Sweet [ fill-in-the blank] Chicago // #MakingMajorLifeDecisions

This weekend I followed the roads down Lake Michigan that led to Chicago! Green Bay is not exactly the most exciting place, I mean, it has it's moments. But for the most part, there is a reason why Wisconsin is known so well for beer... you generally need to be drunk to enjoy most of what's here!

Okay, cool your jets fellow Wisconsinites! That last statement was definitely harsh and not entirely true. Wisconsin is gorgeous with a bounty of outdoor activities, but, you have to admit, it does lack severely in the big city offerings.

Where in Wisconsin would streets be shut down for a huge festival celebrating the LGTB community? I can't think of anywhere either. I happened to have an appointment in Boystown on Saturday where I was greeted with the rowdy crowds for Market Days. Unfortunately I missed out on Neon Trees performing Today! 

It's okay though, because I got an even more interesting show by some fabulous queens! These ladies seriously know how to radiate confidence and gather crowds! 

This is the one street in Chicago I know I know I will never be harassed by men.

Now, for the real reason I drove down to Chitown this Saturday?

I signed a lease! 

That appointment I mentioned above, was with my new real estate company! In a month I'll be packing my bags and moving down to the most perfect, little studio apartment! I am currently in progress of applying to Dev Bootcamp, an intensive 9-week course that pumps out some pretty solid web developers... and I hope to make myself one of them! 

Here's a sneak-peek into the furnishings and decor of my soon-to-be room. I've already named my new apartment "The Bullpen", because I clearly have no shame and I basically grew up in barns. Between Ikea, Target and the many junk piles of my parent's backyard, I have been able to go wild with turning my inner-city apartment into a little piece of Wisconsin. Yes, there's going to be a cowhide rug and bull-horns along with lots of natural, exposed wood.

All I think it needs is more cowbell! 

Cheers!

#BigPlans // #BigCity // #LittleBlogPost

So, I have some big, exciting, semi-ambitious plans in the works! And no, unfortunately it does not involve moving to Chicago. Even as sweet as that would be, I have to be satisfied with mere weekend trips to get my fix of big city life. As much as I'd love to get back into a real city, that's going to have to wait a little bit longer... 

I did tease myself last weekend as I drove into the city and immersed myself back into crowds of interesting folks, stunning architecture and the constant hustle. I had to stop myself multiple times from even entertaining the idea of moving down here! As much as I'd love to, I reminded myself the situation I have up in Wisconsin is good.... especially for saving money. 

The money I'm saving is pretty crucial for what I have planned in the next coming months, I won't tease too much since there is still a lot of planning and figuring out of visas'n'such, *hint hint*. BUT(!), my weekend in Chi-town revolved around a two-day class that I hope will help significantly with my grand plans! 

There is a fantastic group called Girl Develop It, if you haven't heard of them, check it out! They're based in a lot of major U.S. cities and even a few international ones. They are an incredibly welcoming community of female (and some male) coders that hold regular meetups and classes. I took a two-day intermediate HTML and CSS class that I learned a heap from!

I am continuing on with several online courses to further the mind-boggling task of learning to build websites. I really want to immerse myself to the level of being able to pretty much do everything myself as much as possible, and the class I took verified this is going to be a long process! So far Skillshare, Lynda, Skillfeed & Treehouse are all proving to be fantastic resources to expedite the process! I'm loving Skillshare and Treehouse the most so far! 

What all this basically means is that you may see a makeover done to this blog very soon, one that includes ditching blogger. Gasp! I'm super excited though to learn Wordpress and play with my new Adobe Creative Cloud programs and features! I finally stopped being stingy after many failed attempts to torrent it and first now realized how nice and extensive the new cloud service really is! 

I have a lot to keep me busy with this summer, but I'll do my best to continue storytelling about my European, Tasmanian and Great Lakes trips I took last year! 

Cheers!

#Travel // I Didn't Hate Cleveland

I didn't hate Cleveland.

 In fact I was actually really surprised how mildly entertaining it ended up being. We only dedicated a day of our month-long road trip around the Great Lakes to this city, thinking we'd just stop by and stretch our legs for a few hours. This was still only a couple days after leaving Niagara Fall and Toronto, we weren't expecting to see much until we hit Detroit.

 A lot of our trip ended up being like that, considering we didn't have much idea of what was in store when we rerouted from a trip out west to around the great lakes. Trading National Parks and Monument for ... uhm, a lot of woods and random, low-profile cities. Props to the National Shutdown. 

The best lesson of traveling our new route, was that places can really surprise you. We never once had to deal with inflated prices or obnoxious crowds of tourists and a lot of stops really surprised us with how visitor friendly they were. Cleveland is probably one of the best examples. I was expecting only to see an nausa-inducing amount of the horrible color scheme of brown and orange. Fortunately the city isn't as crazy with Browns pride and I was spared!

For most of the road trip, all we really spent money on was food and gas. The Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame was pricey, we knew that going in. We had no intention to pay the entrance fee, but decided at least a peek in the lobby would be worth checking-out. As you can see, we caved and forked over the $40 to marvel at all it's impressive innards.

This was definitely one attraction both Torsten and I were glad we splurged on. As I mentioned, we weren't planning on actually seeing the full museum, but once we were in, we stayed in... for hours. What was meant to be a quick stop ended up taking up the whole day as we watched old music videos and admired memorabilia of legends. 

We wandered the downtown a bit before stumbling into a food court, starrrrrving. We pretty much made a meal out of all the free samples on offer, but still dug into some good ole gooey, food-court "Chinese". We also soaked up as much of the WiFi as our phones could handle. 

On the way out of Tower City, we walked along the Cuyahoga River, counting the bridges along the way. The old steel and stone buildings lining the path along the river was strangely beautiful in an industrial way. The perks of having an engineer boyfriend is being able to see rusty eyesores in a positive light. 

As the sun started setting, we started making our way back to the van, passing through a massive hunk of inner-city green space, read: glorified lawn with fancy sculptures. 

We rolled out of town with a sky-full of colorful clouds and better impression of Cleveland than we'd ever expected. We continued the drive along Lake Erie, heading North to the one and only Motor City; Detroit!

Cheers!