Chicago Auto Show

First off, since my last post, Scott and I celebrated the fourth anniversary of our first date on the 9th, and then Valentine's Day a few days later.  It is hard to believe we were just little nineteen-year-old kids when we started dating.  Now we are super mature twenty three-year-olds!  Here are baby Scott and Emily in summer 2008:

That's my favorite picture of us, for the sole reason that it is the only picture in existence where we both look decent and have normal-looking faces.  Usually at least one of us has closed eyes or is making a face.

For our anniversary we went out to dinner at Outback (yum!) and then for Valentine's Day I gave Scott a super-awesome card and some cookies and candy, and he totally one-upped me and gave me a Nook Color to match the one he had recently procured for himself.  I think he was sick of me stealing his to play with all the time, but I was still super excited about it.  It's encouraging me to read more, too, I think.  So that's good.  Maybe I'll stop wasting so much time playing on the computer.

On the 12th, we went downtown to go to the Chicago Auto Show.  I took some pictures of cars.

A Silverado for Kelly R.:

Two green cars for Heather, a Porsche and a Camaro:

 

The Porsche looked a lot greener in person than it does in that picture.

My favorite car was (sadly for car-lovers everywhere) the Ford Fiesta, because it came in super cool colors!  My favorite was this purple-red color that I had never seen on a car before.  I want this car!

 

After looking at all the cars, I spied a booth selling fudge.  You could see the guys in the back making it.

We bought two varieties to take home and enjoy, Oreo and chocolate peanut butter.  We went to the parking garage to head toward home and food, because we were both hungry.  Unfortunately, we got stuck in the parking garage for over an hour, just sitting in the car, bored and getting hungrier and hungrier.  So of course I had to open up the fudge to try it out.  It was sooo good.

Hooray for fudge, saving the day!

Tuesday

This morning I went to Lifetime Fitness to work out with Kelly R. and Helen.  Kelly got me a 3-day guest pass to check the place out.  It is definitely waaayyy better than the "gym" at my apartment complex.  The gym here has exactly one treadmill, two stationary bikes, two stairsteppers, two ellipticals, three weight machines and some free weights.  I almost forgot what a real gym is like.  Lifetime is huge, and not only does it have a million machines, but there is a rock-climbing wall and the pool has water slides!  What gym has awesome water slides?  Too bad it's 60 bucks a month.  I don't really know if I can factor that into my budget anytime soon.  Also, Helen and Kelly made me feel like a little workout baby.  Helen is a machine on the elliptical, and Kelly had to show me how to use most of the weight machines since my gym doesn't have much of a variety.  And every time I used a machine after Kelly I had to move the weight down a notch (or two or three) because I am a weakling.  Clearly I need a real gym in my life.

After a shower at home, Kelly picked me up and we went to the Noodles in Naperville to meet her boyfriend Jeff. This was the first time I got to meet him.  He seems pretty nice.  Good job Kelly!

I got Bangkok curry with chicken.  It was delicious.  I got a small but I ate the whole bowl.

 

After lunch, Kelly and I went to Target.  I came home with these:

 

Scott and I are bad and we already ate all of them!

Random

*I just cut my foot on a piece of glass in the bathroom from a cup that I dropped and broke in there months ago.  I swear I do sweep and mop, but somehow this piece of glass has eluded me up until this point:

 

I took the picture with my phone cam because it was the closest available camera and I was bleeding everywhere.

*Scott and I are planning on moving when our current lease is up at the end of May.  However, we are having problems figuring out where to look for places that we like.  All of the apartment-listing sites online have the same boring apartment complexes.  We are interested in finding a house or part of a house to rent, but I don't really know how to find a place like that around here.  Any suggestions?

*Scott just bought a nook color a few days ago.  It is super awesome!  I am loving it, and think I have spent more time playing with it than he has.  I've also managed to read a book and a half since Thursday, which is more than I read in the whole month of January.  All I read last month was Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (which I didn't really like).  Over the weekend I read Hairstyles of the Damned and it was really good.  I actually read the whole book in less than 24 hours, just because I couldn't put it down.  Now I'm reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I checked out Hairstyles of the Damned from the library website as an e-book and downloaded the free version of Dorian Gray, so they were both free.  Yay!

I tried to take a picture of Kitty posing with the nook, but then she had to go and lick her face in the middle of the picture, so I ended up with this:

Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl 45 was yesterday, Packers vs. Steelers.  (Packers won.)  I really didn't care at all who won; I have no real ties to either team.  So basically this game to me was an excuse to eat lots of food!  Scott and I went over to Mike and Kelly's apartment to hang out and watch the game (Kelly and I work together).  There were seven people there, but probably enough food to feed at least 20!  I'm okay with that, though, since I probably ate enough food to feed three or four people myself.

Here are Mike and Kelly setting up some of the food:

 

The above is just SOME of the food.  There were also rolls with spinach dip, meatballs, two more kinds of chips and two flavors of popcorn.  I ate some of everything except the shrimp, because shrimp is icky!

I'm jealous of their apartment, by the way.  Not only do they have room for a dining table, unlike us, but a fireplace, two bathrooms, and two huge bedrooms.  Kelly keeps telling us we need to move into the apartment above theirs.  That would be awesome, if only it weren't quite so far from where Scott works.

Scott and me in front of the coveted fireplace:

Yes that is a picture of a dragon.  That's pretty much why we're friends with them right there.

And here is a picture of everyone who was there, besides me.  Poor, unsuspecting people who didn't know I was taking a photo (Scott, Clayton, Kristie, Carrie, Kelly, and Mike):

Oh yes, and check out Kelly's cute semicircle snack plates:

The actual game wasn't all that exciting (and I even like football most of the time).  However, there was a new episode of Glee afterward that we stuck around to watch, and that was awesome and hilarious!  Most of the other people present hadn't seen the show before, but I made everyone watch it with me.  They are probably better off now.

Today's Project: Hall Closet

So after the movie today, it was time to clean out the closet.  We live on the first floor, so we have an extra closet under the stairs that lead to the second floor apartment that's above us.  This closet houses all of our junk, along with coats, shoes, DVDs, tools, and a bulky vacuum cleaner.  I've been meaning to put away the Christmas stuff for a few weeks now, but it's just been sitting on the floor outside the closet:

I vacuumed this morning, so the vacuum was out, too.  So here is the closet this morning.  Coats and shoes on the left, DVD rack on the right, and huge pile of crap in the back.  The vacuum is usually shoved in there somewhere as well.  Also on display there is a hamster ball, even though our hamster died in early December, and a license plate (still valid).  Scott had the plate zip-tied to the front of his car since in Illinois you are supposed to have a front plate as well as a back plate.  But then he hit a deer, and had to have the front of his car repaired.  The license plate was never reattached.

AFTER:

Okay I am aware that it still doesn't look very organized.  But at least all the Christmas stuff fits now, and the boxes are stacked on top of each other instead of just thrown in there.  And there isn't a dog crate and baby gate piled on top of everything.  Plus, the Guitar Hero guitars are more easily accessible now, which is a good thing.

SNOW DAY!

We are both home today even though it’s a Wednesday.  Crazy!  Scott was going to try to go to work, but the roads were so bad our village closed them all.  Apparently they didn’t even have enough police to help the people who were already stranded due to the weather.  We slept in, and then had pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  Yum!  We were out of regular butter, so we had to use our turkey-shaped butter we bought for Thanksgiving and never used:

 

It’s not quite so cute anymore.

We got all bundled up to go play outside.  I look big and puffy in these pictures, but keep in mind I’m wearing something like four layers.  The wind is super cold.

Open the front door and SNOW is there!!

The undisturbed snow in our yard looked pretty to begin with:

 

I waded in and it was up above my knees.

See to the right of the hydrant the guy walking his dog?   He’s kind of behind the tree.  Anyway, that dog was super cute!  The snow was taller than he was so he was more jumping instead of walking through it, and he was covered in snow.  He seemed to be having a pretty good time though.  He came over and inspected me and Scott before continuing his jaunt through the snow.

Scott took the plunge and fell backward into the snow.  I just caught him getting up.  He looks like a snow monster in this picture:

 

I fell backward next.  It felt nice until I realized how cold it was.

 

Then I made a snow angel.  This is me trying to get up out of the 3 feet of snow; I’m not very graceful.

We came back in and I had some raspberry hot chocolate and watched The Ghost Writer.  It was a little slow in the middle but overall I liked it.  This afternoon my plan is to clean out our hallway closet.  I have to do this every few months or it gets totally out of control.  Okay, it’s pretty out of control right now, but that’s why I am going to clean it out!