PictureFest

Like much of the country, we were hit with heavy snow last week. Here's the view we had from our kitchen window after the snow stopped:


We were curious as to how much snow we received, so Wendy bravely went forth with measuring tape in hand.


We measured 9" on the railing, and up to a foot on the deck. Later that day, I performed my own act of bravery by shoveling the driveway (with the snow shovel we cleverly bought the night before the storm hit).


It's been a week, and there's still plenty of snow left on the ground. The highs the past few days have been in the teens, but thankfully we're due for a warm-up this weekend, with temperatures returning to the mid-40's.

Turning from the outside to the inside, here are the highly anticipated photos of our dining room and living room.


The living room still has some work left to be done (note the lack of a coffee table, end table, and pictures).


And, finally, our snazzy red bathroom, which Wendy painted just before Thanksgiving.


I hope you enjoyed the tour. Please come again soon!

Wii got one!

We found a Wii yesterday! Because there are so many more of them available than the PlayStation 3s, we had assumed that it wouldn't be that hard to find one. On release day, though, we went to all the stores in McHenry that we thought even might have one, only to find that every store was sold out and that none of them really knew when they'd be getting more. Wal-Mart kept assuring us that they had another shipment that would be arriving at practically any moment, but it never materialized. Sears told us just two days ago that they only got two, and they had to turn away more than 50 people who were waiting in line.

So yesterday, when I had the day off, I hit all the McHenry stores again in the morning, and again nothing. After lunch, I was reading a message board where people were posting about trying to find the Wii and someone mentioned finding one at a Target in Michigan at about 1 p.m. eastern time. It was, at this point, 12:52 p.m. central time. So I put my shoes on and hustled over to the Crystal Lake Target - and found ten Wiis sitting behind the counter in the electronics department. I bought one!

As I was leaving, I called Randy to offer to buy another for one of his co-workers who's been looking for a Wii for his son for Christmas. His co-worker said yes, please, so I put ours in the car and went back in. As I was heading back to electronics a second time, a man sprinted past me to buy one - in the time between buying my first and second (which was maybe 3 minutes), I saw three other people buy them. So. Wow. We have a Wii!

And it rocks! Seriously, so much fun. It comes with a sports game that has tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing - Randy and I played them all last night. In case you don't know how the Wii works, it has a motion-sensitive controller. So when you're playing tennis, you swing your remote like a racquet; in golf, you putt with it; you either pitch or bat with it; and you swing your arm just like you're bowling. I have to say that I didn't think a golfing game (or, honestly, tennis, or boxing, or baseball) would be that fun, but it really was. Bowling was my favorite.

In other news, we had a great Thanksgiving in St. Louis again. It was wonderful to get to see everyone, Grandma Gilda fed us waaay too much, and we did lots of shopping. The girls always hit the stores first thing in the morning, so we were at Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. I have to say, I hope to never ever be in a store that crowded again. The line to get in was so long that by the time we actually made it up to the doors, the first people in were already leaving with their insanely-lowly-priced TVs. I didn't actually get anything there, but I did find plenty of clothes elsewhere, so it worked out okay.

A Rich, Colorful, and Multi-Textured Post

Due to a power outage in part of the city yesterday, I wound up with the afternoon off. So I decided to enjoy the extra sunshine by going for a hike at a trail near the McHenry dam. While I was there, I took a picture of a frog.


It turned out a little blurry, which is too bad. But he was such a friendly guy, and he held his pose so perfectly still, that I thought he deserved his own picture.

Also while I was there, I happened to run into some of our neighbors, who were just finishing their walk. They're an older couple, and have lived in the neighborhood for many years, even before our house was built. The conversation naturally shifted to annexation, which is still a hot topic here. The city has proposed to annex our neighborhood, with the promise of improving our water system, but also of raising taxes to help offset the costs. The city is currently deciding whether to put the deal to a vote, or just drop the proposal altogether, since a fair number of people in the community have raised objections. If it goes to a vote, Wendy and I are in favor of the deal. The couple I talked to are opposed to it, though, since they're retired and are on a fixed income. Despite our difference of opinion, the couple is very friendly, and we're pleased to have them as neighbors.

On the house front, we now have a freshly painted living room and dining room, a new light fixture in the dining room, new living room furniture, and a new shower in the master bath. The shower looks fantastic compared to what we had in there, and we had a great experience with the installer (we went so far as to write the company a letter telling them how much we appreciated his efforts).

Of all those things, painting definitely took the most work. It wasn't the act of painting, though, it was mainly deciding what color to pick. We wound up getting samples of several colors, and by the time the final decision was made, we had created this:


The winner? Grand Stand Tan. The verdict? We dig it. And apparently other people do, as well. When we were buying the paint at Ye Olde Home Improvement Mega-Store, the clerk mentioned it was a very popular color.

So, there you have it.

The "Royale With Cheese" Debacle

This isn't so much a debacle as it is a "How could they get that wrong?!" moment. Wendy's mom visited this past weekend, since she had a conference this week in Milwaukee. On Saturday night, she and Wendy were playing Trivial Pursuit, when Wendy was asked the following question:

What McDonald's item is known as Le Royale in France?

Any self-respecting movie aficionado knows the answer to this instantly. Wendy and I both knew it, and she correctly replied, "The Quarter Pounder."

But no! It's the Big Mac, says Trivial Pursuit. We were shocked. There's a famous scene in Pulp Fiction that goes something like this:

Vincent: "You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?"
Jules: "They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?"
Vincent: "No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the @#$! a Quarter Pounder is."
Jules: "What'd they call it?"
Vincent: "Royale with Cheese."
Jules: "Royale with Cheese. What'd they call a Big Mac?"
Vincent: "Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac."

At first I thought that the movie might actually have been wrong, but after a bit of googling, I was reassured: Trivial Pursuit was wrong. The answer is in fact the Quarter Pounder. Despite the temporary setback, Wendy went on to claim victory in the game.

We managed to get a fair amount accomplished over the weekend. We replaced a bunch of old light switches and outlets, installed a new thermostat, and bought a new light fixture for the dining room. And we're currently plotting a painting project for this weekend (when Wendy's mom returns, post-conference), although we're not sure yet what we'll paint or what color. Minor details, though.

And finally, the bathroom remodeling that we mentioned in our last post is going to happen on Monday! We're very excited, since it means we'll each now have our own bathroom!

China: Unpacked

Our dining room furniture was delivered a few weeks ago, and last weekend we finally got around to unpacking our china and putting it in our new china cabinet. This is china we were given for our wedding almost five years ago - most of which had never been out of its original box and most of which has moved with us four times in those five years. Impressively enough, nothing was broken, which I think is more a testament to the wonderful things packaging engineers can do with cardboard these days than to the care of our various moving companies.

So we got it all unwrapped and stacked up, and we discovered we had 10 tea cups, 10 dinner plates, 10 salad plates...and 8 saucers and 6 bread plates. "Do you think this is some kind of practical joke that we're just now getting, five years later?" Randy asked. Hee. Luckily, the next day I found one more small box of china that had 2 saucers and 4 bread plates in it. We're all good now. (The dining room furniture, by the way, looks fantastic. It's like we have a real house, with real furniture, now!)

In other news on the home front: We have finally found someone to re-do the shower in the master bath. It looks like the previous owners put up a surround on their own, and it...really looks like it. So much so that we've actually never used that shower - the big, gaping seams in the surround always seemed like something you would definitely not want to get water near. The rest of the bathroom is great - it looks like they recently replaced the toilets and vanities in all the bathrooms, so it will be nice to finally have an attractive, and usable, shower to go with. The only sad part will be waiting the four-six weeks they estimate it will take until they have our custom-formed replacement surround ready to go. We'll keep you updated!

Holy Toledo!

We haven't blogged about it yet, but college football has started! This is the third weekend of the season, and is being billed as "Separation Saturday" or "Showdown Saturday" depending on which sports site you visit. The reason? There are seven games pitting Top-25 teams against each other.

Lost in the hype, though, was Friday night's game between Kansas and Toledo. I had been looking forward to it all week long; Toledo is a scrappy team from the overachieving Mid-American Conference, while Kansas is a solid, middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team. You could just sense that these two teams were evenly matched. "It's gonna be a barnburner," I told Wendy. "I think Toledo might take it."

The game did not disappoint. It took double-overtime for Toledo to pull out a victory, 37-31. Before the first overtime started, the announcer summed up the unusually exciting game by pointing out there'd been 5 lead changes, 2 safeties, 2 two-point conversions, 2 fourth-down touchdowns, 17 punts, and 17 penalties. And on top of that, Toledo didn't get a single first down in the second half, but still managed to score 14 points! In the end, though, Kansas was doomed by their 5 turnovers. (These last two stats prompted Wendy to ask "Is it really a barnburner if the offenses are so inept?" That's an interesting question that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.)

This is why I love college football, though. It doesn't matter who's playing -- New Mexico vs. New Mexico State, Kansas vs. Toledo, or Pittsburgh vs. Ohio -- it's so easy to get into it because the games are all about emotion. It's the emotion, the pride, the passion, and the tradition that make it so great. For the next 12 weeks you'll find me glued to the TV on Saturdays, enjoying every touchdown, overtime, last-second field goal, goal-line stand, and fourth-quarter rally.

College football. God bless it.

Update, 7:04pm: I neglected to mention that on Saturdays you will also find me yelling, screaming, and cursing vehemently at the TV (and the officials) when things aren't going well for the Sooners.

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

The weather here has been fantastic lately - mid-sixties and gray and rainy. I'm not being sarcastic; I really love this kind of weather and missed it desperately when we lived in Colorado and it was sunny day after day after freaking day. The clouds and rain remind me of fall and melancholy and thick socks and warm drinks and jackets and books and football and other things that I love.

I will admit that chilly gray days are not ideal for picnics, but that didn't stop us from going to two this weekend anyway. Friday was the employee picnic at my college. It's not nearly as big and fancy as Randy's company picnic, but it was a good time anyway. Randy got to meet most of my co-workers for the first time, we ate Mexican food, and we played the beanbag-toss game. (I lost. Repeatedly.)

Saturday was the neighborhood association block party, and it was pretty windy and cold all day. We ventured out anyway and chatted with more of our neighbors (they're still all very friendly). We also met a woman who grew up in our house - her parents were the original owners of the house, and she still lives in the neighborhood with her husband and kids. Apparently there used to be a hot tub in our backyard.

Sunday we bought dining room furniture! It hasn't been delivered yet, but we're very excited about it. A table big enough for more than two people to sit at! Chairs that match the table and each other! We also got a china cabinet, so the china we got for our wedding may soon be freed from the boxes it's been living in since we got it. Living room furniture is actually kind of a more pressing need - we did have dining room furniture; it just wasn't very nice, whereas we don't have any furniture in the living room yet - but we haven't found anything yet that we liked enough to buy. We'll keep looking.

Observing Wisconsin

Last week I was reading The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt, a sci-fi/fantasy from the early 1900's, when a character referred to research being done at the Yerkes Observatory. There was a footnote, so I turned to the back of the book and read the following:

The University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, located in southeastern Wisconsin, was in Merritt's day arguably the most important observatory in the world. Its forty-inch refractor, constructed in 1897, was the world's largest telescope for a number of years and is to this day the largest refracting telescope in the world.

I had never heard of it before, but with that kind of lead-up it had to be checked out. A quick Google search revealed that it's still in operation, it's a mere 45 minutes away, and there are tours on Saturday mornings. Who knew that a 100+ year old, world-class observatory was so close and so accessible?

So, yesterday morning, we set out. The 45 minute trip wound up taking 1 hour and 15 minutes, since we had to drive through downtown Lake Geneva, a small but very popular resort town. We still made it on time, though, and once there we were greeted by a very friendly and very chatty astronomer, who led the tour.

The observatory is shaped like a "T", with 3 domes, one at each endpoint. The tour lasted about 45 minutes, and focused exclusively on the largest dome (90 feet), where the refractor is held. Suffice to say, it is big. And quite impressive.

At this stage of its life, the observatory is primarily used for educational outreach, but there is still a fair of amount of research being done there. The astronomers are upset at the University, though, for recently selling some of the surrounding land to a developer who plans to build about 75 homes. The observatory will stay as it is, but the added light pollution won't make their job any easier.

I forgot to bring our digital camera, so we had to make do with the camera in my new cell phone.













Before leaving, we stopped at the gift shop and I bought a piece of a meteorite that landed in Northwest Africa. The friendly man behind the counter explained the metals it contained, their properties, where the meteorite came from, and then remarked, "Everybody needs a rock from space." I couldn't agree more, friendly man. I couldn't agree more.



Not content with such a short foray into Wisconsin, we had agreed beforehand that after checking out the observatory, we would head over to Milwaukee and visit the Public Museum, where they have a new exhibit on display called "Dragon Skies: Astronomy of Imperial China."

So we drove northeast for about thirty miles, navigated construction in downtown Milwaukee, and finally arrived at the Museum. We spent a couple of hours looking at the exhibits. "Dragon Skies" had several ancient Chinese star charts, astronomical instruments, and water clocks, all with elegant dragon carvings adorning them.

Overall the museum was interesting, but it was hard to top the Yerkes Observatory. The most valuable thing we learned from the second half of our trip is that if you're going to Milwaukee, beware the construction! It renders maps nearly useless.

Things We Have Recently Learned

1. Lake Michigan is one cold motherf- Shut yo' mouth!

We went to the beach again for Randy's birthday at the end of July, more than a month later in the summer than we went with Abby. We were really looking forward to it, especially because it was a really hot day and we thought the water would be nice and cool and refreshing. Nope. The water was, if possible, more frigid than it was in mid-June. So we sat on the beach until we were sweating, then we stood in the water until we couldn't feel our legs. Repeat as necessary. (Overall, it was a good time, just rather more punctuated with temperature extremes than was perhaps ideal.)

2. Annexation and cattails are the big news in our neighborhood.

We went to our first neighborhood association meeting last week. The good news is that we've got very friendly neighbors. The bad news is that no one really knows anything about whether or not our neighborhood will be annexed by the city of McHenry, and no one really knows how much it will cost to send the cattails in our lake (which have been proliferating as the water level in the lake drops) to sleep with the fishes, but it didn't stop anyone from expressing an opinion about either thing, sometimes in great detail.

3. The UPS Customer Center in Palatine should be avoided on Friday nights.

We missed the delivery of Randy's new phone (e-mail him if you need his new cell phone number and don't have it), and we weren't going to be home during the "We'll try again on..." time, either. So we drove out to Palatine, figuring we'd be able to run in, grab the package, and head right back home. Um, no. The line to retrieve packages was probably 20 people long, and we waited for more than 30 minutes. I shudder to imagine holiday-length lines.

4. Mowing goes a lot faster when most of the grass is dead.

See also water level in lake, dropping of.

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Squirrel Shenanigans

As we were sitting down to eat dinner Saturday evening, we happened to notice not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six squirrels in our yard, two of which were locked in an epic, no-holds-barred brawl. We sat at the table, calmly eating dinner while watching the melee unfold.

"I bet it's some kind of Saturday night fight club," Wendy remarked.

Eventually the two squirrels settled down and the crowd dispersed among the various nearby trees. We can only guess as to what they were really fighting about. (girls)

And in other rodent news, it appears that a family of chipmunks has taken up residence underneath our front porch. Wendy happened to see one darting underneath it as she went to check the mail earlier this week.

While writing this post, I learned, thanks to the magic of wikipedia, that squirrels and chipmunks belong to the Sciuridae family of rodents, and that black squirrels (which I saw several times growing up in northeastern Oklahoma) have been spotted in the Fox Lake area of Illinois, a mere ten minutes away from our house.

Hopefully Sciuridae will be our only exposure to Rodentia, and we won't have to deal with the Muroidea superfamily.

Everything's Bigger In Texas

Happy belated Fourth of July, everybody! Hope it was great for all of you.

We went to Texas over the long weekend. It was the first time I'd been back since we moved away in Februrary 2002, and it was hot. It's easy to forget how toasty 98 degrees can feel when it's mostly been in the upper 70s and low 80s here - if this is what summer is typically like here, I am seriously in favor.

Once we arrived, we went to pick up our rental car. We had reserved a midsize car, but the agent was extremely friendly and chatted with us while he was taking down all our information, and then gave us a free upgrade to a premium car. "Everything's bigger in Texas," he said, with a big grin. "Even our hearts!" So we got to spend several days driving around DFW in a Buick LeSabre with free XM radio. Very nice, although we were the youngest ones we saw in a Buick by several decades.

The real reason we were in Texas, though, was for Joy and Cory's wedding! Saturday night, they hosted a get-together for all the families and out-of-town guests and we had a great time. It was wonderful to get to meet Cory's family and hang out with Randy's family, some of whom I had never (or only once or twice) met before. My parents were also able to come down for the wedding, so it was great to have the chance to hang out with them as well.

It was also at the get-together Saturday night that Joy distributed all our to-do lists. This past semester, she's been working full-time, planning a wedding, and finishing her final semester of an MA program, so she's had to be incredibly organized to get everything done. I helped with table decorations. Randy was in charge of the present table. Joy and Randy's dad's to-do list? 1. Walk Joy down aisle. 2. Perform wedding ceremony. 3. Take out the reception trash.

The wedding itself, on Sunday, was beautiful as well as organized. Joy wore the gorgeous dress her mom made for her and her dad performed the ceremony admirably. The reception was nice, and made better by the fact that they served chocolate cake and hot fudge sundaes. Now they're off to Hawaii for their honeymoon, and hopefully having lots of fun.

Monday evening, we were able to go see Ruben, who also lives in the Fort Worth area. It was nice to hang out with him and commiserate about being home-owners, since he also just bought his first house. We hung out for a bit, then went to a tasty little Italian place for dinner and went to see Superman Returns, which I really enjoyed. (I think the boys did, too.)

And Tuesday we came home. We weren't scheduled to leave until 4:30 p.m., but we went to the airport early and we were able to get on the 1:25 p.m. flight, which wound up being much nicer. I think we both breathed a sigh of relief when we drove up and saw that our house was still standing.

Since we've been back, I've been catching up on my Tour de France viewing (it's Phil and Paul's 21st year broadcasting together!) and we've been pondering bathroom remodeling. Any suggestions, advice, or desperate warnings?

Back in Blogland

It's been five and a half weeks since our last post. What could possibly have kept us away for so long? Well, here's the answer, in reverse chronological order:

-- We had an A/C guy come by and add more refrigerant. The air is much cooler, now, thankfully.
-- Abby flew back to Kansas. We had a nice time during her visit.
-- We all went for a walk at the McHenry dam one evening. It was very pleasant, except for several swarms of bugs that we had to fight off.
-- We visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. There were many cool exhibits ranging from Leonardo da Vinci, to submarine warfare, to slices of body parts, to virtual reality. On our way back we drove along the lovely Lake Shore Drive.
-- We took a trip to the beach at Lake Michigan. It was sunny and hot (mid-90's), but the water was still very cold.
-- Wendy and Abby did lots and lots of shopping.
-- We "trained our brains" every day, by playing Brain Age, a super-fun game for the Nintendo DS Lite.
-- A plumber came by and fixed a leaky toilet.
-- We went for a nice two-mile jaunt at the nearby Chain O' Lakes State Park.
-- We embarked on a sacred pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Suburbia, otherwise known as IKEA. If you've never been to one on the weekend, it's hard to describe how insanely busy it is. Although we didn't buy anything, we did get some good ideas on how to organize our house.
-- We saw the Prairie Home Companion movie. It was very enjoyable.
-- I went to Meijer late Saturday night on June 10th, and at 12:01 AM Sunday, June 11th, I bought a Nintendo DS Lite. It's a new, improved, and slimmer version of the Nintendo DS, and that was the very earliest you could buy it.
-- I searched all the nearby stores for a DS Lite prior to June 11th, after reading that some places accidentally started selling them early. I did manage to find one several days early at Sears Grand, but it rang up as "Do Not Sell" at the cash register. Thus, I waited until June 11th.
-- Abby came to visit us!
-- We had an insulation guy come by and add more insulation. We hardly had any to speak of, but now it's like our house has a nice thick blanket that keeps all the cool air in.
-- We unpacked a lot, but there are still plenty of half-empty boxes lying around.
-- We spent almost all of Memorial Day Weekend cleaning the townhouse we rented the past year.
-- We moved!
-- I got sick.
-- We packed and packed and packed. And packed.
-- Wendy got sick.

Photo Extravaganza

Well, we've been keeping busy the past few weeks with cleaning the house, painting the family room, mowing the lawn, and getting all of our utilities and services switched over. I'm fairly certain I've been to Home Depot more times the past two weeks than the past ten years combined. Life is different when you're a homeowner.

Wendy is currently in Kansas, attending her sister's graduation. Since she left, the weather has turned cold and rainy -- we've gotten just over 2 inches of rain in recent days -- and the forecast is calling for even more.

So, to pass the time on a rainy weekend in May, here are photos of our new house:

The Whole Thing (front)

Lots o' grass to mow

A pond in the distance

Ye Ol' Dining Room

A mighty white kitchen

Family room, pre-painting

Family room, post-painting

"Clean me!" cries the deck

El Backyard Gazebo

The Whole Thing (back)

Purple and White Flowery Things

Up close

And personal


Our first visitor

We have a house!!

The Girl's A Super Freak

If you wake up at 6:41 a.m. Sunday and your immediate reaction is a sense of almost-unbelievable relief at having been able to sleep that late, followed by the thought, "Wow, seven hours of sleep in a row," that is probably a pretty good indication that you have not been sleeping all that well. Friday (and closing) can't come soon enough for either of us. I think we're both still slightly worried that everything will somehow find a way to fall apart before we actually manage to take possession of the house. And I know we're both more than slightly worried that the house itself will somehow find a way to fall apart right after we actually manage to take possession. Right now it feels like the best we can do is cross our fingers and hope desperately that we haven't made some kind of terrible mistake, while still secretly suspecting that we really, really have.

In other, less freaking-out, news, my mom was able to come for a visit this past weekend on her way back from a business trip in Washington, D.C. It was great to see her and it was nice to spend time together, even though we didn't have a whole lot of it, since she arrived Friday evening and had to leave Sunday morning. We were able to show her the house Saturday morning, and she and I spent the afternoon looking around at house-y stuff (fabric and curtains and sheets and rugs and so on), but we didn't actually buy anything because I'm too superstitious to think it's a good idea to buy accessories for something we don't yet own.

I guess the take-away message of this post is that buying a house turns me into a neurotic mess. With luck, we may someday have something actually coherent and non-house related to say again. But definitely not until after Friday. In the meantime, I think I have to go freak out some more.

Dollars and Cents

We walked in to the bank today carrying a 39 pound box, and told the receptionist we had some change to deposit.

A teller across the room exclaimed, "That's full of change?!"

"Yes, it is!" was our response.

And so, over the course of the next twenty minutes, we waited and watched while the coin-counting machine tallied up all of the loose change we'd collected over the years. This box has actually moved with us a couple of times, although we never let the movers handle it since they charge by weight, and I'm not sure if we would have come out ahead in the deal. Since we're facing another move soon, this time across town, it seemed like a good idea to finally turn the change into something more usable.

And is it ever. The grand total came to $176.

(I had a fleeting idea as I was typing this that it might be just enough to purchase a Little Giant, but no, the As Seen On TV model is about twice that amount.)

Mega-Post!

Well, there's been a lot going on recently, and it's high time we filled everyone in with the details. This is my take on the past month and a half, see below for Wendy's take. And be warned that this is a very lengthy post, with many tangents and side trips.

We started looking for a house in earnest around mid to late February. We're not always the quickest decision makers, especially when it comes to major decisions like buying a house, but thankfully the deadline for notifying our landlords that we were moving out loomed large enough on the horizon that we finally scrambled into gear. So, we got in touch with a realtor that we met during our move here from Colorado and began scouring the internet mercilessly, looking for house listings and getting an idea of what was available and what the price ranges were. It didn't take long for illinoisproperty.com, zillow.com, and maps.google.com to become our most frequently visited sites.

Then we began driving all around the neighboring towns (McHenry, Wonder Lake, Woodstock, Crystal Lake, and Island Lake) to get a feel for what they were like. We put a lot of miles on the car during this time, and at one point we got to watch the odometer roll over the 100,000 mile mark (but don't worry, we still kept an eye on the road).

One day during this "exploring the area" phase, we decided to meet for lunch and drive around a neighborhood in Island Lake. It turned out to be a nice neighborhood, and we decided we were interested in one of the houses for sale in it. On the way back we stopped at a gas station to buy some drinks, and as I got back in the car, I heard the unmistakable sound of a camera taking a picture. It took me a minute to realize it was the camera phone in my pocket. "Oh," I said to Wendy, "I think I just took a picture of my pants." So I opened up the cell phone and discovered, that, in fact, I had taken 26 pictures of my pants! The camera's entire memory was full of dark blurry pictures of my pocket, which amused us both. Apparently, I just like pants.

And while we're talking about pictures of pants, it seems only reasonable to segue into pictures of dogs. Coton de Tulears, to be exact. Unfortunately, though, this is a somewhat sad story. As Wendy and I were heading out one Sunday afternoon to drive around neighborhoods in nearby Woodstock, we saw a small white dog running around the middle of the road, holding up traffic in front of us. After a moment the dog got safely to the side of the road, and we all went on our way. A couple of days later, though, lost dog signs were up in the vicinity and an article appeared in the local paper. Apparently someone pulled over, put the dog in their car, and drove away. As the days passed, we kept exploring more neighborhoods, and we started noticing signs everywhere with a picture of the missing dog. People were even handing out fliers at the nearest major intersection. There's still no news yet, but there is a reward being offered, and there are now large signs that I see everyday saying "We can't hurt anymore. Please let Star come home, no questions asked". Hopefully Star will be safely returned. We'll keep you updated.

Getting back to houses, we then started looking at the insides of them with our realtor. After three rounds (the interested ones, the maybes, and the it'll-take-some-fixing-up options) we hadn't found any that seemed right. Actually, what we did find is that none of them felt right at the time, but as we thought about some of them more, they became more appealing. Every single time, though, right when we decided to take another look, the house would go under contract. Frustrated and stressed, we knew we had exhausted all the options on the market at the time, and now we had to sit and wait for something new to come up.

Happily, it didn't take long. A listing appeared one Monday morning that looked promising, so we met during lunch and drove by it (no pants-pictures this time). We liked the neighborhood (it's not that far from where we are now), so we set up an appointment to view it that evening. The inside of the house turned out to be nice, and we both knew it was at the very top of our list. So, after sleeping on it, and taking another look at it the next day, we made an offer! They accepted, and we have since been subject to a whirlwind of inspectors, mortgage brokers, and attorneys.

And speaking of inspectors, it's time to talk about ladders. Specifically, the Little Giant. If you haven't seen the infomercial, the Little Giant is 24 ladders in one compact, easy-to-use design! It actually looks like it could be really useful, and I mention it here because our inspector had one. Being first-time home buyers, there are a lot of things we don't have that we'll need to buy, with one of them being a ladder. And seeing that a professional home inspector uses the Little Giant may have convinced me to get one. Incidentally, Wendy and I smiled when we saw the inspector using a Little Giant. Sometime last year, after seeing the infomercial, Wendy was telling me about it and referred to it as "The Mighty Dwarf" when she couldn't remember the real name. The Mighty Dwarf is such an absurd name for a ladder that it stuck.

There are several other things that have been going on recently not related to houses. One of them is the beginning of spring! Yep, we have officially made it through our first Chicago winter, and the general consensus among the natives is that it was a very mild one. I can say, though, that it got much colder here than it did in Colorado. The snowfall seemed to be about the same, but it wasn't nearly as windy here as I thought it would be.

And not only is it the spring season, but it's also the tax season as well. For the first time, we took our taxes to a tax preparer, and wow, it was incredibly easy! The entire process took about an hour, the people were nice (it was interesting to see that most of the preparers were older women), and they even offered us homemade cookies while we waited! It was a bit expensive, since we had income from two states, but it was totally worth it, and I have a feeling we'll be doing it again next year.

As Wendy mentioned below, we became trained weather spotters! We went to a 2 hour presentation on weather spotting and learned all about things like shelf clouds, scuds, and gustnados. It also covered the formation of severe storms, what to look for, the best position to be in when watching a storm, and what type of information to provide when reporting severe weather. It was cool! Oh, and also they had a picture of one of the two known photographs of a tornado in McHenry county. So they're definitely not as common here as they are in Oklahoma and Kansas, but Illinois has definitely had severe tornados in the past.

And finally, a couple of Friday evenings ago Wendy and I met our good friend Sir Austin of Tahlequah in downtown Chicago. He was attending a law conference and had some free time, so we took a train down and met him. It was a milestone for Wendy and I in that we took our first cab ride together. We had planned to eat at Pizzeria Uno's, but 7 o'clock on a Friday night does not make for short lines at classic Chicago restaurants. So we went to California Pizza Kitchen instead (no waiting!), and then spent the rest of the evening chatting at a nearby Borders. By the time we got back on a train to head home, we'd taken a total of four taxis, so we feel fairly confident that we can handle it now. It was cool to see Austin again and we both enjoyed hanging out and catching up with him.

The Details, Part 1

So, if you are young, and looking for a house, there is one question you should be prepared to answer repeatedly. Your real estate agent will ask you. ("Are you thinking of starting a family?") Your inspector will ask you. ("Going to start a family next?") Your mortgage broker will, too. ("And are there children in your future?") Coworkers. Friends. The woman who cuts your hair. There is no one who won't ask you this. "Well, we'll see!" has been our standard response - consider this a public service announcement so that you can all be prepared with a politely vague answer of your own. (Unless, of course, you have a politely specific answer you would prefer to use.)

Now that we've found a house, though, everything has been happening so quickly that there's really not much time for idle questions anymore. I don't think I realized quite how speedily everything was going to happen - we got the listing for the house on Monday morning, drove by and liked it during lunch, and saw it after work Monday evening. Tuesday, we went back for a second look during lunch and made an offer, and we had a verbal agreement before we went to bed that night. By dinnertime Wednesday, we had a signed contract. Since then, we've also applied (and been approved) for a mortgage, had a home inspection ("solid as a rock," according to our inspector), a radon test (well within normal levels), and requested that the sellers fix a few things from the inspection report. It's felt like more, honestly. From now until closing (four weeks from today), though, apparently we pretty much just wait. And presumably pack.

But wait! There's more! Since we last managed to update:

- We've ridden the train down to Chicago to see Austin, who was in town for a law journal conference. We had a really nice time eating dinner and hanging out, and it was great to get to visit with him.

- I've managed to read most of The Count of Monte Cristo - I'm somewhere around the 950-page mark (which leaves a mere 300 or so to go), and the Count really is remarkably Batman-esque. I'm enjoying it.

- I am now a trained weather spotter! The National Weather Service held training at my college last night, and since I was working anyway, I sat in. Randy came, too - they will be mailing us official weather spotter certificates.

- We have been witnesses to a dognapping! I think Randy is writing about this in greater detail, but let me just mention that the missing dog is a small, white fluffy dog. The people whose house we are buying have a small, white fluffy dog. Can this be coincidence, or are they moving because they need to get out of town, quick? (Actually, I'm pretty sure that it can be a coincidence, and I'm very sorry for the people whose dog is missing.)

- Spring has, so to speak, sprung. Or it has at least begun to - this is a later spring than I'm used to, but the days are finally beginning to noticeably lengthen and it was warm enough yesterday to open the windows for a while.

I can hear Randy writing the rough equivalent of a novel for his post, so maybe I'll just stop here. I expect that between the two of us, you will be more than sufficiently filled in on everything!

A Very, Very, Very Fine House

We have a house! Or at least we have a contract, a mortgage approval, a homeowner's insurance quote, and an inspection report. We also have a fair amount of abject terror, but apparently that is all very normal and only to be expected. We'll each write our own post about everything in the next few days, so you can get all the details. Our closing is set for April 28; we'll keep you updated until then! (We do have pictures but are not planning on posting any just yet - if you'd like to see them, please feel free to e-mail us and we'll be happy to share them that way.)

Also, this is the one year anniversary of our blog. Happy Birthday to us, and thanks for sticking around!

And now for something completely different

On Monday of this week, the high was 55° and the weather was gorgeous. Today, the high was 4. Wind chills last night hit -35. Needless to say, that's really cold.

In the past, January and February have always seemed like the dreariest months of the year, and the kind of weather we're having today only serves to bolster that. But one particular sign has been very encouraging over the past few weeks: the days are getting longer, and there's now some daylight left when I'm driving home from work. Living in the northern parts of the country definitely makes you notice, and appreciate, the amount of sunlight that you get.

While we were making dinner this evening, I started to tell Wendy about a Rolling Stones song I heard recently that I'd never heard before, but really liked. She stopped, looked up, and started singing But don’t play with me, ’cause you’re playing with fire, which was exactly the song I was about to describe to her. It turns out that one morning earlier this week we were both driving to work at the same time, listening to the same radio station, heard the same song, which neither of us had heard before, and both really liked it. That cracked us up. As you can probably guess, the song is called Play With Fire.

In other news, we're looking into buying a house in the coming months! Housing prices in this part of Illinois are still fairly expensive since we're close to Chicago, but it's not quite as expensive as the Boulder area in Colorado.

And, finally, I finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo several nights ago. It was incredibly good, and I found it interesting to note just how much the Count is like a 19th century Batman (or more correctly that Batman is a 20th century Count): Tragedy befalls both of them in their youth, they disappear into the Orient where they develop their skills, they re-emerge into society incredibly wealthy and mysterious, they both have hidden caves, both are masters of disguise, some people think they're vampires, and, most importantly, they both have an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. Despite the similarities, though, I would venture to suggest that both characters are unique and unforgettable. Bravo Messieurs Dumas and Kane, on jobs well done!

A Post of Olympic Proportions

It is now T-minus 56 minutes to the Olympics! Or at least the opening ceremonies, shown on a seven-hour tape delay from Italy. But I'll take what I can get! Because I love the Olympics, even more than I love the Tour De France!

We got a Tivo last month as an anniversary present to each other, which we're both loving so far. (Providentially, we discovered after ordering it that the fourth anniversary, at least on contemporary lists, is the electronics anniversary. Go us!) I'm really pleased to have the Tivo, because this is our busy season at work and I'm now getting in almost all my hours for the week on the weekends, which is of course when most of the Olympics coverage is on TV. On a job note, although 6 a.m. events are pretty rare so far, 7 a.m. events are coming along much more frequently than I think is really ideal. Disregarding the occasionally obscenely early start times, though, my job is still going quite well.

Um...what else? I successfully hemmed a too-long pair of pants, which was a first for me. Randy set up a wireless network for our computers and the Tivo, so we can now listen to music and browse pictures stored on our computer from the TV, as well as set up programs to record from the Internet. Thanks to an anniversary gift from my parents, we have peaches and pound cake from Harry and David, which is incredibly delicious. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

We've also both been doing a lot of reading recently - Randy's been reading The Count of Monte Cristo, all 1300 pages of it, while I've been flying through a bunch of much shorter books. I especially loved The Perilous Gard, which I keep thinking back to, even after finishing it. I love books that can make me do that.

And I note that it is now T-plus 6 minutes from the Olympics starting. (I got slightly distracted while typing this up.) Don't worry; I'm Tivo-ing it!

Sponge-Worthy

One of our adoring fans posed this question to us recently in a comment: Whither SpongeBob? He should, after all, constitute a full third of our blog, if the tagline above is to be believed.

Well, dear readers, fear not. We have not forgotten about our absorbent and porous friend. Although he has not had a starring role in our blog until now, he has made several cameo appearances. One such appearance was in the form of a band-aid (although it was pointed out to me later that it was no mere band-aid I used that day -- it was a glow-in-the-dark one!); another appearance here detailed our impression of Mr. SquarePants' adventure on the silver screen.

And, as you may have guessed by the new name adorning these pages, the current and previous title of our blog have paid homage to classic quotes from the TV series:

"Art thou feeling it now, Mr. Krabs?"
-- Spongebob, Mid-Life Crustacean

"Just look at him. Square... the shape of evil!"
-- Sheldon J. Plankton, The Fry Cook Games

Having established the subtle, yet unmistakable presence of Mr. SquarePants, we can turn our attention to the manner in which we became fans.

I first became aware of the aforementioned character in 2002, when I began my job in Colorado. The department I was in had established a team mascot, which was a talking SpongeBob SquarePants doll ("Bring it around town," he exclaimed). Every month the department would vote for a member that had performed exceptionally well, and the winner had the honor of possessing the doll, which was nicknamed "FancyPants," for that month. Lest any harm befall the mascot, the Code of Ethics within the department included the line "Treat FancyPants with Respect."

Having never heard of him before, I asked Wendy one day if she had heard of a cartoon named something along the lines of "SquareBob SpongePants." She had, fortunately, and she corrected my mistake.

Not long after that we began watching the TV show on Nickelodeon and discovered that we quite enjoyed it. SpongeBob is zany, naive, and, perhaps, somewhat gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). A fine combination. And a fine show.

We thank you, Mr. SquarePants, for providing hours of entertainment. And to our readers: should you ever have any SpongeBob-related questions, please do not hesitate to ask. We shall always endeavor to answer.

Well.

Last night, I finally fell asleep around 4 a.m. This morning, I got up at 8 a.m. I left about 10 minutes later than I should have for work and was stuck behind someone going 5 miles under the speed limit for probably a third of the way there.

When I finally got to work, it turned out that the server was misbehaving, and I spent probably 30 minutes trying to get my computer to restart. I spent another several hours looking up the zip codes for over 200 addresses, for a mailing we're doing.

When I got home today, I discovered that the two boxes of Christmas presents we had to mail to ourselves had arrived and had been sitting outside our garage in the rain all afternoon. I brought them in, checked the mail (in the rain!), and then walked all the way across our light beige living room carpet before noticing that I had stepped in mud while checking the mail. I also managed to almost completely shred one of the crusts I needed to make dinner while trying to get it out of the pan.

The carpet is now clean, a pot pie is in the oven, Randy is on his way home, and I am drinking a much-too-strong pina colada.

So. How are you all doing?

As promised, here's a selection of the 100 memories from our Christmas trip.

1. Wendy accidentally walking in on a little girl in the women's bathroom at a gas station, apologizing and moving on to the next stall, where she accidentally walked in on a little boy.

20. Abby doing the laundry dance.

22. Santa bringing Randy's mom a tulip toilet seat.

26. Santa bringing Randy's dad an Aircap 2 - strongly reminiscent of a chemical warfare mask.

27. Playing Battle of the Sexes with everyone at Randy's house.

28. Discovering that Cory is rather metrosexual, and thus knew many of the answers to the female questions.

31. Celebrating our fourth anniversary!

34. Nearly running out of gas on our way back to Kansas City, but fortunately just making it to a gas station in Topeka.

38. Graffiti in a Kansas bathroom: "God is the reason for the season," except "God" was crossed out and "Jesus" was written above it.

70. Randy's dad saying he wanted a 52" plasma TV for Christmas, and Wendy telling him that all we could find was the 56" one, which wasn't what he asked for, so we didn't buy it.

76. Walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart with Wendy and Abby and hearing a little boy say, "Mom, that lady is cute! Both of those ladies are cute!"

80. Getting home and discovering that our suitcases had been searched.

(Which surely had nothing to do with...) 82. Wendy having her Miss Army knife confiscated by Midway security.

Happy 2006!

Hola, amigos. Sorry it's been so long since we rapped at you, but we're back now!

December was busy, but not terribly exciting through most of it. My back problems were re-diagnosed as possible gallbladder problems, and then re-re-diagnosed as possible back problems. I suspect that I did in fact have a severely pulled muscle or deep bruise, since it seems to have finally healed almost completely over the last week or so despite my less-than-healthy holiday diet (which would probably not be the case if it was a gallbladder problem).

So I spent more time this past month than I would have liked at the doctor, and the rest of the time frantically trying to get the Christmas shopping done. We did get it all done, with time to spare, thanks to the beautiful, beautiful internet.

We were able to go and visit both families again this Christmas. We first headed to Tulsa to spend some time with Randy's family. We had a great time hanging out with everyone, and were very pleased to meet Joy's fiancé, Cory. He's a funny, wonderful guy, and they're obviously very much in love. We approve!

After a few days, we drove up to Wichita to see my family as well, and again spent most of our time hanging out and playing games. While we were in Wichita, we celebrated our fourth anniversary. It fell on the same day as OU's bowl game. OU won, sealing the victory with a late interception, which was a nice gift. (Sorry we were so, um, exuberant with our cheering, Mom. We didn't mean to wake you!)

We're glad to be back home now, although I wish we could have stayed longer. We had a wonderful time with both families. Coming soon: a selection of our 100 memories from this trip. I'm sure you can't wait!

May you all have a happy 2006!