Waiting for the Ice Cream Truck

Waiting for the Ice Cream Truck
 


When will it get here?
 


Mmm that was good
 


Okay, time for a nap!

Chubby

Chubby
Originally uploaded by soelo

Chubby has tireds from moving.
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IMG00324.jpg

IMG00324.jpg
Originally uploaded by soelo

Catfight
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Pride

It's Wednesday; I need some humor

Italy Trip - Day Six

Monday May 21st

I decided to do the Colosseum and the Forum today, so I left my B&B around 10:30 to catch the 64 bus. I hopped off the bus at the area known as the Sacra which was close to the restaurant from last night. It is a square block of temple ruins that were discovered in the 1920's and built in the second and third centuries BC. It is about ten feet below the current street around it, and there is a cat shelter that takes care of the stray cats that live there. Each time I passed it, I could see about ten cats just lounging or playing around the ruins. I got back on the 64 and took it to Piazza Venezia, which is at the foot of Capitoline Hill. From here I got some more pictures of the Monument Vittorio Emanuele II and then climbed up the steps to the Campidoglio, a square designed by Michelangelo. I took lots of pictures and then rounded the corner to go down the hill towards the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. I filled my water bottle after waiting in line with tons of German tourists and got my first view of the Colosseum! I wandered through the forum at the foot of Palatine Hill for about an hour and finally reached the Colosseum. This area was rife with street hawkers selling sunglasses, hats, purses and other things. I sat near the Arch of Constantine, bought some souvenirs, took a bunch of pictures and had some so-so pizza.

I decided not to go inside the Colosseum until I came back to Rome the next week. Instead, I took the Metro up to the Cipro/Vatican Museums stop. I climbed several sets of stairs and got to the door of the museums at 3:20PM. They stop letting people in around 3:30, so there was really no line at all. I wandered through the Gallery of Maps and came upon the Sistine Chapel. You can take pictures in all of the other rooms, but they are a no-no inside the Chapel. You are also supposed to be quiet, but the guards have a hard time enforcing these rules. After sitting a bit and staring at the ceiling, I moved on through the rest of the museums, seeing lots of old artifacts and a few works of art. After I left the museums, I shopped on via Ottaviano and had some cannolli. I'd been to a small grocery store, so I had a picnic in St Peter's square and went to bed early. Tomorrow I would leave for Florence!

Day Seven

Italy Trip - Day Five

Sunday May 20th

I woke up to pack at 4AM, got the early bus to the other early bus to the airport. There were some nice views of the English countryside from the second bus and I got some pictures. I checked in and went through security at about 6:45AM. I got some food and big bottle of water from the Boots store and headed towards the gate. Remember that I paid a pound a minute for internet at the rail station? I found a bank of computers in the airport that were one pound for 15 minutes! I checked my email and then experienced the frenzy of boarding an airplane with no assigned seats. RyanAir does not assign you a seat on the plane, but it wasn't too crazy. We did have to walk from the gate to the plane right on the runway, and use the old-fashioned airplane stairs. I got a window seat and got the coolest views of the English Channel, France the Alps and all of Italy.

Once we landed, they had to bus us from the plane to the terminal and I was waved through immigration in order to wait at least 30 minutes for my bag. I took a 6 Euro coach bus to the Termini in Rome, and I napped a bit on the way there. At this point I realize I have American Dollars, British pounds and Euros all in coins and bills mixed up in my wallet. I put all the non Euro cash into a baggie with my passport. On reaching the Termini, I go inside to buy my Trenitalia ticket to Florence for Tuesday and get some food. Then I take the 64 bus to Stazione St Pietro and walk to my B&B. The first thing I see as I turn the corner is the dome over St Peter's Basilica. My host is very nice and I take a quick nap before heading out to see Rome.

I started by walking a few blocks to St Peter's Square, then over the Tiber River on Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II and then back on Ponte Sant'Angelo towards Castel Sant'Angello. Back over the river, I wandered around and came into Piazza Navona. Unfortunately, the Fountain of the Four Rivers was under scaffolding. I walked down Corso Vittorio Emanuele II all the way down the Monument Vittorio Emanuele II (he's a popular guy since he was the first king of a united Italy) and then backtracked to a restaurant. I had salmon and sweet rosemary potatoes. It was dark and I was tired (sensing a theme here?) so I took the bus back to my B&B, seeing some stray cats along the way. I hit the sheets at about 11PM.

Day Six

Dreamt

The dream opens on Tracey Gold (from Growing Pains) who is telling us how happy she is that she was able to get the loan to fix up her coffee shop, the one I am standing in with my mother and sister. It becomes clear that she bought it from my mother and has an interior covered in wood, like a lodge. She tells us she was able to make use of all the "estuary" my mother left behind, which ends up to be tons of animal parts, especially feet and tails that are now decorating the rafters of the shop. There are also some very large bones worked into the architecture. Now we sit down to wait for our food. My sister and I both order po'boy sandwiches, hers with dog meat, and mine with cat! The sandwiches come and we are disgusted not because of the pets we are about to eat, but because the bread on the plate is just the heel of a small loaf and covered in a runny egg. The meat is just two medallions and there is no top to either sandwich.

**I just dreamt about Jessica Simpson, and now she is getting a divorce. Let's hope I'm not becoming psychic

Chicago

Tuesday I flew into O'Hare, landing at around noon. I rode the Blue Line downtown to my hotel, but it was too early to check in, so I left my suitcase there and headed over to Grant Park. I perused my Not For Travelers book and decided to take a free trolley to Navy Pier and get some late lunch. That turned out to be the one and only time I rode the free trolleys, since they had no air conditioning and were always way too full. I had a 3 day transit card, making the busses as free as the trolleys, so I got off at the next stop and walked north over the river. I caught a bus that brought me right to Navy Pier. I checked to see what was playing at the IMAX theater, which turned out to be Batman Begins. I had thought about seeing it while I was in Chicago, since I always see a movie when I am on vacation. It was very crowded, they had assigned seating and it cost about $22 after ticket soda and popcorn. Despite all of that, I loved the movie, especially Liam Neeson and Gary Oldman. I headed back to the hotel after stopping in the Crystal Gardens. It was very hot and humid while I was in Chicago, but as long as you could get into the shade, it wasn't that bad. The wind from the lake keeps you cool. I waited a bit too long to head out for dinner, since it was about 8:30 by the time I headed back into the Loop to find a restaurant. I ate at a bar and grill called the Exchequer, which looked like it could have held a few Mafia meetings in it's heyday.

Wednesday was my 28th birthday and I went to the Field Museum since I was disappointed I'd missed it last time. Although the Maccu Picchu exhibit was gone, it was still an eye opening place. They have a hall of gems with all kinds of precious stones, metals and even replicas of famous diamonds. There is an entire section of jade artifacts, a mock up of a whole African village, and more stuffed and mounted animals than you can imagine. They even have the skeleton of a black right whale on the ceiling. I was resting on bench when I overheard a security radio someone to call 911 and then a man yelling, "I just had to use the washroom." and "I just got out of jail." He was the same guy who had tried to sell me copy of the Onion by the jade stuff earlier. The special exhibit that I picked was the dinosaurs from China. They had about 15 skeletons of dinosaurs that ranged in size from eagle to horse that were all found in China. Behind most of them is a mural depicting what they think the animal looked like when it was alive. The best preserved and most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found, "Sue", is also at the Field. It is freaky to look at something that is not only so ancient, but was also alive at one time.

In the gift shop, I came across a book called 'What Every American Should Know About the Rest of the World'. I expected some partisan slant, but it has turned out to be pretty neutral while pointing out that most of the world's woes are related to oil, religion or the arbitrary borders and leaders that were inflicted on each country in the last century.

For dinner that night, I went to a place downtown that is 3 Italian restaurants in one building, and I went to the one in the basement, La C.... I had some of my favorite foods: scallops (with tomato, garlic, pasta and olive oil), Chianti and cannolli.

Thursday I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free and located in, you guessed it, Lincoln Park. They had an entire building filled with smaller primates, including sugar gliders and colubus monkeys. The polar bears and seals both have an underwater viewing area where you can watch them swim, and they seem to put on a show for the visitors. The big cats were all inside due to the heat, and most of them were sleeping, except the tiger. The weirdest animal was probably the Sand Cat, which looks like a regular housecat with a slightly larger head and more muscles. As I was heading back downtown, I saw the same huge group of tourists you see everywhere waiting for the free trolley and looking jealously at those of us who got on the bus instead.

Friday I went to the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium. At the planetarium, I saw a show called The Stars of the Pharoahs, which was the best part. They discussed what the Egyptians thought of the sky, some of their legends about the gods as well as the many ancient buildings that are aligned with various constellations. The other exhibits seemed geared mostly towards kids, but also seemed to bore most of the kids I saw there.

Sitting in front of the Shedd Aquarium is one of the most vivid memories I have of my trip to Chicago in 1991. It was just as I remembered, and all week I had been enjoying the view of the Lake from the Museum Campus, which juts out on a peninsula. When looking back to the Loop from the campus, you see some of the tallest buildings in the world right next to a calm, picturesque lake. I got some good pictures of some jetskis playing around near the harbor.

Inside the Aquarium, I ran out of room on my digital camera that holds about 250 pictures. I had to delete some duplicates every once in a while. The coolest animals are always the rays, Skate and Sting, in the Caribbean reef. There is a hallway that is set up like the Amazon, complete with different tanks showing the varying water levels and reptiles in the Amazon. I saw poison frogs, a caiman and an Amazonian Python that was so big you couldn't find it's head. I saw a show with Pacific White-Sided dolphins, which look like the Atlantic Bottle-Nosed but have a big white stripe on their side. They also had Beluga whales, sea otters and a huge sea lion in the Oceanarium section. The penguins were being fed and monitored when I saw them, and a tour guide walked by and explained how penguins cool themselves by raising their wings. He also said that a penguin is full grown by the time it is 3 months old, so it's hard to pick out the younger ones. As I headed out to my hotel near the airport on Friday evening, downtown was getting more crowded by the second, since Taste of Chicago had started that day. That was obviously the reason I couldn't find a hotel in the city on Friday night.

My camera is being fussy about sending the pictures to my computer, so I can't upload any of them right now. I'll post them as soon as it behaves.

Dream

I had the following dream on Saturday night:

There were two brown recluse spiders, a male and female, loose in the apartment where the dream took place. The male was the size of a human hand and looked like a white crab instead of a spider, and the female was tiny. She was made up of 3 or four tiny brown things shaped like toilet plungers, but they were only about a half an inch long. I knew they were dangerous, and my sister's grey kitty was trying to attack the female, so I shooed the cat away when the female bit me on my left hand. In the dream, I knew it was a fatal bite, but someone told me I would be okay, and it was no worse than a bee sting. I looked on my hand, which was hurting by this time, to see a big slash, two teardrop shaped wounds and two puncture wounds. We kept trying to trap the two spiders, but they kept escaping out of the cups and jars we'd catch them in.

Persian Kittens

This one, also named Molly, is my favorite, but you should check out the whole photostream.

Molly
Originally uploaded by Anders Viklund.

Don't use Hartz Flea and tick products on Cats.

Molly

This is my cat Molly:



My sister found her as a stray in July of 1999, and at the time she was so small that we assumed she was not full grown. She didn't seem to get any bigger after I took her in, maybe she put some weight on, but not much. She has always been the crazy cat that meows at visitors and runs around bothering the other cats.
Last Friday, I came home and she was not at the door to greet me and be fed. I fed my other cat, Chubby, and went to find Molly. She was under my bed and was acting sick. I took her to the vet on Tuesday since she wasn't eating or drinking water. They did blood work, took x-rays and diagnosed her with Pyometra, which is an infection of the uterus. I won't get any more detailed than that, since it is pretty gross. She had surgery this morning to remove her uterus and ovaries, and she's now recovering at home, tired but feeling better.