Sweet-@ss Suite

Pardon my language. Linda arrived yesterday and I wisked her off to Las Vegas pretty much right away. I am here for a conference and she is tagging along for company, shopping and laying at the pool. We arrived at the Marriott hotel and we got the suite. It is 2 bedrooms, 3 baths with a wrap around balcony overlooking the pool. Yes, rock star style suite. This place is much bigger then my apartment!! It's awesome and I will post pictures soon of it.

The weekend is too short

This weekend went by so fast. I really did not do much at all, but it still felt like it went by fast. I biked a lot on Saturday. It was my mode of transportation to go and hang out with people. I biked down to where my friends were playing innebandy (floorball). I still cannot play of course but I went there to hang out with people and go with them to Tre Kronor to have brunch. It is by far the best brunch in Chicago. After that I biked to Lincoln park and went to see the end of the chicago cubs game at the bar with my friends Sara, Carri and Valerie. After that it was off to the beach to hang out and enjoy the last days of summer. The weather this weekend was really amazing. Sunny and warm. Today I went to the burbs and biked for about 15 miles and then I have been working the rest of the day from home. Have a lot of deadlines for the upcoming conferences. Right now I am trying to finish some stuff up but it is hard since the Bears (Football) game is on. I have also cleaned that apartment because we are getting a visitor on Tuesday. I really need to go shopping too, because when you open the refrigerator all you see is a half empty milk bottle. I need to at least create the appearance that Matt and I are cooking at home.. sometimes...

Holy Cow!

It is finally Friday night after a long week at work. I have hardly seen my husband lately since he has been working so much overtime. We decided on having a date night tonight. We had a gift card to go to a fancy steak house so that is where we rushed off to after work. I now feel like I ate a whole cow and his brother.. yes, if your vegetarian please forgive me. It was good stuff, but we were so full that we decided to take a walk to feel better. We ended up walking almost half way home from downtown. Now we are both home, still pretty full and feet are sore. We are going to spend the rest of the night watching a movie and go to bed early. Yes, a wild a crazy Friday night for the old married couple.

Cyclones win!!

I love tailgating. This weekend we went back to Ames, Iowa and relived our golden college days. It was so worth the 6 hours of driving. So what is tailgating for those that have never done it? Well, it is a bunch of people that meet in a parking lot really early in the morning. Stand around, talk and then drink beer. Sometimes we even talk about football and the upcoming game. Not me though. It was a great time because I got to hang out with my friends that do not live in Chicago, like Tracy and Brandy. The picutre on the right is of me, Tracy and her hot man Greg. This picutre was taken at around 8 am and it was cold (freezing) in the morning. Hence, the hat and gloves. This is not normal fall weather it was just a weird cold day, today Chicago is back to normal fall warmness.. it is about 80+F and high humidity. I posted a couple of more pictures from the game too:

I love popcorn! Friends but football rivals. =)

Oh by the way Iowa State Beat Iowa by 15 - 13! Good times. The weekend went by way too fast, but they always do when we are out of town.

Svenska

Ok, jag har inte skrivit pa svenska pa ett tag. Denna vecka har verkligen gatt fort. Kanns som om jag bara jobbar bort mitt liv. Men i gar sa borjade ivilketfall svenska klasserna igen. Jag ar larare pa Swedish American Museum har i Chicago. Det ar verkligen jatteroligt. Det ar en kvallskurs med personer i olika aldrar som ar intresserade av Sverige och att lara sig prata lite svenska. Jag tvingar aven min man att ta min kurs i ar.. stackaren har fatt ta om svenska kursen nagra ganger nu. Fast det kanske han bara gor for att han tycker om lararinnan sa mycket, vem vet?

Photo from the game

We now have proof that we went to the nohitter game.
Pretty nice photo of us, I have to say..

Bifocals, bikes and beaches

I went to the eye doctor this week. I know, I am getting old and so are my eyes. I don't have perfect vision anymore. However, I had very "healthy" eyes and got a prescription for reading glasses, which would only be optional. However, the problem with glasses that you do not wear all the time, is that it is easy to loose them. I have a habit of loosing things, so I am not sure that you will see me with glasses anytime soon. Well, maybe now when I do have my lightning bolt scar in my forehead and with round glasses, I can turn in to Harry Potter. I am pretty good at making things disappear. I also fulfilled on of my goals of the summer this week. I biked to work. I have always wanted to do that. It is about 10 miles and it took me close to an hour. My knee was hurting a bit but it was amazing!! Yes, the bike ride down to work along the lake shore is so beautiful, seeing the sun go up and other crazy healthy people out there on the path getting a morning workout before work. it was great. The ride did more for my spirits than physically I think, since my knee was stopping me from peddling very fast.. In fact, I think at one point some runners past me on the path. Today I biked down and hung out at the beach with was so great. The weather is so great right now. The humidity is finally gone so it is pleasant to be outside. My favorite time of year.. I am not ready for winter yet so I hope this weather is here to stay for a couple of weeks.

Some photos from the vacation.

I know that I was complaining about this before, but I manage to loose one of our cameras on this trip... bummer, I know. So we lost a lot of pictures but here are some of the ones that were on Matt's camera that we took. The one on the left is at a hike around a waterfall in Quebec and the two to the right are from when we we went to Nantucket. We had a great time and I miss vacation already.



Matt and the tiny
light house.

Vacation over :(

So now we are home again. It was great to see that the apartment is still there and just as messy as we left it. The trip was so much fun. The game on Saturday was so awesome by the way. It was no-hitter, which apparently is a big deal. People were celebrating like they won the world series. The audience did the "the wave" (including us of course) and got showered in beer. After Boston we drove down to Cape Cod and also went out to Nantucket for a day. The beaches at Cape Cod are so beautiful. We drove all the way out to Providencetown. Which by the way surprised us.. it was kind of like a mardi gras town, but fun. We rented bikes once we arrived to Nantucket from the ferry. We actually biked about 15 miles. The wind was somehow always against us and the hills were always uphills.. I have no idea how that works, but it happened to us..so we got a great workout. The really sucky thing was that I lost my camera on the beach in Nantucket.. yes, 9 days of great vacation pictures lost. I am really kind of upset about this. But I am a clutz so I am not so surprised at all that I lost it. Luckily, we do still have Matt's camera and he took some pictures during the trip too, but that camera is a bit bulky so we did not carry it with us all the time... Now when I look at the pictures from the vacation it kind of looks like I went alone on this trip, since there are only a few random photos of me at some of the places. I took all the pictures of Matt with my camera. Yes, I will call these photos Sandra's tour of the East.

Boston Red Sox

Matt and I arrived at the "walking city of America" yesterday and we have not stop walking since. ok, bad joke. But we have been walking a lot. Yesterday we ate at this seafood restaurant at the fish pier. Then we ended up at original "Cheers" bar (Bull and Finch bar). Somehow my old college skills came out and I "smuggled" out a pint glass from the bar. Hey, It was a cool beer mug so I couldn't resist! Today we went shopping and walked the freedom trail. We had an excellent charismatic guide that showed us the sights. We, of course, ended this tour with a stop at the famous Green Dragon pub, where we toasted the old revolutionaries. We are off to see the Boston Red Sox game tonight.. that is baseball for those that do not know. I am actually really excited, even if I really don't know much about baseball. It is going to be fun to see old Fenway Park and the game. I will cheer load, but not as load as I would for the Chicago Cubs, of course. Yes, I will cheer for the Red Sox, if I am paying attention to the game and by mistake do not cheer for the opposite team.. which happens a lot.