Cooking Class

Last night, Heath and I went to the Chopping Block in Lincoln Square (a Chicago neighborhood) to take a cooking class. It was a lot of fun! We made southern Italian cuisine while sipping wine and visiting with the other people taking the class. Our chef, Micah, was very helpful and Heath and I both learned a lot. Heath is becoming a pro at chopping onions! We made White Bean Bruschetta, Italian Wedding Soup, Sicilian-Style Eggplant Risotto, and Cannoli's. Everything was delicious and these are definitely meals we would try again at home.

We also picked up a Le Creuset teapot that matches my dutch oven! So cute!

Busy Weekend!

Heath and I went up to Michigan last weekend for Easter and a variety of other activities. It was so much fun to spend time with my sister and Ron and my little niece and nephew. We each left work around noon on Friday so we wouldn't have as much traffic and so we could spend some time with the kiddos before they went to bed. On the way up, we stopped to get a few bottles of wine for Mindy and Ron as a pre-Thank you gift for taking our engagement pictures.

We got to Hudsonville around 6pm and chatted for a bit. We got some takeout dinner and played with Lucy and Henry for a little while before cracking open one of the bottles of wine and visiting with Mindy and Ron until bedtime.

Saturday was busy busy! We got up and headed over to order Mindy's bridesmaid dress, which looks great on her and will be super pretty down on the beach. Then we headed over to Blue Water Grill for a lunch wedding shower... for me! It was really wonderful. The food and atmosphere were just right and everybody seemed to have a great time.

After the shower, we went back to my mom and dad's house, where I tried on my wedding dress for my mom and Mindy. They both really liked it and thought it was perfect for the beach. (One of the must haves for the dress was that it can travel relatively easily, and it definitely does. I'll probably just need to have it lightly steamed once we get down there.)

Ron and Heath brought the kids over shortly after that and us grownups headed out to downtown Grand Rapids so Mindy could take some engagement pictures. We had a lot of fun, even though it was a little chilly. She's still going through the gazillion pictures she took, but posted a handful proofs for us so far, including this one that she posted on her photo blog (it's one of my favorites so far!).

She's amazingly talented; I'm so excited to see the rest of the proofs! The session was a huge success, except for me getting a big rip in my jeans at the first location (errant nail sticking out of a window board! Oops!) After a couple hours, we headed back to our parents' and had dinner together.

Sunday was just as busy with Easter stuff all day. Lucy took a faceplant in the backyard going after an Easter egg (video coming soon!), but was okay. We went over to the grandparents' house to celebrate Easter and my Grandma Myrt's 80th birthday. Lots of family picture posted on various smugmug sites. My grandma is awesome. She's always (and I mean always!) positive, loving, and generous (we grandkids could do no wrong. ever.). I am unbelievably lucky to have such a stable and consistent positive influence in my life. And, she sure doesn't act like she's 80! She even surprised us all yesterday with the FIRST AND ONLY sex-related joke any of us had ever heard her make! Hilarious! She's one of a kind and I'm so glad we got to visit and spend time with her on such a momentous birthday!

Overall, a great weekend. It was really tough to come back to this icky weather (30 degrees and rainy!) and get back to work after such a nice time!

pros and cons

Ah, the adventure of home buying in Chicagoland! Super sweet townhome for a totally reasonable price - 3 bedrooms, 3.1 bath, huge rooftop deck (that's in addition to the 'grilling deck' off the kitchen!), nice finishes, 2 CAR ATTACHED GARAGE! See here.

Ready for the rub?!

How about that Murder Risk!?!? Eh?? Eh??

Compared to where we live now...

So, we're above average for most areas (given proximity to a major metropolitan area, this isn't surprising). But, the West Roger's Park numbers are too high for my taste!

For reference, these numbers were pulled off the Point2Homes website. Each of the images are hyperlinked to the respective data pages. You can search out any zip code, city, state, etc. and gather lots of demographics on the area, including these crime stats. Definitely a resource worth bookmarking if you're ever considering moving into a less than familiar locale!

Oh, Evanston!

How we love thee. Great location relative to Chicago, great restaurants, shopping, beaches, and so forth. We could even afford to buy a place here - there are a number of great condos and even houses with list prices well within our budget. Although there is definitely a markup for being in Evanston (the same place would cost much less in many other locales), it might even be worth it.

Except...

Taxes on a small 3 bedroom house with 1.1 baths with a small yard and one car garage -- not even that close to downtown: $11,000! An extra $917/mo... Uh, no.

Taxes on a 1500 sqft condo downtown: $7,000! Plus, the $500+/mo association fees! An extra $1083/mo... No again.

This, folks, is why we are not yet homeowners. :)

Foolish Tax

A lawmaker in Oregon (one of most bicycle friendly places as far as I understand it) has proposed a tax on cyclists to help pay for the roads. More detail is here as posted on the Freakonomics blog. Pretty much every comment was the same, that it is ridiculous to charge all bike riders $56 every two years to register the bike. It costs $56/year there to register A WHOLE CAR! Nobody could ever realistically begin to think that a bike does even half the amount of damage on roads as a car does. Plus, it's an incredibly green form of transportation, many adult cyclists also own cars, and most municipalities collect taxes from ALL residents that go toward road upkeep. This dude must have someting against cyclists or is looking for a quick buck! Super lame. :)

Awful

Since when do security employees at airports get to determine whether a person counts as "somebody"? Fairly short and worth reading...

Link.

Seriously?

I went online to check the availability of casepacks (i.e., packets of articles) for my classes next quarter (starting a week from Wednesday). The bookstore lists them by course and section. Neither of mine is available yet, but it wasn't easy for me to determine it. As you can see in the image, they run the instructor name into the course name with no spaces, so finding your class is no easy feat. This is pretty inexcusable if you ask me. As an aside, I don't know if online textbook ordering has ever been available - certainly not since I've started school here. It would be a great feature for people who are busy, like, say, oh I don't know, students who also work full time! :P

Those of you wondering, my classes are DECS 433 S73 and MKTG 430 S72. Let me know if they are in there and I happened to miss them in this excruciating letter jumble!

For the Record

I'm NOT one of them. And I don't care if everybody else is doing it.

Absolute Baloney

So, I started school in the fall. One of the main reasons I decided to start in the fall was to maximize the way that I could leverage the tuition reimbursement benefit offered by my current employer. I just found out today that they changed the rules for this benefit halfway through my first quarter, which throws a gigantic wrench in my plans. Now, I'm going to be forced to extend my stay here by at least a quarter, which has other implications for tuition payment and student loan eligibility. Basically, in order to receive all the tuition reimbursement that I was originally thinking I could qualify for (part of why I elected to go to Kellogg and a HUGE part of why I started when I did), I'll have to pay for at least 2 quarters out of pocket because I won't qualify for loans for those quarters. Awesome. As a bonus, I won't get that money until a YEAR after I finish school, leading to extra interest accrual on my loans.

I thought the tuition benefit was really nice. Granted, it pays for only a teensy portion of my school expenses, but it's better than nothing. I know I shouldn't be complaining too much since a lot of people don't get any tuition reimbursement, but if you are making your educational plan partially planning on a benefit that gets changed without adequate notice, it sure sucks.

Thanks, employer, for putting me in this situation. Thanks for changing your policy when I was already halfway through and had fully paid for my first quarter at school, which made it impossible for me to adjust my plans accordingly. Thanks for making the change immediate and not allowing a grace period for those of us trapped in the middle, unable to react, respond, or adjust - given NO options. Thanks for making me stay in school an extra quarter, forcing me to pay two quarters out of pocket and accrue more interest on loans that were to be paid off with the reimbursement supposedly coming my way. Thanks for somehow not having my tuition reimbursement forms that were supposedly sent in months ago by our admin.

Good thing I called or else I wouldn't be getting anything at all since the forms are due March 31. It needs to be said that "employer" in this case is not my immediate employer, it is the behemoth parent company that bought us, making all of our lives SO much better! Thanks!

oh sweet sweet warmth!

It's so nice to have a warmer day again! I'm antsy to get outside and feel some sun on my face and have my sunroof open. I haven't gotten a chance to feel it yet, since I've been cooped up today, but soon...soon...
On a related note... Heath is currently in New Mexico for work, and yesterday I was a little jealous of him getting to enjoy a little reprieve from the cold while I had to slog it out up here. Guess that's not really an issue at this point.

Please let it stay warmish!!

still working on it

hectic week so far, so not much time to make headway on a lot of the changes i have in mind. i've been messing with the sidebar widgety things a bit, and hopping thru themes lately, but that's about it. I've had a pretty rough time sticking to my "planned schedule" this week so far, but hopefully the rest of the week will be better (excepting, of course, tomorrow night and Friday night, which are consumed by extra-curriculars). oh well! i HAVE managed to get some "fun" reading in, which has been great!

revamping

so, i'm in the process of revamping a lot of things, including, possibly moving to a new blog and style in order to refocus. my life has gotten away from me lately and i'm seeking to get organized and get things in order! more to come soon!

peanut butter recall

here is a widget from the FDA to check:

an alternative perspective...

i saw this today on indexed, and i thought it was a cute tongue-in-cheek* follow up to heath's thoughtful post about valentine's day yesterday.

*note: not to be taken seriously. i agree with heath's points on his post. :)

profit!

a still from the south park episode that inspired me to pursue my mba...


i was reminded of the episode because it was referenced in a consumerist post today citing some shadiness in target's "sale" policies... see the image below...

another thinker

from freakonomics. this one is about people reducing their human interactions. it's focused on whether there are times/situations in which paying a premium to avoid interaction/relationship is preferred or useful. pretty interesting read.

indeed!

this post from the freakonomics blog pretty well sums up my feelings about the housing bailout stuff. heath and i have chatted a bit about this and why we are particularly frustrated by the bailouts. we are paying for other people's/corporation's poor choices. this is especially frustrating because we're not homeowners. we're not homeowners specifically because we didn't want to purchase a place beyond our means. so, despite making the financially prudent choice to wait until we had more money (or lived in a more affordable locale) before buying a home, we are still paying the price for those less responsible. my sympathies if any of you who read this are in trouble because your home has lost value or your ARM is exploding your housing payments. i certainly don't want anybody to lose their home. i do think, however, that it's unfair for me to be expected to help pay for it when the loss is due to improper lending practices and/or irresponsibility/lack of accountability on the part of the borrowers.

snuggie in usa today

Link

memory stick

ha! love it!

surprise!

speaking of last weekend, i completely forgot to blog about the surprise party that heath threw for me! i turned the big 3-0 on saturday, and thought we were just going out to dinner. here's a rundown of the events:

friday, i had a make up class for the mlk day holiday. after a long day and a long week, i got home around 9:30 pm. heath met me at the door and was grinning all weird while i took off my boots and coat. i finally asked him what was wrong with him, and he said that i had a birthday present in the living room. i look over to my right and see jessie, one of my dearest friends, sitting on the couch! i was beyond surprised, as she live waaaaay up in duluth and i hadn't seen her in over a year. it was so great to see her and catch up.

saturday morning, we got up and the three of us walked over to starbucks (a luxury jessie no longer has, what with living up in the boonies). we chatted and stopped in the pet store on the way home to ooh and aah over the puppies and bunnies and kitties. we meandered back to the apartment and plugged in a movie. the door buzzed unexpectedly, and i thought it might be the ups guy with a package i was waiting on. heath went down to see and when he came back upstairs, my sister and ron were with him! another surprise! it was great to see them, and we all sat around and chatted a bit. i figured they all just came in to go out to dinner with us.

we decided that us girls were going to head out to a local fabric store to browe for whatever and then go see slumdog millionaire. when we got to the theatre, the garage was all trafficky and i was sort of inclined to just go home. i asked the girls how badly they wanted to see the movie, and jessie, who is typically VERY laid back quickly and forcefully expressed how strongly she wanted to see it. weird, i thought, but let it pass. we watched the movie and then headed back to the apartment.

when we got there, it was all decorated with birthday stuff and heath's brother luke and his girlfriend rebecca were there. what a surprise! heath had gone to a lot of trouble to plan this all out as a surprise. he was a tad disappointed that people weren't there on time - most folks showed up about 5 min after i got home, but it was still a great surprise. he got food catered from portillos and arranged the whole thing, even ordering a cake from bennison's. he and mindy also put together a slide show of pictures of me growing up, which our friends found very amusing. turns out i have the same hairstyle as when i was three. seriously. eventually, we got out our catch phrase game and played that, which is always a lot of fun.

it was a great time, and once again, heath managed to surprise me - something people can rarely do. i am a very lucky girl to have a fiance that cares so much to go to such lengths to plan a celebration for me. it was great that so many of our friends were able to join us as well, especially those that came from far away. thank you thank you thank you! it meant so much to me.

etrade baby outtakes

we saw this before a movie last weekend, but for those of you who have missed out so far, check it out! totally hilarious!

headlines

i can’t resist commenting on some of the recent headlines…prepare yourself for some full-on snarkiness. i just need to purge the negativity so i can resume a peaceful existence. Ommmmm Ommmmm Ommmmm…

• blagojevich impeached. illinois has a new governor. we’ll see what this new dude does, but good riddance to blagojevich. every time he opened his mouth lately, i was ashamed for our state. he sees himself as a martyr despite a track record of incompetence and shady business. from what i could tell, he didn’t do himself any favors when he spoke in front of the state senate yesterday. if anything, he eradicated any sympathy that may have been left.
• related to the above, illinois is moving quickly to remove his name from everything. for instance, all the tollway signs (30-40 of them) around chicago that had his name on them will be taken down. there will no longer be anybody’s name on them, but they will continue to tout open road tolling and include the toll number. the fact that his name was on them (like HE personally gave us open road tolling) struck me as egotistical and unnecessary. well, it turns out it cost half a million dollars to put those signs up and will cost another half a million to take them down. hurrah! i wonder why our state budget is in the red to the tune of $6B…
• woman has octuplets. what a miracle! not. turns out she was on super hard core fertility treatments, which often result in multiple births. i’m all for fertility treatment when a couple is seeking to have a child and is having difficulty conceiving. but this woman already had SIX other children, all under the age of eight. what? it bothers me to know that there are people out there going through all kinds of emotional and physical distress trying to have a baby, yet this woman somehow is provided access to fertility treatment and resources when she already has six other kids. i know everybody has rights, but this just doesn’t seem right.
• wallstreet bonuses. nuff said. this is reminiscent of the auto executives taking their private jets to washington to lobby for a bail out. dumb dumb dumb. if you want the government to think you’re hurting for money, don’t lay off a bunch of working folks that need their paychecks only to turn around and give yourselves ginormous bonuses. kudos to President Obama for publicly saying shame on them! it’s not much, but at least they got called out publicly by somebody important.
• exxon profits. seriously. we were paying $5 a gallon for gas this summer because it was SO expensive to drill, process, etc etc etc, right? wrong, it was all speculation and deception. just like it was suggested that reason that gas prices stay high for a while after the price per barrel of oil has decreased is that the gas station has to sell all their “expensive” gas before they can buy this new cheaper gas. whatever! gas prices go up instantly when the price per barrel of oil goes up. for some reason, they don’t sell through their “cheap” gas then raise prices when they replenish stock with the more expensive stuff. the oil/gas companies make me so sick.

headline rant over. ommmmmmmmmmm. ommmmmmmmmmmm.

is this cheating?

i saw a link a week or two ago that the book "seven habits of highly effective people" was available for free download from audible.com. so, being a lover of free things, i went and snagged it. i hadn't listened to it at all, mostly because i was having difficulty getting it to work on my blackberry. yesterday before leaving work, i finally got it working and was able to listen in my car via one of those old fashioned tape adapter things (how archaic!). it was really really nice. i didn't have to deal with the boring/annoying commercials, and actually felt like i was getting something out of my time in the car on the way to class. i listened more on the way home and again on the way to work this morning.

so my question is, if i start to get caught up on my ever growing 'reading' list by listening to them on audiobooks, is it cheating? i know there is something cozy about curling up with an actual book and reading it the old fashioned way, but with my commute, and school, and attempting to have some sort of social and or fitness life, my time to do that is limited. i really think that audiobooks are a great idea for me. they make my commute seem less wasteful, and i actually get to accomplish something, even if somewhat passively, during that time. i also get to start knocking items off my reading list. i saw that i can get a daily podcast for the wall street journal downloaded as well, which would be a manageable way to keep up on current business events (important with this whole MBA thing!) also, i get motion sickness if i try to read when travelling either by car, plane, train, anything. this allows me to enjoy a book while travelling without getting nauseous.

am i missing out by using audio books? if i 'read' something like Anna Karenina by hearing it, does it count? i would argue yes, because i will still get the story word for word and it appears to be my best option at this point in my life with my various obligations. i get to enjoy great and helpful books in what would otherwise be wasted time.

very sweet

i just got a call from the front desk at work that there was a delivery for me. my mom and dad sent me a cookie bouquet from cookies by design for my birthday (a couple days early). very pretty, and it's all i can do to not eat one right away! thanks mom and dad!

what am i missing?

so, i bought a new computer a little while ago on good financing terms with no interest for 9 months or so. i thought it would be wise to pay the minimums until the end of the financing period, so that i can earn interest on the money in the meantime, rather than paying it all up front. the money is set aside in my savings account with ingdirect. i like the savings there because you earn a pretty darn good rate with no minimum balance and no fees. (if anybody wants to sign up, let me know because i can refer you and i think we both get a bonus!) as you can see here, i earn 2.4% APR no matter what the balance is. not too bad.

so, then i thought, hey, wouldn't it be better to drop that amount in a six-month cd or something, to earn even more? the money is already set aside and dog eared for that purpose alone, so i don't need to be able to access it, and cds are a great solution for short term savings needs. so, i looked into the cd option at ingdirect and found the following rates...

what? i earn more in my savings account unless i sign up for at least 12 months (which puts me past my financing window). even then and even if i go up to 60 months (5 years!), i only earn marginally more. i guess the thought is that if rates drop again, then i'm at least locked in at the good rate. not much motivation for me to move my money around. anybody know why this would be the case?

p.s. mindy and ron, i have an extra flat panel monitor that is bigger than the one you have if you want to borrow for an upgrade. just let me know before i sell it on craigslist :)

busy busy

it's been a while since i updated apart from the random post here and there. last weekend was a lot of fun. i was up early on saturday to head to school for the second session in the leadership series that kellogg offers to all incoming students. it was pretty useful and i had a nice time catching up with some of my classmates.

when i got home, heath had all the pots and pans out of the cupboards to go through. we wanted to get rid of duplicates now that we're engaged. we managed to get through the pots and pans, spices, baking stuff, pantry, junk drawer - you name it! too much expired stuff and way too many small frying pans. we both felt a lot better after clearing that stuff out. from there, we worked on the linen closet in the hallway and the winter accessories box (gloves, hats, scarves). very soothing to have all that stuff taken care of!

from there, we headed over to fifty/50, a restaurant in wicker park (i think). school was having an event that started with drink discounts and free heavy appetizers (awesome sliders and grilled cheese triangles, stuffed mushrooms, etc - so good!) for a few hours there, followed by a bulls game afterwards. we headed over to the united center to watch my first ever nba game as the bulls lost to the spurs. it was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs regardless.

afterwards, we met up with heath's friend brian to do some bowling. yes, after ALL that other stuff on Saturday, we still went bowling. it was nice to catch up with him, since we hadn't seen him since a few weeks before christmas.

sunday was pretty laid back, with me focusing on homework and heath trying to get the tv tuner card to work properly in the computer.

yesterday was another busy one, but also effective. we had the holiday off, so after sleeping in a bit, we got up and went to the gym together. then we grabbed lunch at bat 17 (the BEST sandwiches in evanston, or probably anywhere) before heading out to ... dum dum dum.... ikea. yes, we braved the expressway and the crowds. we had a mission - redo our office desk situation to accomodate the new setup (widescreen hd lcd monitor instead of the big clunky tv). we actually had great success - two desks that go very well together and a rolling drawer cabinet that matches. we lugged it all upstairs and got it put together, even doing some cable management in the process, so it's at least a little less of a rat's nest back there! it's a vast improvement storage-wise and makes the room seem bigger and more cohesive. heath has a dedicated spot for his new laptop (arrived today), and my new computer is all set up for work/surfing/playing/tv watching. i also got the ps3 to stream hulu!

all in all a very busy but extraordinarily productive weekend!

An Historic Event

So, today is pretty historic. I managed to sneak upstairs to sit and watch part of the speech in one of our conference rooms with satellite tv (who knew we even had that?! HD to boot!). I missed the oath of office but I caught the second half of the speech. He is a pretty fantastic speaker. He's got his work cut out for him, and I hope that he is as effective as so many hope he will be. Whatever happens, it is a pretty amazing day (and few months). I've never seen people actually excited about a new president or about political process at all. That is something really special.

Early Birthday Present!

Heath surprised me with my birthday present early last night. It was perfect because it was something I've wanted for a while, but would never buy for myself, nor would I ever expect to receive it - a 5.5 qt round Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch (or French) Oven. This is one of those pieces, like a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, that will likely last a lifetime and then some. It's very pretty and very heavy, and I'm looking forward to trying it out, maybe tonight, probably this weekend. It's kind of a dorky thing to want, but I'm very excited. He took some pointers from a coworker (that used to sell them) about size and shape, and picked a great color - Flame. It's a fun, bright color, but one that will probably go with any kitchen decor in the future. It's such a nice piece, I wouldn't be at all opposed to designing a kitchen color scheme around it entirely. :) Thanks, hon!

Vegas Baby!

We're going to Vegas in February! We found a good deal on Orbitz and decided a mini getaway would be fun to do. We'll be staying at the Signature at the MGM Grand, which is a nice place right on the strip. As a bonus, it's non smoking, which is GREAT, since most places in Vegas are smoky and gross. At least the hotel room will be a nice escape. I'm really looking forward to it. I have President's Day off, so we'll get to go for a long weekend over Valentine's/President's Day weekend. Woohoo!