Long time, no blog.

Well hello there! I know, I know, I haven't blogged in like two weeks. There's no excuse for this kind of behavior, but of course I have one, which is that I've had company ever since the Wednesday before last (I'm very popular, you know), so my blogging/doing anything in my normal routine time has been cut severely short. In some ways this has been great, as I've had the perfect excuse not to work out, answer emails/voicemails, or do the dishes/laundry (hoo boy is that laundry piling up...). On the other hand, it's been rather...great.

Last Wednesday my Aunt Sheri, Uncle Bill, and cousin Emily came to visit from Des Moines. Emily, age 15, was supposed to go to South Africa with her youth choir (yes, you read that correctly, and no, I still have not yet left the country at age 29), but in an extremely unfortunate turn of events, the company planning the trip for the group went bankrupt and all of the kids (read: the kids' parents) lost all of the money they had invested for the trip (around $3,000/kid). Ouch. So in an effort to cheer Emily up, my aunt and uncle let her choose where she'd like to take a trip (domestically this time) and she ended up choosing Chicago. Which suits me just fine because not only did I get to see/hang out with them, I also got several days' worth of free meals, as well as free admission to the Science and Industry Museum which was good fun. Emily spent the night at my place on Friday night, and we went and saw "Orphan" which was so scary that I don't think my hand left my mouth the entire two hours we were in the theater, except for the few times it traveled up to cover my eyes. Yikes. I took the crew to all my favorite spots in Chicago: Walker Brothers Pancake House, Wildfire Grill, Bookman's Alley, the Evanston Lakeshore Art Fair (which just happened to be last weekend), Ethiopian Diamond, The Museum of Science and Industry, and, as previously mentioned, the movie theater. Yes, more than half of those involve food. No, I don't care that I totally derailed my efforts on Weight Watchers (I lost 3.6 pounds last week! And now I've probably gained it all back!). Why? Because it was fun.

The Des Moines contingent left on Tuesday, and on Wednesday my mom flew in to continue the party. Lots of good times ensued, including a full day at the beach, more movie watching (this time we saw the very un-scary "Adam" and "Julie and Julia"--both excellent), lots more eating (which ensured that if I hadn't gained back the weight I lost when the Des Moines-ians were here, I certainly have now, and oh, what a way to go), shopping (wherein I discovered Target was having a huge sale on their underwear and bras, so I basically overhauled my collection--and I got an immersion blender--woohoo!), sleeping in (because I took THREE DAYS off of work), playing with the dogs (yes, I added that "s" on purpose--I have also been dog sitting for a friend of mine for the past 8 days), and generally basking in the glow of having numerous possibilities but no commitments.

So now it's back to reality and back to my crazy job, which will be especially crazy this week since we have a huge deadline on Friday. But all the while I'll be thinking about the last week-and-a-half: laying on the beach with my mom, seeing movies, and generally being care free.