Almost a week and nary a post. <sigh> When did life sud­denly get so busy?

But before I go bab­bling on about shtuff, I want to send a great big THANK YOU for all the won­der­ful birth­day wishes I got last week. It truly means the world that I have friends, both IRL and online, that care so much for me.

I must admit, Hubby & I started cel­e­brat­ing my birth­day the Fri­day before the hol­i­day; kick­ing it off with SIL’s birth­day in Detroit. Since the two of us (SIL & me) share birth­days exactly two days before and after America’s Birth­day, we have tended to cel­e­brate our birth­days in some com­bined man­ner; typ­i­cally either on the Fourth of July or on her actual birth­day. So yeah, we ended up at lunch with Hubby’s side of the fam­ily and exchanged gifts at that time.

And because I had been dying to get into the water again (one day at the beach two weeks ago was obvi­ously not enough), I twisted Hubby’s arm by drag­ging him to the local water­park in sub­ur­ban Detroit. We lost track of time, spend­ing close to four hours of swim­ming in the wave pool and float­ing down the lazy river … and it was won­der­ful!

My only com­plaint? When did my 38 year old body begin to need an hour nap after spend­ing that much time in the water? Geesh … I can remem­ber spend­ing hours and hours in a pool and STILL have enough energy to stay up all night dur­ing the summers.

But after a won­der­ful nap that Sat­ur­day, I got to spend some qual­ity time with my youngest cousins (Dad’s side); tak­ing them to Mex­i­can Vil­lage down­town Detroit and dri­ving them around to show them more than the rel­a­tively non–diverse sub­urbs of South­east Michi­gan. (Think old Detroit Train Sta­tion … ) Yeah, I think we opened their eyes to the tragic beauty of Detroit.

Orig­i­nal Exte­rior and Inte­rior of the Detroit Train Sta­tion
(Michi­gan Cen­tral Station)

Cur­rent Exte­rior and Inte­rior of our Trag­i­cally Beau­ti­ful Train Station

On my actual birth­day, Hubby & I were back in Chicago. My Mom tagged along with us to meet up with some of her uni­ver­sity friends (from back in the Philip­pines! In the early-​​to-​​mid 1960’s!) It was a very hot and humid day, but we man­aged to have lots of fun at the Art Insti­tute of Chicago (my Mom’s a BIG Van Gogh fan) and at Mil­le­nium Park. We had lots of fun tak­ing pic­tures next to and under­neath “The Bean.” After­wards, we hit a Chi­nese Restau­rant closer to our apart­ment and ate dim sum along with the tra­di­tional Noo­dles that each per­son should eat on their birth­day (it rep­re­sents Long Life).

So yes … that’s what I’ve been up to this past week. That … and doing some web­site stuff for one of Hubby’s friend (and get­ting paid for it … woo-​​hoo!).

Oh, and did I for­get to tell you that I got a job?! Not just any job … the trav­el­ing job that I had been want­ing! Woo-frickin’-hoo!! The only down­fall is that I’m not going to be able to start until the end of August. Which means … yeah, still no major cash flow into our bank account.

The upside to it all? (Other than actu­ally being able to say that I’m tech­ni­cally no longer unem­ployed … ) Now I can tell peo­ple that I’ve decided to take the sum­mer off for a sab­bat­i­cal! Tee-​​hee!

Again, thanks for your birth­day wishes AND thanks for all the good vibes and prayers y’all sent my way in regards to my job search. You guys are AWESOME!