Silly stuff...

It's been a long time since I found one of these silly little blog survey thingies, but they're great for filling in space when I have nothing else to say. (Or when my condo is still much too disorganized to take better pictures...) So here ya go:

Four TV shows I watch:

1. 30 Rock
2. Tosh.0
3. Chuck
4. Anything with Samantha Brown (because I'm planning to take over her job one day...)
(Bonus: I've been addicted to a show on the History channel lately called Brad Meltzer's Decoded -- it's like Dan-Brown-conspiracy-theories-meet-science-and-logic... if you're interested in that kinda thing, I highly recommend it...)

Four things I'm passionate about:

1. Travel/other countries/other languages/other cultures/etc.
2. Writing
3. Chocolate (also, chocolate from other countries, which nicely ties back into number 1)
4. Attempting to eat well/stay active (Yes, I am passionate about the ATTEMPT...)

Four phrases/words I use a lot:

1. Uh...
2. I don't know
3. I have no idea

4. What am I doing?? (I generally spend most of my time in a state of constant confusion...)

Four things I've learned in the past:

1. Life is confusing (hence the constant confusion).
2. Life also has never been, and never will be, fair... so get over it, you whiny little loser. (I'm just talking to myself here... :))
3. Those crazy people were right -- money really DOESN'T buy happiness...
4. Italians know how to make some seriously good coffee.

Four places I'd like to go:

1. Everywhere
2. Everywhere
3. Everywhere
4. Maybe everywhere, if I still have time...

Four things I did yesterday:

1. Drank a cappuccino.
2. Ventured out in the cold to pick up Rick's electronic doohicky thingie that was at the repair shop.
3. Washed the bedsheets and then made the bed.
4. Made a (very small) batch of chocolate chip cookies (I had a craving... don't judge me).

Four things I love about winter:

1. The entire Christmas season.
2. Watching snow fall.
3. Hot chocolate (especially that awesome stuff from Caribou).
4. And this year, I love that I actually GET a winter to love!

And that concludes this totally useless blog post... :)

A fragmentary tour...

I've been working hard (okay that's probably an overstatement... I COULD be working harder on this, but random things have been distracting me lately) to get this condo in some kind of order so I feel like I'm living in a home instead of a flea market. And slowly, things are coming together... but at the moment, I only have a few choice areas I can reveal to the blog world:

The living room -- the great view is over to the left... we set the TV up so it faces the alleyway between this building and the one next door, because in addition to the great view, those windows on the left side of the room let in tons of sunlight. It would be hard to watch TV if you were being blinded by the sun...

Here's a tiny little piece of the kitchen (along with a bit of the dining room table, which is still covered with mugs, glasses and paper that all needs to be thrown away and/or recycled...).

This is about all I can show of the bedroom -- we still have an entire corner filled with boxes (and a wardrobe box sitting next to the bathroom that needs to go to our storage unit), so it's not exactly photogenic right now...

But even LESS photogenic is Rick's study -- I'll just show you the French doors... :)

Our view isn't so great today, but at least there's a good excuse -- it's snowing!!

And by the way, for those who are afraid of heights -- here's the view out the windows behind the TV of the fire escapes next door... interestingly, I've never been afraid of heights, myself... rather strange for someone who is afraid of such innocuous things as clowns and pool drains... :)

One of these roads is not like the other...

I'm watching Aladdin on the ABC Family channel -- I haven't seen this movie in a gazillion years. Probably since the year it came out, which, as a quick perusal of the movie info tells me, was 1992. (Wow... animated movies have come a looooong way since then...) Does anyone know, where, exactly, this movie is supposed to take place? Morocco? Tunisia? Somebody just said something about a sultan... where do they have sultans? Turkey?? Brunei?? (Isn't the Sultan of Brunei some kind of crazy, insanely rich guy with about five million sports cars?) Is it just a random North-African-possibly-South-Asian-y place??? Because I don't think they ever really make that clear... it's just a lot of Arabian stereotypes like magic flying carpets and genies in lamps... (And why does Aladdin sound like he's a college kid from Toledo???)

Aladdin is quite lucky, though... I wouldn't mind three wishes right about now... where are those stereotypical genie lamps when you really need them???

Anyway... speaking of wishes... since I have no other topic to expound upon at the moment, I might as well run with this one. It's funny how wishes change as we get older. When I was seven, I probably wished for a pony and a bucket of Legos. Gosh, I loved Legos... Eric and I used to make Lego cities in our basement, and they were HUGE. Actually, they probably consisted of three little square Lego houses and a ten-inch-high Lego "skyscraper," where all our little Lego people commuted to go to work...

When I was twelve, I wished I could be an ice skater or a ballet dancer, and I wished for no homework on weekends. And if I HAD homework on a Friday, I made sure to finish it as soon as I got home, so it would be out of the way. Just so I could climb into bed that night, and think of the freedom of the next two days, and fall asleep thinking, "I have nothing to worry about right now..." When you're twelve, homework is high on your list of worries...

When I was sixteen, I wished that Ed, the boy with the black hair and the dark green eyes, would talk to me in our computer math class. When he asked me one spring day if I was going to the prom, my heart skipped a beat and I managed to squeak out, "no." To which he replied, "good, neither am I." I spent the next week analyzing that comment and attempting to decipher its meaning -- did he mean "good" as in "that's good, because if you went with anyone else I'd be jealous"? Did he mean "good" as in "good, don't succumb to the social whims of the mindless masses"?? Did he mean absolutely nothing in particular (the most probable meaning of the three)? It's actually a good thing he didn't ask me to that prom, because no doubt I would've lost my voice, run out of the room, and hid in the bathroom until the bell rang...

But as I've gotten older, my wishes have tended to turn more toward the intangibles -- I wish for contentment, and I wish for happiness for my family, and I wish for the knowledge that I'm on the right path for my life. Just the other night, Rick was asking if he thought we'd done the right thing by moving to Chicago. After all, Austin was "safe," and many of our family members are there, and I had a good job, and we had a great house with an awesome master bathroom, and Sharon at Starbucks made perfect cappuccinos... but when Rick asked that question, I gazed out the window at the falling snow, and thought of our new "city" lifestyle, and thought about how we hadn't even needed our car in five days, and realized that we may have lost Sharon at Starbucks, but that blond-haired guy at the Caribou coffee shop is really starting to get to know us now... and I could honestly say that yes, at this moment, I'm sure we made the right decision...

This seems like a good point to throw in a Robert Frost poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

You know, I've always found it interesting that Frost doesn't actually say that taking "the one less traveled by" was a GOOD thing... just that it "has made all the difference." Maybe that road led to something horrible... just sayin'...

I will admit, though, that in addition to all those intangibles, I still selfishly wish my jeans fit better. And I also wish I knew where this movie was supposed to take place...

Weekend randomness...

So last night we experienced one of the downsides of condo-living: one of our neighbors was apparently having some sort of party, and we could still hear music and loud voices through our bedroom wall at 1 in the morning. It was one of those obviously drunk get-togethers, where the guests don't realize that they don't have to shout to be heard by people in the same room. There was also an abnormal amount of "woooooing" going on (not to be confused with "wooing," which is an entirely different thing), which leads me to believe that they were playing a game of some sort and felt the need to exclaim every time someone won/lost/answered a question correctly/killed the zombie/guessed what the drawing meant/drove the virtual car fastest/had the highest hand/whatever... We debated whether to be the uncool neighbors and complain, but we decided against it. This morning, however, we found the binder we were given when we moved in with all the "rules and regulations" of condo living, and found the page which clearly spells out that the hours between 11 pm and 8 am are considered "quiet hours." If crazy party-goers show up again, I may highlight those hours and stick the page on my neighbor's door...

Before the disappointing end to the day, we actually had a very nice dinner -- we walked around the block (in the falling snow! I love walking through freshly fallen snow... :)) to a place called Mon Ami Gabi, which is like a French bistro-type restaurant. They serve everything with "frites," which is just the French word for French fries. Which makes me wonder -- why do we call them FRENCH fries if FRENCH people call them frites??? We then walked home by way of the grocery store, so we could pick up a few staples. The girl who checked us out was randomly babbling about how she was craving cheese, which made her feel rat-like... um... ok... please give me my groceries, Rat Girl...

Despite our brief snow shower last night, and a few slightly snowy days in December, we really haven't had much snow here yet. People back in Austin keep asking me how much snow we have, and I'm like, "uh, not much..." I'm not sure they believe me... Apparently there is a belief that Chicago = snow. No, but Chicago DOES = cold... 

Hey, am I the only one who's weirdly attracted to the Allstate mayhem guy? I just get all giggly when he winks at me... (he IS winking at ME, right??)

Okay, off to find lunch somewhere, which means a walk through the 20-degree weather. I can do it... I'm strong... I can withstand anything... maybe...

A tale of two lamps...

Check out my nifty new table lamps. I saw them on Amazon.com, and I thought the modern design would work well for a city condo. What I didn't realize, however, was that these lamps would arrive unassembled -- which is not usually a big deal. I've assembled my share of Ikea-type furniture throughout the years... desks, bookshelves, file cabinets, some kind of CD-holder at my parents' house, etc. And those are all big and unwieldy... lamps are small... you can pick them up... they don't come with those little wooden dowels and Elmer's glue... how hard could assembling a lamp be?? (And why must I always ask questions like that? Everyone knows not to ask the "how hard could it be" question...)

The lamp came with a base, and three silver cylinders of varying lengths which had to be screwed into the base. The instructions (which included no words, rather only drawings and arrows), seemed to be suggesting that the longest cylinder should be placed closest to the power cord, then the second longest below it, and then the shortest next to that. So I called upon my genetic engineering talents and began assembling the lamp. First plug in little blue thingies so each light will have power (yeah, that's right, my dad is an electrical engineer! I've got this!), then simply screw the cylinders into the base. No problemo.

Okay. Problemo. No matter HOW I arranged the cylinders, it would always end up being impossible to maneuver the last one so it was at the correct angle to thread into the base. After following the oh-so-helpful visual aids provided in the box, I went online to Amazon's website to read some of the reviews for this particular product. Apparently this inability to assemble the lamp is quite a common problem. One guy suggested a differently situated cylinder set-up, but I had already tried that, along with every other possible combination. Finally, I became so frustrated that I gave up and turned the project over to Rick, which is something I rarely do (mainly because I'M usually the patient one). After about five minutes, Rick figured out that each cylinder could be screwed into the base by only PARTIALLY installing each one, giving the cylinders enough give and movement that they could be manhandled into place. And voila -- a lovely little table lamp that only took an hour longer to assemble than the gigantic table our TV is sitting on...

Fortunately, with the second lamp, I was aware of the trick necessary to make the process go more smoothly -- I was able to assemble that one in about ten minutes. I then triumphantly carried it into Rick's study to show off my handiwork.

Yeah, it's the little things that bring the most joy...   

Yay! It's the first post of 2011!

How was everyone's Sunday? I had a decent day -- actually managed to accomplish a few things, so that's good. :) I rearranged the extremely cluttered closet so it is slightly less cluttered, and I unpacked a couple more boxes (unpacking somehow seemed to cease the week between Christmas and New Year's... I guess I considered that "vacation time"??). I am determined to get this place looking like a "real" apartment this week... as opposed to some sort of pawn shop filled with random items...

Rick and I also walked about three miles around Lincoln Park this afternoon, doing a bit of exploring and stopping for lunch and (naturally) coffee. It was about 22 degrees outside... not ideal walking temperature... but I think the key to walking a few miles in sub-freezing temperatures is to be certain there is a Starbucks somewhere on the route. That provides you with extra caffeinated energy to keep going, plus you have a nifty cup-shaped hand warmer for the rest of the walk (or at least for the next five or ten minutes of the walk... coffee cools down pretty quickly in 22-degree weather...).

We also accomplished something yesterday, by way of conquering the laundry room. Okay, "conquering" is probably unnecessarily dramatic. But honestly, I haven't needed to leave my residence to do laundry since... uh... 1994?? Gosh, that makes me feel old... (shut up, Faisal... :)) The last time I had to leave my home and walk to a communal laundry room was when Rick and I were first married and living in our first apartment... Our second apartment had a washer/dryer, and since then we've been in houses. So this "carry all my laundry down to the laundry room and pay to use a machine" thing is a new experience... I mean, really, 1994 was so long ago I've forgotten what it was like...

Since I'm still working on getting everything in order and ready for a blog picture tour, I'll leave you with some pictures of the view (it's really the best part of this place... which is why I've been continually taking pictures... :)):

Here's my proximity to people I know:

 

Here's me in the kitchen with the view behind me:

 

 

And me in the living room with the view behind me:

(The sun was setting and it was getting dark... :))

Off to make dinner... Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Happy 2011!

Our view this morning...

 

 

And this evening...

Happy New Year! :)

Crossing into the unknown...

So tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and for some reason the end of a year always makes me feel melancholy. Although that could also have something to do with the fact that mom and dad left today, my new condo is still cluttered and a mess, and it's a gray, rainy Chicago day (yes, RAINY -- it's about 42 degrees today, instead of the necessary-for-snow 32 degrees I'd rather have...). Tomorrow is actually supposed to be 55 -- I'll be pulling my swimsuit out of whatever box it's packed in and walking a few blocks to the lake...

I tend to be a melancholy person to begin with -- always reflective and analytical and second-guessing every little part of my life... but throw in the end of a year, and I get super-philosophical and metaphorical... like a pretentious artist who works in some sort of arbitrary medium that has nothing whatsoever to do with the ideas supposedly presented... (Look! I taped together a windshield wiper and twenty-five cupcake wrappers! It's a commentary on the state of political affairs in Kuwait... if you don't get it, you've obviously never read Kafka or Aristotle or Tolstoy, and you probably think cupcake wrappers are used to hold cupcakes. Closed-minded simpletons...)

But I guess it's only natural to be reflective at the end of a year -- to think about what has happened, and what sorts of goals and wishes were unmet, and what was accomplished... to think about the people who are in your life... who you miss and wish you could see more often... who you love... who you can't stand and wish would just go away... yeah, you know who you are. (Just kidding about that... I don't think I know anyone who I wish would go away... :))

So what can I say about 2010? It was an interesting year. If I had to sum it up in one word, I believe that word would be "stressed." In fact, there were at least a couple months -- when we were unsure of what was going on, where we were headed, or what we should be planning for -- when I felt stressed out 24/7. And I mean I literally felt stressed out while I was sleeping... I'm serious... I don't even know how that can happen, but apparently it can... Other 2010 "stuff":

*I somehow managed to master my rise early/work/exercise/cook/clean/head to bed early schedule... yet never quite managed to figure out how to squeeze in blog posts...

*We lost our sweet little Allegro and Echo, which was so hard... if they taught me anything, it's that unconditional love can easily be found wrapped in fluffy fur. And then we added our rambunctious new family member Riff, who has been unconditionally crazy since we got him (and I can't imagine it any other way :)). Never a dull moment with that cat...

*We traveled to Las Vegas, and we traveled to Hawaii, which was a lovely break from my day-to-day routine. (Actually, Hawaii would be a lovely break from just about anything...)

*Eric and Rachel got married, and we had an awesome time hanging out in Las Vegas with friends and family. (By the way E & R -- we all voted, and it's unanimous: every year on your anniversary, we're all heading back to Vegas... :))

*We moved to Chicago (in case anyone hasn't been paying attention)! And then we moved AGAIN, which has added more stress to the Year of Constant Stress. But I will say this: I am IN LOVE with the view from my condo right now. There may be boxes everywhere and an uncertainty as to where most of the remaining items in this place will be stored, but every morning when I wake up, I look outside my floor to ceiling windows and think, "that is SO COOL..." :) It's also cool that we can just walk down the street to the grocery store and pick up what we need for dinner... or walk down the street to eat dinner at a restaurant... or walk down the street to get coffee... (do you see a pattern?? I really like all the walking... :)).

And now I'm off to eat a baked potato and wax poetic to crazy Riff about the looming new year... We're off into the unknown...

Some of my favorite pictures of 2010...

 

Just a few random blurbs...

Hope everyone had a good Christmas... 2010 is drawing to a close so quickly -- and it's been a rather crazy year, so I will be alternately relieved and sad to see it go. But it'll be interesting to see how 2011 unfolds...

I think this may be the funniest thing I've read in the last few weeks...

I managed to make two double batches of Christmas cookies this year, 75 percent of which were eaten by Eric. And 75 percent of that 75 percent was eaten by Eric in a single night. (Okay, I may be exaggerating. But only slightly... :))

We went to see "White Christmas" at a theater downtown last night, which turned out to be really good. Rick and I were a little worried at first, however -- we drove ourselves instead of taking a cab (which, in hindsight, would have been a better idea), and for some puzzling reason, there was no parking garage within the vicinity of the theater. (Actually, that's not true -- there WAS a parking garage, but it was closed...) So by the time we finally found a random spot on the street and hurried into the theater, the show was about to start. As soon as we walked in the door, we were rushed to the back of the theater by an old, curmudgeonly usher who took us down the wrong aisle. We ended up on the opposite side of the aisle we needed to be on, and I pointed to the other side, where I could see Eric and mom and dad waving us over. Old Curmudgeon, however, shoved us into a couple of empty seats in front of us and told us we had to sit there because the show was starting. I could actually see two empty rows in the back of the theater where we easily could have crossed over to the other side, but Old Curmudgeon Theater Nazi refused to let us move. Ten minutes into the show, however, she came back and told us we should move to our assigned seats. (So what, exactly, was the point of making us sit in those seats for ten minutes??) Besides that frustrating start, however, the rest of the evening was quite nice...

I believe we're completely moved out of our temporary downtown apartment and moved in (as much as we can be) to our less-temporary-but-still-not-permanent Lincoln Park condo. Which is good, because I'm just not sure we can haul any more carts full of random stuff up and down elevators without going insane... and I'm really, really not sure we can fit one more box in this place. We have filled our box quota. No more boxes. Please.

Well, I'm off to bed... (By the way, who's impressed that I'm up to 11 posts for December? Anyone? Anyone?? No? Just me? Okay then...)

Stille Nacht...

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh! 

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,

Hirten erst kundgemacht

Durch der Engel Halleluja,

Tönt es laut von fern und nah:

Christ, der Retter ist da!

Christ, der Retter ist da!

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,

Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht

Lieb' aus deinem göttlichen Mund,

Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund'.

Christ, in deiner Geburt!

Christ, in deiner Geburt!

 Merry Christmas!!

Not without a few snags...

It's been a crazy, chaotic, stressful few days... but we're in our new condo, more or less. Yes, there are boxes everywhere... yes, there is packing paper strewn all over the floor... yes, we seem to be missing a living room lamp... yes, I believe every available space in my kitchen is now occupied and I still have at least three unopened kitchen boxes... but at least we're HERE. And I have to admit, sleeping in my own pillow-top mattress KING-size bed last night was great. The temporary apartment wasn't horrible (contrary to what Rick will say... :)), but that queen-size bed was just not comfortable at all...

In addition to our missing lamp (which, for all we know, is now in our storage unit down the street), I have no idea where the safety key for my treadmill is hiding. The "safety key" is really just a magnet on a bungee cord that you're supposed to attach to yourself -- so if you trip over your own feet and fall, the treadmill automatically stops. The problem is, the treadmill won't WORK without that stupid magnet attached to it... and the guys who packed up our house apparently removed the magnet and stashed it in a random box. So even though my treadmill was reassembled this morning, I can't use it. Fortunately, mom and dad have the same treadmill, and they're bringing me their own safety key when they fly up tomorrow... (Dad does most of his walking outside, anyway... he can do that because it's been 75 degrees in Austin... :))
 
I knew that the guy who was reassembling the treadmill and unpacking our TV boxes was showing up around 9 this morning, but I figured I could sleep until around 8:30 uninterrupted. However, sometime around 6:45 or 7, I was awoken by a faint, insistent, annoying noise. I heard Rick jump up to check his phone, so I thought maybe the alarm on his phone was going off. But his phone was just sitting idle on the kitchen counter... so for a few seconds, we both sat in silence, attempting to figure out where the noise was coming from. It was definitely an alarm... a constant "beep, beep, beep, beep..." but faint, as if it was located in another apartment. In my groggy state, I wondered why our neighbor wasn't hitting the snooze button already... and then it suddenly dawned on us that the sound WAS coming from our place. In fact, it was right in our bedroom. The annoying, insistent sound was coming from one of the seven unopened boxes piled in the corner of the room. Our alarm clock, which apparently has quite a tenacious battery life, has presumably been going off every single morning at 6:45 a.m. since the things in our house were packed up and sent to storage. And, since the alarm will sound continuously for an hour if no one turns it off, Rick and I had to listen to each box in turn to figure out which one contained the clock, so we could open the box and turn it off. Ah, moving is fun...

And now I believe it's time to collapse into my king-size bed once again... hopefully tonight I will NOT be rudely awakened by noises coming from inside a sealed box... :)

Sunday random thoughts...

Wow... less than a week until Christmas?? That's crazy. Where did 2010 go? By the way, you're gettin' nothin' from me this year... whoever you are, wherever you live -- you're gettin' nothin'. Not because I don't care, and not because I don't like you, and not because I don't have the perfect gift in mind... quite the contrary -- I DO care, and I like you just fine, and I probably know EXACTLY what would make you say, "it's just what I wanted!" But we've had neither the time nor the money to focus on Christmas this year. We're moving AGAIN tomorrow, okay? There's too much going on!! Arrrgggghhhhhhh!!

Speaking of moving tomorrow -- we're a little apprehensive about this move. I keep running through my mental list of all the stuff we have, and I'm trying to figure out how much of it will actually fit into the new apartment. And how much of the rest will fit into storage. We got rid of so much stuff before we left Austin, but even so, I'm still worried we have too much... And when I think about it all in my head, it all seems so BIG -- why is all of our furniture so huge?? It's like we were living in the land of giants. Are we giant people??? I'm pretty short, actually... (so maybe it's not all as big as I'm remembering...) And it doesn't help that the building we're moving into has tiny, strangely shaped elevators, which should also make moving quite a challenge. (Tomorrow is going to be a multiple-visits-to-Starbucks day...)

So I think I'm finally getting over this cold that sidetracked me last week. And by the way, a little tip for everyone: do NOT buy tissues from Whole Foods when you have a cold. I mean, look, I love Whole Foods... and I have no problems with using recycled materials and being environmentally responsible and all that. But there are times when you really, really DON'T want your tissues to resemble the fine sandpaper used to finish a lovely piece of woodwork. Sometimes you really need those soft, squishy, excessive-use-of-paper, tree-killing tissues they sell at Walgreens and regular grocery stores. In fact, I couldn't even bring myself to finish off the box of Whole Foods organic, splinter-filled, made-of-recycled-pencils tissues I bought a few days ago -- I had to buy some Puffs from Walgreens. Puffs. Doesn't that sound nice?? You can just HEAR how soft they're going to be. Pufffffffs...

Totally random thought about Facebook: it's really weird sometimes. And I don't understand people who send out random friend requests to people they obviously don't know. For instance, I just received a "friend" request from a certain Mr. Mustafa. (By the way, my original name for him was "Arabic Name Guy" because his name is in Arabic and I had no idea what the English equivalent was. But it turns out you can translate Arabic in Google... cool...) I was also able to figure out that he lists his employer as "Saudi Arabia," which seems a little odd. So no, Mr. Mustafa who works for Saudi Arabia, I really DON'T want to be your "friend." Besides, we would obviously have this whole Arabic/English language barrier to work through...
 
Guess it's time to start thinking about dinner... and then we'll have to get to bed early so we can be up in plenty of time to get to Starbucks before we go to meet the movers. Wish us luck -- tomorrow should be interesting... :) 

Short post... hungry... need food...

I am quite excited about this particular blog post. Why? Because this post marks the 74th of the year, meaning I will, at last, end a subsequent year with MORE posts than the previous year. I had quite a decline last year, thanks in no small part to the fact that I was working full-time and had neither the time nor energy to devote to blog frivolities. But the last few weeks have brought me more free time (especially in this 600-square-foot apartment -- it takes me, like, 20 minutes to clean the whole thing from top to bottom), so I've been able to afford more frivolity...

So here's some random stuff:

We're on target to begin a Monday-morning move-in at our new place. It's so funny -- now that we have the place, we keep second-guessing details: Is there REALLY room for that huge couch we have? Was the wall in the kitchen still painted red like it was in the listing? If we take the leaf out of our dining room table, will it fit in the apartment? Are we going to have enough room in the storage place we've rented for all the stuff that will be leftover?? Was there a tub or just a shower in the master bathroom??? I keep joking that we'll arrive at the apartment on Monday and it'll be a completely different place than what we remember... and actually, I'm only HALF joking... :)

There's something really weird about the water in this apartment. It seems to be turning all my pots a strange bluish hue. (Although now that I'm thinking about it, it COULD be the pots themselves -- they're not really MY pots, they're the pots that the relocation people left in the cupboards. And I'm pretty sure they're the cheapest pots you can possibly buy. They couldn't have sprung for anything more expensive than what you find in the baking aisle of a grocery store...) There's some kind of bizarre H2O/unknown metal reaction going on here, and I'm not quite sure how much longer it'll be safe for me to cook food in these things... Just another reason why I'm looking forward to the new place -- hopefully I can locate my pots and pans quickly...

Well, I'm a little bit starving right now, since all I had for lunch was soup (hoping this cold will run its course soon...), so I'm off to start dinner. But here's photographic proof that my cats CAN get along when they want to:

Awwwww... (wish they'd be this nice to each other ALL the time... :))

Wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy...

Actually, I can't vouch for that... I have no idea what P Diddy feels like when he wakes up. And I have no idea how Ke$ha knows, either. (By the way, I find it extremely annoying that "Ke$ha" uses a dollar sign instead of an "S" in her name. Nevertheless, I shall, from this day forward, be known as Li$a...)

And I, Li$a, seem to have caught my first Chicago cold. (So I guess we're to assume that when P Diddy wakes up in the morning, he has a stuffy nose, a foggy head, and random muscle aches... actually, yeah, I think that's pretty much what Ke$ha was going for...)

Usually, when I get a cold, I run through my routine in my head to attempt to figure out where I may have picked up such sneaky germs. Never at home, of course... not when I'm constantly washing my hands to eradicate the threat. So that would leave work and anyplace I may have been running errands, like the grocery store or Walgreens. Here in a big city, however, it seems the culprits are much more extensive. I can no longer assume I'm germ-free here at home (or "temporary home"), since hundreds of other people live within seconds of my own domicile. Just yesterday, in fact, I hit a button in the elevator and it was WET -- why was that button wet?? It wasn't snowing yesterday -- it was quite dry and sunny. So why, oh why, was that elevator button wet? (And do I really WANT to know??)

I can't even count the number of doors in various places that I've pushed or pulled open -- grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, movie theaters, other apartment buildings... I've been in cabs, I've patted a few strange dogs (they're extra cute when they're outfitted in little doggie sweaters -- I can't help it), I've used foreign treadmills and tried on millions of coats (okay, maybe not millions)... the point is, I can't even BEGIN to think of where I might have picked up this thing.

Oh well... the fact that this is my view when the sun is setting makes up for SOMEthing... :)

Snow... and success!

We had a nice little snow storm yesterday -- nothing TOO bad... I think we ended up with about three or four inches. But it was also windy, which turned every snowflake into a tiny little face-stinging projectile (I really need to figure out how to keep my face covered up when the weather is cold and windy -- it's the ONE thing that really bothers me when I'm outside in the cold). Still, we ventured out for lunch, groceries and coffee:

I don't look TOO cold, do I? :)

In other Chicago news -- we found a place to rent! I'm excited about it -- I think we made a good choice. It's a great location (except for the fact that it's only about a block away from Eric... ;)), has hardwood floors in the living room, a pretty big bedroom (there was a king-sized bed in there when we saw the place, so we know our bed will fit just fine), an actual office with a door (so Rick can shut himself away and work without distractions), and really awesome floor to ceiling windows with a view of the city skyline (which Rick will love once spring arrives and we get some lightning storms...). The kitchen is a little small, but since we have ROOMS where we can sequester our much-too-curious cat, I can make it work.

The funny thing about us choosing this apartment is that as far as "showing" for potential renters, everything was done WRONG with this place. First, when we arrived, we were told that the occupant was home (our agent was under the impression that it was empty) -- but he told us to come on up anyway. Once we walked into the apartment, it was apparent that this guy had done nothing to even ATTEMPT to tidy up. One of the first things real estate agents tell you when you're getting ready to show your place is to get rid of "clutter" -- well, this place was pretty much covered with clutter. Shoes on the floor, food in the kitchen, an unmade bed... according to Rick there was a pair of boxer shorts somewhere, although thankfully I missed that little detail myself. And, the best part (or worst part?) is that the guy who lived there was, as our agent put it, "stoned out of his gourd." (So THAT'S what that weird smell was...)

Yeah, so you might assume that we'd never, ever want to rent this place after that viewing experience... but I guess it's just a testament to the fact that the apartment itself (nevermind its disturbing slacker occupant) was that much better than any of the other places we checked out. Once it's been cleaned (and I'm expecting some sort of top-to-bottom disinfection... seriously, I want NO memory of creepy stoned guy left in that apartment), I'm confident that it will be a great place...

We're hoping to move within the next couple of weeks, so once the aforementioned disinfection has occurred, I'll be sure to post some pictures. Hope everyone had a good weekend! :)

King, queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn...

I completed a 5K this morning... okay, it was on a treadmill in the gym in my building, but still -- 5K is 5K. (And 5K is actually not that far -- just 3.1 miles. So "5K" sounds more impressive... :)) I think I've figured out that the best time to go down to the gym is right around 8:30 or 9 -- that's right after all the "before work" exercisers have left, and right before the "close to lunch hour" exercisers show up. In fact, the gym is usually empty when I arrive, and then a few people will start showing up as I get to the middle of my workout. I really prefer to work out alone, lest anyone make fun of the girl (who is clearly not a runner) attempting to run on the treadmill... but I can't be picky right now...

I definitely needed to get in a workout this morning, because I spent the evening at Eric's place last night making Christmas cookies... although to my credit, I did not sample one single cookie while I was baking. I didn't even eat one after I'd whipped up some buttercream frosting and started the all-important Christmas-cookie-decorating process. I had amazing restraint, if you ask me. Because I make some GOOD Christmas cookies. (I did, however, accidentally eat one for breakfast. Hey, it was only one! And then I went right downstairs and worked it off on the treadmill! :))

So tomorrow we're checking out a few condos for rent, in the hopes that we can ditch this tiny little apartment and move to a place with a little breathing room. This apartment really isn't that bad, but we seem to have a couple issues -- one is the fact that Rick works from home now, and this "home" doesn't have anything even slightly resembling an office. We don't even have a table. We do have a coffee table, but it's really not conducive to work -- it's too low... you'd have to sit on the floor. This is something I discovered myself this week, as I was attempting to complete some freelance proofreading work -- I'm used to having a big desk or table where I can scatter paper in a rather haphazard (yet completely logical) fashion while I work. Here, I had to juggle everything on the couch (at one point accidentally dropping all 100 pages on the floor by the end table), and it felt a bit disorganized... Rick has the same problem... plus, as I've already mentioned, I can't use any of our insanely loud appliances while Rick is on the phone...

The other issue is our adorable little fuzzball Riff. I really DO think he's adorable, but this cat is driving me crazy. If I make any sort of move toward the kitchen, that cat is immediately up on the counter to investigate. Cooking is nearly impossible unless Rick corrals Riff and keeps him out of the kitchen. I never had this problem in our old house, so I have to assume that Riff is really, really bored because there's not a lot to keep him occupied here... so he likes to expend energy by jumping up on the kitchen counters... (And my counter space here, by the way, is about the size of a chess board... I have a chess-board sized space in which to work, and that cat is constantly yelling, "checkmate!!")

So we'll see what we find tomorrow -- hopefully I'll be posting another photo tour in the not-too-distant future... 

Sunday random thoughts...

Hmmm... our snowfall was a bit disappointing. We only got about two inches, and most of it melted pretty quickly. But it was still nice to watch it falling for a while. Besides, I have a feeling that won't be the only snow we see this winter...

The ABC Family channel has been having a Harry Potter movie marathon the last couple days. They started with the very first movie and have shown each subsequent movie in a row... the first couple of films were making me laugh -- all the main characters look SO young compared to the movie that's in the theater right now. (Of course, NOW they all look much too old to be supposed 17-year-olds... it's like they've all already been through Wizard College and are, in fact, halfway through Wizard Graduate School... Harry is going for a doctorate in Writing Books That Sell a Zillion Copies and Ensure Billions of Dollars for Their Authors...)

Rick and I ventured out into the bitter cold (I believe my nose was about two minutes away from falling off by the time we got back home) and visited the Verizon store, where Rick's intent was to buy an extended-life battery for his phone. And yet somehow we walked out with two new phones (one of which has a nifty purple silicone case... I'll let you guess whose phone that is...).

Eric and I have an appointment to make Christmas cookies this week. I'm all stocked up on flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Rick, for some strange reason, doesn't like frosted sugar cookies. Rick is insane. But that's okay, because that means more cookies for Eric and Rachel and me and whoever else wants any...

ABC Family also keeps showing commercials for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is one of two "children's classics" that totally terrify me. The other is the Wizard of Oz. Both of those movies freak me out... in the case of the former, it's the Oompa Loompas that do it -- I mean, seriously, who in the name of chocolate-coated nightmares thought THOSE things up? Little orange men with green hair who sing creepy songs and "dispose" of children after they've been naughty?? And in the case of the latter, well, there's just SO MUCH that's wrong with the Wizard of Oz -- witches, flying monkeys, talking scarecrows, some kind of opium trip in a field of poppies... oh, and the whole time, Dorothy could've just clicked her ugly shoes together and been back home, but did anyone bother to MENTION that to her? If I want witches, I'll go back to the Harry Potter movies...

Okay, it's about time to start thinking about making dinner in my tiny little kitchen whilst fending off nosy cats... Hope everyone had a great weekend! 

Glad I don't have to shovel...

So I have to say, the best thing about being in Chicago so far has been having the opportunity to hang out with this guy:

Um, yeah, don't ask... it's a really long story... (suffice it to say, my head was buried in my arms on the table because I was laughing so hard... wish I could explain, but really, you had to be there... :))

I am also excited by the weather forecast today, which is calling for a 90 percent chance of snow. I think we're supposed to get three or four inches overnight... and then maybe more tomorrow. (And now I'm wishing I had a decent pair of winter boots... I'll have to put that on my Christmas list...)

I'm getting more used to my tiny little apartment, although we may not be here much longer -- we really didn't consider the distractions that might ensue when one person is trying to work from home, and "home" is a 600-square-foot box. I can't watch TV, run the dishwasher or do laundry for much of the day (too distracting/loud for Rick to make calls, etc.), and I have to time my microwave usage and dish washing in the sink for whenever Rick happens to NOT be on the phone (he seems to be on the phone a lot...). So we're considering some other options (read: more square footage) for January... we'll see what happens...

I've been making use of the fitness center in the building, which is actually quite nice. But I wish I could figure out when the "slow" time is... Every time I go down there, it seems to get busy. And I've never been one to enjoy working out with an audience. But I suppose I should expect that -- in a building with 52 floors and only about eight treadmills, I should be happy to find an empty one at ANY time...

And I am quite happy to report that I think I've already lost my "work" weight -- the few extra pounds that crept up on me over the year and a half that I was sitting in a chair for eight hours a day. I was feeling extremely frustrated with that -- even when I started taking a pedometer to work with me and forcing myself to get up every hour (sometimes even pacing back and forth in my office, just to get in SOME kind of activity), I couldn't seem to drop anything. It may have had something to do with the fact that I tend to eat mindlessly when I get really stressed out... and for a few months there, I was REALLY stressed out. (But now, for some reason, when Rick is traveling, I forget to eat... weird... :))

But speaking of eating, I think we may be heading out into the cold to seek food soon... we'd better get out there before the snow slows us down... :)

My gigantic apartment...

So here it is, the opulent luxury in which I've been living -- try not to be TOO jealous:

The kitchen -- there's no pantry, and not a lot of cupboard space, which is why I have a pile of food in the corner and a bunch of spices and olive oil sitting next to the stove... (By the way, every appliance in this apartment is ridiculously loud -- the microwave, the dishwasher, the washer and dryer... even the refrigerator makes weird buzzing noises...)

Standing in the kitchen, looking into the living room (Rick's computer is occupying what I think is supposed to be the "dining room" -- just a little bar area with a couple chairs...)

Standing in the living room (or dining room??) looking toward the bedroom... (if you look closely, you can see Riff's head poking out of the suitcase... I was packing for Rick's overnight trip to Kansas City...)

Standing in the bedroom looking into the living room...

The bedroom (that fake tree on the balcony was next to the bed when we first got to the apartment -- the first night, when we were trying to sleep, Riff decided the tree would be fun to climb... over and over and over again... We finally had enough and put the tree outside. It was either the tree or Riff. I think we made the right decision... :))

Standing in entry hallway looking into bedroom/living room...

The largest amount of empty space in the whole apartment -- the entry hallway, with a small closet next to the door, the bathroom, and another small closet across from the bathroom. Those closets are pretty much stuffed full... of stuff...

The view (it's nicer when it's sunny, but we've had a few cloudy days in a row now... :)). The Trump building is on the left (with the spire on top), and the Sears Tower (I'm sorry, I just can't bring myself to call it the "Willis Tower") is that black building in the distance on the right. It looks even cooler at night right now -- lots of buildings have red and green lights for Christmas...

And here's Riff, ready to jet off to Kansas City... :)