Sir Reginald, Meerkat Sentinel...

Tireless and ever-watchful... fearless and wise... There can be no entry to Meerkatdom without Reginald's gracious permission...

(Okay, so maybe meerkat life isn't quite so dramatic... and I don't know why I think he looks like a Reginald. Although I can definitely see him as a Reggie...)

Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day yesterday. The weather here has finally taken a turn toward "summer," and yesterday was probably the warmest, sunniest day we've had in Chicago so far. That, coupled with the fact that it was a holiday, meant that the sidewalks here in Lincoln Park were crowded with people heading toward the lake -- or, like us, heading toward the Lincoln Park Zoo. Don't ask me why we decided, after six months of living a couple blocks away, to finally walk over there on Memorial Day in the hot sun. But walk to the zoo we did -- along with about five million other people... most of them with kids in strollers.

Needless to say, we didn't stay long... pretty much just long enough for me to find the meerkats. I love the meerkats:

 This one is yawning, not yelling at me...

This one wanted to come home with me and meet the cats... I almost said yes...

Many of the "outside" animals (the meerkats are housed in an indoor exhibit) were hiding in shady places and sleeping because of the heat... but we still managed to catch a glimpse of a few other animals:

I felt bad for the polar bear -- I'm sure he was quite happy during the winter, but at the moment he's very much out of his element... At least the water looked nice and cold...

Usually, I like to get some pictures of the lions, but they were being quite lazy yesterday -- not unlike my little cats, who also tend to pass out when it gets hot and sunny...

And in non-zoo news -- unless something unforeseen happens, we SHOULD be Chicago condo owners by this time tomorrow. It's been a looooooong journey to get to this point, so it's hard to believe that it's finally happening. Once we've signed the papers and get slightly settled, I'll post some pictures of our new place! For now, we're off to buy moving boxes so we can start packing...

I've never actually played Pong...

While I was on the treadmill yesterday, I watched Airport '77, which happened to be on one of my movie channels. And even though it's been around since 1977 (what a coincidence!) I had never seen it before. It was, at times, unintentionally hilarious -- as many movies from the 70s tend to be. At least I think they can be hilarious sometimes... I mean, let's face it, clothing in the 70s was just crazy funny -- why on earth did people wear some of that stuff??

Airport '77, in case you've never seen it, is about a group of art thieves who hijack a big, private 747 -- so it's outfitted with couches and various rooms and a bar with a piano... and a super cool, state-of-the-art computerized tabletop where kids can play Pong. This resulted in Hilarious Moment #1, when the two kids on board the plane were playing Pong and acting like it was the most action-packed game ever invented. (Although maybe in 1977 Pong WAS the most action-packed game ever invented??)

As I watched, I realized that many of the actors were younger versions of actors I've seen many times before. (Hey, it's Saruman from Lord of the Rings! Hey, it's the dad from A Christmas Story! Hey, it's that guy from the Naked Gun movies who ISN'T Leslie Nielsen! And is that Jimmy Stewart??) Which was part of Hilarious Moment #2 -- a very young Kathleen Quinlan made an appearance, but it took me a while to realize who she was. I had a hard time tearing my eyes away from her huge, fuzzy eyebrows, which looked like two caterpillars resting above her eyes. These days, a stylist or makeup artist would enthusiastically attack those things with a pair of tweezers... but again -- it was the 70s...

Once the plane hijacking begins, the art thieves subdue the passengers by hooking up a canister of some sort of gas to the ventilation system... meanwhile, the co-pilot, who is in on the hijacking (and, apparently, the worst pilot in the history of flying), flies the plane low toward the water (in the Bermuda Triangle, no less). But he fails to notice the huge oil rig out in the middle of the water until it's too late -- he clips the rig with a wing, and then is forced to crash land in the ocean. And of course at this point, all the passengers begin to wake from their gas-induced stupor, and realize the plane is crashing. This resulted in Hilarious Moment #3 (and I will mention that I literally laughed out loud at this scene) -- this was before all the various special effects we've come to know and love... so as the plane was "crashing," I have to imagine the director told the actors something along the lines of, "just start throwing yourselves onto the furniture." Because that's exactly what it looked like. Someone jumped over the bar onto the piano... another person jumped onto the couch... another person threw themselves against a wall, as another person off screen threw a chair at them... that was pretty much the extent of it...

Basically, the movie was "The Poseidon Adventure" but with a plane instead of a boat. The plane is trapped under 100 feet of water, chaos ensues, a small group is brave enough to attempt to swim to the surface to find help, the navy comes and rescues them... But I have to admit I was interested enough to watch the whole thing...

And now I'm off to the airport to fly back to Buffalo... I probably shouldn't have watched a movie yesterday about a plane trapped underwater when I'm about to fly over two great lakes, but oh well... :)

Ups and downs...

The last few days have been full of good and bad. We started our weekend with a flight to Buffalo, where we met up with family to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's 70th anniversary.

Aww... how cute are my grandparents?? The rest of the family dressed in white shirts and dark pants for a big family portrait... which sort of made us look like we were in a weird cult (but will probably result in a good picture :))... And actually, on our way to the party, we passed an Olive Garden that was about to open for the day -- the entire staff was dressed in white shirts and dark pants. I thought about inviting them over for the family portrait as "extras" -- just so we could look like we had a HUGE family -- but decided against it. I did, however, stop by the Olive Garden later on in the day and made about 200 bucks in tips... (okay, maybe not... :))

The party was held in the banquet hall of an Indian restaurant, but sadly, we didn't have any Indian food. That's just wrong. I was literally steps away from all manner of Indian food, but could not partake. (If I had stealthily crept into the kitchen, would anyone have noticed? I should've tried...) But we DID have an extremely yummy cake at our party, complete with purple flowers (I should have also stealthily stolen some extra cake :)):

Afterwards, everyone went to my cousin Kevin's house and hung out for a while. But Eric, Rachel, Rick and I had to leave pretty early to head back to the airport for an 8:15 flight. When we got to the airport, everything seemed fine, and the departures board said our flight was "on time," so we settled in at the gate to await boarding. But we were soon informed that our plane (which was also flying in FROM Chicago) was delayed due to storms in Chicago. Our departure time was pushed to around 9:15... and then 9:30... and then 10:10... and then 10:30.

A little after 9, an announcement was made that the plane from Chicago was finally on its way to Buffalo, so at least we knew that we WOULD have a plane eventually. When it landed, around 10:20 or so, the guy behind the desk at the gate said that once everyone was off the plane, we'd have to board as quickly as possible, because we HAD to be in the air by 10:46 to beat the next round of storms in Chicago. The idea that we HAD to get into the air to beat gigantic storms was already stressing me out... but when there were STILL people walking off the plane at 10:35, I lamented to Rick, "there's no way we're getting on that plane by 10:46..." It takes people fifteen million years to board planes... I don't know why... it seems like a simple process. But there are ALWAYS people who stand in the aisles for twenty minutes, trying to shove huge, over-sized bags into bins the size of a mailbox. (Can you not SEE that your bag is bigger than a mailbox???) Nevertheless, we all gathered our bags and stood up, ready to run for the plane as soon as they made a boarding announcement...

And then, with about five minutes to that 10:46 cutoff, the guy behind the counter announced that the flight was canceled and rescheduled for 7 the next morning. (I should mention at this point that the "departures" board at the airport continued to say that our 8:15 flight was "on time"... it never changed... we thought that was funny...) So after a call to my parents (who, fortunately, were still staying at a hotel across from the airport), and after my dad made a few calls to hotels (because their own hotel was completely booked), my dad picked us up and dropped us off at a Holiday Inn Express. We ran into a fellow Chicago-bound traveler in the lobby, who warned us to be at the airport NO LATER than 5 am for our 7 o'clock flight. He was quite adamant. He insisted that the security lines at the Buffalo airport were of Biblical proportions on Monday mornings... wending through mountains and valleys and treacherous volcanoes... slipping underwater and shooting to outer space... security lines that ripped families apart... battles won and lost... travelers disappearing forever into a vortex of TSA pat-downs and three-ounce bottles of liquids...

And after a (nearly sleepless) night, we arrived at the airport at 5 in the morning and checked in for our flight (again). We then worriedly made our way to the infamous, epic Monday-morning security line and ended up waiting... oh, about five minutes. It was quite anti-climatic. Apparently that guy doesn't travel much...

And of course at the time, the whole thing seemed like such a big deal and such an inconvenience. And then we heard about the massive tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri... and suddenly, our canceled flight not only seemed like less of a big deal, but also a SMART decision on the part of the airline, which decided not to take any chances. We made it back to Chicago safe and sound on Monday, so who are we to complain?

And then yesterday afternoon, we got word that my uncle, who had been very ill with leukemia, passed away. And once again, little things like flight delays and sleepless nights were put into perspective. In the grand scheme of things, a canceled flight now and then is no big deal. Sometimes we need reminders about what's truly important in life.

Uncle Charley, of "jump off the garage into the pool" fame...

Land of warmth and sunshine...

We're in Buffalo for the weekend -- the gateway to Canada... or something like that. I've always found it interesting that the Canadian flag is often flown right alongside the American flag here in Buffalo. And I'm not sure if it's still like this, but when I was a kid, if you happened to have a few Canadian coins mixed in with your American money, merchants wouldn't give a second glance. Of course, I think it also resulted in some slight confusion in my child-mind, as I don't remember ever thinking of Canada as another COUNTRY -- in fact, I think, perhaps, I may have thought it was the 51st state... At the very least, I thought it was just that place we went to now and then with the really big waterfall and the yummy maple candy...

But this weekend, we'll be remaining here on American soil just outside of Buffalo, in the area where my mom grew up. My grandparents are celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary, and the whole family has gathered for a party in their honor. My grandparents are so cute -- even now, at 89 and 95 years old, they joke with each other and hold hands everywhere they go. They have the kind of marriage we should all hope to have... and it's lasted for 70 years, so they've obviously done something right. :)

As our plane landed at the Buffalo airport, I remarked to Rick how nice it was to be here in May... instead of, say, January. Buffalo can be a bit miserable in the middle of winter, but at the moment, it's quite warm and pleasant and everything is green. We spent much of the day sitting outside behind Grandma and Grandpa's log cabin (which, by the way, they built themselves...) underneath the cherry tree that used to provide many a pie and jar of jelly, and watched woodpeckers and cardinals and bluejays flitting from tree to tree. It's funny, because most of my childhood memories of Buffalo are of the WARM weather, not the cold weather... although Eric did reminisce about how the patch of land near the beginning of the long driveway back to the cabin used to be filled with evergreen trees -- Grandpa sold them every Christmas, and that was always where we cut down our own Christmas tree...

But this weekend, there's no snow... just warmth and sunshine. And even though I've heard it's supposed to rain tomorrow, at least I can be content in knowing that there WILL be cake. Sun = not guaranteed. Cake = guaranteed. Sounds good enough to me... :)

What I'm pondering today...

After listening to Rick's distressed, confused outbursts coming from the study this afternoon, I'm wondering if we'll ever actually close on this new condo. We are, apparently, up to our knees in various forms and paperwork... we've already signed and faxed so many documents, and we don't even close for another two weeks. It's encouraging that we've managed to come farther than we have with any of the other condos we attempted to buy... yet it still seems rather far away. Which makes it hard to get into "start packing up to move" mode...

I wonder why my neighborhood grocery store marks all the prices on items in cents. For instance, the sticker on the box of tea I bought a couple weeks ago proclaimed that I owed 359 cents. Not $3.59, but rather 359¢. For some reason, this makes me feel like I'm paying more... I mean, three dollars is just THREE dollars... but three hundred cents is three HUNDRED cents. (Yes, I do realize they're the exact same amount...)

Can someone tell me why television networks keep cancelling perfectly good shows?? Three of the shows I'd started watching and enjoying this past season have already been cancelled... metaphorically and unceremoniously dumped into a vast empty lot under an interstate overpass. (Probably somewhere in New Jersey.) They got rid of The Chicago Code, which we'd really been liking -- especially since we got to see so many familiar landmarks, and the show had worked with the Chicago Police Department to ensure accuracy. They'd even used some officers as extras... Eric was planning his big television debut for next season, but THAT'S not gonna happen now. They also cancelled Mr. Sunshine, which was probably suffering from low ratings -- I really liked it, and I could never even remember exactly when it was on. A victim of bad scheduling on a boring network. But the one I'm REALLY upset about is Outsourced -- I did NOT expect that one to get cancelled. Sure, it was occasionally a bit insulting to Indians AND Americans, but it was the only show on TV where I could get a Bollywood fix... and it had one of the best characters on a sitcom -- a quiet, shy girl who blended into the woodwork and was often forgotten... but who had hidden talents and important things to say to anyone who might listen... I affectionately nicknamed her Indian Lisa. I wanted the show to continue at least until Indian Lisa became a CEO or the prime minister of India or something... I'm so disappointed...

I'm wondering when Chicago went from the Windy City to the Foggy City. We've had some crazy fog here over the last few weeks. Like scary, mysterious, impervious mist -- the kind that no doubt holds all kinds of secrets and monsters. (I think perhaps Faisal thought I was a bit strange when I suggested in a text message this afternoon that there may have been brain-eating zombies hiding within the soupy mix... but honestly, if brain-eating zombies WERE to plan an attack, the fog we've had in this city the last couple days would be the perfect hiding place...) I'm assuming the fog is just a "spring" thing around here. But I'm not a big fan, since it means my skyline has been temporarily eradicated...

Rick just returned from a dinner with a colleague, and he brought me chocolate cake, so I am now pondering whether or not I should go eat it... wait, what am I saying? It's cake! Of COURSE I should! Hope everyone is having a good week... :)

 

"This one's going on the blog, isn't it?"

Is what Rick said when he saw this picture:

Yes. Yes it IS going on the blog. I mean, c'mon -- the skyline AND my cat? It's two of my favorite blog photography subjects in the same picture! Nevermind the fact that I have nothing interesting to say and this is pretty much going to be the extent of today's post -- it's a cute cat! And the Chicago skyline! All rolled into one! What more could you ask for?? (And don't ask for a more substantial blog post, because it's just not gonna happen today... possibly tomorrow... but not today.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have Very Important Things to do...

The ocean is scary...

I just finished watching the documentary "Oceans" on one of my movie channels. I think they may have shown this movie in the IMAX theater at the Bob Bullock Museum in downtown Austin a couple years ago (and maybe mom and dad and Rick's mom and dad saw it?), but I never saw it. And while I'm completely terrified of large bodies of water and hate boats unless they're big enough to have restaurants and shops and casinos, I'm also absolutely fascinated by what goes on underneath all those mysterious waves...

And the movie was quite interesting, with some amazing, beautiful underwater cinematography. But as with most documentaries about the natural world, it showcased not only the "good," but also the "bad." Baby sea turtles that hatched on land were frantically scuttling toward the ocean and then plucked from the sand by hungry sea birds... fish with unusual camouflage talents snapped up smaller, unsuspecting fish for dinner... one strange-looking lobster/shrimp-type thing proved to be extremely territorial when it attacked a crab that dared to venture too close to its den -- Lobster-Shrimp ripped the crab's leg right off, then head-butted it into submission and tossed it on its back to die... it was like the Little Mermaid ordered a mob hit...

So you can imagine how I may have burst out laughing when the credits rolled and I saw the usual, "no animals were harmed in the filming of this motion picture." What?? Um, am I the only one who saw those baby turtles get eaten??? I'm not even sure I'll be able to go to a seafood restaurant with a lobster tank again -- those lobsters can get MEAN... I think the better wording may have been, "no animals were harmed BY HUMANS in the filming of this motion picture." I would've believed that...

Anyway... the Blogger site was down for a while yesterday and this morning, so even though I took these fabulous, stunning, one-of-a-kind skyline pictures last night, I wasn't able to post them until now:

I took these as a storm was rolling in last night, and I was hoping to maybe catch some lightning -- as you can see by the last picture, I was using a setting that kept the shutter open for 15 seconds. But all I managed to catch was some swirly street lights (apparently I moved the camera just as the 15 seconds was up... :))

Okay, I'm off to check under my bed for scary lobster hit-men...

Pros and cons...

We're discovering that one of the bad things about living in a high rise (or at least an older high rise -- this place was built in the 60s, I believe) is that you have to wait for the maintenance people to switch the heat over to air conditioning. And they won't do it until it's already BEEN warm for a certain amount of time, because once The Switch has been flipped, there's no going back until cooler temperatures return and heat is needed again. At the moment, the heat seems to be off... but the air conditioning still isn't ON. And the last few days have been quite warm... and even though I've been keeping the window open when we sleep, I inevitably wake up feeling much too hot and sweaty. Last night was particularly bad, as it was not only warm, but humid as well... When I got up this morning, I immediately stripped the sheets off the bed and headed downstairs to the laundry room to wash them. I don't like feeling gross and sweaty when I wake up in the morning... ick... (What? Nobody wanted to hear about that? Too bad... :))

Actually, when it's not humid and the temperature is just right, I rather enjoy sleeping with the window open. That would be one of the PROS of living here -- I never would've kept a window open all night in my house back in Texas... I'd be much too paranoid that someone would climb in through the open window. Not that we lived in a bad neighborhood -- on the contrary... but if someone WAS creeping around at night looking for a house to rob, they'd be awfully happy to see a house with an open window, wouldn't they? Yeah, they would. But I don't imagine anyone would be so desperate as to scale sixteen stories to get to my open bedroom window here (maybe Spiderman's evil twin?).

So at the moment, I have the "air" on -- which means the fans are just blowing around room-temperature air -- and two windows open in the living room. And since the sun seems to have retreated behind hazy clouds, it's finally feeling a bit cooler in this condo right now. We're supposed to get some rain later today, which should cool things off even more. Who would've thought that I'd have more of a problem cooling off in CHICAGO than I ever had in TEXAS???

But air conditioning woes aside, Rick and I are pretty psyched about the warmer weather. Over the weekend, we walked all over the place -- around Lincoln Park on Saturday, to run errands and buy coffee and tea at Argo... and then downtown on Sunday for dinner at Q (where I was presented with homemade peanut brittle and a "happy mother's day!" It's easier to just politely say thank you and accept the good wishes than to tell a complete stranger that my only "kids" are of the feline variety :)). The walk to and from downtown is really quite pleasant when the weather is nice -- I didn't mind it much during the winter, either, but it took a few minutes to get to a point where my teeth would stop chattering... and after about a mile, my feet and legs would start to go numb. It's much nicer to walk a couple miles with all feeling intact...

And now I'm off to be crazy and work out in my non-air-conditioned condo. But what does it matter? I'd end up getting all sweaty anyway... :) 

Happy Mom's Day!!!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

My mom and Rick's mom...

Mom with her favorite child... and Eric...

Mom covering up the extraneous portion of this sign in Hawaii...

Mom, if you were here, I'd make fajitas and bake you a key lime pie! We'll definitely have to plan that for the next time you're in town! :)

Friday night random thoughts...

It doesn't feel like Friday for some reason... maybe because we were in Austin last weekend, and came back with mom and dad on Monday, and then Rick's schedule was weird this week, and mom and dad left this morning, so everything has been off-kilter this week and my mind doesn't know what day it is. (It's FRIDAY, Mind... it's Friday...)

We walked about a half mile to dinner tonight. The weather is starting to get really nice -- I wore a jacket, and about halfway to the restaurant I had to take it off and carry it. It was only about 64 degrees, which, when I lived in Texas, would have seemed freezing cold -- in fact, I used to classify anything below 70 as "freezing" in Texas. You really get used to the weather wherever you live... which, by the way, is here:
 

Seriously, I have a problem. Someone take my camera away from me...

Okay, this may be the shortest list of random thoughts ever, but we're about to watch a movie, so I'm off to make popcorn... have a good weekend, everyone!

Guess where I am?

Oh, I suppose I made that too easy. :) As usual, I could not resist the call of the skyline... the Sears Tower seems to be pink tonight? I'm not sure why that is... but I do like the ever-changing colors of the skyline. (Needs more purple... :))

We flew home this afternoon -- Rick and I had seats in an exit row, which not only provides more leg room, but also apparently results in super powers. At least that's what we concluded from this sign over the emergency exit door:

We interpreted it to mean, "Do not listen to an iPod when using your laser-vision eyes to start fires outside the window." You don't even get laser-vision in first class...

When we got home, I was greeted with this:

That would be nearly an entire roll of toilet paper in a giant pile on the floor. I'm pretty sure THIS guy was the culprit:

Yeah, he TRIES to look all sweet and innocent, but I know better. And he never unrolls toilet paper like that when we're at home -- so he probably thinks we'd never suspect him. And then he goes into Operation Distract Owner With Extra Cuteness mode and rubs my feet:

See how adorable I am? I could never be suspected of such a crime. I'm sure the paper simply fell off into a pile by itself. These things happen. Tuna???

Okay, I'm about to fall asleep, so I'm off to bed... Do you suppose my laser-vision will still work in the morning?? :)

Happy weekend!

We're hanging out here in Austin, where the temperature has seemed stiflingly warm the past couple days... apparently I've really gotten used to the cool weather in Chicago. :) But as a type, a cold front is moving into the Austin area, and Rick is hoping for some thunderstorms tonight. And while I don't necessarily share Rick's affinity for bad weather, I won't mind a few storms... as long as they move out of the way before we board our plane back to Chicago tomorrow.

We've had a good weekend -- had a great family dinner Friday night, where we ate far too much food... just like our Friday nights always used to be. :) It never seemed like the weekend had started unless I came home from a Friday night family dinner feeling way too full and vowing to never eat again. (And then, of course, I'd wake up starving on Saturday morning... I don't know how that happens...)

Last night we met our friends Nick and Cindy for dinner at North, which is one of my favorite Austin restaurants. Chicago is such a great foodie city, but North is one of those restaurants I'll HAVE to visit any time I'm back here. I got the strozzapreti pasta, which has spinach and mushrooms and pine nuts and parmesan cheese... it's one of my favorite dishes at the restaurant, but Rick got the short ribs and they were awesome. I've been on a strange short rib run the last few months -- I'm not usually a red meat kind of person. I'm about a hundred times more likely to order chicken or a vegetarian dish at a restaurant. But a few months ago, I took a chance on the short ribs at the Roy's restaurant that was in the lobby of the first apartment we stayed at in Chicago. They were SO good that I started trying short ribs at other restaurants -- sometimes with not-so-good results (they HAVE to be cooked until the meat is super tender and starts falling apart, otherwise I end up on the other end of the appreciation spectrum and think they're gross... it's a fine line for me with red meat...). But the short ribs Rick had last night actually made me rethink my vegetarian dish and wonder if I should've changed my order. At one point, Rick and Cindy ended up in a heated theological discussion (as they are often wont to do) and I was able to sneak several bites of Rick's meal without him even noticing...

Nick and I, on the other hand, are the types who like to avoid conflict... so we stayed out of the discussion and instead spent our time praising the incomparable beauty of the classic gray Yankee away uniforms. ;) (Nick's actual feeling on the subject is that the Yankee away uniforms are the ugliest uniforms in the major leagues. Although I think perhaps he just says that because he's not a Yankee fan... I mean, c'mon -- do you really think the Oakland yellow/green combo is attractive? Is the Tampa Bay sky blue REALLY a color grown men should be wearing to play baseball?? :))

And in non-Austin news: our offer for the new condo was accepted this weekend, so perhaps third time's the charm?? We have an inspection on Tuesday (the same guy who did the LAST two inspections... we should be getting some kind of group discount on these things...), and hopefully -- HOPEFULLY -- we can close by the end of May. I will stay cautiously optimistic about this, but I don't want to make TOO many plans until we finally know for sure that THIS is the one. At least, unlike the last two places, this condo needs very little in the way of rehab. The only thing I'd want to do before we move in is replace the carpet in the master bedroom. Any other improvements can wait, because it's in pretty good shape...

We head for the airport tomorrow morning and then it's back to Chi-town, where, hopefully the trees will be slightly greener and the weather will be slightly warmer and a new condo will soon be in the future... that's the sign of spring, right? Green trees, warm weather and closing on condos?? Yeah, I think that's the way it goes... :)