Returning to Random...

You guys, thanks so much for all the sweet comments under my last post! It was so nice to hear from all of you, and I really appreciated everything you said.

Now that I'm back to a somewhat-normal routine, I figured I'd post one of my somewhat-normal random posts. So here we go:

1. For those of you in America -- did you enjoy your July 4th holiday? Rick and I met Faisal for dinner, and then went back to his place to watch fireworks. His condo has an awesome view -- remember the view I used to have at our rental condo in Lincoln Park? Here, let me refresh your memory:

I used to have a pretty clear view of the Navy Pier fireworks. Faisal's place is even better -- not only does he have a clear view of Navy Pier, but his balcony overlooks the entire skyline of Chicago, from downtown to the western suburbs. So when it started to get dark, the ENTIRE horizon was filled with fireworks -- it was like watching 50 different fireworks displays all at the same time. In fact, the actual Navy Pier fireworks show sort of paled in comparison to watching the constant pyrotechnics off in the distance. Seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen...

2. So as I may or may not have mentioned (it really has been WAY too long since I was updating this blog regularly), we've been using Peapod for grocery delivery the last couple months. I was wary about trying them out at first, since I'm crazy picky about produce. I have, at times, given up attempting to find a "perfect" onion or apple in the piles at the grocery store, and just handed over the task to Rick in frustration. For some reason, I'll get to a point where NOTHING looks good to me (for whatever arbitrary reasons I have), but if Rick just picks one out, I'll be so happy to finally have an onion in my cart that I don't care anymore. And so far, allowing the Peapod people to pick out my produce (wow -- Peapod people picking produce... say that five times really fast... :)), has worked out just fine.

We did, however, discover a slight drawback to the grocery delivery system over the weekend -- you have to actually remember that you ordered the groceries and be HOME when they deliver them. We took a walk down to Michigan Avenue on Sunday, so Rick could buy a watch battery and look for sandals, and I could check out the summer clothes at H&M. And just as Rick was about to find (what I can only assume would have been) the perfect pair of sandals, his phone rang and our door person informed us that Peapod was at our condo with our grocery delivery. Oops. We literally RAN out to the street, hopped in a cab, and got home as quickly as we could. Fortunately, the Peapod guy had another delivery to make in the same area, so he did that first and then came back to our place. Which is good, because if you're not around for a delivery, you get charged for the groceries you ordered PLUS some kind of penalty fee. Lesson learned -- don't forget about your grocery delivery time...

3. I'm starting to think that this weird "zombie" obsession in our culture is bordering on ridiculous. I mean, sure, at first it was like, "Shaun of the Dead is such an awesome movie!" (And it really is... I mean, Simon Pegg is hilarious...) But lately it seems like zombies are everywhere -- I just found this website, where you can actually download a zombie app to motivate you to run more. Apparently the idea is that you're pretending to run away from zombies. I don't want to pretend to run away from zombies... if I want to run farther and faster, I'll pretend that I'm running TOWARD a truck full of Ghirardelli chocolate...

4. I need to go do stuff (you know, non-specific yet extremely important "stuff" stuff), so that's it for today. Hope everyone is having a good July so far...