Boy, my hands are not pleased with me for all the knitting I did yesterday.

Liese, I'm so sorry. Peace to you and your family.

Four miles is nothing to sneeze at! That's over 5k, for one thing.

Enjoying meara's tour-and-post very much.

Resident baker lady is moving to a different department, so today is our last department meeting with her nummy treats. I'm gonna have one of each, diet be damned.

Liese, much strength to your family.

Connie, thanks! The package arrived yesterday. I am all armoured up.

Yay! No one intercepted it! And I've two more cartons of the things if you want them.

Liese, peace to you and yours.

meara, I just sent my Krakow guide to your yahoo mail. Maybe it will help you.

Saturday Aug. 23rd was a foggy day in Chicago--here are some photos I took at the beach: [link]

This one is my fave: [link]

I'm loving the Prague reports! It's high on my list of places to check out.

Other places I went today: Strahov Monastery (they have a famous library: but you can't actually go in, just look from the doorway. Which is not super exciting AND means the other 100 tourists will all also be trying to peer through this narrow doorway....weirdest thing was the huge Buddha statue in one corner. Not something I thought I'd see at a monastery?), the Miniature Museum (on the monastery grounds for some reason? Tiny room, all these metal sculptures and paintings done on a human hair or a grain of rice. There was one that was a caravan of camels, done in gold, in the eye of a needle), and the museum of decorative arts, which was another one where they wouldn't let you take photos, which was annoying. It was pretty neat though (I should say, these were all worth what I paid--most were about $5-7 each, so not big city museum type prices). There was a temp exhibit of weird twisty pottery that I totally didn't get. But then they had awesome fashion couture pieces, ceramics and clocks and stuff, some neat stained glass, and some nice jewelry (especially the art nouveau replica pieces in the tiny gift shop, but those were like $150 bucks, so not on the menu for me).

Then I came back to the hotel, and asked the concierge if there was a laundromat anywhere nearby--my brother is getting here in a few minutes, so I figured I'd do laundry before he got here (and when we get to Poland on Monday supposedly the place we are staying has a washer). She said there was a place about a 30 minute walk away (near the river/clock) but it was closed now. I was like what? How does a self-serve laundromat stay in business if it's only open until 6pm?? Thankfully google had my back and I found a place three metro stops away (super fast trains, btw--they seem to come every 5 minutes!) and did it there. Though it was kind of ridiculous expensive ($9 for one small load to wash and dry myself!). But now all my clothes are clean. Whew.

Liese, here's hoping the coming days can be as serene as possible for your family.