I should be writing...

We have a new TV! After looking at the Circuit City in Boulder, the Circuit City in McHenry, and the Best Buy in Crystal Lake, reading a gazillion reviews on Amazon.com, checking Consumer Reports, and a great deal of dithering, we finally bought one Sunday. We may not be the most exciting people, but boy howdy, no one can say we're not well-researched and deliberate.

It's great so far - much bigger, and with a flat screen, so we can finally see all the stuff in the corners. I'm glad the payoff is worth it, because it was kind of a pain to get it. We went to Best Buy, bought it, took it out to the car, struggled with getting the box in the car for a bit, finally realized we were going to have to take it out of the box to get it to fit, opened the box, and discovered it was broken. Part of the case was not just cracked but actually crushed. So...back in the box, back on the cart, back inside to trade it out. This time, we gratefully accepted their offer of help getting it into the car and were impressed with the guy who easily picked it up all by himself and slid it (no problem) into the backseat. Wow.

Randy also had a birthday! He's 28 now, so it was his Golden Birthday (28 on the 28th). Sadly, he had a bit of a cold on his birthday and only wanted to go to bed early, so we didn't do much then. He was feeling much better by this weekend, though, so we went out to dinner to celebrate and had a great time.

Finally...writing. Since I last posted about my novel, I've written, um, almost nothing. At the rate I was going, I would have finished around, oh, say 2034. Luckily, while George was visiting, we were talking about writing, and I told him all about NaNoWriMo and loaned him my copy of No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High- Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. He was inspired, and we decided to have our own, unofficial version of NaNoWriMo this month, starting today. So, for the next thirty days, I'm sure we'd both appreciate any support any of you want to wing our ways. Any of you who are feeling particularly masochistic are welcome to join us!

Boomer! Sooner!

Now that the Tour de France is over (Go Lance!), the countdown to college football season can begin. The first slate of games begin Thursday, September 1st, which, by my calculations, is 5 weeks and 2 days away. Since we're no longer in Big 12 country, we'll be upgrading to digital cable soon so that we can get "ESPN GamePlan", a TV package that airs games not typically shown in your region. In addition, we're in dire need of a new TV. The set we currently have gets blurry on warm colors (yellow, orange, and red), and the remote stopped working some time ago. We've looked at Circuit City, but so far haven't come to any decision on what type of TV we'll get.

This past weekend we had a mini-reunion of sorts with friends from OU. George, Danny, and Rubén all travelled up to our place to hang out for a few days. It made for a full house, but it was a lot of fun. The weather was incredibly hot (Sunday we had a heat index of over 110 degrees), so we pretty much stayed inside all weekend and played board games, with Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Taboo being our games of choice. There was much hilarity. Sunday we also went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which we all very much enjoyed.

Fortunately the weather cooled down remarkably today. Temperatures were in the low 70's, and it was gray and dreary with a light rain falling all day. It sounds dismal, but it was an incredibly refreshing change.

A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love

Wow, the new Harry Potter book is good! I really loved it - it's dark, and funny, and very intriguing. There's only one book left, and it seems like the series should really be winding down, but it feels like we're still being given lots of new information and that the world, and Harry's future, is actually opening up rather than shutting down.

Also, I don't want to give anything away, because I know that not everyone may have had the chance to read it yet, but I think the ending is a lot less straightforward than Harry thinks it is. In fact, I have very strong thoughts on the matter, and if you ask, I will tell you all about it, probably in more detail than you ever dreamed you wanted. And if you haven't read it yet, go! Get reading! It's worth it!

P.S. Many congratulations to Joy and Cory on your engagement! We wish you every happiness together!

Harry Potter, You're So Keen

We had a really nice time with Jill! I'm so glad she was able to come visit. Final Trivial Pursuit tally: 3-3-1. (We had to call one game on account of extreme tiredness.) Other things we did while Jill was here included taking a nice walk at Chain O' Lakes State Park, watching the first season of Coupling, and going to Lake Michigan on a hot day without our swimsuits. We'll know better next time.

The day after Jill left, I got a rejection letter in the mail for a story I had submitted to a magazine for publication! This is actually much more exciting than it might sound, because, 1) this was my first rejection letter ever, and, 2) my rejection letter was personalized and encouraging. Some bigger magazines (which this magazine isn't, really, but still) have as many as 5 or 10 different rejection letters that they send out, depending on how thoroughly they're rejecting the piece. The meanings can range all the way from, "Please don't ever send us anything again," to "We really don't have space in this issue, but this was great, so please try us again." Mine was along the lines of, "We like this, but it's not quite right for us. Try it somewhere else." And an editor had taken the time to write a few notes about the story on the letter, including "Good Luck!" It may not sound like much, but it is encouraging. So...I'll try again.

Also, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out this Saturday! I pre-ordered it from Amazon, and it should be delivered that day. I'm just frantically trying to finish re-reading the first five books before then - I have only two more to get through, but they are by far the biggest two. Luckily, they're pretty quick reads for me, so I think I should be able to do it. I can't wait!

P.S. You can download a song about Harry Potter here. It's the British-ish version, which is not as good as the non-British-ish version available for sale on that website, but it is free.

The Great Outdoors

Jill is here, and the epic Trivial Pursuit battles have commenced! At last count Wendy was ahead 3 games to 2.

This evening we went for a walk at the McHenry dam. There seemed to be a lot of wildlife out and about, which was very cool. We saw a muskrat swimming in a pond, several frogs, a few deer, many different kinds of birds, the coolest of which was a field full of at least a dozen great blue herons, and, as usual, many lightning bugs. Afterwards we went swinging on a nearby swingset which is next to a large grove of pine trees. The swings, pine trees, and lightning bugs all made for a very pleasant evening.

A little over a month ago, I posted a link to a google map of the state parks we've visited so far. Google has recently released a programming interface to create custom maps, so you no longer have to rely on hacks. There's really no limit to where this will go; the possibilities are endless. People have already come up with maps showing live concerts across the country, earthquakes in North America, and even a map of injuries during the running of the bulls in Spain.

My favorite so far, though, is Gmaps Pedometer, which helps you record distances between points. Simply center the map where you want it, and start double-clicking to plot points. It does all the work of calculating the total mileage. Here's a map I created of a walk that Wendy and I would go on when we lived in Longmont. And here's a longer walk that I occasionally went on. It's a lot of fun when you can effortlessly connect technology with your everyday life!

Toor Day Frants!

It's Tour de France time again! I'm not sure why I love it so much, but I do. OLN shows the race live every morning starting at 7:30 a.m. CDT, and I usually watch it then.

I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is the commentators, especially in the morning when it's live. They re-show each day's stage in the evening with extended commentary by Al Trautwig and Bob Roll (whose aggressively American pronunciation of Toor day Frants is pretty well known), but in the morning it's broadcast with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. Phil and Paul are British and are themselves former cyclists. Phil in particular is pretty excitable, while Paul is fairly laidback. The following exchange, which took place during the prologue time trial a few days ago, pretty well sums up their personalities:

Phil (suddenly extremely excited): And it looks to me as though Stuart O'Grady has just gone through the time check in first place! Oh, this is amazing! No one expected -

Paul (interrupting): Uh, that's actually forty-first place, Phil.

Phil (immediately contrite): Oh, I beg your pardon, Paul.

They're a great team. And the race is amazing, and lots of fun to watch.

In other news, Jill's going to come visit us this Thursday and stay for a long weekend! She and Jay are in the process of moving to Connecticut (actually, Jay's already there), and she was able to take a few days away from visiting her parents in Indiana on her way up to come up and see us. We don't have definite plans, aside from playing Trivial Pursuit with each other. Hooray!

Misadventures at the Mailbox

So today I checked the mail after getting home from work. I unlocked our mailbox, grabbed the mail, locked it, and I began to walk away as I started to pull out the key. The key, however, refused to come out. Since I was already moving, my hand slipped off the key and my finger scraped across the sharp end of the thin key ring. This wound up cutting my finger, pulling the key ring apart so that it disconnected from the rest of the keys, and also pulled the stubborn mail key out the lock. The key then fell onto the ground, bounced, and somehow managed to land in a thin crack between the curb and the concrete the mailbox was on. To illustrate:


Fortunately I was able to rescue the key by using a metal hanger to reach into the gap. Between this and The Green Tea Incident, though, I'm tempted to create a file called "Things I've Dropped In Unusual Places".

In semi-related news, today is our 3 and 1/2 year anniversary. While I was putting a Spongebob Squarepants band-aid on my finger, it occurred to me that instead of celebrating our full year anniversaries, which occur during the holidays when we're visiting family, we should instead celebrate our half-year anniversaries, which occur close enough to the July 4th weekend that we could have an extra-long vacation. Wendy thought this was an excellent idea. It's too late to plan a long trip for this year, but we do still have a 3-day weekend coming up. Perhaps we can find a cool place in Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin to visit.

We Only Love Saturday!

This was a really nice weekend.

Saturday morning, I discovered some really excellent programs on our local access cable channel, apparently aimed at native Indians and Pakistanis. I came in toward the end of a program that seemed to involve the inhabitants of two apartments across the alley from each other arguing about whose music they were going to listen to, only exclusively in song (and Hindi). It was almost totally incomprehensible, but I couldn't look away.

That segued into a program that was ostensibly about the over-use of certain Hindi phrases in music videos, but which really seemed to be an excuse to show music videos. I mean, they were taking requests. And giving shout-outs. My favorite video (which they played twice!) was "Chak de Saturday" by the Balle Balle Boys. It was a Matrix-inspired, computer-animated video that showed the Balle Balle Boys' computerized alter egos running down a hallway, entering doors marked "Wednesday" or "Thursday" and doing battle with a buxom female version of Mr. Smith. It then cut to the real Balle Balle Boys dancing with a Trinity look-alike and singing the catchy chorus: "No Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday/No more Thursday or Friday/We only love Saturday!" It was the only part of the song that was in English. Anyway, the programs were excellent. You can, if you want, read more about them at Namaste TV and Chitrahar.

We also bought bikes this weekend! Honestly, this was more exciting than the South Asian tv programs, but I think there's less to say about it. There are a lot of parks with bike trails in them nearby that we're looking forward to exploring.

We also saw Batman Begins, which was very dark and very cool. We both really enjoyed it, and I would highly recommend it to everyone. (Except Mom, who won't like it.) We went for a late-night bike ride after we got back from the movie. It was really nice, with fireflies everywhere.

We're (Almost!) Famous

We're in the paper today! Yesterday, a columnist from the paper called and interviewed me as well, so there's the original article about newcomers to McHenry County as well as a column about blogs. You can read them online here and here. Let us know if you want a clipping and we'll mail you a hard copy.

Also, my interview was yesterday. I think it went pretty well, but it's hard to tell sometimes. I've thought other interviews that didn't get me the job went well, too. The only one I was ever sure about was the interview at Naropa - I remember being almost certain that I had the job after I left the interview. (Luckily, I was right!) I guess I'll just have to wait and see...

Fireflies!

They were everywhere tonight. We first starting noticing fireflies a few weeks ago, much to our excitement, since we didn't see any the entire time we lived in Colorado. But tonight we went for a walk and they were out in force. It was very pretty. This evening was noticeably warmer than it has been recently, so perhaps that had something to do with it.

We both very much enjoyed Steven Wright's show. Here are some of our favorite lines:

"I have a theory that the end of the Cold War is what started global warming."
"I got food poisoning today. I don't know when I'll use it."
"If heat rises, then heaven's going to be a lot hotter than hell."
"Why is it that it's a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in? Somebody's making a penny somewhere."

Exciting Things Are Afoot

So here's the scoop: Tuesday was quite a good day for us. The fun started when we got tickets to see Steven Wright perform tomorrow night in Crystal Lake. If you're not familiar with him, he's a comedian with a monotone voice and a very dry sense of humor (not to mention some wacky hair). He's absolutely hilarious. A quick google search will pull up plenty of his one-liners.

Later that day, we were contacted by a reporter from the local newspaper who was doing a story on people settling down in McHenry County (see the comment on our previous blog post). She was very nice and wound up interviewing Wendy about why we moved here, what our impressions are, and what we've been up to. So, if it makes it through the editing phase, Wendy will be quoted in the newspaper! We're not sure when the story will run; possibly not until next week. We'll let you know when we see it.

Finally, that afternoon, Wendy got a job interview! It's for a part-time job, which is what she's looking for so that she can continue her writing. The interview is early next week, so please be sure to send good thoughts her way.

Happy Anniversary!

My parents spent their twentieth anniversary washing windows.

They don't actually remember how they spent their tenth anniversary, but they had a five year old and a two year old, so I can only imagine it was equally as romantic. Their thirtieth anniversary is today - and they have no special plans.

My sister and I decided to give them a new dishwasher as an anniversary gift. Clearly, I joked, we inherited our parents' sense of romance and passion. Or their distinct lack of it.

What we have inherited from them, though, more than makes up for the dearth of wine and roses. Not that we don't all appreciate flowers, but flowers eventually die, no matter how diligently you water them. With proper care and feeding, a good marriage can last forever.

From growing up with our parents, my sister and I have learned the valuable lesson that love for your spouse isn't enough. (Although it's certainly a good start.) We've learned that you also have to acknowledge your spouse's faults while somehow still ignoring them. You have to let wife know that she has your unwavering support. You have to laugh with your husband, and occasionally, you must also laugh at him.

My husband and I married in our early twenties, as did my parents. People sometimes say to us, as they must have sometimes said to my parents, how young we are to be married. We may be young, but I’ve never felt unprepared to be married. Thanks to my parents, the thing I know, possibly above all others, is what makes a good marriage.

I see in them a couple who not only love each other, but like each other, and laugh together on a regular basis. My sister and I are incredibly lucky to have grown up with their example, and to have learned early on that there are more important things in a relationship than flowers.

I hope, in another few decades, to be washing windows with my husband on our anniversary.


Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

A Novel Idea

As some of you know, I'm working on a novel.

My major in college was Professional Writing, which required a class called Writing the Novel for graduation, in which you (surprise!) write a novel. Although I did well in the class both times I took it, I wasn't at all happy with my first two novels and thought that I could have written something better, or at least something less monumentally stupid. After graduation, I kept thinking about trying again with a different genre, or better characters, or a more intriguing plot, but I couldn't ever quite come up with the discipline required to write a novel that wasn't being graded.

Last October, Randy found a mention of an event called NaNoWriMo, where participants write a novel (or at least the first 50,000 words of one) in a month. It sounded intriguing, and I decided to give it a try. I was even, maybe, just the teensiest bit smug about my chances of succeeding, since both of my previous novels were about 50,000 words and I had written each of them in about a month, completely disregarding my professors' advice to spread the writing out over the full semester.

It was exhilarating, at first, to fling myself into a novel with no outline, no plan, only a few characters and a very hazy idea of where I was headed. But after about 17,000 words, I started to lose steam. I was writing myself into corners and I still didn't know where my plot was going, and I was really starting to like the story - I was worried that I was going to screw it up. So I didn't finish it, and then November ended and real life intervened.

I still really liked the story. I had good characters, and I thought the plot had promise. Best of all, this novel was actually interesting, in a way that the first two just really, really weren't. Since November, I've thought of it often and worked on it rather less so. But recently, I've come up with a plot - a complete plot, with no gaping holes or fatal flaws, and good characters doing interesting things. (I hope!) I'd like to finish it up over the next few months, in time for this year's NaNoWriMo.

So, I wanted you all to know I was working on it. Please, feel free to ask me at frequent intervals how it's going. Be disappointed in me when I haven't written anything since last Tuesday. Be pleased for me when I've gotten four chapters and a plot twist done since Thursday. It's a young adult fantasy novel. I won't be posting any of it online, since that's tantamount to publishing it and I could then only sell re-print rights. But I can tell you that it contains: a heroine with a mysterious past, a hero with a tragic past, an evil prince, a mystical necklace, a black fortress, and a legendary dagger lost for centuries. I'm really excited about it!

Trees Rule!

Wendy and I have always been big fans of trees, so on Memorial Day we decided to visit the Morton Arboretum, which is in Lisle, IL, about an hour away from us. It was founded by Joy Morton (of Morton Salt fame), and it turned out to be a fantastic place to visit. There are over 1,700 acres of trees, 9 miles of roads winding through the various forests, and 14 miles of hiking trails. We spent most of the day there seeing all the sights. We walked through a hedge maze, rode a tram touring the site, hiked one and a half miles through an Oak forest to see a giant boulder that was deposited by a glacier, ate lunch, and then walked around a bunch more. And there was another section that we didn't even get a chance to explore. We did get a slight sunburn, and a few mosquito bites, but overall we loved it and would totally go back again.

While we were there, I decided to purchase a book at the gift shop called "1001 Questions Answered About Trees". Here are a few things I've learned so far:

• Trees as we know them today first appeared during the Coal Age 240 million years ago.
• Animal inhabitants during the Coal Age included "dragon flies with a 29-inch wing spread, enormous scorpions, spiders, and cockroaches 4 inches long."
• Hawthorne is the tree genus with the greatest number of species (165).
• There are trees in the Florida Keys with bark very poisonous to the touch.
• The title of the book is misleading; it's actually 1,044 questions answered about trees.

Link-O-Rama

One of the nice things about where live is that there are a number of state parks nearby. We've visited Moraine Hills State Park a number of times; last weekend we went to Chain O Lakes State Park; and today we briefly visited Glacial Park. Since one of the hot topics in technology right now is hacking Google Maps to create your own custom map, I decided to give this a shot. You can see the state parks that we've visited here. If you click on the red markers you should see a picture we took at each place. Doing this type of thing is still very new, but there are already some amazing applications of it. This one combines Google Maps with real estate listings.

Recently Wendy and I watched The Corporation. It's a very interesting, but somewhat disturbing documentary about the effects corporatization has had on our lives, on society, and on the planet. It does run a bit long (2.5 hours), but it is very well done.

Finally, one of the most incredible engineering failures/environmental disasters of all time took place at Lake Peigneur in Louisiana on November 21, 1980. You can read about it here, here, and here. One of my coworkers saw a program on the History Channel recently that covered this event and interviewed people that were there. In a nutshell, here's what happened:
- Texaco had an oil rig set up at the edge of a lake. The lake covered about 1300 acres, but was very shallow, only 3 feet deep.
- After drilling 1,228 feet, something started to go very wrong. The oil rig felt like it was going to collapse, so the workers abandoned it and headed to the shore.
- They watched as the lake started to turn, and a giant whirlpool formed that began sucking everything in the lake, including the oil rig, down a huge crater at the bottom.
- The lake was connected to the Gulf of Mexico by a canal. As the lake started draining, the canal lowered and began flowing in reverse. Water from the Gulf of Mexico actually started pouring into the lake in a 50 foot waterfall.
- Barges in the canal couldn't overcome the reversed water flow, and so they too got sucked down the lake.
- All of this mayhem was caused by the fact (unknown at the time) that the oil rig was drilling right above a salt mine. The drill punctured the roof of the mine, water flowed in, dissolved the salt pillars, which caused the mine to collapse, which caused more water to flow in, causing more salt to dissolve, etc.
- There were workers in the mine, but all of them managed to escape. No one was killed.
- The list of things sucked down the lake includes: 2 drilling rigs, 11 barges, 40+ acres of land from an island in the lake, a house trailer, a tug boat, and more.
- The lake, which was originally 3 feet deep, was now 1300 feet deep.
- Eventually, 9 of the 11 barges sucked to the bottom of the lake popped up to the surface like corks.

I can't believe I had never heard about this until now.

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Husband

Today after dinner, Randy and I went for a walk at the McHenry Dam. We were walking along, mostly in silence, when he turned to me and said, "I think if I could play any instrument, it would be the bagpipes. That just occurred to me."

And that's why I love him.

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.

Tales of Frustration and Delight

Wendy's cell phone has gotten fairly old, technologically speaking, so we decided she should get a new one. It has proven to be somewhat difficult. We wanted to add her to my Sprint account so we can share the minutes (and the cost). In order to do that we had to call Sprint; we couldn't just order it online. So, last Saturday, I called their customer support and our tale of frustration began. Without going into the details, there was confusion as to which phone was being ordered, how much it was going to cost, how to change the order after the wrong phone was ordered, how to return the wrong phone that was delivered to us even after the order was changed to have the right phone (customer support said go to the Sprint store, the Sprint store said call customer support), and oh yeah, the area code ("We don't have an 815 area code for Illinois. All we have is 303," they said. No, you can't have a 303 area code for Illinois; that's a Colorado area code).

The end result is that we're sending back the wrong phone that they sent us and giving up on Sprint. I'll keep my service with them until the contract is up. So: Wendy will be getting a new cell phone with someone other than Sprint. Any recommendations?

Finally, our tale of delight.

As you probably know, FLR provides books to K-12 school libraries. Occasionally, books get returned for various reasons. Those books often have school-specific bar codes or stickers on them which makes them unable to be resold. Thus, FLR every so often has an employee-only book sale. Employees are allowed to bring 1 guest, and all books are only a quarter. A quarter!

This morning they held just such a book sale. We got there a half hour before it started and there were already about 150 people waiting in line. It was totally worth the wait, though. I couldn't believe how many good books were available. The best part (for me) was that they had a lot of graphic novels. All told, we bought 53 books for a mere $13.25.

Here's a sampling of what we got:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett
Alan Moore's The Courtyard
Teenagers from Mars
Essential Fantastic Four
Essential Avengers
Daredevil Legends, Volume 1
The Complete Concrete

There was no limit to how much you could buy. We only wound up with a box and a half but we saw some people with 6 or 7 boxes. Now we just need to buy another bookshelf to hold our new books!

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.

Dune, Green Tea, and the Gap

One morning about a month ago, as the packers were just starting to pack up our belongings in Colorado, I realized I should find something to pass the time until they were done. I remembered a copy of Dune I'd bought once but never read (I did read Dune back in junior high but didn't recall much of it). So I grabbed the book before it got packed away, and started reading. It was very good.

I was close to the end of Dune by the time we arrived in McHenry. So we stopped at a used book store where I was able to find the next four books in the series. I paid for the books in cash, and as the lady handed me the change, a rogue dime fell out, bounced off my hand, and plopped right into her cup of green tea. It was quite funny, but also a bit awkward and embarrasing. She didn't seem too upset; I apologized and Wendy and I went on our way.

A couple of nights ago I was flipping through "God Emperor of Dune" (which I got at the bookstore) and came across a receipt. It's from the Gap, and is dated June 14, 1985. Just for fun, here's a picture:



Anyway, Abby is now here, and the weather has happily warmed up (a few nights ago parts of the Chicago suburbs got down to 21 degrees, setting the all-time low for the month of May in all of Illinois. It only got down to 35 where we live). We're planning a trip to Chicago this weekend, so we'll hopefully have more things to post after that.

PS - Happy Birthday, Joy!