chicago '08

you know those vacations that don't feel like vacation? like, they drain your soul and make you feel worse than before you had vacation, except now you're also behind at work. my week off was a bit exhausting. there were lots of fun parts, but my week may have been better spent farther away from home.

the following things happened (all true):
1. Hugsband was bit by a squirrel in boston commons (I have a picture of the culprit but am too lazy to upload)
2. his bite looks like a razor cut, and an MD friend of ours recommended a course of anti-biotics (no worry about rabies, though)
3. we went to see an opera version of the David Lynch film "lost highway"
4. it sucked
5. I was the (almost) primary caretaker for a preschooler and a toddler for a few days
6. it was very tiring and super fun
7. we bought 5 different kinds of dark chocolate
8. we ate turkish for lunch, greek & indian for dinner in manhattan
9. my clothes got tighter (not in any kind of sexy way)
10. I read a book about the red tailed hawks in central park

the end. back to work.

my nieces were here this week. we had a wonderfully exhausting time. I brought all of my toys home from work, and our house was one giant playroom. yesterday we took them to a children's ecological museum. we especially enjoyed the raptor rehabilitation program. we also took them (and their parents) to yale's peabody museum, a natural history museum. I spent a lot of time trying to explain pre-homo sapien hominids to Lilly, who is 4 and a half. I wasn't sure she quite got it. the next day she was telling one of my friends about what she had seen in new haven, and she referred to "the dead people museum 'cuz first there were dinosaurs, then different weird people, and then the real people like me."

while our guests were here, the resident Mr. Wizard conducted a series of science demonstrations.



they left this morning, and the house seems very quite without them.

Hugsband and I enjoyed a snow day today. (technically, I don't get snow days, but if Hugsband is staying home all day, I am too! plus, I was on call last night and needed some extra rest today.) I should clarify, though. the precipitation wasn't quite snow. it was more like tiny painful ice cubes hurling through the air at 100mph. they didn't accumulate in an amorphous blob the way snow does, each cube remained distint. weird. we spent an hour and a half battling the elements in our neighborhood park and were rewarded with lots of good bird sightings: common and hooded mergansers, belted kingfishers, a young red-tail hawk, some unidentfied falcon (merlin?), and northern pintail ducks.

I have big news:

1- Maxine, our rescue bird, was not warming up to human compansionship and seemed very lonely, so we bought a new bird and named her Francine. (Hugsband calls her '$20 bird', which discriminates her from Max, who is known as 'free bird' since we didn't have to pay to catch her outside.) we purchased Francine 2 weeks ago, and it seemed like a huge mistake at first. the birds hated each other and fought all day. I felt really guilty for making free bird's life even more miserable. then, suddenly today, they started cuddling and chirping sweetly to each other. it's really, really cute.

2- my mom smashed her face on the el when the train braked without warning. her nose was broken, and she had to have surgery. she's back to work and sounds fine now.

3- remember when I went to france with that family and ended up on a nude beach in the riveria for 2 weeks, and there were genital piercings and other weirdness ? well, I just found out that last summer the father stabbed the mother and then shot the judge from their divorce trial sniper-style and then was on the lam in mexico. he was on america's most wanted. now he's in custody. how crazy is that?! I can't believe it.

4- oh, and I got the job I wanted in chicago.