It was like October!
At last it seems the weather has finally caught up with the calendar, it's goddamned JUNE already. Thursday it was dark and stormy, and when the wonderful princess335 arrived I said, "So nice that you could visit October!"
It's been since before I left Seattle that princess335 have seen each other, and it's been a very happy (and ACTIVE) reunion. Although princess335 would be content to just sit on our asses drinking wine and watching old movies, we frequently ventured out and explored some of my version of the city. On Friday the weather had a moment of "Oh, yes, I see that it is June, my goodness." And gave us a gorgeous day to take the train downtown. We visited Millennium Park and the Cloud Gate and Grant Park, and the Chicago Cultural Center (which I consider a lovely hidden gem full of free FREE art exhibits all year long), and the Art Institute.
After stopping for lunch* we collapsed into a deep dark naptime of the soul for a few hours, and emerged to force princess335 to try Chicago deep dish pizza -- which is never as good anywhere else in the world as here, so if you think you've had it, you haven't, unless you've had it here. It's so good, that I remember one year La Cyn and I in a fit of desperate yearning ordered some by overnight shipping, it still wasn't as good.
Later that night we corrected a grave error in pescana's cultural lexicon by forcing her to watch All About Eve.
Saturday morning dawned cold and rainy. Oh for dog's sake, really, not even two days in a ROW can we have nice weather? But by mid-afternoon the sun had come out and we (princess335, pescana, and Young Zed ventured south to Ribfest. Which could have been better. We stopped for drinks and curry fries on the way back and again ended up watching movies when we got home, because we are old and lazy.
Sunday, princess335 and I got ourselves up and took the train to Oak Park, where we took the self-guided walking tour of the district, since the weather had decided to make nice for us once again. On the way back we had the fun of not being sure which train was actually going to bring us back through the Loop, as well as the train in front of us going tits up, forcing delays and disembarkings and much grumbling. We just sat with our noses in our books (because we're smrt! and always travel with a book, or Oscar Wilde's diary). Eventually we made it back home, and La Cyn had just returned from her visit up to her mom's as she does every odd weekend.
We (princess335, pescana, cynstress, and I) went out again for dinner and spent much of it trying to gently coax princess335 to move to our version of the city. Of course, it has to be very very gentle, as the minute you tell her to do something, she balls her tiny fists and digs in her tiny heels and obdurately refuses to do just that. But I think the city itself did a good job of it for us.
The she left me this morning, so all I had to do was bake some bread and repot the rosemary and brandywine tomatoes I got at the farmers' market last week. Hopefully they'll do well.
Gosh, just writing this has made me tired, I think it's time for a nap again.
*Things overheard on the street: On the way home from lunch, two women were walking toward us down the sidewalk, the blonde one asked, "What's big, round, and yellow?" obviously on her way to making a joke about the sun which we haven't seen for three months, her companion, a young Asian woman replied, "Ummm, I don't know. My mom?"
It's been since before I left Seattle that princess335 have seen each other, and it's been a very happy (and ACTIVE) reunion. Although princess335 would be content to just sit on our asses drinking wine and watching old movies, we frequently ventured out and explored some of my version of the city. On Friday the weather had a moment of "Oh, yes, I see that it is June, my goodness." And gave us a gorgeous day to take the train downtown. We visited Millennium Park and the Cloud Gate and Grant Park, and the Chicago Cultural Center (which I consider a lovely hidden gem full of free FREE art exhibits all year long), and the Art Institute.
After stopping for lunch* we collapsed into a deep dark naptime of the soul for a few hours, and emerged to force princess335 to try Chicago deep dish pizza -- which is never as good anywhere else in the world as here, so if you think you've had it, you haven't, unless you've had it here. It's so good, that I remember one year La Cyn and I in a fit of desperate yearning ordered some by overnight shipping, it still wasn't as good.
Later that night we corrected a grave error in pescana's cultural lexicon by forcing her to watch All About Eve.
Saturday morning dawned cold and rainy. Oh for dog's sake, really, not even two days in a ROW can we have nice weather? But by mid-afternoon the sun had come out and we (princess335, pescana, and Young Zed ventured south to Ribfest. Which could have been better. We stopped for drinks and curry fries on the way back and again ended up watching movies when we got home, because we are old and lazy.
Sunday, princess335 and I got ourselves up and took the train to Oak Park, where we took the self-guided walking tour of the district, since the weather had decided to make nice for us once again. On the way back we had the fun of not being sure which train was actually going to bring us back through the Loop, as well as the train in front of us going tits up, forcing delays and disembarkings and much grumbling. We just sat with our noses in our books (because we're smrt! and always travel with a book, or Oscar Wilde's diary). Eventually we made it back home, and La Cyn had just returned from her visit up to her mom's as she does every odd weekend.
We (princess335, pescana, cynstress, and I) went out again for dinner and spent much of it trying to gently coax princess335 to move to our version of the city. Of course, it has to be very very gentle, as the minute you tell her to do something, she balls her tiny fists and digs in her tiny heels and obdurately refuses to do just that. But I think the city itself did a good job of it for us.
The she left me this morning, so all I had to do was bake some bread and repot the rosemary and brandywine tomatoes I got at the farmers' market last week. Hopefully they'll do well.
Gosh, just writing this has made me tired, I think it's time for a nap again.
*Things overheard on the street: On the way home from lunch, two women were walking toward us down the sidewalk, the blonde one asked, "What's big, round, and yellow?" obviously on her way to making a joke about the sun which we haven't seen for three months, her companion, a young Asian woman replied, "Ummm, I don't know. My mom?"