Please excuse the interruption

I did not at all anticipate when I first started this blog (a whole 9 days ago) that I would so look forward to ending my day with a post. I've never been a great diarist, and I feared my blog would suffer from that. I know, there is plenty of time for my enthusiasm to wane. It has, afterall, only been nine days, two of which I have missed, but I have found this to be really fun and maybe even a little cathartic.

So you can imagine how I felt last night, sitting on the couch, patiently waiting for my turn at the computer, which never came, because we were up to important things last night. We were creating this:

OK, maybe not exactly that. The above is a slightly stylized version of what we were creating, but it's pretty close. Any idea what it is?

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Oh happy day!

The email arrived at 10:27am central time. Subject: Success. Message: We now have a wii!


Oh what torture to wait until 8:30pm to play! As you can see, though, I'm working on making up for it.

The weekend in Seattle was lovely. We ate, we drank, we gabbed, we got manicures and facials - it was the perfect girls weekend.

The girls.

Weekends like this are so much fun for me. I miss my college friends and need to take any chance I can get to act like a girl...apparently. Tonight when our building's cleaning lady walked into my office to empty the trash, she declared (very sweetly) that she really liked my new haircut. And that it made me look like a girl. I'm not quite sure what she meant by that. I mean, what did I look like before? A woman? (ie I look younger) Or a boy? (yikes!) I'm not going to worry about it. She meant it as a compliment, and she's very sweet.

Speaking of sweet - so is Amanda - the girl who just got dumped on the Bachelor (what I'm watching right now). This Brit comes off as genuine and genteel because of his accent (we Americans are so easily duped by the accent), but really all he can think with is his pants and his love of American celebrity. The final two make this clear - Lorenzo Lamas's daughter and the girl he was about to dump until she put on a see-through nightgown in the fantasy suite. I know it's wrong of me to have expectations from this show, but I'm disappointed nonetheless.
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Will we get one?

Today is a very exciting day for me. I eagerly await some (I hope) exciting news from my husband. Alex and I received a Best Buy gift certificate for Christmas last year. Every time we are near Best Buy, we check to see if they have a wii in stock with no luck. At first I was patient. I'm an adult. I don't need games. I don't have time for games! I should be reading 10-Ks, research reports and the Wall Street Journal in my free time, not playing wii tennis! I should be thinking about the decline in US LIBOR and how it might help or hurt my investments, not holding up a fake steering wheel and pretending to drive go carts! I should be focusing on the price of oil and its impact on airlines and offshore drillers, not practicing my golf swing with Tiger Woods!

But I can't resist and my patience has run out. Alex and I have increased the frequency with which we check in on our local Best Buy  - we stop by, we call, I flirt with the nerdy guy who works in the video game department (I don't think he perceives it as flirting, though, I think he thinks I ask too many questions). And it all did nothing for us, bupkis, nada, diddly squat, until...last weekend a Best Buy employee told us that they should have wiis available on Sunday. 

I'm out of town, so I'm trusting Alex to go when it opens without me. Of course I can trust him. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only member of our household who wants the wii. :) Keeping my fingers crossed...

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Whole lotta shakin goin on

I am currently sitting on a plane on my way, theoretically, to Seattle, though all we've done is maneuver from the gate to the penalty box. Once we pulled away from the gate, a pretty big thunderstorm came through and has been shaking our plane quite vigorously. I'm a bit fearful that my trip to my friend Tracy's bachelorette party may turn into a tour of the taxi ways of O'hare.

I'm hopeful that the weather gods will let us leave Chicago tonight. I am looking forward to seeing Tracy and my other friends from school who have assembled for the festivities. It's good to meet up with the girls every now and then because (1) my day-to-day routine does not include enough manicures, (2) my friend Candace loves her new camera as much as I love mine (they're the same) so we can dork out together and (3) I need to be reminded from time to time that I just can't rage like I used to. Here's hoping that I don't focus too much effort on that last point. :)

No telling how long we'll be here. The woman behind me is calling everyone she knows and complaining loudly to anyone who will listen that there's a thunderstorm warning for Chicago until 10pm. Yikes. Click here to read more!

Golden Birthdays

Today is my brother Christopher's golden birthday - he's 24 on the 24th! I'm more excited about it than he is. And I'm guessing my brother Patrick was more excited about his most recent birthday (his 21st) than Christopher is about his. Oh well, as their pseudo 2nd mom, I get excited about these things.

The Birthday Boy

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Spring is Springing!

I opened our front door this morning to discover little green things emerging from the brown/gray space we call our front yard - hostas and lilies of the valley and leaves on our trees!

How exciting! And what a relief to see signs of winter finally releasing its grip on Chicago. Good bye snow miser!

In celebration of nicer weather, I went running tonight. It was lovely, and I am exhausted. 

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Ah, to be young and have "problems"...

My brother Christopher and I were talking on the phone yesterday when he presented me with his current dilemma. “I want to buy something,” he said, “but I don’t know what.” He went on to explain that he had just about everything a young man could want, and while he used to find pleasure in buying things, he just couldn’t come up with anything.

Sassy jeans? He has them.

Shoes? How many shoes does a man (he says this with a bit of Tim Allen in his voice) need?

A lens for his sister? Kathleen, why would I buy you a lens? I miss the point, you see. Apparently he wants to buy something for himself.

It was worth a shot. I will have to find another way to get that Nikon 105mm f/2.8D Micro lens that I’ve had my eye on. eBay isn’t working for me. I keep getting outbid at the last minute, and I don’t want to pay a lot for that muffler. Unfortunately, Nikon doesn’t make the lens I want anymore. They replaced it with a lens that Ken Rockwell doesn’t like as much, and I trust Ken Rockwell implicitly. So I’m forced (kicking and screaming “please don’t make me buy this lens!!!” all the way) to buy a used lens on eBay or craigslist or ideally Adorama or B&H (reputable camera dealers that sell used equipment). Oh, wow, wait a minute, B&H has my lens. [Be right back.] Chris will be so jealous - I just bought something!

Oh, I can't wait - just in time for flowers and bugs and summer! I will soon have a macro lens!! As if my photography obsession needed more encouragement. More on that later...
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So Begins Life on Southport

When Alex and I searched for our home together, we had two criteria: First, we did not want to live with anyone above, below or next to us - neighbors are noisy and if they're not, they move. Second, we did not want to move again for a really long time - we needed a place where we could live for lots and lots of years. When we first visited what is now our home, we declared it the most adult place we had ever looked at and since we aspire to be adults some time between now and lots and lots of years from now - it was perfect. And so began our Life on Southport.

What a great name for a blog! You know, it just came to me like that, and I was inspired and compelled to write! Brilliant.

OK, that's not actually the genesis of the blog. I'm pretty certain it occurred to me one day as I picked up my Wall Street Journal on the way to work and put it into my bag next to copies of Cooks Illustrated and Martha Stewart Living that I was not a typical girl. I needed an outlet - more than just cooking and book binding and photography and all that other crazy stuff I do when I'm not working. I needed to tell people about it. A blog! Yes! A blog is how I will let people into my world! Of course, it took me 3 months to come up with a suitable name (and you can't start a blog without a name, right?), so this might not work. I mean, who will read my blog if it takes me 3 months to come up with something to say?!?! But I am optimistic. I've gotten past that hurdle. I'm ready for primetime. I hope. :)

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