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!