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.

West Coast

We spent 8 days on the West Coast--the first time for me and husband. Flew into San Francisco, drove up the coast and flew back from Portland.  We returned just a few days ago and the trip is already starting to feel a bit like some hazy dream.  But I want to hold on to it, because it was magic.

Look we really were there.

Volcanic Engagement

When my romantic friend Dimitri fell in love with the perfect girl who loves volcanoes, I knew it was only a matter of time before he popped the question (and that's why Kari and I pushed and pushed and pushed him to do it every chance we got). D and Naomi are both proper forces of nature so perfectly suited for one another that everybody knew it was destined to be.

Well, folks, he finally popped the question this weekend, and she said yes! . . . and true to form, it all happened in the land of volcanoes (Hawaii) with the perfect ring:


That's right. That's a ring shaped like Naomi's favorite Costa Rican volcano. And my understanding is that the gemstone is peridot. . . a gemstone created by volcanoes.

Congratulations you two! We're all incredibly happy for the both of you!

4th

Our buddies Jess and Jett joined us for our yearly Cicero 4th of July. Just the four of us this year because I need to keep things small and manageable. Maybe next year, we'll throw a real blow out.


Dan grilled burgers to go with broccoli salad and baked beans. . .

And there was cake. . .

And the night sky and Cicero provided the rest. . .

Patterns One: Heart Beat

One of the patterns that is at the very center of our lives is the beat of the heart. Yesterday, I had a stress test in prep for surgery next week and I was surprised by how changeable it was. I have always thought of it as a very steady beat like a metronome. But as I sat perfectly still having images of my heart taken, my heart was steady and slow as I exhaled, and then speedier when I inhaled. And in a doctor's office far north of the city, sitting in room after room for solitary tests that took fifteen minutes at a time, in a hospital run by folks who seemed to care only about the expensive equipment they were running (ugly ugly rooms, with old broken things heaped on counters at the edges of rooms, no art anywhere to speak of, the only thing breaking up the expanse of drab cream colored walls that I had to stare at interminably were wide cracks in the plaster), I had a lot of time to focus on my beating heart.

Boring, grim stuff. . . but then in the middle of that boredom, I remembered the story of Ann Druyan's part in putting together the Voyager Golden Record for both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. She was part of a group of scientists (including, of course, Carl Sagan), who selected music, speeches, and sounds to record and then send into space as a representation of humankind. Heady work. And during the course of that work, she fell in love with Sagan--and him with her. Nearing the end of the project, they admitted their love for one another by getting engaged over the phone. Before their first date. Before even their first kiss. They just knew.

A few days later, Druyan was having all of the electrical impulses of her body recorded and converted to sound to include as a human physiological orchestra to include on the Voyager Golden Record--her heart beat, brainwaves, breathing. . . But those sounds were also the sounds of a woman in the new flush of love. And that's the record of human life that we have sent into the void in the hopes of intelligent life finding it and knowing us.

Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and the heart beat of a woman in love.

There's a pretty great piece about this in the Radiolab archives. It's a story that makes me teary-eyed every time I hear it. And it was a comfort to me yesterday while listening to the beepings of machines and staring at blank hospital walls.

Patterns

I think we all know that life hands us lemons from time to time. I think we also know that it's our job to do our best to turn those lemons into lemonade. Well, I'm having a rough week. And I imagine a few tough ones to come.

So, I've decided to think about patterns. Our lives are made of patterns--large and small--the patterns of our daily lives scheduled around family or work. The patterns of sounds we hear in the tiny worlds around us (i.e. I can expect 9 months out of the year to hear the kids at the school bus stop on the corner in the mornings chattering their ways into their mornings or during the summer months to hear the ice cream truck and its happy/sad clown song to wend in soft and loud concentric circles around the neighborhood streets calling out to children). The patterns of the growing season--berries and asparagus in the spring, tomatoes and squash and peppers in the summer, apples and winter squash in the fall. Or small things--like the patterns of footsteps of the people we love and knowing which one of them is coming by the sound of their particular pattern of footfall before they appear in your doorway. And on and on. . .

And so, posts for a few days (or longer?) about patterns to help me get over the hump. Maybe you, too? That would be nice. . .

Anniversaire

Daniel and I have been married for six years--as of a few weeks ago. This has been an odd and busy late spring-early summer, so we celebrated off schedule when time permitted. It's our day, after all, so we celebrate as we see fit.

I almost argued for end of summer, after my surgery and rehab, when we could literally do anything at all. . . but then friends were playing at Space and we got a taste for tapas and the small gifts had already been purchased. . .





Happy 6th, D! I feel lucky every day.

she read my mind

Wow. It's as if Judy Kaufman has made artwork especially for me. You can get this as a print on Etsy, if you, too, love your city. But don't buy all of the prints, please. I want one to still be there once I get past my husband's-b-day spendy rush.

Valentine

I love Chicago. I say that a lot here, but I think I go through swings with Chicago throughout the year. I never ever hate it, but I think I'm constantly going back and forth between being madly in love and simply taking it for granted.

Before I lived in Chicago, I imagined the different ways people might live in a big city--maybe hating living in the hustle and bustle or maybe loving it and having the luck to take advantage of all a big city has to offer. But I don't think any of my imaginings were correct. Truth be told, living in a big city is a lot like living in a mid-size city or even a small town. It takes longer to get from here to there in Chicago, but otherwise, I go to work and come home and hang out with my husband and dog and do housework and read and cook and lead a life.

But occasionally, I look up from my life and realize that I'm looking at the Willis Tower (nee Sears Tower) or that my office is on Michigan Avenue or that the Art Institute is always just a lunch break away during my work day. And I am struck by the fact that the place where I live is actually a place where millions of people decide to go on vacation every year.

My home is also a destination.

So, I am in the midst, again, of one of those moments, wide-eyed, a little in awe, certainly, suddenly, in full bloom love with Chicago. I mean, look at it. Who could blame me?

Wow, right?

The hotel workers have been on strike at the Congress Hotel for over 8 years. I can't recommend it as a place to stay. But it has one of THE best marquee signs in the city--not just old, but an old version of what someone once thought was modern. . . which is a special kind of old that Chicago specializes in.

And this final blue blur of photo. . . the shake of my hand turning Chicago into a dream, and the rear lights on the back of the Metra car into tiny hearts.

Maybe Chicago loves me back. . .

Clare Owens Drew Me and Mine

Well not actually. Clare Owens doesn't even know me. . . but it could totally be me and Dan. I saw this illustration and it made me go all ooey gooey thinking about loving my boy.



Check out her blog and all of her other great illustrations here!