A pictorial essay of my life after work

Enjoy my life in pictures from the minute I get home from work until I go to bed:

Get greeted by Bailey - she's not sure why I have a crazed look on my face

Turn on computer and start frantically searching Craigslist for a place to live

Get frustrated that no one emails me back about houses/apartments, but then posts their listing again on Craigslist. Give up on Craigslist and start searching the internet for other rental sites

Between the 4 websites I have open, find a few places that look reasonable. Immediately map them on google maps to see what area they are in.

If it is one of my "approved areas," switch to satellite view and try to get a feel for the neighborhood

Then I send the little man down into "street view" and check out the neighborhood a little further

If all is well, I check the Metra and/or El map to see if public transportation will be an option for one if not both of us

Then, I see how far the new place is from each of the 3 different locations that I could possibly be working at.

Finally, I email the owner/agent and sell us as the perfect tenants.

Sometimes I eat. Then it starts all over again the next day.

Dissertation? Check!

Tom submitted his dissertation yesterday! All 150 pages of it! He only has two more major things before he's all finished with his PhD......his private defense on October 8th and his public defense on October 27th. Congrats Tom! These last few weeks are going to fly by!

Moving is stressful

Um, duh. As if everyone doesn't already know that. But I'm really stressed out!! Part of it is coming from finding a place to live. Thankfully I've gotten some good advice from friends of friends, but I kind of tend to obsess over things until they are finalized, and, obviously, where we are living is not yet finalized (aside from the Greater Chicago Area).

The other part that is causing me stress is my GIANT "To-Do" list that seems to keep growing. The reason it's so big is because I want to go through ALL of our stuff now and sort everything out into "Keep" "Give away" "Sell" or "Throw Away/Recyle" piles. This is a huge undertaking, but I know that as it gets closer to our actual move date I won't have time to do this. Also, it should make the actual packing and unpacking process A LOT smoother. When the time comes to pack, I can do just that, pack. I won't have to sort through stuff or decide if I want to take it with us to Chicago. And when we unpack once we get there (in a house yet to be determined), we will have only things we want and need. We won't have 10 random "junk" boxes or "garage" boxes because I refuse to bring unused/unwanted items with us.

Other than organizing and searching the internet for a house like a crazy woman, this weekend was pretty good :) Friday night we went to On Tap with Tom's lab. His friend Ben got a job where he can use his PhD and hunt/fish so he will be leaving Birmingham pretty soon. Saturday we hung out and watched football all day. (And by "watched football" I mean "occasionally looked at the television when my eyes started hurting from looking at the computer screen while searching for a place to live").

Penn State Game

What a whirlwind weekend!! My parents took the train down from PA with a bunch of fellow Penn State fans and arrived on Friday afternoon. They had some minor hold-ups, delaying their arrival in Birmingham including having to be rerouted because a bridge was on fire and some lady got kicked off the train for having too much to drink! They finally arrived and we spent the afternoon relaxing and preparing for Saturday. I made an awesome "PSU football brownie" for the tailgate on Saturday. I was pretty impressed with the turnout, considering I am 100% NON-artistic (my cousin Sarah got all of those genes ;)

The little inflatable lion even made the train ride!

Friday night we went to a Penn State Alumni Mixer held at the Wynfrey Hotel at the Galleria. There were so many Penn Staters there! They completely overflowed the room that was reserved for the event and filled up the whole lobby area that connected the mall to the hotel! They had the Blue Band (part of them), the cheerleaders, the dance team, and the President of Penn State getting everyone ready for the big day! We were hoping Joepa would make an appearance, but this was as close as we got: Saturday we woke up at the crack of dawn and loaded up the cars with people, food, coolers, chairs, tables, and equipment and headed for Tuscaloosa. We got there around 8 and set up shop next to a bunch of other Penn State tailgaters! It was SO HOT and we were all sweating and miserable before 10 AM! We did what we had to do, and rigged up a UAB umbrella to some chairs and took turns sitting in the "shade." We took a walk into some nearby merchandise tents and that's where I met my favorite Alabama fan ;) Some "spirited" Penn Staters next to our tailgate had a "Group Jager shot/fight song singing" event every hour, on the hour. The first time they humoured our friend Leah by having her sing the Alabama fight song......and then cutting her off in the middle of it. She was a good sport! By this point in the day we had been brainstorming for a while on how we could magically get a tent to give us some shade. Tom and I decided that any amount of money was worth it and our wonderful friends Kelly, Stacy, & Marji stopped by Kmart and picked up a NAVY BLUE canopy tent on the way to our tailgate! Awesome! Stacy brought Casper along, but I don't think tailgating is really his thing. Although he did like trying to sneak up to the hot dogs and try to lick them claiming them to be his. More hours passed and those crazy Penn State fans kept having their hourly singalong, and this time this guy showed up. Those Alabama fans sure are creative! (note sarcasm) Get it? Roll Tide?Then THESE GUYS* showed up near our tailgate! So I had to snap a picture!Later on in the afternoon, the sky started changing in the distance and before we knew it it was POURING down rain! At this point in the day we were very thankful for our tent!!We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting under the tent trying to stay dry while waiting for kickoff. At least it cooled things off a little bit! Due to the festivities at our tailgate, we didn't quite make it over to check out College Game Day on the Quad, but we did get our picture with the bus on the way into the game! And I think that's all I have to say :)

*There are 3-4 guys that go to every single Penn State game (home and away). 2-3 of them dress in full gear and wear these silly/scary linebacker masks and 1 of them wears a Joepa mask. If you watch enough Penn State football on tv, you'll definitely spot them in the crowd!

It's official!

We're moving to Chicago!! Woooooooooooot! I feel like a weight has been lifted now that we actually know where we're moving to! I can start being neurotic and planning every single thing out :) You know, like where to live, where to work, etc. Minor details ;) A LOT to do and only a little bit of time to do it in! Tom is publicly defending his thesis October 27th so we will likely be moving at the beginning of November. I have so many emotions running through my heart right now! I tell everyone at work today. It's going to feel so *real* now that we know where we're going and everyone else knows too!

Apples and Baking

Fall is my favorite time of the year to bake. I love the smell that fills the house and I enjoy being in the kitchen making baked goodies. We bought a bag of apples at the apple orchard in Georgia so I've been able to start baking already!

I made 2 recipes from my last Taste of Home magazine and another from allrecipes.com. The first one was called Crisscross Apple Crowns and is pictured below. Yum! Baked apples wrapped in dough brushed with butter and cinnamon. I used pecans instead of walnuts and left out the raisins. One week for dinner last night I made sauteed apples to go along with our main course. They could be eaten at any time of the day...breakfast, lunch, dinner, OR dessert! They were so good we ate them all before I could get a picture!

On Saturday I made Slow-cooked Stuffed Apples at Stacy's house while we watched football. They were scrumptious, I highly recommend caramel topping to go with!

Fall is in the air!

I love fall. Love, love, love it! It was so wonderful to wake up Saturday morning and have it be chilly enough outside that I had to wear a sweatshirt to enjoy my coffee on the balcony! (Although that didn't last long!) And I am sooo excited that football is finally here!!


In true football-season-kickoff fashion we went over to our friend Stacy's house with our friend Kelly to watch Penn State (while Kelly watched Iowa) since Stacy gets the Big Ten Network and is kind enough to fill her house with Big 10 fans every Saturday :)Stacy didn't have her Alabama shirt on yet, but we figured a Talladega shirt was a pretty close second. The puppies played while we watched football and enjoyed the fresh fall air and the aroma of baking apples in the slow cooker and buffalo wings in the oven!Bailey had a fun time taking every single one of Casper's toys out of his toybox (and he has a lot!) We tried to get Bailey and Casper to destroy Casper's stuffed penguin (because of the Youngstown State Penguins) but they were nice enough to leave him in one piece. And we certainly missed having these two here this year.