Creativity & Cupid

Our friend Kelly recently landed her dream nursing job, but the program she got hired for doesn't start up until March, so she basically ended up with February as a month of vacation. After a week of sitting in her apartment and blowing through several seasons of Parks and Rec, she decided to actually get out in the city and do something. So she planned a day trip to The Art Institute of Chicago and invited all of us from church to come along. Luckily, it was on a day that I happened to have off, so a few weeks ago I met up with 5 others from church, and we took the Red Line into downtown.

The best part was the Institute was offering free admission for Illinois residence. Considering most of our church consists of 20-somethings working weird jobs to get by, that made us all happy. When we first arrived, we wandered downstairs through the miniatures exhibit and took in some photography. One of my favorite works was an entire wall of close-up photos of pennies in various states of corrosion. I came across one penny where Lincoln had a large divot in his temple and said "That seems insensitive." After that, we walked around the Renaissance wing, where the walls were lined with mammoth, colorful paintings. I like to think of myself as a person who enjoys and appreciates art, but some things are difficult not to mock. Sam and I would giggle like immature kids when we found something odd and amusing.

"Hey, look at this one, Sam. This guy was like, 'I want you to paint my portrait as I wear my bathrobe...but I also wanna be holding my big sword.'"
"Haha. Yeah, and look at this one. I think I'll paint two guys in a boat whispering while they look at woman trying to breast feed her child on the shore."
For some reason, the older curators stationed in each room kept giving us stern looks.

After that, Sam, Josh, and I split off from the girls to check out some of the more modern art. We found ourselves in a room with over half a dozen completely black framed photos on the wall. Upon reading the description of the work, we learned that the artist had used one of the most powerful telescopes in the world to look out into space, and instead of photographing anything interesting, decided to capture images of the deepest darkness. "She probably just forgot to the lens cap off and didn't want to admit it," someone said. So we headed back to the Eastern art room, where the artifact were much more interesting than black photos.

Intrigued gentlemen

Sadly, Cary Anne had to work during our trip to the museum, but luckily the Art Institute is only about 3 blocks from her office, so we were all able to get lunch together.

A week later, Valentine's Day was upon us. I generally have Tuesdays off, so I was able to take the day and plan things for when Cary Anne got home. Since we're on a relatively tights budget, I thought I'd make dinner for us, which is kind of a scary idea considering up until about year and half ago heating up frozen mozzarella sticks was basically the height of my culinary skills. I settled on a menu of grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, and salad, which I figured would be pretty hard to screw up. But then I remembered another obstacle. When we made the move to Chicago, we sold our dining room table set since we knew we wouldn't have room here in our new place. I ended up pulling our desk to the center of our apartment and throwing a bed sheet over it. We only have one desk chair so I had to borrow a folding chair from our church pastors, Rich and Dori. When I picked it up, Rich and I laughed about how it was one of those classic newlywed Valentine's Day that you look back on with nostalgia in a few years, "Remember when we didn't have any chairs...?"

Luckily, I was able to mask the less-then-classy table accommodations by placing tea candles all over our apartment. While it provided it a nice ambience, it certainly made cooking more of an adventure. All-in-all, I was able to successfully surprise Cary Anne with an intimate meal when she got home, and I managed not to catch anything on fire (including the food). Earlier, we had decided that our Valentine's gifts to one another wouldn't be the traditional flowers or candy, but Cubs gear instead to make us feel like true Chicagoans. Don't we look great?

What comes before Part B?

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been doing plenty of partying here in the Windy City. The festivities kicked off a couple of weeks ago when Ben invited a bunch of people to Dave and Buster's to celebrate his 28th birthday. Ben is a friend of ours from church whom I've hit it off with particularly well thanks to our mutual love of writing and comedy. (In fact, we've already been working on stuff together.)

If you don't know, Dave and Buster's is like a Chuck E. Cheese for adults, where you binge on unhealthy food and then spend too much money on arcade games. Only Dave and Buster's is better than Chuck E. Cheese because D&B serves alcohol, and it's always fun to watch somebody try to have the coordination to master air hockey or skeeball after they have a few drinks in them. In fact, those two games we're quite popular amongst our friends, probably because they're good group games with smack talk potential. Although, in retrospect, skeeball smack talk sounds pretty stupid. (ie- "Oooh, you see that? I got my ball in the 50 hole! I know how to roll a ball up a ramp more accurately than you!") After skeeball, a small air hockey tournament broke out. Kelly succeeded in taking down Josh and Cary Anne before I came along and knocked her off her high horse. Air hockey is another one where smack talk is a bit weird (ie- "Yeah, I know Geometry, bitch!") But air hockey wasn't the only game I dominated; I also took everyone down in Pop-a-Shot, which shows you just how unathletic our Chicago friends are, when I'm the one dominating basketball.

After basketball, Ben took me down a peg by challenging me to a Nascar race on a simulator. After a fierce 4 laps of crashes and wall slams, Ben succeeded in beating me by .01 seconds! (Of course, I just let him win. I mean, it was his birthday after all.) Shooting games were also popular among our friends. Whether we were busting a cap in some aliens or foiling the plot of international terrorists, everyone seemed to have fun killing other living things. In the end, we all had fun and got to enjoy some chocolate cake after we sang to Ben and watched him blow out his candles. Cary Anne and I got him a Spider-Man bobble head as a gift because...well, what else could a 28-year-old want?

Then, just a couple of days ago was the Super Bowl, of course. Because of the big game, church got pushed to earlier in the afternoon, and after the service everyone headed just down the block to a bar called Norse. That's where I met up with Cary Anne and the rest of the gang since I had to work that afternoon. Norse provided everything one could hope for for the Super Bowl, which is mainly junk food and big screen TVs. Not only was there a free nacho bar, but they also allowed us to bring in our own chicken wings and cookies. The whole thing was pretty relaxed, with the two bar tenders coming out from behind the bar and sitting in stools for most of the game, only walking around occasionally to see if anyone needed another drink.

Like pretty much every Super Bowl party I've ever been to, the whole thing was more of a social event than a "let's play close attention to the game" event. No one seemed particularly passionate about either team with most of the "Who are you rooting for?"s being met with "Eh...no one, really." One of my favorite parts of the evening was watching our friend Kelly trying to convince us she knew something about football by sprinkling her sentences with the one or two football terms she knew, like "Ah yes. That quarterback really tossed the ol' pig skin good on that...drive?" Of course, all eyes were on the screen for the spectacle of Madonna's half time performance which somehow shifted from a Ancient Greece theme to a modern day Gospel choir theme in the middle. It made me think that somewhere out there an old man was having an awkward conversation with his army buddies...

"Hey guys, did you see my son in the Super Bowl?"

"Your son played in the Super Bowl? You must be so proud!"

"Well, he didn't play football. But he did play a fake harp while he was dressed like a Trojan soldier, dancing behind Madonna."

In the final moments Cary Anne pretended to be a passionate Patriots fan since our friend Zach was rooting for the Giants. For a few fleeting minutes, they exchanged some fiery smack talk before the Patriots came up short, and Cary Anne was left crushed as the team she put all her hopes in for less than a quarter of the game let her down.

So far it's been great year for fun and community, and hopefully that trend will continue on into the coming months.