Friday night randomness...

I tried to figure out how to incorporate "Friday Night Lights" into my post title, but it just wasn't working... By the way, when we lived in Austin, our neighborhood was directly across the street from a high school football field, where we literally DID see the lights every Friday night. That stadium was HUGE -- weird how high school football is such a big deal in Texas. My high school in New Jersey had a dirt field and a smattering of metal bleachers... and there MAY have been some kind of concession stand in a dilapidated shack... But an entire STADIUM? With lights that illuminate the sky a mile away?? And a jumbotron scoreboard??? That's just crazy... (And the funny thing is, the only time that stadium was packed FULL was when it was being used to host a Mexican soccer team...)

So we were reminded of one of the joys of home ownership yesterday -- broken stuff. Specifically, the pipes behind our washing machine. The condo directly below us is being completely renovated, so walls have been torn down and pipes are exposed. And yesterday, one of the building engineers called us to tell us that they were noticing water dripping down inside the walls, and it occurred right after I had run the washing machine. So someone came up and cut a hole in the wall behind our washer/dryer and found the leak. We thought we'd have to wait until Monday to get a plumber to come out, but there happened to be a couple plumbers in the building today so they were able to come up and fix the leak. After which, the guy who is remodeling the condo downstairs came up and patched the drywall for us. (This is an interesting advantage to being in a condo over a house -- when you're in a house, you never "happen" to have random plumbers/drywallers/contractors hanging around... unless you ARE a plumber/drywaller/contractor of some sort...)

The Weather Channel promised us 5 to 8 inches of snow last night... we got nothing. Actually, we got nothing DOWNTOWN -- apparently, Eric (out there in the 'burbs) DID get 5 inches. We're getting close to March now, and I'm torn -- on the one hand, I'm still wishing for just ONE really good snowstorm before this winter ends... but on the other, the slowly lengthening days and extra sunlight are reminding me that spring is kinda nice, too. Sigh... NEXT winter had better be snowtastic...

Sometimes I really wish I wasn't so shy (okay, I ALWAYS wish that), so I could go up to total strangers and talk to them. Especially when I can tell they're from another country, and I'm really curious to know WHICH country, and I'd love for them to regale me with tales of their homeland. (That's assuming, of course, that anyone anywhere EVER regales total strangers with tales of their homeland... that's a big assumption.) Take last weekend, for instance -- Rick and I were eating lunch at a restaurant, and I was completely enamored by the accent of the man sitting behind me. He was speaking English, but the accent, to me, sounded Austrian -- it COULD have been German, I suppose, but it had more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-type sound to it. And I would've loved to have asked him where he was from, just to satisfy my own curiosity. And then tonight, as we walked down the hallway of our condo building, a door opened and we could hear a couple women speaking another language -- Russian? Polish? They're practically my next-door neighbors... I should know more about them...

Oh well... off to make tea and watch some old episodes of Supernatural... Hope everyone has a good weekend... :) 

The bean and a baby...

The other night, we walked about a mile to Tavern at the Park for dinner -- it was kind of a cloudy and drizzly evening, but it was rather "warm" at about 39 or 40 degrees. (Still annoyed by this super-mild-for-Chicago winter... halfway through February, and not a flake of snow in the forecast for the next week...) After dinner (and an awesome dessert -- I wanted to try their homemade brownie sundae, and it was sooooooo good. Really more like chocolate cake than a brownie, but who cares?? CHOCOLATE.), we walked over to the park to check out a light/music installation by "the bean."

It started to rain a bit while we were in the park, and we debated whether to walk the mile back home (with no umbrellas) or just break down and get a cab -- but, since we were on the way home and didn't care about arriving with dry clothes or perfectly coiffed hair, walking won out. And all I could think about, as the light raindrops fell softly to the sidewalk, was how it would all be SNOW if the temperature would just drop a few degrees. (Curse you, global warming!! ;))

Surprisingly, the walk back was really quite nice -- if it had been an outright downpour, I'm sure I would've thought differently... but walking in a light rain isn't bad. Besides, that "I just rolled out of bed twenty seconds ago" look is TOTALLY in right now:

Oh, who am I kidding -- this is what my hair ALWAYS looks like...

And yesterday, we headed over to Eric's place to hang out with him and this awesome little guy:

Sigh... Connor's hair is so much cooler than mine...

What's so funny?

The Hancock Building has been red (or maybe pinkish-orange?) for the last few weeks in honor of Valentine's Day... a day I've never been particularly fond of, to be honest. Too many bad memories of being the only girl I knew without a boyfriend, and the one who was never asked to a dance, and the one who was always picked last in gym, and the one who would hide in the library to avoid eating lunch alone... (Okay, SOMEbody needs to stop living in the past -- that just makes me sound downright pathetic... and I don't even know what those last two have to do with Valentine's Day -- I was just on a roll with the bad memories... :))

Anyway... we went across the street to our oh-so-convenient neighborhood cupcake store and bought a couple of cupcakes in honor of today's Hallmark holiday. They had those little candy hearts on top -- the ones that say things like "Be Mine" and "I heart U" and "True Love." THIS, however, is the one I received on top of my cupcake:

Really? You think something's funny, Valentine's Day Cupcake?? Are you laughing at me? Are YOU laughing at ME??

Oh, it's ON...

Who's laughing NOW, Cupcake?

Who's... laughing... NOW???

What, suddenly you don't have any smart-alecky little candy heart quips to pass along?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

The reindeer pelts make it cozy...

I somehow got sucked into watching the movie Titanic in its entirety this afternoon. I don't know how this happened, as a) I've already seen it about a dozen times; b) I knew how the story would end before I'd even seen it ONCE; and c) it's ridiculously depressing. But I must have my reasons, right? As Old Rose says, "a woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets..." Oh, Old Rose, such wisdom... and yet STILL you toss the crazy-expensive necklace into the abyss at the end of the movie. You could've donated it to charity or something...

So now, I either need to go cry for an hour, or write a blog post. I think I'll write a blog post... But speaking of freezing cold icebergs (see how I did that? I'm really good at this segue thing...) George's comment under my last post got me thinking about my love of snow. It seems that most people don't feel the same way I do about the fluffy frozen flakes -- except, perhaps, avid skiers and snowboarders and whoever keeps those "ice hotels" up and running in cold climates.

(I love the snow, but even I'M not sure I'd want to sleep on -- and in -- a block of ice...)

But then I realized that the majority of my exposure to snow was in my pre-18-year-old days. Until I was 9 years old, I lived in one of the snow capitals of the U.S. -- Buffalo, New York. Snow was a given when winter rolled around -- it was just part of the season. A foot of snow would fall, the wind would blow it into kid-sized drifts, and the call of the outdoors was undeniable. Eric and I would bundle up in stiff, padded snowsuits that blocked out the gustiest of winds, and dive headfirst into the powder. We built snowmen, dug tunnels, and hollowed out snow caves... I used to imagine that I was an explorer, lost in the wilderness, and my only shelter was my homemade frozen room... I actually thought that it might be possible to curl up within all that snow and take a nap (so perhaps those ice hotels aren't such a bad idea?). Snow was just FUN -- when you're seven or eight years old, you don't get stuck with shoveling duties or driving a car...

And then we moved to Texas for a few years, and snow was on hold for a little while. I found the novelty of 80-degree weather in February interesting at first... but after a couple years, I found myself wishing for a white Christmas (something I'm not sure Austin has ever had...). And then, when I was 13, we moved to New Jersey and welcomed the return of snow. (Okay, SOME of us welcomed the return of snow.) New Jersey is quite different from Buffalo, which is very flat and crisscrossed with straight, right-angled streets. Consequently, it takes a LOT of snow to shut down Buffalo. Jersey, on the other hand, is filled with hilly, winding, serpentine roads -- a few inches of snow, and you've got yourself a day off from school. When snow was in the forecast, I'd wake up in the morning and just listen -- before I even got out of bed to look through my window -- because I could tell by the way the cars moved down our street whether we'd be likely to have a snow day. We lived right on a hairpin curve in the road (the site of many an accident when we lived in that house), and if I could hear cars zipping around the curve like normal, I'd know that my school day was about to begin. But, if I heard the wonderful sound of crunching tires, slowly, gingerly, painstakingly inching down the road, I would excitedly hop out of bed to view the wintery school-closing scene outside. Ahhhh... those days were awesome...

It wasn't too long after high school that I moved back down to Texas and lived there for years and years. So you see, all my memories of snow have been GOOD memories (save for one snowy drive down Interstate 81 in Virginia that ended with our car stuck in a snowbank -- but that's another story for another time...). And because I've always associated snow with snow forts and snowmen and hot chocolate and Christmas and days off from school, I absolutely LOVE the stuff. Even if I don't get days off from school anymore.

But I AM determined to build a snow fort in downtown Chicago after our next big storm. (Eric, you're helping -- bring a shovel. :))

Snow and other random stuff...

Why have all my posts been so random lately?? I guess it's just a reflection of the discombobulation in my brain right now. But here's a good topic: SNOW! We're getting some nice wintery weather today... I guess we've averaged about one decent snowfall per month this winter? That's just unacceptable for Chicago... I moved here with the understanding that there would be snow. Lots of snow.

Today's little storm began with some nice, gentle flakes:

And has progressed to windy, billowing, horizontal snow-clouds:

Fuuuuuuun!!! (Hey, I don't have to shovel anything or drive anywhere... ergo: fun! :))

So far, the lines on the street are still visible, so there haven't been any entertaining traffic issues yet. But the day is young...

Yesterday's weather:

 Piva:

Riff:

And yes, Riff does have a scratch below his left eye -- it was bestowed upon him by Piva, who was NOT in the mood to play whatever game he wanted to play... when will he learn? (Probably never...)

Well, that's about it for today... maybe next time I can come up with something more substantial to talk about...

Random thoughts: Super Bowl Sunday edition...

So I was looking back over that list of grammar pet peeves (which, again -- was NOT altered from its original form in any way), and I realized that I actually have an issue with #2. There IS an instance where an apostrophe can be used to form a plural -- when you want to refer to more than one SINGLE letter. As in "I received straight A's in English because I'm so awesome at this whole writing business." You NEED the apostrophe in that case, because "As" (or, to add a couple of other examples, "Is" and "Us") is an actual word. So while I agree that in the vast majority of cases an apostrophe is never used to form a plural, there IS an exception. An exception to every rule, I suppose...

Is everyone ready for the Super Bowl? I don't know what that means... it just seems like the thing to ask. I guess it means, "does everyone have enough chips and guacamole?" (Darn... now I wish I had chips and guacamole...)

I'll be rooting for the Giants, even though I've never really had an absolute favorite pro football team. I do like the Baltimore Ravens, but that's only because they were named in honor of Edgar Allan Poe, and as far as I know, that makes them the only football team with literary ties. (I could be wrong about that -- I have no idea how most football teams acquired their names...) That's not weird, right? I'm sure plenty of people choose teams based on their relation to favorite writers. But since I do consider myself an East Coaster, by default I must like the Giants. I believe the New York Jets are the equivalent of the New York Mets, which means I can never like THEM... (Although this makes me wonder -- are there any Giants/Mets fans? Or Jets/Yankees fans??)

I probably shouldn't watch so many episodes of House Hunters International... it makes me want to move overseas for a few years, just to see what it's like. I'm thinking either Europe or Asia...

This super-mild-for-Chicago winter is making me think that I might not need my snow boots again this season. I keep checking the extended forecast on weather.com with the hope that I'll see a little snowflake icon to signify wintery weather. I've hardly even needed my scarf or gloves this year. And to think that last year at this time, we were still digging out from under the couple feet of snow poured upon us by the blizzard...

Speaking of last year at this time, I just went back to check my blog posts from last February, and discovered that I made Brussels sprouts for dinner the night of the Super Bowl... which is interesting, because I was planning to make Brussels sprouts tonight, as well. Weird. (I also made Caribou hot chocolate last year -- and darn it, now I want chips and guacamole AND Caribou hot chocolate...)

Okay, I'm talking about food too much... I should go think about what I'm making for dinner. So far, I have Brussels sprouts, chips, guacamole and hot chocolate on the menu... 
 

So many rules...

Saw this on a friend's Facebook page. I did not alter it in any way. This is exactly the way I found it. Pay no attention to the fact that the font is slightly different at the end -- I'm sure that's just some kind of computer glitch. You know how computers are...