12 of 12: October 2008

Wow. I totally missed last months. Like, "oh, la, it's the 15th of September. OH MY! I forgot about 12 of 12!" Totally bummer. But I'm back again! And this time there aren't ANY pictures of the cats or the dog. But there are some of goats.

Thanks again to Chad for this! And go here for more 12 of 12s.

Today we decided to head up to Wisconsin to go apple "picking" and go the the cheese castle. Bob and I picked up Liz and Chris around 9 at the Dunkin Donuts and headed out of the city.

9:41am: In the car, heading to Wisconsin
10:15am: Welcome to Wisconsin!
10:36am: After getting a little lost and then calling the restaurant for directions, we made it to Apple Holler. Just shows that you should always at least LOOK at the directions before heading anywhere new.
10:40am: Goat! If you look closely, he's bleating (?) and his tongue is sticking out.
10:42am: Liz as an apple.
10:43am: Me as a cow
10:47am: Bob is feeding the baby goat while "mama one-horn" is looking on. And begging for some treats as well.

11:14am: You had the option of picking out apples from their bins or actually going into the orchard to pick apples yourself. It was SO crowded there that we decided to just pick from the bins. Besides, we didn't need a peck of apples. No canning in my future!
11:23am: Our apples!
11:28am: Liz and Chris got some pastries from the store. Chris took a bite of this mammoth cinnamon roll, and surprisingly, got NO frosting on his goatee. Very impressive.
11:43am: After apples, it was on to cheese!! Mars Cheese Castle (which is awesome) is just a few miles from Apple Holler so we stopped there to get some cheese.
1:26pm: And then we drove back to Chicago.
The rest of the day consisted of me taking a 4 hour nap, watching dvrs of Kitchen Nightmares and Heroes. :)

See you next month!

Cat Clothing

Take this hat off my head!!
Originally uploaded by hak123

Jinx got a present this weekend. Look how happy he is!

(He actually really likes the bow tie. The hat makes his head feel too heavy though)

Wrigley Tour

Last Sunday, Bob, my Dad, Jandy, Matt, Jack and I all went to Wrigley for the Wrigley Tour. I had gotten the tickets as a father's day present for my dad way back in June, but this was the first Sunday available that worked for everyone. Unfortunately for us, it was the second day of massive rains for Chicago. We got over 7 inches!

Luckily (?) the tour still went on so we headed over to Wrigley to see all of the places that are usually off-limits to fans.

The 90-minute tour started with a little background on the stadium (very interesting!) and then we headed inside for the tour.

We got to go in the press box, see the organ that's played at every game, go into the visitor's locker room (unfortunately we couldn't go into the Cub's locker room because there was personnel in there), and finally we got to go into the Cub's dugout and (kind of) on the field.

It was a great tour and we had a lot of fun--even if we got a little wet in the process!

The field, with the rain tarp:

Visitor's Locker Room:
Cub's Dugout:
Jack in the Press

Flugtag: Chicago

Two weekends ago Bob and I decided to attend the Flugtag event in Chicago at North Avenue Beach. Basically it's a flying contest of self-made, self-propelled flying machines.

The contestants are required to create a little skit and set it to music before launching their contraptions off of a cliff into water. They then get judged by their creativity and how far their machine flew (which, usually? isn't very far)
It was a really neat contest but it was SO CROWDED. After wandering around for a while, we finally found section to sit on the grass and peer at a jumbo tron to see what was happening. Even though a portion of the screen was obstructed, we were able to see smurfs, lobsters, Mike Ditkas, and other characters fly off of the edge of a platform into Lake Michigan. :)
The lobsters ended up winning.

Quick Update

Castell de Montjuic
Originally uploaded by hak123

Yikes! I've been out of the loop. I need to write up last weekend, the weekend before and I TOTALLY missed the 12 of 12 for September. The first time since I started. Bummer. I'll be writing those up this week. :)

In other news, Schmap loves me again! This time from Barcelona (see picture at the right)

Updates soon. Pinky swear!

Photos from Around the Web

So, the Schmap people have "shortlisted" another one of my photos! This one's for Chicago, which is pretty cool.

But the photo they picked? Is kind of weird. And not indicative of Chicago (at least in my mind).

Yep. They picked a car from the Auto Show. Now, I'm not sure where they'll actually use it (probably McCormick Place?) but I have a TON of other Chicago pictures that I think are better. It's kind of like the one they picked for Munich. Not my favorite picture, but if you want to use it (and credit me) I'm fine with it!

In other "photos around the web" news, I had some other pics picked for a Chicago bar website. They asked for pictures of Lemmings and when I agreed, posted them (with credit). Pretty neat!

And all because of Flickr. I love Flickr. It's become kind of an obsession (sorry Facebook. You just can't compete!)

Weekends (both last weekend and the one before!)

What a lazy blogger I've been! Here's a quick update of what I've been up to in the last two weeks.

Renaissance Faire!

Two weekends ago a group of us headed up to the Bristol Renaissance Faire. I'd never been (and frankly didn't have a HUGE interest in going) but everytime I told someone I was going, it was the same response "ooo! The Renaissance Faire! Fun!" so I knew I'd have a good time.

Talk about good people-watching! Wow. I'd say almost 50% of the visitors there were dressed up in some kind of costume. There were tons of shops and food stalls and things to do. We ate the best mushrooms in the world (butter and garlic heaven), pet zebras and goats, shot crossbows, threw knives, watched a joust, and just wandered around. Really fun.




St. Joe, Michigan!

Last Sunday I jumped in the new car (yay!) and went up to St. Joe, Michigan to visit my sister and her family. My brother-in-law's family has a lake house up in St. Joe where they go just about every weekend in the summer and this last weekend I was invited. It was BEAUTIFUL weather so we headed to the beach and then to the pool for some last-days-of-summer fun. Only a little sunburn on my part (I haven't been out in the sun AT ALL this summer. oof) Fun day--although it made me realize, I live about 20 minutes from a beach and never go. Kind of silly. Maybe next summer, I guess...