Spring is a Time for Change
As mentioned in my previous entry, the writings will continue. So where were we last? The end of March? Wow, so much to cover.
Well, as I noted in the outlook for 2010 and in my previous entry, Alex and I moved to a new apartment. We were done living in Logan Square, isolated from all our friends on the North Side (Logan Square is Northwest Side), too close to Humboldt Park and the gang activity (when you can hear gunshots from your apartment, it's hard to feel safe), and too hipster for our taste. So we moved to a wonderful neighborhood situated in the heart of the North Side, aptly called North Center. For those of you who know Chicago, but don't know North Center (it is, in my mind, one of the best-kept secrets in Chicago), North Center is north of Roscoe Village, east of Uptown, south of Ravenswood and Andersonville, northwest of Lakeview and southeast of Lincoln Square. It's central intersection is Lincoln/Irving Park/Damen. See? You know exactly where it is, you just didn't know what it was called. Everything we grew to loathe about Logan Square is reversed in North Center. It's close to our friends, easily accessible via the Brown Line, Clark bus, or Ashland bus. It's about as safe as it gets in the North Side, and for most of Chicago (the extreme Northwest side, closer to O'Hare, is the safest area of the city due to lots of cops living there), and the people here are just plain young people. They're not rich and pretentious (ahem, Lincoln Park, ahem), butThe they're also not hipster. They're in between, they're right where Alex and I are, which is why we feel so comfortable here. And, as a bonus, this neighborhood is GORGEOUS. The streets are quiet and thickly lined with trees, in full bloom after our early Spring, the lawns are manicured and healthy, the houses are well-maintained. It's like a little Longmeadow in Chicago. Alex and I both love it.
What's even better, we thought we'd have to sacrifice the quality of the apartment itself for the quality of the neighborhood. I LOVED our Logan Square apartment. The kitchen especially made me feel like I was living the high life right at home. But this new apartment blows that one out of the water. Not to say our old apartment was bad, but this apartment is fucking awesome. The kitchen, while not as spacious, has a better layout for cooking, and it has an expansive dining area, which the old kitchen didn't have. The living room is about twice the size of our old one. We're on the 1st floor, but there's a garden level that's pretty much ground level, so we're elevated from the street about 1 story. That not only makes it easier getting in and out of the apartment (no 3 flights of stairs to climb), but it also sets us right at the tree level, so all we see is green out the windows (and there are a lot of windows in the living/dining/kitchen area). Everyone we've had over loves our place too. It's really gone beyond my expectations I had when we set out to move.
So let's backtrack a little bit. April was our last month in Logan Square. A streak of unusually warm weather (70-80 degrees) and some standard April showers have caused the trees to start blooming weeks earlier than they normally do. I typically don't see green on trees until late April, but just a few days into the month, things were popping. The move was going forward as planned for May 1. We had a signed lease for the new place, notified the landlord of our current place that we're moving out at the end of our lease (he took it unusually well, which was a pleasant surprise), reserved the U-Haul, and had a couple friends, who eagerly volunteered without even asking, enlisted to help on the big day. The fact that May 1 this year was a Saturday could not have been more perfect, but even so, I'm took a 4-day weekend for the event.
Classes are rounding the homestretch now, but in April I was in the thick of it. Advanced Financial Accounting covered governmental accounting, which I hated. As if Tax did not already make me run for the hills to flee from massive headache/brain explosion of our government's influence on the accounting profession, now I have to learn their fucked-up way of doing books. Non-profit was not a whole lot better. We're now back to regular business accounting with consolidations, which are extraordinarily complex, but it's still a breath of fresh air for me.
Audit has been the opposite, started out really well, but now I'm just bitter about that class. The cases are all interesting to read, our professor is engaging as a lecturer, the discussions are a nice break from the traditional accounting classes, but things went south after the first midterm. My audit professor doesn't pace himself appropriately; he spends too much time on one topic in a chapter that he gives himself no time to go through the entire next chapter, so he just brushes over it in 10 minutes. Then he gives us a midterm with questions so specific, they were barely mentioned in one sentence in the text, and not brought up at all during the homework problems or lecture. On top of that, he doesn't curve, after giving this big speech on the first day of class about how we determine our own grades, which is another way of saying "I'm to lazy to assess the difficulty of this course with your performance to curve accordingly so that the average is what it should be, so you're just going to have to be stuck with the raw score, even if you deserved better." A second aspect of his laziness: he has no way for students to go over the midterm to determine what they got wrong. He didn't go over it in class, and he didn't provide for any opportunity outside of class, because the exam was online and he didn't even keep track of the questions. Then, when it came time for my group to present, we were given a case far more challenging and complex than the others, which we were excited about, only to present and the professor rip apart a topic point we didn't really think was an issue. He didn't even touch upon the far more interesting aspects to the case, so I was flat out angry at the end of it. So what could have been a great class has been a huge disappointment due to an inadequate professor.
April was not all that socially active, save for one weekend. The first weekend of April, Alex went home for Easter, and Dana and I went to the newest Smallbar on Fullerton for drinks and dinner. I had a burger that was decent but did not measure up to the Bad Apple (as if any burger would). We then went to this awful dive bar at Diversey & Broadway that was like Parrot Bar, as it looked like Gilligan's Island in there. It smelled. The beer was nasty. We couldn't even finish it. We were on our way to Michelle's birthday party anyway, so it's not exactly like that was the destination. Michelle's party was just starting when we got there, but eventually it filled up with people I didn't know, beer pong games ensued, and I was suddenly back in college. If I haven't already said it on here before, I am sick of those kinds of parties. Seriously, we're 25, grow up and throw an adult party. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
The next weekend was Alex's birthday, so to celebrate, I took him to one of the newest and highly-regarded French restaurants in the city called LM, in Lincoln Square, a neighborhood we will be exploring more now that we're practically next to it. LM was fabulous. Everything we ate was rich (to be expected considering it was French) and delicious. The service was excellent, and that was before we learned our server was the owner. The restaurant is named after his children. I can't remember their names exactly, maybe Luke and Michelle? Not sure. We'll probably go back, so we can ask again.
The following weekend was the super social weekend. Starting with Friday night, I orchestrated a farewell to Logan Square evening with a marathon bar crawl along Milwaukee Ave. It ended up being me, Alex, Dana, Katie, Dave, and Gina. We started with dinner at El Cid, my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, with filling and classically good Mexican cuisine and margaritas. From there we went to Longman & Eagle, a brand new place basically next door to El Cid. We just went for drinks at the bar, but the food menu was quite impressive. I may need to go back, even though I thought I'd be done with Logan Square. Then we went to the Rocking Horse, which I learned from two visits was better with beer than food, so that's what I stuck to. Then we went to another place I'll probably have to go back to: Revolution Brewing, where they brew some of the drafts on site. And finally, we finished the night off at the Logan, which I thought was appropriate for a neighborhood crawl. The evening started at 7 pm, ended at closing at 2 am. I loved all the bars we went to, I wish I could take them with me to North Center. Oh well, can't have everything. NC has some good bars and restaurants too, but I'm still in the early stages of exploration. Then on Saturday night, I went to Old Oak Tap for Sara's birthday party, where again I knew practically no one. But at least this birthday party was appropriate. We had half of a dining room for a huge 20+ person table, where everyone got drinks and food. I got a beer Sara didn't like and passed off to me (I liked it), with some spicy shrimp that everyone seemed to enjoy. They continued on to Bar DeVile, but my marathon crawl from the night before made me hesitant to have more alcohol. To finish off the weekend, I met up with Christy for brunch at Earwax Cafe in Wicker Park. The food was good (breakfast burrito, french toast), the conversation was good (hotels, Chicago neighborhoods), everything is always good when Christy is involved. If only I could hang out with her more regularly.
The following weekend I did absolutely nothing social as we were prepping for the move and I had two midterms to study for.
Then the following weekend came the big move. I took that Friday (April 30) off work, and started out by getting the keys from the previous tenant (she reached out to me during the lease signing process to see if we wanted to move in earlier, which we didn't, but we were exchanging e-mails back and forth up to the move in, which was really nice to be able to do), then returned home for an all-day packing and cleaning affair. I made at least 50 trips up and down the 3 flights of stairs getting as many things as I could into the basement by the back for easy transport to the moving truck, which would be parked out back. Alex and I didn't cook much that week on account of limited food in the apartment, so we tried out a barbecue joint recently opened in Logan Square called Brand BBQ (pretty good, not the best I've had), and a pizza place in West Town called Paula & Monica's (mmmmmm). Then Saturday morning came the big move. Of course, we had issues getting the Uhaul, with them completely fucking up our reservation, but it ended up working in our favor because they gave us a bigger truck than we reserved, and we used all of it. With Dave, Steve, and Dana there to help us, the actual moving part was rather easy. After we got everything out, did one final clean, someone from the landlord's management group came by with the security deposit check in full (wow!) and to collect the keys. Then we said goodbye to Logan Square, and high tailed it to North Center.
We arrived in North Center. I got pizza from Sarpino's for everyone, we ate, drank, then we moved in. Moving in is always easier than moving out, and we were done by 3:00 pm, hours earlier than I expected. We returned the UHaul, returned Dave home, and pretty much collapsed once we got back in our brand new, but absolute disaster of moving boxes apartment. The next two days were spend unpacking and sorting.
The following weekend (we're now on May 8 & 9, if you're keeping track), Alex and I grabbed an after-work drink Friday evening at the Long Room, which I really like and is two blocks away. Then we returned home to relax a bit (still kinda exhausted from the move and subsequent work week). The next day we drove out to the suburbs, where we got a new car, a new television, and a new bookcase. Alex traded in his 2002 Volvo S40 for a 2010 Ford Fusion, which is actually a really nice car. Ford has improved significantly in the past year or so. I think GM is also on the same track, but not quite where Ford is (Ford, after all, did not take any bailout money). Chrysler still doesn't get it at all and their cars continue to suck balls. The TV was on sale at Best Buy, and the bookcase came from Target. After returning home, we assembled the bookcase, set up the TV, and watched Betty White on SNL, followed by Mario Kart 64 between me and Dana.
The following weekend, we felt confident enough in the apartment finally being ready for public viewing to have some people over for a barbecue. Dana and Alex set up the Weber Grill his mom got him for his birthday in April, and eventually Katie and Eric showed up. Dave showed up later after Philadelphia defeated Boston in the NHL playoffs. We grilled some brats, hot dogs, and Polish sausage, all of which were amazingly good, then settled down to some Apples & Apples courtesy of Dana. The following evening, Suzanne and Kelly came in from the 'burbs (we drove by Blagovech's house on the way to picking up Suzanne at the Irving Park Metra stop), brought them back for a couple drinks at the apartment, then went downtown for dinner at La Madia and piano fun at Howl at the Moon. La Madia, while too trendy for my taste, had tasty gourmet pizza, the line for Howl at the Moon was out the door and around the corner, so we just said "fuck it" and returned to North Center for a couple drinks at the Globe Pub, where we witnessed family drama, a man with not one but two prostitutes, and a wedding party. Oh Chicago, how I love you.
So now we're caught up. *Wipes sweat off brow*
With love,
Active Bitch
Well, as I noted in the outlook for 2010 and in my previous entry, Alex and I moved to a new apartment. We were done living in Logan Square, isolated from all our friends on the North Side (Logan Square is Northwest Side), too close to Humboldt Park and the gang activity (when you can hear gunshots from your apartment, it's hard to feel safe), and too hipster for our taste. So we moved to a wonderful neighborhood situated in the heart of the North Side, aptly called North Center. For those of you who know Chicago, but don't know North Center (it is, in my mind, one of the best-kept secrets in Chicago), North Center is north of Roscoe Village, east of Uptown, south of Ravenswood and Andersonville, northwest of Lakeview and southeast of Lincoln Square. It's central intersection is Lincoln/Irving Park/Damen. See? You know exactly where it is, you just didn't know what it was called. Everything we grew to loathe about Logan Square is reversed in North Center. It's close to our friends, easily accessible via the Brown Line, Clark bus, or Ashland bus. It's about as safe as it gets in the North Side, and for most of Chicago (the extreme Northwest side, closer to O'Hare, is the safest area of the city due to lots of cops living there), and the people here are just plain young people. They're not rich and pretentious (ahem, Lincoln Park, ahem), butThe they're also not hipster. They're in between, they're right where Alex and I are, which is why we feel so comfortable here. And, as a bonus, this neighborhood is GORGEOUS. The streets are quiet and thickly lined with trees, in full bloom after our early Spring, the lawns are manicured and healthy, the houses are well-maintained. It's like a little Longmeadow in Chicago. Alex and I both love it.
What's even better, we thought we'd have to sacrifice the quality of the apartment itself for the quality of the neighborhood. I LOVED our Logan Square apartment. The kitchen especially made me feel like I was living the high life right at home. But this new apartment blows that one out of the water. Not to say our old apartment was bad, but this apartment is fucking awesome. The kitchen, while not as spacious, has a better layout for cooking, and it has an expansive dining area, which the old kitchen didn't have. The living room is about twice the size of our old one. We're on the 1st floor, but there's a garden level that's pretty much ground level, so we're elevated from the street about 1 story. That not only makes it easier getting in and out of the apartment (no 3 flights of stairs to climb), but it also sets us right at the tree level, so all we see is green out the windows (and there are a lot of windows in the living/dining/kitchen area). Everyone we've had over loves our place too. It's really gone beyond my expectations I had when we set out to move.
So let's backtrack a little bit. April was our last month in Logan Square. A streak of unusually warm weather (70-80 degrees) and some standard April showers have caused the trees to start blooming weeks earlier than they normally do. I typically don't see green on trees until late April, but just a few days into the month, things were popping. The move was going forward as planned for May 1. We had a signed lease for the new place, notified the landlord of our current place that we're moving out at the end of our lease (he took it unusually well, which was a pleasant surprise), reserved the U-Haul, and had a couple friends, who eagerly volunteered without even asking, enlisted to help on the big day. The fact that May 1 this year was a Saturday could not have been more perfect, but even so, I'm took a 4-day weekend for the event.
Classes are rounding the homestretch now, but in April I was in the thick of it. Advanced Financial Accounting covered governmental accounting, which I hated. As if Tax did not already make me run for the hills to flee from massive headache/brain explosion of our government's influence on the accounting profession, now I have to learn their fucked-up way of doing books. Non-profit was not a whole lot better. We're now back to regular business accounting with consolidations, which are extraordinarily complex, but it's still a breath of fresh air for me.
Audit has been the opposite, started out really well, but now I'm just bitter about that class. The cases are all interesting to read, our professor is engaging as a lecturer, the discussions are a nice break from the traditional accounting classes, but things went south after the first midterm. My audit professor doesn't pace himself appropriately; he spends too much time on one topic in a chapter that he gives himself no time to go through the entire next chapter, so he just brushes over it in 10 minutes. Then he gives us a midterm with questions so specific, they were barely mentioned in one sentence in the text, and not brought up at all during the homework problems or lecture. On top of that, he doesn't curve, after giving this big speech on the first day of class about how we determine our own grades, which is another way of saying "I'm to lazy to assess the difficulty of this course with your performance to curve accordingly so that the average is what it should be, so you're just going to have to be stuck with the raw score, even if you deserved better." A second aspect of his laziness: he has no way for students to go over the midterm to determine what they got wrong. He didn't go over it in class, and he didn't provide for any opportunity outside of class, because the exam was online and he didn't even keep track of the questions. Then, when it came time for my group to present, we were given a case far more challenging and complex than the others, which we were excited about, only to present and the professor rip apart a topic point we didn't really think was an issue. He didn't even touch upon the far more interesting aspects to the case, so I was flat out angry at the end of it. So what could have been a great class has been a huge disappointment due to an inadequate professor.
April was not all that socially active, save for one weekend. The first weekend of April, Alex went home for Easter, and Dana and I went to the newest Smallbar on Fullerton for drinks and dinner. I had a burger that was decent but did not measure up to the Bad Apple (as if any burger would). We then went to this awful dive bar at Diversey & Broadway that was like Parrot Bar, as it looked like Gilligan's Island in there. It smelled. The beer was nasty. We couldn't even finish it. We were on our way to Michelle's birthday party anyway, so it's not exactly like that was the destination. Michelle's party was just starting when we got there, but eventually it filled up with people I didn't know, beer pong games ensued, and I was suddenly back in college. If I haven't already said it on here before, I am sick of those kinds of parties. Seriously, we're 25, grow up and throw an adult party. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
The next weekend was Alex's birthday, so to celebrate, I took him to one of the newest and highly-regarded French restaurants in the city called LM, in Lincoln Square, a neighborhood we will be exploring more now that we're practically next to it. LM was fabulous. Everything we ate was rich (to be expected considering it was French) and delicious. The service was excellent, and that was before we learned our server was the owner. The restaurant is named after his children. I can't remember their names exactly, maybe Luke and Michelle? Not sure. We'll probably go back, so we can ask again.
The following weekend was the super social weekend. Starting with Friday night, I orchestrated a farewell to Logan Square evening with a marathon bar crawl along Milwaukee Ave. It ended up being me, Alex, Dana, Katie, Dave, and Gina. We started with dinner at El Cid, my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, with filling and classically good Mexican cuisine and margaritas. From there we went to Longman & Eagle, a brand new place basically next door to El Cid. We just went for drinks at the bar, but the food menu was quite impressive. I may need to go back, even though I thought I'd be done with Logan Square. Then we went to the Rocking Horse, which I learned from two visits was better with beer than food, so that's what I stuck to. Then we went to another place I'll probably have to go back to: Revolution Brewing, where they brew some of the drafts on site. And finally, we finished the night off at the Logan, which I thought was appropriate for a neighborhood crawl. The evening started at 7 pm, ended at closing at 2 am. I loved all the bars we went to, I wish I could take them with me to North Center. Oh well, can't have everything. NC has some good bars and restaurants too, but I'm still in the early stages of exploration. Then on Saturday night, I went to Old Oak Tap for Sara's birthday party, where again I knew practically no one. But at least this birthday party was appropriate. We had half of a dining room for a huge 20+ person table, where everyone got drinks and food. I got a beer Sara didn't like and passed off to me (I liked it), with some spicy shrimp that everyone seemed to enjoy. They continued on to Bar DeVile, but my marathon crawl from the night before made me hesitant to have more alcohol. To finish off the weekend, I met up with Christy for brunch at Earwax Cafe in Wicker Park. The food was good (breakfast burrito, french toast), the conversation was good (hotels, Chicago neighborhoods), everything is always good when Christy is involved. If only I could hang out with her more regularly.
The following weekend I did absolutely nothing social as we were prepping for the move and I had two midterms to study for.
Then the following weekend came the big move. I took that Friday (April 30) off work, and started out by getting the keys from the previous tenant (she reached out to me during the lease signing process to see if we wanted to move in earlier, which we didn't, but we were exchanging e-mails back and forth up to the move in, which was really nice to be able to do), then returned home for an all-day packing and cleaning affair. I made at least 50 trips up and down the 3 flights of stairs getting as many things as I could into the basement by the back for easy transport to the moving truck, which would be parked out back. Alex and I didn't cook much that week on account of limited food in the apartment, so we tried out a barbecue joint recently opened in Logan Square called Brand BBQ (pretty good, not the best I've had), and a pizza place in West Town called Paula & Monica's (mmmmmm). Then Saturday morning came the big move. Of course, we had issues getting the Uhaul, with them completely fucking up our reservation, but it ended up working in our favor because they gave us a bigger truck than we reserved, and we used all of it. With Dave, Steve, and Dana there to help us, the actual moving part was rather easy. After we got everything out, did one final clean, someone from the landlord's management group came by with the security deposit check in full (wow!) and to collect the keys. Then we said goodbye to Logan Square, and high tailed it to North Center.
We arrived in North Center. I got pizza from Sarpino's for everyone, we ate, drank, then we moved in. Moving in is always easier than moving out, and we were done by 3:00 pm, hours earlier than I expected. We returned the UHaul, returned Dave home, and pretty much collapsed once we got back in our brand new, but absolute disaster of moving boxes apartment. The next two days were spend unpacking and sorting.
The following weekend (we're now on May 8 & 9, if you're keeping track), Alex and I grabbed an after-work drink Friday evening at the Long Room, which I really like and is two blocks away. Then we returned home to relax a bit (still kinda exhausted from the move and subsequent work week). The next day we drove out to the suburbs, where we got a new car, a new television, and a new bookcase. Alex traded in his 2002 Volvo S40 for a 2010 Ford Fusion, which is actually a really nice car. Ford has improved significantly in the past year or so. I think GM is also on the same track, but not quite where Ford is (Ford, after all, did not take any bailout money). Chrysler still doesn't get it at all and their cars continue to suck balls. The TV was on sale at Best Buy, and the bookcase came from Target. After returning home, we assembled the bookcase, set up the TV, and watched Betty White on SNL, followed by Mario Kart 64 between me and Dana.
The following weekend, we felt confident enough in the apartment finally being ready for public viewing to have some people over for a barbecue. Dana and Alex set up the Weber Grill his mom got him for his birthday in April, and eventually Katie and Eric showed up. Dave showed up later after Philadelphia defeated Boston in the NHL playoffs. We grilled some brats, hot dogs, and Polish sausage, all of which were amazingly good, then settled down to some Apples & Apples courtesy of Dana. The following evening, Suzanne and Kelly came in from the 'burbs (we drove by Blagovech's house on the way to picking up Suzanne at the Irving Park Metra stop), brought them back for a couple drinks at the apartment, then went downtown for dinner at La Madia and piano fun at Howl at the Moon. La Madia, while too trendy for my taste, had tasty gourmet pizza, the line for Howl at the Moon was out the door and around the corner, so we just said "fuck it" and returned to North Center for a couple drinks at the Globe Pub, where we witnessed family drama, a man with not one but two prostitutes, and a wedding party. Oh Chicago, how I love you.
So now we're caught up. *Wipes sweat off brow*
With love,
Active Bitch