well, amigos, the three of you that read this have been wondering about me, and wrote to ask how i'm doing. thank you.. i really appreciate it.

here's what happened: i was working, working, working. then we moved to a new place (a different unit in the same building, although now we are owners instead of renters). then we had a bunch of houseguests. and then we went on vacation.

so now i'm back. and i'm really enjoying our new place more than i thought i would. it's pretty much a mirror image of our old place, but we were concerned that the view (although from a higher floor) wasn't as good. we used to face the lake, but decided that it wasn't worth the $40k premium, so now we face the city. the north-facing windows in the living/dining room are somewhat blocked by the ugly back of the hyatt, but then we can see the top of the hancock building over it.
the view from the study, where i'm writing, is amazing at night. not only do you get a nice view of some of the bridges over the river, but you can see some really amazing buildings.
at the end of the river-bend is the riverbend condos building, which has a few fun lines of bright blue lights across the front of the building at night, but you have a view of my favorite building in town, the carbon and carbide building, which is the home of the hard rock hotel nowadays, and the awesome building at 35 e. wacker, which i guess is known as the north american life building.

since we're now on the 34th floor (we were on 20 before) there are a few little upgrades to this unit over the last one. we still have crappy quality rental carpet, but now we have tile in the entryway. we have the same sink (we miss our old bart-installed sink in ann arbor sooooo much!) but at least now there is a pull-out faucet. the bathrooms are the same, but the subtle upgrade in this unit is that we get much, much larger medicine cabinets. i have hogged them with my crap, and i love it. we also have a cooktop range stove, which slightly scares me because steve's mom keeps telling me all about how it has to be cleaned with the special cleaner and we can only use certain pots on it. i guess it's an upgrade, though, and since i don't really cook anyway, i guess i shouldn't worry about it too much.

the condo purchase and move went pretty smoothly, although there was a big fat bump. we only had the freight elevator reserved for a two hour block, from 5-7 pm. unfortunately the building wasn't exactly being generous with the elevator, since we only have one and there were about 150 moves taking place this month. so steve hired some movers to help us, and we had them scheduled from 4:30-7:30. he figured that we could have them move everything down the hallway and ready to go from 4:30-5, move things up and down from 5-7, and then probably end up with some things that needed lugging again from 7-7:30.
well, by a little after 5 the movers hadn't come, and i had been sneaking boxes and hanging stuff up in the regular elevator for a couple of hours. we were anxious to get going on the big stuff and were wondering where in the heck they were.
it turns out they had our reservation down for a friday, when the day of our move fell on a tuesday.
sooooo... after some begging and pleading steve convinced the moving company to find a couple of guys (i can only imagine the conversation their manager had to have to get some guys to come out in the pouring rain immediately that evening -- thank goodness it was an indoor move!). the two movers arrived around 6 and moved us for an hour, although steve and i had already done much more than we should have without the wheeled carts that the movers brought. i had packed my books (and other crap) much too heavy, and boy! were we sore the next day. :(

so that's our moving story. i hope you enjoyed it. and i hope that sometime soon you can visit to enjoy the view. we've already had alex & sarah and keenan & carrie visit, and we hosted a little shindig for some of our chicago friends on venetian night, when we started with cocktails at home (which has been christened Super Sky Hut, or Sky Hut II: Electric Boogaloo>, then had a pretty elaborate picnic at grant park while watching the boat parade and fireworks. venetian night is definitely my favorite chicago event (steve loves the upcoming air & water show).

anyhow, i'm rambling.
and i'm tired.
and i'm sorry that i have been a piss-poor correspondent.

tomorrow night i shall update you all on our trip to the UK. i have a work event (focus groups -- oooh!) that may last as late as 10 pm, so i may not get to blog the entire trip memoir, so i appreciate your continued patience and loving thoughts. :)