Over the river and through the, um, desert.

Tonight we leave on the great cross-country trip to Chicago! I can't say I'm really looking forward to the drive, but I think it will go alright. And I'm very excited about being in Chicago again. I definitely miss it. As much as I like LA, I feel out of place here in a way I don't so much in Chicago. I don't even think it's people here, or the culture here. Because there are so many people in California who are so wonderful, that I am so very, very fond of. But my family is in Chicago, and it will be nice, for a little while at least, to be back there with them.

We will be traveling with the dog, which I suspect is in some ways worse than traveling with a child. Sure children require a great deal more entertaining on roadtrips, but the trade off is that you can take the into restaurants. At least into McDonalds. I will be having several days of eating in the car, with evenings of eating in a hotel room. I've done before, coming out here, and it isn't fun.

But then we will be there! And on November 25th, we're getting married! Which is amazingly cool.

The goldfish hat is up in my etsy shop! Go buy it! You know you want that classy hat!

Goldfish Hat!

A new hat! People who knew me in Chicago, (and really, a lot of people here in LA) know that I used to sell handmade, self-designed hats for extra money. I decided to get back at it, and this is the first of them. It'll be up in the shop tomorrow!

Five paintings!

A very productive day! I finished five paintings! Some of them will be up in the shop soon, once I decide which ones I'm going to sell.

Halloween Roundup!

So. That was sort of a lackluster Halloween. I was sure that this year, being in Los Angeles, where people I know are always having parties, that there would be Halloween merriment. But no. People we knew were generally sick, injured or out of town.

That said, I did have some vaguely Halloween related fun this weekend, so I'm not complaining. Charlie and I met up with Jed and Kate for a puppet theatre performance of Frankenstein, which was really good. And really, I'm a big supporter of anything puppet related. And this was largely paper and shadow puppets, which I am particularly fond of.

After the show, Jed joined Charlie and me in our kitchen for a dinner of cheeseburgers, creamed kale, and mixed greens with blue cheese dressing. Good beer was had by all, and then there was much playing of the Guitar Hero video game.

Halloween day itself was fairly low key. I set up my etsy shop, did some sketches, worked on my sweater. I prepared for trick or treaters, but as I had suspect, the number I got was zero. So I now have six pounds of Smarties.

Poor Charlie didn't get home from work last night until 1:30 in the morning, so I had a quiet evening alone but for the dog, watching House and doing art.

And now I have the hiccups.