Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Chicago!


Today I traveled to Chicago, Illinois to visit my friend Katie for her birthday. From Waukegan, we took the Metra downtown to avoid traffic & parking headaches. Here I am riding the train -- whee! I couldn't quite see out the window, though -- I think they need booster seats.

I try to make new friends wherever I go. Today I met this cat Lucy in Bucktown and I tried to be friends with her, but she just was not in the mood. Turns out that Lucy is actually short for Lucifer -- what a mean kitty! I am not used to not being well-liked. :(

To distract me from feeling sad, Martha packed me up in her coat and we all walked to Zen Noodles in Wicker Park. It was a little cold and windy, but the sun was out and it felt good to get some exercise after sitting on the train. Katie ordered all sorts of maki and Martha got a funnily-named dish of Bamee Wonton with these delicious little pork dumplings! I didn't see any kind of hunny sushi on the menu -- I wonder if that kind of thing exists for Pooh Bears?

One last Chicago picture for today -- here I am at the train station with the Sears Tower and part of the Chicago skyline in the background. I was starting to think about all of the fun places I could go see in this city -- and then the train came and ended my adventure for the day!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Traveling to Wisconsin...


It's the holidays (OK, we're a little late this year), so I traveled with friends to the Midwest. Apparently, Northwest Airlines knows how awesome I am, and it turns out that I was upgraded to a first-class seat from Santa Ana to Minneapolis! I forgot that they actually feed you on the plane, so I had two breakfasts -- one before the plane and one during the flight. I have a suggestion for Northwest, though: they did not have hunny for my croissant, only butter or jelly. Hrumph. Here is a picture of me, hogging the window seat.

To be exact, we connected in Minneapolis and then flew into Milwaukee, Wisconsin and it is cold but not so awful at all here. They had almost 2 feet of snow on the ground until the weekend, but it turns out that a day of nearly 70 degrees has melted almost all of it. Maybe there will be some snow pictures during the week that I am here?

Tonight I played this great game called "Apples to Apples" with the family -- here I am, wearing my sunglasses so no one will see my game face. This is my strategy, don't tell anyone!

We'll see what other adventures this week brings!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Baking day!


On Saturday, I decided that I would take advantage of the cooler weather and holiday spirit and have a baking day. It was only in the upper 50's or so, and having the oven on didn't overheat the apartment, which is much appreciated by the humans.

I first made a loaf of bread in the BreadMaker... it's Italian herb bread and very good, especially because I added extra herbs. I sense a good grilled cheese sandwich in my future this week... or maybe some BLTs? Mmmm, I get hungry just thinking about it. You know, I didn't realize until I saw this picture that I am about the same size as a 1 pound loaf of bread! Ha!

Then, because it just wouldn't be the holidays without them, I made a batch of Peanut Butter Kiss cookies. I got extra festive and added some red and green sugar to the rolling sugar, so they are way Christmasy. Here I am with one of the plates while they were cooling...I'm glad that we remembered to get out the holiday snowflake plates and use them this year! It's nice to have all the snow at least in spirit, until I head to Wisconsin in a few weeks and have my fill of snow in real life!

Now to quality test all of these tasty treats... thanks for checking my blog!