Weekend, 10.17.09

Ahh, the weekend. Now that I'm working again, it actually MEANS something to me. Saturday is a day for laying around the house and catching up on the DVR and possibly doing some errands, instead of doing that sort of stuff all week. While not everything got done (groceries? Not so much), I was able to both get some stuff accomplished and also watch some bad TV. Not everything was accomplished, however. There are some serious hairballs floating around the place. I've got to stalk those suckers and take them out this week.


Along with finally getting back to what a weekend actually feels like, I have pretty easily gotten back into the swing of things with a work week. Getting up in the morning has been fine (it helps that I always got up at 7am, even when I was off of work) and sitting at a desk all day is pretty normal. The best part is probably being able to talk to people again and feel like I'm using my brain. Things are getting more clear and I'm starting to feel more confident in my ability to do my job. It's a nice feeling.


So this weekend. Let's see. I caught up on my DVR'd shows (aka shows that Bob won't watch so I have to watch them when he's not around, eg. Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, Project Runway), took a 4 hour nap (!!!!) and then walked up to the 7-11 to get a slurpee. Total lazy day. I probably SHOULD have cleaned the apartment or done something more productive, but now that I only have 2 days a week to be lazy, I had to use one of them.


Sunday was a full day. Liz (hi Liz!) and I went shopping for about 6 hours on Sunday. Target (love/hate) and TJ Maxx and other stores like that. While totally fun, I was EXHAUSTED when I got home. Hard-core shopping like that can take a lot out of you! :) I didn't get too much, considering, but did get some work clothes, which is always fun. Or fun for people that just started a new job and need to have clothes that fit that aren't jeans and t-shirt like they have been wearing for the last 8 months.


Once I got home I watched a neflix movie, "Every Little Step", which is a documentary about the creation of "A Chorus Line" and the casting of the revival in...2006? I think? While I was never a musical theater actor or dancer, I've always loved musicals and really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes aspect of the movie. Seeing what these performers went through to get the jobs was surprising (8 months from first audition to final? then another 8 months until curtain? wow) and you were able to become invested in some of characters. I enjoyed it a lot and it totally made me want to see "A Chorus Line" again.


And then the Bears played. But I'm not going to discuss that. Harrumph.

Weekend

This past weekend Bob and I went to Jackson and Janna's wedding. The bride was beautiful and the groom was dashing and we had a fabulous time. :)

Wedding Photos!

I don't have very many, and most are from later in the evening, but it was a beautiful wedding. :)

And....

I'm back. I've been hibernating and processing and generally just ignoring the world for the last week. But I'm over that now. Back to real life!

I had a pretty busy Thanksgiving weekend and thought I'd share. First, Thanksgiving at my sister's. Mmmm...
My dad falls asleep every year either before dinner or after. And I usually take a picture. This year, it was after dinner.On Friday, my new nephew was born! William Matthew, 8lbs, 11oz. Cute as a button. :)
A rare photo of me on the blog. Little Will had to be in the NICU for a bit, but he's all better now and at home with mommy, daddy, and his two big brothers.On Saturday I put up the Christmas tree. Marbles found it FASCINATING and just the best thing EVER to rub up on.
The tree is lasting pretty well, even with curious cats. I tied it to the table it's sitting on and didn't put any breakable ornaments on, which will help.

Also on Saturday, Sadie and I went with our neighbor and her dog to get a bath.
It didn't go over that well. Water is evil, apparently.
Percy was a good dog. :)
Sunday was brunch with friends and some guitar hero. And then laying on the couch and watching TV. No pictures of that. Sorry! :)

Weekend, October 31-November 2

First off, the time change is totally messing me up. I got up at 7am on Sunday, watched a movie, and the it was 10am. And it felt like 3pm or something. And then at 8pm I wanted to go to bed. I know that the time change is only and hour but for some reason my body read it as, like, 4 hours. And leaving work tonight in the (almost) dark is going to suck.

Anyway, my weekend.

Friday was halloween so Bob and I went to our neighbor's halloween party upstairs. (so convenient!) We didn't know anyone, really, but had a good time. Everyone was dressed up which is always fun. Bob taped a bunch of pictures of Robert on himself and went as...Mucho Deniro (hee) and I was a biker. Yes, I have a couple of pictures. No, I'm not posting them. Sorry!

Saturday Liz and I did errands--target, Dominicks, etc.--and I bought my first Christmas present! Woo! I feel so accomplished getting stuff somewhat early! I'll probably still be scrambling until Christmas though...

Later that night Chris and Liz came over and we played Guitar Hero World Tour with all four of us, rotating who did what. I also made Corn and Kielbasa Chowder...yum...that's a good one. And EASY!Sunday (after my movie), Bob and I went out to the Aurora outlet malls for a bit and then pretty much crashed. Somewhat lazy day. Oh! I DID make some baja fish tacos that made my apartment smell like fish all night (Sorry, no pics. We were starving). They were ok. Kind of boring, really. It COULD be that I really like regular tacos so I felt that these were missing something. If I liked fish more, I'd tweak the recipe to make it more interesting, but...eh. It's just not worth it to me.

The highlight of my weekend might have been the gas we got for $2.55. $25 to fill the car? AWESOME. I think that last comment makes me an official adult. I'm way too excited about gas being less than $3.

:)

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.

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...

Smoke the Bone 2008

Yesterday was the annual Smoke the Bone rib cookoff at Lemmings (well, not technically at lemmings since it's not allowed, but kind of at lemmings anyway.)

The weather was perfect for once and everyone gathered out back with their grills and smokers to cook up some ribs. For those of us that didn't cook ribs, it was also a pot-luck of other goodies. My empanadas turned out really well and were gone quickly! Hurrah! They went over much better than the broccoli salad I made once. I guess meat pastries will always win over veggies at a rib cooking event...

The general rule is that if you don't cook ribs you don't get to sample ribs (not enough to go around), but lucky for me I have some wonderful friends that let me have a taste. They were all really good. Tender and flavorful and all-around awesome.
The winner this year was Sherry. It was great to see a girl win again! Congratulations!!
More pictures on Flickr!

Port Austin

Beach
Originally uploaded by hak123

This weekend a group of us went up to Port Austin, Michigan to Terri's family lake house to celebrate her birthday. We left on Friday afternoon to make the 7 hour drive up there (it's on the tip of the thumb of the mitten for all of you Michigan-ites out there).

The drive was pretty easy and we got up there in time to have a few drinks before bed. (side note--it was light until at least 9:30pm up there. Awesome.)

On Saturday we mostly just lazed around (beers and 4 hour naps) and enjoyed hanging out on Lake Huron. That night we "celebrated" her birthday with a cake and she broke open her birthday pinata (Fred) that we brought up with us. (There are a variety of Fred pictures on Flickr. He was included in the majority of our weekend, even if he didn't make it down to the beach.)

On Sunday we made the drive back arriving around 5:30 in time to watch the Cubs sweep the White Sox in the cross-town classic that night. It was a great weekend!

And now I need another day to recover.

Weekend, 5.17.08

What did I do this weekend?

First, it was Gail's birthday on Sunday so we had drinks on Friday. Much fun was had. No pictures (um...thankfully, I think).

Saturday Terri, Chris and I went to Cleo's to visit Liz. Then Terri introduced me to the joy that is Trader Joe's. Seriously? Love it. My new favorite grocery store!

Sunday? This happened:

It's so pretty and shiny! Bob and I had steak last night and it was delicious. We're going to have a great summer with this little baby in our backyard! Come on by! Grill up some food stuffs! Yay!

Camping!!

Last weekend a group of us went camping up in Wisconsin for two nights. After some struggles packing the car (camping requires more supplies than you'd think), we made it on the road and were up to the campsite by 5:30 or so. The place was great and the area was beautiful--lots of orange and yellow leaves.

Saturday a few of us went to New Glarus to the New Glarus Brewing Company. Had some Spotted Cow, Fat Squirrel, and a cherry beer that tasted like cherry pie filling.

Most of the weekend consisted of sitting around the campfire and just chilling out. It was a great weekend. Now I have to do laundry because all of my clothes smell like campfire. As does Sadie, I'm sure. (she got to go with and was very well behaved. Pretty much.)

Oh, and I shotgunned a beer for the first time. Good for me. (it was awesome)

Quick Update

My camera gave up the ghost on Friday, in the middle of my 12 of 12. It was very traumatic for me. How would I take obnoxious pictures all weekend! Very sad.

So I'll post my 7 of 12 later today or tomorrow once I receive the new camera.

Oh and Saturday: shopping and art, Sunday: cooking at eating all day, and yesterday: off of work.

Awesome weekend. Really very good.

Weekend 10.6.07

Finally, the weekend! It was a long week due to lack of sleep last weekend and a full work week. Friday finally arrived and I headed out to Lemmings for our weekly gathering. What also seems to be weekly is my obnoxiousness with my camera. My friends are so patient. For that, I won't post the majority of the pictures that I've taken over the last few weeks. :) I'll even delete the ones that aren't so flattering!

I think this is the only reason why they let me get my camera out at all.

I got home around 12:00, walked the dog, and crawled into bed. and then realized that I forgot to close out my tab. Oh boy. Now, I KNOW that I could have left it for the next day, but I love this bar and really don't want to cause them any problems. And it's got to be annoying to have an open tab at the end of the night. So I put my contacts back in, dragged my bike down the stairs and rode off to the bar to close out my tab. Luckily no one was really on the roads at that time. I scared one person getting out of a cab when I sped past them, but other than that, it was an easy ride. And I closed my tab out after just a bit of teasing from Rusty (the bartender). Then I rode home and collapsed back into bed, sweaty (it was, like 75 degrees out!) and tired. And only a little drunk.

On Saturday, I took a quick trip on the Metra out to Downers Grove to have tea with the "ladies" of our family. Or at least a portion of them. It was at a cute little shop called Pinecone Cottage Tea House just steps from the train station. We headed in and once we were seated, Gramma had a little surprise for us--fancy hats and white gloves! We all donned our festive attire and giggled, took pictures, and ate fabulous food for the next two hours.Sunday was SUPPOSED to be a trip to buy a sleeping bag for an upcoming camping trip and then out to see Harry Potter #5, but both things fell through. Alas. The movie will be tonight (I hope) and the shopping will be next weekend. Packed between an art show (go Bob!) and Sunday dinner at Terri's.

I'm sure the camera will be out in full force.

Blah

I'm still recouping after last weekend's debauchery. Oof.

I spent Saturday and Sunday in the 'burbs with friends from high school--some of which I haven't seen since high school. And then I drank too much. Not pretty. I'm FAIRLY sure I didn't embarrass myself too much, but I'm not the best judge of character when I've been drinking. I DO know that I was loud. Which is par for the course.

It was a good time. And, amazingly, I didn't take any pictures. I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't, but I was busy wrangling Sadie around all of the people and then I just plain forgot. There are some out there somewhere. I'll try to find some and share them.

In other news, I finally finished watching The O.C. Now it's on to Nip/Tuck! I'm so behind...

Road Trip

Liz and I drove down to Jefferson City, Missouri last weekend to visit her family and see her new baby nephew. The drive was only 7 hours, which was really pretty easy. I forgot how much I like road trips--it makes me want to rent a car and just GO somewhere soon. Maybe out to see the big trees in California, by way of Montana and Wyoming? Hmmm...
The trip was pretty fun--for all the grief that we all give Liz for being from "the country", it's not really that rural. And it's really pretty! We visited the Capital and I got a driving tour of her hometown.

And we visited Target! That will always make me happy.

Sadie went with as well and had a fabulous time chasing frogs and turtles (well, sniffing the turtles) and running around in the backyard with Missy.

Weekend 9.8.07

After a too-late evening at Lemmings on Friday, I spent most of Saturday in front of the TV watching The O.C. Most people panned this season as the worst but I have to say that I'm really enjoying it! Maybe it's because I'm a little more removed from the previous seasons--it HAS been over a year since I've seen the show.

Or it could be that I really like Taylor. I think I relate to her. Not the scary mom part, but the kind of crazy/weird/talking to much part.

Sunday I went to the burbs to do laundry (I'm so regressing! Hello?) and have dinner with my sister's family and my dad. Good times.

Jack showed us his Halloween costume. How cute is he?? He's the red Power Ranger. Did they have names? or just colors???


Ben didn't want to put on his costume, but he'll be Peter Pan. I can't wait for official Halloween pictures in 1 1/2 months!

We're All Just 12-Year Olds at Heart

Friday was playing with fire.
Saturday was watching TV and playing with my dog.

Sunday was watching High School Musical. (Really. So bad. I wanted to like it. But...no. BAD)

Monday was watching Ratatouille.

I AM 12 years old. But I'm a 12-year old with a driver's license, the ability to drink (legally), and a steady paycheck.

All is good.

Weekend 8.17.07

Friday: Lemmings to "celebrate" two friends being laid off from their jobs. Luckily they're both getting a severance, but it still sucks. It was a fun night--lemonade and blueberry vodka is a tasty summer drink!

Saturday: 12 hours of scrapbooking with my mom. It was really fun--I got a lot done and am now inspired to do even more. I also won a prize again. I think that's 4 out of the last 5 drawings. :) Lucky. I'm working on photos from 2004 and REALLY want to get more caught up.

Sunday: Met up with Christy and her adorable son Jacob. We went to target and McDonald's, which...fun! You can't go wrong spending time in either of those places, although you might be very poor after. Jacob and I had fun running around the store and asking "Where's mommy?". Hopefully strangers didn't get the wrong idea. I didn't steal him!

It also poured rain all day on Sunday so once I got back to the city Sadie and I took very short walks. We still got pretty wet though.