Joie de vivre

So, Sam has a job now. After a few wonderful months of time off, he’ll now be working with a big architecture firm right downtown. This isn’t like Colorado Springs’s downtown. Sam will be working on the 19th floor (not the highest floor of his building), which is several stories higher than the current tallest building in Colorado Springs. This also means parking is not included with employment, so he’ll be taking the train to work. That sounds so big-city to me. Commuting will definitely be a big change from the 2 ½ block walk he used to have. Just another change among many – I think we’re becoming “worldly.”

Friendship

I love the old story of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. If you don’t have time to read the whole book, I recommend at least reading Chapter 21. It offers beautiful insight into the important things in life (which come across more profoundly if you imagine the fox speaking with a French accent).

Yahtzee as life

I know I’m learning something right now, I’m just not sure what it is yet. We’ve picked up all of the pieces of our lives, shaken them up, and flung them back down like dice to see what might happen. With all of this chaos and confusion there are bound to be lessons, but I think we’re a little too much in the mix to see what they are right now. I do have one lead, though – something to do with control-freakism – and it isn’t pretty.

Fortunately there are lots of fun distractions from personal growth. Last week we spent a day at the beach and we just got back from a trip to Washington DC. The weather has been my favorite (lots of rain and cloud cover) and I’m getting ready to enjoy a memorable lunch. Like the ever-cheery clothing brand says, life is good.

Here's a picture of one of our favorite sites in DC, the Jefferson Memorial on the Potomac River.

Update - Good prevails again

I’m amazed! All of the library books that were stolen from our car a few months ago were returned! Apparently our criminal was a conscientious citizen after all. I wonder if I should be expecting a check in the mail to cover the cost of the window repair…

Update - Over the weekend

On Saturday we enjoyed some of the most amazing food I’ve ever tasted at the “Feast of Assumption” Italian festival. From what I can remember (I think I was experiencing a grease haze), we had huge meatballs, sausage, fried eggplant, tiramisu, cannoli, and a funnel-cake-ish thing called an elephant ear. The festival took place in Little Italy, one of the most beautiful suburbs of Cleveland. It’s pretty huge with as many as 100,000 people attending over four days.
And yesterday we tried out a church near the house for the first time. I loved the music and the sermon was pretty good. It’s a much smaller church than we went to in Colorado Springs, but I feel like we’re all about change right now, so I think we’ll give it a go for a while. I hope you all had wonderful weekends!

Update - Sister

My sister Lauren was home from Chicago for a long weekend and we got to celebrate her birthday. I had an amazing time hanging out with the whole family. My favorite part was lying on the bed with Lauren just talking about life. Here’s a picture we took right before Laur had to leave.

Update - Busy days

You know you’re on vacation mode when taking a shower can be checked off your to-do list as though it was a major accomplishment of the day. In addition to looking for work and keeping clean, we’re also in hot pursuit of a used chest of drawers. We’ve already checked out a few consignment stores and we hit up a bunch of Thursday morning garage sales. We didn’t see much, but I definitely recommend garage sale hopping if you move and need to acquaint yourself with a new area. Brilliant!