January 29, 2009 by kim.

This sculpture is located in Millennium Park and is entitled Cloud Gate:

In warm weather, it is wonderfully smooth and shiny. I thought it looked rather interesting with the snow on it in patches. Chris thought it was almost like looking at the earth from space.

Pretty!

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January 25, 2009 by kim.

I’ve been sitting on my hands for months, trying not to inundate my blog with various pictures of bugs we’ve found in our apartment, but I just couldn’t resist sharing this one with you:

We found this dead little guy on our kitchen windowsill. I think it is in the same category as a silverfish/bristletail/firebrat, but I’m not entirely sure. I started taking pictures of it but it blended in too much with the brown sill, so we moved it to a paper towel. Actually, Chris moved it. I really like to look at bugs, but I’m not that jazzed about touching them.

We worked to get the lighting just right for this all-important photo shoot. Overhead lights, indirect lights, flashlight…we stopped before setting up movie lights. No reason to get carried away. I took some shots and gave the camera over to Chris who was able to capture this magnificent creature in all its glory:

Isn’t he (wasn’t he) beautiful?

Farewell bug!

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January 21, 2009 by kim.

Hooray!

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January 18, 2009 by kim.

I’m so excited – I went to my first ever book signing today!

The book – Perfect Chemistry:

The author – Simone Elkeles:

Here she is with Chris (he produced/wrote/directed/edited the rap video that appears on her site – www.simoneelkeles.net – which I wrote about in December):

After I got the book signed, I snatched up and purchased her other books:

I’m reading the first one now (How to Ruin a Summer Vacation), and already I like it! You can read the first chapter of that book and Leaving Paradise if you go to her website (www.simoneelkeles.net).

And – we got cool T-shirts!

You’ll understand the T-shirt if you watch the video on her site…

Yay Simone!

Posted in Happy | 1 Comment »

January 15, 2009 by kim.

Is that a kitty hiding behind that chest? Is it? Is it? Come here cute little…

Aaaahhhhh!!!

That’s no kitty! It’s a swishy cat-like tail toy that I bought Matilda for Christmas!

How could I fall for it every time? I mean, come on – it looks nothing like Matilda’s tail:

Right? Nothing like it. However…

Hey – you really can’t blame me…maybe…if it’s dark…it sort of might…

Oh, stop.

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January 10, 2009 by kim.

Last weekend while shopping at Target, I decided to pick up a new meat thermometer since our old one didn’t seem to be working quite right.

When I took the new thermometer out of the package, I was confused. Reading the gauge, it seemed to be stuck at about 70 degrees. 70 degrees? I just took it out of the package! Shouldn’t it be at zero? I ran it under some hot water to see if the needle moved. It did, but just a little bit.

New thermometer

I went to the computer to try and find information about this anomaly . Maybe it was some sort of defect. I wondered if anyone else had had this problem. After a fair amount of time spent on Google, I came up with nothing. I went to look at the old thermometer. There was no zero temperature anywhere on it.

Old thermometer

No zero temperature? How can I…that would mean…

Ohhhhh.

Duh.

The new thermometer was reading the temperature of the HOUSE. 70 degrees! It all makes sense now! No one is cooking meat to an internal temperature of something as low as zero. Impossible! You wouldn’t even be able to insert the thermometer into the meat, because the meat would be FROZEN.

I’m sure glad we cleared up that little mystery.

NOTE: On Tuesday, I cooked a roast and decided to use both thermometers to check the temperature, just to see if they were working. Of course, BOTH worked just fine.

Good grief.

Posted in Observation | No Comments »

January 6, 2009 by kim.

Chris and I went for a walk Sunday in the wintry weather of Chicago. It was about 35 degrees which wasn’t too bad, but it was gray and cloudy which was depressing. We did see some interesting things along the way, though.

First, the landscape and Chris:

Next, the ice on Lake Michigan:

Remnants of a pier covered in ice

Then, a post with random pieces of art on it:

Finally, we were walking back home when these church bells began to ring:

They were so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves talk, but I was glad that they were ACTUAL BELLS and not a recording!

This concludes our winter walk. Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Posted in Art, Nature | No Comments »

January 1, 2009 by kim.

Yay! We made it to the New Year! I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be a lot better than 2008!

We stayed home to celebrate the New Year this year. Well, we do that almost every year. We’re not much for crowds and parties, I guess. Anyway, we decided to kick off the evening with a rousing game of Scrabble:

It wasn’t all that rousing, really. We were both yawning and I was playing with the cat in between turns until the game was over. We were having quite a time making decent words. After the game (Chris won), Chris wondered if we actually had all the pieces. I’ve had this game since I was a kid and he thought we may have lost a few over the years. I said, “Don’t be silly! Of course we have all the pieces!” Then I second guessed myself and decided to count.

Turns out, we were missing two letter ‘O’s.

Oops! No wonder we couldn’t make high scoring words!

Right.

We then decided to watch a movie until the New Year rolled around. Kung Fu Panda. Very entertaining! Finally, there were only 15 minutes until 2009. We got ourselves together for the big moment:

Boy - don’t we look excited.

Okay - here we go!

…5…4…3…2…1!

Happy New Year!

That’s more like it!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Posted in Holiday, Celebrate | No Comments »