My Kind Of Town

Chicago was awesome (well, it was insanely cold, WAYYYY colder than central New York, but still, it was awesome)! Kevin had to go for business, but since Chicago is the city we lived in when we first got married, and since tomorrow is our 8th anniversary, it seemed like the perfect time for me to accompany him. We stayed overnight in the suburbs on Friday with one of my best friends from college, Jen, and her husband Steve. Jen drove us in to the city on Saturday, and we took a trip down memory lane...here's our first home at 1000 W. Washington St. We had a loft in this building--1/2 of the building was a book binder and 1/2 was a Nabisco factory. Our loft was on top of the old oven!
Directly across from our old loft is Harpo Studios--we saw the limos pulling up every day, the lines of people waiting to see a taping of "Oprah," but we never saw the woman herself. No luck this trip either--she is elusive!

After a yummy brunch at Le Peep (which is housed inside our old apartment building) we were done reminiscing and ready to see some new things. Our first stop was The Drake...it's a gorgeous old hotel ovelooking Lake Michigan. I always was curious about what it looked like inside, and I finally found out, as that is where Kevin's company paid for us to stay. Woo hoo!

Another first for us was a trip to Millenium Park to see the "Bean." I loved it and took a ridiculous number of photos...the only reason I stopped was because I could no longer move my fingers to work the camera due to the frigid weather!

A view from under the Bean:

And yet another Bean picture:

And finally, me and Kevin in front of the Bean:

And part of the Chigao skyline including the Sears Tower seen through the gridwork of the new (to us anyway) amphitheater in Millenium Park:

After hitting a few bars in the Gold Coast, we decided to end the night on a nostalgic note. We cabbed it back to West Loop and ate dinner in Greektown, then finished up the night at our old neighborhood haunt, Emmit's. A scene in Ocean's 11 was filmed at Emmit's while we lived in Chicago, and I remember how excited the waitresses were because they got to meet George Clooney and Matt Damon. This visit, we didn't actually get to sit in George and Matt's booth, but it was still a perfect end to the day.

Oh yeah, one other first for me--Jen made me get on Facebook! I'm always the last to jump on these trends...I don't think I really used email until 2002. Now I have another way to procrastinate, I mean, reminisce!

Yep, It's Still Snowy Out There

Bandit & Big Bertha

An 18 year old cat was recently dropped off at the animal shelter. I can't fathom how anyone could own an animal for 18 years and then just take it to a shelter, and situations like this make me kind of bitter towards people. Of course the cat, Bandit, ended up getting sick--she was stressed out so her immune system faltered, and there are so many germs at an animal shelter. Young cats generally recover quickly with antibiotics, but I was scared that such an old cat wouldn't stand a chance, so I ended up fostering her until she got better. Here she is hanging out under the Christmas tree:
I learned many things during her stay at my house. Useful things, like if you are trying to squirt a syringe full of Pedialyte down a sick cat's throat, and said sick cat squirms and writhes and you accidentally squirt it into your own eye, it stings like a bitch! And similarly, if you are trying to squirt Zithromax into a sick cat's mouth, and said sick cat squirms and writhes and you instead squirt it into your own mouth, it is sweet and sticky and will make you gag (not so much the taste as the realization that you probably squirted some sick cat saliva into your own mouth too!) I also learned that a sick, old cat who crawls into my lap and starts purring and kneading her little paws will melt my heart. Finally, I learned that there are some truly wonderful, generous people out there--Bandit was just adopted this weekend. The family knows she doesn't have lots of time left, but they wanted to give her a good home for the remainder of her life. I am so happy for her, and it makes the inadvertant Pedialyte eye wash totally worth it!

On a completely unrelated note, our 14 year old TV gave up the ghost a couple of days ago. Kevin and I discussed it and decided that we would get a moderate sized plasma flat screen to replace it. You know how when you go to a Christmas tree lot, and all the trees seem really small, and you end bringing a much bigger tree home than you had intended, and then you end up lopping a bunch off the bottom just to make it fit in your house? Yeah, same thing happened at Circuit City--the TVs all seemed kind of small and unimposing, so we ended up getting a 50" model. We can't lop any off the side, so I guess we're stuck with a ridiculously massive TV. We have named her "Big Bertha":

And yes, we watched "Darjeeling Unlimited" starring Owen Wilson for Big Bertha's maiden voyage, and no, it was not very good. And then we watched the "Daily Show" starring John Stewart, which was very good indeed!