Last Sunday (Not Yesterday)

Last Sunday was Mother's Day.  I did not not go home and see my own mother.  I was over 2,000 miles away in Seattle.  Granted, my mother wasn't at home, either.  She was 450 miles away from home in Branson, MO.  So there was not guilt trip on the trip.  But I did call her.  TWICE.  And left two messages on her cell phone!

I went out with Cora's family to a quaint little restaurant filled with lace.  EVERY WHERE.
 

Along with Cora and her daughter, we were joined by her mom, sister, brother-in-law, and her niece and nephew.  I got to sit across from this little sweetheart.

Precious?  Isn't she.

But then, after this wonderful meal, something sad happened.  I had to go home.

Which meant another sad drop off @ Sea-Tac.  Well, there was some kissing in the parking garage. ;-)  Then, planes (Southwest), trains (CTA Orange & Red lines), and automobiles (a cabs) and the next thing I know, I'm back in my condo, on the phone, talking to Cora.  Which is so surreal, since I was just talking to her face-to-face.

Silver Centurion* Saturday

After such a feverish Friday, Cora and I took it a little easier on Saturday. The morning was spent out running errands. Like on Thursday & Friday, I did the driving. We figure that in July, I will need to be able to drive groups of people around, so getting a feel for the area wouldn't be a bad idea.

Saturday afternoon, we went to a matinee showing of Iron Man 2.

Cora had not seen the original Iron Man, but I gave her a quick rundown, and I don't think she was overly confused by that. All in all, I liked the movie, and loved all the Avengers / S.H.E.I.L.D. stuff, but then, I was a comic book collector in my 20's, so you don't have to hit me over the head with a hammer to get some of the references.

After the movie, it was time to meet up with Callista and her husband for pizza! Good food. Good conversation. They hadn't seen the movie yet, so I tried to reassure her that her dislike of Scarlett Johansson wouldn't taint the movie. (I later referred to her as "that Scarlett witch". If you don't get that joke, that means you're fairly normal.)

We got home from dinner, and joined Cora's mother and Gwen for a showing of 27 Dresses before bed at a respectable time this night of around 11:00.

* In the comics, the armor Tony uses to fight Whiplash the first time, is referred to as the "Silver Centurion" armor. But you all knew that, right.

A Fairly Full Friday

Last Friday, I was out in Seattle, visiting my best gal, Cora.  I'd flown in Thursday evening, and we certainly hit the ground running.

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First Things First – While our first try of the morning fizzled with total equipment failure, we switched things up a little, and things started to get really HOT.  And after that first try, we did it again.  Yup, Cora's toaster died as she tried to toast her bagel.  But we pulled out her infrequently used toaster oven (I'm a toaster oven guy) and got both of our bagels all nice and toasty.  I even made Gwen's breakfast, a plain, untoasted bagel, with two slices of Colby-Jack.  Cora and I drove her off at school, and then took off on our tasks for the day.

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Making It Legal – Off to the courthouse to get our marriage license.  I'd never done this before, so wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  We waited in the little licensing room while other people tried to get their marriage licenses and passport papers done.  Note I said, "tried".  The couple before I were going to get married on July 10th, one week after us.  Too bad the license is only good for a month.  D'oh! They were a couple of days early, so "No soup for you." And the couple who wanted to get passports for their kids for June?  Yeah, you need to bring the kids in.  And for June?  You are going to need to pay $60 extra, EACH, to get that expedited.  Ooops!

But as you can see, we were successful in that mission.

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Time To Celebrate! – With one of our first big task done, we then took care of a small task, getting our wedding flutes at Crate & Barrel.  We think they represent us well.  Modern.  Quirky.  Bubbly.  Kinda cool.

From there, we went to The Cheesecake Factory to celebrate getting the license.  We went to a Cheesecake factory on our first date.

And, like that time, Cora and I shared a desert.  White chocolate and blueberry.

We also made a quick stop into Macy's so I could pick up a tie for our next appointment.

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Picture Time! – After getting Gwen from school, we all got dolled up and headed out to meet our wedding photographer for our "engagement" session on the shores of Lake Washington.  It was a beautiful afternoon.  A little breezy, but sunny and clear.  If you want to see some of the pix, please go HERE.  I must warn you, they are wonderful.  This little box turtle watched us.

And this fun loving, lovely lady shot us.  There was a whole lot of laughing and walking and posing and walking and more laughing.

The shoot was fun.  The pix I've seen are great, and I cannot wait to see what our wedding pictures will look like.

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Let's Do Some Bacon – A few weeks ago, I was talking to Cora about a meal idea I'd had.  A kind of grown-up version of the tomato soup / grilled cheese sandwich mea.  Instead of normal tomato soup, we went with Campbell's Select Harvest Zesty Tomato Bisque.  A thicker, hardier, tasty soup.  And for the "grilled cheese"?  We took Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, some more of that Colby-Jack cheese, and bacon bits.  (Real stuff, but from a jar, 'cuz we're lazy like that.)

They start like this:

  But a quick trip thru the oven, and they come out looking like this:

And they tasted AMAZING!

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Wrap It Up – And by 9:00, Cora was waking my sleeping ass up from the couch, and telling me it was bed time.  Hey, that's 11:00 my time, and we packed a lot into one day.

Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

I finally went and done did it.  I went and I done won Beckeye's Caption Contest Crotch-test #34.

I'm the FireCrotch of the month for May, and I promise to faithfully uphold all duties and responsibilities that go with the title.  Not sure what those would be, mind you, but I will do my best to uphold them regardless.

Thanks, Beckeye, and now I have this song stuck in my head…

And I said 'duty'.  ;-)

It's An Illusion

I know I haven't been posting a whole lot of personal stuff recently, and guess what? The trend continues! I fly out to Seattle this weekend, and Cora and I will be buying our marriage license.

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Now, wrap your brain around this one, borrowed from the Red Eye:

Look at the squares labeled "A" & "B". Which square is darker?

Obviously, it's a trick question. That are the same color. But your brain will refuse to see it. Want proof? Link HERE. Haul the picture into your photo editing software, and sample them.

R-120, B-120, G-120.

My job is done. I'm out of here. Have a nice weekend, and I'll catch up with y'all next week.

Star Wars Day II

The entire first, second, ORIGINAL trilogy. Told with Lego in 2:13!

Thanks, Gizmodo!

Star Wars Day

Boo yourself. That's a classic!

Two Months

But who's counting?

Dream Police

[Editor's Note: No – You're not dreaming, I'm also guest posting over @ Sassy Britch's blog today.  And if you are coming over from there, "Welcome."  I wrote about a dream on Monday.  While not a "Part 2", it is a follow-up to THIS post.]

I dream.  I dream a lot.  I don't remember my dreams most nights, but at least once a week I will.  Every once in a while, I will enter what I call an "active dream phase" where for about a week, I have 3 very vivid dreams a night that I remember bits of when I awake.

I love those times.

My dreams usually have a narrative, and mostly make some sort of sense, although there are always impossible things.  Like the dream where I was arguing with the people about how they were reporting on balance sheet numbers.  They were doing it like it was and income statement, only adding the 12 months together.  I was in their face about needing "bucket zero" as we called it, where you rolled last year's balance into the new year.  See, I haven't coded financials in 7 years, so I wouldn't be having this discussion at work.

I do not have recurring dreams, but I have recurring themes.  Not the traditional "falling" or "being chased" things either. More SCOPE than that!

You Can't Get There From Here – One recurring theme is that I need to get somewhere, but I can't.  The harder I try, the further I get away.  Like I need to get to work, but as I get on the train, it breaks down, so I hop on a bus, but it takes a wrong turn, the cab gets rerouted due to a detour, and I am further from my destination than when I left.  While these dreams are really frustrating, I do get to explore new, and totally made up sections of places I know, so that's kinda cool.

I Believe I Can Fly (Just Not Very Well) – I do have flying dreams, but in my dreams, I can't fly well.  It's not that I crash into stuff, or flap around like <- THAT <- dork.  No, I tend to just skim the ground.  So, I have to dodge around cars and stuff.  Eventually, I can get some decent air, but usually only a story or so up.  Once, my flying ability mutated.  Instead of being able to fly, I strapped joy buzzers to the bottom of my feet, and the the vibrations reduced friction, and I could skate upon them.

Sans a belt?  Sans Pants! – In my dreams, I'm often pantsless.  Never naked. Usually I have on a shirt, and most times I've even got unders on.  No junk swinging free.  But I'm out in public in a T-Shirt and boxers.  I can pull the shirt down to cover if I crouch, but then I have to duck walk and hide behind things to avoid being seen until I can get to where ever my pants are.  The dream always ends before I get tot he pants.  Always.

This would be my nightmare.

What about you?  Do you have any recurring dreams?  Themes?  Either write them in the comments, or take this as a meme and post the answer on your blog.

Last Friday

Last Friday, I was out in the far western suburbs at a conference in the city's historic downtown area. After the meetings, I was supposed to get a ride back to the hotel with my boss's boss. I was following her out, but got distracted and lost them in the crowd.

Crap! But I'll just email them on the BlackBerry and… no BlackBerry. That means no phone numbers. No email addresses. I'm not sure which direction the hotel is. And…

Double crap! I left my wallet back at the hotel!

So there I am, standing on the edge of the quaint little traffic circle in town, slapping the hell out of my self, screaming "It's only a dream! Wake up stupid. It's only a dream!" Well, the fifth hit or so REALLY hurt like a mother. It wasn't a dream.

I eventually make it back to the hotel in time to get cleaned up and meet everyone for dinner. In the room, I found my wallet and BlackBerry but no car keys. Instead there was a valet ticket. So I flipped on my robe, and tracked down the hotel owner her was just heading off on her evening walk. She told me that she didn't have valet parking, and that my car was in the parking lot. Fearing a revealing gust of wind, I went back to my room, dressed, and found the keys on the dresser.

I headed out, and as I closed the door, I met up with some friends…

And woke up from the dream.

Last Weekend

I realize that I've kind of left you hanging about Cora & Gwen's LAST visit last weekend.  Sorry about that.  It was really a wonderful weekend.  Aside from the trip to the Art Institute (LINK) there wasn't any real "Big Ticket" kind of event.  Nothing touristy.  Just everyday sort of life things.

And it was MAGIC!

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Friday: We woke up and headed out.  But not that far.  Just down to the corner.  On the corner right outside my building is a crossing guard.  I wanted Cora and Gwen to meet her, and help fuel the excitement for the school that we would be visiting later.

While not distracting her from her job, we spent about 45 minutes talking with her.  Getting great intel on the school and the neighborhood.  And then we also had a "small world" moment while talking about a all-girl's Catholic school here in town.  While I don't know a lot of high school's in the city, I do know this one.  Turns out, she was a classmate of "The Blonde", my friend from college, who we were going to visit the next day.

The school tour went very well.  Cora and Gwen loved it.  I liked it, too.  It's a smallish school.  Not intimidatingly.  It's a classic three story brick building.  Nice and compact.  But it's also right in the middle of a "green" retrofit, and is a really neat place, with a huge community garden and play lot.

The evening was spent on snuggled up on the sofa making a "Cora sandwich" while watching more Harry Potter.  These are good movies.  Why didn't someone tell me before this?

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Saturday: Gwen took the lead in making crepe's for breakfast.  We filled them with cream cheese and bananas, or blueberries, or chocolate pudding, or yogurts.  And more Potter.

Midday – We headed out to the suburbs.  A slow crawl in Saturday afternoon traffic to visit "The Blonde" and her family.  They have 4 kids, and her oldest daughter is Gwen's age (MG), and they have similar interests.  But before we go, we have one stop to make.

Crate & Barrel looking for wine glasses for our first wedding toast.

Gwen was a little nervous in there.  Not anything to do with the wedding, but she was feeling a little clumsy, and there was just all that glass stacked around.  (Truth be told, I use my super powers to shrink about 10% when I enter too, to avoid the "bull in the china shop" thing.)  And we found exactly what we were looking for in the "Verve Flute" (see left).

After the quick stop and success, made it out to our friends'.

Good food.  Good conversation.  A little drama (MG had an accident on a a rip board. A couple of raspberries, nothing serious), and then watching "The Blindside" in their home theater.  Well, trying to watch "The Blindside", but there was a scratch on the disk, so we resorted to Nerf dart / foam disk battles and watching movie snippets.

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Sunday: Rats.  This got here WAY to quick.  As we all moped about, saddened by the fact that the family was going to be split up for a while.  But not too long.  And not for much longer.

We loaded up the car and headed for a lunch visit with my parents.  This was Gwen's first time to meet them, but thought it was important that it happened before the wedding.  Despite the fact that we were about an hour late, the meeting went well, but soon, I had to get the girls to the airport.

:-(  Lots of group hugs, a couple embarrassing (for Gwen) smooches and then they disappeared thru security.

And I went home to a condo that suddenly felt very, very quiet and empty, and moped about for a few hours.

Until I got the quick email from Cora.  Which led to a phone call.  :-)

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You're A Genuine Work of Art

Thursday was the day of 3 halves.  Just like a hockey match.

The first half was filled with the cleaning, organizing, etc.  The normal scramble of preparation when Cora is coming.  But amped up to 11 because because my future step daughter Gwen was coming along for her LAST visit to Chicago before she moves here in the summer.  I wanted to make sure everything was just right for her.  Ya know?

After a quick car wash to blast the bird shit off my car from it setting outside for 40 hours at my parents over Easter, it was off to the airport to get the girls from their flight due in at 1:00.

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The second half of the day started when they got in. We got our welcome hugs and kisses in, grabbed their luggage off baggage claim (like, the third and fourth bags to pass by!), and then managed to get the car out of the parking garage in 58 minutes, so I didn't have to pay for an extra hour!

It was then off to get a not so quick bite before the three of us hit the Art Institute.  If you haven't ever been, you are probably still fairly familiar with many bits of the collection.  And but those aren't the bits I want to talk about.

First though, we have to start off with a picture in front of the lion statues out front.  Everybody does it.  Here we are at the entrance. We decided to get our yearly membership on this trip so we could go back.  And, they have a rule that if you live over 100 miles away, you get 10% off.  We used Cora's PO box and saved some ca$h!

A couple of things that caught my eye:

The Rock by Peter Blume has a destruction side and a rebirth side,

and Coca-Cola is on the destruction side…

Speaking of "destruction" they have Ivan Albright's Picture of Dorian Gray from the movie.

Trust me the life size painting was pretty disturbing.

Regardez! Un singe! Et un chiot!
(Look!  A monkey! And a puppy!)

(Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.)

But, the middle half of the day was winding down and it was time to head out of the museum.  But we'll be back to tackle the Modern Wing soon!

(FYI – Unposed.  I was sneaky.)

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The third half of the day was spent at my condo HOME.  We cooked a little supper, and I about pepper sprayed us out of the joint when the ground red pepper on my chicken turned aerosol started us all coughing.

But, after tasty, home cooked vittles (does microwaving Easy Mac count as "home cooked"?), we settled in on the sofa to watch "Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone".  I have tried to watch this movie, TWICE, at Cora's, and each time, we got to the scene with Hagrid delivering Harry's letter, and had to shut it off.  This time, we made it all the way through.

But then, it was time for the three half day to end.  After all, Friday was going to be a school day.

Guest Blogger – Museum of the Art Institute

[Editor's Note: Today's blog post is my guest blogger's first blog post. She and her mom flew into town to visit me this weekend, and we started the trip off with a visit to the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. Without further ado, I bring you my future daughter, Gwen.]

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Hello. My name is Gwen. I usually spend my time at home in the state of Washington, but for the past couple of days, I have been in Chicago. On the first day, I woke up at home at 3:30 a.m., and was on the plane by 6:30. We arrived just after 12:00. We went straight to the Art Institute of Chicago. There were many paintings, sketches, sculptures, etc. Here are a few:

Okay, that is it. I'm done. Goodbye!

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[Editor's Note: We were trying to ape the people in the the painting. That explains my shirt and hair, really.

And a great thanks to Gwen, for helping me out on this post.]

And posted on the wrong day!

Happy Anniversary, Cora

All, it was one year ago today that Cora and I met in person.  And the thing is, knowing how amazing and wonderful this year has been, this next year is going to be even more magical.

 

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

Did I ever tell you the REAL reason Cora fell for me? Like her favorite fictional boy wizard, Harry Potter, I too have a scar on my forehead. Mine, however, is not due to the touch of an evil wizard. More like the touch of a 2 way swinging door.

(It's as hard to see in real life as it is in the picture.)

I was in 3rd or 4th grade at the time. I was only in school in that building for 3 years, and I don't think it was second grade; too young. Anyhow, I had been excused to go to the bathroom. This was back in the day when Coke had real sugar, no child owned a "bicycle helmet" and grade school bathrooms not only had doors, but had doors that swung both ways. (Psst – don't forget to make an Anna Paquin joke later when you review this.)

After doing my business and washing my hands like a good little boy, I headed for the entrance / exit door. That's when Charlie from the Special Ed class BLASTED through the door at a full run.

CRACK!

The leading edge of the door caught me right above my left eye. Little eff'r just kept going too. Oblivious to the destruction he had just wrought. But then, so was I. Head wounds don't really hurt. But one thing they do very well?

BLEED LIKE A MO-FO!

Probably concussed, I returned to my class room. The teacher gasped. Jill Sherbyn almost threw up. I had yet to realize that the blood, streaming from the half inch gash and had run down my face and neck and was starting to soak into my T-shirt.

Being the 70's, I was taken to the school nurse, who cleaned me up, and put a butterfly bandage on it. No other medical care was provided. I think. Did I mention the possible concussion?

I am pretty sure they called my mom to pick me up. Or at least bring me a new shirt, because the sudden imbalance of my four bodily humors that were displayed like a mad Rorschach Test on my clothing.

But I don't get it title. Okay, "Charlie" makes sense, he hit you with the door. But "Chocolate Factory"…

Oh. My.

You seriously made that joke?

Yes. And for that, I WIN.