificant. It went something like this:

Decided to try out this Facebook thing -- hope I can figure it out!

I'm wondering if Salman Rushdie was reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis when he started writing The Satanic Verses... that would explain the themes of radical transformation.

Worked out on the treadmill this afternoon -- 4 miles... not bad.

Off to see a movie!

Hello!

Eating... food...

Hi?

Yeah, so eventually I decided to stop pressuring myself to post "status updates" all the time, and to only post something if I really feel like it.

Today, there's plenty on my mind. Part of which is this post from five years ago. Because I like to live in the past (have I really been writing this blog for more than five years??).

And another part of which is that I think we've decided to once AGAIN back out of buying the condo we had planned to buy, because of bizarre actions by the condo association. They've had more than three weeks to fill out a short questionnaire that we need in order to procure financing, and for some reason they haven't yet bothered with it. Like the first condo we were looking it, this process is getting too complicated for something that should be fairly easy. When that happens, I start to get a bad feeling about everything, and wonder if this isn't God's way of telling us we should be looking elsewhere. Even our realtor said this morning, "everything happens for a reason... maybe this place just wasn't meant to be." So, keeping that in mind, we went to look at another condo -- a downtown loft-style place that was actually pretty cool. In fact, I really loved the condo -- we wouldn't have to do a THING to it (unlike the other place we're thinking of buying, which needs a lot of rehab...). The only cons are that we'd have NO view at all (except of the building across the street), there isn't as much light as I'd prefer, and the walk to the grocery store would be a little longer. (Not a huge deal... unless, like the other day, we need a ton of stuff from the grocery store and Rick and I are both weighted down with bags full of milk and potatoes and soup cans and whatever other "heavy" stuff you can get at the store... and thank goodness our place is only a block away, because my hands HURT by the time we got home...)

So we'll see what happens with that. Maybe I'll even announce our decision on Facebook. :) 

Thoughts of a random nature...

Does anyone else ever go to Google Maps and drop the cursor in a random mapped-out country just to see where the street view takes you? (No? It's just me?? Yeah, I figured as much...) Today, for instance, I noticed that parts of Romania have recently been mapped out, so I thought I should do some virtual exploration. So I randomly dropped my cursor pointer onto one of the blue "street" areas, and suddenly found myself on a dirt road next to a wooden fence. I find it interesting that there are so many countries and major cities left to be mapped out for the Google street views, yet they've already mapped out dirt roads in Romania...

So the other day I woke up with pillow lines on BOTH sides of my face -- how does THAT happen?? Was I lying face-first in my pillow?? Did Rick attempt to smother me in my sleep, and I somehow missed it??? (Hmmm... I'd better keep an eye on him...)

Mom and dad are safely back in Austin after a week-long Chicago visit. And I just realized that I never made fajitas. (Next time, perhaps??) We did, however, eat at about a million restaurants in the city, which, I have to admit, is one of my favorite things about Chicago. This is quite the foodie city. (Fortunately, it's also quite the walkable city, otherwise I would've gained vast amounts of weight this week...)

It is extremely foggy here today, and my city view has been obliterated. What's more, every time I look out the window I'm struck with a momentary sensation of blindness, as if I've just noticed the cataracts clouding my vision. And then I remember it's just fog:

This is NOT conducive to my skyline-photography obsession.

Hoping for something more like THIS tonight:

We shall see. (Or perhaps we won't -- that'll depend on whether the fog has lifted...)

Photo Project 7...

In lieu of all the embarrassing photos I threatened to post (although maybe I'll post some embarrassing photos of Eric eventually, since I have so many to choose from... :)), here is #7 in the photo project series:

A photo of someone you love.

This was Rick in Hawaii last year, which I took when he was gazing pensively out toward the ocean. Or something like that. I'm just amazed that I managed to keep the horizon straight (I have a habit of slightly tilting the camera to the side...)

And, hey, why not:

1970s-era, polyester-suited Eric at a Cubs game -- where I'm pretty sure everyone else was dressed normally... he just wanted an excuse to don some fake hair... (Love you, E! :))