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?