Yummy Yummy! Right Here!

We had a great weekend. Abby's here, and we decided to begin exploring our new habitat.

Saturday we took a picnic down to the McHenry Dam and then hiked the 2-mile trail around the nature preservation area nearby. It was both woodsy and wetland-y and we saw a bunch of birds. There was a deck for observing black terns about halfway around that we enjoyed, although we're not really sure if we saw any black terns as none of us are quite sure what they look like. Canada geese, though - those we recognized. Also something that we're pretty sure was a crane. Or a stork. Anyway, it was really pleasant.

Sunday we ventured down to the heart of Chicago. We rode the Metra, which is a commuter train that offers $5 weekend fares to ride as much as you want on any of the lines. It was fun, and a neat way to see the scenery. Which, okay, was mostly trees (in the suburbs) and buildings (in the city), but still nice. We got off the train at Union Station, where that one scene in The Untouchables was filmed. It's a pretty busy station, with restaurants and souvenir shops. One restaurant, in a stunningly clever marketing ploy, was trying to attract patrons by having its (surely underpaid) employees yell, "Yummy yummy! Right here! Yummy yummy!" We decided not to eat there.

Instead, we walked to Sears Tower, which is only a few minutes from the train station. We had to wait in line, but not for too long, and then after a mere 60-second elevator ride, we were at the observation deck on the 103rd floor. The view is impressive, as you would expect. Kind of like going up in the Arch, only much more so.

Then we headed to lunch, where we ate real Chicago-style deep dish pizza. "It takes 30 minutes to cook, but it's well worth the wait," our waiter told us, and we agreed that he was right. After that we walked around downtown some, took a few pictures of St. Patrick's, Chicago's oldest church (it pre-dates the fire), and then decided it was time to head home. All in all, a very pleasant day!

Finally, a picture of our living room sans boxes!



This gnome came with the house. I think he's pretty saucy.



Sears Tower, from the ground up (tallest building in the US, second-tallest in the world)



The view from the Sears Tower, facing north



Downtown Chicago, near Union Station



St. Patrick's Church. The two different spires represent East and West.

Pizza Night

So my first week at work is in the books, and it went quite well. All of my co-workers are very friendly and helpful, and they've kept me busy with plenty of things to do. By the end of my first day, I had a bug report assigned to me and I had started tracking it down (I found it and fixed it the next morning). There's a huge amount of stuff that I have to learn, but that's actually a good thing. After just one week, I can say that this job is already a lot more interesting than my old one.

When I got home from work this evening I discovered that Wendy had made sugar cookies with chocolate frosting to celebrate the completion of my first week at work. They are quite tasty. For dinner we made our own pizzas, and they also turned out to be very good.

The weather turned a bit gloomy today, with cloudy skies and rain (and a chance of snow tonight). After spending 3 years in sunny Colorado, this kind of weather is a refreshing change. Wendy saw recently that Miami, FL gets 236 days of sunshine a year. That's nothing -- Boulder, CO gets 300 days of sunshine each year. After a quick check on google, we also discovered that Boulder gets more sunshine than San Diego!

Finally, we haven't forgotten about posting photos of our place now that we're unpacked. We'll try to get some up this weekend.

Cheers!

And we're done!

The last box is unpacked, and everything is (more or less) put away. All that's left to do is finish hanging our pictures on the walls, but that shouldn't take very long at all. Everything looks much, much nicer - we'll post new photos in the next day or two.

A few more random things:

- There are a lot of motorcycles here. The other day, we were at a stop light and probably 30 motorcycles in a row turned left in front of us. We're not too far from a Harley-Davidson shop, but I don't know if that really explains the sheer number of them.

- There are a lot of limousines here, too, and not just near the airport. We've seen them at the gas station, at fast food places, driving down suburban streets - pretty much all over.

- Ditto pizza places. There are 121 pizza places in the phone book for McHenry County, 16 in McHenry proper. McHenry has about 20,000 people. I don't really know if that is a lot, statistically speaking, but it sure seems like it.

- Pepsi is having a promotion with iTunes right now, where (so they claim) 1 out of every 3 diet Pepsis will win you a free song from iTunes. I was running 0 for about 11 on the free songs, but over the last 2 days, I'm 2 for 2! I haven't decided which songs I'll get yet. I don't want to squander my winnings on the wrong songs!


And last but definitely not least, Randy's first day at Follett is tomorrow. I'm sure he'd appreciate any good thoughts any of you would like to send his way!