Okay, a little late to the game, but for about the last month I have been addicted to Pandora. I have created many stations and all of them are great, but aside from discovering a French Canadian band in June called Les Breastfeeders and creating a station around them, I have become rather fond of just chilling at work to the musical stylings of Gordon Lightfoot. Yes, this takes a lot of courage for me to admit. While I have always loved "Sundown" and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" I never ever realized that he had written one of my favorite Peter Paul and Mary tunes that I listened to as a little tyke: "Early Mornin Rain." As they said of Michael Bolton in the movie Office Space, "I celebrate his entire catalog." Although, not Michael Bolton's; I'm still talking about Gordon Lightfoot here. A distant Canadian chum was amazed that us U.S. folks were exposed to Mr. Lightfoot, or in his words had him forced upon us as well. Well maybe it's a little much for some, but I'll tell ya, the station for him on Pandora is splendid. It's got Paul Simon, James Taylor, and to be honest I think a Dan Fogelberg song almost brought a tear to my eye the other day. My other fave station revolves around ELO, but I won't go into that right now. I'm apparently embracing my inner 70s child.

So my mother has told me not to talk about her here. Okay I guess, but it takes a lot of fun out of life not to be able to talk about her trip to Chicago with my Dad.

So instead here is a list of fun things I did with Mark and Marshall and Mark's lady Robin while they were up here the past few days:
*ate Chicago-style pizza at Lous Malnatti's
*saw the old Playboy Mansion on State Street
*rode the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier
*stood under the Bean at Millenium Park
*ate at the House of Blues
*took the water taxi with Martin
*sat in the bleachers at the Cubs game on Sunday at Wrigley
*yelled rude and funny things at a Marlins players at said game. Felt bad about it when we got home and realized the guy was probably a nice enough guy.
*watched someone dangle their feet over the edge of the train station
*went to the Art Institute
*rode the El around the Loop
*snooped around Macy's in the Loop
*visited the Chicago Cultural Center
*bought Garrett's Popcorn
*swam in the pool
*ate Italian Ice and Chicago dogs at Portillo's
*watched a lot of "King of the Hill"

All in all, I think that they had fun. I know I did!

In other news, my last day at my current job is this Friday. I then have two weeks until my new job at Harper College starts. I'm very excited!

I love all things French (except clowns) so I found this particularly amusing.



Click here for a larger image.

Not up to much lately. Actually that's not quite true. I'm working my buns off getting ready for exciting up-coming happenings. Unfortunatley it does not actually involve traveling this time around. On one hand I'm glad we are not jetting off anywhere exotic over the next few weeks. On the other hand I have that feeling of homesickness for places I have only visited. Is there even a word to describe that feeling? I know I'm not the only one who feels it. I actually did a Google search for the phrase: homesick for somewhere you've never lived and got a bunch of hits about Mexican food and Sydney. But there needs to be a word for it.

On another note my co-worker and I are trying to get a cover band together called: Def Snake. Only Def Leppard and Whitesnake songs please.

I hope everyone had a great Independence Day weekend if you are so inclined or in a location that celebrates that occasion. I laid low for the weekend, so if you know where and what I was doing keep it to yourself. One day I will reveal to all my secret life, but not now! Suffice it to say I enjoyed a lot of grilled meats this past weekend. We’ll see how long I can go without sharing more details here.



We are getting ready for another visit from my parents. I think that they had originally planned on renting a car and driving to all the cute little towns around Chicago. I think they mean little downtown areas like Arlington Heights, St. Charles, etc. However, when my mom was visiting last month she came up with the idea of why don’t they just ride the train to all the stations and get off the train when a downtown area looks interesting. I’ve been making a mental list of all the cute downtowns on our Metra line but it by no means is meant to limit their trip. I thought the list from wikitravel on, and I detest this term, Chicagoland, was pretty cool.

I got a dirty look today from a girl at work who has just about the worst case of man-hating I have ever encountered. It’s even worse than the case I had in grad school. This girl is not overly friendly on a good day but today was unusually odd. Could be she’s just jealous of my kicking bubble dress I have on today. It seems that most girls today are wearing fun summery things. Maybe she’s just envious of mine.

Also in the schedule for this month is a trip from my two guy cousins and the girlfriend of one of them. They are primarily coming to see a Cubs game and I was really surprised that they wanted to stay with me and Martin. I’ll have to buy snack food but I’m not sure what college kids eat these days. They will probably take the train downtown most of the days that they are around. I think they’ll have a good time plus we have plenty of at home entertainment they can enjoy: pool, pinball, computers and tv.

Totally forgot to mention that we went to Albuquerque a few weekends ago with Martin's bro-in-law Ezra to look at some land that Martin's grandparents had bought before he was born. It is in the illustrious Rio Rancho Estates and the land that we own has some trash and a tumbleweed on it. I especially appreciate that the city's motto is "City of Vision." I guess it has to be when all you've got are sand roads and some jackrabbits. We are trying to decide if we want to keep our little piece of desert. We stood in the hot hot sun for about 3 hours total and walked the perimeter and tried to figure out if we would ever use the land. It was kind of interesting and basically it is still a piece of desert with an electrical pole running across it. See our pics of our little piece of dry heaven here at flickr.