Turtle Power!

In the past month my mom and Joy each had a chance to visit us. Their trips were separated by three weeks and nearly sixty degrees: Mom came at the beginning of March and got to experience temps in the 20s and dangerous blowing snow; Joy came at the end of March when the high almost hit 80.

While we were giving Joy a tour of the area we drove by the McHenry dam and noticed that the Fox River was unusually high. This morning Wendy and I went back to take some pictures and go for our first hike of the season.


To give you some perspective, the trees in the next two pictures are not usually under water.




As we were walking, we kept noticing more and more turtles out sunning themselves on logs. We started to keep count and literally came up with over 100 turtles!










There were lots of beautiful dark clouds racing across the sky during our hike. It turned out to be good timing; later in the day it turned windy, cold, and rainy.

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.

Can't You Smell That Smell?

Welcome to our renamed blog! We had been talking about renaming it for a while, but the other day we finally got the proper impetus:

I was making dinner and Randy was washing veggies for me to chop. He grabbed something to toss it in the trashcan, and his wedding ring slipped right off his cold, wet finger and into the trash. Oops. After a few minutes of carefully transferring trash from one bag to the other, he triumphantly held up his ring.

"Ah," I said. "It's the stench of discovery!"

It is, natürlich, a Spongebob reference. There's an episode where he loses his Krusty Krab nametag, and he and Patrick have to dig through a dumpster to find it again. Just before they dive in, Spongebob says, "What is that stench?" And Patrick tells him: the stench of discovery. Of course, it turns out to be the stench of discovering that you've just been wearing your shirt backward and your nametag has been there all along, but still.

In other news, it has been coooooold here. The last few days have been in the 20s, and have actually felt quite pleasantly warm. We've also been getting - well, not a lot of snow, but a little bit of snow repeatedly. Just enough to have to repeatedly shovel the driveway, except for yesterday when we got maybe three inches, but the wind was blowing so hard that we ended up with drifts of six to eight inches that we had to shovel away. I think this is probably a much more typical Chicago winter than last year's - it is definitely colder.

We're also taking a ballroom dancing class. So far we've learned to foxtrot and most of the steps for swing - waltzing and the tango are ahead of us still. Even though I was looking forward to the class, I was nervous about how well it was going to go, since I have a notable lack of coordination. I walk into walls, door frames, and furniture; I trip over my own feet and also the air. But I think it's actually gone quite well - we're maybe not the best dancers in the class, but we are far from the worst. The class has been a lot of fun so far.

And, in house news, we finally figured out how to arrange our living room furniture. The people who lived here before obviously didn't use their living room much, and obviously didn't have any idea of how to best arrange the furniture. It is a little tricky because we have one room for our living room and dining room without any obvious demarcation between the two, and while it's certainly not a small room, it's not huge either. So I had been kind of half-heartedly pushing the sofa and loveseat around without ever being inspired by the way it looked.

But I came home from work last Saturday, and Randy had found the perfect arrangement. Somehow it just works now - we never hung out in the living room before, and I kept thinking it was because we still don't have any accessories (we're looking! it just takes time), but now we do hang out there. All he did was rotate everything 90 degrees to the left of where it was in the living room picture here, but now it feels like a place you want to be. Clearly Randy is some kind of heretofore unrecognized interior decorating genius, because I tried every single other configuration - parallel, diagonal, angled toward each other, angled away, whatever. Anyway, it's nice!

Tasty Morsels

* If there was any doubt about us being bona fide home owners, it can now be put to rest. We spent our Friday night at Home Depot and Menards, looking for a new bathroom light fixture and mirror.

* We went to see Children of Men last Tuesday evening, and wound up being the only two people in the theater. That made us wonder if they even bother starting the movie if no one shows up. We decided they must, because someone could always come a little late, and if the movie hadn't started, that would make the next showing start late. Anyway, the movie was very intense, but very good.

* On Friday the temperature hit 40°, the first time we'd been above freezing in two weeks. It was but a brief respite, however. Highs for the next 10 days range from 7 to 25 degrees.

* As you can imagine, people are very excited about the Bears being in the Super Bowl. There's a billboard somewhere in Chicago that we saw once, which said "Baseball will divide Chicago, but the Bears shall unite it."

* The past few weeks I've been working on replacing the old light switches and electrical outlets in our house. I'm very pleased, because not only did I successfully replace two 3-way switches, but I fixed two 3-way switches that had been installed incorrectly! Woo!

* We've been trying a few new recipes lately, with great success. Last week we made pasta with olive pesto, and it was INSANELY GOOD! Wendy got the idea from an event at work, where a restaurant catered the food and brought olive pesto pasta. They said it was their best-seller, and I now believe it.

* We also tried homemade pretzels, which were good. Ditto for a chocolate mint cake we had right after New Years. Also, Wendy used an Amazon gift certificate to buy a Muffin-Top Pan. I had never heard of these before, but I was blown away when she told me about it. Basically they let you just make muffin tops, ala Seinfeld. Today we had chocolate chocolate-chip muffin tops. Very, very tasty.

* Lest you think we gorge ourselves on decadent desserts, we've also been trying some recipes from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. I found it on Amazon, and was intrigued because it had over 50 reviews with an average rating of 5 stars. Everyone says that the recipes are great, even for non-vegans, and so far, yeah, we agree. Spaghettini with Walnut-Garlic Sauce and Herbed Scalloped Potatoes, Provencal Style are a few of the tasty dishes we've tried.

Recapping the New Year

Wendy and I made the usual rounds over Christmas, visiting each of our fams for several days, and having a delightful time. Fortunately travel went relatively smoothly for all involved, despite the blizzards in Colorado and storms in Dallas.

In Tulsa, we got a chance to have lunch with our friend George, which was cool. And we also made our annual trip to Bill & Ruth's, a local sandwich shop that has super-tasty 3 cheese and avocado subs. If you're ever in Tulsa, stop by and check 'em out. In Wichita, we got a tour of the new house Wendy's parents are having built. It's rapidly coming together, and Wendy and I are both jealous because it's going to be very nice when it's done!

When we got back home, we were surprised to find the oak trees in our front yard had been trimmed. We had a company come out and give an estimate for it, but we never agreed to have the work actually done. After talking to them, we found they had made an honest mistake, and after a bit of haggling we reached a fair compromise to settle the issue. That's just part of the fun of owning a home, I suppose.

We also said goodbye to the college football season by watching nearly all of the final bowl games. Sadly, OU lost its bowl game to Boise State, 43-42 in overtime. It is, however, being called one of the greatest games of all time. OU fell behind by 18 points in the 3rd quarter, then staged a miraculous comeback, only to see Boise State stage an even more miraculous comeback. The way I look at it, though, is that Boise State ran, quite literally, every trick play in the book, and they still barely managed to pull out a one point win in overtime. At least it was a good game. And now the countdown to next season can start!

And, finally, our blog has been updated to a new version, so you'll notice a few things may look slightly different. We can now label posts, which is super-handy, and the Archive links to the right have been made a bit more useful. And for those of our readers that use RSS feeds, you'll find links on the sidebar to subscribe to posts and to comments. Enjoy!

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.

Email Notification!

Tired of checking our blog only to find we haven't updated? Don't know what RSS feeds are? Then follow these three easy steps to get an email notification whenever we make a post! It's quick, easy, free, and your email will never be used for nefarious purposes.

Step 1: In the box on the right sidebar type in your email address and click the "Notify Me!" button.

Step 2: To make sure you're not an evil spambot, you'll be taken to a page outside of our blog where you'll enter the text from an image. After that, click the "Subscribe" button.

Step 3: As a final precaution, you'll get an email with a link that says "Click here to confirm your registration." Click the link, and you're set!

Now whenever we post a new entry, you'll get a spiffy email delivered right to your inbox!

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!!