I hope everyone had a great Independence Day weekend if you are so inclined or in a location that celebrates that occasion. I laid low for the weekend, so if you know where and what I was doing keep it to yourself. One day I will reveal to all my secret life, but not now! Suffice it to say I enjoyed a lot of grilled meats this past weekend. We’ll see how long I can go without sharing more details here.



We are getting ready for another visit from my parents. I think that they had originally planned on renting a car and driving to all the cute little towns around Chicago. I think they mean little downtown areas like Arlington Heights, St. Charles, etc. However, when my mom was visiting last month she came up with the idea of why don’t they just ride the train to all the stations and get off the train when a downtown area looks interesting. I’ve been making a mental list of all the cute downtowns on our Metra line but it by no means is meant to limit their trip. I thought the list from wikitravel on, and I detest this term, Chicagoland, was pretty cool.

I got a dirty look today from a girl at work who has just about the worst case of man-hating I have ever encountered. It’s even worse than the case I had in grad school. This girl is not overly friendly on a good day but today was unusually odd. Could be she’s just jealous of my kicking bubble dress I have on today. It seems that most girls today are wearing fun summery things. Maybe she’s just envious of mine.

Also in the schedule for this month is a trip from my two guy cousins and the girlfriend of one of them. They are primarily coming to see a Cubs game and I was really surprised that they wanted to stay with me and Martin. I’ll have to buy snack food but I’m not sure what college kids eat these days. They will probably take the train downtown most of the days that they are around. I think they’ll have a good time plus we have plenty of at home entertainment they can enjoy: pool, pinball, computers and tv.

Totally forgot to mention that we went to Albuquerque a few weekends ago with Martin's bro-in-law Ezra to look at some land that Martin's grandparents had bought before he was born. It is in the illustrious Rio Rancho Estates and the land that we own has some trash and a tumbleweed on it. I especially appreciate that the city's motto is "City of Vision." I guess it has to be when all you've got are sand roads and some jackrabbits. We are trying to decide if we want to keep our little piece of desert. We stood in the hot hot sun for about 3 hours total and walked the perimeter and tried to figure out if we would ever use the land. It was kind of interesting and basically it is still a piece of desert with an electrical pole running across it. See our pics of our little piece of dry heaven here at flickr.