Icy Cold Fun

A few weeks ago, while it was still brutally cold, we took a trip to Lake Michigan to see how it was holding up. We had no idea how much, if any, of it would freeze. What we found was a frozen beach, with ice jutting out into the water, and large chunks of ice floating in the lake.

All the white specks you can see in the distance are chunks of ice.

The cute, shivering girl in this picture is my wife:

The stoic, wind-blown guy in this picture is yours truly:

The frozen, wind-blown beach in this picture is, well, the frozen, wind-blown beach:

While we were there, it was 15°, with a wind chill of 0. Honestly, though, it felt colder.

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.

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.

Abby and the Aquarium

Abby's gone home now, and it's once again very quiet here during the day. It was great to have her visit. While she was here, we played Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Sorcerer's Stone for Gamecube, and beat them both. (We actually started with Prisoner of Azkaban, then CoS, and then SS. No sense doing things in order, we always say.) We watched all of Buffy season one and two and about a third of the third season (in about 5 days). We went to the library and checked out a bunch of books, approximately 3 of which we read. We did some shopping. And of course we did some sightseeing.

This past weekend, we went down to Shedd Aquarium, which was good fun. It's big, and right along the shore of Lake Michigan. We saw a dolphin show and saw belugas and sharks and penguins. And lots of fish. Then we walked along Lake Michigan for a while, but headed back to our car when it started sprinkling a bit. Also, it was cold and I left my jacket in the car. Oops.

Abby's plane left at 8 a.m. this past Wednesday, which meant we had to be at the airport at 7, which meant we had to leave our house at 5:30 a.m. Just for the record, that's really early. There was a little confusion regarding which terminal her flight actually left from, but we got it all sorted out and she made it home fine.

Here's Abby with her new boyfriend. He's a punk.



Randy and me on the scenic shores of Lake Michigan. That's the Chicago downtown skyline behind us (obviously).



Abby and me. I think we were discussing how nice the cloudy sky was. Also how surprisingly chilly it was for May.



Also, I know many of you are waiting on pins and needles, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer: I went with T-Mobile.