Brotherhood of the Traveling Office

... well, it would be a brotherhood, if I had any bros here, anyway. I'm working (for the third day in a row) out of the Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins a couple blocks from our new apartment in Chicago. Every morning I come in, pay $1.09 for an iced coffee, and milk it for all it's worth by nursing it for a couple of hours while abusing the free wi-fi. After today, though, I'm moving this operation to a new coffee shop each day (hence the "Traveling Office" title, also inspired by Rachel recently staying up until 2am to watch the sequel to the Rory Gilmore/Ugly Betty vehicle/sensation) until we have internet set up in the apartment. Tomorrow's office? Cherub which the yelp reviews say "smells like grandma's attic." Can't wait!

Despite the bleak initial picture with regards to coffee shops here (seriously walked two miles down a main street in an unsuccessful search for a coffee shop with free wi-fi -- I don't think that's even possible in Seattle), we're off to a good start here. The apartment is way bigger than we need, particularly since we have no furniture other than the bed which (self-congratulation alert!) I successfully "built" (read: assembled with the helpful picture-instructions of IKEA). Each day brings new adventures and misadventures, the latter being particularly fun in the freakish (or perhaps even worse -- the routine??) 90-degree heat.

We've also been exploring some of the local cuisine and will surely be taco/burrito/torta experts of the first order. I've been furiously trying to keep up with Yelp reviews after each experience, too!) We also found a swingin party to watch the Lost series finale -- part of the Brew and View series at the Vic Theater. As it turns out, it was a good thing, too: the excitement of the crowd definitely buoyed spirits through the at times underwhelming and at other times plain frustrating 3.5-hours (Check out the Slate guys' discussion of the finale, too!). Reminds me of hooting with glee at a midnight showing of "Attack of the Clones" only to find out much much later that Yoda's sparring match with Dooku was actually pretty ridiculous.

Now that I'm settling into some sort of a routine (shyeah right), hopefully I'll be able to post more. There's definitely stuff to say! Until next time, keep cool and go Hawks!

On the Road ... Again

I guess it's not entirely crazy that I haven't updated since our yard sale a few weeks ago. Between then and now we have sold or dumped all of our furniture and most other belongings, packed the remainder into the car, moved out of the apartment, couchsurfed with friends, quit jobs/finished school, left Seattle, and made it (so far) to Denver, CO. I haven't had nearly enough time to process all of these happenings (despite the 10-hour drives through Montana and Wyoming) and hope to dive into them a bit more in a later post.

In the meantime, however, I just want to say how much I love and loathe road trips. On the one hand, I can't stand living out of suitcases (particularly those that I didn't pack for myself), but I do enjoy the long stretches listening to country radio, exploring the awfulness of highway-side motels, and discovering regional gems like Taco Johns, to which we just treated ourselves to while watching "Miss Congeniality" (part of some station's "Mamalicious Mothers Day Weekend Movie Marathon") on our hotel room cable, another of our road-trip guilty pleasures.

We've got two more days of driving. Tomorrow's destination is sunny Kansas City, after which we'll make the final push to Ohio. We've seen the more scenic sites of the trip already, but who doesn't have a little soft spot for Kansas, after all?