Ketchup!

My family's visit went well and we all had a good time. Amy and I took them to some unique restaurants which are plentiful around this area including Kabul House and Farang Meet Thai (formerly Blue Sapphire). We also paid a visit to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. The day at the gardens was gorgeous. The temperature was in the mid 70s with low humidity and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The Japanese garden, my personal favorite, was excellent as always.

As I said before, my parents were going to bring some of my various collections and computers that they didn't want to store any longer to our new house when they came to visit. I got to sift through my modest collection of Garbage Pail Kids, which are still funny, a few boxes of various sports cards and comic books, and a large collection of Mad Magazines dating back to the early 1980s. Of course, the Atari 2600 came with them as well as the Commodore 64C. Unfortunately, the Commodore's sound was not working and I have since found a replacement on Ebay. I was quite disappointed as my beloved SID 6581 was the main reason I was looking forward to arrival of the Commodore. Everything else is in working order, though, even the 1541 5.25" floppy drives which are notorious for failing with age. I did have to clean some of the third party Atari cartridges, but they are all fine now that I have given them the appropriate alcohol swab.

Amy and I finally bought a couch for the basement entertainment area. Our choices were very limited because of the space available to manuever the furniture around a tight U-turn and down some basement stairs. But, we finally found something that we liked and it should fit downstairs without too much trouble. The couch is a sectional set that travels around a corner with a sleeper in one section so that we can now officially sleep seven people here comfortably. Bathroom privileges would be a different story!

We also took a look at some bicycles. Both Amy and I enjoy riding and I'd also like to commute to work by pedal power. We haven't made a purchase yet, but I think we might by the end of the week. We found a great bike shop called Amlings Cycle Shop that offers superb service. It was the best service that I've experienced at any local bike shop and I highly recommend them if you happen to live in the area.

Our acquisitions don't end with furniture and bicycles, either. We made a visit to the Tree House, a no-kill, cageless adoption house for stray and injured cats. We saw two cats that we liked very much and we'll probably have one of them by the end of the week. The first was a black cat with a tiny tip of white at the end of her tail and the second was a light orange tabby that was very friendly. We're not quite sure which one we'll pick, but either one will be a welcome addition to the house, not to mention that Amy will finally stop bugging me to get a cat.

I also went with Dennis to catch some film fun at the Chicago Underground Film Festival this weekend. We saw a collection of short films that were definitely entetraining to say the least. My favorite was a very short feature called Cats and Pants that was just this woman saying, "Cats" and "Pants" in quick, random patterns. The video complementing the audio was a montage of still images of, you guessed it, cats and pants. Both Dennis and I found this wildly hilarious. I was practically crying with laughter. However, the "artier-than-thou" crowd apparently thought that it made some deep comment on modern society because hardly a peep was uttered by any of the other theater-goers. It's just further proof that B-Fest is the best film festival in this area by far! My second favorite short was called Cheap Ludes. It was the strange story of a man-sized turkey on human legs running around Mexico City looking for toothpicks. We also caught a full length feature called God Told Me To, a thriller about a detective investigating crimes apparently inspired by the Almighty. The director, Larry Cohen, was present to give us some insight into the film and to relate some anecdotes about Andy Kaufman whose very first film appearance occurs in a short parade scene.

Currently listening to: Matt Uelmen, Monastery - Diablo 2 OST