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Ampersands are Fun (Long/Lots of Pictures)

4 September 2008 / aidan, books, food, friends, living in chicago, pictures

I had a fun Labor Day weekend. My friend from college, who I’ll refer to as friendAdam, came into town and crashed at our pad. I don’t have pictures of him to post at his request, but we had a great time. It had been about 10 years (at least) since I’d last seen him, and we spent hours catching up. He also had a goal to eat his way through Chicago, and Adam and I, naturally, had to tag along.

The first place we went to eat was Hot Doug’s.

On the way to Hot Doug’s. I’m wearing a shirt that Star bought me.

Here I am enjoying a Chicago-style hot dog and a regular ole corn dog.

For dinner, we went to Arturo’s, a 24 Mexican food joint, and I had a tostada. It was amazing. I woke up craving it for breakfast the next morning. After Arturo’s, we went to Margie’s Candies, where I had my Swiss chocolate sundae…

…with the warm chocolate marshmallow sauce.

Mmmmm. That’s another thing I often crave for breakfast.

The next day, we went to Weber Grill where I had filet mignon and a baked potato, and a passion fruit mango margarita on the rocks.

We walked down Michigan Avenue:

U.S. flag, City of Chicago flag, State of Illinois flag

Here is one of the funny dresses along Michigan Ave. It’s made out of Coke and other pop cans.

We also went to Millennium Park. Cloud Gate never gets old for me.

That night, we’d attempted to go to Martini Park for dinner, but they had a $10 cover for the boys (I was free!) and the live band there was WAYYYY too loud. We then tried to go to Lou Malnotti’s for pizza, but seriously, a touristy place during Labor Day weekend… not a good idea. There was a 50 minute wait. So we went home and partied with the neighbors. When the hunger got to us, we headed to Pie Eyed. Adam was VERY happy about numerous things.

The next day, we went to friendAdam’s cousin’s for a cookout/party which was a lot of fun, and Monday night, we finally made it to Martini Park. friendAdam had been talking about this place and their chocolate chip cookie dough won tons ALL weekend, and we finally got some:

We also had Kobe beef sliders, pulled pork sliders, macaroni and cheese sticks, and home made donuts.

Home-Made DoNuts with Raspberry Sauce & Chocolate Sauce

It was a great weekend!

Today, Aidan officially started kindergarten! I talked to him last night and he was very excited. Apparently, there are FIVE Aidans in his class. FIVE. *hits self on head*

Before his big trip, he went to Phoenix with his dad and Matt. Chris sent me some of the pictures.

Monday, I start my assignment at Ambrosi. I’m excited and nervous. I know I’ll get back into the working all day flow again, but it’s still kinda crazy. Then soon after that is Disney! Woooo!

I popped into the library today to pick up Breaking Dawn, and I also got Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes (it’s a reread–I just reread Rachel’s Holiday for the first time in years and fell in love with the Walsh sisters all over again), Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson, Wuthering Heights, a couple of Disney World travel guides, and a couple of other books. YAY books.

And today was a good mail day. Rosa sent me a really CUTE ampersand tee-shirt. She’s so good to me! ♥

Who watched ANTM last night? I’m looking forward to this season, and for now, I am on team JOCLYN, ISIS, and ELINA. We’ll see how things pan out, yes?

I suppose that’s it for now. Adam wants to watch the last two episodes of Arrested Development with me. We have all three seasons on DVD.

(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)

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Finally, An Update! (Pictures, Long)

21 August 2008 / friends, horoscope, life, living in chicago, pictures, ronni, shopping, to do

I’ve been chastised about not updating, so here I am. The thing is that I simply didn’t (and still don’t, really) have much to talk about. Sometimes it’s just like that.

I’ve been highly enjoying the Olympics. In fact, now my body clock is WAY messed up because I stay up late watching them and then just don’t make it to bed after. I’m back to being a total night owl. Sleeping all day and staying up all night. I only get to bed at about 3:30 or 4:00 am because I force myself. I’d easily stay up all night if I could.

However, I am anticipating starting my assignment next week (actually, as this week winds down, I’m kind of losing hope of starting until after Labor Day which wouldn’t be good for my wallet AT ALL), and I NEED to get my body back to “normal” hours. Frankly, I believe MY normal hours are like this, because it’s too easy for me to slip back into this pattern of staying up all night and sleeping all day. I wonder if I moved to the other side of the world, would I be on a “normal” schedule, then?

So, the biggest news?

I got new glasses!

Wanna see? Of course you do.

Cool, huh? I decided to go for a more bold look than I’ve had the past few years. I like them. Adam LOVES them. ♥

The cats have been great. Helena is an EATING MACHINE, and they’ve gone through an entire HUGE bag of Kit & Kaboodle. That used to last Crookshanks quite a while (and a bag of food that big would last Little Lucy months!), but now with Helena here (who is incidentally, wailing for more food at this moment!), I get the feeling our cat food expenses will go up drastically. I hope she doesn’t get fat! The only annoying thing about her is that she is very loud, and unfortunately, she’s usually loud around 6am. She does that terror-running and she wails, especially if the food bowl is empty. She’s very sweet, though, and she often curls up beside me on the couch when I’m on the laptop or reading or watching TV. She used to try calling me to bed, but I think she’s given up on that. SHE is a night owl too, but she’s also a very early riser, and she’s a cat, so she gets to sleep and take naps all day. Lucky girl. I do like mirroring her life, but I need to make money, dang it.

This is one of the pictures from our wedding weekend. Kelly took this one. I haven’t been able to take one this great of Helena yet:

Here are some more of the professional wedding pictures taken by Kelly. [LINK]

My friend Libby said she likes when I detail my grocery purchases on my blog, so this is what I got ~~today~~ yesterday:

1 carton of Edy’s chocolate ice cream · $2.50
1 bag of Lay’s potato chips · $2.50
1 bag of Malt-O-Meal Tootie Fruities (generic Froot Loops) · $1.89

I also went grocery shopping Monday, but I don’t know the prices. I know I did get two containers of lunch meat (one ham, one turkey), some Lay’s potato chips (yes, I had to get more b/c I’m clumsy and well, let’s just not talk about it), Tropicana Twister, Dean’s french onion dip (I hate onions, but I like the flavor, and I love certain French onion dips), and that’s all I can think of for now. At Target, Adam got granola bars. I’m not used to having people eat the foods I eat. I’m used to buying granola bars and having them stay until I’m ready for them; but Adam likes granola bars and he likes Trix, too. Eek. Anyway, I made him buy granola bars at Target, and we found these dark chocolate cherry ones. MMMMM! I’m pretty sure they’ll be discontinued soon, as this happens often when I find something I love to eat. *sigh* I haven’t been able to find Granola Dipps in the grocery for weeks now.

I went to the library last week and I’ve already read all but two of the books I’d taken out. Eep. The guy behind the counter recognized me. He said that I come in every week and check out sixty books. I have to go again soon, actually. I got to read Lisa McMann’s WAKE (awesome book) and Sophie Kinsella’s REMEMBER ME (which I also enjoyed). I’ve also been poring over Disney World travel guides. Not much longer ’til we’re there!

This is my daily forecast for August 20 and 21:

You feel very centered, calm and in perfect harmony with yourself Your inner communication is flowing quite smoothly, regardless of what’s going on around you. Your life has reached a point of balance and equilibrium and you’re feeling the satisfying effects of getting all those disparate elements to work together. Your creativity is also quite high, which you should certainly take advantage of. If you already have a creative project underway, get to it! If not, give yourself some time to dream and let images and feelings come to you; then go get started bringing them to tangible form. If you tell others of your ideas, you’re likely to notice you receive lots of positive feedback. If you’re an artist by career, you might even have some pieces accepted by a gallery or a film invited for a festival screening. Now is a good time to blend your artistic abilities with your confidence and people skills; get out there and tout your work, because others are in prime mood to appreciate whatever you show them.

It really does mirror how I feel. I’m head over heels butt crazy about Adam. Did I mention that he sometimes brings me breakfast in bed? And he makes good meals, and he is so nice to cuddle. ♥ I guess I’ll stop before I get all sappy and make you all go EW GROSS!

Instead, I’ll make my to-do list.

TO DO
thank you cards
upload and order wedding pictures
send wedding pictures to my mom
mail Ivy’s & Rosa’s stuff

Well, the list seemed LOT bigger in my head. I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff. Speaking of Ivy, she sent me cookies again. Adam ordered me to keep him away from them or else he’ll eat them all. THEY ARE YUMMY! I love Ivy’s cookies. Everyone I know likes them, too. I also just finished editing her latest project, and I stayed up until 4am because the book got SO GOOD that I had to see what happened. I’m having a hard time breaking my reading up into healthy chunks. I keep on devouring them in one gulp. Eeep.

I guess I had a lot more to say than I thought. Huh. Funny how that works. Anyway, I am going to try to get to bed a LITTLE bit earlier than normal. Let’s see if I can pull it off.

‘Til next time!

(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)

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Wedding Weekend 2008! (Long, Pictures)

28 July 2008 / adam, family, friends, ivy, life, living in chicago, pictures, reflection, ronni, wedding, yay

The Wedding Weekend officially started Friday morning, when I got up to get my hair done at Eshe Day Spa & Salon. Here’s my new hairstyle!

Ivy got into town Friday afternoon. Here we are, being cute.

Saturday night, Aidan, Ivy, and I met Kelly and Garth at their hotel, then we all went up to Jen K’s place to eat and hang out. Here we are, waiting at the bus stop. The #65 bus takes FOREVER to show up, so we had to find ways to amuse ourselves.

After dinner at a great cafe (where I had a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream and bacon!), we headed back to Jen’s to hang out. It was a bachelorette party, of sorts, but not really. Aidan wore a tiara, though.

Woke up early Sunday morning. It was my wedding day! 🙂 So of course, I had to play “Happy Wedding Day” by The Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby. I think it set the tone for an awesome day. Adam had gotten donuts, and I took a nice, long bath. Kelly and Garth showed up while Aidan was in the bath, and then Chris showed up with the beautiful bouquet that he’d made for me, and daisies for the girls and moms and grandmas. Pretty soon, the Weird Chicago bus showed up! And off we went.

Adam and me on the Weird Chicago bus. We’re going to get married!

When we showed up, it was like the paparazzi. It was a bit crazy! All the camera snapping at me. I loved every moment of it!

We all walked to the beach for the ceremony. There were people looking surprised sitting on benches, and one random biker said “Congratulations or whatever.” HA.

The beach was very pretty. There was a Song of Solomon verse on the block we jumped from. Dragonflies swarmed all around, and waves lapped the shore. The sand was hot, but I quickly got used to it.

Newlyweds!

After the ceremony and lots of pictures, a bunch of us hopped back on the Weird Chicago bus and headed to Eleven City Diner to get some eats. Good times ensued. A vase flew off the bus and scared some people standing on the street. We simply yelled “Ooompa!” or whatever it is that Greek people yell in celebration. 🙂 (Hmm, I kind of have the urge to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding right now!) Aidan wasn’t too happy with all the noise. He was tired and trying to sleep.

Poor little guy. He had been up late the night before and had gotten up a lot earlier than normal, he was afraid of the dragonflies, and the sand was hot on his feet. Oh well, he cheered up once we got to the diner. The food at Eleven City was amazing as always (I had corned beef on rye and a pickle, mmm!), and after that, we came home and hung out a bit with friends and family before Adam and I took off for downtown. We rode in a horse drawn carriage along Lake Shore Drive, and checked into the Allerton for the night. ♥

I’m very happy. 🙂

As more and more pictures trickle in, I will make posts featuring some of my favorites. In addition, you can go here to see some of the pictures Jen H. took, or here to see pictures from my camera and other people who have shared their pix with me so far. 🙂

YAY Adam just came home with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. We’re gonna totally watch it! Woohoo!

‘Til next time!

(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)

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Doing it the Semi-Easy Medium Hard Way (Pictures, Long)

24 July 2008 / family, friends, living in chicago, pictures, Uncategorized, wedding

Wow, what a week it’s been. Three meetings downtown, having my soon-to-be sister-in-law Cassidy in town (which has been awesome!), Aidan’s growing pains, a trip to the vet for Helena, a trip to the library for me…. whew. And it’s not over yet. I mean, I’m getting MARRIED in a few days!

Plus, more visitors are coming! Tomorrow, Adam’s family makes it into town, Ivy gets in. Saturday, my friends and photographers Kelly and Garth get into town, and Sunday morning, Chris flies in just for the day. 🙂 It’s going to be a crazy next few days! On top of all that, I have a hair appointment at noon, so I will be looking fabu for the ceremony.

Yesterday, Helena had to go to the vet for a dental cleaning. They told us not to feed her after 8pm Tuesday night. Cassidy and I were out with Deborah getting our nails done (thanks for the mani/pedi, Deborah!). We got home really late because the Grand Ave. bus sucks, and when I dumped out the last of the food (it was after 8 by then), Helena just looked at the bowl so sadly. At about midnight, we heard her crunching. That little booger had gotten into the big bag of food! She was so pissed at me, she actually turned her little back on me. :O

When we went to pick her up at the end of the day yesterday, she was a feisty little something. I thought she’d be loopy and out of it. No way. She was ready to kick SOMEONE’S butt for leaving her there all day! But once I held her close, she stopped fighting and became still, her little heart pounding. She was glad to be home, but upset that there was no food in the dish. They’d told us to go light on the food that night, to give her half of what she normally eats. Then I realized that she eats a LOT, so half is a lot more than what we were giving her! She was happy after that.

Isn’t she pretty? She totally matches our floors:

Saw Batman last night with Jeff and Deborah. We made the date last year during our “spying on the movie set” phase. I have two words for you regarding that movie.

Holy Crap!

The coolest part (besides the freaking awesome movie) was recognizing Chicago is almost all of the Gotham City shots. That parking garage scene at the beginning with all the Batman impersonators? I totally spied on them when they were filming that scene. I remember we were like “Dude, why are there so many Batmans running around?” It all made sense once we saw the movie. 🙂 The Batmobile is totally in these pictures; you can click on the link to get to bigger versions on my Flickr site. Lookee:

It is VERY cool living in a city where they film movies. It’s kind of surreal to go “Hey, that’s the bank I sometimes go to!” and “That’s the building where the law firm I temped at is located!” The movie was great. VERY intense, not sure if I can handle seeing it in the theatre again. My body’s in so much pain from being so tensed up, but I promise, you will NOT be bored watching it. Now, I am ready for Twilight, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have several months for those, though. I’d like to see Get Smart and Wall-E too. We’ll see.

People have been so generous with our Disney Honeymoon Registry! We are so excited about the trip, and it’s fewer than sixty days away. Wheee!

I’m getting excited about the wedding, too. I’m excited about the people who will be there, the picture taking, the good times. I’m mostly excited about finally being married to Adam. ♥ Again, if any of you locals want to tag along, everyone’s meeting about 10:30 at the Edgewater Beach Cafe, then we’re going to walk over to the beach. It’s going to be short and simple and awesome. I got Adam’s ring today, and after I get my hair done, I think that will be everything! No fuss, no craziness, just goodness. 🙂

I think that’s all for now. My brain is tired, and I’m ready to go to bed and read. ‘Til next time!

P.S. Do you say “I have to scratch my arm, it’s itching” or “I have to itch my arm, it’s itching”?

(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)

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Bananas and Chicken (Long, Pictures)

15 July 2008 / friends, living in chicago, mommyhood, pictures, reflection, Uncategorized

Actually, this post won’t have anything to do with bananas and chicken, but it’s something I say often, so it’s only fitting I’d finally use it as a subject heading.

Today, despite the 90 degree heat, we headed to Millennium Park so Aidan could play in the big fountains. We had promised him, and he was being pretty good, so we wanted to definitely follow through.

He had a good time, even though it was blasted hot! At one point, he had gotten so cold that he was huddled under the towel. I couldn’t believe it, not as hot as it was outside. Still, even when it’s like that and I know I can’t stay out there long because I’ll faint, I’ll take this weather over the dead of winter any day.

The cats are getting along great. Yesterday, Helena and Crookshanks spent a great deal of time cuddling on the bed. It was so sweet.

Helena is amazing. Once it’s bedtime, she follows me into bed and cuddles and purrs and rolls all over the place. When I have to use the bathroom, she comes with me. Sometimes, she gets adventurous. A couple nights ago, I kept hearing plastic bags. Nervous that she might get caught in a bag, I searched high and low for a plastic bag. No such thing. Turns out that she had gotten into the bread. I’ve lived with cats who loved bread. It’s an adventure keeping buns, bread, etc. away from them. So far, she hasn’t realized that I just moved it to the butcher block (AKA Carb City), and hopefully she won’t discover it.

I’ve been in touch with some old friends from my intermediate school days. My friend Jessica found me on MySpace a few weeks ago, but as I never log into MySpace, I didn’t know until she found me on Facebook yesterday. I found a couple of other people because of that. Chain reaction. A good one. It’s nice to catch up with old friends.

I’ve been rediscovering “Girl World” on the Internet. I remember when I first found it, late 1999, early 2000. I’d thought the Internet was dominated by geeky guys, and even though I’d have my site since 1997, I had found only a very few girls. Domain ownership was for the “elitist of the elite” and it was a great honor to get “hosted.” I remember Amy was the first person to host me at thesedreams.net. How awesome that was! As a result, we became good friends, and I even got the chance to meet her in September of 2005. Star was someone who I’d felt like was a billion years above me in design skills and therefore pure WIN. But getting to meet her as well in 2005 (the same trip where I met Amy) was incredible.

Anyway, virtue.nu and envy.nu, altern.net, all of those sites is what I think started the “Girl World” revolution. And there were trends. Oh Lord, there were trends. The “ME YOU WWW” layouts. Frames. Pop Ups. Iframes with the matching windows. UBBs. Blinkies. Pixels (Oh how I miss The Cutie Factory). Kaos. (I still like kaos and pixels, actually!) Surveys. Blogger to Greymatter to B2. Diary-X. Diaryland. Friendster. MySpace. Lots of interactive stuff. Some of that stuff carries over ’til now. Like imood. I totally still use imood. And there is the new stuff. Plurk, Twitter. Facebook. Netvibes. Flickr. What will be next?

Back then, I think it was a popularity contest, but at least it was based on skill. EVERYONE knew Star and Tash and all those people who still have awesome design skills. With one really cool layout, all of a sudden, Anywhere Is bloomed overnight in popularity. Having a cool layout, getting into the elite cliques (anyone remember woogoo?), posting on the right UBBs… that was the way to go!

Nowadays, I don’t seek cliques to join, or webrings, or affiliations. I couldn’t care less if someone decides to design her site to look just like mine (as long as s/he doesn’t steal my personal stuff). Nowadays, my site crossposts to Live Journal, because most of my friends are there now, having moved away from domains. (Although I’m seeing that many people are moving back to domains because of WP.) Nowadays, I use premade Word Press layouts because I don’t have the imagination, time, or energy to design a layout. And that’s OK. I like to see a pretty and well-designed site, but honestly, I’m a lot more interested in what the person’s writing about these days.

I met a lot of awesome people during those years, and I’m still meeting cool people. And that whole online friend vs. “real life” friend line is so blurred now–I mean, everyone has a Facebook or MySpace these days–that it’s easier than ever to actually meet and forge real, true friendships with people you meet through Live Journal or a message board.

One cool thing I’m seeing now is that many of the women whose sites I’d visited back in the day of cliques, awards, and all that good stuff, is that many of them are moms and wives now. They post about their day-to-day lives with their husbands and their kids. They post the pictures they take, and show us what they’ve knitted. They talk about their jobs and their families and I find that to be so fascinating. The past couple of days, I’ve been surfing site after site after site and feeling that sense of nostalgia for those days. Now, there is less drama because we’re simply trying to live our lives the best we can. We’ve all matured and started focusing on what’s important, but we’re sharing our lives with each other. And that is awesome.

And on that note, I’m going to try to finish reading Firestarter. I didn’t realize it was such a hard book to get through. Not because it isn’t interesting. It’s amazing. But it’s long and dense. Stephen King was and is a freaking genius.

(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)

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