This month has been really busy. I have been slacking on my duties here.

I have been a little preoccupied with the nice change in weather and taking a photography class. This winter was really long and lately I’ve been feeling a little bored. Business is good but after doing similar projects over and over for the past 2 1/2 years I needed to shake it up a bit. So I signed up for a photography class.

I’ve been wanting to get a nicer camera for a while but was a little intimidated about learning how to use manual settings. This was the perfect time to dive in since I have someone to ask when I get stuck. The ‘new’ camera is great, I love it. The class is a perfect outlet for me right now and gives me an excuse to take pictures.

In other exciting news, we’re going to Australia in September! Yay! I’m trying to focus on being excited about seeing Australia and not the 17 hours on a plane + 10 hour layover it will take to get there. So that’s exciting. I figure if I make it through the trip there without totally freaking out I can pretty much fly anywhere. My flying anxiety has been getting better over the past couple years and hopefully this trip will help.

The new house is still great. We’ve done some more decorating and painting. It’s coming together nicely. I’m absolutely in love with Hyde Park. I don’t think we could’ve found a more perfect place for us to live right now.

So things are good.

For some odd reason I’m really fascinated with Groundhog’s day. I think it’s one of the weirdest traditions. I say it every year but, seriously I want to go one of these years to see the spectacle. 

This year’s prediction:

6 more weeks of Winter. 

Not really a huge surprise.

Thanks Punxsutawney Phil

Here’s some info about Groundhogs Day from Groundhog.org

Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is a popular tradition in the United States. It is also a legend that traverses centuries, its origins clouded in the mists of time with ethnic cultures and animals awakening on specific dates. Myths such as this tie our present to the distant past when nature did, indeed, influence our lives. It is the day that the Groundhog comes out of his hole after a long winter sleep to look for his shadow.

If he sees it, he regards it as an omen of six more weeks of bad weather and returns to his hole.

If the day is cloudy and, hence, shadowless, he takes it as a sign of spring and stays above ground.

The groundhog tradition stems from similar beliefs associated with Candlemas Day and the days of early Christians in Europe, and for centuries the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. Even then, it marked a milestone in the winter and the weather that day was important.

According to an old English song: If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Go Winter, and come not again. According to an old Scotch couplet: If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, There’ll be twa (two) winters in the year. Another variation of the Scottish rhyme: If Candlemas day be dry and fair, The half o’ winter to come and mair, If Candlemas day be wet and foul, The half of winter’s gone at Yule.

The Roman legions, during the conquest of the northern country, supposedly brought this tradition to the Teutons, or Germans, who picked it up and concluded that if the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, an animal, the hedgehog, would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of bad weather, which they interpolated as the length of the “Second Winter.”

Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers were Germans and they found groundhogs to in profusion in many parts of the state. They determined that the groundhog, resembling the European hedgehog, was a most intelligent and sensible animal and therefore decided that if the sun did appear on February 2nd, so wise an animal as the groundhog would see its shadow and hurry back into its underground home for another six weeks of winter.

The Germans recited:

For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
So far will the snow swirl until the May.

This passage may be the one most closely represented by the first Punxsutawney Groundhog Day observances because there were references to the length of shadows in early Groundhog Day predictions.

Another February 2nd belief, used by American 19th century farmers, was:

Groundhog Day – Half your hay.

New England farmers knew that we were not close to the end of winter, no matter how cloudy February 2nd was. Indeed, February 2nd is often the heart of winter. If the farmer didn’t have half his hay remaining, there may have been lean times for the cows before spring and fresh grass arrived.

The ancient Candlemas legend and similar belief continue to be recognized annually on February 2nd due to the efforts of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.

16 days until we close. Time was going so slow a week ago and now I can see the finish line. I still have the little bit of anxiety about something falling through at the last minute but mostly I’m excited.

The thing I’m most excited about is we were able to change our closing date and we’re now moving on my 11 year anniversary of living in Chicago. I like when things work out like that. And it’s also Valentine’s Day. The best Valentine’s Day present ever, for sure! 

I’m still looking for a new obsession to focus all the house hunting energy into.. That’ll come naturally I’m sure.

Winter is still winter. Gray, snowy, really cold. The other night after freezing my ass off walking the dog I came in and got right on the computer and ordered some long underwear and proper gloves. Finally I’m warm for the first time all winter. It’s really nice.

Still feeling a little sad about leaving our apartment but I have to say I will not miss the outrageous heating bills and still being cold in the house. Right now I have thermal shirt, Patagonia thermal hoodie, long underwear bottoms, jeans, thermal socks, slipper boots and a hat on. The heat is at 75. Exposed brick looks pretty but it’s not very energy efficient at all. There is no insulation between the outside wall and the interior.

Only a couple more weeks and I’ll be basking in the warmth of radiator heat, yay!

We have gotten so much snow this winter. This is the most I’ve seen since I was a kid growing up in Wisconsin. 

It’s nice though. Winter is supposed to be snowy not just gray and cold. Snow makes it fun.

We finally found out that we got our financing for our new place!  Not knowing whether or not we got the loan for sure was making me crazy. So that’s a huge relief. Not we just have to rent our place and get packed.

Yesterday we took on the mammoth task of washing every piece of fabric in the house, clothes, bedding, rugs, towels.. I’m glad it’s done but what a pain. I’m excited we’ll have our own laundry. No more walking down the snowy stairs to the creepy basement to find that the one washer that 7 apartments share is being used, waiting until it’s done and swooping in before anyone else gets in there. I will not miss that at all!

Next on the list of stuff we have to sort is our storage space. That’s going to be fun. 3 years of crap to go through.

I have been shocked by just how much we have. And doubly shocked by how much of that stuff we don’t use or need. Last year we went through all our clothes and cleared out the things we didn’t wear or like any more. I think we got 6 or 7 bags of clothes to donate from that project. This past summer I went through and purged my clothes again and got a couple bags more. Yesterday we got yet another 4 bags. Where are all these clothes coming from? We hardly buy new things. I bought maybe 8 or 10 new items this year…

I think we finally have our clothes clutter under control. The new place doesn’t have a ton of space for clothes storage so we have to just get rid of the things we don’t wear on a regular basis. I don’t want to have a messy cluttery looking clothing rack in our bedroom so we are downsizing. It doesn’t bother me really. I get lost in the clutter really easily. It’s also a little depressing to look at a rack of clothes and think about how much money you’ve wasted on clothes that don’t fit or you thought were cool in the store and when you got home you changed your mind. 

It’s all about efficiency.

Keep the stuff you need and don’t take up space with the things you don’t.

The place we bought is from the 20′s. People didn’t have 400 sq ft walk in closets. 

We’ve been watching all these house hunting shows on TV and it amazes me how many people complain about the size of bedrooms. I understand the complaint if you can’t fit a queen size bed in it and have room to walk around a little..

Do people really feel it’s necessary to have massive master suites?

Do people really hang out in them?

I can understand wanting a large bedroom if you have a roommate and you want to have your own space to hang out. Is it really necessary to have a giant bedroom with a giant walk in closet to store all the clothes that you never really wear anyway just so you can show your friends how much space and stuff you have? 

Just wondering.

I’m happy we won’t have a giant closet again. Right now we use our 3rd bedroom as clothes storage/ utility closet/ a home for all the other things we don’t quite know what to do with and it’s a nightmare. It’s a constant source of annoyance and frustration. I’ll be happy to have some normal sized closets to work with. 

We close in a little over a month! I’m excited to start the new adventure.

I’m so fricken excited. I really, really, really need 5 days out of the city and away from the computer.

Yay!

The name was inspired by this great little needlepoint art piece done by a friend of ours, Ben and his wife Betsy.

I was sitting here trying to think of a new domain name for my blog and looked up at the piece on the wall, bingo! Needle Cloud. My husband and I went to Ben’s art show last summer and I saw this piece and really liked it. He bought it for me for our anniversary and it now hangs above my desk.

So that’s it that’s the story..

These are my two favorites.

The Biosphere

Random building when we were just wandering about one of the days

When I was working my old job I had quite a bit of down time so I was constantly trying to find ways to entertain myself. One day I was really bored and just started looking around at different things and stumbled on a fantastic website all about lomography. I was in wedding planning mode and trying to figure out interesting things for our party. I really wanted to rent a photo booth but after talking to a couple companies about the cost that idea was thrown out. So I resigned to the idea of disposable cameras.

Looking through the lomography site I found that they had these little disposable cameras that had color filters for the flash. They seemed like fun and definitely a more interesting option. I bought 20 of them. They worked out great. We got some really interesting pictures from them. Better than the usual blown out red eye demon pics you get with most disposable flash cameras.

Over the past week or so I’ve been obsessively researching digital cameras. I’m kind of pissed at mine taking such noisy pictures. For the most part it’s a good camera but in some lower light situations it doesn’t do very well. I found a couple options and was ready to drop some money but changed my mind a little when I got all these pictures back. The 5 or 6 we took in Montreal with the little $5 plastic camera were much more interesting than most of the 400 we took with the digital.

So today I bought a Holga.

I’ve kind of wanted one for a couple years but was thinking film is a pain. You have to take it in and then wait for it to come back, blah blah blah.. But I’m feeling nostalgic. Digital cameras are satisfying and definitely serve a purpose. You can look at the image right away and laugh at your friends stupid pose or whatever. But what about enjoying a vacation, coming back home feeling a little bummed to be back to the grind. You pick up your pictures and look through them enjoying the trip all over again. That’s what’s lost with digital, the delay that allows you to forget just a little bit and be reminded. You can always browse through your pictures on the computer but it’s just not the same.

I’m excited. I haven’t had a film camera in probably 6 (maybe longer) years except for disposable ones. It’ll be a fun new adventure.

After 5 months of broadcast TV, we are getting cable again. I know, I know, we were doing so well. Not getting stressed out by the number of channels to choose from, comfortably complacent watching episodes of ‘The Moment of Truth’ and a million Law & Order’s.. Life was good until we found ourselves going through the channels in the early evening last Friday and stopped on ‘Most Outrageous Moments’. Kind of like America’s Funniest Home Videos.. Oh My God, what happened to us.

So being afraid that the next step from there is eating dinner at 4 and watching ‘The Wheel’ I took things into my own hands and ordered cable. We get it on Monday morning.

I’m also getting sick of getting up and readjusting the rabbit ears and getting pissed when the upstairs neighbors walk into a part of the apartment that interferes with our reception.

And our parents (all of them) being the nice people they are have decided to all go in on a new TV for us. So we kind of have to get cable, I don’t think you can even hook rabbit ears up to the newer sets, can you?

Well it’s a good excuse to splurge. The only reason we really got rid of it in the first place was because we were trying to save money to move.

Anyway blah boring.

We finally have some summery weather, the dog is doing well. He’s so much better when it’s hot out. It makes him really lazy.

Last weekend my mother in law came to visit and she brought the best dog toy for Saul, a deer antler. I was a little skeptical at first but he loves it. Saul has jaws of steel, he can chew through and destroy most anything but the antler has been a challenge. They don’t splinter like a beef bone can and he looks so wild and wolfy chewing on it. He seriously brought it into his crate when he was going to bed the other night, he’s in love. I think the company is called Antlerz or something like that. The antlers are harvested from the wild. I guess deer shed their antlers every year so it’s a natural renewable resource, always a huge bonus. We’ve been giving him plastic nylabones to chew on and though he loves them I don’t really like him ingesting all the little plastic pieces.

I gotta run. Going to Stanley’s to get some produce for some yummy summer spaghetti.

1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes

1/2 a 5 oz container of Arugola (if you can find bulk get a couple good sized handfuls , I could only find it pre-packaged)

Pinch of ground cayenne

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

1 pound rotini

Parmesan Cheese

Empty can of tomatoes into a large bowl. Finely chop the arugola and add it to the tomatoes. Add cayenne, salt and olive oil. Stir it all together. Let the sauce sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes to let the flavors mix. Cook pasta according to the package. Drain pasta. Heat the sauce until bubbling, add pasta. Toss and serve. Top with parmesan cheese.