SNOW!!

We might have over done it this weekend.  Just a smidge.  

It started on Friday night, when I scooped up Nico and gave him the choice of what he wanted to do: head down to Lincoln Park to see what we could see or hang out at the house (we were trying to give Dave some time to keep working).  Nico chose to hangout at the house, so we headed to the grocery for some supplies.  We had big plans to make popcorn and drink hot chocolate and watch Christmas shows.  We watched the show, but somehow managed to skip the hot chocolate and popcorn.  Weird.  

Saturday, Nico and I finished up a huge batch of sugar cookies (to take to my friend Amy's police station at O'Hare).  Then Dave and I took Nico up to Lincolnwood Town Center- which is a mall.  Dave and I took turns getting massages while Nico road the train and played the skill game (where you use the claw to try to grab a prize from a machine).  Afterwards, we headed back down to the city and drove to the end of the Brown line (at Kimball) where the Santa train was.  For like the last 15 years or so, the CTA has decorated 4-5 cars in a holiday motif.  It spends several days riding one section of the CTA... so Friday and Saturday, it was traveling on the Brown and Orange lines.  So we hopped on board.  

Nico is doing this super annoying thing lately where he won't look at the camera. Here it looks like he is snuggling me.  Not so.  

So my plan was to ride the Brown line down to Montrose to get some candy at Margies for Christmas. I know someone who likes chocolate covered cherries, and Margies makes them pretty good, so I figured that would be an easy trip.  Since I hadn't specifically mentioned to Dave about wanting to do the train thing, I wasn't planning for him to come along- so I when he said he wanted to, I thought we should go further.  So we rode down to the Loop to check out the Christkindlmarket, which was a big mistake. Everyone and their mom was at the Christkindlmarket.  Have we talked about how I feel about crowds?  And how unprepared we were for the cold?  And how when we finally did leave there was a 25-30 min wait at my new favorite restaurant (called the Castle and the Elephant). Yeah, I had a sad.  

In any case, we ended up ducking into Marshall Fields/Macy's to use the bathroom and found their candy section. And a restaurant, which was definitely nothing to write home about.  After, we headed home to grab cookies and Nico and I were on our way out to O'Hare. 

So, one of the things I am trying to do with Nico is to have the holiday be less about buying stuff and getting toys and more about doing stuff.  Since he is in a really big police officer phase, I thought we could take some christmas cookies to a police station.  And for him, it was totally doing something... he helped me make cookies and rode with me out to O'Hare.  My crossfit friend Amy is a police officer at O'Hare, so suggested bringing Nico out and he could sit in a police car and have the sirens and lights on.  We got to be in the roll call room for their roll call and inspection.  Which was cool.  He did get all shy (per usual), so it was kind of a bust in the sense that he didn't talk to any police officers.  

Sunday morning, Dave and I finished tearing apart the living room.  We've been talking about moving furniture around, but this weekend we had to put up or shut up since we were getting the Christmas tree.  Then we made the journey up to Ikea- both of our first times.  And we pretty much loved it.  There was something for everyone, which was cool.  It was snowing, so the trip to Schaumberg took a long time.  Then we came back in town and got some groceries and finally swung by Home Depot for a couple of things (including the Christmas tree).  

By this time, the snow was really coming down, so when we got home, Dave and Nico shoveled snow while I put the groceries away.   It's probably just the novelity of it, but Nico loves shoveling snow.  Here is yesterday, before school, shoveling.  

In total, we got about 4 inches of snow.  Which was pretty cool.  I am soooooo glad that I bought a pair of snow boots for me (back in the late summer) and a pair for Nico (in Dallas last week).  The temperature has been in the single digits with highs up to the 20's, and I am so glad that my toesies aren't getting iced out. 

The Bishop-Royses go to Royse City

 We had a really fun Thanksgiving Holiday.

The Friday night before we left, I scooped up Nico and got him out of the house so we could run some errands.  This entailed dinner down in Lincoln Park.  We were headed towards the train when we stopped by the DePaul Athletic Center and caught a DePaul volleyball game against Butler.  Nico and I watched for about 30 minutes.  He seemed to be pretty into it.

A new development, which will get it's own post probably next week, is that Nico has just taken off with the reading and the writing.  It's pretty amazing.  He has filled up a composition book at school with "work" and he brought it home before Thanksgiving.  And he is just so smart.  It's fantastic.  He is reading street signs and signs at the store and everything.  It's awesome.

 

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to Texas to see Nico's cousins.  They had an absolute blast.  Nico was so excited to have other kids to play with (NOT AT SCHOOL), that he showed his tail a bit.  He was totally over stimulated and off his schedule, so I guess I can cut him a little slack.  Plus, Nicole and Cody's house is amazing.  Seriously- they have a zipline: 

I know, right?

We stayed with Nicole and Cody Monday-Saturday and had a good time hanging out.  I got in a little shopping and had so much fun.  The weekend before we headed out, we got Nico a couple of new pair of shoes (blue adidias with flourescent orange stripes and blue pumas).  Whenever Nico was not wearing the shoes and becks found them, he would bring them to a grown up and ask for the shoes to be put on his fit.  What does it say about an 18 month old's feet when they can fit in his 4 year old cousin's shoes?  Yeah.  Big honkin feet.  

On the way back to Chicago, we ran through Royse City, Texas. A town founded by Dave's people.  It's pretty non-desript.  The depot has a sign that was clearly spelled Royce City, but that someone had to fix, which I found very funny.  

We got back on Sunday- and have been back on the grind since.  While we were gone, someone stole the catalytic converter off of Dave's 4Runner- which is annoying.  Have you ever driven a vehicle without a catalytic converter?  So annoying. It's loud.  Not like, man- that is a souped up engine loud.  But rather, who doesn't have a muffler on their vehicle loud.  Normally its a $2200 repair job, but luckily, we had comprehensive coverage on the 4Runner... so Progressive is handling it- and all we have to pay is our $500 deductible.  It's always something... but it could have been a lot worse. 

All for now.  

I'm baaaaaaaaaack....

Well hello there!!  It's good to see you.
As promised, I have returned from the hiatus- with a mixed record as to what I did with my time.  Before Thanksgiving, I had gotten down to within 5 lbs. of pre-nico weight, but I undid a bit of that when we were in Texas over the holiday.  I went to the doctor (to get some meds reupped) and was weighed on his "official" (read: bullshit) scale.  He confirmed that since August 7th, I had lost 18 lbs.  This works out to be about a pound per week.  The upside to this that my left knee is feeling great- which is a departure from what it usually feels like.

Moreover, I am getting so strong.  Case in point: we do a lot of pull-ups in CrossFit.  I have never been able to do a pull-up and have always had to use the black band (think of a very large rubber band that you loop over the bar and put your feet in.  Then you step off the box and your weight is somewhat supported by the band).  In order of support, the colors are: purple, black, green, blue.  Since I started CF, I have been on the black band, and have tried a couple of times to go down to the green, but could not get the pull-up.  But the black band has felt really easy the last couple of weeks... like not even a workout.  This week, just for grins, I gave it a go and was able to get a couple of pull-ups.  It was fantastic.  I'm not sure I could do a whole workout with just the green band (yet), but it's nice to have that as a measure.

Last night I went to an Olympic lifting class for the first time.  I am starting to really like a couple of the movements (power cleans and power snatches), but my technique is a hot mess.  So I went to the class to do a little work and just get in a lot of reps.  It's totally like goalkeeping... where sometimes the only way to improve is to do 100 punches over the crossbar.  It is what it is.

So that is great.  The trade off is that I am sore all the time these days.  And I have a lot more muscle... so clothes just do not fit.  Not only the ones that I already have but most the ones I'm looking at when I go shopping.  But I guess that is a good problem to have, right?

In other news, I am looking (on my desk) at a complete second draft of a paper that I have been working on.  Today I will be sending it to my old boss at the FSU COM, for his comments and remarks before we submit it for publication later this month.  Which is fantastic.  I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but I got another publication last month (November).  Back in the spring, I helped one of the FSU COM students with a paper he wanted to submit for a patient safety award.  Well, as I left, he was working on getting it published.  Back in October our old boss (the third author) sent me a note that it had been published.  So, make that two publications since I have been in Chicago.  Isn't that cool?

I have about a third of the lectures for my Winter Quarter class edited.  I still need to record and post them, but I like the progress so far.  I am experimenting with "flipping the classroom", where I record my lectures and my students view them on their own time.  Then they come to class and we work on problems together.  For statistics??  I think it could be really good.

More later.