chicago day 3

first things first, i got the 'entertainment weekly' summer movie preview and it consumed me. it's one of my little seasonal rituals. i get the movie preview issues (they do fall, winter, spring, summer), then sit down and methodically go through them, month by month, circling the ones that i want to see based on the descriptions/buzz/cast/director/subject matter, etc. then i put these circled titles into my notebook of films. when i see the films, they get crossed out with a line through the middle of the title. if i love the film, there's a star in the margins so i know that i'd someday like to own it.

it's a neat, tidy, efficient little system and i LOVE the act of doing it.


tonight for dinner i made this pasta with fried eggplant cubes, grape tomatoes, basil and olives. alongside i made my antipasto salad which is basically iceberg lettuce, romaine, roasted peppers, tomatoes, red onion, salami, and provolone all dressed with a very vinegary red wine vinaigrette. you could also add olives, cucumbers, hot italian peppers, mushrooms...basically just plus it up however you wish but use as your guideline things that would normally appear on an antipasto platter.

okay, day 3 of chicago times.


sunday was our "free" day, meaning we didn't have much planned by way of itinerary. we decided to check out oak park, which is the suburb of chicago where the majority of frank lloyd wright-designed houses are clustered. he also did the unity church. getting to oak park necessitated a 45 minute subway ride. that was fine, the neighbourhood is hella affluent and suburban to the extreme, in that tony, monied way. like, the kind of way where apparently people who own the frank lloyd wright-designed houses get all panty-knotted about the fact that their houses are tourist attractions and there are people walking around stopping in front of their yards - newsflash: you BOUGHT A FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOUSE. what did you THINK was going to happen? sheesh. talk about entitled.

naturally, we got pwned by our lack of foresight and the dotytron's tour antipathy from seeing the inside of flw's home and studio. so we tooled around and gawked at the GINORMOUS houses and took some shots of us with flw's bust (the vacant eyes were a bad call on the part of the sculptor - he looks like some generic early 20th century british illustration of a wacky, well-to-do eccentric à la dr. doolittle).

the dotytron's leg was hurting him like crazy that day, so we decided to pack up ship and go for lunch. the plan was to go to this mexican place that was a little closer to chicago downtown, but still definitely not on the beaten path (it was in humboldt park) - requiring getting back on the subway and stopping somewhere between oak park and the loop. the place was called cemitas puebla and was famous for making cemitas - mexican sandwiches served on a sesame flecked bread, that i'd never even heard of before, and seemed like something i would only get in mexico or in chicago.

i called the place up and he told me what the closest subway station was. we cross referenced on the map and got off at the stop. we passed the conservatory, which is listed as an "off the beaten path" tourist site. and then we started walking. and walking. and walking. we walked for 20 minutes and found ourselves in the thick of a down-at-heel african american neighbourhood. i describe it as kind of like 'boyz n the hood' but not quite as nice. every house had a padlocked iron fence between it and the sidewalk. people were drinking malk liquor at noon, hanging out. some of the houses were boarded up and needless to say, the dotytron and i stuck out like sore thumbs. we were openly being gawked at. there were also signs in some of the house windows that said stuff like: "stop the shooting! no more innocent victims!" with other signs expressing a similar sentiment plastered on the street light poles.

i stopped and asked directions from some kids who gave me the wary up and down look and we were told that it was "back thataways" - so we walked for another 15 minutes (did i mention that the dotytron was limping like the hunchback of notre dame?) deeper and deeper into this neighbourhood, not recognizing a single street sign. finally, we came to a major artery and hopped on the first bus, abandoning the mission.

it wasn't that i felt unsafe per se. it's not like i thought we were going to get capped in the middle of the day. it was more because we stuck out so badly - there was no way we could be anonymous and it was a terribly discomfiting experience. i felt othered in a way i haven't in a long, long time. i wasn't going in there as the benevolent liberal, the hilary swank character in 'freedom writers' - i felt like a trespasser and interloper. maybe it was all in my head, it probably was...but walking in that neighbourhood i felt the full weight of my privileged subject position and my complete inability to navigate the social relations - i was a tourist with a capital T. and i mean, i'm reasonably aware of my own tourism. i'm not one of those people who goes on trips and pats myself on the back about how i avoided the "tourist traps" or looks down my nose at "touristy" things and tries to act like i'm one of the "natives." i know i'm a tourist. i can't be anything BUT a tourist. this experience kind of crystallized all that awareness and brought it forward in such sharp relief that i couldn't sublimate it.


by this point, we were famished, so we went to wiener's circle for cheese fries and chicago style hot dogs. i love a good steamed vienna red hot. i loved steamed buns. they can be pretty mean to the custies there, but they were nice to me because i was unfailingly polite. i got a double cheddar chardog and a double steamed dog. they were amazingly good, though next time i think i won't get the cheddar fries because they are transcendently good for all of 2 minutes and then the cheese hardens and turns stubborn and recalcitrant the way only processed cheese can.

as we were debriefing over our experience in the ghetto, the dotytron brought up this quote from paolo friere that made us BOTH start tearing up. it's something along the lines of this: hope is an ontological need. hopelessness is not the inverse of hope, it is hope that has lost its way. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so amazing.

as we wandered home, we passed an anthropologie and i applied myself to the sale rack with prodigious industry while the dotyron snoozed on a lemon-coloured sofa.

then we went to garrett's popcorn shop (in business since 1949) and grabbed cheese popcorn (the best cheese popcorn i've ever had...the tangy, sharp, salty cheese flavour perfectly coats each spongy piece...not like the smart food dust that gets in your nose) and caramel corn and went to millenium park where we beheld the glory of the gehry designed amphitheatre and took a million pictures of the bean. the bean is a magical thing. apparently when it was first unveiled, or when chicagoans first saw an unfinished version of the bean, they were in an uproar. now they love it, as they should. it's hypnotic, enticing, fun, playful, engaging - all the things that public art should be.



i'll probably end the chicago chronicles with the alinea recap, so i'll talk about what we did on our last day. we were supposed to go on the segway tour, but it happens rain or shine and we were already feeling a little trepidatious because of the fact that the weather thus far had only deigned to oscillate between a bracing chill and bone-numbing cold. when the day of the segway tour dawned overcast and cloaked in a wet, miserable, dense rain, we called an audible and bailed.

we had breakfast at the bongo room, where i had the pretzel studded pancakes (a reasonable portion) with caramel and white chocolate cream and a side order of sausage and the dotytron ordered the breakfast burrito with chipotle cream.

then we went back to our hotel and bowled a game in the bowling alley in our hotel, which apparently doubles as a club and a bowling alley for the rich and famous, as evidenced by the framed pictures of lance bass and puffy bowling there.  we separated and i returned some of my anthropologie spoils and the dotytron went to this famous jazz record store called the jazz record mart, whereupon he happily gorged on the riches of a store devoted entirely to jazz and blues. we gathered our bags, hopped on a plane (the ricketiest plane EVER - i could feel the refueling guy screwing the gas cap on from my seat!) and came home.

it was a fantastic time filled with adventure and fun. i'd love to go back. i still think new york is MORE fun, but chicago is a great city for a weekend jaunt.

tomorrow i'm going to see 'adventureland' with D at my beloved AMC theatre. K and J are going that night too and we might end up at the same show. the real question is: what to eat? chipotle's? milo's falafels? harvey's??? I LOVE THE AMC!

fin.

chicago part 3

but first, my day with the chilluns yesterday was so fun and very untaxing and stress-free. they actually went down for a TWO HOUR nap! i had to rouse them because they were sleeping so long, which is a bit of a feat because little miss is notorious for resisting napping. the key is to really tire them out beforehand. first i gave them both haircuts and then i packed us up some healthy lunches and snacks (peanut butter sandwiches cut into start shapes, a banana, an apple, water) and we took the subway and then the bus to riverdale farm. we were originally going to go to the science centre and friend H and baby D were going to accompany us, but they've been felled by a little cold and the science centre seemed a little buckshot on my own.

so little miss was terrified by the animals and the little sir was completely enthralled and they ate their healthy snacks and we shared some cookies baked by the farm and then on our way home we stopped at the park and they played for another hour and then we walked home. on the way there, i had let little miss hold the ttc child's tickets and on the way back, i gave them to the little sir. he was SUPER STRESSED about it. i put them in his pocked and then i noticed his little wee hand poked into his pocket, feeling for the tickets and he was kind of tense. he stayed that way until he gave them to the ttc bus driver! lol! so cute!

then i put them in the roomie's bed and made the room really dark and blocked them in and removed distractions and they conked out. s-dawg came over, we ate dinner and shared some cupcakes and then watched treehouse until my mum came to pick them up. it was super fun and very easy going - the older they get the easier they are to handle.

s-dawg also insisted on making me watch this video that he had posted on my facebook wall and i had ignored (i'm the worst for clicking links to stuff sent by other people). people, i eat my recalcitrant link-clicking ways. this is the second coming of christian the lion AND it features my favorite les miz song and it's so perfect that of COURSE i was tearing up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

i can't embed it, you'll have to click through. AMAZING. so so so good. this is totally the kind of human interest story that people need in this time of recession and totally kicks the pants of like, sanjaya and clay aiken or whatever crap north american barfs up. BEST! BEST EVER! 25 MILLION views! another blow struck on the sincerity come back trail.

okay, chicago times.

i forgot to mention that on day 2, while lugging our 10lb tres leches cake around (they're heavy because of all the milk they're soaked in), with the dotytron in an increasingly heightened state of anxiety over the structural integrity of the tres leches, we walked through a bit of pilsen (initially in an attempt to find MORE tres leches!) and hit al's no. 1 italian beef sandwiches - which are supposed to be chicago's answer to the philly cheeseteak, even though the two couldn't be more dissimilar. the chicago beef sandwich has more in common with a florentine bollito sandwich. the meat is clearly sliced paper-thin, then braised to a dissolving tenderness and then piled into a very soft, tissue-textured bun (that you can request "dipped" or not dipped - judging by the pictorial evidence above, we clearly picked "dipped".) we requested hot peppers, to the beef was liberally sprinkled with chili flakes and what looked like bits and pieces from the braising liquid - celery, onions and the like, that were just barely holding their form. it's a messy, undignified affair to eat, but an utterly transporting experience on the palate, the french dip you always wanted but never had.

the major factor that made us abort the secondary tres leches pit stop and go for beef sandwiches instead is that we ended up in a bit of a rough neighbourhood - which is fine, no biggie, ordinarily. and it wasn't even THAT rough...just a little coarse. however, we passed a demo'd lot between two buildings that rank of feces - human. and there was a car on blocks covered with a tarp and the only conclusion that you could come to was that someone was using that as their domicile and lavatory and it kind of made us decide that we should cherish our one tres leches cake and just have a snack somewhere else instead (the dotytron's leg was also hurting - remember the explanatory note that began the chicago chronicles.)

then we went back to the hotel, rested, hit publican and then hit this jazz club, the green mill, which had been owned by al capone way back in the day and was way up north in the suburbs of chicago. chicago is mostly known as a blues town, a jazz town, and a town of libertarian, neo-classical economics. we obviously had to hit a jazz bar at one point. the green mill was kind of awesome, especially for someone who isn't naturally inclined to love jazz and has been gradually brought over by osmosis. it was LIVE in there. we showed up at minute because they have a band that places from midnight until FIVE AM for a $5 cover. amazing! the dotytron chose wisely because the band had a hammond b-3 player - one of the factors that will make me more inclined to like whatever jazz happens to be on is the presence of hammond, wurlitzers and rhodes - i'm more of a rhythm section fan at the best of times and generally tune out the saxophones and trumpets.

another factor that makes me like live jazz is if the show is LIVE. i'm used to ENERGY at shows - the dotytron's constant criticism is that i want things to be too boombastic when we go out and hear live music. jazz shows in toronto featuring the most boringly middle-class, aged, restrained, and fogey audiences i've ever seen everywhere. it's VERY off-putting. people don't talk, but sit in silent reverence and then unleash a scattered pitter-patter of polite clapping. it's egregious. this music was supposed to be COOKING! the thing about the green mill was that it was like a rowdy, raucous bar with people listening to tunes. the late night band was more of a be-bop thing (i think) and there was a great energy in the room. the same thing in new york. when we caught this jazz legend, ron carter, at the museum of natural history. it was still a museum audience, but A - there was WAY more ethnic diversity in the crowd, and B) even though it was still museum town, the audience was still more lively and engaged (purely subjective, but my powers of perception are unparalleled.)

and so ended day 2, with a sleepy cab ride back to our hotel, which apparently turns into a nightclub at some point, completely with skanky chick hostesses tottering on stilettoes in the lobby.

day 3 will have to be a separate post and the rundown on alinea will get it's own self contained review.

today i was supposed to go to the inaugural meeting of my knitting club, which consists of friend H, baby D (by proxy), friend M, and H's other friend M, a dude who's interested in sock knitting, but H and baby D, as previously mentioned, are sick so that go kiboshed. it's supposed to be a bit rainy, too. we're having the dotytron's parents and his sister over for dinner tonight so i'm going to do some prep for that, do some knitting, and my exercises and do the grocery shopping. i have a billion photos i should be putting in albums but i ordered the albums to my sister's house so i'll probably just organize my recipes and do some general, mild tidying and dinner preparing.

there's a party at my dodgeball peeps' house tonight - a little mixer to celebrate the upcoming season - i might stop by for a bit after dinner with the parental units and be sociable.

fin.

day 2

where did i leave off? ah yes, we had fallen asleep at the embarrassingly uncool and unyouthful time of 9pm to the sweet slumber that can only be procured from the sound knowledge that you do not have to launder anything in your immediate vicinity. we woke up and trekked out butts down to sweet maple cafe for breakfast. sweet maple cafe already had a lineup at 9am on a saturday morning. it's not the biggest place and it's far off the beaten track (close the university of illinois, chicago campus) but hoo boy do they know how to do a rib-stickin' breakfast.

we ordered something savoury and something sweet and went splitsies.

two eggs over easy; biscuit; sausage patty; grits; side of ham. i ordered the blueberry pancakes which were GINORMOUS. look at them! (the blueberries were underneath)

thus fortified, we set off on our day, the centrepiece of which was hitting the museum of science and industry. we were kind of freaking out because yesterday's s**tshow at the planetarium (with every child and every frazzled parent in the northern hemisphere converging at the same time) made us wary of hitting such a kid-friendly place. we got there fairly early though and it was AWESOME. the best museum i've ever been to. it's HUGE! it's housed in one of the only surviving buildings from the world's fair in 1893. they have so much stuff!
it's so much fun! it's so conducive to taking funny pictures (our forte!)

i can't imagine being a kid and going to this museum because my head would probably explode. they have mini EVERYTHING! crazy animatronics and plastic people and miniature scenes and train sets that allow you to take pictures that seem like real life. to wit:

the first exhibit we hit was a circus-themed one. it was kind of weak, but saved itself by having little miniature scenes and a circus caravan going on a little wee track.

one of the major highlights of the museum is that they have a u-boat, captured during the second world war and they built a WHOLE WING to house the thing (it's monstrous.) the build up to actually seeing the u-boat is awesome. there's like a fake command room with projected people in costume radioing back and forth and then they have the u-boat just sitting there in the room with torpedos strewn about and other memorabilia and fun games/interactive things to do like decoding encrypted messages. super fun!

this is the dotytron in a u-boat berth:

see? the props are super-high-quality.

they also had one of those little setups rigged up where you can get your picture taken in front of the u-boat and then they sell it to you when you come out of the exhibit, all u-boat drunk, with a commemorative frame, key chain, and 2 key chain-sized shots for the very unreasonable sum of $20. this is ours:

the dude taking the picture was majorly appreciative of our pose. the dude in charge of selling the pictures said it was the best one he'd seen since he started working there. we ended up having them hold it for us until we were ready to leave. when we went to pick it up, another guy was working and when we asked for our picture, he said, "oh yeah! guys, that's the best one i've seen all day!" lol! basically, our rampant immaturity and obnoxiousness won over all the museum staff. another cute thing about the museum staff is that they're all SUPER into their jobs. they seem to hire only retired veterans and nerdily sincere high school kids and it's a winning strategy because the staff are amazingly friendly, informative, and engaged.

one of the reasons that this museum is rolling in top-notch, high-grade exhibits is because of the strong public-private partnerships. this can lead to interestingly staged exhibits that are thinly veiled indoctrination pieces from various stakeholders. take the "farm tech" room, whose sole purpose was to impress upon young minds the importance of industrial agriculture.

there were videos set to booming, loud, pop music of cows with horrifically distended udders placidly receiving their sweet succor at the hands of hispanic itinerant farm workers. we played a timed milking game where you had to start a timer, "spray" down a fake cows udders with a pressurized air spray and then attach 4 milking suction things. i won by 1 second. it was awesome. we were obnoxious but i think again, our unbridled, childlike enthusiasm really won over our fellow museum goers.

okay. this shot above came about as a result of me being me (read: a jerk). it resulted in one of the more infamous moments of my insanity during the trip and, on a greater scale, my life. they had these shiny john deere tractors set up and as soon as i saw them, i said, "i have to get a picture in one of those!" so i stood in line behind a couple of kids to wait my turn (reminder: the museum of science and industry is mainly targeted at children.) out of the corner of my eye, i see a 7 year old kid and his maybe 2 years older sibling come running into the room. the kid's eyes grow huge at the sight of the tractor and he beckons to his dad, "dad! check this out!" - he's so excited he's practically jumping out of his own skin and he proceeds to stand in front of me, probably assuming that i'm waiting for my own kid to come off the tractor.

so what do i do? without missing a beat, i tap the kid on the shoulder, three times. not unforcefully. tap. tap. tap. "excuse me," i say, in the same tone of voice i would use for say, an adult who cut in front of me in line, "i was actually next." no sooner had the words left my lips then i realized that i had just TOLD OFF A SEVEN YEAR OLD CHILD FOR CUTTING IN FRONT OF ME IN LINE TO SIT IN A TRACTOR. i looked over at the dotytron and he was staring at me, slack-jawed, aghast. ahahahahahahahaha!!!!!! maternal instinct success rate is running at about negative 50% right now. lol!!! who DOES that?!? what's wrong with me?!???? ahahahahaha.

then we headed into future zone. future zone was kind of weird. it featured a hallway with pictures of various "visionaries" and "inventors" and models of some of their creations. it wasn't terribly impressive. to give you an idea, this LED dress was one of the "futuristic" things on display, in addition to this stupid robot who was SUPPOSED to answer a limited array of questions (sample question: "do you have any friends?") but then just ended up staring vacantly at you and doing a herky jerky piss poor version of the robot (maybe that's why he doesn't have any friends.)

then midway during a conversation, the dotytron looks over, and says, "THEY HAVE ONE OF THOSE?!?! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS." and goes tearing off in the direction of this little bad boy:

it's a REACTABLE, which is basically a touch synthesizer, aka the dotytron's robot bride. we played with it for about 30 minutes. it was kind of annoying because these n00bs would keep coming into the room and messing with our song, so we'd have to wait until people left to clear the table and start all over again, but then more people would come (how dare they?) you basically move the various cubes around on the table and they interact with the table itself and each other and you can modulate the sounds (pitch, etc) by twisting and turning the blocks. it's pretty flippin' cool and basically made the dotytron's life.

this is a thing where you stuck your face into a little depression and it projected your face on this statue of a person juggling balls (tenuously related to both science AND industry, but cool nonetheless)

we basically blew through the museum in like, 3 hours and hit every floor. then we went to see frank lloyd wright's robie house. in our hubris (in collusion with the dotytron's hatred of tours), we didn't pre-buy tickets to the tour which allowed you access to the interior. in what would come to be a maddening trend for the remainder of the trip, we could never get within a 5 foot radius of frank lloyd wright. he wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. so we could only get shots of the exterior. i contemplated pulling a chinese "i'll give you cash under the table if you just let us in" but the dotytron nixed that idea.


then we literally walked for like, 2 miles (remember: the dotytron's bum leg) to get a tres leches cake that i had ordered that morning when the previous day's tres leches cake mission had been a bust. i called this place, kristoffer's cafe during breakfast at sweet maple cafe to see if they might have any tres leches cake left in the afternoon. at the time that i called (10 in the morning) they were already out of the vanilla. in a panic, i ordered a 9" caramel, not really realizing that i was somehow buying an ENTIRE TRES LECHES CAKE. rick bayless says that the tres leches at kristoffers cafe and bakery is the best and i trust rick bayless.

so we schlepped our butts all the way out there to get the cake. then i had to figure out what the frig i was going to do with a 9" cake that weighed about 10 lbs from being soaked in the three milks. en route, we also passed by some sketchiness, involving a pretty downtrodden neighbourhood and a demolished parking lot area that smelled like human feces because we suspect someone was living in the tarp-covered car parked there and had probably jerry-rigged themselves an impromptu latrine. it was kind of gross and unsettling.

this is how you know you're traveling lagerfeld styleee. i will make you walk 3 miles out of your way for tres leches cake, past some very sketchy neighbourhoods/living areas. i will make a harebrained, panicky decision to buy an ENTIRE tres leches cake. i will then embark on a mission of every cvs and walgreen's in the downtown core in a vain attempt to find tupperwares, only to find that you can buy a SLOW COOKER at walgreen's but will receive blank stares when you ask for tupperware (incidentally, sales people in the states are about a BILLION times nicer than sales people in canada, don't ask me why.) i will then somehow sweet talk the proprietor of some random restaurant to give me 8 takeout containers (for free! i offered to pay but he refused) and then i will then somehow sweet talk room service into looking for a pie lifter for me. room service will not be able to procure a pie lifter but will give me two knives. you will watch incredulously as i divide the tres leches cake into fifths, pack each fifth into an ill-begotten takeout container, and somehow macguyver the bar fridge into accepting all my tres leches cake portions.

it's crazy.

more to come tomorrow! reviews of the publican and al's no. 1 beef and day 3!

fin.

2 ding dongs in the white city

a tale probably to be told in many, many parts (i don't want to have to nail myself down to a number.)

the dotytron and i woke up obscenely early on good friday and were picked up by east end taxi (aka the dotytron's da') and taken to the airport. my new thing is to NEVER CHECK BAGGAGE. for a few reasons: a) it's annoying waiting for bags that might be lost; b) most airlines are now CHARGING YOU to check bags (lame!) c) it's a desperate bid to help us (read: me) pack light and curb my tendency to pack 10 different outfits and 4 pairs of shoes for a weekend away.

poor dotytron suffered the brunt of this new thing of mine. i packed for him and did a pretty good job. i checked the weather forecasted (that's an oxymoron and an egregious insult to tense and the english language, i know) for the weekend and things seemed pretty decent. the night before, we had the following exchange:

dotytron: i'm going to take my heavy fall jacket, it's been FREEZING here lately!
me: no! just take your fleece and the hot guy jacket (that's what we call this spring jacket of his - it really is a hot guy jacket)
dotytron: but don't you think it's going to be cold?
me: no! i checked the weather, high of 10°C and low of 2°C
dotytron: but that's cold!
me (getting increasingly shrill): look! it's going to be fine! 10°C isn't THAT COLD! it's just going to be bulky and heavy and you're going to have to carry it around all the time!!!
dotytron: but they call it the 'windy city'!!!
me: IT'S A MISNOMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dear reader: it is very much not a misnomer. as you hear recounted for you the chronicles of our time abroad and as you gaze upon the pictorial evidence, please keep in mind that at almost EVERY SINGLE MOMENT the dotytron is freezing his poor little butt off. it's SUPER WINDY! lake michigan is insane! it was really, really cold. there's like non-stop white caps on lake michigan and when we were at the planetarium, we almost got blown off our feet. the dotytron's nose was constantly running.

so i obviously felt really bad for being such a monster and in remorse, i struck a deal that will test the limits of my patience and ocd tendencies on a future trip. the next time we go away, the dotytron is allowed to pack whatever he wants.

another thing to remember is that the dotytron's left leg got pwned this weekend. remember last sunday, when we went for a run to get groceries and go for brunch on that epic day filled with hilariousness? well, what i didn't tell you, was that on that run, the dotytron was making fun of me for being a little huffy and puffy and wheezy, while he was apparently "fine." "awww lagerfeld," he said, looking at my gasping short-legged frame trying valiantly to keep stride with his lankiness, "look at how out of shape you are!" he ALSO gave me grief for being really reluctant to run on concrete and for insisting that asphalt is softer and better on the legs. fast forward to this past week.

lagerfeld: feeling completely fine, able to play dodgeball on both sunday and monday with minimal stiffness and after effects

dotytron: nagging pain in achilles tendon

this nagging pain in his achilles tendon ended up manifesting itself in giving him a limp and waves of being able to walk fine and other times of being in extreme pain. he also got pain at the back of his knee from all the walking we did this weekend (point of interest: chicago is NOT a pedestrian friendly city, outside of the immediate core area known as 'the loop'). he also got a blister on his foot. so keep in mind, that throughout most of the following adventures, the dotytron's left leg is running at a success rate of 0% (with an additional minus 25% for making him cranky)

ANYWAY, we hopped on the subway at o'hare (known as the "el" because a lot of the trains are actually elevated in chi-town) and got to our hotel. ummmm...our hotel was AMAZING! it was all super-designery faux boutiquey. here are some shots:


pretty swank, eh? that's a king sized bed mofos! those are leather pillows on the bed! and a fake snakeskin arm chair! and a tromp l'oeil chandelier on the wall! lol! all this (location was fab too, smack dab in tourista ville, attached to the house of blues and steps from the magnificent mile [which we didn't check out because we don't usually prioritize shopping on our travels]) for the princely sum of $109 USD a night (it usually goes for $350+) thanks to some insane promo code. samantha ronson was djing in the hotel's bar in a few weeks and the hotel had a BOWLING ALLEY/club INSIDE IT that had hosted the likes of p-diddy and nsync! amazing!

it was the kind of place where even though check in time was technically 3pm, they let us check into our room at 10 in the morning. amazing! then we went and got ourselves some breakfast. we went to a place called wishbone and indulged in all our american breakfast fantasies.



i had eggs over easy (another point: american short order breakfast cooks KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. eggs over easy are over easy, like where the whites are still kind of runny. over easy in canada is mostly over medium, which is what i really want, generally), with sausage patties (WHY CAN'T WE GET SAUSAGE PATTIES IN CANADA?!??), homefries, a corn muffin, and a SMALL (yes, that's a small) side of biscuits with sausage gravy. the homefries were amazing. every bite tasted like oniony, griddly, crusty goodness. they really understand the importance of a good crust on the homefries, too. the biscuits and gravy were delicious. basically a sausage-studded, milky, bechamel sludge slumped over a split biscuit. the dotytron had some kind of scramble, with cheesy grits, and bacon and a corn muffin. the cheesy grits were so so soooooooooooo good! salty, savoury, creamy (the grits are white, the kind i make at home are yellow), bowl-lickingly good.

then we stumbled around trying to get our bearings with the transit system before hitting the adler planetarium. the planetarium shares space on what's known as "museum campus" along with the field museum (kind of like your standard, rom-type museum with dinosaurs and artifacts and stuff), and the shedd aquarium. the planetarium was obviously the less cool of them all (judging by the fact that the bus that loops around museum campus was practically empty by the time we got to the planetarium), but that didn't ameliorate the fact that we had to stand in line for almost an hour just to buy tickets to get into the place.

i was also grossly misinformed about what a planetarium is all about. i thought it was mostly exhibits about star stuff with the dome shows. it's mostly about the dome shows with some odd things to pad out the shows. this didn't stop us from doing our usual thing of making an absolute farce of well...everything.

this is us in infrared


this is me going to renaissance astronomy school


this is me asking my renaissance astronomy school prof a question


this is the dotytron as a peruvian astronomer (or something)


this is the dotytron kissing this weird hologram/projection of a creepy kid fixated on space


we saw two shows. one was this 3D symphony of animated and manipulated space stuff set to an orchestra. it was very boring and uneducational and i used that time to take a much-needed 30. according to the dotytron, there were people sawing logs all over. then we saw an AWESOME light/show thing called "secrets of the night sky" in the planetarium proper which was mind-blowingly good. at certain points, i wanted to stand up and randomly scream it was so good. this only reinforces my plan to build my ultimate fun-zone if i ever win the lottery. the ultimate fun-zone consists of a lazy river crossed with a planetarium. eh, eh? pretty solid, huh?

the dotytron and i travel in this really weird way where i spend hours and hours and hours making a spreadsheet of places to eat and do a meals itinerary (replete with coding the spread sheet entries and plotting it on a map) but then when we actually arrive at a destination, we're extremely laid back and don't do any research about the actual "must-see" sites and stuff. like, i do *some* background reading but it's pretty scattershot. we end up mostly just goofing off by being us in a different place without having to think about life stuff and laughing like idiots. most of the time we stumble upon the tourist sites while traipsing around in pursuit of one local delicacy or another. like, in chicago, we saw this famous picasso sculpture by getting lost and happening upon it:

we also bail on stuff right left and centre because in the end, we don't care. like in italy, we didn't care if we saw real david, fake david was okay. we don't HAVE to go to galleries and museums and whatnot and totally don't stress about absolutely having to see this, that or the other thing, the most important thing is hanging. this might surprise some people who would think that i would have trips scheduled down to the minute. i'm actually a very laid-back, roll with the punches, unflappable traveler - as long as we get to eat the goods.

anyway, for dinner the first night we went to lou malnati's which serves chicago-style deep dish pizza. bwong had brought me back a stuffed crust specimen (from giordano's - another heavy hitter in the chicago pizza scene) so we decided to try the classic deep dish with the full sausage patty. it was incredible. first, let's look at what our buddy lou here calls a salad:

yes, that's piles of meat on the antipasto salad. it was really good though - and i needed the vinegary cushion for the coming assault on my colon. look at this slice:

lou's has a very chunky, sprightly, oregano-infused tomato sauce, the acidity of which cuts through the solid 1/2" of cheese. overall, i think i preferred this to the stuffed crust, which seriously had like a 2" block of cheese sandwiched with a cracker like dough. this dough had a nice chew but was still super crisp-crusted and buttery. the sauce made the whole thing come together though and helped you feel slightly less gross about eating 2 slices (and seriously contemplating a third).

then we came back to the hotel to "get changed" before going out to see bill frissell but then ended up bailing on the show and passing out at 9pm for a well deserved one of the best sleeps of my adult life. it was sooooooooo good. the pillows on our bed were like, 3 feet long. my only complaint is that a king sized bed makes you feel like there's an ocean between you and we're so used to sleeping on a double that all the space left me feeling a little bereft. it's too crazy.

more on the trip, tomorrow.

fin.

my opus

we went to bed pretty early last night...passing out at around 10:30pm after watching the first episode of the newest (and last) season of battlestar galactica - now we only have 2 or 3 more to catch up and we're in real time.  

i'm always totally knackered by friday night anyway and this weekend is a full one.  today i'm meeting up with H, M and baby D to do some trawling around kensington market for haloumi and other random assorted goods.  then we're heading to kitchener to hang with the kdubsguelph crew at our friend's housewarming party.  excitement!!!  i love seeing people's houses!  

i've already eaten breakfast and i got to do a bunch of stuff before i head out...boring saturday stuff like laundry, blogging, mopping the kitchen floor, yoga.  i also have to bake a cake for tomorrow night's festivities with the goosetang clan.  

i did however manage to finish my opus this morning.  what is my opus you ask?  well, every time i travel to a new city, i go on an exhaustive search of my magazine tear outs, my file folders, my collected travel issues of food magazines, my food blogs, chowhound, etc and cull a list of restaurants in the city in question.  i then construct a chart/table with the restaurant name, type of cuisine, address (hyperlinked), transit information (if available), reservation information, hours of operation, and a notes column for the restaurants website, dishes to try, etc.  it's kind of insane and HIGHLY ocd.  i just finished my chicago one.  it's running at 9 pages long but it's a thing of beauty.  my new york one is even more insane.  once i get started, they become works in progress and i update periodically.  i'm pretty happy with the chicago edition.  it's got good coverage between the fine dining molecular gastronomy joints (avenues, alinea, moto, etc) and the beef sandwich/hot dog/deep dish-stuffed crust pizza places.  a bunch of gastropubs thrown in there, and then the last few pages are dedicated to mexican food (taquerias, cemitas, sopas, etc.) 

the tough part will be narrowing everything down!  i know for sure that we're definitely going to have one blow out, insanely expensive, 4 hour long meal at alinea.  then the rest is up for grabs.  i'd like to eat at one of paul kahan's places...probably his new gastropub, publican.  definitely want an italian beef sammich, some deep dish pizza (bwong brought me back a stuffed crust in the summer, so we're going to try deep dish), and then check out some of the creole/southern brunch places (a trip to the US is wasted if i don't get biscuits with sausage gravy.)  and i really want to go to a taqueria AND either get cemitas or carnitas.  my tummy is already growling in anticipation!  i'd also like a chicago dog or two and some garrett's popcorn.  i'll have to consult with the dotytron.  

as nerdy as my charts are, i gotta say, they've never steered me wrong.  

okay, the day is running away from me (i ended up spending some time on realtor.ca)  gotta flash!

fin.