Lincoln Park Zoo

One of my favorite places in Chicago.

It's weird when it gets dark at 5 p.m.

Oh Ducky.

Walking through the Loop in the fall always makes me feel like I'm in a John Hughes movie.

He's Done!

Updates from puppet #2 coming soon...

Keep on dreaming.

Oriental Insitute at the University of Chicago

Definitely worth checking out.

Coal Valley, IL 9/5/09

Took these pictures at my grandparents house in Coal Valley...sometimes I forget how beautiful it is.

Parts of the whole

"Ta Da!" "Zoe, only magicians and idiots say ta da."

The head will take some more work...I don't think stuffed is going to work...and his chin is kind of nonexistent...and the nose is not attached very well...but not bad for a first try I guess!

Halfway there...

My Nemisis

Mr. Deuce

My nickname is "Ka".

Happy Friday...although that loses meaning when one is unemployed most days.

West Bend! Who knew you had it in ya?

I hate you and I hate Valley Forge and I will NOT go!

I was reading Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live yesterday (he is amazing and hilarious and references the Quad City Thunder in the book BTW) and got to the part where he talks about visiting Macon, Georgia to see where the guys from the Allman Brothers Band died, and I realized that I had been to Macon and how hilarious my brother and I thought it was to yell "Macon Bacon!" the rest of the drive to Florida. It also made me start thinking about all the other crazy trips my parents took us on every summer and random places we visited. Such as the aforementioned Valley Forge excursion, where my brother hid in the back seat with a blanket over him and wouldn't talk to anyone because he was so mad that we were being forced to see yet another historical sight. There were a lot of similar events. I think I cried once because I didn't want to go see a crazy shirtless man wrestle an alligator in the middle of the Everglades. We definitely visited some sort of dinosaur/archaeology/bones dig place in Montana or something....banana trees outside the Alamo...buffalo blocking the entrance to public restrooms in Wyoming..good times. And my dad visiting the visitor's center at EVERY SINGLE PLACE. Even when we had been there before.

Maybe this is fodder for some sort of crazy-family-hilarious-memoir....or not.

The Archipelago

Took a cruise around the islands of/around Stockholm. They said that lots of people have their summer houses there and just commute during the summer. I also learned that the majority of the TV that Swedish people watch is subtitled American TV...and that some Swedish people sound Australian when the speak English. It is a crazy place with tasty herring and lots of very nice blond people. And there are totally a bunch of H&M's and 7-11's all over.