We Service Society By Rocking (And Yes, We Like Those Pants)

Today was a pretty productive day. We got car and renter's insurance for Illinois, browsed the Grayslake Library (it's very nice), returned a defective curtain rod and got a working one, bought some pictures for our bedroom and then framed and hung them, did some birthday shopping for...um, never mind...and watched School of Rock. It rocked. Seriously.

Oh, and I totally forgot about Kohl's. We went to the one in Crystal Lake to find some pants and a belt for Randy. While we were browsing through the pants, we saw some school-age guys also looking for some pants, and I noticed one was holding a video camera.

When Randy went in to try the pants on, we saw the guys again. They were filming what I can only hope was a video for their Spanish class. One guy went into the dressing room, changed pants, and then came out and said, "¿Te gusta los pantalones?" which I originally (and mistakenly) translated for Randy as, "Do you like my panties?" Oops. That's an entirely different kind of video. So yes. Hopefully for their Spanish class.

They got through about a scene and a half before someone noticed and kicked them out. Apparently Kohl's frowns on cameras in the dressing room. Which I find reassuring.

Abby's coming to visit us on Wednesday! We're really looking forward to seeing her. We don't really have any plans yet, but hopefully we'll spend some time down in Chicago sightseeing. I'd like to ride the Metra and go up to the top of the Sears Tower, although Randy is slightly apprehensive about the height. We also got a coupon for a free train ride at the zoo today from our gas company, so maybe that would be fun. Any thoughts, Abba? (Or suggestions from anyone else?)

Love to all!

P.S. to Abby: Die Hose gefaellt mir. Was kostet die Hose?

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!

Week One

A few random notes and observations from our first week here:

- We now have Illinios driver's licenses and license plates. We had to take a written test to get our driver's licenses, but fortunately we both passed with flying colors.

- When we were registering our cars, the clerk asked me when I bought my car. I said it was in '95. He looked at me oddly and said "But we're not to 95 yet." Wendy and I were both confused, and as we tried to figure out what he meant, he said, "Oh, 1995." For some strange reason he was thinking 2095. He apologized, with a look of embarrassment on his face.

- If you ever come to visit, be aware that the steps up to our 2nd floor are a bit steep. Plus, they're carpeted, so it makes for a slippery combination if you're just wearing socks. Wendy's already slipped down the stairs twice and myself once. Thankfully the worst that came out of it was a sprained ankle for Wendy, which was fine by the next day.

- I've accidentally locked myself out of our townhome... twice. Fortunately Wendy was home both times and let me back in.

- It seems to us that a lot more people here smoke. Wendy pointed out, though, it could actually be that a lot fewer people in Boulder smoke. I'm inclined to think it's a bit of both.

- When you step outside, it's hard to not notice the chirping of frogs. Apparently, Illinois has a lot of them. When we were looking into moving here, I came across this page, in which someone posts a comment describing what we can look forward to:

"I live in Lakemoor, IL and we have toad and turtle migrations. The turtles are easy to avoid, but get hit regularly nevertheless. The toads are impossible. It's like a hopping carpet covering the road a few days a year. Sickens me to drive home those nights. :-("

Wendy and I both agree that if there are going to be mass animal migrations, at least it's frogs and not snakes.

Home sweet home

We're here, and so is our stuff!

We've been here since Friday, when Randy's car (which we shipped) arrived. Sadly, our stuff didn't arrive until yesterday, so we were roughing it a bit until then. We have our bed and our Internet back now, and are very glad for both. A few more days and our Internet withdrawal symptoms might have gotten the better of us.

We've been (relatively) hard at work unpacking since yesterday afternoon, and we're making pretty good progress. The kitchen is totally done, and the bedroom and living room are mostly done. Every other room is at least a little done. You can see some pictures below - we'll try to post some more once everything's in its proper place and we're not quite so overrun with boxes.

The front door - which doesn't actually face the street



Our garage! (and our rental car)



Boxes in our kitchen



Boxes in our loft



The view from our front door - there are two Canada geese that like to hang out in the pond sometimes



On a "different" note: There's a radio station in Boulder that we both used to listen to some of the time called the Mountain. It sounds very independent and their tagline is, "It's different on the Mountain." Perhaps naively, I always assumed this meant they were independent - until we got to Chicago and discovered the Drive. Apparently, it's different on the Drive, too.

Incommunicado

After a weekend of cleaning, we're now almost fully prepared for the packers, who arrive tomorrow morning. We'll find out Tuesday how long it will take for the movers to get to Illinois. If it's just a few days, we'll head straight to McHenry with a stop in Wichita. If it's much longer than that, we'll take the long way: Denver to Wichita to Tulsa to St. Louis to Chicago. So, this may be our last post for some time.

The only thing we have left to do tonight is pack what we're carrying with us. Just the essentials: Mac Mini, GameCube, GameBoy, iPod, etc.

Finally, here are our thoughts on tomorrow night's championship game:

Wendy correctly predicted Illinois and UNC would be the last two teams standing. She's going with Illinois. I'll be rooting for Illinois, but I picked the Tar Heels to win it all, so I'm sticking with them in a close one: UNC, 85-80.

Follow your bliss

Today was my last day at Naropa. I knew that it would be sad to say goodbye, but I think it was actually harder than I was expecting. I managed to avoid thinking about it too much for most of the day, even though I (like Randy) didn't actually have that much to do today. It felt a little bit like the last day of school before summer - everyone was terribly unfocused and unproductive today.

After work, my co-workers and I all went for a bowling-pizza party extravaganza, which was lots of fun until it was time to leave, when most of us ended up in tears. Even though the job itself wasn't always the greatest, I don't know that I could have ever imagined having better co-workers or friends than them. I learned a lot of wonderful things while working at Naropa, and very few of them actually had anything to do with university admissions.

One of the phrases you hear on a semi-regular basis at Naropa is "follow your bliss." I think that writing will give me the opportunity to do that, but maybe I hadn't realized just how much this job was allowing me to follow my bliss until it was time to give it up. On the other hand, I can't pretend I'm not glad that I'll never have to look at another visitation request form again.

It's bittersweet. And I'm melancholy.

I'm a Follett man, now

Today was my last day at IBM. It was fairly uneventful; I spent most of the day waiting around for it to end. All in all, I think I came out ahead, because as a going away present I was given a small, but very tasty, cheesecake.

For anyone who's interested, here's the job posting at Follett that I applied to. You can definitely tell that it was written by a programmer (and not an HR person), and that it was written by someone who loves what they do.

Stay tuned for Wendy's last day...

The Trip to Chicago

Recently, Wendy read in a magazine about a couple that, to pass the time on their flights home from vacations, would take turns writing down a memory from their trip until they had come up with 100 memories. We decided to give this a shot when returning from Chicago. Just so you know, it takes MUCH longer than you would think to do this. Here are some that we came up with:

10. Quinn, my new boss's 3 year old daughter, burping loudly during dinner, laughing, and saying "that blew my hair back!" (Andy and his wife Amy were appalled and are now trying to find out who taught her that.)

12. Accidentally banging my head on a shelf in our new townhome, right after the real estate agent said they were looking for someone who would take good care of the place.

37. Our waiter at Pizza Hut being very nervous and eager (it was his second day of training).

38. Hearing the supervisor at Pizza Hut tell an employee: "Can you change the sign outside to say Hoppy Easter? I know, it's retarded."

39. Driving by the Pizza Hut later and seeing the sign say "Hoppy Easter!"

49. Seeing a Stanley Kubrick look-alike at Lake Michigan driving very slowly around the parking lot in his truck.

56. Andy asking Wendy if she'd read any good computer books recently ("System Administration? Code Complete, 2nd Edition?").

57. Wendy lying and saying "Of course!"

59. Taking the scenic route back from Lake Michigan to Crystal Lake.

60. Getting lost on the scenic route.

76. Leaving the hotel room to go take pictures of McHenry and almost forgetting to bring the camera. Then getting to the hotel lobby and realizing we somehow still forgot to bring the camera.

100. The pilot on the flight back to Denver announcing that Illinois had beaten Arizona in overtime.

A tribe of superior men

Hello everyone!

So, Randy and I will be moving to Illinois in about a week. We decided that now would be a good time to start a blog where we can keep everyone up to date about what we're up to in the Land of Lincoln. (Side note: You may or may not be interested to learn that Illinois translates from Native American as "tribe of superior men." I was interested, but then I'm a dork.)

Randy has a new job with Follett Library Resources as a web application programmer. (Follett provides services, software, and books to K-12 school libraries.) I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing, but I think I may give professional writing a try.

We spent this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday up in McHenry looking for a new place to live. We found a townhouse that seems really great - it's comparable to our apartment now, but it has a two-car garage as well. Goodbye, ice scraping on winter mornings! I met Randy's new boss, who gave us a tour of Follett and went out to dinner with us, along with his wife and their daughter, and another of Randy's new co-workers and his wife. Everyone was very friendly, and I have a good feeling about Follett and Illinois in general.

Feel free to leave us comments or questions - we aim to please!