2 Postcard Arrivals: Spain & Austrailia

This postcard traveled 4,461 miles in 10 days all the way from Valencia, Spain. The sender says this is a picture of Paella, a typical food from the region. It's a rice dish with different ingredients and meat or seafood, looks yummy to me! 

This postcard traveled 9,618 miles all the way from Gisborne, Australia in 11 days. This sender works in the library of the local high school and enjoys quilting! 

Postcard Arrival: Kaohsiung,Taiwan

You can never go wrong with a postcard of a cat! This postcard from Taiwan traveled 7,741 miles in 14 days. I had to show you guys the back of this one too, you might have to click it to make it bigger, but this sender wrote several things in Chinese, including my name! The stamps have been neat to see on the postcards as well.

I mentioned last time that I needed new stamps. I went to the USPS website to check my options and I'm torn. They have really cute new global stamps for the holidays.. 

But if I combine two stamps, a 0.66 and the regular stamp of 0.47 (yes I would be giving the postal service an extra three cents) then I can get all the cool forever stamps that are out. A Harry Potter stamp series will be announced on November 19, but here is my favorite holiday stamps.

Can you help me pick a favorite? 

The First Snow

If you follow from a warmer climate you might be surprised to know that here in Central Illinois we've already had our first snow. Now the old wives day that the day of the first snow that you can track a cat, that is how many snow's you will have that winter, though technically it's not even winter yet so I wonder if this will hold true? But according to this we will have 11 snows. OL has already marked her calendar to keep track, this may be the first year that the 'track a cat' part hasn't been disputed. I'm can promise you can track a cat because I'm pretty sure there was a creature, not a cat, that took up residence on our porch last night, I'm guessing it was a raccoon or an opossum.

I'm especially happy that our furnace was finally fixed yesterday too, just in time for the first snow. We have radiators throughout our house and there was a malfunction with a water valve and the part was on order for over a week, luckily I don't mind sleeping a little cold. I made sure to bundle up in my sweatpants and a couple blankets. I actually had to shed some layers last night! Today I'm thankful for warmth and heating. Keep warm my fellow Illinoisans! 

Update: it appears I spoke too soon, our furnace is out again, water all over the basement, I'm in for another cold night! 

Poscard Arrival: Russia

From what I can tell, this postcard came from the Moscow area. In 16 days it traveled 5,106 miles. The sender told me his favorite book is The Kite Runner.

I've run out of stamps! I'm going to have to make a stop at the post office and pick some more up! It's fun to just look through the postcards that other people have received on the website too. I think I spend too much time on the internet.. oh well, at least I'm kind of learning something new.

Postcard Arrival: Japan

Yes, you'll note the date, Sunday, but this was in the mailbox this morning, I believe it was delivered to the neighbors or it was just left in the mailbox on accident, don't even ask why the mailbox was checked on a Sunday in the first place. This postcard is postmarked from Matsuura, Nagasaki, though the sender did not add their city in the text. It traveled 6,832 miles in 12 days. The sender of this card said she lives in a small city that has terraced rice fields and a few islands, it sounds lovely

I Met a Canadian Astronaut

You might remember a few months ago in the post 'How is Canada Cooler than the US?' where I mentioned that I was slightly stalking Canadian Astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield on twitter? Well it just so happens that Colonel Hadfield has just published his first book 'An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth' I've been reading about this book for months, and when I went to check about a book signing I just happened to notice that he was going to be in Chicago! Sure it's a 2.5hr drive but it would be totally worth it, I've never met a real famous person. I had told A.Drama about him awhile ago too and when I told her about this opportunity she was in. 

We left about 3, and managed to hit Chi at about traffic time, yay! (not) but we managed to arrive with plenty of time for the 7pm start. This signing was at the Barnes and Noble in Skokie. 

This is a picture from Col. Hadfields twitter and Facebook pages, this was the gathering as we waited for him to speak. I actually kind of thought there would be more people there to meet him, but it was a manageable crowd and very well organized. You bought your book and were given a number, we were 77 & 78 and we heard others mentioning their numbers in the 150's. The talk began promptly at 7.

Col. Hadfield began his book talk with a story about the bathroom facilities on your way up, as one would imagine they are quite limited. He said you are encouraged to really go before you leave, which ends up meaning 2 enema's. Yeah he went there.

Most of the talk time was allocated for a Q&A session. The first question came from a little girl about 8 or 9, her question to him was "What does it feel like to be in space" and "were you sad when you had to leave"  With a short pause he repeated the question and his answer was "magic" being in space feels like magic. Um insert heart melting here. He went on to explain it in a way an 8 year old could appreciate, he says you feel like Tinkerbell and can do all kinds of Tinkerbell flips in space. He also said that he enjoyed being in space but was glad to have his feet back on the ground.

He went on to explain a little bit about his social media presence during his stay on the International Space Station and explained that it's not something meant to be a ploy or anything wanting you to donate your money to space, he looked at it as an opportunity to share. Space is a limited experience that only a few will have the opportunity to visit, and he wanted people to see where their money was being spent. He shared his thoughts about the future of space exploration. He thinks we will go back to the moon and that there will eventually be a collaborative International Space program that will allow us to pool multiple countries' resources to continue exploration of the unknown.

The evening ended with a final question "What is the prettiest thing from space?" He explained that while your in space the first things you look toward are the familiar, where you are from and places you have been. Then it just becomes something more and you are able to see the beauty of the whole Earth. After a short pause and really thinking about it, he determined that his favorite site from space is the Bahama's. He says the way the dark waters of the ocean meet the shallow blue waters over the reef's that it's just so beautiful from space to see all those colors coming together.

Then it was time to get in line for our signing. We were placed in numerical order from our tickets, I won't lie when it was my turn in line I was a little bit nervous. I was kind of star struck and didn't want to be one of those geeky people that wants him sign something weird. So I simply shook his hand and said it is a pleasure to meet you and thanks for sharing the images. He said, no problem and that he liked my shirt.

After the singing we couldn't help but notice there was a Cheesecake Factory a few doors down from the bookstore, so we stopped in and helped ourselves to a piece of strawberry cheesecake, and it was DELISH! 

So if you haven't yet, I highly suggest googling Chris Hadfield and take a look at the amazing photos he shared from his time in space, then hop on over to YouTube and watch his videos. Check out 'Space Oddity' first then if you're curious check out how you go to the bathroom in space or how to brush your teeth in space, I promise you won't be disappointed. And be sure to check out his book, sorry yours isn't signed like mine is ;) 

Postcard Arrival: Reutlingen, Germany

Roughly translated this means: Celebrate the moments, the most beautiful moments arise unexpectedly. This postcard came from Germany and traveled 4,529 miles in 15 days!

Digital Dilemma

I've been storing all my pictures on my external hard drive that I've had for several years. I've been good about keeping all my pictures in order by year and grouping them in sub folders by event. Then the other day I went to back up my pictures from the Notre Dame game and got an error. WTF?!

It had occurred to me that this could happen but I was really prepared for it and now I'm kind of at a loss.

Luckily my friend at work is a computer guru and was able to back up my photos from 2006-2012. The 2013 folder was corrupt and unable to be accessed, which in this case is kind of the best outcome.

So now I'm trying to figure out all the pictures I could have possibly taken this year. Luckily I'm always kind of hesitant to delete the pictures off my SD card once they are backed up so I do have most of everything I've done this year saved. Luckily I have the blog to go back and figure out what I've done and try to figure out which pictures may have been lost.

The thing with such easy access to digital photography images is that we take crap tons of pictures and can just easily delete the bad ones later, so we tend to have an over abundance of pictures. Back in the day of film we were more diligent with our 24 pictures on the roll, knowing we had to carefully select which images we wanted to capture. Sometimes I myself even get too caught up in wanting to take great pictures to have to look back on that I forget to actually enjoy the subject matter.

So what to do now. Obviously I'm going to need to get another external hard drive because it wasn't only pictures that was on it. I used it to back up tax documents and my music along with many other things. I didn't double back up lately because I had too much faith in the electronic box storing all my things.

I had mentioned before that I wanted to start making scrapbooks by year using a photo website, which I will now definitely make a priority. But I also need to actually start printing off my pictures. I have tons of pictures in boxes from middle school and high school, then they all just drop off because digital cameras came about and there was no need to have the prints in order to share and see them.

I'm a little bummed, but glad I didn't lose all of them, now I will be extra careful of my pictures and make sure I have them in more than one place.

Wicked Chicago

Day 2 of the busy weekend is done and in the books. A.drama, mom and I headed up north to the big city today for Broadway in Chicago to see Wicked at the Oriental Theater.

Luckily this was a bus trip through work and we got to let someone else do the driving this time around. Our buses left about 9am and we reached Chicago about 11, and our play was at 2 so we had a little bit of time on our own for lunch and window shopping.

We were dropped off near the theater which is near Macy's, so we strolled on over. It's Christmas time in the city already. Mom had heard on the news that they had just lit the big Christmas tree at Macy's so we decided to go on a tree hunt. The outside of Macy's was all decked out in all it's holiday glory, with all the windows decorated with their moving window displays.

Head up to the 9th floor and you'll get a lovely view of the Walnut room (which I didn't know existed) and you'll see the big ol' Christmas tree (which I also did not know existed) I had to take a panoramic picture to get the whole thing in one shot! I just can't come to terms with the fact that it is now November and Christmas is just a short month and a half away.

Then we headed over to Panera for some yummy soup and a sandwich and then made a pit stop at one of the Chicago souvenir shops for a postcard run. We found some great Chicago ones to send out for Postcrossing around the globe.

Then it was time to hear the untold story of the witches of Oz.

The musical was great! It's on the second one I've seen, both have been at the Oriental theater. I noticed they had a play coming later in November called "Rudolph" based on the movie. 

It's been a busy weekend and I'm pooped. I still have some fun things up my sleeve for later this month, but the next fun thing comes on Wednesday! You'll have to stay tuned to find out what it is! 

Bucket List: Notre Dame Football Game- check!

A HUGE bucket list item checked off the list today! See a Notre Dame home football game... check! Even better that dad was there too! I had been checking the weather forecast all week and wouldn't you know it, cold and 50% chance of showers... we'll get to that.

After our lovely drive over to South Bend, with a few sprinkles and showers on the way, we made it to the home of The Fighting Irish! The skies were mostly cloudy with blue peeking through here and there. We arrived in plenty of time so we were able to walk around campus. Seriously, I have never seen a more beautiful campus before, lots of trees and older buildings. The building you see above is the golden dome which is home to the admissions and administrative offices.

Here's a look from the inside.

And we had to take a walk to see the lake... beautiful!

and to the grotto.

But this is where our story turns soggy. After we went to check out the grotto we made our way to the bookstore, I needed to stock up on some ND gear. Once we got there holy moly, nevermind, I'll shop online. Then as we stepped outside the heavens opened up and rain came pouring down, oh and the wind picked up out of nowhere. Boom. Soaked.

But don't fear! We came prepared! Well, as well as you can be prepared with a Dollar Store emergency poncho. So we poncho'd up and waited out the rain under the cover of safety and semi-warmth. But soon the rain turned to drizzle, then to a fine mist, then it was safe to venture out to our seats.

Oh hey there NBC, they were set up shop right in front of us, luckily their little tent folded down at game start, but popped back up again at halftime and blocked some of our view of the marching band.

Then something happend, you might even call it a miracle, but the clouds gave way and blue skies poked through just as the Marching Band was taking the field for their pregame performance. They began with America the Beautiful, then began the Star Spangled Banner.

As soon as the last line of the Star Spangled Banner hit, the roar of six Navy Blue Angels jets came in from above. This is seriously one of the coolest things I have experienced in some time. It was just that awesome.

It's a full house!

Those fellas in the blue pants are the pilots that did the fly over

Notre Dame touch down! Time for push ups!

The Navy mascot, he's a goat

Here's the band at halftime, you can see the Irish Guard and the NBC tent in our way

It may have been cold, it may have been rainy, but it was still totally an amazing experience to be at Notre Dame on game day. I would gladly go again. I will say some days it's better to be a home in your comfy warm clothes and watch the game at home. But nothing will ever beat the experience of sitting on a little piece of wood bleacher soaked from the rain, with a soaked butt watching from row 7, seat 10, section 23 for my first Notre Dame game. There aren't even words capable of describing the feeling. Glad you could be there dad, sorry Navy lost, it was close. ;) 

Notre Dame - 38
Navy - 34

Go Irish!