Watch out!

There's a lot of espresso contained in those two cups! If you walk by my office and see me shaking and/or running around like a crazy person, you will now know the reason why.

Disclaimer: I only purchased one of these for me. The other one was gifted to me by my co-worker.

In need of a party

Does someone want to please invite me to a party so that I have an excuse to make these?

The site doesn't tell me how to make them but I bet I can figure it out. Aren't they adorable? Someone, please have a birthday or a BBQ or decide to celebrate a Tuesday! Anything!

I'm on a roll!

I'm a money saving machine these days! Either that, or I've decided to punish myself for no apparant reason. There's the challenge I decided to make public yesterday and then today I called up and spoke to a very nice lady at RCN who helped me get rid of my land line and my cable. I'm keeping the internet (I'm not totally crazy!) but my roomie and I are both trying to make an effort to save some money so we decided that a land line was not needed (I never actually knew the phone number to it, it was more for her) and that I could live without watching hours of the Food Network. They said that everything would be shut off as of today and that someone would be out to disconnect it all at the poll tomorrow but I am hoping that they forget about me and decide that I've been such a good customer that I can have my cable for free. (Yes, I realize that I am crazy for thinking that. You should already know that I am just a little crazy to begin with.)
I do have to laugh a little at my horror of being without cable. I didn't grow up with cable. I think my parents got it at some point when I was in high school but between youth group, choir, drama and various sports, I didn't have a lot of time to watch it. I didn't have cable while in college. It was a treat to watch when home during breaks. I didn't have cable the 3 1/2 years I lived in Pasadena and it really never bothered me. I only got cable when I moved to Chicago and over the past three years I have become completely addicted! It's horrible!
So, here's to a life filled with more conversations with friends and less time watching meaningless junk!

A Challenge

This may not come as a total surprise to some of you, but the amount of money I spend on coffee each month has gotten a bit out of hand. I mean, really, I make a pretty good cup of coffee at home, why am I paying someone else so much money to do it for me? In an effort to break this habit, I am going to challenge myself for the month of September to not purchase coffee at Starbucks, Caribu Coffee or the likes. I will not purchase any coffee or non-coffee drink at these establishments. I will buy the beans that Trader Joe's sells at a very reasonable price and make my own caffeinated drinks at home. Officially this challenge will start on Wednesday September 3, 2008 and will end on Wednesday October 1, 2008 (um, is anyone else as freaked out as I am that October is so close?). I would start this on September 1, but I am headed to Michigan with some friends over the weekend and if they all decide to stop for a tasty treat, I want to be able to indulge as well.

There will be a few exceptions to this rule:
1. I am allowed to purchase a beverage at one of these establishments if I am there with at least one other person and intend to enjoy said beverage on location (or near location) with said other person with the intent of catching up on each other's lives, discussing a book or having other meaningful conversation.
2. If I have a gift card to one of these places and am therefore not spending any of my own money, I may then have a little treat (please send gift cards immediately!).
3. If someone chooses to purchase a drink for me, I will not deny them that pleasure.

Yikes!

Reading is Fun!

Ok, I totally stole this from Denise but I really don't think that she is going to mind (because I think she stole it from someone else).

Apparently the NEA thinks that the average American has only read six books from the list of 100 titles below. I'm pretty sure that at least six of these books were required reading for me in junior or senior high and I find it hard to believe that there are people who haven't picked up at least one book that someone wasn't forcing them to read. I guess that's because I assume that everyone enjoys and appreciates reading as much as I do.

So someone out there on the web turned this list into a meme (Thanks to Denise for pointing out that that means "me! me!". I had no idea either!). Of course, I look at this list and have to think really hard to remember if I actually read the book or if I just saw the movie. And, oddly enough, some of my very favorite books are not on this list (hello, East of Eden!) Here's what you do:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read. (Um, some of the ones in italics below are not ones I'm dying to read. My computer has gotten the better of me and I can't un-italicize Denise's.)
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you L.O.V.E.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (admittedly, not the whole thing)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (ok, not the complete works, but I've read a lot of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia complete series - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My mom is so much cooler than I am

I just sent a text message to my mom on her brand new iPhone. Yes, that is right. My mom has an iPhone. She picked it up last night and I had the honor of being the first person she called from it. She thought about calling my brother but was afraid it would be rubbing it in too much with him (as if I'm not jealous). She really was just testing to see if the new phone dropped calls in an area that is notorious for no service. Success! There was a little static, but no dropped call.
She can now talk, surf the internet, send text messages, send e-mails, use her GPS to figure out which cow pasture she is driving by and probably tele-transport herself places all while driving around in the middle of no where. And, if you know my mom's driving, thank the stars that she is in the middle of no where because this is a recipe for trouble.
Someone asked me if my mom was going to be able to figure out how to use all the new bells and whistles on the iPhone and the general answer is 'eventually, maybe, we're not really sure'. When she picked up the phone last night, she asked the guy at the store if there was a tutorial or something that he could give and he said that there is actually a really good video online that she can watch when she gets home. On her way home she remembered that the speakers on their computer don't work. And, the fact that she somehow managed to call me really only happened by accident.
This is going to be good for lots of laughs!! (Secretly, I'm hoping she gets frustrated and decides she doesn't want the fancy phone and she gives it to me. But, don't tell anyone.)

A little treat

I have to admit that I am struggling to keep my eyes open today. I very seriously contemplated not getting out of bed at all this morning. But, I forced myself out of bed and off to work and have managed to be somewhat productive despite my heavy eyes. At lunch, I wandered out in hopes of the fresh air giving me a little boost and to pick up something with some bubbles in it. Usually I go for a Diet Coke but today, the Coke Cherry Zero caught my eye and just sounded like the right thing to have.
Generally, anything that is not diet is a little too sweet for my taste but today, this really hit the spot. I had it 'on the rocks' to cut some of the sweetness (and yes, I am using my Starbucks Red Cup Mug. It makes me happy. Deal with it.).
Of course, now, an hour later, my stomach hurts and I think that I generally feel worse than I did before this treat. Oh well.

Fall Into You

Yes, I realize that I have posted lyrics from Phil Wickham's songs before. But, these lyrics really struck me this afternoon while listening at my desk.

Fall Into You
Phil Wickham

Oh who am I that Your merciful eyes should fall on me
A sinner a fool, who doesn’t deserve You
And what am I that you’d offer Your life and die for me
What can I do, I’m nothing without You, I’m nothing without You
I’m nothing without You my love, my saving love

So I fall into You, I’m desperate and weak
Crying out from my heart, take all of me

How can it be that the heart of my God would long for me
For all that You do, Jesus I love You, I’ll Always Love You
Jesus I love You with all of my heart

Maker of sun and moon and stars
I throw myself into Your arms, into Your arms

It's a sad day...

My favorite pair of shoes is dying. This afternoon, the little button on the strap popped off.
See, here it is on my desk instead of on my shoe

The button on the other shoe long ago lost it's fancy fabric top and has just been a shell of itself. However, it still functioned.

I think that I am just going to cut the straps off of them so that I can continue to wear them. While the straps were what made the shoes so stinking cute, they were always a bit on the tight side.
So much sadness...

1,000+

That's how many times people have viewed this little blog of mine. That means that either the 5 of you that I think read this, click on it a lot or it means that I have more readers than I think and they just never make themselves known.

My very first Cubs game...

And there was a tornado in the 6th inning!
Only when I finally have tickets to enjoy a game from one of the fabulous rooftops does a tornado actually threaten the city. We never get them here. They are always out in the 'burbs. Oh well, I managed to enjoy the first 5 innings!
A couple of co-workers and I were invited to enjoy last night's game at one of the rooftops out in left field. We all arrived with no problems, found some seats up on the roof where a wonderful breeze was blowing and enjoyed free food and drink and good conversation. Oh yeah, we enjoyed the game too (well, some did. I had no idea what was going on).
.


We were all very aware of the dark clouds headed our way and towards the end of the 5th inning it was strongly suggested that we start moving inside seeing as there was a lot of lightning coming our direction and we were all seated on metal bleachers. We got inside just as it started raining and we were able to watch them scramble to pull the tarps onto the field. After hanging around for a bit to see if it would stop raining and the game resume, we opted to head home while there was a lull in the rain.

My co-workers headed in one direction towards their car and I headed in the other to begin my walk home. About half way home the sirens started going off to indicate a tornado and I debated if I should duck into Whole Foods and wait it out or continue on my way home seeing as I was so close. I opted to keep walking and made it home safely (very wet, but safe). In retrospect, probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I can't do anything about it now.
I was thankful to arrive home to find that our apartment still had power and despite all the windows being wide open, relatively little water inside. I did have to rescue a plant that had toppled to the ground and try to comfort a cat that was not at all happy about the storm raging outside, but that was about it.
I turned on the news to find that the game was technically still in 'rain delay' regardless of the fact that Wrigley Field had been completely evacuated and they were still holding out hope of completing the game. I'm guessing that they never got around to finishing it since there was thunder and lightning well into the early hours of the morning. I checked in with a few friends who were all home safe, but some without power. I talked with my roommate who was finally on her way home after having been stuck in an auditorium at the Art Institute for the last couple of hours. Then, I crawled into bed and attempted to sleep, but was not very successful.
This morning I woke up to find my left eye quite swollen for no apparent reason. It looks like someone hit me or I ran into something. Unless I was sleep walking, I have done neither of those things in the last 24 hours so I don't know what the deal is with that.

On a side note: My roommate met our new downstairs neighbor last night. She was kind enough to go downstairs to ask him to turn down his music that was making our floor vibrate. She knocked on the door and it was answered by a very attractive 20-something man who apparently was totally stoned. He was very obliging in turning down his bass and said something like 'sure, babe, you just let me know if it gets too loud again.' This is going to be an interesting year!!

My weekend adventures

This last weekend was one of the busiest I have had in awhile. Here's the play by play.
Friday:
We had our yearly department outing. Since the head of our department will be embarking on a new roll as the president of the denomination and this will be his last adventure with us, he wanted to make this one a big deal. So Friday morning we all jumped in Canoes on the Chicago river just north of Belmont Ave and paddled our way south to Chinatown.


It took us about 3 hours to complete the 7.something miles down the river, but the sore shoulders were totally worth it.
We went past waste management...

Saw tour boats and tried not to tip over in their wakes...
We went under bridges...

And got spectacular views of downtown...



And yes, I realize that the lighting in these pictures is a little off, but seeing as how I was supposed to be paddling the canoe and not leaving my partner to do all the work, I didn't feel like I had a lot of time to mess with things and figure out what I was doing wrong. Oh well.
We ended in Chinatown and had a little lunch and did some exploring. Then I headed home on the train and did my best to not move a muscle the rest of the day.


Saturday:
Thanks to a large dose of ibuprofen the night before I was able to get out of bed the next morning and head to church for our monthly leadership training where I was treated to a breakfast of pancakes and fellowship with some of my favorite people around.
After that, I raced home, changed my clothes, threw together a salad, waited 20 minutes for a bus before deciding I should just walk only to have the bus pass me by as soon as I crossed the street, and finally ended up at Montrose Beach. I was invited to join the college group in a BBQ and afternoon of playing games and hanging out. Somehow I managed to survive playing several games of volleyball and had a wonderful time (so nice, I forgot to take pictures).
I got home and jumped in the shower and am pretty sure half the beach went down my drain. Earlier in the afternoon I had made tentative plans to hang out with my good friend J who had just moved to the city so I gave him a call when I got out of the shower to see what the plan was. He wanted to see a movie at 7:30. I looked at my clock and it was 6:55 and I had just gotten out of the shower and he was still in Millennium Park and the movie was up on the north side. Somehow though, we made it to the theater and were sitting in our seats just as the previews were ending. At this point, he leaned over to me and said 'oh yeah, did I mention that this movie is in French and has subtitles?' I had kind of figured that was the case and the movie was good. However, half way through the movie, I became very aware that I had not eaten much all day and that I was probably dehydrated and I was sore and just wanted to stand up and stretch. We finished off the evening with drinks and a (late) dinner at a pub nearby and caught up on the happenings in our lives since the last time we saw each other 3 years ago.
Sunday:
I dragged my sleepy self out of bed for church followed by a lunch to celebrate a friend who had just quit his job followed by an afternoon by the lake with friends. When I came home around 5:30 and actually sat in one place for more than 5 minutes my roommate laughed about how I had just sort of been this flash that passed through all weekend and it was odd for me to be home for more than 10 minutes. It felt good to finally just sit and do nothing! At least until our new neighbor downstairs turned on their music and made the floor vibrate, but I think that's going to be another story for another day...

A Gift

On Thursday morning I was handed this lovely little card by a co-worker.

It was her last day of working here and she handmade gifts for each of us. Everyone else had their gifts delivered in these really cute little purses she made out of construction paper but she made this lovely shoe especially for me! I still have glitter all over my desk from it.
The best part though was the pair of earrings that she attached to the shoe.

She also made these earrings! The best part about the earrings is that she was scoping out all of our jewelry for weeks to figure out each of our individual styles and preferences so that she could make the perfect pair.
I love mine!