Daily Dose

Now that I mostly understand Illinois weather, (though I do wonder how it was decided that the sirens would be tested every Tuesday at 10am, since that has been happening since Suzanne was a kid. Why Tuesday? Why 10am?), I have some learning to do in regards to Illinois raccoons and trees.

I think it was like the first morning that we lived here, after we got our stuff unloaded – that would make it a Tuesday. I was sitting at my desk at the unGodly hour of 5am when something in the window caught my eye. I tweeted about a parade of raccoons and I wasn’t kidding. Four of them, running across the wooden fence, the last one bringing up the rear, getting left behind, like a Disney cartoon or something.

I saw them again and then again once more. And then I saw them on the back fence at like 6pm. Why are raccoons out in public at 6pm? What’s with that? Don’t raccoons generally stay tucked away in their trees until dark? Florida raccoons seemed to do that. Do they have a longer commute up here in the north so they have to leave earlier?

Then, there are the maple trees. I’ve apparently never spent much time with maples. Or if I have, I haven’t spent enough time thinking about them or watching them.

We were laying in bed the other night and TW started cursing about “the helicopters”. Umm we live under the flight pattern for O’Hare but I haven’t actually heard any helicopters, so I questioned her on this. “The helicopters, you know – the seed pods that are all over the house? They’re always stuck to my feet.” Umm no. I had no idea what she was talking about. She got up, with a huff (which means everybody knows this stuff but you, why am I cursed with having to teach you stuff that everybody knows), and came back in with a couple of green things.

Apparently they are maple seeds? Or something. And when they fall from the maple trees, they spin. Or something. She tossed one up and nothing happened except that it fell onto MY bed, MY quilt, MY nice expensive white sheets. She tossed another one and oh yea, it spins. Whatever. I’ve never seen that before.

And now that she’s mentioned it, I’m noticing them all over the floor of the house and when I go outside the maple trees are shooting the freaking things at me. Yesterday during a phone meeting I was covered with the things. I get the point, the tree no longer needs to display this helicopter stuff to me. I’m totally done with maple seed helicopters, kthxbai.

Last week, TW and I went to Joy’s house so I could show her some stuff and so TW could mess up Jory’s childhood bedroom with spilled coffee from this awesome coffee pot.



After we’d worked for awhile, we took Joy out for lunch at Annie’s Pancake House. Joy hopped in the front seat, I turned on the car and she looked at the gas mileage I was getting and she was amazed to see I was getting 47 mpg.

She got her own Prius last year as a Christmas gift and she doesn’t get nearly as good gas mileage with hers. In fact, she seems to get considerably WORSE gas mileage and if mine was that low, I’d be at the dealer asking why.

Even our first tank of gas, when were driving 2 miles at a time, never quite getting up to 40mph or being able to stay at 40mph for very long in Gainesville we still got mid-30’s and higher. So why is Joy’s Prius not performing as well as mine and not even as well as my dad’s Honda hybrid?

Inquiring minds want to know. I’m tempted to take Joy’s Prius into the dealer and ask them to explain it to us.

Yesterday morning we headed out to visit a couple of Farmer’s Markets and a few thrift stores (hoping to solve some of our kitchen organizational problems on the cheap.)

First, the Northfield Farmer’s Market. It was considerably larger than the Glenview Farmer’s Market and we left with a mini loaf of marble bread and a mini loaf of zucchini bread, some mini plums and some tiny yellow tomatoes. We skipped the other veggies, thinking we’d get some at the next FM.

Next stop, the Northbrook Historical Society Shop – not really a thrift store, but a consignment shop. It was interesting, a tiny little room, but the women working there scared me. They were talking about their “house fires” like this is an everyday thing and no big deal. House fires? Scary! Are they that common that you can chat about losing everything without a blink of an eye?

Then we headed toward Skokie in search of the Skokie Farmer’s Market. Err we found it, or found where it was supposed to be but there were no farmers! I thought maybe this was just the parking area and the market was tucked away in a village park that can’t be seen from the street – so I drove around the block and came up empty. Drove through Skokie, peering down side streets looking for signs of farmers. Nothing. Weird. Turns out it’s on SUNDAY and not SATURDAY. duh. sheesh.

Since I was starving, I was also looking for some place to eat – found something interesting but couldn’t find parking so I kept driving down Oakton, hit a cross street that had no sign and took it to Dempster since our next stop would require hitting Dempster and looking for Crawford.

We drove and drove and drove with no sign of Crawford but that was OK because I knew there was food at Chicago and Dempster and sure enough, we got there – parked on the street and jumped into a bagel shop, Bagel Art. The Green Mt. Veggie Wrap was good, so was the coffee.

We got back in the car and continued down Dempster but at this point, I had pretty much decided we had missed Crawford. Sure enough, we landed on Lake Shore and turned around. TW opened the trust iPhone map and found Crawford – turns out that cross street with no name, the one I took off of Oakton was Crawford. Hah. Whatever.

We made our way through Skokie, back through Evanston and into Chicago and found Unique which really was the most unique thrift store EVER. I cannot describe this place – tons of clothes, all of which seemed in pretty darn good shape but organized oddly so sizes were impossible to find. No furniture that would solve our kitchen needs but I found a book that I thought was a sequel to a book RJ liked – turns out it was the sequel to Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging and I don’t think RJ read that. Oh well, we’ll enjoy it ourselves. (The young man who rang up my book looked at the very pretty pink and green hard cover and said “awe, cute!” and opened the first page to find “On the bright side, I’m now the girl friend of a sex God.” He closed it fast and looked shocked and I laughed so hard. He did not expect THAT in such a pretty little book, being bought by a middle-aged woman.)

From there, we headed back in the direction of Niles. Took a quick detour into a Tuesday Morning which was a lot more dumpy thrift store like than we’re used to in a Thursday Morning. And it smelled funny. Still no kitchen solutions, sheesh.

We found our way to the Wings shop in Niles and we could have bought any number of great things but none of them were things we absolutely NEEDED. I can, however, see us going back there again – and again. (I would also like a word with their webmaster. Those horizontal navs should not blink. It’s unnecessary and troubling. Stop that.)

Then, we stopped at the annual Glenview Art Festival where we were once again reminded that we are not in Florida (or anywhere in the south) any longer. There were no paintings of Miami or the Keys. No alligators. And the people were talking about how much BIGGER the festival was this year. umm bigger? Also, the people were… well that’s a post for another day when I tell you about regional differences. We bought nothing and were only tempted by metal lawn art sculptures. (These folks could also use some web design help. Are there no web designers in this area????)

So – we spent about five hours roaming the “neighborhood”. It was interesting and fun in a strange way. We’re definitely not in Florida anymore.

I finally made some time to call my dad yesterday. I was procrastinating dealing with my inbox and figured I’d just call half the people on my “Really should call X” list – he was one of those. Of course every time I call my father, it’s a bad time – which is why I rarely call him and just wait for him to call me. This time, he was taking the little grand kids to see the American Girl movie (which I did not even know existed.)

We chatted about North Chicago and the Great Lakes Naval Station. I guess I’m going to have to video tape the area to figure out where I lived when I was three. He sort of makes sense when he talks about landmarks but he keeps saying things like “cliff” and I saw no cliffs. So, next weekend I’ll video tape and we’ll see what he thinks.

I asked him about his hybrid Honda and he still likes it but he’s not nearly as happy with his gas mileage as he’d like to be. 38 in the city (I’m getting between 46-48 in the city.) He didn’t drive it to NC for the Heir to the Throne’s birthday party last weekend so he doesn’t have a good highway driving comparison for me. I’ll keep ya posted on that.

I’m still thrilled with my Prius and after reading all of the GM Hybrid posts I don’t think I’d ever buy a non hybrid. If I was going to buy another big car, it would have to be a hybrid.