Some things are just not meant to be

Disclaimer: This title may lead you to believe that this post is going to be about serious life events. It's not. Sorry for tricking you.

My friend Margaret was supposed to come visit this weekend. Earlier in the week we started planning what we would do for our fun weekend in Chicago. I asked Mags what was on her list, and was thinking I would plan everything around that. The only thing that was a must for the weekend was a stop at Hot Doug's. Which sounded perfect because my friend Jess had been wanting to go there as well and it's actually pretty close to our apartment. So I went to check out their website to see what their hours were and this is what I found:

Epic Fail #1.


So I continued to look for fun things for us to do and came across this comedy/improv/interactive show that looked like a blast. I sent an email out to our other friends to see who wanted to join us. Later that night I heard back from everyone and went online to book the tickets. I clicked "buy tickets" but it wouldn't let me complete the order. I went back to the main page to try again....and the Saturday night show was "Sold Out."
Epic Fail #2


This weekend marks the end of Restaurant Week here in Chicago so we began looking at different restaurants to see if any of them appealed to us. I found this "Pop up Restaurant" that was going on near our neighborhood and thought that would be a fun and different experience. Cost wise it was similar to restaurant week. I heard back from all parties involved and went to their website only to find out that they had stopped taking reservations the day before.
Epic Fail #3


I told Margaret all of this and she said she didn't care, it would just be fun to hang out and spend time together! We still planned on going ice skating at Millenium Park, having a drink on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building in the Signature Lounge, and checking out a couple of popular brunch places.


Friday evening I got a call from Margaret (who was flying standby) that ALL flights out of DC were delayed because of 70 mph winds! She hung around the aiport to see if she could get on any of the later flights, but because of all of the delays all of the flights were overbooked by at least 20 people, so there was no way she would get a seat.
Epic Fail #4!


We're hoping to reschedule for sometime in April! Hopefully the weather will be a little nicer and we'll be able to book everything at least a week out!

Beer-filled Weekend in Milwaukee

Saturday morning we drove up to Milwaukee to visit our friends Anne and Brian. Our friends Matt and Kendal (who recently moved from Birmingham to St. Louis) drove up as well, and our friend Kedar (who was a post doc in Tom's lab in Bham and now lives north of Chicago) joined in on the fun too! We decided to meet up at the Dranka residence because Brian finished brewing his first batch of homemade beer! Mitochondriale Brown Ale! (He's a scientist).

Before we could sample Brian's fine beer, we had to "warm up" by doing what our group does best....go on a brewery tour. (It's kinda our thing...like here or here). So we went to Sprecher Brewing Company in Glendale, WI.

We went on a little tour and then got to sample some of their fine brews. In addition to the 15 beers that were on tap, they had 8 varieties of soda...which was great considering 2 people in our group were pregnant (not me).

Although when two more tours come through after your tour (they run hourly), it's probably time to go home. (Or when random people start getting in your pictures....)

So we headed back for some grilled burgers, Mitochondriale (quite good!), and a skype session with Kelly, Emily, and Stacy (the remnants of our crew still in Birmingham). (Kelly had to get really close to the computer so we could hear her...so we got a nice close-up of her whenever she talked to us :)

After dinner, the guys helped Brian start another batch of brew. I forget what it was called but it was extremely hoppy (needless to say, Tom loved the aroma).

And of course, the puppies had a blast! Bailey even played "nice" with Bentley and didn't try to rip her face off with her teeth like how her and Jack used to play! (Although she did rip the head off of one of Bentley's bobos and partially gutted 3 others...Sorry Benny)! Bailey was so tired she didn't move from the couch all day Sunday when we got home!

We had a great weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Saturday night Tom and I celebrated Valentine's day the same way we have for the past 3 years....Pizza Hut takeout and drinks :) (With plenty of everything leftover!!) It warmed up a bit too this weekend...to a balmy 37 degrees, but it doesn't even compare to the Valentine's Weekends in Alabama when I could go for a run in shorts and a t-shirt and be comfortable!

We didn't really get gifts for each other this year (actually, I think we never give gifts for Valentine's Day....except for flowers...which is perfectly fine with me!). We have been talking a lot about a few minor things we want to get for the apartment. For example, I hate our bedroom. It just doesn't feel cozy and it doesn't feel like a bedroom. We rearranged a few things in the bedroom and took a few things out. Today we went to Ikea and Home Goods to pick up a few things to make the bedroom more "cozy." We bought full length brown curtains (instead of using the ones from our old apartment that barely covered the windows. We bought a cozy fluffy brown rug to go under (and around) the bed. (There were seriously some nights where I wouldn't get up to pee because I didn't want to touch the cold floor with my bear feet)! Finally we moved the mirror from the living room and put it above our bedroom dresser and bought a new (and much bigger) mirror for the living room. I love it!

We did a few other (free) things to the room including changing the duvet cover, adding a few throw pillows that were sitting in the linen closet, removing the tv (I've only watched it twice since we moved), and added a lamp to one of the bedside tables (I didn't think we needed it because the room has overhead lighting, but it really does make a difference!). I forgot to take any "before" pictures but here are the "after" pics!

(Sidebar: We're not allowed to paint in this apartment, otherwise that would have helped a ton!)

Weekends January through March

College football is over. Pro football quickly dwindles away. It's cold, dreary, and snowy. There's nothing to do on these weekends.

And I absolutely LOVE it!!! I used to dread these weekends in the first three months of the year. So much that this was part of the reason why I got a second job soon after we moved to Birmingham. But this year (for the first time ever I think ), I am LOVING them! I am enjoying the relaxing, the getting caught up on laundry and housework, running a few errands with Tom. I actually like there not being something that we HAVE to do every weekend.


Don't get me wrong, I am very much looking forward to warmer weather, exploring Chicago in the summer, going to the lake, taking Bailey to the dog beach, and the list goes on and on. But for now, I'm very much enjoying these weekends with nothing (or little) to do :)

We've been getting in some good friend time during these weekends as well. A few weekends ago we went over to my friend Jess's house for Game Night and last weekend we had my friend Stef and her fiance over for dinner. Next weekend we're trekking up to Milwaukee again to visit with some good friends, and the weekend following that my friend Margaret is coming to visit! Then we just have to get through March and hopefully April will bring us a glimpse of spring weather :)

Top 10 Things I miss about Birmingham

I had originally meant to write this post before we moved, and just realized the other night that I never wrote it. Looking back, I guess the weeks leading up to our move were a tad bit busier than I thought they were while we were going through it!

10. Sweet tea
9. Warm weather beginning in February
8. Sunshine! (and the lack of frequent winter gray skies)
7. No aiport traffic....ever
6. Publix
5. Our balcony (especially drinking coffee on the balcony on cool spring and fall mornings)
4. Being so close to the Gulf Coast
3. Cheap gas
2. Bailey's friends (her besties (Jack and Casper) and her neighborhood pals!)
1. Our friends!

Because SOMEONE said the pics of Bailey aren't big enough....

This one is a little blurry...at some point I dropped my glove. Bailey stole it and it instantly became her favorite new snow toy.

I'm a stylish blogger!

Guess what? Chi-town Southerner gave me a Stylish Blogger Award! As with any really awesome award, there are some responsibilities that go along with it. They are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award
Thanks Chi-town Southerner! I'm glad I stumbled across your blog while googling random words to try to spark creativity for my new blog name when I moved to Chicago!


2. Share 7 things about yourself
Well, I shared with you 25 random things about myself back in March of 2009, so I'm going to try to come up with 7 new things without looking back at this blog.
1. Lately I've been loving rocking out to Chicago's "Rewind 100.3" Best of the 80's and Today radio while I'm in the kitchen cooking
2. Tom and I are starting to look for a house....well, maybe...
3. Knitting stresses me out
4. I drink Sleepytime tea every night
5. I've only been doing yoga about 1x/week (oops)
6. When I was little I cut my dad's hair while he was zoned out watching tv
7. I aspirate a lot...I should probably get that checked out


3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers
Okay, most of the blogs I follow are not "recently discovered" but I will award my favorite blogs to read:
Kelly at Iowa Girl in Bama
Anne and Brian at The Drankas
Libby at Don't Waste Your Cancer (Okay, I'm sure she could care less about a Stylish Blogger Award, as she has many other things on her plate, but I can't stop reading her blog! And I think she's pretty stylish ;)


Hmmm, every other blogger that I read either A) already has 18 million followers or B) only blogs once every 3 months (Stacy!). One of my favorite, favorite, favorite blogs (that I recently discovered at least) is Hyperbole and a Half. My particular favorites are Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving, The Party, The God of Cake, and This is Why I'll Never be an Adult.

Blizzaster Fun!

Happy Winter Storm everyone! I am writing from home in the middle of the day on a Wednesday because it is a State of Emergency and no one could go to work! So far we have 20.5 inches of snow (according to the news). The third largest snow storm in Chicago history! Right now the sun is shining but we're supposed to get some more "Lake Effect Snow" this afternoon. I am loving my day off mid-week but not loving that my PTO balance will drop even further into the negative! Here are some picture collages of all of the snowfun! The picture to the left is our kitchen window this morning...we could barely see outside!

This is the view of our street from our living room window for the past 24 hours. My favorite is the little white car in the middle that slowly disappears :)

This is the railing on the back porch.

And finally, pics of the pup! She (of course) absolutely loved the snow. She tried to help Tom shovel, and at one point snatched my glove and ran around with it like it was her most favorite toy in the whole world!

And I couldn't make a snow blog post without a video of Bailey running (galloping) through the snow!

Snowpocalypse, Snomageddon, Blizzaster...

Those are just a few of the words that are being used to describe the massive snow storm we are getting right now in Chicago. I've never heard of any of them before (which is weird because I grew up in a town where we had at least 3-5 snow days to make up every single year). Although I think my favorite happens to be found on a t-shirt....

The front: Chizzard 2011

The back: Hide yo kids, hide yo wife

Hahhaha. If this isn't funny to you, you missed out on this original video and then the remix from nowhere else than my former state of residence, Alabama (there is also a Christmas version if you missed it last month).

Anyways it's hard to tell how much snow we have right now because it's so windy that the snow is drifting all over. We got a couple inches last night and then it started around 2pm and has been going strong ever since. I also learned what exactly entails a "blizzard:"

1) Visibility less than 1/4 mile

2) Winds over 35 mph

3) Snow and the above two things for 3 hours
We're supposed to get around 24 inches by tomorrow afternoon, have some thundersnow, and wind gusts are supposed to reach 60 mph!

Bailey has been LOVING it. She runs in giant circles and then crashes into a snow drift. I can't wait to take her out again tomorrow!

This Week at Work....

Welcome to a new series I like to call "This week at work." (Okay, I lied, I'm not going to make this a new series....but saying that just makes this post a little less random :)

This week at work...

• I met a fellow Penn Stater
• I spent a day in inpatient and didn't like it at all (3 months ago I never thought I would have said that!)
• I covered ortho clinic (by myself) for 3 different docs who saw 52 patients (Normally this clinic is covered by no less than FOUR different PTs throughout the day)
• We finally got to check out the little bar with a Penn State flag in the window that I drive past everyday for an after-work happy hour event
• I volunteered to stay until 7pm one night to learn!
• In the same day, I was told by one person that they could "hear the Birmingham" in my voice and I was told by another person that "they thought I was from central Pennsylvania by the way I talked." (Just wait until I'm here long enough to add a midwestern component to my voice!)

My nose gets cold too

We have a programmable thermostat in our apartment so Tom has programmed it to drop down to 65 when we leave for the day and come back on before we get home. The other morning I had to drive out to a satellite clinic for work so I left a little later than usual and the temperature had already started to drop. I came out to the living room and this is what I saw. Hopefully she doesn't get too cold during the day!

Peewee Hockey...a new reason to exercise!

The gym that we decided to join is a small little fitness center that is part of a local Chicago Park District. It's only a few blocks away, and was super cheap compared to the other big name gyms. Sure the equipment is a little old, but there is rarely anyone else there when we go so it's been kind of awesome. As if all that isn't enough, the fitness area overlooks a regulation size ice hockey rink, so there is usually something entertaining to watch while you are running.

My favorite? Peewee hockey!! We've seen them practicing a couple of times, and yesterday when we went there was a peewee hockey game. They were so cute!!! The majority of them weren't even as tall as the goal. My favorite is the little squirts who go speed skating down the rink only to belly flop and slide the rest of the way on the ice.

We had a pretty good weekend despite the frigid weather! Friday night we went to a place called Tiny Lounge to meet our friend Jess but left soon after we arrived because the place was packed (apparently they had a groupon that expired Friday). We went next door to a place called Bowman's because it was empty and looked warm. Turns out it was a Chicago/Iowa sports bar so our friend Kelly would have loved it! We had some great appetizers and met up with one of Jess's friends, so (excluding work) that brings the grand total of people we know in Chicago to 4.

0 Degrees right now!!!

Little penguin

So, yesterday Tom and I went to Old Navy since they were having 40% off all of their clearance items. Tom found quite a few deals, and I found a banana peel Halloween costume for Bailey (for $0.74!!) and 2 little stuffed penguins for $0.38 each. I knew Bailey would destroy the penguins but for $0.38 I thought it was worth it. I don't know if the first one lasted 5 minutes!! Here is her nice, pretty, new toy. And here is what it looked like 5 minutes later.

Matt Takes Chicago

My brother came to visit on his way back from a work training trip to Dallas. He flew in Friday night after we got off work. He FINALLY got to meet Bailey and of course, she instantly loved him! He tried to turn her into a cuddler...but she really must have personal space issues because she just wasn't having it.

We went to dinner at this restaurant that Tom and I drive past every single day and always say we should try, Chief O'Neill's. It was cozy and still decorated for Christmas and we left with full bellies and platefuls of leftovers. After dinner we just hung out at the apartment and Bailey and the boys played in the snow in the back yard for a little bit. Bailey was so thirsty after playing and running the Basenji 500 that she ate a TON of snow.

Saturday we went downtown to Millennium Park and played around at The Bean and watched a bunch of eager ice skaters take the ice after the zamboni finally finished cleaning the rink.

We grabbed dinner at Gino's East and then got Matt to the airport in time for his flight. Tom and I are slowly eating our way through Chicago's Deep Dish Pizza and I am loving every bite of it!

Random List of Updates

Because, as you all know, I love making lists!

• (In case you didn't notice) I changed my blog name and header again! The creative Brian Dranka Anne Dranka came up with the name (Thanks Anne!), and I played around with Google's Picasa until I got something I liked.
• Last weekend we drove up to Milwaukee to ring in the new year with our good friends, Anne and Brian, who moved to Milwaukee last January. We had a wonderful evening starting off at the Milwaukee Ale House where we enjoyed some flights and appetizers. Oh, and a Keg Christmas Tree. We went back to Anne and Brian's house for a cheesy goodness dinner and spent the rest of the evening hanging out. The puppies enjoyed reuniting and Bailey had a blast devouring her rawhide while Bentley was just not as "in" to her rawhide. We tried some of the new "Champagne Beer" made by Sam Adams, and it was quite good.
• Tom and I are officially residents of Illinois! We've been putting it off since we moved, but finally decided we just need to bite the bullet, wake up early Saturday morning, and get new drivers licenses and tags for our car. It was actually not bad, except for the small amount of anxiety we both experienced when they told us we had to take a written test! Fortunately, we both passed, and an hour later we emerged with Illinois drivers licenses, new car tags, and are now registered to vote in Illinois.
• My brother is coming to visit next weekend! Matt recently got a job with United and will be passing through Chicago Friday night on his way back from training in Dallas. We're planning to go exploring in the city and of course hit up another deep dish pizza place! I'm thinking Gino's East but we'll have to wait and see.
• I'm taking a little "break" from my frugal blog. I really do enjoy keeping up with it, but lately there have just been too many things on my plate. We're going to change up our "plan of attack" for grocery shopping, which I am so excited about because it has been stressing me out more than you can imagine (Publix...I miss you!)
• I love edamame! Okay, for some reason Tom thinks that probably everyone doesn't want to know this, but this is a big step for me! I don't like beans (unless they're all mushed up from the food processor or immersion blender), and I've never been crazy about soy, but for some reason, I have been obsessed lately with soybeans!

2010 Year in (Picture) Review

This year flew by and brought about quite a few exciting changes and adventures for us! Here is our 2010 in pictures!!

January

My pedometer obsession began DC Trip to visit Mags & Brie Drankas move away
February

Freezer Cooking Day is initiated John Mayer Concert
March

Ashley’s Baby Shower and the Antishower
April

Sushi Night Jamie’s Wedding

May

Destin Trip

Do Dah Day Rogue Fest Tubing Tom's 30th BirthdayMike comes to visit
June

Sarah & Pat’s Wedding Annual Conference in Boston
July

30th Birthday AOTR
August

The Chins get adopted Blue Ridge Mountain Trip
September

Penn State game in T-town
October

Fun events with friends Tom’s Defense Move to Chicago
November

New apartment New jobs Bailey LOVES the snow
December

Holiday Weekend NYE