Cats on the Move

We had been a bit worried about how the cats would react to all the packing and logistics of the move.  They may still be traumatized by being locked into the bathroom together on Thursday, followed by a car ride in their carriers.  And they may still be weirded out by the new home and new smells.

But so far?  We’re fine.

Gena: If we’re in sight and she can touch us occasionally, she’s set.  Particularly without our AC the past week or so, we’ve had to sleep with the bedroom doors open, which means she’s been glued to us for 8 hours per night.

And Pup:  She wishes we’d live like this all the time.  She has a roving buffet of plastic to lick, tons of places to hide, new things to attack, and we both get the sense that she finds this arrangement far more stimulating than our usual clean and put-away state.

So far, so good.

-Me and Bee

We Don’t Live Here Anymore.

Perhaps that’s just an extension of Bee’s post below, but take a look:

That was even before we took down the shelves and added even more boxes to the piles.

You can see all our boxes in our windows from the street.  And it’s certainly not feeling like (a) home, or somplace where we do anything but work on the big project called The Move.  Some places are downright arrid:

It’s not sad yet.  But it is bizarre.  And tiring.  Hard to believe it will all culminate in movers showing up at our house on Friday morning to bring this all into our house for us!

-Me

Packing

Just a few days ago our living room was a stack of empty boxes. Since then we’ve started packing, went to New Orleans and came back (more on that soon).

We got back from New Orleans yesterday, picked up a second load of boxes I scavenged from work and packed until we ran out of tape. We’re getting pretty bare in some rooms, but still have a ways to go this week.

Boxes are starting to pile up, but since we brought a car load down each work weekend we did on the house we’re not over run by box towers yet.

We’re getting more tape today and some boxes in a day or so. We’ll be unpacking before we know it!

-Bee

Snow in June

I’ve been saying it snows in June in Chicago since before I moved here. It’s mostly living by the lake which drops our early summer temps 10 degrees lower than the western suburbs, but also other weird Chicago weather patterns make it much colder here. Despite the cold Junes, there are so many perks of living by the lake, such as the Lakefront Path. Although it was in the 50’s and I had to wear legwarmers (the cycling kind, not the Flashdance kind) last weekend I hopped on the Lakefront Path on my bike and road down to see the renovation of Buckingham Fountain and Blues Fest. Below are some photos taken by others that I downloaded from flickr.

Photo by pchowdhury

The renovation to Buckingham Fountain looks great – it was rushed to be ready for the Olympic Committee. There were tons of people checking it out and snapping photos. It would be even better if they reinstalled the crosswalk across LSD directly to it they removed last year.

From Buckingham Fountain I headed north to Blues Fest. There were multiple stages and food vendors around Grant Park with each stage having its own (sponsored) vibe. Each stage had a good size crowd either standing up or parked on camping chairs or blankets – although I was the only one wearing tights and tap shoes. Similar to Taste food and beer was for sale, but it was cool that the city also let people bring coolers into this free festival. I walked around and although I didn’t see the Muddy Waters bus I wanted to include this cool shot from tenrewnna because I really enjoy his music and those he influenced.

Someone  I did see play was Travis “Moonchild” Haddix. He was a great showman and guitarist. His horn section was also really feeling the music, which was fun to watch.

At this point I hopped back on my bike and raced as hard as I could home into the headwind on the LFP. Days like that remind me of what I’m going to miss about Chicago, even in “frigid” June weather. Luckily B-N was also having their annual blues festival the same weekend, so next year we can attend that and not have to wear leg warmers.

-Bee

School’s Out

It’s official. Summer is finally here and I think I could listen to this song 3-5 times a day at least until July.

Graduation has come and gone. I celebrated with a personal dance party after emailing all my papers last week and with family on Sunday. Seeing everyone was great and so was the food at the Handlebar. The ceremony was long, but the experience of walking was worth it.

This was my last great hurdle before enjoying summer could begin. I’ve already been enjoying reading books that aren’t required, bike rides, hanging out with “Me” in the evenings, taking a few photos and I’m looking forward to all the fun and work in B-N. Now it just needs to get warm in Chicago.

-Bee

Things I Won’t Miss

Living in Chicago these past six years has been awesome.  We love our neighborhood; we love our apartment; and we love everything this city has to offer.  While we are excited about Bloomington, we will miss it here and always look back fondly on these years.

But… as much as we love and have appreciated our apartment, there are some things I won’t miss:

1.  the kitchen and bathroom floors.  Cracking, splitting, seeping, impossible to keep clean, especially with cat litter and cat hair waging a constant war on them.

2.  the three flights of stairs.  Being active and, well, used to it, it never bothered me much.  But we are constantly amazed at the house down in Bloomington that unloading our car means… just taking a few steps inside.  Getting things into and out of here can be such a production sometimes!

3.  rickety windows.  The windows in this apartment are beautiful, and we have had gorgeous natural light in every room, all year round.  But some are hard to open or close.  The paint is constantly splitting.  They are drafty in the winter.  They are tough to keep clean.

4.  the dust.  I have no idea why, but this is easily one of the dustiest places I’ve ever lived.  We can dust and make the place sparkle one day, and there is a layer of visible dust on everything just days later.  This is especially true in our bedroom.  Down at the new house, we have NEVER yet dusted, and it’s just… not a problem.  Yet another way this place being so poorly sealed (floors, windows, etc) has been kind of exhausting.

5.  coin laundry, small stove, and no dishwasher.  I know.  Boo hoo.  Such is apartment living.  But being able to do dishes and laundry and regular-size cooking witout much thinking about it is already so amazing and nice, and we don’t even live there yet!

So far I don’t feel too sad about moving.  Between teaching, the dissertation, logistics of the move, the crazy weekends packed to the gils with plans and people going back to March, and even the trip to New Orleans next week, there hasn’t been time for many emotions other than survival.  But when that wistfulness inevitably occurrs, I just might pull out this list.

-Me

Quick Post

We have not abandoned our new blog!  We have been SWAMPED with work the past two weeks!  But the good news is that I successfully defended my dissertation today and Bee is graduating on Sunday.

More from us soon, we promise!

-Me,  Ph.D.

Leaving a Good Home for a Good Home

We find it’s hard for people to appreicate why we are so excited to leave Chicago for Central Illinois.  And that’s understandable.  Perhaps for regular readers of this blog, especially once we’re done with school in a couple weeks and living down there more to report from the front lines, you will see through our eyes why it’s so good for us.  But heck, a year ago I’d never heard of the university around which we’re now planning our lives, and I sure know my first 24 hours in B-N had me wanting to pack up the car and get away… fast.

Take the slow-to-reveal-itself goodness of our new home, and take the context of Chicago (jazz hands!!!) that we’re leaving, and it’s an understandable reaction.  After all, Chicago is a great city, and we were lucky enough to find a great building to live in for my entire six years here, and Bee’s four.  I mean, look at where we live now:

Maybe later we can better explain why we still strongly feel we’re trading up.  But we’re still here, and although we’re busy as hell, barely able to take it in and enjoy it, and have one foot firmly planted out the door, for now, we’re still here.  We’ll miss it, to be sure.  But we promise we’re trying, right now, to agree with you.  This… is a good home.  We really do know it and love it just as you do.

And we can’t wait to invite you into our new home, too.

-Me

A Couple More Links

We are still in a dead sprint between school, work, hosting guests, and making our own moving arrangements.  Time is still flying, though, so we are happy!

Here are some introductions to a couple more links on our page:

Bitten is Mark Bittman’s blog.  Mark Bittman is a regular writer for the New York Times, the author of How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and a co-host of the delightful Spain – On The Road Again which aired this winter on PBS.

He’s someone with a clear food sensibility; he’s not a snob, has no hard rules, respects cooks and farmers and real food, and works to make all things foodie both practical and enjoyable.  I featured him in a recent post about food pantries, and his blog and NYT food reporting is always a breath of fresh air.

The other is a new find for me, Spork and Foon.  I stumbled across this blog via the Flickr photostream associated with Heidi’s 101cookbooks blog, and I’ve been impressed and amused ever since.  The photography is great; the recipes are useful; and the writing conveys the blogger’s obvious joy for food and cooking.  Better yet, she’s young and takes cooking seriously, which awards her automatic cool points in my book.  But like all of our links, it’s just an enjoyable read.  She’s a doll, writes with love and humility, and makes me excited about cooking in that process.  Well worth a spot on our  blogroll.

More to come from us soon!

-Me