Can you blame me?

A few days ago, Faisal sent me this iPhone 5 "promo" video, which spoofs the fact that people use their phones to take way too many pictures of food:

Hehehe... that is hilarious... :) I'm sure the proliferation of food blogs has had something to do with the use of phones for food photography... and social media, of course. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (I don't even know what Pinterest IS exactly... and I have no interest in Pinterest) -- they are all rife with photos of whatever everyone is eating at any particular time.

And I'll admit it -- I've been guilty of this myself. Just a couple months ago, I posted this picture to Facebook of the Belgian waffle I had at a restaurant called Brunch one morning:

(By the way, I would like it to be known that I actually ATE some of those seed-covered strawberries on top. They looked really good... and they were buried under whipped cream... so I just powered through the seeds and somehow managed to survive... :))

And the funny thing is, just like that video suggested, as soon as I posted this picture on Facebook, the comments started pouring in. It's just a silly picture of my breakfast, but all of a sudden everyone was like, "mmmmm waffles!!"

But when I look through the pictures on my phone, it's not food that gets the most attention. No... in true Crazy Cat Lady fashion, my phone is filled with photos of this guy:

My sphinx cat...

Who loves being a city dweller...

And has recently decided that the best place to sleep is UNDER the quilt on the bed...

Stalking his favorite toy in the known universe (I think that thing used to be a fluffy green mouse, but he has completely destroyed it and turned it into nothing more than a pile of unraveled yarn... and he LOVES that thing)...

And I feel bad that I have so many pictures of Riff on my phone and not many of Piva... but it's only because Riff is the more active of the two. Piva, more often than not, is asleep in her favorite spot in front of the window. Of course, once in a while, I get a picture of her, too:

Which Riff promptly photo-bombs... :)

So maybe I SHOULD take more pictures of my food, before I turn into an even crazier cat lady?? I'm obviously already pretty crazy -- I mean, I actually ATE strawberries... :)

Aaaaaaaaaall kinds of random...

Well, I have just been HORRIBLE with updating this blog lately, haven't I?? Where has my mind been? Apparently not on writing for the blog...

So let's see... what's been going on? Not much of interest, which I suppose has contributed to the lack of blog postings. :) We got new blinds for the condo -- we've been making do with the ones that were on the windows when we bought the place. (Unlike the refrigerator, which I needed to replace as soon as we moved in. It was just... ew...) The old blinds were okay, but they had weird spaces where bugs went to die... they were impossible to get clean. And they didn't block out much light -- which I didn't mind at all in the living room, especially since I rarely ever lower the blinds (I like LOTS of light in my living space), but the bedroom never really got dark... even at night, because of all the streetlights outside. But with the new blinds, the bedroom has seemed SO dark the last few nights -- which is nice for sleeping, but harder for making my way around the bed in the dark...

Rick and I watched the Hunger Games movie last night -- we saw it back when it first came out, in March or April or so... and I was rather unimpressed at the time. I think I just expected so much more -- it was hyped like crazy for weeks, and after reading the books, I knew what all the characters were like and where all the action occurred in the story. And the movie was much shorter on characterization and not long enough to cover all the action, so I walked out of the theater feeling underwhelmed. But when I watched it again last night, I actually liked it a lot more -- maybe because I knew what to expect, so I didn't have such high expectations. Maybe I'll enjoy movies two and three more if I remember not to expect a perfect recreation of the books...

Our car gave me quite the compliment last week. (Yes, the CAR.) We took it to a dealership to have the oil changed... and we also asked them to check on the passenger side airbag, because lately a light has been lighting up on the dashboard to indicate that the car isn't sensing a passenger in the seat, even when I'm sitting there. When we picked the car up after the oil change, the mechanic said they couldn't get the light to come on, so he said if it happened again to bring the car back. Well, it lit up as soon as we started the car and I was back in the passenger seat. So Rick called the mechanic back over to the car, he switched places with me, and I stood outside the car, awkwardly loitering in the parking lot. When the mechanic got out of the car, he smiled at me and announced, "you're too light!" Apparently the airbag sensor doesn't always know I'm there because I don't WEIGH enough?!? (Um... thanks for the compliment, Car.) I realize I'm not a huge person, but I'm also not exactly a tiny wisp of a thing... seems like my weight should be considered reasonable for a human adult, so it's surprising that the sensor wouldn't notice me. Unless even CARS are now assuming that all Americans are overweight...

The Chicago Air and Water Show was in town this weekend. And this is one of the great things about living downtown -- unlike many of the people who attended, Rick and I didn't have to search for parking. In fact, we didn't even start our Saturday afternoon planning to watch any of the show -- we just had lunch at a restaurant a few blocks from the lake, and then we were like, "eh, you wanna walk over and see what's going on?" So we headed out to Lake Shore Drive and ended up watching the last hour of the show. We'd actually been getting a bit of a preview for a few days, because the Blue Angels were flying all around the city on Thursday and Friday:

Those last two were taken when we were actually at the show, and all we had were the cameras on our phones (like I said, we weren't really planning to go watch -- if we had, maybe we would've brought a decent camera! :)). Although Rick's iPhone camera really isn't THAT bad...

Well, that's about all the randomness I can muster today... one of these days, I shall return to a regularly scheduled posting pattern... Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Random thoughts from Mt. Olympus...

1. First off, Zeus says hi... (Rick is hoping he'll send some thunder and lightning our way tonight... although we seem to get more storms when no storms are in the forecast. The weather people in Chicago are even more clueless than the weather people were in Austin. And those Austin weather people were pretty clueless...)

2. I keep deliberately visiting Google just so I can play the little games they've been putting up every day. I'm not very good at them... apparently I can't even PRETEND to win a gold medal...

3. So does anyone else feel extremely lazy and out of shape after the last couple weeks of Olympics-observation? I mean, I work out, I watch what I eat (most of the time... sometimes... okay, at LEAST now and then...) -- I'm not a couch potato by any means. But then I see athletes like this:

And suddenly I feel as if my entire being is composed of something akin to one part insecurity, one part inability, and one part marshmallow fluff... maybe two parts marshmallow fluff...

4. My favorite summer Olympics events are the gymnastics, swimming, and track and field. I'm less interested in things like cycling or long-distance running, or team games like basketball and volleyball -- those don't really get exciting until the last few seconds, anyway. There are a few events I've noticed this year that I hadn't even realized were part of the Olympics -- like ping pong and badminton. I actually started laughing the other night when I happened to catch a few minutes of a ping pong game and noticed one of the players taking a swig of Gatorade -- really? Is it really THAT taxing to loft a nearly weightless ball over a tiny net with a hand-sized paddle?? I know, I know -- I can't really criticize, seeing as I'm mostly made up of marshmallow fluff...

5. For some reason, I've had the uncanny ability of switching on Olympic coverage right in the middle of water polo like five times in a row. This is another thing I wasn't aware of in relation to the Olympics -- the proliferation of water polo games. How much water polo can there possibly be??? How many countries actually play this game? And why is it called water polo when it really seems to be more like water soccer? Although I guess soccer, hockey, water polo, handball, and even basketball all have similarities... and quidditch... also quidditch. Which WOULD be an Olympic sport by now, if only we could figure out how to make brooms fly...

6. Off to make lunch and try to ignore my obvious athletic shortcomings. (But I could totally get a gold medal in "popping open a can of soup and heating it on the stove"...)

Condo concerns...

I did quite a horrible job of keeping this blog up-to-date in July... I'll have to do a better job in August...

Wait -- it's August?? These "year" things always seem to run away from me so quickly. Although I'm rather looking forward to fall this year, so I can't complain about the fact that we're heading into the end of summer...

So there have been a few things I've had to get used to in regards to living in a condo as opposed to a house. Like making use of a much smaller kitchen... and taking my garbage out to the chute in the hallway, instead of out to the can in the garage... and being responsible for water from the washer and the shower that leaks into the almost-renovated condo downstairs. I mentioned the horrible paint/varnish smell that was wending its way through air vents into my place last week. We have one vent in particular, above the cabinets in the kitchen, that seems to be directly connected the the condo downstairs. And after about three days of keeping my balcony door open all day (in close-to-100 degree heat...), and waking up to the smell of varnish every morning, I finally decided I couldn't take it anymore. I found a vent-sized piece of cardboard, climbed up on my kitchen counter, and, with the help of a Swiffer duster handle (because even standing on the counter I couldn't quite reach the vent -- we have really high ceilings...), managed to tape the cardboard over the vent. The painty-varnishy fumes were immediately reduced by at least 50 percent, and eventually, with the help of my open balcony door, they receded to the point that I felt I could breathe again. Surely by now they must be finished with all that painting, right?? (I might keep the cardboard up for another week or so, just to be sure...)

And I was reminded of another difference between house-living and condo-living this morning, when I was awoken by the sound of knocking against my bedroom windows. In the second and a half it took me to realize it was the window washers (normally, it only would've taken me half a second, but I was just waking up...), the thought that it MIGHT be a daytime ax murderer on a bungee cord did cross my mind. But hey, the good thing is that I was wide awake by that time and able to jump right out of bed. No coffee needed. (I had some anyway, of course... I'm not crazy... :))

I'm off to find lunch... and while I'm eating, I will gaze contentedly at the cityscape outside my squeaky clean windows...