Ah neglected blog, so sorry to not have kept you in a while.
The weather here has turned gorgeous - lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s but this weekend when we will be in Clear Lake for a wedding at Butler's Courtyard it will be between 30 - 40 degrees here in Chicago and we will STILL be experiencing the 50 - 70 temps in Houston.
The tree in our back yard has lost all it's leaves and revealed the location of all it's bird's nests. It's actually quite charming. I hope the birds come back to these same nests in the spring and they don't have problems with squatter birds claiming already built nests.
Chris found a Half Price Books and I got books on making mosaics, knitting socks, and baking breads. Too many projects swimming in my head and not enough time to realize all of them.
I began applying for jobs today in earnest. I mean, full-time jobs. There's nothing part-time worth part of my time here in the suburbs of Chicago. Unfortunately. Because I was having a fabulous time as a housewife but I don't have any money and that is no fun. I just want to go to my sister's beach house party and I can't even get $150 to her for my part of the party. ~ sigh.
I'm looking forward to being employed again but it will mean drastic changes to our lives. No more taking Chris to the train in the mornings. Instead I'll be taking myself to the train and getting on it and he will probably take himself to the train because he leaves work every day at 4pm and I won't be able to leave til 5pm or later just to get some work done. I used to leave around 6pm usually when I had a job. No more full load of all the household chores - all the laundry, all the dishes, all the cooking, all the vacuuming and sweeping and mopping and dusting and cleaning toilets. I think everyone should be responsible for their own laundry anyway. I know several people who run their houses like that with younger children too! Heck, I was doing laundry way younger than Colin and he's the youngest person in the house. There's no reason in the world that he should be sitting around playing games waiting for someone else to wash and fold his laundry - or anyone else in the house either. We're all grown people.
I think it will be fun to work downtown. I anticipate learning a lot about the city of Chicago and meeting a lot of great new people and being able to shop again!
My book club finished reading Jane Eyre which I hadn't read since junior high and it was great! I miss Mr. Rochester and Jane and all the drama going on between them. :) Next is The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. I feel like I've read this book before but I can't remember. I also thought I had it already but I have a different Cisneros volume or maybe I just can find it due to the move. There are lots of books in a jumbled order.
Time to run to the station!
LOVE
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
More great Illinois experiences
This past weekend, Chris and I took another drive ~ this time we headed south, a direction we had not yet traveled. I wanted to go to St. Charles to a yarn shop there called Wool Company and Chris found a disc golf course we could play near there in Geneva, IL. The drive was, again, just stunning! The trees are coming out in even MORE brilliant hues of yellow, gold, copper, amber, red, maroon, purple, orange, rust, peach, and lime-green. I really just don't have the words to describe it. I keep thinking that someone (my mother in law, my sister, my friends back in Texas) HAS to come visit so they can see it like this. But then the next week I think, 'No, NOW they need to see it like this!' But it keeps changing every day. Chris described it as a super slow motion fireworks display where you only get to see one frame of the video every day. Each tree seems to be showing off it's own personality or colors in a different way and it's utterly amazing.
I remember going to the International Quilt Festival and just being complete exhausted from the sheer awe I felt standing in front of each quilt. It's hard to be completely amazed over and over and over and over again. It becomes overstimulating. My brain has to take the time to catch up. At the IQF I would stand in front of a quilt with my mouth hanging open in just complete rapture and think it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen; and then I would take a few steps to the left and stand in front of a different quilt and have the same rapture, the same amazement, the same awe all over again. How many times can you be blown-over by beauty before you shut down, or start skipping over the details or lose interest just so you can think. That is the way autumn in Illinois feels to me. I feel as if I can barely take in any further beauty, any more shocking in-take of breath at the grandeur of tree-lined streets blanketed with colorful leaves fallen from the trees. This has been so far my favorite of the seasons. I mean, I've only been here for summer and now the beginning of fall but I've never seen anything like it before in my life.
So we're driving through all these glorious trees shining in the sunlight and encountered what appeared to be a nature preserve of some kind and had to turn around and drive back though the gorgeousness to turn into the park and discovered it was a fen. I learned something new because I had never heard of a fen before. But it is a low land area which frequently floods due to it's proximity to water but which does not permanently retain water. Thus the plant life is very different than on dry land and there are few trees or woody plants. This particular fen was maintained by friends of the fen and had a very pleasant boardwalk through the fen out to the near-by body of water which was the Fox River. There was a nice deck area at the end of the boardwalk to stand over the Fox River and it was beautiful!!! And freezing cold. I wouldn't mind going there again during the various seasons to see how it looks in different weathers and take the kids there.
St. Charles, IL was having a harvest festival complete with ferris wheel and amusement rides and bands, with police directing throngs of traffic and people EVERYWHERE!!!! Needless to say, there was no way that I could get to the yarn shop I wanted to see due to the madness of the festival. We pressed on to Geneva where we found a bakery shop that sold the most delicious chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I've ever tasted in my life.
The disc golf course in Geneva, Wheeler Park, was lovely. There was the usual gorgeous colorful trees that I could go on describing over and over again but that would eventually bore you and you would ask me to stop talking about the trees. But they were beautifully displaying all their reds and peachy colors and oranges and yellows like the trees here do. It was freezing cold like playing disc golf in December or January back in Texas. However, there was one thing that was glaringly different than most of my previous disc golfing experiences in Illinois - the course was crowded. Crowded like Jack Brooks Park on a Sunday any time of year. Groups of people playing and waiting in line at the tee-boxes to throw. You could see them all over the whole park and you had to keep moving lest they pass you up. And I thought to myself, why on earth are SO many people out playing disc golf in 40 degrees and my nose frozen and red and runny, when all throughout August and most of September when there were the most perfect days on earth for being outdoors and walking through the park on a cool, breezy, 80 degree summer day, the parks were empty? My theory is that it was "too hot" for these Illinoisans in 80 degrees; but too cold for this Texan in 40 degrees. Most other folks seemed to not be concerned with the temperature at all. Let me tell the Illinoisans reading - 80 with a nice breeze is heaven!!! I've played rounds where it was 104 degrees with 100% humidity and it felt like my brain was melting. Normally I would drink a whole big gatoraid in the front nine on a summer day in Texas whereas I've found I can bring a small bottle of water or gatoraid to fit in my disc golf bag and still have a drink remaining at the end of 18 holes here.
This temperature thing is something I'm definitely going to have to get more used to. I can see myself already acclimating though. For instance, just yesterday, after picking Chris up from the train station we took a short drive through the Deer Grove Nature Preserve because it's just jaw-droppingly beautiful with a thick carpet of fallen leaves and color everywhere you look. My eyes are just gorging themselves on the visual treats that the trees offer. Anyway, it was 56 degrees outside and we were driving along with the windows down discussing what a fine temperature 56 degrees is. We used to bundle up and wear jackets in 56 degrees but no, not anymore. Not when that morning it was 27 degrees. We started having fires in our fireplace when it was 48 degrees. Not now. Now we save them for nights when it gets into the 30s.
So bring on the winter! I'm looking forward to the snow. I'm looking forward to how brutal it is. Last night I met my neighbor who lives across the vast park between our houses and she seems really interesting! I can't wait to chat with her again. She apparently LOVES the cold and the snow. And to underscore that she came over to the book club in flip flops and a denim jacket not even buttoned up over a thin top and leggings. I was in long sleeves, jeans, socks and shoes, and my NaNoWriMo hoodie. But I will probably start shedding the layers in the spring when 40 will feel like disc golf playing weather after surviving the temperatures in the teens or single digits all winter.
LOVE
I remember going to the International Quilt Festival and just being complete exhausted from the sheer awe I felt standing in front of each quilt. It's hard to be completely amazed over and over and over and over again. It becomes overstimulating. My brain has to take the time to catch up. At the IQF I would stand in front of a quilt with my mouth hanging open in just complete rapture and think it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen; and then I would take a few steps to the left and stand in front of a different quilt and have the same rapture, the same amazement, the same awe all over again. How many times can you be blown-over by beauty before you shut down, or start skipping over the details or lose interest just so you can think. That is the way autumn in Illinois feels to me. I feel as if I can barely take in any further beauty, any more shocking in-take of breath at the grandeur of tree-lined streets blanketed with colorful leaves fallen from the trees. This has been so far my favorite of the seasons. I mean, I've only been here for summer and now the beginning of fall but I've never seen anything like it before in my life.
So we're driving through all these glorious trees shining in the sunlight and encountered what appeared to be a nature preserve of some kind and had to turn around and drive back though the gorgeousness to turn into the park and discovered it was a fen. I learned something new because I had never heard of a fen before. But it is a low land area which frequently floods due to it's proximity to water but which does not permanently retain water. Thus the plant life is very different than on dry land and there are few trees or woody plants. This particular fen was maintained by friends of the fen and had a very pleasant boardwalk through the fen out to the near-by body of water which was the Fox River. There was a nice deck area at the end of the boardwalk to stand over the Fox River and it was beautiful!!! And freezing cold. I wouldn't mind going there again during the various seasons to see how it looks in different weathers and take the kids there.
St. Charles, IL was having a harvest festival complete with ferris wheel and amusement rides and bands, with police directing throngs of traffic and people EVERYWHERE!!!! Needless to say, there was no way that I could get to the yarn shop I wanted to see due to the madness of the festival. We pressed on to Geneva where we found a bakery shop that sold the most delicious chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I've ever tasted in my life.
The disc golf course in Geneva, Wheeler Park, was lovely. There was the usual gorgeous colorful trees that I could go on describing over and over again but that would eventually bore you and you would ask me to stop talking about the trees. But they were beautifully displaying all their reds and peachy colors and oranges and yellows like the trees here do. It was freezing cold like playing disc golf in December or January back in Texas. However, there was one thing that was glaringly different than most of my previous disc golfing experiences in Illinois - the course was crowded. Crowded like Jack Brooks Park on a Sunday any time of year. Groups of people playing and waiting in line at the tee-boxes to throw. You could see them all over the whole park and you had to keep moving lest they pass you up. And I thought to myself, why on earth are SO many people out playing disc golf in 40 degrees and my nose frozen and red and runny, when all throughout August and most of September when there were the most perfect days on earth for being outdoors and walking through the park on a cool, breezy, 80 degree summer day, the parks were empty? My theory is that it was "too hot" for these Illinoisans in 80 degrees; but too cold for this Texan in 40 degrees. Most other folks seemed to not be concerned with the temperature at all. Let me tell the Illinoisans reading - 80 with a nice breeze is heaven!!! I've played rounds where it was 104 degrees with 100% humidity and it felt like my brain was melting. Normally I would drink a whole big gatoraid in the front nine on a summer day in Texas whereas I've found I can bring a small bottle of water or gatoraid to fit in my disc golf bag and still have a drink remaining at the end of 18 holes here.
This temperature thing is something I'm definitely going to have to get more used to. I can see myself already acclimating though. For instance, just yesterday, after picking Chris up from the train station we took a short drive through the Deer Grove Nature Preserve because it's just jaw-droppingly beautiful with a thick carpet of fallen leaves and color everywhere you look. My eyes are just gorging themselves on the visual treats that the trees offer. Anyway, it was 56 degrees outside and we were driving along with the windows down discussing what a fine temperature 56 degrees is. We used to bundle up and wear jackets in 56 degrees but no, not anymore. Not when that morning it was 27 degrees. We started having fires in our fireplace when it was 48 degrees. Not now. Now we save them for nights when it gets into the 30s.
So bring on the winter! I'm looking forward to the snow. I'm looking forward to how brutal it is. Last night I met my neighbor who lives across the vast park between our houses and she seems really interesting! I can't wait to chat with her again. She apparently LOVES the cold and the snow. And to underscore that she came over to the book club in flip flops and a denim jacket not even buttoned up over a thin top and leggings. I was in long sleeves, jeans, socks and shoes, and my NaNoWriMo hoodie. But I will probably start shedding the layers in the spring when 40 will feel like disc golf playing weather after surviving the temperatures in the teens or single digits all winter.
LOVE
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Niagra Falls Trip
The weekend immediately following our anniversary my husband surprised me with an overnight trip to Niagra Falls in upstate New York. It was stunningly beautiful! We arrived in Rochester and drove through the countryside along the coast of Lake Ontario to see the lovely fall foliage changing from green to brilliance. We played 18 holes of disc golf at Shore Winds Disc Golf Course which is probably the most beautiful course I've ever played right on the lake. We went to the American Falls that evening and took pictures from the tower deck and then ate at the Niagra Hardrock Cafe and then stayed at a great airbnb place nearby. The next day we went to Niagra State Park to see the Bridal Veil and Horseshoe Falls off the Canadian boarder. It was stunning! We walked through the "Cave of the Winds" which is not actually a cave but a walkway under the falls and got soaking wet and then had a picnic lunch at Fort Niagra on Ontario before driving back to Rochester for our flight home. Here are some pictures:
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