Fancy Party Notes

So, Dan and I braved Chicago Magazine's Best of Chicago 2014 party at the Chop Shop in Wicker Park. I figured it would either be my worst nightmare (because I get skittish in crowds of strangers) or loads of fun.  Turns out, it was both.

 

In the circles we run in, I think Dan and I are cool-ish.  He's a great musician with a voice like an angel and can code stuff. I am creative and can make just about anything with my hands to cuddle on or to eat with joy. We're both nice and smart and decent in most conversations. People like knowing us.

But in a crowd of gorgeous gastropub hotties, swinging socialites, and gingham summer suit dandies. . . we don't exactly stand out or attract interest. So, we were, as a couple, an island.  The good news is that I love our island and Dan is really cute and funny and we were a little fun-having rock in the stream of fancy fancy fancies.

The open bar and the free eats didn't hurt either.

Three stand-outs from the evening were--surprise, surprise--food-related: 

1. We kept seeing another couple that looked similar to us, wandering around together looking sweet and nice and a bit out of place.  We vowed to say Hi to them at some point and finally cornered them on a couch in the "Emirates Airlines VIP Lounge" (seriously?  If you know me, just from the name of that room, you know how out of place I was. . . ).  He was there representing Little Goat Diner--a diner we will now go to because the couple was so nice to us (Ryan and Georgia?) and so earnest about how great the place is.

But the whole time we were talking to these sweet sweet young people, an Emirates airlines commercial was looped on a giant screen behind their heads--a woman taking a shower in-flight, people dripping in money eating gourmet meals and mingling at the free standing bar in the center of the plane.  And at the terminus of the flight in Dubai? Attending polo matches.  Um. . . totally surreal.

2. Honey-glazed donuts from Endgrain.  Holy crap. Those donuts were a life-changing experience. I have a huge chip on my shoulder about donuts--always whining that the best donuts in the world are made by Busken's in Cincinnati and isn't it shameful that Chicago, as big as it is, can't make a donut at least as good as the donuts from my hometown. Well Endgrain, dear sweet Endgrain, has stepped up with the most ridiculously unbearadelicious donut I've ever eaten.

Honey glazed, but then in the center is this thin layer of an incredibly light slightly sour cream--a bit like cheese cake--and it's texture matches so perfectly with the texture of the donut that at first bite, I knew something magical was happening, but I couldn't tell there was a cream involved.  I HATE filled donuts.  Hate them. With a white hot blinding passion of hate.  But these were heaven.



Dearest Endgrain, we will be visiting you.  But we will call ahead to make sure my new donut boyfriend is in stock before we come. (in the picture above, I think my beau is the blurry one in the background. . . )

3. The Chop Shop sliders?  What?  Shut up.  We'll be back to eat you, too, and to try out your charcuterie buddies.  You reminded us just the tiniest bit of a fancied up Olympic Provisions in Portland--high praise indeed. 



So, all in all, a successful evening was had.  And we were home by 9:08 PM and asleep by 9:30. Sexy. sexy. sexy.

Dan will always be on my Best of Chicago list.

The Past Week

 

New View

I keep up with a bunch of blogs (see the blog roll to the left of the page) and I learn all kinds of cool stuff from them.  I learn about gardening and design and people's lives in other countries and food and art.  Sometimes I also learn about new or cool technology.  So, this weekend, I got a few new apps (Tangent, Lory Stripes and Fragment) and I'm having a little fun:

So dreamy. . . 

happy. sad.

Went to the Art Institute with my mom and aunt and in the hall on the way to the textile installation and the Lichtenstein show, I saw this ridiculously loveable cutie lion (my new favorite object).  Other end of the hall to balance things out was this grumpy disapproving head.

Luckiness

We've been lucky to have been visited by a number of lovely folks in the last month.

First Auntie M and Uncle David took a short trip to Chicago and treated us to dinner at the Honky Tonk BBQ.

 
And then the Millards--Casey, Tom, Ben, and Hap--all came to stay for a long weekend.

 

We hung out.  They played a show with Dan at Transistor.  And then we threw a big party for all of their friends (and ours. . . :) ) on Saturday--replete with shrimp boil, watermelon, salads, scape dip and so on.

Ben took this last picture.  Rock Photographer Millard credit.

We're unbelievably lucky to have such good people in our lives--both local and far away. . . and it's nice when the faraway ones stop in.

We Licht It Up at the AIC

This blog post title is in honor of my honey who thought an awesome ad campaign for the Art Institute's Roy Lichtenstein retrospective could involve--with slight lyric changes, of course--Kiss's "Lick It Up."  My husband is funny, singing "Licht It Up" through the Asian artifact wing. .  .

Anyhoo, the show was good. . . though I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the giant Composition Book (my fave).  So, I took pictures of Engagement Ring (in honor of our anniversary day). . .

this Radio (which was Dan's favorite early on)

Modern Painting with Bolt (which D and I both liked and agreed would make a great album cover)

And then these. . . Seascapes . . . which I think are unceasingly terrible.

More than a decade ago, Casey and I went to go see a Monet retrospective.  In a lot of ways it was fascinating--seeing haystack after haystack after haystack or water lily after water lily after water lily.  You could see measurably how light and time of day altered the subjects of his painting and likewise, how age altered his sight and what he produced.  But, man, early on in the show, there was this whole set of bubblegum pink garden/cottage scenes.  They were commissions.  They were hideous.  They looked like starving artist paintings you'd buy in a parking lot for $29.95.  Casey and I were beside ourselves, giggling, poking fun, and we got shushed by a set of middle-aged women who gave us a brief lecture on respecting genius.  Gah.  Monet was a genius, but that work was not.

That's what seeing Lichtenstein's Seascapes reminded me of. . .

Anniversary Breakfast

Our anniversary is actually June 10th, but Dan had a show so we delayed until this weekend. We started our hang-out day with a train ride into the city and then brunch at the Eleven City Diner.

(my honey is so cute. . . even when he's messing around)

nom nom nom nom nom

 
These are not our drinks. But we sat at the bar and watched the bartender crank these out, non-stop, by the dozen the whole time we were there.

Super entertaining. . . and do Bloody Mary's usually have a deli cheese/meat garnish?  That detail almost made me want one.

618 S. Michigan Ave

The Fashion Studies Department of Columbia College Chicago has moved fully into 618 S. Michigan Ave.  And not surprisingly that means that the storefront windows of that building are consistently filled with a revolving collection of awfully brilliant student fashion work.  Sometimes the work there is so far along the fine art spectrum that I just want to stare it as art, but often the work makes me covetous.  I want to buy it and wear it and make it my own.

But the windows are spectacular. Walking to meetings or to go get coffee in the morning, it's fun to watch passersby drawn in to get a closer look.  It's a wide sidewalk there and it's not hard to notice the beelining to the collections on display.

Most recently, there was a collection of historical designs made entirely out of paper.