Surprise Presents!

My office-mate, Katrine, saw this apron over the weekend and thought of me. It's pretty fantastic. I wore it tonight to serve me and Trevor up some pizza slices (Henry looks distressed because he was not offered any pizza. I think he's considering eating my toes in retaliation.). Next time I'm having people over, I'll throw it on over something pretty (prettier than jeans) and french looking.

What's funny is that around the time Katrine was getting me this awesome apron, I was at P.O.S.H. (one of the greatest places to buy...anything in Chicago!), saw this little trinket hanging on the wall, and thought of her! She likes religious iconography, so this carved wooden cross covered in Mexican milagro charms is perfect for her (there are a couple of cats on this one, which is why she got it).

So we did a spontaneous gift exchange, which turned out to be fitting because she'll be moving into a single office down the hall at the end of the month (July, not June). They're sort of "good-bye for now, it's been nice rooming with you," presents. Either great minds think alike or eleven months is the time when the brains of two people who spend a lot of time in the same small space start to meld. Meeellldd. I guess it's best that she's getting out before we start dressing in identical sweater-sets.

Tomorrow morning, the elder Borks are FINALLY MOVING DOWNTOWN! Just as a reminder, this is what their condo looked like last July. I'll have pictures tomorrow afternoon of the "final" product. Though I doubt Mom will let me take too many until they've unpacked. They've been living in that fantastic hotel in the A.H. for three whole months, and I think it's safe to say that they're anxious to do a few things in their new home (make a pot of coffee, sit in a comfortable chair, use an oven, not have to eat a continental breakfast with 87 Alabaman tourists...). We'll let you know how they settle in.

It was a lovely weekend

The weather was finally cooperating with us, so we thoroughly enjoyed the weekend: a low-key Friday night, dinner with the Neenans and Fratinis on Saturday night before Jeremy N.'s (Julie Papadia's fiance) birthday party, Simona's Sunday afternoon baby shower (see photos below), pizza with Brenda and Derek who were visiting from Fargo for the AFSP Overnight walk (they had a great time and walked 20 miles like champs), then lunch with them this afternoon between laundry, homework, and Facebook futzing. Tonight I plan on sleeping like a log while the breezy evening flutters around outside our window. And I plan on falling to sleep while mentally putting together tomorrow's outfit. I'll let you know what I come up with...

Suburban Oddities

On Thursday evening I had dinner with my friend Jen in downtown Crystal Lake. I was a little early, and since I had never really explored the CL downtown area, I wandered a bit before going to the restaurant. And this is what I saw:

Weird, right? This shop was closed, but it looked like a thrift store/regular clothing store/fabric shop/junk shop. I really wanted to go in (morbid curiosity), so I might come back when I have an early afternoon sometime this summer.

My dinner with Jen was fantastic and we were so caught up with chatting that I had to run for my nine o'clock train (the next one wasn't until midnight). Thank goodness I was wearing sensible (but sequined) shoes, and I made it with seconds to spare.

The weather, as I'm sure you all have noticed, has been grotesquely hot this week. But on Wednesday I sat on the roof deck for about an hour (without melting, thank you very much!) and graded papers.

I managed to burn only one small portion of my body: my knees. Strange, right? I had doused myself in 45 strength sunblock, but I was using a clipboard as a hard surface for my papers, and I'm guessing the metal clip reflected the light directly onto my knees. So I had saucer-sized red spots on the center of each of my knees for about three days. They're gone, now. Just in time for me to go back on the roof!

We've got a really pleasant weekend planned. Tonight is dinner at West Town Tavern with friends and then a birthday party at the Five Star bar up the street. Sunday afternoon is Simona's baby shower (I went overboard yesterday with presents...) and then in the evening we get to have dinner with Brenda and Derek, who are in town for the AFSP Overnight walk. We haven't seen them in months, and I can't wait.

Don and Danielle Prabish are also walking tonight (20 miles through Chicago), so I'll be thinking of them and everyone else who is doing this for such a good cause. Part of me wishes I'd gotten myself together to do the walk again this year, but another (more convincing) part of me is happy to just donate, think good thoughts, and then snore the night away.

Have a good weekend, all. Enjoy the weather because it might be snowing on the Fourth of July!

Touristing

I've lately felt as though Trevor and I have been acting like tourists in our own city, and it's been pretty nice. Last weekend the two of us went to the MCA to see the Olafur Eliasson and Buckminster Fuller exhibits. They complimented each other perfectly and we could see Fuller's influence on Ellasson's time, light, and spacial experiments. Among so many of the cool pieces (a black room with a sprintzing misting rainbow of water, a hall of yellow light that turned everything black/gray and white, photographs, sculptures...) was this wall-o'-moss that's actually living and will change color slightly as the exhibit lives in the museum:

You can sort of see the colors already. Up close it looked like millions of millions of dried out dandelions. Really cool. (And no, we were not supposed to take this picture.)

We left the museum and got picked up and whisked down to Summit by Dan and Simona to eat at their favorite Lithuanian restaurant, Grand Duke's. I've never seen so many potatoes on one restaurant's menu before, and I've never put so many delicious potatoes into my belly. It was so good, and we were in a spud-stupor for the rest of the day. After dinner we went over to the deli portion of the restaurant and got some treats: cookies, Lithuanian thyme tea, beer, and Trevor got sprats. He hasn't tried them yet, though he says he will soon and he sounds excited about them. I have a feeling that they will sit in our cupboard until the next millennium.

We were supposed to go to Madison to say bon voyage to Kate (she's moving to North Carolina. Well, she's moved already, actually) before she left, but Henry decided to barfy, so we had to cut out the trip. But, I just look at it as an excellent opportunity to visit a state I've never been to before in the very near future. It's supposed to be pretty there, and since Kate's arrived, I'm sure it's even better looking.

This weekend was Fathers' Day, and we first went out to Yorkville Saturday night to hang with the Power clan. Almost the whole gang was there (missing our Floridians of course, who were apparently swimming in the ocean this weekend, those little sprats), sans Destiny who was then headed down for her summer mission trip to New Orleans. We ate good food, had good conversation, and then played many rounds of Catch Phrase, which was fantastically fun even though our team sunk like a brick.

On Sunday we went to the City Bork's for ribs and fixin's from Smoque, one of the joints visited this past winter by my Rib Supper Club (where my friend Angie said the brisket was the best she's had to-date). Greg and Paula got plates and plates of ribs, cornbread, mac-and-cheese, and corn-on-the-cob. There was cake and pie for dessert and then a nice Smoque-stupor for the rest of the day (we're quite fond of food-induced stupors). The girls were also in rare form, and Trevor was good enough to capture them:

And then when he was finished snapping, he got to pose:

When we got home, Henry was beside himself with confusion as to why he hadn't been invited to the party, especially since he'd gotten to hang out with Greg at the house on Thursday night when I kicked the boys out for my Bunco group to come over. But, he'll get over it, I'm sure, and hopefully he'll get to see Pepper very soon.

Today I finished up being a tourist by heading up to the Prime Outlet malls near Kenosha to meet my friends Kate and Jim and their fantastic kids for some shopping and lunch. I, of course, found many good things and bought most of them. Kate and Ella did very well, too, though Jim and Keenan spent a good portion of the shopping time walking around so Keenan could nap. It was, as usual, great to see them. And now you can, too!

And now, full of dinner and procrastinating reading student papers, I am blogging, doing laundry, and sipping the coldest water I could get out of the tap (I tried not to mention the weather until now. What happened to those beautiful days of early summer? Of 75 degree days with light breezes? Instead it's WHAP! right into August humidity.). But I'll go with the promise to report back here soon. Stay cool!