 |
|||
 |
|||
|
Hello time traveler. You've found the REALLY old stuff.
Use the links below to navigate around, and
have fun browsing! Here are some more pictures from around Ballantyne, North Carolina. This is the downstairs of our apartment building. The best way I can describe it, is think of Chicago-style wooden fire escapes on the inside of the building. You can walk through the back down a set of stairs to a grassy area. If you walk out the front you'll see the parking lot.
Here is the car that Anne and Peter gave us, I like it a lot. It feels great to have a car again, since we sold my old Ford Explorer back in November of last year.
It gets hot here, think Florida hot. And when it's 80+ degrees like it was today, Oreo's face starts to sweat and his body becomes limp like warm puddy. So it's no surprise that he's a huge fan of air conditioning.
We took a quick drive past the corporate park where I will be working. There is a pond in front of the building where I work. Pretty soon we noticed a friend was coming our way.
Oreo met Jack and played for a bit, then he rolled around in the grass and we went home.
Lucky for him there is a doggy daycare nearby, an amenity that I thought was restricted to large cities -- but Laura and I will have to investigate more when she gets down here (hopefully sooner than later because I miss her). I think Oreo misses her too, but he's crashed next to my leg because the hot weather really knocks him out.
That about raps it up. I got some wind chimes, a palm tree for the balcony and a shower curtain at Target today. I also bought one of those bleach hockey pucks you put in your toilet to make the water blue.
I am pretty beat. The movers come tomorrow at 7am to unload everything, and then I go off to start my first day at 2pm. Wish me luck!
The eagle has landed. Wow. Packing everything, moving and driving 900 miles in 72 hours seemed like a good idea at the time. Luckily Oreo and I made it safe and sound. Even more fortunate, is the unencryped WIFI signal I am borrowing to post this message. Here are a few quick pictures just in case I get booted off the local connection I found. I will post more reconnaissance data tomorrow.
Main building:
It's the last Chicago post, and I'm getting a little sentimental. I have a few pictures to share. First, I have pictures of my dinner & drinks with Sam and JC on Monday night. We went to Gibsons, which is one of the most famous steak houses in Chicago and I had never been before.
Sam and JC remind me of the characters from "Two for the Money":
And then today, Wednesday, I snapped a few pictures on my way out of work (my last day). I wouldn't describe the feeling as "triumphant" or "liberating," I was actually kindof sad to go.
While walking home along the lakeside, I took a few more pictures of millenium park (Laura was getting a little tired of the picture taking by now).
One thing I won't miss is the bus ride to work:
And one last thing, I will miss are my buddies at D&D! (Picture taken with permission).
And that's it. Good bye Chicago. Good bye college town, good bye friends. You will be missed.
Here's how this morning started:
My breath is so bad in the morning, I'm surprised it didn't pick up the camera and take this picture for me. Thankfully I was awake enough at 5am to snap this shot on Easter morning. We went to church today. The line at the Presbyterian church in downtown Chicago stretched around the block. When we got in, a nice older woman said "We have a place for you." What I didn't know at the time was that she was ushering the latecomers into a separate, windowless room with closed circuit television screens of the sermon. I veered slightly using a shoulder trick that was 2 parts nightclub, 1 part highschool football. Through a sliver of people I slipped, and we found ourselves in the front row, next to the aisle of a congregation of 500 people. Full success! The sermon was great, and we both agreed it felt good to be at church. The rest of the day was pretty much wasted on seeing which stores are open on Easter (none), and watching movies while it rained outside.
It's my last weekend in Chicago. Exactly a week from now I'll be sitting in my new apartment in Charlotte with little more than an inflatable bed (if there is electricity), some important files, and a few plants. Oreo will have his metal crate and plush bed to sleep in. It's the one time in his entire life when he will have it better than me. Tonight I convinced Laura to walk down to the Hancock buidling so we could take the elevator up to the 95 floor and enjoy some overpriced drinks and fight our way toward a table by the window. I wanted to get a good look at the city I am leaving. It was pretty fun.
Here is the view facing north, toward our apartment:
And here is the view facing south:
If you stood next to the window and looked straight down on the south side you'd see Michigan avenue and the famous Chicago Water Tower:
And if you looked across the table from me, you'd see this!
Yum! Afterward, we went back to Tsunami and had basically the same meal we ate in March, it was delicious! Tonight I'm just laying low, posting on the website, cleaning up the Artemenko.org Links section, and fixing the broken links and adding videos to the Hall of Fame section. Oh, and I'll probably play a little Fight Night Round 3 on the Xbox 360 that Laura has sworn as her eternal enemy. I bought one for myself because it's been too long without a good gaming system, and the Dreamcast I bought last fall isn't cutting it. When I have a month alone in Charlotte, I'll really have some quality time with the 360!
We just got back from Kentucky, and the wedding was great. Here are some pictures:
Drum roll please... Ann Marry is about to throw her bouquet, and there is some stiff competition!
Now that we're back in Chicago, I have to wrap up plans for relocating to Charlotte (read: I now have less than 2 weeks to move), and finish up my 2005 taxes which have been chronically regurgitated by Turbotax since adding my Roth IRA information. Good times! We're in Lexington Kentucky celebrating the marriage of our dear friend Anne Mary and her future husband Kyle. More specifically, I am in a Hyatt hotel room updating the website with my continental breakfast in my lap in a styrafoam container. Thanks to my handy laptop, I'm still in close contact with Adam and Tim. Without said communication, I wouldn't be reading things like this: BrewBoy01: oh dude Whatever you do, don't get him started on the "space elevator." Anyways, yesterday we went to the rehearsal dinner and the weather was awesome, perfectly sunny and 70+ degrees.
The dinner was fun, and we got to hang with Maggie, Jason, Courtney and Brian. For whatever reason, the six of us had our own table in the far corner, which made the dinner toasts a little hard to hear -- but we had a great time together!
As you can see, my hair is slowly growing back since I shaved it, sortof. I'm developing an "island" at the front of my head like Rob Corddry on the Daily Show:
Things could be worse! Laura keeps getting better looking every day...
Maggie kept things fun.
I'm really glad we could all get together this weekend before moving to Charlotte. We've had some good times at homecoming, concerts, and lots of dinners in Chicago. Carpe Diem! It's definitely important for me spend some time with all of our friends who have made Chicago great. Hopefully I'll have a chance to sit down and have some beers with my college buddies. Carl is in Africa, and Chris is in med school... but I know this guy is still in town:
Hey everybody, today was a crazy day for me. When the dust settled, one thing was clear:
The picture above comes with a soundtrack, which you can listen to by clicking here.
I found an old picture album of the lake house, so I scanned a couple pictures:
It's not really fair to compare pictures of the old cottage in summer, and the new place in early spring -- but you get an idea of size:
The building occupies the same footprint of land, but I imagine it absorbs a lot more sunlight than our neighbors would like! That about wraps up our weekend visit to the lake, it has been a great escape for all three of us.
We're at the lake. Part of the reason we made the 90 mile drive from Chicago to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin is to relax. The main motiviation for coming up here was to get our laundry done. You see, one of the octogenarians who inhabit our building put enough quarters in the dryer to let it run until 2008. After a few hours of tumbling, her towels reached that magical temperature when terry cloth turns to flame. The firemen came and had to knock out a window and hose down the entire laundry room where we live, and it has been out of comission for 2 weeks. So I'm sitting here with Oreo enjoying a coffee from 1-Stop, watching a Discovery Channel HD program about the Pantanal.
The last time we were here (excluding our trip in February which was cut short by a snow storm), was about 6 months ago in October. Its pretty fun just to sit here. There is a lot of history for my family here at the lake. It wasn't always this fancy, maybe if someone can email me some old pictures, I'll show you what the old cottage was like before they knocked it down. As I open my nostrils, I realize that I am paying dearly for the McDonalds vanilla shake that Laura whole-heartily shared with Oreo on our trip here. Ok I'm going to go find Laura. We may need to head to Walmart soon. As always, check out the Archive section to catch up!
| |||
Update 4/23/06
