Dear Chicago: I love you, man!

From the moment my brother picked me up at the airport my day really turned around. It's hard to come to terms with the switch from scarfing down a crappy Subway sandwich at lunch on the East coast to eating tapas in a froo froo restaurant with my brother many hundreds of miles away on the shores of Chicago. I'm in my incredibly trendy hotel room at the W which I'm sharing with my incredibly cool internet friends after sharing a bottle of wine with my incredibly funny and wonderful brother. Perry was here for a conference this week and picked me up from the airport for dinner. We puttered around a bit and toured the hotel room and the lobby before having dinner at the Wave in the W. Our waiter was cute, the food was fantastic, and I had just enough wine to be tipsy without being hungover tomorrow. Wheee!

The boo/hiss parts of my trip were my hectic departure from the office and the gum someone left under the seat on the plane that is now on my favorite sweater and favorite laptop bag. The super keen parts of my trip have been using my iPhone to navigate the big city, finding the only parking space in Chicago with a broken parking meter that not only didn't take money but was open to retrieve free quarters from its belly and spending time with my brother. Oh and the hotel room has its own stationary including postcards. So fun!

Now I'm just waiting on my roommates to arrive and might call the concierge desk to see if they have any recommendations for getting gum out of a sweater.

an update on my three-legged cat

It's been a little over two weeks since Isis had her amputation surgery and we said goodbye to Monster Paw (and the entire left front arm it was attached to). I'm pleased to say that she is 100% back to normal and every bit the kitty that we know and love. I would have never thought a cat could recover from a surgery like that so quickly but she's really been a trooper.

Several milestones told me she was just fine, such as using the incline scratcher and scratchy disc as well as doing her signature move of stretching up the wall as high as she can and digging her claws into the drywall. I've almost teared up when I witnessed each of these and definitely clapped my hands with joy!

The only thing she won't do now is go between the washer and dryer to get to her food. Mostly this is because she doesn't have the zero turning radius she had before and she doesn't like to back out of there. We kept the food in this narrow alley because the kitties could get to it but the dog most certainly couldn't. Now we are building a dog barricade and are researching a new location for the cat food.

So if you ever are faced with the decision of if you should remove your pets leg and when, let me be the first to tell you that after a few days they won't even miss it. And if anyone knows how to make a kitty-sized peg leg, I can only imagine it would make a fine Halloween outfit for her.

we have a visitor

Rich and I did some yard work today and were all ready to wage ware on our apple tree that is so gross this time of year, until we found this.

So we just trimmed a few limbs and left the rest for next year.