Reason Breeds Insanity

Mine was FAIR to middlin’! I had so much fun today! To begin my day, I went to the Blue Bottle and had coffee with my friend, Molly, who I volunteer at the Mission with. We sat and talked to a woman who I will just call Amanda Galbraith’s grandma, and it was fantastic. I got caught up on Amanda, Cristin, and Tara and their lives, and their grandma was pretty amazing, too! And Molly and I always have fun, so it was a great way to start the day.

When I left my coffee date with Molly, I went to Sarah and Daniel’s house to pick up Elizabeth. We spent the whole afternoon doing zany things like going to a new seedy little restaurant called Thai Kitchen. I must admit that I liked it better than Thai Smile for several reasons. First, the restaurant itself is sort of small and used to be some kind of greasy spoon diner. Elizabeth and I sat at the 1950’s style soda counter bar instead of a table. Second, our waitress was amazing, telling us all about all the cool stuff of the restaurant and giving us sweet chili sauce to accent our Lemongrass and Tofu lunches. Third, the food was great. It wasn’t filled with sugar, but it had great flavor, especially the dipping sauce for the spring rolls. Fourth, Elizabeth got a Thai Iced Coffee, we split spring rolls, and we each had a good portion of lunch for only $18. Stellar.

When we left Thai Kitchen, we went just up the road a few blocks to Sally’s Ice Cream. I had the best Slushie I’ve had in a long time. They serve the kind that has the syrup at the bottom, the cup is filled with icy sugar-water, and then they mix it with a milk shake machine. You know, the best kind of Slushie ever! Elizabeth got a chocolate covered cherry sundae that looked amazing. All of this for only $4. Of course, when we were finished we had to go thrifting: Meow and Mutt Market, Glass Factory Outlet, and Meijer to purchase clearance items. Essentially, I got two polos and a funny sweatshirt, some mugs/glasses, and a water bottle. I think I spent about $12 or so, so it was a good day.

The crowning glory of my day came this evening when Ed, Abbie, Izzy, and I went to the fair. Bec stayed home because Dave decided to grace us with his presence, and they watched Heroes and ate steak and corn on the cob for dinner. When we got to the fair, we were a bit disappointed because the animals were all gone. We went into every barn and only saw a few calves and steers. Our adult disappointment didn’t stop Izzy from jumping up and down in her stroller—as best she could with her little seatbelt on—and laughingly chanting, “Diddle, diddle, diddle.” Pretty sweet. We played games, and Ed won tons of little animals for Iz. Abbie won a little purple whale, which I must say was cute, and I didn’t win jack. I have never been able to play Carnival games.

Our favorite part of the fair by far was the food. I know, everything’s food! I got fried mushrooms that were huge and tasty, Ed had the biggest turkey leg I’ve ever seen, and Abs had the biggest corn dog in the world. The gluttony was fair-time magical. I also had a great lemon shake-up and some pretty good cotton candy. All-in-all I would say it was a positive experience.
The one draw back was that my two good friends seem to place wagers on whether or not I will see people I know. Apparently, that is quite a sport among my friends, including Becky. I can’t say that I blame them, since I DO see people I know absolutely everywhere. It DOES border on ridiculousness.

Finally, I came to the stark realization today that there are only 5 weeks until school starts. I haven’t written my syllabus, I haven’t finished the books I wanted to finish, I haven’t ordered my books for fall, and I haven’t taken a break. Literally, there are five more weekends before the first Monday of school. Good thing for Florida. The prospect of going back to school so soon is sad but exciting, because this is my last year of classes. I am a bit nervous about comps and that pesky dissertation, but I think I can, as Bob says, “Saw through it.”

But it seems like they were never gone. Weird isn’t it how even though people you love leave, when they come back, it seems like they were never gone. We spent both Friday and Saturday night with Ed and Abbie, and I swear it was as if we had just spent the weekend before with them, too. Izzy is absolutely precious, and I think I may frequently borrow her when she is older. It’ll be sort of like having a child without having to have one, which is a plus. We played Apples to Apples, which always reminds me of New Year’s Eve, but we had a great time, and of course, Becky “I don’t like to play games” Kaehr won by a landslide. Sometimes that woman!

Celie, the puppy, is getting big. Since everyone keeps asking me about her, I will fill you in. She weighs about 35 pounds and is in that puppy-rambunctious phase, the one tests your love as a puppy parent. She chews. She poops. She chews. She eats. She chews. She sleeps. She chews. She rocket launches herself across the room. She chews. Did I mention that she chews? She does: on us, on her toys, on things we didn’t even know we owned, and on her siblings. The vet said she is getting her big girl teeth, so she will be especially chewy for the next couple of months. My hands are proof.

I leave next week for Florida. I am riding the motorcycle down to Atlanta on Tuesday then staying in a hotel just north of the city, so I can get up at the crack of dawn to beat the rush hour traffic around the city. I plan to make it to Merideth’s early on Wednesday, so I can be there when she gets home from work. I need to make sure I have directions to her new house, though, so I don’t show up at Leah’s. On the way home the next weekend, I am going to ride to the south side of Chattanooga, so that my last day riding is only about a six hour trip. I have to get home to rest up to go to Jimmy Buffett on the 29th with Adam.

In other good news, we are going to the Delaware Country Fair with Ed, Abs, and Izard on Friday. I hope to eat some good corn-on-the-cob, since apparently it is my favorite food group, and to watch Iz having fun looking at all the diddles. Oh, yeah, and hanging out with Ed and Abbie will be great, too! 🙂

This weekend is my cousin’s wedding. So Saturday will be spent with family—extended family. Ever seen my big, fat, Greek wedding? It’s like that only not humorous. I will get to see my grandma, though, and I almost never see her because she lives in Huntington now, and I don’t get up there much. I am going to go before the summer is over and classes start back up, though. Sunday will be fun because we are going to go out for dinner to celebrate my birthday. I will be 34. I had such great plans for 24. I pushed them back to 34. Now, I guess I will have to push them back again to 44. Hopefully, by then I can run that marathon, have a real job, and have my house remodeled and looking somewhat decent.

Onward.

As we were walking the dogs tonight, it struck me that I totally forgot to take Celie to her vet appointment this evening, so I rescheduled it for 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. She needs her last puppy shot! I’m sure she will love me for taking her first thing in the morning. Right now she is a little destruction machine; she’s at that phase in a puppy’s life when God keeps reminding us how cute she is so we won’t kill her. She tore some of the insulation out of one of the walls of the garage, so we had to put a board up in order to keep her from chewing more of it. It sounds worse than it is, because our walls aren’t finished in the garage, so it’s not like she chewed through drywall or anything, she just pulled the insulation off from the wall. And then ate some. And then pooped some.

This morning when I got ready to go out for my morning jog, I went to the kitchen to get my watch and my iPod, but my watch was no where to be found. I assumed that one of the cats had just knocked it onto the floor or something, so I looked around for it a bit. I then thought that maybe Bec had moved it or something, so I called her to see if she had seen it. She HAD seen it, but the now missing watch was in the same place it had been the night before when I had seen it. I could only come to one conclusion: the cats hid it from me. After looking high and low, on top of book shelves, under the couches, between their cushions, and everywhere else imaginable, I had to admit that the cats are better at hide-and-seek than I am!

I went to Chicago with my family for five days and four nights. We stayed at the Palmer House:

This is the main lobby taken from the mezzanine level.

While I was trying to take this picture a street-dweller kept walking back and forth in front of the camera. I was afraid to get him in the picture, because in California you have to pay homeless people if you take pictures of them!

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Argo Tea, which was right next to the theater. It was fabulous, almost as good as Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in California.

The second day will be forever known as Museum Day. We went to Shedd Aquarium, Adler Plane-arium (for all of you South Park watchers), and the Field Museum all morning long. Here are the highlights:

My parents at the size of earthworms.
We got shrunk by a special machine at the beginning of this exhibit!

My brother and I after the shrinking process.
He kept saying: “Honey, I shrunk the kids!”

It’s a little known fact that Adam helped build the pyramids!

Probably everyone knows that I am an invasive species!

We ate lunch at Adler, and it wasn’t half bad. From there we went to the Taste and I ate corn on the cob, which is one of my favorite things in the world. I also had this fantastic vegan BBQ strip on a stick that was way more than the Taste portion I paid for! It was huge, and I was glad I didn’t get the whole portion because I was stuffed from the little one! From the Taste, we walked to the Sears Tower:

Here is the famous skyscraper from the street just outside the Sky Deck Entrance.

My dad’s famous observation: “We should just walk. It only looks like it is about three blocks away.” It was more than a mile away, so it took us almost twenty minutes to walk there. The next morning we were incredibly sore. I am guessing we walked at least eight miles on the museum tour, and we were literally on our feet for the entire day from around 9AM to about 1030PM. Here are some pictures from that day:

Some kind of eel. Don’t ask. I don’t know.

Just leaving the Planetarium. This is Chicago across the lake.

On Saturday we started out by going to Lincoln Park Zoo. Well, that was our intention anyway. The dork that I am, I told my family to get off the bus too early, and we walked over two miles to the zoo. However, we were able to stop by two different farmer’s markets before we even got to the zoo. At the second one, I found this amazing little booth that sold all locally produced, organically grown, pastries. They even had a choice of vegan scones! The one I got was perfect: crusty and dry and chock full of nuts and seeds! It was like an orgy in my mouth! From there, we went across the street to the petting zoo and made our way all the way through to the botanical conservatory where I took some pretty good pictures:

A random plant. I liked the leaves.

Orchids.

Another random plant. I liked the flowers.

Once we left the zoo and the conservatory, we went to the Magnificent Mile to shop. The best part of Michigan Avenue in my opinion is just off the Avenue: the Hershey Store. It seems like Hershey is the only major candy producer that doesn’t ruin their chewy, fruity candy by putting gelatin in it! I bought Rainbow Twizzlers. The taste was great, but they were the pull-and-peel kind, which I didn’t notice until it was too late. Their texture is so weird! Slightly off of Michigan is another place that I could grow to love. It is part of the Rosebud Restaurants of Chicago. They made me a special vegan pasta primavera that was out of this world, having the perfect amount of peppers, carrots, and mushrooms. We ended Saturday with the fireworks at Navy Pier, and I ended it with a vegan Chicago-dog, fries, and Ben and Jerry’s lemon sorbet. This is the huge ferris wheel:

This Ferris Wheel is actually over 100 feet shorter than the original one built for the World’s Fair in 1893.

We got up early on Sunday morning because my brother was running the Race to the Taste. The Race was a 5K, and he finished in like 24 minutes. Not too shabby for a course that he said was mostly uphill. Here he is getting his goodies out of the Bally Fitness Club Goody Bag:

Isn’t my little brother handsome?!?

After that we went back to our hotel room, ate donuts, changed clothes, and rode the Red Line to the North Side of Chicago to go to Goose Island Brewery. I have never been so disappointed in my life. First, we were supposed to call two to three weeks in advance for the brewery tour, which it does not say online. Their website says to arrive early to sign up for the tour. Second, out food was less than sub-par and our waitress was, too. Third, they were out of four of the six beers my brother requested for his sampler. And, fourth, the meal was the most expensive one of the vacation and we had several that were leaps and bounds above this one in quality. When we left Goose Island, we went to the Patagonia store to look around. Of course, we found nothing because their stuff is pretty expensive for what it is, but I learned that they will recycle used underwear. They make it into sheets, socks, and other things. Pretty sweet. We also walked around the neighborhood a bit and found a second floor Trader Joe’s. On our way back to the hotel it started to rain pretty hard, so we were a little afraid that the Cubs v. White Sox game would be rained out. The game was on, and was it ever fun! The Sox kicked some major butt: Sweep Revenge. Apparently in the cross-city challenge the week before the Cubs beat the Sox in every game, so it was only fitting for the Sox to beat the Cubs in every game at their own park: Comiskey Park a.k.a. U.S Cellular Field. At any rate, while we were there—we didn’t feel like fighting for a train once the game was over—two different Sox players hit home runs! Amazing! At any rate, we went back to the hotel and has Chicago style pizza from Renalli’s. (I cheated a bit on the vegan-thing from here on out.)

We passed out that night and got up late Monday morning, walked to Argo Tea and got breakfast, then checked out and headed home. On the way we stopped at Fair Oaks Dairy and the Albanese Candy Factory. Both were educational and fun. They would be places I would take a kid if I had one! The dairy even had a birthing barn where you could watch the baby cow being born, a huge trampoline, and a milk bottle climbing wall.

I would say all-in-all the vacation was great fun. I am used to a bit more alone time on vacation, but I had a great time with the family and made a few more memories. My favorite part was the walk to the Sears Tower, getting to the top, and saying to my dad: “Hey, Dad, look at those tiny people way over there three blocks away!” Can you spot the Taste?

Yeah, this picture was taken from the top of the tower, the Observation Deck, with the highest level of zoom.
Three blocks, my ass. But we made it.

I got this from an old friend from college, Shirley. She was the only person that made living in Woodworth even slightly bearable! Here are my answers:

1. Do you like blue cheese? Yes, but I’m vegan.
2. Have you ever smoked? Yes. I have an affinity for clove cigarettes, but I quit smoking.
3. Do you own a gun? No. I hate guns.
4. What flavor of Kool-Aid was your favorite? Grape or Black Cherry.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor’s appointments? No.
6. What do you think of hot dogs? You know that scene from The Great Outdoors? Lips and buttholes.
7. Favorite Christmas movie? Not It’s a Wonderful Life.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? 100% fruit juice (usually cranberry-something) and soy milk
9. Can you do push ups? I can, but you can’t make me.
10. What is your favorite piece of jewelry? My spinning ring.
11. Favorite hobby? Probably reading.
12. Do you have A.D.D.? Nope.
13. What is one trait you hate about yourself? My fluffy hair.
14. List three thoughts at this moment: I need to get dressed. I will be gone for five days. It’s hot upstairs.
15. List three beverages you drink on a normal basis? I drink water, cranberry juice, and soy milk everyday.
16. Current worry? Driving in Chicago traffic.
17. Current hate right now? I don’t hate, or I try not to.
18. Favorite place to be? California.
19. How did you ring in the New Year? Sleeping.
20. Where would you like to go? The Northeast and the Northwest.
21. Do you own a pair of slippers? No.
22. What color shirt are you wearing? None, but I am wearing a towel.
23. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? I’m too old for satin sheets.
24. Can you whistle? Yes.
25. Favorite color? Purple or black.
26. Would you be a pirate? Do I have to wear the eye-patch?
27. What songs do you sing in the shower? I sing along with whatever CD is playing: Bob Marley, Indigo Girls, or Psalter.
28. Favorite name for a girl? Olivia or Pearl
29. Favorite name for a boy? Greyhem or Sterling
30. What’s in your pocket right now? In my towel pockets?
31. Last thing that made you laugh? Watching The Darwin Awards.
32. Best bed sheets as a child? Raggedy Anne and Andy ones.
33. Worst injury you have ever had? Probably when I knocked my tooth out in Little League.
34. Do you love where you live? Absolutely!
35. How many TV’s do you have in your house? 2
36. Who is your loudest friend? Amy or Merideth
37. How many dogs do you have? Three: Lily, Sydney, and Celie.
38. Does someone have a crush on you? No.
39. Favorite book? Too many.
40. What is your favorite candy? Not sure.
41. Favorite sports team? I don’t really follow sports.
42. What song do you want played at your funeral? Something by the Doors.
43. Are your toenails painted? Um, no.
44. Something you want back? Childhood, my imagination, or the ability to sit for long hours doing nothing.