It is somewhat sad when you see the hottest guy from high school on Facebook and see that he has no hair left.

This past weekend I eliminated my need to ever go to Iowa. This does not mean that I will never go there; it seems strange not to ever visit neighboring states so I suspect that I will someday venture into what many call "flyover country." The wonderful and colorful Edward Hopper exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago contained two of my all-time favorite paintings. Not just Hopper paintegs, but ALL-TIME favorite paintings. I have been to a lot of museums and I have a lot of favorite paintings so seeing two of my favorites (one which is usually house in Des Moines) in one place during a special exhibit is truly a treat. Not only were they in the same exhibit, but the same room of said exhibit. On one wall hung Automat (the Des Moines painting) and to the right of this painting, on the adjoining wall, hung Chop Suey (from the collection of someone named Barney A. Ebsworth). Actually I just looked him up and he is definitely some big wig in the Build-A-Bear world and other ventures apparently. Maybe if I can come up with some wacky goldmine like those American Girl dolls (whose heads stick out of every backpack in the Loop on weekends) I can one day afford an Edward Hopper too!

We have finished the Season Four DVDs of the Sopranos. I am bereft. No, seriously.

Things I plan to do in the next few months, beginning with more immediate plans:

• Catch up on e-mail (since personal email is no longer allowed at work I find myself just ignoring email for weeks. BIG BIG BIG apologizes to everyone I have basically been ignoring for what seems like months. In some cases, it has been months!)
• Also I need to call people more about life and babies and whatnot.
• Design raised flower bed for seeds I ordered from the Park Seed Company catalog.
• Burn some Golden Oldies for my mom's 40th High School reunion.
• make Hamantaschen - probably jelly-filled and not as many poppyseed-filled ones this year.
• Go to a wedding in Chicago. After 3 years this will be the first wedding I get to attend in Chicago proper. Banquet hall here I come!
• Go see the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Art Institute
• Buy nice colorful dishes from Crate & Barrel
• Finally get some new mod lighting for the house.
• Go to London And go to these lovely places:
  Fortnum & Mason's
  Tate Modern
  Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum
  Like I have said many a time before, we like to learn on our holidays!
  
• Celebrate Passover
• Attend the Chicago Modernism event
• Go on a professional development trip to Tucson, AZ! This is my first trip on my company's approval in many years. Should be fun.
• Go to Pensacola for a long beach weekend!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

There are probably better things I could write about, but reading over my last entry, I think I've invented an original portmanteau! I think I meant to only write the word: sampling, and instead wrote: smapling. I think this would mean a small sampling.Or is it implied that sampling means small?

Martin asked me a strange question that I never thought he would ever ask. While watching an "ace of Cakes" episode about a Delta airlines cake (see it was about aviation) he sat there and asked, "What is fondant?" last question I ever expected him to ask. Ever.

There's this big outdoor store that has recently opened by my place of employ. It is a huge two-story behemoth of a store in the middle of what is basically a business park. The only non-businessy type place in proximity to it is a big civic/arena type deal that has quite possibly some of the weirdest sports events I've seen lately. Monster trucks and arena rugby (there is an audience for this in Chicago) are just a smapling of the strange things that take place nearby.

Anyhoo, on Saturday Martin and I ventured to said outdoor store. Now, one reason I had been wanting to go for the past few months is that the store had slowly been erecting little brown signs in the vicinity directing us to the "Museum." When the store opened late last yearsthey even rented one of those big orange flashy "Oh crap, there's road work" signs to direct people where to park. there were billboards everywhere and at every possible turn in to the business park where I work there were these big AND small signs about the so-called museum. Curiousity being what it is I wanted to see the museum myself. Well, if a museum is a huge store selling stuffed animals, clothing, rifles, deer blinds, the entire Ted Nugent Collection of cross-bows surrounding a large mound of fake landscape where there is perched every possible animal capable of being stuffed and put on display, then you've got a museum. I know that most natural history museums have their fill of dead animals. Heck, I love what the National Museum of Natural History did with the hall of mammals. But, this is a store. A commercial outlet. It is NOT, by any means, a museum. There is an aquarium containing about 20 or so freshwater rainbow trout. It doesn't say anywhere near the fish what they are, where they come from, what they eat, whether they contain huge amounts of mercury or toxins. Nothing, zilch, nada. All the stuffed animals? the previously alive ones I mean...they have a cute little sign under them describing what they are: Muskrat, Wolverine, Moose, Mountain Goat. No little map telling about their habitat or what they like to munch on. Weird weird weird. It seems to me that the store wanted to advertise on every street corner because of their, let's face it, bizarre choice of location. To do that they had to come up with some strange scheme that they were providing some sort of learning experience. What I saw instead were eight years olds with those old-timey pop rifles shooting at a stuffed elephant.

Sick as a dog is the best way to describe the last, well, two weeks I guess. Fever, chills and enough snot to fill the Grand Canyon seems to be finally subsiding.
I picked up something pretty awful and after Martin got the same thing we both seem to be getting better. We haven't felt like doing much of anything for about 14 days.
There are many things I could comment on in the realm of pop culture, but it's really not worth repeating something that has be mentioned so many times before.

I moved cubes at work yesterday and today. This seems to be the highlight of my life recently in realizing how much crap I seem to have. Now that it has been packed up and unpacked again it really doesn't appear to be that much. I do have an overabundance of condiment packets. They have been liquidated. I have thrown away about a trash can full of stuff and then I have another bag of stuff that doesn't even belong at work so that is going home tonight.

Picked up the cool NYC Transit picture from the frame place. It is gorgeous. This also marked the first time I've ever needed to let the backseat down in order to stow something in the car. It was super easy and I have absolutely no one to share the fun with. Martin was marginally impressed.

Other than our convalescence, we have a few upcoming events planned, including a wedding, a baby birthday and a possible trip across the pond.