Party Weekend

There were lots of parties this weekend.

I had to go to Lena's wedding shower, and then organize Lena's bachelorette.

Then my mom threw me and Tom an engagement party.  It was really cute, and the food was really good.

Anyway Tom and I are both pooped, and are looking forward to a relaxing weekend this weekend.  Well I am anyway, Tom is going to two Bulls games and a Bears game this weekend, but I will enjoy an apartment all to myself!

The Missing Plant

So I have this dumb plant that sits on my desk.  It's a pink orchid.  It's from World Market, but I got it at Walgreens for $5 as an impulse buy while I was standing in line one day.

I've had this thing for like 3 years now, and for some reason I've kind of become attached to it. It adds a nice splash of color to my desk, and it looks real, so everyone who comes by is always asking me if they can touch it to see if it's real.

When I came in on Monday it was missing.  I didn't even notice until a few hours after I'd been sitting at my desk.  So I sent out an office email just saying, if anyone had it, that I would give a reward for returning it.  I was thinking someone probably borrowed it for some weird reason, who knows, and forgot to give it back.

Turns out, the cleaning person on the weekends had accidentally knocked it over and broke the base.  When I found out what happened, I told Carlos (our maintenance man), not to worry about it, it was no big deal, I would get another.  Well Carlos said, the cleaning person felt really badly about it and was making me a new base for the my plant, and he just needed to paint it and then he would bring it back!  I couldn't believe it.  I felt so bad, that poor guy was probably really worried, and went through all that trouble to make a new base for my stupid $5 plant.

Well it looks great now, and it's probably worth more than $5, since it has a hand crafted pot!  I will have to make him some baked goods to thank him.

Barack the vote!

I went to the Obama rally last night.  It was incredible.  There were thousand and thousands of people.  SO amazing. Even leaving was so strange because Michigan Ave, and all the big roads east of that were entirely closed to traffic.  There were just throngs and throngs of people strolling down the middle of the street.

Madness

Ok, I haven't blogged in forever...not that anyone reads this thing anyway.

The reason we haven't blogged in forever is because we haven't been doing much, except the usual stuff.

But this weekend changed that up.  I feel like I have wedding fever.  It's all I can think about now, and I feel like my list of to do's just grew ten fold.  Here's what our schedule was like for Saturday.

9am Meet the band

10am Meet the wedding planner

11am See the ballroom

12pm Meet one baker

1pm Meet the other baker

2:30 Meet the florist

Afterwards we went shopping and then straight out to dinner.  It was a CRAZY day.

Some highlights are, the room we have isn't hideous.  I really like our baker, and I think she's going to do something really amazing with the cake.  And the florist is SUPER nice, and she's got some great ideas, and really understands what I want.  So the good news is that while I don't love the ballroom, it's plain, and all of the other elements will be really nice so I think that will set the mood.  Fingers crossed anyway.

PS Another highlight, is that we went to dinner a place that had "chicken lips" on the menu.

Feasting

This weekend Tom and I took a trip to the burbs.  Us going to the burbs always results in a feast.  There are always a few rather large meals.  So I always come back about ten pounds heavier.  It's almost like we went on vacation, but not.

This weekend was no different, and we ate heaps.  We started out in Chinatown on Saturday morning and ate our fair share of dim sum, 13 plates, but only 4 people.  Then on to Chili's for dinner with another couple, Ryan and Cherry.  I tried to go light on this meal because I knew the Sunday had a lot of food in store, so I only got the chicken tacos, and only ate two.

Sunday after 3 hours of tennis in the morning, we went to Yu's.  I had never been before but as long as I've known Tom he's talked about the Yu's Hot Noodle Soup.  So I finally had said soup, and it was amazing.  I've been dreaming of it ever since.  It has homemade noodles and the perfect spicy, but not too spicy broth, and some seafood and pork and some vegetables, YUM!  I just had lunch, but I still feel like I could eat one of the gigantic bowls of Yu's soup.

Then for dinner, we went to Bob Chinn's. Apparently it's one of highest grossing restaurants i the country, but they only have one location.  It's ridiculously large, and it was REALLY busy.  We all had the surf and turf.  I only ate the lobster and brought the steak home for another meal.  I think Tom and I will be able to live off the food we ate on the weekend until the next trip to the burbs.

Lazy Dayz

For the first time in about three months, Tom and I made plans to not make plans on the weekend.  We had some things we were going to do around the apartment, like hang pictures and shelves and such.  The following is a list of activities that took place:

Napping

Eating

Watching TV shows

Watching movies

Reading

Laying out on the balcony

As you can see, none of that included actually doing anything, and I'm feeling so relaxed.  I'm glad we made plans to not make plans.  We should plan that more often.

Rainy Marathons

Abbie was visiting this weekend.  We just hung out and ate and watched some movies.  It was nice to see her.

On Sunday we ran a half marathon.  The run actually went really well.  We finished around 2 hours and 30 minutes.  Which is pretty good for us slow people.  Abbie and I even got matching shirts so we could be twinsies.  For those of you who have never run a long distance race, this isn't dorky.  We were one of many who dressed alike for the race. Tt shows solidarity, OK.  And since we bought our shirts at the expo (they said "Will run for wine", sweet, I know), we were not the only ones wearing the exact same outfit.  So on accident, we were quadruplets with a few others.

Sadly, since it was raining, I have no pictures of this glorious event.  Let's just talk about the rain for a minute.  It didn't just sprinkle.  It RAINED.  In face, It was a record setting day for Chicago, for the most rain, ever recorded in one day.  At least now Abbie and I can brag about how hard core we are.  

YAY!

Abbie is here!

She made it out of the hurricane.  Hopefully we will have a really nice weekend and a good run and she won't go back to tons of destruction.

Christina has family in Houston, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they're OK.  

I'll let you know how the run goes.  I'll post pictures on Sunday (if I don't fall asleep after running).

Visiting

This weekend was busy, like all of our other weekends for the past six months.  I feel like Chicagoans only have 4 months out of the year to live life, and the rest of the year we hibernate.  This way we don't rest for the summer and then sleep through the winter.  Ok, maybe just me?

Anyway, this weekend my mom came to town.  She took Tom and I to run all the errands we'd been saving up until we had a car.  So we went to Home Depot, Best Buy, Target and Jewel.  It was a solid 4.5 hours, we were tired.

Then my dad's cousin was in town with his new wife.  I call him Uncle Mike, but I'm not really sure what he technically is.  Anyway I had volunteered to have everyone over to our apartment for drinks and appetizers, so right after we got home my mom took a nap while Tom and I busied ourselves cleaning and cooking.

I turned out to be a nice night, with lots of wine.  I made a cheese plate and zucchini wrapped goat cheese and some marinated shrimp skewers.  My dad and Gay made home made ravioli with a red pepper sauce.  Yummm.  I think I gained another ten pounds this weekend :(

New apartment woes

Dear New Apartment,

I really liked you when we first moved in.  I love your hardwood floors and sweet balcony.  But, I'm afraid I'm not so happy with you these days.

You can't get your internet working correctly, which is a real pain for me.  Our phones still won't work on the Wi-Fi so we're running low on minutes.  You decided to lose power today while Tom as working from home, which is a real pain for him.  Your A/C is too strong and we have to turn it off and on to regulate the temperature.

My mom is coming to visit this weekend, and Abbie is coming next weekend, so Apartment, if you think you can, please pull your shit together so they don't hate visiting us.

Thanks for rallying.

Love,

Me

The long haul

This was a long weekend.  And what's better on a long weekend than a long haul?  We drove 12 hours to Pennsylvania with my Dad and Gay to go visit my grandparents.  The only word that comes to mind every time I think about the drive is "brutal".

Dad and Gay picked us up on Friday night around 8pm.  We took off, and Dad drove until around 9:45pm.  Tom took it until 1:30am, and then I took it until about 3:30am.  It was brutal. Especially since Tom was ditching me and falling asleep.  I was ridiculously tired on Saturday but we had to just deal since two aunts came to visit, we didn't have time to mess around with sleeping all day.

Needless to say there was heaps of food.  Like seriously heaps.  I will post some pictures of that later.

Sunday, another uncle came to visit, so there was heaps more food.  I am so fat.  I even ran 10 miles in preparation for the half marathon coming up, and I still think my jeans are tight.  My iPod said I burned 1,400 calories, but I don't think  it was enough, not nearly enough.

But on Monday, we took Tom on a tour of Lake Ariel, to show him the lake of course, and why not the local watering hole while we're at it?  This dive is straight out of a movie.  There was even a dog that acted as the bar mascot AND a guy with an eye patch.  Not like one the doctor gives you when you scratch your eye, but a pirate kind, like this:

Anyway, he finished his Yuengling before I could sneak a picture on my phone, which makes an annoyingly loud noise when it takes pictures. I need to figure out how to turn it off for covert operations like this one, I didn't want to rial up the locals.  The bar was nice and festive for 4th of July, even though it was only 2 months ago.

Cubs and a Flood

Ok this post is really late coming, but I wanted to write about it because it felt traumatic.

Two weekends ago, Tom took me to a Cubs game. Whoo!  I love going to live games.  They played really well on Friday night, so I was hoping for a repeat performance.  Of course they lost like 9-2 Cards, boooo hisssss!  So that was pretty depressing.

After the game we went to my dad's apartment for dinner.  We were having a nice time, making the food and hanging out, drinking of course.  We sit down to dinner, and just as we're finishing there was a loud knock at the door.

I answered it.  There was a maintenance man there who asked "Hi, are you having a leakage problem in your master bedroom?".  I said "No I don't think so..." and immediately went into the bedroom, only to find that the ENTIRE room had half an inch of water on the floor.  I screamed "Holy crap!" and went to pull the carpet up.  Tom came running in to try and figure out what was leaking.  The toilet was running but there was no water coming out.  He saw the chain was caught.  The maintenance man ran down to get a wet vac.  I grabbed the mop and started cleaning the mess.  Tom was toweling the floor.  It was a very frantic 45 minutes, pulling things out of the closet, trying to vacuum the dripping carpet.

There was a lot of water, so much water that it dripped down from the 51st floor to the 48th floor.  It was very traumatic and stressful.  It just made me think of all I have to look forward to as Tom and I start thinking about buying our own apartment.  Joy.

Moving

This weekend was brutal, I am so tired, I can't even really write about what we did, so I will just show you our schedule and you will get an idea of how it went.

Friday

5:30pm Home from work

5:30pm - 1am Packing

1:30am Bed

Saturday

6am Wake up

7am Show up at new apartment to get keys and check out apartment

8am Breakfast

8:30am Movers show up half an hour early

8:30 - 10am Frantically packing up the last of the loose items while movers are zooming in and out with all of our stuff

10-12pm Movers bringing stuff into the apartment

12:30 Lunch

12:30-6pm Unpacking

6-6:30pm Nap

6:30- 7:45pm Dad and Gay over for drinks

8pm Dinner

9:30pm More unpacking

10:30 Bed

Sunday

7am Wake up

8am Back at old apartment cleaning

11:30am Jon picks us up and takes us to Target where we proceed to spend $270 and what felt like a million hours because there were 10,000 people shopping for back to school!

3pm Lunch at Quartino

4:30pm Shopping for curtains at Bed Bath & Beyond (we did find some each on sale for $10, what a steal!)

5:30 - 6:30pm Nap

6:30 - 8:30pm Ran 8 miles w/ Lena

10pm Bed

I should note that Lena and I had an encounter with a weirdo while we were running.  She seemed kind of normal from behind, and in the dark, until we got a little closer and she saw that she had this crazy long curly hair piece in and make up that looked like she put it on in the dark.  As we started running past her, she started running with us in flip flops, and proceeded to do so for an uncomfortable distance, maybe 400 yards, then shouted something incoherent and went on her jolly way.  I have a feeling that I will be having many more encounters now that we've moved into the heart of things...

Bad Kitty

I was going through some REALLY old pictures, and came across this one from Halloween like three years ago.  I figured it deserved a post, for no other reason that it's just disturbing.  He liked to be called Bad Kitty.  Enough said.

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Da Bears

Tom and I went to the Bears game last night.  It was muggy out, so everyone was sticky and hot.  But I will take a muggy pre-season game over a cold ass January regular season game.  The stadium looks cool at night, and we even had a good view of the city from our seats.

  

If you can't tell from these pictures our seats were high.  Second to the last row high.  My legs are sore today high.  I know, you're thinking, any in-shape person would be able to climb a few flights of stairs without having sore legs and then you scoff and think smugly "My legs wouldn't be sore".  Well, I shake my fist at you, because those stairs were steep and those seats were damn high, and I didn't want to even have to go down to go to the bathroom for fear of having to go up them again.  Although it was a trek to get to our seats, we did have a very nice view of the whole field.  We also enjoyed some stadium food.  For anyone who does know Tom, Tom likes to eat.  He especially likes disgusting meats.  Here is a sampling of what he likes to eat at games.  *Warning* vegetarians do not scroll down.

  

We also had beer and nachos.  Neither one of us was feeling too great this morning.  But then I just look at this picture of Tom, and I feel so much better, and think "I'm so lucky".

Segway Adventure

For Tom's birthday, instead of buying him things, I like to buy him experiences. That sounds weird, but last year I got us a kayak adventure.  It was six miles of kayaking on the Chicago river at night time, to Navy Pier to watch the Saturday night fireworks.  It was an adventure for sure, we were in a tandem kayak, and it takes a lot of teamwork to maneuver one of those things.  It was heaps of fun, and we're always talking about how we want to do it again.

This year, Tom opted for the segway tour.  Make no mistake, the things are utterly useless in real life, but are incredibly fun.  You seriously just have to stand there.  There is little to no effort on your part to move, and you can go up to 12 mph.  Ours didn't go that fast because the tour guide put a "speed limiter" on ours to keep the newbies from killing themselves.  *I shake my fist at the speed limiter*

Tom and I were lucky, we got a small group.  It was the two of us and then a family that included a few teenage girls.  They were nice enough and very enthusiastic once they realized Tom and I were engaged.  They were also a bit reckless with their segways and each of the girls managed to fall off or crash 2 or 3 times.  

One key thing about the segway that everyone should know is that it will drive away without you standing on it, if you don't turn it off or lean it against something.  The guide told us that in a group three weeks before ours, a tourist got off to take a picture and didn't hold on to his segway, it drove into the lake.  That is an expensive $5,000 oopsie.  So of course on our way home, Tom was making sure to ride as close to the water as possible, because he "wanted to see more of the lake".  Sure, so long as they have my credit card for the damage deposit.

The highlights of the tour included: the girls crashing a few times, and getting to ride to the top of the sledding hill, but not down the actual sledding hill, riding to the pretty park the mayor put on that old air field to the south of the planetarium, the beautiful weather, and doing sweet tricks on my segway.  (pictures to come)

Date week - The Proposal

Tom and I had planned out our Sunday at the garden to the minute. Both ends of our trip revolved around catching a train.  We had to take the 8:35 am train to the trail, and then we had to plan to leave in enough time to catch the train that leaves from the garden back home.  We cut it too close.  We left in just enough time to catch the train from next to the garden, but only if we had gone in the right direction.  We went in the wrong direction just long enough for us to realize we were going the wrong way and miss the train.  Oops.

Our options after that were very limited.  We could wait two hours until the next train came, or bike to the end of the path and wait two hours there.  Neither one seemed very appealing.  We were not happy.  So we opted to wait at the train station by the garden.  At least it was a nice day, and we sat around and ate some cookies and played with our phones.

Once we got home, Tom decided we should go out for dinner.  We were going to try a new sushi place by the river, but weren't able to figure out if it was open late on Sunday.  So instead we went to our regular, Oysy.  This is my favorite sushi place in the city.  Everyone is all in love with Japonais or whatever, but Oysy is consistently good and prices are wallet friendly.

We got some or our regular fair (spicy salmon, spicy tuna, spicy california), and it was good as always.  We also had a few drinks.  It was the perfect and relaxing way to end a long, busy day.  It was nice to just enjoy each other's company.  We were there for a few hours, so by the time we started to head home the sun was just starting to set.

Since it was a nice night we thought maybe we'd walk home.  As we were crossing the river on State, I noticed a park down by the side of the river.  Since it was twilight, the park was all lit up, but it was still semi-light outside.  It looked very pretty.  I took a picture, and then Tom suggested we go down and check it out. (Picture to come)

It's a ways down from the street so it's pretty quiet, and there was only one other couple off to one end of the park.  We stood at the edge near the water and just enjoyed the night.  We were talking about how nice it was, and how excited we were to move into our new apartment (only one block away), when Tom got down on one knee and pulled out my ring.

I was so excited, that I danced around in a circle and started laughing like a schoolgirl.  I was totally swooning.  The lighting was perfect to make my ring shine, as much as possible it was fantastic.  I'm swooning even as I write this.  So now it's official, and we are engaged!  The date is 6/27/09 get ready for it!

I love hearing proposal stories, tell us about yours!

Date Week - Friday and Sunday

Ok, I know I haven't written forever, but that's because we've been extremely busy! I have many things to post about. I have 5 different posts going right now. Here's the continuation of Date Week:

After our adventure to see the Shanghai acrobats, Tom surprised me on Friday by taking me out to dinner. He took me to Sangria. It was pretty good, we had a nice peach sangria. We also had some chicken and spinach empanadas, which came with a very tasty sauce. We didn't think it was as good as Cafe Ba-ba-reeba though, I think that's our favorite.

Sunday was a very very fun day. We got up early and took the 8:35am train with our bikes out to the start of the forest preserve trail. We rode almost 20 miles up to the Botanic Garden. The ride was really nice because it was shaded and the trees kept in a lot of cool air. It was pretty uneventful until I got a bug in my eye. We had to pull off and Tom had to help me get the guts out. Gross.

When we got to the gardens we found out that Academia Barilla was in the Vegetable garden doing cooking demonstrations and doing olive oil and balsamic vinegrette tastings. We were just in time for an olive oil tasting so we decided to check it out. The "teacher" was a judge on Iron Chef (Tom and I love Iron Chef, it's so suspensful!). He is also a teacher at Academia Barilla. He started the class by telling us how to tell what kinds of oils are from Italy. Only the bottles that say "Product of Italy" are actually made in Italy. All other kinds may have some very small amount of Italian olives, but for the most part come from Spain or Canada.

We then went on to the tasting. He gave us two different kinds of olive oil, both were Academia Barilla brands. They came in small plastic cups. The way that you taste olive oil is to wrap your hand around the whole cup and cover the top with your other hand. Then you move your hand around in a circle to swirl the olive oil around. Then you get it close to your nose and smell the oil. These two in particular smell like tomatoes right off the vine. He made a good point in saying that if your food doesn't smell like anything, it won't taste like anything. I never thought about this in relation to my olive oil. Then, and this is kind of gross, you take a small sip of the oil and make a sucking noise through your teeth. You should taste the flavor of the oil and then shortly after that you'll feel a peppery burning sensation in the back of your throat. A good olive oil should smell good, and have a bit of a bite.

Then on to the balsalmics. Did you know that there's a consortium that certifies authentic balsalmic? The modena consorsium de balsamic puts a seal on all those balsalmics that are "real", kind of like how champagne can only be made in the Champagne region and has all of these rules, balsalmic vinegar has many regulations around it. Authentic balslamic also will only have an age range on it. The reason being that they keep many barrels at one time, as one gets low they use the one next to it to fill it up, thus the barrel at one end may be 12 years-old, while the barrle at the very other end may be 25 years-old. We got to try some balsalmic vinegar, as well as some balsalmic must. The must is very sweet, and extremely tasty. The instructor mentioned that it tastes excellent on desserts. Especially vanilla ice cream, fruit and chocolate cake. He mentioned that Vosges Chocolates uses the Barilla must to make a balsalmic truffle. He said he's also used it for making filet mignon. He poked four little holes in the filet after he finished cooking it, and then dropped a little drop in each hole, he said it's delicioius. A little bottle of that must is like $50, crazy. A 3oz bottle of the really super old and concentrated kind could cost around $300. The lesson was very interesting and educational. I have a whole new appreciation for olive oil and balsalmic vinegar.

After the tasting we wandered around a bit until we found a place to stop and eat our sack lunch. We had a great view, and sat at some cute tables. We then went to the Japanese garden, which was very neat and interestingly organized, and then to the Englished walled garden. I LOVED the Englished walled garden. It looked like it came directly out of a Jane Austen novel. So cute, with a little portico that had circle windows on either side, and the chairs under them had high backs, with half circles cut out of them to match the window.  So quaint!  The rose garden was in full bloom as well, and smelled wonderful.  We spent the entire afternoon wandering around and enjoying the pretty sunny day, until it came time to leave the garden.  But since this post is getting really long, I'll continue the rest of Sunday's adventure in the next post, so, 

To Be Continued...

Strange Sightings

OK so living in the city, I know you're supposed to see weird people all the time, but I feel like I see a lot of weird people/things that people do, like a lot. So I like to include some of what I see in these posts, e.g. the Sushi lady.

Sighting #1
I was waiting for the bus in the morning, when I saw a lady that had ridiculous hair that hung past her shorts. Good thing I was carrying my camera and could get a picture. I know it's hard to tell because she's wearing dark shorts, but believe me when I tell you the hair actually came down PAST the dark shorts, no, seriously, it did.



Sighting #2
Tom and I caught an 8:35 metra to the Botanic Gardens on Sunday (that story is TK in it's own post). We sat down in the priority seating because we had to stay by our bikes. We happened to be sitting next to three girls who had obviously partied a little too hard and were rewarding themselves with 2 for $3 sausage mcmuffins. We were all sitting peacefully as you normally would on an 8:35 train, when the girl closest to us, got up and told her friends to watch her stuff. When she stood up, not only was her underwear showing, but also her half her butt, because her underwear was halfway down her butt and her pants were halfway down her underwear, not cute. She went to the bathroom in the train (this is gross on many levels so I won't go into it, but seriously, the train bathroom?!), which was directly in front of us and proceeded to chuck her guts for like ten minutes. When she left, she didn't close the door. The whole experience was pretty gross.

Sighting #3
On our way to dinner after our long bike ride, we were waiting for a bus behind the Olgilvie Metra station. Suddenly, a girl who is barefoot comes running out of the train station, the back of her jean skirt was soaking wet. It was not wet like she spilled something, more like she peed her pants. Thirty seconds later a guy came running out and calling the girl's name. She had hidden in an area on the side of the building that was a little recessed and had some columns. We got on the bus, and as we were driving away, we saw that the guy had the girl's skirt in his hand and was waving it around. That was until he put it down and started taking off his own pants. All I can say is that I'm glad that the bus was driving away...

Date week -Thursday

Our date week began at Navy Pier. Tom took me to see Cirque Shanghai Gold, which is basically a Chinese acrobat show. We took a bus to the pier and walked to the beer garden at the end. We had some bar food and beers and watched a Latin band. They were quite festive.



We saw the beginnings of a pretty sunset and then we went into the show at 8pm. These people are crazy, I mean I know they're acrobats and all, but really, literally putting your butt on your head is just insane. Tom was cracking me up because he seemed like he was physically in pain every time one of them did a crazy contortion move. He kept saying "Oh maaaaan!" or "SHOOT!". One of my favorites was a guy who came out, with a big metal hoop balanced on his head. Inside of the hoop was a girl hanging from the top. If this weren't impressive enough, he started SPINNING the hoop. I guess if you're balancing a girl inside of a hoop on top of your head, why not add some spinning? Meanwhile she was flying around and doing crazy "butt on head" moves. It was highly entertaining.



Afterwards, on our way out, Tom asked if I'd like to go on the ferris wheel. Why not, it seemed appropó after the circus, plus I'd never been up before and the city was all lit up. It was quite pretty, but I don't know if I'd do it again for $6 a ride. The ride takes about 7 minutes, which means you're paying 85 cents a minute.



It may seem a little exorbitant to some, but to others worth it for the cheese and romance.

Busy Bees

Tom and I have been extremely busy this past week, we have a lot to post about. The festivities of the past 4 days are to come, stay tuned...

Bug Bites

This is directly quoted from a conversation with a friend.

It is attributed to none other than the fantastical, genuine, and true, Yasmine Yasmine Yasmine (who wrote that, is currently a camp counselor, and who also gave me permission to post this).

Yasmine: I need a pedi, and to pluck my eyebrows. And to be clean for more than 3 minutes at a time. And not smell like bug spray.
Me: Oh, you're making me miss my camper days.
Yasmine: And not have bites in my vag***. No, seriously.
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I am at work, and I'm dying.
(this is where the convo starts to get really ridiculous. I should also mention that Yasmine has been very ill for 4 days, and thinks she may have Epstein-Barr Virus)
Yasmine: O M G. I'm serious. You don't have to be nakes. They'll bite through your freaking sweatpants. Which, when you're wearing them and being bitten in the vaje makes you feel uber sexy.
Me: Stoooooooooooop iiiiiiiiiiittttt.

At this point she really had to stop because I was at work, and trying not to fall off my chair. She went on to talk about a song involving crevices, but I think that's better left off.

71 years-old and crab cakes

On Sunday, at 5:30am, Lena and I got up bright and early to run the Nike Women's 5k. We ran pretty well, considering we woke up when the sun started to rise, and I haven't been running in 6 weeks. We finished in around 34 minutes. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until we got the results of the race the other day. The top ten finishers finished in under 20 minutes. Not only that, but a 71 year-old finished around 30 seconds ahead of us. How depressing. (Below is the sexy picture I promised of Lena, I owe her for posting stupid looking pictures of me from when we ran the Run Hit Remix on Facebook)



After the race we went to Meli Café in Greektown for breakfast. To reward myself for running a whole 3 miles, I know I'm amazing, I ordered crab cake eggs Benedict. Lena got the strawberry and banana french toast. Overall it was delish, minus the guy at the table next to us with the annoying voice and those stupid J. Crew shorts with hula dancers all over them.

Flopping around like they own the place

When I was living in London the pigeons were out of control. They feed them birth control there to try and keep their numbers under control because their crap eats away at the famous landmarks.

One day my friend Mike and I were walking to class when we were dive bombed by a bunch of kamakazi pigeons rushing for a piece of food. They were all flapping around, my friend Mike got sooooo pissed and yelled "God those freaking pigeons flopping around like they own the place! They need to get those things under control".

Well, on my way home from work yesterday I felt that exact same sentiment. I stopped by the Jewel to get some milk, and walked out of the parking lot near an exit that's under the L. So of course, there are a million pigeons around, because under the tracks of a really noisy train is the perfect place to roost. Anyway some a-hole threw half a glass of water on the street, but it looked like he was tossing food or something so the million idiot pigeons flew towards it, thinking they were going to eat, directly in front of me.

I stopped and calmly waited, thinking to myself "Good thing I didn't walk through that mess, they probably would have hit me". Once they all passed by I started walking again, only to be taken from behind by a rogue pigeon flying the OPPOSITE way of the 'food'! It flapped me on the side of my head with it's WHOLE wing! It moved my hair across my face!

I thought I was going to throw up, I felt as though a rat had crawled into my bed and nested in my hair. The thought of all of the parasites that thing was carrying, crawling around on my head made me want to pee my pants. I shake my fist at the a-hole who threw the water, and I especially shake my fist at the fact that it's a crime to harass pigeons in Chicago, and I thirdly shake my fist at the city for not getting these damn birds under control and feeding them some birth control!!

P.S. I also shake my fist at my co-worker Heather who claims to have a bird phobia, but admitted to spending an hour on Saturday feeding a pigeon a chocolate chip muffin, because she thought it was funny that the bird picked the chips out of the muffin before eating it.

Tom Learns to Text

Tom was supposed to post this, but since he's being stubborn, I will try and break the ice for him. This week is a big week for us. Not only did we get new phones, but Tom, learned how to text!! I know, let's all welcome him to 1999. No but really, this is a major breakthrough and will save us lots of minutes since we have a sweet unlimited texting package!

We've basically spent the past two nights wasting time on our phones...well Tom spent the first night on the phone with customer service because they sent him the wrong phone. But 4 reps and 2 hours later, my phone worked and his new one was on the way. So after a slight hiccup, we are now both proud owners, here are the hot new pieces we got.



Update: I have received 13 texts from Tom since he got his new phone at 6pm on July 17th.

Parasites

Yesterday, I was sitting waiting for a bus, and minding my own business, holding my lunch, which happened to be some delicious sushi. When a seemingly pleasant older woman sat down next to me.

We sat there peacefully, minding our own business for about 7 minutes, when the lady, who had to seemed so kindly when she was quiet says, with some tone of disgust, "Is that sushi you have there?"

I replied "Um, yes..."

She says "Well I studied Parasitology and there is a very high incidence of parasites in Japan, because most people get them from raw fish. You should really think twice about eating that stuff." And then she added really emphatically, so emphatically that she spit on my arm, "Once you have a parasite, you'll NEVER get rid of it, you're STUCK with it forever!"

I said "I guess I'll just have to risk it today."

And then, finally, the bus came.

Apartment Hunting

Can I just say that apartment hunting might be one of the most miserable experiences one can have in life. It goes on the same list as, looking for a new job, getting a root canal and filing taxes. A necessary evil for those of us who are not fortunate enough to own yet. Well, to add insult to injury we had a HORRIBLE experience with a Realtor this weekend.

We met with Anthony Anderson, the agent who was meant to meet with us on Saturday morning, but canceled 30 minutes before our appointment with only an email and no phone call. We really wanted to do our due diligence and see some other apartments in the area, so we decided, hesitantly to reschedule for Sunday.

He met us this time, even if he was 5 minutes late. We saw 4 units in the building that we were most interested in. He then took us to a building a few blocks away. We were waiting in the lobby for the other agent to show us the unit, when the following altercation took place. I'm still not entirely sure what exactly happened, but this was one of the strangest experiences I've ever had, seriously, ever.

Random Guy says to our Realtor "What are you doing here?"
Realtor "What are you talking about?"
Random Guy "Should I call the cops?"
Realtor "I'm sorry, what?!"
Random Guy "You don't know who I am?"
Realtor "I have no idea"
Random Guy "Well, you're Anthony Anderson right?"
Realtor "Yes, who are you?"
Random Guy "Is it even legal for you to be here? I'm calling the cops, or maybe I'll just kick your ass right here. I can't believe you have the nerve to come into my building."
Random Guy turns to Tom and I, "This guy just got out of Cook County prison for stealing $3,500 from my girlfriend and I. He stole $35,000 from ten people."
Random Guy turns back to the guard "Don't let him leave the building, I'm calling the cops. Does he even have a license? Is it even legal for you to be showing apartments? I'm calling the DA."

At this point the security guard was getting riled up, telling them to take it outside because she didn't want to file a report of the resident got in a fight. And our Realtor, trying to maintain a "professional" appearance, I guess, asked the Random Guy to step outside. In the meantime the guy was still yelling at the Realtor saying "Do you even know what you did to Fabie and me? Do you have any fucking clue what you did to us?!!"

Tom and I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what the hell just happened. The guard tried to convince us to stay and let the owner of the unit know what happened, but we were too freaked out. We didn't have to have any kind of confrontation with this crazy guy who may have learned some mad fighting moves in prison! So we peaced out.

We went around the block the opposite direction of where they were standing and still arguing, went directly back to the building that we liked and filled out an application for the apartment we wanted in the first place. Screw that realtor, and screw due diligence. We are now the proud renters of a sweet ass, brand new apartment on the 31st floor, with hardwood floors, a balcony, and amazing kitchen. We move in at the end of August, sighs, the search is over and hopefully this will be the last time we EVER rent anything. But for now we will be happy in our amazing place.

(Our view is nicer than this because our unit is higher, but it's pretty close)

L.A.T.E Ride

Saturday was a pretty interesting day for us. After we tried to look at apartments in the morning and we were stood up, again, we had some donuts, because I like to eat donuts when I'm pissed. Then we split up, I went home, and then we went BACK to the same building for an open house. We found an apartment we really love, but more on that later. Then we went home for a nap to get geared up for the L.A.T.E Ride. We had some Mexican food at my dad's to get fueled up and then went home again for another nap.

Finally after a day of napping and eating to prepare, we left for the ride around 11pm. Needless to say we were there extremely early and waited for what felt like a million years. This is us waiting around.



They let us go in waves, we were the middle group, but we didn't even start biking until 1:55am! There were so many people there. The area around Buckingham Fountain was TOTALLY packed with people.



The biking part was really nice, because the weather was great for it. It was a beautiful clear night, and we even saw stars! They also had all the roads closed off for us, so we could zoom around and through traffic lights and everything, it was so cool. It was interesting to see a lot of different neighborhoods in the city, and hear all of the crazy people honking and cheering us. There were plenty of drunk people out too getting really excited about seeing all of the bikers. After the long ride, we both had sore butts, but Tom was ready to eat....of course, because that's what he does. All in all it was a fun experience, but next year, we would take more naps, and go to the race a lot closer to the start time.