Omaha!

IT'S NOT JUST FOR STEAKS ANYMORE!

Norbert's best friend from camp, Woodrow, was called to the Torah as a bar mitvah this morning, and Norbert was invited. While I love a good bar mitzvah luncheon as much as anyone, normally this wouldn't be anything to blog about. Except that Woodrow lives in Omaha, Nebraska, which is several blocks from beautiful Hyde Park, Chicago.

I want to have something to counter with when Norbert comes home from therapy and says I never cared for him. So I immediately said, "Great! I'd love to drive to Omaha! This will be fun!"

Mapquest says that Omaha is 7 hours, 52 minutes from our doorstep. And it is. As long as you can hold your water for 7:52, it might even be a minute or two more than you need. But no more. If you are middle-aged, have had a child, or worry about deep tissue thrombosis, it takes 9 hours.

I would venture, though, that it was well worth the drive.

In addition to two synagogue services -- no camera allowed -- a dinner last night and a luncheon this afternoon, we took a little walk on the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge. See below.


The Kerry Bridge spans the Missouri River between Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. It's a pretty cool bridge. I don't know that I have ever seen a curved suspension bridge.

We walked to Iowa and back.


After the bridge, we went looking for a Starbucks on the way back to the hotel. Myfanwe was feeling a need. And we came upon a Starbucks in a lovely retail development -- lots of lovely shops clustered together. Myfanwe, bless her, suggested I drive around the shops to see if there was a yarn shop. And there was.

The shop is called String of Purls. And it might well be the most beautiful, comfortable, spacious yarn shop I have ever set foot into. This is just one room.


The owners and staff are incredibly nice women. They obviously love what they do, and they do it well. The shop, for lack of a better description, is sort of a Palace of Yarn. I could easily have spent an entire afternoon there. Everyone was so genuinely nice. If you are ever in Omaha, do yourself a favor and put String of Purl on your itinerary. You won't be sorry.

Don't ask me why I photographed this scarf. The best reason I can come up with is that I loved the whimsy. And I wondered how they made the i-cord off the edge of the scarf. It was pretty cool. I think I'd put some bells at the ends.

I have had a really good week at work. I feel like I'm getting back to my normal work again. (Which I really, really like.) My office no longer looks like the place used paper goes to die.

Blogging may be a rarity the next two weeks. Monday through Friday will, I imagine, be working hard at work, then coming home to get packed for Ireland. (And we will need to tidy up the house -- Li'l Myfanwe and Gale are house sitting for us.) I'll try to blog from Ireland, but I don't know how good the connection to the interwebs will be at the hotel. If the connection isn't good, or if we are having such a wickedly good time that I can't pause for a mo to block, I promise lots of pictures and a travelogue when we return.