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Ensconced in Chicago again, where it was delightfully warm on Friday (warmer than California, in fact) and tear-inducingly cold today (which is uncomfortable, given that tears freeze instantly). This visit I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had never done before, and will likely not repeat, and not just because I get a bit of l'appel du vide on bridges. Little is more terrifying than open water at night. But the bridge is pretty in the dark.

( on True GritCollapse )

Aaaaand I have no New Year's Resolutions for 2011. Unless I am resolving not to resolve to do things I am unlikely to actually do. Happy New Year to all y'all!

Oh, Chicago.

Yes, it's a Tin Marshmallow-stuffed Dog!

If you're cruising by your flist and curious wtf this thing is, it's a stuffed version of this. A fire-breathing snarky robot dog. I made the pattern before my sewing machine broke (attempting to put him together was how I discovered that it didn't want to function anymore) so this was the baptismal project on my new machine. See? I definitely needed that expensive machine. For very important stuff like plushie K9.


( some more of my robot dogCollapse )

A Happy-Slightly-Early Christmas to all! May it be full of... victorian bear maulings. I dunno. But this card is awesome and clearly ahead of its time.


I started my break by missing my flight out of Chicago. Yes, this is embarrassing because I missed it by going to the wrong airport (yes. Yes, really.) but since C is going to avail himself of the opportunity to tell everyone we know, if I say it I may then at least pretend that it is not borderline-mortifying.

At any rate, I discovered that if you miss your flight but show up within two hours of take off (I finally got to the check in counter at Midway 6 minutes after my flight had left) they will book you on the next flight for no additional charge. And when you’re on the 7 pm flight that means the 6 am flight. I ended up sleeping 2 hours in a 36 hour period and did fine, which is bizarre considering the fact that I sometimes sleep ten hours, wake up feeling like crap, and want to go back to bed again 12 hours later.

But anyway, I got back to suburban California and am more or less enjoying doing nothing, though that is also (more or less) what I do in Chicago. I haven’t read my novel for class, or watched My Cousin Vinnie (which is an assignment for Ethics; perhaps better at the beginning of the quarter than as a final, which it’s been used for in the past) but I did watch The Wire all week, which takes as much of an investment of attention to follow as the Wilkie Collins I should be reading instead.

Photos from California, edited down to a reasonable number. (And only including vacation-within-vacation photos, because I presume nobody wants to look at Sacramento or Lincoln, jewels of the Central Valley that they are).

( Trip photos; 9/7 - 9/9Collapse )

Ice flow on the Chicago River, 6:00 pm today. (And at 2:45 pm, looking toward Wabash.)


My day was good -- paid my bills, returned a dress I decided I was never actually going to alter (my torso is three inches too short for normal human clothing, apparently) and despite my best efforts, did not find something to exchange it for. Bought $30 worth of jewelry instead, then had jerk chicken with C at Calypso, and plan to watch the first episode of The Tudors while attempting to brush my cat. It was cold today, and it may have hailed. Or maybe it was just very sharp snow.

How was yours?