Toy Killer

I woke up this morning to this:

That girl sure knows how to destroy a toy. She owned that one for almost 48 hours!

12 of 12

So I found this link while popping around in other blogs (it started at Jamie's and it just moved on and on and on until I found this).

Sounds fun. I think I'll give it a shot. Especially since I'm obsessed with my new camera and it gives me a good excuse to post random photos. :)

Zoo Fun

This weekend was my annual trip to Lincoln Park Zoo with my nephew and my mom. This year, Sister & Brother-in-Law came along as well since my baby nephew, Ben, was going as well. Quite a group!

I go back and forth on whether or not the zoo is a horrible place where the animals are taken out of their natural habitat, la la la, but once a year I enjoy the fun that is seeing my nephew (now nephews!) enjoy the zoo.

For the first time in the three years we've been going (Jack's only 4 1/2!), we saw almost the whole zoo. He usually gets tired are just a few exhibits, but this year we went through just about the whole thing and even made it to the farm. Monkeys, zebras, penguins, polar bears, giraffes. Good stuff. It's kind of strange to think that these animals all live in the middle of the city next to a big lake, but they seem to be...ok.

There were two animals that were a little worrisome. One was a zebra that has seizures (we didn't see any seizures but it was laying down on it's side which was a little odd) and a gibbon monkey that lost one of it's arm because a visitor to the zoo threw something and he tried to grab it. That was sad but he was swinging around and seemed to adapt pretty well to only having one arm!

The monkeys and apes were pretty fun. I never really liked monkeys before, but this year they were neat! They were all playing and jumping around and having a good time so it made them a little more interesting than the lions that just lay in the sun all day.

It was a fun day! It makes you realize that you need to play tourist in your own town more often.

(I need to update these photos. I had a chance to edit them but I haven't posted them here yet. Check my flickr site if you wanna see more and better pics. :)

New Camera!

I got a new camera for my birthday and I'm in love with it. It's so fun. It's small and fits in my pocket and has a great zoom and image stabilization and it's pretty and shiny. :)

There's also a fun option that allows you to take pictures where they're all black and white except for one color of your choosing.

This may be something that exists on all other cameras, but I find this totally fun. Not practical for site-seeing, necessarily, but it creates some fun stuff. I took about 50 pictures of Sadie last night trying it out.

Unfortunately the battery has already died (??) so I'll have to play more later. That and I'm at work. Hee.

Scary Sadie

During our morning walk this morning, Sadie saw someone leaving his apartment and stopped to watch them (as she does). Now, she normally just watches them go by and nothing more happens. Today was different.

As the guy walks by, she jumps at him, pulling the leash and making me pull back on her. She never touched the guy, but got really close. The bad part? He was totally freaked out. If we was just pissed, I'd get it (random jumping dog is probably scary to non-dog owners) but the look that he gave me was so...sad. Like "why did you do that?" It's like I hurt his feelings.

So of course I feel guilty and horrible because my dog scared the bejeezus out of someone.

Sorry random man. I'll keep Sadie away from you in the future.

Happy Father's Day!

Another weekend, another weekend out in the burbs. I love my family, but I don't have a car! Luckily my mom's nice enough to pick me up a lot, but it's still hard to travel to the burbs all the time. And I'm going out again this weekend.

A pretty quiet weekend overall. I watched a couple of movies, Nacho Libre (Seriously? Who greenlit this?) and You, Me, and Dupree. I also cleaned out my tivo--woohoo!

Sadie and I took a few walks this weekend and it was so hot out that she had to take a few breaks to rest in the shade. The poor thing, she just can't handle 90 degree heat with her dark fur! We'd go about a block and a half and she'd find some grass and just plop down and not move. I had to bribe her with promises of treats to get her home, and once we got home, she would lay down and not move for a few hours. By the end of the day on Saturday she was hiding under my bed trying to keep cool (I had the air on!) and had no interest in doing anything outside.



On Sunday I went out the burbs for a Father's Day BBQ at my sister's house (aka cicada central). Sadie went with me this time and really enjoyed chasing and eating the bugs. So gross. Dinner was nice as well--it good to spend time with my dad and my sister outside of the big family events that go on.

Drama in the Middle of the Night

Last night around 12:15am a loud car woke me up with incessant honking. Annoying.

I tried to ignore it, but it continued and continued for at least 10 minutes. Then I heard yelling outside my bedroom window. Since the voices were so close, I decided to peek out of my curtains to see what was going on.

Two women around 25 years old were yelling and swearing at the guy who lives in the basement of my building. He wasn't coming out and acknowledging them and they were getting more and more angry. They were swearing up a storm and screaming things at him and at one point grabbed some crates to try to make steps so they could climb the fence (they were both fairly large so this would have been an interesting show had they accomplished it. Yes, that's rude, but seriously...)

The downstairs neighbor came out to talk to them for a while (she's the basement neighbor's mother? I think?) and eventually basement guy came out. That didn't make things much better because now the main girl was screaming and crying and swearing and he was getting pissed off. She kept asking for her stuff back and he wouldn't open the gate for her to come in and get it. It quieted down a bit and I lied down to go back to sleep, but then the screaming picked up again so I peeked out again. And I saw a TV on the front lawn. I'm sorry, what? I'm so confused. She wanted her DVD player so how did a 32" TV get on the lawn? Did basement guy bring it up? Was it the women's? The gate was still locked so I'm totally confused.

But at that point, I didn't care as much. They stopped yelling and I went to sleep. I kinda want to know what was going on, but at 1am, I was over it. As long as the honking stopped, I could stop being a peeping tom and go to sleep. :)

Oh, and I saw the women on the bus that wears shorts around her neck like a sweater again this morning. A new pair of shorts.

That's so weird.

Cicadas Are Loud Little Buggers

So I was going to post this on Monday but, well, I forgot. So I'll do it now.

Last weekend I went out to the burbs to celebrate my nephew's 2nd birthday and to see the family. Sadie went with, which was fun, but she was a hellion in my mom's house. Lots of accidents AND she broke the screen door (she broke a major hole in it). NICE. Sigh.

My sister lives in Downer's Grove which is like Cicada Central. She's had to scrape them off of her fence and spent part of the morning on Sunday sweeping them off of her back porch so that we could enjoy the day outside. I ventured outside a couple times, but after being dive bombed by the buggers a couple of times, I spent the day indoors. Outside of the fact that they're big and orange, they are LOUD. Like, by the end of the party (around 3), we were practically shouting at each other when we were outside.

I took a video (Ben's on the left about half-way through the video).



I also took a picture. It's just one cicada on it's side, but I didn't really want a photo of the pile of dead ones by the tree. There were about 200 of them. Ick.

And Sadie had a good time playing with Dakota, to the point where she just passed out on the kitchen floor.

Oh, and my nephew had a good birthday but I didn't get a lot of good pictures. I'll have to get some from my sister.

Huh. I'm slightly impressed

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
North Central
The South
The West
Boston
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Birthday Shenanigans

Yesterday started with some birthday greetings from Miss Sadie.

I then went to work and got two (TWO!) flower deliveries--one from my dad and one from my mom and step-father. So pretty!!

After work I went to Lemmings to meet some friends for drinks. And they brought snacks. And cake! Multiple cakes!

And my nephew called to wish me a happy birthday. He's two so it was just about the cutest thing ever. :)

I'm a lucky girl. It was a good day.

Weekend Update 6.2.07

Ah, the weekend. I really wish they were always 3 days long.

My mom participated in the Avon Breast Cancer 2-day walk this weekend and I went to go cheer her on Saturday morning. I got to the 8-mile cheering place around 9am and waited with the rest of the crowd for the first walker to come through. They had started around 7am, so I had timed it pretty well to see the first few go through. About 5 minutes after I got there, the first few people walked through the little crowd that was waiting there. It was so inspiring. I had to distract myself a few times so I wouldn't start crying. I was really worried what would happen when I saw my mom!!

She and her two friends came by around 10:00 and by that time, I was ok. :) I held up my sign and jumped up and down so she would see me and they stopped to say hi. They were doing well and were in good spirits. After a quick picture, I walked with them a bit and left them to catch the bus home--while they had another 18 miles to walk!

I got a phone call later that night and my mom told me that they made it through all 26.3 miles on Saturday but that they just weren't going to be able to do another 13 miles on Sunday. The poor things--they were sore, tired, and in one case, a little bloody! What they accomplished was so amazing though.

Later that night, I met up with friends at the Clipper to have a few drinks for my birthday. It was a quiet night, but I had a good time. I didn't dance, but L DID dance a bit. Not with a cowboy this time, unless Dustin counts.
Oh, and I saw The Notebook this weekend. And, yes, I cried. That's a given, right?

The People on the Bus Go Up and Down

Seriously. The bus is crazy.

I forgot something to read this morning so I spent about 30 minutes watching the people on the bus from behind my sunglasses and my ipod. Two things that I noticed:

1) A woman in her 50s that had a slight she-mullet that was reddish-orange on top and dark, dark brown in the back. It looked like she stuck a wig on top of a full head of hear.

2) A women that had a pair of SHORTS tied around her neck like it was a preppy prepster sweater. SHORTS. Blue and white striped shorts with a drawstring (no the drawstring wasn't tied around her neck as well)

And both of these people were fairly normal. Neither were those people that usually sit along because they either talk to themselves or put off this vibe of crazy. Just normal, 50ish women riding the bus...somewhere. During rush-hour.

I'm pretty sure there were others but I can't recall right now. I was so transfixed by the shorts lady that I couldn't concentrate on anything else for about 10 minutes. I wish I had the guts to take a camera phone picture of that.

Oh, and go to the clipper tomorrow night. We're gonna rock it out. L might even dance with a cowboy again.