Things I Have Learned

In the last week, I feel like I acquired a lot of little bits of information, so to gather them in one place, here is a bulleted list!

• Indiana still allows smoking in restaurants (or at least gas stations with KFCs attached).
• When a baby wakes you up for a 4am feeding, an uberhappy toothless grin is all you need to make that wake up call worth while.
• The card game Nerts is still as fun as it was when I was 10. (It’s a multi-person solitaire-type game.)
• Old friends are the best sort of friends. No one knows you better than someone who knew you at 5 years old. Nor is anyone more accepting of your changes and flaws.
• Spending Thanksgiving without my parents was surprisingly easy…Don’t tell them that!!
• When you can travel for 6 hours and visit three states, a road atlas is your best friend. I had forgotten how awesome they are. There is no need for one in Texas.
• If you ever go barhopping in Chicago, you can avoid Mother’s…unless you like bad karaoke and very large women wearing backless shirts on a winter night.
• If a coat doesn’t have a tag on it at Old Navy, you might just get it for $24 instead of the $40 (at half-price!) that it was supposed to be. Enjoy it!
• Marshall’s sometimes carries Uggs. You apparently just have to keep you eye out and check regularly. They also have more great winter coats than any other place I have looked. And the prices are terrific.
• People in Chicago are really starting to take hold of the “bring reusable bags to the grocery store” trend. Particularly at Trader Joe’s. I felt very uncool and ecologically evil to not have one with me.
• Quite possibly the best cat toy I have ever devised is a fake fur mouse toy with a long piece of thread tied to the tail. Hold the end of the thread, and throw the mouse…Then just reel it in. Luka can play with this for ages, and I don’t have to run after the mouse 8 million times.

I feel like there are a million other things, but that will do for now. I am thoroughly enjoying myself these days.

Twitterings

Ok, I finally jumped on the bandwagon after seeing two ridiculous outfits yesterday while walking to my friend’s house that I wished I could share with everyone! I officially have a Twitter account! It’s on the sidebar over there.

For those of you not in the Twitter-know, Twitter is a website designed to for moment to moment updates. I can send an update from my cell phone via text message, and you can view it here, or you can subscribe to my twitter feed and get my little blurbs sent to your cell phone as a text message!

Should be fun! I see some crazy things walking around this city…

Today’s news

My cell phone has been acting up. It likes to cut out now and then, and occasionally, I will call someone and I can’t hear them at all, just dead silence. So I called AT&T to see if they could do one of those software upgrades they can do. Well, apparently, from my description, they decided it was a “warranty issue.” Since it was my only phone, and they couldn’t run a line test on the phone while I was on it with them, they told me to go to the store. I was a little unhappy about that, because I was sure the store would be forever away from my apartment.

Well, it turns out, there is a store just a few blocks away, so I bundled up (because it was in the 30s today!) and headed over. The agent wound up calling the same people I had talked to, and low and behold, it was a warranty issue, and because I had to do an insurance replacement for my phone about 6 months ago, the replace phone was still under warranty, and I qualified for a brand new phone. But, I guess my phone wasn’t very popular (I have a knack for picking the unpopular phone by the way…this has happened before…) and they discontinued my model. This is the perfect scenario if you ever have it happen to you (Note to self: This means don’t buy the uberpopular phone…Razr anyone??). It means that they have to give you an “equivalent phone.” And equivalent seems to mean equivalent to the price you payed when you first got the phone…i.e. hopefully, cheap from your pocket, but expensive for the list price. But, here’s the good part, said equivalently priced phone will likely have many features that were better than your old phone, because the technology has advanced. Did you follow all of that?

Back to my phone…That is exactly what happened! I am getting a snazzy new phone for FREE! It has a 2.0 megapixel camera, video, 3G internet (which is broadband speed!), an MP3 player, radio, and it’s even still a slider phone like my old one (which I really like). Oh, and it’s white! And because it’s a Sony Ericsson, it also has burnt orange trim…yes, you heard me correctly, it’s burnt orange and white! Hook ‘Em Horns!! Want to see it?? You’re gonna be jealous!

I am sort of jealous of myself right now…That is a sexy phone…

Beware of Dogs

I was walking down my street a few blocks away from my house, past a construction site for a brownstone. In front of the building was a fence as with most construction sites, and on that fence, like on most fences for construction sites, there was a sign. This time though, the sign said:

Guard Dogs on Duty

Survivors Will Be Prosecuted

Loved it!

I Suck

I have totally blown NaBloPoMo this year. I am going to continue to try to post everyday, but I blew the competition part. Very sad.

Well, in other news, I have a couch!! And, it’s orange!

It’s an Ikea Tylosand sleeper sofa. And because it’s Ikea, each piece, including the base, is covered in a slipcover. So when I get tired of the orange, all I have to do is go back to Ikea, and for about $200 I can get a more muted couch! But in this apartment, because of the grey carpet and grey trim, I thought a nice bright color would be best. And I have to say, I really like it in this room!

I will keep you updated on the changes in my apartment as I make them. Today should be a big day as I should be getting all of my shelves hung, and hopefully, I will have a completed kitchen by tonight!

Sunset

The fact that it was 30 degrees warmer in Dallas today doesn’t bother me.

That sunlight was fading today at 3:30pm does. Wow. I’ve been in the North in the winter. I’ve even been in The Netherlands in January, but I don’t remember it getting dark so early even there! It was completely dark at 5pm. In my mind, that doesn’t happen for another month or two…

But c’est la vie. Just something else I will have to adjust to. I manage to cook dinner in my tiny kitchen today, so if I can drive to Chicago alone, and cook in that kitchen, then I can do and tolerate anything!

The Story

I just sent an email to all of my friends to tell them about my trip to Chicago, because I already typed it, I am going to use it for this post! Hope you don’t mind! I’ve added some pictures though!

I made it to Chicago!! I was supposed to leave on Monday with my mother as copilot, but Monday morning, she came down with stomach flu. And I don’t just mean an upset tummy, I mean she got so dehydrated, we had to call an ambulance because she was too weak to move. We spent the day in the ER, and once she was getting rehydrated (intravenously) and it was clear she would be ok, but wouldn’t be up to driving to Chicago, we decided I should just go ahead alone. So I set off at 4pm for Tulsa, as there was no way I would make it to St. Louis in one day, alone.

Can I just tell you, if I never drive through Oklahoma again, it will be too soon! That state has the world’s worst roads. Ever. Horrid! It was windy and most of the roads I took Monday night had no shoulders, and were unlit two or four lane highways. At one point, I knew I was supposed to take a soft left to stay on 75. I thought I was there, because, well, I saw a sign for 75. I took it. It became clear very quickly that something was wrong because it was a 2 lane, shoulderless road with NOTHING around for miles. It took several miles to find a place wide enough to turn around with the 12ft trailer. Once I did though, while I headed back to the right road, out of nowhere, a raccoon ran in front of me. I slammed on my brakes to not hit him and of course, the trailer wobbled and swerved. It was awful.

Eventually, I made it to Tulsa, but somewhere along the way poor Luka, who hadn’t been near a litter box all day because of the ER hoopla, couldn’t hold his little bladder anymore. He had a towel in his carrier, and he was smart enough to push the towel into the urine to absorb most of it, but he was still all wet, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it until we got to Tulsa. So he and Brody (out of sympathy I suppose) cried the rest of the drive to Tulsa. Finally, at 10pm I made it to a crummy little Best Western. I snuck the cats in, and the first thing I did was to throw an unexpecting Luka into the bathtub, and turn the water on him. You should have heard the meow that came out next! lol He was PISSED!

But he survived, and the next day we left Tulsa, and headed to St. Louis. After the night I had had in Oklahoma, I wasn’t looking forward to the drive through Missouri, but once I got to the border (where I had to pay an $8 toll to get out of Oklahoma!!) the drive got better. Missouri is beautiful. Almost the entire drive was through rolling, tree covered hills. And as it is November, the trees were changing colors. It was really pretty. If you ever have the chance, it’s a great drive. St. Louis looked just as it did when I lived there, except bigger!

The next day, Wednesday, I headed out to Chicago. The drive to Chicago was rather boring and uneventful. Illinois is mostly flat farmland. I left at 7am Wednesday and made it to Chicago at 1pm. Just in time to meet the movers that would be unloading my trailer. But they were late. Of course. Meanwhile, there was no good place to leave my truck and trailer, so I left it in the alley behind my building with the flashers on. I was finally unloaded by 4:30 and just waited for the cable installer to get there, who was also late. Around that time, I decided to go downstairs to start my car so the battery didn’t die. I was too late! My car was dead. I wound up flagging down a neighbor driving through the alley, and luckily, she had jumper cables, but we couldn’t get the cap off of her battery. About that time, the cable guy called and said he was out front. I told him what was going on, and asked him if there was anyway he could bring his truck around back and give me a jump. He obliged, and we wound up using Stacia’s (the neighbor) jumpers and the cable guy’s battery! It was quite a scene!

Eventually, I had cable and a running car, and I returned the trailer. I cannot tell you how happy I was to get rid of that stupid trailer!

The good news is, since my eventful trip, not much else crazy has happened. I have spent the past few days unpacking and getting to know the neighborhood. It’s a great neighborhood! I live in Lakeview, which is just north of Lincoln Park and just a couple of miles north of downtown. Everything I need is within walking distance. There are great little restaurants, and tons of shopping. Everything from Bed Bath and Beyond, and Pet Smart to small boutiques and vintage clothing stores! (One of which has a pair of boots I keep eyeing… ) )

Lovin’ The Neighborhood

Ok, I lied. The big post will come tomorrow. There’s lots to say, and I have pictures, but the memory card reader is still packed!

But I can tell you, I love my neighborhood!  It’s a really neat area. I think you could live quite contently in my neighborhood without leaving a 5 square block area. Everything you need is there. And it all looks cute!

Also, I ordered groceries from Peapod for the first time today. We’ll see how that goes, but I am quite hopeful, because the idea of someone bringing 24 packs of water to my door, and not having to carry them farther than the kitchen (all of 5 feet from my front door) is incredibly appealing!

IN CHICAGO!

I made it. I am here. I am tired. I will post stories tomorrow!!

16 Hours to Go!

I am now in St. Louis. Today’s drive was much better! Missouri is beautiful. Particularly when the leaves are changing. I am exhausted and lying in a hotel bed using the free wireless internet. Whoever decided hotels should have free internet–and even better, wireless internet–was a genius!

Tomorrow I drive to Chicago! Supposedly, it’s a little over 5 hours to Chicago from here. I need to be at my new place at 1, so I will be leaving at about 7:30. Not one leg of this trip has taken the suggested amount of time. Pulling the trailer is slow going. I can go the speed limit, which in this part of the world is pretty consistently 70mph, but it’s tiring holding the rig steady, so I wind up stopping more than I normally would.

Cross your fingers that I make it to Chicago in time!