Gary has been hanging shelving in the house all day today (now that we are out of floor space for furniture) and it looks so great! We now have shelving in both offices and the master bedroom which looks so great, holds a lot of stuff, and looks even better than we thought. I love the brackets he picked out!

I’m certified . . . wait, I got a certificate -ha 😉
No, I’m not going into forensic photography, so no worries to my 2008 and future wedding couples, I won’t be disappearing to the police academy, but being a photographer I’m interested in learning about what other fields do with photography. So I took a class that taught what forensic photographers do and it was very informative about what they shoot and how methodically they shoot it. Afterwards I got a neat certificate saying I took the course -woo! It was interesting seeing the shots our instructor had from past cases and the stories that went with each one. Some were extremely graphic cases and photos -kudos to forensic photographers. For what they see and how they contribute to society to help CSI close cases, they aren’t paid a lot, don’t always have set schedules like a 9-5, and sometimes are working for 48 hours straight. Its not all glamorous like the tv shows. I’d go into some of the stories but there are too many, and all the little details are crazy. I really appreciate the time that is put into a case and it’s nice to know that there are devoted people to make sure the outcome of a case and what happened in it is as scientifically accurate as possible.

Last December07/January08, I met up with Richard A. who liked my newly released website and said he would send out press releases about it. As some of you know, these things take time, but I am very happy to announce the press releases have been distributed!

Here are a few locations of my press releases:

“The time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men”  -Leonardo da Vinci

We got back home on Wed the 20th. What took us 14 hours to drive going up to Chicago took us 16 hours to drive home. I did find out that I really like Monster energy drinks. The Loca Mocha is so good and I had 3, which is why I was able to drive for 13 hours. We were driving in snow, and West Virginia has some very windy roads that aren’t lit so we were going 50mph . . . slowed us down. I think I got home around 3:30am and went to bed around 4:30am after unpacking the car and seeing the surprise Gary had for me. The upstairs was cleaned, carpets steam cleaned, and he painted the red room (6 coats) to a lovely peach shade we had picked out a while ago. It was definitely a lot of work, and while I was in Chicago, he told me he was sick for the past 3 days but instead he was doing all of this work . . . awwww. He also hung hooks in the closet for me to hang my bags from, and cleaned out the closets, put rods in the other closets, did a TON of laundry . . . so much other stuff.

The last night in Chicago we went to Udupi Palace which had great Indian food, and afterwards we hung out at Martini Club, which overcharged us by saying we had more than we did which was physically impossible, but what can you do? Pay cash and move on. It was late and we were tired, but here are the pics from that evening!

Photos from Pint have been added to the post below!

We made it to the Aquarium pretty easily after getting the ‘business’ portion of the trip done today. Spent a few hours there, mostly hung around the dolphins and penguins.

Then we went back to the hotel to rest up before dinner and then went to Papajin for dinner, afterwards we hung out at Pint for a while.

[Photos from Pint coming Later]

* Additional Photos Added: 2/22/07 of us being silly, but cute 😉 haha

So today we spend most of our time wandering around, looking for the Shedd Aquarium. We finally found the bus stop and the CTA lines and unfortunately used the directions on the Shedd Aquarium website.

We found the blue line, and then found bus #146, and that’s where we spent a lot of time walking. We did find a Starbucks for brunch which was good. Walking to the CTA line was wet, later it was rainy, and all this time we are carrying around our camera gear. So we didn’t really shoot anything due to the rain, and by the time we found the aquarium was 10 blocks away from where we were at the moment, we wouldn’t have much time to spend there.

So we decided to head back to the hotel and go tomorrow since we know how the public transportation works. On the way back to the hotel, we spoke to some people who made it to the aquarium and their hotel gave them the easiest directions . . . they gave us the slip of paper. Something about bus #12, and getting off at a different train exit. We made it back to our hotel and found a brochure for the Shedd Aquarium which had the ‘easy’ directions. Sigh. Who would have known the directions on the aquarium website would be wrong and/or incomplete and the guy at the front desk gave us faulty advice, but oh well, we saw a lot of the city.

Got back to the hotel and hung out, dried out, relaxed, rested. We found a place to go for dinner, The Chicago Diner which was so good, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant. I had a potato soup and a ravioli dish. We found it pretty quickly. . . blue line > bus, but we walked slowly because of the icy sidewalks. A 5 minute walk really takes 30 minutes -haha. 😀

Got to Chicago around 4:00/4:30pm took a nap for about an hour, had dinner in Greek Town, walked around a bit . . .

Stopped around 3am around Columbus Ohio after going through Virginia and West Virginia. Now I’m hungry and can’t fall back asleep. As we get further up north, it’s getting colder and there is a little ice on the ground . . . out come the down feather jackets. We still have atleast another 6 hours to go today . . . Are we THERE yet?