wanderlust
Perhaps it's simple "spring fever" but I have this very strong urge to get out and travel. In particular to load up the cameras and hop in the car and just drive somewhere. Around Lake Michigan, or out to the Badlands of South Dakota, or down to Texas, or somewhere. It could also be, in part, a reaction to not being able to walk very much during lunch these past couple of weeks, I'm not sure.
This past weekend was good. 
twench came over and helped me paint the kitchen while whippetgirl and helloheather scrapbooked and sat with Lauren.
The painting went well and we got done in a few hours (with the required stop for lunch and wait for the next coat) and then the five of us went to BW3's for dinner (mmmmm...wings) and Cold Stone for dessert.
Sunday I headed down to my grandmothers to install a wireless network. All told it went rather well and I even cleaned my uncle's computer of some persistent spyware. Of course, a few hours after getting back home I get a call that the wifi connection is b0rked. While on the phone, apparently the wifi magic pixies stopped by because it mysteriously started working again. I sure hope this isn't a trend.
And today during the lunch hour I was able to get out and walk in this wonderful weather. I chose a northerly route and headed up Orleans to Chicago Ave and then back on Franklin to Wells. Snapped a few photos and had lunch at "Brett's Kitchen" (a sandwich/burger place under the El tracks on Franklin).
Escape to DC
This weekend helloheather and I headed to Washington DC for torapines' wedding.
I was able to leave work earlier than I had originally thought and so I wanted to try and go standby on the 3:45 pm flight to IAD instead of the 6:00 flight. Despite United customer service representatives continually telling me (on the phone) there was no way in heck I was getting on an earlier flight by way of standby, I was easily able to do so. By chance I happened to land about 5 minutes behind Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte who had spent the whole day flying from Madison after experiencing delay after delay. 
Saturday was warm and sunny with helloheather leaving me to do the bridesmaid thing at 11 am. The wedding went quite well, despite some of the usual last-minute panic of getting stuff done. The wedding and reception took place at the soon-to-be-official Mr. and Mrs. Pines' home which was a good choice for the small crowd. The weather was fantastic, the food (all from different local restaurants) delicious, and (hopefully) the photography fruitful. We spent time with friends we don't get to see very often and much in the ways of parenthood and babies was discussed.
As it turns out it was also our friend Aaron's 30th birthday on Saturday (April 1st), so a slice of wedding cake served as birthday cake (with candle, of course).
Sunday, as some left for earlier flights, a bunch of us headed into downtown DC for the viewing of the cherry blossoms. Madness of people (expected) and beauty (unexpected). I didn't realize how many cherry trees there actually are around The Mall and monuments, along the Potomac, and pretty much everywhere 
Another fantastic weather day and lots of pictures. I'm really glad we were able to go and extra glad to have Mr. and Mrs. Pines act as drivers/guides along with Eric and Paul providing commentary and companionship.
Our flight back to Chicago was scheduled for 8:00 pm Eastern, but due to weather there we were expecting delays. We didn't board the plane until 8:30 but then, after pushing back from the gate, we were told there was a ground stoppage at ORD and that we wouldn't take off for at least an hour and twenty minutes. It turns out it was a bit longer than that. We ended up sitting on the runway for 3 hours at Dulles. No food was available (thank goodness helloheather and I were able to eat a small meal in the airport) and they did serve some water. Finally, in order to avoid the more violent parts of the storm, we took a longer route to Chicago. Actual touchdown was at 11:59 pm Central and we arrived home at 1:30 am. It was a very long and rather stressful bit of traveling.
helloheather started looking through the photos last night and found a couple highlights. Hopefully we'll be able to get an album uploaded this week.
oh the humanity!
Babysitting Lauren on Saturday. The duck didn't stand a chance, but thankfully the other animals made it out unscathed.
St. Pat’s by way of Indy
We headed to Indianapolis this past weekend.
Highlights:
1) I only flooded one bathroom with toilet water.
2) I picked Ketel One over Christiana in the vodka tasting.
3) Scotch Eggs at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub.
4) Our A80 rolled over the 20,000 exposures mark.
I miscalculated due to the fact that Canon cameras roll over at 9900 not 9999. As this will be our second roll over, I forgot that I need to subtract by 200 and not 100. Our current image count is 162 making the total number of photos so far: 19,962)
5) helloheather's car rolled over 75,000 miles.
6) Babies!
7) A Singapore Air 747 only a couple hundred feet above us as it took off from ORD. (Hey, it was neat and loud.)
Lots of friends.
9) Listening to my Best of SXSW - 2005 mp3 CD during the drive.
Charlotte
I added three new photos to the Charlotte Elizabeth album on our photo gallery from when Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte visited us a couple weeks ago:
The weekend, from my perspective
Much was done this weekend thanks to our wonderful friends.
The guest room is painted (save 2" in 2 corners which will be done this week) and it looks great. Thanks to everyone that came over!
We attended the yearly Rotary Club charity dinner and auction Saturday evening. gonj seemed rather surprised when he won all the beer this year. So, in the past three years, someone(s) at our table has won it twice. Go us! Gonj said he'll provide the beer for our St. Patty's day party in a couple of weeks.
(For an approximation of the amount of beer he won, see this photo from our 2004 win: http://www.bernhard.us/photos/rotary2004/abv but add two more mini-kegs and four more individual over-sized bottles like the Grolsch in the front row.)
Charlotte is a very happy baby and was a lot of fun. She cried once that I heard, and maybe once more in the middle of the night and that's it. She was very accepting of other people and, as helloheather pointed out, very keen on gripping your hand and putting a finger or two in her mouth. Double extra points for cuteness.
I felt our baby give a good solid kick this morning. And then, during the middle of my normal Monday morning 9am meeting, my stomach/intestines gurgled so loudly people on either side of me looked around the room thinking something was wrong. So, I guess we both have interesting things going on in that area of our bodies. I'm not sure, but I think helloheather's happenings are more important and more likely to be cute...
Oh, and it snowed a fair bit yesterday. Thank you March!
a bevy of photos
I finally got around to posting photos from various events so far this season and year:
The week of Christmas 2005:
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/christmas2005 (6 small sub-albums)
New Years weekend with our friends Aaron and Serena (and their baby Charlotte) and Hilary and Chris:
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/newyears0506
Heather's birthday weekend:
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/heather-birthday-2006
Enjoy!
To travel in time
My mom, since getting laid off, has had some time to devote to attacking the piles of stuff my sister and I have left in the basement over the years. I am especially guilty of this thanks to the many moves to and from college.
helloheather and I were invited down for lunch and to go through a few of the boxes.
While there were a few items from childhood, most of what my mom had organized was from college. It was a rather interesting, and in some ways melancholy, trip down memory lane. I went through notes from at least three years of school: chemistry, graphic design, french, english, theology, computer science, and a lot of geography and physics classes. It was something of a shock to realize some of the notes I was reading were ten years old. Ten years...it's sort of mind-boggling. Where has the time gone? There's a lot of conflicting feelings rolling around there, but then helloheather found this, which made me smile:
It's a cropped version of the original, and the part I cropped out leads me to believe it was taken outside of Alumni Hall. This would make it our sophomore year (1994-1995). I'm not sure who took the photo, but it was probably a parent. So, to those that are in the photo and on either Blogger or LiveJournal, enjoy the trip back in time.
Recent Photos
While sick, I spent some time uploading photos from past events. I'm still behind but I've made progress:
- Decorating our Tree
- Adam and Nicole's Wedding
- Aunt Lisa's 50th Birthday Party
- Lauren's First Birthday Party
Current Music: The Wailin' Jenny's - "Beautiful Dawn"
Thankgoodness for Thanksgiving
Five days off is something I should do more often, even if I did work from home for part of it.
Thanksgiving Week/Weekend was busy but lots of fun. We saw family every day.
1) Wednesday: Dinner with my grandpa and then church with my parents
2) Thursday: Morning at our friend Greg's parents for the yearly Thanksgiving Morning open house/get together; afternoon/evening at Mickey and Bill's for The Big Meal (tm)
3) Friday: Harry Potter at noon then Beer Tasting Dinner at 1776 (local restaurant) with 12 people (half family, half friends).
4) Saturday: Surprise birthday party for one of helloheather's aunts. Lots of fun there, saw all the younger second-cousins (held cute Carter for so long my arms are still sore Later in the evening, Christmas Tree pickup thanks to hilhas1 and gonj and a viewing of "Searching for Bobby Fischer."
5) Sunday: cleaned the gutters in the rain (yay! I'm very happy I got them done); saw the Bears win their 7th in a row (double yay!); and then had birthday dinner with Grandpa and my family.
Wheew. What an exhausting weekend.
Photos from Atlanta
I finally uploaded some photos from the weekend in Atlanta: http://www.bernhard.us/photos/atlanta05
Charlotte Elizabeth
And before I forget, welcome to the world: Charlotte Elizabeth Hawley.
Congrats Aaron and Serena!
MIA
bernhard.us has been having some stability issues lately and, in response, I've been slacking on my blogging. Things have been rather busy and this trend is probably endless.
First off, happy belated birthday to davesanngel. Hope you had a great day.
I'm working on uploading photos from the Atlanta trip. I keep meaning to bring them to work to sort them, but have forgotten yet again.
Lauren had her first birthday this past week. Twench and whippetgirl had a friends party on Saturday. It was fun and Lauren seemed to have a great time.
Before the party on Saturday, helloheather and I worked for 5 hours on the leaves. We got 90% of it done and, even though the wind storm yesterday knocked down a bunch more leaves, I feel great at our accomplishment. Last year was so difficult because we let the leaves sit too long and then they were too wet to burn. But this year we've been on top of things and it is a wonderful feeling. Next Saturday should be about the same amount of work if we include cleaning out the gutters and after that, with most of the leaves down, we should have only minor work to complete. That is unless we have another massive windstorm day.
Yesterday, because we were both pretty sore from the yard work, we didn't do much of anything. After church it was a lot of TV watching and a few chores (laundry, dishes, vacuuming). I felt like a lazy slug
Hail Atlanta!
helloheather and I, along with our friend Joe, were in Atlanta, GA this past weekend visiting our mutual college friend Andy.
Andy is the regional manager of IBM's hosting facilities. He manages their facility in Miami and their two sites in Atlanta. Lots and lots of drool-worthy equipment. There's something inherntly geeky and cool about standing in just one cage in the data center with $20 million worth of equipment all around you.
So, we flew out eary on Friday morning, bummed around the office on Friday and eventually ended up at dinner at a nice italian place whose name escapes me at this point. I'm pretty bad with names. Saturday took us to Stone Mountain. Part theme park/Southern version of Wisconsin Dells, part "here are some heros of the Civil War, from, you know, the 'other' side," and part funnel cake, it was fun. We wandered everywhere, took a train ride around, and a gondola ride up, the mountain as well as a boat ride and DUCK ride on the lake. Andy had booked a comedy murder/mystery dinner at Agathas. Quite a large under-taking with probably 150 patrons and only two actors. Everyone was given different parts. I was, along with Joe and a group of about 20 others, a beggar. In the 3 intermissions we had to get together and pick a popular song and come up with new lyrics to describe a specific main character in the performance. Our group picked a do-wop hit and had some pretty clever lyrics. I wished I had saved the napkin they were written on
Sunday was a relaxing day of brunch at a cajun restaurant (I had a really good shrimp, lobster, crab omelet), a viewing of "Batman Begins" on Andy's amazing home entertainment system and a game of pool that featured an easy loss for yours truly.
Our flight out was delayed 2 hours for unknown reasons. We got bumped to a new gate and had to deal with almost no communication from the American Airlines staff. Oh and the Burger King in the airport doesn't have cashiers. They have 3 touch-screen kiosks for ordering food. It takes about 4x as long to order something due to the rather inefficient user interface.
Photos forthcoming.