There is a cat on my lap

...because clearly this is where all of the fun and attention-deserving things are happening!  It's really adorable until he gets tired of being a lap cat and decides to explore the desk, the keyboard, and the mouse.  You try typing with your elbows up in the air trying to keep the cat from climbing onto the desk.  It's super difficult and awkward!

So I'm going to try out Bar Method with Mandy this weekend.  I hear nothing but awesome things about it (and by awesome I mean things like "It's so hard! But so worth it") so I got a free class email offer and we'll see!  I imagine it will kick my ass, a lot, but be totally worth it.

My insurance (and other benefits) from my NEW FULL TIME JOB! have finally kicked in so I went to the doctor yesterday and got a clean bill of health.  Except that I am slightly anemic and at some point will have hypothyroidism.  Thanks Mom.  I'm hoping some iron supplements will fix the tiredness; I sleep between 7.5 and 9 hours a night and I still fell asleep on the bus home the past two days.  Ugh.  We'll see, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've decided to cross stitch some Christmas stockings for JonMarke and I.  I remember that Nana made our family's stockings and they were awesome, so I wanna try to make some for our new little two person family unit.  I got two little kits with designs and they are SUPER complicated!  I knew the pictures looked detailed but when I opened them up I found that the pattern has like five different stitches and varying numbers of strands to use, plus it's on 14 count fabric so it's already fairly detailed.  But I'm having fun just sitting in front of some television and working on it for the past few nights.  The snowman mostly has a head now, but no eyes or nose yet cuz those are different colors.

And it's getting to be time to put up curtains in our apartment to keep out the cold.  Perhaps this weekend.

Test

So check it out, if I post an entry today, then I still (just barely) have managed to make at least one post a month since April!  Take that, everyone who didn't believe me when I said I'd update more often!  *sheepish look*

But really, this time I have a valid excuse, my life has been super insane for about a month.  So I talked about the job situation already, but it's still ever changing.  Now they're talking about a full-time position for 2011 that's fighting it's way through budget reviews right now, and there may even be resources to hire me full-time for the rest of this year!  So goodbye contract, hello awesome benefits!  The company I work for is so friggin' amazing, I'm having so much fun working there, it's interesting, and totally cool work that is fixing a lot of ongoing problems for the rest of the company.  IT is awesome (and frustrating sometimes) because we get to make these huge changes that totally improve the efficiency and ease with which the rest of the company does business (but we also get complained to and about when it isn't working).  :-)  Ah well.

So besides the job news we also adopted two little kittens about four weeks ago!  They are tiny and adorable, or at least they were tiny when we got them.  At this point they have more than doubled in size from the 1.5lbs they weighed when we got them.  They are fun and playful (read: they keep us up at night with their craziness) and are totally awesome!  Also, about two hours after we actually got them home my camera died, and I lost my charger somehow, so I had to buy a new one online and it only showed up last week.  So there aren't really an 10-week kitten pictures, but here are some 14-week kitten pictures!

The black one is Puck, he is mine.  The tabby is Finnegan and he is JM's.

Finnegan really wanted to attack the camera wrist strap, that's the only reason he was looking in the camera's direction at all.

Puck is totally a trouble maker, getting into all sorts of places he shouldn't.

They LOVE boxes!  You can see three of them that are just sorta strewn about the room.  And foil balls too, the are really easily (and cheaply) entertained!

And also, wedding planning.  So there, three good excuses for being as delinquent as I have been.  :-)

A JOB!!!!

So I'm pretty sure that I have a job now!  Like, a full-time one, at least for the rest of the year.  It's still a bit hush hush because all the paperwork hasn't been signed yet, but screw that... we bought a bottle of champagne and we're celebrating!

Also, the apartment is pretty much done.  The camera is dead, and I can't find the charger, but once I do I'll take some more pictures.  We've got a ginormous couch for giants in here now, and it's really just fantastic.  It's big and comfy and awesome!

And we've started wedding planning.  And by we, I mean me, but JonMarke's being pretty good about it.  He is at least having an opinion on things and helping me start to look for venues!  We're visiting a few places this weekend and it seems like about now we're just gonna start doing this with (apparently) all of our free time from now on.  :-)  It probably won't be that bad.  I think we're a bit early in picking out a place as we're trying to have the wedding in September or October of next year, so maybe once we've got that dealt with we'll have a break before DJs, photographers, videographers, caterers, flowers, decorations, invitations, DRESSES!, etc.  (I'm excited about the dress part)

Apartment!

Well, it's not finished, but it's definitely getting there!  Actually, the only things that still need to fit in somehow are a couch and a TV/TV stand, which we will deal with in a few weeks.

So, pictures!

Looking in from the hallway (still a few boxes unpacked)

Just inside the door, a place for shoes, and our table

Kitchen

More kitchen, between the fridge and stove

Desk and bookshelf

Looking into our room (I think the TV will go right next to that bookshelf on the outside wall of our bedroom)

Bedroom, with a bed and everything!

Bathroom

Looking in at the closet from the bathroom (the door into the living room is just there on the left before the shoe rack)

Looking into the closet from the living room (the plan, however, is to keep those doors closed so no one has to look in at the mess that is our closet)

Our first week here has been pretty awesome!  I am super tan again, which is nice.  I used to be this tan all the time when I was a little kid, running around outside, playing soccer, etc. and now that I'm walking everywhere (and it's summer) I'm tan again.

We're walking sooooo much here!  On weekdays I walk almost three miles every day (depending on how much I walk at lunchtime) just getting to and from the public transit and lunch.  We live in a fantastic neighborhood where you can walk to almost everything you need.  We still plan on driving to Dominick's on the weekends to buy meat and that sort of grocery type item, but we have a great little produce market at the end of our block, and a CVS for random emergency needs.  It's great.  There's also a ton of other little stores around, a bunch of restaurants, banks, salons, etc.  And the Metra, should we ever want to go downtown (for things other than work).  Also, there's a bajillion parks and a beach within walking distance, so going for runs (yes, I will be going for runs) will be nice and scenic.

In fact, we went for a run last weekend, but it was storming and rained like no other on us almost the entire time.  My legs just stopped hurting Saturday, which was basically exactly a week later.  Hopefully I'll get used to the exercise soon, cuz it sure is good for me!

We did absolutely nothing for the Fourth yesterday, which was really nice.  Aunt April and Uncle Bob came over for lunch and we took a walk around the neighborhood, but after that we were exhausted and just came home and did nothing (besides build the bookshelves and unpack the books).

The Road Chronicles: Day 4 (and really just the rest of the trip plus the first week in Chicago)

Ok, here's the real version of events since the disgusting day of packing the car in Tulsa.

We left Tulsa early early early Sunday morning and drove.  The end.

Well, ok, it was a little more exciting than that, to be fair.  We stopped in St. Louis to have lunch with our awesome friend Doug.  We ate delicious pizza and chatted with him, then got back in the car.  There was a huge accident with at least one person (fatally?) injured just in front of us as we were leaving St. Louis and the police had all four lanes of traffic completely blocked off with their cars.  So we parked the car in the middle of the freeway and sat there listening to Harry Potter on tape with the AC on for about 45 minutes.  Ugh (both to the horrible accident and the horrible traffic).

But then we were on our way and made really good time to Hinsdale and Aunt April and Uncle Bob's house.  We had some food, rested a bit, and got settled in.  Unfortunately Uncle Bob was leaving for Michigan the next day, but fortunately that meant that we got to park the van in his spot in the garage.  Not that it's a bad neighborhood or anything, but it was soooo nice to have the car and all of our stuff safely inside during the next few days when the ginormous storms hit.  Really, I'm sure they weren't that ginormous, from Chicago standards, but from our point of view we thought this was the end.  We'll get used to it I'm sure though.

The power did go out for about four hours or so, so we went out to dinner and went to bed early.

Monday and Tuesday JonMarke and I spent the day looking at apartments, and Tuesday afternoon we found a really great one.  We put the application in Wednesday, got approved, and moved in Friday!  Thursday we (he and I and Aunt April) spent the entire day at IKEA and at a mattress store buying furniture and a bed.  Then we moved all the stuff in Friday.  It only took two trips and not very much time, which was great.

Here are a few photos of the apartment before we filled it up with boxes and stuff:

 Standing in the doorway looking in at the "living room"

From the living room looking at the doorway to the "bedroom"; it's technically not a 1BR apartment because a bedroom is qualified by having the closet in the room, so they get away with calling this a "loft" or "convertible" apartment because the closet is not in the bedroom (and the wall doesn't go all the way to the ceiling either)

The kitchen, which shares a wall with the bedroom.  The apartment is not yellow, it is in fact just bad lighting from the flash on my camera; it is the color of the wall on the left in this picture, which somehow didn't get all flashified.

Looking into the bedroom from the living room

Looking back out into the living room from the bedroom (the bedroom is so small it's hard to get an actual picture of it from anywhere, I can't back up far enough!)

The huge closet/changing room (the bathroom is to the right but you can't see it in this picture)

The bathroom, through the closet

All in all we're very happy with it; it's a great layout, and it's just big enough for us to live in comfortably!  We've got most of our furniture set up but I'm not gonna take/post any more pictures until it's fairly close to being done, cuz it's still pretty messy and full of boxes right now.

The apartment is in a fantastic neighborhood as well!  We can walk to pretty much everything we need to get to, and it's all very safe and friendly.  JonMarke can walk to classes, and I can walk to the train and then it's only a fifteen minute ride into downtown where I work.  We've had a lot of fun wandering around exploring the neighborhood so far.

Day 4, and 5, and 6, and etc.

Oh my god, well, we're here, and it's been like a week since the last post.  But don't freak out, we did make it, we're fine; everything just got sorta busy and/or crazy and I haven't had time or access to a computer or internet or some combination of the three for about a week.

I'll go into much more detail later, but for now JonMarke and I made the drive to Chicago, stayed with Aunt April and Uncle Bob for a few days, found an apartment, moved in, furnished it, did the grocery shopping, etc.

And my first day of work is tomorrow!  So dinner and sleep is in order, and I'll try to get my computer set up so that I can do a full and detailed post, including pictures, tomorrow!  (I've stolen JM's laptop for right now just to check email and the Metra schedule for tomorrow morning)

The Road Chronicles: Packing for Day 4

Bleh, repacking the car today was not very fun at all.

It is stupidly hot and muggy outside today; according to the weather it is 95 degrees but feels like 107.  And of course we didn't really think to do the packing later tonight when it was a bit cooler.  We just thought "We want to get on the road early tomorrow so we need to pack today instead of tomorrow morning."  Woops.

Also, cuz it was late and dark when we actually got to William's house, I forgot to put up the sunshade.  Then, we haven't had to get in the car for the past two days at all, so I didn't think to put it up then either.  Needless to say, when I got in it today to back it up the driveway so we could pack, the entire car was horribly hot.  The steering wheel (which isn't even black) was so hot I couldn't really hold onto it firmly with both hands for more than about ten seconds at a time.  Luckily I just had to turn the car around in the driveway and back it up a few feet.

But, half an hour, three bottles of water, and about ten gallons of sweat later, the car is packed!  It is full to the brim, there is maybe room for the two pillows that are inside the house still, and that only because pillows are fairly squishy and forgiving.

After three days of driving with the van seat on top of the car, we decided we didn't actually want to put anything else up there.  There were a few things that didn't fit into the car that would have, had we been willing to put more up on the top.  But Dad and JonMarke did a really good job of tying that seat down, and then we did a really good job of getting the tarp bungeed down on top of it.  So I'd rather not mess with it at this point.  When we were driving through New Mexico there were a bunch of lighted warning signs that said things like "High wind area next 75 miles" and a bunch of cars passed us in those areas that did not have their roof cargo tied down very well.  One large black SUV had two large suitcases on their roof rack.  The suitcase were very well wrapped around with rope and tied down to the left and right sides of the car, but the owners did nothing about the front and back of the suitcases.  So this SUV flies past us and the suitcases are blown up at about a 60 degree angle on the top of the car, but held on at the sides, just not the top.

It was all fairly scary and I'd rather leave well enough alone.  So there are three boxes of JonMarke's books and one of his guitars that William will mail to us in Chicago.  I offered to repack the car so that the guitar would fit, but JonMarke swears that mailing it is how he got it to Tulsa in the first place and that it will be fine.  So that's the plan.

So now, an hour and a half later, we are finally almost comfortable in our skin again, after drinking much more water and sitting under the fans in the air-conditioned house.

We're going to bed early today and hopefully we'll be on the road by about 6:30 tomorrow!