April 30, 2008 by kim.

What in the world is going on with the jet streams this year? Can I tell you how sick I am of the weather lately? Well, I can, and I will. I’m sick of it! Warm weather, cold weather, warmer, colder, warm again, cold again.

Enough already!

Here is a sample of what the roller coaster jet streams are looking like over the next couple of days (from www.weather.com):

Would you just look at that mess? Air traveling all willy-nilly, raising and dropping temperatures without a care in the world…it’s a disgrace, I tell ya! A total disgrace!

Let’s hope summer doesn’t go haywire on us, too. Warm weather, I like. Humid, sticky, sweat-dripping suffocation, I can do without.

Come on weather - give us a break!

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April 27, 2008 by kim.

Oh boy! Twenty-one days without sugar, and finally, we got to have cake!

No - we didn’t eat all of it. Wanted to, but didn’t.

We were pretty excited about our first day back on sweets. Sure we didn’t make it to April 30th, but three weeks seemed to be enough. The first two weeks without cake, candy, or cookies went pretty well, considering what a big sweet tooth I have. The final week was more of a challenge. I can see why people don’t suggest depriving yourself when dieting. It only makes your cravings stronger and stronger, until you contemplate knocking children down just so you can snatch the ice cream out of their innocent little hands. Don’t laugh. The thought really did cross my mind as we walked to the grocery store. I’m telling you - those cravings are strong.

I held myself together as we walked into the store, but if I had my way, I would have walked out of there with a cart full of stuff. Pastries, doughnuts, cookies, ice cream, candy bars…the possibilities were endless! Good thing Chris was there, reigning me in. We bagged up our goodies and headed home, buzzing with anticipation of the sugary feast awaiting us.

When it came time to indulge, I served myself a normal portion of cake and sat with my caramel candy bar at the ready. Chris had the flourless chocolate cake, and had his candy bar at the ready. Ready? We were ready.

The first whiff of that cake almost sent me over the edge. How could cake smell so good? Light and fluffy, it tasted as good as it smelled. Chris quickly enjoyed his cake and dove into the candy bar. He only had three small pieces, and I just stuck with the cake. I felt pretty good after eating it, although I kind of missed drinking the refreshing fruit smoothies that we had been drinking for a snack the past week. In addition to Chris’s delicacies, he also decided to partake of some Diet Coke. I think that may have been a bit too much, because the caffeine had him bouncing off the walls for the next few hours and into the next day.

All in all, I think we had a rather successful experiment. We were able to avoid sweets for three weeks solid and felt better for it. In addition, we don’t feel the need to have sugary snacks every evening. We can take it or leave it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is a piece of cake calling my name.

I guess that means I’ll take it.

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April 23, 2008 by kim.

…really…

…no…I won’t…

Thing is, I seem to remember not two years ago when the water actually came up to these signs. Now look how far away it is:

If that’s not a sign of global destruction, I don’t know what is.

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April 21, 2008 by kim.

The first sign of spring isn’t necessarily the first appearance of a robin or flowers in bloom, but rather at the first sighting of Frosty chucked up into a tree:

Either that, or we had more snow this year than I realized.

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April 18, 2008 by kim.

I woke up this morning around 4:30 a.m. and of course, couldn’t sleep. Matilda kitty had a bit to do with that, too, with her meowing, so I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came back, I was laying there awake, when I felt the bed shake. Three scenarios ran through my mind:

1. I was jittery after waking up out of a sound sleep, and felt like I was shaking.
2. A large truck rolled by and made the bed shake.
3. Chris was having a dream and was twitching enough to shake the bed.

3. I looked at Chris, and he was sound asleep and still.
2. I didn’t hear a truck go by.
1. I must be crazy.

When we woke up this morning, I told Chris about it and he said that sometimes it feels like his body shakes if he’s startled awake, so I thought that must be it.

Then, we turned on the news.

Would you believe it? Downstate Illinois had a moderate EARTHQUAKE registering 5.2 on the Richter Scale at 4:36 a.m. - around the same time that I felt the bed shake!

Wow! I never thought I would feel an earthquake here in the Midwest!

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April 17, 2008 by kim.

While sitting in the car by the lake eating our McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches, we observed some interesting seagull behavior. I’m sure they knew we had food in the car, but having no appendages with which to open our doors to get at us, they had to be content just walking around the car shooting us dirty looks.

Those that weren’t interested in us, were interested in each other. There was much squeaking and squawking going on, and sensing a good photo opportunity, I took out our trusty digital camera. It was a bit hard to take pictures of the seagulls, because they were hanging out just out of my line of sight, but I did manage to get a couple shots.

I’m not sure, but I think some sort of mating ritual was going on that morning. I caught these two before they tried to sneak off to be alone:

Then I caught them during a private moment:

I’m going to guess they were mating, even though I can’t really find any concrete evidence of seagull mating rituals online.

Ah…love by the trash cans. How romantic!

Posted in Nature, Animals, Observation | No Comments »

April 15, 2008 by kim.

Happy Tax Day, Everyone!

I know that’s an oxymoron, but I’m just trying to put a positive spin on the most dreaded day of the year.

Happily, we finished our taxes yesterday. When I say “we”, I really mean Chris. I was there for most of it on Sunday (running back and forth to my office to retrieve various documents that I had forgotten - grrrr), but I had a migraine yesterday and spent the morning in bed while Chris was chained to the computer navigating the billion nitpicky questions he was being asked. There are so many steps involved when you file online! I’m sure the same steps are involved when filling out the forms by hand, but I digress. I took notes, so next year should be much easier.

By easier, I mean that we’ll just have someone else do it.

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April 10, 2008 by kim.

Just thought I’d bring a little sunshine into the blog today, to counter the never ending rain we’ve been having…

Chris bought these for me earlier this week and they still look good. Thanks honey!

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April 5, 2008 by kim.

5 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes.

That is how long we lasted without refined sugar.

We both had stressful weeks. When we’re stressed, we turn to chocolate. Most people do this. The cravings tonight were so strong that we decided to eat some sugar. We went back and forth on this for about an hour. Having come this far, it seemed a shame to break our little sugar-free streak.

How were we to know that we (especially me) would actually be turned off by the stuff?

Here is what we decided to buy for this evening:

Our little junk food frenzy

We were so excited to be able to eat all our goodies! Once we started eating and drinking, though, we were disappointed and confused.

First of all, the soda. Way too sweet. So sweet, that I only had a few sips. Second, the popcorn. I didn’t even have that, but it isn’t a sweet, so it would have been okay. Third, we had two cupcakes that I had baked late last week (not pictured). They were chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter chips inside. We didn’t have frosting (having chucked it in the sugar purge on Sunday), so we ate them plain. Chocolate cake should taste like chocolate cake, right? Wrong. It tasted like paper towel.

Finally, we ate our chocolate. Chris had about 3 out of 5 pieces of his Dove bar, which he said tasted good at first, but not so good as he continued eating. I had one piece of Toffifay and almost spit it out. It had a sort of bitter, cardboard-y taste. I continued eating that one piece to see if the flavor would present itself, but it just didn’t.

You know what that means, don’t you?

That’s right. We’re back on the “no sugar” kick. We’ll revisit sweets again once we hit the end of the month, but I just don’t think I’ll ever look at my precious snacks the same way again.

If you can believe it, I’m actually considering having some fruit and yogurt.

Who am I, and what have I done with Kim?

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April 2, 2008 by kim.

Believe it or not, Chris and I decided to give up refined sugar for a month.

WHAT?

That’s right. We did. That means no cakes, cookies, or candy. We started last Sunday, and we’ll go at least until April 30th.

Why?

I think we decided to do it because we’ve been feeling sort of under the weather lately, and we thought eliminating sugar might help. We threw everything away containing sugar, and stocked up on fruits and vegetables. Yes, there is sugar in fruit, but not as much as there is in a candy bar.

Candy bar…mmmm…

Oh - sorry. Got off track there for a minute.

Anyway, we initially agreed on cutting out the sugar indefinitely, but my obsessive brain kept conjuring up images of cake and frosting (white cake and white frosting, to be specific), so we settled on trying it for a month. Now, I may not even WANT sugar after that point (HA), but my brain felt better knowing there was an end in sight. That’s not to say that I’ll go crazy and inhale a whole cake, but it gives me comfort to know that it’s not gone forever.

Hmmm. If that doesn’t say “addict”, I don’t know what does.

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