Chicago!

Chicago! The windy city...or so they say, my experience with the literal part of the nickname is this: that's really only true if you're down by the lake. It's been a great experience thus far, minus not having a job or a place to move into yet. I still have a week though so hopefully something turns out by then!

In the meantime, here are some pictures of my current home, consider it a virtual tour. I didn't include pictures of either bedroom, but they are pretty standard as far as bedrooms go. I got a little camera happy, but the building is old with a few quirks and I kind of like it! :-)

This is the hallway. I took pics entering and leaving the apartment, if you can't figure out which is which the closed door is sort of a dead giveaway:


The Living Room (I slept on that couch for about a week):


The "Dining room," complete with homemade cookies on the table. It's really not a room since it's in the living room, more of a dining area:


Moving forward! Connected to the dining room is our kitchen. I'm a fan of the checkered floor:


We also have a bathroom, one of those apartment necessities:


The door in the kitchen leads to our back porch. Below is a picture of said porch, however you cannot see the iron rungs on the wall that lead up to the roof, but I promise they are there. Also, there are a couple of our "lovely" porch views.


Which brings us to my favorite place, the roof. The sunset was particularly pretty the evening I was up there, so I decided to capture the moment:


So ends my tour, hopefully you weren't too disappointed...if you were, next time lower your expectations ;-) New pictures will come once I am permanently established in the city.

Just some words...

Looking up, falling down

Getting dizzy with each round

Of this crossword puzzle I’m trying to figure out

Another turn here, turn there

Within this maze going who knows where

How can I make sense out of something that has no sense at all?

But this is where the sort of understanding comes into play

It follows you around until you finally turn and ask the way

To find the exit to this “Alice in Wonderland” sort of maze...

And then you realize

Things aren’t always what they seem

An open door isn’t always an opportunity

I blow my wishes to the wind

Drop some pebbles to show where I’ve been

So everyone will know I’ve learned from what I’ve seen...

It’s not the same as it was yesterday

It’s not logical, practical, or anything else they call sane

It’s a weakness that’s made true through His strength

Falling up a downward staircase

Like a communication, frustration, intimidation, humiliation

For all signs and deeds and words to please

To try to make me feel better for who I am

Like I know what’s showing and going up the lifeline at the right time

Fear of no affection

Fear of correction

Fear of saying too much that would give someone a clue

Of how I’m not so strong and I’m sometimes wrong

And I can feel the pressure of what everybody measures me up to be

By what they see, so nothing that I feel is gonna help me deal with me

Summer Lovin' (Part 2)

And now to complete the second half of my summer travels...

After Virginia we headed to upstate NY where I gave my first professional piano concert. It went really well and they want me to come back in January and next summer if I can. I don't have any pictures from the actual recital (sorry!) but I will eventually...I just don't know when that will be, patience is a virtue you know, or so I've heard...

The town (city?) where I gave the concert was really old with lots of history...

I took these pictures the morning we left for Indiana to head to my grandparents house. There were quite a few of these old abandoned factory buildings which I found fascinating. This particular one was across the street from a nice little Italian restaurant where we had dinner following my performance. The restaurant was one my mom had actually been to before, it was where her grandparents had celebrated one of their wedding anniversaries (I believe it was their 50th), so it was neat for her to be back there again. The town was full of giant old houses too, which I absolutely love.

On our way to Indiana, we realized that Niagara Falls was not too far out of the way (16 miles to be exact), so we decided to visit them since Laura (my sister) and I had never been...
These are the "American falls"

This one is just a pretty part of the river on the path towards the Horseshoe falls...


Looking over the railing...such a pretty site, there's even a rainbow!


And finally the Horseshoe falls...


They were ridiculously loud and the water was flowing super fast...I really don't know how anyone survived going over them in a barrel, but according to the history signs posted around the falls more than one person has done it...crazy people.

After NY came Indiana, we stayed there for a day to rest and relax a bit and then headed up to Chicago for my job interview...it went well but I won't be working there since I am now living in the city and not a suburb, as was originally planned. So from Chicago we headed home...stayed the night in Minnesota somewhere, then met up with James (my brother) in SD where he lives, ate lunch with him, and then we finished our journey that afternoon. We made it home right before a giant storm hit...here is a pic of the sweet clouds that we saw...this is about an hour southeast-ish of where I live...


Neat huh? Anyway, that was my really long trip along the East coast...

My other adventure this summer took me to the West coast. I went there to visit Alex, who happens to be my boyfriend. We hadn't seen each other for about 3 months so I was well over-due for a visit. I was there for about a week and in that time we went to an aquarium, a beach, a Bach concert, and San Francisco. I also spent a day in San Francisco with Sarah Lu, who is a friend from TU...she's great and we had a fantastic day in the city.
Here we are (behind the ferry building I think)...


This was the view as we sat by the pier eating lunch(clam chowder!)...The tall structure in the middle that sort of looks like a castle turret is called Coit Tower, I had been there the previous day with Alex.


Pier 39...


We saw a lot of other things too, including a "live" statue, which was just a man who looked like a statue but moved every couple of minutes or so...creepy.

This is from Coit tower the day before I saw Sarah Lu...


It was dang cold up there! The last full day I was there we went to the beach where we saw...

Crabs! There is actually more than one in this pic if you look closely you can find 3 others besides the big one in the crevice...

They are sort of creepy but still cool.

Here are some other pics from the beach...

I'm not really sure what I'm doing here...


I'm a fan of this one...


The following day I flew home and that was the conclusion of my summer traveling adventures. I think it was a grand way to end the summer, I left for Chicago a week later and that trip was quite an experience, but I'll leave that for another time.

Thanks for "tuning" in...
Next time: Chicago! :-)

Quick Update

This is not the second part of my summer tale. This is a quick update to let anyone who reads this know what is currently going on. I have moved to Chicago and am in the process of getting a job and hopefully finding an apartment of my own. I am currently living with a TU grad, which was a total God thing, details are really unimportant, unless you care...but those of you who do probably know the details already. ANYWAY...I had a job interview today and should know more about that within a week or sooner. In the meantime I will be searching for an apartment of my own to live in when my future roommate finally arrives in Chicago.

That's pretty much it...the summer saga will continue at an undetermined later date.

;-)

Summer Lovin' (Part 1)

Summer is almost over and I am about to embark on a new adventure. Before that happens though, I will give a brief recap of what took place in my life the past few months. This will come in two installments because a lot happened this summer and two semi-long posts are better than one ridiculously long post.

Most of my summer was spent traveling, the first stop along the way was Georgia. This is where my older brother's wedding ceremony was this past June. Although he and his wife had already been married a year, they never had an actual ceremony. SO, they decided to have a wedding which meant all of the family could get together. Also, since our two families had never actually met each other, it was a good opportunity to get to know them and vice versa.

We saw an awesome sunset on the way down there, I think we were in TN at the time:


This is the immediate family on both sides (plus grandparents) with the bride and groom:

Not a great pic, but it gives you an idea. Here is the happy couple:



Enough of that endeavor, next stop: Virginia! We actually stopped in NC along the way to visit my friend Christina who lives there. It was great because we didn't have to go out of our way and we had a superb lunch at Panera, although seeing Christina was definitely the highlight of that short stop. My Uncle Brad, his wife Deb, and their two kids Jacqueline and Jonathan live in Virginia (DC area) and that is who we stayed with while we were there for 3 weeks. We made trips into the city a few times and also visited Mt. Vernon while we were there. Since the sites of DC and Mt. Vernon are easily found on the internet, I feel no need to post those pictures. However, here are some of the fam and such...

This is Jacqueline and Jonathan, he has a love for making silly faces:


This is everyone: my fam on the left, my uncle and their fam on the right and then Stephen, his wife Crystal, and their 3 children are in the middle. Stephen is my mom's cousin. They came to visit and have dinner one night while we were there because they live in Maryland, just a couple hours away.


Here we are waiting for the fireworks in DC. We were sitting on the lawn of the Pentagon since my Uncle works there, so we had special privileges :-) The umbrella indicates that it was stormy, but the show went on! My cousins illustrate their excitement with silly faces:

The fireworks show was impressive, despite the smoke and clouds. It was a great way to end our time in Virginia and that was basically the first half of my summer road-trip. Our next stop was upstate New York where I gave my very first "official" piano concert. It was pretty exciting...but that will come in the second part of my summer adventure series...so stay tuned! ;-)

I've collected all these thoughts and I'm dying just to lose them...

I find it interesting how people react to situations in such a variety of ways. Obviously this is expected since everyone is different, but sometimes reactions are unexpected and also unwarranted in certain situations.

For example, I got into a "tiff" with my mom the other day. This is unexpected on two accounts: 1) my mom and I hardly ever fight, it is an extremely rare occurrence (that may have been redundant, but I am trying to emphasize that point), 2) I'm leaving home in less than a week and you'd think that fighting would be the last thing that would happen. This is what went down: I was doing research on taking a bus to return to Indiana (my car is at my g-rents' house there) and realized through my research that I had to go to the actual station to get my ticket. Well, this would normally be fine for most people, but I live 85 miles away from the bus station, so it's really not that feasible. I explained to my mom that there was a bus scheduled for the day I want to leave and that I'll just have to buy my ticket that morning because I can't get it any other way. I had tried calling the actual bus ticket-line's phone number multiple times, but I never got to a person and I realized that it wouldn't do me any good because under the schedule listed on the website for my bus it said very specifically that I needed to buy the ticket at a station for this trip. So I gave up on that endeavor and resigned myself to waiting until I got to the station to purchase my ticket. Apparently my mom believed that I had not tried hard enough and was being her passive-aggressive self and silently sitting there in a "huff." I asked her what else did she expect me to do and she told me that I should call the station. I explained to her that this would do me no good as I could not buy a ticket from them and the website had made it very clear that even with a ticket, my spot on the bus is not guaranteed. So she proceeded to say, "fine, I guess you can just stay here then or we will find someone to bring your car here for you." I might add that this was said in a raised voice, so I sat and did not say anything while she tromped around the house and then called the station herself since I clearly was not going to give-in to what I knew would just be a fruitless enterprise (plus I'm stubborn). By the time she was done talking on the phone with the lady at the station she had calmed down and had learned all of the same information that I had already told her, but she was satisfied because she believed all of our options had been now exhausted. Thus, her reaction was unwarranted because I had told her the truth, and it had been proven through what she had learned by calling the station herself. I think I had a justifiable "I told you so" in this situation. I may add that I was going to call the station eventually, but I had been quite frustrated with my previous attempt at human contact with the bus line and wasn't ready to go through an automated voice system again at that current moment, even though, as it turns out, I would have talked to an actual person.

This all leads me to the discussion of, was my mom really upset at me for not exhausting my options or is she just not dealing with my leaving home very well? I would think that logic would choose the first one, but since my mom does not normally react in this kind of way I can't use that logic to justify her actions in this scenario. I believe that my mom is not comfortable with me taking a bus all by myself, sitting in a bus station in downtown Chicago for 5 hours during the night, and not having any knowledge of when I will be able to visit home again. Now I would think that most people in this situation would not react in anger or bitterness towards the person leaving. Although I suppose it is somewhat similar to how certain people react to death or terminal illness...that is definitely an extreme comparison though. The difference in this situation being: there are only a certain amount of days left and one would think that they would be spent having good quality time with said person. I know that if I was my mom I would be upset about my child leaving home, but I'm not sure that I would react in "shoving" that child away while he/she was still at home. It is never easy to say good-bye to someone you care about and not know when you will see the person again, as I have had to experience recently. But it is even harder when it is someone you love and have raised in your own home. Don't get me wrong, I am going to have a hard time leaving home, but I am definitely ready for my next chapter in life...to get out on my own and discover what the world has in store for me. It will be fun and exciting for me, so that makes my end of it a lot easier than it is for the people I'm leaving behind. I recognize this, and respect that my mom may not be having an easy time of it...regardless, I still find her reaction to the situation fascinating. Granted it makes my time left at home semi-stressful, but I don't think that will be how my few remaining days at home will end.

A real update about how my life has been this summer will come...I promise ;-)