Tennis is More Dangerous than Motorcycles

At the end of July, two of Cary Anne's old college roommates, Laura and Allison, came to visit us in Chicago. It was kind of a spontaneous trip. Laura and Allison were two of the people we were able to see when we went back to Kentucky for the 4th. (Before that, we hadn't seen them in a year and a half.) Then, about 2 weeks after we returned to Chicago, we got a text asking if they could come up for a few days. By that time, Cary Anne and I were on different work schedules (since I had started working evenings at Target and Domino's), so we had fun showing them around town separately. Cary Anne took them to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and I took them up on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel (which I hadn't been on since my 8th grade class took a trip to Chicago back in 2001). Luckily, we didn't have some time where all four of us could hang out together.

At the beginning of August, Cary Anne and I took a free motorcycle safety course offered by the state of Illinois. We figured the course would help us be more comfortable on the Vespa, and if we successfully completed the course, we would get our motorcycle license without having to take the test at the DMV. Neither of us had our full motorcycle license (only permits), despite the fact we had already owned the Vespa for over 2 years. The course was 24 hours of training over 2 weekends. It involved classroom time and riding time. I was hoping our experience on the Vespa would give us a little advantage, but motorcycles with clutches and gear shifts are quite different. There were a number of wobbles and spills throughout the class. At the end, there was a skills test, which was rather nerve racking. Luckily, CA and I both passed, and we now officially have our motorcycle licenses. We celebrated by going to get ice cream.

Cary Anne's birthday was in the middle of August. Part of her gift from me was a tennis racquet because she had been talking about how she wanted to learn to play. We started spending a lot of our free time at the court. Sadly, on our first outing, Cary Anne managed to injure herself. She was collecting a ball that she had hit out of the court and stumbled into a pothole. I laughed a little because I thought she had just tripped, but she had a pretty good scratch on her knee and her ankle had twisted, so then I kind of felt like a jerk. Thankfully, it was only a minor setback. Within a week or so, she was ready to get back out on the court. While the weather was warm, tennis kind of became our go-to date, which was a nice break from dates like eating and going to the movies where we just sit around.

At the end of August, our friend Lisa came back to visit from the west coast. Lisa was one of the first people we met at our church, Community Edgewater, when we moved here. Sadly, about a year ago, she moved to Seattle, but she still returns from time to time to visit. This time, she convinced a friend of hers to host a rooftop party downtown. So for a few hours one night we got to live up on a swanky high rise. It was a pretty good way to end the summer.

How We Spent Our Summer Vacation, an essay

Summer flew by here in Chicago. The weeks made a condescending "wooshing" sound as they wizzed by and reminded me I had yet to update this blog.

Around the end of May, the lingering coolness of Spring finally started to move out of Chicago, and the sun showed up sporadically. This meant the beach was finally an enjoyable place to spend time. Cary Anne and I would go to the shore with our friends and lay around, waiting for the sun to peek out from behind the clouds so we could feel warmth on our skin. "Ahh, there it is!" we would shout, only to have it disappear back behind clouds several minutes later.

In June, around the middle of the month, tragedy struck when I lost my job. I had been working for the restaurant chain Cosi since Cary Anne and I moved to Chicago back at the end of 2011. For about a year, I was a barista in the restaurant. Then, I was lucky enough to land a full time job at their corporate office. Sadly, the company has been on shaky financial ground for a long time, so they downsized about a quarter of the office around the middle of summer. Though they offered to let me go back to work in the restaurant, after some thought and prayer, I decided to just cut ties all together. And so began the task of finding a new job.

Towards the end of June, we added a fourth member to Hallnathan Manor- a tabby named Toby. For a few weeks leading up to his arrival, our housemate Kelly had been talking about wanting a pet, and it didn't take much effort for her to get Cary Anne on board with the idea. I would come home at night and find them on their computers at the dining room table oh-ing and aw-ing at pictures of animals from local shelters. Kelly started really pushing for a cat, and when we found out that our building doesn't allow dogs, that sealed the deal. Our friend Jon knew a family with a litter of kittens that they were trying to find good homes for, so one night we drove down to the south side to pick one up. Toby has the mood swings of a pregnant bipolar woman; he can go from sleeping on the couch to jumping on the dining room table at the drop of a hat. We have started to use a water bottle to spray at him when he tries to eat our food or chew up our stuff. We keep hoping one day he'll become well-behaved (or just less hyper-active), but there's a long road ahead of us on that one.

At the end of June there was also a picnic at the lake for all 3 Chicago campuses of Community Christian. The main event of the day was a volleyball tournament, which I'm happy to announce that Team Edgewater dominated. It was much more competitve than the volleyball "tournament"s from the church I grew up in, where middle-aged men would stand around with a soda in one hand and swipe at the ball as long as they didn't have to step more than a foot. After the tournament, there was just enough time for everyone to grab some food before a storm started to move in. The lifeguards forced everyone out of the water, and wind started to blow our tents over. After several picnicers were nearly struck by the airborne canopies, Cary Anne and I decided it was time to make our escape on the Vespa.

For the 4th of July, Cary Anne and I made a trip down to Kentucky. By this time my grandmother had lost her battle with lung cancer, so there was a bit of a mini family reunion happening. Cary Anne got introduced to members of my family she had never met as we spent the holiday eating and laughing and remincing about my grandmother. Since we had not been back to Lexington since December of 2012, CA and I filled our days there with visits to most of our nearby friends. Admittedly, CA and I are both pretty bad at staying in touch with people via phone and email, but we have been blessed with friendships that seem to pick up right where they left off whenever we do get a chance to actually see people.

One of the upsides of being unemployed during the summer was that it gave me the opportunity to volunteer with StuCo, the youth program at our church. Since our church meets at a school that runs K-8th grade, we would gather once a week at the school playground and organize games for the kids. Gretchen and Tori, our church's summer interns, spent lots of time coming up with fun and interesting games for the kids, so I always felt a little bad when the kids just seemed content with playing kickball or dodgeball for hours on end. The program was just as fun and insane as you would expect, and hopefully it will continue to be as we move into the new school year.

Overall, it was a fast-paced summer full of changes. Based on my current track record with maintaining this blog, you'll be reading all about our Fall in the Summer of 2014.  

A Stay in the Sunshine State

Back in February, my grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer. As you can imagine, it came as a pretty big blow to the family. My grandmother's health has been up and down since I was in high school, and there have been multiple times that my mother has come to me to tell me that my grandmother may not be around much longer. In fact, my grandmother has come back from the brink so many times, that I've almost started to dismiss any sort of warning as a false scare. However, as the days passed, it became clear just how serious my grandmother's condition was, and everyone started to make travel plans. Cary Anne and I were finally able to fly down in the middle of May.

My grandparents live in Winter Haven, a small town just south of Orlando. My aunt Callie, uncle Paul, and two cousins, Sarah and Haley, also live there. The last time Cary Anne and I were able to visit all of them was for Sarah's high school graduation in the summer of 2011. (They were living in North Carolina than.) The great thing about the trip to Florida is that it turned into a bit of a family reunion. My brother, Jon, and his wife, Andrea, were able to drive down from Kentucky, and my aunt Tina flew in from Vermont. (CA and I hadn't seen Tina since our wedding back in 2010.)

During our time there, Callie was able to get Cary Anne, Jon, Andrea, and I some free passes to Disney World. Cary Anne hadn't been to Disney since she was a child, and the only other time I had been was when I was16 or so. (Andrea was particularly excited since she had never been.) The day was filled with all the fun you would expect from a trip to Disney World. We had our photo taken with Buzz and Woody, we rode Space Mountain, and we watched fireworks explode over Cinderella's castle at the end of the night.

Most of the next couple of days were spent in the hospital with my grandmother. Though she and my grandfather knew Cary Anne and I were coming, Jon and Andrea's visit was a surprise, so it was great to see my grandparents' reaction when they walked in. With all of us there, the hospital room got pretty cramped, but we made the most of it. At one point, we brought in a small TV and watched old home movies. Later, my grandfather made each of us talk about our lives and our dreams. He talked to Jon and I about how his hope for the family is that we would always stay close and support each other and laugh together. It was nice because, to me, my grandfather has never come off as a particularly sentimental man.

A few day after our arrival, CA and I were able to borrow my aunt and uncle's van to make some short trips outside of Orlando. Cary Anne's cousin, Danielle, (whom CA hadn't seen since 2005) lives less than hour away from Winter Haven. Danielle and her husband, Bill, were nice enough to invite us to dinner at their place. We were able to catch up while their kids ran around and showed us their favorite toys. Another day, we drove over to Clearwater, mainly because I refused to take a 5 day vacation in Florida and never see a beach.

Though the main reason for our trip to Florida wasn't ideal, it turned out to be a pretty nice vacation. For Cary Anne and I, despite all of the great things about moving to Chicago, one of the downsides meant moving farther away from all of our family. Hopefully, we'll continue to have opportunities to visit in the future.

April, this month is so premium.

April flew by here in Chicago, highlighted by several fun events...

First, Cary Anne and I had the chance to see some live theatre, which, sadly, is not something we get to do very often. Luckily, I found a good deal on some tickets at a small theater in Evanston the week before the show closed. The production was "Everything is Illuminated," which was an original adaptation of one of mine and Cary Anne's favorite novels. I decided to make the date a surprise for Cary Anne; I told her to get dressed up and made her wear a blindfold during the car ride. The production was very entertaining, and now Cary Anne is insisting we be more deliberate about seeing live theatre.

Not long after that, my parents had the opportunity to come visit. My father's work sends him to the area for training every now and then, and, of course, my mother insists on tagging along. The last time my parents came to visit, CA and I were still living in our studio in Roger's Park, so we got to show them our new(ish) apartment and neighborhood. Though we were only able to spend about half a day with them, we still got enjoy lunch and take a walk along Lake Michigan. 

The next weekend, a group of us from church went to see our friend Lana's piano recital. Lana was graduating from Moody, a local Bible college, so it was her final senior performance. Of course, she did amazing, and now she has moved off to New York to pursue her dreams. After the recital, Kelly and I hopped on the train and went to the Chicago Theatre to see Jim Gaffigan's newest stand-up show. We had bought our tickets a little late, so we weren't exactly close to the stage, but there's not really a bad seat in the Chicago Theatre. It was a great show, and I'm sure Cary Anne grew tired of us quoting it for the next several days.

At the end of the month, our friend Craig announced that he was moving to Kentucky, to be closer to his family, so we invited him over for a farewell dinner. We told Craig that we were going to cook up some steaks, and he offered to bring over some crab legs that he had won in a local meat raffle. (Yes, I said meat raffle.) So, the dinner turned into surf and turf night, which is probably the fanciest meal we've had in this apartment so far. The evening was great. Craig was a huge part of the muscle that helped get all of our stuff into this 3rd floor walk-up, and he has been a big part of our church over the past several months, so we're really going to miss him.

Pie and Pancakes

If you've known me (Spencer) for over a year, you probably know that I enjoy celebrating Pi Day. It's not because I enjoy math so much; it's because I was raised in America and have learned to make even the flimsiest of excuses to eat large amounts of food. So each year, I like to buy a pie or two and share them with friends. This year, Cary Anne and I had our artists community group on Pi Day, so I shared it with them. As you can see, everyone seemed to enjoy it.

After Pi Day, our church started to get prepped for Easter. The central location of Community Christian wanted to use our campus to film the video that would show at all of the campuses on Easter Sunday, so two weeks prior to Easter many of us volunteered to take part in the filming. The rough part was that even in the middle of March, Chicago was still firmly within winter's grasp (as you can tell from the ice on the lake that was thick enough for people to stand on). The freezing temperatures and frigid wind made filming on the lake shore quite unpleasant, but the video itself (a modern retelling of the story of Thomas) turned out quite well. You can watch it here.

For our Good Friday service, we met at a local house that can be rented out for meetings and art showings. The theme of the night was, "Everything is different, but nothing's really changed," which was apparently inspired by the William Fitzsimmons song since we played part of the song during the service. At Community Edgewater, we tend to embrace the somber tone of Good Friday, setting the evening aside to think about what it would have been like for the disciples on the night Jesus died considering everything they had just invested the past 3 years of their life in was suddenly (seemingly) nothing. Inside the rented building, the whole first floor was gutted, with only the skeletal structure beams holding up the place. There were several tables set up with half-eaten food to show what it would have been like for the disciples to have returned to the uncleaned upper room after Jesus was betrayed. Everything is different, but nothing's really changed. For a while, we wandered around the wood beams and tables while our friend Patrick played the chello. After that, we moved up to the third floor of the building, which looked like a finished attic from the '70s, completely with orange shag carpet and wood paneling. During the service, members of our community shared stories of deep loss from their own lives.

Last Easter, our church had a small service on the shore of Lake Michigan. But this year, with our rising attendance and Chicago's dipping temperatures, we decided to just meet at our normal location, Swift Elementary. However, we did want to do something a little special, so we got back in touch with our Southern roots and had a pancake breakfast. Craig and Abby manned the griddles set up in front of the school. With the free breakfast in plain sight, we were even able to offer pancakes to random passer-bys. During the Easter service, the same people who shared stories of loss at our Good Friday Service talked about the hope that emerged from the darkness. Overall, it was a great Sunday, and we all kept hoping that, with Easter over and April beginning, Spring would show up sometime soon.

Birthday Bonanzas

If you'll recall from our last update, our friend Ben had a sketchy karaoke birthday party back at the beginning of February. Not wanting to be outdone, our friend Jackie convinced a local bowling alley to open up about an hour early so she could have a private bowling event for her birthday the very next weekend. One of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan, says there are two types of bowlers: bored people who can think of nothing else to do before they die and hipsters who think bowling is ironic and funny. Both were present at Jackie's birthday, along with a 3rd: people who take bowling very seriously.

Thankfully even the serious bowlers had a great attitude because none of us were very good. (You know the bar is set low when your friends are cheering because you broke 75.) Both gutter balls and strikes were met with encouraging high fives. When you're playing with a bunch of non-bowlers, it's also entertaining to watch people's form. Kelly goes with the one leg hop...

Ben goes with the barely-keep-from-falling-sideways...

And Amanda goes with the try-to-look-professional-but-end-up-tossing-my-ball-into-the-next-lanes-gutter. That's exactly what happened in this photo, and I was very excited to get the shot. Notice the red blur flying oddly high in the air? Yep, that's not normal.

At the beginning of March, our friend Betsy came into town. Betsy was involved in theater with us during the one year she went to University of the Cumberlands. She transferred to a different school in 2009, so we hadn't seen her almost 4 years. She was in town visiting the Art Institute since she's considering going to grad school there. We met up with downtown, and grabbed dinner. It was nice to catch up, and we tried to tell her about all of the great reasons to move to Chicago. (Though do really need any more reason than "we live here"?)

Towards the end of March, we decided to host Kelly's birthday at the apartment. Earlier, Kelly and Amanda had decided that we should throw a Beach Bash since everyone was growing tired of the continual bleakness of winter. They decided to call the party "Leave Your Pants at the Door," and it was decided that no one would be allowed in unless they were wearing shorts. A few days before the event, Kelly went out and bought a bunch of beach-themed items, so on the Friday night of the party I came home to kiddie pool and an inflatable palm tree in our dining room and a blow-up tiki statue in our office. To be honest, it really looked like we were about to host a beach-themed Vacation Bible School. Except for the fact there was a little male nudity...

You can't have a pool without a lifeguard on duty, right? Safety first!

As the evening set in, our apartment began to fill up, fast. It quickly became clear that this shindig would be more intense than the s'mores house warming get-together we hosted when we first moved in. Our hallway became crowded with discarded coats and pants and our dining room table couldn't hold all of the drinks and snacks people were bringing. Our apartment became divided into 3 different sections: the living room became a dance party, the kiddie pool became a place for people to converse, and, with a little help from my tripod and DSLR, the office was transformed into a photo booth. There was laughter and music, and a blender full of fruity cocktails was continually being passed around. Thankfully, everyone seemed to have a fun, relaxing, and safe evening.

The next morning, our apartment was a hot mess, but Cary Anne, Kelly, and I had a good time sitting around the table looking at all of the pictures from the photo booth.

Only 4 more months until Cary Anne's birthday!

S is for Super Bowl, Singing, and Stuck

February kicked off the same way it does every year...with the Super Bowl. This year, Ryan and Sarah, a young married couple from our church, invited a bunch of us over to watch the big game. There were all the makings of a good Super Bowl party: a big screen TV, plenty of junk food, and a nice ratio of people who were way too into the game to people who were confused as to what was even happening. Cary Anne and I are not really into professional sports. (A big surprise coming from people with Theatre degrees, huh?) So when it comes to situations like the Super Bowl, we tend to just root for whichever team is from a place close to one of our hometowns. Cary Anne grew up in Virginia about an hour away from Baltimore. So for one night, we were Ravens fans. Overall, we had a fun time watching the game, even the half hour when there was no game to watch thanks to a power outage at the stadium. And in the end, our root-for-the-not-really-your-hometown-team-but-close-enough plan meant we got to celebrate a victory.

In February we also had a great time celebrating our friend Ben's birthday. Ben's birthday is actually at the end of January, and at that time we had a small MAN group celebration. (MAN group is what Ben, Josh, and I call our discipleship meetings. Every Wednesday night we get together just to talk and hang out and "do life together," to steal a hip churchy phrase.) So one Wednesday night we had pizza and wings and birthday cake. Since Cary Anne was home that night, we allowed her to partake, and we were a (wo)MAN group for just one night.

Later Ben wanted to have a real party, so he invited a bunch of people out to karaoke one Sunday night. In Lexington, Cary Anne and I would sometimes go to karaoke at a shabby bar with some of my co-workers from Krispy Kreme. We didn't go that often, because a lot of times it was just a continual stream of barely sober people singing sad country songs. They would give us weird looks as we would scream-sing 80's power ballads. Ben's birthday was not that kind of karaoke. He had rented all of us a private room, which is not even something I knew existed in the karaoke world. When we pulled up, the place looked suspiciously like a place where you would go to get an exotic message, complete with the poster of a woman holding a microphone provocatively close to her open mouth. We walked into the small lobby where there was no front desk or sign, just a door to the left and a door to the right. We decided to take the door on the right. It led down a long hallway with rooms on either side, which didn't do much to ease the sex parlor vibe. Eventually, we came upon a bar, which also served as the "front" desk. We told the bar tender we were with Ben, and he pointed to the door at the end of the hall. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and used it to open the door.

Inside was basically a mini night club, complete with flashing lights, several big screen TVs, and couches on every wall. As we all crowded in, the mood changed from weary to jovial. There was not a lot of sitting around and listening to people sing. Pretty much every song was a group sing-along, and by the end of the night, the room had just turned into one giant dance party.

A couple of days after Ben's birthday, Cary Anne got stranded at the movie theater late one night. The church small group she and I are currently in is dedicated to recognizing creativity as a spiritual gift and sharpening your artistic discipline. Part of the curriculum encourages you to take yourself on an "artist's date" every week, which means taking time to treat yourself to an activity by yourself every week that your inner artist will enjoy. (Like all artistic curriculum, it's a half practical / half hippy non-sense.) So Cary Anne went to the movies by herself, but when she came out she realized her driver's side wheels were on a sheet of ice and her passenger side wheels were in a deep puddle, and she couldn't get enough traction to move. Kelly and I drove to her to try to rescue her. We threw salt down on the ice and tried to wedge a board into the puddle in an attempt to gain some traction, but after 15 minutes we still hadn't made much progress. Eventually Kelly said, "Why don't we just throw this mother in neutral and push?" After we started pushing, Kelly managed to step right into the ankle-deep frigid puddle. Our shabby condition attracted the attention of a couple of passer-bys, who decided to lend a hand. "Whoa, it's icy over here," one of them said. Yep. Hence the stuck car. Luckily, after a few minutes of pushing, we managed to get the car out onto the road.

This is the type of winter nonsense people warned us about before we moved to Chicago.