Saying Goodbye... And Hello

For a number of reasons (Google's sucky customer service being at the top of the list) I'm moving on from blogger. Well, not really. I'm still doing my wedding planning blog that gets loaded onto Weddingbee here on blogger.

But my personal blog is moving. I'm going to try wordpress. If only because their commenting is incredibly easier to navigate. We'll see. I may be back in two weeks. Don't know why I'm feeling so restless about this whole blogging thing.

After having this blog for not even a month and a half, I'm changing again. Perhaps this is reflective of my life and my tendency to feel stuck? Gotta change something you know...

That's not accurate. I honestly wouldn't change much about my life except my need for sleep. I need too much sleep. If I needed less sleep, everything would be better. Oh well. If you've been following me from blog to blog, come on and join me over at wordpress.

I'm not suggesting you leave blogger, I'm just suggesting you read my wordpress blog. Wish me luck!


New blog: Chicago Style Hot Girl

The Most Exciting Basketball Game I've Ever Been To

Are you a fan of basketball? I'm not. Well, not nearly as big a fan as I am of other sports like football, baseball, tennis, swimming, hockey, soccer, bowling, fly fishing, etc. I think you get my point.

But I recently went to a game that was thrilling. Everyone was screaming and jumping up and down. The winning team celebrated like they had just won a national championship.

It was a 6th grade girls' basketball game.

And oh yeah, it was at one of Easy's schools. He teaches music to elementary school students at three different schools. I've met a number of his kids and they are pretty amazing kids.

I took some photos during the game to try and convey the emotion, but it was hard because everyone was jumping around so much. But you all should've been there! These folks were screaming like it was a playoff game for the bulls in the 1990s!

The opposing team, having a huddle (or whatever basketball folks call it). Trying to regroup because they were getting their butts kicked.

This is what defense looks like. Half-raised arms and relaxed legs. Sarcastic face.

The team is green is the home team. They were dominating!

Yeah, this was pretty close to the final score. After all the running back and forth, fouls, shots taken, players in and out, this was the score. I was so tickled that people could be that excited about a 4 quarter game with this score. But it was still pretty exciting.

When the game was nearing the end, things started getting rough. A tiny girl who scored most of the points got run over like a wildebeest stampede (Lion King 3D shot out, what-what!).

The only one not standing and screaming. Letting the picture speak for itself...

The coach didn't sit down the whole time. I think it may have been her enthusiasm alone that carried her team to victory. That and the tiny girl's baskets.

Whooo! Celebration time! We are the champions! Oh wait, this is just the first game of the season...

De-briefing. I wonder if the fact that they scored only a couple baskets came up.

If you're looking for a thrilling time, go to an elementary school basketball game. You're gonna love it!

The Tuesday Date I Planned

Life didn't stand in the way last Tuesday. I've finally loaded the pictures off my camera and so I can share the lovely date I took Easy on. Remembering that date will hopefully make me feel better about how crappy everything has been since then.

I started with three handwritten notes that he was to open as the date went on. The first he opened right at midnight on Tuesday.

Envelope #1 front

Envelope #1 back

Envelope #2 front

Envelope #2 back

Envelope #3 front

Envelope #3 back

I also cooked dinner Monday night and prepared breakfast and lunch for Easy for him to warm up since I had to go to work. I made Italian sausage, spaghetti, biscuits, rice, greens, breakfast sausage, home-made blueberry syrup, and salad. Add in yogurt, an apple, and ranch dressing, and you have the sum total of all three meals.

I met him out at his parents' house because they lived closest to where he works. He got into my car and I drove off. He opened the second envelope while we were on our way. It was a sweet love note and offered hints about where we were going. He figured it out it had something to do with nature. I took him to...

The Morton Arboretum! It's a beautiful landscape with lots of amazing trees, bushes, etc. It has miles of trails. We went and had about 90 min or so before sunset, when they close. We were glad to have time just walking around, feeling romantic. It was amazing. We stayed until I got too cold, then we moved on. Here are some photos from the Arboretum.

This is Easy trying to re-enact that scene from The Holiday. He turned around to see I wasn't chasing, but photographing.

Thinking man...

This is amazing art. Just amazing.

This is one of my favorite shots of the day. I'm and air sign, so of course I love the sky.

Then we headed to dinner. He opened the third envelope that gave a hint inside and out about our destination. We ended up at a tapas restaurant called Meson Sabika in Naperville. If you've never been to a tapas restaurant, this is the one to try for a classic experience.

We ended the night on a happy note and headed home. This was one of our best dates ever, if I do say so myself. Looking forward to more time.

I really look forward to moving to New York. I know we'll be even busier there, but we will also have a likely easier time being able to spend time just us. No family and hardly any friends will be nearby. Not that I want to escape... No... I just want to spend more time alone with my fiance.

This Week... I'd Like To Press Re-Set

I'm still feeling like hiding under a rock and not coming out until the wedding day. I wish someone else would make all the rest of the decisions and we could just be married already. But that is not reality and after a few more days of sulking, I'll get back on track.

To push myself in that direction, I did buy something to help with organization. Shopping always makes me feel better, you know?

My to-do list for the wedding

Belle is trying to help me wit the hammer and screw driver.

My Tuesday date with Easy never happened. My family has a lot going on right now, and it seems I'm the only grandchild who can help out. Even though I'm the only one who works nights and not the only one who has a car. But it is what it is.

After I got off work 8 am Tuesday (I hardly leave on time from work), I was headed to my parents' house to try and watch Dancing with the Stars on the DVR then get some sleep and be well rested by the time Easy got off work and we could have our Tuesday date.

Easy locked his keys in his apartment and needed me to come let him in. Before I got there, someone from our property management group let him in. This was after I'd already switched expressways. Nothing like driving an extra 30 min on an expressway during rush hour when you've been up for 20 hours.

Then my mother texted me to ask if I could take my grandmother to the hospital to see my great-aunt. Because no one else apparently could do it. Even though visiting hours are 9 am - 9 pm.

That text message was the last thing I saw before my phone conked out. My space button won't work so I can't e-mail or text. The speaker doesn't work so I can't hear phone calls. My poor phone is ruining my life.

So I headed to my grandmother's house to take her to the hospital. I couldn't call ahead because my phone wasn't working properly. My mother didn't tell her I might be coming, so she wasn't ready to go. We finally got to the hospital around 10:15 or so.

We stayed there for a couple hours. I ignored the television as all the ABC morning shows showed clips from the DWTS Monday episode.

After we left the hospital, my grandmother wanted to make a couple stops. We made a couple stops. I finally dropped her off and got back home by 1 pm. I hate being awake for more than 24 hours. I hate when people don't understand that I need sleep. I need sleep!

And who gets the short end of the stick usually? Poor lovely Easy. I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything, but even in my hazy upset-ness, I can tell he doing everything in his power to try and make things better for me.

He got home from work, armed with flowers, a great Tuesday gift, a card that had a love note inside, and wonderful plans. I still don't know what his plans were because when he heard I'd only been sleep for three hours, he told me to go back to sleep.

Beautiful roses!

Lovely tea candle holder!

I woke up at midnight, and the whole Tuesday was gone. I've got lots of days off for my birthday weekend starting Friday, hopefully things will improve by then.

Date Night Continues

I still haven't done the post about the date I took Easy on. Once I get the pictures loaded onto my external hard drive, I swear I will.

He decided to take me on a date last Friday. It didn't go well. At all. Not even a little bit. I'm not going to get into the details, but let's say our whole weekend kind of sucked and that date really kicked it off perfectly. *Sarcastic face*.

My great-aunt is in the hospital and she's not doing well. We spent hours on Saturday and Sunday at the hospital. I love Easy so much knowing that even when in the middle of a fight, he'll be there for me and my family no matter what.

Well, we got past the weekend. We're still hoping my aunt gets better, but we're going to do a re-do of the date on our date day: Tuesday, i.e., later today.

I don't know what we're going to do, but Easy says he has something pretty great planned. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm surprised I am. But hopefully this will go well. And then I'll have two dates to talk about.

I'd much rather talk about our day-to-day stuff instead of the bigger stuff like wedding planning. I feel like sticking my head in the sand for the next four months. Sigh, well, it will be fine once we've picked a DOC and a florist and had our tasting and have our menu picked. Yikes, that's a lot.

Back to sticking my head in the sand and only coming up for date nights and dealing with family stuff.

OMG There Are New Kindles Out!

I don't know how long Amazon has been working on their new Kindles, but I've just heard of them. Amazon sent me an e-mail today about it.

That e-mail was perfectly timed, since I was looking for a birthday gift to buy myself. Every year I get myself a nice birthday gift. Seeing as how this is my first gainfully-employed birthday with a real big-girl job, I want to get something really really nice.

The prices are also pretty amazing, so I'll be able to get this gift without breaking the bank. Yay! I bought my first Kindle over a year and a half ago. I loved it so much, but now I'm ready to upgrade.

Do you want to meet the new Kindles? Of course you do.

First up is the new Kindle. Tiny, e-ink, amazing price!


Click here to go to the website.

 This Kindle is the new version of the one you already know and love if you own a Kindle. No more keypad, this baby only has the 5-way touchpad. I have no idea how you type things into this Kindle (I used Google a lot on mine), but if you never used the keypad, it's no big loss.

It's his price that's so amazing. If you won't want "special offers and sponsored screensavers" displayed on your Kindle when you're not reading, you'll pay $109. But if you don't mind that extreme marketing, you can get this baby for $79. Yay for low demand!

Next up is the Kindle Touch. I hate touchscreens, but lately, there have been a couple that get me going, like The new Blackberry Bold 9900 that has both a touchscreen and a keyboard. Drool. But back to the Kindle Touch.

Click here to go to the website.

 This lovely do-dad is just the Kindle but with a touchscreen. Kindle catches up to nook with this one. The price for this guy is $99 with sponsored screensavers and $109 without. I'd say pay the extra $10 dolars. If you have $109 lying around, you can get the Kindle or the Kindle Touch without sponsored offers. How cool is that?

 Up next is the one I'm halfway considering pre-ordering.

Click here to go to the website.

This one has 3G. Unless you live in a magical place where Wi-fi is always available, this is the one for you. The 3G is free unless you're using it to upload certain documents to your Kindle, which you can easily avoid using a PC/Mac and the handy-dandy USB cord that comes with.

The other one I'm half considering is the last one. They certainly saved the best-- if by best I mean most flashy-- for last.

Click here to go to the website.

 This one is so shiny looking. That full color screen really draws you in, doesn't it?

I got the Kindle in the first place because I preferred the e-ink. But I've been talking to people who have nooks and iPads, and the backlight doesn't seem to cause as big as issue as I thought it would. Plus, with the light, I could read in bed, or watch streaming television/movies--assuming I could get Wi-fi.

There's that pesky Wi-fi problem. And do I want to stare a computer screen all day at work and then use my leisure time to stare at yet another backlit screen?

I have some thinking to do. Do you have an e-reader? Which of these four would you choose?

Disclaimer: I wasn't asked to do this post, I just really love the Kindles. I wish I were getting reimbursed for pubbing these...

Planning The Perfect Tuesday

Tuesdays are special days for Easy and me. I don't know when exactly that happened, but I remember it most vividly starting right after we moved in together at the end of June. We don't do something every single Tuesday, but we try. It's our unofficial date night.

Sometimes it's just as simple as hanging out on the couch talking. Other times, it involves full nights out being all romantic and coupley. My favorite Tuesdays are the ones that involve flowers! I love flowers. Hint hint, ahem.

Last Tuesday didn't quite work with our schedule, so we had our "Tuesday" on the weekend. But this week, it's my turn to plan something that's just-for-us-and-doesn't-involve-our-families-or-our-careers. I was really looking forward to the planning.

Now the planning is all done and I'm excited to put it into action. I was trying to figure out what Easy is interested in that wasn't music. For a while, I just didn't know. But we've talked about it more recently, and I took notes from that and have planned a wonderful date for him.

I would tell you all what I have planned, but Easy reads my blog, and I don't want to ruin the surprise. But when I'm back at work (and therefore have internet) on Thursday, I'll tell you how today goes.

I'm just glad we have these days. I think of years from now when we've got kids and long commutes (knock on wood) and have to schedule Date Night, but then are too tired to really enjoy it.

Image via IMDb

Right now, we're just enjoying being engaged. We're enjoying being D.I.N.K.s, and life is good. Even when we have disagreements, it's pretty easy to settle it quickly because we don't have a lot of distractions.

I'll be looking back on this time in 10 years. I hope I won't envy this time. My life will hopefully be the life I'm working now to build and I'll be satisfied with it. I imagine that instead of envy, it will be more like nostalgia because I'm making the most of these moments.

How do you make the most of everyday moments?

How's Your Life? Mine's Awesome

I'm feeling pretty awesome today. Have you ever heard of the term D.I.N.K.?

I'd never heard of it before a couple weeks ago. Easy's mother introduced us to the term.

It means Double Income, No Kids. It is pretty nice to live this life where our only responsibility is making sure each other is as happy as possible.

We go to work-- and luckily we both love our jobs-- then we come home and we pretend to be nesting.

We're not actually nesting. Our house is still incredibly unsettled. It's the product of a busy schedule and an odd set of priorities. But Easy and I are incredibly happy almost all the time. It feels like a dream, but still also very realistic.

The last couple days have not felt like a typical weekend. We actually had time to just live life. I love that man because I told him all of five days ago that I wanted to do something with our time that didn't include a restaurant, my parents' house, his parents' house, or live jazz music.

And he made it happen in just a couple days. Friday, I hung out with my girl, Gloria, who I wrote about in one of my old blogs. We went shopping. Women be shopping! I got two pairs of shoes for me, two pairs for Easy, a great new dress, a new scarf, and the piece de resistance was this:

Image via Express Online

 I saw a belted cape coat somewhere online and I fell in love. I dragged poor Gloria into every store on Michigan Avenue looking for one! I returned the favor by being dragged into every store in Water Tower Place after that to find her the perfect boots. It was a very successful day.

Then, we went to go see The Lion King in 3D. I love Disney (with their parent-killing, stereotype reinforcing asses), and so I was super excited to have the chance to go see that movie. 

Some people were in that theater reacting to the movie like they'd never seen it. And this was not 10 years old and under kids, this was mostly grown-ups falling out over the floor laughing when the hyena voiced by Whoopi Goldberg says, "Make mine a cub sandwich!" Easy, Gloria, and I were in there shaking our heads.

I understand that everyone else isn't as big a Disney fan as me and they aren't at home watching the Special Edition DVD once a a month, but come up on people. It hasn't been that long, has it?

Saturday, we hung out at home for most of the day. There was listening to music and dancing. We break into dance a lot. And I cooked dinner for Easy to eat right then and for me to take to work. Pork chops, collard greens, rice, and corn bread. Delish!

Just like that picture at the top, this weekend was a great blend of a good number of all the components of my personal life I like to juggle. I look forward to the next time I'll be able to do this, which is... probably at least 2 months away.

Introducing... A Variety of Blog Topics!

The exclamation mark indicates some sort of fanfare. Yay!!!

I'm pretending that people will actually care enough about my blog to want to know what they're reading about before they read it. In my last post, I came up with the idea to separate out the different things I want to talk about into different memes in the (counter-intuitive) idea that it will make this blog feel more seamless.

These are not in order of importance, they're just in the order that I figured out the jpeg. So, without further ado, my blog topics.

Up first is one that I pretty self-explanatory.

A Love Life Review

This one will be for when I discuss my friends' love lives. Pink means love right? And the word love is pretty damn obvious. Mostly, it's just pretty...

Next is the one of the ones I designed for talking about my life.



All Growed Up

 That's not my hair, but everything else about the clip art just...works. With this meme, I'll be talking about career, finance, grad school, and all the general grown-up stuff that's coming at me full force. It's coming almost as fast as my 30th birthday feels like it's approaching. Okay, I"m being dramatic as 30 is still over 3 years away.

Up next is one I had a lot of fun making.

Living My Life

I may or may not be completely self-centered. Well, 80% self-centered. But I love this one and I'm looking forward to having this jpeg identify when I'm waxing poetic (except I hate poetry) about my life with Easy or my hobbies or my family or whatever else goes on in my personal life.

After I did this one, I figured that could cover all I had to talk about my friends and myself. That left politics and television.



Let's Talk About Politics



On The Small Screen

 So perhaps the phrasing isn't so clever. But I love these and I'm looking forward to having a more clearly defined topic list from which to choose. Coming up with the jpegs helped me further refine what I'm going to talk about. I love movies, but I don't have much to say about them besides whether or not I liked them.

So you can pretty much be guaranteed that if you read my post you'll read about: 1) my personal life, 2) my career and other grown-up topics, 3) my friends' love lives, 4) politics, 5) television. It feels good to have some focus!

Inadvertent And Random Funnies

You ever have those moments where the most random things happen? All you can really do is laugh about it and hope it's funny in the re-telling because you've simply got to tell someone what craziness just went down.

Luckily, I have a blog, so I can subject the 3.5 people who read this thing to hearing my ridiculously random stories.

Story #1: Giving Out Hair Advice At A Busy Intersection
If you live in Chicago and drive around a lot, chances are you've gone past 35th & King Drive. That's pretty busy and large intersection. King Drive is a boulevard at 35th Street which means there's actually three separate streets separated by grassy medians that make it a very long intersection.

Image via Google Maps

So I'm sitting at this intersection on the western 3rd of 35th street heading west. I'm waiting for the light to turn green. I see this guy in the next car trying to get my attention. I make a point to be nice to strangers and not assume a guy trying to get my attention is full of shit, so I turned down my radio to see what he wanted.

He complimented my hair and then asked where I get it done. I told him where and he asked if my hairstylist takes walk-ins. I told him she did and he asked for her number. At this point the light turned green. So I'm yelling her cell number out of my car into his while we're both slow rolling into a green intersection. He got the number and thanked me and we both drove off to continue our lives.

I'm quite sure we broke several traffic rules about cell phone use while driving. Whatever, I love my hairstylist, and if she gets more business (plus no cops saw us), I'm happy it happened. I'll definitely be checking with her during my next appointment to see if he called her about getting his hair done.

Story #2: Trying To Reach A Florist Who Doesn't Return Phone Calls Right Away

I will be mostly talking about the whole wedding planning thing on my other blog which I maintain purely for Weddingbee. But I will say here that our first florist appointment to check out potential florists was originally scheduled for a day that didn't work for my mother or Easy's mother.

I called the florist a couple times to try and push the appointment back one day. But they never called back. Finally it was the day of the original appointment. I had just gotten home from work and really needed to get sleep since I had to be back at work the next day.  I still hadn't heard from the florist and I didn't want them to think I'd stood them up for an appointment. Not when they do work like this:

Image via South Loop Floral and Events Gallery

I called them again and left yet another voice mail. I basically decided that I was going to have to postpone my much-needed sleep in order to drive up to the florist to make sure they were okay with changing the appointment. On my way to the florist is when #1 above happened. I finally get about 9 blocks from the florist only to have my phone ring. It wasn't my hairstylist complaining that I gave her number to a crazy man on the street. It was the florist saying moving the appointment to the next day was no problem.

Sigh, so I trekked back home and finally went to bed a couple hours later than intended. I was not happy to miss out on that sleep. I hate when being lazy would've paid off better than being proactive. But it happens.

Story #3: Directing Attention To An Ex To Take It Off Myself

This last story is about Easy's ex. I mentioned in my last post that something ridiculous happened when I met her. She came out to Easy's last gig that was in St. Louis at this club called Robbie's House of Jazz.

Image via Robbie's House of Jazz

This was my first time meeting her. Easy introduced us and I shook her hand. Then she pulled me in for a hug. I think she was determined that we would be friendly and she would give me no reason not to like her. But she miscalculated because I AM NOT A HUGGER!!

Easy said he was worried when she hugged me, but then it was over so we all moved on. She seems nice enough, but I definitely wasn't trying to get to know her and hang out. She's an ex and I'm basically just counting down the time until she's no longer a part of our lives.

This crazy thing that happened actually came up when Easy introduced one of his original compositions. It's a song called The Wrath of Knee-coal. It's a lovely song and one of my favorite's he's written. His friend we just went on the double date with actually played with him on the recorded track and it sounds amazing! This song was written about his ex who was at the show.

Easy told her he had written the song and what the title was. But he didn't exactly rehearse what he was going to say to introduce the songs, so the intro came out like this: "I wrote this song. It was inspired by a friend of mine. When she gets angry, it really isn't pleasant. It's not fun. That inspired this song. I hope you like it." Or something like that.

There was a woman at the next table who always goes to Easy's shows in St. Louis with her husband. We haven't seen her since before we were engaged, so she didn't know the background of the songs. She leans over to my table where I'm sitting with one of my best friends, Lion, who's the best man at our wedding. She asks, "is he talking about you?" with a laugh.

I turned to her and threw a thumb over my shoulder in Easy's ex's direction. "Nah! He's talking about her!" The woman turned to look at her like, "Oh..." And didn't ask any follow-up questions. I told Lion what happened and I admit I had amused myself for a bit. Easy found the story pretty funny. I didn't turn to see her reaction, but I know she heard what happened. That should make sure she doesn't try to hug me again.

I'm not going to be friends with her. I feel like it's fine if she and Easy are friendly, but she and I are not about to be friends. Who wants to be friends with their spouse's ex? Certainly not me.

Having your ex officiate your wedding? That's a big hell no!

And a very random late addition: I listen to Pandora while at work. The song Candy by Cameo came on. I love that song as it shows up in several places that I have fond thoughts of, such as the second-to-last scene in the movie The Best Man. I googled it to see what year it came out. It came out in 1987. And it's about cocaine. Cocaine! WTF? I feel like I did when I first learned what the song Mary Jane was about. And the song Brown Sugar. Stupid drug-addled amazing artists.