Category: LiveJournal

Beautiful Day!

According to my computer, it’s 82F outside, which I can well believe. All of my windows are open & letting in the fresh air. Linus is asleep on the computer desk and Lucy is asleep somewhere else in the house. 6 out of 10 windows have brand new pet-proof screens, and when the weather returns to normal, I’ll have the other 4 replaced as well. (No more Linus-sized hole in the living room window – yay!)

I got the quote back on the landscaping for my house. The design looks great, but doesn’t utilize native plants. (Apparently the nursery doesn’t actually have many native plants to sell). Still, the quote was in my budget and I think I’m going with it after a check to make sure at least none of the plants are invasive species. (I wonder if it’s even legal for nurseries to sell invasive species. No idea.)

I’ll need to *sniff* have the Bradford Pear tree taken down in front. I hate to have a live tree cut down, but its twin already fell on my house and was removed and it’s only time before it follows suit. I’ll be getting a flame maple for my front yard which, theoretically, only gets to 20′ tall.

Not going to do anything with my back yard yet. Maybe next year that can be my home improvement project. I have 2 black walnut trees in the back already (both weeds that have really taken to the place) and want at least 1 maple in the back as well. And I need a place to sit & read under a shade tree. 🙂

In a bit, I’ll go on a nice walk through town. Lunch today was Chinese Buffet, so I need some activity points to counteract that. Heh. (I am NOT a WeightWatchers poster child, that’s for sure!)

So let’s hear it for beautiful days, open windows, and sleeping kittens!

Home again, home again!

I stepped back into my house at 10 til 11pm last night. Linus was glad to see me. Lucy, I suspect, resented my leaving in the first place. Indeed, she didn’t join me in bed all know (as far as I could tell). I think she’s finally forgiven me, now.

While taking a walk through town this afternoon, I noticed just how different a walk in my town versus a walk in Chicago truly is. No tall buildings to crowd out the light or funnel the wind. No sirens going off every 5 minutes or so. Still, the walk is the same walk I’ve taken loads of times and I know practically every nuance of the walk. I can’t say the same for my walks in Chicago. (I’m sure if I lived there, I’d wind up knowing every nuance.)

I love visiting Chicago. But, as the saying goes, I wouldn’t want to live there. Sure, it takes me the same time to walk to judiang‘s grocery as it does for me in town to walk to my Aunt Becky’s house. It’s neat being able to take public transport instead of driving everywhere. But in my home town, I know a lot of the folks, and if I don’t, it doesn’t matter, we still say “hi!” and maybe even have short chats. Some smiles & waves to folks in Chicago, but not as many, percentage-wise, as here.

I’ll miss the wonderful dining. We ate at Zapatista, a Mexican joint near Judi’s place the evening that elsaf arrived. Actually, “joint” is too coarse a word. It was definitely a restaurant. But even though it was a little hoitier toitier than my usual Mexican joints, the prices were rather reasonable for Chicago. I started with a rather yummy and refreshing mohito, then I had pork carnitas with a pineapple salsa that were quite yummy. I liked the Mexican rice (thankfully a small portion) but not the refried beans (I had expected to get black beans, but got these instead – maybe I misread the menu). For dessert, I had the tres leches cake. Yummy and moist, but not quite as good as the one I had in Minnesota (that’ll take some doing to beat).

We waddled back to the apartment to enjoy the company and wait (and wait and wait) for Judi’s partitioning to finish. Thankfully, it was done by 1am and the OS wasn’t hosed. I’ve since gotten the backup going and I hope Judi’s computer is now nice to her from this point on.

Saturday was Dim Sum day. Yes, I’d been eagerly waiting this meal for over a week. No Dim Sum places around here, so I must take them when I can get them. After the delicious Dim Sum, Elsa drove us to Costco so Judi could purchase her birthday present – a new TV for her bedroom. The whole time Elsa was driving through Chicago streets, I was thinking “thank god it’s Elsa and not me!” (Another reason to love living in my dinky town!)

Before my evening flight, I talked the girls into going to Marble Slab (since we’d been cheated on Judi’s birthday) one final time. I had chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a waffle cone. And that kept me sated until I walked in the door of my house. (Whereupon I had a handful of cashews and a slice of toasted beer bread. Heh.)

Oh, and another advantage to small towns & cities? I was actually in the shuttle to my parking place at the time that my plane was supposed to touch down. Heh. Columbus airport – almost as small as Dayton International. 🙂

Anyhoo, a fun trip was had by treen. I hope Judi and Elsa have some excellent fun until Elsa has to drive back home on Monday. Thanks, girls, for the fun time!

Have Tech, Will Travel

So last night & today, I’ve been in full-on tech mode, helping poor judiang get her PC back to some semblance of normal after it had been Geek Squaded (not a pleasant thing to happen to any technology). It’s currently having its OS partition joined with the formerly locked & hidden “recovery” partition which is now useless since it became Geek Squaded. Here’s hoping I don’t bork the OS!

We had a lovely day yesterday. It was another sunny & chilly day in Chicago. I walked over to Jewel in the morning to get some cereal, milk, and fresh fruit for breakfast and became jealous of Judi when I noticed it only took me 5 minutes to walk there. (Takes 10 minutes to DRIVE to my nearest grocery.) Judi was off getting her hair done (to repair an earlier job that hadn’t gone to her satisfaction), so I had some time alone with Patty in the morning.

We had considered walking all the way to Whole Foods to eat at the food court & explore the food, followed by Best Buy to pick up an external drive. But Judi decided it was better to bus there and head to Manny’s for lunch instead. I was OK with that. Manny’s is a relatively famous cafeteria/deli in Chicago – even Obama ate there. You definitely don’t leave the joint hungry!

I ordered a bowl of cream of broccoli soup and half of a pastrami on a Kaiser roll sandwich (which also came with pickles and a potato pancake) and some strawberries. They put about 4 tons of pastrami on the sandwich and I highly suspect they gave me cream of chicken soup instead of the other (or else it just didn’t have much of a broccoli flavor). It was good, but I did leave some of my sandwich on the plate when we left.

Despite Best Buy being the home of the Geek Squad, we went there next so Judi could get a new external HD (her old one was a measly 320GB in size and she’s got 1TB of storage on her PC now) and a USB hub. She picked a WD 2TB external drive (me, jealous?) and the second cheapest USB hub and we were off home again. I then spent much of the afternoon fixing her music collection and beating iTunes with a hammer.

Did you know that, if you have to do a fresh install of iTunes with no iTunes backup, you have to go to the iTunes store and attempt to repurchase EVERY APP you originally bought for your devices? Thankfully, you don’t have to pay for them a second time, but you have to find & install them all individually. Thank goodness I don’t have an iPod Touch or iPhone. Judi’s gonna have so much fun!

For supper, we opted for default Thai. So we walked to Ma & I for pad thai (mine with tofu, Judi’s with shrimp) and while there, noticed that Marble Slab (ice cream joint) is open again for the season. So after supper, we headed across the street for ice cream. I got coconut, which was yummy.

Today, I had a light breakfast just like yesterday and Judi and I walked to Target for a USB flash drive. She couldn’t find the Ultimate Boot CD USB drive I’d given her a couple years ago for Xmas, so I recreated it on this new drive. It’s now doing what I said earlier. We went to A Capella for lunch, where we both got soup and BLTs. I had the tortellini soup, which was yummy. The BLT was yummy too. No one else was there in the restaurant, but that didn’t stop our waiter from being late serving Judi her tea…

We WERE going back to Marble Slab for more ice cream, but despite an opening time of 2pm (which it was), it wasn’t open when we arrived. We popped into a corner store for a bit, but 15 minutes later, the joint was still closed. We walked back, sad that there’s no ice cream.

elsaf is apparently on her way. Here’s hoping she’s having an easy drive today!

A Visit to Judi’s

Usually Spring Break and judiang‘s birthday coincide and this year is one of those years. So I have broke open my piggy bank and bought a ticket to Chicago. Today, I flew there and I’m currently sitting in her den and typing this up. She’s playing Rift and her doggie (Patty) is sleeping beside me.

The drive to Columbus was uneventful this morning, though there was some snow. I discovered hoodies aren’t and ideal apparel for flying since they needed to pat down my hood. Only they couldn’t get a female TSA person to do it, so I had to pat myself down. I didn’t find anything untoward in my hoodie.

The flight was also uneventful. I skipped lunch since the food choices were high in points, and I wanted to save my WeightWatchers points for supper. (Besides, I wasn’t hungry at the time). The only eventful part of the trip was the long wait for my bag to appear. Southwest is free for checked bags, but they take a long time with ’em at Midway.

Judi met me at the train station (though I came out the wrong entrance and was across the street from her – whoops!) and we walked back to the apartment. The day was sunny and chilly – a forecast for the rest of my stay, I believe.

We vegged for a bit and chatted and Patty got all excited cuz hey, another person! Eventually, we went across the way to The Little Branch Cafe for supper. Well, lunch & supper for me. Lentil soup with goat cheese to start, followed by a Monte Cristo sandwich (basically a ham & turkey club on French toast – ish.) Judi furthered the evil by showing me the gelato choices. I picked pistaccio (with an ugly green dye-job) and chocolate. Very yummy.

On the way back, we stopped at the game room at her complex and played 3 games of pool. Judi won the first two and I lost the last game twice, followed by Judi losing it once, and then me scratching on the 8 ball to lose it for sure. If’n you don’t know how it’s possible to lose the same pool game 3 times, you’ve never played pool with me. 🙂

Glad to be visiting Judi again. Should be a fun time. Alas, only a small overlap with elsaf this trip, but at least there will be some overlap!

Paul

Apologies to the SMASters – they’ll see this in the forum as well as here.

Today (well, officially yesterday now), Mom and I went out to see a movie together (been ages since it was just the two of us – back when I was little, we did it from time to time – I remember Superman and Snoopy Come Home in particular). Originally she wanted to see Rango, but I’d mentioned a hankering to see Paul. She read the premise and decided to humor my British-obsessed self.

So we paid our $5.25 (sheesh, the price at Piqua just keeps getting higher & higher!), sat in our comfy chairs (the main reason I prefer Piqua over Troy for movie watching), watched our 15+ minutes of trailers, and eventually got to laugh mightily while watching Paul. Quite a treat and, IMO, Simon Pegg’s best flick yet. I was still remembering bits & chuckling to myself when we returned to mom & dad’s house.

I twigged on who The Big Guy was early on, and mom figured it out too before the flick was over. Amy (my sis) would be proud of us. She has us well trained. Best pay-off line was near the end. I almost stomped my feet in delight. :-)(Mother, of course, fwapped me. Though it wasn’t the first time she did it in the movie. I apparently laugh quite loudly.)

Anyhoo, Simon & Nick (Frost) did a great job on this flick. Although you get more out of it by being a scifi geek like me (the bar scene with the big brouhaha? listen to the music playing and I bet most of you will recognize it), even folks only on the fringe of scifi geekery (like mum) can enjoy the movie as well.

Spring Break – Wheeeeee!

With the temperatures dropped back into the upper 30s, lower 40s (deg F), you can tell it’s time for Spring Break! Not sure which day the ice storm is scheduled for, but I hope it’s not Wednesday or Saturday when I’m going to fly to/from Chicago!

Because my break has begun, I decided to resubscribe to World of Warcrack using my last 60-day card. *sniff* And when it expires, summer will be nearly here, so I may decide to pay some moolah and resub again for a few months. I’ll know after the 60-days if that’s a good idea or a bad one. (And then if I decide it’s a bad one, I’ll have to talk myself out of resubbing, heh.)

Before I head off to Chicago to visit judiang for her birthday (with elsaf joining us on Friday), I’ve got a couple of other things planned. On Monday, a landscape designer will meet with me to discuss landscaping the front of my house with Ohio Native Plants. And it looks like Tuesday will be the day for the folks and I to invade Ikea. Yay!

Other than those things, I have little planned. I want to play some WoW and some CoH (still on the year subscription there, but I’ve not been overplaying, which is nice.) I wouldn’t mind catching a movie or two if there’s anything playing nearby that I want to see. I really REALLY need to get my screen windows out and have the screens replaced (Linus can be a devil on screens, despite the Soft Paws). I really REALLY need to do a good Spring Cleaning of this place. Oh, and tomorrow is Laundry Day.

Definitely exciting things going on here! Heh.

Call me Adjunct Professor!

I can’t believe I haven’t posted about this yet. Typical of me to forget all about the important school stuff when I get home. But there ya go…

But I thought I should let y’all know that I was accepted by Indiana University. I’ll be teaching ACP Chemistry at Newton next year – woohoo! So the students who take the course & pay the tuition will get college credit in addition to high school credit.

The training for the course was for the second week in June, which meant, I thought, that I’d be able to do that and B-WISER camp this summer. However, I recently got a call from one of the camp coordinators that they had to move the camp up a week. So, for the first time in years, I won’t be doing B-WISER. Alas!

Still, I’m awfully excited about the ACP thing. I don’t envy the guidance counselor who’s got to work out how to schedule the ACP chemistry and our usual chemistry since there’s usually a “non-band chemistry” and “band chemistry” with the schedule, but the ACP sign-ups may not match the band student split.

Vernal Equinox

Yay for the Equinox! The days will get longer & longer until Summah!

We are 3/4 done for the school year. We have one week this week to start the 4th quarter, and then it’ll be Spring Break (woo!) And when we return to school? 8 weeks to go. Wow. 2 months…

Have had some nice warmish days the past few days, so I’ve gotten some walking done. Alas, my ankle started hurting on Thursday (no idea why) and was so bad that night I could barely sleep. But thankfully it’s getting better and today was nearly normal. Hasn’t stopped me from walking.

I made garden vegetable soup and beer bread today, so the house smells nice right now. And my sandalwood candle is burning here in the library. Yay for nice smells.

Hope folks are enjoying the changing seasons. I know that I am. 🙂

The icon says it all

I only get to use this icon once a year, so I thought I’d best post before the day was out. To celebrate, I…. didn’t wear green and had pizza for supper. Hmmm, I think I’m doing it wrong.