Trip Photos are Up!

Feel free to peruse them at my Flickr site.



Puffins!

I'm Back!

...and I'm exhausted. I was all ready to twitter through the trip, but I think we over-planned a bit, and I just didn't have the time or energy to update it. We went to Chicago for two days, then drove to St. Louis on the third day, and stayed there until Sunday when we drove straight back home. The reason I'm so pooped:

• Attended to two White Sox games (1 loss, 1 win)
• Bought just under $300 worth of new wardrobe from H&M (and that can buy a lot, let me tell you)
  
• Visited no less than 14 places in one day in Chicago, on foot, with blisters
  
• Ate french fries every day (sometimes twice!) for a week
• Shopped University City in St. Louis and ate the most enormous hamburger EVER.
  
• Ate at Ted Drewes twice
  
• Went up the arch for the second time in my life (still underwhelming, IMHO)
• Toured the Cardinals Museum, Bowling Museum, and AKC Museum of the Dog (boring, really boring, O.K.)
• Got some kind of stomach flu, and still managed to visit two museums, ride the Arch AND go to the Union Station mall the next day, mostly on foot.

...and that was just Thursday! (I kid.) Those are just the highlights (and lowlights, I guess), so you can see why I requested we try taking a vacation involving a lot of napping and doing nothing next time. Yes, I know the next vacation will probably be the big U.K. honeymoon we are planning, but I'm thinking with my feet right now, and they're worn out.

If I ever get out of the mound of dirty laundry we've brought home, I'll be uploading pictures soon. I'm focusing on getting Buddy Baroo re-adjusted back to a homelife without Mr. Beau (more on that later), getting my digestive system back to normal, and preventing the weight gain from the horrendous diet I just cosumed last week.

Twitter is EVIL...in a good way

Now that I've started using Twitter, I'm really fascinated by it. It's like old-school IMing or chat rooms, but permanent and bigger. I've been messing around trying to find a way to post to it via my super-basic phone without using text messages (which I refuse to pay for), and I've found TwitterMail. Since I have Yahoo! Mail on my phone, it's really easy. The only problem is that I'm the world's slowest texter. Typing in a few words on my phone takes about 5 minutes, and don't even ask me how to work the capitalization thing.

As I'll be on vacation next week, I figured I'd send at least one update a day reporting on what I did/am doing. Not that anyone would be all that fascinated, but I think it would be kinda fun to have a list of all the things I did for "posterity".

This Twitter Thing

I signed up for Twitter. I don't know how much I'll use it. Maybe it will challenge me to make my life a little more interesting. Or not. I'll see if I can send a few updates while on vacation next week.

Children's drawings come to life

How cute/creative are these pictures?

http://www.yeondoojung.com/artworks_view_wonderland.php?no=88

Recommendations

These are the best things ever invented. Well, maybe not better than the Polio vaccine...or the pacemaker...OK, this is one of the best things ever invented:

I have worn headbands since I was a little girl, and they have always given me headaches. These headbands are made of a jelly-like plastic and are attached with an elastic band. When on, they look just like the painful plastic ones, but they are much more comfortable. I've only found them at my local Walgreen's so far; they aren't even on the company's website yet! Here's a link to one online. I was just at my Walgreens and they had a bunch of new styles of these out. (I'm not being paid to say all this. I doubt a blog with 3 subscribers would get the opportunity to make money off endorsements.)

I am looking forward to Cinematic Titanic's newest release: The Wasp Woman.



My favorite MST3K episodes were always the classic ones made before the mid-sixties. I did download the Doomsday Machine, which was pretty good, but I avoided the Oozing Skull, as it didn't look like my cuppa. This one looks right up my alley.

...end of transmission. :)

My Sister is on Etsy

Here's a link to her shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6055279.
Peruse it, won't you?

Buddy

This has been a really crazy week for me. Heck, it's been a crazy summer! Monday was my 33rd Birthday. This was my present:

This is Buddy.

I met Buddy a few weeks ago at a local Petco purely by accident. I was headed to the shoe store nearby when I saw the sign "Adopt a Dog Today". As we've been looking for a dog for many months now, perusing Petfinder and all, I can't resist a sign like that. I went in and saw quite a few dogs there for adoption. I saw Buddy, who's name was Martie at the time, and thought to myself "he's what I'm looking for, but he's not one of the breeds Sean's been wanting." I took a card and left. A week or so later, I was in the area again and went in again, seeing that some of the other dogs had been adopted, but Buddy was still there. He was barking very loudly, and I thought "That ends it. Sean does NOT want a yippy dog." Then I saw that he had to go potty, and he was just signaling. Whew! The next day, I dragged Sean in there to show him the pups. He wanted a "manly" dog, whatever that is, but I was smitten with the Budster. We walked him around. Finally, I got an application. After filling it out at home, we brought it back the next day and were approved on the spot! Hooray! We got to take him home on Sunday, the very next day, and he's been with us ever since.

Here's his story, as far as we know:
Buddy was rescued with a lot of other dogs from the Cedar Rapids floods. He's about a year old, or close to it. He had obviously been through obedience training and potty training, so someone must have owned him previously. They found him as a stray, so his history is unknown, as is his exact breed or breed mix. Here's a link to the folks who found and saved him: Good Dog Animal Rescue. We started calling him Buddy, and it kinda stuck.

He's a very sweet little chap. We really couldn't ask for a better little pup. Please peruse my Flickr photos for more hot action shots of the lil' guy.

Lace Tree

This was on Craftzine's blog today. As someone who has struggled with lace knitting, it blew my mind.

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2008/06/lacewrapped_tree.html

Flooding

For anyone wondering what's up with the flooding in Central Iowa, all I can tell you is that we had some minor flooding downtown this morning, but we are only a little flooded thus far. It rained pretty hard this morning, which caused some flooding downtown, but I've heard that has gone down. The bridges are still visible, though they may be covered later in the week. Our local NBC affiliate (and my former employer) has some good video you can check out on their site: www.whotv.com

If I see any flooding personally, I'll take some pics and post them. I wasn't here during the floods of '93, so this is all pretty new to me.